“Olivia!” Simon shouts from the other side. “Come here. You won’t believe this!”
I hurry over, and when I emerge from the archway and look down, I see a landscape that both chills and mesmerizes me, a fairy-tale place I’ve seen in nightmares. It is completely unlike the smooth, sunlit valley we just crossed. This is a deep and narrow ravine shaped by violent upheavals, as lumpy as an unmade bed, a scratchy blanket of moss with patches of light and pockets of shadows, the faded hues of a perpetual dusk.
Simon’s eyes are glazed with excitement. “Isn’t this great?”
Sprouting here and there are mounds of rocks, stacked high as men. They look like monuments, cairns, an army of petrified soldiers. Or perhaps they are the Chinese version of Lot’s salty wife, pillars of human weakness, the fossilized remains of those who entered this forbidden place and dared to look back.
Simon points. “Look at those caves! There must be hundreds.”
Along the walls, from the bottom of the ravine to the tops of the peaks, are cracks and fissures, pockmarks and caves. They look like the shelves and storage bins of a huge prehistoric mortuary.
“It’s incredible!” Simon exclaims. I know he’s thinking about Kwan’s cave. He goes down a trail of sorts, more gully than path, with rocky footholds that give under his weight.
“Simon, I’m tired. My feet are starting to hurt.”
He turns around. “Just wait there. I’ll look around for about five minutes. Then we’ll go back together. Okay?”
“No more than five minutes!” I yell. “And don’t go in any caves.” He is clambering down the trail. What is it that makes him so oblivious to danger? Probably one of those biological differences between men and women. Women’s brains use higher and more evolved functions, which account for their sensitivity, their humaneness, their worry, whereas men rely on more primitive functions. See rock, chase. Danger, sniff, go find. Smoke cigar later. I resent Simon’s carelessness. And yet, I have to admit, I find it seductive, his boyish disregard of peril, his pursuit of fun without consequences. I think about the type of men I consider sexy: they are always the ones who climb the Himalayas, who paddle through alligator-infested jungle rivers. It isn’t that I consider them brave. They are reckless, unpredictable, maddeningly unreliable. But like rogue waves and shooting stars, they also lend thrills to a life that otherwise would be as regular as the tide, as routine as day passing into night.
I look at my watch. Five minutes have dragged by. Then it becomes ten, fifteen, twenty. Where the hell is Simon? The last time I saw him he was making his way toward a cluster of those cairns, or whatever they are. He walked behind a bush, and then I couldn’t follow where he went. A raindrop hits my cheek. Another splatters on my jacket. In an instant, it’s pouring. “Simon!” I yell. “Simon!” I expect my voice to echo loudly, but it is muffled, absorbed by the rushing rain. I duck under the archway. The rain is falling so fast and hard it makes a hazy curtain. The air smells metallic, minerals flushed from rocks. The peaks and hillsides are turning dark, glistening. Rain streams along their sides, and small rivulets send loose rocks down. Flash flood, what if there’s a flash flood? I curse Simon for making me worry about him. But within another minute, my worry spills into panic. I have to leave the shelter and search for him. I pull the parka hood over my head, step into the downpour, and march toward the slope.
I’m counting on altruistic courage to seize hold of me and guide me down. Yet when I lean toward the dark ravine, fear slips into my veins, paralyzes my limbs. My throat tightens and I plead out loud: “Please, dear God, or Buddha, whoever’s listening. Make him return right now. I can’t stand it anymore. Make him return, and I promise—”
Simon’s face pops into view. His hair, his down jacket, his jeans are soaking wet, and there he is, panting like a dog who wants to play more fetch. My one second of gratitude dissolves into anger.
We run for the archway. Simon slips off his jacket and twists the sleeves, releasing a small flood onto the ground. “Now what are we going to do?” I grouse.
“Keep each other warm.” His teeth are chattering. He leans against the tunnel wall, then pulls me toward him, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me. His hands are icy. “Come on, relax.” He rocks me slightly. “There, that’s better.”
I try to recall the morning’s lovemaking, the unexpected joy, the welling up of emotion we both had. But throughout my body, bundles of muscles tighten and cramp—my jaw, my chest, my forehead. I feel restrained, stifled. I ask myself, How can I relax? How can I let go of everything that’s happened? You need complete trust to do that.
