The Language of Solitude

Book : The Rising Dragon Series

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Genres: Literary Fiction; International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Brooding expat and journalist Paul Leibovitz is beginning to imagine a new life for himself in Hong Kong, one in which the grief over a recent family tragedy doesn’t consume him and his love for Christine Wu brings him great joy. When Christine gets an unexpected and emotionally-charged letter from her estranged brother, Paul journeys with her to a remote village outside Shanghai, where a mysterious illness is affecting the locals.

Paul discovers a powerful chemical conglomerate is polluting a nearby lake, and Chinese officials are doing nothing to stop it. The victims demand justice, but taking legal action could prove even more dangerous than the strange disease itself. Government intimidation and political corruption threaten to suppress even the most passionate and audacious environmental activists. If Paul doesn’t walk away, he could pull the woman he loves back into a world she escaped from decades ago—putting their relationship and their lives at risk.

Suspenseful and rife with the page-turning storytelling that defines Sendker’s remarkable work and harks back to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Dragon Games offers a peerless look into contemporary China.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 352

Sample

The Language of Solitude

I

You are someone who is hungry for love. This was the first time that a woman had said this to him. He did not know whether it was a criticism or a compliment. Aren’t we all? he replied, without giving it great thought.

She smiled. Some are more so than others.

What about me? More or less?

More. More, more, more.

He took her in his arms. The delicate body that he was sometimes afraid he would crush. That could fill him with desire and render him helpless through long, sleepless nights like no one else in his life had done. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

More. More, more, more.

Hungry for love. There had been people in his life who would have meant to hurt him with these words. And there had been times when they would have succeeded. He would have taken the words as an insult, and rejected them as an outrageous accusation.

Not today. Although the words “hunger” and “love” did not fit together in his head. For him, at least with Christine in his arms, love was abundance, happiness, and fulfillment. Hunger, on the other hand, was a need. Hunger had to be satisfied, at any price if necessary. Hunger knew only oneself; love, only the other. People who were hungry were weak, but people who loved were strong. If hunger and love had anything in common, it was that they were both immeasurable.

He asked her what she had meant by it. If he should take her words as a complaint or a compliment.

Neither one nor the other, she said. It’s just something I’ve realized.

They left it at that.

Maybe, he thought, she was right. Perhaps the previous three years had left deeper traces than he was aware of. Three years in which he had wished for nothing more than to be alone. Three years in which a day when he had not exchanged a word with a single person had been a good day. A period in which his world had shrunk to the size of one house and a small, barely inhabited island with no cars in the South China Sea. Maybe a person who had had to withdraw himself so much, who had lived in the past and on memories, who had loved nothing and no one on this earth more than someone dead, was a person who was in more trouble than Paul wanted to accept.

Hungry for love. It was the neediness in the description that he did not like, although he could not say exactly why. We are all needy, he wanted to say out loud, but he knew what Christine would say.

Some are more so than others.

What about me?

More. More, more, more.

He said nothing and kissed her on the forehead. He trailed his long fingers up her neck and massaged her head with gentle rhythmic motions. She closed her eyes, and he stroked her face and her mouth. He could feel that his touch was arousing her; he heard her breath quickening. Not a lot, but enough to show him that they would not stop. He kissed her on the throat, and she whispered that she wanted to make love to him. Here, on the terrace.

He heard the hum of the cicadas, the loud chirping of the birds, and, from a distance, the neighbors’ voices, and wanted to say that someone might see them, shouldn’t they go up to his bedroom instead? But she was kissing him so passionately and holding him so tight, showing him how much she desired him, here, now, that he said nothing.

She pulled one of the garden chairs over, pushed him down gently but firmly onto it, and straddled him.

She was wearing a skirt; she did not waste any time. She dictated the rhythm, and was more vigorous and abandoned in loving him than he had ever known her to be. At the end she let out a short cry, loud but not light and full of relief as usual. It was dark and deep, expelled with force, almost despairing. As though this were the last time.

They held each other tight for a long while, clinging to each other silently, listening to their breathing gradually returning to normal.

