Dream of the Blue Room (20 page)

The brush, dipped in deep black ink. Graham holds it above the bottle, lets the extra ink run down, blots the brush on the yellow pad. He stands by the window in the dusky light, stretches out his arm, searches for something, touches the tip of the bristles to the soft white skin of his inner elbow. A single dot, a perfect black circle inscribed on the blue fullness of a vein.

I stare at the vein, mesmerized. That blue. Like something not quite real. I have a colorized photograph of my mother when she was a child. Her hair is yellow, her naturally brown eyes a clear and frozen blue—some photographer’s ideal of what a young girl should look like. And I have seen this color somewhere else. It is the blue of Amanda Ruth’s bathing suit in my favorite photograph of her—she is standing at the bow of her father’s boat, leaning slightly forward, arms above her head, poised to dive. It is the blue of that room, our room, at a certain time of day, just as the sun was slipping behind the long row of pines across the river. And somewhere else, I’ve seen it.

Graham reaches up and touches my hair, brushes a tear from my face. “What are you thinking?”

“About this block in New York where I walk sometimes. Eighty-sixth Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam. There’s a huge brick apartment building. On the seventh floor, there’s a row of tall windows that spans the entire width of the building. From the street, all you can see is this incredibly bright blue glow. I passed by that building dozens of times, wondering what was behind the windows that could give off this strange, brilliant color. One winter afternoon about three years ago, as I stood across the street, staring up, two girls came out of the big double doors. They were sixteen, maybe seventeen. They were laughing and whispering to each other, lost to the rest of the world, as though there was no one else in New York City, just them. Their hair was wet, clinging to their cheeks and necks. They wore long dresses that stuck to their damp skin. Through the dresses, I could see the outlines of their bathing suits.”

“It’s a pool,” Graham says. He smiles.

“Here it was, the middle of winter in New York City, snow in Central Park, everybody bundled up in scarves and mittens. Just that weekend I’d watched the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center. I thought of all those people high up in that building, in bathing suits and swim caps, traipsing barefoot around this huge indoor pool. I found it somehow exciting—the idea of a big warm body of water on the seventh floor of an apartment building on the Upper West Side, this room where it was perpetually summer. I wanted to go swimming in that pool. Who knows, maybe I even wanted in a small way to be friends with those two girls. So I did something that’s always surprised me a little since. I crossed the street and walked up to them. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. They stopped talking and looked at me politely, a little impatiently. I asked them who owned the pool, if they knew how I might buy a membership. The girls giggled. The taller one said, ‘That’s the Upper West Side Youth Club.’ The other one said, ‘You have to be, like, a teenager to use that pool.’ I thanked them. ‘Sorry, lady,’ the taller girl said. I could tell she really meant it, she felt sorry for me.”

“It’s a good story,” Graham says.

“I still pass by that building every now and then and look up at the blue room. It’s a blue you wouldn’t believe, with this deep miraculous shine. Even though I can’t use the pool, for some reason it’s comforting to know it’s there.”

Graham blows the ink dry. The vein is wide and sure, a hard line inscribed on the muscled length of his arm.

“Why here?” I ask. “Why this awful hotel?”

Graham stares up at the ceiling for a moment, then looks at me, puts one finger to his lips. “Hear that?” he whispers.

“What?”

“The room isn’t much, but the river…”

I close my eyes and listen. Down below, the river rushes, a continuous, comforting white noise. I’ve become so accustomed to that sound, I no longer notice it.

“What happens afterward?”

He points to the sealed envelope on the desk. “I’ve left instructions, made arrangements. You’ll leave as soon as it’s done.”

“Surely you don’t want to be left in this room?”

He sits on the bed, pulls me down beside him. “What matters is that I’m with you.”

“But what about a grave? Or at least cremation. You can’t just stay here.” I’m lying beside him, my head resting on his shoulder.

He laughs. “Stay here? You make it sound like I’m moving in.” He kisses my eyelids. The front of his shirt is damp from my tears. A warm breeze sifts through the window, and the bulb above the bed sways.

“I could come to Australia with you, you could think about it for a few weeks, and then, if you still want to do it, I’ll help you. Wouldn’t it be better at home?”

He props himself on his elbow and looks down into my face. “This morning, while you were asleep, I counted. I’ve traveled the Yangtze sixteen times. It feels more like home to me than Perth ever did. You can understand that, can’t you?”

