The Lost Garden

by Ang Li

  She stood up, sending the sticky secretion flowing down her legs to her feet; warm at first, it quickly turned cold and clammy like snot. It felt like the first time she realized that a man could leave such a large quantity of semen in her.

  While she was trying to find something to wipe herself off, she happened to look up and saw a naked woman before her in a ridiculous posture, standing with her legs wide apart. Her heart raced before she realized that it was a mirror.

  A hotel that prided itself on its Mediterranean flair had a large oval bed that took up half of the room and faced a mirrored wall. The other three walls were plastered in paper featuring huge red-and-yellow flowers that seemed to engulf the room in fiery passion. With all the lights on, a white glare was reflected in the mirror, which contrasted with her disheveled black hair and displayed her naked body in an eerie, embarrassing posture. In the mirror, the ridiculously large oval bed behind her, with its full pretension to romantic exoticism, appeared to fill up the room, as if serving as a constant reminder that a carnal encounter had just taken place there.

  She turned the water on full and scrubbed herself repeatedly, but she knew she would never wash off the soiled feeling of violation; she was even more keenly aware that, for the rest of her life, she would have to live with the unclean feeling that the baby inside her was contaminated by another man’s semen.

  She left the bathroom and quickly got dressed. When she reached the ground-floor reception desk, she was, to her surprise, stopped by the staff; it turned out that Teddy hadn’t even paid for the room.

  After hailing a taxi at the alley entrance, she settled in before calmly giving the name of an ob-gyn on Zhongshan North Road. The young driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror, but she just turned her head to look out the window.

  It was already dark outside on a cold, drizzly winter evening. Yet it was only when the driver reached the street and began to search for the sign of a clinic lit up by fluorescent lights that she was startled awake by the sight of neon signs dazzling the streets in the misty evening.

  The doctor was a man in his fifties who had studied in Japan. Yinghong had recently accompanied a female friend for a procedure that had gone smoothly. She asked for a general anesthesia, to which the doctor agreed with an understanding nod.

  When she woke up to find herself in the recovery room, she placed a call to Lin’s office. A familiar male voice answered with a hint of fatigue after a long day’s work. She told him in a measured voice, with little elaboration:

  “There’s no need for you to worry that I will hang on to you. I want to tell you that I just aborted our child.”

  He raced over. What greeted him was an ashen-faced Yinghong devoid of makeup. She was noticeably thinner but peaceful, with a relaxed, even indifferent composure, as if everything that had supported her in the past was gone. She was no longer the daughter of the Zhu clan, nor was she his most competent assistant. She was, simply put, a woman; she had even lost her intimidating beauty.

  Pulling her tightly into his arms, he said:

  “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll do what’s right.”

  At that moment, he obviously had no idea how to react to a self-possessed woman who wanted nothing from him, and all he could do was instinctively mumble a promise.

  A few days later, he put all business aside and returned with Yinghong to spend some time at Lotus Garden. In the cassia grove on a hill, in his usual conceited tone, he asked her to marry him.

  With an evident decline in the real estate business, construction companies had stopped or delayed work on new projects, which in turn cooled a market that had already been leveling off. While staying at Lotus Garden, Lin continued to run the company in Taipei via telephone, but showed no sign of anxiety over the situation, for he knew he had the edge over the others. The large amount of ready cash meant he could re-launch when the moment was ripe, particularly because, in his estimation, this was just the beginning of the depreciation of the housing market; he had all the time in the world to wait it out.

  Because of the certainty of his future success, he held off on new projects and gradually finished the old ones.

  “We must wait now so we can maintain our edge over others.”

  He explained this to Yinghong in a decisive but calculating voice. But he sent secret messages to reliable and viable real estate brokers, who would immediately notify him if they knew of any real estate firm with a shaky financial structure that could no longer hold out and must sell its land units at a low price.

  Which was why he had lots of free time while staying at Lotus Garden. The decay in the dying garden bothered him and made him uneasy.

  At the time, the tallest structure, Sea-gazing Tower, had suffered damage during an earthquake that destroyed the top floor and reduced the bottom floor to broken walls. Several typhoons over the past few years had blown the roof tiles off most of the pavilions, towers, and terraces, including the second story of Lotus Tower, which leaked every time it rained. Only Flowing Pillow Pavilion, under the aging Luohan’s painstaking care, managed to retain its original form and remained habitable.

  In the beginning, Lin followed her around the garden and watched as she devoted her time to various tasks: picking up fallen wood carvings from the windows and putting them away after carefully noting the location; reinforcing the finials on posts; and giving additional support to slanting doorframes to hold up a wall.

  He lent a hand with some of the physical labor but couldn’t help noticing the obvious changes in her. The most inescapable sign was that he was no longer the center of her world and that she had stopped planning her schedule around him. In fact, the decision to return to Lotus Garden was hers alone. Now what he liked or disliked no longer dictated what she said; worse yet, she didn’t seem to care what he said either.

  In the moonlight on a chilly winter night, when they were looking at shadowy trees and waist-high weeds, he joked, as an attempt to recapture a topic from the time she lived in Taipei:

  “There’s something funny about you, you know. No matter where you go, there will be a garden choked full of weeds, one that scares you.”

