Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Read online

  The delay in getting our train tickets had set Claire and me back several days. Now we’d be arriving in Beijing exactly on Trevor’s birthday. When Trevor first proposed meeting at the Meridian Gate to celebrate, I’d half figured he was kidding. But now, each rotation of the train’s wheels brought me closer to him, stoking my anticipation, the rhythm synchronizing with the throb of my desire to see him. I imagined him pressed into the dingy berth beside me, his smooth hip bones grinding against my thighs, the minty taste on his tongue. On my Walkman, I replayed “Espresso Love” and “Little Red Corvette” as a soundtrack, then I invented insipid dialogues, then envisioned Trevor sliding his cool hands up the back of my shirt and kissing me fiercely in Tiananmen Square. Trevor undressing me slowly. Trevor nuzzling me from behind.

  When Claire leaned out from her bunk and said suddenly, “I can’t sleep. What are you doing?” I got flustered and snapped off my cassette player.

  “Oh, just taking notes,” I lied. “You?”

  She stammered, “Just working on my world curriculum.”

  She studied me for a moment, fingering the thin gold chain around her neck.

  “Actually, I can’t stop thinking about Adom,” she confessed shyly. “Imagining, you know, that he was here with me. And stuff.” She giggled and blushed. “Is that terrible?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. I want Trevor so badly, I ache. I know you think he’s a lunatic. But oh, my God, Claire, he is so fucking hot.”

  “Ooh, so is Adom,” she whispered. “I can’t get him out of my head. Everywhere we go, I keep thinking I see him. I keep imagining he’s sending me little messages, little signs—”

  “I keep thinking about having sex on the Great Wall of China.”

  Claire laughed and clamped her hands over her mouth.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she scolded, “we are so bad.”

  ———

  Beijing was oppressively gray. The vast boulevards, inhuman in scale, were gray rivers of concrete teeming with black and gray bicycles. The massive, oppressive-looking stone buildings were gray. And the sky was gray, too. Even though the sun was out, it hung like a small dull pearl behind a gauze of smoke, glowing weakly without emitting any light. The air, heavy with dust from the Gobi Desert and decades of burning coal, existed in a permanent state between mist and particle, powdering the trees in the city with whitish ash, coating the rooftops, buses, and shop windows with fallout.

  And Beijing was cold. As soon as we emerged from the train station, wind iced through our clothing. At the guesthouse in the south of the city, we were not upset when the proprietor informed us that he only had a twin room with a private bath available. All we cared about was a shower. We had not had a full, decent shower since Hong Kong. For three weeks now, washing had consisted of tentative forays beneath frigid spigots and searingly cold, masochistic sponge baths. My cough had crept across my chest and taken deep root. My lungs now felt knitted together with congestion. I craved eucalyptus, menthol rub, fresh orange juice. If I could just sit in a hot, steam-filled bathroom for a few hours, I thought, maybe I could breathe again.

  “Yes, yes.” The proprietor nodded when we asked him if there was hot water. “Number one room.”

  When we switched on the light to the room, we saw a private bathroom to the left with turquoise fixtures, including a turquoise Western toilet with a black plastic bagel of a toilet seat. We couldn’t believe our good luck. The room itself had chunky, lacquered twin beds, a black bureau with ornate drawer pulls, and gold-flocked wallpaper that looked like it had a moiré pattern superimposed on it. Little brown polka dots streamed over it, moving in great reflective arcs across the walls.

  Claire screamed.

  What is it about cockroaches? People live with houseplants that grow spiky and grotesque as they creep over bookshelves, strangling things with their overgrown tendrils, their genitals exploding every spring, littering the gardens and tabletops with rotting petals. People live with cats who claw their furniture, coating it with dander and millions of adhesive hairs, filling the bathroom with ammonia-scented feces and tracking urinous kitty grit all over the floor. And dogs? Those slobbering, defecating, crotch-sniffing, face-licking shit-eaters? I’ve seen people literally clench bits of breakfast sausage between their lips and let their schnauzer eat it out of their mouth in an act of low-grade bestiality. And yet it’s cockroaches that propel us into a frenzy of primeval disgust.

  “Oh no.” Claire announced, doing an about-face with her backpack. “I can’t stay here.”

