Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

There was no mirror. In those days, Michael kept up a thin Fu Manchu. Both his hair and mustache he wore much longer in his hippie days, but these days he tried to keep up a neat appearance. It was a proletarian thing; his attire consisted of T-shirts, a single sweatshirt, jeans, boots. He’d meant to trim his mustache before he left, but he’d been in a rush to get out. Now he didn’t want his hosts to get the wrong idea about him, so with the free time fate had granted him, he learned how to shave without a mirror.

That night, under curfew, the old man started to lose it.

“I want to go out, see the sights, get laid. This sitting around here all night, man, is driving me nuts.”

“Hey, at least you’re out during the day. Think about me. I burned through the two books I brought with me by the time we left Vancouver.”

That seemed to elicit some sympathy at least. Ariel told Michael he would talk to someone tomorrow about letting him out, even just for a few hours with a chaperone.

“You haven’t told me a thing about what goes on when you go out there with them.”

“I haven’t told you anything because I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

“There’s some shit going down, isn’t there? Who are we dealing with?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know these people.” Ariel lit a cigarette, one of the Chinese ones a youth stationed outside the door had given him. It smelled awful and quickly suffocated the entire room. Michael thought his roommate was using this method to kill him. Having not gotten over his jet lag yet, Ariel chain-smoked for most of the night, but by morning Michael was still alive.

“Hey, Ariel,” Michael asked as the dawn was breaking. Neither one of them had said a word for hours. “Are we in trouble?”

The old man detected the note of fear in the younger man’s voice and his stony expression softened.

“You’ll be all right,” he said.

Michael didn’t know what to make of that. Did it mean that Ariel wasn’t? Or was he just reassuring Michael? Either way, Michael felt ashamed.

On day three, there was considerably more traffic going back and forth from the room, and Ariel spent more time out than in. His pleas on Michael’s behalf worked to the degree that Michael was handed a stack of English-language Peking Reviews.

Michael felt better in the morning. At least he got the sense that the old man was as confused and frustrated as he was. Of course, all of that may have been a put-on, but he preferred not to think so. He seized the day, trying to make the best of the hospitality that was offered. He sat down to read the Peking Review . In the first issue he read, he found an article, in the “Arts” section, with the headline, “ Music with No Words Is Reactionary ”:

Beethoven’s music is inherently reactionary. Because there are no words, you can’t know what it means.

The prose style and reasoning reminded him of something Camus had written about Saint-Just’s writing style: “ It is the style of the guillotine .” This, then, was the style of the dull butcher knife.

In the afternoon, he poked his head out the door and saw a girl sitting in the hallway. He assumed she was “guarding” him, though this was the first time he saw someone sitting instead of standing. Maybe they were getting the idea he wasn’t going to challenge them.

When she looked up, he was startled. He thought he recognized her, but that would have been impossible: He didn’t know anyone in China. Then it occurred to him that she resembled Cletus Dong’s sister, Candy. It took a bit of imagination to make the transfer: imagine Candy without makeup, her long, straight hair chopped off just above the chin, wearing a sexless blue suit. When she stood up, he could tell they were about the same height, too.

“I’m sorry. I fell asleep for a little while,” she said, in only slightly labored English. That was a major plus. Every single person that had been posted outside his door until now hadn’t said a word to him.

“Uh, that’s okay. If I’d known earlier, I would have made a run for it.”

“Do you enjoy your visit to China?”

“Sure. It’s been great.”

“Good. Please let me know if I can do anything for you.” Michael pondered that when she followed up with a question: “Where are you from?”

“Me? America.”

“What city?”

“San Francisco. Well, not exactly the city itself. I live in the East Bay.”

“Is that near New York?”

“No, it’s on the opposite side of the country.”

“Really? I thought it was next to New York.”

“No. You’re thinking of New Jersey.”

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“Do you smoke?”

“No. I am offering you.”

“That’s okay.”

“Yes, or no?”

“‘That’s okay’ means ‘no’.”

“Strange. You don’t like Chinese cigarette, eh?”

“I don’t smoke…tobacco.”

“American cigarette taste better, right? That’s what I hear.”

“My friend,” he gestured inside, meaning Ariel, “says that Chinese cigarettes are better. More tar.”

She shook her head. “How much does one cost in America?”

“One cigarette? Or a pack?”

“Pack.”

“I dunno. I never bought one.”

“That’s very strange. Is it true Americans eat raw vegetables?”

He blinked at that one. It took him a moment to realize what she was talking about. “Yes. We eat salad. You don’t eat salad in China?”

She shook her head. “We cook. Only barbarians eat raw food. Like Japanese.”

He nodded. It made sense.

Their conversation went on in this manner, with her peppering him with questions that sounded genuinely curious. It was the most fun he’d had in days, though he couldn’t help noticing that every time he tried to come back with a question about China, she would clam up and ask another question about America. He got the message after a few tries: Talk about America, don’t talk about China.

“You’re very curious about America.”

“I would like to travel there someday. I know it’s difficult right now, but I think the relationship between our two countries will improve in the future.”

“I hope so. There are a lot of Chinese people in America, especially in San Francisco.”

“I would like to see them. There are a lot of things I would like to see in the world.”

“Light out for the territory, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“‘ I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before. ’ That’s from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.”

“Marx…?”

“Not Karl Marx. Mark Twain. American author.”

“I don’t know him. Have you read any Chinese authors?”

“Just Mao.”

She took him down to the basement, where he met the hotel kitchen staff. Nobody could speak English, but they all waved at him, smiling. A crowd began to grow around him. He was, he supposed, something of an attraction. The enthusiastic reception he received seemed to go beyond mere obligation. The spontaneity was a welcome relief from the uptightness of the bureaucrats and flunkies he’d encountered so far. His guide asked the staff to show him what they were making, and they took him around the kitchen. In one spot, a group of women were wrapping what looked like won tons. The people there had the friendly, unpretentious appeal of blue-collar workers who, while they weren’t exactly happy, weren’t as miserable as they once were. It reminded him very much of the post office.

The next day, he and Ariel were taken out for a drive to a village on the outskirts of Peking. He got a good look at the countryside surrounding that gray city. It was a brisk autumn day, and the trees were in full color.