Jonathan Tel

Excerpt from The Beijing of Possibilities

She can't imagine ever leaving Hainan. The sand, the sky, the coconut palms, the sea yes, the sea above all. The sea is always there. It's alien, unknowable, and doesn't necessarily love her, but it's there. The sea is her mother.

Then again, what does she want? How should she know? The man is right: thousands of people are eager to migrate to Beijing. Who's to say she isn't that kind of person?

The whole village pulls together to give her this big chance. Someone finds her a place to live, in the home of a Hainanese family in a western suburb. Someone else arranges a job for her there, at a company. Nobody's quite sure what the company does, and the salary won't be much, but it's a job! And the party secretary himself loans her the one-way fare, for bus and ferry and train.

She stands at the stop, her father at her side. He made landfall yesterday, and in a few days he'll set out again. Neither  is  the  talkative  sort;  they  don't  look  each  other in the eye. Thoughts pass between them, ebbing and flowing, of parenthood and love and loss. The daughter's suitcase holds the warmest clothing she has, and one knitted bootie. The father smells as always of the ocean.  

Another year, and there's a routine to her life. She sleeps on a mat on the floor of the living room of a husband and wife who are seldom at home. Her job is an hour's commute to  the  northeast;  she  works  in  the  basement  of  an  office building. She's  on  her  own  there,  sorting  the  incoming mail,  delivering  it  to  offices  throughout  the  stories above. Sometimes she's called on to make tea. Sometimes she operates the shredder machine, converting documents to illegible, off-white matter. (She's not considered reliable enough yet to be entrusted with the photocopier.)  Her companions  are  the  shredder  (nicknamed  by  her,  Gao  Gao), the machine  for  weighing  letters  and  the  machine  for franking  them  (twins,  Bao  and  Zhao),  and  the  trash  can (oddly enough the only female, Xiao Bing).

The company is in the telemarketing field. The other employees, all women, wear uniforms of tan skirts and blue blouses and look down on her the hick. They cold-call clients all across China. Nobody would want to listen to her accent. The boss is male. According to the gossip, he's in the habit of  picking  on  telemarketers,  making  their lives a  misery a  different  target  every  few  weeks. The victims are all pretty; this is not her fate.

The sights of Beijing? It's a gray and lonely city. Its anonymity is its consolation: you'll never again encounter the  person  who  slips  past  you  on  the  street  or  who  sits opposite on the subway not if you live ten thousand lives. Its vastness:  so much is here that nothing is here. The stores sell things she cannot afford. If she were asked to describe  in  visual  detail  a  bus  or  a  subway  car,  a particular shop, a crossroads, let alone a person, she'd be unable to.

The sounds of Beijing? The couple with whom she's lodging gave her  a  pair  of  earplugs flesh-color,  waxen things,  two  halves  of  a  caterpillar. 'Put these in at night.'  She guesses the intention is to stop her from overhearing  them  make  love,  on  the  far  side  of  the  thin wall. She wouldn't hear them anyway. Her sleep is profound, without dreams. She wears the earplugs on her commute also. And at work too, often. Her coworkers seldom address her, and when they do it's a curt instruction or complaint. The office is located near the Fourth Ring Road. It abuts a demolition/construction site, where old buildings are being wrecked and the foundations of new ones laid. Every few days: a siren, followed a minute later by an explosion. The mail room quakes. More constantly she hears and feels the dull determination of a pile driver, the scrape and thud of backhoe and bulldozer, the tinnitus of traffic. She's within these noises, and they are within her like a dentist setting up shop inside her mouth.

One  morning  in  winter  she  feels sad, and  it  takes  her most  of  the  day  to  work  out  why:  the  date  is  January  12. She  thinks  of  contacting  the  parents,  but  what  would  she say? I'm sorry about the death of your ... of our ... Remember me? I'm fostering the little girl who doesn't exist.

About the only excitement in her life is when the municipal security stop her. They lie in wait at the foot of the pedestrian bridge she crosses between bus and subway. In  her  first  year and  a  half,  it  happens  to  her twice. She shows them her residence permit. They scrutinize it. Fake? They're disappointed to discover she's entitled to be here, and so, in a way, is she.

Who can believe in Beijing? Only those who've never been and those who've left; it comes to life in imagination and memory. The smell of Beijing? Smog. Dust. Her sinuses are affected; she has lost that sense. The taste of Beijing? She eats rice three times a day, drinks tea, not much else. The touch of Beijing? Outside  boutiques,  there are  women  (immigrants  like  herself,  she  assumes)  hired  to clap, to attract customers. Day and night, sun and rain and snow, the clapping goes on. Whenever she passes a professional clapper, she rams her earplugs deeper into her skull. Silent applause now: the sore palms coming together and moving apart.