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  LESSONS IN ESSENCE

  For my husband, Christopher Roberts

  I close my eyes and everything is fine

  I open them again because I love mountains

  —STONEHOUSE

  TRANSLATED BY RED PINE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  LESSONS IN ESSENCE

  one

  TEACHER LI only noticed the clouds that day because of his inattention. God knows, to see the sky in Taipei is usually a chance occurrence. Cities are designed that way; give the residents only a sliver of freedom, eye blue or pebble gray or jasmine white and glimpsed in tiny, irregular patches above the tops of inward-leaning buildings. Perhaps the old gentleman is exaggerating; after all, he lives in the suburb of Scholar’s Gulch, in the old section around the university, where buildings are seldom more than a few storeys high. Not only portions of sky but even the green mountains that form the northern curve of the Taipei basin can be seen from almost any north–south running street in the neighborhood, at least from the center of the street. Many years ago, before Teacher Jiang died and his sons sold his apartment, Teacher Li needed only to climb three flights of stairs from his own second-floor flat to his friend’s rooftop garden to see mountains releasing into open sky. He had been that close. Thinking back, wasn’t he able to see mountains from the window in his own music study before his wife had the air conditioner installed? And that was from an east-facing window. Taipei is surrounded by mountains! A map will reveal what the horizon obscures.

  The clouds appeared the day after a withered old Nationalist lawmaker cut his wrists, or perhaps wrist, or perhaps “cut” is too incisive a verb, though there was blood for the vampire cameras. The gesture was made from the central podium in the legislature the day before, and the blood was still fresh enough for the morning news. Hero’s teahouse will be writhing with sarcasm, the old tea-drinkers competing with jokes at the legislator’s expense. It is annoying to be at a disadvantage on such a day, but Teacher Li is distracted. He is just standing there, absently mouthing words. Hong Mei. His lips go, Hong Mei, and he is thinking what a good name it is for a lover. It is much like the motion you might make with your mouth if you knew you had forgotten something, suddenly remembered it, and then lost it again in one smooth ebb of thought.

  Teacher Li is standing on his slim front balcony at the threshold of the open sliding door. In the front room behind him, the dark woods of his uncommonly delicate antique furniture and of the many stringed instruments hanging on the walls are deep and lustrous. Black and white brush paintings and calligraphies, all his own work, occupy nearly every other centimeter of wall space, but their arrangement is so balanced that the effect is almost austere. Likewise, books bound in the Western style stand in lines on bookshelves along the lower walls, and numerous tall stacks of traditional Chinese scholars’ books, string-bound volumes lying supine in brocade boxes, form a miniature city skyline in front of the Western bookshelves. Yet there is no sense of clutter; everywhere the eye travels it finds space to linger.

  But Teacher is facing out, and the view is far less refined: a panorama of pollution-stained buildings composed of rectangles of cement and tile, broken up by the smaller rectangles of air conditioners, balconies, and Taipei’s ubiquitous iron gratings covering the windows. The security grating creates small cages that gather junk, from rusted folding mahjong tables to rotten mops. The only attempts at beautification are the potted plants that many residents line up on balconies and in the bottom of the window cages. Sun-cracked plastic pots of weeds, or kitschy ceramic pots of bare plants that require little tending and are thus so common in the city as to be near-weeds; Teacher Li rages as he pulses his jaw and studies them. At the end of this unsatisfying survey, his eyes turn to the one balcony that garners his acceptance. There, passionfruit vine, in flower, frames the left and top borders, and a shock of white-petalled bougainvillea fills the lower right quadrant of the picture. His eye finds this mature stand of bougainvillea almost every time he steps to his balcony.

