At the Heart of the Universe (47 page)

China is the other that you come to love and that loves you. China is our daughter. To lose this opening would be to lose her. And you can't just do it once, opening up to that love, no. You have to do it over and over again until you die.

Naked, as she walks closer toward them, she sees the amazement in their eyes.



That night, Katie asleep, and Xiao Lu feverish and restless across the cave, they lie in each other's arms. Pep's arm is around her, his fingers intertwining with hers in their special way. Seeing her naked, and daring, has turned him on. He caresses her breast, her belly. Her summer scent of tube-fresh Coppertone mixes with the scents of the cave and the meal, the scents of hollows in rocks, of earth floors, of being inside this mountain. As he caresses her, she sighs happily. Has he ever felt so close to her? Their first summer, making love in the afternoons—but even more afterward, lying together like this but in daylight in his inherited house filled with the stiffness of two hundred years of whalers and commerce and insurance that had become a burden, a slow death. Lying there together, she with him and he with her, a “click” with each other that had something to do with their breaking free of their families and of their separate pasts. He loved her spirit. The way her senses mixed—she would hear “a velvety sound,” or see “the daylight music,” or talk about “the color-tumbled gardens of the Islands.” She woke him up. He opened up to love, and love opened them both up to the shared vision of having a child. He suffered with her through their sterility—a shared suffering, which, to his amazement (for he had been taught the opposite), opened them up even more and drew them even closer together. And then when he—ass that he was!—at first said “No” to adoption, she kept holding the “Yes” until China opened up and led them to this.

He strokes the small of her back. She sighs, and snuggles in closer, all along him.

What I loved then and love now is the... yes, the vital sense that with her I could make the journey all the way to the end of life, and that to lose her would be the old beginning of death. Amen.

40

They look around. They call out. There is no answer.

A late runner of sunlight strikes the bright white of the golf umbrella that reads “GE Brings Good Things to Life—The Masters 2000,” skids off over the glittering cliff face, and hurries back to the hut and the two people standing outside it. Rhett is in black—black loafers, pants, collared shirt unbuttoned two or three buttons down, black leather jacket, and a black, brimmed hat like actors wear in gangster movies. His white golf umbrella is an aberration. The woman, taller than him, is dressed for an upscale safari—khaki pants with many pockets and khaki vest with many more, and a stylish robin's-egg-blue safari hat with a many-colored feather in the band. All the logos on her clothes match: “ORVIS.” Her blond hair scoots out in a ponytail. On her feet are Reeboks, pink trimmed and mud spattered. She and Rhett both wear aviator sunglasses. Both are damp from the monsoon, and out of place in this unadorned clearing in fashionless nature, the dead end of a rough path carved onto the mountain.

“Depressing!” the woman says, staring at the hut, at the ill-set stones and tilting moon gate. “You really think this is it?”

“Un hunh.” He walks to the hut, shakes the rain off the umbrella, and closes it. The tip hits the roof tiles. A shower of dirty water and leaves comes down on his leather loafers and black linen trousers. Brushing them off he notices the hems of the trousers are filthy, the sides of the loafers too. Cursing, he leads her inside.

Lived in. Recently lived in. Ashes cold in the wood stove. Bed, with quilt pulled up over the pillow. Calligraphy everywhere. Smell of old incense and garlic and cooking oil and kerosene. And worse. A peasant's dwelling, one of thousands he's been in, run from, and tried for many years never to be seen in again.

“She's been here, Thalia,” Rhett says, reflexively sniffing at his wrist where his cologne, Hermès Homme, affirms his talents and aspirations. “But no sign of them.”

Thalia wrinkles up her nose, then sneezes. “Hard to believe people live like this. I hate this smell.”

“Here.” He takes out two cigarettes, lights them, hands one to her.

“I told you I'm trying to quit. It's deadly.”

“Nah. It's good for you. Clears the chest.” He takes a deep drag, holding the cigarette up between index and middle finger,
a la
the French sophisticate. “Let's get some fresh air.”

