The Train to Lo Wu (15 page)

He feels a sharp pain in his solar plexus; for a moment he struggles to breathe. That’s easy for you to say. I’ve never done anything else. This is my whole life you’re talking about.

Then what do you want to do?

I want to go back. I have to start over again.

She looks back at the floor. If you let go of it, she says, if you don’t make here and there—if you stop always thinking
Thailand
and
Hong Kong
—it will be easier for you.

That’s impossible, he says, his head rising from the floor. I don’t want to play these word games anymore. How does the world exist, if you don’t have
here
and
there
? I’m not a nun. I have to
choose
.

Yes, she says, giving him a defiant look. You should choose.

When he says his name into the phone it echoes loudly, drowning out the receptionist’s voice in New York. A long silence, and she asks again, annoyed, Curtis
who
?

Curtis Matthews for Alex Field. He represents me. The sentence repeats twice and dies away. It’s a bad connection, he says. Can you hear me?

Where the hell are you?

Hong Kong, he says. Alex, it’s good to hear your voice.

I’m glad you called. How’s the leg?

Goddamned travel insurance wouldn’t cover any of the hospitals in Bangkok. I had to leave; there wasn’t any other way. This woman I met, Mrs. Mei—

He stops. Something—a tiny click, a muffled sound on the other end of the line, as if a hand has been placed over the receiver—tells him Alex isn’t listening.

It’s a long story, he says. I won’t bother you with the details.

But you’re recovering, right? That’s the most important thing.

I hope I am, he says. It’s hard to tell. Did you get the last paintings I sent?

We did.

And?

For a moment he wonders if the connection is broken, but he can hear the faint ticking, ticking of the timer, his Hong Kong dollars falling into space.

I
think they’re wonderful, Alex says. But the market’s changed, Curtis. We haven’t gotten the kind of interest I hoped we would. It’s all swinging back to conceptualism now—nobody’s looking for color anymore. Nobody cares if you can draw. You’d be amazed at the crap I’ve seen this season. Every figurist painter I know is having a terrible year.

He looks down and sees a sampan bobbing across the water, and for a moment he imagines it exploding, raining bits of debris on the black waves. I had a feeling, he says, willing his voice not to shake. Well, then. This is costing a fortune.

You should come back to the States, Alex says. We miss you. Everybody here misses you. You should apply for a summer residency, maybe a teaching job for the fall. Once you’ve recovered, I mean. Things will pick up again.

I think I may go to Mexico, he says. I’ve lost my taste for mescal, you know? I think I’m ready to eat the worm.

Alex gives an audible sigh, almost a groan, at the other end of the line. Don’t do this, he says. It’s melodramatic. It’s self-pitying. It’s not
like
you, Curtis. I’m saying this as your friend, understand?

Write me a letter sometime, Curtis says. Say hello to Helen, would you? He presses down the receiver and covers his face with his hands.

He wakes at the first graying of dawn, tears starting in the corners of his eyes. Images float out of his last dream. The tiny white eye of the moon above Doi Suthep. An emaciated Burmese boy curled up in the darkness of a kitchen hut, his face lit by the glowing opium in his pipe.
Now you wish you had smoked it when
you had the chance,
he thinks.
Even your memories are nothing.
He turns his face to the wall, closing his eyes, but the faintest sounds invade his sleep; buses whooshing around the curve toward Central, garbage collectors calling out to one another in a hoarse singsong.

For three days he stays in bed, rising only to drag himself to the toilet. His knee is fused solid; there is no pain, but when he tries to bend it it feels as if it will snap and fall away, like a rotted branch. Clouds move fleeting shadows across the ceiling. He selects a book from the stack beside his bed, reads a few sentences at random, and lets it fall to the floor.

On the afternoon of the third day the telephone rings. He waits for the answering machine to pick up, and then remembers that there is none: in Hong Kong, where everyone has a mobile phone, there is no need. Still he feels no need to get up. Everyone who Mrs. Mei wants to speak to will know she is in Paris. But the rings persist: twenty, twenty-five, thirty-five. Finally he lurches out of bed, snatching his cane, and limps across the room to the desk.

It is Ji Shan Sunim. She sounds agitated, even angry. Why have you not come to the therapy? It is
vital
that you come every day. Have you been sick?

Yes. I’ve been ill. I’m sorry I haven’t called.

Do you need medicine? I will send someone to get it for you.

No, he says. There’s no medicine.

But you are in pain, she says after a moment. I can hear it.

I’m sorry. I don’t think you would understand.

What is not to understand?

Every morning I wake up and realize that my career is over, he says. How can you know what that’s like? Nuns can’t fail; you can’t fail if you don’t
want
anything. How am I supposed to tell you about it?

In the background loud voices babble, raucous laughter rises and falls.

I don’t think I can keep coming to the therapy, he says. I’m sorry. I don’t think I want to get well.

Then I will come to you.

I’m not worth your time, he says. Don’t bother.

What will I do,
he wonders. More than an hour has passed, and he is still leaning against the desk, his back to the window. The silence burns in his ears; he taps his cane against the floor just to hear the sound. For a moment he imagines pulling the old television off its shelf in the closet and plugging it in, but no, he thinks, you do that and in a moment it will be April, and you’ll have wasted five months watching bad old movies and Chinese commercials. He sees himself sitting by the window with his leg propped on a chair, washed in blue light, sweat beaded on his forehead.
Choose your poison,
he thinks. The doorbell rings.