And then a bad thought lands on my brain: Has Simon slept with other women since our separation? Of course he has! The guy can’t go without sex for more than a couple of days. One time—this was a few years ago—we came across a magazine questionnaire, “Your Lover’s Inner Sex Life,” something stupid like that. I read the first question out loud to Simon: “How often does your lover masturbate?” And I was mentally checking “never or seldom” when Simon said, “Three or four times a week. It depends.”
“It depends?” I blurted. “On what? Sunny weather?”
“Boredom, as much as anything,” he answered. And I thought, Twice a week with me is boring?
And now I’m wondering, How many women has he been bored by since we broke up?
Simon massages my neck. “God, you’re so tight in here. Can you feel that?”
“Simon, this morning, you know?”
“Hmm, that was nice.”
“But don’t you think we should have used a condom?” I’m hoping he’ll say, “What for? I’m shooting blanks. You know that.” But instead he catches his breath. His fingers stop kneading. And then he rubs one of my arms briskly.
“Hmm. Yeah. I guess I forgot.”
My eyes lock. I try to breathe calmly. I’m going to ask him. But whatever he says next, I can take it. Besides, I’m not so holy myself. I slept with that creepy marketing director, Rick—or rather, we groped, never needed the condom lying on the nightstand, because “the big bruiser,” as my date called his flaccid penis, went on strike, something it had never done, he assured me, ever. And of course, I felt sexually humiliated, especially after pretending with well-timed sighs and shivers that I was aroused.
Simon’s mouth is near my ear. His breathing reminds me of the rushing sea sounds you can hear in a nautilus, a memory now endlessly trapped in a spiral.
“Simon, about the condom—are you saying you slept with someone else?”
His breathing stops. He lifts his head away from my ear. “Well . . . well, if I did, I don’t remember anymore.” He squeezes me. “Anyway, they don’t matter. Only you.” He strokes my hair.
“They? How many is they?”
“Uh . . . Hell, I don’t know.”
“Ten? Twelve?”
He laughs. “Gimme a break.”
“Three? Four?”
He’s quiet. I’m quiet. He exhales, shifts his posture slightly. “Hmm. Maybe something like that.”
“Which is it? Three or four?”
“Olivia, let’s not talk about this. It’ll only get you upset.”
I pull away from him. “I’m already upset. You slept with four other women and you didn’t even bother to use a goddamn condom this morning!” I walk to the opposite side of the archway and glare at him with my shit-detector eyes.
“It was three.” He’s looking at his feet. “And I was careful. I didn’t catch anything. I used a condom every time.”
“Every time! Boxes and boxes of condoms! How thoughtful of you to be thinking of me.”
“Come on, Olivia. Stop it.”
“Who were they? Someone I know? Tell me.” And then I think of a woman I despise, Verona, a free-lance art director we hired last year for one project. Everything about her was fake, her name, her eye-lashes, her fingernails, her breasts. I once told Simon her breasts were too symmetrical to be real. He laughed and said, “Well they s
ure squished like the real thing.” And when I asked how he knew that, he said that whenever they looked at the layouts together, she leaned over his shoulder and pressed her tits into his back. “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. He said that that would only have called more attention to the fact she was flirting, that it was better to just ignore it, since he wasn’t going to do anything about it anyway.
“Was one of them Verona?” I hold my arms tightly across my chest in an effort to stop trembling. He opens his mouth slightly, then closes it, resigned. “You did, didn’t you? You fucked that bitch.”
“I’m not saying that, you are.”
I’m crazed. “So tell me, were they real? Did she have squishy tits?”
“Come on, Olivia. Quit. Why on earth is this so important to you? It shouldn’t mean a damn thing.”
“It means you never intended to get back together with me! It means I can’t trust you. I’ve never been able to trust you.” I’m raging, drowning, needing to take Simon down with me. “I’ve never been important to you! I only tricked myself into thinking I was. And Kwan tricked you with her stupid ghost tricks, that séance. Yeah, remember that? What Elza said? You were supposed to forget her, move on with your life. And you know what? Kwan made that up. She lied! I told her to.”
