Song of the Silk Road (23 page)
He paused for a few seconds, seemingly deep in thought, then added, “Most of your lovers are mutually destructive with the element of water. It’s their fate.”
Before I could ask how, he waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve revealed to you enough of heaven’s secrets. Now you can take leave. I need my afternoon nap.” Then he craned his neck toward the door. “Ah Hung, come and show Miss Lin the way out!”
I opened my bag and pulled out my purse. “Master Soaring Crane, you still haven’t told me how much . . .”
He cut me off sharply. “Miss Lin, please don’t embarrass me and yourself. Anyway, your consultation has already been paid.”
“But by who?”
“Your so-called aunt. Ten-odd years ago, when she came here for consultation, she left a large amount of money to the temple. That was how I could maintain the temple and bring up the orphans. So now both you and her debt are paid.” He went on. “Your so-called aunt is not a bad person, she just has bad judgment, which led to a bad life. By donating she’s neutralized some of her bad karma.”
“Master, may I ask why you referred to her as my so-called aunt?”
“Heaven’s secret will reveal itself when the right time comes. Just follow the Way. Always wait till the right, propitious moment to act. In this dusty world, timing is everything, so is patience. Also, don’t forget to exploit the use of your
yin
energy. It’s very charming. I’ve been feeling it all along.”
yin
energy. It’s very charming. I’ve been feeling it all along.”
I pondered what he had told me, awed by the wisdom of this decrepit old man. What more pearls were hidden inside his face’s oyster shell–like wrinkles?
Then he suddenly recited something like a poem. “The soft always overpower the strong. Nothing can be softer than water, however, nothing can destroy the hardest thing like water.”
Now he looked me in the eyes. “It’s from Laozi’s Daode Jing. I doubt a Western-educated young woman like you would have heard of this.”
“Sorry, Master.” I involuntarily lowered my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. Or could he? Maybe through his third eye.
“Miss Lin, you may return to visit us anytime.”
Outside the temple door, Ah Hung had already arranged for coolies to take me down the mountain. “Miss, visit us when you have time. It’s quite lonely up here.”
“I will, and thank you, Ah Hung.”
He handed me the three embroidered bags. “Miss Lin, you forgot to take this wisdom endowed by Master. People are willing to pay a fortune for Master’s heavenly granted knowledge, not to mention his much-sought-after, exquisite calligraphy.”
“Oh, how could I’ve forgotten this?” I said, taking the three “poems in a pouch” from Ah Hung.
As I stepped onto the sedan chair, I tucked the small silk pouches into my backpack, a little nervous about what they might have to tell me.
Use your feminine charm
.
.
The master’s saying rang loud and clear in my ears. I sighed. Did it mean I had to seduce more men on this journey?
After I left the temple, I headed straight back to Urumqi, then checked back into the Xinjiang Hotel. That night, I flipped and flopped in bed, failing to get any sleep. My encounter with Soaring Crane was the scariest so far, even more than with Floating Cloud, though in a different way. The monk might be plain fraudulent and depraved, but the master’s predictions and his crane soaring with all the mysterious stars were beyond my writer’s wisest intelligence and wildest imagination.
What other routes, exciting or dangerous, were written on my life’s map? And what stars glowed bright and clear above my head? I prayed they’d lead to joy, not sadness; laughter, not tears; love, not heartbreak. I prayed that my Transmigration Star would shine brightly to lead me home.
Early next morning after I finished breakfast, I booked a ticket to New York. Holding the thick papers in my hands, I first felt excited, then alarmed, wondering if I’d made the right decision to leave China in the middle of my mission, even only for a few days. However, I felt I needed this break for my mental and physical health.
In the desert, I had not been eating well because I did not take to the local food. I disliked the Uyghur tradition of tearing the
nang
into small pieces and dipping them into sweet milk tea before consumption. I hated the stink of lamb, but mutton is everywhere—whole roasted sheep; mutton shashlik, which is barbecued lamb pierced by a bamboo stick; steamed mutton dumplings; baked bread dough stuffed with mutton and onions; boiled noodles with sautéed mutton. I terribly missed Chris’s gourmet cooking and the endless arrays of ethnic foods in Manhattan.
nang
into small pieces and dipping them into sweet milk tea before consumption. I hated the stink of lamb, but mutton is everywhere—whole roasted sheep; mutton shashlik, which is barbecued lamb pierced by a bamboo stick; steamed mutton dumplings; baked bread dough stuffed with mutton and onions; boiled noodles with sautéed mutton. I terribly missed Chris’s gourmet cooking and the endless arrays of ethnic foods in Manhattan.
