Something Special, Something Rare (8 page)

– Thank God. We're not babysitters.

– Oh, I've seen worse. He hasn't been any trouble. Hasn't wrecked the place. You've been good company, haven't you, Mr Collier? You poor old thing.

– How did he know how to drive, anyway? He can't remember his name or address or how to tie his shoes. How could he drive?

– Oh, dementia's like that. Sometimes they remember stuff from years back, clear as crystal. They forget last week or a minute ago. He's probably been driving for sixty years. It's as natural as walking. But he can't remember the vehicle or the dog or whether he ate breakfast today. Those are just black holes.

I jolt in my chair. How dare they. Perhaps I've forgotten other things – inconsequential people, countless patients, the smell of my wife's hair – but never, ever my dog. The gentlemen reach out to calm me. I turn indignantly away.

Mind your own business. Don't touch me. There's plenty of memories I can happily do without, how dare they accuse me of forgetting the dog. That will never happen.

Of course, we don't like to hear that – that an animal can be as beloved, or more so, than any human being; that the company of an animal can be preferable and superior to the company of our own. Such notions dangerously expose our faults, so we ridicule them. We insist and insist that the animal is lesser. We point to their silence, their forgiveness, their stoicism, their peace. These traits make them lesser.

But sometimes – maybe often – an animal is more. Sometimes an animal is the sun which brings all that revolves around it into the light.

My father said
WHAT'S THAT?

MY DOG.

Father glared at my wilful mother. Yet his softest spot was for dumb children and animals. Taf was mine, but my father loved him. My mother loved him. Taf bound our family. He belonged to me but had loyalty enough for each of us. He became our centre of affection and goodwill.

Each afternoon, when I came home from school, my mother would tell me the things he had done. His sleeping, his waking, his yawning, his barks. His watching through the wire fence, his sitting outside the store. His many admirers, his enemies. No dog had such charm. For her, he was a listening ear, a sharer of biscuits, the wiper of crumbs, the guard at the door. She babied him, mollycoddled him, brushed his silken coat. He once chased and apprehended a gypsy who'd been staring through the bathroom window.

My father was the Teacher of Tricks, and Taf liked to succeed. No dog could jump higher, run faster, turn tighter on a coin. When called upon to perform, Taf never made my father out to be a liar. On Sunday afternoons the pair of them walked for miles across the countryside. For Father, Taf was mischief. He chased birds and cows. He would vanish and reappear with a crafty smile on his face. Father would drum his palms on his thighs.
WHO'S MY WICKED TAF THEN? WHO'S MY CLEVER FELLOW.

Myself, he was my shadow. Often I forgot to think of him as
dog.
Rarely did I call him anything but
Boy.
With Taf beside me, I became that respectable thing – a kid with his mutt. I stepped, with him, back from the brink. My life changed. I remained shy, awkward, and unbefriended at school – but I saw that I would be all right anyway, that I could survive nonetheless.

Lovely creature. You beautiful animal. After all these years I can still feel the warmth of you. My hand recollects the shape of your head, my eyes see your sunshined colour. You good, cheerful soul. How I loved you.

Part of me hardly dares even to think your name. Especially in these ugly surrounds. It's sacrilege. You dog, you holy relic.

You lived for fifteen years. A shambling wreck by the end.

Arthritic and bent, mornings were the worst time. You did not walk, you hobbled. Your eyes were blindly glazed with silver, your coat was powdered white. You were deaf, yet seemed to hear everything that nobody else could. You slept deeply, twitching, eyelids fluttering, moaning. In your sleep, you could see; in your sleep, you re-lived life.

You evoked pity.
IT'S QUICK IT'S PAINLESS HE'LL THANK YOU FOR IT, YOU'D BE DOING HIM A KINDNESS YOU KNOW
. I was heartless, because I refused. But I wanted you to die only when you were ready: for I would never be.

I was twenty-seven years old at the end. My calling was zoology, but my mother begged me to do medicine. Initially, I refused. I had no empathy or concern for my fellow man. I knew I would struggle to care sufficiently. But Mother wheedled. Medicine will save you, she said. Respect and prosperity are no bad thing. You don't have to care. Just do it well. You can study nature on your days off.