Simon gives a small laugh. “Olivia, you’re acting crazy. Do you actually think I believed that séance shit? I thought we were both just humoring Kwan.”
I’m sobbing: “Right, barrels of laughs . . . Only it wasn’t a joke, Simon, she was there! I swear, she was, I saw her. And you know what she was saying? Forget her? Fuck no! She was begging you to forget me. She said to wait—”
Simon claps his hand to his forehead. “You just never give up, do you?”
“Me give up? You’ve never given her up!”
Simon’s eyes narrow. “You want to know what the real problem is? You use Elza as a scapegoat for all your insecurities. You’ve made her a bigger deal in your life than she ever was in mine. You never even knew her, but you project every doubt about yourself onto her. . . .”
I put my hands over my ears. And as he continues to heap his pseudo-analytic garbage on me, I rack my brain for another weapon, a final, fatal bullet to the heart. And that’s when I recall secretly reading some letters Elza had written Simon, their pet names, their youthful promises. I turn to him. “You think I’m crazy? Well, maybe I am, because I can see her right now! Yeah, Elza! She’s standing right in front of you. She just said, ‘Angel Buns, what do you mean I was no big deal?’ ” Simon’s face freezes. “You were supposed to wait, we were supposed to plant those trees together, one for every year.”
Simon tries to cover my mouth with his hand. I jump back.
“Don’t you see?” I wail. “She’s here! She’s in your head. She’s in your heart! She’s always here, right now, in this stupid fucking place, with her stupid fucking omens, telling us we’re doomed, Simon, we’re doomed!”
At last, Simon has a stricken look on his face I’ve never seen before. It scares me. He’s shaking. Drops are running down his cheeks—are they rain or tears?
“Why are you doing this?” he howls.
I turn and race out of the archway, into the rain. I run across the valley, gasping, pushing my heart to burst. By the time I reach Big Ma’s house, the rain has stopped. I walk through the courtyard, and Kwan gives me one of her knowing looks.
“Libby-ah, oh, Libby-ah,” she moans. “Why you crying?”
20
THE VALLEY OF STATUES
Simon still isn’t back. I look at my watch. An hour has gone by. I figure he’s fuming by himself. Fine, let him freeze his ass out there. It’s not quite noon. I pull out a paperback and climb into the bed. The trip to China is now a debacle. Simon will have to leave. That makes the most sense. After all, he doesn’t speak any Chinese. And this is Kwan’s village, and she’s my sister. As for the magazine piece, I’ll just have to take notes from here on out and find someone back home to polish it into an article.
Kwan calls out that it’s time for lunch. I muster my composure, ready to face the Chinese inquisition. “Where Simon?” she’ll ask. “Ai-ya, why you fight too much?” Kwan is in the central room, putting a steaming bowl on the table. “See? Tofu, tree ear, pickled green. You want take picture?” I have no desire to eat, or shoot photos. Du Lili bustles into the room with a pot of rice and three bowls. We begin to eat, or rather, they do, eagerly, critically.
“First not salty enough,” Kwan complains. “Now too salty.” Is this some sort of veiled message about Simon and me? A few minutes later she says to me, “Early this morning big sun, now look, rain come back.” Is she making a sneaky analogy to my fight with Simon? But throughout the rest of the meal, she and Du Lili don’t even mention his name. Instead, they gossip animatedly about people in the village, thirty years’ worth of marriages and diseases, unexpected tragedies and hilarious outcomes, all of which I have no interest in. My ear is attuned to the gate, waiting for the creak and slam of Simon’s return. I hear only the meaningless spatter of rain.
After lunch, Kwan says she and Du Lili are going to the community hall to visit Big Ma. Do I want to come? I imagine Simon returning to the house, searching for me, growing uneasy, worried, maybe even frantic. Shit, he wouldn’t worry, that’s what I do. “I think I’ll stay here,” I tell Kwan. “I need to reorganize my camera gear and enter some notes on what I’ve taken so far.”
“Okay. You get done later, come visit Big Ma. Last chance. Tomorrow we do funeral.”
