The traveler pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. I looked up, “Tonight’s the night?” The traveler was quiet. He was here before me, and I always figured he’d be here long after I left. Two years ago, he pulled the chair out like he did tonight, ordered the bottle like he did tonight, and took a sip, careful not to let his beard fall into his drink.
Two years, and I guess I don’t need an answer. Tonight is the night. I raised my glass. Most expats paid the high prices for imported drinks, unable to trust something clear from an unmarked bottle. But the traveler went right for the rice wine, unmixed, unchased.
He tapped his glass against mine, emptied it in one go. I watched him. Then I emptied my own. I grimaced, I couldn’t help myself. They say Chinese rice wine is an acquired taste, but that doesn’t mean everyone can acquire it.
“I can buy you a chaser if you’d like,” the traveler said, “or perhaps you’d prefer a massage, to ease your pain?” It was just our first round. He filled our glasses again, “you said that on our first meeting,” a smile forming somewhere behind his beard. “It was no more believable then than it is now. Would you like to say something else?”
I lifted my glass. The second shot went down no easier than the first. I grimaced again. “You need more practice,” the traveler said, “but I suspect you are not interested in rice wine. You want to ask me why. Why now? Why not two years ago? Or two years hence?”
“Actually, I want to ask why the lake.” I waited. The beard or the traveler’s skill, you could never read his face. I glanced at my full glass, and raised it.
After the traveler had refilled our glasses, I said, “It’s just a lake. There’s lots of lakes here.”
“None like this lake.”
“So what about it?”
“It’s where she went.” He tapped his glass, looking into it. “It was supposed to be my gap year, when I met her. I was young back then. She was pushing thirty.”
“That’s still young.”
“For a woman in China, to be that age and unmarried . . . I thought I understood what it meant, to love. I didn’t.” He put his hand on top of the glass. “She told me she was going to the lake, and that’s what she did.”
“Sure, you messed up, but she had her choice too. Like you said, you were young, and besides, it was so long ago. Why now?”
“I have traveled far too long.” He took his hand off the glass, “but it’s over. I knew that two years ago, and waiting has made it no less obvious. Were it not for you, my journey might have been eternal.”
“I can’t be the first person you talked to here.”
“You’re the first who understands. You came here for a gap year yourself. How long has it been now? A year in China, and then you go back to what? To spend your only life doing something you don’t want to do, all to purchase stuff you don’t need? What sort of life is that?” He let those words settle. Then he sighed, “Well. It is late.”
“You don’t have to do this”
“It’s late it’s late,” he muttered, reaching inside his shirt. “Why the lake?” He was fingering something under his shirt. He pulled out a necklace and set it on the table. “The lake is not where I began. It’s where I understood.”
He left. I drank a few more glasses of rice wine. It got easier with each glass. After a while, I picked up the necklace, a ring of jade surrounded an off-white gem, hanging from a long strand of hemp. I put it on and left.
It’s been five years since my journey began. Sometimes I think of the lake. Sometimes I think of the life I turned away from. Mostly I think of the traveler, and the journey that never ends.