What Is All This? (32 page)

“No, you goddamn ninnies, for the three hundredth time I was not on a spy flight for America and, in fact, am not in the American Air Force or even an American. I'm the legitimate handpicked rightful revolutionary heir of the great Mao—rather than the bureaucratic New Class fakes now in control—so you're all under arrest. Actually, I'm the great-grandson of the illustrious Sun Yat-sen by a previously unknown pre-teen marriage arranged by my great-great-grandparents, so now you're all most certainly under arrest. All kidding aside, me and my fellow flyboys here, well, we were over China not to spy on her but to seek asylum in her, when one of our country's most effective anti-asylum missiles caught us in our contrails, knocking us for a few unaeronautical loops though not hitting our plane in time to stop us from landing it on your munificent soil. The truth is, and I see no reason to lie or joke around about it anymore, we were on a spying mission for China against American fleet forces in the Pacific when Vietnamese naval batteries, thinking we were scouting for an expeditionary brigade of Japanese to reestablish military imperialism in Asia by Asians, gunned us down. Okay: our sole reasons for transgressing your territory was to end the border dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia, return Sabah to the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia to the Khmer, reunite the Koreas under the Silla kingdom, Japan under the Yamoto priest-chiefs, Burma under the Toungoo dynasty and China under the Kalmucks, and really get things moving again in Asia, really get the job done. The absolute truth now? I want to go home. I miss my mad Aunt Rose, I adore my loony Uncle Sam, I'm even a little crazy about you, China, wherever you are, whatever you might be.”

I stay in prison for three more days, sitting in Ep's elegant office chair and giving the most extravagant orders imaginable to a thousand functionaries, sleeping in his bed with a photograph of his beautiful wife, smoking all his Cuban cigars and drinking his plum brandy, cooking up wild tasty dishes in the officers' kitchen and working myself back to pre-prison shape in their pool and gym. But I'm very lonely and also curious to know what's going on outside, so I fill a knapsack with food, canteens of water and a blanket and go through the main gate and head south, thinking that with a lot of luck and muscle I might reach Kowloon, walk across the bridge to Hong Kong, and sneak onto a ship leaving for some country like Japan or Australia.

I'm on the road for a day before I see another person. The man's walking toward me, but seems too frail and old to get any intelligible information from, so I salute him and walk past, but he yells “You there, Yankee fan, you part of occupation forces blitzing south instead of west as I past heard?” I run back and hug him and say how happy I am to speak to someone in English again, “though I haven't a clue as to what you're saying to me.”

“Suspect it's my English then, which I haven't spoken since one New Zealand missionary lady learned it to me in Nan-ch'ang some thirty years ago. Name of Dot Gentle, a Mrs.—you know her, familiar with her good looks and name?” I tell him I'm not and ask why the road's so empty. He says he's surprised I haven't heard about China's newest and perhaps greatest disaster. It seems that American bioresearchers were testing a new nerve agent in a Taiwan proving ground when, because of an unforecasted storm, several chemical gas clouds blew across the China Sea. Once the gas reached China it was discovered it had no effect on the nervous systems of Chinese inhabitants but worked with unintended superlative results as a herbicide, for in a week this agent acting as a multiplying virus spread so fast that most of the arable land in the Fukien and Kwantung provinces were made infertile and the crops were destroyed. By the time American bioagricultural scientists could come up with a counterreactant to the herbicide, a civil war had started between the more reactionary political faction, which insisted China declare war on America for its chemical invasion, and the group in power, which said that war with America would be national suicide for China and so it was the reactionary faction that had to be crushed. Diplomatic relations between China and America were once more restored, arms and food were sent in from the States, and the two countries were now fighting side by side against the rebels. A new era in international peace and cooperation will begin once the war ends, world experts have said, though by the time it comes most of China's cities and farmlands and maybe a quarter of its people might be destroyed. Right now twenty million homeless Chinese are plodding this way from the ravaged South, eating everything in their path like twenty billion locusts.

I give the man half my provisions and head back to the prison. With its solid walls and vast food reserves, it'll be the safest place to stay till the Americans come; and where I know I won't starve.

It takes me a day to get back, but the prison's locked. I ring, and a caged window in one of the gate doors opens and the eyes of Commandant Ep appear.

“You leave something behind?” he says, and I tell him I want to get back in, since I heard that living's going to become extremely hazardous outside.

