Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?: chapter 1

“Who are you?”

“I’m Julia.”

“That doesn’t explain anything. Are you American? Your accent—”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“In Beijing?”

“You’ve come to the wrong place.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Wherever you think you’ve ended up, you’re not there.”

“I am.”

The girl stepped forward, up onto the front step of the house, putting her on level ground with the man. He was standing in the crack of the door, having only opened it part way. The sun was shining down from behind her, and it was making him squint. Behind him, the interior of the house was dark. His greasy bangs were hanging in front of his eyes, casting a shadow against his forehead. His hair had once been dark black, but it was now marbled with streaks of gray. He was only thirty, but anyone would have been forgiven for thinking he was much older.

“You’re Percival Mendelssohn,” the girl, Julia, said. She felt a sudden surge of energy as she said it, as if everything inside of her was pushing the words out of her mouth.

“Who?” the man asked. No hesitation. Not even a flinch. If the name registered, he wasn’t showing it.

The man was sizing her up. The alleyway outside of his home was only a little over six feet wide, so it was impossible for them not to feel close, even with a door between them. The girl was pretty, in her early twenties. She had jet black hair—the color reminded him of his own at that age—cut in a bob, à la Louise Brooks. But instead of the translucent white of a girl from the Weimar Republic, her skin was brown, almost chestnut. Her face was oval shaped, her nose a little wide (but not too much), her eyes dark. If he had to guess, this Julia was Filipino, which only deepened the question.

How had a college-aged Filipino American ended up on his doorstep in China?

“You know who,” Julia insisted, “because you’re him. I know what Percival Mendelssohn looks like.”

“You’re saying I resemble this person?”

“Don’t act so offended. Percival Mendelssohn is handsome. You used to look a lot healthier, though.”

The man was only wearing a bathrobe—navy blue, silk. Comparing his wardrobe to hers, feeling the draft from inside the house, only made him feel more out in the open. A white sheet lay on the floor behind him, discarded in haste.

He snickered derisively. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “I guess I’m flattered, but you’re wrong. Statistically, there are only so many combinations of features that make up a face, so odds are that a couple of people are going to look a little bit alike.”

“You see,” Julia said, “that logic...you sound just like him.”

“Or you’re desperate to hear his words in mine.”

“That sounds like him, too.”

The man groaned. “This could go on all day. You could make that claim about everything I say.”

Julia stepped forward again, moving closer to him. She was dressed entirely in black: a charcoal long-sleeved shirt, leather belt, skinny-fit pants with white vertical stripes, and a long scarf wrapped around her neck, an end dangling over each shoulder. The scarf was dark gray with flecks of silver, the lightest piece of her outfit. Her shoes were black and had thick, clunky soles, and when she walked, they made a sound on the sidewalk. The man recoiled from the noise and began to shut the door. “Wait!” Julia shouted, and she jumped back completely off the step. “Don’t go! Don’t lock me out!”

He froze.

“I’ve come a long way for this. A long way around the world. It took a lot of maneuvering and a lot of faith. I bet my entire education on a rumor just because I wanted to talk to you.”

“You wanted to talk to this Percival person.”

“Whatever. I wanted to talk to you. I wanted you to teach me, to explain things to me.”

The girl sounded desperate. The expression on her face told him this was her last shot. She was begging.

“I’m not a teacher, nor am I an explainer,” he said. “I’m just a man living in Beijing with his lover. I’m sorry, your gamble was a stinker. You bet on a loser.”

He shut the door. Julia jumped a little in her skin when she heard the click of the lock. Small particles of stone tumbled down from the roof, loosened by the way the closing door shook the structure of the house, and the way the tiny pebbles bounced on the ground made her think of pearls from a destroyed necklace.
Or rice at a wedding.

#

Val had two bags of groceries in his hand when he stepped into the entryway. He shut the door behind him and started to walk back into the house.

“Is she still out there?”

The voice startled Val. He was not used to his employer being in this part of the house and so had not looked when he had come in, but there in the shadows, the man sat with his back to the wall, hugging his knees to his chest.

“Percival? What are you doing there?”

“Don’t call me that. She might hear you.”

“The goth girl? Who is she?” Val saw the bedsheet on the floor and nudged it with his foot.

“I don’t know, Val,” Percival snapped, “but she knows who I am. What is she doing here? You have to get rid of her.”

Val nodded. “It won’t be a problem.”

#

The house—traditionally known as a siheyuan—covered the entire block. It was the main building on this tiny street, and it could only be accessed through a complex navigation of other small streets. These alleys were called hutongs, and, as a result, the houses were often referred to by the same name. The design of the structures had been patterned after the layout of the Emperor’s palace, and so was as old as Chinese history. In the modern age, a siheyuan was considered a relic, and most were being torn down and replaced by newer styles of apartments.

Beijing was a big city, though, and it would take a long time to renovate the whole of it. The walls of the building were long and smooth, made of gray stone, with criss-cross patterns carved along their length. The roof was covered in old, clay tiles that had turned green with age. A pointed canopy jutted out above the rest of the house, marking the entrance. The south doorway was the only way into the house, a mirror of how China’s imperial palace, the Forbidden City, can also only be entered from the south. The doorway was the last remaining ornamental fixture of this home. The stone planters that flanked the walk-up were now empty except for some remaining dirt and a few stray pieces of litter. There were no trees or bushes, only random weeds that had found their way through the concrete. Likewise, the front step had long since lost any of its decoration. Jagged stones on either side were all that remained of the original statuary, and these pieces served as a bad omen for the house. The sculptures that had been there were good luck charms strategically placed to protect the home and ward off bad spirits. Their removal had been intentional.

