by A.T. Payne

Smoke slowly drifted from Jake’s parted lips as he clicked on the “delete” button.  He flicked his joint and took another hit. His mind was as wordless as the air around him.

     Up here on the twenty-ninth floor, the closed windows of his apartment sealed him in a vacuum of stale air and silence.  From his office window, Dalian looked like a toy metropolis, laced in loops of superhighways. Occasionally, Jake would have nightmares of falling out that window. He would watch himself becoming smaller and smaller; and then, miraculously, he was alive and staring at the yellowing ceiling.

     He logged out of his email.

     No new messages from Jasmine. No phone calls, either. Not even a simple “happy birthday” text. In a little bit, he would give her a call. He would ask how her day was, if her sister was feeling better. Jasmine’s sister was sick, and Jasmine, responsible and attentive as she was, spent most of her time taking care of her. It was the only reason why he saw so little of his girlfriend of — what was it now — three weeks. (Or was it two weeks?) That was all right. Talking on the phone, stealing a few evenings here and there–for now, it was all right.

     A shattering hollow sound made him jump.  BANG BANG BANG. He smashed the joint in the ashtray before heading to the door.

     “Hello, hello, come in…”

     “Hello, Teacher.” The sixteen-year old student spoke in his metallic accent, unsmiling. He knelt by the doorway to untie his shoes, and Jake went to bring out tea and snacks.

     When Jake emerged from the kitchen, he found his student lingering in the living room, absorbed in the collages on the walls. Every single student would do this, no matter how many times they came here for lessons. No part of the walls had been left bare: it was all Tiananmen Square, Time and Newsweek magazine covers, aged articles, smiling propaganda pictures, photos of Chinese dissidents and tanks and mangled bodies. Jake knew that some people called his apartment the Museum. Others called it the Moratorium.

     He remembered when Jasmine first came. She must have stayed for half a day, asking question after question about the history that had been hidden from her. Her history. And when he explained it to her, he felt as though he were doing something right, something important. And then she had been quiet. For a long time, neither of them spoke. They watched some stupid movie, and she let him hold her. Holding her was a task he took quite seriously.

     Now, his student was staring at one of his new pictures – a cartoon illustration of a man’s face. Tiny, illegible Chinese characters were smeared all over his face, surrounding a pair of stony dark eyes.

     “Like it?” Jake asked.

     But the student just kept staring at the picture. His finger trailed along the characters.

     “These are names,” he said quietly.

     “Yes,” Jake replied. “Names of his ancestors – people in his family who came before him.”

     The student nodded his head. “Yes, yes. I know.” Then he abruptly turned his back on Jake and sat at the table in the office.

     Jake followed and sat next to him. He began to pour two cups of tea. “So,” he said, “did you hear about the Japanese earthquake?”

     “Of course,” the student replied.

     “And what do you think?”

     The student’s face was motionless. “They are deserve it.”

     “Huh. Why?”

     “You know, we have the history.”

     “Nanjing. The war. And before that, the occupation of Dalian. Yes, I know.”

     “They are animal. They are punish for what they did. You know, they are not real human.”

     “Okay, I see. I understand. But you have to think. That was many, many years ago. Things are different now.”

     “No, no.” The kid shook his head. “It’s the same. They are bad.”  He sipped the tea and pushed up his glasses. “Can we play that video car game?”

     “Sure, later. First we need to study your textbook. But aren’t you even a little sad about the earthquake? Not even a little?”

     The student said nothing. He sat tapping his glass of tea with a trembling hand. “I am a little sad,” he said finally. “Maybe no more Japanese cartoons.”

     “Hmm, yes. Maybe no more Japanese cartoons. Let’s turn to Unit Five…”

     Their lessons were more or less unvaried from week to week. They reviewed vocabulary, grammar and the dialogue; Jake asked questions, probing his student for more than one-word answers. But today, when Jake spoke, his voice, to his ears, sounded far away. So he spoke even more, fumblingly, too much for a proper language lesson. Periodically, he noticed his students’ eyes stray from him to the poster of the man and then back again. His own mind dipped into some other thought as well. . .

     JAKE, THIS IS URGENT. PLEASE READ AND REPLY.

