Katherine (6 page)

Lion Head’s place was on the second floor. His room was narrow and dark, about ten by fifteen feet. No windows. There was a tiny
porch in front where he cooked and tended a little garden. He lived with his eighty-year-old grandmother, who slept in an attic cupboard at night. During the day she practiced tai chi and volunteered along with other old ladies collecting tickets at the entrance of public parks.

Lion Head called his place Treasure Island. His neighbors thought he must be crazy to collect old garbage like “lotus-foot shoes,” triangle-shaped, delicately embroidered shoes women wore at weddings during the Ching Dynasty in 1600
A.D.
; ceramic tiger-patterned “cooling pillows” that old men used to sleep on in hot summer months; a “kettle of one hundred roses,” a man’s chamberpot, made from fine ceramic, with extremely detailed carvings and white and blue drawings inside and out. Colorful red wooden masks of Chinese gods and goddesses hung on the walls and dangled from ceiling beams. If not for the noise from the street, I could imagine I had stepped into an ancient time.

Lion Head’s ceramic pots belonged to his ancestors in the last century. The only reason these objects survived the Cultural Revolution was because of the political reliability of his working-class family. Not only was his home never looted by the Red Guards, he was able to trade cigarettes for antiques with former Red Guard officers. The pots were so delicate it looked as if they would dissolve into dust at any moment. Lion Head was careful when laying them out. He said his room was too damp. He was afraid that the pots were deteriorating. I helped him lay the pots out on the porch piece by piece to dry in the sun.

He said that he was a self-taught history lover because his hero, Chairman Mao, was a lover of history too. Mao had only an elementary-school education, but he learned everything he needed to be a modern emperor from history and tradition. He studied
The Art of War by Sun-Tzu.
To Mao, people were chess pieces and he
was the greatest player. “I admire him,” said Lion Head. “He was such a brilliant tactician. He was a free man. He didn’t spurn convention, but wasn’t going to be deceived by it. This was precisely what made him a hero. He was able to use the dynasty as an instrument instead of being used by it.”

When Lion Head talked, it seemed he was talking more to himself than to his guest. He indulged himself and demonstrated his elaborate knowledge of history. He must have felt like Mao at those moments, I thought.

Gently wiping the dust off the antiques, I told Lion Head that I liked to paint and asked him about the ancient way of making paints. He said that they would mix color with egg yolks. It was expensive but good, he said. He painted too, but he preferred photography. He handed me a new jar of paint as a gift and asked me what I liked to paint. I told him I mostly painted symbols, a white mask on a black background, for example, or a giant watch without numbers, a candle burning on both ends, a faceless face. He said that had always been his idea of a self-portrait—a faceless face. He had been trying to capture that image with his camera but hadn’t been successful. We sat quietly for a long time.

I told Lion Head about Katherine’s efforts at understanding China. He asked if she had seen my paintings. Yes, I told him, I showed her some. He asked what her comments had been. “She said that she saw anger in the paintings,” I told him. Lion Head shook his head and laughed.

We talked about Katherine’s expectations and whether they were realistic. I told him that Katherine now seemed to understand that she couldn’t swallow the Pacific Ocean in one gulp, but she was thinking about taking it one cup at a time, downing it bit by bit. I told him that she intended to capture her experience in the book in units simple enough for her readers to comprehend. She
believed she could break it down, like measuring curves by reducing them to a sequence of tiny straight lines.

“That’s the thinking of a typical western mind,” Lion Head said. “You see, Chairman Mao ruled China by
not
ruling it. Mao swam in the Yangtze River in the summer, traveled around his kingdom in the autumn and spring, and wrote poems in the Forbidden City in the winter. The basic difference in our beliefs lay in our concept of the Great Void and the westerner’s idea of God. They think God exists in the world by
wei
—making—while we believe in the power of
wu-wei
—not-making—which is the
true
creative power.”

