Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Read online

  Then she’s leaning over me, insisting, “Just one little bite, okay? You need to eat.” And suddenly I’m propped up in a bed and she’s proffering a sweet dumpling stuffed with gooey red bean paste. The sheets are damp. Do I imagine her telling me that her father has a business contact in Guilin? “I’m sorry, but we just can’t let the Chinese know you’re sick,” she says. “You know what happens. We’ve got to steer clear of the doctors and hospitals here.”

  It is nighttime, it is morning. Claire is writing in her journal, Claire is gone. I crawl to the bathroom on my hands and knees. Somewhere Oingo Boingo is singing. My glands are swollen; it’s nearly impossible to breathe. I am back in bed with both Trevor and Jake. They are kissing my forehead, performing cunnilingus. I come in my sleep. When I wake up, I am weeping. I am alone. I have never felt so forsaken in my life. It hurts to swallow. Mommy! I hear myself cry. I’m curled like a snail beneath my puffy sleeping bag. Mommy! Claire is saying, “This is the best I could find.” She leans over and presses her hand to my cheek. “You’re a little cooler, I think. Here, try this.”

  She gives me a pill, a bottle of soda.

  I swallow with difficulty, and the room goes dark.

  ———

  It took three days for my fever to break. While I lay immobilized in the grungy Overseas Hotel by the train station, Claire stepped out intermittently, returning with wet, tangled hair, wet clothes, wet plastic bags full of whatever provisions she could find in a grocery up the road. Often she sat in the bed across from mine keeping vigil, reading paperbacks and writing in her journal. “I’m so sorry,” I groaned. “I’m keeping you from exploring.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s still pouring rain, so there’s not much to see. Besides, I don’t mind just chilling out for a few days under the radar.”

  On the fourth morning, I finally felt better. Claire and I did a load of my laundry in the bathtub. It was a new day, a fresh start. But after breakfast, Claire came down with the same illness I’d had. I watched her face inflame, her forehead sequin with sweat. “No hospital, no doctor,” she cried hoarsely. She writhed in her bed, kicking off the sheets, then burrowing deep beneath her sleeping bag. She called out, “Dominic, Edward, Alexander! Feed Medium the noodles!” then wailed, “Oh, Adom, Adom.” Later, when she sat up weakly and I served her orange soda, she whispered, “Don’t tell anyone where we are. Whoever is working for Adom has alerted the authorities and endangered us.” She started shivering again.

  Thankfully her fever dissipated more quickly than mine, and the next day the rain finally stopped. It felt like we’d been sick forever, like we’d been existing in a world of time-lapse photography where we alone remained inert while everything around us had whizzed by and vanished into the ether.

  We immediately spent several hours at the CITS office next door booking airplane tickets to Guangzhou. At sixty dollars apiece, domestic flights in China were considered expensive and wimpy, but neither of us were in any hurry to get back on those trains anytime soon. We were itchy to get moving again, too—we’d lost all enthusiasm for Guilin—and the next leg of our itinerary, we agreed, had to be easier. As we’d learned the hard way, the very first thing you should do upon arriving in any city in China was to start making reservations to get the hell out of it. Sure enough, the CITS agent—another grudging, bureaucratic cipher—informed us that the next available flight to Guangzhou wouldn’t be for another four days.

  “Fuck it. We’ll take it,” Claire said wearily. “I’m not spending fourteen hours trapped in another hard sleeper when flying takes fifty-five minutes.” Once we forked over our money, the woman gave us a handwritten receipt.

  “You come back later, collect tickets,” she warned. “Tickets not refundable. Tickets cannot be changed.”

  ———

  Millions of years ago, the region of Guilin was a prehistoric sea. When the water receded, it left in its wake a valley of karsts—landscapes of huge, transmogrified limestone formations that look like pulled taffy, melted wax, the interior of a lava lamp. Now the city was nestled among these fantastical mountains; there was even one in the center called Solitary Beauty Peak, with a temple perched on top. The climate was subtropical, the streets dense with perfumed foliage.