I was at the hospital when Father rang. That morning Mother had found Taf down the side of the house, curled and colder than stone. My father had dug the grave by the time I got there. Mother had cut flowers from the garden. I wrapped you in a bedsheet and laid you in the hole. The three of us were stoic. Nobody cried. But neither my mother nor myself could watch the dirt tumble down on you. We walked away, not speaking, leaving Father to do it alone.

For weeks afterwards I found myself waking at night, anxious, aching. My bones felt hollow, my chest cribbed. I told no one that I was haunted by the desire to unearth you for a final glimpse.
IT MUST BE A RELIEF, HE WAS OLD AND FRAIL.
But it was no relief to think of him under the mud. I took him from its sodden grip and bid him lie down inside my heart. It was warm and safe there. Sleep, I invited him. Don't leave me.

A year after the funeral, I married. The bride was lovely, the wedding fine. Everybody said it was the happiest day of my life. I remembered the flea-market, the handstand, my boots against the sky.

– Look who's here, Mr Collier. Your son and grandson.

They've come to collect you.

– Dad? Dad? It's James. How are you feeling? Do you remember what happened?

– Ask him about Luka, Dad.

– The older man leans closer. Dad? Listen to me. Do you remember what happened this morning? You took the car and drove around and then you must have parked the car and started walking. These policemen found you wandering around lost, remember? Dad, where did you leave the car?

This newcomer makes a lot of noise.

We had four children, I believe. I spent long hours working at the hospital. My specialty was lungs. I liked their determined deflate and revive, their canine faithfulness. I liked them for being the cleanest element of the system, their memories of the fresh air.

When I wasn't at work, I was out in the fields. Flora and fauna remained the sustaining interest in my life. I also owned dogs. Seamus, the laughing German shepherd. Flight, the quick-witted border collie. Good dogs, now with Taf. Sometimes I picture what my life would have been, were it not for the dogs. I imagine it as a habitable but sterile, unbroken, grassless land.

Of course, I taught my children to appreciate animals, and nature as a whole. I believe children learn such things best from a parent. To take a broad view of the world; to respect lives other than our own. I don't much like children – I find them, as I did in boyhood, discomforting – but I'm pleased I've passed on to others my abiding affiliation with a wilder world.

– Grandpa? Look at me. Where is Luka?

I gaze obediently at the youth who is the other newcomer to the room. His face is unfamiliar. I won't speak to him – he's impolite. His hair has not been brushed. I don't know who or what Luka is, and I wish he would go elsewhere.

– We've put the vehicle's description out over the radio.

Everyone will be looking. No question, we'll find it soon.

The youth seems momentarily lost for words. He puts his hands over his face. It is an action of despair. I wonder why someone, so young and healthy, would think they had cause for despair. The indulgence of it. I could tell him some stories that might make him realise he isn't so badly off. From behind his hands, the youth speaks. We haven't got time.

She'll die.

– We don't even know if she is in the car -

– Where else could she be, Dad? Where else would she have gone? He's taken her. He's put her in the car and taken her for a drive, like he's always saying he will. And now he's lost the car, and he's lost my dog. And it's forty-four degrees out there!

He is shouting. He is an angry youth. I don't know why he's shouting. I don't know what he's got that's worth shouting about.

– Maybe he let her out of the car. We don't know that she's still inside it.

The youth gasps for air. He shakes his head. If he'd let her out, she would have stayed with him. She wouldn't have left him alone. She's locked in the car, Dad – you know it!

One of the men in blue speaks up. If your dog is trapped in the vehicle, it's possible a passer-by might see her there, and break a window to let her out. People are very aware of animals in distress.

The angry youth just stares at him. His face is very red. His eyes are filling with tears. My dog is locked in a car, he mutters. She's lost and locked in a burning-hot car.

One man moves to put a hand on him. The angry youth wheels away. He crosses the room and bends down to me. I shy in my chair. He's a disturbing stranger. He opens his mouth and words crawl out like adders. I hate you. I hate you, you revolting old man. I wish you had died years ago. You've lost my dog – you're killing her. You've left her to die in a burning-hot car. I'll hate you forever for this. Until the day I die, I promise, I will never forgive you.

– Don't, whispers the empty-handed man. He doesn't understand.

– He understands! the boy yelps. Where's my dog? he asks, and raises a hand. Where's my dog? he screams. You son of a bitch,
where's my dog?

