Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Read online

  I reel from my own foolishness. How could I have been so naive? How could I have been so oblivious? Claire’s unraveling, her hurtling toward suicide, the machinations of the Chinese authorities—have I absorbed absolutely nothing? For seven weeks I’ve been tromping around Asia, candy-coated in deflective stupidity. Now Claire is being held in a local jail somewhere, and I am in way over my head. In every way imaginable, I am so far from home. I set off to conquer the world, and here’s what it’s resulted in: three Chinese police officials grilling me in a cramped hotel room while my friend is detained somewhere in a Guanxi cell.

  Jonnie stares at me. “Please, answer us. Do you think your friend is crazy?” he repeats.

  I glance fleetingly toward Eckehardt, lying motionless beneath the acrylic bedspread; the officers haven’t acknowledged his presence. I don’t want them to, either. Still, I instinctively look to him for answers he cannot possibly have. How on earth am I supposed to answer this?

  Of course I think Claire is crazy. She’s delusional, she’s gone missing, she’s jumped in a river. But I’ll be damned if I tell the Chinese this. I haven’t forgotten what the British traveler back at our hotel in Beijing had told us: This Belgian girl was hallucinating because she had a fever, and so the Chinese put her in a mental institution, and they wouldn’t let her out for over a year. I haven’t forgotten Tom in Shanghai, either, sent to a prison camp for owning a Playboy.

  I have to get Claire out of police custody as quickly as possible—before she says or does anything that might further indict her—and get her back to the United States pronto. But how can I explain her actions to them in any way that makes sense—in a way that will convince them to release her to me?

  Oh, Claire, I think wretchedly. I wish you were here. Claire, who sweet-talked the officer in Dinghai and routinely chatted her way out of speeding tickets in Rhode Island: She’d be far better equipped to deal with this than I am. Me, I’m just some clueless, fumphering asshole from New York.

  In this situation, I wonder in my panic, what would she do?

  Straightening my back and crossing my legs, I affect her posture, attempting to channel her. “Is my friend crazy? Oh, no. She’s just homesick,” I tell Jonnie breezily with a flick of my wrist. “She’s homesick for her family, homesick for her boyfriend. We American girls, when we get homesick—wow—we just get really emotional.

  “Of course,” I add gently, “I can see how her behavior might seem bizarre to you, since you’re Chinese. But trust me, Jonnie, what Claire did is pretty typical for an American girl.”

  As I say this out loud, it sounds saccharine and disingenuous to me. And yet it doesn’t strike me as wholly unreasonable, either. Since Jonnie and the officers are men, I hope and pray they’ll readily believe that Claire and I are prone to hysterics simply because we are women. For a moment, I decide, I’ve got to sell out the sisterhood; sexism has got to be manipulated to full advantage here. Instinct tells me, too, to play up our Americanness; this, after all, is our real X factor, our wild card, the quality that renders us truly enigmatic to the Chinese.

  “She is just homesick?” Jonnie repeats dubiously.

  “A homesick American,” I correct. “Please let me try to explain my friend’s behavior in a way that makes sense.” I re-cross my legs, take a deep breath, and smile at him winningly.

  I actually have no idea where to go with this. My mind races through its database of trivia and information, calculating algorithms of what might formulate the best, most convincing excuse. I’m a writer; fabrication should be my strong suit. To lie decently, I know I’ll have to be audacious. And I’ll need what’s known in fiction writing as a significant detail—some unusual, highly specific invention delivered with such authority as to make it seem plausible. Ideally this detail should be something that Jonnie himself might be able to relate to, that hooks him in. But what? The situation here is so dramatic and extreme, it’s practically an opera.

  And that’s when it hits me.

  “Jonnie, you’re a highly educated man,” I say silkily. “I mean, you’re in a position of authority. You speak impeccable English. So I trust you’ve heard of William Shakespeare, yes?”

