The Train to Lo Wu (18 page)

I heard it slap against the floor, on the other side of the room.
My wallet,
I thought. It was the first thing I had bought in America, at Krieger’s Stationery on 112
^th
and Broadway—to keep my new student ID card and a copy of my visa, a picture of my parents and my brother and sister. The room smelled of spilled Chinese food: garlic and ginger and the too-sweet orange sauce that Americans liked. If I have to die, I thought, let it be here. Don’t let him take me away from my parents’ faces and the smell of my own food.

I don’t see you, I said, more loudly this time. I won’t say anything. You let me go.

There was no answer. I opened my eyes. The flashlight was lying on the floor, throwing a dim half-moon against the front wall. He was crouched down with his back to the door: a small, pale man, hardly bigger than me, wearing an open-neck shirt and black polyester pants, holding his head in his hands. Beside him, on the ground, was a tiny silver pistol, shining like a child’s toy.

You got to help me, Chinaman, he said, his voice muffled by his palms. I got ten minutes to get seventy bucks.

But I have no money.

Yeah, no shit, he said. You got friends? There’s a phone in the back. You got family here? Someone with a car?

All my family in China.

You sure? He dropped his hands and looked at me: a handsome face, I thought, thin and angular, except for a long pink scar descending from the corner of his mouth. You got no cousins in Chinatown? Aren’t you supposed to all be cousins? Chin, Chong, Wong, like that?

My name is Liu.

Shit.
He gave a sudden, high-pitched laugh, like a small dog barking. My damn luck, he said. Me and the loneliest gook in New York.

Why you need this seventy buck?

He looked at me incredulously, as if I’d asked him why the sun went down at night. I got debts, man. Serious debts.

You don’t have job? Don’t make money?

Yeah, I got a job. I run the numbers. You know what that means?

I nodded, though I had no idea.

I work for Ronnie Francis, he said, as if it were a name that everyone knew, like Nixon, or Colonel Sanders. Ronnie don’t mess around. Last time I took a little extra off the top, this is what he did. He held up his hand in front of him, the fingers splayed. I squinted in the half-light, and saw that his little finger was a stump, cut off at the knuckle.

This time I’m dead, he said. Ronnie promised me. I only get one warning.

I can not help you, I said in my loudest, most American voice. I am only delivery man. I don’t come home, my roommate calls police.

He stared at me for a moment without speaking. Chinaman, he said, you don’t get it. Time the police get here we’ll both be gone.

I felt a tingling sensation rise from my toes, as if I’d just stepped into a freezing bath.
I’m his ransom,
I thought.
I’m his
way out. He’ll never let me go
. And then I thought,
give him something. He’s desperate—he’ll believe you.

Why stay here? I asked. You hide somewhere else.

He picked up the pistol and stood, wrapping his arms around his chest and shaking from side to side, as if he were freezing cold. Can’t, he said. Ronnie’s got spotters everywhere. I couldn’t even get a bus out of Port Authority.

I call my boss, I said. He find someone take you to New Jersey. Easy. You pay him later.

After I kidnap his delivery boy?

He don’t care about me, I said. Only about money. You tell him you pay one hundred dollars, he take you anywhere.

He didn’t answer, but walked to the window and peeled away a scrap of paper so that he could look out at the street.

Chinese delivery van, I said. No windows. No one see you. You want me to call?

I got a cousin in Newark, he said. His voice had grown raspy, as if something was swollen in his throat. My sister’s in Philly. He looked down at the tiny gun, and out the window again. Would you do that for me?

Give me the light, I said. He tossed it over. I picked my way to the back of the room, stepping over a pile of broken bricks, bat-ting cobwebs and loose wires from my face. The telephone was on the floor in one corner, connected to a raw copper wire. I squatted next to it, and dialed the only number I knew: the office of my department at Columbia. I covered the mouthpiece and spoke loudly in Chinese. Father, I said, using his proper name, I hope you can hear me. I am about to do a terrible thing. You must forgive me. And then I said yes a few times,
hao,
hao,
to make it seem like an agreement, and slammed down the phone.

We walk around the corner, I said. I turned and saw my wallet lying against the wall, a few feet away; I picked it up and put it back in my pocket, my fingers trembling. Hide behind Dumpster, I said. He meet us there.

