Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind

by Anne Charnock

  Toniah shudders with silent laughter, and when she stills herself, she feels suddenly sickened by her own blatant omissions. The merest scintilla of curiosity would have surely prompted her to say, “Hey, Mum, tell me about your childhood with Nana Stone.” Or, “Tell me, Nana, about your father.” Toniah isn’t even clear why her nana chose parthenogenesis. As a child, Toniah sensed a sad, almost angry vibe around Nana Stone’s past. She recalls her nine- or ten-year-old self, conjuring a simple explanation: Nana Stone had been jilted at the altar. This satisfied a child’s curiosity and also instructed her not to pry. Why would she want to remind Nana Stone of the worst day of her life?

  What is clear in her memory is Nana Stone saying, more than once, “Don’t talk to me about men.”

  The piano concerto has been switched off. Carmen has left for her yoga session, and Poppy is racing around searching for Eva’s goggles.

  The Paris sketchbook lies discarded on the floor. The battered suitcase is open on the large square coffee table with its contents strewn and picked over. Toniah found a greetings card in one of the envelopes, and she rereads it for a third time. She can’t make sense of the handwritten message, from Hildi, their old family friend, to Leah—that is, to Nana Stone. It’s a thank-you note for a day they’ve spent doing the galleries, but the ending of Hildi’s note is enigmatic:

  I’ve been mulling over what we were talking about, and you know I’ll always have your interests at heart. I just feel, Leah, you should be more open. You’ve done nothing wrong!

  Toniah doesn’t show the card to Poppy. Maybe later. She wonders if their mother ever read it. If she did open it, she might have glanced at the first sentence, assumed it was trivia and closed it again. Did she even open the suitcase?

  “We’re off. Back by lunchtime,” Poppy shouts from the hallway. Toniah hears the front door slam, and in the silence, she can hear her blood circulating through her head. She closes Hildi’s card. The picture on the front is one of those innocuous but seductive images that suggests to Toniah that the sender appreciates a certain type of art: nothing too challenging, a field of ripened wheat swaying in an imagined breeze, under a false blue sky. She slips the card back in its envelope, which is addressed to Nana at this house and makes Toniah feel like a squatter.

  She walks over to the window and sees the bus pull up at the bus stop. All to a schedule; everything in the street is exactly as it should be. Eva will be on time for her swimming lesson, and they’ll be home for lunch for Eva’s Saturday favourite—hot chocolate with Welsh rarebit. Toniah has slotted back into the warmly familiar routines of the house. You’ve done nothing wrong! She feels she should quarantine herself with Hildi’s puzzling note. Why share it until she can make some sense of this singular sentence?

  She returns to the suitcase and kneels down for an item-by-item inspection. It all appears to be Nana Stone’s stuff. There’s an incense stick holder, a glass paperweight, a crab made from shells—surely bought by a child at the seaside—a pendant stating “First Prize,” but for what? Tins, most of them empty. And tight rolls of papers, which haven’t uncurled even though the elastic bands which once bound them are now desiccated. They’re quaint paper receipts, and the ink is all but faded. Toniah smiles, remembering the story of Nana Stone returning faulty hair straighteners twelve years after she made the purchase, because she still had the receipt.

  She picks up a small, roughly carved wooden box—a cheap jewellery box, most likely—turns it over, gives it a shake. There’s no rattle. She tries the lid, but it’s locked, and she can’t find a key among all the jumble.

  The utility room by the kitchen, in contrast to the attic, is well ordered, and Toniah goes straight to the toolkit at the far end of the work surface. She stands the small wooden box on its hinged side, eases the sharp edge of a flat screwdriver under the lid and taps the end of the screwdriver with a hammer—small taps escalating to bigger taps and then a whack. The lid tears away from the flimsy lock. Toniah stares at the contents—a single small photograph, its colours as vibrant as the day the box was locked. It’s a young Nana Stone holding an infant on her lap. A boy.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Suzhou, 2015

  Toni and her dad appear to be the only westerners among the throng at the western buffet breakfast. She sidesteps along the line of hot tureens and lifts the lids, sagging with each revelation. Nothing quite looks like breakfast food. She’s tempted by the boiled eggs in the final tureen, but she decides against them; they sit in a steaming black soup that smells of soy sauce. So she returns to their table with a plate of watermelon, three small egg custards in puff pastry and fried rice.

