Laurie Sheck
Page 23
TRANSLATION OF CAO XUEQIN’S 9TH NOTE:
Red Inkstone still hasn’t come. And the other one who signs himself Odd Tablet—I haven’t set eyes on him for months. I worry I’ll die before I finish this. But then I remind myself of Zhuangzi who’d see this worry as needless, as being caught within a “bitter thing.” “Think of the story of Uncle Lame-Gait,” he might say: “One day out of nowhere a willow sprouts from Uncle Lame-Gait’s arm. ‘Are you worried?’ his companion asks, ‘Do you resent it?’ ‘Why should I resent it?’ he answers. ‘To live is to borrow. You and I came on this earth to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me, that’s all’”
Aosta, Dec 11
My Friend,
My eyes sting, they always sting. Every day I go into her room. I remember the touch of your gloved hand. The way you weren’t afraid. In her top dresser drawer, a small hand-mirror. Did she use it in the weeks before her death? Or did she wrap it in cloth months before (it was wrapped when I found it), then slip it in among the clothes she knew she would no longer need? Through a crack in the window the smell of the ironworks. Slowly I feel a leaving in myself, I XXX and it’s not a violent thing though the quiet of it pierces and the solitude’s slightly different from the solitude I’ve known these many years
Did I tell you my illness was never explained to me XXX the course it could take not explained XXX I didn’t know that the lesions could be internal in the throat for instance the larynx so that if I were to speak to you nowXX I mean if you were here if you were XXX but I’m glad you’ll never be here and my voice such as it is what’s left of it is hoarse and shallow XXX XXX I’ve thought much about what skin is—a boundary, a shield, a site of harm XX a pleasure a raw stopping-place a starting-place a home site where the hidden senses what’s beyond it expectant visible variable unfree I—
I didn’t know of the categories: non-infective cases, quiescent cases, arrested cases, neural cases. Acute, subacute or chronic. With fever or without. With succulent lesions or without.
I still wonder what skin is. I’ve thought about it often as I said yet I still wonder. The smell from the ironworks grows even stronger in winter—
Your Friend,
My Friend,
You write to me of your old Roman Road, your arch with no inscription, the sister’s closed room, the frescoes at Issogne, and trying to picture what you see, I also want to tell you what I see. But what I write I never send. I keep thinking of leaving here for just a few days, but with what money, and to where? Instead I close my eyes, lie down and remember. Strange what stays in the mind, what strays, wanders, erupts inside the mind. The narrow strips of pink paper pasted over the statues’ eyes in the old temple near Snow Valley, for instance. What purpose did they serve? Some say they were used to protect the gods’ eyes from the decaying temple walls until the day they could finally be repaired. Why do I remember this now? I remember also:
Large wild silkworms feeding on oak leaves. They produce the coarse silk known as Mountain Silk, the only silk that slaves are permitted to wear. Rice plants a few inches high being transplanted one by one to a large field. The bent postures of peasants as they worked. White storks outside Silent City. A dozen blindfolded oxen harnessed to six grindstones churning winter wheat into flour. Narrow streets lined with horn lamps, paper lanterns. The scarred foreheads of penitents at Kushan.
Why do I remember these things and not others? Last night I dreamed your eyes were covered with thin strips of pink paper—
WORKING NOTES FOR DRC:
∼∼ the iceberg in the Goddess’s Ninth Song is unexplained, but seems to refer to a family’s suffering and fall
∼∼ “Thirty-six ways to enclose a corner” refers to a treatise on cures by King Rong (I would have thought it easy but it seems there’s truly no way to enclose a corner)
∼∼ the best guess for an answer to this riddle is “inked string”—what carpenters use for making a straight line on wood (though often it seems nothing in this book forms a straight line)
Red Inkstone: “If the person you were before reading and the person you are after is the same, then you haven’t really read”
my friend’s letters, his frozen eyelids, my eyes
Aosta, Dec 13
My Friend,
then XXX over time when I grew worse the doctors said words to me and those words left cuts inside my mind—”infiltrative” “fibrotic” “trophic” I walked into her room it was too quiet I left I walked back in. Skin is quiet, thought quiet. I wonder if there are cases in which the face remains completely smooth, lesions limited to torso or limbs, so one could cover XXX and completely XXX just imagine it XXX nothing would show XX yet all of it still there XXX Sometimes I imagine they hand me a “quiescent certificate” which verifies I’ve tested negative for nine months. Then I visit XXX the faces of Issogne so smooth, unmarked in their mute world, just a few shadows here and there suggesting age or worry or the structure of the hidden bones XXX So many words inside my head: “rose-spot nodules” “evanescent erythematous rashes” “subcutaneous” “iritis” “exacerbation of” “atypical or typical of” I should stop now it’s past midnight too late to have tried to write to you after all. The white horn on the mountain, I watched it for hours from her window XXX forgive me, I XXX XXX “intradermal” “subcutaneous” “chronic” “neural” “acute”
Aosta, Dec 14
My Fre