When I was a child in Wuhan, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards that ruled our city split into factions and fought battles in the streets, with sticks and knives, with machine guns and hand grenades. In those years I learned many extraordinary things; one of them is that a small pistol can only be fired accurately from a few feet away. If I was able to get away from this man, and run, I was sure that he would miss. This is what was in my mind as we left the building and walked along Tenth Avenue, toward Fifty-second; as soon as we turned the corner, I thought, I would sprint away, zigzagging from side to side, to make it harder for him to aim.

Can’t believe it, he said, as we walked. He seemed even smaller than he had inside, hunched over, darting glances up and down the street. His voice was almost tearful. Once I get out, that’s it, he said. Can’t ever come back to the Apple. Ronnie Francis, man, even I showed up after he was dead, his ghost would track me down and get me.

I said nothing. My eyes were locked on the corner, estimating the number of steps it would take, and wondering whether I should simply run, or shove him aside first, to give myself an extra second or two.

My name’s William, he said. My friends call me Willie. What’s your name, man?

Liu, I said. My name is Liu.

What the hell kind of a name is that? Loo? That’s a girl’s name, man. Like Lucinda, or Lulu, or something. No, I got a name for you. You’re from the Lucky Dragon, right? So you’re Mr. Lucky. You’re my luck, man.

OK. Mr. Lucky, I said, barely hearing him.

I got a bad feeling. He took a long, trembling breath, and wrapped his arms around his chest again, although it was a warm, humid night for October. I feel like I’m going to die, man, he said. I’m scared.

You not going to die, I said. Everything fine. Soon the van come.

Tell me a story, he said. Would you do that? Just to get my mind off it.

We were twenty feet from the corner now, six or seven paces, and my body was tingling, sizzling, as if I’d jammed my finger into an electric socket. I was tempted to leap on him and wrestle the gun away, although I knew that that, more than anything, could easily get me killed. I clenched my fists so hard the nails tore my skin. I don’t know any stories, I said. I’m sorry.

Come on! He was breathing so hard I thought he might have a heart attack. Everybody knows a story. Gimme a break, man!

All right. I closed my eyes for a moment, and heard a string of Chinese words, out of nowhere; at first I didn’t recognize them at all. There was a fish, I said. A giant fish in the northern ocean. And it changed to a bird—a bird big as the whole sky. This bird flew to the Heaven Lake.

William nodded vigorously. That’s cool, he said. I like it. The Heaven Lake. So where’s that? Where’s Heaven Lake?

We had almost reached the corner, and the muscles in my legs were tensed to run; I felt as if I were walking on stilts. A taxi rounded the corner and sped up Tenth Avenue, and I turned to make sure it didn’t stop; and that’s when I saw the blue car, coming slowly down the street from the opposite direction. It was a Chevrolet, I think, and one door was painted a different color, as if it had been replaced. It was driving with its lights off. Two men were sitting in the front, and I could see their arms and chests in the glow of the streetlights, their faces hidden in shadow.

Come on, man, William said to me. Heaven Lake! Don’t stop now.

The car sped up and pulled alongside us, the driver’s door opening as it moved.

Hey, Willie. Where you going, Willie?

William stopped, and his mouth sagged open, like a child caught sneaking a piece of candy. He turned around, and I stepped away from him. I wanted to run, but my legs locked at the knees; instead, I folded my arms in front of my chest, as if that would protect me.

Hey, William said, his voice cracking. Curt. It’s OK, man. I was just waiting for you.

Curt stepped out of the car and stared over William’s shoulder at me. He was tall, dressed in a tan leather coat, and his eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen, like a cat’s eyes. I squeezed my arms tight around my chest; my ribs felt ready to crack.

This is Mr. Loo, William said. He’s going to get me a little loan. I’ll have it for Ronnie tomorrow. I swear.

That true?

I swallowed hard; my mouth tasted as if it were coated with dirt. I looked at Curt’s face, and his hands hanging open at his sides, and I thought,
he’ll know. He’ll know if you’re lying.
I shook my head slowly.

Get in the car, Curt said to William.

