The Lost Garden Read online

  “It’s all because of you communists that I can’t go home. I’m going to kill all of you, you damned communists!”

  She was panting hard by now, after running and crying at the same time, so she slowed down, but when she looked back, she saw, to her horror, that he was gaining on her. At that moment, a woman with a bamboo basket on her arm ducked out of the small roadside Earth God temple. Yinghong instinctively exhausted her last bit of energy to run up and take refuge behind her.

  Peeking out from behind the woman, she saw that the man had also stopped. His swarthy face had turned sickly pale and was crisscrossed with tears that flowed unstopped from under his puffy eyelids; two streams of sticky yellow snot ended at his upper lip. Not knowing what to do next, he stood still, his eyes staring straight ahead. Then he abruptly squatted down peasant-style, and began to howl. She heard him sniffle as he muttered:

  “It’s all … you communists … because of you I can’t … can’t go home … can’t go home. Communists …”

  She ran all the way home, face and body bathed in sweat in the bitter cold of late winter. That night she ran a high fever that came and went, keeping her home for nearly a month before she returned to school. By then everyone had finished the second semester’s first monthly exam.

  When she graduated from high school and was ready to leave for college in Japan, her father, believing she was old enough to know the truth, talked about his arrest years earlier. She sat with her head down; her hair, which had hardly grown from the required length for high-school girls, barely covered her earlobes, so her downy neck showed each time she lowered her head, forming elegant, graceful arcs that reached to her shoulders.

  At one point she looked up and, after a momentary hesitation, asked in a firm, serious voice:

  “What did Otosan do to warrant arrest?”

  Her father’s face darkened and he seemed lost in thought for a moment.

  “What I did was never the issue. Ayako, you must keep in mind that throughout the course of human history, knowledge has repeatedly gotten people into trouble. I was guilty of the crime of being an intellectual, of being able to think, and not easily manipulated.”

  She began to tear up but forced the tears back. Father said in a feigned light tone:

  “I was actually one of the lucky ones. They let me go because they thought I’d die from an infectious disease and wanted to show benevolence toward the Zhu family. They didn’t expect me to survive.” He paused, the lightness of a moment earlier vanishing. “But my life was over.”

  Still with tears in her eyes, Yinghong managed a smile. She thought quietly for a while before venturing to ask:

  “If, I mean if, someone said that Otosan was a communist, how would Otosan respond to that?”

  “Why is Ayako asking such a question?” he asked, keeping his voice low. Visibly apprehensive, he looked around to make sure they were alone.

  “Does Otosan remember the time when I was just a kid and fell ill from a scare by a waishengren?” To put his mind at ease, she quickly went on, “He was crying and calling Otosan a communist who was the reason they had to leave their hometown and flee to Taiwan.”

  Father smiled bitterly.

  “Want to hear a story?”

  She hadn’t expected that, but acquiesced with a nod.

  “I heard this story when I was in prison. An especially patriotic soldier who came from one of China’s backwaters saw his very first electric light when he was stationed at a new place. Being obsessively loyal, he was always vigilant against anyone who harbored ill will toward the country.”

  Father continued in Japanese, as always, but now with a detectable hint of sorrow.

  “Shortly after the soldier began at his new post, he noticed that every day at dusk, across from where he lived, a light would flicker a few times and then stop, like a signal. After careful observation, he reported this to his superior and had a young student arrested.”

  At this point, Father stopped; Yinghong, clearly puzzled, looked up at him.

  “It turned out that the flickering light, which was mistaken by the soldier as a secret code to the enemy, was caused by the student turning on the light to study.” He added, “Back then, electric lights always flickered a few times when you turned them on.”

  Father’s weighty gaze shifted to the scene outside the window, reminding Yinghong of the worry-laden face that kept recurring in her dream, a look of profound concern mingled with compassion and pity.

  “Otosan …”

  She wanted to say something but no sound emerged, as the recollection of Father upon his return flashed through her mind.

