Toward the North

by Hua Laura Wu

  “You appeared in his life, as a real person. That’s more than enough.”

  “I know so little about him.”

  “There are additional provisions for his monetary gift.”

  “What provisions?”

  “You must be accepted by a university. I will send the tuition money directly to the university. You provide me with the address of your landlord, and I will mail the rent on your behalf.”

  I knew why Sean made these provisions: he was afraid that I might not go to university at all.

  When I told my family the news, both my mother and my brother demanded that I take out the money and give it to them so that they could invest it in the stock market.

  “That’s impossible. I cannot take one penny out. The only way I can use the money is to go to university,” I told them. When I hung up, to my surprise, I laughed quietly. It was the first time in my entire life that I said no to my family.

  I went to the Kilt and Clover one more time to say goodbye to Jim. Sharon’s kilt was replaced by a new one, one with blue-and-green checks. Her picture had also disappeared. Jim told me that when the TV station had reported the news about Fred and Sharon committing the murder together, Sean had charged into the restaurant and forcefully torn Sharon’s kilt and photograph from the wall. He had then poured gasoline on them and set them on fire right in front of the door. He had squatted beside the burning pile and stared at it. While the kilt and picture burned into ashes, his eyes had dimmed, as if, bit by bit, they were sinking into a bottomless darkness. He had set fire to his love right where his love had started.

  Three years later I got my Master’s degree in psychology from the University of Toronto. I opened a clinic in the business section of the downtown core. My advertisement in the newspapers said that my specialty was treating patients with obsessions.

  On the third day that my clinic was open for business, I had my very first client, Kane, forty-five years of age. On the form he had checked “Obsession with internet pornography.” Because of his obsession, he had lost his job, his health was deteriorating, and he was suffering from loneliness. With his brown eyes, thinning hair, dark complexion, and mixture of humility and shyness, he immediately reminded me of Sean.

  Kane sat down in my office, and right away he saw the four-leaf clover that was framed and hanging on the wall.

  “A four-leaf clover? Really rare. You found it?” Kane asked.

  I nodded.

  “You’re lucky.” I detected a trace of envy in his voice.

  Like a magic key, that clover leaf unlocked the heavy door of my memory: Sean’s garden, the fireplace on that Christmas Eve, the revolving antique carousel, the clear blue water of the Welland Canal….

  Perhaps I had loved, though in my own unique way, I thought. If I could exchange luck to get love, I would be more than willing to do it. Tears began to well up.

  “I am so sorry. Have I said something to upset you?” Kane asked apologetically in a low voice.

  I realized that I was sitting before my first client in my professional life. So I wiped away the tears, a bit embarrassed, and then I said in a very calm and soothing voice, “Let’s begin, Kane. Tell me your story.”

  Translated by H. Laura Wu and Cory Davies.

  “The Kilt and Clover” was originally published in Literature, No. 6, 2009.

  1“Four-Leaf Clovers” was written by American poet Ella Higginson.

  Toward the North

  LING ZHANG

  XIAOYUE,

  I, your dad, am going away for a while. You’ll understand the reason I’m leaving when you grow a little older. The place I’m going to is in the north of Toronto, far north. But no matter where I live, my heart is always with you.

  SIOUX LOOKOUT

  Zhongyue Chen bent over a table, holding a magnifying glass and pouring over the newly bought map of Canada, searching for that strange name. Like tadpoles with various tails, lakes and rivers were swimming beneath his magnifying glass. Finally he got rid of the tadpoles and located a sesame-seed sized black spot in the northern part of Ontario. Turning on the computer, he found a dozen indexes on Google.

  Town’s population: 3,400. External population: 1,800. Latitude: 52 degrees north. Main inhabitants: The Ojibwa. Area: a reserve land according to Indian treaties….

  The description page gradually blurred. A few words that looked like mountains rising up from the ground blocked all his vision.

  Latitude: 52 degrees north.

