The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [2]
She stayed behind on the first day of class: a tall girl with a narrow face, pinched around the mouth, her cheeks pitted with acne scars. Like most of my sixteen-year-olds she looked twelve, in a baggy uniform that hung to her knees like a sack. The others streamed past her without looking up, as if she were a boulder in the current; she stared down at my desk with a fierce vacancy, as if looking itself was an act of will.
How do you think about bats?
Bats?
She joined her hands at the wrist and fluttered them at me.
People are afraid of them, I said. I think they’re very interesting.
Why? she said. Why very interesting?
Because they live in the dark, I said. We think of them as being blind, but they aren’t blind. They have a way of seeing, with sound waves—just like we see with light.
Yes, she said. I know this. Her body swayed slightly, in an imaginary breeze.
Are you interested in bats?
I am interest, she said. I want to know how— She made a face I’d already come to recognize: I know how to say it in Chinese— when one bat sees the other. The feeling.
You mean how one bat recognizes another?
Yes—recognize.
That’s a good idea, I said. You can keep a journal about what you find. Write something in it every day.
She nodded vehemently, as if she’d already thought of that.
There are books on bat behavior that will tell you—
Not in books. She covered her eyes with one hand and walked forward until her hip brushed the side of my desk, then turned away, at a right angle. Like this, she said. There is a sound. I want to find the sound.
18 September
First hit tuning fork. Sing one octave higher: A B C. This is best way.
Drink water or lips get dry.
I must have eyes totally closed. No light!!! So some kind of black—like cloth—is good.
Start singing. First to the closest wall—sing and listen. Practice ten times, 20 times. IMPORTANT: can not move until I HEAR the wall. Take step back, one time, two time. Listen again. I have to hear DIFFERENCE first, then move.
Then take turn, ninety degrees left.
Then turn, one hundred eighty degrees left. Feel position with feet. Feet very important—they are wings!!!
I don’t know what this is, I told her the next day, opening the journal and pushing it across the desk. Can you help me?
I tell you already, she said. She hunched her shoulders so that her head seemed to rest on them, spreading her elbows to either side. It is like a test.
A test?
In the courtyard rain crackled against the asphalt; a warm wind lifted scraps of paper from the desk, somersaulting them through the air.
The sound, she said impatiently. I told you this.
I covered my mouth to hide a smile.
Alice, I said, humans can’t do that. It isn’t a learned behavior. It’s something you study.
She pushed up the cover of the composition book and let it fall.
I think I can help you, I said. Can you tell me why you want to write this?
Why I want? She stared at me wide-eyed.
Why do you want to do this? What is the test for?
Her eyes lifted from my face to the blackboard behind me, moved to the right, then the left, as if measuring the dimensions of the room.
Why you want come to Hong Kong?
Many reasons, I said. After college I wanted to go to another country, and there was a special fellowship available here. And maybe someday I will be a teacher.
You are teacher.
I’m just learning, I said. I am trying to be one.
Then why you have to leave America?
I didn’t, I said. The two things— I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. All at once I was exhausted; the effort seemed useless, a pointless evasion. When I looked up she was nodding slowly, as if I’d just said something profound.
I think I will find the reason for being here only after some time, I said. Do you know what I mean? There could be a purpose I don’t know about.
So you don’t know for good. Not