Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

[Click.]

“Uh, Jeremy. What else did the guy want from you?”

“Nothing, Dad!” He’s back to lowercase letters, less enthusiastic, bordering on annoyed. “Why are you so suspicious, Dad? It’s like you hate America! You think everyone’s out to abuse us.”

“Okay, so long as you keep the lemonade stand on our property.”

“I do, Dad! What do you think, I’m a friggin’ idiot?”

“Jeremy, when’d you start using language like that?”

“Dad, it’s just, remember how I always used to say that if you were my age, you’d be my best friend?”

“Yeah, I love that.”

“Well, I still think that, but you force me to use extreme language. You have to understand, things aren’t like that in America anymore. Maybe you’ve been gone so long you don’t remember.”

“I have to agree with him, Dad,” Spencer says, picking up his line again to add his two cents. “Not everyone goes around molesting everyone all the time. That’s a pretty dark worldview, Dad. You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers over there. Maybe the Chinese have brainwashed you by now.”

“Spence, are you off the computer yet?” Jeremy asks.

“Give me five more minutes, Jeremy, and it’s yours.”

“Guys?” I say, trying to break in. “It’s fading out here, guys, can you speak up?”

“Three more minutes?” Jeremy begs.

“Four.”

“Oh, thank you, Spencer, thank you, thank you, thank you-”

“Hey, Spence?” I interrupt. “I was in the middle of a conversation with Jeremy, and then I want to speak to Mom-”

[Click.]

[Click.]

I’ve lost them both. Guess they’re used to my being away by now.

And so I walk. Each night I sneak out before my den mother can see-except that she always sees, mutely racing up to me to straighten my shirt and primp my hat before pinching my cheek good-bye-and rack up ten or twelve miles walking. It’s not to alleviate loneliness; I feel at home here. Nor is it to kill time; time’s not my enemy. It’s merely walking, walking without firecrackers, walking for hours without heat or sorrow, walking over potholes like a mule bred to be sure-footed-no more ankle twisting-walking past shut-down warehouses with people shouting inside with words that sound like me talking to myself in my dreams, or like commentary from a Bizarro local travel channel:

Under cover of nightfall, the crazyheart American Cowboy emerge from his lair. Here he go now, blinking at dusky moon. What the devil he up to? Ah, now we see, he want prowl space-age nightclub. See how blue smoke explode in face, how mighty bass make Cowboy hat vibrate. Cowboy amazed when bartender juggle Hennessy bottles behind back and over head. Cowboy unshamed when open bathroom door and find it janitor closet. Cowboy flattered when two women ask to dance. They not dancing the Dan, he happy to see. They want be Cowgirls, he think, but white high heels too big for feet-look like white rain boots for little girls to splash in puddle. Splash! Splash! Cowboy splash, too! Having fun! Women think funny! Then women think weird. Cowboy feelings hurt. Cowgirls lead Cowboy to back room, where help him play electronical darts. For hundred RMB. What the hell, Cowboy play. Cowboy get bull’s-eye. To celebrate they want sell him clove-scented cigarettes, also hundred RMB. Many RMB later, Cowboy leave. Take off sweating sucker hat. Regard how hair is thinning. Let this be lesson!

Yes, lessons are learned, even as mysteries are solved. Not that the mysteries are such big deals, but solving a few does make me feel that China is not impossible to understand, that there are reasons for things being how they are. China is scrutable!

INSCRUTABLES…SCRUTED!

Inscrutable of the stockings: Because the Chinese live closer to the soil than we do. Even in the cities, mud cakes and flying dust are a part of daily existence. Ankle stockings are merely a matter of keeping the dirt at bay.

Inscrutable of the bus squat: It’s not avoiding pee, as Larry thought-it’s patience. Or strike that, it’s sufferance, long-suffering patience, the best way to wait for a bus that may never come. Not knowing if and when the Princess will ever come, I myself find it restful to hunker down like this sometimes, and a good stretch, too.

Inscrutable of the gradual stairs: It’s to keep the population sedate! American steps are pitched steep to reflect, or augment, our rush. Here the effect is calming, making you either patient or docile, depending on your point of view. Maybe Chinese history can be measured in the pitch of their stairs, I think, taking them three at a time.

Inscrutable of the lullaby music: Same deal. I’ve been noticing watered-down American lullabies everywhere lately, as hold music on phones, as background Muzak in hotel elevators. For a mighty nation, China sure does like to infantilize its subjects.

Inscrutable of the cab honking: It’s taken me a while to crack the code, but the Queen Latifah cabbie was my Rosetta Stone, her “long, long live” honking enabling me to extrapolate what other honking means. Sometimes it’s instructional: You’re driving the wrong way. Other times it’s argumentative: You may not think you need a cab, but I’m here to convince you otherwise. Usually it’s celebratory, though, honking for the sheer vitality of it, an expression of cabbiness the same way duck honking is an expression of duckiness.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. I’m a quack, after all, just here for a tiny while, with training in absolutely nothing. But I’ll be damned if things don’t seem fraught on these night walks, scrutable yet infinitely unknowable at the same time. An older bus driver is watching me from his elevated seat as he waits for the light to change. It takes him just a glance to get all the information he needs to know who I am and what I’m about. How I instinctively turn my shoulders a centimeter to indicate that I won’t be trying to cross the street in front of him-our subtle animal intentions on display every second no matter what we do. And I’m doing the same with him: reading, analyzing, deciding. What a miracle it is to see a person. You can decode his whole history and the history of his race in an instant’s expression and bearing. The exposure nearly makes me giddy. And yet at the same time, our knowledge of one another is infinitesimally small. Haven’t I just scratched the surface with Larry?

For the mysteries go on and on. The mystery of the dead chef on the sidewalk, of any dead body anywhere, is one I hope not to solve for a long time, and certainly not on this journey. Nor have all my doubts been laid to rest; new ones are surfacing all the time. China’s still a repressive, centralized society, trained to think in lockstep-I see it every time a cabbie resists having the destination changed mid-ride, every time a waiter refuses to modify an item on a menu-and these are the people I’m expecting to bend the rules for an illegal kidney? In one TV music video, a man’s chasing his girlfriend headlong down the street, but at a crosswalk he halts and waits until the lights indicate it’s okay to resume his chase. These are the folks I’m banking on to break the law for us?

The doubts keep pace with the mysteries; the best I can hope for is to maintain some sort of balance. All in all, along with the climate change, I find myself graced with a second wind: I have new patience for Larry, new regard for the place I’ve landed. I’ve been living nearly two months among people I was brought up to fear, and I have experienced nothing but generosity and compassion everywhere I turn. If it weren’t for sorely missing my wife and sons, I’d be content to stay here indefinitely. In fact, there are moments when I find myself almost dreading the day the kidney comes through. I want nothing more than for the scallion bread to keep supplying me my daily nutrition; for Jade to keep hopping two-footed off her bullet train on her quickie visits from Beijing; for the badminton tournament in no-man’s-land to go on and on; for Chinese calligraphy to keep being scripted onto my carpet with a naked vacuum pipe, up and down and sideways; for the hammering and drilling and bass playing at nightclubs to continue so loud it makes the hair on my bare legs quiver-country on the move!-and for everyone’s cooties to keep gloriously commingling. Despite the perils and unknowns-maybe because of the perils and unknowns-I want to be nowhere else than right here, doing what I’m doing. Is it okay to be happy being here, doing this? Falling in love with China?