Before she got up, she took his head in her hands and looked him in the eyes. Did he know how much she loved him? What he meant to her? He nodded, a little surprised. Did he promise never to forget that?

He nodded again, too tired to ask any questions.

Later, when he brought her to the ferry, she was unnervingly quiet. It was a warm and humid tropical evening; they walked down the hill to Yung Shue Wan, and the bushes around them were full of rustling, chirping, and cheeping noises. He asked her what she was thinking.

Nothing in particular, she said.

Is everything okay?

She waved his question away.

They had to run the last few yards. Christine could not miss this ferry; she had promised her son and her mother to be home by dinnertime.

He hated rushing. The next ferry left in forty minutes, and Paul found it an intolerable imposition to be forced by a timetable into hurrying. He was often to be found walking in measured steps toward the quay while other passengers rushed past him panting, responding to the ringing that announced that the gates were slowly closing, leaving him the only one who missed the boat. Instead of cursing, he sat down calmly on a bench under the shade of the pine trees in front of the bookshop and gazed at the sea. Or he crouched by the edge of the water and looked at the spray beneath him. Even as a child he had liked to watch the drops of water moving through the air; he had been fascinated by how they separated themselves from the sea, took shape for a couple of seconds, whizzing through the air, before disappearing almost immediately into the expanse of the ocean. People were like these little drops of water, he had thought then, they rose from and disappeared into the same infinity they came from. They stopped existing but still remained part of the whole. Somehow this thought had been comforting to him as a ten-year-old. His father had liked it too, but he thought instead that people came to an end like drops of water falling onto a hot plate. They disappeared into nothing with a quick hiss. The young Paul had found that comparison anything but comforting.

He loved looking at the waves, the way they played with the fishing boats and lapped the rocks in front of him. He heard the voice of the sea. Sometimes he even missed the next ferry while he daydreamed away like this.

But you don’t have a son waiting for you, Christine had said when he told her about this before.

No, he did not. His son was dead.

She had apologized immediately. She had only meant to say that he did not have any familial or professional obligations: no boss, no business partner insisting on punctuality, no one waiting for him apart from her. And, if there were any doubt about it, she would forgive him if he were late.

Christine said a hurried good-bye with a quick kiss. He watched her walk up the gangway without turning back to look at him, and she disappeared into the belly of the ship a few seconds later. He stood on the pier, waving in the darkness and watching the ferry until it disappeared around the tip of the island.

It was a dark evening. The sea was a deep black in front of him, and the lights of Cheung Chau and Lantau twinkled in the distance. A junk full of day-trippers hove into view, close to Lamma. He could hear the monotonous thump of its diesel engine, children shrieking and parents admonishing them. The sound of voices and laughter floated over from the seaside promenade in Yung Shue Wan. He strolled along the pier, relishing the mild, warm, and humid air, soft as silk. At the Green Cottage restaurant he got a table right by the water and ordered a freshly pressed apple, carrot, and ginger juice. He was the only lone diner. He missed Christine already, even though her ferry was only just arriving at Hong Kong harbor.

Four weeks ago he had sat at that very spot, looking at the fishing boats bobbing up and down on the water, the red lanterns reflecting in the sea, and wondered if Christine should move in with him. Her son could take the ferry to school, and she could take a slightly later ferry to work. There was enough space in the house. Square footage, at least, but would he be able to stand seeing another child in Justin’s room? The idea of it was as terrible as it was tempting. An attempt at having a family, at age fifty-three, after the first one had failed.

The thought of it had stayed with him since, and he had wanted to talk about it with Christine today. But she had avoided his questions and had been very quiet all day, withdrawn. Hungry for love. What made her think that? He tried to remember how she had sounded when she said it. Tender, he thought at the time; now he began to doubt it.

She rang him every Sunday evening before she went to bed, to tell him she had arrived home safely, she had enjoyed the time with him, and that she missed him already. And he said that he felt exactly the same way. It was their Sunday ritual, and rituals had come to mean so much.

He paid attention to the little things now.

