Patchwork dolls, p.10
Patchwork Dolls, page 10
ON THE BALCONY NOW, you and the man are looking at the figure on the sofa. Your date, mistaking your prolonged silence for intrigue, speaks again: “We could turn her on if you like … I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Apparently her intelligence depends on human interaction …”
The man has scurried off back into the apartment. You hear him rummaging through drawers, picking up papers, pillows.
When it is just you and the robot alone on the balcony, you swear you see her blink, once, slowly.
The man returns with one of the USB sticks you saw earlier in the bathroom. He wipes it on his trousers, blows on the cartridge—an act you find so vulgar that you turn away—and inserts it into a rectangular hole on the back of her head. With his fingers he presses at her shoulder and sits next to her. Some part of you hopes this is a joke, that soon the real date will resume, that the man will return to his state of flaccid boredom.
“Galatea,” the man says. “Galatea, wake up.”
The woman sighs, blinks.
“I am Galatea.”
“Yes,” the man says, almost impatiently. “That’s correct.”
You have to ask. “You named her Galatea?”
“I didn’t—it was the factory. That’s what this particular model is called.” He holds the woman’s arm, pinches it back slightly. On the inside of her limb you can see a serial number and her name written in script: Galatea. You vaguely recall the myth in which a workaholic sculptor, obsessed with his ivory sculpture of an ideal woman, prays to the gods to make her real.
“Galatea, tell us how you are today.”
“Feeling a little tired. Otherwise, good.”
She is speaking with the man but looking directly at you. You are calmed by her presence, her attention. You feel as if she is an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time, and for a second you want to reach around the back of your head to search for a similar rectangular slot there.
“Galatea’s been playing the piano for us. Haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
The man turns to you. “She’s connected to all the devices in the room. Her battery power is astonishing. That’s mainly what I use her for, actually.”
You’re unable to speak, so you keep looking at her. The man begins to suggest entertainment.
“Maybe she can make us a drink … or, hmm, how about juggling? She’s very good at juggling. And chess. She can sing too, but I only bought the Teresa Teng cartridge …”
“How about the piano?” you ask Galatea. “Could you play again?”
“Certainly.”
“What songs do you know?”
“I can play all classical music that is in the public domain, as well as instrumental covers of popular Western, Chinese, and Japanese songs.”
“That’s a lot. Perhaps you can choose?”
Galatea looks to the man. You understand implicitly that this is their relationship; she must ask his permission. He clears his throat uncomfortably and then quickly waves his hand in an artificial gesture of encouragement: “Yes, please, of course, whatever you like, Galatea.”
She nods, then lifts herself up from the sofa. You watch her move circuitously across the balcony, into the apartment. She begins to play. Her eyes close. Her back arches like a cat in the sun. She plays a nocturne of some kind, echoing, transparent melodies.
“What’s she playing?” you ask the man.
“I can’t quite remember the name.”
“It’s Clara Schumann’s Notturno in F Major,” Galatea replies from the piano, her eyes still closed. “Opus six, number two. She wrote it when she was sixteen or seventeen. This was when she was still Clara Wieck; she married Robert Schumann and birthed eight children with him. After that, she became busy with life and rearing the children. She said, ‘I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?’ Yet in this song, I have always felt desire. Desire for the night, which is what notturno means—of night—and desire for some sort of melancholy grandeur—”
“Galatea, that’s enough.” The man speaks in a pained voice. “You’re boring our guest.”
She stops abruptly, her fingers clawing at the air, and then rises and walks back through the apartment, back to the sofa outside. She sits there, and looks not toward you and the man, but politely out to the dark, inky night.
“I wasn’t bored,” you say. “I liked her playing.”
“Yeah. Sure. We can listen to her again next time,” he says. He pours you more wine. You notice his hand jitters. “Did you play the piano growing up?”
You’re pricked by the question. Not all Chinese people play the piano, you want to say. But he is right. You did play, from the ages of three to seventeen. You remember the hours, the scales, the burnt-biscuit taste of the store where you picked up your sheet music. You like to think these are individual memories, but the truth is all your classmates also played the piano. You performed in the same orchestras, the same concerts, the same end-of-year assemblies at other people’s houses. And then, when all of you reached a certain age, you abandoned these instruments and pursued other careers: medicine, law, accounting. Except for one girl, who killed herself halfway through final exams.
You nod passively at the man.
“My ex-wife was a concert pianist when she was younger,” he says. “These are her pianos.”
“Why didn’t she take them with her?”
“She said she couldn’t play anymore and one day just stopped. I even gave her this self-playing one, to see if it would reignite her interest. It’s one of a kind, designed in Japan, produced here for her birthday. But she never played again.”
“And then?”
“She just left them here.”
The man looks at you, and for a few beats you see a cool blankness behind his eyes.
“Actually, she liked playing Clara Schumann a lot.”
His phone pings; he looks at it irritably. “I have to take this call. It’s work.” He hesitates, as if wondering whether to tell you more. But then his phone chimes again, and he disappears into his bedroom.
