Sunday, October 26, 2014

Three Loves Seven, Chapter 19, Part 2 - "So Are You Feeling Well Enough for Your Death Sentence Now?"

Dear Gentle Readers,

We continue on with Clete's journal entry. Just to recap, he is writing up his thoughts on a Tuesday evening looking back at what happened back on the previous Thursday. You will recall that he has become caught up in Dog Island's justice system for violating their airspace. As acting judicial officer, Qi had just dropped him off in the shark-infested waters off the Island to swim back to shore to test his fitness for trial. As he was treading water, he felt something large coming up beneath him. And so we pick it up there.

There are about 15 lines of conversation in today's passage that will sort of gesture in an obvious way toward the the stuff Asian American writers my age have tended to write--namely the difficulties of fitting in a mainstream culture that forever views you as a foreigner in your native land. I'm really not good at that type of "identity fiction," but to some extent the issues of being an outsider are something everyone faces. Certain ethnic groups bear the weight of being different more than others, to be sure. For you to understand him, Clete must have this conversation with someone, and it might not be Lee in the final draft, but right now, with what has happened so far, she's has the best ears to hear what's on his mind.

Love,
Pops


The story continues:


The fact that you are reading this journal entry means that I survived a trip back to the shore of Dog Island. How it happened I cannot tell you. The only thing I can say is that the next thing I remember was coming to consciousness on Soul’s Landing beach. I think I was turned on my side and I proceeded to wretch out all the water in my chest and the full contents of my stomach. I heaved in air and then I saw hazy black forms hovering above me. I remembered the procession of sea vultures that waited on that beach. I curled back up and covered my face.


     “NO! NOT THE EYES! DON’T PECK OUT THE FUCKING EYES YOU GODDAMNED ZOMBIES! GET THESE DAMN FRANKEN-TURKEYS AWAY FROM ME! GO AWAY! GOD! PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE. I WANNA GO HOME.”


Or something like that. It turned out the black forms were Eve and Eight in their new sunglasses. They did tell me later that the Soul Birds were indeed there, encircling me at a distance of maybe 10 meters. They said the birds were squawking like crazy, the sound probably triggering my hallucination. The Second Princesses knew nothing of the Marooning Ordeal I had been made to undergo. Na, for her part, had sent the girls to set up a combustible offering shrine, meant to implore safe passage for travelers. That was their only hint. I continue to NOT tell any of them anything of my dealings with their mothers--it doesn't seem proper.

Eve and Eight said that while they were there building an altar, the noise of the Soul Birds caught their attention, and that a group of huge gray-white sea creatures were tussling about, as if in combat, on one part of the beach.  At first they thought the creatures were dolphins, but they were much too large. As the girls approached, the fish-like creatures pushed themselves back into the sea. They had left behind a quivering purplish lump. And that lump was me.

Eve said they kept their distance because at first they looked like sharks to her—like Great Whites even—they are frequently seen chasing the local seals, leaping out of the water at times, sometimes capturing one for lunch. But she thought she must have been imagining things. Sharks are never helpful. Always hurtful. And how could that even be possible for sharks to come up onto a beach? 

But it was possible. A few years ago I was shore fishing with a friend and he was reeling in the bluefish pretty easily—probably a school forced into a bait ball protective formation by a group of sharks. But then the sharks and sea birds diving at them from above, forced them into the breaking surf, causing a lot of the bluefish to beach themselves, but the sharks just came out with them, nabbing them in their teeth and wiggling back into the water.

Some of the sharks misjudged their abilities out of water and wound up helplessly beached themselves, drowning, as it were, in the air, right alongside their prey.  My buddy just put down his pole and reel and just started picking up the bluefish off the beach and putting them into his catch bucket. Me? I've been caught in frenzies myself and I felt sorry for the beached sharks, all of whom were about the size of an adolescent child, so I just started picking them up in my arms one-by-one, and carried them back into chest-deep water. My buddy yelled at me to start grabbing fish, but my answer was, “How many of those things can you eat anyway?” His response was, “You ever hear of an invention called ‘the freezer?’” He was a cryogenics engineer so he had a point. In any case, Eve said that the idea sharks that big could come onto the on land was way too scary a thought for her to entertain. Her description was so vivid that I had nightmares of being crowded and pushed about by a shiver of Great Whites thereafter.

I was in some sort of shock, and apparently my behavior was erratic and it made the girls quite afraid. I alternately ranted and raved and trembled and curled into a fetal position. Lee was fetched who slapped me repeatedly, jabbing various pressure points hard with a blunt stick, and eventually putting me into a stupor so that I could be transported back to my bed in the guest cottage to see if I would come back to my senses. Lee said I fit very easily into a wheelbarrow.

The good news was that I eventually did come to my senses. The bad news was that I was now declared fit to stand trial for high crimes against the state and that I should report the Hall of Justice as soon as I could walk on my own.