  But back downstairs, the proprietor pointed to the empty row of key hooks behind him. “No more room. You have number one room, ” he insisted.

  Before we could protest, two blond boys came careening into the lobby shrieking, “Cowabunga! Die!”

  Strolling behind them coolly was none other than Cynthia, dressed now in slacks and a beige cashmere sweater, a plum-colored backpack slung over one shoulder. The moment she and I saw each other, we shrieked with delight. Oh, my God! Are you a sight for sore eyes! What are the chances? Let me get a look at you! How are you? When did you get here? There were hugs all around.

  “Anthony! Warren!” she called across the lobby. “Look who’s here. It’s Claire and Susie from the boat!”

  Warren raced over. “Guess what? Mom lost money on the black market this morning.”

  “This man was going to give her a hundred and ten Chinese yuan, but he ran away,” Anthony interjected, bouncing up and down, delirious with excitement.

  “So I chased after him on my bicycle—”

  “And Warren caught him! Warren caught him!”

  “Anthony!” Warren slugged him on the shoulder. “You’re not supposed to tell. This is my story—”

  “This is everybody’s story,” Cynthia corrected. “No hitting.” She smiled at us helplessly as if to say What can you do? “We’ve been having quite a time of it here,” she said, not unhappily.

  “Beijing is awesome,” Warren declared. “We saw a dead body.”

  “That would be Chairman Mao,” said Cynthia. “Honestly, Warren. You know that—”

  “We saw Tiananmen Square! And the Great Wall of China! And a lake full of ducks! And we fed all the ducks!” cried Anthony, leaping up and down. “Quack! Quack! Quack! And we saw a man peeing in the street! And we saw the Temple of Heaven! It’s round, and if you spin around in it, you get all dizzy like—” He started spinning and making a shrill, regurgitative Waaahhhhoooo sound.

  “There hasn’t been a dull moment yet.” Cynthia laughed. She took my hand and squeezed it. “So how have you two been?”

  “Uh, good, I guess. We’ve had some adventures,” I said.

  Claire looked at her wearily. “We have to find someplace else to stay. Our room is crawling with roaches.”

  Cynthia pursed her lips. “Oh, dear. I hate to tell you, but this is it, I’m afraid.” She gestured at the sparse lobby with its cheap silk banners dangling from bamboo dowels, its brown pilling sofas. “The boys and I were at two other hotels before this one. It’s the best of the bunch. It’s where everyone stays.”

  “There’s nothing else at all?” Claire said. “But this is a capital city.”

  “There’s the Holiday Inn Lido. But it’s miles outside of town, and apparently it’s in some sort of compound. And there’s the Grand Hotel Beijing downtown, but it’s very expensive, and I’m not even sure it’s open to Westerners.”

  Claire looked deflated.

  “If it’s any consolation, we’ve got roaches, too. The boys just killed three in the bathtub this morning. They’re keeping score, actually.”

  “Yeah and so far,” said Warren, puffing out his bony rib cage and pounding on it, “we’re winning.”

  “When you put the lights on, they run. But if you put toothpaste on your shoe, you can get them to stick to it,” Anthony reported. “And then you can smear them along the edge of the bathtub and—”

  “Okay, Anthony,” said Cynthia. “That’s enough.�
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  “Mom,” Warren whined, tugging on Cynthia’s arm. “You said we could rent bicycles.”

  He and Anthony pulled at Cynthia, prodding her toward the door. She looked back at us in delighted surrender. “Get settled in, you two,” she called out. “You can rent bicycles at the stand next door. We’re going to spend the day at the Forbidden City, if you want to meet up with us. Otherwise, we’re in room 214.”

  As the glass door swung shut behind them, Claire sank down on the bench near the reception desk.

  “Well?” I said.

  She sat staring at the crude brass key in her palm, turning it over and over as if doing this long enough would transform the key into something leading to a better room in a different hotel.

  Finally she said, “How do we know Cynthia’s right? I’m sorry, but you can’t tell me there isn’t another decent guesthouse in all of Beijing.” She whipped out the Lonely Planet guide and pawed through it furiously.