  She smiled serenely, saying nothing in response.

  Her changes extended even to the way she dressed. Shedding the alluring, feminine clothes he’d preferred, she switched back to the black and white she’d worn back when they first met. What remained was only the delicate lace trim adorning the hems of white skirts, the collars of black sweaters, and the sleeves of white blouses.

  Mudan came back to Lotus Garden with her, where she cooked the daily meals and helped clean up the garden. With Luohan, the two women shared an intimate relationship and memories about the garden, which often made Lin uncomfortable. Mudan and Luohan were the only two servants left, but everything about their old-fashioned loyalty, manner, and style reminded Lin of Yinghong’s highborn pedigree, even though he’d always known that she came from the renowned Zhu family.

  He’d planned to return to Taipei after a few days at the garden, but was apprehensive about the distance that had begun to grow between them, as Yinghong slowly regained her self-awareness and superiority. He delayed his departure for fear that all ties would be severed if he left and she would be beyond his reach again.

  In order to while away time at a place with no clubs or piano bars, he began to roam the long-deserted garden. At first he didn’t think he would have trouble finding his way around, because he had spent years in the construction business and had always prided himself on his sense of direction. But once he began, the garden seemed to transform itself into a maze mired in confusion. He didn’t know the various structures to begin with, and now they all seemed to look the same in their dilapidated state. Often he would think that he had traveled quite a distance, only to realize that he had been going in circles around a few pavilions and courtyards.

  One afternoon, he took off again, but this time, using the height of Lotus Tower as a landmark, he was able to make it back to Fl
owing Pillow Pavilion, where Yinghong was going through the cameras stored in large camphor trunks. He took her by the arm.

  “I seem to go round and round in the garden, wasting time and energy. But I won’t accept defeat. Come, let’s go to the hill in the back and look at the design. I refuse to believe there’s anything special about it.”

  She smiled faintly and gracefully got to her feet to lead the way.

  When they reached the Jiaping platform by Flowing Pillow Pavilion, she turned right onto a small path; then she led him around the artificial rocks and trees, before moving on by taking a winding verandah by Long Rainbow Lying by the Moon.

  Lin stopped by Long Rainbow Lying by the Moon. The hill was now behind Lotus Tower, which was separated from Flowing Pillow Pavilion by a large lotus pond. The location told him that they should be walking in the opposition direction from the verandah. So, ignoring Yinghong, he took off down the path from the verandah, hoping to reach Lotus Tower ahead of her. The path was overgrown with weeds, but stones still showed signs of foot traffic; carefully he followed the flagstones, but the path twisted and turned to the point that he was getting farther and farther away from Lotus Tower and soon ended up in the small yard by Authenticity Studio.

  He was flustered, but reluctant to backtrack. Then he noticed another verandah by Authenticity Studio, which, in his estimation, should have been connected to the others in the garden. So he walked across the yard, but when he got to the other side, he saw a low lattice wall blocking his access to the verandah. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t locate a break in the wall; all he found was a moon gate on the opposite side, by Authenticity Studio, but it was unclear where it would lead.

  The crumbling wall, which reached only to his shoulder, had decorated openings with visibly identifiable bat designs. Tall and long limbed, he would have jumped over the wall if not for the imposing air the dilapidated garden still possessed. He looked around before finally deciding to retrace his footsteps.

  When he got to Long Rainbow Lying by the Moon, he saw Yinghong leaning against a railing post, her white dress fluttering in the cold winter wind. Obviously, she’d known he’d have to backtrack, which was why she calmly and quietly waited for him.

  Seen from the hill, the crumbling Lotus Garden structures, camouflaged by the lush vegetation, showed no sign of decay. The vibrantly green trees and plants spread and wove themselves into a verdant ocean to embrace the fading buildings and cover the disintegrating eaves and rooftops. A sweet, quiet, and serene kingdom was created, where time seemed to stop, and the garden, surrounded by the sea of trees, would awaken from a deep sleep a hundred years later.

  Lin could only look down at a garden whose design escaped him, for obviously it was now shrouded in a profusion of trees and vegetation. He was surprised when Yinghong spoke up without much thought:

  “Just think, I was born in this garden, so my child—”

  She stopped, but unease prompted her to continue incoherently:

  “I remember once when I was child, a fairly powerful man, General Chen, came to pay us a visit at Lotus Garden. Father hosted a banquet for him at Lotus Tower and I was allowed to join the adults, probably to create a familial atmosphere.”

  The recollection brought delight to Yinghong’s face, as she smoothed over her earlier incoherent utterance.

  “My father had a Western side to him.”

  Lin nodded in agreement.

  “The first dish was a cold appetizer. Carefully following my parents’ instructions, I waited until the adults began eating before sampling the food in my bowl. Common with children, I ate the pieces I didn’t like first, saving the best for last. Who’d have thought that the adults would lay down their chopsticks so soon?”

  He laughed softly.

  “So naturally I had to follow suit and lay down my chopsticks. Then the servers came and took away all the plates and bowls, including mine, with my favorite food still in it.”

