Kings and Emperors

I sat at the edge of Aunt Lil’s bed. She was dying of cancer. “Read something to me,” she asked and squeezed my hand. “Read me one of those stories you like so much.” I pulled a collection off the shelf. So many stories were draped in death, so I started Updike’s “A&P,” suddenly thinking it too adolescent. Lil liked it. “I spent a lotta time in supermarkets,” she said, her cracked lips turned up in a smile. And she found it funny that the bikinied girls went to so much trouble to buy a jar of pickled herring. When Sammy in the story quits his job, angry and embarrassed over the way his manager scolds the scantily clad girls, Lil said, “I’d bet you’d do that.”

“I don’t know, Lil. I need a job.”

I did need work, and a letter from China offered a university teaching position in Beijing if I wanted it. It was the summer of 1994, and I had been home for a month. “You should go,” my father said, lifting the lid on the Crock-Pot to check his beef stew. He had just retired and was doing a little cooking. My brother was starting his first year of college in Massachusetts.

“But what about Lil?” I asked.

“What can you do?” he said. “I’ll take care of her.”

I accepted the teaching job in Beijing, hoping I could get home at Christmas. Eugene came by to visit. He and Aunt Lil were good friends, and the three of us sat around the kitchen table, sipping tea and talking. Our marmalade cat, Twain, jumped on the table, and I reached over to grab him. “Let ’im stay,” Lil said, stroking the cat as he dropped and rolled over some newspapers, purring. After an hour, I walked Lil back to bed, then lifted Twain and set him down beside her. Eugene and I stepped out on the back steps to talk and watch the birds. He and his brother were going fishing in Thailand and wanted me to come along. “It’s on the way to China,” he said. “We’ll pay for the boat. Come on. I won’t see you for a while. Let’s fish together.”

On an August morning I said goodbye to Aunt Lil. She wanted to come out into the driveway and see me off the way she always did, but she couldn’t make it. We sat on the breezeway couch and held hands until my father warned I’d miss my plane.

“I’ll see you at Christmas,” I promised.

“You be careful, now.” She hugged and kissed me, smiling over her tears. “Don’t fall in that Yellow River.”

Bangkok’s pungent humidity smelled familiar. I had been here before, checked into ten dollar a night guest houses with paint-chipped rooms, wobbly ceiling fans, and leaky toilets that sashayed water across the floor. There were crazy, careening tuk-tuk taxi rides across the city, always to a cousin’s jewelry store or a friend’s travel agency. Over the course of three visits from Japan, I befriended a Thai driver named Sang, who took me to meet his family outside the city, where his father raised and fought bettas, Siamese fighting fish. Dropped in a tank together, the cocky males fin-flashed and then charged and nipped each other while men shouted bets with fistfuls of red baht. Back in Bangkok, Sang drove us to restaurants overlooking the Chao Phraya River, the River of Kings, where we slurped the gingery heat of turtle soup and feasted on tom yam goong, steamed stingray, spicy prawns, fried swim bladders, braised grouper, and endless varieties of pad thai. Sauces and soups brought the fire of chilies to the mellow milk of coconuts and coriander.

There was plenty of Singha beer, Mekong whisky, and good smoke that opened the gate to other sensations: bizarre sex shows and the lurid nightlife around Patpong, where numbered women danced or slumped like used cars on a sales lot. I took some pleasure at Patpong—and it might’ve been okay, had I not broken a condom and woke the next morning in the horrible shadow of AIDS and the impassive face of the purchased woman. Confused and disgusted with myself, I wandered alone through smoky neighborhoods and a Buddhist temple veined by a canal that came alive at dusk with fish rising in endless swirls and splashes. The next evening I returned to the temple with my telescopic spinning rod. The rubber worm plopped into the dark canal, and I instantly hooked a large, eel-like monster—God knows what it was—that overpowered me and broke off. A young monk in saffron robes ran up. “No, no,” he said, fanning his hands. Another monk joined him and said, “We not fishing here.” I opened my wallet, repeating, “I’m very sorry, very sorry,” and gave them five dollars each. Although an obvious purchase of religious indulgence, they smiled and bowed. I bowed and hurried out of the grounds with my rod and spirits unstrung.

There was the Grand Palace with its fantastic murals depicting a bow-drawn King Rama lured from home and wife by an enemy disguised as a trophy stag. The story came from ancient India and seemed relevant to the modern world. Resting on a bench, I heard an older American man talking with his family about the Vietnam War, when he was on “R & R in ’67.” His wife stepped closer to study the mural. “Never thought of coming here,” the man confided softly to his grown son. “We just wanted a good time.” It was swelteringly hot and humid. His wife undid a couple buttons and sat at the other end of the bench. The stag’s twisted antlers raked an orange sky, and the crazed hunter pursued blindly while ogres surrounded his wife.

