Josh Stenberg is a Lecturer at Nanjing Normal University. He has translated two volumes of Su Tong's fiction, Madwoman on the Bridge and Other Stories and Tattoo: Three Novellas. His writing has appeared in the Asia Literary Review, Kartika Review and is upcoming in  Vancouver Review.  

Gate of Bone (August 20, 2011. Issue 30.)

This was a few years ago, 2010, I was just back from the Expo, Shanghai.

There's an e-mail, I said.

An e-mail from who, asked Ellie.

Whom. From the guy, I said.

The Shanghai guy? asked Ellie.

Yeah.

So? What do you want me to do about it? Are you trying to make me jealous?

No; I thought—you know—we're not keeping any secrets, right? He was a nice guy. Is.

No one's blaming him, said Ellie.

Is someone blaming other people?

No, we're perfectly OK. But I don't need to hear, in great detail, about your gay paramours.

I just thought I should tell you.

Well, you told me. Colour me told.

He's a nice guy.

Shut up and tell me what the e-mail said.

Dear Gordon, I read. Hi! Is it snowing? What is Christmas like in Canada? I went out at Christmas in Shanghai but the streets were so full of people going out to eat that I went right back home. Was it like that in Vancouver? Can you send me a picture? I know you hate photographs—because you are so fat! But still, can you send me a photo? The city is beautiful, I can see it online. But it's different, when someone sends you a photo. You know? Send me one. You don't have to be in it. Send me a photo of your wife, maybe. It'd be nice to know how you live. I am glad you two have each other, to pass the time.

I am still at the little white collar job that I told you about. I phone people and try to frighten them into buying life insurance. You said this job existed also in Canada? Perhaps Canadians are more successful at it. I usually feel more frightened than the person I am calling. Even though they are supposed to be facing death. When I have the night shift, I lie down on my elbow and try to sleep. We just have to answer the phone if someone calls, injured, hurt, scared. And try to figure out if we have to cover it. Our boss is happier of course when we do not. He always says, cannot.

My mother called again with a girl from my town she has discovered in Shanghai. A beautiful girl, she says, and her father has a factory that makes diaper linings for the whole world. I agreed to meet her and her mother and we went to a restaurant in Puxi. I had to dress up a little; I should sabotage things, but I can't. I don't want to feel ugly. Fortunately the girl was a horrible snob, so I didn't have to feel bad. She will find someone. In time. Then my mother phoned and I told her that I thought girls were disgusting and she said, oh well, next time. I wanted to say something, but I thought, no. Who does it help? What does it make better?

And I went back to Shanghai Studio. You remember, where we met. It is still horrific, but this time no one took pity on me and said, "you don't know how to dance." And so I couldn't say, "neither do you." And the two out-of-place people couldn't leave together. I thought about you a lot that night. And I read the English book we bought together, about Princess Diana. I don't believe what you said is true—remember? That her wedding cost more than China's GDP in 1981.That's a lie. Did I tell you I was born that year? If my spirit had been cleverer about which womb to choose, I could have been Prince William. Prince William of Henan Province. Don't say I don't deserve it. I could be marrying Li Ka-shing's daughter, maybe. Hu Jintao's daughter. Jackie Chan's daughter.

But I am really writing because of a dream I had. It was like this, I went to Expo to see you and Julie and Connie and Hilary and all the other people, like I used to, you remember, you got me the pass. And I was wandering around the pavilions. It was the same thing—movies, displays. But then the path forked and if you kept going down the other way, the way I never went in real life, then—then there was a second gate, you see? And you went through the other gate—and there was the real Canada. And all the other countries were just the same! They all had these gates! And you were there! In the countries, themselves.

You will think this was a foolish dream. But you cannot control the intellectual level of your dreams! Remember when I dreamt about you and Julie speaking French—I didn't understand the French my own dream was making. At least I am honest about my dreams.

I don't know if you are still coming back to China, or if I will ever see you again. Meanwhile I pray and bless and hope that happiness will be and remain with you. And your wife.

Zhu Lian

Awww, said Ellie.

Awww, what?

Oh, it's adorable, said Ellie. He's adorable. Gormless. Artless. I want to adopt him.