“Can't do. Orders from loyalist command state that I and my soldiers return from the front, where we had previously been ordered to go to fight, to occupy the prison against all possible enemies of China and also against the expected onslaught of the landless millions migrating north. This prison will soon be of indispensable use to China and even more so when the war ends, and the government doesn't want it recklessly torn down. Besides, you've no right requesting entrance here, as officially you're no longer a prisoner. I, myself, once ordered to do so by loyalist command because of American material help and armed intervention on our side, pushed the button that released the doors of the ten American cells. Why you didn't leave with your colleagues, or more like it, why they left you behind, is something I didn't understand. Fleeing as I did to fight the rebels, I never had time to find out, but it was probably because of your disagreeable pushy nature, which even now you so openly employ. What you and your colleagues did with this new freedom was of no concern to me, till I learned several days ago that you're all, by far, not thought of as free men in your own country. On the contrary, very important American leaders have recently denounced you for lying, for the purpose of making prison life here easier for yourselves, about being on a spy plane over China. For this crime you'll each, when caught, receive a reported prison term in America for many years.”

“We told the truth about that flight. Each of us, in fact, was given a few hundred dollars extra a month because of the risks of that flight and many others, and you know that as well as anyone.”

“Let me be frank with you, Soldier Namurti, although later at your trial say I told you this and I'll deny it with a rage. One of America's quick bargain-table conditions for its material help and entry into our civil war was that loyalist China retract all of its espionage charges against America, as America didn't want to ally itself with a country that on record still considered it a liar. Naturally, the charges were withdrawn—I understand that the rebels, once the war had begun, would have agreed to the same conditions for similar American assistance—and now your country accuses you of giving aid and comfort to what at the time was its enemy.”

I walk away while Ep is deciding out loud whether reimprisoning me for the oncoming Americans is worth having to feed me during these food-shortage times, and head north. South is where the famine and refugees are. And from the east, the old man told me, American forces are moving west to join with the loyalists to smash the rebels for good, and I don't want to be captured by them, flown home for a treason trial and maybe put away for life or possibly even executed.

I walk for days till I come to hills that seem to have plenty of woods for protection, and climb the hill that has the best view of the valley. Two Chinese are living at the top—a girl of about seventeen and a boy who's around five. They're frightened when they see me and hide behind a clumsily built lean-to for two days. I make no attempt to befriend them, though do make a point of exhibiting my dried fish and seaweed and bag of rice. When they come out and walk hesitantly toward me, she says “Lin,” and touches her chest, and I touch my chest and say “Jamie.” We shake hands, the boy hugs my waist, and I give her the rice to cook, since what I forgot to pack is a cooking utensil. She later accepts my offer to rebuild their lean-to, and the day after I give them my blanket for the cold nights, she asks me to sleep inside.

A few days later we see an army of refugees on the road that takes a week to pass. In a month, the American troops pass, and the month after that another American army comes from the east. The war must be over, because the second army brings materials and equipment instead of weapons. From our hill cover we watch the Americans repair the road, the Chinese refugees in the backs of trucks return to the south, and then the Americans widen and repave the roads into highways and level the trees and huts and farms along the highway and replace them with American-style ranch houses and then suburban track developments along with shopping centers and malls, trailer courts, industrial parks, a sports complex and an oil refinery, and farther off we see a six-lane freeway approaching. The smaller hills around us are cut down to bumps, and more developments rise on them and also on the planed-down steps of the larger hills.

One day two non-Chinese climb up our hill with surveying equipment. Lin, her brother Chu, and our baby Sun Goddess and I hide behind a clump of trees and watch the men eat lunch, take lots of land measurements and then discover our two-bedroom cottage and garden and chicken coop. When they start walking in our direction I throw a rock at them and shout “Don't come any closer or I'll drop a few grenades on your heads.” One of them says “Hey, you're American. Well, nice surprise, brother, and welcome; we're Americans too. The war's been over for three years, haven't you heard? Nothing to be worried about anymore—this country's been pacified. The whole of freaking Asia's been pacified. China and Stateside are the greatest of buddies now. And any man who can build that shack with just the material he found lying around and who knows with what tools, should have no trouble tying in with the big boom going on here. So come on out, fella, we're your best friends.” I yell that I'll give them to ten to get off my property or I'll start zeroing in on them, and they leave.

They return the next day with about a dozen American and Chinese soldiers and three other Americans. The three new civilians present themselves as diplomats with the embassy in Beijing and ask me to come out peacefully as I've no reason to be afraid. Everything's okay in China again, they say, but this hill has to be surveyed for a road and housing development that are going to be built on it with American help, and I'll be amply compensated for my house and land which are directly in the builders' way.