  “How old were you?” he asked, his eyes brimming with tenderness.

  “I don’t really remember, but I know it was before I started school.”

  “Do you still recall which favorite dish was taken away?”

  “I do, actually. It was cashew nuts,” she said, with an innocent look that bordered on childishness; the feeling of regret persisted. “With a table laden with fancy food, all I was looking forward to was cashew nuts.”

  He smiled tenderly, before blurting out in a surprisingly spirited tone:

  “Your father saw to it that you were born and raised in the garden, so I, I will help you carry out its renovation. Then our children too will be born and raised in Lotus Garden.”

  Caught completely off guard, she looked up at him with confusion in her eyes.

  “I want you to marry me,” he said in a hurried but determined voice.

  As she fixed her gaze at the man before her, the first thought that came to her mind was a sense that she did not seem to have ever loved him.

  Endless clusters of snowy white silver grass flowers in front of Yinghong blanketed heaven and earth.

  It was nearly the heart of winter, and yet the silver grass still raged, with giant bunches of white flowers, like wolf tails, growing everywhere and painting the small hill in white. In dry, cold winters, northern winds carried strands and fibers of the flowers into the garden. Their tiny seeds, covered in gray fuzz, drifted all over the place, and when the wind died down, left a fluffy white film on the greenery in the garden, from the wild weeds, to the moss and ivy on the wall, and to the towering trees that were tall enough to block out the roofs.

  Finally I saw my very first snow, but what immediately occurred to me was the “snow” I’d witnessed as a child in Lotus Garden.

  I must have been a third-grader. I remember it was a winter afternoon when a gust of wind sent a similar whiteness drifting in the air. I thought, at the time, that it must have been the kind of snow scene Otosan had experienced in Japan and Germany. I ran out into the yard to catch the snow, but all I managed to grab hold of were clusters of silver grass blooms, indeed, gray, fuzzy flowers that were feathery light. They began to float in the wind as soon as I opened my hand, wafting over the place so much so that I could only see a flurry of whiteness.

  I never knew that the silver grass flowers could be so abundant and so white they looked like snowflakes. Father couldn’t recall such a scene either. Could it be, Ayako, that your homesickness planted a false memory when you saw the snow in New York?

  Although I spent so much of my life at Lotus Garden, it was only recently that I was deeply moved by the many wondrous scenes, a result of learning to observe the garden in its minute details. The world is filled with boundless mysteries and wonder; everything is possible and nothing is tenable. I can’t be sure if Ayako has been blessed with karmic fortune to see the rare sight of silver grass flowers blanketing the sky; it could be an illusion, just like the world we live in.

  After reaching a certain age, I’ve been thinking recently that everything, including cause and effect, along with retribution, is predetermined, both in this life and in previous incarnations. I still recall when Ayako, as a young child, was nearly bitten by a green bamboo viper, you said that death meant not seeing Father and Mother, and, you added, Lotus Garden. Ayako, you were born and grew up in Lotus Garden, which means you witnessed its various transformations.

  You must still recall that year when we set fire to the hill and the wind changed direction suddenly, nearly reducing the garden to ashes. You were the only one who was convinced that the fire would not reach the garden, because you were seeing the flaming hill in the transposed images through the lens of a camera.

  And indeed Lotus Garden escaped destruction by fire. Could there be some connection between Ayako and the garden? And what kind of tribulation would the garden, which reached its current state through the efforts of generations of the Zhu family, bring to you? What kind of karmic connection did you have with it?

  After s
pending decades of my life in Lotus Garden, I have yet to see the unusual sight of silver grass flowers covering the sky, as described in your letter. Perhaps this has all been prearranged in some unknown way, for no one can say for sure what happens in life where karmic causes and effects are concerned. Or, it could be that what you saw years ago was, in the end, illusory, like life itself. Even if there were indeed silver grass flowers flying around like drifting snow, the flowers would fall till nothing was left. It would be as if nothing had taken place, nothing appearing and nothing disappearing, for life in the myriad worlds is but a dream.

  EPILOGUE

  THE LOTUS GARDEN DONATION CEREMONY took place in the morning. At noon, a Taiwanese-style banquet was held in the garden, filling all the structures and empty spots under the trees with round tables covered in red tablecloths, as if giant flame flowers were abloom on the summertime garden grounds.

  After lunch, VIPs who had come from afar left, while most of the guests stayed behind for the two o’clock lecture under the coral trees by Lotus Tower, with a tour to follow.

  The speaker was the middle-aged architect heading the restoration project; a specialist in traditional architecture, he began his lecture in Taiwanese:

  “The Taiwanese term liaomweigyah usually refers to a son who squanders his family’s wealth. During the three years of restoration, I spent most of my time in Lucheng, and I’ve often heard the locals speak reverently about the liaomweigyah of the Zhu family, the previous owner of Lotus Garden, Mr. Zhu Zuyan.”

  A man who spent years restoring and maintaining historical sites, the architect continued emotionally, showing his fondness for anything old:

  “To me, Mr. Zhu was not only not a liaomweigyah but was in fact a protector of ancient structures. Without him, it would be impossible for Lotus Garden to present itself in such a complete state to you all today.”