  He had likely returned in the spring. Yinghong recalled that not long after he came home she started going to the neighborhood Number Three Elementary School, a schoolbag over her shoulder.

  She’d been playing in Lotus Garden when Mudan found her. Back then Mudan called her Ah-hong. “Ah-hong, Ah-hong!” Mudan was running as she called her out of frustration, making her name sound more like hurried breathing. Yinghong wasn’t having much fun playing alone, so she stepped out from behind a Yinghong Pavilion pillar. Mudan grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the Upper House. Yinghong was wearing Japanese geta, whose wooden soles knocked crisply against the garden’s flagstones. The heels made running difficult, and she had to struggle to keep them on, but they were her favorite red clogs and she refused to take them off.

  She heard a din in the Upper House when they drew near. Mingled with sounds of footsteps were whispered comments like “get the sacrifice ready,” “offer up the incense,” and “pig’s feet and rice noodles.”

  When she entered the main room, which had always been dark and gloomy, she saw that the dozen or so formal armchairs on both sides of the room were all taken. Women were standing to the sides, while serving women were shuttling back and forth. And yet the room was deathly quiet. Mudan led her forward, where she heard her mother’s soft, tender voice:

  “Say ‘Papa.’ Papa’s back.” Her voice quivered.

  She did what she was told, but kept her head down.

  Then someone came up to help Father out of his chair. In what she could see with her head down, she spotted a pair of geta in front of the armchair’s horse-hoof feet. They were the wooden clogs Father had always worn at home, Japanese-style, some three or four inches high. Moving slowly down into the clogs were two ghostly white feet so thin they were virtually shapeless, and so weak he fell forward before they reached the clogs.

  Yinghong jerked her head up and saw Father’s face. Over that puffy, deathly ashen face lay a profound melancholy, so sorrow-laden it kept appearing in her memory from that day on.

  Father was laid up in Flowing Pillow Pavilion. She could not get in to see him for the longest time, and all she saw was Mudan going in and out with an enamel basin filled with water.

  They owned several enamel basins like that, with similar patterns. Mudan used one of them to bathe her.

  The thick white enamel, which had the look of spilled condensed milk, was spread evenly over the surface, a solid, opaque white. A large bouquet of hand-painted red flowers adorned the bottom of the basin—layer upon layer of bright red petals interspersed with orange stamens and highlighted by a few green leaves. The flowers seemed to dance in the ripples when water was poured over them, and appeared to float up to the surface, at which moment she would step on them so they would stop moving and stay at the bottom, where they belonged.

  She always had secret thoughts of her father when she did that. His enamel basin had the same red flowers, making that basin her only concrete connection to him. For some peculiar reason, she was convinced that with her feet on those red flowers she could keep him around. But in no time she’d be frightened by the possibility that the flowers, though solid under her feet, might disappear completely, so she’d remove one foot and see, in the rippling water, the flowers floating at the bottom; then she’d hastily step on them again, now with a sense of relief over having verified
that they were still there and that she had the power to keep them there.

  Father was laid up for more than two years, during which Yinghong secretly continued to repeat her foot ritual. Sometimes, when Mudan was occupied with other chores and forgot to get her to finish up, Yinghong would leave her feet in the water for as long as two hours, even in the depth of winter, long after it had turned icy cold.

  Over the years that followed, up until she was a third-grader and wrote “I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War …,” she often saw Father, who was on the mend. But she was constantly plagued by the deeply affecting fear that she’d be awakened late one night by unidentified noises, then get up the next morning and never see him again. Then, after a long time, he would return and yet she still couldn’t get to see him; his somber, worry-laden face alone kept reappearing in her dreams.

  The next time she met him was at a similar social event for Taipei’s businessmen at a piano bar called “Elixir.”

  It was more of an accidental meeting.

