White Tiger on Snow Mountain (15 page)

My mother waves it away. “Of course you do. You’re just shy. And you can’t play sports because of your health. And they’re jealous because you’re smarter. “

“I had a friend once,” my father breaks in. “They shot him and left him lying in a ditch. No one could go to him because the guards were looking out. So late at night, I crawled out to him. I tried to help him, but he was dying and he knew it. All he wanted was for me to knock him out so that he wouldn’t feel so bad the pain. So I hit him as hard as I could. But he was tough and I was weak from cold and no sleep and to eat only one rotten potato a day. I tried and tried, beating him until my hand ached, but it was no good. Then I took up a rock and hit him on the head, but he was still too tough. He bled, but he stayed awake. So finally I smothered him, with my hand like so.”

My father pinches off my nostrils with his left hand and covers my mouth with his right. “It wasn’t hard because he didn’t struggle. Just squeezed my wrist until it was bruised.” With that he turns back to his bran.

My mother waves him off. “Don’t listen to your father,” she tells me. “You’ll make plenty of friends next year. Why don’t you try joining the math club?”

I brighten as an idea comes to me. “Can I take karate lessons? Or join the scouts with Philip? They go camping in the country.”

“Come on now, honey,” my mother says. “You know you’re allergic. The woods are full of airborne mold and pollen.”

“Please?”

“Ask your father.”

To my father, “Please? I promise I won’t touch any plants.”

My father points his spoon at me. Milk runs down his wrist. “Forget plants. There’s a lot worse things than pollen out in the woods.”

“You mean bears?” I ask.

“He means rednecks,” my mother explains. “And hicks.”

My father shrugs noncommittally and opens the newspaper. “So go if you’re so smart. You’ll find out.”

“Over my dead body,” my mother says. I finish eating as fast as I can and race out to meet Philip.

We decide to cut school, but it is raining out, so we go to the Earl with Philip’s sister, who threatens to tell on us if we don’t let her come and buy her ticket. The ticket booth at the Earl Theater is freestanding, like a subway token booth, with bulletproof glass, a steel grille to talk through, and a curved wooden threshold worn smooth with hands pushing money, but it also has carved columns and a scalloped roof, and it stands beneath a huge marquee, with stone floors under the grime, and ornate moldings under the paint, and burned-out tulip bulbs around the empty glass boxes where the movie posters used to go. The fat lady in the booth never questions your age. She doesn’t even speak English, except to say “three dollar.” Sometimes she falls asleep in the booth, her breath fogging the glass, and you have to tap on the glass and show her your three dollars. You give your ticket to the old man in the threadbare jacket with epaulets, and he grants you entrance to an unearthed tomb. With each step, dust rises from the pattern of the ancient carpet, and in the dim light you can still make out a water-stained, speckled mural depicting Greek ruins on a hill above an olive grove.
Silver ashtrays the size of funeral urns stand guard outside the gentlemen’s lounge.

Entering the great cave of the theater, with its balding plush seats and the shifting curtain marked with the masks of joy and pain, the gaze lifts to the limitless roof, rising away on buttresses and columns, thick with soot but still painted, here and there, with stars. Glimpsed through the cracks and plastered fissures, mottled with mold, this night sky no longer matches the one outside. It has deteriorated, regressing to an older, unfinished sky, mapped with different constellations: the Key, the Snake, the Handgun, the Pizza Man, the Three-legged Dog. Drops of rainwater seep along the cracks and fall, one at a time, across the huge vault, to clang in the buckets placed in the aisles. No one ever sweeps up in the Earl. When the lights go down, you want to keep your feet up on the seat in front of you. Rats scratch in the candy boxes, stale popcorn in their mouths. Bottles roll. Don’t go to the bathroom either. The toilets are always backed up, and there’s usually blood or vomit in the sinks. Often the floor is flooded, with toilet paper sailing around. There are no doors on the scribbled marble stalls, and one time I saw a man stripped to his waist and soaping his armpits at the sink. Another time there were two men in a stall together, one on his knees before the other.

Still, the Earl is the best place in the world to see a movie. It draws a great crowd. The dozen or so patrons spread out and relax. Some sleep, although the usher with the baseball bat will poke you if you snore or wave your hand in front of the projector. Otherwise, he doesn’t mind; you can smoke or drink from a bottle in a bag. You can throw candy and yell at the screen.
In fact, the old dark-skinned men at the Earl appreciate everything that your parents would yell at you for doing in a theater or even in front of the TV. If you burp or make a fart noise, they laugh. They will discuss with interest the birth of Godzilla or debate who would win in a fight between Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson. If you shout, “It’s ass-kicking time,” when Bruce Lee takes off his shirt, they cheer, and yelling “Yo’ mama” at the bad guy is always appreciated as a classic riposte.

