The Hundred Secret Senses (26 page)

“For example.” He motions for Kwan to take the floor.

She furrows her brow and crinkles her nose, as if searching through her extensive repository of ghost stories, all of them secrets we would be sworn never to reveal. “Most famous ones,” she says after this pause, “always concerning foreigner. When they die cause so much trouble!”

Simon nods sympathetically.

“Okay, one story go like this. This happen maybe one hundred year ago. So I didn’t see, only hear Changmian people talk. Concerning four missionaries, come from England, riding in little wagons, big umbrella on top, just two mule in front pulling those fat people. Hot day too. Jump out two Bible ladies, one young and nervous, one old and bossy, also two men, one has beard, other one, oh, so fat no one from our village can believe. And these foreigners, they wearing Chinese clothes—yes!— but still look strange. Fat man, he speak Chinese, little bit, but very hard understanding him. He say something like, ‘Can we do picnic here?’ Everybody say, ‘Welcome-welcome.’ So they eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, so much food.”

I interrupt Kwan. “You’re talking about Pastor Amen?”

“No-no. Entirely different people. I already told you, didn’t see, only hear. Anyway, after they done eating, fat man ask, ‘Hey, we hear you have famous cave, ancient city inside. You show us?’ Everybody make excuse: ‘Oh, too far. Too busy. Nothing see.’ So old Bible lady, she hold up pencil—‘Whoever want it, take me see cave, you can have!’ Those days, long time ago, our people never yet seen pencil—writing brush, course, but pencil, no. Course, probably Chinese people invent pencil, we invent so many things—gunpowder but not for killing, noodle too. Italian people always say they invent noodle—not true, only copy Chinese from Marco Polo time. Also, Chinese people invent zero for number. Before zero, people don’t know have nothing. Now everybody have zero.” Kwan laughs at her own joke. “ . . . What I saying before?”

“You were talking about the Bible lady with the pencil.”

“Ah, yes. In our poor village, no one seen pencil. Bible lady, she show them can make mark just like that, no need mixing ink. One young man, family name Hong—he always dreaming he better than you—he took that pencil. Today, his family still have, on altar table, same pencil cost his life.” Kwan crosses her arms, as if to suggest pencil greediness deserved death.

Simon picks up a twig. “Wait a minute. We’re missing something here. What happened to the missionaries?”

“Never come back.”

“Maybe they went home,” I reason. “Nobody saw them leave.”

“That young man also don’t come back.”

“Maybe he became a Christian and joined the missionaries.”

Kwan gives me a doubtful look. “Why someone do that? Also, why those missionaries don’t take their wagons, their mules? Why Bible church later send all kinds foreign soldiers searching for them? Causing so much trouble, knock on this door, that door—‘What happen? You don’t tell us what, burn you down.’ Pretty soon, everybody got same idea, they say, ‘Oh, so sad, bandits, that’s what.’ And now, today, everyone still know this story. If someone acting like better than you, you say, ‘Huh! You don’t watch, maybe you later turn into pencil man.’ ”

“Hear that?” I poke Simon.

Kwan sits up straight and cocks her ear toward the mountains. “Ah, you hear?”

“What?” Simon and I say at the same time.

“Singing. Yin people singing.”

We fall quiet. After a few moments, I hear a slight whishing sound. “Sounds like wind to me.”

“Yes! To most people, just wind
—wu! wu!—
blow through cave. But you have big regret, then hear yin people calling you, ‘Come here, come here.’ You grow more sad, they sing more louder: ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ You go see inside, oh, they so happy. Now you take someone place, they can leave. Then they fly to Yin World, peace at last.”

“Sort of a tag-you’re-it kind of place,” Simon adds.

I pretend to laugh, but I’m bothered. Why does Kwan have so many stories about switching places with dead people?

Kwan turns to me. “So now you know why village name become Changmian.
Chang
mean ‘sing,’
mian
mean ‘silk,’ something soft but go on forever like thread. Soft song, never ending. But some people pronounce ‘Changmian’ other way, rising tone change to falling, like this:
Chang.
This way
chang
mean ‘long,’
mian
mean ‘sleep.’ Long Sleep. Now you understand?”

“You mean songs that put you to sleep,” says Simon.

“No-no-no-no-no. Long Sleep—this another name for
death.
That’s why everybody say, ‘Changmian cave, don’t go there. Doorway to World of Yin.’ ”

My head tingles. “And you believe that?”

“What believe? I already there. I know. Lots yin people stuck there, waiting, waiting.”

“So why is it you were able to come back?” I catch myself before she can answer. “I know, you don’t have to tell me.” I don’t want Kwan to go into the whole story of Buncake or Zeng now. It’s late. I need sleep, and I don’t want to feel I’m lying next to someone who’s possessed a dead girl’s body.

Simon crouches next to me. “I think we should go see this cave.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Are you nuts? People die in there!”

“You believe that stuff about ghosts?”

“Of course not! But there must be something bad in there. Gas fumes, cave-ins, who knows what else.”

“Drowning,” adds Kwan. “Lots sad people drown themself, fall to bottom, down, down, down.”

“Hear that, Simon? Drowning, down, down, down!”

“Olivia, don’t you realize? This could be an incredible find. A prehistoric cave. Stone Age houses. Pottery—”

“And bone,” Kwan offers, looking helpful.

“And bones!” reiterates Simon. “What bones?”

“Mostly foreigner bone. They lose way, then lose mind. But don’t want die. So lie by lakeside long time, until body become stone.”

Simon stands up, facing the peaks.

I say to him: “People lose their minds in there. They turn to stone.”

But Simon isn’t listening anymore. I know he’s mentally wending his way into the cave and into the world of fame and fortune. “Can you imagine what the magazine editors will say when they see our story? Shit! From chicken soup to major archaeological find! Or maybe we should call
National Geographic
or something. I mean, it’s not like we owe
Lands Unknown
the rights to this story. And we should also take some of the pottery back with us as proof, definitely.”

“I’m not going in there,” I say firmly.

“Fine. I’ll go by myself.”

I want to shout, I forbid you. But how can I? I don’t have an exclusive claim anymore on his body, mind, or soul. Kwan is looking at me, and I want to shout at her as well: This is your fault! You and your damn stories! She gives me that annoying sisterly look, pats my arm, trying to calm me down. I yank my arm away.

She turns to Simon. “No, Simon. Can’t go youself.”

He spins around. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know where cave locate.”

“Yeah, but you’ll show me.” He states this like a fact.

“No-no, Libby-ah right, too dangerous.”

Simon scratches his neck. I figure he is gathering his arguments to beat us both down, but instead he shrugs. “Well, maybe. But why don’t we all sleep on it?”

I LIE
in the middle of the crowded marriage bed, as stiff as Big Ma in her coffin. My limbs ache in my effort not to touch Simon. We are in the same bed for the first time in nearly ten months. He’s wearing silk thermal underwear. Every now and then I feel the sharp ridge of his shins or the cleft of his butt against my thigh, and I carefully ease away, only to be rebuffed by Kwan’s knees, her jabbing toes. I have the sneaking suspicion she’s pushing me toward Simon.

Strange groaning sounds erupt. “What was that?” I whisper.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Simon answers. So he’s still awake too.

Kwan yawns. “Singing from cave. I already tell you this.”

“It sounds different now, like someone complaining.”

She rolls over to her side. In a few minutes, she’s snoring, and after a while, Simon’s breathing deeply. So there I am, crammed between two people, yet alone, wide awake, staring at the dark, seeing the moments of the past twenty-four hours: The refrigerated van ride and Big Ma’s ski parka. Buncake and Kwan in their coffins. The poor chicken and its death dance. The dead mouse in the wine, the dead missionaries in the cave. And Simon’s face, his excitement when we looked at the dragon peaks together. That was nice, special. Was it the old feeling we once had? Maybe we could become friends. Or maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it was only the pickle-mouse wine.