  As Elixir was one of the few bars without hostesses, Yinghong’s uncle recommended the place to his friends for an after-dinner drink and chat. When they got there, Lin Xigeng was already drinking with his friends in the largest room. So after brief greetings, the two groups joined up and sat together.

  Socializing for Taipei businessmen followed a typical formula—an early evening dinner, say, around 6:30, leaving plenty of time for after-dinner entertainment. Dinner was open to all, men and women, but after dinner, the women excused themselves if the men had other plans.

  If only men were invited to dinner, then women from the entertainment industry were hired and the guests drank, flirted, and made plenty of noise at dinner. But no matter what the format, the host was considered inadequate if they stayed at one place all night; they had to go to a drinking establishment or piano bar afterward.

  Wherever they went, they carried on pretty much the same, drinking, playing finger-guessing games, singing karaoke, dancing, and flirting. Come late night, the men would take the girls, now off duty, for a midnight snack, after which they could decide on their own what to do next. They hardly ever took the girls home; most likely their final activity of the night would be going to a hotel to “rest.”

  Though Elixir did not supply hostesses, good-looking young women would come in and introduce themselves, passing out business cards with such job titles as “manager” or “deputy manager.” They poured drinks, served food, handed out towelettes, and toasted the guests. On this particular night four or five such women came and went the whole time. They sat quietly; except for toasting, they never started a conversation.

  Still sober, the guests maintained a decorous appearance; no one groped the girls, since the real transactions had to be conducted outside. That was the rule for such occasions, one familiar to insiders.

  Seasoned guests would never consider intimate contact with the girls here, though they didn’t mind having one they knew sit by them for a tête-à-tête. So after a “deputy manager” was asked to switch with someone else, Yinghong and Xigeng wound up sitting next to each other.

  He sat smoking a cigarette, but failed to mask the smell of alcohol. Obviously, he’d had quite a bit to drink before coming to Elixir.

  Focusing on their current location, he opened the conversation.

  “In the past, nightclubs, singing halls, and drinking bars all had raised dance floors, creating a distance between the performers and the audience. Now, see how low the floor is? That’s so people can mingle and guests can go up to sing.”

  She was at first disturbed by his familiarity with denizens of the red-light district, but he was so unpretentiously direct, with an ease that seemed to make any explanation unnecessary, that she turned to look.

  They were in a private room, where the wall behind them was made of glass so the guests could look out at the dance floor. A degree of privacy, though, was maintained by frosted prints of long-tailed phoenixes.

  Through the glass partition, she saw an ebony Steinway on the dance floor. A singer was leaning against the piano, singing a popular song that bemoaned a heart-rending romance in a soft, sad voice. Strobe lights in front of her twirled and spinned, creating a myriad of colors—soft pinks, greens, blues, and purples—as if enveloping a dream from which it was hard to awaken.

  Obviously in high spirits, Lin went on and on about his latest project, a development along nearly two hundred feet of Dunhua South Road; it would be the classiest residential community in all of Taiwan, flats outfitted with imported, brand-name materials, from granite and flush toilets, to door handles and electric circuits.

  He was dressed casually that night: tapered-leg blue jeans, a style that would soon be all the rage, and a green shirt with maroon stripes. A faint glint reflecting off the shirt told her that it was made of high-quality cotton, so exquisitely tailored that it had to have been created by a world-class designer. Highly animated, he couldn’t stop talking, a stark contrast to his low-key attitude at their first meeting. Now that the weariness and glum mood no longer showed on his face, he looked quite young.

  He told her he’d come to Taipei before the age of twenty, with no money. He’d accepted an internship at an ad agency, where he’d worked on ads for real estate, which, he felt, was where Taiwan’s development potential lay. He put together some capital and, with the knowledge that land was the island’s most valuable resource, undertook some housing construction in Zhonghe, Xinzhuang, and Wanhua, before taking on the prized market of Taipei City.

  She asked him how he had turned from real estate advertising to housing development.

