A Long Stay in a Distant Land Read online

  What was the point, Esther thought. He was gone. There was nothing left, nothing here or in an afterlife that didn't exist. There was only time and waiting for his body to be shipped home.

  Phil wrote another poem and placed it alongside his brother's photo.

  It read:

  No More Fishing, Melvin Melvin,

  We got the news

  Yesterday afternoon.

  We cannot go

  Fishing together anymore.

  I don't know

  What to say.

  A week after the news of Melvin's death, the family discovered that it was Mark Ling from three blocks down who'd actually been killed. Mrs. Lum took down the shrine and Phil wrote yet another poem:

  You're Alive, Melvin!

  Melvin,

  The army clerk

  Made a mistake and sent the

  Wrong telegram!

  Thank goodness You're alive!

  Come home soon.

  Esther wanted him to return soon, too, but she wanted back the man who'd left, not a stranger. She wanted wide-faced, skinny-nosed Melvin, and in her nightmares he came back changed, his face thinner, his chin elongated. Up close she could see the frequent epicanthic folds newly formed above his eyes, the folds she didn't want him to have because he'd looked perfectly natural and fine without them.

  He must have yearned for these folds each night before he fell asleep, hoping their appearance would make his eyes more attractive and distinguish him from the enemy Japs, these folds Life had presented on the face of its friend and partner.

  The Tragedy of Delicious Turnip Cakes

  (2002)

  After taking off from LAX, Louis swallowed three Benadryl tablets and fell asleep. He had the recurring dream.

  They were in Grandma Esther's beige dining room eating her fried turnip cakes and talking. He knew it was a dream because her turnip cakes tasted good, good not from hunger, but well cooked and perfectly seasoned, and stuffed with minced onions and shrimps.

  The whole family was there, eating and talking. Connie was chewing on sunflower seeds. Will, training for football, talked about his biceps. "They grew three millimeters in the last week," he said. "Go ahead. Poke them. Like steel."

  "Eat," Grandpa Melvin said. "Eat," Grandma said, and everybody ate because the turnip cakes actually tasted good.

  Uncle Larry talked about the low rate on his refinance and Mick responded, "You think that's a low rate?"

  Aunt Helen asked Uncle Bo and Aunt Julie about property values in Hong Kong.

  His father Sonny was there.

  His mother Mirla. "Your father has been driving you crazy, hasn't he?" she asked.

  "Yes," Louis said. "Crazy."

  Then things changed.

  A soft yellow light sparked in the center of the ceiling and grew in intensity, threatening to consume the room.

  The diphenhydramine hydrochloride Granduncle Phil had created contained two phenyl rings and a chain comprising the essential life ingredients of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which could be rearranged into the gas that Grandpa had ignited to fire the .30-caliber rounds that pierced the bodies of the German soldiers he'd confronted.

  What went around came around.

  Light covered the room, filled it, heated it. The light was so bright it hummed and pulsated, sending shock waves that shook the hairs on the back of Louis's neck. The light melted skin.

  Connie's hands turned into running wax and the skin slid off her bones. Connie, twelve years old, asked, "Where am I going?"

  "I don't know."

  The skin on Will's steely biceps melted and left behind red muscle threaded with veins and arteries that also melted.

  "Don't go."

  Grandpa.

  Uncle Larry.

  Aunt Julie.

  Skin, muscles, and bones dissolved to reveal molecules: hundreds of glowing green and red balls connected by clear tubes, like those three-dimensional plastic models Louis had studied with in college chemistry.

  His mother melted like the rest, leaving behind green and red clusters that exploded, each glowing particle shooting through the walls of the dining room and trailing streaks of light.

  The dead Lums had died again, and Grandma, Dad, Mick, Aunt Helen, Uncle Bo, and Louis were left at the table with six empty chairs.

  "What happened?" Grandma asked.

  A Really Strong Iron Gate

  (2002)

  The Grand Park Hotel rose eighty-five flights above the street bustle of Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui District.

