It was my obstinacy that led to the sight I hated above all, the weak crinkling and the struggle against expression in her plaintive eyes as she realized she was no longer loved by the man she loved. Her illness made her too strange, a chasm cauterized into the hutong between us. In the days that followed, I drifted through the city. I felt like I was back at Tiantan Park watching the specter of a woman: elegant, turquoise dress, dancing beautifully by herself, hovering from one prospective partner to another, trying to find someone to accompany her but finding herself alone. All of the comforts of Beijing seemed alien without Sue Lian.
One year after our separation, I was still adrift. I had to meet this stranger even if just to soak in the last vestiges of voluntary amnesia. I pushed past the families with their duffel bags holding everything they owned. I fought against a deluge of passengers swarming into the train. I waded through a billion strangers to find one, remembering the end, teleporting from one emotion to another. “You’re picking on peanuts in the kung pao chicken,” she’d said. “Ivory chopsticks just won’t do.” I knew she was trying to reach me, trying to mend our broken satellites. But I hardened my will, convinced myself she was petty, self-absorbed, projecting my frustrations onto her, fighting campaign after campaign for my tawdry pride. If I could go back and rebuild the tracks, send the subway along a different route, everything would unwind and disentangle. The destination would be clear.
But that was when I felt a sharp sting in my brain and winced. I raised my head, realized I’d caught motion blindness. I blinked and Sue Lian was gone. I blinked again and the stranger was gone. I blinked one last time and the entire world evaporated, Beijing an empty train station with decrepit tracks.
All I had left were moments.
Searching for Normalcy
I.
My obsession was listening to other people’s phone calls. I spent my mornings thinking about all the things that would never be, life being that series of conversations over coffee and Coke and phone booths. Past subway rails and empty picnic tables and torn school books. All the other stuff was filler, never the fulfillment of one’s ravenous lust that consumed like a Neanderthal run amok. I stood and listened to people screaming into their cell phones, lonely whispers outside phone booths, pressing my ear against a glass box or waiting in line for unwanted calls. I didn’t try to remember names, a Jake or a Jenny or a Jane. Heard a girlfriend asking a boyfriend why he no longer loved her and a boyfriend asking a girlfriend why she no longer loved him. I traveled from street to street, waiting next to obsolescent phone booths, collecting what people said, a connoisseur of eclectic conversations.
It all began on a day I woke up late because I’d received a phone call telling me an old friend had passed away. My wife of four years was sleeping in a separate room. In the morning, I slept through the alarm, eventually got up and showered. Even though my wife had been out of a job for a year, she was gone, her bed neatly set up. There was a phone call. I picked up expecting my boss. Someone asked for my wife.
“She’s not here. Who’s this?”
He remained silent. Then hung up.
Later, during dinner, I remembered a time as a teenager when I’d gone to a friend’s house. As her parents ate, they didn’t say a single word. The mother served the food; the father read the newspaper. It was an act that played out every night, same time, same place without variance. I swore I would never be like them. But here I was—my wife reading some obscure cookbook; me, mute. When we’d met, we were like two sailboats in a fleet of ocean liners, our sails torn asunder, anchored together by the stratifying mishaps of ritualized tedium. Routine was the breeze that drove us forward, cynicism tethering our hulls together. Even after thousands of conversations, I was struck by how little we actually knew each other. The poverty of dialogue and the inability of our words to sate either of our appetites for companionship left us famished and lonely. It was hard for me to filter through the present coldness to one that had once smiled, lit up at the sight of me.
The following day, I went on a business trip for three days. When I came home, there was a note that read Goodbye. I never spoke to her again.
I tried to lose myself in work. As a marketing guy, I dealt with people every day, selling them things they didn’t want or need. I’d tell them the exact same lines in the exact same way with the exact same pose and the exact same smile. People would lie to me and we both knew they were lying but it was okay. It was all within the rules, the boundaries of pleasant deception.
One day, while wandering through the city, a phone began ringing. I blinked, saw it was a pay phone. Not sure who it was for, I picked up.
“I’m gonna rape your fucking ass and cut off your legs and tie you up and bitch fuck you all day,” a coarse female voice said to me.
I stared blankly, shifting awkwardly. “Excuse me… Do you know this is a public payphone?”
“Of course I do, you fuck. You think I don’t know that?”
“But you don’t know me.”
“I’m watching you right now.”
I hung up and immediately left. For two days, I gave into all my conspiratorial paranoia and isolated myself, refusing to pick up the phone or step outside. Only when it was over did I realize something: I felt alive.
And it began. I noticed that in the moments when a person thought nobody else was around and they were completely alone on the phone—a few minutes, thirty seconds, an hour—I heard something in their voice. Honey, I’m going to be home a little later. No, don’t wait for me. The inflection, the subtle drop, the quivering in the throat, the unconscious hair sweep. Meaning under meaning, watching from afar, confirming something even if it was a vulgar reality, bare and viciously raw. It was pure in an adulterated way.