     “Try to use it in a sentence.”

     “When I was a child, I am used to play outside…”

     When this student was a child, it would have been the early 2000s. Internet censorship in China had been even stricter. Tiananmen had long been tucked into the past. Dalian would only just have been burgeoning into the sprawling city of six million that it was today. Jake tried to picture him playing tag on the quiet, clean streets of the past.

     “When I was a child, I used to play outside. But now, I am used to study. It is right?”

     The student pushed his glasses up his nose to protect his expressionless eyes. But this time, Jake thought he heard something in his voice softening, unraveling . . .

     “Teacher . . . it is right?”

     “Yes,” Jake said. He felt his mouth spreading into a smile. “It’s right.”

He tried to picture Jasmine playing under a blue sky, in a place brimming with life and color. This place was called Pao’ai, her hometown. The Pao’ai of her childhood had been a poor village, rather than the poor suburb of Dalian that it was today. That would have been back in the 1980s, before Tiananmen. Despite pervasive government surveillance, Chinese democracy had seemed like a remote – but not impossible – dream.

He and his student continued the lesson, and then they played video games; but all the while Jasmine’s shadow hovered over his mood. There were times when he closed his eyes just so he could glimpse her every eyelash, her every pore.

     After his student left, Jake smoked a quick joint. Then he decided to treat himself to a late lunch. In the elevator, he received yet another text message from a friend: Yo, J, happy b-day. Can’t wait for tonite. Still nothing from Jasmine. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. He needed air. Dust-drenched, polluted air, but air nonetheless.

     Today was a typical March day in Dalian, cloudy and windy. Outside the gate of his building, the street was lined with fast food and fruit vendors; it was nearly impossible to squeeze between the people and the inviting scent of barbecue and fried eggs. Having lived in China for about a year, Jake had no qualms about pushing past people, as it was customary, even expected, here. Still, like many foreigners, he didn’t like it. Every moment of contact with a person’s arm or shoulder gave him a touch of nostalgia for the personal space he would have had back home . . .

     Dust blew into his eyes. He was passing a massive construction site, where the city was erecting a stadium to rival Beijing’s. Only a few blocks away was Olympic Square, but for whatever reason today it felt like a long, cold trek. A western wind permeated his bones, chilling them. He wondered what Jasmine was doing right now, whether she, too, was fighting against the wind. He could picture her face with a pink sheer. Years ago, when they had both worked at the same English school, he had remarked to a coworker that he thought Jasmine was gorgeous. His coworker had laughed. “Gorgeous? She’s pretty, yes, but you know, in Chinese eyes she is not . . . gorgeous.”

     But to Jake, there was no other word for her. Her body was taut plain of smoothness and strength. Yes, that was another word for her: strong. Unlike a lot of Chinese women, she didn’t have that irritating air of innocence.  Each movement was slow and careful, and her head was always raised high, so that she seemed like a queen; and right before Jake’s eyes, that same majestic grace would clear like fog and reveal a shadow of a woman. Jake recognized it at once: a secret scar. He could see it in her eyes, too, wide but full, knowing. There, another word for her: wise. When she looked at him, Jake could feel all the unexpressed questions in his life being hushed and quietly forgotten.

     The restaurant’s windows were coated in steam.  It was so warm inside.  He even took off his coat as he walked to the counter to order.

     “Yi pan dapanji.”

     The cashier’s face always lit up whenever he saw Jake, who was one of the few foreigners to frequent this restaurant.  Even some Chinese didn’t come here; it was a Xinjiang restaurant, and all of the staff were Xinjiang natives. The men wore taqiyahs and the women wore pink or green headscarves.  None of them looked like Han Chinese, and perhaps that was part of why Jake was drawn here. Jake would sometimes notice the young girls staring at him with a wide grin, and he would wonder about their life in exile. Were they scared, living in enemy territory? Did they ever dare to leave the restaurant unaccompanied?

     It wasn’t until he sat at an empty table when he realized he had forgotten to bring a book. There was nothing to do but wait. He couldn’t even smoke a joint. He tried to ignore the curious stares of the few other customers.  It was the kind of thing that he had acclimated to, but right now their stares were as penetrating and intrusive as when he had first arrived in China. The fuwuyuan brought his food, and when he savored the aromatic taste of the chicken and noodles, his first thought was of his sister and his mother and his father and how they had never been here, had never tasted this dish. And would never.

