Paul listened. What magical strength this sound transmitted.
What kind of person was behind this heartbeat? A fearful one or a brave one? A tender soul or a coarse one? What secrets would he come to the world with? Every life was a promise. Every life was a gift.
* * *
Paul continued sitting next to Christine in silence. He stroked her face and her belly. She groaned quietly. At some point two midwives and an anesthetist came in and prepared her for the operation. They raised her and sat her on the edge of the bed, and the doctor put a long, very fine needle into the epidural space of her spine to numb the lower part of her body. Paul looked away. One wrong prick of the needle, too far to the left or the right, and Christine could end up wheelchair bound. Extremely unlikely, of course. Statistically speaking.
He walked alongside Christine, holding her hand as she was wheeled down the corridor and into the operating room.
He had to let go at the entrance to the operating room. The obstetrician asked if he wanted to be present for the operation. That would be fine, but he just had to change out of his wet clothing first, which was not a bad idea anyway, and put on a cap, a face mask, and hospital scrubs. Paul followed the obstetrician into a room, undressed, and pulled on the scrubs. Then his courage left him. The fear of being overcome by panic during the operation was overwhelming.
You will lose life.
Whose life was he to lose? Christine’s? In Hong Kong, there was practically no risk of a healthy woman dying in childbirth. His son’s? A caesarean section was the safest method of delivery for a baby; again, the figures showed that nothing would likely happen. How much could statistical averages and graphs be relied on when it came to a life? Not much at all.
The worst feeling was the powerlessness, the feeling of having to look on helplessly while his fate was being decided. How often he had held conversations with himself in the months before Justin’s death, begging that someone might save his child, that a supernatural force might make everything right after all. He had tried to pray. He had made sworn pledges—to sell his apartment, to build a temple, to fund an orphanage in the Philippines—if his son were healed. He had done everything, but not found a god within himself to whom he could turn.
Paul collapsed onto a bench and waited. Through the door, which was ajar, he could hear the voices of the doctors and nurses. To his amazement, he felt that he was becoming calmer for the first time that night.
His son came into the world eighteen minutes later.
Paul listened to the animated voices in the operating room, but could only hear fragments. Blood loss. A mystery.
Paul followed the doctor. “How is my wife?” he asked. “How is my wife?”
“She’s fine. You can go to her,” one of the doctors said.
Christine lay on the operating table, her body covered with a green screen, with her white legs sticking out at the bottom. Paul went to the top end of the table. She was conscious and her forehead was covered in tiny beads of sweat. She reached for his hand. He had never seen her smile so beautifully before.
The obstetrician was suddenly by their side. He was very sorry. It was difficult to explain. Their baby had had a twin. It was not possible to establish on the spot whether it was a boy or a girl, a fraternal or an identical twin. They had just found the remains of it in the placenta with the afterbirth. It was incredible that no one had noticed it in the scans before, but that sometimes happened. The second fetus must have died early, at only a few weeks’ gestation. It had probably not been a healthy fetus. Or perhaps the mother’s body had been able to nourish only one of the fetuses, so it had rejected the other one. If that were so, one baby had been sacrificed so that the other one could live. Perhaps that was some comfort.
You will lose life.
“Is our son healthy?” Paul asked.
“Yes, of course. He’s doing well,” the doctor answered lightly, brushing away his concern. He brought him to a side table where a midwife was weighing and measuring the baby.
Paul looked with his heart racing at the naked, blood-smeared infant. The pale skin, almost bluish in some places. The wrinkled little hands. The wide mouth and the eyes screwed shut. A miracle weighing 7.3 pounds and measuring 19 inches in length, fragile and vulnerable. The midwife checked his temperature, wrapped the baby in a towel, and laid him in Paul’s arms. How light he was. And small. His head fit comfortably in his father’s hand.
“You can come with me to wash the baby for the first time, if you like,” the midwife said, leading him into another room. She filled a plastic basin with water, checking the temperature a few times until it was right. “Is this your first?”
Paul was unable to say anything. He shook his head.
“Then I won’t have to show you anything.”
She helped him unwrap his screaming son from the towel and watched as Paul laid the baby’s stomach on his right hand and slowly dipped him in the water feetfirst.
The midwife had done this for Justin, but Paul had watched every move carefully. The long-faded memory was suddenly alive again.
With his left hand, he trickled water over the baby, washing his back, his little arms, and little legs.
A handful of life.
The warm water calmed the boy, and his angry cries of protest gradually stopped.
Paul laid him on a towel, dried his little body carefully, and put a diaper on him. His son opened his eyes for the first time and looked at him. He had his mother’s dark hair and his deep blue eyes.
