Across a Green Ocean (30 page)

The taxi driver is very erratic, and by the time they pull up in front of his hotel, Michael isn’t sure he’s going to make it. He tosses some bills at the driver, runs into the hotel, and gets to his bathroom just before he throws up. Thank God for modern Western toilets.

He lies down on the bed, fully clothed. Did he really expect to end up in his hotel room that night with Donny? That had to be his intention. You didn’t agree to go with someone to a night club and dance with them, even kiss them, in a foreign city without expecting them to go home with you afterward. But what was the point of that? To be able to say to David when he got back to New York,
Oh, not only did I look up my father’s old friend, whom he helped send to prison for fifteen years, but I also hooked up with a random college kid?

Michael already knows what David’s reply would be: that it doesn’t matter. Everything Michael has done to drive him away—refusing to take the key to his place, not calling him, leaving the country without telling him where he’s gone—hasn’t worked. David will wait for him, however long it takes for Michael to decide how he feels, because that is who he is. And Michael is beginning to think that, just maybe, he deserves to be with someone like that.

He glances at the digital clock by the bed; it’s almost two in the morning. He needs to go to sleep if he wants to get up early enough for his last day in Beijing.

Back in New York, it would be afternoon, and if Michael was there, David would probably have gotten off from work early to meet him. Michael would be at the bar next to David’s apartment building, nursing a pint because that’s all he can afford, watching the mirror across from him for David to enter. There’d be a businessman or two out for a late lunch, young women looking for an early drink, and then David would flash into view. The sight of him, with his tie loosened, his jacket over one arm, would make Michael catch his breath, as if he’d unexpectedly caught a glimpse of his future.

Michael holds on to this image long enough to drag himself out of his clothes. Then he passes out on top of the coverlet.

 

The next morning, Michael wakes up, thankfully, without much of a hangover. He finds a cab that will take him to Houhai, the part of Beijing where his father and Liao Weishu grew up. He has on a piece of paper the location of his father’s house, which Liao Weishu visited a year and a half ago, which he’d asked Liao to write down before he left Xining. Rather than the highwaylike Ring Road from last night, the cab takes quiet side streets shrouded in a haze that can either come from mist or, more likely, pollution. Occasionally, they pass groups of elderly people doing their morning exercises, or old men sitting outside with their caged birds.

Finally, they stop in front of a gaudily painted gate, and the driver indicates that he can’t go any farther. Michael points to the characters on the paper, and in turn the driver points somewhere beyond the entrance, so Michael pays him and gets out. He figures that he can stop and get directions along the way. For now, as he walks down a warren of lanes, he takes in the brick walls, the tiled roofs, the wooden doors, some of which are painted bright red and others which are peeling. These must be the
siheyuans
that Liao had talked about, the compounds that once held families and now are divided up among many unrelated inhabitants. One door is ajar, and he peers through the crack to see a neat courtyard brimming with potted plants. In a corner, two bicycles lean against each other like lovers. There is something timeless about this place, and Michael wonders what it would be like to live or grow up here, in a place that seems so far removed from the rest of the city, if not the entire world.

He hears a rustle from the interior of the courtyard and jerks his head back, as if he were caught spying. What he really needs is to find someone who can tell him if he’s heading in the right direction. There are stores along this street, but most of them appear to be souvenir shops, cashing in on the picturesque qualities of the area. Michael is reminded that he needs to get something for his mother and sister. But when he looks at the wares on display—a certain time period appears to be most popular, judging from the various Mao pins and badges—he thinks of how Liao had said that Michael’s grandfather had turned to selling these things, so as to not raise the suspicions of the authorities. Suddenly, the thought of purchasing such an item seems less appealing, and Michael hurries on before the shopkeeper can misinterpret his hesitation as interest.