  “I witnessed a transformation in landowners who brought in builders to develop their land. In the beginning, they rode their bicycles to watch me create the ads. When the development was finished and they received their share of the flats, they came back to see me in their Mercedes.”

  She looked up in surprise, her gaze falling on the phoenixes on the glass partition. Their layered tails, as recorded in legend, trailed behind them, free flowing and soaring. But the transparent glass rendered their original vibrant colors as misty white outlines. The pristine white of the phoenixes left room for imagination, lending a sense of wonder to the birds.

  He chain-smoked as he talked about his past in the same casual tone he used to talk of his successes. While differing in content, they were equally unique.

  He said he’d come from the countryside in the south, a place called Pujiao, probably known to few people in Taiwan. He was the oldest of seven kids. Reduced to extreme poverty during the early postwar era, like so many country folks, the family converted to Christianity.

  It was never clear to him whether it was Catholic or Protestant Christianity, or the particular denomination; all he recalled was that there was a Jesus and the Virgin Mary. His mother took him to church to hear sermons and returned home with sacks of flour, which was why the villagers called their religion “Flour Christianity.”

  He remembered how, when they returned home from the church, his mother would burn incense in front of the spirit tablets of their ancestors. Back then, Catholics, Protestants, and other religious adherents were allowed to keep the tablets of their ancestors; later, when there were enough believers, the rules changed and the practice was banned.

  Their family also offered incense to a portrait, but he couldn’t tell whether it was the Guanyin Bodhisattva or Mazu, the fisherman’s patron saint. The portrait was carefully stashed in back of the spirit tablet, taken out only for worship, behind a closed door. They did not want the pastor or his wife to see them doing it.

  He told her about the pants he’d worn as a child, made from American Aid flour sacks. There were blue symbols on them, but they were of no concern to him until he started school and learned that the blue symbols were a string of Arabic numbers and other unintelligible writing—serial numbers.

  Taiwan’s economy stabilized slowly after the war; his family was still on the verge o
f starvation, but his parents insisted that he go on to middle school. Having no interest in studying, he dropped out of a senior vocational school and came to Taipei to seek his fortune.

  Separated by the glass wall and the misty white phoenixes, the dance floor looked blurry and unreal under the lights. When she looked away, the twirling strobe lights stayed with her, giving her the impression that the glass wall was gone and leaving the pristine white phoenixes to fly in a void and float in the soft, bewitching lights. Though white phoenixes existed only in legend, amid the exquisite artificial ambience of Elixir, the wondrous could become real. The phoenixes seemed to stop in mid flight when she turned her head, before they faded into the pink miasma.

  Yet in that small room infused with soft, pink light, where white phoenixes took flight, the typical business dinner went on, with men drinking and flirting and playing finger-guessing games with the girls next to them, while others displayed their talent at karaoke. It was the sort of entertainment that required no conversation, except for the occasional exchange of business information or political news, which needed few words. Since there was no need for talk, the host and guests did not have to interact, as they carried on with their unique way of socializing—bantering with girls or singing karaoke to amuse themselves. Xigeng and Yinghong were ignored, so they continued their talk with no concern for the others.

  They had the ideal backdrop for their conversation—karaoke, alcohol, working girls, man-made soft lights and ambience, cool, perfume-infused air created for the occasion, and the elegant decor of the glass-partitioned room. Uninhibited enjoyment, so characteristic of these businessmen, and a direct arousal of the senses, provided a constant stimulant for drunken indulgence. The legend of white phoenixes seemed possible, even appropriate for a business dinner saturated with wondrous sounds, sensuality, alcohol, and women.

  When she was ready to leave, Lin offered to take her home. The decadent entertainment had yet to reach its apex, even at two in the morning. On that misty spring night, on a street devoid of traffic, she spotted his snow-white, long-body Rolls Royce, a behemoth of a car that, under the silent night sky, seemed to take up the whole block.