"And why is it millions of people can’t get housing registrations?"
"It’s not that they can’t get them. They can. They just don’t want to live where their housing registration is, in some poverty-stricken remote village or wherever, so they leave and go someplace else. Someplace where they’re not registered. They join the floating population."
"So then where do they live?"
"On the margins. Some of them get rich. But most of them-well-crash somewhere, if you know what I mean. Stay with friends, or relatives. Patch something together."
He bit into his bing. "Alice, you were right. This is great. And for street food! Oh. Here. I almost forgot." He dug into his pocket and handed her a small, two-inch-square newspaper clipping.
Lucile Swan, 75, died May 2, 1965, at her home in New York. Noted artist and lifelong confidante of the Catholic mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The cause was heart failure…
"Her obituary," Alice smiled. "Where did you get it?"
"When I first started researching all this I went back and poked around a little bit in New York. That’s where Teilhard died too. But they didn’t see that much of each other in those last years, even though they both lived in New York."
"There was a lot of bitterness-she was resentful and jealous," Alice said. "I can tell from their letters, the book we bought at Zhoukoudian. It’s fascinating."
"Really?" He ate thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes. I can really relate to her life. What I wouldn’t have given to have had somebody like her, so smart, so aware, for a mother."
"What was your mother like?" He added more hot sauce.
"Died when I was a baby. Never had one."
He looked up, penetrating. "That’s too bad. God. Some life. At least you have your dad."
"Who?"
"Your dad."
"Oh, you mean Horace." She smiled wryly. "I never call him Dad."
"You don’t?" He stared for a second. "Hey. Look. I’ve been meaning to apologize for bringing all that up, the first day we met, at breakfast. You know, the Alice Speech. I know it made you uncomfortable. I feel bad about it. I won’t mention your father at all if you like."
"I don’t really care that much," she said, staring at the obituary. "I hate everything he stands for. Basically, I don’t have anything to do with him."
"Ah." He examined her face. "That simple?"
"That simple."
"Well. Anyway." He nodded at the newspaper clipping. "I got to wondering about Lucile’s death, so I looked up the records. This is all I found." He saw how Alice was looking at it. "Why don’t you keep it?" he said kindly. "It’s not like I need it for the research."
"Really? Are you sure? I’d like to have this."
"Keep it." He resumed eating. Just then the Chinese couple on their left got up to leave, and the man pushed against Alice so hard, she almost fell into Spencer’s lap. Instead of apologizing he muttered, "Waiguoren," Foreigner, and stalked off.
Spencer stared after him. "The Chinese don’t like us too much, huh?"
"Not a bit," she said. "We’re barbarians. Ghosts. Even the lowest laborer feels superior to the most educated, most successful foreigner. You’ll see."
"That must be hard for you, being an American."
She tore into her third bing. "I’m not what you’d really call an American," she said between bites. "And believe it or not, that attitude is actually one of the things about the place I find appealing." She could feel his stare, but there was no use explaining. He’d never understand the safe, settled feeling it gave her to be a foreigner in China, an outside person, barely tolerated. The way the geometry of her world seemed righted here, all weights and balances, all retributions, called into play.
He put down his bing and pushed his plate away. "Best lamb I’ve had in years. But I can’t finish it."
She eyed his food. "Really? You’re not going to eat any more?"
"No."
She pulled it over and started in.
"Alice. How do you do it?"
"I don’t know. I just do."
"But you’re so-so slim!"
"Yeah. I keep eating and eating, and I don’t get fat. Sometimes I even think I’m trying-to pack something in around me. And then other times I realize that actually, I’m not even hungry. But I just keep eating anyway."
Alice sat on the bed naked except for the antique red silk stomach-protector, two strings tied around her neck, two around her waist. It was no more than a silk trapezoid with four strings. As an undergarment its purpose had never been clear to Alice, for it covered only the belly and left the breasts and the genitals bare. She had always assumed its function had been to conserve qi, the vital energy traditionally thought to be centered around the navel-but she wasn’t sure. In any case she felt good in it, and it suited her, since she never wore a bra. She loved the way she felt in it, especially when she went out at night.
She opened the book of Teilhard and Lucile’s letters to a passage she had marked the night before, this a letter Teilhard had written to Lucile: Sometimes, I think I would like to vanishbefore you into some thing which would be bigger than myself,- your real yourself, Lucile, – your real life, your God. And then Ishould be yours, completely.
Her real self, Alice thought, her real life. Somehow Lucile had accomplished a thing Alice had only imagined: gotten her true core coupled with Teilhard. Even if they’d never fully committed to each other.
She put the book down and opened The Phenomenon ofMan. To connect the two energies, of the body and the soul, in acoherent manner… Had Pierre and Lucile achieved that? Maybe. Though Lucile’s letters and diary entries-also included in the book-made it clear she was dissatisfied. Thelive, physical, real you, all of you. I want you so terribly and I’mtrying so hard to understand…
She rolled over on her stomach and dropped the books to the floor. She figured she, Alice, could connect the body and the soul-definitely, she could, if she just found the right man. A Chinese man, maybe. Though would there ever be one who’d accept her?
Of all the men she’d known, only Jian had come close. He’d understood her; he’d taken the time. But in the end he didn’t love her enough to fight for her. His separateness, his Chineseness, had won.
And who had she known who’d truly accepted her? Who’d been truly, seamlessly unconditional?
Only Horace.
God. She groaned and covered her eyes. He never understood her, it was true, but he was loyal and he never wavered. It was a kind of love. Punishing maybe, unfair, controlling, but love nevertheless.
Like the day she graduated from Rice University.
He had flown in early. As a senior member of the Texas delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, Horace didn’t get back home to Houston much. But she knew he would come to her graduation from anywhere. From Boston. From Bahrain.
She could still see the dorm room, the books and typewriter and stereo packed in their boxes, the posters down, the bare-box walls bereft. Outside, the sweat-bath Houston summer was already rising from the ground in waves. Then he got off the elevator. She could hear the special tap of his walk. She felt the ripple of recognition, the thrill that followed him as he strode down the hall.
He stepped in the door, saw her. His face brightened with joy. "Too long, darling." He put his arms around her and squeezed. "So good to see you."
"You too." She smiled. He was someone who’d always known her. At school she’d been mostly on her own.
"I’m proud of you, Alice." He stood back and admired her.
"Thanks. Hard to believe it’s over." She looked balefully around the room. "And still so much to pack!"
"Go on, continue. I’ll watch." He sat on her plastic desk-chair in his gray tropical suit and wine-colored tie. He was a small man, exact, articulate. When he was onstage he grew to evangelical stature-but now, in repose, it was easy to see why he was the perfect elected official, conservative, smiling, devoted to the business and progress of the South. "Congratulations. And graduating cum laude too!"