Beautiful as Yesterday Read online

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Han Dong shakes his head in distress. “The innocent dreams we took to heart when we were young are just naïve. Do you remember that I once said I’d use my poetry to change Chinese people’s spiritual world? What a dreamer I was! You also said that you’d devote yourself to science just like Madame Curie. We used to think we were the happiest people in the world.”

  She is touched. “We were poor then, but we were happy.”

  “Now we’re no longer poor, but we have forgotten what happiness is.” A trace of sadness and bewilderment rises on his face, but it soon disappears. He uncrosses his arms and sips his wine, then holds it in front of his eyes, watching the red liquid with interest. “I must say, you have very good wine here in California. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy a few cases and ship them to China.”

  It is that fleeting moment of bewilderment and sadness that evokes Mary’s compassion toward him, making her recall their connected pasts. She asks softly, “What did you do after I left China?”

  “Oh, that’s a long story. Very long indeed. I almost didn’t get my bachelor’s degree because I had skipped too many classes, spending a lot of time writing poetry. Then I realized that I had to have a job to pay my bills. My girlfriend at the time helped me get a government job in Beijing, where her parents worked. Nothing fancy, just a clerical job, writing reports for our leaders, filing documents. I was still ambitious, dreaming of becoming a famous poet. I had actually been published by quite a few magazines, but then life played a trick on me.”

  He stops, meeting her eyes. “How do you like your wine?”

  “Mine? Oh, it’s pretty good.” Afraid that Han Dong will ask to taste her wine, like lovers do, Mary lifts her glass to her lips.

  Han Dong regards her with interest.

  “What kind of trick?” Mary presses.

  A feeble smile flashes on his face, but he continues. “Have you heard of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign? Well, I was busted for a few poems I wrote. They were just love poems, mimicking Byron, but I guess there was a little political stuff in there as well. I don’t even remember what it was. Anyway, a colleague of mine was so eager to please the leaders that he turned my poems in as evidence of my bourgeois decadence. That was then; now, who cares about a few subtle lines about sex and politics?

  “But still I lost my job and soon broke up with my girlfriend—she just couldn’t stop nagging me to write a penitence letter to the government. I went to help a friend run a hot-pot restaurant. We were making good money and thinking about opening two more branches in Beijing. Then the student movement for democracy started. My friend was always an advocate of democracy and free speech, so he turned our restaurant into a temporary hotel for students from outside Beijing and helped print and distribute pamphlets.”

  “Guo-Ying, my sister, was in Beijing at that time,” Mary adds, an attempt to show that she wasn’t entirely ignorant of the situation.

  Han Dong acknowledges this information with an indolent nod. “Of course, I was fully involved as well, feeling like a newborn person. I began to write poems again and even made a few speeches in Tiananmen Square. I should have known better, but I was blinded by my passion. After the central government declared that the movement was an antirevolutionary riot and put it down, our restaurant was forced to close and my friend was sentenced to two years in jail.”

  “How about yourself?”

  “I was lucky and was only detained at the police station for a few days. I was interrogated and threatened but was let go without being charged. Later, I tried my hand at different jobs before an old friend got me something at Bank of China. And I’ve stayed.” Han Dong doesn’t appear sentimental talking about his past; on the contrary, he looks relaxed, stretching his arms and suppressing a yawn, as if what he has just said was quite boring and unworthy.

  “How about that friend who was put in jail?”

  “He stayed in jail only for a year. Then a French journalist friend of his got him some kind of visa for political dissidents and helped him get to France. He didn’t do anything related to politics in France, though. He did some odd jobs for a while, then opened a Chinese restaurant. He’s certainly doing well and has all kinds of titles: this CEO, that board director. He even has a French wife, whose father owns some serious jewelry business. Just a few months ago, he came to Beijing for a trade show. He’s been trying to persuade me to get into real-estate investment in China with him. Who knows, I might do it.”

  Han Dong extracts a package of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and shakes out a cigarette.

  “Smoking is prohibited in restaurants here,” Mary whispers.

