The Dissident Page 10

  “Good girl,” he whispered. He clasped her tightly against his chest; Fionnula whistled, an alert to other lesser galagos of nearby predators—such as the eagle, owl, snake, or genet. Phil felt slightly offended.

  “What do you think I am?” he asked. “A genet?”

  With the bush baby in his arms, Phil stood up, banging his head on the underside of the overhead bin. He suppressed a groan and, holding her more tightly than usual, carried her down the aisle to the bathroom, patting her lightly on the back. It was unlikely that she would burp, but the gesture gave him a certain satisfaction. He was surprised that people didn’t seem more interested. When he was a child, air travel had been a different thing: you arrived early, all dressed up, as if for an adventure. You made eye contact with fellow passengers, as if to confirm that you’d all be looking out for one another. Now it was almost like getting onto the subway; no one chatted up their seatmate, or offered to share food or reading material. He wondered what would happen if there was some kind of accident. Would people suddenly turn to comfort and touch one another? Or would they continue staring fixedly at their tray tables, struggling alone with their ambivalent attitudes toward God?

  The lavatories were occupied.

  “Shhh,” Phil said, because it seemed appropriate, not because Fionnula was making any noise. Nor was she moving. He released his grip a little, feeling for her breath. It was hard to do through the blanket. Was she getting enough air? What if she were dead! He lifted the corner of the blanket, as he’d seen the Dane do with his baby, and whispered her name. She was a warm little bundle in his palm, all eight ounces of her. Could she be sleeping? He wanted to reassure her that there were no eagles, owls, genets, or snakes around.

  “Fionnula,” he whispered.

  There was nothing.

  “Fionnula!” A woman in the last row turned to stare at him; he didn’t care. “Hey please,” he said. “Fionnula—wake up.”

  Fionnula’s ears popped up; he felt a faint pressure on his palm and, as his heart expanded with happiness and relief, his baby leapt easily out of the blanket, onto the headrest in front of them. Before Phil could grab her, she had leapt again: three and four rows at a time, across the aisles, landing not only on seatbacks but on shoulders, laps, and one tousled, newly awakened head. Fionnula cried out at full voice, exulting in her newfound freedom: Chee! Chee! Chee!

  Someone screamed. Other people got to their feet. The flight attendants pushed past him. Fionnula stayed at seat level as long as possible before dropping to the floor, evacuating three rows in one stroke. A steward pushed past the passengers in the aisle, knelt, and peered under the empty seats.

  “Excuse me,” Phil said. “That’s my—kitten.”

  “Well, then, you’d better go get it.” It was Karen from Portland; she was right behind him, and she sounded less than pleased. Phil took the banana out of his pocket and unpeeled it. He hurried down the aisle and handed it meekly to the steward.

  “Oh, thanks,” the steward said. “This is great.” Not yet aware of Fionnula’s provenance, he obviously believed that Phil was the kind of helpful passenger who always brought a supply of potassium-rich foods on board, in case of emergency.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. If you’ll just step back a moment.” Under his breath Phil heard him say: “What the fuck?”

  “She’s not dangerous,” Phil said.

  But the steward didn’t appear to hear him. He was cajoling Fionnula, stretching out his hand with the banana in the palm, the way you might feed a horse. “Here, here. C’mere now, buster.”

  Buster?

  The steward shook his head. “You’re supposed to be prepared for anything—but this? E-fucking-T, two hours from LAX?”

  “She’s a galago!” Phil said. And then more softly, “A lesser one.” By bending down and turning his head he could just make her out: her sensitive pink ears were quivering. She didn’t know the word snake or owl or genet (what was a genet, anyway?) but some code deep inside her was alert to them. She had captured a bag of peanuts and her enormous nocturnal eyes shone, as bright as the foil wrapping, in the darkness underneath the seats. What was she thinking, assuming she was thinking? Was she imagining talons on her back?

  “Fionnula,” he whispered. “Here, girl.”

  The steward turned to him in disbelief. “Is this your animal?”

  “He’s traveling with a kitten.” Karen was standing above them. “It’s a very rare breed.”