  Zhongyue pulled out a map of China with worn-out edges. Searching for 52-53 degrees along the north latitude, he found a lonely spot: Mohe. He had heard this name. His high school geography teacher had told him that it was the northernmost county in China.

  In other words, Sioux Lookout and Mohe were almost at the same latitude.

  Zhongyue felt as if warmth from his feet had moved up to heat his whole body. He could hear his heartbeat. He left the webpage and started to type a message: “I accept all the terms of the contract and will take over the position within two weeks.” As he finished, his finger tapped on the Send key, and the email went out. Then he felt his finger shiver slightly. Closing his eyes, he seemed to see transparent wings all over sky; they were carrying him, filled with eagerness, to the little town with a strange name in northern Canada.

  The following day, Zhongyue started to pack his luggage. He gave all his large pieces of furniture and electronic appliances to Xiaoxiao Fan, his wife. All his necessities were in four suitcases. Two in the trunk and the other two on the back seats would fill up the car. He closed his bank account; had the car checked; bought an insurance policy for the trip; took his daughter, Xiaoyue, to his family doctor for a general exam; and said goodbye to his supervisor, colleagues, and friends. Unexpectedly, everything went smoothly and easily.

  A week later, Zhongyue started his long journey by car to Sioux Lookout.

  He departed in the morning. Before his car reached the highway he pulled it over and made a call to Xiaoxiao with his cell phone. The phone rang for a long time before someone answered. “Is Xiaoyue in?” he asked.

  The response was a question with a smirk: “How long has it been since you took Xiaoyue to school? Don’t you know her school bus for the summer class comes at seven thirty in the morning?”

  After a pause, he answered, “Okay, Xiaoxiao. I’m leaving now.”

  But no answer came from the other end, so he had to hang up. Remaining momentarily at the side of the road, he realized he had hoped she’d say something. But what did he expect from Xiaoxiao? He knew, as a matter of fact, no matter what she said, that he had his mind set. She had known this about him and, so, she said nothing.

  Driving out of Toronto, he saw fewer houses and buildings. Fields appeared along the roadside. The corn stalks shook their yellow tassels in the wind. As he drove farther north, there were no more houses, and then even the crops disappeared. Weeds were scarce. Only large expanses of wild land remained. Occasionally brooks and ponds came into his view, but they were blanketed by quietness. They seemed to have been there for a thousand years and were too lazy to ripple on the water’s surface. Summer insects kept crashing onto the windshield, their bodily fluids splashing against the glass, scattering green splotches. With no cars or human beings around, the road ahead loomed like a huge grey cloth, unfolding smoothly toward the ends of the earth. Zhongyue couldn’t help but roll down the window, stretch out his free hand out, and wave it in the wind. The blood seemed to storm though his body, roaring: go toward the north; go toward the north; go toward the north!

  Zhongyue’s expectations for the north were rooted in unsure concepts formed in his earliest years.

  He was born the year that the Vietnam War broke out. Three-year-old Zhongyue, along with the children in the neighbourhood, had watched a Vietnamese movie. The content of the film was unclear. He only vaguely remembered tha
t a group of South Vietnamese children, starving and skinny, quickly sharpened bamboo sticks. However, he clearly remembered the song in the movie. The lyrics were repetitious and rhymed and it was very catchy.

  Go toward the North! Go toward the North!

  The children in the South are expecting their liberators.

  Go toward the North! Go toward the North!

  The children in the South are expecting their liberators.

  Go toward the North! Go toward the North!

  The children in the South are expecting their liberators.…

  That was the first song Zhongyue had ever learned. It was buried in the bottom of his memories. During his growth, more things piled up. The surface memories were forgotten, but the memory of the song at the bottom still remained; having melted into his flesh and bones, it was hard to forget. He didn’t know what the difference between the south and the north was, but that song had inspired his initial longing for the north.