It’s warm inside the theater today, as the three of us find our favorite seats in the middle of the middle row. Raindrops ping in the buckets. The lights ease down. There is a double feature,
Blood of Vengeance,
starring Bruce Klee (Bruce Lee’s cousin, someone explains), and a picture about knights,
The Curse of Doom.

The movie starts with Bruce Klee as a simple fisherman rowing his boat in from the sea. He pulls it up on the beach and jumps off, barefoot in white pajamas. Then he sees smoke rising from a hut and starts running. It’s too late. They’ve massacred his family. His sister has been raped and killed, and his dad’s hanging from a hook. He spots a few hoodlums at the local waterfront tavern, drinking rice wine and hassling the old innkeeper with the long white whiskers. One of the troublemakers is wearing his sister’s jade necklace! With his bare feet, Bruce pushes his toes against the edge of a brick lying on the beach and pops it up like a soccer ball. He catches it and rams it right into one guy’s chest. Blood shoots out of his mouth. Then Bruce gouges the other guy’s eyes out and snaps his neck sideways. Covered in blood, he puts on his sister’s necklace and, falling to his knees, lets out a warrior scream of vengeance.

Next he has a whole long journey. He learns from clues that
the killers are from the Dragon Temple, so he shaves his head and joins, throwing his ponytail on the ceremonial fire. He has to hang out with the Dragon Monks, swallowing his hate like poison, letting it seep into his heart. The contest starts. Guys get their arms ripped out. They shatter ice blocks with their heads. Monks who have rubbed iron dust into their hands for many seasons split logs with one chop and break bricks. Bruce beats everybody in the tournament, even the Dragon Champion. The Champion, who can’t stand it, dishonors everyone by throwing a razor star at Bruce when he’s not looking. But Bruce catches it and throws it right back into the Champ’s forehead. They reward him with the Dragon Robe, but we see his smile is bitter.

Now he’s alone with the Master at last. Bruce tells him who he is, and they fight, first monkey style, then praying mantis, then crane, where they jump up twenty feet in the air and hang like hummingbirds, arms and legs whirling. Finally, Bruce gets the Master down, and we know, from the twisted look of horror on Bruce’s face, horror at himself, at what he is about to do, that this is the deathblow. He plunges his fist into the Master’s chest and rips out his heart. While the Master, still alive, watches in terror, Bruce wraps his sister’s necklace around the beating heart and throws it on the fire, where it explodes. Everyone in the Earl roars in approval. A man leaps to his feet and turns to face the audience, fists raised in glory. Somewhere a bottle breaks.

“That’s true,” the black man in army fatigues sitting in front of us says. “I seen it in Nam. They’d split you belly and take out you whole intestines, like twelve feet of it right in front of you. But the brain is still alive and watching it all.”

The fat white guy a row back agrees. He’s so fat he never has to wear a coat, just parachute pants and a
Blizzard of Ozz
T-shirt. We can hear him breathing there behind us, wedged into his seat, sipping from a bucket of diet soda.

“Over thousands of centuries,” he explains, “your Chinese has mastered the Art of Death.”

The Earl is a ruined temple, open to the sky, and in its endless night, dreams arise from the void and fall again. The same wise men, in beards and long coats, gather here each time, to see the great forgotten tales retold. Stored on metal reels, a million tiny pictures, bright as stamps, come spilling out into the dark, floating down in a row, dancing like merry soldiers or angels along the dusty beam of light that crosses the vast, empty heaven of that cave. It is like the unscrolling of a lost parchment, unearthed and read aloud for the first time since history began. And as the magic words are uttered, these dead images begin to move. Skeletons gather their bones and march. Monsters awake and crawl out of the sea. A terrible force is unleashed on the earth. Good and Evil fight to the death on the screen. The dead rise up to feed on the living. An army of heroes invades hell, and mutinous angels turn to make war on heaven. The courtesan of Babylon, full of strong drink, does a belly dance for the nobles. The king swears he’ll slaughter a nation to have her. Blood runs in rivers. Heads weep on sticks. There are crucified soldiers on hilltops and fires in the pits of the night. Kings perish and the kingdoms fall at the breaking of the sword. During a storm, the queen gives birth in secret and dies. The orphan prince, born under the curse of Doom, and raised by wolves and peasants, does not know his own name.