When I’m finally alone, I sort through my baggies of film, checking for moisture. Damn this weather! It’s so damp and chilly that even with four layers of clothing, my skin feels clammy, my toes practically numb. Why did I let pride take precedence over warm clothes?
Before we left for China, Simon and I discussed what we should bring. I packed a large suitcase, a duffel, and my camera bag. Simon said he had two carry-ons, and then he goaded me: “By the way, don’t count on me to lug your extra junk.” I shot back: “Who asked you to?” And he retaliated with another taunt: “You never ask, you expect.” After that remark, I decided I wouldn’t let Simon help me—even if he insisted. Like a pioneer faced with a dead team of oxen and a desert to cross, I took a long, hard look at my travel inventory. I was determined to reduce my luggage to complete self-sufficiency: one wheeled carry-on and my camera bag. I pitched everything that was not absolutely essential. Out went the portable CD player and CDs, the exfoliant, skin toner, and rejuvenating cream, the hair dryer and conditioner, two pairs of leggings and matching tunic tops, half my stash of underwear and socks, a couple of novels I’d been meaning to read for the last ten years, a bag of prunes, two out of three rolls of toilet paper, a pair of fleece-lined boots, and the saddest omission, a purple down vest. In deciding what should go in my allotted space, I bet on tropical weather, hoped for the occasional night of Chinese opera, and didn’t even question whether there would be electricity.
And so, among the things I packed and now resent seeing in my tiny suitcase are two silk tanktops, a pair of canvas shorts, a clothes steamer, a pair of sandals, a swimsuit, and a neon-pink silk blazer. The only opera I’ll wear that to is the soap going on in my own little courtyard. At least I have the waterproof shell. Small consolation, big regret. I long for the down vest the way a person adrift in the sea deliriously dreams of water. Warmth—what I would give for it! Damn this weather! Damn Simon for being nice and toasty in his own down jacket. . . .
His down jacket—it’s drenched, sopping and useless. Just before I left him, he was shaking, with anger, I thought at the time. Now I wonder. Oh God! What are the signs of hypothermia? A vague memory about cold and anger strays across my mind. When was that, five or six years ago?
I was shooting photos in an emergency room, the usual dramatic stock for a hospital’s annual report. A team of paramedics wheeled in a shabbily dressed woman who reeked of urine. Her speech was slurred, she complained she was burning
up and had to take off a mink coat she didn’t have. I assumed she was drunk or high on drugs. And then she started convulsing. “Defibrillator!” someone shouted. I later asked one of the nurses what I should put in the caption—heart attack? alcoholism? “Put down that she died of January,” the nurse said angrily. And because I didn’t understand, he said, “It’s January. It’s cold. She died of hypothermia, just like six other homeless people this month.”
That won’t happen to Simon. He’s healthy. He’s always too warm. He rolls down the car window when other people are freezing, and he doesn’t even ask. He’s inconsiderate that way. He keeps people waiting. He doesn’t even think they might be worried. He’ll be here any minute. He’ll arrive with that irritating grin of his, and I’ll be pissed for worrying without reason.
After five minutes of trying to convince myself of these things, I run to the community hall to find Kwan.
IN THE TUNNEL of the second archway, Kwan and I find Simon’s jacket crumpled on the ground like a broken corpse. Stop whimpering, I tell myself. Crying means you expect the worst.
I stand at the top of the ledge that leads into the ravine and look down, searching for movement. Various scenarios play in my head. Simon, now delirious, wandering half clothed in the ravine. Rocks tumbling down from the peaks. The young man, who is not a cow herder at all but a modern-day bandit, stealing Simon’s passport. I blurt out to Kwan: “We ran into some kids, they screamed at us. And later this guy with some cows, he called us assholes. . . . I was tense. I went a little crazy, and Simon . . . he was trying to be nice, but then he got mad. And what I said, well, I didn’t mean it.” In the coved tunnel, my words sound confessional and hollow at the same time.
Kwan listens quietly, sadly. She doesn’t say anything to take away my guilt. She doesn’t respond with false optimism that all will be well. She unzips the day pack that Du Lili insisted we bring along. She spreads the space blanket on the ground, inflates the cushion, lays out the little camping stove and an extra canister of fuel.