I Stand Corrected Read online

  “As in New York here?”

  “Lon …”

  “Did you say London?”

  “That’s right, goddamn it, London,” he complained. The unseen but damnable “it” hammered his impatience into a thin wedge of anger.

  “I assume whatever’s going on isn’t going very well,” I said.

  His response was garbled.

  “It sounds like you’re talking through a wet towel,” I told him. “I can barely hear you.”

  “I’m talking as loud as I can under the circumstances.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am not okay. What I am is stuck in the middle of a negotiation taking longer than anyone bloody well expected.”

  “You haven’t missed it,” I repeated.

  “Have the invitations gone out?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “So I assume the shipment isn’t in.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you think they’ll show up by the end of the month?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re coming from some godforsaken part of Asia.”

  “I thought they arrived the same time every year,” he persisted.

  “Yes … usually when the weather turns warm.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “It was warm when I left New York a few weeks ago.”

  “Not any longer,” I pointed out. “It’s cold now.”

  “Goddamn it,” was his refrain.

  “Greg, listen, I can’t do anything about the weather or the shipment.”

  “I realize that,” he said in a slightly more conciliatory tone. “I want to be there.… I plan to be there.…”

  “If it’s any help, we’ve always done it on a Tuesday or Wednesday,” I offered.

  “I remember … in the middle of the week, when fewer people are around … after hours.”

  The man on the phone was a friend and the president of a large publicly traded company. When our conversation took place, big business was at low tide ethically. Even under the best of circumstances, our cryptic exchange would have made us sound guilty of something: references to “shipment” and “after hours” suggested an illegal transaction; the item in question was arriving from Asia, adding a sinisterly global reach. If investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission questioned us, we’d have to admit the facts: the Turtle Release was an annual event, the date of which was impossible to schedule in advance. It took place in public spaces, but was shrouded by ceremonial secrecy.

  Two months before Gilliam left for Japan, Greg received what he was waiting for.

  The Pleasure of Your Company Is Requested

  at

  the Final Turtle Release

  Tuesday, April 2nd

  17 East 95th Street

  5:30 p.m. Champagne

  &

  7:00 p.m. Release

  Central Park Pond

  (a short walk from the apartment)

  A Chinatown is a micrometropolis that operates with an enduring distrust of the outside world, no matter which international city acts as its backdrop. The Chinese make a single-ingredient bouillabaisse from turtles, believing they impart longevity. It was customary—or so we concluded from years of personal experience—that red-eared sliders were shipped seasonally from Asia. That particular year in New York, the turtles arrived the last week of March. Though fishmongers in New York’s Chinatown are easily found, turtles are not. Down a narrow side lane … in an open-air fish stand … under a large tray of eels … there they were: turtles stacked in a deep wooden barrel.

  Handicapped by my tendency to anthropomorphize, I was hopelessly emotional when it came to the actual selection; Gilliam decided which one of the turtles to rescue. Instructing me to stand a respectable distance away, he made his choice with unsparing objectivity.

  Because it was impossible to know the precise date the turtles would arrive in Chinatown, there was, inevitably, a period of waiting between the time the rescue occurred and the time the release took place. After taxiing uptown with the chosen turtle, we hosed it off in Gilliam’s bathtub. During a week of sanctioned luxury, the turtle lounged in its tub, dined on strawberries, and wandered among the claw-feet of the nineteenth-century furniture in our living room.

  Turtle Releases in New York were traditionally scheduled on weekday evenings, when there were fewer people in Central Park, for truth be told, we were breaking the law—or, at the very least, ignoring the warning posted in front of the pond. Given our need to accomplish the actual release as quickly as possible, its celebration occurred at a reception beforehand. Among those marking the occasion were actors, authors, and musicians. Seduced by an available audience, encouraged by the champagne, they recited verse, played ditties on the piano, and offered toasts before we set off for the park.

  A large sign in front of the pond forbidding the introduction of any other reptiles made it difficult to disregard the Asian embarkation of what we intended to set free. The law-abiding part of me worried someone would report us to the authorities, and I scanned the area furtively before approaching. There—waiting in the designated area—was Greg, having come directly from the airport in time to watch the last in a decade of turtles lumber purposely toward its freedom.

  Ten years. Ten turtles transported across continents and chosen by the luck of the draw to be returned to whatever nature was available in the middle of whichever city we were living in at the time. For Gilliam, the turtles counted down the annual passing of his boyhood. For me, they were the unlikely markers mapping a journey through what was then an unexplored—and what is now an unforgettable—decade of our lives.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The year of the last Turtle Release was the year I began to measure what it was costing me to preserve my self-sufficiency.

  “I’m not very good at this anymore,” I told Jonathan.

  “Good at what?”

  “Being alone.”

  “You have suitors,” Jonathan was kind to remind me. “The problem is they’re all peculiar,” he added.

  “They are not all peculiar,” I insisted. “Well … not all of them.”

  “Who are you trying to kid? My favorite is the one who eats paper.”

