The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [35]
You don’t have to go, I said. Tell them you were sick.
I’m supposed to be saving money, she said. Instead I’m spending it. If I don’t show up they’ll fire me then and there. In Shenzhen you don’t get second chances.
You can find something better, I said. You’re spending everything you make on taxis. It doesn’t make any sense, Lin.
I told you. I warned you that it wouldn’t work.
Let me help you, then.
She pressed a finger to my lips.
My life is so little to you, she whispered. A snap of the fingers. I’m the dust you shake off your shoes.
Do you think that’s what I meant?
She shook her head. You don’t have to mean it, she said. It just is.
It was June. In the evenings after she left I went for walks along the concrete seawall that overlooked the bay, watching the sun melt through layers of haze. The water there was clotted with sewage and the shiny bellies of fish; without wanting to, I imagined myself paddling through it on top of my sailboard, and felt a shiver of nausea and disgust. That isn’t fair, I thought. There’s always garbage on the beach at Shek O. I turned to the east and looked up at the skyline, or what little of it I could see through the smog: a jumble of tall spires and cylinders and shining glass tower blocks, some of them copies of buildings in Hong Kong, others probably copied from buildings elsewhere in the world. Why is it that Shenzhen doesn’t look quite right, I wondered. Why does it seem like such a mirage, as if I might come back next week and find it gone?
We slept together for the first time on the night of July 1, the first anniversary of the handover, of Hong Kong returning to China. From Nanhai Lu we could see the fireworks over downtown Shenzhen and over the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong, and on satellite TV we watched the small crowds gathered in Statue Square, waving the new Hong Kong flag—the one with the purple flower, the bauhinia. The joke is, I told her, that it’s a hybrid flower, and it’s sterile. Produces no offspring. But she didn’t laugh. In the flickering light of the screen her face was inert, unmoved; nothing I did made her smile.
I’m sorry, she said. I’m just tired.
You need to look for another job. A day job. This work isn’t right for you.
I don’t see what they’re celebrating, she said, nodding at the screen. Hasn’t it been a terrible year? What about the stock market crash?
They’re celebrating the future, then. Things will get better.
The future, she said. What a luxury.
I turned off the TV and we sat slumped on the couch in the dark.
I’m sorry. She touched my knee. I feel like I’ve poisoned you.
We have to forget all this, I said. Can’t we just be us, just once?
She reached for my hand and squeezed it, hard. I want to, she said. Try to make me forget.
When it was over she folded herself against me, limp, like a body washed in by the tide.
I have an idea, I said the next morning, bringing her a cup of tea in bed. I want you to hear me out. Will you listen?
She nodded, brushing hair out of her eyes.
I’ve been reading some articles about immigration, I said. We both know there’s no way to move you forward on the list for Hong Kong. And I can’t legally change my residence to the main-land, even if you wanted me to. But there’s nothing to stop us from simultaneously emigrating to a third country.
But—
I raised my hand. There are two options for us, I said. Canada and Australia. Both are expensive. I would have to sell my parents’ investments. And we would probably have to wait two or three years for you to get a visa. But that’s it—three years at the most. You could start a Chinese kindergarten in Toronto or Vancouver or Sydney. It wouldn’t be so hard—I could help you.
You would do that? Leave Hong Kong for good?
Not necessarily for good. Once you’re naturalized in another country we can move back to Hong Kong if we want to. We’ll keep my apartment and rent it out.
She drank her tea in one gulp and set the cup down. You’ve figured everything out, she said. Haven’t you.
It’s not so difficult. People do it all the time.
Of course, she said. People buy