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  PRAISE FOR JACK WANG AND WE TWO ALONE

  “These moving stories are both global and intimate as they span the continents where the Chinese diaspora has settled. With ingenuity and impeccable craft, Jack Wang gives us an utterly remarkable collection that zeroes in on the emotional texture of utterly unique lives.”

  — Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning

  author of The Sympathizer

  “This impressive and vibrant collection of stories takes the reader by the hand, leading us across the world and back in time. But they’re all unified by the gentle sensitivity of Jack Wang’s prose and his ability to inhabit characters who long for freedom, connection, and fulfillment. Deeply humane and beautifully wrought, these stories stay in the heart and the mind.”

  — Alix Ohlin, author of the Scotiabank

  Giller Prize finalists Dual Citizens and Inside

  “Jack Wang’s dazzling first collection of stories, We Two Alone, moves through decades and across continents with rare ease, telling not the story but some of the many stories of the Chinese diaspora in the last century. These stories are so elegantly shaped, so satisfying as individual stories, that their collective power sneaks up on you. There is a quiet and building intensity to the storytelling here, a commitment to chronicling — with deep compassion and a refusal of easy answers — the dignity of human experience against the broader indignities of history. I was moved, heartbroken, and thrilled.”

  — Emily Fridlund, author of

  the Booker Prize finalist History of Wolves

  “We Two Alone is not only a penetrating examination of the Chinese diaspora, it also brilliantly renders its subject in the most deeply resonant universal way, as the yearning for personal identity that drives us all in our shared humanity. This is a remarkable collection of stories, a remarkable work of art.”

  — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning

  author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

  “A brilliant and ambitious vision of a hundred years of solitude: the Chinese diaspora navigated with courage, cleverness, and grace. Wang does this by following not a single family over generations but a dynamic cast of unforgettable characters as they scatter across the past century and across the globe, to Vancouver, Vienna, London, New York. For some, it’s a lonely journey; as Frank O’Connor said, in the best short stories we find ‘an intense awareness of human loneliness.’ But these characters cross continents and oceans to free themselves from history and from their own ‘tiny flames,’ seeking peace, work, adventure, fame, and, above all, love. This is a delicately wrought and deeply moving book from an exceptional new voice.”

  — Eleanor Henderson, author of

  The Twelve-Mile Straight and Ten Thousand Saints

  WE

  TWO

  ALONE

  A Novella and Stories

  JACK WANG

  Copyright © 2020 Jack Wang

  Published in Canada in 2020 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All of the events and characters in this book are fictitious

  or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Extracts from On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius, translated by

  Sir Ronald Melville. Copyright © 1997 by Sir Ronald Melville. Reproduced with permission of Oxford Publishing Ltd through PLSClear.

  Extract from “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album” by Philip Larkin,

  in The Less Deceived. Copyright © 1955 by Philip Larkin. Reproduced with permission from Faber & Faber Ltd.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: We two alone / Jack Wang.

  Names: Wang, Jack, 1972– author.

  Description: Short stories.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190196270 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190196300

  | ISBN 9781487007461 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487007478 (EPUB)

  | ISBN 9781487007485 (Kindle) Classification: LCC PS8645.A532 W4 2020

  | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

  Some of the stories in this collection have appeared elsewhere,

  in slightly different form: “The Valkyries” in The Humber Literary Review, “The Nature of Things” in The Malahat Review and The Journey Prize

  Stories 29, “The Night of Broken Glass” in The New Quarterly and

  Let’s Tell This Story Properly: An Anthology of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, “Belsize Park” in PRISM international, and “Allhallows” in Joyland.

  For Angelina and the Zeds

  CONTENTS

  The Valkyries

  The Nature of Things

  The Night of Broken Glass

  Everything in Between

  Belsize Park

  Allhallows

  We Two Alone

  Acknowledgements

  We Two Alone

  THE VALKYRIES

  Nelson spent his day as always, in the belly of the laundry. Once again, Fong Man, the owner, was nowhere to be found, and Nelson had to do everything himself: churn the washer, crank the mangle, hang wet clothes by the pot-belly stove on wires that ran the length of the room, and hand-press cuffs and collars, the iron heated on the same rusty stove. A lot for one boy, even if the operation was small, all the equipment old and mismatched, the dregs of other laundries that had switched to centrifugal wringers and starching machines.

  At the end of the day, instead of retiring to the back room he shared with Fong Man, he set off on Pender Street. When he reached the green dome of the World Building — once the tallest building in the British Empire — he quickened his pace, eyes darting. Whenever headlights swept across him, he flinched. These days it was risky, leaving Chinatown at night. Just last month a man out on his own had been kicked and beaten. Now that the Great War was over, jobs were scarce, and angry young men were once again roving the streets, seeking rough justice.