One December, my friend Dan and I took a rumbling night bus up to the mountain jungles of Chiang Mai, trekking with a group of Swiss travelers through the foggy mountains, staying overnight at a Karen village where we smoked a little opium and Dan played guitar for a smiling family. In the morning we mounted elephants for a lumbering ride down to a brown river. The elephants seemed happy with the water, taking long drinks and wading out into the flow. Our guides used old bicycle tire tubes to lash bamboo into rafts while Dan and I walked along the grassy bank. People hawked small pipes, bracelets, and spangled bags, and one man came up with a homemade rifle. “You try?” He muzzle loaded powder, wadding, and a lead ball, handing me the gun and pointing to some plastic jugs floating by. I pulled the hammer back, aimed, and fired, miraculously blasting a jug. A small cheer went up in the crowd. I paid the man a few baht, and we moved on. We had asked the Thai guide about getting a little smoke, and he came up with a joint that Dan and I burned on the sunny bank, watching the elephants blast water over their dusty backs. It was powerful herb, and we felt very high. The guides called us back to the group and explained that the last leg of our journey would be a four-mile raft ride. Dan and I stepped onto our wobbly raft, little more than a four by fifteen foot bath mat, and picked up our long bamboo push poles. The two Swiss couples each had their own raft, and the guides shared a larger raft with our bags. My elevated state played nicely to the easy float downriver from the thatch-roofed village under huge trees and some boys checking their fishing nets, but the river narrowed and picked up speed, cascading over rocks and the rusted wreck of a bus. As we bounced over more rocks, the lashings loosened and my feet started slipping between the bamboo. I grew anxious and scared, imagining my ankle snapping off, and I just tried to focus on keeping my feet and watching the river. We pushed off boulders and snags, but the bamboo took some terrifying hits, and I fell to my knees just to stay aboard. Up ahead, the first Swiss couple bashed a boulder and spun out of control. We poled up to them and saw that the bamboo had split and cut the woman’s leg. It looked deep and serious—blood ran down her calf, and her boyfriend was trying to bind the wound with his shirt. I called for the guides who waved us forward. There was nothing to do but raft on. When we reached the next village, our guide ran up to call a doctor. But the doctor was upriver for another emergency, a man had been blinded and badly injured when the breech of a homemade gun exploded in his face.

Thailand was beautiful, freeing, and full of dangers. Arriving that August in 1994 with Eugene and his brother Ken, I was troubled about leaving Aunt Lil and unsure about my work in China. “Let’s get you a drink,” Eugene said and put his arm on my shoulder. We checked into the Phuket Fishing Lodge on Chalong Bay. At $12.50 a night, the clean, balconied waterfront rooms were idyllic. We walked under coconut trees into the adjacent yacht club pavilion—a laid-back Key West sort of scene—and were greeted by the lodge owner, Siri, a neatly dressed Thai man in a crisp Panama hat, and Crazy Bill, a wild-haired American wrapped in sunglasses and a flowery bandanna. Bill, a local charter-boat captain, regaled us with legends of the seventeenth-century Englishman Samuel White, who abused the King of Siam’s favor and became the pirate of Phuket, ravishing women and plundering the island’s riches. When we told him about our booking with English captain John Pearce, he went silent. “Pearce, hah?” he said after a moment.

“Is he a pirate?” Ken asked.

“No.” Bill adjusted his sunglasses. “He’s a serious fucking guy. But you’ll catch fish.”

That evening, Ken, Eugene, and I rented scooters and rode into Patong, one of the stinkiest, craziest, wildest party towns I’ve ever roamed. Bob Marley played over crackly speakers, and we waded through a steamy carnival market of clothing, jewelry, fruit, birds, monkeys, and sex. A transgender woman wrapped in a python invited us to inspect her shapely chest while young women in miniskirts and tiny tops sidled up with, “Come on. Have some fun.” Increasingly thirsty, we broke through to an open arcade with canopied bars and people in various states of intoxication, including a large Buddha-like man, passed-out and completely naked, lying flat on his back on a table while his friends tried to rouse him by pitching peanuts and fried shrimp at his balls.

Nearby, a young Thai boy quietly hand-fed a small monkey, and two German-speaking men felt up a creamy blonde leaning against the bar. We had a couple drinks and just watched. “Well, we gotta big day of fishing tomorrow,” Ken, the older brother, reminded us. Early morning fishing commitments—often waking up at 3:30 or 4 a.m.—have saved me from many nights of overindulgence. There were times, however, when we drank all night and, hearing the first robins of dawn, decided to go fishing. Spirits high on the first cast, the flesh rarely held up for much longer, and we never experienced our best mornings in such a state. Don’t tie one on if you really want to tie one on is my wellness slogan.

That bright morning in Thailand, my head was clear. Brown puddles stretched across the streets from the night’s rain, palms glistened, and we sat on plastic stools at a card table near the beach and met John Pearce at 7 am. Pearce, in his late twenties, was a tall, lean, handsomely clean-cut Englishman with beautiful teeth. Friendly, professional, but not overly warm, he talked briefly about the planned three days of fishing, collected some money, and said sailfish over and over again. I asked about tuna and wahoo. “Sailfish is king around here. You want a sailfish,” he insisted.