He had begun to pursue beauty into her hiding place. For the first time in his life.

The death of his son had been his teacher. A terrible, merciless teacher that had not forgiven any mistakes or tolerated any objections. Paul had learned one of the most important lessons in life from it: never to take anything for granted again.

He used to think that it was just a matter of course for babies to become children, children to grow into young people, and young people to become adults.

He had thought that bruises on a child’s body came only from a fall or a push.

He had thought that children who fell ill got better.

The fragility of happiness.

The randomness of unhappiness.

Nothing was the matter, of course. Anyone who understood that—no, Paul thought, anyone who had experienced those banal words, so often said glibly, as an existential truth never, ever forgot it; he was an outsider forever, someone for whom home was an impossible concept. He could make plans, father children, buy houses, make decisions about the future, and know at the same time that he was submitting himself to an illusion, that the future was only a promise and that you could never rely on it, that security could never be permanent, but could exist only for short, infinitely precious moments.

Was all the happiness in this world not hanging from a thread stretched tight, to the breaking point? It was so thin that most people did not even notice it.

I’m sorry to have to tell you. With these words, the doctor had snipped Paul’s thread. Forever and ever, as his son might have said. There was no going back. Paul had reconciled himself to this thought. Until he met Christine.

As if trusting was only for fools. As if we had a choice. Those were the first words she had said that he had remembered. He had not taken them seriously at first. He had been secretly a little amazed that a grown woman was so naïve. Until then, he had been convinced that being skeptical was very useful, that it protected us, and in sufficient measure, kept us from great disappointment. He knew they came from two very different worlds: Christine Wu, the dreamer, and Paul Leibovitz, the realist.

How was a person to trust when the most important thing in his life had been taken away? Overnight, through no fault of his own, and for no reason. Someone who had had to witness white blood cells multiplying relentlessly, watch their numbers rise and rise as no medicine in the world could stop them. What could he rely on now? What, Christine, what?

She had not answered this question with words. She had stayed by him even when he pushed her away. She had trusted him more than he had trusted himself. Trust can be infectious, she had warned him. And she had been right.

It was just after midnight. In Yung Shue Wan the voices of the evening had long died away and the lights of most of the restaurants had gone out. Lamma had given itself over to peace. Paul opened the large sliding door to the garden and stepped outside. How loud the night was in the tropics. The cicadas chirped away tirelessly and the shrill croaking of the toads in a nearby pond filled the air. The bush in front of him rustled loudly; probably a snake hunting down a rat. The bamboo canes bent slightly in the gentle breeze. He had listened to this regular creaking and groaning so often, and fallen asleep to it.

Christine would normally have rung him long before this time. To wish him good-night. He had checked several times that his telephone was switched on, that the volume was on, and that the battery did not need charging. He could not remember a Sunday when she had not called. Perhaps she had simply lain down on her bed for a moment and fallen asleep in exhaustion. He missed hearing her voice and had thought a few times about calling her. But that would not have been the same. He needed the gesture.

Hungry for love. Maybe she was right.

He decided to send her a text message.

My love, my darling,

Why have you not been in tou

No, he did not want to make any accusations.

My love, my darling,

Where are you? I was really looking forward to yo

Not even veiled ones.

My love, my darling,

Sleep well. Thank you for today. Thank you for everything.

I love you. More and more.

He hesitated. Added “I need you and I miss you.” And deleted it. He did not want to sound needy.

Paul read his text message a few times. He was not used to writing text messages and did not want to risk any misunderstanding. Finally he sent it, switched his phone off, and immediately felt better. Tomorrow morning she would reply with a few tender lines, and the incident would be over.

It was a dreamless night. He slept well, longer than usual, and when he woke, his first thought was of Christine. What a gift it was to wake next to her while she was still sleeping. To feel the warmth of her body. Her regular breathing.

How little it took now to find happiness in its hiding place. How often we simply walk past it.

