Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Read online

  And meanwhile, Claire Van Houten will likely slip out of her delirium once she orders a medium-rare steak, drinks several bottles of spring water, and sleeps beneath freshly laundered bed linens. Once back in the United States, my friend will go on to some magna cum laude greatness—a partnership in a white-glove law firm, a Princetonian husband, a gabled house in Connecticut (Graycliff, Briarwood Falls), which she will fill with ruddy, tennis-playing children and heavy coffee-table art books. She will have her hair cut by Vidal Sassoon, a cordovan leather briefcase, a trusteeship on the board of a museum. She will sail, recalibrate. Our time here in China will be remembered only as some misguided youthful impetuousness akin to a lost weekend or a smashed-up convertible. Her stepmother will be the only one ever to mention it, referring to it under her breath as “that little nastiness back in Asia.”

  And me? An astrologer, a novelist, the next Gloria Steinem? Whatever my future holds, I have to be sure it’ll be cushier and a lot more expansive than Lisa’s.

  It is not enough to hug her goodbye and say “Shay shay nee” profusely. I believe a grand gesture is required, something that will emboss us in each other’s lives and link us across the ocean. Impulsively I run next door to the jewelry stall and find two souvenir bracelets made of heavy, tarnished brass engraved with the Chinese characters for good luck and long life.

  I present one of them to Lisa. “You wear one, and I’ll wear the other, and every time we look at it, we’ll remember each other, ” I say gravely, twisting mine over my wrist. It feels heavy, almost like a shackle. “See? This will be our bond, no matter where we are in the world.”

  Lisa slides hers on, adjusts it, and smiles at me sadly. “You very good friend,” she whispers, touching my cheek. We place our wrists side by side, so that the bracelets touch and we can admire them. Then we burst out crying like the two twenty-two-year-olds we are, pulsating with sentiment.

  “I’ll come back here one day, I promise,” I weep. In my heart, I suspect I’m lying; I can’t imagine ever setting foot in this supremely difficult country again. But I really do want to believe that I’ll return to Yangshuo one day if only for Lisa: that I will rescue her the way that she has helped me.

  “I’ll come back again under better circumstances. Maybe I’ll be married. Maybe we’ll both have children, and we’ll show them these bracelets, and we’ll tell them how we met, and we’ll laugh.”

  Sniffling, I write down my parents’ address for her, and Lisa writes down hers for me. We hug as if I’m a soldier marching off into battle.

  “Goodbye, Susie.” She waves forlornly. Then she picks up her tray and heads slowly back inside the Green Lotus Peak Inn, where rows of pancakes and hamburgers are growing cold on the countertop waiting to be served, and a group of drunken backpackers have begun pounding on the table with their forks, chanting, “Lee-sah! Lee-sah!”

  “Goodbye, Lisa,” I call after her hoarsely. Then I hoist my overstuffed backpack onto my bruised shoulders with a grunt, and Eckehardt and I make our way down the lane toward the bus depot, dragging Claire’s backpack on the dusty ground between us like a corpse.

  ———

  Of course the bus breaks down.

  Halfway to Guilin, there is a gnashing and shudder, and it wheezes to a halt. We are all forced to disembark and wait on the shoulder of the road while the hood of the bus is raised, and all the Chinese take turns peering into the guts of it and proffering opinions. Cigarettes are offered around. Mechanics are fetched and parts slowly accumulated. Most of the passengers walk down to a small roadside teahouse and install themselves there. They drink from chipped cups, smoke more cigarettes, and play a game using ivory tiles like dominoes. Even the driver does not appear to be in any sort of hurry.

  Eckehardt and I stand off a little ways under a tree, my back pressed against his chest, his arms entwined around my waist. We watch the occasional bicycle or truck rumble past, leaving tread marks imprinted on the road. We squint up at the formations of geese flapping across the pale blue sky. Neither of us says much. We just breathe in unison.

  When the bus is finally repaired, it sputters into Guilin two hours behind schedule. Eckehardt and I arrive in the lobby of the Osmanthus Hotel sweaty and drained.