  “He is a brilliant thinker,” was my defense of the man who—it is true—ate paper.

  “Then there’s the one from the ancient European family who cuts the tops off his socks. And what about the Brit?”

  “Peter?”

  “He’s obviously working for MI6.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he’s an Englishman of a certain age who went to Oxford at a time when it was an absolute breeding ground for them. He doesn’t seem to live anywhere. No one understands what he does, and he seems to have memorized the train schedules in Eastern Europe. He’s a spy. Think about it.”

  Before I could think about it, Jonathan warned me off someone we both knew who had a well-earned reputation for promiscuity.

  “He must be a viral minefield by now,” I said.

  “His wife has finally kicked him out,” said Jonathan.

  “I remember her at our reception for Gilliam’s christening. She spent the entire time in our kitchen sobbing,” I said. “But that’s almost, what, twenty years ago? How has she put up with the situation for this long?”

  “With pharmaceuticals, I should think,” said Jonathan before asking, “What about Coco? He’s eccentric enough to appeal to you.”

  Coco was a notorious renegade, tempestuous and mercurial, habitually late for everyone and everything. He was also wonderfully fascinating. “We’ll make a plan” was an expression of his I came to love. Unlike my own results-oriented plans, his had no other purpose than a good time. Coco was never a suitor. We never made a plan. Not because I thought he was unacceptable, though he could be. Not because he was impossible; I forgave him for that. But because, by th
e time we met, he was dying.

  Even in death, Chinese parents project themselves into the lives of their children, whose unquestioned devotion assigns the obligation of arranging funerals for their elders. When, during my first week in Dongzhimen, I came upon the young man begging for money to bury his mother, it was not only grief I saw in his eyes, but fear of not being able to do what was expected of him. In circumstances less desperate, most funerals are scheduled—much like weddings—after consulting the Chinese almanac for the best possible dates. White is the color reserved for death, and so white invitations are sent, unless the deceased was eighty years or older, in which case the invitations are pink, an acknowledgment that mourners are expected to celebrate the person’s longevity rather than mourn his or her passing. All beyond death is regarded as dark, and it is believed that by lighting candles at the funeral, the dead are made to see how and where to go.

  White envelopes filled with cash—much like the red envelopes given at weddings—are left for the family near the wreath of the deceased. The amount placed in each envelope varies according to the giver’s relationship with the deceased but must be an odd number. Just as money is of practical importance in the here and now, so, too, in the afterlife. During the burial ceremony, the family burns paper money as a wire transfer of sorts so there will be no financial concerns for the deceased upon arriving in the afterworld.

  Unquestionably, best prepared for whatever his afterlife would entail was China’s first emperor, Qin Shihung, who took up arms at the age of thirteen to unify the warring Asian tribes and died at the age of forty-six. Buried with him is a larger-than-life three-thousand-man army precisely and individually replicated in ceramic. Soldiers and generals, along with their horses, were discovered in perfect formation in fortified underground tombs—tombs so skillfully hidden that they remained unearthed in Xi’an until the 1970s.

  The tombs are staggering proof of China’s cultural sophistication two hundred years before Christ—which was what I was contemplating when I emerged from these ancient underground wonders into broad daylight to find that the only exit was through the gift shop.

  There in the gift shop—a gift shop looking not unlike any other museum shop in the West—was the farmer who, some forty years earlier, had discovered the tombs while digging for water on land dispossessed during the Cultural Revolution. He appeared to me the embodiment of modern China, sitting comfortably behind a desk and charging tourists for his autograph.

  THE YEAR OF the last Turtle Release was also the year Candida was dying of cancer.

  “Don’t be sad,” she told me. “I’ve had a good run.”

  “How bad is the pain?” I asked.

  “Agonizing. But the good news is I’ll finally meet the Jew-God,” she told me.

  Given the relatively short time one has to make sense of life, the outcome of death seems unfair, and in the aspiration of making sense of our finite existence, most of us look for comfort in what we believe is the answer to life’s infinitely unknowable questions. Jew-God, Buddha, Shiva—the name for that answer makes little difference. Laozi, a Chinese philosopher who is traditionally credited with founding Taoism in the sixth century B.C., described his metaphysical search in resolutely modern words.

  Once something arose out of non-existence before Heaven and Earth and came into being.… It softens asperity, unravels complexity, moderates effulgence, co-ordinates particles. Invisible, yet real, I know not whose son it is, but it precedes the sovereign stars.

  “Before you meet your Maker, what should we do?” I asked Candida when the pain became unbearable for her.

  “I have a choice.… I could end it,” she told me, alluding to a final act of self-determination. “But I’m curious about death. I won’t cheat myself out of greeting it when the time comes on its own.”

  That time came two months later.

