KAZAKHSTAN/BEIJING, 1995  

Becca Wang

She runs her thumb over the picture, again and again as if to reveal something. The picture is black and white, just small enough to fit in the back of a wallet. The picture is a dream. Her skin is porcelain, not a mishap or shadow could exist there. The hands are resting under her jaw, not for function or purpose, just because her hands are small and beautiful. Her face is perfectly oval, like a teaspoon for sugar or a pebble on the beach. A glint on the cupid’s bow suggests that she reached for lip-gloss at one point and the choice was hers. No one, not even the preacher of Christ could ignore her eyes: pools of delicious tar, almond-shaped, holy.  

‘Ni mama piao liang bu piao liang? Wo shi shijiu sui zai zhe ge zhao pian li mian.’  

Wasn’t your mother beautiful? I was nineteen in this picture. 

*** 

He’s at the poker table again and his hands are enemies of the state. The school bus is outside, children spilling across the street, hot and 7AM. They must have drunk enough beer to warrant a murder. Cigarette butts and prawn tails—same thing.  

‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’ the one with the saran-wrap skin asks.  

‘No,’ he says, looking at his cards for the seventh time, rubbing fingers over numbers to summon three wishes. 

‘How about we continue this tomorrow?’  

He sighs, drops his cards almost face-up and coughs into his shoulder, red-throated and bitter.  

The train arrives exactly forty-five seconds late. He finds the seat furthest away from the sun and the envelope of tomorrow closes around him.  

Four dust storms in the last six months. Back when the tiles were emerald in the quad, she covered her mouth and eyes, reaching for an answer. When the letter came, she was sitting on the porch looking out into the yellowed clouds, another storm on its way. Kazakhstan wasn’t her first choice, but neither was he. She had packed a bag: clothes her mother made last winter, tokens for the train, her nicest textbook (russkiy yazykoznaniye tom tretiy), dried venison for dinner. The carriage looks just like the one she came to Beijing in, but rounder, with beet-purple carpet.  

The cart lady trudges past, ‘Would you like something to drink?’ She counts her gold tokens and hands the lady one. The salted plum juice goes right and sweet all the way down.  

He stumbles into a payphone booth and shuts the door behind him, asking for privacy. The first ring marks the beginning of this winter solstice—he can already feel he’s coming to the end, palm damp against the black plastic.  

‘Wei?’ she says. It’s only 10 o’clock there, but she’s been up since they let the cats out to hunt the street mice. 

‘Ni zen me yang?’ he asks, like handing a crying newborn to her. She’s forgotten everything except for the back of his head.  

‘Hai hao, ting re de.’  

The truth is, she hasn’t thought about the heat at all until it is right in her ear. What good would it do her, knowing he was only ever thinking about the glass in his hand? He coughs into his shoulder, fogging up the box. 

‘Ni you zai chou yan?’ She actually wants to know the answer to this question because if he has been, she will not leave Kazakhstan yet. At least tobacco doesn’t age the men here, just makes them talk less. 

‘Heng shao chou,’ he replies, lying through the receiver. 

‘Ni bing le me?’ There is a virus going around inside her. Maybe it got to him before she left. 

Her White Russian neighbour told her she looks ill without her glasses. ‘Boleznennyy,’ she said. Not sick, but sickly like a spoonful of corn syrup.            

The air is warm, but the floor is the touch of a changed friend. She packs the bag she came with sans the textbook—she left it at a bar with plastic chairs and half-empty bowls of peanuts.  

‘Ne bud’ chuzhim!’ she yells to no-one as the train leaves the station.  

Another Chinese woman gets on and sits across from her, but speaks only in tongues. She walks up and down the carriages until she realises the cart lady doesn’t operate this time of day.   

*** 

 

Think of the fruit on the trees and the yellowed grass pastures. Think of her and all the stories she remembered. Aesop’s Fables, two by four by six. One hundred and one folk tales. The proverbs chanted in unison. Think of the proverbs you know. Protector of agriculture, seeker of forever. Think of how many pieces of fruit she has broken up with her hands. Remember why she came to this lost country, why she wanted the days to be longer. Wide-eyed Aryan children standing at the foot of the stairs, blond hair in the wind.  

Think of the flood that year, after Father left for the motherland to send his father off. Think of the reflection of the sky, a window in her eye, as the water came closer and closer. The piano against the wall in the living room—the only thing left on the first floor—that, and the ghosts of summer. Think of her after the flood when the roads dried up and father returned to a home with nothing but a piano. How he walked through the door and laughed at the sight.  

Think of the language of distance between here and Russia. Here and the chosen land. How the plains beyond matrimony are barren, like they warned her, like we warned her. When she goes to sleep tonight, she will dream of the Underworld—her first God—her first love.  

 

Author: Becca Wang

Artist: 

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Edited by: Lara Madeline Rand, Ariya Sokhara Say, and Max Jenner

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