  He frowns, puts back the cigarette, and throws the package onto the table. “You Americans are all about rules. I don’t think I could ever get used to living here.” He runs the tip of his tongue around his lips and says casually, “You’re lucky. You weren’t in Beijing at that time.”

  She wants to tell him that she, in her Berkeley dorm room, watched on TV as tanks rolled onto Chang’an Avenue and how a slim man sporting a white shirt tried to stop a column of advancing tanks by standing in front of them, and how a squad of uniformed soldiers pointed their machine guns at protesters. She also wants to say that she heard a speech on the radio by a student leader who had escaped to the United States, who in a tearful and weary voice said that the tanks had knocked down the tents in Tiananmen Square where students were sleeping. In those days, Mary watched and read every piece of news about the Tiananmen Square massacre and the events that followed. The news sources varied, so did their reports. What was true, what was not, no one seemed to know for sure; even the surviving participants provided different versions of the story. And her calls to her sister were met with hesitancy or even silence. She ate and slept poorly and had nightmares of her sister lying on the ground, bullet-riddled and hollow-eyed.

  “Han Dong, you know, in 1989…” She stops, noticing the indifferent expression on his face. She swallows what she wanted to say and states instead, “I mean, if I’d stayed in China, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

  “Let me guess. Hmm, a scientist at China’s Academy of Sciences? Or a professor at Beijing University?” He sounds sarcastic.

  “I meant if I would have gotten involved in the political movement, if I would have gotten myself into trouble. I used to like reading books about politics.”

  “You’d have been totally okay. You were only interested in theories and concepts, not in action. You read the books I lent you like you were reading classic novels, purely for the pleasure of reading. Actually, studying philosophy might suit you. You could lock yourself up in your room for a month while I’d go absolutely mad if I couldn’t get out of my room for one day.”

  The waiter serves their salads, apologizing for the delay. “There is a birthday party over there.” He points at a far corner. “They ordered tons of stuff.” He is young, perhaps a student, has blond, curly hair and a nervous voice, and he blinks often. Mary asks for a glass of iced water in Mandarin—after speaking it for a while, she has a hard time switching back to English. Immediately realizing her mistake, she repeats her request in English. The waiter smiles mischievously and says in Mandarin with a Beijing accent, “Hao le, yi bei bing shui,” then switches to English. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When the waiter returns with the glass of iced water, Mary asks him where he learned Mandarin. He says that he taught English for a year in Beijing, where he met his fiancée, a Beijing native. After the waiter leaves, Han Dong remarks, “You can’t believe how many foreigners live in Beijing nowadays. You see them everywhere. Before, they came for sightseeing or a temp job, but now they’ve moved their families over, the parents working locally and the kids going to an international school. Somehow it reminds me of the gold rush in California, except that this time everyone is coming to China. I’ve seen little white kids speaking perfect Mandarin. That’s just amazing.”

  He leans across the table
, staring into her face. “Mei, I have to say that you’re even prettier than before; you’ve got that kind of classic look. I’ve seen many pretty women, and some of them were even beautiful, but they bored me to death. Like my ex-wife. She’d be all smiles if I just bought her a gold necklace. When we got divorced, she wanted the house, the car, all the furniture and kitchen appliances, even the Omega watch I was wearing. When we were at college, I must have been blind to have let you go. After all these years, I still recall the time we went for a walk after dinner, talking about poetry, about philosophy, about our dreams.” He grabs Mary’s hand.

  Flustered, she pulls her hand out of his grip and places both her hands in her lap, her face turning scarlet and her hands trembling. After she composes herself, she says, “What’s the point in talking about the past? We’re both parents now.”

  “America hasn’t changed you, nor has time.” He leans back in his chair, takes a green leaf with his fork from his plate, and lifts the fork to his mouth. But his eyes, full of desire and affection, eyes that she has dreamed of more than once, fix on Mary’s face. She looks toward the door, at two old women who are entering, but all she can think about is the captivated look in his deep-set eyes. She knows that she has never forgotten him, her first and only love before she married Bob. If not for him, she wouldn’t have left China and her life would have been entirely different.