“You call that a thorough search?” she says, following him out.

“No, I call it a downer. We'll check outside.” He tiptoes through the puddles, trying to keep on the old stone path that leads toward the stream and the cliff. The sight of the lowering sun is of scant interest to him. He isn't really worried about not finding them. The monk saw them several days ago and said they were fine. They're sure to be back by nightfall. The real worry is where the hell he and Thalia are going to sleep. It took them a lot longer to get here than the monk said it would. He can't see going back in the dark. Thalia is standing beside him, looking at the sun, which doesn't seem to him to have all that far to go before it's gone. He turns to look back at the little settlement and notices the inscription chiseled into the wall of the hut, the script looking ancient and set out in short lines like a poem. The two of them draw on their cigarettes, standing awkwardly in the clearing, with no place to sit down.

“What do we do now?” she asks.

“We widen the circle, shift the paradigm. Investigate.”

Metal sheets of sunlight suddenly rattle through the clouds and illuminate the clearing like, he imagines, on a film set. He lowers his aviator sunglasses from their perch on his pomaded black hair, and moves around with surprising lightness, keeping up a patter, “See, look at me, I'm investigating, investigating. Sure to be some DNA shit around here somewhere.” She laughs. He leads her around, finding the latrine, the vegetable garden, the huge, wet ming aurelia, which, with the soaked eucalyptus and pine, gives a fresh scent to the oncoming dusk.

He stops, and listens. “Hey, hey, hey. Listen up.”

Sounds coming from the woods, sounds of people moving toward them.

Three people come out of the forest. First is a woman in peasant shirt and torn khaki shorts and a conical straw hat, bent low under a large bundle of tied-up wood that lies over her shoulders. Next is a tall man in a torn Hawaiian shirt and a hat that looks like a cloth bowl, he too bent over, from the weight of a bamboo pole with a bucket at either end. Last a girl in shorts and a faded yellow T-shirt sporting a chicken. She carries a woven reed basket full of greens.

Breathing heavily, Clio, Pep, and Katie make it into the clearing and put down their burdens. They blink in the sudden bright sunlight, shading their eyes to see.

“Holy shit,” Rhett says, staring at them.

“I don't believe it,” says Thalia.

Clio, Pep, and Katie stare back. In each mind is the same word:
Tourists?

“Pep?” Rhett calls out. Pep nods. “Wha's happenin', baby?”

“Just gathering wood,” he says quietly, “fetching water and food.”

The Macys stay where they are, as if suspicious of the well-dressed intruders.

“Clio? Can it be you? And dear little Kate?” She walks toward them.

“Thalia? What are
you
doing here?”

“You didn't show up at the family Fourth—it was
quite
unlike you...” She stares at her sister: two black eyes, scratches all over her face and legs, and filthy hands. Dirt makes dark rims of her nails and outlines the creases of her skin. Pep too is filthy; Katie's hair is unruly and her knees are caked with mud, as if she's been crawling around in dirt. “Are you guys
okay
?”

“Fine.” Clio looks Rhett and Thalia up and down. She sees them as dressed ridiculously for where they are, without climbing shoes, and with no protection from the elements except those stupid hats, and that garish umbrella too wide to get through the narrow mountain paths. Their jewelry—gold necklaces and fat watches and rings and bracelets—and that potent cologne seem pathetic here.

“Don't I get a hello from my niece?”

Thalia's one of those adults who doesn't know how to talk to kids. Katie stares down and says, “Hi.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Thalia says. “Now. Clio, what happened to your
face
?”

“I fell down in the dark. It looks bad, but it doesn't hurt.”

“Far out,” Rhett says. “But what's with all the scratches and cuts?”

“From the monkeys,” Katie says. “Just the monkeys.”

“The monkeys?” Thalia asks.

“No joke,” Katie says. Pep bursts out laughing. Clio and Katie join in.