  I stood over her, shifting my weight. I was disgusted by cockroaches too, but Claire’s squeamishness somehow brought out my bravado. We were seesawing, Yinning-and-Yanging, the two of us adhering to the laws of physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I found myself thinking impatiently: So what if there are a few cockroaches in our room? Big deal. They’re everywhere in New York, too. What planet do you live on? I didn’t want to waste time hotel-hopping. I didn’t want to go on a quest for the holy grail of guesthouses. I just wanted to take a hot shower and cough up as much phlegm as possible, then meet up with Trevor at the Meridian Gate.

  Yet just as Claire and I were about to face off in the lobby, I heard a distinctive Australian voice saying, “Of course, if I’d been really smart, I would’ve had him put the tattoo on backward, so when I looked in the mirror—”

  Cynthia was right: This was where all the backpackers stayed. Rounding the corner, with a girl tucked under each of his sculpted, tattooed biceps, was Trevor. As soon as he spotted me, he shouted “Oi!” unhooked his arms, rushed over, grabbed my chin in his hands, and kissed me full on the mouth. His goatee was prickly and rough. “Girlie, you made it!” he cried, throwing his arms around me sloppily. There was something performative about his gestures; his breath was hot and oversweet. He seemed to have already been drinking. He pulled me tightly against him, his belt buckle digging into me. “Oi. Where’ve you been? Adele, Luxana.” He called over to the two girls. One was skinny and blond, pocked with acne. The other was chubby and sullen, with dyed black hair and red lipstick. They both wore peasant blouses and ill-fitting canvas hiking pants. They looked completely uninterested. “This is Susie.” Drawing close to me, he stage-whispered, “They’re from fuck-knows-where in Eastern Europe. Hardly understand a word of English. Oi, you’re just in time for me birthday!” He threw his arms around me again.

  I asked uncertainly. “Do we still have a date today at the Forbidden City?”

  Trevor wobbled and took a step backwards. “Whoops. Sorry. Change of plans. We’re going to the Great Wall tomorrow instead. We’ll celebrate me birthday up there. Me and Adele and Luxana here… an’ about six other people. We’re just on our way to get some beers and rum from the Friendship Store. It’s going to be brilliant. This guy I met on the train up here, Wolfgang. Oi, you’ve got to meet him—a total fucking madman, he’s this little Austrian guy who’s been running around Borneo and Tibet for, like, years, with nothing but a banjo and a toothbrush. He’s got this Mekong whiskey that’s like fucking turpentine. He’s going to come, bring his banjo. We got a couple of Kiwis that we met, plus maybe this British girl and her friend, and we’re all going to sleep out—sleep out on the Great Wall of China for me twenty-second fucking birthday! How’s that? So grab your sleeping bag and get ready, girlie. This is going to be the party to end all parties.” He pulled my face into his and kissed me hard on the mouth again, making a smacking sound like Mmmahh! “Fucking brilliant,” he said, more to the lobby in general than to me. “Okay, off to the Friendship Store. See you later?”

  ———

  And then he was gone. Though the taste of him was fresh on my mouth, the image of him with his arms around those two girls was seared into my mind like a photographic negative, their faces in light and dark, echoing.

  The rental bikes were old and rusted, thick-fendered, flaking black paint. They had only one gear, and they squeaked and clanked as we pedaled. But they liberated us. Not only was the scale of Beijing massive—each city block was at least a quarter of a mile long—but once we were in motion, people no longer surrounded us, gawking. Instead they waved as they pedaled past, as if to say, Welcome to the club! Cycling down the boulevards with the millions of other bicycles sifting through the streets of Beijing, I felt part of something bigger.

  I glanced over at Claire. She was pedaling with grim determination. We’d mapped out a route from the hotel, heading east along a canal lined with market stalls called Hucheng City Moat, then turning left up a big street past the Temple of Heaven. The streets were lined with dumpling houses, minuscule groceries selling bottles of fruit liquor and canned goods, tool and die shops, all of them opening directly onto the sidewalk: no storefronts, no doors. Men were drilling, repairing cracked roof tiles amid great clouds of dust, whacking noisily away with ball-peen hammers. The streets were laced with sycamore trees and an elaborate corseting of electrical wires.

