Elsewhere, p.9
Elsewhere, page 9
We carried on walking along the path. The clouds thickened. The sun dimmed to a smudged circle. Do you miss speaking Mandarin? he asked me.
I try not to, I said.
I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed at the event, he said, smiling apologetically. You didn’t talk in Chinese. And you only read the English translation of your story.
My chest was swelling up again hopelessly. I did speak Chinese at the event, I told him. Thanks to you I said lanshan.
He chuckled. Right, the blue mountains.
We began to walk up the hill along the stone steps. Grey-lilac flowers pushed their way through the cracks in the stones. Blotches of dry dwarf shrubs were scattered across the mound. A few seagulls hovered above us, drawing invisible lines in the sky. When we finally reached the top, a massive body of water filled the panorama before us, like a cosmos of blue ashes.
On the other side of the water floated a string of elongated islands, on which varicoloured buildings stood next to one another. Rising above them were the copper domes of cathedrals, their bright patinas gleaming through the mist.
We stood watching a white ferry move slowly across the lake. Beneath the overcast sky, the whiteness of the ferry seemed otherworldly, making me think of Charon. In Chinese mythology, the one who would help the deceased cross the river to the afterlife was a woman. She would take you to a raised terrace from which you could look back to the world of the living one last time, before you drained the soup of forgetting and travelled to the underworld.
Can I tell you something?
The abrupt utterance startled me. Of course, I said.
He told me that during his last year in China as an exchange student, he had lived in my home city, C_. Through an online forum popular among the homosexual community, he had met a local man who was about ten years older than him. Soon, he began to see this man regularly. They would meet in a pub, have a few drinks, go to a cheap hotel and have sex. One night, in the middle of intercourse, the man, who’d had too much drink, started to shudder. Realising his lover might be having a seizure, the young man tried to call an ambulance, but the older man gripped the phone and assured him he would be better soon. However, it didn’t happen like that. Shortly afterwards, the Chinese man died in the hotel room while my interviewer fled, leaving the country on a red-eye flight.
After returning to Stockholm, the young man told me, he had searched on the internet and read in the C_ City Evening News that his lover’s body had been found in the hotel room the next day and sent to the hospital. His pregnant wife had come to identify the corpse and had wailed in devastation until she passed out.
In the taxi back to the hotel, Olivia and I had laughed so irrepressibly the driver checked on us in the rear-view mirror. Oh my god. She wheezed, her body shaking like an aeroplane about to crash. This is the funniest story I’ve ever heard.
I know, I cackled, pressing the milk-soaked napkin on my chest as if I’d been shot.
The taxi arrived. Olivia tapped her card and climbed out of the sedan with me. The world swirled as I stood up straight while Olivia clutched onto my arm to steady herself. I think I’m getting sick, she said. Urgh, too much fun and alcohol.
Do you want to come in and use my bathroom? I asked her.
Is it okay? If you don’t mind. She crunched her face. Her black hair was mussed and stuck to her cheek.
We stumbled across the courtyard, passing the laurel tree and down the corridor into my room. Olivia went straight to the bathroom and shut the door while I unhooked my bra and dug out the breast pump from my suitcase.
Shortly after I had switched to my left breast, Olivia re-emerged from the bathroom. She looked renewed, her face luminous, her long, slick hair draping down her shoulders.
Did you just vomit in there, or were you taking a beauty nap? I said, sitting in the armchair and holding the flange in one hand and the motor in the other like a woman warrior with her sword and shield.
Olivia ignored my joke. Instead, she stared at my breast, which was being repeatedly tugged into the plastic tunnel of the flange, the motor beating. A stream of pale liquid plunged into the half-full bottle, spattering before more ensued.
Holy shit, Olivia said, walking to the armchair and sitting down cross-legged right in front of me. She held her chin with both hands and looked up at me like a child. This is amazing, she said. So powerful and poetic.
It’s more like clogged ducts and mastitis, I said.