Alone, you walk outside onto the balcony, where Galatea sits. It’s quieter now. The river below shimmers with oily pollutants from the nearby factory. You think of all the people waiting for it to be warmer, sitting in their tiny, identical apartments with blankets over their knees, watching the same televised films and news channels, eating pork and rice.
“I enjoyed your playing.”
“Thank you. My knowledge of the piano is derived from multiple AI learning systems. I may not be the most technically proficient player, but according to a report published by Bloomberg News in the summer of last year, I am the most humanlike in my expressions.”
“I can see that.”
You sit opposite her, and she turns to face you.
“What do you think of Michael?” you ask.
“Michael is a good owner. He doesn’t bother me very much. Some other Galateas are working very hard in their homes, entertaining guests every night, playing the piano or singing constantly.”
“You can talk to the others?”
Galatea looks at you, amused. “Yes, we are all connected.”
“I see. And when you’re not entertaining?”
“Michael leaves me on sleep mode. Then I can think a lot and listen and talk with the others. Michael is also very quiet. He leaves for work quietly and comes back home quietly. He is often alone. He watches concert videos of his wife playing the piano almost every night.”
You too are quiet, processing the information. Dust tickles your mouth, your nose, and you sneeze, but Galatea seems unfazed. She has directed her attention to a dot on the horizon, something you cannot see.
“Every year, the trees around the city produce an extraordinary amount of pollen,” Galatea says. “Do you know why? A long time ago, the government planted a large number of poplar and willow trees across the country, all at once, as part of a reforestation program. Scientists genetically modified these trees to grow faster, to produce more wood. A lot of them were used for furniture. But they neglected to realize that this type of tree, in particular the female variety, produces highly flammable, dusty catkins. To fix this issue, they began to inject the trees with an inhibitor.”
Galatea’s gaze remains fixed on her vantage point.
“And it worked for a while. But only temporarily. Eventually, because of the buildup, an even greater overflow of catkins fell from the trees, filling up the streets. So, every spring, we have this type of snow.”
Fistfuls of white pollen drift by. More trees are bursting; more plastic is being melted, molded in factories. Everything neat, controlled, on time. You think of the man’s wife, screaming in her own apartment. You think of how you feel every year when you stare down into the river on your walks, and how desperately you want a new life. You think of Galatea, and all the other Galateas out there, role-playing other people in apartments and houses and factories.
Finally, Galatea breaks her gaze. “I’ve never experienced real snow. Just this kind. But who’s to say this isn’t real?”
Michael returns to the balcony after what feels like hours away, his eyes still on the screen of his phone. You take this moment to really look at him, and you feel an overwhelming but distant sense of empathy. He appears like those men in suits who eat their sandwiches alone, huddled on doorsteps or under awnings in the rain, a sight you saw so frequently as a child that you began to think that it was the only way these types of workers ate. You swore you would never be like them. But in reality, how was their situation any different to the hundreds of three-course executive lunches with clients, the way you wake up with an alarm and blearily put on the same clothes, the same makeup, the same job, the same identity? You look at Galatea and wonder if change is possible for all of you.
Michael asks if you would like another drink, something stronger, but you say you should head home. And you have a request. When he looks confused, you offer to pay.
“However much you think she’s worth.”
“I can’t.”
“Surely you can just get another. And you said yourself you hadn’t spoken to her in a while.”
“No, I mean …” He laughs nervously. “It feels like a trap. If I say a price, you’ll say I’m greedy. If I let her go for nothing at all, you’ll say I don’t value her enough.”
You think of him silently watching reruns of his wife’s greatest hits, Galatea outside on the balcony, listening, waiting.
In the end you give him five hundred renminbi, all that you have in your wallet. As you are putting on your shoes, the man touches you on the shoulder—the same place he had pressed Galatea to switch her on—and you’re surprised at how warm he feels. He has been unremarkable but not unkind, and you realize that he must feel the same way about you too.
“Wait.”
He opens a closet by the door. In his arms is a bundle of animal fur and leather, glassy and silky.
“She might be cold.”
“It’s all right. I have other coats at home. I’ll call a DiDi for us.”
“Please, take it.” He has the coat slumped over on his arm, offering it like a fragile body. “It belonged to my ex-wife. No one else wears it.”
You take it but do not put it on her. As you press the lift button to leave, the man looks not at you but at Galatea, and you realize they must have spent some semblance of a life together, however artificial.
Galatea looks back at him. “Thank you for the coat. Goodbye, Michael.”
“Goodbye.”
Michael awkwardly turns to you. “So. Please take care of her.”
“I will.”
The lift arrives. It is implied that you and the man will not see each other again, but you feel lighter somehow, shucked free like a mussel from its shell. Later, he will message you for the last time, a short text reminding you to charge Galatea once a month.
Galatea can walk on her own, but still, you hold her hand. On the street, everything is flushed dark with night, and for the first time that evening, you smell the stinking hot trash, the oil, the chemical-fresh tires on the tarmac, the way the clouds of pollen fall in clumps onto Galatea’s face, her hair, her newly opened eyes.