We stepped aboard the Andaman Hooker, a trig forty-foot game-fishing vessel, and met his Thai crew: Saron, the pilot, and Don, the tackle mate. In need of live bait, Saron motored us out to Monk Island, and Don and Pearce began jigging sabiki rigs like those used for aji and herring. “We can do that,” Eugene said.

“Yeah, I’d like to fish,” I rubbed my hands together and stepped to the stern.

“I’d rather if you didn’t. We know how to do it,” Pearce frowned.

“We know how to jig,” I persisted. “We grew up jigging for mackerel in New York.”

“These guys are fishermen,” Ken added, happy to lean back in the warming sun.

Pearce reluctantly handed us the rods, grumbling, “You got about twenty feet of water.” We clutched, thumbed, dropped, engaged, jigged, retrieved, and dropped again without a whisker of backlash, bringing in slim pairs of slivery queenfish. Eugene reeled in a seven-inch yellowtail. “That’s what we want,” Pearce rejoiced, carefully placing the yellowtail in a live well. He half apologized. “I get a lot of people who never fish. They screw things up.” When I reeled in another line of dancing queenfish, Pearce cursed, “Damn those things.” Apparently only the crew found queenfish desirable. “Good to eat,” Don smiled at me, slipping them into a plastic bag. We caught six yellowtail for bait, rigged for sailfish, and began trolling off Koh Racha Yai, a lush, steeply cliffed island at the southern tip of Phuket. Only one other boat was in view. While we trolled, Pearce inquired about our evening. “So how many birds did you bag?”

“How many birds?” Ken asked.

“Sea eagles?” I queried, remembering the raptors for sale at the bazaar. Pearce laughed, “Come on, don’t play innocent with me. I recommend two each. In case one’s a dud.” Pearce ordered Saron to steer off from the other boat and then went on talking about Thai prostitutes in the most crude and mercantile manner. “Cheap birds, right?” he nudged the Thai mate, Don. I felt embarrassed. Pearce then moved on to the “German and Australian bimbos who come down thinking they’re gonna liven up their sex lives and end up getting a sunburn and pussy rot from their blokes.” It was hard talk. A movement over our lines refocused him in silence, and then he cried, “Fish!”

A sailfish bill-thrashed around the inside bait and then bit and bolted across our wake. It was an unlucky moment for a strike with the other boat close behind us, and Pearce yelled for Ken to set the hook. “Now!” he screamed. Ken fumbled a bit with the rod and then pulled up hard. The fish made a magnificent leap, shining through a purple pirouette and crashing back into the water, throwing the hook.

“Bloody hell!” Pearce shouted. He waved a fist at the other boat, “Bugger off,” and glared at Ken. “When I say ‘Now,’ I mean Now!”

We rebaited, and Ken caught what locals call a longtom, a garlike needlefish with a beaked mouth full of teeth. “Good to eat,” Don said, slipping it into the plastic bag. Pearce grew even madder. “There goes another good bait.” We were savaged further by barracuda and a mystery fish. An hour later, I picked up a jumping rod and zinging reel and felt the amazing speed and power of a wahoo, the Maserati of mackerel, that thrilled me with its racing runs and black tiger stripes, coming up finally on the point of Don’s gaff. “Good to eat,” Don said.

At 5:30 we pulled in the sailfish baits and turned home, cruising at fifteen knots and trolling pink and blue tuna skirts. “We’re always fishing,” Pearce repeated. “Always fishing,” I nodded in approval.

When we pulled into the dock, a beautiful Thai woman in a flowered dress with two young children smiled and waved. Pearce hugged the woman, kissed her, and reached over to take the little child from her arms. It was his family. “Let’s make it eight tomorrow morning,” Pearce said. “I’ve got to help my wife with the kids.” I was amazed. Was this the same chauvinist who called women “cheap birds?”

Siri came by and arranged for our wahoo to be cooked and served at the corner restaurant. Wahoo, or ono in Hawaiian, is one of the least expensive fish at world markets, so I’m reluctant to boast of its flavor. Fillets from our fish were soaked for a half hour in olive oil, lime, paprika, and red pepper and then grilled for fifteen minutes over hot coals. It was rich and delicious. While we were eating, Crazy Bill stopped by. “No sailfish, hah?” We told him how close we’d come. “Pearce didn’t torpedo the other boat? He’s gettin’ soft. Oh well, plenty of wahoo around.”

That night Ken went to bed early while Eugene and I returned to Patong, petting a baby elephant and chatting up two Australian women, Monica and Alexa, who told us they were graduate students in chemistry. They had a lot to say about Thailand and the ocean. Alexa grew up in Perth and liked to fish. “Among the aboriginals, it’s the women who do the fishing,” she said.

“Are you an Aboriginal?” Eugene asked.

“She’s an O-riginal,” Monica quipped, and we laughed.

“Why don’t you two join us tomorrow?” I said. “There’s plenty of room.” Monica bowed out, but she encouraged Alexa to go. “All right,” Alexa lifted her hands from the table. “What time do we sail?”

“Pearce is gonna flip,” Eugene grumbled, looking up at the stars on the way back to the lodge. Two cats wandered onto the road, and I reached down to pet one.

