“If Simon returns to Big Ma’s house,” she reasons in Chinese, “Du Lili will send someone to let us know. If he comes to this place, you will be here to help him get warm.” She opens her umbrella.
“Where are you going?”
“A short look around, that’s all.”
“What if you get lost too?”
“Meiyou wenti.” Don’t worry, she’s telling me. “This is my childhood home. Every rock, every twist and turn in the hills, I know them all like old friends.” She steps outside, into the drizzle.
I call to her: “How long will you be gone?”
“Not long. Maybe one hour, no more.”
I look at my watch. It’s almost four-thirty. At five-thirty, the golden half-hour will come, but now dusk scares me. By six, it will be too dark to walk.
After she leaves, I pace between the archway’s two openings. I look out on one side, see nothing, then repeat the process on the opposite side. You’re not going to die, Simon. That’s fatalistic bullshit. I think of people who beat the odds. The lost skier at Squaw Valley who dug a snow cave and was saved three days later. And that explorer who was trapped on an ice floe—was it John Muir?—who did jumping jacks all night long to stay alive. And of course, there was that Jack London tale about a man caught in a blizzard who manages to build a fire out of wet twigs. But then I remember the ending: A clump of snow slides off the branch above and extinguishes his hope below. And then other endings come to mind: The snowboarder who fell into a tree well and was found dead the next morning. The hunter who sat down to rest one day on the Italian–Austrian border and wasn’t discovered until spring thaw thousands of years later.
I try meditating to block out these negative thoughts: palms open, mind open. But all I can think about is how cold my fingers are. Is that how cold Simon is?
I imagine myself as Simon, standing in the same archway, overheated from our argument, muscles tight, wanting to bolt in any dangerous direction. I’ve seen that happen before. When he learned that our friend Eric had been killed in Vietnam, he went meandering alone and wound up lost in the eucalyptus groves of the Presidio. The same thing happened when we visited some friends of friends in the country, and one man started telling racist jokes. Simon stood up and announced that the guy had his head screwed on wrong. At the time, I was angry that he had created a scene and left me to deal with the aftermath. But now, recalling this moment, I feel a mournful admiration for him.
The rain has stopped. That’s what he too must be seeing. “Hey,” I imagine him saying, “let’s check out those rocks again.” I walk outside to the ledge, look down. He wouldn’t see stomach-churning steepness the way I do. He wouldn’t see a hundred ways to crack your skull open. He’d just walk down the trail. So I do. Did Simon go this way? About halfway down, I look back, then around. There isn’t any other way into this place, unless he threw himself over the ledge and dropped seventy feet to the bottom. Simon isn’t suicidal, I tell myself. Besides, suicidal people talk about killing themselves before they do it. And then I remember reading a story in the Chronicle about a man who parked his new Range Rover on the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour, then threw himself over the railing. His friends expressed the usual shock and disbelief. “I saw him at the health club just last week,” one was reported as saying. “He told me he held two thousand shares of Intel stock at twelve that were now trading at seventy-eight. Man, he was talking about the future.”
Toward the bottom of the ravine, I check the sky for the amount of daylight still left. I see dark birds fluttering like moths; they fall suddenly, then flap upward again. They’re making shrill, high-pitched noises, the sounds of frightened creatures. Bats—that’s what they are! They must have escaped from a cave, now out for a flight at dusk, the hour of insects. I saw bats in Mexico once—mariposas, the waiters called them, butterflies, so as not to scare the tourists. I wasn’t afraid of them then, nor am I now. They are harbingers of hope, as welcome as the dove that brought a leafy twig to Noah. Salvation is nearby. Simon is nearby too. Perhaps the bats soared out because he entered their lair and disturbed their upside-down slumber.
I follow the twisty, uneven path, trying to see where the bats are coming from, where they return. My foot slides, and I wrench my ankle. I hobble over to a rock and sit down. “Simon!” I expect my yelling to carry as if in an amphitheater. But my cries are sucked into the hollows of the ravine.
