“This is the lowest bitch-work in the camp; no one has ever lasted longer than a year at this post.”
The hostel owner is frantic, stomping out of her narrowly-situated, sweaty kitchen-tent, assaulting us with questions.
“Who’s going to run this place while I’m down with the smallpox? Don’t you KNOW anyone?”
“Yeah, but they’re all four-year-olds,” McAuley retorts in a flat whisper. It’s his usual detached tone - eyes averted, as if he can’t surmount the prospect that his speech could actually fall on comprehending ears. I can feel my right eye narrow to a slit, the sinews twisting in my right shoulder.
“Elitist prig...,”
I spit.
The tables and yellowed newspapers erupt, giving way to wide bins of pomegranates and lemons, the narrow tents are now yawning skylit atriums. Wide open glass doors sweep in the sweet decay-smell of autumn leaves. African lullabies push themselves from my lips, a call answered by Miss Pham, now a good six-months pregnant, adding harmony while she pushes her grocery cart past us.
“Nicely done,” I smile, and walk out the door. At the curb is a windowless Chevy van, fitted out with off-road suspension and knobby tires.
“It’s about time you guys showed up.”
The New Strangers and I plummet into the valley, down hills of clover and wild strawberry. The speed, sharp turns, the sudden drops resound in my gut as the van flies off grassy moguls, finding its tread instantly without spinning. Through the windshield, I watch the valley-basin approach, steadying myself with my eyes, scanning the rough hillside. The New Stranger at the wheel is a good driver; I trust him, even though the onset of motion sickness seems to hang down in my elbows and knees.
We pile out of the van. The metal frame of an abandoned swing-set stands in the green basin. I pull myself up to the crook between two of the endmost supports and watch the sun set, trying to process the conversation we’d had during our descent: who were we, again? Catholics ? Jungians? Zen Monks? Hassids? We tried to remember ways we could find each other. Email? The United States Post? We knew it was impossible. We were already lost.
The sun has gone down. The cashier at Englund Marine has sent me into Union Town to deliver a message. I’ve been in this tenement building before, in dreams maybe, in this rude amateurish addition to the stately turn-of-the-nineteenth-century bath-house. I’m asking for Mrs. Todd who operates the Workers’ Saloon, but the streets keep dropping me into the Shanghai underground, into the tunnels of Seattle’s public market, into the carpeted top-floor apartment over the steam-baths, into the untended gardens that lie to the east of this strange castle... and the message is forgotten.
I fall through the roof of the penthouse again. There are no smells here, no indentations in the carpet fibers. It’s not night or day; a grey television snow lights up the windows. There has been no movement here to unsettle the dust. I crawl under the bed and the floor drops me again onto the stone path to the Castle Shrine, just south of the Main Compound. I enter from the east gate. A scattering of tiny windows lets in slivers of light from all four directions. The room is tiled; deep browns and light blues map out acerb patterns on the floor and ceiling. Shelves set into the walls hold brittle flower arrangements. The pool in the center of the room holds no water; the fountainhead is snarled in flowering vines. A television sits on a wooden table against the north wall, screen facing vaguely southeast. It shows a queen attended by two ladies, surveying her court, choking back tears.
I fall through the floor into the slanted tunnels of the Public Market. Fiona is riding on my back; we are moving in a quicksand of tourist swarms, looking for a place to sit down and eat ...butter knives and paper napkins and stained coffee pots. The 1970s haven’t happened yet; I must be asleep. I hear the giggling, babbling of a young girl, but it is not her. She waddles up to the side of my bed, tickling the sides of my chest. I look down and she’s not there, but I hear her voice bubbling and feel her little hands goading me to wake up. I strain to look over my right shoulder.
“Who are you?”
She giggles. I roll out of bed and look down at myself, but I’m not there, either.
The hostel owner is frantic, stomping out of her narrowly-situated, sweaty kitchen-tent, assaulting us with questions.
“Who’s going to run this place while I’m down with the smallpox? Don’t you KNOW anyone?”
“Yeah, but they’re all four-year-olds,” McAuley retorts in a flat whisper. It’s his usual detached tone - eyes averted, as if he can’t surmount the prospect that his speech could actually fall on comprehending ears. I can feel my right eye narrow to a slit, the sinews twisting in my right shoulder.
“Elitist prig...,”
I spit.
The tables and yellowed newspapers erupt, giving way to wide bins of pomegranates and lemons, the narrow tents are now yawning skylit atriums. Wide open glass doors sweep in the sweet decay-smell of autumn leaves. African lullabies push themselves from my lips, a call answered by Miss Pham, now a good six-months pregnant, adding harmony while she pushes her grocery cart past us.
“Nicely done,” I smile, and walk out the door. At the curb is a windowless Chevy van, fitted out with off-road suspension and knobby tires.
“It’s about time you guys showed up.”
The New Strangers and I plummet into the valley, down hills of clover and wild strawberry. The speed, sharp turns, the sudden drops resound in my gut as the van flies off grassy moguls, finding its tread instantly without spinning. Through the windshield, I watch the valley-basin approach, steadying myself with my eyes, scanning the rough hillside. The New Stranger at the wheel is a good driver; I trust him, even though the onset of motion sickness seems to hang down in my elbows and knees.
We pile out of the van. The metal frame of an abandoned swing-set stands in the green basin. I pull myself up to the crook between two of the endmost supports and watch the sun set, trying to process the conversation we’d had during our descent: who were we, again? Catholics ? Jungians? Zen Monks? Hassids? We tried to remember ways we could find each other. Email? The United States Post? We knew it was impossible. We were already lost.
The sun has gone down. The cashier at Englund Marine has sent me into Union Town to deliver a message. I’ve been in this tenement building before, in dreams maybe, in this rude amateurish addition to the stately turn-of-the-nineteenth-century bath-house. I’m asking for Mrs. Todd who operates the Workers’ Saloon, but the streets keep dropping me into the Shanghai underground, into the tunnels of Seattle’s public market, into the carpeted top-floor apartment over the steam-baths, into the untended gardens that lie to the east of this strange castle... and the message is forgotten.
I fall through the roof of the penthouse again. There are no smells here, no indentations in the carpet fibers. It’s not night or day; a grey television snow lights up the windows. There has been no movement here to unsettle the dust. I crawl under the bed and the floor drops me again onto the stone path to the Castle Shrine, just south of the Main Compound. I enter from the east gate. A scattering of tiny windows lets in slivers of light from all four directions. The room is tiled; deep browns and light blues map out acerb patterns on the floor and ceiling. Shelves set into the walls hold brittle flower arrangements. The pool in the center of the room holds no water; the fountainhead is snarled in flowering vines. A television sits on a wooden table against the north wall, screen facing vaguely southeast. It shows a queen attended by two ladies, surveying her court, choking back tears.
I fall through the floor into the slanted tunnels of the Public Market. Fiona is riding on my back; we are moving in a quicksand of tourist swarms, looking for a place to sit down and eat ...butter knives and paper napkins and stained coffee pots. The 1970s haven’t happened yet; I must be asleep. I hear the giggling, babbling of a young girl, but it is not her. She waddles up to the side of my bed, tickling the sides of my chest. I look down and she’s not there, but I hear her voice bubbling and feel her little hands goading me to wake up. I strain to look over my right shoulder.
“Who are you?”
She giggles. I roll out of bed and look down at myself, but I’m not there, either.