I then set off for the village. Once back, I washed, wrote in my journal about my meeting with Soaring Crane and Ah Hung, then went to Keku and told her about my upcoming departure. We were sitting inside her cottage, with Mito playing by our side.
“Why go back? Village no good?” she asked.
“No, Keku, you know I love this village. I just need to take a break. The desert is too hard for me, and I’m not used to the food here so I have not been eating well.”
“Food very good in America?”
“Yes, it’s the richest country in the world.”
“Like people make one thousand a month?” She was referring to the price I’d paid for the possessed ivory bracelet that could have been used to buy two sheep, a dozen chickens, a new bicycle for Mito, and a new pan for her.
We laughed.
“You like living there?”
I nodded.
“And the young man?”
“You saw him?”
“Of course.” She pointed to her chest. “He someone here?”
“Yes and no.”
“Yes and no?” She cast me a chiding glance, then pointed to her son. “Look, Mito’s four. I married eighteen, so now old woman.”
I chuckled. “Keku, then what does that make me at twenty-nine, a grandmother?”
Just then Mito plunged his tiny body onto Keku’s lap and rubbed his round head against her ample chest. Keku smiled to her son and spoke to him jokingly in their Uyghur language.
Mito looked up at me with his big, curious eyes while uttering a loud, “Grandmamma!”
Keku and I laughed uncontrollably. After I calmed down, I took candies from my pocket and handed them to the boy.
Keku said, “Miss Lin, have a child quick. If not, too old. It’s troublesome but happy. Old woman with no husband not too bad, but old woman with no children very sad.”
As if on cue, the sun’s descent began to smear the sky with a tragic reddish orange. Was getting old that horrible a scenario? Face wrinkled, hands spotted, loved ones gone? Then Alex’s smooth and tender visage emerged in my mind’s eye, looking sad and pleading, as if reiterating his undying love for me.
“You think so?” I tousled Mito’s hair while he was busy unwrapping a candy and popping it into his mouth.
“Yes!” the son answered loudly for his mother, this time in Mandarin, his mouth full.
PART THREE
22
Back to New York
A
fter my long absence, my New York studio looked familiar yet forlorn, like a neglected puppy. I made a mental note to buy some flowers and plants to brighten it up. But the first thing I did was to take a long, hot bubble bath, something that I hadn’t had the luxury of enjoying for four months. So when the scalding, fragrant water splashed generously on my bare flesh, grateful moans escaped from between my lips. As I rubbed myself hard to get rid of the dirt from the desert and the twenty-hour plane ride, I felt my body beginning to crave a man’s touch.
fter my long absence, my New York studio looked familiar yet forlorn, like a neglected puppy. I made a mental note to buy some flowers and plants to brighten it up. But the first thing I did was to take a long, hot bubble bath, something that I hadn’t had the luxury of enjoying for four months. So when the scalding, fragrant water splashed generously on my bare flesh, grateful moans escaped from between my lips. As I rubbed myself hard to get rid of the dirt from the desert and the twenty-hour plane ride, I felt my body beginning to crave a man’s touch.
I wanted Alex, but I called Chris instead. And I did not want to think why.
My former professor seemed both shocked and elated to hear from me. “Lily, I could’ve picked you up at the airport. Why didn’t you call?”
“Sorry, Chris, but I had to walk two miles to get a public phone and most of the time they don’t work anyway.” This was a lie; I knew I could have found a way to call if I’d really wanted.
“All right, stay right there till I arrive.”
“What about your wife and son?”
“You let me take care of that.”
“Chris.” Suddenly I regretted the call. “I . . . think maybe we should stop seeing each other. It’s not right. . . .”
“Lily, I’m very sorry about our situation. But give me time. And please let me see your beautiful face and body tonight. I miss you.”
“Do you want to see me just for the sex?”
“No, I want to see you. And, yes, I also want to make love to you.”
“How do you know I’m not with someone else tonight?”
“Someone else?” His tone suddenly turned angry and hurt. “Is he the same one you were expecting the night before you left?”
“No, I told you there was no man that night.” Although my tone also came out angry, I was enjoying Chris’s jealousy.
“Then what about tonight?”
“It’s for me to know and for you to find out.” It’s as unbearably pleasurable to tease a man who finds you so desirable as it is to finally realize he’s in fact dispensable.
“Then I’ll come. And please don’t torture me while I’m with you.”
“But wait, Chris, who’s torturing whom?”
“Please. I’ll try my best to solve our problem, just give me time.”