Sometimes, people would dial the wrong number and reach me at home. Instead of hanging up, I asked questions, encouraged them to talk. Obsessed with their own drama, some would tell me things about their lives, describing things minuscule as grand, their self-absorbed pain being the most traumatic. They never asked me any questions, almost like I wasn’t there, just a broken mirror hanging invisibly in front of them.
Watching people, trying to partake in their phone calls, I wanted to know if they knew what I did. I wanted to hear the truth in their voices. At work, I couldn’t focus anymore. I’d be given assignments to contact this person or that, and then I’d hear them talk in the same jovial bonhomie that meant nothing. What was the point of talking if everyone said the same thing but knew it meant nothing? So I stopped speaking. People would talk to me and I wouldn’t answer them. They’d be confused, upset. They’d ask if I was sick, ask me to respond, a desperation in their tone. Occasionally, I could hear a residue of truth, a trace that reminded me they were real. But most times, it was only frustration and false morality. It wasn’t long before I left my job. Left my home. Left my career. My family. I grew tired of not hearing them.
II.
I was on a long street with cars, some with headlights on even though it was day. Business suits and suitcases blended into the massive billboards selling trends and beliefs, acolytes and disciples of the corporate church that gave you something to live and die for.
Standing next to the phone booth, I was eating a piece of a bagel someone had thrown away. A man in a blue business suit furtively entered the booth. He had half a mustache, curled oily hair, a suave veneer about him that meandered between confidence and fear. He didn’t close the door, just took out a bunch of quarters and dialed random numbers. I could hear voices on the other side asking, Hello? Hello? HELLO???? He didn’t answer, just stood there, listening. He repeated this about forty times. Men, women, children. Some cursed. Others hung up, terrified by the silence. When he used up all his coins, he came out, ready to leave.
I approached.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“What were you just doing?” I demanded back.
“What is it to you?”
“I just saw what you did.�
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“And?” he asked.
I stared at him without saying anything.
He laughed amusedly. “Walk with me through the park.”
III.
“It’s silence I want to hear,” he said. “That single instance where a person is bare and pure and doesn’t know how to feel. The silence that follows. That’s all.”
IV.
“What do you get out of this?” he wondered.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I can tell that wasn’t the first time you’ve listened in on a conversation.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I replied.
“Why not?”
“Words can cheapen an experience,” I said, “misrepresent a truth, especially when you try to describe it exactly.”
He laughed.
As we walked along, I asked him about himself, why he started doing what he did.
He answered, “I got tired of losing things because I wanted them so badly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never lost anything?”
“What’d you lose?”
His eyes hardened. Then he said, “They say that people only have a few motivations for anything they do. You think people ever do anything without any reason?”
“Love, hate, jealousy… what real reason is there for any of it?”
“The disease is existence,” he said.
“What?”
He grinned. “I’ve never thought nature beautiful. I always thought people made up the word beautiful just so they can look at something forever. What if they discarded the words beautiful and ugly? Would any concept of physical judgment disappear?”
“No,” I answered.
“Then words don’t really mean anything.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re just symbols for what we really mean,” he said.
“Symbols are important because they give things meaning when they normally wouldn’t have sense of anything,” I said.
“Maybe…” he replied. “Let me tell you a story. I once met this woman by random chance. We were both looking for champagne in the supermarket. She’d just finished graduate school and wanted to celebrate. I asked her who she was celebrating with. She frowned and said no one. She was sad to be alone. I insisted I would do something for her if no one else would. She pretended to be shy, refused initially, but I broke through all the barriers. Back at her apartment, she told me how she’d been studying hard for the last few years. After a few drinks, we made love on her bed. I know most people like to sleep right after sex, but I can’t. I have a hard time with anyone next to me. She was happy because she thought I wanted to talk. This was her most intimate of moments. She told me about her ex-husband, how they’d been together for three years. One night, she came home and found him with another woman. He didn’t apologize even though she would have forgiven him. Instead, he cut off contact and refused to speak to her again.
“She’d lost something pure. And I don’t mean her virginity. A man can fall in love just as easily in the span of a second as he can in ten years. She continued talking about her ex, describing what a scumbag he was, how he went from girl to girl. All I could think about was her wasted love. She’d be suspicious, reluctant of me after a while. We’d probably have a scene a few weeks into the relationship. She’d ask for space and time, demand that I prove myself trustworthy. It was already written. I didn’t want to play my part. So when she fell asleep, I left and never looked back. Truth is, if she would have shut up, I would have loved her. But in this case, as in most cases, the truth wasn’t worth knowing.”
“But the truth is what makes her interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I love people for their scars,” I replied. “No scars and they’re a bore.”
“Self-induced scars are signs of stupidity.”
“Then I’d be the stupidest man alive.”
He laughed. “It’s curious how normalcy seems so abnormal when surrounded by abnormalities.”
“Then it’s normalcy you’re searching for?”
“Or the lack thereof,” he replied.