  For a moment, she allows herself to be carried away by her reflection. She’s frightened, confused, yet excited, like a caged bird suddenly facing an open door.

  Han Dong, sensing Mary’s dilemma, leans forward again, extending his hand, palm up, in front of her, staring into her face. In her daze, Mary places her right hand on his without looking at him, allowing him to lift it to his lips. She shivers when his soft lips touch her skin.

  She finally meets Han Dong’s eyes. She says to herself that she should just get up and leave the restaurant, but all she does is withdraw her hand mechanically after he has kissed it a few more times.

  Both know what these few seconds mean. Han Dong whispers her name affectionately.

  She lowers her head like a coy girl, her mind blank. At this moment, God, Bob, and Alex are nothing but empty words that have no influence on her. As she meets Han Dong’s eyes again, she loathes herself for her inability to resist temptation, but she cannot seem to muster the strength to leave the table; in fact, she smiles at him.

  From that moment on, everything seems like stage acting to Mary. They continue chatting over their meals and drinks. He asks about Alex and how she met Bob, and she asks about their old acquaintances and how he met his ex-wife. Several times, when he says something slightly funny, she laughs too loudly, flirtatiously. She is behaving, she knows, like the kind of woman she usually despises.

  They mention the whopping trade deficit between China and the United States, and the pressure the United States has imposed on China to reform its currency policy. They laugh at the scandal between Bill Clinton and his plump, blowsy intern.

  Throughout their conversation, Mary feels that she and Han Dong are like two politicians who have reached a dirty deal yet have to cover up their scheme with normal conversation in front of their voters, their public.

  After Han Dong pays the bill, he invites her to his hotel for coffee. He’s staying at the Claremont, a magnificent resort hotel; she’s been there for a conference. She agrees without hesitation, as if believing this is an innocent offer. On her way out, she reaches into her purse and shuts off her cell phone.

  They hail a taxi, and Mary insists on sitting in the front, next to the driver. As the car jerks into traffic and gathers speed, she stares out the window at the passing pedestrians, who look perfectly happy, saying to herself every few minutes that she should stop the car right here, right this second. Every inch from the restaurant is a step closer to a swamp, she reminds herself. But with time moving on and Telegraph Avenue disappearing behind them, she remains in her seat, trying to assure herself that she will just have coffee with Han Dong in his hotel lobby, then say good-bye after a handshake; she pictures the expression she will wear as she extends her hand to him: gracious and polite, even with a halfhearted invitation to pay a weekend visit to her and her husband’s house.

  They get out of the taxi and walk across the hotel’s marble entryway, through the revolving door, into the lobby, and toward the elevators. A bellboy coming down with an empty luggage rack exits the elevator and holds one side of the automatic door for them. As soon as the door closes, Han Dong puts his arm around Mary’s waist. Her heart misses a beat, but she allows him, her hands placed rigidly on her purse in front of her, her eyes gazing at the center of the closed stainless-steel doors as if wanting to force them open with the sheer power of her staring. The moment the doors open, he slides his arm to her hip; again, she doesn’t stop him.

  No sooner do they enter the room than Han Dong turns her and pins her against the door, hands on her hips, kissing her fervently on her mouth and neck. She drops her handbag, twists her head away from him, and kicks, trying to escape his kisses. Push him away, she commands herself, but then suddenly she gives up, turns back to him, and opens her mouth to take in his tongue. The moment their tongues touch, Mary throws her arms around his neck. Yes, she wants him! she exclaims in her heart. Hasn’t she always been fantasizing about this moment? Hasn’t she been yearning for a little craziness and boldness in her drama-free and mundane life? She sucks on her old lover’s tongue greedily. She reasons further: they grew up together, were lovers—each other’s first lover—for three years; they never made love—premarital sex was unthinkable in those years. Just once, maybe it is not too terrible a mistake. After she came to the United States, many nights, filled with shame and guilt, she imagined them having sex on the bed, in the woods, or on a beach; she even regretted that she hadn’t made love to him while she still could. These dreams bothered her, making her doubt her sanity. Maybe her wild dreams, she thought then, were merely a way for her to escape from her onerous lab experiments and unsympathetic adviser.