  In the West End, he scurried past row upon row of pretty little houses with wide porches until he reached Denman Arena, incandescent against the dark expanse of Stanley Park. Nelson had been here before, but tonight, for the first time, he was going to play. A new Junior team was holding tryouts. Challenge for the Abbott Cup! the sign had read. Now that he was sixteen, he could. So he’d pulled out his old moth-eaten gear and tossed it into a laundry bag, still smelling of soda and lime, and slung the bag over his shoulder, his tube skates tied by the laces and draped around his neck. Propped on his other shoulder was the 35¢ hockey stick he had begged his mother for before she died.

  Without the usual game day throng, the arena looked desolate. Feeling like an intruder, he slipped in through the players’ entrance and found his way to the dressing room. The moment he entered, eyeballs slid and silence fell over the room. When he took a seat along the wall, the boys nearest scooted away. He dressed quickly, eyes to himself, then hurried onto the ice, hoping to vanish into a sea of bodies. No such luck. As he circled the rink, other boys trailed at a distance like a pack of dogs in pursuit.

  A man in a wool suit and a felt hat came down to ice level, clipboard in hand. He sized up the scene
, then blasted his whistle. Nelson started. The game was up.

  “Give me four lines!” the man barked.

  Relief put spring into Nelson’s step. He flew through the skating drills, faster it seemed than anyone else. But when the man threw out a bag of pucks, Nelson faltered. One thing to shoot a tin can or a block of wood, another to corral a solid disc of vulcanized rubber. The first pass that came his way skittered under his stick; the first shot he took flipped lazily through the air. By the time the scrimmage began he was anxious to make amends, but no one would pass to him. He kept finding open ice but the puck never came. So he did the only thing he could: fetched the puck himself. Once he had it, he dashed up the ice, through wide-eyed players on both sides. At the blue line he cut wide on the point and carved himself a path to the net. He saw the goalie’s fearful look — the ignominy of letting him score! — and room on the far side. He leaned in and fired so hard that blood surged into his hands.

  The net rippled.

  Before he could even raise his arms, a cross-check sent him into the boards. After slamming his shoulder, he landed on his back, saw lights, stars. Then everything was eclipsed by a snarling, pimply-faced behemoth. None of this was surprising; it was simply life for a boy like Nelson. And because of his mother, his young, proud, beautiful mother, snatched at fifteen from the Pearl River Delta and carried an ocean away to serve the lonely men of Chinatown, one of whom had gotten her with child, Nelson had even been ill-used by his own. He always turned the other cheek, but today —

  He pulled himself up. “Whad’ya do that for?”

  Suddenly the boy was upon him, and all the other boys too, their foul mitts in his face. Then someone grabbed him by the scruff of his sweater. Next thing he knew he was sitting in an office across from the man in the felt hat.

  The man examined his clipboard. “Did you put down your name?”

  Nelson shook his head.

  The man pushed his hat back, past his widow’s peak, then leaned forward, hands clasped. “Look, son, you seem like a nice kid and a decent player besides. I don’t have a problem with anyone who can skate fast and shoot straight. But some of those boys” — he jerked his thumb — “have got a problem, and if they’ve got a problem then I’ve got a problem. ’Cause I aim to win, and you can’t win with trouble in the locker room. See what I’m saying?”

  When Nelson said nothing, the man leaned back, drummed his fingers. Then he reached into his coat, pulled out a slip of paper, and pushed it across the desk. “Here’s a ticket to a Millionaires game. Why don’t you take it?”

  Nelson stared, searching for a crack in the man’s resolve. Seeing none, he snatched the ticket and left.

  * * *

  Two nights later he was back at the rink, gazing down at the massive slab of marble that was the ice. At the age of nine, on an evening when his mother had asked him to make himself scarce, he and Sammy Kong had snuck in the gate and scrabbled up to the very last row and looked out onto that big barn of a building, all wood and naked joists, for the very first time. Back then, Nelson knew as much about hockey as most people in Vancouver, which is to say very little. He was struck by the sounds: the rasp of skates, the clap of sticks, the booming report of a hard shot into the boards. He was also struck by the speed, the way the players’ hair seemed to blow in the wind. But nothing compared to Fred “Cyclone” Taylor, the best player in the world, throwing the first heavy hit, which shook the whole building and brought the crowd to its feet, thunderously. Nelson had been hooked ever since.

  Unlike that first time, there were now two blue lines painted across the ice, and goalies were allowed to fall to their knees, and he was close to the action — closer than he’d ever been. But the evening would stay in his mind for other reasons. During the first intermission, a man with a megaphone shuffled onto the ice and said, “Here for your entertainment, a daring bunch of hockeyists, the Vancouver Amazons!” When seven players took to the ice in wool caps and culottes, a wave of laughter swept through the crowd. Nelson sat up, unsure of what he was seeing. Was this a novelty act? As the Amazons scrimmaged — skillfully, he thought — the crowd hooted and hollered, even booed. “Go home!” a man shouted. “This ain’t no game for ladies!” Nelson felt a little riled himself. Why could they play when he couldn’t?

