The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [53]
After they have eaten for some time in silence the radio program changes to big band music: Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra. He taps his good foot to the beat. I would ask you to dance, he tells her, but I never learned properly. I suppose I missed my chance.
My mother was a dancer, she says. Not that kind. Ballet. When she was very young she had a teacher from Leningrad.
Did she teach you anything?
Assemblé, she says, smiling at the forgotten word. And she gave me her costumes. I sometimes would put them on and think I was in Tchaikovsky.
You’re very graceful. You would have been a beautiful dancer.
She wipes her mouth and turns to the window. High cirrus clouds hang over the city like a painted ceiling, turning the harbor lavender. Her lower jaw juts forward, as if he has insulted her and she is considering the right response. What does she see, he wonders, watching her reflection in the glass. What is there for her, in this gaudy, hallucinated world.
I wanted to tell you something, she says softly. But I don’t know how to say it.
What was it?
Everything changes. Everything dies. We say, life is a cloud which appears and disappears. Do you understand?
Ana, he says, how could I not understand?
So why say it, she says. What is the use? And she reaches for his hand.
She climbs astride him and arches her back, pointing her chin at the ceiling, dropping her arms behind her: as if her body is a bow being drawn. They move as if borne by waves, in slow, even spasms, until it seems to him a continuous motion, without beginning or end. There is no building tension, no need; even the blood in his veins seems to wash back and forth in a tidal rhythm. When it is over he feels only the fading of the pulse, his body coming to rest, the air chilling his soaked face. She lies on top of him, kissing him; he is so dazed he can hardly raise his arms to embrace her. Is it what you wanted, he whispers, and she says, yes, yes, I want, I want—
The next morning is sunstruck, the sky over the Kowloon hills a faded sheet of blue, and when Ana opens the windows the apartment fills with a clean, sea-smelling breeze. He sits at the kitchen table drinking tea, turning the heavy pages of an old book from Mrs. Mei’s shelf: Some Painters of the Early Qing. There is a chapter on Bada Shanren, the painter-turned-monk, with his scribblings of blasted scenery: gnarled trees, broken boulders, ragged, fierce-eyed birds. “The Comedy of Catastrophe,” the chapter is called, and it’s such an apt title that he laughs out loud. What is it? she says, coming to look over his shoulder. He gives her the book, and she pages through the chapter, looking carefully at each plate before turning to the next.
He was born into a powerful family in the Ming dynasty, he explains. Then, when the Manchus invaded, nearly everyone he knew was killed. War, famine, pillage—he saw it all. He became a monk, a wandering sage. For the last thirty years of his life he never spoke to anyone.
These are very pure, she says. Like calligraphy. I like them very much.
He’s kind of a hero of mine. I’ve looked at his paintings for years.
You paint also in this way?
No, no. I don’t have the technique. It’s his thinking I’m interested in.
He had a very still mind. You can see this.
He was a crotchety old bastard, he says, and laughs. Being a monk, he was immune