Abruptly, the lane ends, and Michael finds himself standing in front of a lake that he guesses Houhai takes its name from. But it isn’t so much of a sea, as the other side is easily visible, slate roofs rising and dipping in the morning light. As Michael walks along the lake, he imagines Liao passing underneath the same willows with his missionary teacher. He can’t be far now; he can feel it. At the corner is a store that appears to be the equivalent of a New York bodega, its front bristling with ads for phone cards and soft drinks, and Michael stops to show the proprietor the piece of paper. The man says something in what Michael knows to be Mandarin, although the Beijing accent makes it sound like a rusty engine. The shopkeeper gestures around the corner and shakes his head, making it seem like he’s contradicting himself.

“Can you show me?” Michael asks, pointing at the shopkeeper and then in the direction the man has indicated.

The shopkeeper finally gives in and comes out from around the counter. He’s wearing blue plastic slippers from which puffs of dust rise as he leads Michael down the alleyway. Then he stops, and Michael thinks that he must have made a mistake. For in front of him, extending down what seems to be the entire block, are giant piles of rubble. Among them he can make out pieces of gray brick, concrete, and tile, all jumbled together. There are also bits and pieces of household debris: shards of dishes, broken pieces of furniture, torn pages from books—destruction caused not by Red Guards but by modernization.

The man points to a section of wall that miraculously is still standing.
“Chai!”
he barks, then imitates something falling down.
“Chai!”

On the wall is written a symbol in a circle, what could be an anarchist’s symbol, except that it’s a Chinese character that looks a little like a tool that’s wearing a hat. Michael looks at the piece of paper again, at Liao Weishu’s scrawl. He can’t believe that in the eighteen months or so since Liao visited this place, it’s been torn down. He knows that things must move fast in a modernizing country—villages that disappear overnight in favor of skyscrapers, towns submerged with water from the creation of a dam—but this is unbelievable.

Then Michael thinks about whether his father would feel any regret over what has happened. Somehow, he suspects not. His father made a point of distancing himself from his family and his upbringing. What was the loss of a house, a building of brick and stone, compared to the loss of family members, friends, a history? Now, as his father wished, there’s finally nothing left from his past life.

Michael takes a tiny piece of stone from the rubble, folds it in the piece of paper, and puts it in his pocket. He knows it’s silly to take such a souvenir, that it might not even be from the right house, but no one aside from himself will know its significance. Then he follows the shopkeeper, who has been watching his actions with a skeptical eye, back to his shop and purchases a soda to thank him for his help. Then he glances at his watch. He still has some time before he needs to go back to the hotel, pack his things, and get to the airport.

He retraces his steps back to the entrance and hails a cab to take him to the Summer Palace, as if he wants to get in as much sightseeing as possible. But in reality he thinks that if he’s unable to see his father’s and Liao Weishu’s old home, he might as well go to the next place that had some meaning in their childhood. The cab heads north, back past Haidian, the university district where Michael’s hotel is located, and then west toward the mountains beyond the city.

The haze has burned away, leaving the sky sunny if not entirely blue. Michael is beginning to understand that this is as clear as the weather will get here. With the day advancing, so do the tourists, swarming over the temple grounds, posing for pictures on the graceful arch of the Jade Belt Bridge and boating in Kunming Lake, which really
is
a lake, extending like a vast mirror underneath Longevity Hill. Since he’s by himself, Michael feels at distinct odds among the families, foreign tour groups, and packs of students. To escape them, he wanders off down the garden paths until he finds an empty patch of grass by the lakeside. There he sits, closing his eyes to the slender spire of a pagoda on a faraway hill across the lake.

He tries to banish the murmuring voices of the people passing by him, concentrating instead on the sound of the lapping waves and the faint stirring of the wind. He wants to will himself back in time to when two boys were at the Summer Palace forty-five years ago. What did it look like then? Had it been renovated, or did it somehow look more authentic?