  Candida was cremated. Her ashes were buried near the trellis behind her house in Stonington, Connecticut. Carving out a cavern above the spot, I reached into my coat pocket, and my hand curled around the moss-green shell I’d found twenty years before on the beach of Africa’s Lake Victoria. It was the fragment of a continent to which Candida—the daughter of Italian immigrants—had never been but had wished to see. I put the shell alongside her remains and covered them both with the seaborne earth.

  AFTER CANDIDA DIED, time seemed to move in sputtering bursts. Gilliam was one year in Japan, and left for his British university the next. A year later, he left there to live in Nanjing before returning to England once again, this time to complete his degree. My life yo-yoed between Brussels and New York, and work took me from one point on the globe to another. Despite the advantage of a global perspective, I had no idea how humanity would manage its complex future. I was, however, certain on three points. Events in a single location were affecting the world landscape in a matter of moments. Those events were no longer defined, shaped, or resolved primarily by Westerners. And China was fast becoming a game changer. It was that last point that sent me to Beijing with the intention of writing a Western etiquette guide for the Chinese. Three months after I began writing it, I finished with a lesson more contemplative than instructive.

  → LESSON 26

  Expand your outlook. When you visit someone outside of China or entertain a foreigner in your home, learn about the country of your host or guest. If you are dealing with a colleague from another country, read about that country’s current events so you can discuss them knowledgeably; the gesture will indicate the interest you have in him or her. Memorable people always stand out. Look around and take your cue from others you admire. Be generous, be smart about how you handle yourself and others, be interested in learning new things, meeting new people, and traveling to places you have not yet been. These are the important things.

  Those who are thriving in what will continue to be a globalized economy are adaptable and persuasive and possess the ability to navigate increasingly diverse cultural landscapes. Comportment has a marketable use: it enables a better understanding of those with different points of view. We are only human, and there is a sometimes overwhelming messiness to that fact. Our complexities and our uncertainties, our personalities and our temperaments—all of these factors unwind in ways that cannot be predicted. Still, we must try to behave with a graceful fortitude, for it is the outward evidence of the best in us.

  By early October, The Tao of Improving Your Likability was ready for the presses. And I was surrounded by a publishing staff who, with the ferocious speed inherent in the Chinese, took immediate charge of the next crucial phase. Arriving at the front door of my hotel apartment were three young women—all looking the age of girls—and a slightly older-looking young man with an assistant lugging camera equipment.

  The young man, who spoke no English, introduced himself by way of his business card: he was a freelance photographer hired by the publisher’s production team. One of the three young women—the publisher’s marketing director—enlisted her best English while the other two giggled nervously. For what would be the book’s front cover, I was instructed to stand with crossed arms in an authoritative pose, looking stern but friendly. After the photographer left, the young woman who spoke English proposed that free scarfs be offered with the book to the first thousand online buyers.

  “That will send me down-market,” I told the marketing director.

  “It’s for young women to speak about the book,” she said. And by that, I assumed she meant it would generate word of mouth.

  The next item of business was tricky. It had to do with registering my own Weibo account. Weibo is the only state-sanctioned social media outlet in mainland China. Once a personal Weibo account is approved by government authorities, a verification badge is added beside the account name.

  At the time I was applying to register, some hundred million messages were posted each day on Weibo. In China, self-censorship has become the most effective weapon against action by the state. That is certainly true for foreign n
ews bureaus; they know from experience that they must tread carefully in order to be allowed to continue reporting from China. The Chinese leadership has proved its willingness to punish news organizations that ignore the warning signs, which has led Bloomberg News to employ a system that allows editors to flag postings or articles so that nothing flirting with danger is published in China.

  Weibo sets its own strict controls over the posts on its services with a defensive approach that ranges from monitoring users to filtering blacklisted key words. Some users play a dangerous game of communicating in coded languages or writing about their political opinions as allegories. The government’s censor has been adept at keeping up with technology. Nearly 30 percent of all deletions occur within five to thirty minutes of posting; 90 percent are completed within twenty-four hours. Offending sites are first blocked and then shut down. It’s virtually impossible to reestablish a site once it’s closed—the reason even Western media sites are careful to avoid hot-button words. Anything perceived by the party as galvanizing the public sends China’s censorship apparatus into an indiscriminate slash-and-burn mentality. At the onset of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, the word “jasmine” immediately disappeared from everything in China, including tea.

  Despite its tight grip, China’s intent is not to shut its people off from the world. It is, however, determined to identify political controversy that threatens to undermine the regime. Unlike the U.S. government—inclined, it seems, to vacuum up wholesale information about citizens and, in so doing, ignore the constitutionally mandated right of privacy—Chinese authorities are motivated to prevent citizens from pursuing a dialogue among themselves.

  Social media networks forbidden in China have enabled the voice of a generation to be heard outside of the country. The threat the Internet presents in China is not that it provides information but that it can enable a virtual meeting place. Reacting with silence is the next best thing to agreement, and there is still a great deal of public silence in China. Yet in daily talk, the Chinese discuss thoughts freely among themselves, and like the young man in Tiananmen Square writing on the cement, others of his generation are beginning to openly express themselves.