  Han Dong has never been out of her mind, she admits painfully, as she attacks him with hungry kisses on his face and neck. She plants her hands on his hips and pulls him toward her, feeling his erection against her body, which is swelling with heat and sexual stimulation. A vine clinging to a tree with its tendrils, that’s how she sees herself. Is she taking revenge on him for abandoning her? she asks herself. Is she a victim of her buried desire?

  On the other hand, through her panting and the pounding of blood in her ears, she hears clearly a cold voice inside her, “You don’t love him, nor does he love you.”

  She closes her eyes, letting go of herself, a self that is now a stranger to her.

  Han Dong leads her to the bed and lowers her onto it. Astride her, he takes off her sweater and throws it onto a davenport against the window. “Oh, my baby,” she hears him say, his voice oddly twangy and pretentious, reminding her of bad acting in a cheap romance movie. She opens her eyes, expecting to see him looking at her face with flaming eyes, but instead he is gazing at her lacy, semitransparent, black bra, smiling mysteriously.

  Why is he smiling? Mary wonders. Is it because he thinks her breasts are too small? Is it because he is so excited at seeing his first lover’s half-naked body after all these years that he wants to take things slowly? Is it because he is contemplating some kind of fetish, such as role-playing stuff? Or is it because he thinks her hypocritical—if she didn’t plan to sleep with him, why did she wear such a bra?

  She feels goose bumps all over, and her conscience suddenly wakes up and hits her hard. She sees Bob and Alex and hears their voices. They’re as real as the bed she’s lying on.

  “Don’t…,” she manages to utter.

  But Han Dong’s hands are already at her belt. Soon he’ll see her black panties, just as transparent as her bra, and her trimmed pubic hair. Terrified, she sits up and shoves him off her with all her strength. He rolls across the bed and falls onto the f
loor with a thud.

  She buckles her belt with quivering hands and gets off the bed to pick up her sweater. She puts it on with her back facing him, then grabs her handbag. As she opens the door, she turns to look back: he still sits where he fell, looking at her contemptuously, his face red with fury, his mouth twisted as if saying something.

  Bitch, he must be calling her, Mary thinks.

  “Sorry, I’m terribly sorry,” she hears herself say.

  Before hailing a taxi to the garage where she parked her car, she fixes her makeup in the hotel’s public ladies’ room. She can’t remember afterward how she got home; it is a wonder that she wasn’t stopped for speeding.

  “Mom is back!” Alex sees her first through the kitchen window and shouts merrily.

  The door opens, and Alex jumps up and hugs her hard. Her mother and Bob stand at the door.

  “Is your cell phone battery dead? I was so worried. I called you a gazillion times.” Though his tone is unhappy, Bob looks relieved.

  “You forgot to take a shawl with you today. Look at you, your lips have turned purple. Come in, don’t catch a cold,” her mother says at the same time Bob is speaking.

  Ingrid appears from the living room, thinner than Mary remembers, smiling uneasily. “Hi, Mary, I arrived an hour ago,” she says in Mandarin. She approaches her sister and, after a brief pause, holds out her arms to hug her.

  IN THE YEAR 2001

  TEN

  January

  THEY’VE ALL LEFT—HER older daughter and Bob to work, and her grandson, Dongdong, to kindergarten. Except for the periodic sounds from the fridge and birds chirping in the backyard, it is very quiet. Fenglan can hear her footsteps as she walks on the hardwood floor in her cork-soled sandals and, if she tries, even the clock ticking in her daughter’s bedroom. The quietness disturbs her: something is missing, she feels. If she were in her own apartment in China right now, she would surely hear Old Aunt Huang scolding her unemployed daughter-in-law, saying that she never helps with housework, or the sounds of hammering, sawing, and drilling from a neighbor remodeling. Of course, there also would be street vendors’ chanting, and buses’ and cars’ honking. She used to complain about these noises because they interrupted her sleep, or made it hard to hear the TV or radio, but now she misses them—they kept her mind occupied, made the days go by; they reminded her that she was still alive.