“Take your sweet time then.” I grunted and hung up.
I realized the reason I came back to the States was not that Chris was on my mind but Alex, even though we’d had the big fight before his departure and I still felt hopeless about our future. Since I considered myself adventurous and a risk taker, then why should I be bugged by our age difference? Because when I had my first sexual experience, Alex would have been nine years old, a fourth grader. When I’d turn forty and over the hill, he’d be thirty-two, waltzing at his prime.
In my opinion, men, young or old, handsome or plain, rich or poor, all have Alzheimer’s disease—not the disease of their brains, but their penises. Even a snake will always slide back to the same hole. But a penis’s karma is to wander and forget which hole—especially the most familiar one—it is supposed to return to.
Chris brought food and a bottle of red wine. As expected, the food was my favorite Chinese takeout, a gesture I always appreciated. To me, a man who brings hot, tasty, nutritious food to feed the woman he cares about is simply heaven-sent. So, although Chris was a man with many faults, he was also graced with this endearingly redeeming trait.
As I watched my blockbuster-novelist lover set down on my table the long-missed dishes—kung pao chicken, beef broccoli, shrimp dumplings, hot and sour soup, scallion pancakes, and fried banana—my heart was filled with a fleeting happiness. Chinese call this abundance
youyu
, which means “there is so much that there will be something left over”—money, food, good fortune, blessings, healthy children.
youyu
, which means “there is so much that there will be something left over”—money, food, good fortune, blessings, healthy children.
In the small studio, we ate and drank with relish, savoring the salty and saucy beef and chicken, the lip-greasing scallion pancakes and dumplings, as well as each other’s long-missed presence and energy. From time to time, Chris would put food on my plate, refill my glass with wine, and peck my cheek. However, amid the pleasant clicking of chopsticks, smacking of lips, and slurping of soup, we didn’t engage in a lot of talking as in the past. I was thinking of Alex and how to find him. Chris, I guessed, was wondering, What was she doing in China all by herself, and why won’t she tell me the reason for her travel? Does she have a boyfriend there? Will she have sex with me tonight?
Chris tilted his head toward me; his golden hair undulated like silk under the yellowish light. “Lily, you OK?”
I stopped chewing. “I’m fine, why?”
“You’re just not your usual lively self. Problems during your trip?”
“Nope.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Why did you go to the Silk Road and what were you doing in the desert?”
“Not now, but later.”
“Not later. I want to know now.”
I dropped my chopsticks, which hit the table with a sharp thud. “Then will you divorce your Jenny now and marry me later?” Actually, I never really wanted to get married, at least not now, but I said that just to annoy him.
“Lily, you know it’s a very difficult situation for me, but I’ll think about it seriously, I promise.”
“All right, then, why don’t we push this serious matter back till later and enjoy our greasy Chinese food now.”
He gave me a surprised, upset look. Then we resumed our eerily silent concentration picking at the many dishes and gulping down the endlessly flowing wine, red like roses, blood, or Chinese good luck paper.
Moments passed before I asked, changing the subject, “How’s your new novel going?”
“Not well. I’m stuck; writer’s block.”
I put down my bowl to pat his hand. “I’m sorry. Can you start a different one?”
“I thought of that but no new ideas came. Anyway, don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll think of something else. Now let’s finish our food,” he said, his chopsticks noisily hitting his bowl while scraping up rice.
The unspoken lines were “then we can fuck our brains out as soon as we are done eating.”
So after we devoured the food, in our drunken state we started to devour each other’s bodies. That made me think of two very popular Chinese sayings:
“Eating and coupling are people’s innate nature.”
“A warm, full stomach leads to lasciviousness.”
“A warm, full stomach leads to lasciviousness.”
Sex was excellent, as usual. It felt so wonderful to have Chris’s muscular arm around me, his thick torso pressing on mine, his burning lips sending zealous greetings to various parts of my body, and his sex playing hide-and-seek inside my valley like a naughty, poisonous snake as he muttered, “Let me devour you, my juicy little dim sum, please” and “Oh, God, how come you’re so
fuckingly
sexy and your nipples so
impossibly
hard?” Although I didn’t like profanities, I accepted his compliments with painfully pleasurable moans. . . .
fuckingly
sexy and your nipples so
impossibly
hard?” Although I didn’t like profanities, I accepted his compliments with painfully pleasurable moans. . . .