  The tiled lobby is shiny; it smells sharply of ammonia. A strange, xylophonic Chinese Muzak plays softly in the background. Claire is not there.

  Eckehardt sinks down on one of the sofas and guards our backpacks while I hastily search the restaurant, the gift shop, the travel office, the fancy Western steak house upstairs on the mezzanine. For some reason, I’m not surprised when she does not appear, though each time I search a room and find it empty, I find myself feeling increasingly unsettled. Finally I head back to the reception desk and ring the bell. After several minutes, a clerk appears, a prim girl with a starched white blouse and a slightly woebegone look. I show her Claire’s passport.

  “Have you seen this girl here?” I point. “Has she checked in yet or left a message for me? Her name is Claire Van Houten.”

  The clerk looks at the passport and nods. “You like room, yes?”

  “No. I want to know if she’s checked in. This girl.” I point again to Claire’s photograph. It must have been taken when Claire was a freshman. Her face still has that childish, unfinished roundness to it. She’s smiling goofily. Her hair, which falls past her shoulders, is feathery and white-blond. How the receptionist can think this is my passport is beyond me; I suppose all Westerners look alike to her.

  “Did Claire Van Houten—her, not me—did she check in already?”

  The receptionist looks at me blankly. “You like number one room, yes?”

  Exasperated, I tuck the passport away and rummage through Claire’s things for the phrase book. Watching me, the receptionist announces, “No passport, no room.”

  Of course, there’s no way Claire could’ve checked in, I realize, without the items I’m carrying with me. So where is she, then? My uneasiness thickens.

  “Excuse me, but is there anyone here who speaks English?”

  “English?” she repeats unsurely. “Yes, okay. One minute.” She disappears behind the wall. The Muzak continues playing; it sounds strangely like an Asian rendition of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “After the Lovin’.” After ten minutes, no one returns. I walk back over to the sofas.

  “Ecke, she’s not here,” I say worriedly. “Maybe she went for a walk or she’s at the park? Can you wait here with the bags, in case she shows up, while I go look for her?”

  Eckehardt checks his watch and frowns. I sense that I’m finally exhausting his chivalry. “Yah, okay.” He motions to the inside pocket of his Windbreaker. “But I am sorry I do not have so much time left. The train to Kunming is leaving at eight o’clock, and so I have to be there at seven.”

  “It’s only four p.m. now. I promise, I won’t be gone more than thirty, forty minutes tops. Guilin’s not so big. It won’t take me long to find her. Please?”

  Now, as I push through the glass doors and step out onto the humid sidewalk, I positively hate Claire. I still can’t help but suspect it’s her jealousy that’s at the root of all this—that she orchestrated this fiasco just to punish me for having a fling. This is perhaps naive and selfish, but my logic is similar to that of female jurors who blame rape victims for wearing short skirts: As long as you insist that people have control over their actions, you’re buffered against having to confront the true anarchy and craziness of the world. If Claire has done this deliberately, it means she’s still rational. Nasty and vindictive, yes, but not mentally ill.

  On impulse, I return to the Guilin Guesthouse. But she isn’t there, and no one has seen her. I hurry down Zhongshan Road, past its restaurants like pet stores. An entire Chinese town slides by me: rudimentary shops; a fretwork of parked bicycles; men sitting out on the sidewalk on folding chairs smoking cigarettes; women squatting by the gutter, rinsing laundry in plastic buckets full of soapy water. Old electric fans rotating lazily in dirty windows.r />
  At the turnstile to Solitary Beauty Peak, I hastily buy a ticket at the foreigner’s price and race through, looking under trees and scanning the lawn areas. But Claire isn’t there, either. Now I’m really starting to panic; I was certain she’d be at the park sitting on a bench by the pond. The only other place she could conceivably still be is the large public garden on the other side of the river. Seven Star Park is at least half a mile away, but I don’t have time to wait for a bus. I half walk, half jog as fast as my lungs will let me; I arrive twenty minutes later panting and gasping.