“It’s about time he met a bimbo who was smarter than him,” I said, stroking the cat.

“That thing’s probably got fleas,” Eugene walked on.

“Come on, it will be fun with Alexa.”

“It’s fine with me, but I don’t wanna piss off Pearce.”

“I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

“And Kenny,” Eugene said.

Lying in bed, I had misgivings about my offer. I should’ve asked Ken first. He and Eugene were paying for the boat. And maybe it would upset Pearce and the fishing. What was I looking for? Was I that lonely? I thought of Aunt Lil cuddling her cat, slowly slipping away on the other side of the world. What would my family think of me wandering the streets of Patong? What was I doing here?

In the morning over fruit and coffee, Ken liked the idea of having an Australian woman aboard. Eugene said, “Whatever.” Alexa arrived at 7:50 looking beautiful and prepared. When Pearce drove up, I walked over to him.

“Good morning, captain.”

“Hello,” he said without looking at me.

“If it’s okay with you, we’ll have another guest with us.”

“No hookers on the Hooker.”

“It’s my Australian friend, Alexa. She’s a chemist.”

“I bet. Hey, that wasn’t the arrangement. If you guys wanna fuck around, fine. But if you want to catch a sailfish, you need to concentrate on fishing.”

Eugene was correct, Pearce was not happy about our guest. We fast-trolled grass-skirted pink and green tuna lures out to Monk Island. “Always fishing,” I said to Pearce, but he hardly smiled when we picked up two skipjack tuna in the five-pound range. Alexa handled the rod nicely, bringing a black-striped silver bullet of a fish to the transom, where Don swung it into the cockpit. She turned a wonderful smile, and I took her photo. We stopped to jig for baitfish, refreshed Alexa on how to clutch and thumb a conventional reel, and she caught a couple queenfish, a lizard fish, a small snapper, and a trumpet fish. Eugene and Kenny hooked three yellowtail, but that’s the only live bait we had. “Bad luck,” Pearce growled.

Trolling for sailfish in thirty feet of water off the northern end of Koh Racha Yai, we went three hours without a strike. Terns dipped in our wake, and Pearce pointed to some dolphins playing a hundred feet off our bow. Pearce was an excellent captain, in command of his vessel and a great body of knowledge concerning southern Thailand’s waters and marine life. We listened to him talk about his beloved sailfish, how they migrate, change colors, and use their sails to herd squid. “Must be great to work out here,” Ken said. Ken was an insurance agent. He made excellent money, but there were long, sometimes stressful hours in the office. Eugene was a computer systems manager for a large pharmaceutical company. He made great money, but there were long, sometimes stressful hours. I was off to China to teach English for three hundred dollars a month. “A month?” Ken exclaimed. “Hey,” Alexa touched my shoulder, “What an adventure for you.” She was wearing denim shorts, and she pulled off her T-shirt to a blue bikini top. Pearce held the rail at the cabin entrance and watched the lines, finally addressing Alexa: “So you’re a chemist? Like home economics?”

“Sure,” she said. “You want me to bake brownies for everybody?” We laughed. “I'm a biochemist,” she answered again. “Been doing work on lipid metabolism. Maybe save you guys from having heart attacks when you’re sixty.” Pearce, stripped down to his swim trunks and a tennis visor, had a lean runner’s build. “I’ll keep you in mind,” he chuckled.

About one o’clock a squall blew heavy rain and wind across our decks. We retreated to the cabin, and the water turned choppy. In ten minutes, the rain passed, but with the tide ripping out and the wind blowing in, the seas grew rougher. A reel clicked off and Alexa jumped to the far rod. “Fish on,” I yelled to Saron at the wheel. Pearce stepped behind Alexa, coaching. “Let it take line. There’s nothing you can do now.” But the fish got off. “Bloody bad luck,” Pearce shook his head. Ken and Eugene played a game of cards in the cabin, and Alexa and I went up on the flybridge. Now rolling in seven-foot waves, the bridge of the Andaman Hooker felt like a wild amusement ride. We held tight to the rails, laughed, talked, and rejoiced over another pair of glistening dolphins.

At 4:30 a sailfish startled us. Making a play for the live bait, the black bill sliced the waves and turned away. Then the fish struck back, grabbing the yellowtail and running. After many quiet hours of concentration, lapse, distraction, reconcentration, hope, wonder, even despair, a large striking fish feels like a miracle. They do exist, they are here—by God, there’s one on the line!

Line peeled off the reel, the rod bent, and the disciples stared, wave-lulled and awed, except Pearce, who snatched the rod from the holder, waited, and then arced back on a hook set. The sailfish made an incredible leap, its brilliant blue-bronzed flanks and namesake dorsal glistening cobalt against the gray horizon. And that was all. The hook pulled free, and the fish disappeared. “Goddamn it!” Pearce shouted, looking up at the sky and closing his eyes. “Bugger all. What a fucked up day.”

With the late afternoon seas still beating on us, we turned for home. “What a great day,” Alexa smiled. “Thanks so much.”