There are no dogs. Look around, you won't see any dogs. There's dogs in my heart, hidden away – I won't share them with anybody. The dogs of better times, that's what they are. The great and enduring loves of my life.

The man with empty hands leads the shouting youth out of the room. The youth is weeping now. It is not manly. Healthy, young, in the prime of life, he's got nothing worth crying about.

– Mr Collier, would you like some more water?

– Yes, I say. It's very hot; I'm thirsty.

The gentleman in blue hands me a paper cup. I drink the water slowly. It's refreshing. I'm sleepy.

It's been nice thinking of you again, Taf. Though there's years between us, these days I seem to remember you better than I have ever done. I hear you barking at the end of the street; I hear your claws click the footpath. Sometimes I believe I feel your loyal presence at my side. I've lived a full long life, Taf, but it has been a lonely one. When I die, and if there's any justice, may the first and last thing I see be you.

A CHINESE AFFAIR

ISABELLE LI

I dream of my mother again. She is sitting in front of the sewing machine, crying.

I press on the wooden blue door and it opens quietly. My father asks me to come in. He is lying in bed, looking at the ceiling, where cobwebs dangle at the corners. He is murmuring, but his voice is loud, echoed by the whitewashed walls. It is a winter morning before dawn. The fluorescent light tube is black on both ends, casting white light on my father's dark skin.

My mother wears a thick cotton vest. She hunches over the sewing machine, holding a piece of cloth with one hand and rolling the sewing wheel with the other, sobbing. Her tears are trickling down her plump face, her nose red. She grimaces in silence.

I cross the room and spread my arms to hold her, and I am woken up by a stabbing pain in my heart. My hands are on my stomach, sweating.

*

My husband is in his third stage of snoring, loud but even. The first stage is when he has just fallen asleep. He snores suddenly, waking himself up. He then turns on his side, starting the second stage, soft and varied. The third stage is now, when he is deeply asleep.

I get up and steady myself, feeling the soft hair of the carpet between my toes. I have become used to this – waking up suddenly in the middle of the night, as sleepy and as alert as a snoozing owl.

The hall is lit by the moonlight through the ceiling windows. Maybe moonlight has a slightly cooler temperature. I tighten my dressing gown.

On one side of the living area is an antique Mongolian chest in dark green and two Ming dynasty antique chairs in burgundy. Above the vase of artificial white roses and between two cast-iron golden candelabras, my husband's deceased wife is smiling at me. She is surrounded by other family photos, her eyes following my movements. I sit down on one of the antique chairs, feeling dizzy.

*

I told my mother I live in a house next to the beach. On sunny days I open the window and the white curtains blow in and out, depending on the direction of the wind. I sometimes put on a straw hat and a pair of sunglasses to take a walk among the beach-goers. I wear various shades of grey and blend into the surroundings. I become two-dimensional, a moving shadow, walking under the sun like a grey cat walking under the moon. On rainy days, I close all the windows and peep into the yellowish-grey sky and the greenish-grey ocean. Raindrops knock on the roof urgently like visitors keen to come in. I told my mother I live happily in an expensive house.

I told my mother I am an interpreter. When I was young, she hoped I would one day live overseas and work for the United Nations. I told her as an interpreter, I attend meetings, where people from different countries negotiate important matters. I interpret for businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies. I learn the jargon for macroeconomics, banking, insurance, fashion, medicine, including cochlear implants and IVF. I create Chinese names for expatriates going to China, and their wives and children. I find beautiful Chinese words from the dictionary, and explain the meanings to them, quoting Chinese poetry.

At night, I may be called in to interpret for counselling hotlines, when young mothers speak about losing their children to illnesses, middle-aged wives speak about losing their husbands to younger women in China, and old women speak about their loneliness at having no one. The counsellors sound as tired as I am, but they diligently ask the Chinese-speaking callers open-ended questions, reflect back the situations by paraphrasing, and name the callers' feelings. I hear ‘What should I do? I cannot see a solution,' and I say ‘What should I do? I cannot see a solution.' I hear ‘Are you feeling trapped?', and I say ‘Are you feeling trapped?' I speak for both parties as if I am having an internal dialogue, as if I am comforting myself, being simultaneously the suffering child and the hand that's combing through her hair.