Philip’s sister takes my hand and puts it under her skirt. It’s like putting my hand in an oven. Her legs are smooth and coated in soft hair. She moves my hand up her thighs to where the flesh splits and it’s warm. I close my eyes, and another movie forms in my head, as the blood bursts behind my eyes, breaking into roses and flaming hearts against my lids. I am afraid to move or take my hand back. Philip is right there, next to her in the dark. She presses my hand harder against her with her two hands, and grinds her hips until something gives and she gasps. Then she grabs my jacket off the back of the seat and drapes it over my lap. She unzips my fly and touches me down there. She knows just how to work it, better than I do, light and then hard until it shoots. It’s never done that around other people before. She laughs, a mean laugh, and I blush with shame in the dark. Somehow I have been tricked, made a fool of in a way I can’t even understand. Then the film jams and starts to burn. The frame bubbles, and a white hole opens like God’s eye peering in on us. The old men howl in pain. A treasure is being lost, like a Torah thrown on the flames. The lights come on, and everyone looks around, blinking, wondering where they are and how they got there. I sit absolutely still. My pants are still open under my jacket, and my legs are sticky. The audience begins to hoot and clap, yelling curses and throwing empty soda cups at the screen. Philip’s sister wipes her hands on my jacket and reaches for the popcorn. She has a defiant look on her face. Her eyes glitter wildly and her smile curls into a sneer. She is proud.

Finally the lights go down and the movie starts up again. But it’s a different reel, some other part of the story with no connection to what happened before. I can’t even tell if it is from earlier or later. The king is dead, but the wizard he killed before
is back. The prince is grown and on a quest to find the sword. He dismounts in the mist and gets on the barge that will take him across the River of Forgetting to Snow Mountain, where everyone who died in part one is alive, where everything lost is regained, where flowers fold their petals back into seeds and scattered leaves leap back in the wind and dance into the arms of the trees. But before you may enter, you must answer questions three.

One. Where do you come from?

Two. What have you forgotten?

Three . . .

It is always night when you come out of the Earl, as if, distracted by the movie, lulled off guard by the darkness and warmth, you fell asleep without realizing it and now you are exiting into a dream. I walk carefully down Roosevelt Avenue, under the steel girders and openwork roof of the El. Headlights rear up, exposing the rain’s invisible connections, the strings of a puppet theater tying the sky to the street. Then the car goes by in a rush. Ghostly faces glance from behind the windows and, splashing through a pothole, it’s gone. Philip and his sister turn off to go their own way. Only Philip says good-bye. His sister holds Philip’s hand and gives me a sly look. Now I’m alone, and whatever has been pursuing closes in. The rain parts and the buildings lean in, closing out the sky. The clouds descend to earth. The streets have rearranged themselves, shuffled like a pack of cards, and I am no longer in my own neighborhood. I have gotten turned around somehow and wandered into the city behind my back, like when you lay your head on the pillow and sink through to the other side of sleep. I pass rows of closed
shops with bars drawn across their doors and here and there a lit store window. The door is locked, but a bright box still displays peculiarly chosen objects. It is impossible to say what they mean. One storefront is heaped with foreign candy, pink circles and pyramids tipped in green. Another offers only a broken clock, a fork, an old-fashioned lady’s hat, and two black leather gloves. They are like the clues left behind at a crime scene. A headless mannequin signals from behind her glass. The only place still alive on the street is a bar, a neon beer sign glowing through a steamed-over window, but I’m not allowed in bars. A man stumbles out, arms gripping a fat woman like a buoy in a squall, and they vanish down an alley.

Trying to find my way back to a main street, I end up in a park I don’t recognize, or perhaps it just seems different in the dark. Fog seeps through the picture, gathering on the swings. With each step, I grow more apprehensive, as if something is there, watching me, holding its breath when I stop to listen. I hear the crush of feet on leaves and duck down behind a bench. I strain my ears. The park has become an orchestra. Each leaf leans out, a tuned instrument raised in anticipation, awaiting the breath that will move them all. Rain comes, a sheet of water, from a single cloud passing over me. It descends like a flock of sparrows landing everywhere at once, with tiny, light steps, picking at the grass, checking under each blade. Drops line up on the branches and wires. They gather together to draw resolve before falling to the ground. Then it’s gone, leaving only the scent of water and its splotched tracks on the ground, a delicate, unreadable scrawl.