  Phil looked up, as if for guidance: suddenly, materializing in the doorway of the first-class cabin, towering over passengers and crew alike, was the Dane. He had retrieved Fionnula’s cage from Phil’s row; holding it under one arm and his suddenly docile baby under the other, he strode triumphantly down the aisle, like the Beowulf warrior, and set the cage in the middle of the center aisle. As if harkening to a silent command, Fionnula trotted between the pillows and carry-ons, still holding the shiny bag of peanuts in her mouth, and hopped delicately into the cage. The steward latched the cage and stood up. Someone began to clap. All around them, one by one, and then row by row, others joined in, building to an ovation.

  A moment later, Phil heard Julie’s honeyed voice coming from the intercom at the front of the plane:

  “Ladies and gentlemen. We’re sorry for the disturbance in the economy section of the aircraft. As you have no doubt noticed, a domestic animal brought on board by one of your fellow passengers was temporarily loose in the cabin. I am happy to report that your steward, Rick—assisted by a very helpful first-class passenger—now has the situation under control.”

  People were looking at Phil. “Was that a monkey?”

  “A ferret?”

  “It was a mink, wasn’t it? My grandmother had one.”

  “I’ll take her back now,” Phil said.

  “Just have a seat,” said the steward. “We’ll return her to you at the end of the flight, when we pass back the coats.”

  “But she needs to be with me!”

  “With the coats,” the steward said firmly.

  There was nothing to do but return to his seat. Phil stared out the dark window and saw his own face reflected, its familiar expression of dumb hurt: What was wrong with him? They had confiscated his baby—his bush baby, but still. They had basically declared him unfit. If he couldn’t take care of a seven-inch primate, he certainly could never be a father. That was something Cece must’ve sensed from the beginning, although she’d been too kind to say it. And yet, she had confided in him. She couldn’t ask him to come, not in so many words, but he had heard it in her voice.

  The sky divided itself, opened along a fold. There was a very faint gray horizon. Phil leaned forward in his seat, as if urging the plane to go faster. It had been ten years, and his nephew needed him. Or if not his nephew, then maybe she needed him herself.

  16.

  WHILE I WAS WITH THE TRAVERSES, I HAD A HABIT OF GETTING UP EARLY. I liked to exercise in the mornings, before it got too hot. Sometimes Mrs. Travers would be out there too, swimming her laps in the pool.

  “You are an inspiration,” she would say to me, after she had wrapped herself modestly in a large beach towel. “Those are tai chi, aren’t they?”

  “Only calisthenics,” I told her, but perhaps she didn’t hear me, because a few days later I heard her describing to a friend how I got up every morning “at sunrise, to practice qigong.”

  When I was finished with my morning routine (three sets each of fifteen push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and lunges), I would go into the kitchen and make my tea, and then carry it to the rose garden, where I could be quiet for a few moments and let my mind drift, without anyone wondering why I wasn’t getting down to work in my elegant studio. The studio was windowed on all sides, like a glass tank. Cece and the house keeper were constantly knocking on my door to retrieve things they’d forgotten there (and, conveniently, to check up on me). I had seen a room I would have much preferred—a small, private guest room in the back of the house—but after the Tra
verses had gone to so much trouble with the pool house, I could hardly ask to move.

  “It will take you a week or two to get settled,” Mrs. Travers had said, but before the end of the first week, she was remarking on how eager she was to see the work I would produce, and looking at me in a funny way when she came into the den and found me watching television.

  “Is everything all right out there?” she would ask. “Is there enough light?” I thought of my cousin’s studio at Dashanzi, with the dirty windows and the dirtier sink, the old brushes stuck into coffee cans and the oilcloth on the floor, the bare cot and the unwashed dishes on the table, drawing insects. I assured Mrs. Travers that her pool house was not only the most beautiful studio I had ever had the opportunity to use (very true), but also the most beautiful I had ever seen.

  “Sometimes it’s so beautiful that I get distracted,” I told her. “I just sit there and look out at the garden.”

  Cece nodded, unconvinced. “You’re homesick,” she said. “It will wear off.”