I told my mother I was the interpreter at an international conference on a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled. So I was not playing games when I told her the colours of people's surnames. I cornered our neighbour's youngest boy, not to bully him, but only to teach him the colours of numbers. I met a Chinese artist who painted lotus in crystal blue. In another painting he painted raindrops in yellow and he titled it
The Shower of Gold.
He painted me too.

*

I met my husband when I was interpreting at a writers' festival for a Chinese poet in exile. What the poet said did not make much sense but I tried my best to make it sound logical. At the request of an earnest audience, he read a poem from his latest volume. People applauded, not so much for his poetry because he read it in Chinese, but for his long hair and his animated voice. My husband came to talk to me afterwards.

I was in my Chinese costume, Prussian blue with gold and silver bamboo leaves. There seems to be some decorative value in a Chinese costume, which makes me feel like a porcelain vase, exquisite and brittle, to be treated with care, by others and by myself. So that day I walked with my chin high and my chest out.

My husband used to be a carpenter, known for his impeccable craftsmanship. After his wife's death, he studied a real estate course and worked in the property industry. After he retired, he started to learn to paint, visit art museums, and go to writers' festivals.

He has the look of a well-maintained and respectable gentleman. His jaw, once square, has lost its sharp edge. Like the furniture he made decades ago, he now looks subdued and reliable.

My husband's first wife died twenty years ago. She has large eyes, a prominent nose and a sensitive chin. She smiles contentedly in every photograph. Her last photo was taken on her forty-fifth birthday. She smiled from behind the elaborate square cake and the orange glow of the birthday candles, oblivious to the accident to happen a few days later.

My husband had been progressively reducing the number of her photographs in the house, until I noticed it and asked him not to. Instead I reframed some of them. My favourite is in an oval-shaped ivory frame displayed in a corner amid fine china. She wears a Chinese top and looks straight out of a 1920s movie. I also like an old photo of her mother and her six aunts sitting on the fence of their family farm. Seven young women, squinting under the sun, cheerful and relaxed, their frizzy hair and floral skirts flowing in the wind. I spend a lot of time walking around the house, feeling accompanied and blessed by the dead. I am safely buried in someone else's family history.

My husband's eldest son is a contractor for telecommunications projects. The second son is an accountant for a large chain of funeral companies. His daughter is a nurse in a mental-health hospital. She is the only one younger than me.

They are generally kind to me. Just like their father, they share a collective comical affection for me. My comments are exotic, amusing, controversial and not to be taken seriously. Once I told them an old neighbour of mine could read characters written inside folded paper. They all laughed. It has since become a standing joke.

I can afford to be controversial. I can blink my almond-shaped eyes and make provocative statements to peoples' faces. I once said, ‘The world is made of strings of energies. A brick and I are made of the same basic elements. The strings vibrate differently to form different particles.' My husband stared at me, shaking his head, sighing, speechless. He did not speak to me for the rest of the evening, but he made me Masala Chai tea.

The next day coming back from the church, he said he was going to save a space for me in heaven. I looked up from my book and said, ‘How do you know we are not in heaven already? Every realm has the same problem of increased population.' We were sitting in the garden under a weeping maple. The sunlight was filtered through the new leaves. My husband shuffled his newspaper but he did not turn the page for a long time.

My husband likes to think of me as coming from the middle of nowhere. He often mixes up my hometown with Inner Mongolia and he once believed I rode a camel to school.

I go back to China less often now. After each trip, I would be depressed for some weeks. I read Chinese books, browsed Chinese websites, listened to rock music from the pirate Chinese CDs, and talked to my friends in China on Skype. My husband asked why I did not listen to the equivalent rock music in English. I said rock is about anger and there is nothing to be angry about in his society. When probed further, I said I cannot explain because it is a Chinese affair. He was satisfied with my response; it confirmed me as his inscrutable oriental muse.

Going out with me is not without challenges for him. We walk on the street, and people look at us, older men with envy, older women with contempt, Chinese women with curiosity, and Chinese men with disgust. Those that are English-speaking talk to me in simple sentences. Those that are Chinese-speaking pretend to whisper knowing that I can hear and I understand. The funniest is when we see other mixed couples, mostly older white men with younger Chinese women, and we look into each other critically as if we are looking at ourselves in the mirror.