  “Look over there, Dad,” she whispers across the table. “That’s the couple who were photographing the blossom trees yesterday.”

  The man and woman are sitting opposite one another and strike the same pose, as though saying grace. Their quiet contemplation is focused on their smartphones, held identically against the edge of the dining table. The man stands somewhat abruptly and leaves the restaurant. The woman leans across the table and grabs his phone. She holds both phones side by side and thumb-swipes across their screens, repeatedly.

  “I think they’ve had an argument,” Toni says, and she sets off towards the buffet as though eager for a second helping. She walks behind the woman, lingers to look over the woman’s shoulder, sweeps past the buffet and grabs a banana, then rushes back to her dad.

  “She’s comparing photos.”

  “What?”

  “They haven’t had an argument. She’s comparing his photos of the blossom trees with her photos of the blossom trees . . . Look how happy she is.”

  “Yes, you’re right. She does look happy.” Her dad smiles fleetingly. It’s a weary smile, and Toni looks down at her plate and pushes her fried rice around. She can feel her face burning. She and her dad do this to one another all the time; one of them makes a chance remark, and it makes the other feel deep-down sad. It just happens, like they’re on hair triggers all the time. In fact, her dad has done it to her already today, without actually speaking. She woke this morning to find he’d left his laptop open on the chair next to her bed—she could hear him in the shower—and his mail window was open. There was a message from their neighbour Anna Robecchi.

  Not that she opened it—she’d never do that. And the message had no subject line; Anna must be a total computer illiterate. The question was: Why had she emailed when they were halfway around the globe? What was so important? Or had she dreamed up some excuse to send him an email? She’s always dropping by the house. So blatant; so gross.

  “Come on then, Toni. I want to be in the foyer at least fifteen minutes before Mr. Lu arrives. Can’t risk keeping him waiting.”

  As they leave the breakfast room and cross the foyer’s indoor stream, some twenty-five minutes early, her dad sees the concierge holding the hotel’s entrance door open for Mr. Lu. “Blimey, he’s here already.”

  Toni takes his hand, an instinctive move. She knows his attention is about to slip away from her. “Dad. Dad! It says in the guidebook . . . Chinese people are always early for appointments.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “Well, read it yourself.”

  In his deep voice, with false seriousness, “Eh, none of that cheek in front of Mr. Lu. Chinese children are polite.”

  He doesn’t hear her muttered rebuff: “I didn’t read that anywhere.” He’s already striding ahead with his hand outstretched to greet Mr. Lu.

  Toni is surprised; Mr. Lu isn’t wearing a sharp suit. He looks like a golfer. Not that she’s interested in golf. Her dad likes to show her the highlights on television—a hole-in-one, or a spectacular miss—probably because he and her mum used to watch golf together. So, Toni says things like, “That’s amazing.” Or, “That’s hopeless.” She hates watching the eighteenth hole, when the players wave their caps to the spectators and show off their white foreheads with no embarrassment at all. She always thinks, Idiot, keep your cap on
.

  “You must be Toni. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Thank you,” she says. She checks his forehead.

  From his soft briefcase he pulls out a small wrapped package. “You can open it now if you’d like to.”

  She deliberately takes the present with both hands—she read about local etiquette in the guidebook, unlike her dad—and carefully picks at the sticky tape, as she imagines a Chinese girl might do.

  “You can rip off the paper,” says Mr. Lu.