  Yet in his own home, he has laid an edict against fresh flowers. His wife disobeys his decree often enough, but remains loyal to her husband by keeping cut flowers only one day before disposing of them in the park or sending them off with a departing visitor. Teacher Li maintains that cut flowers possess only a moment of grace before they succumb to the ugliness of dying. He feels no sadness at their death, but to witness such passing of beauty agitates him. “Teacher does not like flowers,” his bemused female students intone over tea, though most of his male students begrudge him even the tease. And though he is a master of traditional Chinese brush and ink paintings, he does not paint flowers, neither plum blossoms nor chrysanthemums, to fade and drop. He also detests Chinese carp, the lucky fish that swim in stasis on centuries of Chinese scrolls, their orange, yellow, black, and white markings teeming into ten thousand patterns, an exuberant paean to the infinite individuality of nature. “Gaudy. Vulgar. Too colorful.” Teacher Li uses only black ink, “as the ancients,” but this is not a matter of honoring tradition. His choice is purely aesthetic.

  Though Teacher Li paints no birds, he seldom rails against traditional bird paintings, as it was such a work that turned him to brush and ink. He was a passionate student of Western art when he saw a classic Japanese painting of a bird on a dead branch. The artist used less than thirty brush strokes. The main limb ascends the void of the unpainted background, the stretch of its longest segment a hair shy of exaggeration, just as a young tree reaches to its utmost in a good summer’s growth; the perpendicular branch on which the bird perches culminates in a finely enunciated halting stroke, a knob of protection at the clear ending; the wings of the bird are washed lighter than its body, seemingly a shade lighter than nature would permit, and the contrast is ethereal. The bird faces away.

  The painting is arresting. When Teacher Li saw it, his perception seemed to suspend, and then suffuse. He deemed the limb, the branch, the bird, the wings, perfectly realized. He contrasted the feeling the work gave him with the yearning he felt when painting in the Western style and made a choice. Perhaps he saw the ardent reach for life in the main limb opposing the sure halt of the dead tree’s last growth as a metaphor. Perhaps he modeled himself on the ethereal bird with the turned back.

  Teacher has been standing in the doorway too long. He takes a step forward on the small balcony and tries to focus on yesterday’s news. The legislator had threatened to take his own life to demand the expulsion from the Nationalist party of the former president, the nation’s first head of state actually born on the island. In recent days, the ex-president had lent support to a newfound party in favor of Taiwan’s independence and thus despised by the Nationalists, who have longed for reunification with China ever since they fled to Taiwan in 1949 after they lost the civil war.

  Teacher Li is remembering the days when the Nationalists first allowed the opposition to compete for a token number of seats in the legislature, at the tail end of nearly forty years of martial law. Though media censorship officially ended, self-censorship was just as effective in keeping new Democratic party legislators from receiving media coverage. Teacher was acquainted with one of the new opposition lawmakers, a confident leftist who wore three-piece suits in a serious gray, an unarguable gray, bolstered by European ey
eglass frames that proclaimed his role as an intellectual. To underscore this proclamation, the leftist legislator, at all times, carried a thick volume on European political philosophy, which he commonly placed on the table in front of him when in conversation, symbolically forcing any opponent to defy the whole of European democratic thought to defy him. The book was actually a treatise on revolutionary methods, that much Teacher Li remembered, but written by what philosopher and in what language (the legislator would not be sauntering about with a translation), Teacher Li could not recall, having long forsaken European study. This legislator had managed to capture the media’s attention, though not with his eloquence or style: there he was on television, face red with shouting, throwing his fists at Nationalist lawmakers, upending chairs and tables, and with subtle symbolism for the observant, ripping microphones from their jacks. Taiwan political news began to show up in international broadcasts, always as the “kicker,” or final story meant to leave audience members laughing and shaking their heads. The frequent brawls in the legislature made great television, and foreign networks never bothered to translate what the lawmakers were arguing about. When Teacher Li, who is actually fond of the formal scholar’s robes he complains of wearing when he gives concerts, saw such scenes on television or heard them discussed, he covered his mouth with his hand and closed his eyes.