I think about my small apartment by the park in New York City, and the path around the reservoir that I’ve jogged every Sunday morning for years. The water of the reservoir changes with the seasons—an opaque cold gray in winter, a glassy blue in spring, and in the summer a greenish white alive with birds and growing things. The path is less than two miles around, and I know every dip and curve of it—which spots turn muddy in the rain, where I’ll have to slow to make way for the tourists, where to keep my eyes on the ground to avoid stepping in horse droppings, the exact bend at which I stop and look up to see the maple trees changing colors. There is nothing of that path that reminds me of the place I grew up, nothing in it that would seem to beckon to a girl from Alabama, but when I am there I feel as if my body has come home, and the sound of the pebbles crunching beneath my feet is comforting, familiar.

I put my arms around Graham’s neck, pull him closer. “I guess I do understand. But why now?”

“I’ve gone through my whole life alone,” he says, brushing my hair away from my face. “I decided to do this months ago. I wanted to spend my last few days on the river, with someone special, but I was afraid it wouldn’t be possible. I was afraid I’d have to end it in some hospital, with strangers, cold white walls and cafeteria food and all that nonsense. Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“This is my third Yangzte River cruise this year. I’ve been looking for someone—I just didn’t know who. I didn’t know it was going to be you. Now you’re here, and these past few days have been perfect.” He breathes in, out. A light breeze rattles the windowpanes. “Just think of this place a few months from now. Everything here is going back to the river soon. I’ll be happy to go with it. It’s just—right.

“If you want me to explain the pain I’ve felt for the past year, if you really want to know just how bad it is, and how much worse it gets day by day, then I’ll go into all the unpleasant details.”

We lie for a while in silence. The decision has already been made. I am trying to figure out how things came to this. How did the trajectory of my life bring me to this moment—on a bed in an abandoned motel in China, holding on to a dying man?

“I’m glad we met,” I say. I don’t know what else to tell him. That nothing I have known or believed could have prepared me for this? No words are sufficient.

The syringe, shimmering in the yellowish light. Graham’s finger tapping the side of the syringe, his thumb pressing the plunger, a thin stream of liquid shooting through the needle. He gets up and goes to the window, takes another look at the river, that brown ribbon threading past. He comes to me, puts his hands on my shoulders. Can he tell that my body is a package of taut electrical wires? I imagine the wires exploding, bursting into flame. I imagine the fire licking the yellowed walls of this room, leaping from the windows, turning the hotel into a heap of ash, racing through the abandoned streets, rushing lava-hot down to the river, catching everything in its path: ships exploding like firecrackers, rickshaws splintering like matchsticks, stray dogs screaming, the tips of their matted fur aflame.

“You can do this,” he says, looking into my eyes. He wraps me up in his arms, buries his face in my hair. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my scalp. “You’re saving me.”

I sob into his chest; the cotton of his shirt grows damper. I unbutton his shirt slowly, unzip his pants, pull him onto the bed, take him into me. That filling up, that deep slow heat, that fullness, that completion. We take our time, make it last as long as we can. An hour passes, more, that throbbing, that feeling of the world splitting open. “Get closer,” he says, and though it seems we cannot get any closer than we already are, somehow we do; everything is fluid, molten matter, there is no separation. Afterward, we stay together, sweating, tired, breathing together, one breath, two breaths, three, a matching rhythm that slows and slows.

We get up from the bed, retrieve our clothes from the floor. I button his shirt for him, he zips my dress. The cool metal of the zipper snakes up my spine, and I think of the girls in red dresses at the staged funeral procession in Yeuyang, their long black braids switching down their backs, their stained shoes padding down the dusty road. We stand for a long time by the window. Down on the river, ships float past. In the streets, there is no one, nothing, just strange geometric shadows cast by the leaving sun. “It’s time,” he says. He goes over to the table, picks up the syringe, presses it into my hand. He lies down on the bed. His body seems impossibly long. His calves and feet hang over the edge of the mattress. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a white linen shirt, crisp and cool-looking even in this suffocating heat. I sit on the side of the bed. I look into his face and make one more plea. “I’ll go back to Australia with you. I’ll nurse you. Anything.”

“Please, Jenny. If you want me to beg, I will.”

His lips are full and pale. I lean down to kiss him. His trembling hands touch my shoulder, my neck, my breasts, my thigh. He lays his arm across the sheet.

My eyes blur. I wipe them, concentrate, focus on the black dot. The syringe in my hand feels cold, impossibly light. I touch the gleaming tip of the needle to his skin and push. His skin is surprisingly strong. I push harder; my breath stops as I break skin. The vein bubbles slightly as I enter him. The slide of the long thin needle, the shape of it moving along the underside of his skin. I hesitate.

“Good,” he says. “You’re doing well.”

I press the plunger. It moves so slowly, as if his very blood is resisting me. I press until my thumb hits the base of the syringe.

“Yes,” he says. “Now, lie down with me.”