I flip onto my side and Simon follows suit. I make myself as straight as a chopstick to avoid touching him. The body, however, isn’t meant to be stiff and still, except in death. I long to bend my body into his, to allow myself this comfort. But if I do, maybe he’ll assume too much, think that I’m forgiving him. Or admitting that I need him. He smacks his lips and snuffles—the sounds he always makes as he enters into deep sleep. And soon I can feel his breath rolling in waves on my neck.

I’ve always envied the way he can sleep solidly through the night, undisturbed by car alarms, earthquakes, and now, those persistent scratching sounds beneath the bed. Or is it more like sawing? Yes, that’s the teeth of a saw, the sawteeth of a rat, chewing on a bedpost, sharpening its fangs before climbing up here. “Simon,” I whisper, “do you hear that? Simon!” And then, as in the old days, he loops one arm over my hip and nuzzles his face against my shoulder. I instantly stiffen. Is he asleep? Did he do this by instinct? I wiggle my hip slightly to see if he’ll rouse and remove his hand. He groans. Maybe he’s testing me.

I lift his hand from my hip. He stirs and says in a groggy voice, “Mmm, sorry,” then extricates himself, snorts, and turns over. So his embrace was an accident of sleep. He meant nothing by it. My throat tightens, my chest hurts.

I remember how he always wanted to cuddle and make love after an argument, as if connecting our bodies that way mended whatever rift was between us. I resented the easy supposition of all’s well that ends well. And yet I’d resist only slightly when he’d raise my chin. I’d hold in my anger and my breath as he nibbled my lips, my nose, my brow. The more upset I was, the more places he’d woo: my neck, my nipples, my knees. And I’d let him—not because I weakened and wanted sex, but because it would have been spiteful, beyond redemption, not to allow us this hope.

I planned to talk about the problems later. How he saw avoidance as normal and I saw it as a warning. How we didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore, how in protecting our own territory we were losing common ground. Before it was too late, I wanted to say that whatever love had brought us together had dwindled and now needed to be restocked. At times I feared that our love had never overflowed into plenty, that it had been enough for a few years but was never meant to last a lifetime. We mistook a snack for a recurring harvest. We were two people starved for abundant love but too tired to say so, leg-ironed together until time passed us by and we left this world, two vague hopes without dreams, just another random combination of sperm and egg, male and female, once here now gone.

I used to think these things while he undressed me, resenting the fact that he saw nakedness as intimacy. I’d let him stroke me where he knew me best, which was my body and not my heart. He’d be seeking my rhythm, saying, “Relax, relax, relax, relax.” And I’d slip, let go of all that was wrong. I’d yield to my rhythm, his rhythm, our rhythm, love by practice, habit, and reflex.

In the past, after we made love, I would feel better, no longer quite as upset. I’d try to remember the worries once again—about harvests and abundance, fruitless love and hopeless death—and they were no longer feelings but notions, silly, even laughable.

Now that our marriage is over, I know what love is. It’s a trick on the brain, the adrenal glands releasing endorphins. It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep.

19
THE ARCHWAY

I
’m jolted out of sleep by screams—young girls being raped or killed or both! Then Du Lili’s voice cries out, “Wait, wait, you greedy things.” And the pigs shriek even louder as she coos: “Eat, eat. Eat and grow fat.”

Before I can relax, I sense another unpleasant eye-opener. During the night, my body must have gravitated toward the nearest heat source, that being Simon. More precisely, my butt is now snuggled against the springy nest of his groin, which, I notice, is sprouting a morning erection, what we once fondly referred to as “the alarm cock.” Kwan’s third of the bed is empty, her indentation already cool to the touch. When did she leave? Oh yes, I know what she’s up to, the sneak. And Simon, is he really asleep? Is he secretly laughing?