  Most buildings in Guilin were small and so heavily streaked with moss they appeared to be scorched. On the eastern edge of the town, they gave way to the languid Li River, across which was an expansive public garden known as Seven Star Park. Most everything in the town was either beautiful or strange. It felt humid, lush, drugged.

  Along the main thoroughfare, we came upon a row of curious restaurants. They looked like pet stores. Bamboo cages stacked outside contained small live dogs, snakes, bamboo rats, pigeons, and beavers, and basins full of eels, crabs, and turtles. A Chinese man knelt down and pointed to a pair of turtles. A waiter hoisted them up and carried them inside. “Ew,” Claire gasped. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  As we hurried past, I kept wheeling around to see if the restaurants with their menageries were in fact still there. Since my fever, it was becoming increasingly difficult to separate hallucination from reality. In Guilin, apparently, you could sit in a tropical garden and feast on a zoo. Claire was strangely disengaged. She stared ahead, scratching the angry red patch on the side of her neck and humming faintly to herself.

  On a rise above a broad lawn stood the town’s one fancy modern tourist hotel, the Osmanthus. Built of white concrete and tinted glass, it looked like a 1970s spaceship plopped down in a flower bed. Claire exhaled. “Finally, civilization. Mind if we go inside?”

  The lobby gleamed with polished linoleum and brass elevator banks. Overhead, a modern crystal chandelier jutted down ominously like a clutch of stalactites. Claire sank into one of the fat vinyl couches and closed her eyes. Chinese Muzak played faintly in the background. “Thank God,” she murmured. “Better.” In a moment she fell asleep.

  I sat there for almost an hour, wondering what to do. Although I was light-headed, my limbs felt leaden. The Muzak stopped. A few Japanese tourists cut across the lobby lugging Samsonite suitcases.

  When Claire finally stirred, she said, “I’m going to go back to the guesthouse and lie down. I can’t be seen here any longer.” With some difficulty, she hoisted herself up from the couch and hobbled across the lobby toward the hotel restaurant. “Look, ” she said, pointing to the menu posted on the entrance. “All English. And no dogs or cats. Only normal Chinese food.”

  She turned to me. “You should stay, sweetie. Have a decent dinner. You’ve been cooped up for days. And I could use a little time on my own to get reestablished.”

  Before I could object, she staggered out through the revolving glass doors. Suddenly I found myself alone again. Evening was setting in. I glanced inside the tourist restaurant. Except for one table of women, it was virtually empty. I felt torn, but Claire was right: I hadn’t eaten a full meal in almost a week.

  Back in Beijing, I’d ameliorated my loneliness by daydreaming about my loved ones, imagining them standing beside me in fruit stalls and alleyways. But after my fever, I couldn’t even fantasize about Jake or Trevor anymore—or anyone from home, for that matter. They’d become fused with my nightmares; their faces had melted like Salvador Dalí’s clocks, dripping with illness and delirium. Now I had to sever myself from them completely. America, New York, my friends, my family: They were relegated to the past now, abandoned in another dimension. The only enveloping reality was China.

  In the United States, I never would have dreamed of approaching strangers and asking if I could join them for dinner, but here, what did I have to lose? The game had changed entirely. Perhaps, this was what true liberty was: nothing left to tether you, plus an absence of shame.

  Three Swedish women were traveling together, and they were more than happy to shift their chairs around to accommodate me. Oh, you’re alone? By all means, join us. Here. They passed me a platter. Have some sautéed greens. Have some glazed pork
. How long have you been in Guilin?

  I explained that my friend and I had been sick all week in the Overseas Hotel by the train station. We hadn’t really seen much.

  “Get out of your hotel,” said a square-jawed woman with aviator glasses and a spiky pinecone of a haircut. “Check into the Guilin Guesthouse instead. That’s where all the interesting backpackers are. It’s on the top floor of a building near the park, and it has wonderful views of the karsts. Better yet, go to Yangshuo. It’s only an hour away from here by bus, and it’s so much more beautiful than Guilin. It’s just a tiny little village in the countryside.”