  During this period in the late 1980s, Teacher Li ran into his old acquaintance at a bookstore. The new lawmaker approached him with greetings, and they noted each other’s nicely graying hair and Chinese-pleasing plumpness. “You look even rounder on television,” Teacher joked.

  “And what do you think of our methods?” the legislator responded, projecting his voice into the crowded shop.

  Teacher Li disliked loud talkers as much as loud colors, particularly in what should be the scholarly environment of a bookstore. “Methods?” Teacher said, with disdain slipping through his quiet voice.

  The lawmaker continued, “We are doing this to help the journalists, who have no experience in or even knowledge of true journalism after so many years of repression. Many of them, at least the younger ones, are actually quite liberal-minded, as all true journalists are—and must be. But their bosses are their bosses precisely because they are conservative, loyal supporters of the regime” (he used the foreign term), “and the journalists have been forbidden to so much as mention our party, let alone report on our efforts. We are helping them to advance toward media freedom. If we throw punches, their bosses are delighted to show the footage on television and the photos in the press, as the Nationalists have always tried to portray themselves to Taiwanese as the last bastion of Chinese civilization. But each time the journalists mention us in a report, it dilutes the strength of the media taboo against our party. In time, they will be able to report our words, our vision.” The legislator, who had been leaning over the much shorter Teacher Li as if he were a patient in a hospital bed, righted himself. “This is a strategic device. Only. Do not believe the propaganda that we are uncivilized.” And here, the lawmaker rapped his knuckles twice against the volume in his hand.

  So naive, Teacher Li thinks at the memory, I am endlessly naive. He was ashamed that he had not understood the opposition’s motives back then. He hopes now that it is again his naiveté that causes him so much nervousness over the current political climate. He has taken to answering meaningless questions such as, “How are you, Teacher?” with a scowled, “China will eat Taiwan.”

  Hero, who knows no fear, joked him in response, “China will eat Taiwan, or Taiwan will eat China?”

  “Bei!” Teacher spat the particle indicating the passive. “Will be eaten by!” Any humor that can be dredged from political news is a consolation, and surely Teacher can come up with an easy joke about the Nationalist legislator’s resort to sensationalism. He puts his head into his hands and his elbows on the balcony rail in thought.

  The ground-floor garden he sees below is in the Japanese style, with ornamental rocks, a miniature pagoda, and a small pine tree. The needles of the pine have turned rust since Teacher Li last looked at it, causing him to flinch with concern. As he does, he realizes that he has been staring into the garden of his downstairs neighbor. He dodges out of her potential view, heart speeding. White Rose is the last person he wants to see. He’s been avoiding her since she ambushed him in the stairwell yesterday screaming “Scoundrel!” and “For shame!” He sinks to a low stool to hide himself, though her garden is empty. He roughly rubs his face, frantic, and incredulous at this whole realm of emotion. There was a nobility to his life, however insignificant, before yesterday. He has not left the apartment since, nor received anyone, canceling private lessons for the rest of the week. “Trapped,” he says aloud and offers himself a harsh half-laugh.

  After a couple of minutes, he drags a pair of old loafers towards him and puts them on, preparing to leave. He must pass White Rose’s apartment on the way out. He takes the shoes back off and holds them in his hand. His bicycle is parked in the ground-floor foyer outside her door. “I will not take the bicycle so she will not hear,” he decides, and rises to leave. The action makes him dizzy, so he pauses and breathes with deliberation through his mouth. He takes the two steps to the end of his balcony and slowly opens the wooden door. Even more slowly, he pulls the latch of the outer metal security door and inches it open just wide enough for his body. He hears nothing down below. He steps through. He pulls closed the wooden door, but not the security door, as its clang would reverberate through the cement stairwell, the familiar chime of irregular time in the city. Teacher Li is now standing idiotically barefoot on the landing outside his door. He tiptoes down the stairs, passing the neighbor’s door without incident. The success transforms him into a jubilant young boy, so he alters his plan, grabs his bicycle, and disappears through the street door. From there, in a seamless motion mastered in childhood, he propels the bicycle forward as he places a foot on a pedal, hoists his other leg over, and settles on the seat. “White Rose, White Rose,” he is silently gloating, as he glides past her little walled garden, where he knows she is not. His shoes are dangling in his hand on the handlebar. He is going the wrong way.