     He raised the chopsticks to his mouth mechanically, then lowered them; again and again for a silent, indefinite space of time. Then he left.

He cut across the empty square, past the towering Olympic rings. In the summertime, it was not unusual to see teenagers roller-skating around these rings. But there were no people out today.  Although it was March, Dalian was still deep in winter.

     His only companion was the wind, and, from a distance, the screeching buses, the car horns, the crash and mechanical hum of construction work . . .

     He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be home, under a blanket, smoking. He wanted to sip a beer and read blogs about Chinese politics. He walked faster, but he couldn’t block out the noise. He thought about Jasmine. How had Jasmine grown up in such a chaotic city and still flourished into the queen that she was? It was a shame that she had to grow up in a place like this. She should be living in a high rise in Beijing or Shanghai, sealed off from the pollution of everyday life.  Even back when they worked together at that dilapidated English school, he remembered watching her and thinking, She’s too good for this shit.  Even back then he would imagine her in his bed and making love to her. Her slow, languid movements were replaced with flashes, streaks; they were in one spot on the bed and then another; they were almost fighting each other, and then they were sinking into each other’s arms, overwhelmed, happy to surrender.

     The fantasy carried him all the way to his building. At the convenience store he bought two boxes of beer for the party tonight. When he got upstairs, he opened a beer, lit a joint and sat at the computer. There was much to do; a revolution was rustling in the air! In February, a group of Chinese citizens, inspired by the struggles in Egypt and Yemen, had arranged to meet at Beijing’s fashionable Wangfujing Street at one o’clock. Although there were no banners or protests–just a group of people standing around–it surely marked the beginnings of change. Most passerby assumed a movie was being filmed and walked right past the heavy undercover police presence. One man, a student, placed a single flower at the entrance to McDonald’s and was instantly nabbed by the police. Jake was in the middle of replying to someone’s blog post about this when he suddenly stopped. He had forgotten what he wanted to say. When he finished his joint, he lit another. He stared out the window, at the endless sky.

     Miles and miles beyond the smog, the day was just beginning. His mother was probably already up, sitting at the kitchen table and holding the morning paper to her glasses. She would utterly ignore the colors of dawn spilling into the world outside. Suddenly, it occurred to Jake that dawn was different on this side of the world. In China, it was gray and soundless. One moment it was dark, the next it was time to leave for work. But here, dawn eased itself onto the earth. His mother was too busy studying the paper unblinkingly; he peered over her shoulder and saw the headline, EGYPT FORCES CLASH WITH CITIZENS. Jake knew she did not really care about Egypt. She was secretly listening to the coffee percolating and the birds singing. Jake suddenly would have given anything to sit with his mother again and listen to these sounds, so familiar, so much like home. But that was no longer possible. So he let her be. He moved past her, to the living room. Deep, soft carpeting, a small couch, and above, all over the walls, were their lives in pictures – a narration of stiff smiles and embraces. He followed the story upstairs, to the darkened bedrooms. Annie. His sister was in her bedroom, sleeping. In the darkness, he could barely see her bald head, but he knew it was there. And as he stood looking, it was as though his feet were slowly sinking into an uncanny, nauseous feeling. The serenity on her face kept him rooted to that spot.

     Her eyes opened, but he couldn’t remember the color.

     “Jake,” but there was no sound.

     “I’m here,” he said. He opened his eyes. Everything was dark. The computer screen clock read 7:22. His joint had burnt out.

     He lit a new one.

There was nothing to do but wait.

     He sat down. He stood. He went to the bathroom more times than was necessary. He sat and smoked and flipped his hands over and under, over and under, wondering who or what was controlling them.