  The green marble floor in the lobby sparkled. The male clerks wore black jackets and ties and the female clerks wore gray dresses. They all had on plastic pins that showed in vacuum-metallized silver the hotel's name.

  In the center of the lobby was a brass fountain flanked by mermaids made out of plaster.

  Beyond the mermaids was a long check-in counter on which sat a pineapple-shaped glass jar that held the hotel's personalized matchbooks. Louis took one, then another and another. He studied his reflections on the many-sided jar. He smiled at a female clerk. She looked at the matchbooks in his hands and frowned.

  This was much nicer than the last hotel Louis had stayed in, the Holiday Inn. The Hong Kong Holiday Inn had been an option, but he wanted a genuine Hong Kong hotel, not a chain, not an import, not anything that bore the mark of the place he'd just come from. He wanted a hotel with a brass fountain and plaster mermaids.

  The bellboy, a cap perched on top of his head, loaded Louis's luggage onto a cart. He asked in English, "Is there a problem?" Louis pointed at a mermaid. "That's wonderful. What do you call it?"

  "Statue in the lobby."

  Louis followed the bellboy toward the elevators.

  As they ascended, Louis said in Cantonese, "I can speak Cantonese."

  The bellboy was staring at his feet. "Super."

  "What's your name?" Louis asked.

  "Aaron."

  "Your real name," Louis said.

  "What?"

  "Your Chinese name," Louis said.

  "Fu Sing."

  Most people in Hong Kong had both an English and Chinese name. Learning the Chinese one made Louis feel like less of a tourist. "Beneficial meeting you, Fu Sing," he said.

  "Your tones are wrong," Fu Sing said in English.

  Louis's room was on the thirty-second floor. Fu Sing rolled Louis's luggage in and set it down next to his bed.

  "They're all wrong?" Louis asked in English.

  "Fifty percent. Sixty-five." Fu Sing looked sixteen, a tall, stocky kid whose thick neck strained his shirt collar.

  Louis tipped him two Hong Kong twenty-dollar bills.

  "Do you think people will understand me here?" Louis asked.

  "Say something in Cantonese," Fu Sing said.

  Louis said something.

  "Your old bean lives in California?" Fu Sing asked.

  "Old man."

  "You're saying old bean instead of old man."

  Fu Sing said old man in Cantonese, slowly and clearly like an instructor, and Louis repeated.

  "That's better," Fu Sing said.

  "I'll be able to walk here?" Louis asked in Cantonese. "You have problems walking?"

  "Place orders for restaurants. Discover how to navigate directions. You think people will comprehend me?"

  Fu Sing looked puzzled.

  "Do you think I speak well enough to find my way around here?" Louis asked in English.

  Fu Sing took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. He flicked his wrist, fanning the sweat off his hand as he headed for the door. "Sure. If you speak English."

  Louis called his father. "I've arrived, old bean," he said in Cantonese.

  "Good. Have a fun vacation."

  "I called you old bean instead of old man," Louis said in English.

  "Okay."

  "You didn't know that?" Louis asked.

  "I've always known." His father yawned. It was four in the morning in Orange County.

>   "Why didn't you correct me?" Louis asked.

  "Your mother thought it was cute."

  "You should have corrected me."

  "Say hi to Uncle Bo for me. Don't lose your wallet."

  "I'll call you again before my flight home," Louis said.

  "I'll talk to you then."

  Louis hung up and looked out the window. High-rises cluttered the landscape. The narrow streets were jammed with red taxis.

  He checked his wallet to see how many bills were left. A man is a dollar. A man is also a mosquito. Hundreds of people covered the sidewalks below like man.

  Louis had a habit of mixing Cantonese and English when he spoke with his family. The problem with mixing languages was it was too convenient, it encouraged ignorance, and it encouraged not flipping through a Cantonese-English dictionary when the need arose.

  When he'd wanted to say, "Old man, I need you to sign a permission slip so I can go on a field trip to the Griffith Observatory," he'd used English for every word except old man, I, you, sign, and go. He'd used English for scientific and technical words like electrons, power saw, and dual overhead camshaft. He'd used English to curse, or when he wanted to get a point across to his father in a loud way without raising his voice, as in, She's not a fucking leg.