“Will you join us for dinner?” I asked. Ken groaned on the edge of seasickness. Eugene leaned back against the padded bench and closed his eyes. “We’ll have some sashimi,” I forecasted, holding a tuna by the tail.

A long day on rough seas can wear out a person. We all felt tired and achy, and dinner was shorter and quieter than I had hoped. I spoke to the chef about tuna sashimi, and with lots of Japanese tourists, he knew exactly what to do. “This is wonderful,” Alexa said, dipping the bright red flesh in soy sauce and bringing it to her lovely mouth. Siri came by to report that a virago monsoon was swirling over India and we would feel her skirts. “No fishing tomorrow,” he said. Eugene and Ken bade goodnight, and I sat with Alexa and ordered a Mekong Mountain, Mekong whisky and Mountain Dew, hoping it would perk me up. A couple German men walked in with their skin and bling Thai dates.

“So, do you sample the local ladies here?” Alexa asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No,” I said resolutely. “Well, I did on my first time to Bangkok a few years ago. It was disappointing. I’m no longer inclined.”

“What, to screw twelve year olds?”

“I would never do that,” I squinted in disgust.

“Have you been tested?”

“For AIDS? Yes,” I said, sipping my drink. “Had to, for the China job.”

Alexa was attractive and interesting, and I thought we might come together that night, but perhaps my admissions, her attitude toward Western men in Thailand, or our bruised weariness ruined that opportunity. Still, I thought it worth asking. “Would you like to hang out in my room? There’s a nice view of the bay.”

“Sure,” she said, and I felt my dull heart leap.

We were up half the night, and by morning it was good that a storm swept Phuket, as I was in no shape to fish. I went out and found instant coffee and sweet cookies, and Alexa and I watched the bay and talked easily. Siri’s boat wallowed in the chop, a string of Christmas lights and its bright red cabin ports made it look heavy and clownish compared to the lean athleticism and naval grace of the Andaman Hooker.

Alexa told me that she was once engaged, but she discovered that the man was obsessed with his own success. “He worked all the time, and I was okay with that for a while. But when we were together, he couldn’t talk about anything else. I stopped asking him questions and stopped listening.”

So I asked Alexa more questions and listened.

“‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’ Have you heard that?” Alexa put a finger on my chest. “Irina Dunn, an Australian activist, said that.”

“I thought it was U2. So you don’t need a man?”

“Not sure about ‘need.’ I like men,” she said and smiled.

“I’ve seen a lot of bicycles in rivers,” I said. “The fish seem okay with them.”

I told her about Aunt Lil, who never dated or married but seemed happy with her life. Alexa listened and said she was sorry about Lil’s illness but that our family was lucky to have had Lil all those years after my mother died.

Alexa had to go. She and Monica were heading back to Bangkok later that day. “Time to get back to work,” she said, slipping on her shoes.

“I guess you work pretty hard yourself,” I said, not wanting her leave.

“You must’ve guessed I also like to play.”

“Or at least fish.”

“You should visit me in Perth. I’ll be there next spring. There’s lots of fishing.”

Alexa and I walked out into the wind and rain. In the distance, waves crashed the coral shoal, and I hailed a covered tuk-tuk. Alexa kissed me. “Write me when you get to China. Good luck. Be safe, okay?”

“Thanks. You, too.”

I would never see her again, but would never regret or lament the brevity of our relationship. Brief, intimate encounters with people can leave us with powerfully formative and remembered sensations, joys, and insights unsullied by the efforts of getting along for years or under the stresses of work and family. I wouldn’t want an emotional life composed solely of short episodes, but I wouldn’t want a life without them.

The weather can change so suddenly in Thailand. Clouds lifted, the sun shone, and you could hear the popping snarl of the local long boats as their pole shafted props churned Chalong Bay. “Always fishing,” I thought. Eugene and Kenny waved to me from the restaurant. “So, if it isn’t Captain Horny,” Eugene smiled broadly. “Good night of fishing?”

“Looks like he was the fish,” Ken smiled, folding his newspaper. “Alexa caught a longtom last night.”

“And the price was right, hah,” Eugene laughed.

“Okay, okay. We had a nice time. She’s a cool woman.”

“I’ll miss her,” Ken said, nosing back into his paper. I laughed and ordered coffee. In an hour the skies turned dark again, and wind and rain drove us inside.

After a day of rest we were eager to fish, but we wanted to forgo the sailfish and head to open water for more action and variety.

“Didn’t you come here to catch a sailfish?” Pearce looked severe when we met him the next morning. “Sailfish is a prize worth working for.”

“No need for prizes, John,” I said.

“We’re on vacation,” Ken smiled.

“We’d like to get into some tuna, maybe some dolphin fish or more wahoo,” Eugene added.

“Fine, it’s your money.”

When we started loading up, Pearce asked, “Where’s your chemist friend?”

“She threw us back,” Ken said. “You know, catch-and-release.”

I shook my head. Pearce smiled and said, “She was all right. Probably high maintenance, but all right.”