At least I’m not cold anymore. There’s hardly any wind down here. The air is still, heavy, almost oppressive. That’s strange. Isn’t the wind supposed to blow faster? What was in that brochure Simon and I did on Measure J, the one against Manhattanization—the Bernoulli effect, how forests of skyscrapers create wind tunnels, because the smaller volume through which air passes decreases pressure and increases velocity—or does it increase pressure?
I look at the clouds. They’re streaming along. The wind is definitely blowing up there. And the more I watch, the more unsteady the ground feels, like the bottom of a salad spinner. And now the peaks, the trees, the boulders grow enormous, ten times larger than they were a minute ago. I stand and walk again, this time careful of my footing. Although the ground appears level, it’s as if I were climbing a steep incline. A force seems to push me back. Is this one of those places on earth where the normal properties of gravity and density, volume and velocity have gone haywire? I grab on to the cracks of a rocky mound and strain so hard to pull myself up I’m sure a blood vessel in my brain will burst.
And then I gasp. I’m standing on a crest. Below is an abrupt drop of twenty feet or so, as if the earth collapsed like a soufflé, creating a giant sinkhole. Stretching out to the mountains at the other end of the ravine is a bumpy wasteland pincushioned with those things I saw earlier—cairns, monuments, whatever they are. It alternately resembles a petrified forest of burnt trees and a subterranean garden of stalagmites from a former cave. Did a meteor fall here? The Valley of the Shadow of Death, that’s what this is.
I go up to one of the formations and circle it like a dog, then circle it again, attempting to make sense of it. Whatever this is, it sure does not grow that way naturally. Someone deliberately stacked these rocks—and at angles that don’t look balanced. Why don’t the rocks fall? Large boulders perch on the points of small spires. Other rocks tilt on dime-size spots, as if they were iron filings latched on to a magnet. They could pass for modern art, sculptures of lamps and hat racks, precisely planned to give them a haphazard look. On one pile the topmost rock looks like a misshapen bowling ball, its holes suggesting vacant eyes and a screaming mouth, like the person in that Edvard Munch painting. I see other formations with the same features. When were these made? By whom and why? No wonder Simon wanted to come down here. He came back to investigate further. As I continue walking, this strange gathering of rocks resembles more and more the blackened victims of Pompeii, Hiroshima, the Apocalypse. I’m surrounded by an army of these limestone statues, bodies risen from the calcified remains of ancient sea creatures.
A dank, fusty odor hits my nose and panic rises in my throat. I look around for signs of decay. I’ve smelled this same stench before. But where? When? It feels overwhelmingly familiar, an olfactory version of déjà vu—déjà senti. Or perhaps it’s instinctive, like the way animals know that smoke comes from fire and fire leads to danger. The odor is trapped in my brain as visceral memory, emotional residue of stomach-cramping fear and sadness, but without the reason that caused it.
I hurry past another stack of rocks. But my shoulder catches a jutting edge, and I scream as the entire load collapses. I stare at the rubble. Whose magic did I just destroy? I have the uneasy feeling I have broken a spell and these metamorphisms will soon begin to sway and march. Where is the archway? Now there seem to be more rock mounds—have they multiplied?—and I must weave through this maze, my legs going one direction, my mind arguing that I should go another. What would Simon do? Whenever I’ve become uncertain about accomplishing a physical feat, he’s been t
he reasoning voice, assuring me I can run another half-mile, or hike to the next hill, or swim to the dock. And there were times in the past when I believed him, and was grateful that he believed in me.
I imagine Simon urging me on now. “Come on, Girl Scout, move your ass.” I look for the stone wall and archway to orient myself. But nothing is distinct. I see only gradations of flat-light shadows. Then I remember those times I became angry with Simon because I listened to him and failed. When I yelled at him after I tried rollerblading and fell on my butt. When I cried because my backpack was too heavy.
I sit on the ground in exasperation, whimpering. Fuck this, I’m calling a taxi. Look how dopey I’ve become. Do I really believe I can stick my hand up, hail a taxi, and get out of this mess? Is that all that I’ve managed to store in the emergency section of my inner resources—my willingness to pay cab fare? Why not a limo? I must be losing my mind!