  Later, his uncle and aunt were dispatched to the military farms in Northeast China as re-educated youth. They wrote letters home often. At that time, Zhongyue’s father was still alive, and his mother read their letters to his father at the dinner table. All of those letters contained complaints about hardship in life. Not totally understanding the letters, Zhongyue just remembered what he wanted to remember: the endless fields that no combines could reach; the cloudless horizon; and the winter snow, thicker than a quilt, which covered the land completely. Those letters had sparked his imagination about the beauty and expanse of north.

  He had grown up fast, like dough mixed with yeast. As a ninth grader, he’d already reached six feet. His pants were forever too short; his shoes, forever too tight; the door, too low; and his voice, too coarse. The comments about his personality in his school reports always said that “this student needs to get along with others.” When the students were paired up at the beginning of each term, nobody was willing to sit with him at the same table. When the students went camping, no one wanted to sleep next to him. There was no place for him to feel comfortable with his own body except in the playground. He was like a tall, clumsy bear walking on a crowded lane in an exquisite southern town. He had trouble dealing with sophisticated human relations. In every situation, he would either hurt people or people would hurt him. The small southern town in which he lived was like a small-sized gown embroidered with gold threads. Wearing it became a burden. Whenever he moved, he could easily break those delicate stitches. His young heart felt the restrictions of the southern town where he lived.

  He’d begun to dream of the north, the place he had never been, but to which he felt drawn. He longed for the north because of its breadth, simplicity, informality, and boldness.

  After high school, there had been a chance for him to flee from the south, but he’d missed it. His scores for the entrance exams weren’t very good and he was only accepted by a local teachers’ college.

  When he had graduated from the college, he missed another chance to flee from the south. He fell in love with a girl named Xiaoxiao Fan and yielded to her wishes. They both went to graduate programs at the university in the provincial capital.

  Surely, life had gone along its natural path. After his graduate studies, he’d taught at the same university. Then marriage, the birth of a child, the decision to study abroad, and immigration to another country became new responsibilities that life threw at him, one by one, every few years. Like an iron man, he carried out all those tasks. With his mind set on each target, his feelings gradually became semi-numb. The song “Toward the North” occasionally resounded at unguarded moments. That melody was weak, like an interval murmur between heartbeats. He almost believed that his dream for the north had slipped away with his youth and died in his old memories. Nothing in this world would stir up his peace and quiet again.

  But he’d been wrong.

  One night, at midnight, he woke up from a confusing dream. As usual, he touched the empty side of the bed before he remembered that Xiaoxiao had moved out. Sitting up, sounds filled his ears. He thought it was tinnitus—he had developed it recently. After a while, he finally recognized it was the melody that had long been buried in his heart. It resounded in his ears so loudly that he couldn’t sleep. He got up and went out, jogging on the empty street for a whole hour. Back home he took a cold shower, but he still couldn’t fall back to sleep. Go toward the North. Go toward the North. Go toward the North.

  The drumbeats became stronger and stronger, as if they were striking his eardrums, so that he could hardly bear it. Like the gusts of dark wind and fierce storms, the sounds of the drumbeats invaded his blood and coursed through his body. He was in pain, and he stumbled. The drumbeats made his heart swell to many times its size. He felt as if his heart had changed into a balloon, risen to his throat, and then stuck there. It couldn’t go up or come down. His breathing became erratic.

  He knew that some part of his life had been slowly dying, but that other parts were gradually recovering.

  He also understood that he couldn’t resist that call; he had to obey it.

  So he quit his job and scoured the internet, looking for a chance to go north.

  That was how he stumbled onto Sioux Lookout.

  Xiaoyue,

  Most First Nations children are living under very poor conditions. During long winter, many contract otitis, which is caused by an upper respiratory tract infection. Because there is no immediate medical treatment available, many of these children lose their hearing permanently. The ratio of deaf children to hearing children is several times higher than that in Toronto. All urban children are very lucky to be born in the city.