“Does he have a name already?” the midwife asked.
Paul nodded. “David.”
“No Chinese name?”
“Not yet. We want to ask an astrologer for advice.”
“He’ll be hungry soon. Come, let us bring him to your wife.”
Paul covered the baby in a blue-and-white-striped blanket and carried him with light steps down the corridor.
Christine was lying alone in a room with two beds. She looked pale, but her eyes brightened when she saw them approach.
“Your son needs you,” the midwife said, laying the baby on Christine’s chest. The baby began drinking from her breast in mere seconds.
Christine looked at her baby and her husband in turn, over and over again. “What are you thinking?”
“What strange questions you ask,” Paul said.
“I just want to know how you’re feeling,” she said, smiling weakly.
Paul got the reference. He smiled back. “You’re much more Western than I thought.” He was indescribably tired, and felt pains in his whole body, especially at the back of his head. He pushed his fingers through his hair and found dried blood on his hands. “Do you think I could lie down on the other bed for a bit?”
“Join us on this one,” she said.
He gave the narrow bed a dubious look. “Is there room?”
“For you, yes,” Christine said, moving a little to one side with great effort.
Paul squeezed into the narrow space next to her and put his arm under her head. He took a deep breath and buried his nose in her hair. Despite the hospital and the operation, she had not lost her wonderful smell.
His son sucked away noisily. “He’s really hungry.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Paul remembered the beating of his son’s tiny heart and understood that he no longer had to search for the answer to Christine’s question: What do you believe in? The answer lay in his hands. He believed in the strength of this heart. Of every heart. In hope. In promises. In magic. He believed in the greatness, the tenderness, and the uniqueness of every being. In the love that everyone was capable of giving. It was quite simply and plainly a belief in life, with all its tragedies and beauties.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
This book is a work of fiction. The events and characters are the products of my imagination. The ideas for the book came from the countless journeys that I have made to China since 1995. I was inspired to write this story by
the many conversations that I had there and in Hong Kong, where I lived for a time, with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. I feel deeply indebted to the people who helped me on my travels and in my research, for their trust in me, their openness, and their support. Special thanks go to Zhang Dan, who has made such an effort, with bottomless patience, to explain her country and her culture to me. I’m also indebted to Lamy Li, Clara and Derick Tam, Bessie Du, Wang Cai Hua, Emily Lee, Zhang Yi, Dan Yi, Dan Yiu Kun Yat, Fang Xingdong, Qian En Wang, Maggie Chen, Richard Chen, Graham Earnshaw, Clemens Kunisch, Dr. Gerhard Hinterhäuser, Alwin Bergmann, Dr. Reinhard Kruse, Dr. Ekkehard Scholz, and Dr. Joachim Sendker, who all helped me in one way or another with my research. I would also like to thank my parents for their help, and my sister, Dorothea.
My son, Jonathan, helped me with his penetrating questions and with his ideas. And in the end, I have benefited from the trust, the discipline, and the experience of my wonderful editor, Hanna Diederichs.
I would like to thank my agent PJ Mark for his encouragement and the passionate way he helped to turn my dream into reality. Writing a book is a lonely thing to do, publishing a book is teamwork. Therefore I am very grateful to everyone at Atria, especially Dawn Davis, David Brown, Hillary Tisman, James Thiel, Carly Loman, Isolde Sauer, Douglas Johnson, Joshua Cohen, and Susan Bishansky.
I owe my biggest thanks to my wife, Anna. She was involved in every stage of this manuscript coming into being, and read every chapter with a critical eye. Her advice, her comments, questions, encouragement, and, above all, her love, have made this book possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jan-Philipp Sendker, born in Hamburg in 1960, was the American correspondent for Stern magazine, and its Asian correspondent, based in Hong Kong. He is the author of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, an international bestseller, Cracks in the Wall, a nonfiction book about China, and the novels A Well-Tempered Heart and Whispering Shadows. He lives in Potsdam, Germany, with his family.
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ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Christine Lo (previously known as Christine Slenczka) is an editor in book publishing in London. She has also worked as a translator in Frankfurt and translated books by Juli Zeh and Senait Mehari from German into English. Her most recent translation is Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky.
ALSO BY JAN-PHILIPP SENDKER
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
A Well-Tempered Heart
Whispering Shadows
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Jan-Philipp Sendker
English language translation © 2017 by Christine Lo
Originally published in German as Drachenspiele.
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ISBN 978-1-4767-9367-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-9369-6 (ebook)
Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Language of Solitude
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