It’s hard to believe that all of that happened before noon that day. I rose from my sleeping cubby and staggered into all-purpose living area of my cottage. Lee was there. She gave me a stare and a grunt and motioned for me to sit on the dining porch. She brought out bowl of her jook porridge with a dollop of her motor oil in the middle with some chopped greens garnishing the top. It was the tastiest meal I had on that entire trip. She watched me in silence as I gulped it down. I thanked her.


     “Are you my security detail escort, taking me to court?”
     “No. You get there by yourself. You know the way. You go now. I have things to do first, but I will come by later to see what is decided.”
     “Aren’t you afraid I’ll escape?”
     “Fool! Where would you go?”
     “Score for you.” She was right.
     “I want you know that was very rude of you to do such a thing that you did. You have stolen time from everyone. Time that we need to be working.”
     “Let me say that if everything had gone right, no one would have been the wiser.”
     “Have you no sense of right and wrong?”
     “I do. They’re just hard to determine at times. I’m more of ‘ends-justifies-means’ guy than an ‘dot-the-i’s guy.’”
     “What is that supposed to mean? And how would you have explained Ba and Yi having sunglasses all of a sudden? And diving masks?”
     “I’d think of something. Did you get your sunglassess? The mirrored aviators were supposed to be for you. It’ll make your natural deadpan face even more so.”
     “Be serious! You almost just died.”
     “It’s really irrational, right? I committed a capital offense right? I saved myself for a death sentence. Judging from the level of this country’s evolution in jurisprudence, they’re probably going to tell you, the official killer, to chop off my head, right? That’s why you are coming later?”
     “I have nothing to say to that.”
     “It’s true then. You’ll enjoy that won’t you?”
     “Sigh. I only wish that you could have been a different person.”
     “You and me both. Being here makes me imagine what it’s like to be a true American.”
     “You ARE American. What you talking about?”
     “You think so. I think so. But people who look like me, like us? We’re always suspected of being foreigners there. I get complimented on speaking good English. My family’s been in the U.S. since the goddamned gold rush! I’m over 50 and fuckin’ tired of it.”
     “But America is like this Island, no? Everybody come from someplace else? Everybody feel that way?”
     “No. Asian and Latinos feel that way. Blacks kind of in a different way. It’s hard to explain. Be glad you feel you’re at home here.  Maybe you DO have a better life than me.”
     “Mn. We do not think of this island as our home.”
     “Really? How long have your people been here?”
     “Almos’ 500 year now?”
     “That’s not long enough to feel at home? You’re even in charge here.”
     “We are only visitors. We take care of this Island while we are here. But it is place for us to wait. I think the Sea Witch and the people of The Outside maybe think of this as their home. We do not. We are sojourners.”
     “Wow. I guess Chinese abroad never feel at home anyplace.”
     "Oh?"
     "Had a coworker--Indonesian Chinese? When he was in high school, his family got their home and business burned down in riots in Java. Been there for generations? They have Indonesian names? Didn't help. He said everybody keeps track there. So they moved to America. Not the only story I've run into."
     "So you think of yourself as Chinese?"
     "Mostly because that's how I'm defined in the U.S. And you tend to believe it. And then you meet someone who's more Chinese than you are and it screws up your self-image."
     "Someone like me you mean?"
     You're a diaspora Chinese too, but I give you a higher "score" since you're Chinese literate and you at least speak the language. More than one dialect actually. People from China today whom I do business with, are very different from you and me."
     “You have a very odd way of looking at yourself."
     "I admit it. What about you?"
     "We think of ourselves here more as Manchus, but Chinese is not an incorrect word for us.”
     “What’s the difference? Natsuki chewed me out about this.”
     “Manchuria is our ancestral homeland in the area in the north, even north of Korea. We have a different language and culture. I think the traditional clothes and hairstyles that people think of as essentially Chinese are actually Manchurian. We always were more stylish than the Han. I think of Chinese more like a very broad word. More than 50 kinds of nationalities and ethnicities make up that country.”
     “But when the Manchurians took over from the Ming, why didn’t they rename the country ‘Man Guo’ or something like that instead of just adopting a new dynastic name? The Qing?’
     “I don’t know! Why would I know?”
     “You’re a goddamned princess for starters.”
     “Idiot! Next time I see the emperor I will ask!”
     “Touche. I guess I chalk it up to corporate good will. The only older brand name for countries is probably Egypt. Lee?  Do you think if we had met 500 years ago in the old country that we would have liked each other?”
     “Depends on the circumstance. What makes you ask something like that?”
     “Meh. Probably not. You’d be a princess and I’d be a guy who was pulling your rickshaw.”
     “There were no rickshaws in the Qing. That is recent invention.”
     “Really? But it’s so low-tech.”
     “No need for better inventions when you have slaves. Important people were carried about in litters, or palanquins. But you look like your people are the Yue ethnicity, from the south. You say they speak Cantonese--the language of the southern people. But I don’t think you would have been a mere porter or laborer.”
     “Why do you say that?”
     “If you were, you would have starved. You are too weak! Maybe you would have been a thief?  But even so, we would have never met. Royals were never allowed to speak to anyone, especially the women.”
     “Well, setting aside my legal problems here, I’m glad we finally met and can talk here in the 21st century.”
     “Why would you think so? You have yet to have a day that you are not suffering from the weather.”
     “By the way, Lee? Thanks for voting for my deportation.”
     “Qi told you that?”
     “It was an act of mercy. Makes me wonder if you’re starting to like me?”
     “Unfortunately I have gotten used to you. You need to go.”