  He could understand them when he heard them, but the correct tones didn't transfer from the reception to the production areas of his brain. The number of words he could comprehend far outnumbered the ones he could recall and use at will. He could listen to Cantonese. He just couldn't speak it correctly.

  The first two days Louis wandered the streets around his hotel, rode the subway, and hailed a couple of taxis, asking the drivers to take him to the "best place to eat in the area." The first driver dropped him off at a KFC, and Louis told the second driver, "A Chinese restaurant."

  The third day Louis began searching for his uncle. He headed north on Chatham Road, moving forward with the flow of human traffic, constantly adjusting his shoulders and hips to avoid head-on collisions with oncoming pedestrians.

  The burst of car horns and voices filled the street. The air was hot and humid, and a layer of moisture covered his arms and legs. At some point, his uncle's feet must have touched this pavement, his eyes must have scoured the high-rises above, and his nose must have picked up the scent of barbecued duck hanging from miniature gallows behind restaurant windows.

  Gai. Live chicken cackling in an alleyway, the birds held in square wooden boxes with spaced slats along the sides.

  Mah. Mother dragging her son through an intersection like he was a Labrador retriever, his left arm the leash.

  Bouji. Newspaper in a newsstand holding news, anime magazines, comic books, and porn.

  Gaai. Street.

  Giu. Hail.

  Diksi. Taxi.

  Louis handed to the driver the sheet of paper with Uncle Bo's address on it. The flat was in Kowloon City northeast of Tsim Sha Tsui.

  The driver looked Louis up and down. In this August heat, most of the young people were dressed in black jeans and tight black T-shirts. Louis had on a pair of sneakers and cargo shorts that covered his knees.

  "Ganahdaaihyahn?" the driver asked. Canadian?

  "Meihgwokyahn. Gahjau." American. California.

  "Taam gatihng?" Visiting family?

  "Haih." Yes.

  "Neih yauh gatihng hai Gahjau?" You have family back in California?

  "Ah-bah." Father. Not old man and not old bean.

  Louis paid the driver and stepped out of the taxi. In front of him loomed another tall building. It stood at the end of a quiet cul-de- sac like those found in Irvine and Mission Viejo. The structure resembled a stick of polished marble, very different from the government-sponsored ghettos he'd passed by on the way here, those concrete high-rises that housed hundreds of families.

  Here an electrically powered wrought-iron gate sealed off the Paradise Plaza flats from the rest of Kowloon City. It had straight vertical bars that ended in spikes.

  There was a com device with a numbered keypad in front of the gate. The number Louis dialed was the number of the flat Uncle Bo had rented a room in.

  "Wei?" It was a woman's voice.

  "My name is Louis Lum," he said in English slowly and clearly. "I am Bo Lum's nephew. Can you please let me in?"

  There was a pause. Then she hung up.

  Louis called again. "I am Bo's nephew. Please let me in."

  "Please go home," she said.

  "I can't. I'm already here."

  A pause. He heard her breathing. A long pause followed by a click and the dial tone.

  He called again. The answering machine came on. Her voice said in Cantonese, "We cannot come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Thank you."

  "This is Louis Lum," he said. "I'm staying here until you let me in." He disconnected and approached the gate. He kicked it, just to see whether it would give. The iron bar sang softly. He kicked it again harder. The bar whined a little louder and the gate shook slightly. Maybe it wasn't that tough. Maybe it only looked strong. He swung his hip and kicked hard as he could against the bar. The pain shot through his right foot and he let out a yell. He walked gingerly back to the com device. He sat and took off his shoe and sock. His big toe was throbbing, but not broken. He could still move it. He heard footsteps and quickly put his sock and shoe back on.

  The woman pretended to inspect the hedges that lined the opposite side of the gate. The individual shrubs resembled jade mah-jongg tiles. They'd been meticulously trimmed.

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  She wore sunglasses.

  "Who are you?" he asked again.

  She turned the other way.