  It was early Friday morning of that first week that I spent with the Traverses, at the hour when pale sunlight bleaches the gravel walkways of the garden, and the only sound is the breeze in the dusty rosebushes. I was reading the names of the flowers from small plastic stakes—the delicate pewter-colored Blue Girls, the Belle Amours, and my favorites, the creamy, cakelike Perditas—when I spotted the intruder, lurking in the bluish shadows behind the garbage cans.

  The strangest thing was that he seemed to be trying to catch my attention.

  “Ss,” he seemed to say. “Ss, ss.”

  He was a very tall, thin man, with large blue eyes like an actor on television. His clothes looked slept-in, but decent: he wore khaki trousers and a not very clean white linen shirt with wooden buttons. There was a yellowish stain on the left pocket. You could see that he hadn’t slept; his red, bloodshot eyes gave him the appearance of a drug addict. I admit I was nervous, but I didn’t want to wake the family if I could help it. This was my first chance to do something in return for their kindness to me, and I thought I could get rid of the intruder on my own.

  The man moved toward me sideways, like a crab. Every few seconds he looked back at the garbage cans, as if he thought someone was going to come after him from that direction. “Ss,” he said. “Hey, you! Are you the gardener?”

  So, he thought I was a servant—even though I was wearing a pair of designer trousers from Hong Kong, and a fine shirt of Egyptian cotton that Cece had given me (in spite of my protestations), since it was too small for Dr. Travers.

  “No,” I said coldly. “I am not.”

  The intruder looked startled. “Then what are you doing here?”

  He was asking me this question.

  I put my hand into my left pocket, where I kept the small knife with a pearl handle that my painting teacher, Old Wang, had given me when I was sixteen years old. I took it out and flicked my wrist, and the blade snapped open. The intruder was startled.

  “Christ,” he said. “Put that away. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “All I have to do is yell,” I said. “The house keeper will release the dogs.” (He did not have to know the particulars about these animals: the sheepdog Salty, who needed to be fed by hand, ran sideways with a limp, and cowered if you raised your hand at her, and the whippet Dr. Spock, who had recently reached his adult weight of six and a half pounds.)

  “Salty?” the intruder said. “Give me a break.”

  At that point I had to wonder whether he was a real burglar. In spite of his decrepit appearance, I didn’t really think he was homeless. I had a sudden fear that this was one of Dr. Travers’s insane patients, coming after his psychiatrist in a murderous fit, as in a movie I had recently seen on Cinemax.

  “Put your hands up,” I said, but I sounded tentative.

  “For the love of God,” said the intruder, but he put them up. “Is this all right? Will you come over here for a second and let me explain?”

  That the intruder was moving toward the driveway was a good sign; that he wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of me and my knife was not so good.

  “All I need you to do is deliver this note—d’you mind?” He waved the fingers of his right hand, and against my better judgment I allowed him to reach into his own pocket, from which he withdrew a folded piece of white paper. “Give this to your employer.”

  “I don’t know whom you’re speaking of.”

  “I’m speaking of Cece,” the intruder said. “You know who that is, don’t you?”

  “Mrs. Travers is not my employer.”

  The intruder looked at me curiously. “Maybe you’re her boyfriend.” He was not even pretending to keep his hands in the air anymore.

  “I am her guest,” I told him, in as curt a voice as I could manage.

  I expected him to apologize for his mistake, but the intruder simply nodded: “Then you can give her something for me.”

  “If I give her the note, will you go?”

  The intruder nodded. “And a small gift.” He retreated behind the garbage cans, where he retrieved a square sort of suitcase, covered by a black cloth. I became aware of a high, twittering sound, which was nevertheless not birdlike. “Carry it by the handle, here,” he said. “And if you could just take the cloth off when you give it to her. Not like a magician or anything—don’t make a big production—but so that she knows it’s a gift. Here, look—”

  But before he could remove the cloth, a sound made us both freeze; I realized that by allowing the intruder to stay and talk, I was now responsible for his presence in the rose garden. Not only had I been unable to expel him, I had failed to raise the alarm.

