THE WORLD DOES NOT HAPPEN the way we lay it out on paper: one event after another, one word following the next like a trail of ants. The rocks in the field do not preclude the flowing river fifty miles away; a man sneezes and at the exact same time a woman washes her feet, a child trips and blood oozes from the broken skin, a dog nips at a flea on its hindquarter, and a bird swallows a beetle. Past, present, and future too swirl together, distinguishable but not delineated by any sort of grammar beyond the one our hearts impose.
I want to believe that my parents found a way to bypass time that night, to compress and expand their lives together, to live out their whole lives again in their good-bye.
The shades were drawn. His daughter had fallen asleep, but he didn’t want to wake her. This moment was for the two of them: he and his wife.
This was the night, the moment. She was already halfway there, dragged down by morphine, which was the boatman of her voyage tonight. He brushed hair off her forehead. If their places were switched, he knew, she would be praying for him right now. Though the gods changed, she had always prayed for him. He had no prayer, believing only one thing from the thousands of Christian words she had said to him: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This night felt so broad, broader than the years that had preceded it. He wondered how the decades condensed like this, disappearing into a blink, while one moment unfurled almost endlessly.
How quickly it all had passed.
That year, the cherry trees on Grass Mountain bloom in late February.
He sits on a blanket beneath a tree that is thick with flowers. The girl sitting beside him bats away a petal falling slowly toward her. Five of them are arrayed here sharing snacks and cups of cold sake: he; his sister, who has asked him as a pretense for inviting his friend Su Ming Guo, of whom she is fond; her classmate; and her classmate’s cousin. This girl, the classmate’s cousin, who has just caught him watching her, has blushing white skin the same color as the drifting petal. Her name is Jeng Li Min. He tries to return his attention to admiring the sakura, but his eyes keep being drawn to her creamy throat and the darkness of her hair against her skin.
Mono no aware. The bittersweet of transience. He tries to concentrate on this feeling. They come here not for mere beauty, but to think of the brief, brilliant flash of their own mortality reflected by the sakura. But he is a doctor, not a poet.
She, however, is a painter. He wants to ask her what she sees when she looks at the trees, if she sees them like he does. But amid the chatter of the picnickers around them, the question seems too earnest.
“I skinned my knee here,” his sister cries, and pulls up her skirt to reveal a light brown scar etched on her skin. He cringes at her blatant attempt to charm his friend and his friend’s indifference, though Ming Guo dutifully rolls up a sleeve to display a puckered line on his elbow.
“And you, Li Min? Any scars?” his sister asks.
Li Min blushes, but her expression doesn’t change. He’s curious about what she will say. Will she play the game or demur?
She tilts her head up and touches a finger to the underside of her chin. “A dog nipped me once, when I was three.”
His sister leans forward to inspect, then calls him over. “I can’t tell if it’s a scar or a birthmark. Dr. Tsai, you look.”
“Why would she lie?” he says.
“You’re the doctor. Look. It looks like a birthmark to me.”
He sighs, takes off his glasses and wipes them with his handkerchief.
“He’s very serious,” his sister’s classmate says, and giggles.
“Always,” his sister says.
He puts his glasses back on and leans forward. His sister gives him a mischievous smile as she moves out of the way.
This close he can smell Li Min’s hair, sweet with artificial roses. She holds herself very still. Right below the scar, her skin pulses.
“What kind of dog was it?” he asks.
“A street dog.”
“Ah, my brother’s bedside manner in action,” his sister says.
He leans back. “Definitely a scar.” This jagged scar against her pale throat fills him with the sort of clenched awareness that the sakura is meant to elicit. He swallows heavily and his eyes grow moist. He chides himself for this sentimentality. “Who’s next?” he says.
His sister claps her hands. “Now he plays.”
The sky is perfectly blue. In two days, it will be March. Because of a light breeze, the usual sulfur smell of this mountain is faint. His sister and her classmate have escorted Ming Guo to walk among the trees. He swore he saw his sister wink at Li Min as she left.
He knows his value. He is a doctor. Staring into the mirror as he shaves, he has moments of objective observance, noting that a passing stranger would likely consider him attractive. Yet, sitting on this blanket beside this girl, empty cups and crumpled paper between them, he feels that he has nothing to offer her.
“Look at how the flowers crowd together,” she says.
His gaze follows hers. On each gnarled branch, blooms cluster in bouquets. This is something he has both known and never noticed. He sees how the filaments burst like fireworks from the centers. Of course, these parts have names, but he cannot recall them.
“To the distant observer / They are chatting of the blossoms / Yet in spite of appearances / Deep in their hearts / They are thinking very different thoughts,” she says. Her forthrightness startles him. Her eyes have not left the blue sky or pale flowers. “A poem,” she says. “Ki no Tsurayuki.”
“Did you study poetry as well?” His words come out too fast.
She laughs. “I couldn’t study painting without studying poetry. Words and images are inextricable.”
He admits this is true.
“However, I mainly studied Western painting. Only pictures. No words.”
“Why?”
She looks at him. Her eyes are so dark that the reflection of the sky has completely obscured their original color. “For the same reason you studied Western medicine.”
He considers this.
“I’m not sure you are right,” he says finally.
She smiles. “Then why?”
“I think you expect I will say that Western is modern, and that our culture is old-fashioned. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the West equals modernity. The idea is colonialist.”
She glances at the Japanese family beneath the tree next to them and hushes him. He switches to Taiwanese. “We are curious creatures, we Taiwanese. Orphans. Eventually, orphans must choose their own names and write their own stories. The beauty of orphanhood is the blank slate.”
These words are blasphemy. He is sorry as soon as he is finished. Only a man as clumsy as himself would express such sentiments on such a beautiful day beneath such a beautiful sky. He notices that she has been fiddling with the hem of her skirt. He wants to tell her how she has struck him. On a day with a sky so blue and air so crisp, how can he be held accountable for what comes from his mouth?
“I understand,” she says, and then she quotes Du Fu: “The country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.” Her eyes flash; he catches sight of the fire in this modest woman.
“We are the mountains and rivers,” he says, impressed. “No matter what the country is called.”
“Dr. Tsai!” his sister calls. Her arm is looped through Ming Guo’s and they march toward him. Her face is lost in the shadow beneath her hat.
Li Min glances at him and smiles. “Back to flowers and wine,” she says.