We steamed into the Andaman Sea for a bluewater drop 23 miles to the west. After a three hour ride—with flying fish bursting and gliding off the waves—a nasty squall blew in. “Normally I’d blame a woman,” Pearce joked. It poured and poured, but the wind never mounted, and the seas softened in fifteen minutes. We trolled over long blue swells, and just after 11 a.m. the first rod went down. Ken battled a beautiful wahoo, shouting a deliberate, “Wahoo!” when it ran and took line. It was a big fish crowned in a long low dorsal sail; when it came up on the gaff, Pearce smiled. “Well, at least you caught the king of mackerel.” There were more flying fish, and at 11:30 a school of dolphin fish—also called mahi-mahi or dorado—crashed our lures. With three rods alive, the fun ran wild, and I reeled in a mahi-mahi that fought like crazy, jumping all over the deck until Pearce trapped it in the hatch door. Eugene landed another one that slapped my leg, snapping its teeth and blushing radiant yellows and greens, while starry spots blinked on and off above its silver belly. Light and color refracting and pulsing through the wet scales of fish make them some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. When Ken reeled in the third mahi-mahi, color rippling down its body, I just stared.

We cleared the cockpit, resumed trolling, caught several skipjack tuna, and then endured a fifteen-minute lull while Pearce tutored his mate, Don, on preparing a mullet bait. Don butchered a couple baits, and then filleted and hooked a split-tail mullet to the boss’s satisfaction. Set out on one of the outriggers, it immediately got a take. “It must be one helluva fight for food down there if they’ll eat this miserable mullet,” Pearce speculated as Ken reeled in a large barracuda. Just then another rod went down, and Eugene worked on a tuna that suddenly felt like a submarine. “What the hell?” he looked down at a half-eaten fish surfacing in blood. “Shark,” Don said. We all stared into the blue water, and I thought of Melville’s “universal cannibalism of the sea.” And if we turned the world upside down and considered our own sharkish business—from religious wars in the Middle East, tribal slashings in Africa, New York’s predacious Wall Street, right down to the flesh markets of Thailand—things wouldn’t look so different. Indeed, I shuddered over some of our captain’s Ahabian traits, but measuring my topside friends I felt relief. It might be a sharkish world, but they were warm, trusted shipmates. And when Eugene and Ken dropped me off at the airport the next day, I didn’t know how to say goodbye, so I just walked away, then turned and waved, articulate as a fish.

Unlike the lavish welcome I was shown in Japan, no one at Bei Wai, Beijing Foreign Studies University, seemed to know who I was or what I wanted. After a couple sweating hours of confusion and neglect, I just sat on the rim of a dry, cracked fountain in the tile lobby of the Foreign Experts Building and waited. A British professor, James, stopped by to ask if he could help. I explained what happened, and he assured me it was not unusual. “Welcome to China,” he chortled. After another hour, a fit-looking, crew-cut, senior citizen rode up on his bicycle and introduced himself as Chen Lin, my supervisor. The attitude around me changed. Professor Chen had been the celebrated host of the first television program teaching English during the reform years under Deng Xiaoping. “Chen’s friend?” the grim woman at the counter suddenly smiled.

Despite my connections, I was placed in a “temporary room” in Building 9. Chen and I climbed six flights of concrete steps, and he opened a sheet-metaled door to a filthy, stifling apartment. “Remember, only drink boiled water,” he warned, setting down a complimentary Thermos. The sun was going down and Chen was eager to get home. “We will arrange everything in the morning. Thank you for coming.”

I sat on the edge of a broken bed and looked at the pocked and peeling walls, exposed pipe, and sticky concrete floors. I was twenty-nine years old. Was this where I wanted to be? Tired and thirsty, I drank the few warm ounces left in the Thermos and brushed my teeth with tap water, trying not to swallow. There were no drapes or screens, so I turned off the lights, stripped naked, and lay on the tick mattress, sweating myself to sleep. I woke to sunlight and some amplified music. Touching my hot, itchy face, I found mosquito welts on my temples, cheeks, and lips.

The day got better. I boiled water in a tin pan, drank heartily, and brushed my teeth. Then I took a shower, rubbed cortisone cream on my bites, dressed, and ventured across campus. Even at a major university in the capital, you could see that life was closer to the bone in mainland China. An old woman wheeled a broom cart down the cracked sidewalk, pimpled students crowded and pushed into a bleak dining room where cooks in filthy aprons yelled back and forth. I drank tea and ate steamed bread that cost a few cents. The man next to me coughed up something thick and spat on the floor.

There were handsome buildings in gray brick crowned with wing-cornered Oriental roofs, but their cement interiors were hard and spare. I reported to Chen Lin’s office. He wore a well-cut tan suit, greeted me warmly, offered concern over my mosquito bites, and insisted on a proper breakfast. We walked through the campus, past a mopped entranceway and a sign reading “Slip Carefully,” and then stopped before a tailor’s. “They can make your suits,” Chen said, but I thought of custom fishing vests and shirts with big pockets. There were bike repair stations, book shops, and a market where a fishmonger set out his frozen fare on a makeshift wooden table. I stopped to examine the fish. “You like fish?” Chen looked surprised.