He reached for his phone next to the bed and switched it on. No new messages. Paul suddenly felt the same unease that had plagued him the previous night. It was too early, he told himself. At this hour she was taking a shower and getting ready for a long day in the office. She normally only texted him once she was on the MTR train on the way to Wan Chai.

He got up, tied the mosquito net in a knot, went down to the kitchen, and put some water on to boil for tea. The air had cooled only slightly during the night; the weather gauge by the window displayed 77 degrees Fahrenheit and 88 percent humidity, and it was not even eight a.m. yet. Paul had to hurry. The sun would be shining on the roof terrace shortly, and it would soon beat down so fiercely that he would have to seek protection from it, and be forced to do tai chi in the shade instead. The exercise always took exactly one hour. It helped him start the day after bad nights and gave him, at least for that hour, the feeling of almost cheerful ease.

Not today. His movements were imprecise and strangely clumsy; his hips were much too stiff and his shoulders tense. He even started the “single whip” and “white crane spreads wings” moves from the beginning, but was not able to achieve a harmonious flow of movements.

By evening he finally made contact with her. They spoke only briefly by phone. It was busier than usual in Christine’s office, and in the evening her son had a high fever and needed his mother.

Of course Paul understood. She didn’t have to explain or apologize.

On Tuesday morning came a text message; Christine told him that she would not be able to come to Lamma that Sunday. He rang her three times. All three conversations were unusually short. Their first call was cut short because a customer stuck at the airport in Jakarta was complaining, then Cathay Pacific was canceling flights, then Christine had the pediatrician on the other line. Each time, she did not call back as promised.

Her silence. Paul tried to ignore it. He cleaned the house even more thoroughly than usual. Dusted the books, wiped down the shelves, and mopped the floor. He rubbed the old Chinese wedding chest with new wax polish until it shone again. He cleared out the fridge and washed every compartment with soapy water. Immune system weakened. Make sure everything is especially clean. In the whole house. A minor infection can be life-threatening.

There are sentences, he thought, that follow us around all our lives. Justin would soon have been dead for four years. Nevertheless, to this day, Paul could not bear to have even the shadow of dirt in his house.

He went for a walk to Pak Kok, at the tip of the island. He left his phone at home. He did not want to be waiting for a phone call with every step he took.

He thought about the last two days and tried to think logically. What was he so upset about? That Christine had not found any time in the last forty-eight hours to exchange a few sentences with him in an unhurried way? It was unusual, but she was a very busy woman. That her voice sounded less tender than it usually did? What was he? A teenager in love for the first time? He knew how much pressure she was under. Her mother made demands on her that he could not understand, but had to accept. The more he thought about it, the more he understood that it was not Christine who was making him feel insecure. He was the one doing it to himself.

She had asked him not long ago if he lived on Lamma in exile. The word had moved him strangely. “Exile.” Exilium in Latin, if he remembered correctly. A sojourn in a strange place. Banishment. No, he had replied immediately. No one has banished me. He was not a refugee, not fleeing persecution. He could not be spending time in a strange place, because only people who had a home could do that. Paul did not have a home. His parents were dead. Nothing bound him to the country he had been born in. He remembered barely anything about Germany apart from the many ships in the harbor at Hamburg and, strangely, the deep and loud horn of the steamer that had brought them to America. His early years in Munich and his memories of his grandparents had faded with time.

He was an American citizen. His blue passport was proof of it. But it was a travel document, nothing more. After his mother died when he was nineteen, he had left the country forever. He did not have relatives anywhere in the world whom he knew personally.

Before, whenever people asked him, as they did from time to time, where his home was, he always said, On earth, more or less. Most of them thought he was joking.

He had lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years, but not in exile. If there was anywhere on this earth where he felt at ease, it was in this city. He was grateful to it. It had taken him in and never forced him to belong to any particular place. That suited him.

When he had told Christine what he was thinking, she had replied that she had not meant her question that way. She had been thinking more of how he had withdrawn after Justin’s death. Had he voluntarily gone into exile because of it?

Paul had never asked himself this question; he owed it a reply.