  Seven Star Park is vast and circuitous, with sculptural rock formations and thickets of tropical foliage. It’s impossible for me to search it thoroughly. The only people I come across are a New Zealand couple with terry-cloth sun visors and cameras. The woman keeps squinting up at the karst formations and saying, “Which one is that?” unaware that her husband has already wandered toward the next point of interest, his nose in the guidebook. When I show them Claire’s picture and ask if they’ve seen her, they shake their heads. “Sorry.” They’ve been in the park since noon, picnicking.

  It is now five-fifteen in the evening; I’ve been gone from the Osmanthus much longer than promised. I’ve scoured the entire town, and there’s no sign of my friend. A sickening feeling begins to take hold of me.

  I climb on a bus heading back to Zhongshan Road, praying that by the time I return to the hotel, Claire will have somehow magically materialized. I try to visualize her sitting beside Eckehardt on the plastic sofa, flinging her hair over her shoulder, twirling her wrists in that sinuous way she has, talking animatedly. I try convincing myself that she probably just got tired, lay down someplace secluded in the park—the way she did in the rice paddy—and fell asleep. Or that she simply parked herself in a teahouse somewhere and forgot about the time.

  But somehow I know that this is not the case, and my panic and dread escalate. Sure enough, when I return to the hotel, Eckehardt is sitting alone on the edge of the couch with his hands on his knees glancing around anxiously. The lobby is as empty as it was when I left it.

  Claire is officially missing.

  “I am so sorry, but she has not shown up,” Eckehardt says. “Did you find her?”

  I shake my head.

  From the moment her bus had left Yangshuo, I’d imagined a whole range of possible outcomes. I half expected that once I reached the Osmanthus, I’d find Claire at a table by the window, finishing off a whipped cream dessert and a cup of Nescafé, fully restored and chatting away amiably to some waitress. I also half expected that once she saw me, she’d have the gall to behave sullenly, as if I’d somehow ruined her party. I pictured her frowning at me contemptuously and giving me the silent treatment. Alternately, I also pictured her screaming at me in the lobby, or curled up in a stall in the ladies’ room, ostensibly hiding from the CIA. Whatever state I found her in, I was certain that we would have another fight, and I’d braced myself for this.

  But the possibility that Claire would just not show up at all simply hadn’t occurred to me.

  Her bus went directly to Guilin. It made no stops along the way. Had it broken down, we would’ve seen it. I have all of her identification and money with me. She knows that we’re scheduled to fly to Guangzhou the next day. Even if she was being dramatic or trying to punish me, she wouldn’t have stayed away this long deliberately.

  Where the hell is she?

  I get a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  The afternoon light is in its death throes, filling the lobby with a fiery gloss. Soon it will be dark outside. Eckehardt will have to leave for his 28-hour train journey to Kunming, and I will be left alone with Claire’s abandoned backpack and not a friend in the world to help me.

  I’m seized with panic. A tour bus pulls up the circular driveway and dispatches a group of Japanese tourists; I race outside shouting, “Does anyone here speak English?” to no avail.

  As a handful of Western travelers slowly begin straggling back after their day’s sightseeing, I waylay them by the elevators, desperately pointing to Claire’s photograph. When that doesn’t pan out, I berserkly ring the bell at the reception desk. A different young woman appears, but her English is equally limited.

  “Is there a doctor here?” I beg. Perhaps doctor is a word she knows; perhaps a doctor will know some English. But the receptionist stares at me with irritation. Finally she disappears and returns with a tall middle-aged man in tow. He is wearing a polyester tie, a polyester suit, and a brass name tag: Manager: George.

  When I say, “George, please, I need some help. Do you speak English?” he nods agreeably. “Yes, we have number one room. You need exchange money?”

  I sink down beside Eckehardt in tears. “Ecke, she’s gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t communicate, I can’t—nothing!”