By contrast, the door still had some of its original ornamentation. Its wood was dark green, like a healthy leaf, and the frame and decorative trim were a beautiful scarlet. The paint was chipping, but the depth of the color was holding strong, looking more alive than the man’s skinny fingers when he had hooked them around the door jamb like a gnarled claw. His skin was pale, and the bones of his knuckles were visible through it. It was as if when he touched the wood, it drained all of his blood into the doorframe. Its red was really his red, his inside had colored its outside. Just past the tips of his fingers was the edge of the kanji that was painted across the door, covering both halves. It was a chengyu, a blessing placed on the house. The girl wasn’t so fluent in Mandarin that she could make it all out, but she got enough of it to recognize the phrase.

“Flowing water never goes bad, our doorways never gather termites.”

Judging by the fuzzy edges of the lettering, Julia assumed it had been put there by the previous owner. If hadn’t been, if it had instead been chosen by the man who had greeted her, she wasn’t exactly sure what his intention was in choosing it. The proverb meant that people needed to constantly move forward or life would pass them by. Its closest English equivalent was, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Whether it was ironic because the life inside had come to a full stop or the man she had come to find was only there as one part of some bigger journey was something Julia intended to find out, but right then, only he knew for sure.

The girl was walking the edge of one of the empty planters when the door opened again and Val emerged from the house. He walked straight to her, his shoulders back, his gaze forward. Julia saw how determined he was trying to make himself look, and so she stopped her balancing act and stood still, straddling one corner with her feet spread across perpendicular sides. The planter was maybe a foot wide, and there was just a crack between it and the siheyuan. From the opposite end, where she was standing, she could just about lean across and touch the flank of the building on the opposite side of the hutong. It was taller than the little house, eclipsing it by three stories. Its windows peered down on the alley, but they all looked like they were empty, their glass black with grime.

Julia looked past Val. The door was shut tight again. She could not see him, but the man she believed to be Percival Mendelssohn was spying on her through a crack in the wall.

“Mr. Rossi has sent me to ask you to leave his property.” Val spoke clearly and plainly. He was not interested in excess, nor did he wish to be misunderstood.

“Who are you? His lover?”

She said the last word like it was a taunt.

“That’s none of your concern,” Val replied icily.

“He said he lived with his lover.”

Julia gave the word “lover” the same loaded delivery.

Val gestured back toward the siheyuan. “Mr. Rossi owns this entire quadrangle. Whom he lives with and what he does is no one’s business but his own. We’ve asked you politely to go. Will you comply?”

“Moraldo Rossi,” Julia said. She rolled the name around in her mouth, bounced it off her tongue. “Morallldo Rrrrossi. I looked him up. They always said that when Percy was found, he’d be hiding under a pseudonym based on some person or character who ran away. It’s because of how he tried to cover his tracks, taking that flight under the name ‘George Willard.’ I mean, come on? Winesburg, Ohio, that was a little obvious. It’s not like everyone didn’t already know how he stayed in hotels under the name ‘Sherwood Anderson,’ so that was barely trying. Did you know there’s a whole website devoted to possible Percival Mendelssohn aliases? I think you were last spotted in Stockholm, when he was calling himself ‘Harold Lime.’”

“It’s clear, Miss, that you live a healthy fantasy life.”

“Maybe that’s what caused you to get more elaborate this time. Moraldo Rossi was Fellini’s assistant director on I Vitelloni. I didn’t see how that made sense at first, but then I read that Rossi was originally going to play his namesake, the character of Moraldo, in that film. Moraldo is the one who gets out of town at the end, who leaves it all behind. Just like George Willard at the end of Winesburg. You guys are sneaky.”

“You being a smartass isn’t going to be appreciated by anyone.”

This curt response sucked the buoyancy right out of the girl, and she dropped off the planter to the ground. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s probably not the right tactic. I have the utmost respect for Mr. Mendelssohn, and I don’t want him to think otherwise.”

Julia tilted to look past Val, and shouted at the green and red door, “I’m sorry, Mr. Mendelssohn!”

Inside, Percy jumped back from the hole he had been spying through. For a second, he thought she could see him.

“I really am! I meant no disrespect!”

Val took a step to his left, positioning himself in front of her again. “Mr. Rossi appreciates your apology,” he said, “and he appreciates the trauma you may be caused by your mistake. But it is a mistake.”

“If you say so, Val,” Julia said. “That’s right. I know your name, too. I told you I did my research.”

“My name is unimportant.”

“Maybe so, but I’m still not leaving. Go ahead and call the police. I’m sure the man who’s in there that you say isn’t in there won’t mind the publicity that will come with it.”

The two stared at each other a few moments, waiting to see who would blink first. It was Val. He nodded, spun on his heel, and went back inside. As soon as the door was locked again, Percy leapt from his hiding spot and grabbed Val by the shoulders. “What are you doing? You can’t just leave her there!”

“What else can we do? We’re going to have to wait her out.”

“I don’t think she’s going to leave.”

“Either way, you should move to the back of the house. I don’t want her hearing you talking to me out here.”

Percy looked around the room. His hands moved nervously, like he had misplaced something and was trying to remember where—or even what—it was. “Yes,” he said, seemingly directed at no one. “I shall stay in my room until further notice.”

Val placed a steadying hand on Percy’s arm. “I think that would be wise,” he said. “This nervous energy isn’t good for you. Let me worry about this.”

Taking a deep breath through his nose, Percy composed himself and disappeared through a sliding door into the main house. From there, he would go through the west wing, through the kitchen and Val’s quarters, rather than take his usual path through the central courtyard. It seemed unwise to go outside, even if it was enclosed within the quadrangle. One never could tell what might be passing overhead on a day like today when everything was so exposed.