“Where's Xiao Lu?” Rhett asks.

“In the cave.”

“Cave? What cave?”

“Where we live,” Katie says. “I'll show you.”

Pep stares at the way that Rhett and Thalia are standing together.
My God, he's noodling her!
“Hey, Rhett,” he says, “my shoulders are sore. Can you give a hand?” He motions to the carrying pole. “Just up to the cave?”

“Sure, big fella.” With clear distaste for this menial task, Rhett tries to hoist the pole with the buckets onto his shoulders, spilling some water, finding it hard to balance. Pep grabs it and gets under it by himself again and slowly follows the others up to the cliff face and the hidden mouth of the cave. Rhett chatters away, something about a “business plan” he's brought along.

To Pep the words sound too loud, too vulgar. This mindless banter in the service of ambition is annoying. Thinking,
“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.”

Pep and Clio and Katie walk into the cave, which is dark but for the glow from the fire. Rhett and Thalia hesitate at the entrance, suddenly blinded, their eyes needing to accommodate. The glow from the stove shines on a small bamboo bed, and a larger one. A sharp-edged shaft of light shoots down from far back in the cave, illuminating a large pile of milky-white dust on what looks like a primitive altar. The metallic sound of dripping water. Pep lights the kerosene lanterns.

As if the floor were paved with scorpions and snakes, Rhett and Thalia make their way gingerly to the crude chairs and the table, on which sit backpacks and, arrayed as if for an operation, scissors and knives and bandages and medicines. The smell is revolting to the visitors, for in addition to all the smells of the small hut, there is the scent of sweat and excrement and dirt, and antiseptic, which seems to congeal the other smells in a disgusting way, as vomit might. Rhett sniffs his wrist. Thalia takes out her own perfume and dabs. They watch the Macys go to the small bed and unpeel the covers, revealing a pale, thin, frightened, scratched-up face.

“This her?” Rhett asks.

“Yes. Katie's birth mom, Xiao Lu.”

“Wonderful,” Thalia says, without missing a beat. Standing over her, she says loudly, “Nee how nee how!” Xiao Lu stares at her and says nothing. “I... am... Clio's... sister,” Thalia says, slowly and more loudly, as if that will make the woman understand. “Your... daughter's... aunt.”

Xiao Lu closes her eyes, these loud words making her head pound. Rhett translates. She nods. Katie takes her hand. She opens her eyes and smiles.

Katie makes antler-shaking motions to Xiao Lu and points to the mouth of the cave. Xiao Lu nods and smiles, and tries to get up. She falls back down on the bed, exhausted. Pep and Clio help her up. Supported by them, she walks stiffly with Katie out of the cave to the edge of the woods, where she sits on a stone bench.

“Interesting sign language,” Thalia says. “And the meaning... ?”

Clio finds the sound of her sister's voice irritating. There is something in it she can't identify at first. She wants to ignore it, but feels an obligation to respond. Even so, she can barely squeeze her own words through her set teeth. “Feeding Goldfish to the deer.”

“Good Lord! Well, it
is
China, after all.”

Clio's irritation starts to rise—but then all the air goes out of it. It reminds her of what she herself might have said.
There but for the grace of God go I.

“Yes, Thally,” she says, “it is.”

41

The deer are fed, the dinner done, and the iron door to the old stove in the hut is open. The pops and crackles and slow hum of the burning wood take the bite out of the damp rising like cold breath from the exhaling mountain.

Xiao Lu, still feverish and weak, has insisted on being with them in the hut. She sits in the chair. Pep and Clio squat against the wall. Katie is at the calligraphy table, working on a new scroll. Her head is down close to the brush tip in concentration. Rhett and Thalia sit on the bench smoking, each with one leg crossed over the other as if at a business meeting.

For a while no one has said anything. The loud, fast chatter of the visitors has made Pep and Clio—and even Katie—realize how precious the silence has been.