  Inside, she finds an ivory-coloured cardboard box; the lid has a magnetic flap. On the lid, there’s a drawing of a studious boy wearing a blue robe. He’s pointing to a poster with a teacher’s cane; he’s instructing a cartoon Bambi. She notices that the poster is a miniature version of the studious boy in blue, teaching Bambi.

  “They are aphorism cards. They have little sayings,” Mr. Lu says, delighted. “Open it and read one.”

  The top card has a colour drawing of a baby-faced boy carrying a hoe; he’s walking beside a river. “So cute,” she says. Mr. Lu laughs. There’s a block of Chinese characters with an English translation below, which Toni reads aloud. “‘Weeds do not easily grow in a field planted with vegetables.’” Her mouth stretches and tautens; with the dread prospect of giggles, she clenches her stomach muscles and clears her throat. “‘Evil does not easily arise in a heart filled with goodness.’” She doesn’t dare look up.

  “Well, there’s food for thought,” says her dad. He ushers Mr. Lu towards a seating area by the flowing stream while telling him about their trip to the Master of the Nets Garden. Toni wonders about asking Mr. Lu to translate the bamboo graffiti, but she decides she prefers the mystery of it all. And maybe he’ll be offended if she brings some loutish behaviour to his attention, as if that were the most interesting thing she’d seen in China.

  “Have you been to England, Mr. Lu?” she says, and she wonders what a real journalist would ask next.

  “Yes, I took a business trip to London last year.”

  “And what did you notice? I mean, did anything really surprise you?”

  “Oh yes. The bicycles. You see, in China, it’s the poorest people who ride bicycles, and they pedal slowly, but in London, the cyclists ride fast. And I noticed at the traffic lights, they’re eager to set off ahead of the buses. In China, cyclists always ride behind the buses.”

  “So you don’t ride a bike?”

  “No. But if I moved to London I would, because it’s more fashionable.”

  Both men pull out their laptops, and her dad moves to the sofa to sit next to Mr. Lu. Toni, sitting opposite, knows the signal.

  “Should I go back to the room?”

  “Please, stay with us. We might need your opinion,” says Mr. Lu. “I’m having difficulty deciding which painting I should ask your father to copy.”

  She wants to check her messages, but she thinks that would be rude. So instead, she opens the box of aphorism cards. She doesn’t see why there’s a Bambi; it’s so Disney. She slowly sifts through the cards, reading each one carefully—she knows her dad will take ages—and setting aside the ones she likes best. There’s one aphorism that sounds familiar: The journey of a thousand miles begins with one first step. Most of them are a bit boring and clunky: If we are not attached to outcomes, then we will not suffer from the pain of fallen expectations—picture of a boy caught in a rain shower. In the face of adversity, be grateful, for such opportunities do not come by easily. That’s plain ridiculous. How could her mum’s accident be an opportunity? Sadly, her favourite aphorism has the worst drawing—a boy dressed in grey, reading a book: Every single day is like a blank page of our life. She looks up at Mr. Lu. He senses her stare.

  “Do you like them?”

  She nods. “Do you read them every day? Like, one a day?”

  “No, not at all. I like the sentiments behind them. That’s all. They’re based on Buddhist teachings, though I’m not a Buddhist.”

  “They’re all written by the same man. It says on each card—‘Dharma Master Cheng Yen.’”

  “She’s not a man. She’s a famous Buddhist nun who lives in Taiwan.”

  “She’s not Chinese, then?” says her dad.

  Mr. Lu smiles. “Yes, she is Chinese. Of course.” Her dad looks vacant, confused; too late, he grasps his geopolitical oversight.

  “In fact,” Mr. Lu says, “Dharma Master Cheng Yen was inspired by three westerners—three Roman Catholic nuns. She was so surprised that the nuns were helping to build hospitals and schools, she decided to start her own charity to help society.”

  “What does this one mean, Mr. Lu? ‘Every person we meet, every event we participate in, is a lively essay.’”