My classes didn’t start until the following week, and I had some time to explore, get my bearings, make some friends, and learn a little Chinese. I stopped at a campus snack shop with a patio where a number of laowai, Westerners, and some Chinese were hanging out. I met a bald, elderly American professor named Art who had spent several years in China. He gave me sound advice on navigating the bureaucracy—“make friends, smile, and bring gifts”—and ordered us a couple Wuxing beers. As we were chatting, two young Chinese women approached our table. Art introduced me to Li, and Li introduced us to Jin Lei, a travel agent from Yunnan hoping to improve her English. They declined beer and sipped 7Ups, smiling and charming us with their limited but spirited English. Learning that I had just arrived in China, the women offered to help me shop and set up my room. I thanked them, and we made plans to meet the following morning. They sugared a “Goodnight,” and walked away. Art raised a finger to me. “Be careful,” he said. “The ladies like to cruise for free English lessons and free passports, if you know what I mean.”

I quickly figured out that my temporary room would be my permanent room and that if I wanted to fix it up, I couldn’t rely on the university. Art introduced me to his Chinese cleaning lady, whose husband’s brother worked in the campus maintenance shop. For a carton of cigarettes I got new screens. Li and Jin Lei took me shopping, and I bought curtains, sheets, blankets, towels, and some lumber to fix the bed, bringing it all back in a miandi, a cheap yellow taxi built like a tinny VW bus. Through more smiles, gifts, friends, and favors—what the Chinese call guanxi, connections developed through friendship and reciprocity—we procured tools, university furniture, a working refrigerator, and got half of my apartment painted. “Now you need a bicycle,” Jin Lei declared. We haggled for a used one-speed Flying Pigeon. “What other kind of pigeon is there?” I mocked the name. Jin Lei arched her black eyebrows. “Dead pigeon,” she said—a Chinese philosopher dispatching the philistine.

The smoggy heat of Beijing still lingered through the first days of September, and Jin Lei suggested a bike ride to Yi He Yuan, the Summer Palace. We cycled north, finding safety in a long school of bicycles, finning in like a pair of mackerel fearful of the sharkish blue trucks and yellow taxis. Leaving the main thoroughfare, we pedaled down a quiet cottonwood-lined lane shared by donkey carts, as well as along canals, sorghum fields, and fish ponds. Jin Lei explained that they were raising carp. “Can I fish there?” I asked. She laughed, and then said, “Maybe,” and I wasn’t sure if she understood.

Passing through the red gates of the Summer Palace, we walked up to the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, staring at the massive hardwood throne flanked by life-size bronze cranes holding thick fish-shaped candles in their long bills. We smelled a rose garden and gazed at more ornate pavilions, statues, and strange rocks, suddenly feeling the cool breeze of Kunming Lake. “Named after my hometown,” Jin Lei said. “Kunming—in Yunnan. A very mountain and cool place.”

To escape the heat of Beijing and the Forbidden City, the royal family retreated to this hilly, breezy, lake-cooled resort. In the eighteenth century, the successful emperor Qianlong expanded and deepened the lake, using it for naval drills and to angle for his beloved carp. The palace fell into disrepair but was restored a century later by the Empress Dowager Cixi. “Empress Sex-sy?” I read aloud the sign, remembering that crusty old hag from the film, The Last Emperor, until Jin Lei corrected my pronunciation to something like “Empress Sushi.” In the late 1880s, the empress siphoned the military budget into the Summer Palace, and instead of buying a modern battleship she commissioned a crazy-looking marble boat hulked at the edge of the lake. Cixi might have been an ugly and terrible head of state, but she loved to fish, swinging a line from the marble boat or drifting happily in a Cleopatra-style barge while eunuchs baited her hook and removed the slippery catch. In one old photo, a eunuch holds a brown fish that might easily have been the size and shape of his missing member, and I wondered if a wave of regret passed over his loins as he tossed the hapless dart into a royal bucket.

For a couple of dollars, I rented a rowboat and two bamboo fishing poles, and we trolled Cixi’s lake. “Oh, fishing. Diaoyu,” Jin Lei exclaimed, understanding the word fishing, saying it again and teaching me the Chinese equivalent. Her long black hair shined, and her smile lit up the stern as I pulled on the oars. One pole twitched, and I swung in a seven-inch carp that, in fact, sized up pretty close to my own security. When I held the fish up and shared my reflections on sad and happy memento penile, Jin Lei blushed laughter and declared me a “so crazy laowai.” I threw the fish back, hoping it would grow larger.

Teaching in China was fun. Unlike Japan, where I worked primarily with children in endlessly repeated dialogues of, “I like baseball. Do you like baseball?” Bei Wai assigned me adults, graduate students, and professionals—doctors, lawyers, and PLA (People’s Liberation Army) officers—who would say things like, “Wine is good for your pancreas,” or “America has many crime. Why?” or “We will buy America,” and then laugh and offer me a mooncake. Five years before I arrived, China was rocked by the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests and the brutal government crackdown. Sometimes people would discreetly tell me about the bloodshed they witnessed or friends and family gunned down or dragged away in the night. By 1994, political tensions had eased, and there was a general atmosphere of increasing openness in China, but some topics remained explosive, and one day my students and I fell into a tense discussion about the status of Taiwan, which I asserted was a sovereign nation separate from the People’s Republic of China. “That’s Western propaganda,” one man shouted. And when another burly student with a crew cut tried to defend my view, a thin young lady wearing a kitten blouse yelled: “Traitor say that! We’ll fight the US.” After a couple days of cooling off, the students recognized the need for healing, so they gave me a carp.