  Down the side streets, the roads turned to dirt: more hutongs, those ancient, labyrinthine neighborhoods built around courtyards and communal plumbing. We veered into one to explore, but the narrow road was muddy and pockmarked, and my bicycle chain snapped.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said. Claire and I kneeled in the dust beside my bike, fingering the dry, broken chain. We’d left our Swiss Army knives back in the room, and our phrase book contained nothing regarding bicycle repairs. Around us, a crowd began to gather, and as they pressed in more closely, I could sense Claire’s uneasiness. A man in an oil-stained Mao cap pushed through. Smiling, he pointed to the bike and motioned for us to follow.

  He led us back through an alley, past a stack of crates and debris. If this had been America, we’d never have followed, but what were our options? He brought us to a dilapidated shed in a courtyard and pulled out a pair of pliers and a small can. After expertly repairing the chain, he nimbly rethreaded it around the gear and gave it a salutary glug of oil. When we attempted to pay him, he refused adamantly, smiling and waving us on.

  We cycled north, past the ominous stone Qianmen Gate, past Mao’s tomb, into Tiananmen Square. At the far end, on the massive crimson wall guarding the Forbidden City, the enormous framed portrait of Mao stared down beneficently. Our guidebook said Tiananmen was the largest public square in the world, but it didn’t look like a public square so much as a giant parking lot.

  Wind whipped across the pavement. Except for a lone man sweeping around a flagpole and the soldiers standing sentry at the entrance to the Forbidden City, it was eerily empty. There were no people in this “people’s square,” no hint of passion or lifeblood: no sense at all of what would occur just twenty-seven months later. At this particular moment in time, Tiananmen Square was still simply just the world’s largest rectangle of poured concrete.

  And so we continued on, coaxing our rusty bicycles through the vast gray streets, breathing in the sooty mauve-colored air. We located the Main Post Office, where we could wait for hours in a Plexiglas booth to place a collect call to the United States. We passed the Grand Hotel Beijing. The Friendship Store.

  Although we were cycling through one of the most populous cities on the planet, the boulevards had a peculiarly empty, post-apocalyptic feel. Pedaling along the main east-west thoroughfare, Chang’an Avenue, we came across one of the only signs of life. Bizarrely, on a corner near the train station was a lone low-slung gray building with a bold red awning. Maxim’s, it read in puckish gold letters. The plate glass windows were tinted black, like a limousine’s. Yet inside we could make out the hallmarks of the famous
French eatery: white-clothed tables, crystal glasses, fully intact but utterly empty.

  “What the hell is Maxim’s doing in Beijing?” Claire said. Across the enormous avenue, we spied a tiny French bakery selling a few trays of fresh croissants and crème-filled coronets. Other than that, the neighborhood was cracked and dusty, with the feel of a war zone salvaged by bureaucrats. Who shopped at the little lemon-yellow bakery? Who frequented Maxim’s?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Claire said. “This place is weirding me out.”

  ———

  It was on this first day in Beijing that I began to notice the change in Claire’s mood. She seemed unusually petulant, contrary, disengaged. The expression on her face grew fretful. It was like an abrupt shift in the weather, a surprise cold front, a bank of clouds rolling in, eclipsing the sun. Stranger still, she barely spoke.

  When I asked her where she wanted to bicycle to next, she crossed her arms and scowled. “I don’t know. Christ. Where do you want to go?” For the rest of the afternoon, she refused to make eye contact with me.

  It seemed I must have done something to offend her, though I couldn’t imagine what. As we cycled through the city, I replayed the day’s events. The only variable, the only anomaly that I could think of, was Trevor.

  Ah. I had a guy. Never mind that Claire thought he was creepy and crazy and more than a little vulgar. Trevor had kissed me right in front of her that morning, while she was relegated to pining away for a boat hand who was growing more and more illusory each day. In spite of herself, she was jealous. That had to be it.

  ———

  As we pedaled furiously to get back to the hotel before sunset, Claire’s bike got a flat tire twice. Each time we found ourselves stranded in different neighborhoods, and each time, local people rushed to our rescue with pumps and duct tape. There was much merriment in helping us, lots of pantomiming and laughter. One grandmother insisted we hold her infant grandson; another came running out to us with a bowl of soup and two spoons. There was such an outpouring of kindness shown to us that by the time we returned to the hotel, Claire and I were fairly in love with the Chinese. Certainly their generosity was unlike anything we Americans had ever showed to foreigners back home. In fact, it was more than either of us had experienced back home ourselves.