And so I went. There have been three, no make that four, times that I have walked away from a job, firing my boss by telling them to go to hell, with absolutely no next step lined up. The uncertainty that faces you is daunting, but the feeling of freedom of movement, at least for two hours, is utterly sublime. And then you get hungry and wonder what the hell you’ve gone and done.

Walking to Qi’s house, I was a true man. I had virtually quit my job of being a research geologist without fear of consequences! Which seems really stupid when you're self-employed. But, I did something good with my worthless life, and now I would lay it down as a martyr for virtue. How's that for self-piety? The grave humiliation I suffered, proudly, being forced to row myself to my own drowning to be eaten by hagfish and bottom crawlers, was now over. But I was wrong.

Faye was seated at the entrance to the yard surrounding the cottage where she and her mother Qi resided. She was peeling a basket filled with some species of long, cylindrical tuber. I don’t know too many vegetables, but it was related to the thing we call daikon back in the States, I would say. I was glad to see she was wearing her protective eyewear out in the midday sun. She gave me a cheerful smile of greeting.


     “Hi Dr. Wong!”
     “You’re looking stylin’ in your new eyewear. It’s a good look for you.”
     “Thank you. And thank you for bringing them. Welcome to our home! Mama said you’d be coming by. That you'd be staying with us? You need to wait here while I get her.”
     “Faye. Do you know why I’m here?”
     “Not really. They just told us Seconds that it was some legal business related to your contact. You’re not in trouble or anything are you?”
     “No. Just a formality. This shouldn’t take long. ‘Chop chop,’ I’m sure.”
     “I’ll be right back! I want to show you all of my special pets while you’re here.”


The Qi-Fei House was also designated as the “Hall of Justice,” I was told. Their surrounding property was the only yard of all the houses that was fenced. But I could not see the point. There were four openings in the perimeter fence, and mechanisms for latching a gate, but there no gates. There were no indications that gates had ever been present to close the openings—no broken hinges or even nail or screw holes where hinges had once been.

The yard was landscaped and ordered symmetrically, almost like a Persian carpet executed in greenery. But then I guess such carpets were inspired by gardens, so which came first here? There were all kinds of docile animals and birds about, either just sitting in the shade, or moving slowly about. In the back I could see a big flock of those sea vultures that I’ve written about, the Soul Birds. Did Qi raise them? Their presence confirmed my suspicions as to what fate lay before me. Qi came out of the house and walked up to me.


     “You survived.”
     “Surprised?”
     “Yes. Very.”
     “Sorry to disappoint you.”
     “I am neither disappointed nor pleased. I told you earlier that you have …”
     “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re not buying anything I’m selling. Well, vice versa. So skip it Lady. Let’s just get on with it.”
     “You have a very contemptuous attitude. I do not like that.”
     “Do you blame me?”
     “If I were you, I would be very gratuitous and contrite.”
     “HAH! My big, hairy, hemorrhoid-riddled ass! You’re a goddamned sociopathic sadist. I’m calling you out! Betcha nobody here is willing to call it as they see it.”
     “Are you saying that everyone has integrity, courtesy, and respect except you? Because if you are, I agree.”
     “Are you including yourself as having integrity! HAH. Are you getting my shirt patched like you said? That was a lie wasn’t it?”
     “Prisoner Wong, you are SO petty. You need some adjustment before we proceed. Gravity. That’s it! You must become friends with gravity.”
     “Do your worst.”
     “Oh, I only do my best. The Guardian of Justice must always strive for the righteous and best course. For everyone involved.”
     “Can we get started? Or finished as the case may be? I’ve got a harp lesson lined up in an hour.”
     “Everything in this world has a proper pace. On your knees, right where you are. Now, forehead touching the ground. Hands on the ground by your ears. Let me fix your position just a bit. Excellent pose. You always want to imagine yourself forming a perfect pyramid. Now hold still while I secure you in place.”

She had brought along a lot of rope with which she proceeded to tie my hands and ankles and neck, holding me into a kow-tow position. This was how it was going to end, I thought. Hog-tied and humiliated. What can you do in such a situation but wait for the finishing stroke with grace and humor? What would Oscar Wilde say in this situation, I wondered. Nothing. Yes, nothing but nothing happened.


© Copyright 2012 by Vincent Way, all rights reserved.


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Be truthful and frank, but be polite. If you use excessive profanity, I'll assume you have some kind of character flaw like Dr. Wong. Tks!