We conversed for a few more minutes. He excused himself to go use the restroom. An hour later, I realized he wasn’t returning and was filled with a pang of regret. I wished I could have at least said farewell.
V.
As a nine-year old boy infatuated with imagined histories and treasure coves of lost fortunes, there was no moment more exciting than when my mother brought home twelve boxes filled with old telephones. Her younger brother, my uncle, had died in a motorcycle accident and left them to her in his will. We set them up all over the apartment: oblong ones, coldly metallic ones. There were phones I thought carved from dead dinosaur bones, others from ancient Egyptian ceramics buried with resurrected pharaohs. There were cords made from the leather of old British armor sets and hides from sharks who’d struggled violently with fishermen for weeks. Many of the cases had been constructed from frozen plastic secretly harvested from the moon. It was a laboratory for the senses, all the phones hooked up so that one ring would result in a chaotic opera of discordant ringtones vying for domination. I’d run to pick up, curious who it was. I’d hope for a sword swallower, a piano virtuoso with cerebral palsy playing with her toes, an eco-terrorist who poured yogurt inside fuselages. Instead, it was almost always sales people wanting to talk about bills and special offers.
My adulthood would be different. I’d meet a million different people, holding conversation parties with the entire world. My ear would be a permeable vessel for the turbulence of their thoughts, a balloon brimming with the hydrogen of inspiration and the volatility of revolutionary musings. We’d chat about a metropolis where people only spoke in musical chords and plan a city made entirely of vegetables: Carrot Lake, the Celery Towers, Radish Hall. But to my disappointment, no one ever really wanted to talk about anything except their problems. That’s when they wanted to talk.
At the end of our relationship, I couldn’t get my wife to say anything, no matter how hard I tried. I called her from all over the world and all that ensued was a rote, automated conversation that could have lasted one minute as easily as three thousand. I wondered how many passionless I love yous had been carried across the transatlantic cables, how much lusterless joy and rueless savagery that blended apathy with hatred and bliss. Even my hatred felt obtuse over the phone.
Many had their destiny invisibly carved by phones, ones with the musty smell of disuse and dirt, or the lean fragrance of congealed honey and ketchup stains. I knew a man who killed himself because his girlfriend left him, not realizing she would call him eight minutes after his suicide, confessing her mistake and expressing her desire to return. One woman stopped to take a wrong phone call on her way to work. The delay caused her to run a yellow light as it turned red, resulting in the car on the other side ramming her from the left. I knew of an uncle who could never forgive himself for missing his wife’s phone call as she lay dying in a hospital because he’d turned the ringer off to take a nap.
I grew up surrounded by his phones.
VI.
I often strolled through the park alone. This particular morning, I noticed a young woman playing chess by herself. She had light blonde hair that undulated into a field of cherry freckles scattered across her dapper cheeks. She possessed an airy posture as though she were floating, continually swaying her body from side to side, gripping her seat so that she wouldn’t fly off. I sat across from her and asked if I could join her.
She nodded her head without expression.
I noticed she was several moves into her game, playing herself.
“Who’s winning?”
She didn’t answer, absorbed in making her moves.
I stared as she moved her pieces, retreating or defending appropriately. The rook took bishop. Pawn, the knight. After a few moves, the game was over. She set up and started again.
Some t
ime passed before a man came by.
“Excuse me, what are you doing?” he asked.
“I was hoping to get a game of chess.”
“And?”
“She hasn’t really said anything to me. I’m sorry, is she your…” I hung on the your.
He dutifully completed it for me. “My patient. She’s deaf and mute… I think it’d be best if you leave now,” he said.
“Does she come here every day to play chess?”
“Sir.”
“Maybe she wants some competition.”
“She’s been doing this every day of her life for the last ten years. I don’t think she wants any company.”
I looked at her. Then got up. She was still absorbed in her chess game. As far as she was concerned, I was never even there.
VII.
But I couldn’t just walk away.
VIII.
She wasn’t there the next day, nor the one after. But she was there on the third day. No one was around and I sat across from her. She said nothing, kept on playing. I thought about the conversations I’d heard earlier that day. A couple of guys asked some friends out to play croquet on donkeys. A young lady dressed in expensive clothes called in sick as her male friend waited outside the booth. A teenager was telling someone about a problem.
“I’m obsessed. I can’t stop drinking shampoo and cologne. I get so caught up with the idea of violating and destroying all the disgusting smells inside me. It’s like taking my hand, sticking it down my throat and ripping out my larynx and splattering it all over the floor ‘cause my shoes and shirts stink so bad. It runs through my head a million times. You try to think about this lady’s nice Tiffany necklace and how much her husband spent getting it for her and there’s all the beautiful people in the world and all of them stink to hell when they die or take a shit or wake up in the morning. All I’m thinking is, When is work over so I can go home and chew on soap? I can’t stop myself. I know it’s going to screw me badly, but even then, I just think, one more time, one more time. I’m so tired of bad smells.
Watering Heaven Page 10