  To his surprise, the Amazons came out again during the second intermission and skated about doggedly as more laughter and derision rained down upon them. At one point a man wearing skates and a long blond wig jumped onto the ice, much to the crowd’s delight. He stole the puck and played keep away, and no matter how many players descended upon him, he managed to elude them, sometimes slipping the puck through an unsuspecting player’s legs, as if the Amazons had become stooges in a vaudeville act. Nelson’s blood rose again, only this time at the man in the wig and all the ugly faces in the crowd, the bare-toothed boys and the roughnecked men.

  After the game, as he left the arena, his thoughts still jumbled by the things he had seen, he chanced upon a mimeographed sign:

  Calling all lady puck chasers!

  Women’s hockey team forming!

  Tryouts this Thursday at 7:00 pm

  Time to give the amazons some competition!

  That’s when a strange, unexpected idea entered his mind.

  * * *

  Nelson slipped back to Chinatown. At that hour, storefronts were dark but tenements and alleyways teemed with life — the clacking of mah-jong, the jangle and crash of Cantonese opera. Near Shanghai Alley he caught a waft of something sickly and wondered if Fong Man was home or out again in search of oblivion.

  He found the back room empty. Relieved, he lay down on one of two straw mattresses shoved into a corner at right angles. In the other corner stood a metal sink, home to a few chipped bowls. To keep out the light, they had covered the windows with butcher paper. The only nod to ornamentation was a peeling wallpaper border near the ceiling — some long-ago attempt at fashion. The room had once belonged to Fong Man alone, but when he could no longer do the work himself, he had taken Nelson on.

  Nelson tried to sleep, but lurid phantasmagoria kept stalking his dreams: men in wigs, women in uniforms. In the middle of the night, he turned on the one dangling bulb in the room and studied himself in Fong Man’s cracked shaving mirror. Like his mother, Nelson had small, mobile features and a spare, sinewy frame. He usually wore his hair swept back; swept forward, it wasn’t much shorter than the way some girls wore their hair these days, fabulously shorn. And unlike Fong Man, whiskery as a goat, Nelson had no need for a razor. What he was thinking of doing was crazy, but he wanted to play.

  By morning he had sobered up, and his fantasies of the night before seemed just that, fantasies. But all day long, as he tossed batches of laundry into the wooden barrel of the washer and hauled them dripping into the double rollers of the mangle, he kept seeing that sign and yearning for something other than drudgery. When the day’s work was done, he searched the back room and found Fong Man’s pipe, which looked like a bamboo flute with a small doorknob attached. Nelson scraped soot from the pipe with wire and boiled a potato on the pot-belly stove and rolled the mixture into pills and went out to Shanghai Alley to peddle them. The pipe was what drained the little money they made, so it only seemed right that it give a little back. In the past, whenever news of his scheme reached Fong Man, Nelson would get a beating, but Fong Man was now too old and too far gone for Nelson to worry much any longer.

  With cash in hand, he walked a few blocks west on Hastings Street to Woodward’s Department Store, a four-storey brick building plastered with advertising: Carpets! Oil Skins! Furniture! Hardware! Groceries! His only previous visit had been the year his mother had taken him at Christmastime, the storefront windows shimmering with lights. She had walked him through every floor, delighting in his look of astonishment and shielding him from those of others. No avoiding those looks tonight, though, especially when he ventu
red into the ladies’ section.

  “How can I help you?” a shop girl asked coolly.

  “I’d like to buy a wool cap and culottes,” he replied, “for my mother.”

  The shop girl narrowed her eyes and led him across the floor. It pained him that he was obliged to buy the least expensive things he was shown, but it meant enough left over for lipstick and rouge.

  The back room was still empty when Nelson returned. Under the meagre light of the dangling bulb, he put on the cap and pulled out a few licks of hair. Then he painted his lips the way he remembered his mother doing, with a pucker and a roll. When he looked in the mirror, a version of his mother looked back.

  * * *

  A few nights later he set off again for Denman Arena. As soon as he was beyond the prying eyes of Chinatown, he ducked into an alley and changed in the dark, painting his face with a blind, unsteady hand. Then he scuttled past those pretty little houses in the West End, their bay windows burnished with life.

  Last week, watching the Amazons, Nelson had sympathized with their desire to play and thought that girls would sympathize with him, but as soon as he hit the ice, players began to clear off, warier than even the boys — for the same reason, or so he hoped. No one could possibly think he was a boy. There were five other players, some of whom wore boys’ shorts. Next to them, he looked positively girlish. At least that’s what he told himself to keep from shaking.

  As he skated in lonely circles, a new girl — tall, slender, darkly bobbed — stepped through the gate and onto the ice. After a few silky strides, she was waved to the bench, where she stopped adroitly on the outside edge of one skate. As she leaned over the boards, another girl cupped a hand to her ear, and the new girl turned, compelled to look. Then she skated over to Nelson.