“Simon! Kwan!” Hearing the panic in my voice, I grow even more panicked. I try to move more quickly but my body feels heavy, pulled to the earth’s core. I bump into one of the statues. A rock topples, grazes my shoulder. And just like that, all the terror I’ve been holding in bubbles out of my mouth and I begin to cry like an infant. I can’t walk. I can’t think. I sink to the ground and clutch myself. I’m lost! They’re lost! All three of us are trapped in this terrible land. We’ll die here, rot and slough, then petrify and become other faceless statues! Shrill voices accompany my screams. The caves are singing, songs of sorrow, songs of regret.
I cover my ears, close my eyes, to shut out the craziness of the world, my mind, both. You can make it stop, I tell myself. I’m straining hard to believe this; I can feel a cord in my brain stretching taut, and then it rips and I’m soaring, free of my body and its mortal fears, growing light and giddy. So this is how people become psychotic, they simply let go. I can see myself in a boring Swedish movie, slow to react to painfully obvious ironies. I howl like a madwoman at how ridiculous I look, how stupid it is to die in a place like this. And Simon will never know how nervous I became. He’s right. I’m hysterical!
A pair of hands grabs my shoulders, and I yell.
It’s Kwan, her face full of worry. “What happen? Who you talking to?”
“Oh God!” I jump up. “I’m lost. I thought you were too.” I’m sniffling and babbling between staccato breaths. “I mean, are we? Are we lost?”
“No-no-no,” she says. I notice then that she has a wooden box tucked under one arm and balanced on her hip. It looks like an old chest for silverware.
“What’s that?”
“Box.” With her free hand, Kwan helps me onto my rubbery legs.
“I know it’s a box.”
“This way.” She guides me by the elbow. She says nothing about Simon. She is strangely solemn, unusually taciturn. And fearing that she might have bad news to tell me, I feel my chest tighten.
“Did you see—” She cuts me off by shaking her head. I’m relieved, then disappointed. I no longer know how I should feel from moment to moment. We’re edging our way past the strange statues. “Where’d you get that box?”
“Found it.”
I am beyond being frustrated. “Really!” I snap. “I thought you bought it at Macy’s.”
“This my box I hide long time ago. Already tell you this. This box always want show you.”
“Sorry. I’m just frazzled. What’s inside?”
“We go up there, open and see.”
We walk quietly. As my fear ebbs, the landscape begins to look more benign. The wind pushes against my face. I was perspiring earlier, and now I’m growing chilled. The path is still uneven and tricky, but I no longer sense any strange gravitational pull. I berate myself: Girl, the only thing haywire in this place is your mind. I went through nothing more dangerous than a panic attack. Rocks, I was scared of rocks.
“Kwan, what are these things?”
She stops and turns around. “What thing?”
I gesture to one of the piles.
“Rocks.” She starts walking again.
“I know they’re rocks. I mean, how did they get here, what are they supposed to be? Do they mean something?”
She stops once more, casts her eye over the gully. “This secret.”
The hair rises on the back of my neck. I put some casual bluff in my voice. “Come on, Kwan. Are they like gravestones? Are we walking across a cemetery or something? You can tell me.”
She opens her mouth, about to answer. But then a stubborn look crosses her face. “I tell you later. Not now.”
“Kwan!”
“After we back.” She points to the sky. “Dark soon. See? Don’t waste time talk.” And then she adds softly: “Maybe Simon already come back.”
My chest swoops with hope. She knows something I don’t, I’m sure of it. I concentrate on this belief as we thread our way up and around several boulders, down a gully, then past a high-walled crevasse. Soon we are at the small trail leading to the top. I can see the wall and the archway.
I scramble ahead of Kwan, heart pounding. I’m convinced Simon is there. I believe that the forces of chaos and uncertainty will allow me another chance to make amends. At the top, my lungs are nearly bursting. I’m dizzy with joy, crying with relief, because I feel the clarity of peace, the simplicity of trust, the purity of love.