  “Very appropriate. I think the translation is difficult. It means that every person we meet is the start of something exciting. A new chapter. Yes, chapter would be a better translation than essay.”

  Toni doesn’t read out her favourite card; she keeps it to herself.

  “So it’s one of Uccello’s three battle paintings: this one at the Uffizi in Florence or this one at your National Gallery in London. Not the one in Paris.” Mr. Lu clicks through the images. “Or, Mr. Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.”

  “They’re vastly different paintings,” says her dad. “You should consider the mood you want to create.”

  “Well, it’s for the boardroom, so maybe . . . I’m not sure. Is a battle scene asking for trouble?” They both laugh. “Or would Mr. Monet’s lilies send everyone to sleep?”

  “What do you think, Toni?” Mr. Lu turns his laptop around and clicks between the three images.

  “No contest.”

  “So which one?” says Mr. Lu.

  “The knights on horses, the battle. The one in London is best.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Toni isn’t convinced that Mr. Lu is letting her decide. She thinks he had already chosen the National Gallery painting; he gambled that she’d choose the same one. She smiles all the same, because she’s pleased her dad won’t need to travel abroad.

  Toni wants to go back to her room to sew embroidered tape along the shoulder seams of her denim jacket. But Mr. Lu has The Whole Suzhou Tour lined up, and it’s crystal clear they won’t be back for hours. As they walk towards his four-wheel drive, Mr. Lu asks her that predictable adult question. Namely, he wants to know her favourite subject at school. She tells him it’s history.

  “Have you read any Chinese history?”

  “A bit, in the guidebook.”

  “Maybe you should start with what’s around you and see where that leads.” Which sounds to Toni like an aphorism. “You see, this hotel was once the home of Lin Biao, who was chosen by Mao Zedong as his successor. Later, it became a guesthouse for Communist Party officials and foreign dignitaries. Have you seen Lin Biao’s official car? It’s on display here.”

  “Is it green?” says her dad. “I saw a green car in an open garage.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Let’s take a look.”

  “So what happened to Lin Biao?” says Toni, because she gets the impression there weren’t many happy endings in Chinese history.

  “He died in a plane crash in Mongolia. He was accused of plotting against Mao, and it seems he was escaping to Russia.”

  “So his plane was shot down?” says Toni.

  “I don’t think so. I believe they ran out of fuel. His young son died with him. You see, Lin Biao’s wife and son were on the plane.”

  They walk over to the garage. There’s a framed photograph of Lin Biao and a text panel. While her dad reads the text, Toni and Mr. Lu walk around the car, though Toni hasn’t any idea why an old olive-green car might be at all interesting.

  “So, that was a real disaster, wasn’t it? For China. I mean . . . Mao losing his successor.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s my school history project—it’s about big disasters like the plague, and famine, and wars.”

&nb
sp; Mr. Lu turns to her and frowns. “That’s too serious.” She doesn’t reply. “The topic is too big.”

  She looks at him with an equally serious frown. “I know, it is. And I don’t want the project to be all facts and figures.”

  “Then you should . . . write about people.”

  “Am I missing something?” says her dad.

  She doesn’t answer immediately, because there’s a loud clunk in her brain as the penny drops. Then, sounding absent-minded, “Mr. Lu is helping me with my history project.” She’s not going to spell it out for her dad, but she’ll get started on it as soon as they get back home to London, even before she starts on her new denim jacket. She’ll make a questionnaire and send it to her friends, or maybe she’ll post it online and let anyone join in. Anyway, she already knows the killer question: Do you have a missing side to your family?

  Toni awakens in the back of Mr. Lu’s car when they arrive back in downtown Suzhou from their visit to Tiger Hill. She hears Mr. Lu talking about the battle painting, and he’s saying he’d like something in the picture, actually added to the picture, to remind him of China. She knows her dad will hate the idea, totally hate it. Mr. Lu turns around and says to Toni, “Did you hear that? Your father is making a change to the painting to amuse me. What do you think he should include?”