  Just then another tour bus pulls up into the circular driveway and starts unloading passengers. These are Westerners—retirees in plaid Bermuda shorts and golf pants, with spun-sugar hair and pomaded, overly optimistic comb-overs. Most of them wear matching knitwear shirts embroidered with the logo of a travel company.

  “Excuse me,” I cry, “do you have a Chinese guide? Do you have an interpreter?”

  A chubby British woman in a tracksuit points to a Chinese woman with close-cropped hair holding a clipboard. She appears to be arguing with the driver about luggage he’s piling on the sidewalk.

  “Excuse me, ching. Shay shay nee,” I interrupt breathlessly. “But do you speak any English? I need some help. It’s an emergency.”

  She cocks her head, squints at me, and adjusts the frames of her wire-rim glasses. “Yes,” she says slowly, guardedly. “I speak some English. Why? Is there a problem?”

  ———

  Within ten minutes, the lobby of the Osmanthus Hotel is flooded with interpreters and military police. Suddenly it looks like Command Central. It seems that as soon as the tour guide, Jane, said the words missing and American to the hotel manager, everyone stopped regarding me as just another annoying big nose and began to realize that they might actually have an emergency on their hands.

  A private car stops short in front of the hotel and a woman in a pin-striped dress suit swings her legs down onto the sidewalk and marches into the lobby carrying a notebook. Jane introduces her to me as Jane, also. This second Jane has a level gaze and pleasant face. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She escorts me back over to the couch where Eckehardt is sitting and asks me to please repeat my story.

  I explain very carefully that my friend and I had a big fight in Yangshuo, and that my friend got so angry, she stormed off and jumped on the bus to Guilin without thinking. I tell Jane that when I ran after my friend, she said that she just needed to let her temper cool off a bit. She instructed me to get her backpack and meet her back here at the Osmanthus Hotel at noon. I told Jane that I followed my friend to Guilin as quickly as possible, but that the bus broke down, and when I finally arrived here four hours later, my friend was nowhere to be found. I tell her that I’ve searched all over town.

  Of course I studiously avoid any mention of Claire’s screaming in the streets, her questionable mental state, and her paranoid convictions that the CIA, FBI, and Mossad are trying to assassinate her.

  When Jane asks me, “How well do you know this girl?” I reply, “Not that well, really.” In the event that the Chinese somehow do get wind of Claire’s rants about the CIA, I realize I need to distance myself as much as possible. It’s not going to help either of us if the Chinese decide that both of us are spies or threats to national security.

  “Could your friend have checked into another hotel here?” Jane asks.

  I shake my head. “She has nothing with her. I have all of her documents and valuables,” I say. “Her passport. All her money and credit cards.”

  Jane asks to see them. Reluctantly I hand over Claire’s passport and wallet. Jane glances briefly at the wallet and hands it back to me. But she holds fast to
Claire’s passport and studies the picture intently.

  “She has no money with her at all?” she asks after a moment.

  “Only about eighty yuan in remninbi,” I say. “She also has her American traveler’s checks.”

  “I see,” says Jane, still frowning at the photograph. Finally she closes the passport and returns it.

  A moment later, though, she brings George, the hotel manager, over to me, and has me repeat the whole story to him again. His English proves to be far better than he initially let on. He, too, studies Claire’s passport for a disconcertingly long time, then asks me abruptly: Could she be somewhere else in the vicinity? How much money does she have with her? How well do I know her?

  Then Jane brings over two men in military uniforms and has me repeat the whole story yet again. The men are unsmiling and not nearly as amicable as either she or George. They question me in far greater detail, too:

  How tall is your friend? (Five-nine.)

  What was she wearing? (Khaki slacks, a white alligator shirt, Timberland hiking boots, a brown leather purse with a brass buckle, a silver Windbreaker, gold S-chain bracelets, a matching fourteen-karat gold necklace with a horseshoe charm.)

  How can you be certain of this? (Trust me. We’re backpacking. We really only have one outfit apiece with us. Her other shirt, the peach-colored one, is dirty.)