  I am sorry to say that I swore at the intruder then, and called him a name, although of course he did not understand Cantonese. We were both staring at the door to the den, which was opening, first the sliding glass panel, and then the screen. A moment later Mrs. Travers, wearing a one-piece green bathing suit, stepped onto the lawn and walked barefoot across the grass. She didn’t look in our direction but headed directly to the deck; she disappeared for a moment into the pool house, and reemerged with a striped towel, which she spread out carefully in the sun. Then she climbed onto the diving board and hesitated for a moment there, bouncing very gently on her toes.

  As I have mentioned, Cece was forty-four years old. In Harbin a forty-four-year-old woman is finished being a mother, and is very often already a grandmother. In Los Angeles, however, time moves more slowly. Particularly with the morning light in her expertly highlighted hair—gold, butter, caramel—and on her carefully protected skin, Cece was a young woman. The bathing suit covered her hips and lifted her ample breasts (the nipples of which—it would be dishonest not to mention—were prominent underneath the worn green cotton). The conservative cut of the bathing suit emphasized her still-slim waist and the swell of her hips and bottom. The reader can, perhaps, forgive me for this description of my hostess, or at least remember that I was very far from home, surrounded by strangers, without a lover or the prospect of finding one.

  That morning among the rosebushes I watched the intruder, who was looking at Mrs. Travers on the diving board in a way that made me think he might be in the same situation I was.

  “That’s Mrs. Travers,” I said, glad to show my intimacy with the family.

  “Cease,” he said.

  His response seemed unfriendly, as well as unnecessarily formal. “You ought to get out of here now, before someone calls the police,” I told him. But before I could make good on this threat, three things happened: Mrs. Travers dove into the pool; what ever was in the black box began to make an unsettling noise; and the screen door opened again. A young woman stepped onto the patio and called out:

  “Mom!”

  The girl was wearing a pair of men’s striped pajamas and her long, dark hair was messy from sleeping. I guessed that this was Olivia Travers, who had arrived the previous night from France.

  “Hello,” I called, and then, because I d
idn’t know what to say: “You have a visitor.” Perhaps I was trying to save my own face, by turning the intruder into a guest.

  Olivia climbed the three brick steps to the rose garden. “Hey,” she said. “Uncle Phil. Long time no see.” She wrinkled her nose. “God—what is that?”

  “How was Paris?” asked Uncle Phil.

  Olivia hopped up the steps and stood with one bare foot on top of the other. One of the first things I had noticed about the Traverses was that they often walked outside without their shoes. “It was awesome,” Olivia said. “Almost everyone from Dance Directions was there.”

  “Dance Directions?”

  “That’s my school’s company. I’m a principal this year.”

  “Livy?” Her mother was standing in the shallow end of the pool, shading her eyes against the angle of the sun.

  “Hi Mommer!” Olivia called. She ran across the grass, suddenly childish. Mrs. Travers squinted at us. She was not wearing her glasses.

  “Oh, Jesus,” the intruder said softly. “Here we go, here we go.” But he stayed right where he was.

  “Hello?” Mrs. Travers climbed out of the pool, one hand on the railing. She wrapped the towel firmly around her body and made her way toward us. “Mr. Yuan?”

  Then she suddenly stopped short. Water was dripping from her hair, slicked back now, into her eyes, but there was no mistaking what was happening. There is something about watching a blue-eyed person cry (if you are a black- or brown-eyed person, then you know what I mean) that inspires sympathy. Maybe it’s just that their tears are less easy to conceal.

  “Cease,” the uncle said for the second time. Still crying, Mrs. Travers threw her arms around his neck in a way that I will admit made me jealous—not because I had any romantic feelings for Mrs. Travers myself, but because, far from being an intruder, this person was clearly more welcome at the Traverses’ than I was. I looked away.

  Olivia might have had the same impulse, since she chose that moment to crouch down in front of the cage. She pinched her nose with one hand and lifted the cover with the other: there, blinking its large eyes in the light, was a small monkey. Or a large rat—it was the size of a rat, but it looked like a monkey, with prehensile hands and a long, simian tail. Its coat was gray, with a white bib under the chin, and its ears were lined with delicate pink fuzz. You could see its tiny black snout working frantically as it tried to figure out where it was. I felt sorry for it, exposed that way: everyone could see the mess of yellow-green turds it had just deposited in the corner of its cage.