  “You can take boat rides on the river and watch the cormorant fishing at night,” said the second woman, who had tanned, leathery skin. “Go for hikes. Rent bicycles.”

  “All around it are nothing but rice fields and mountains,” added the third. “We spent an entire week there. It’s the most beautiful place in China.”

  “Go,” said the first woman. “Trust us. It’s paradise.”

  ———

  “I don’t want us to be around other people,” Claire shouted when I told her about the Guilin Guesthouse. “Don’t you get it? And how do you know you can trust these women?”

  “Why on earth would they lie?” I said. “You said you wanted to go someplace remote.”

  Claire slumped back against her headboard and glowered at me. “I thought you promised you’d listen to me.”

  I looked at her, exasperated. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. I was exhausted, I realized, and I was getting depressed. Our hotel room smelled gamy. All of our possessions were strewn about willy-nilly, a mud slide of laundry, hiking boots, underwear, books. Orange peels were rotting in a trash can in the corner. The interior pockets of our backpacks were coated with a thin, greasy film of peppermint oil from our soap bottles, which had leaked all over everything.

  “Claire,” I whispered. “I really can’t take this anymore.”

  “Take what?”

  “This paranoia, your refusal to engage.”

  “I’m not being paranoid, Suze. I know things.”

  “What’s happened to you, Claire? Where are you lately?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m right here.”

  “You used to be… we… Christ,” I said despairingly. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine. Perfect. Couldn’t be better. Why? Are you feeling okay?”

  I glanced at her. “I am so lonely, it’s not funny.” I hadn’t expected to say this, though I realized it was true. Claire looked as though she’d been punctured.

  “How can you be lonely?” she said. “We’re together practically all the time.”

  “No. No, we’re not. Half the time you’re off somewhere, and even when you’re here, you’re… I don’t know. I feel like, when we first came here—okay, I admit, I was totally freaked out—but we were supposed to be, like, this team.”

  I threw up my hands dispiritedly. I couldn’t even articulate or get my own head around exactly what I was feeling. Somehow the Claire I knew and admired so much back at Brown—the graceful, animated, self-assured Claire, the Claire who was jubilant, with her wonderful sense of the preposterous, her extravagant intellect, her Nietzsche board, her Sweeties, her cascading laugh, her can-do adventurism—somehow she seemed to have dissipated here. She was being transformed into a suspicious, brooding harridan. She was taking herself far too seriously. When was the last time we truly laughed together?

  But to be fair, it felt like I was dissolving, too. In China, I was having trouble knowing who I was anymore. There was nothing familiar to reinforce my sense of self: no loved ones, teachers, report cards. While I’d once imagined I was savvy, here in Asia it had become abundantly clear that I was not. While I’d once liked to think of myself as this wild, outré nymphomaniac, here in Asia I’d learned otherwise. Certainly, the primary tool I’d always relied upon for the bulk of my personality—the English language—was no longer at my disposal much. What was really left of me?

  When I looked in the mirror now, I saw a stranger. After being in Asia for a full month, Chinese faces were becoming the norm to me, while Western features appeared increasingly alien and grotesque. With my crude, exaggerated nose, my convex brow, my giblet eyelids and lips, I was literally having trouble recognizing myself. I was a fractured Picasso, a hideous distortion.

  “I need to get out of this cocoon,” I said softly. “I want us to hang out and laugh and—I dunno—socialize? Have fun again?”

  Claire cradled her elbows in her palms and chewed on her lip. “Okay, fine,” she said bitterly, scratching her neck. “We’ll change guesthouses. But I’m warning you right now. I need to go off by myself for a little while. There’s still work I need to do.” She reached for her notebook, opened it decisively, and avoided my gaze. “I need to find out who our next connection is, who’s the guardian.”

  This patently made no sense, but by this point I was too tired to argue.