  I don’t wait for a reply. “Shakespeare, as you know, is the preeminent playwright in Western culture. His plays in America are very much like your operas here in China. Everybody sees them, everyone grows up with them. And one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays is Romeo and Juliet. It’s a little like one of your famous operas here, actually—that one with the emperor and the concubine? Anyway, in Romeo and Juliet, these two young lovers, oh, they want so desperately to be together. But their families forbid it. And so when Juliet can no longer stand to live without her Romeo, she fakes suicide in order to be with him.”

  Jonnie looks confused; clearly he’s not following me. But he is Chinese: If he doubts me or has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, it’s my hope he’ll want to save face and refrain from embarrassing either of us by admitting it.

  “So you see,” I continue, “when we girls in America really miss our boyfriends, we sometimes act just like Juliet in the play. We fake killing ourselves to prove how in love we are. We make these big grand dramatic gestures in public—screaming, flinging ourselves about, declaring that we can’t live without them, and so forth. We become incredibly operatic. We Americans even have a phrase for it. We call it ‘Pulling a Juliet.’ Of course not everyone does this,” I add quickly. “But Claire has been so homesick and missing her boyfriend so much, she probably just couldn’t help herself.”

  Jonnie presses his palms together and brings his fingertips to his lips ponderously. “I see,” he says slowly in a way that suggests he doesn’t see at all. “You’re saying she jumped in the river because she misses her boyfriend?”

  “Now, I understand that it was foolish of her to pull a stunt like this here in China, where your people cannot possibly be familiar with our quirky American ways,” I say. “And frankly I can’t blame you for being alarmed. To an outsider, I can only imagine how crazy she seemed. But please, believe me when I tell you, Jonnie, that my friend is simply a typical American girl in love. And we American girls in love—well, frankly, we’re all just a bunch of lunatics.”

  I sit back, utterly spent. I’ve spoken with absolute conviction and certitude, yet I sense that Jonnie isn’t buying it. He is not a dumb man. He likely recognizes a boatload of bullshit when he hears it.

  “Please. Remember,” I add beseechingly, sitting forward in my chair. “America is a very young country. And so we Americans often act like very young people. We are not as wise or as mature as your nation. We have not yet learned to control our emotions. We’re independent and materialistic, and we’re rarely satisfied with what we have. As a nationality, we’re like teenagers. Often we’re just in thrall to our own desires. And now, through my friend’s actions, well, you’ve just seen this firsthand. It’s embarrassing, but there you have it.”

  Jonnie cocks his head and studies me. This last bit I’ve said seems to resonate with him—perhaps, I realize suddenly, because it is actually true. We Americans are the teenagers of the world, brimming with enthusiasm and arrogance, innocence and narcissism, creativity and emotion, thinking we know everything, that we’re invincible, that the world revolves around us. I have proffered him a genuine insight. And in this cultural context, my explanation of Claire’s behavior does make a perverse kind of sense—perhaps at least just enough to get us off the hook.

  Jonnie shifts in his chair. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, removes his eyeglasses, and polishes each lens with deliberate, unhurried motions. My pulse quickens.

  “So you do not think that your friend has gone crazy and tried to kill herself?” he says finally, replacing his glasses.

  “Oh, no. Not at all,” I say brightly, laughingly. “But I do think she needs to go home, immediately. She needs to be reunited with her boyfriend. The worst thing for an American family is to have a daughter make a huge
, emotional display like this without any resolution. It’s a huge embarrassment. The best thing you can do, Jonnie, is to bring her to me in the morning, and let me take her straight back to America. As soon as she sees her family and her boyfriend, she’ll calm right down. I promise. It’s the only way to help her.”

  Jonnie tilts his head and crosses one small hand over the other, clearly weighing his options. He does not strike me as an unreasonable man, and I suspect that neither he nor the rest of the Chinese relish the prospect of incarcerating Claire, creating an international incident, and having to serve as her custodians for any lengthy period of time. They have their own problems, after all, their own population to feed and police. Perhaps Jonnie has merely been looking for a way to save face all along—for some semi-credible explanation to present to his superiors as a pretext for releasing Claire. Perhaps, like the hotel staff in Dinghai, the authorities are actually anxious to dispense with her—to make sure that if she is going to go crazy and kill herself, she won’t do it on their soil.