He's not that young, I said. And you don't adopt your husband's gay paramours. It isn't 'the done thing.'

Should we invite him over, on a visit?

What? You're crazy. Invite him! He would never get a visa. Anyway, what would that do?

I don't know. Fulfill something. A promise.

We never—there was no talk of that. There were no promises.

Don't get defensive.

It was all aboveboard. Just tenderness. Mutually, I would like to point out. No fiduciary motives. No sneaking. Clear as day.

What if I want to, on my, you know, of my own, volition? Invite him.

Why?

To be nice.

Oh, he has a Canada he imagines. Leave his Canada alone. It's probably better than ours.

And it's just a gate in a dream…It's beautiful. Poetic.

Let me tell you something: I met a depressed woman in China. She was an expert in Song Dynasty paintings. Beautiful paintings—she had business cards on all of them. They sent her to us, because she teaches History of Eastern Art, at York or Western or somewhere. One of the obscure and eminent people.

So?

So she was older. When she was young you couldn't come to China. Forbidden. But now she's older. Emeritus. For many years she didn't come on purpose. But now, well, age looming and such. Anwyasy, she finally got curious. World Expo, ra ra ra. So she came. Finally wanted to know what the real China was like.

And?

And, what? Do I need to finish the story? I told you, I met a depressed woman.

Proving?

Proving, the illusion is nicer. But it's only nice when the sense of the illusion is undisturbed.

The religious impulse.

That direction of conversation was dangerous, and so it was the end of the subject of Zhu Lian for the day. I said, look! Is that a thrush in the birdbath?

But our correspondence persisted, I am not the kind to heartlessly abandon a perfectly good paramour. Although we wrote very immaterial messages. How are you, I am older, I got a raise, I broke my toe. He had no more dreams, perhaps; or he learnt better than to tell me of them. I said nothing about the pavilion; or about Ellie's crazy idea of inviting him.

Every now and then, Ellie still might ask me, how about that boy?

What boy?

The Shanghai boy.

He's not a boy, I said. He's thirty this year. And he's not a boy. He's from Henan.

He was younger then.

But he was never a boy.

Don't be defensive, Ellie might say, I wonder if he ever got to Canada?

Why would he get to Canada? He has a job, he's in insurance, in Henan. He writes, sometimes. It sounds, alright. He sounds well. Canada is not the end of every story. Henan Province develops. He remembers himself to you.

Who says that, said Ellie, who says, 'remembers himself to you'?

It's perfectly good English. Why not?

I still think we should send him something. Something from here.

Maple candies, I said. We don't eat them and they're disgustingly sweet. He'll love them.

Why am I, said Ellie, thinking more about him than you ever did?

Why are you, I answered, the one with the fondness for cutting rhetorical questions? Anyway, I just looked it up the other day, speaking of Expo, did you know, I said, what pavilion comes from?

What? she said.

The word, pavilion.

I always think of a Chinese garden. Remember the Chinese garden where it said Three Geese Pavilion. The poet Ching-Chang-Chong saw three geese at this pavilion. Hence the name. Remember that?

Yeah, anyway. That wasn't the question. See, the word comes from French or Spanish or Latin or something, I forget. It's archaic.

So?

It means, butterfly.

So?

So—so, I'm being deep, God damn you. Remember his dream? Butterflies; you know; am I it or is it me? The butterfly; the me. And all that.

OK.

OK, what?

Well, what do you want me to do about it? I can't change things. Illusion. Great. Kudos to the great thinker in the loveseat. But; seriously, we can send him, a something. Can't we? But you have to tell me: what would he need?

He doesn't need anything. You can't send people things they need. He's not poor. We're not rich.

But.

And what did he send us? Dreams. What did I give him? The gate of ivory and the gate of, whatever it is, the other thing. Bone, right?

No one here knows what you're talking about.

Whatever.

Oh, I'm pretty sure. Because I'm sure you don't know, and I'm sure I don't know, and do you see anyone else here?

Gate of bone, I said, mark my words. Gate of bone.

Why am I, says Ellie after a pause, thinking more about him than you ever did?

I think about him, I said, wondering, but knowing that you cannot really offer proof of such things as what you have been thinking and the content of other people's dreams…