She didn’t respond, but watched my milk amassing in the cylindrical container. I don’t think I’ll ever have a child, she said. But this is something else. You should write about it.
What? I said. No. How can I write about this?
Olivia frowned. Of course you can, she said. In fact, you must. You must write about this – she raised her hands towards my chest – the only reason you feel you can’t write about it is because you don’t think it’s worth being written about. And the only reason you think lactation is not literature is because it has been cut out, for centuries, from the literary narrative. And who has ordained for us the distinctions between the canon and the censored, the classic and the vulgar, the speech and the noise? – she let out a burp – So I say now. You must write your boobs into literature. Make them heard. The need to redistribute the perceptible is pressing and we must take action now.
God, you’re wasted, I said, shaking my head.
She laughed. We giggled intermittently until my milk filled the bottle and I turned off the motor. Gazing at the light-white liquid, Olivia sprang up, fetched a pair of glasses and divided the milk into two portions, which we each drained in one long haul.
Afterwards, we sat on the floor, leaning against each other, and began to talk. She told me about her childhood in Nagasaki, her short-lived career as a Japanese teen model in Sweden and the time when she was an undergraduate in the States, a professor asked her to touch his penis. I told her that, speaking of penises, I remembered when I had been about five years old and was taking a nap with my grandfather one day, he had drawn my hand onto his erection. Although I could not be one hundred per cent sure if it had actually happened. Nonetheless, my counsellor had concluded that this incident was the root of my low self-esteem, which had then deteriorated into body dysmorphia after the birth of my child. I was disgusted by the smell of my armpits, the fat on my abdomen, my cracked and blistered nipples and most sickeningly of all my cut-and-sewn-back vagina.
When I had confessed this to the counsellor, I said to Olivia, she asked me to take a look at my vagina when I got home. She said I needed to embrace the changes in my body as the first step towards healing. Then I told her that these days I only had time to embrace the baby.
So, did you look at it?
Of course not, I said. Why would I do that?
After pausing for a few seconds, Olivia asked me if she could check it for me. It might help, she said, if I received, instead of the visual image in the mirror, a description in words. After all, I had been intimate with words for years.
I thought about her proposal. It does make sense, I replied.
Then I pulled myself up from the floor, climbed onto the bed, removed my pants and parted my legs before Olivia. She smiled at me, craned her head, and, after a long and careful gaze, kissed my labia.
Free Wandering
the moment i open my eyes, a savage pain cuts through my body. Fucking Christ. I push myself up. Sitting beside me is a foreign woman, her skin white as a sheet, her irises unreally blue, almost like glass. She stares at me.
‘We’re nearly there now,’ she says, to my surprise, in Mandarin. ‘You might want to put that on.’ She points at a yellow safety helmet on my lap, its surface badly scuffed, its strap broken.
I follow her instruction. The bus we are in is freezing and reeks of urine and blood. Outside the window, fluorescent light flashes in a long white tunnel.
‘Where are we?’ I ask my neighbour.
‘Crossing the river,’ she says.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. ‘The river?’
She gives me a look. ‘We are in the underwater tunnel. Should get to the City soon.’ She shows me the map on her phone, on which a blue dot is moving along a thin stripe connecting two planks of land.
Then I remember. Getting out my old Nokia, I text my cousin. Hi Linda, I’m arriving soon. See you at the bus terminal?
‘I can’t believe I’m actually here,’ I say.
‘I know,’ my neighbour agrees, swiping her screen. ‘Guess you’re super excited to see your cousin, huh? You two haven’t met for how long now? Ten years?’
Jesus, I have to stop oversharing. ‘Fifteen years.’
‘Wow, you think you’ll recognise each other?’
‘Here.’ I retrieve a folded photo from my trouser pocket. ‘It’s us when we were thirteen.’
She leans over. ‘What a cute pair. And you took this at the Statue?’
I tell her it is only a fake. The photo was taken in a theme park, which my cousin and I visited before she left China. ‘She promised when I came to the City, she’d take me to the real thing.’