  Yet what if she has been telling them that she’s being hunted by American and Israeli intelligence agencies? What if they think they have a valid reason to detain her?

  I decide not to wait for a verdict. “So good, you’ll bring her to me in the morning,” I say heartily, proffering my hand. “What time works for you? Eight o’clock? Nine? You wanna split the difference and say eight-thirty?”

  Before he can respond, I say, “Beautiful. Oh, Jonnie. Thank you so much.” I grasp his hand bathetically.

  “Really, I cannot thank you enough,” I gush—and at this moment, I genuinely can’t. “You have been such a help to us, coming here the way you have. I understand how strange this must all seem to you, and I’m so sorry you had to get caught up in this. Please let me apologize again for my friend’s behavior. But you and everyone here have acted so admirably. You’ve been such good hosts to us. You’ve done not only a great service to Claire and her family, but to the entire United States of America by keeping her safe and being so understanding. Really. And please tell these two fine gentlemen who’ve accompanied you here, and everyone at the Osmanthus Hotel, and all the police back in Yangshuo ‘shay shay nee’ for me, too, will you?”

  Jonnie can’t help it: He smiles sheepishly. When I refuse to stop shaking his hand, he actually blushes.

  “So you’ll bring her to me at eight-thirty then?” I say, rising.

  Slowly he stands up, awkwardly gripping his briefcase. “Okay, yes,” he stammers. The tops of his ears are flushed and glistening.

  “Great.” I usher him and the two officers quickly toward the door. “Then I’ll see you again in a few hours. My heroes! Really, you guys—you’re the best! And again, shay shay nee!”

  After they leave, I lock the door and lean against it, listening for the sound of their footsteps receding and the elevator doors dinging open. When I’m certain they’re gone, I whirl around and look at Eckehardt, wild-eyed.

  “Claire took off all her clothes and jumped into a river?” I yell. “Is she fucking crazy?”

  ———

  I jerk open the zipper to her backpack and begin tearing through her belongings.

  “How did I miss this, Ecke?” I rummage through her laundry, her towels, her Ziploc bags full of medications. “How did I not see this coming?”

  Eckehardt sits up in bed and shakes his head. “Wow, this is very bad news. This is not a very good situation at all. I did not think she would do something like this.”

  “Okay, yeah, but you’ve known her what? A day? I’ve known her for almost four years. What kind of a fucking moron am I?” I dump the remainder of Claire’s things onto the floor and paw through them. “Where is it?”

  Her precious journal: It must hold some clue, some evidence of her undoing and everything I’ve so clearly missed.

  I shake out her one remaining dirty polo shirt, her sleeping bag, her soft gray cardigan that now’s an accordion of wrinkles. She doesn’t have many clothes left. “It has to be here.”

  Finally I unearth her notebook, wrapped in her yellow towel, pushed into the inner Velcro pocket of her backpack behind the internal frame. But when I open it, I find that, except for the first five pages, the journal is virtually blank. After a few entries written in Hong Kong and one aboard the Jin Jiang, they peter out. “What?” I flip through hundreds of empty pages, one virginal white sheet after another, the blue-threaded lines unmarked. “How can this be?”

  On one random page, I do find she’s copied down a quote: No victor believes in chance. It’s unattributed, though I can guess whose it is. On another is a half-finished list of expenses accrued in Hong Kong. Further on, in the center section, I spy a single entry for early October, hastily written in Claire’s sloping, flowery script. I tell myself I’m not going to pry—I just want to skim for any words like suicide or depressed—but when I see my own name embedded in the paragraph, I can’t help reading it twice. Claire gives a brief description of the Friendship Store and Remnin Square in Shanghai, details our tedious boat tour on the Huangpu River, then notes:

  Last night, Susie fooled around w. creepy sailor guy, then got all freaked out that he might have given her AIDS because he has tattoos and she thought maybe the ink and needles could carry HIV. Spent afternoon assuring her that she does not have AIDS, especially since they did not even have sex! She is such a hypochondriac, it is not to be believed. Three days ago she had headache & became convinced it was brain tumor. She is really driving me crazy w. all her imaginary illnesses.