  ———

  The next morning we packed up our backpacks and made our pilgrimage to the Guilin Guesthouse in the center of town. While its dormitory had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the karsts, the view was obscured by laundry lines zigzagging across the room, draped with various people’s laundered T-shirts and underwear, which flapped over their beds like national flags. The Swedes were right: All the interesting backpackers stayed here. Four Japanese tourists were sitting cross-legged on the floor deseeding an enormous bag of marijuana. In a land of surveillance, their audacity amazed me. The room was freezing cold and smelled like a bong.

  “Well, here you go, Zsa Zsa,” Claire said caustically. “We’re out of our cocoon. Happy?”

  She sank down on her bed and massaged her temples. “Christ, my head is killing me. I’ve got to eat something halfway decent this morning. I need fried rice. You want to go get fried rice?”

  I shook my head. Since my fever, all I could eat in the mornings was bread.

  “Okay, well, I’ll meet you back here later then.”

  Left in the dorm room, I encountered another traveler named Laurent, who was also in search of a Western-style breakfast. Laurent was Swiss and spoke a little Mandarin, though since each region of China had its own dialect, his skills were of limited use in Guilin. At a café on Zongshan Road, he finally managed to order eggs and Chinese sweet rolls for us. After forty-five minutes, only the scrambled eggs arrived. They were the color of tiger lilies, and we ate them with chopsticks.

  Laurent left to catch a train to Kunming. Returning to the guesthouse, I found Claire hovering over two of the Japanese potheads with her broken Instamatic.

  “I’m selling my camera,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Excuse me?” Not only was the camera inoperable, it was listed on our customs form; we had to be able to produce it on our way back out of China. “But it’s broken,” I said. “And we’ll need it to leave.”

  Claire looked at me furiously. “It’s not broken,” she shouted with a flick of her wrist. “It’s never been used.” She turned back to the Japanese guy. He was sitting on the floor staring ahead vacantly, his arms between his knees.

  “I just don’t know how to use it,” she said sweetly. “It’s a really great camera.”

  The guy continued staring at the bed frame. “No thank you,” he murmured.

  “No, really. It’s a terrific camera.” Claire held it out to him impatiently. “Look. Top of the line.”

  “Claire,” I said softly. “I don’t think he wants it.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped. “Don’t interfere. I’m trying to do something here!”

  She said “do something” as if she was in the middle of deciphering a code, threading a needle, or performing arthroscopic surgery. But what she was really trying to do, it seemed, was unload her junk on another traveler. I didn’t know what the hell she was thinking. This from the girl who’d taken a boy with cerebral palsy to his prom? Who refused on principle t
o trade on the black market? So far there hadn’t been a single traveler or Chinese local who’d been dishonest or ungenerous with us. There was an unspoken code of honor here. What was happening?

  “Claire, please,” I whispered. “Don’t do this. It’s really bad karma.”

  “Oh, fuck your karma.” She turned back to the Japanese. “Only sixty dollars. It’s an excellent camera.”

  The guy glanced laconically at his equally stoned girlfriend. “No, it is okay. No thank you.”

  “Okay. Fifty, then. Fifty dollars.”

  “We already have a camera. See?” The girlfriend held up a top-of-the-line Nikon that easily cost a thousand dollars. “But on Zongshan Road, there are several camera repair shops. I’m sure they can fix yours.”

  “It’s not broken! I’m telling you!” Claire cried. “Fifty dollars. For a top-of-the-line camera!”

  Finally, tired of enduring her, the Japanese guy grabbed the Instamatic, flipped it over, and pointed to the cracked chassis.

  “Okay, so maybe it needs some repairs.” Claire faltered. “But still, oh—just take it, okay?” She thrust it at him.

  He glanced away coldly.

  “As a gift. I mean. I meant, just take it as a gift. When I said fifty dollars, what I really meant was, that’s how much I paid for it, okay?” She was clearly backpedaling now. “I want you to have it.” She smiled disingenuously. “Not to buy. It’s a gift, okay. A fifty-dollar gift. Do. You. Understand? You see, I just can’t carry it around anymore—see? It’s too heavy for my backpack.”