The awful truth is, I’m aroused. In spite of everything I thought the night before, my lower body has a pulsing, heat-seeking, rub-craving itch. And the rest of me longs for comfort. I curse myself: You have a fucking brainless burrow! The IQ of a pop-bead! I slide away from danger and hop out of Kwan’s side of the bed. Simon stirs. Shivering in my nightshirt, I hurry to the foot of the bed, where I dumped my luggage yesterday. The air temperature must be forty-five degrees. My hands go trawling for warm clothes.

Simon yawns, sits up and stretches, then peels back the mosquito netting. “I slept well,” he says ambiguously. “How ’bout you?”

I pull out my parka and drape it over my shoulders. It’s so stiff with cold it crackles. My teeth are chattering as I speak: “So how does one take a shower or bath around here?” Simon has an amused look on his face. Does he suspect anything?

“There’s a public bathhouse next to the toilet shack,” he says. “I checked it out yesterday while you were shooting. It has an Esalen-spa charm to it. Gender neutral. One trough, no waiting. But I don’t think anyone’s used it for ages. The water’s kind of scummy. And if you want a warm bath, bring a pail of hot water.”

I was prepared for bad, but not incredibly bad. “They use the same bathwater—all day?”

“All week, it looks like. God, I know, we’re so
wasteful
in the States.”

“What are you grinning at?” I ask.

“You. I know how obsessed you are about cleanliness.”

“No I’m not.”

“Oh? Then why is it that when you stay in a hotel, you pull down the bedspread first thing?”

“Because they don’t get changed that often.”

“So?”

“So I’m not fond of lying on top of someone else’s skin flakes and dried-up bodily fluids.”

“Aha! I rest my case. Now go to the bathhouse. I dare you.”

For a moment, I weigh which is worse, bathing in the common broth or going funky for the next two weeks.

“Of course, you could fill a basin and take a sponge bath right here. I could be your water boy.”

I pretend not to hear him. My cheek muscles are nearly spastic from trying not to smile. I pull out two pairs of leggings. I reject the thin cotton, choose the Polarfleece, regretting I didn’t bring more. Simon’s suggestion is a good one, the part about the sponge bath, that is. Water boy, yeah, fat chance. I can just picture it, Simon as Egyptian slave, wearing one of those twisted-cloth jockstraps, a look of excruciating desire on his face as he silently ladles warm water over my breasts, my stomach, my legs. And heartless me, I’d treat him like a faucet: More hot! More cold! Hurry up!

“By the way,” he says, interrupting my thoughts, “you were talking in your sleep again.”

I avoid meeting his eye. Some people snore. I sleep-talk, not in mumbles but in complete, well-articulated sentences. Nightly. Loudly. Sometimes I even wake myself up. Simon’s heard me tell knock-knock jokes, order a three-course meal of desserts, shout for Kwan to keep her ghosts from me.

Simon lifts one eyebrow. “Last night, what you said was certainly revealing.”

Shit. What the hell did I dream? I always remember my dreams. Why can’t I now? Was Simon in the dream? Did we have sex? “Dreams don’t mean anything,” I say. I take out a thermal undershirt and bottle-green velour top. “They’re just flotsam and jetsam.”

“Don’t you want to know what you said?”

“Not really.”

“It relates to something you
love
to do.”

I throw down the clothes and snap, “I don’t love it as much as you think!”

Simon blinks twice, then starts laughing. “Oh yes you do! Because you said, ‘Simon, wait. I haven’t paid for this yet!’ ” He allows five seconds for this to sink in. “You were shopping. What did you think I was referring to?”

“Shut up.” My face is burning. I thrust my hand into the suitcase and angrily grab some woolen socks. “Turn around. I want to get dressed.”

“I’ve already seen you naked a thousand times.”

“Well, it’s not going to be a thousand and one. Turn around.”

With my back to him, I whip off the parka and my nightshirt, still berating myself for being taken in by him. He baited me! And what an idiot I was, going for it. I should have known he’d trick me. And then I sense something else. I spin around.

“You don’t have to suck your tummy in.” He’s holding up the gauzy curtain. “You look great. You always have. I never get tired of looking at you.”