  “Excuse me,” I say aloud, glancing up from the notebook. “I drove her crazy?”

  Then, in the very back of the journal, I come upon a dense collection of markings. Aimless doodles, chains of loop-de-loops, discordant trapezoids, mushroom clouds, Greek letters, lightning bolts, arrangements that look vaguely like fish bones, chicken scratches dotted with stars, fantastical, incoherent equations. For a moment I wonder if it’s some sort of secret code, but there’s no rhyme or reason to any of them. Her scribbles grow increasingly more cramped and ingrown, and some sections of them have been circled repeatedly with arrows pointing to them diagonally across the page. It’s almost a private language, a secret geometry. A few notes are written hastily on the sides: “Make contact.” “Must tell Alex if poss.” “Noodles, tea, soup for din.” “Collect call 4:17, 43Y, bike rental 15Y.” They go on for several pages without any regard for the margins, then stop abruptly.

  There is no trace at all of any world curriculum.

  “There’s nothing here,” I whisper. “It’s like a phantom diary.”

  “Maybe she did not plan to do what she did,” Eckehardt suggests.

  “Oh, my God, Ecke.” I set down the journal and bring my fist to my mouth. “What did I let her do?”

  Suddenly I see Claire in a state of madness and terror. It is earlier that afternoon. She has run onto a crude suspension bridge swaying high above a river. Her eyes dart about like a trapped animal’s.

  Seizing her purse, she pulls it from her shoulder and hurls it into the water as if it’s about to explode. Trembling, she hoists one long, slender leg over the cable, then the other. With her toes curled tightly against the splintery edge of the bridge, she inhales, opening her arms and leaning into the air like a sail into the wind. With a yelp, she pitches forward and plunges.

  I could’ve stopped her. I could’ve paid attention, been more generous. But instead, I neglected her. I let her run off. With my hypochondria and horniness, I literally helped push her over the edge.

  “Oh, Susie, I do not think you did anything wrong,” Eckehardt says as I sob. “You have saved her. You have convinced the Chinese to release her.”

  “Nuh-uh,” I wail, my voice scorched with grief. “Oh, Claire,” I gasp. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Claire. Forgive me.”

  ———

  It is four a.m., it is five a.m., and then it is almost sunrise. Maybe Ecke-hardt finally sleeps; maybe he just lies there with his eyes shut, leaden w
ith exhaustion. But I’m awake, sniffling and blowing my nose as I pace about the room trying to wrap my mind around everything that’s transpired. As soon as it seems like it might be a reasonable hour, I put my bra on under my sweatshirt and lace up my Reeboks (located, finally, under the bed) and hurry downstairs to the reception desk. If the young woman working there has any idea what has recently transpired in my room, she betrays no knowledge of it.

  “Hello. Yes. May I help?” she says, her small, heart-shaped face a blank screen, her ponytail bobbing obediently.

  “I need to place a collect phone call to the United States,” I say in a low voice. “Can I do that here?”

  “Yes. Collect phone call. Yes,” she nods.

  Reaching under the counter, she pulls out a form and turns it around so it’s facing me. Painstakingly I write out my parents’ phone number, then fill in my passport details. The young woman is diligent. To make sure she’s got it right, she reads the phone number back to me when I’m done.

  “Okay, yes,” she says again. “Collect phone call to U.S.A. You wait in room, yes?”

  “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to go through?” It is 5:30 a.m. here in China. This means it’s either 4:30 or 5:30 p.m. back in New York; I’m too dazed by this point to recall the exact time difference.