I pull the needle out, by instinct press my finger to his arm where a spot of red blood glistens. I lie down, and he takes me in his arms. For the longest time I try to match his breaths. At first it is easy, but then his breaths become longer, and I am holding my own breath just to keep time with him. His body begins to shake, then he coughs and spits up blood. I rush to the bathroom for towels. It is uglier than I imagined. There is no such thing as a clean and easy death. “I’ll go get someone,” I say, crying.

“No.” He takes my hand, his grip surprisingly strong, his voice so weak I can barely hear him.

Time unwinds. The world unspools. My body feels light and hollow. I lie down beside him and hold on. “I love you.” By the time it occurs to me to say this, he is already far past hearing.

Now, the bathwater has gone cool around me. A tiny bar of soap floats on the surface, leaving behind a thin white trail, losing its words in the water. When I unwrapped the small square of paper, which had gone soft and damp in the heat, I couldn’t help but laugh at the inscription carved into the flesh of the soap:
Happy Wash
. In the room, nothing moves. There is a glint of glass on the carpet. On the bedside table, a cup of water, and the deep green of a parched banana leaf from which we ate a feast of cold rice and pork. A boat howls on the river. In the hallway, the cleaning woman knocks about, despite the fact that there is nothing to clean.

If I lean back in the tub and tilt my head to the left I can see his thin legs stretched out on the bed, astonishingly white and nearly hairless. The yellowing sheet drapes over his head, falling to meet his wide chest, his stomach, his pelvis, the frayed hem ending just above his knees.

TWENTY-SEVEN

In Greenbrook on Sundays Amanda Ruth and I would rise early, tiptoe to the kitchen, fill a bowl with blueberries and strawberries, sliced banana and cantaloupe. In our T-shirts and underwear we would traipse down to the pier, sit on the farthest edge, dangle our toes into the river. We would go before the sun made its appearance over the thick line of trees, so there was only a suggestion of light, the knowledge of day in the making. We ate the fruit with our hands, our fingers turned sticky and sweet, and when we were done we stripped off our shirts and slid into the river. We swam out to the center, beneath the still-visible moon, while all along the riverbank birds began to call.

On the beach near the pier the water was shallow and warm, but the farther we swam from the narrow beach the colder the water became. We did the backstroke and the butterfly; we dog-paddled and floated, weightless, on our backs. I made my body stiff and, facing downward, arms straight at my sides, head plunged underwater, propelled myself with hips and thighs in the manner of The Man from Atlantis. We did not talk but instead listened to the good sounds of our river—the dip and splash of the water in response to the movement of our bodies, the slow call of a bullfrog, the high hum of a fishing boat in the distance. When we were tired we swam back to the pier, climbed the creaking wooden ladder, then lay with our bare backs to the sun until we heard Amanda Ruth’s mother calling us in.

Inside the house, we would shower and dress for church. Her parents must have assumed we stopped showering together when we passed a certain age, but at eleven and twelve and thirteen we still closed the bathroom door, flung our wet swimsuits on the floor, and stepped side by side into the narrow tub. She would stand beneath the spray, her back to me, and I would work up a lather in my palms then slide my hands across her shoulders, down the groove in her spine. She would turn to face me, and I would rub the soap in circles over her flat belly. When I was finished she would do the same for me, and we would step out of the tub, wrap ourselves in thick towels, and open the closet door in the bedroom to choose our clothes for church.

I didn’t own any church dresses and so I would have to borrow one of hers, which was usually too loose across the chest and too tight in the hips. By the time we had finished blow-drying our hair and shimmying into slips and dresses and sandals, Amanda Ruth’s parents would be waiting in the car. The blue Impala smelled of some flowery perfume her mother wore, a fragrance that made Amanda Ruth sneeze. I remember her father on those Sundays as silent and solemn. While her mother played with the radio dial, searching for the voice of Elvis or Buddy Holly, Mr. Lee sat with both hands on the wheel and drove, occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror or lifting a hand from the wheel to adjust his collar. When he did speak, it was to instruct us to roll up our windows or to be quiet during the service.

There was no hint of China in Mr. Lee’s voice. But in Greenbrook on Sundays he was nothing if not Chinese. You could see it in the faces of the churchgoers who turned to stare as he walked down the aisle with his voluptuous blonde wife and American daughter, headed for the second row in the center. Those Sundays after church we ate lunch at the Red Lobster. Amanda Ruth and I always ordered the popcorn shrimp. The regular wait staff knew the Lees by name, but the new waitresses would often talk about Mr. Lee rather than to him. “What does he want?” they would say to Amanda Ruth’s mother, looking surprised when he said, “I’ll have the fried oysters and iced tea.” Once, in response, a very skinny waitress with brown hair that swung down to her waist said, “Oh! Your English is perfect!”