  "I have to find Uncle Bo," Louis said. "Not finding him would kill my grandmother."

  That stopped her. Louis tried Cantonese. "My grandmother would slice her own gizzard chancing I do not discover my uncle." The words weren't what he'd wanted to say, but he hoped the sentiment of desperation came through.

  She hesitated, then pulled what looked like a garage opener from the left pocket of her jeans. She pushed a button. The electric motor purred and swung the gate open to reveal a path wide enough for two cars, one coming in, one going out. Louis took the path of the incoming car and followed her inside.

  She introduced herself in English-accented English (she'd grown up in Leeds) as Lum Fei. Her husband, Wai, had left this morning with their son, Ah-Kai, to visit one of Wai's old university friends.

  "Lum?"

  "When he first moved here, your uncle looked up all the Lums in the telephone directory. He felt he could trust someone with the same name. He wanted to rent a room from a Lum. We were the fourth on his list."

  Louis sat across the kitchen table from her. The walls were covered with framed artwork from Hong Kong martial arts comic books. Men with long robes and longer queues whirled in midair, brandishing swords and fists.

  "Who drew this?" Louis asked.

  "I did." Fei said she was an artist. She must have been a successful one. This flat was spacious for Hong Kong housing. It had a full kitchen, a large living room, and even a dining area.

  "How was your flight?" she asked.

  "I slept most of the way."

  "You're lucky. I can't sleep when I'm flying."

  "I took a lot of Benadryl," he said. "It's the antihistamine that makes you sleepy. My granduncle invented—"

  She looked confused.

  "Never mind," Louis said. "He's not here, is he?"

  "That's what I told your grandmother. I told her she didn't need to worry." Fei rubbed the skin on her knuckles. The outer edge of her left hand, where it must have pressed against the pages as she drew, was stained with black ink. The inside of her middle finger was callused.

  "Do you have pictures of him?" Louis asked.

  "Yes. Of course." She went to her bedroom and returned with two photo albums. One was orange and the other red. She set them side by side and sat next to him. "Please, go ahead."

&
nbsp; He opened the orange one first. He saw Uncle Bo arm wrestling Wai. Fei hummed in recognition as he flipped the pages, as though each picture sparked synapses in her brain, brought back familiar emotions (happiness? disappointment?) directly hardwired to these prints.

  He saw Wai and Fei eating noodles. Fei and Aunt Julie sitting on the grass in front of a pond. Uncle Bo with his arm around Aunt Julie.

  Fei nodded at the red album. "These are with Ah-Kai. He was born a year after Julie died." Uncle Bo had stopped writing after Aunt Julie's death. The photos inside probably held intimate moments he'd wanted to keep to himself, far away from his family in California. Louis opened it eagerly.

  There was Uncle Bo holding Ah-Kai in the delivery room, the baby wrapped in a cocoon of sheets. Uncle Bo and Fei standing next to Ah-Kai's crib. The boy standing on his own two feet and Uncle Bo towering over him, opening his mouth wide like he was going to eat him. Uncle Bo with Ah-Kai in front of the steel railing at Victoria Peak. Uncle Bo sitting next to Wai and AhKai, their faces obscured by steam rising from their bowls of rice porridge.

  His uncle's expressions ranged from uncomfortable to various degrees of pain. "He hated having his photo taken," Fei said. She looked at the kitchen. "Would you like some tea?"

  "Sure."

  While they drank, the front door opened and a man's voice said, "I'm home," in Cantonese. Wai came into the kitchen with Ah-Kai. If he was born a year after Aunt Julie died, then he was eight. He looked Louis over like the taxi driver had done, studying his sneakers and shorts. He was carrying a big red plastic robot. It was covered in a film of dirt and its left fist looked as if it'd been melted with a flamethrower. On its head were five spikes, one of which appeared to have been gnawed off.

  "This is Bo's nephew," Fei said.

  "Welcome." Wai shook Louis's hand.

  "How are you doing?" Ah-Kai asked in his mother's accented English.

  "Fine," Louis said. "That's an interesting toy."

  "It's not for me," Ah-Kai said.