While polishing and rearranging his antiques, Lion Head continued: “In order to comprehend China, or in fact anything, Katherine must understand that things are not made of separate parts put together, like machines. The Chinese mind doesn’t ask how things were made, which to Katherine must sound odd. If the universe were ‘made,’ there would be someone who knows
how
it is made—who could explain how it was put together as a technician can explain, one word at a time, how to assemble a machine. But the universe simply grows, and the shortcomings of language, for one thing, exclude the possibility of ever explaining how it grows. Katherine must understand that the universe does not operate according to a plan. Katherine is misguided by her western view. She should learn how to open herself to the unknown in order to gain knowledge.”

Lion Head’s grandmother appeared like a ghost. She leaned on the doorframe. Lion Head introduced me. She smiled, showing the one tooth left in her mouth. She said, “Are you the girl who came last week?”

Her question embarrassed Lion Head.

“No girl came last week,” he interrupted her. “That was Jim.”

“I am not that old,” said the old woman. “My sight is still good. She had long hair. Don’t you fool me.”

“It’s he, not she,” Lion Head corrected her.

“No, no, no, I am sure it’s she. No boy would wear his hair that long.”

Lion Head wrapped up his pots and said to me, “Jim’s been influenced by the Beatles, the long-hair-men.”

I laughed, thinking how people reacted with shock to Jim’s long hair. I thought of Katherine. The Beatles. “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Katherine, the foreigner, the magician.

Lion Head and I ate noodles with eggplant his grandmother cooked on the porch. We looked down at the “mobile market” below. Thousands of heads were moving like ants.

“Do you know why Katherine rides her bicycle in red?” I asked Lion Head as he served me tea. “Is it for fashion?”

“No,” replied Lion Head. “She doesn’t want to be hit by a bus. Bus drivers in this country are vindictive, like your own brother; there’s never a day when they’re in a good mood. Katherine is a foreigner. She doesn’t care whether people think she’s crazy for wearing a loud jacket. She cares about her safety!”

I remember someone in class once scared Katherine by telling her that if she got hit she would be left on the street to die without any help, because life was not worth much in China. She didn’t know how to take Chinese jokes. She believed that she would be slipped snake or blowfish if she went to a Shanghai restaurant.

“You just can’t convince her that people are just joking with her,” I told Lion Head. “She’s got a strange mind.”

“I wonder what makes an American mind,” said Lion Head. “From what I know, they eat cheese as their main meal, and that stuff stinks—it clots the brain tubes you know.”

“What exactly did she do, I mean, to her bicycle?” I asked.

“First she painted it red to warn other drivers. Then she had her friends ship a jacket with shiny red strips from America. It looks a lot like the uniform patients wear at the Shanghai Mental Hospital. She’s so identifiable when she passes you. She zips here and there like a red dragonfly. Now all she has to do is dye her skin red.”

I laughed.

“Her hair color is quite interesting,” Lion Head continued. “I would like to touch her hair someday. I doubt if her hair is real. I mean, in America they do all kinds of odd things. I am sure they would mate with animals for money.”

We heard the sound of light footsteps on the staircase. Lion Head went out and did not come back for a long while.

I went to check what was going on and saw Jasmine standing downstairs talking to Lion Head. Just by looking at her eyes I knew she was angry at him.

Jasmine did not say hello to me. She stared at Lion Head. In an instant I noticed that her eyebrows looked unnaturally long, as if painted on. I was sure that she had carefully done something to them. These flying eyebrows did not suit her tiny face. Her cheeks receded because of the strong emphasis of the eyebrows. The O-shaped mouth was knotted into a Q.

I dared not say a word.

Lion Head carefully selected his words. He said: “You should be resting. You are too tired. Bad temper produces poisonous chemicals which can harm your body. You must not get upset.” With his arm he made a big-brother gesture, patting her on the shoulder. With great tenderness, he said, “Come on, be a good girl.”

Lion Head’s words did not help Jasmine; on the contrary, they made her even more desperate. She fixed her eyes on me, and I
knew she was seeking an enemy. I could tell she was suspicious of me. The little lips shrank and wrinkled. She began to weep but her anger was strong. Her eyes were saying “He is mine—don’t you touch him” with such pitifulness. She made me nervous.

I said, “It’s time for me to take off.” I went down the steps. I heard Jasmine break down and cry.