My Friend,
more and more I think about what skin is how it’s meant to be protective and it is but what of how it turns on itself, becomes its own madness? something wildly wrong inside it (chronic reaction, subacute reaction) the sane receptive world of each fingertip suddenly insane each palm suddenly insane skin a living mind after all (treatment of prognosis of) nerve-fibers blood vessels lubricating glands thrust toward the world unprotected I can’t (and the faces at Issogne so flat, so without shadow) It’s cold so I can’t work in the garden like I used to and skin’s both living and dead, a gatherer of knowledge that nourishes itself, replaces itself (intradermal, subcutaneous) often I think of the trust one needs just to live in it, carry it, accept it for what it is, this thing so easily cut or burned or damaged (neural anaesthetic, borderline, progressive) I wonder how old the walnut tree is all those books she read in its shade her lips slowly moving but no voice from her mouth her eyes on the pages no voice from her mouth no voice at all
My Friend, I lie awake and think of what you wrote: “skin a living mind after all,” and of how the doctors’ words left so many cuts. But I can’t even ask about your eyes, can’t speak a single word to you XXXXXXXX I live with the knowledge there’s no comfort I can offer. This distance in which we live. X And I live with Baoyu whose skin is words, and the others whose bodies are words. I watch them struggle and none of the words I bring to them can save them, not even the characters that combine to mean “winged horse” or “sun”—
Sometimes I feel my own body turning into words, my skin a living network of words—
TRANSLATION OF CAO Xueqin’s 10th note:
Red Inkstone still hasn’t come. Maybe he’ll never come again. Lately I wonder what he’d say if I told him the one thing I’ve kept back—that years ago a monk came to me with my entire manuscript already written and tucked into his sleeve. “I was walking near Blue Ridge Peak,” he said, “and found these words on a piece of jade. I knew if too many years passed the inscription would grow blurred, so I made a rough transcription myself, but need someone to polish and circulate it.” He paused, then continued, “‘Go to the place called Mourning-the-Red-Studio,’ I was told. ‘There you’ll find a man, Cao Xueqin, who’ll take care of it for you—everyone else is too busy with their own advancement.’ So I’ve come to you. Will you do it? At the very least it will dispel loneliness some rainy evenings under the lamp by the window …” Would Red Inkstone believe the monk was real? Do I? He handed me the pages, yet when I look down they aren’t there … all the pages and scraps are in
my own hand, and I cross out much in my confusion as I write, add and take away again and add …
Maybe I should just go back to Nanking. But who do I even know there anymore?
Aosta, Dec 15
My Friend,
Don’t think. I can no longer be calm. I suppose I shouldn’t have written of XXX I don’t know XXX but sometimes my mind races XXX and I XXX I haven’t forgotten the lekythos—that Greek vessel on which the souls of the living and dead are depicted. The ones who think of but can’t reach one another. Theirs is in many ways a gracious, tender world. I still feel this. Didn’t I write to you of all the townspeople outside my wall, how fragile their lives are and tender, that I’d protect them if I could, even the horrible ones, though of course I can’t protect anyone, least of all myself. But I was saying about the lekythos, on that white-ground vessel, too delicate for daily use, though the dead one stands in the “ekei,” the world of “there,” and on the vase’s other side the living one walks forward holding a long shallow basket filled with gifts, they’re not completely separate. I like to think something could still pass between them, even though the dead one stares with blinded eyes, even though a grave stele stands between them. Or is there something much harsher I must face?
The walnut tree’s bare now. The brother remembers and walks toward the sister on white ground. Many of those vessels were meant to be broken, left in pieces beside the dead one’s stele (and the brother and sister… none may disclose the secrets of… her mirror wrapped in cloth). Isn’t the mind, too, a collection of fragments?—moments of pinned hair, folded cloth, shoulders, loneliness, curved ankle, rim of shield. I lifted her handkerchief out of the drawer, unfolded it, smoothed it, put it back. What was odd was that it smelled of sun. But how could it smell of sun? Of being dried in the sun? So many years. The living brought libations to the dead, oil mixed with wine and honey. They also brought flowers, pomegranates, grapes, sometimes eggs and ribbons.
I hope it’s summer where you are, I don’t know why I wish this. I imagine willow trees, silks, ponds, tended gardens.
Your Friend,
Cao Xueqin waits for Red Inkstone who no longer comes, and for Odd Tablet who also doesn’t come. Allegra didn’t come back. And Shelley. And the northern explorers—Franklin, Lockwood, De Long—none of them came back. And you didn’t come, though I waited, until absence was a skin, cold layers of waiting, scratches, scars.
Last night I dreamed Claire sat under the walnut tree in Aosta. She wore a white hood to shield her face which was covered with lesions. One of her eyes had frozen open. All around her the garden was in bloom: dahlias, pale blue gentians, Martagon lilies nearly five feet high.