  So his inattention leads him to the small, crowded park at the end of his lane. Older neighborhood residents bid him good morning, but the university students playing basketball or jogging or reading under trees do not address him. He is retired from the local university and now unknown to most on the campus where he taught for thirty years. This new anonymity is not as freeing as he had envisioned. He suddenly becomes very aware of his bare feet and circles the park as a diversionary measure, hoping the trees will hide him as he slips on his shoes in motion. When his feet are covered, he steps from the bike and begins walking it, from habit. The bicycle is a favorite prop, and he seldom rides it. He walked it around on campus for decades, as his fellow professors drove progressively more luxurious cars in futile grid patterns in search of a place to park. Teacher Li does not drive and rails against the screech and stench of the motorized status symbol. His elitist emblem is his bicycle, made more portentous as he always pushes it, conspicuously burdened by his ideals. In actuality, Teacher prefers not to ride the cycle because he has short legs, which he feels look shorter when he is mounted. He rides it only when summer turns molten, when any kind of breeze is euphoric.

  To the north of the park lies an open field. It is abandoned, as today is a school day. On any weekend free of rain, the field is littered with city children, ever enthralled by the wonders of grass. Here, they do what children do, screaming and running. This is also the only place in Scholar’s Gulch where a kite can be flown at moderate altitudes, and perhaps this is the reason district authorities have never planted trees on the field, even at its borders. Taipei is a subtropical city, and this is August; if there were a single tree on the field, Teacher would be pushing his bike in its direction. Instead he cuts across the park and halts in the slick of sun. He turns his face to the sizeable piece of sky provided by the
open field.

  Those clouds. Look at those clouds. Even the heat is stilled for a moment as Teacher Li’s face brightens in astonishment. Against a regal blue sky lie four white clouds, each distinct and elongated, floating parallel to each other and vertically in the sky from Teacher’s standpoint. Look at that—the slashes on the legislator’s wrist, as if painted by fairies, with light, playful strokes. Teacher’s lips are parted as he shakes his head. Then he is struck by swaying vertigo, a swallowing sensation known well to those who live on the Rim of Fire. It is only a few years since the earthquake that killed some twenty-five hundred Taiwanese, and many residents are still so traumatized that they react with terror to any perceptible temblor. Teacher Li is more stoic, as he has an innate ability to gauge earthquakes, often closely guessing their strength on the Richter scale. Side-to-side motions have little effect on him, though there is sometimes a downward-drilling climax to a quake that can destroy his calm. It is this downward thrust—or pull—that he is reliving now, though the earth is still. His vertigo overcomes him only in moments of stillness; the swallowing feeling hovers in threat, and he often fears it is precognition of a quake about to commence. Neruda once wrote of the “cosmic terror” one feels in an earthquake, and that is what Teacher Li feels now.

  But it is not just because of the stillness of the empty field on a sullenly hot morning. It’s those clouds, those fairy-drawn slashes that mirror the events in his mind; the cosmic terror of the thought that this world could be connected to whatever drives the clouds, that “Somebody holds the bag.” Spare us the omen of a cognizant sky.

  Teacher Li is not the superstitious Chinaman of old books. True, he has avoided assuming the cloak of the West, but he sees himself as a man of reason. That is not to say he has never burned incense before a graven image with too many arms, and he claims all the coveted traits of the sign of the Dragon under which he was born. But these he thinks of as matters of ritual, and who would rationally deny the benefit of rituals? No, and though his lips are silently moving now, he is not mumbling the Buddha’s name. Nor Hong Mei’s. “Trapped,” he mouths, and the cloud slashes begin to look like a direct threat to him.