  Zhongyue had majored in education and specialized in Educational and Child Psychology in a graduate program. In Canada, he’d obtained another master’s degree, majoring in Hearing Rehabilitation Science with a minor in Education of Children with disabilities. After graduation, he’d gotten a position in a hearing rehabilitation programme with the Toronto District School Board. Now he was on his way to Sioux Lookout for a one-year contract job to replace a teacher on maternity leave. He was to care for the hearing impaired children at six schools, train them in sign language, and teach them some knowledge of hearing aids and maintenance.

  He arrived during the summer break, when the students were on holidays. With the help of a map, Zhongyue drove to the different schools. After his tour of the six schools, he understood the concept of “nearby.” The shortest distance between two of those schools was about an hour’s drive. Sioux Lookout was the middle point between the six schools, so he settled down there.

  The local school board arranged accommodations for him in the western corner of the town. He moved in that night. He fell asleep right away after driving for three days. The next morning, he was awakened by sharp bird cries, and he discovered that he was surrounded by woods. The entire house was made out of logs; there were no exceptions, from the beam to the wall, and from the floor to the furniture. The logs were coated with varnish. The grains of the wood, annual rings, and even insect holes were visible and countable. The surface of the logs were carved with designs, such as plants, birds, animals and human figures. All these carved images had simple and clear lines, as well as three-dimensional, sharp cuts. They looked alive, like they were moving and flying. Sunlight like a broad, white band flowed down through the two skylights in the roof and brightened the whole room. Dust looked like a silvery powder slowly falling through the light. It reminded him of a fairy tale picture book that he had bought for Xiaoyue. The illustration of a cabin in the forest in that book matched the scene he awoke to that morning.

  As he left the log house, the startling blue sky seemed to sweep him off his feet. He closed his eyes for a while before getting used to the clear and sunny light that bathed the woods around him. Turning around, he noticed that he was on a slope. As he walked down the slope, a smear of grey light emerged a few steps ahead
. That light grey stretched out into the distance. The further away, the narrower it became, and eventually it turned into a fine line that merged with the horizon. The wind picked up and something shining in the smear of grey caught his attention. Oh, there is a lake there, Zhongyue thought. Not a single person was in the woods, and not a single boat was on the lake. Zhongyue couldn’t help but cry out to the sky. Several water birds whooshed through the air, their wings spread wide and strong. He plucked a handful of green grass, squeezed it into a lump, and threw it into the thick water, but the clump didn’t even make a ripple. His palm felt the cool green pulp, but his heart felt hot and unsettled. He felt like shouting wildly.

  So he walked up to the top of the mound, and, with his hands around his mouth, he yelled crazily. “Ah … yu … hum … yah…!”

  The wind tore his voice away and then carried it back. The echoes bounced among the trees. He continued crying loudly until his voice became husky. Then he fell onto the grass, feeling like his guts had been emptied but his mind had become clear.

  At that moment, the cell phone in his pocket rang. A social worker from Whitefish Elementary School was calling him to say that a student had broken his hearing aid during a fight. He asked if Zhongyue could go test the student’s hearing and order a new one before school was scheduled to start. The social worker said he knew it was still the summer break, but the parents were worried, and the family needed special care. Zhongyue said that it would be noon when he got there. The social worker said he’d already taken the student to Zhongyue’s office.

  When Zhongyue got to his office, the social worker was waiting at the door. Zhongyue quickly flipped through the student’s file, which the social worker had brought with him. The boy was Neil Maas, and he was six years and ten months old. He suffered from an extremely severe congenital sensorineural hearing loss. His speech discrimination was almost zero. Zhongyue asked about the child’s language ability. The social worker said he could only speak a few simple words and use some basic sign language. The boy would go to a rehabilitation class as soon as the school started. This was why the parents were anxious to have a new hearing aid. Zhongyue asked why the child’s parents had not come. The social worker answered that the boy’s father was rarely at home; his mother worked in a fish processing plant and was unable to come right then. Before Zhongyue entered his office, the social worker tugged at his sleeve. “This child is a little bit different,” he said with hesitation. Zhongyue smiled and told him that he’d seen all kinds of children, and not to worry.