When he opens the door she uncrosses her arms and takes off the baseball cap she has been wearing, as if to help him recognize her. She is wearing blue jeans, a pink cardigan over a yellow polo shirt someone must have loaned her, her gray nun’s shoes, a small leather bag in one hand. His hand holding the cane trembles, he reaches out to the door frame for support, and she slides her hands under his arms and presses herself to him until he wonders if his ribs will collapse. She is so strong that if his good knee buckles, if he throws away his cane, she will still hold him up.
What’s happening?
he hears a small, petulant voice asking.
What’s she doing? You’re not ready
—and he bites down on his lower lip, hard, to distract himself.
When
will
I be ready?
he thinks.
What other time is there than now?

When he wakes in the morning she has already taken her blankets from the sofa and begun moving the furniture, sliding the armchairs next to the wall, turning the coffee table on its side, rolling up the carpet. On an end table she has made a makeshift altar: a tiny Buddha seated on a cigar box, a spray of dried flowers, three plums on a saucer. Her movements seem stiff, even awkward, until he realizes he’s never seen her body unconcealed by robes. How uncomfortable it must be, he thinks, watching from the doorway.

Have you eaten?

There were noodles in the refrigerator, she says. She picks up the rolled carpet and folds it in half, as if it were made of paper. You don’t mind?

Of course not, he says. Did you like them?

For a moment she seems confused by the question, her eyes wandering over his shoulders. Less pepper next time, she says. She balances the carpet on her shoulder and walks past him to the hall closet.

Sunim, he says, what are you doing?

My name is Ana.

Ana.

She closes the closet door and steps slowly into the light, her eyes intent on his face. I am disrobed, she says. I am no longer a nun. You understand.

But I didn’t ask for that, he says. I never told you—

You should rest, she says. Taking his cane, she slides one arm under his shoulder and walks with him to the couch. Soon we start the therapy, she says. Later I will cook for you. Otherwise you will never get better.

I feel guilty, he says. Why would you disrupt your whole life for me? I didn’t want this to happen.

She sits on the couch next to him and takes his hand in her lap. At first it seems to hold her full attention—she kneads the palm, rolls the loose skin of the fingers, works her thumb between the knuckles—but at the same time she opens and closes her mouth, as if straining to breathe. Finally she releases the hand and looks up at him. It is not so hard to understand, she says. I can help you. And you also can help me.

Me? he says. Look at me. I’m not in much of a position to help anyone.

She blinks twice, rapidly; a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch, and turns to look toward the door.

I’m sorry, he says. You said I had to choose, didn’t you? But this isn’t a choice. I don’t have the faintest idea what you want from me.

Nobody
will be able to help you if you are so closed, she says fiercely, turning back to him. You are like an insect. All hard around the outside.

Shell, he says, trying not to smile. The word you’re looking for is
shell.

So laugh, she says. Laugh and forget. She begins to rise, but he reaches over and catches her arm, feeling a sharp spike of pain in his thigh as he does so.

I’m sorry. I’m not making fun of you.

Her arm feels terribly fragile; expecting her to pull away, he holds it lightly, tentatively. She does not move.

Let’s start this over again, he says. Don’t leave.

She stares at the floor, her cheeks reddening, and he thinks,
she is embarrassed by happiness
.

You see? she says. It is not so difficult. You are helping me already.

In the afternoon she boils herbs in a pot on the stove, filling the apartment with a sour, earthy smell, and covers the floor with Mrs. Mei’s monogrammed towels. When he lies down she wraps the herbs in washcloths and ties them around the brace, at the ankle and the thigh. Close your eyes, she tells him, and places a damp, hot cloth across his face. He hears her footfalls across the floor, more pots clattering on the stove; the lights dim, and her fingers pull his toes forward, cupping the heel.

What is this? he asks. You’ve never done this before.

My grandmother taught me.

Your grandmother?

When I was a child, we had no medicine. Even aspirin we did not have.

He remembers a movie from elementary school:
Life Behind
the Iron Curtain.
Gray buildings under ashen skies; streets lined with bare trees, smoke boiling from factory chimneys. How nightmarish it seems in memory: as unreal as the bogeyman, the children who got lumps of coal in their stockings.

I wish you would tell me about Poland, he says. How you became a nun.

So many questions today, she says.

I want to keep talking. I’m a little afraid of this.

Why? It hurts?

No, he says. It feels wonderful—
too
wonderful. It’s a narcotic.

A what?

Like being drunk.

You are courageous, she says after a moment. Most people would want to forget.

Courage has nothing to do with it. I’ve had too many hangovers in my life, that’s all.

Holding his ankle with one hand, she moves the other slowly up to his calf, gently squeezing the muscle through the holes in the brace. He feels how thin his leg has become underneath its plastic frame: a mass of tendons and nerves that quivers under her touch. When he grimaces she removes her hand and returns it to his ankle. There is a new tenderness, a slow, deliberate quality in the way she handles him. He reaches up and peels away the cloth from his face. His eyes widen; the room shifts more sharply into focus around her.