My neighbour cracks up. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It won’t be much different from this one.’ She taps my photo.
My cousin is not at the bus terminal. She’s still in a meeting and texts me to wait for her at M_ department store. Take any southbound line and get off at 34 St. Then M_ is just one block away, you can’t miss it.
All the other passengers have disembarked. I grab my backpack and walk out of the terminal.
In my twenty-eight years, I’ve never left my hometown, let alone arrived in another continent and now the City. Nonetheless, I have seen it myriad times, images collected from the movies, magazines and documentaries. In my mind’s eye, I have always pictured the City as a panorama, towards which I would glide from the sky. In the light of the setting sun, all the high-rises would stand along the river, glinting like giant fish leaping out of water, their windows silver scales.
In reality, when I enter the City from the ground, walking along the concrete sidewalk, there is no glorious light but a hellish gust of wind that nearly blows away my helmet. A mechanical screaming blasts overhead. Pressing down my helmet, I scurry back and forth along the narrow streets, looking for a subway entrance.
Pedestrians shoot past me like wild horses, imperturbable determination written on their faces, which thwarts my attempts to ask for directions.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ somebody shouts at me.
‘Sorry!’ I hop aside before being shoved over by the oncoming person.
I struggle to catch my breath. Then I see across the road, outside a building enclosed by scaffolding and netting, a large letter M gleaming in gold like a miracle.
McDonald’s.
I scuttle inside, carrying the backpack in which I’ve brought my late grandmother’s last batch of homemade spicy cabbage pickles – a present for my cousin – in a carefully wrapped lunchbox. And I suspect, from the distrustful looks I get as I enter, that the pickle juice might have leaked from the supposed-to-be-airtight lunchbox. I decide not to check.
Sitting down at an empty table, I remove my backpack. Before me, the large window frames a rectangular screen, showing the same swarming scene on the street, only, through the glass, the image seems flat and serene, even hypnotising.
Am I really here now, in the City? I steady myself against a sudden and paralysing exhaustion.
My phone rings. It’s my cousin. And she says, in a sweet voice, that she’s at M_ department store and has searched through three floors and only seen an oldish Chinese man who also happens to be bald. ‘Don’t tell me that’s you.’
I apologise, explaining I have ended up in a McDonald’s.
‘Alright,’ she says. ‘Got ya. Stay where you are. I’ll see you in a minute.’
Yawning, I flip through our exchanges on my phone while waiting.
So great to hear from you, cuz, one of her early messages reads. What have you been doing all these years? Can’t wait to catch up soon.
The door to the McDonald’s clanks. A group of tourists flock in. All of them look Chinese and wear identical orange vests. They quickly occupy a number of tables, unzip their suitcases, take out white buns and jars of spicy pickles and, with a loud munching sound, begin to eat.
As I watch them, saliva surging, I realise that I actually know these people. They are my co-workers, their vests crossed by hi-vis reflective stripes.
One of them turns and looks me up and down. ‘Do I know you?’ he asks, in my local dialect.
Seeing clearly that he’s my foreman, I freeze as he gets up and walks towards me. ‘Wait, are you that scaffolder? Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with us, going to the renovation project at the Empire Building?’
‘I, I’m not,’ I mutter, my face hot. ‘I’m here to see my cousin. You must have mistaken me for someone else.’
The foreman laughs. ‘You’re not very good at lying, kid. And what is your name again? Xiao … Xiao …’
‘Xiao Peng! Xiao Peng!’ a man’s voice calls in Mandarin.
With a jitter, I wake up.
A Chinese man is standing in front of me, wearing a corduroy jacket. His face hides behind a pair of black-framed glasses and a head of mussed, medium-length hair. I can’t tell if he’s older than me or around my age. But he is smiling at me.
‘Are you Xiao Peng? Linda Chow’s cousin,’ he asks.
‘Yes, I am.’ I wipe the dribble from my mouth.