“It’s good not being cold anymore,”
she said,
“I don’t miss Moscow at all.”
I was sure she’d spoken, yet I hadn’t heard her voice (not once have I ever heard her voice). Somehow I still knew what she’d said and that she said it.
“Skin has a subtle, secret life,”
she said,
“more than you know. I don’t want a quiescent certificate, I never wanted one.”
Then all I could see were the cuffs of white sleeves at her lap, her hands buried in the folds of her white skirt.
Aosta Jan Dec 16
My Fri
There have always been captives of one sort or another why should I be an exception—XX Skin is a secret the mind’s imaginings wander through unguided. A testing ground a laboratory a field. Law speaks only angles into justice. My watchfulness is chained to who I am. The sun is very bright today I went into her room again today I always go in now it smells of sun but how could it smell of the sun? Of clothes freshly drying. In her notebook there are many blank, pages and many half filled, many break, off in mid-sentence. What is the grammar of Y What is the grammar of thought that doesn’t want to complete itself that doesn’t believe in completion? Plutarch wrote of the Athenians tattooing their Samian prisoners with the sign of their ship. But to reduce the body to one thing, the self to one thing, one single mark, there’s such cruelty in that. My XXX skin grows more elaborate more complex becomes a new language there’s no sovereign of XX belongs to no kingdom XXX there’s no one it bows down to or serves no civilization no penal code or slave system it moves through branded with its single barren mark XXX but then the doctors’ words come back: “interstitial fibrosis,” “septic absorption,” “atropine sulphate,” “acid tartaric.” “Treatment of” “Description of” On one page near the end of her notebook she wrote the words “radical joy”
Clerval sits at his table for hours not writing or reading, his stillness an impenetrable skin.
I miss the movements of his hands, his legs when he gets up and stretches.
How can I know what he thinks?
Hours pass, or are they days? What do I really know of him at all? I who’ve never even felt his gloved hand in my hand.
the sun’s almost set I meant to get up and work but I keep thinking about Aosta, the walnut tree, the Samian prisoners marked with the sign of their ship. Baoyu’s skin turns to jade then back again to flesh then to columns of words then to jade again then skin that’s smooth then intricate with scars and then it’s fog. He seems to want to speak to me (all these months I’ve been translating I’ve never once heard his voice). Says, “What if my skin were water and nothing could mark me, think about that, think about Zhuangzi’s Nothing At All Town and Vast Nothing Wilds—what would my skin be like there? Would I even have skin? Would I need to?”
Years ago, it must have been in London, I read that when the waters of the Hellespont impeded his army, Xerxes ordered his men to lash the waves 300 times then hurl a pair manacles into them.
Baoyu’s skin is water then flesh then words then jade then water again then flesh. I translate it but can’t control it. Dark now. Must buy more bean flour tomorrow. I wonder if my friend in Aosta’s still alive.
Aosta, Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 18
XXXX wwww XXXX
eyes blink, all the time we hardly notice but now that mine have mostly stopped it seems so mysterious and odd this thing the body does this way of interrupting of disappearing
I lie here and look at the wall she’s walking under the walnut tree I want to just blink for a second like I used to but the wall stays her walking stays
What is the blinking of an eye?
spasms refusals
disruption and resistance built into the very core of sight
My Friend, I
I forgot to address you forgot to mark the proper starting place of this letter
I remember the comfort of it—upper lid lowering, closing. Small rush of darkness. World gone, everything gone. So fast you barely notice. A hush, but visible. A pause. Such gentle obstruction. 3/10ths of a second, fifteen times per minute. 17,000 times each day.
The eye shuts much faster than it opens. Is it so eager for the dark? How the body needs to go into that darkness and not notice. And to blink is to elude, turn away. As if the mind cant stand to look for too long, all seeing shot through with involuntary contractions, the facial nerves programmed for refusal. I hardly used to register them at all those small rests so many times each minute those infant refusals but now I think of them and miss them she walks in the white wall the walnut tree grows, leafs out in the white wall it’s been so long since I’ve gone away gone anywhere there’s a China in my mind where you walk among ponds with blooming lotuses you pass wooden temples, ivory-carvers sitting in windows, baskets filled with rice
I wonder what skin is it is so many things so I keep wondering and I wonder what blinking is I think of you walking, each small resistance in your face each automatic convulsion so many times per minute
Each day the dark comes earlier but her room still smells of sun
When Clerval’s friend wonders what skin is I picture Claire at her cold window in Moscow, her skin turned to snow. When he wonders what blinking is I feel her eyes staring at the window as she thinks, l
ike Baoyu,
“What if my skin were water and nothing could mark me, what about that?”
But she didn’t want to be water, she wanted to be human and still free, wondered if it was possible to be both. When the jade that was Baoyu fell to earth, its story was already written on its body. Claire isn’t like that, or Clerval—I don’t know what might befall them. My blinking makes small slashes all over their skin.