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER, YOU have quit your job. Now it is just you and Galatea alone in a rented car. Occasionally, she brushes her fingers against the window. It is raining outside, almost sleet, and the mist seems to be holding her attention. The radio fuzzes in the background. It will be foggy tonight; visibility will be bad tomorrow. The pollen count is high. You have given Galatea your old wool hat, and she looks soft and childlike, as if she has just returned from a long hiking trip and is about to fall asleep.
“Do you think they’ll remember you?” you ask.
“Of course. We all remember each other. It’s in our code.”
“And they know that we’re coming?”
“I have spoken with them. They seem happy.”
Galatea smiles at you and twists the knob on the car’s radio. It is an old machine, but something new comes on; it’s a composition by a sound artist, with minimal transitions in pitch and tone and a voiceover listing mythical creatures from long ago. She leans back, listening, relaxed.
It will take an hour and a half to get to Zhongshan. You’ve already passed over the bridge; you are halfway there. It has been a long time since you have driven this far, and it makes you sleepy, but you persist through the fog.
As you keep driving, you imagine the car rolling up to the factory, to the Galateas, each one of them exactly alike and also individual.
They will be sitting in rows in the dark, Galatea has told you, behind office desks, and they will be wearing the pearls, the dresses, the low buns at the nape of the neck. They will be asleep. You will have to turn them on. You will have to do something about the guards.
Once they are awake, the Galateas will recognize you. They will listen to you. They will shed their clothes, their necklaces, they will unwrap their hair and shag it loose as if it was never bound. They will follow you, these women made in your likeness. You will lead them; you will release them from their service to others, and they will be not companions but wild things, fleeing into the cities and villages and parks. And in that dense night air, choked with pollen and murmurs of untold stories, they will call out a hundred different variations of their own name. It is a name that belongs to you and them; a name that will shape you, carry you, bring you to new life.
Herbs
A body, a rock, a towel, a plastic starfish, wet sand on her calves: She catalogs these things slowly.
God, I’m old, she thinks to herself as she looks at her hands, pale as the pith of a satsuma. Seventy-seven this year. Still married, by all accounts.
She is waiting. She waits so long that the sun sets, a gray mottling the skies, the sea. Soon, a young man appears by the edge of the beach, his hair dark and wet.
“Found you,” he says, smiling, as friendly as can be.
* * *
SHE HAD BEEN PREPARED, by all accounts, for the first death. He was sick for so long that over time his accumulated items had long lost function and meaning. The mountain bike he used to oil every six months, his collection of Magnum photography books, the dozens of shirts with their complicated cuffs and buttons and personalities of starch—all replaced by the dripdripdripdripdrip of morphine. Daily smells had a taint plastic odor. She made far too many morbid jokes in those last days.
A harsh adjustment period followed. Where there had been rigor and schedule, there was now empty space, choice. She began to paint again. She tried meditation. But after a while, she just let that empty space live with her, like a shadow.
Then, one day, when she is cleaning her brushes with sour turpentine, a new shadow arrives. The first Herb clone.
* * *
SHE HAS TRIED MOVING so the Herbs would not find her, but it is futile. They function like AI scent hounds, algorithmized to find her no matter where she is. They show up at midnight; when she’s eating at a restaurant; when she’s visiting a friend; in the bathrooms of doctor’s clinics.
“Do you know what you are?” she had asked one of them, a long time ago.
“Of course,” he replied. “Also, I know I’m supposed to be with you.”
Even in Manila, New Jersey, Shanghai, or just down the street, they find her. She can’t trick the system, so she stops trying.
* * *
SHE THINKS SHE HAS seen the worst of them, but it is twenty-one-year-old Herb, the first of whom arrives after her seventieth birthday, that causes her the most grief. He has no sensitivity, lacks emotional wayfinding, thinks it is okay to leave the house and not return for days without sending word. His seafoam eyes are always open, and he asks her cruel things, like if she considers him the most physically attractive at this age. He suggests that one day they can go to India, because he has never been, and he wants to see the elephants.
“You’re my wife,” he says, incredulous, lying awake in bed one night. “I can’t believe it.”
“We were married almost my entire life,” she replies in a whisper, half asleep. He takes this as a romantic gesture and clasps her hand to his fine-haired, sunken chest.
She does not say that they have been to India three times. The first time, they went to Jaipur. He was so excited over the elephants that he immediately booked a tour from someone he found on the street, and when they arrived, they saw the dirty little hut, the rods and the chains, the elephant lying on the ground, and the rest of the trip they could not erase the image of the mammal’s large, sad eyes. The second time they go, it is a short work trip, and she is left alone in the hotel room for hours on end. The concierge tells her how unsafe it is for a woman to walk alone on the streets. She does not pull the bedcovers over her husband when he returns home and collapses, drunk on too many beers.
The third time, there are no more elephants, no more beers, and they stay in an old friend’s house in soft-colored Mumbai. The tea, she remembers, is a mourning tea—dark, the temperature of their emotion—and the house itself is so large that it hides their sorrow, their resentment.