We've been so happy and healthy up here, and now I don't even know why we brought another child into this world. But I have to act quickly before they come into the woods and corner us and break up my family and send me back to the States to stand trial, and Lin, Chu and Sun Goddess to live without me in that ugly emptiness out there for the rest of their lives. I give the signal and we start to run, Sun Goddess light and laughing in my arm and Lin and Chu right behind me, running fast as we can. We dart around the soldiers, who don't seem able to make more than lazy attempts at trying to block us, and after a long sprint we stop to catch our breaths, and hear the diplomats shouting down to us. “You're making a grave mistake, buddy—you've no idea what you're doing. If it's a psychiatrist you think you need, well, hey, we have all that free for you now also—free for everyone in this country, including the Chinese. Come on back, pal, as there's just no reason to run.” But we're already a third of the way down the hill, safe and free from them for the moment, and they're not going to get their hands on us without one good hell of a chase.

She called and said “Can I stop by?”

“Sure, what's up, how are you?”

“I'll tell you when I get there, all right?”

“Of course, see ya, goodbye,”

and two hours later she rang from downstairs

and I buzzed her up,

my room cleaned, floor washed down but not ammoniated,

as I didn't want to give the scent I was doing

it for her.

New sheets—fresh, I mean, and bed, which is also

my couch, remade twice till it was right,

most of my books out of sight or in place in my

one bookcase,

books on my table and desk turned cover-side down

so I wouldn't seem pedantic,

everything on my desk stacked and aligned,

my new eyeglasses opened on top of my typewriter.

If she asks “Those yours?,” I'll say “Yes, for reading,

and only nineteen ninety-five at Cohen's, Delancy and

orchard, and that includes the eye examination,

bathroom and kitchenette cleaned too and everything put away.

Two croissants bought in a run so I'd have time

to do all that cleaning and tidying up,

old clothes thrown into the closet,

but what should I wear?

I had that thought: Which turtleneck jersey, blue,

green or black? They're all clean,

and which pants of the five pairs I found in a pile

on a garbage can on the street the other day

and washed in the Laundromat down the block,

even the gray wide-wale corduroys that said

Dry Clean Only,

all of them my length and waist and no cuffs,

the way I like mine.

Shoes and sneakers and flipflops paired and lined

up at the end of the short hallway by the door,

bedspread flattened out again in my only room.

“Your tomb,” she'd said a number of times,

but not for a while.

Then my face shaved, hair brushed back,

anus, genitals and underarms cleaned with a wet

washrag, the washrag then folded neatly over

the bathroom towel rack.

She might comment approvingly of my new headhair

curls which have formed in the two weeks since I

last saw her, painting on the wall also picked up

on the street since then: large studio oil of chair

turned upsidedown on a studio cloth with many folds,

draped sidetable with teapot, several birthday

candles in their holders and can of Ajax on top,

and she might say “Where'd you get that

—off the street like most of your furniture?”

and I'd say “Yes, a studio portrait, appropriate

for my studio apartment, and the chair sort of

symbolizing my life right now,

and also the way I acquired it:

that somebody would just toss it out.”

“You writers,” she might say, or something like,

if the conversation came to that.

So she came—knocked on my door and never mentioned

the painting or my hair—and tells me what I knew

she would and had prepared myself for,

and I told her why I hadn't called her the

last two weeks and that I'd been thinking the

same thing: “We just don't click together anymore

after almost three years. And it's not that I

don't love you, but—

Actually, I do love you, but like a croissant and

some tea? The croissant's fresh.”

“I'd love to but I haven't time and am meter-parked.

I'm glad you're taking it this way and not getting

angry as I thought, and was a little anxious,

you might. But you know, I've always said,

from the first time we met, that I needed a complete

year of freedom, for I went from my first husband,

and that was for ten years, right to you,

and because I was so young, he was the first

man I knew. Let's face it: I just haven't done

what I've wanted with my life—you have to understand,”

and I said “I do.”

“So that's it. Nothing more needs to be said,

I think. And you never know what the future

will bring. Gigi”—a good friend of hers—“broke

up with her boyfriend once—severed their relationship

irrevocably, as she put it—and two years later

they resumed, though a few months after that she

broke it up for good, but anyway, we'll see,”

one arm in her coat sleeve—“Why'd I even take

this off? The boiling heat in this apartment”

—other arm trying to shove past the lining of the other sleeve.

“By the way,” she said, “the camera I left here.

Can I have it back?” and I said “Bottom drawer

on the right, under the T-shirts, to perhaps forestall it being burglarized.”

“You New Yorkers. I'm so glad I don't live here.”

She stood the whole time, even when she laced her

shoes right after she came in.

She found the camera, briefly looked at her face

in the small Mexican mirror above the night table

—something I'd also found on the street—checked

her permed curls—“I wish mine were natural like yours,”

she once said—flicked the front ones with a finger

and said “Don't get up. I'll see you,” and blew me a kiss and left.

I was still on the bed, and after she left, I said

“Okay, I won't get up if you insist.”

We'd pecked lips when she first came in.