“You shithead!”

“What! We’re still married!”

I wad up a sock and throw it at him. He ducks, letting go of the mosquito netting, which must be a hundred years old, because when the sock hits, the mesh blows apart—poof!—and wispy tufts are lofted high into the air.

We both stare at the damage. I feel like a kid who’s broken a neighbor’s window with a baseball, wickedly thrilled.

“Uh-oh.” I cover my mouth and snicker.

Simon shakes his head. “Bad girl.”

“It’s your fault.”

“What do you mean! You threw the sock.”

“You were looking!”

“I still am.”

And there I am, standing stark naked, freezing my ass off.

I throw the other sock at him, then my leggings, the velour top, my nightshirt. Clutching a slipper, I fly toward Simon and strike him on the back. He grabs my hand and we both fall onto the bed, where we tussle and roll, slap and shove, so grateful finally to have this excuse to touch each other. And when we exhaust ourselves with this playful joust, we look at each other, silently, eye to eye, no smiles, nothing more to be said. All at once, we both leap, like wolf mates reunited, searching for that which identifies us as belonging to each other: the scent of our skin, the taste of our tongues, the smoothness of our hair, the saltiness of our necks, the ridges of our spines, the slopes and creases we know so well yet feel so new. He is tender and I am wild, nuzzling and nipping, both of us tumbling until we lose all memory of who we were before this moment, because at this moment we are the same.

WHEN I WALK
out to the courtyard, Kwan gives me one of her innocent but knowing grins. “Libby-ah, why you smiling?”

I look at Simon. “No rain,” I answer. No matter who Kwan really is, sister or not, I’m glad that she suggested we come to China.

In front of her, on the ground, is an open suitcase, stuffed with various gizmos and gadgets. According to Kwan, Big Ma bequeathed these gifts to Du Lili, everything except a wooden music box that plays a tinkly version of “Home on the Range.” I pull out my camera and begin shooting.

Kwan picks up the first item. Simon and I lean forward to see. It’s a Roach Motel. “In America,” she explains to Du Lili with a serious face, “they call this a guesthouse for roaches.” She points to the label.

“Wah!” cries Du Lili. “Americans are so rich they make toy houses for insects! Tst! Tst!” She shakes her head, her mouth turned down in proletarian disgust. I tell Simon what she said.

“Yes, and Americans feed them delicious food.” Kwan peers into the motel’s door. “And the food is so good, the bugs never want to leave. They stay forever.”

Du Lili slaps Kwan’s arm and pretends to be angry. “You’re so bad! You think I don’t know what this is?” She then says to me in an excited voice, “Chinese people have the same thing. We use pieces of bamboo, cut open like this and filled with sweet sap. Your big sister and I used to make them together. Our village held contests to see who could catch the most pests—the most flies, the most rats, the most roaches. Your big sister was often praised for catching the most roaches. Now she’s trying to catch me with a prank.”

Kwan unveils more treasures, and it’s obvious that many of them have come from a sporting goods store. First, there’s a day pack. “Strong enough to carry bricks, with many pockets, on the sides, underneath, here, there, see. Unzip them like this— Wah, what’s in here?” She pulls out a portable water purifier, a tiny backpacking stove, a small medical kit, an inflatable cushion, resealable baggies, heavy-duty trash liners, a space blanket, and—“Wah! Unbelievable!”—even more things: a waterproof match holder, a flashlight, and a Swiss Army knife with a built-in toothpick, “very practical.” Like an Avon Lady, Kwan explains the particular use of each item.

Simon examines the stash. “Amazing. How’d you think of all this?”

“Newspaper,” Kwan answers. “They have article on earthquake, if big one come, this what you need for survive. In Changmian, you see, no need wait for earthquake. Already no electricity, no running water, no heat.”