I always wondered why Mr. Lee agreed to stay there. I never understood how he could endure another Sunday in Greenbrook, or why he would even want to try.

And in Fengdu? What does one do on Sunday in this ghost of a city, this place that will soon be submerged, this city that has houses but no people, roads but no bicycles, graven images but no one to worship them?

You can take your clothes from the dresser, your passport, your empty tin, your bottle of lotion, the Polaroid photos he made of you, place these things in the pack that you brought here before you understood the manner in which you would be leaving. You can look out the window of your motel room, at the ships coming in to port, to be loaded with things that must be taken away. It is a lengthy business to dismantle a city.

You can think of your husband aboard that other ship, sailing westward, away from you. You can go away and lock the door behind you, leaving on it in plain view the note that Graham wrote in Chinese characters. “It says that we will be staying for two more days,” he explained, “that we have paid up and do not want the room cleaned. It says not to disturb us. This will give you time to get away. Please put this note on the door when you leave.”

Walking down the crumbling stairwell, you hold the envelope tightly. Inside it, the instructions that Graham wrote for you:
Go down to the dock at 4 p.m. A sampan will be waiting to take you to Chongching
. The envelope also contains Chinese currency, a key, and an address. The key is to a house in Sydney. “It’s your house now,” he told you earlier, “if you’ll have it. Everything inside is yours.”

In Fengdu on Sunday you can still climb one thousand stone steps to the top of Mount Minshan, from which you can view the abandoned city below. From the single vendor who remains here, who has been allowed to stay in case any officials venture to Mount Minshan before it is drowned, you can purchase a type of currency known as Hell Bank Notes to burn on the graves of your ancestors, a bribe for the celestial judges. The water is rising, the people are leaving, the graven images are spending their last days in the light; nonetheless you can pretend that you are on vacation in this, the City of Ghosts.

There are things you must not do in Fengdu on Sunday, things better left undone.

You must not refuse to think in terms of degree, for degree is your only salvation. Without degree murder is murder, you have killed a man—no matter that he wanted it, that he begged for you to do so, that he used many sensible words to persuade you.

“I do not want to live in pain,” he said. You were lying naked beside him when he said this. His hand rested on your breast. You lay on top of the sheets, not beneath them, because the heat was intense, despite the rain. You could hear rain on the window, and see mud forming on the cracked pane. “I chose you,” he said. All of the heat of the dying city had come to bear upon you in this room. Humid heat, unbreathable, giving birth to mold along the edges of the carpet, in the crevice behind the lamp. “I can’t abide the thought of slow death.” A ship howled in the distance, a rickshaw rattled past. “I love you.” Doorknobs shook in the hallway as the housekeeper made her pointless rounds. His hand, even then, moving across your body. His lips in the hollow of your throat, his mouth on your mouth, the slight bitterness of pain medication on his tongue. Even then, the pressure of him against your thigh, the good warmth, the slow arousal, and how to confront it, then, the specter of life stirring in the body of a man who has chosen to die, a man who has chosen you.

What can be done in Fengdu on Sunday?

You can take into account circumstances, degrees, the demands of the dead.

The chill has reached into everything. At some point it subdued the heat, though you do not know when this reversal took place, at what minute and what hour you understood that your skin had gone cold, and that you had no sweater, no blanket, no means of getting warm. You cannot say how long ago it was that you ran hot water in the tub to warm yourself, waiting for the dark brown water to lighten to amber before dropping the rubber stopper into the rusty drain. The rain does not stop. You listen for the rickshaw boy, but he is gone. The ships are gone. The housekeeper in the hallway is gone. The bathwater has gone cool around you. The soap loses its words in the water, leaving behind a thin white trail. You have neglected nothing. You have done just as you were told.

There are things you must not do in Fengdu on Sunday, this Sunday or any other.

You must not think of the blue room, and how, waking from the dream of her, you went down into the boat, stepping first over the fishing poles with their lines gone slack from disuse, and then through the low doorway into the cabin. You must not think of how you searched for her there but did not find her—not in the narrow hold where you used to lie, not in the hollow space beneath the cushions where she sometimes hid. You must not dwell on how she was not there, and how the river did not rattle the boathouse, how the boathouse did not move at all, for the river was still, it was night and the river was dark, and the moon did not shine down upon it, and she did not lie with her back to the buckling boards of the pier, or on the old familiar mattress, and your fingers did not slip together in the slick warmth of river water.

You must not peer through the crack in the door, see his thin legs stretched out on the bed, startlingly white and nearly hairless. You must not hold yourself accountable.

Rising from the bath, draping the white towel around your shoulders, going out into the room as if it were any room in any town, you must not look into the face of the man you have just murdered, though he does not quite yet look dead. Save for the stillness, he could be sleeping.