She didn't try to dodge me or anything like that,

so I thought it was a good sign. When I'd pressed

down harder on her lips, she pulled back and said

“No, that's enough. Things are different now.”

Shortly before she left I asked if she'd read anything

interesting lately, and she said The selected letters

of Joyce—it recently came out and was reviewed,”

and I said “Oh? Me too. The one with lots of heretofore

unpublished erotic if not masturbatory letters between

Nora and Joyce when they were still fairly young,

right around your age. What a coincidence.”

“Not much of one. You got me started with him

—I'd always resisted, thought he'd be too difficult

—and now my passion for his life and work is out of control.”

“I get blamed for everything…something my father

used to say about himself,” and reached across the

bed to the night table and turned over the book.

The letters, see? Just so you wouldn't think I

was lying to accrue some advantage with you.

Hardbound or paper?” and she said “Same as yours

—what do you think? I only have so much money,

so even six dollars was a sacrifice, but I had to have it.”

Her last words before she told me not to get up,

she'll see me, and blew a kiss and left.

“Sorry it didn't work out,” I'd wanted to say, and

what would she have answered? Probably just a shrug.

I'd also given her a book due at her library in a

few days and which I'd checked out and was going

to mail back. She said she'd read a few pages of

one on artistic creativity I'd left behind and was

a couple of weeks due, and found it very dull.

“What do I owe you for the late fee?” and she said

“Grace”—the librarian of her town's small library

—“said you have your own card, something I didn't

know—I'd always thought you were checking them out

on mine—and that she'd collect from you next time

you're there. I didn't say anything.”

Made coffee, read today's Times in bed while I sipped

from the mug, tried to stay calm but couldn't.

Stripped down to my boxer shorts and exercised—

pushups, situps, swinging from the chin bar between

the bathroom's door frame, running in place.

Drank several glasses of water.

Ate carrots, celery, raw cauliflower florets, peanut

butter on crackers and thin slices of Swiss cheese.

Squeezed the croissants in their bag into the

refrigerator's tiny freezer. Never cared for them,

or haven't since I lived in Paris and had one with

jam and café au lait almost every morning in the

back of a café while I read the Herald Tribune.

Walked across Central Park. Bought her daughter

a beaded necklace for Christmas from a jewelry crafts

stand in front of the Met on Fifth.

Walked downtown in the park thinking “I don't feel

too bad. A little better than I thought I would,

in fact. So she's gone; so what? I'll see. Could

lead to something good. New woman I might even be

more taken with, and she with me and with greater

constancy. Someone who lives in the city—maybe even

on the West Side, so I won't have to go so far to

see her—and who's marriageable but never married,

or if once married, no kid, much as I adored hers.”

Wished we'd had the baby she aborted without my wanting

her to. “Are you kidding?” when I said a year ago

“Let's get married and keep the kid.” Oh, if only

she'd wanted it too, but the hell with it. “Do you

hear?” I said in my head. The bloody hell.”

Saw places in the park we'd walked past, commented

about, rested at. Zoo Cafeteria we'd sat outside in

the cold, pretending it was a ski lodge, though I,

unlike her, had never skied, and had hot chocolate

and shared a warmed-up roll.

Tonight I won't feel so good. But with a little

vodka and a lot of wine, I'll be much better tomorrow.

And day after that, not great but just fine, and

every day after that, always better.

I exited the park at Central Park West and 72
^nd
,

headed to a liquor store near Broadway for a bottle

of wine. When goddamn, on Columbus near the corner,

she was unlocking the driver's door of her VW bug.

I ran up to her while she was putting a shopping

bag on the front seat, and said “Do I know you?”

and tried to kiss her.

“No way,” she said, swiveling out of my grip.

“I know you too and have read your stories. You

and your surrogates never stop with a civilized kiss.

By the way, I never asked—how's your mother?”

“The same, the same, but do you mind if we don't

start that how's-so-and-so talk today, okay?

I'm sort of fed up with it.”

“I thought you wouldn't get angry,” she said.

“Who the hell's angry? I'm not. Say, how about

a coffee for old friends' sake?” and she said

“Got to go. Only came down to quickly see you

and do some Christmas shopping. Now I have to get

back to correct papers and prepare next week's classes.”

She got in her car, door was still open, and I said

“Boy, you're sure not going to suffer.”

“What about you? You've said yourself you only

give your suffering over somebody three days.

Then they're out of your mind, which I find healthy.”

“That was two months after I first met you and we

split. Not three years, and half of it living together.

Screw it,” and I waved with my back turned to her,

and instead of going to the liquor store, I headed for home.

Few seconds later, I heard footsteps running up

behind me. I turned, but it wasn't her. Some young

father pretending to run away from his young son.