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

The spasm knocks me to my knees.

O Fearless Father of East and West alike, Emperor of the healing arts, do not let Larry be crispy, I pray. Forgive him his trespasses as You forgive me for cheating him out of a 1943 zinc penny. I haven’t been too cavalier about this, have I? You’d let me know if these prayers aren’t proper, wouldn’t You? Have I used up my quota? Unless maybe-hear me out-if I haven’t exhausted my lifetime allotment, taking into account my pissy teenage years…I get rollover prayers? Sound like a deal?

My gut feels fine. Must have been the oily peanuts. I trash the rest and set out for a change of scenery.

A few minutes later, the midnight air outside feels ridiculously fresh, like a farmer’s field after haying. The stars are as sharp as any of the china shards I just discarded. I begin walking with no destination in mind. Spit globules glisten in the tar from the streetlights overhead. Neon squiggles like a puppy I’ve grown bored with. Two men are singing “Soul Train” at an outdoor karaoke bar, but they’re so shy they sit with their backs to the handful of listeners. Despite their shyness, the mikes amplify their warbling voices into the humid night air. Are the mikes loud enough to carry their song to the windows of the hospital not far away? Could it serenade the surgeons beginning to hack at his guts? Because the surgery must have started by now. May the song bring them joy and precision as they cut.

I walk farther. A shopkeeper ducks into his store as I approach, the better to observe me through his slatted window. I help a grateful couple push their broken-down car several blocks through city traffic to a gas station; it’s good to have something to do. Farther on, under a highway bridge, a cello quartet is rehearsing on a sidewalk. The instruments bellow as cars sizzle past overhead. It should be a recording studio, Bach complete with street sounds. Lovely.

Even farther, the tissue wrappings from someone’s afternoon fireworks have shredded to red confetti, damp already and turning to clay underfoot. So some festivities go on, even after the holiday season’s passed. Good to know. And another thing: A girl falls off her bicycle, startled by the sight of me. I extend my hand to help her up, then lift her bike for her. She is featherlight, but her bike is as heavy as lead. I’ve spent all this time in China and had no idea how heavy the bikes were. This also seems an important detail to know.

Navigating by the specter of the Giant Mushroom, I find a new route to the Old Faithful fountains. A school chorus is practicing in the open air. Up so late, the singers smile and whisper to one another while the choral director scolds them fondly. It’s a mystery to me how a nation this huge manages to foster such a feeling of family: calling one another aunt and uncle, treating one another like sibs. Maybe it’s because there’s a shortage of real-life relatives. Scrutable! China’s enacted the One-Child Policy not only to halve its population but also to foster national unity. Everyone’s an only child, so the nation is their family. What a stroke of genius. I miss my children.

And then I arrive at the waltzing terrace. There they are, the former Red Guards, waltzing in trim little circles around the colored fountains, round and round. But tonight they’re not frightening, these former cannibals and rapists and butchers; they’re just unfortunates, doing the best they can to salvage what’s left of their lives. Wasn’t that always what they were, unfortunate pawns of generals and tyrants? Given the right circumstances, couldn’t we American student protesters of that era have been manipulated into becoming monsters ourselves? Seeing them tonight, I imagine they’re dancing not in celebration of their misdeeds but in shame for how they were duped into ruining so many lives. They’re waltzing round and round to atone for their sins, the way dirty water can cleanse itself by recirculating. Maybe that’s what these fountains are about, too: redemption through recirculation. Whether they realize it or not, it’s some sort of purification dance, oxygenating themselves free of their polluted past. Isn’t there an old Chinese saying that if you rinse your hands in running water for an hour every day, after nine years you may be pardoned for your past? So maybe if you waltz every night for ninety-nine years, you finally waltz away your crimes. Quick, there’s somebody I need to share this with…

“Hon?”

“Dan?”

“It’s happening. He just went under the knife-”

“Are you sure it’s safe to say this over the cell?”

“He’s in surgery. It’s too late for anyone to stop it. It’s happening…”

I’m close enough to the small fountains that little droplets of spray are coming onto me, dampening my hat. I hold the phone out toward the scene: the waltzers down below and, in the background up above, the hulking shape of the hospital, its top floor ablaze where Larry is. “Can you hear this, honey?” I call to my wife. “I know it’s noon where you are, but it’s midnight here, and the Red Guards are swirling to this music. And can you hear this traffic, all the cabbies honking? And the bicycle brakes screeching? And the street vendors calling? This is what goes on here around the clock! All this blessed cacophony-”

I put the phone back to my ear. “Doesn’t the noise bother you?” she’s asking.

“Nah-threw out my earplugs weeks ago.”

A pause. “Dan, what’s going on? Are you okay?” she asks.

“It’s just…I’d forgotten how lucky I am,” I say, “to get to go halfway around the world and be privy to this. I might have stayed home and missed this. Thank you for allowing me to be reckless.”

“Dan,” she asks, “you haven’t gone back to carrying your flask around, have you?”

“I’m standing here watching these people I thought were monsters, but they’re not,” I say. “They’re victims, too!-of their lives. Because you can’t hurt others without ultimately hurting yourself. And now they need a lifetime to heal themselves, any way they can.”

A cannon goes off somewhere far away, accompanied by cheers. “And, hon?”

“Yes, Dan?”

“Larry’s not going to die of kiddie failure. We won’t let him. ’Cause he’s a victim, too, just like Mary is, and these poor souls here, who’re really pretty good waltzers, by the way. We ought to take some lessons, you and me…”

Shelley takes a moment. “I like how you sound,” she decides. “You sound kind.”

“Yeah, well, blame your older son for that. Is the little one still faking sick, by the way?”

“No, he finally went to school today. His conscience got the better of him.”

“Conscience, eh? Let’s nip that in the bud.”

She chuckles. “Call me in the morning and let me know how Larry’s doing.”

“Will do.”

Hanging up, I see the waltzers gesture to me. I withdraw by habit, hesitate, then come forward and join my generation-mates. “When I Grow Too Old to Dream…” Old Faithful’s on a timer to keep her faithful, and off she goes, adding to the general hoopla. We waltz under the water drops, and it’s bountiful, being sad and festive together with my generation under the hulk of the hospital where Larry lies unconscious. Then, faintly at first, but with more and more clarity, I make out a more insistent honking than any of the stray honking that’s pealing through the night. It’s adamant, rhythmical, eloquent. “Jong may yo yee-”

“Ma?!” I cry, jumping out of the way to avoid getting splattered by my exuberant friend, the Queen Latifah cabbie, waving wildly to me out her window as she weaves around the dancers like she’s one herself, splashing through the puddles, round and round the fountains pumping her horn, and you don’t need a translator to know exactly what it’s saying, in any language at all: