The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [48]
In the evening his windows are filled with the lights of Kowloon: a shimmering crescent on the black waters of the harbor, a multicolored galaxy, fascinating and unreal. He cooks with his right hip propped against the kitchen counter, stirring a pot of noodles with chopsticks, washing a handful of choi sum under the tap with the other hand. The woman who lent him the apartment has left a cabinet full of Thai spices in bottles and jars, neatly arranged and labeled in Chinese; so to replicate the recipes he learned at the cooking school in Chiang Mai he must remember the ingredients by smell: galangal and lemongrass, holy basil, oyster sauce and fish sauce. Each dish brings back a specific place. Morning in Pai, drinking tea in the street, looking west toward the mountains of the Burmese border. Bicycling through the markets above Banglamphu in Bangkok. He eats with wild anticipation, sometimes closing his eyes to focus on the scene, but even the smell dissipates too quickly, sucked away by the air-conditioning. An apartment gate clangs shut; children’s feet clatter in the hall. In the silence he feels welded to his chair.
Later, lying in bed, trying to read, his eyes keep straying to the clock, remembering what time it is in America. Nine o’clock in the morning in New York; six in Santa Cruz; seven in Boulder. His friends are pouring coffee and flattening newspapers, mixing paint, switching on computers. In August he sent postcards, giving his new address, saying I’ll let you know what happens, but since then he hasn’t spoken to anyone. What would I tell them, he thinks, what is there to say?
And where are you living now?
A woman I met in Mae Hong Son loaned me her apartment. She’s in France all winter, through the spring shows. She designs sunglasses. She thinks she’s patronizing a famous artist.
What is Hong Kong like?
The streets are as narrow as slot canyons. Skyscrapers next to buildings that look like they’ve been rotting away for fifty years. Garbage haulers with mobile phones. Outside it’s a sauna; inside it’s always winter. Shouting is the normal mode of conversation—even in elevators.
It must be very exciting.
Colorless, compared to Chiang Mai.
Speaking of which—
I’m not working. I can’t.
You have to do something. Don’t you?
I still have the show in New York. That should bring in something. I don’t have to pay rent; I don’t need much to live on.
But you can’t just stop.
Who says, he asks the ceiling. Who says what I can and can’t do?
Sunim, he says, do you like living here?
In the hallway the elevator dings and the old woman screams her thanks to the attendant. The nun stares at the floor, a marble statue.
My like and dislike are not important, she says.
Why?
I am a nun, she says, raising her chin and giving him a faint smile. I do not choose. So I am free to go anywhere.
But you must get lonely sometimes.
Si fu, m’geidak—
On her knees she turns to the old woman in the doorway and bows, speaking rapidly in Chinese. The woman retreats into the hallway.
I’m sorry, he says, when she turns back to him. I shouldn’t say these things. I don’t know anything about Buddhism.
Do you have the same pain as before?
Sure, but I hardly notice it. I’m used to it by now.
There is a reason for this, she says. What we call pain is not really pain. It is the fear of pain. If you are not afraid, you still have pain, but you do not suffer.
She looks so earnest that he can’t stop himself from smiling.
Let me show you something, she says. Look at this wall. Can you describe it?
It’s empty, he says. Blank. Nothing on it. Just a wall.
Yes. When you expect there to be something, then there is nothing.
How else can you see it?
The wall is white. The floor is yellow.
He laughs, resting his