*   *   *

O
ne afternoon, three weeks later, on our way back from the library, walking on the early autumn leaves, Lion Head told me about his relationship with Jasmine.

She was her father’s doll. Mr. Han was the president of our school and a cadre in Mao’s Long March. Jasmine was the old man’s life ever since her mother was beaten to death by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution as a “capitalist promoter.” Her mother was a beauty. Mr. Han wanted every possible good thing to happen to his daughter. He worked hard as the first assistant to the former Party secretary of the school. He was later promoted to president and became the new Party secretary of the school. When he sought a personal tutor for Jasmine, he picked Lion Head, because the young man was bright and humble.

Lion Head accepted this position in rapture. He tutored Jasmine privately three times a week. He taught her English. They spoke broken English to each other with a British accent. She spoke loudly in public; she liked to have people hear that they weren’t speaking Chinese. It was their secret language. He never forgot whose daughter she was. He went on spoiling her and in a few weeks Jasmine lost herself in him.

*   *   *

“A
re you attracted to her?” I asked Lion Head. After a moment’s thought he said that he felt as if he were sitting on the lip of a volcano. He didn’t explain any further.

Lion Head never expressed his personal desires verbally, but he always knew what he wanted. He was like a fine tailor whose work is intricate but invisible. His easygoing, bright, and funny personality was impressive to many. That was what got Jasmine, I figured. Because I, deep down, wanted very much to spend time with Lion Head too. He made my dull life interesting. Each morning Katherine became a fashion model. Unlike us, who wore the same outfit all year round, she changed her clothes every day. We learned American taste from the way she dressed. This morning she was in deep black-green jeans with a tight, sleeveless black top. A belt with a copper buckle around her waist. Beautiful beads, stones, and shells dangled in front of her chest. The outfit accentuated the shape of her body.

We devoured this image in silence.
“Chi-zao-fan-la?”
—Have you had breakfast yet? she asked in Chinese, a little awkward because of our staring.

No one’s mouth moved.

“Hey, you! Wake up!” she said, clapping her hands.

We smiled back at her as usual. She knew we adored the way she decorated herself. We knew somehow she did it for us, and she knew somehow we appreciated it. She lowered her head for a moment, then said, “All right. Let’s begin our text.”

Jasmine was bored in class. She popped sophisticated questions at Katherine. Questions like “How do you comprehend emotion?” She threw around words like “infatuation.” Katherine knew the rest of the class was not able to follow. After she answered Jasmine’s questions, she would say to us that it was all right for us not to understand everything. What was being talked about was not important, she said. “The important thing is for you to grasp the language, its tone, its sound. Let it roll around in your ears. Catch
what you can, do the best you can,” she encouraged. Katherine never shut Jasmine up, although I could tell she was irritated.

Jasmine seemed to forget that there were thirty of us in the room. We didn’t like her taking all of Katherine’s attention. But Jasmine motivated us—we wanted our English to be as good as hers. We wanted to be able to ask questions like hers to Katherine. I never put away my homework before midnight. I studied under the streetlights. I always did well on Katherine’s examinations. Katherine was pleased. She encouraged us. After only a few months I was on my way, speaking English in sentences.

*   *   *

I
could not remember how long it had been since I stopped communicating with my parents. By the time I biked home, they were already asleep. My mother tried to wait up for me a few times, but I deliberately made it difficult for her by getting home past midnight, until she had grown too tired and had fallen asleep in a chair. I told her the next day that I was in the school library doing homework.

“It’s English,” I said to her. “It’s much harder than Chinese. So don’t tell me how I should study.” I didn’t tell her I resented that I had no private space at home. I could not invite Katherine over to my place the way Lion Head could. I had no friends. I was twenty-nine. I had a heart, but no one to share it with. Inside, my loneliness was burning me down to ashes.

My brother was seeing another girl. His bus-conductor fiancée had deserted him for another man because my brother couldn’t get a room of his own. My mother found a letter under my brother’s pillow to someone named Little Lily. He wrote, “Let’s meet in People’s Park tonight at seven.” My mother was excited when she showed me the letter. She asked me whether I knew Little Lily and whether she was a nice girl.