     Although the party officially started at eight, no one had arrived. He turned on the music anyway. Guitars and drums rained down on his apartment like bombs, and his body, as though wired with electricity, leapt into the repetition.  When his breath got heavy, he sat down at the computer, but his mind was still empty.  He frantically scrolled up and down the blog pages.  But the words were meaningless.  He got up and paced around and around until, at last, he was standing very still in front of the poster that his student had found so captivating. Something was not right about this picture. Jake knew it was supposed to be of a man. He knew it was a comment on the slow eradication of cultures of Chinese people. And then he realized – the whites of his eyes were gone. The eyes were so black that they weren’t even there. They were merely holes. And now the tiny, unidentifiable names were moving, just a little – swarming around the eye sockets like flies.

The thickness of the air was choking him. He rushed to the window, opened it, felt the cool air soothing his face . . . So he leaned out and breathed in deeply, swallowing all the sounds of the city. . .

     Someone was at the door. Jasmine. It had to be. But when he opened the door, it was not Jasmine. It was a skinny nineteen year old with glowing white skin and glassy eyes, cradling a box of beer in one arm.  Ivan.

     “Yoooo…” Ivan trailed off as he gripped Jake in a half-hug. “Happy birthday, man! I brought you something nice.”

     “Yeah, awesome,” Jake said, taking the box from him. “Come on in, take off your shoes, here are some slippers. . .”

     Whenever Ivan came over, they always played video games. Now was no exception; Ivan had already started the game as Jake opened the beers. He blew someone’s head off and hopped in the car. “Die, motherfucker!” They went on a whirling tour of a computer-generated New York City, and as he watched, Jake suddenly wanted to leave. He saw himself slamming the door; he saw himself jumping out the window. But he couldn’t move his legs. His phone read 8:29. He looked at Jasmine’s contact information and wondered when they had exchanged numbers. He couldn’t remember.

     It must have been a long time ago.

     More guests poured in; a sibilant sizzle – the opening of beer cans – punctuated each “happy birthday!”; his small apartment was suddenly jammed with people. Jake could feel himself being lifted higher as he swam through the bodies and voices and smoke . . . His phone was silent, there was a buzzing in his ears . . . There was a pounding on the door and in his heart, but still no Jasmine. “Happy birthday!” Again, the ritual hugs, the sizzle and laughter and grinding guitars. Someone had rolled more joints and started passing them out. He breathed in deeply, imagining the smoke uncurling throughout his empty lungs. His phone reported no texts, no missed calls, only the time: 9:59.

     He found himself in his bedroom. There were a few people there, too; he got sidelined in a conversation about traveling through Asia, but it quickly descended into an asinine sparring match about what was the best place in the world.

     “Hong Kong is way cooler than this shit,” said one old guy, a co-worker, taking a hit. “Except it’s so fuckin’ hot down there.”

     “The south of the mainland is the best. The weather’s hot too, but you can put up with it ‘cause the girls are hotter.”

     “The here and now, baby; that’s the best place in any world,” Jake found himself saying.

     “Yeah, baby, you said it!” Someone cheered drinks with him.

     “Speaking of the here and now,” said a voice from somewhere within the smoke, “where’s your girlfriend?”

     “She’s not here?” said another voice. “Is anyone ever gonna meet her?”

     Yeah, she’s coming, she’s coming, Jake said, though he wasn’t sure if he had actually said anything at all. People had gathered around him, asking the same questions, pushing each other, their jackets and sweaters brushing his own clothes, never touching his skin . . . “Where is she?” “Why isn’t she here?”

     She’s coming, she’s coming. Here, now.

     Yes, the here and the now. Dalian. The best place on earth . . . phone in hand, Jake pushed passed the people and followed this train of thought across the room, to a corner.

“Okay, all you motherfuckers! You fucking cunts! Listen. Listen to her voice, all right? Then you fuckers will believe! You’ll know! Stupid motherfuckers. Do you hear me, assholes! You all fucking listen to this. . .”

He raised the phone to the heavens of his apartment, and, looking out at all those expectant eyes (at the awe and disgust flashing through the smoke, stupid motherfuckers, what did they know), he could feel something rising within him, like pinpricks, yet deepening with each step until it was clawing its way up.

And up it came.

     “Nin hao. Nin bo da de dianhua shi konghao. Sorry, the number you have dialed does not exist. Nin hao. Nin bo da de dianhua shi konghao. Sorry, the number you have dialed does not exist. Nin hao. Nin bo da de . . .”