What? Why? I just said I was—

Curt grabbed William’s wrist and bent his arm back, took his shirt by the collar, and swung him around, banging him against the side of the car. William turned his head and stared at me. Call the police! he shouted. Call the police! The rear door swung open, as if by magic, and Curt pushed him inside and slammed it. Then he turned to me, and took out his wallet. Charlie, he said. Hey. Charlie. Here’s fifty bucks. He threw the bills in front of him, and they scattered on the sidewalk like loose napkins, bits of trash. Everything’s OK, he said. Get down on the ground. Don’t look up. Please. You understand me?

I understand, I said.

Then get down there. And count to a hundred.

I did what he said. I pressed my face to the sidewalk until the car rounded the corner, and then raised my head. There were no shouts, no sirens; only the echo of my own breathing. I stood up slowly, leaning forward, my hands on my knees. After a minute I broke into a run. I unlocked my bicycle and pedaled furiously away, taking a long, circling route. When I finally reached the Lucky Dragon I left the bicycle and chain at the back door.

I am a teacher of philosophy. My gods, if I have gods, are ancient, dry-lipped men, who stay awake in the small hours worrying over the substitution of one word for another.
Yi,
for example, which means righteousness.
Ren,
which means benevolence: the love of a father for his children, the love of one man for all men. I speak of these things in my seminars, and often my young students, who are the same age that I was in 1982, say,
there are no exceptions.
Kant was right. Mencius was right.
I look at them and I think of myself lying in bed in the International House that night, rolling over and over, the sheet coiled around me like a rope. There was a telephone next to my bed, and a white sticker on the side that said EMERGENCY CALL 911. I could see William’s face, twisted in pain, and then I thought of my father, and how the police nearly beat him to death in 1968, when he dared to report the murder of his friend. I think of these things, and I look at my students and say,
No. It’s not
our job to decide.

In the
Nicomachean Ethics,
Aristotle says,
In some cases there is
no praise, but there is pardon, whenever someone does a wrong actionbecause of conditions that no one would endure.
Sometimes I take great comfort from this. Not because I feel guilty for saving my own life. No, because I know there are people who would say that William deserved to suffer, and that I was brave, like an action hero. Even my own daughters, I think, would look at me with new admiration: as if I were like Schwarzenegger, who always rolls away from the cliff, or turns so that the knife strikes the other man instead. This is why I like the word
pardon
. A pardon is a little space, an opening, where the world stands back and leaves you alone. It is the door I walk through every day when I open my eyes.

Here is my problem, again:
I
understand perfectly. But a pardon isn’t an explanation; it isn’t something to pass on to your children. A pardon is the opposite of a story.

The CD is finished: its fourth repetition. The sun pours through my windows, and the water of the harbor has turned a bright blue-green, the color of laundry soap. It strikes me, now, how foolish I am to think this way. Another man would be able to say,
this is what I’ve learned from my life.
And he would include everything I haven’t: the woman named An Yi I met later that year in the International House cafeteria, and how we struggled for five years in New York while I finished my degree; how Mei-ling was born one night in the Columbia Presbyterian hospital during a driving rainstorm in June. How we came here, to Hong Kong, and how the cancer in An Yi’s breast took her and left me alone with two small children and a heart as hollow as a Buddhist’s wooden drum. I try to hold it all in my mind at once, and it slips away from me, like my shadow; as if I’d raised my hands to cup the light that falls across the floor.

Where is Heaven Lake?

In the ancient tale, it was the home of the Immortals; a place we humans could never reach. But this is what I think: in this world there are no more Immortals. We cross the oceans in a matter of hours; we talk to people thousands of miles away; we even visit the moon. So if Heaven Lake exists, it is wherever we are, right in front of us. Even here, in this strange city, where I so often wake up and wonder if I am still dreaming. And it may be that stories do not have to have endings we understand, any more than human lives do. Perhaps beginnings are enough.

It is four o’clock. My daughters are on their way home; standing together in a crowded subway car, rolling up the sleeves of their uniforms, loosening their Peter Pan collars. Mei-ling is listening to her Walkman, and reading a fashion magazine; Mei-po pages quickly through a Japanese comic book she’s borrowed from a friend, the kind I won’t let her read. If my wife were alive, I would ask her:
is this what it means to have children? To be able
to see them so clearly, and never know what to say?
I am not any kind of storyteller, but my daughters are coming to my door, in these precious last days, and I have to give them something. They come in, and let their heavy bags drop with a thud that shakes the apartment, and turn to see an old man standing with his arms open, and his mouth is open, as if he is about to sing.