“You’re kidding me,” I said when Captain Zhou, always neatly dressed in his dark green, red- and gold-trimmed PLA uniform, handed me a jumping plastic bag with a live grass carp.

“What’s ‘kidding?’” he tilted his head.

“No, I just mean that I’m surprised. Thank you.” I tried to teach the class while eyeing the still-flipping fish hanging over a chair back.

“Today is Friday,” the kitten lady said. “This is your Christian food.”

Fish has always been a cherished food in China. An old Han proverb, “The fewer the feet, the better the meat,” obviously ranks fish above two-legged chicken and four-legged pork. Thumbing through little red dictionaries, my students explained that the word fish, yú, is an up-tone homophone and symbol for “abundance,” yù—and among fish, carp is emperor. Images of golden carp in baskets or in the arms of smiling children adorned red and gilt greeting cards and Spring Festival posters, signifying the blessings of fertility and plenty. Numerous myths and tales star a golden carp. In some stories, the resplendent carp is adored and cared for by a lonely student who is rewarded when the fish transforms into a gorgeous, enamored lover. Jin Lei retold a ninth-century Tang dynasty tale remarkably similar to the Western Cinderella story. A mistreated stepdaughter, Yexian, raises an affectionate golden carp in her family’s pond, but her cruel stepmother resents the girl’s loving attentions and kills and eats the fish. The heartbroken Yexian is told by a mysterious old man that any wishes she makes over the fish’s bones will come true, and she provides herself with dresses, pearls, and shoes. Of course, Yexian secretly attends a ball, dazzles everyone, and loses a pretty little shoe that is picked up by a handsome prince.

Over the centuries, wild carp were cultivated into several colorful domestic varieties, including goldfish, which swam into fame on the scrolls and vases of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Although carp and goldfish are revered throughout East Asia—the Japanese certainly fancy their ornamental koi and sport a major league baseball team called the Hiroshima Carp—it seems China, with its vast, dusty interior and still-developing refrigerated infrastructure, has held on most tightly to the original durable fish. Carp can be raised in murky, warm water and eaten fresh when the sun is high and the sea is distant. I put the grass carp in the front basket of my bicycle and pedaled back to Building 9, where I met Jin Lei.

“Hen hao! That’s great,” she peeked into the bag. “We cook it.” Jin Lei zipped off to get a few ingredients, returning to the apartment with a bag of vegetables and Miss Li. Then Art showed up, breathing heavily but safely escorting two German women who carried beer and shrimp chips. We had no phone, but people found us, and a Friday afternoon party was born.

It was a cool, sunny September day and we opened all the windows, popped big green bottles of Wuxing beer, crunched shrimp chips, and started cooking. Dime-size scales flew all over the kitchen, and then Jin Lei gutted, gilled, and rinsed the carp, patting it dry with my new bath towel. She asked for a sharp knife, and I honed and handed her my best Japanese steel. The head and tail remained, but she made several vertical cuts through the meaty flanks down to the spine. “Too bone,” she said. We ignited a blue flame under a deep wok of oil, and I remembered Ben Whitehorse’s advice on cooking carp, though I had never tried it. When the fish hit the hot oil, every head in the apartment turned, and I shielded us with a pot lid.

Simultaneously, Li prepared a sweet crimson sauce. The fish emerged crisp and curled, and we glazed it with Li’s sauce. Beers lifted, I made a toast to Fish Fridays in Beijing.

The firm white chunks of carp were delicious and with a dab of the candied glaze, even better. Quickly following the fish, Jin Lei and Li brought out platters of vegetables—glistening eggplant and milky bok choy. The British gentleman I met on the first day, James, arrived with an older Chinese man who presented a bottle wrapped in red paper. “Have you tried the Chinese spirit, baijiu?” the man asked. I recalled the strong liquor of Malaysia but at this moment just said, “Not yet. Thank you. Let’s have some.”

“Gan bei,” the cheers went up again. More people arrived. Neighbors banged on the wall. We hushed then rose again, riding beer and baijiu into the evening.

By eight o’clock people headed home. Jin Lei and I sat on the couch, dazed, exhausted, and happy. My newly painted kitchen was covered in fish scales and sticky grease, and a pile of dishes crowned by a carp skeleton towered like a pagoda over the sink. I started cleaning then gave up, dropping into bed. Jin Lei slept on the couch, but I heard her get up before dawn and sneak away, fearing the moral censure of my Chinese neighbors.

I was sound asleep when a firm knock shook the door. I jumped up and opened it to Chen Lin in a dark suit. He looked serious. “I’m very sorry. You must go home,” he said.

“What?”

“Your Aunt Lillian passed out.”