Chang-rae Lee - The surrendered

NewYork, 1986

HERE WAS THE CITY of her solitude, set afire by the first autumn light. Could a civilization ever be as peerlessly etched as this? The corner windows of her apartment faced north and west onto the stone-and-glass towers of Midtown, and through all the years she lived here she had never quite seen this depth of gleaming or coloration, the low sun sparking every niche of the building faces and lending shape to the sky by lamping the high-floating ribbons of sheerest vapor.

June’s work was all but done. How time had accelerated. The apartment was sold the very day it was put on the market, and here she was, a mere six weeks later, peeling off rubber cleaning gloves and tossing them into a black garbage bag. Earlier, the men she regularly employed to deliver items from her antiques shop had carried out the last chair and lamps from the apartment, and by now they were likely finished with their rounds. Rather than hiring an estate service, she had done the job herself, selling everything she owned in grouped lots to dealers she knew around the city. She had practically given the stuff away, strangely delighting in the knowledge that they would do very well with the pieces. One of them actually balked at paying the low price she proposed, insisting that there should be some honor, even among thieves. She told him he had better stop talking about honor or she’d reconsider, and soon enough he relented, to the point of inquiring, before he left, about a Late Federal desk he’d long admired. She undersold that one to him, too. The overwhelming balance, like the nonrare books and records, the kitchen- and cookware, the bath towels and bed linens, she bundled and gave free to a junk dealer friend on the Bowery.

For herself, she had set aside only two small suitcases packed with clothes and a zippered tote of toiletries. Just a few basic cosmetics. Vanity had never in the least ruled her. Mostly it was her nature, but there was also the fact that she had never needed to be concerned with her appearance. She had spent her life being not so beautiful as extraordinarily youthful, her wide, oval face ruddy and pure, her skin having an apricot smoothness, the lustrous sheets of her black hair shimmering and thick. To an undiscriminating eye, her sturdy figure might have appeared stocky, but her naturally bolt-straight posture, her shoulders set back like a dancer’s, made her look taller, more athletic, as though she were just about to spring. Only a few months earlier, on her forty-seventh birthday, her favorite waiter at the corner diner brought her a huge slice of carrot cake with candles in the shape of 25 stuck in the white sea of the icing, though of course he could guess her approximate age. He was perhaps slightly younger than she, but he always called her his “lass,” and like most men (and women) of every age who came into her shop or sat beside her on the subway, he was drawn to this freshness, this vitality, this odd but intractable sense that she was someone who might never grow old. Her late husband, David, who had passed unexpectedly two years ago, often said as much, jesting that her eternal youth would rub off on him, as though she were a charm against the dread pull of the years. He would say, “Come here and just lie on me.”

“That’s all you want?”

“That’s all I need.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well…”

How different things would be, if she had such powers…

She twist-tied the garbage bag and hauled it out to the two others already slumped outside her door. There was one other apartment across the short hall, but June had never exchanged more than a hello with the occupants, so she hadn’t bothered saying goodbye. They would have to learn of her departure from Habi, or from someone else in the building, or when the new owners moved in, and they likely wouldn’t pause or think more than a second about it, which was perfectly fine by June. The apartment had been David’s, but it suited her just as well; the building was on lower Madison Avenue and tended to attract those who didn’t care that the area lacked services and was deserted at night, who didn’t mind the traffic noise or lack of residential neighbors. They enjoyed the special brand of privacy that comes from living an exquisitely small, circumscribed existence, made exquisitely smaller and more private still when lived in the heart of the immense, bustling city.

The elevator bell rang and the door glided open; it was Habi, the young building superintendent. Earlier June had asked him to come up, and he assumed it was to help her with the garbage bags, and he grabbed two by the neck, but she waved him off.

“Please, Habi. Come inside. I want to show you something.”

He let go of the bags and followed her inside the apartment, which was completely empty and swept clean. He had been in her apartment a half-dozen times, yet each time he entered he behaved as though it were the first, or perhaps he felt he shouldn’t, and he lingered by the kitchen until she guided him to one of the back rooms.

Habi was from the Congo and she had come to know him best of anyone in the building, especially after David died. If he was around, he always helped carry her groceries upstairs (there was no doorman), and several times sat long enough to have a cup of tea with her. They didn’t say very much, for whatever reason; she simply enjoyed his presence, which was a kind of perfect temperature, like tropical waters. She admired that he was intelligent and soft-spoken and polite and did his menial and mostly thankless job well and carried himself with unstinting dignity. He was always very respectful. He had a very pleasing and placid face, but for a long, raised scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his jaw. June had noticed that he had a scar on his left palm, too, which aligned exactly with the one on his face whenever he raised up his hand. Once she asked him about it, and rather than answer directly, he simply said he was orphaned when he was young. “It was a very difficult period,” he said, in his heavy French accent. “A tribal conflict.” He had walked for several weeks on his own, hiding out during the days and moving at night, covering hundreds of kilometers on his bare feet. It was then that he asked June what had happened to her hands. His question took her aback, but then she surprised herself by turning them over and showing them to him. Her hands were delicate and petite and perfectly normal in appearance except when she revealed her palms, which was something she shied from doing. The palms and pads of her fingers looked like they were somehow unfinished, being putty-smooth and only faintly lined, like the hands of a mannequin. One of them was more scarred than the other. She told him they were burned in an accident. He’d nodded somberly, but without the cloying concern that others might proffer, and said nothing more. Yet she would have told him (as she would never tell others) that they gave her discomfort sometimes, despite the fact that they were almost completely numb.

“There are some things I want you to look at,” she said. They walked to the back bedroom, their footfalls echoing in the empty apartment, and for a moment June pictured them as a couple, shopping for their first home. “I’ve had this furniture for a while, and now that you are married I thought you might like to have it.”

The furniture was a child’s solid walnut desk and chair, as well as two matching chests of drawers and a bunk bed with rails and a ladder. All of it was in good condition, but June had spent a couple hours anyway filling and buffing the various scratches and dings, just as she might have in her shop. She then polished each piece until it looked brand new.

“But we do not have children,” Habi said.

“You will someday, won’t you? It’s high-quality furniture, the kind they don’t make anymore, at least not for children.” She pulled open the desk drawers, showing him the joints, the bottoms, even stepping up one rung on the ladder to give a tug at the bedrails. “I was about to sell it with everything else, but then I realized how stupid I was. I would have shown you last week, but I’ve been so busy.”