Then words in English cut through his musing: “But why doesn’t it sink?” It’s the voice of a little girl, the words spoken with a British accent, no doubt referring to the famed Marble Boat to the west of the lake. The Empress Cixi restored it in the late nineteenth century, turning it into a symbol of that dynasty’s excess and woeful lack of preparation for foreign invaders. Michael wonders why he can’t be like the other tourists, concerned about why the Marble Boat doesn’t sink, counting the sections in the Long Corridor, bargaining for the best price for a set of ten postcards featuring the Temple of Heaven, which isn’t even on the Summer Palace grounds.

He tries to channel a different scene, but the difficulty, he realizes, is that while he’s able to picture some random rosy-cheeked boy for Liao Weishu, he can’t do the same for his father. He doesn’t know what his father looked like as a child; as far as he knows, there are no remaining photographs. He hadn’t thought to ask Liao Weishu if he had any pictures, if indeed they had survived his imprisonment, and now that his father’s childhood home has been destroyed, there’s no hope there either.

So instead he pictures his father the last time he saw him, on a summer day almost a year ago, two weeks before he passed away. Michael was standing in the backyard in the middle of the lawn, since it was the best place to get cell phone reception and also afforded some privacy. As far-fetched as the idea was, he couldn’t help thinking that even with his door closed, his parents might overhear him if he were in the house.

That particular afternoon he was talking to David, since he’d finally broken down and decided to call him. Although he’d left the city in a bit of a funk, once he was away and in the middle of the suburban town he had grown up, he’d suddenly needed to hear David’s voice. Part of it, he was sure, was that after a night and a morning with his parents, he was beginning to feel like he was a teenager again, sitting at the table while his mother tried to fill his father’s usual silence with chatter about her church friends and which of their children were in medical or law school. Uncanny how after seven years, it was as if he’d never left. Even when he talked to his parents, he could feel his speech patterns falling into the familiar cadence of empty reassurance and evasion.

He told his parents that he liked his job and his coworkers. He said that his apartment was spacious and in a safe neighborhood, neglecting to mention he’d had to move recently because his roommate had started a fire and gotten them kicked out. At that point, Michael had decided he couldn’t stand another roommate and discovered his very own crawlspace at the top of a five-story walk-up, euphemistically described by the broker as a studio apartment with “penthouselike qualities.”

Most of all, he did not say he had just met, and was possibly falling in love, with someone.

That afternoon his mother had gone to the grocery store, and his father had retired upstairs to take a nap, so Michael thought it was safe to go out into the backyard and give David a call. When David answered, Michael listened carefully for any indication that he was outside, possibly in the company of someone else, but the air in the background was dense and still.

“Where are you?” he finally asked.

“Where do you think? Home,” David replied.

“What are you doing?”

“What is this, some kind of late-night hotline?” Michael could hear the grin in David’s voice. “Should I slip into something more comfortable?”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay, I’m getting ready to go out for a run. And I’m wearing a T-shirt and shorts, in case you’re wondering.”

It was Michael’s turn to smile.

“How are your parents?” David asked.

Michael was surprised by how genuinely David seemed to be interested in his parents, asking about them whenever Michael mentioned his mother had called. When Michael said he was planning to visit them that weekend, he almost thought David was going to ask if he could come along. But it was far too early for that; Michael didn’t want to think yet where that could lead. He’d be more comfortable with introducing Emily to David first, but he knew a sister wouldn’t carry as much weight. He’d told David that his parents were typical immigrant Chinese parents: his mother a conscientious churchgoer who complained to her friends about her lack of grandchildren; his father withdrawn and obsessed with maintenance of nonhuman things, like his lawn.

“They’re fine,” Michael replied. Unconsciously, he turned toward the house and thought he caught sight of someone standing at a second-story window before the curtain dropped. It could only be his father. Had his father been watching him and had he been able to deduce from that distance who he was talking to?

Michael walked farther away from the house, but he no longer felt comfortable.

“I have to go,” he finally said. “My mom’s back from the store and I should help her.”