And there!—the day pack, the stove, the damp jacket, everything as we left it, nothing more or less. Fear nicks my heart, but I cling to the absolute strength of faith and love. I walk to the other end of the tunnel, knowing that Simon will be there, he has to be.
The ledge is empty, nothing out there but the wind, its slap. I lean against the tunnel wall and slump to the ground, hugging my knees. I look up. Kwan’s there. “I’m not leaving,” I tell her. “Not until I find him.”
“I know this.” She sits on top of the wooden chest, opens the day pack, and takes out a glass jar of cold tea and two tins. One contains roasted peanuts, the other fried fava beans. She cracks open a peanut and offers it to me.
I shake my head. “You don’t need to stay. I know you have to get ready for Big Ma’s funeral tomorrow. I’ll be okay. He’ll probably show up soon.”
“I stay with you. Big Ma already tell me, delay funeral two three day, still okay. Anyway, more time cook food.”
An idea hits me. “Kwan! Let’s ask Big Ma where Simon is.” As soon as I say this, I realize how desperate I’ve become. This is how parents of dying children react, turning to psychics and New Age healers, anything as long as there is a thread of possibility somewhere in this universe or the next.
Kwan gives me a look so tender I know I have hoped for too much. “Big Ma doesn’t know,” she says quietly in Chinese. She pulls off the cup that covers the camping stove, and lights the burner. Blue flames shoot through tiny slots with a steady hiss. “Yin people,” she now says in English, “not know everything, not like you thinking. Sometimes they lost themself, don’t know where should go. That’s why some yin people come back so often. Always looking, asking, ‘Where I lose myself? Where I go?’ ”
I’m glad Kwan can’t see how dejected I feel. The camp stove throws only enough light to outline us as shadows. “You want,” she says softly, “I ask Big Ma help us go look. We make like FBI search party. Okay, Libby-ah?”
I’m touched by her eagerness to help me. That’s all that makes sense out here.
“Anyway, no funeral tomorrow. Big Ma have nothing else can do.” Kwan pours cold tea into the metal stove cup and sets this on the burner. “Of course, I can’t ask her tonight,” she says in Chinese. “It’s already dark—ghosts, they scare her to death, even though she’s a ghost herself. . . .”
I absently watch blue and orange flame tips licking at the bottom of the metal cup.
Kwan holds her palms toward the stove. “Once a person has the bad habit of being scared of ghosts, it’s hard to break. Me, I’m lucky, I never started this habit. When I see them, we just talk like friends. . . .”
At
that moment, a dreadful possibility grips me. “Kwan, if you saw Simon, I mean, as a yin person, you would tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t pretend—”
“I don’t see him,” she answers right away. She strokes my arm. “Really, I’m telling the truth.”
I allow myself to believe her, to believe that she wouldn’t lie and he isn’t dead. I bury my head in the nest of my arms. What should we do next, what rational, efficient plan should we use in the morning? And later, say by noon, if we still haven’t found him, then what? Should one of us call the police? But then I remember there are no phones, no car. Maybe I could hitchhike and go directly to the American consulate. Is there a branch in Guilin? How about an American Express office? If there is, I’ll lie and tell them I’m a Platinum Card member, charge me for whatever is needed, search and rescue, emergency airlift.
I hear scraping sounds and raise my head. Kwan is poking the Swiss Army knife into the keyhole on the front of the chest. “What are you doing?”
“Lost key.” She holds up the knife, searching among its tools for a better implement. She chooses the plastic toothpick. “Long time ago, I put many thing inside here.” She inserts the toothpick into the hole. “Libby-ah, flashlight in bag, you get for me, okay?”
With the light, I can see that the box is made of a dark reddish wood and trimmed in tarnished brass. On the lid is a bas-relief carving of thick trees, a Bavarian-looking hunter, a small dead deer slung over his shoulders, and a dog leaping in front of him.
“What’s in there?”
There’s a click and Kwan sits up. She smiles, gestures toward the box. “You open, see youself.”
I grasp a small brass latch and slowly pull up the lid. Tinkling sounds burst out. Startled, I let the lid drop. Silence. It’s a music box.