A kind of self-imposed exile, fleeing life because he could not bear the pain and grief over his son? Perhaps. If that were so, then it was because of Christine that he had found his way back. Her patience, like an angel’s, in the first few months. Her strength, which had borne with his moods. Her ability not to expect more than he could give.

She had brought him back to life and made him realize the simple truth of an old Chinese saying: “A human being alone is not a human being.”

Was it any wonder that he was sometimes oversensitive in his reactions? He was surely not the first exile who found the return to a world that he had left, from one day to the next, difficult. There was a lot at stake. The short breath of happiness. As though fear needed a reason.

Once he returned from his walk, his cell phone showed a missed call. Christine. He called back but she didn’t answer. A busy tone. He tried again, with no luck. She would see on her phone display that he had called. She would ring back as soon as she had time.

He circled the telephone the way Justin had done with a bar of chocolate that he was not allowed to have. He picked up a book and put it down again a few minutes later. He tried some music. Brahms didn’t work. Neither did Beethoven. Puccini only intensified his longing.

He rang her shortly after eleven p.m. He wanted to sound relaxed. Calm, cheerful, casual, everything but hungry for love.

“Is something wrong?” she asked immediately.

“No. Why?”

“You sound so—”

“How do I sound?”

“Down.”

He hated talking about important things with the small device pressed to his ear, asking questions and then hearing nothing but a hissing noise, not knowing when it would end. Waiting alone for answers that could be of meaning to him. He had to see who he was talking to in order to reassure himself that what was being said was reflected in the gestures and the body language, that it was consistent with what was in the person’s eyes. How much simpler it was to tell untruths on the telephone. The wrong tone of voice or a tiny, unimportant misunderstanding was enough to unsettle him, to cause a moment of doubt that could flare quickly into an argument. For him, the telephone magnified a person’s mood. It made the secure feel more certain and the fearful more frightened. Right now, he was one of the fearful. How was he to understand the harsh tone of her voice without being able to look into her eyes? He had no idea what to ask or what to say. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said quietly.

“You woke me up.”

“I’m sorry.”

They were silent.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He wished he could hang up. Her words and her voice were making him feel the opposite of what he needed. If he weren’t careful, the conversation would not end well. How sensitive needy people were. It was not her fault.

“We’ve barely spoken since Sunday. This morning I received a text message in which you simply—”

“Paul, you have no idea what I’ve had to deal with these last few days. Josh is sick and is ringing me five times a day. My mother has a pain in her chest and won’t go to the hospital on her own for an examination. All hell has broken loose in the office. It’s May and I’m almost twenty percent down for the first half of the year. Do you know what it means if we don’t catch up?”

“I know, Christine. I just don’t understand—”

“You have too much time on your hands. That’s the problem,” she interrupted again. “If I spent all day cleaning the house, cooking, and going for walks, I would also think stupid things.”

What was he supposed to say to that?

“I’m sorry,” she said after a long pause. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Paul felt empty and exhausted, as if they had fought for two hours. “You mean it’s nothing more than that?”

“?‘More than that’?” Her voice sharpened again. “Haven’t you heard what I said? That’s all a great deal, if you ask me.”

“Of course. That is all a great deal for you, but I didn’t mean that.”

“What, then?”

“I’m worried.”

“About me?”

“Yes. About us.”

She gave a deep sigh. “Paul, it’s late. I can’t sleep in tomorrow. My alarm is set for six thirty a.m. Could we talk about it another time?”

Now he could hear how tired she sounded. “Of course. But when?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“I love you. Sleep well.”

“I love you too. Good-night.”

“You too. Always and for—”

She had hung up the phone.

I love you too. That was all he had wanted to hear. Like a child.

Paul thought about Justin. I love you. He had said that to him every night after he turned off the light. I love you too, a tired child’s voice had whispered back in the darkness.

She was absolutely right. He would go to Hong Kong tomorrow, ask her out to lunch, and apologize to her.

As if trusting was only for fools. As if we had a choice.

He would have liked to have fallen asleep with these comforting thoughts. Something kept him awake. A feeling that he did not dare himself to put into words.