I was still attracted to Chris, but I knew now that I didn’t feel real love for him, as I had once thought. After sex, to my surprise, what came right into my mind was Alex. If Chris could be compared to a mug of scalding, bitter black coffee, then Alex was a cup of steaming, fragrant green tea. The coffee might scorch my throat and keep me high, but the tea soothed my high-strung nerves and warmed my soul. Chris’s hands were like a gourmet chef’s cooking high-fat dishes, while Alex’s were like those of a conductor conjuring pleasing melodies.
Tears coursed down my cheeks.
Chris put his arm around my shoulder. “Something wrong?”
I couldn’t possibly tell him that Alex was on my mind, or that I was now determined to find him, hoping that he still loved me and that there’d be a second chance.
“Nothing. Just a headache, probably because of all the wine.”
“You want me to get you some aspirin?”
“No,” I said, feeling unbearably sad.
Chris wanted to see me—read: fuck—several more times before I went back to China, but I decided to stop providing any more entertainment, sexual or otherwise. In the ten days I had left I desperately needed to be left alone to think about where my life was headed. Also, I felt my desire for him and his hold on me fading fast. Yet my urge to find Alex refused to subside as Master Soaring Crane’s words kept spinning in my head:
Maybe it’s flattering and pleasurable to have all these men chasing you. But ultimately you better stay with one. Passion and lust will vanish like smoke and dust. Only true love lasts.
The next two days I tried Alex’s home number but to no avail, so I left a short message on his machine. According to my experiences with men, acting desperate was the worst thing to do.
On the fourth day, the phone was finally picked up after the eighth ring. But instead of feeling elated, my heart sank. It was Donna Adler’s cold, impersonal voice.
“Hi, Mrs. Adler, I’m Lily Lin, Alex’s friend. We met at the Welcome Guest Hotel in Urumqi.”
“I remember you.”
“Is Alex there? May I speak to him?”
“He’s not here. I just stopped by to check on things.”
“Oh. . . .”
“He went back to China.” Her voice from the other end of the line sounded like she was now thinking of strangling me with her hundred-dollar-manicured hands.
“China?” My heart sank.
“Yes, to find you. Since he’s never heard any news from you. . . . Nothing.”
“Oh, my . . . I’m sorry . . . so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m the one who should feel sorry for my son.” Her tone was getting increasingly antagonistic. “It’s dangerous in China, especially where you were. But he won’t listen. Now he’s in China looking for you and you’re here. What kind of games are you playing with a twenty-one-year-old kid? I’m not at all happy about this.”
“I’m sorry. You know that we quarreled before he came back here. So I think maybe he doesn’t want to see me again. . . .”
“Well, then you think wrong, smart as you think you are. I tried to stop him from leaving, but he won’t listen to me! So thoughtless of him, and now you’re here.”
Losing Alex was bad enough, so I tried my best not to lose my temper, or my dignity. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Adler, but Alex is an adult and he’s free to go wherever and do whatever he wants.”
Before I could add, “And with whomever he loves” plus “whomever he wants to find including his biological mother,” the line was already dead.
“Bitch.” I let the beast jump off my lips.
Overwhelmed by the unpleasant conversation, I collapsed on the bed and let my tears make their long-postponed escape.
Oh, God, how could we have missed each other like that?
I decided to return to China immediately. I called the airline and changed the ticket, paying a penalty, which fortunately I could now afford. The power of money. Things can actually change. Something I was getting used to.
So, after I did some shopping and errands, I braced myself for my second twenty-hour trans-Pacific flight in less than five days.
When I told Chris of my early departure, he asked why, and my answer was an evasive, “Something happened, but I can’t tell you now, only later.”
Knowing that it was futile to further probe, he begged to come to my studio one last time, presumably for a quickie. I lied that my “great aunt” had just announced her monthly visit. I’d spit on myself if I’d again let another man crawl into my bed except Alex, who had been sitting right in the center of my heart all along. Guilt was engulfing me as I remembered how I’d yielded to Chris on our reunion five days ago. So I racked my brain for excuses: I did it for old times’ sake; I owed him emotionally and financially; it was compensation for not telling him why I had gone to China and left him for four months; after all, he was my professor, mentor, and body reader; and finally, we were both dead drunk.
All right, I was weak in the flesh and the heart, plain and simple.
Fuck!
Fuck!
Then Alex’s sweet, pained face emerged in my mind’s eye as I remembered his sexual poetry. Now I didn’t want any other men, only Alex. I dried my tears, ran a hot bath, then soaked in the tub to soothe my nerves, imagining Alex’s caresses as I slid into the sloshing, scalding water.
I moaned and squirmed as my hand feverishly explored the area burning between my legs.
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