Next Kwan lifts from the suitcase a plastic sweater box, the kind used for storing junk under the bed, and out come gardening gloves, gel-filled insoles, leggings, towels, T-shirts. Du Lili exclaims and sighs and laments that Big Ma did not live long enough to enjoy such luxuries. I take a picture of Du Lili surrounded by her inheritance. She is wearing wraparound sunglasses and a 49ers Super Bowl cap, the word “Champs” studded in rhinestones.

After a simple breakfast of rice porridge and pickled vegetables, Kwan brings out stacks of photos that document her thirty-two years of American life. She and Du Lili sit on a bench, poring over them. “Look here,” Kwan says. “This is Libby-ah, only six years old. Isn’t she cute? See the sweater she’s wearing? I knit it myself before I left China.”

“These little foreigner girls”—Du Lili points—“who are they?”

“Her schoolmates.”

“Why are they being punished?”

“Punished? They’re not being punished.”

“Then why are they wearing the tall dunce hats?”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Yes, yes, tall hats for punishing counterrevolutionaries, that’s what they look like! In America, foreigners wear tall hats to celebrate birthdays, also New Year’s. This is a party for Libby-ah’s birthday. It’s a common American custom. The schoolmates offer gifts, nothing useful, just pretty things. And the mother makes a sweet cake and puts flaming candles on top. The child plants a wish in her head, and if she can blow out the candles all at once, the wish will grow true. Then the children feast on sweet cake, guzzle sweet drinks, eat sweet candy, so much sweetness their tongues roll back and they can’t swallow any more.”

Du Lili rounds her mouth in disbelief. “Tst! Tst! A party for every birthday. A simple charm for a birthday wish. Why do Americans still wish so much, when they already have too much? For me, I don’t even need a party. A wish once every twenty years would be enough. . . .”

Simon pulls me aside. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Where to?”

He leads me out of the courtyard, then points to the archway between the mountains, the entrance to the next valley.

I wag my finger at him like a nursery school teacher. “Simon, you aren’t still thinking about that cave, are you?”

He returns a phony look of offense. “
Moi?
Of course not. I just thought it would be nice to go for a walk. We have things to talk about.”

“Oh? Like what?” I say coyly.

“You know.” He takes my hand, and I call out over the wall: “Kwan! Simon and I are going for a walk.”

“Where?” she shouts back.

“Around.”

“When you return?”

“You know, whenever.”

“How I know what time worry?”

“Don’t worry.” And then I have second thoughts about where we might be headed. So I add, “If we’re not back in two hours, call the police.”

I hear her happily grumbling to Du Lili in Chinese: “She says if they’re lost, telephone the police. What telephone? We have no telephone. . . .”

We walk quietly, holding hands. I’m thinking of what I should say. I’m sure Simon is doing the same. I’m not going to settle for patching things up automatically. I want a commitment to become closer, to be intimate with our minds and not just our bodies. And so with our own yet-to-be-spoken thoughts, we head in the general direction of the stone wall that separates Changmian from the next valley.

Our meandering takes us through private alleyways that interlace related compounds, and we apologize to those families who stare at us with curiosity, then apologize again when they run to their doorways, showing us coins for sale, green tarnished disks they claim are at least five hundred years old. I shoot a couple of frames and imagine a caption that would suit them: “Changmian residents staring at intruders.” We peek into the open gates of courtyards and see old men coughing, smoking the stubs of cigarettes, young women holding babies, their fat cheeks bright pink from the pinching cold. We pass an old woman with a huge bundle of kindling balanced on her shoulders. We smile at children, several of whom have cleft palates or clubfeet, and I wonder if this is the result of inbreeding. We see this together, two aliens in the same world. Yet what we see is also different, because I wince at such hardship, the life that Kwan once had, that I could have had. And Simon remarks, “You know, they’re sort of lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the small community, family histories linked for generations, focused on the basics. You need a house, you get your friends to help you slap a few bricks together, no bullshit about qualifying for a loan. Birth and death, love and kids, food and sleep, a home with a view—I mean, what more do you need?”

“Central heating.”

“I’m serious, Olivia. This is . . . well, this is
life.
”