‘Good.’ The strange man nods. ‘Linda needs to run because there’s a situation. She asked me to come here to pick you up and bring you to meet her at a party in Borough Q_.’
I stare at his face, which remains obscured behind the glasses and beneath his hair. My ears are burning under the gaze of other customers, among whom – I suspect irrationally – are the builders from my dream.
‘I’ll go with you,’ I say.
‘Excellent.’ The man picks up my backpack. ‘We’d better leave now. The F line’s ridiculous. Have you eaten?’
I tell him yes and walk out of McDonald’s. The daylight is now gloomy, the street busier than before. The crying of sirens interweaves with the thrumming of helicopters, the pavement flooded by people.
‘Come on! Xiao Peng!’ Before I know it, the man skips into the stream of pedestrians, and I follow, fixing my eyes on his back and my khaki rucksack he’s carrying. We arrive at a narrow iron gate leading to a flight of stairs extending downwards. The man stops abruptly. He turns back and steadies my shoulder as I’m about to stumble.
‘By the way,’ he says. ‘My name is Simon. And you should know I’m totally trustworthy.’
The subterranean world is long and narrow, cluttered with humans, pervaded by the stench of perished food. Right away, I regret my decision. I should have told Simon that I am actually starving.
At the thought, hunger wrings my stomach like a python. But there’s no way to turn back. One by one, the passengers are drawn in by the cold arms of the turnstiles and gulped into the deep, low-ceilinged tunnels. We congregate like overcooked dumplings, countless heads, hair and shoulders melting into each other.
Where the hell is Simon?
More people flush in from behind, sweeping me down to the end of the staircase where the tunnel forks. I feel I might be sick as the mass swirls around me before rushing out in two opposite directions.
‘Xiao Peng!’ I hear Simon calling. ‘This way!’ I try to turn but my body is trapped in the left-surging current, crushed and heaved by frenzied commuters. ‘Xiao Peng!’ The calling is moving further away.
Suddenly, a ridiculous terror seizes me. No, no, I don’t want to die here.
‘Excuse me!’ I call out, in English, pushing my arms in front of me, trying to squeeze through tangled human limbs and torsos. I hold on to my helmet. ‘Excuse me, please!’ My tears are welling up when finally, forced out from the passageway, I land on the solid surface of the platform, panting.
About a dozen passengers are dotted along the platform. Simon is standing at the far end, waving at me with a grin.
‘Ah, thank goodness!’ I dash towards him. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
Three tall and well-built men stand coolly and squint at me as I pass by. I look away. Beside the platform, the hollow subway tunnel extends into the darkness.
‘Watch out, Xiao Peng!’ The next moment, I trip on something and plummet to the ground, my helmet flying off. With a piercing pain, my head hits the concrete. The three men roar. Their laughter almost sounds like cries of horror.
Footsteps approach. The helmet rattles away. The aroma of my grandmother’s homemade pickles. ‘Nainai …’ I mumble before passing out.
I open my eyes in dim orange light. The space smells faintly of sandalwood – the very scent that used to diffuse through my grandmother’s apartment. But I can tell, by the width of the bed I’m lying in and the height of the ceiling above me, that I’m elsewhere.
I prop myself up. On the opposite wall hangs a long calligraphy scroll, on which is spread an enormous character:
鯤.
I can’t recognise it. Blinking, I try again, scrutinising it stroke by stroke, only to see its radicals orbiting away from each other, turning into a senseless heap. My head aches violently as if it has just been stapled back together.
Where the hell am I? What happened? Did I break my head open somewhere?
A knock comes through the door. Followed by another.
The door opens and a man walks in. He is my build but could be slightly taller. He wears a pair of glasses, his hair is tied to the back of his head.
‘How are you feeling, Xiao Peng?’ he asks.
I look at him in a daze.
‘I’m Simon,’ he says. ‘Your cousin’s friend. We just met at McDonald’s. We were taking the subway to Borough Q_. Then you passed out.’