My husband took me on holiday one day. When we came back, we went to his house and it was repainted in crimson. A local landmark, it used to be called the white house. It is now called the red house. I accepted his proposal for marriage and the fact that he had a snip done years ago. I told my mother I am married to an older husband, just like Jane Eyre to Rochester, and we do not plan to have children.

*

I tell my mother many things, but I do not tell her everything. I do not tell my mother that I dream of her and the dreams are my worst nightmares. I dream of her being sick, being hurt, losing her way home, or falling. Even her smiles make me worry.

My mother is losing her memory. She hardly speaks and if she does it would be questions about the children or remembrance of the distant past. She walks very slowly and has great difficulty climbing up to their apartment. On winter afternoons, she often sits on the sofa in front of the television, and if asked, she says she is waiting for the weather forecast. She looks like a chubby child wrapped up in too many layers of clothing.

I have not written to my mother lately. I have not told her that I am nearly three months pregnant.

My mother once told me she was very hungry when she was pregnant with me. The only treat she had was three hardboiled eggs a day. She could not endure the intervals between peeling the eggs, so she always peeled them all before eating them in one go. She said she longed for fried rice during those days.

I have been hungry too, sometimes feeling a surge of hunger in the middle of a meal, and I have to start afresh. I often feel like a wolf wandering in the winter forest, tormented and isolated by my hunger. I feel like smashing the table when food is late and kissing the waiter or waitress when my food is carried down the aisle. When other people's food arrives ahead of mine, I regret every order I have not made. During the day, I give up my usual Vietnamese roll or sushi and go straight to chicken kebab. At home, my husband is delighted to see his hearty stew suddenly in demand. I pity the North Koreans – no one should suffer from hunger like that.

Sometimes I feel I am being eaten from the inside. Other times I feel like a ripe fruit, about to burst into something pulpy.

My nose seems sharper than usual. I walk by men on the street, and I account in my mind: beer; cigarette; Indian curry; onion; perspiration. What I consider natural smells are still better than some deodorants that smell like blunt knives, and some perfumes that hit me like broken glass.

I search the internet for articles and images. I know which day the egg was fertilised. It should have turned into a foetus this week with its sex apparent. I try to imagine a world where sound is muted. The blood flow the spring creek, the heartbeat the distant thunder, a rub on the tummy the autumn branches swaying in the wind.

I find myself talking to her, apologising for any stress I have put on her. I have become careful. As the bearer of a secret, I avoid stepping on manholes or walking under roof edges, I wait patiently for the lights to turn green at pedestrian crossings, and I move away discreetly from people who sneeze or cough. At home I keep away from the microwave oven when heating up soy milk and I wash my hands excessively.

I have put on weight, particularly around my mid-section. I have outgrown my pants and since the weather is warm, I wear skirts and dresses. Loose long tops with ruffles in front are the most deceiving. My body temperature is higher and I feel like a mini steamboat. My hands are warm and my forehead feverish. My husband says the extra weight I have put on suits me.

*

My husband is an experienced gardener but the only thing I can help with is the weeding. He mows the lawn, trims the rosemary hedge, applies fertiliser for the gardenia and cuts back roses, while I squat picking weeds from the garden beds or between the pavements and the gravel.

Every Saturday morning, when we are working in the garden, I wait to find the perfect moment. This is the time when I most want to tell, to confess, to unburden and expose. The calming new green, the fragrance of the spring flowers, the primitive labour, make me feel innocent. Sometimes I feel so tense that I almost cannot breathe. I have prepared a whole speech, but still I wait behind the curtain for the lights to dim and the spotlight to turn on. The audience will stop their polite conversations and turn their heads to the stage. Then I will go up, ready to be executed.

I did approach my husband once while he was cutting back the citrus trees. He was in his shorts and T-shirt, his knees and elbows looked dry, he was panting from manoeuvring the heavy-duty scissors. I asked him to follow me and sit in front of the lattice screen with star jasmines. The flowers had not opened but already the perfume was leaking from the rosy pink buds. I was in a green floral dress, a pair of sandals, my feet crossed at the ankles, my hands held together on my lap. I focused my eyes on the pavement, where a group of ants were carrying a dead bee. Just as I was about to start, he took my hand and held it between his palms. He said he had not been able to squat for a long time and luckily I could and it was very nice of me to do the weeding. Maybe we could use a gardener so we did not have to do everything ourselves. Then we would have more time to smell the roses.