“The old man was happy that I understood; his spirit was raised. Ever since then, we’ve been best friends despite our difference in age.”
From the eyes of the few listeners present and the laughter, Ouyang received the appreciation he hoped for.
We raised our glasses. While we didn’t quite know why we needed to empty the glasses, we emptied them anyway.
Tomorrow, I’ll Stroll No More
i buy cigarettes at the cross street and light one. Perpendicular to the street where I stand is a road lined with dwarf trees already filled with shiny new leaves. The taller trees on my street still display the grayness of bare branches. I imagine these must be budding too, but because of their height the branches aren’t visibly green until their buds unfurl into leaves. I walk across the street and am soon back on the front steps of my apartment building where I suddenly realize how much I hate the stuffiness inside. The air outside is fresh. As air belongs to everybody it’s also mine. I quicken my steps away and feel a sensation like swimming in the air, through waves of breeze. In this area of Jamaica, Queens, all the roads that diverge from Midland Parkway become a slope; the streets are bordered by wide or narrow lawns and by detached houses concealed behind tall trees; windows and doors of various styles are shut so tight that not a sound from within can be heard. The cleanness and quietness of the houses are impressive to me. Should some passerby say to me that none of them are inhabited, I won’t be able to prove otherwise. At least right now, this moment in the afternoon. Only the glow of windows at night could indicate if one was occupied. Still, if a reclusive elderly lady dies in one of the houses, her lights would remain on for she wouldn’t have been able to turn off the lights before she died. Her windows could continue to glow for weeks. It would then be the lights, not the dead lady, who suffer. It’s fortunate that objects have no senses or the world would be infinitely more chaotic. It’s fortunate that we live among objects with no senses so we can find places to hide, so we can easily move, rest, frown, smile at will, which is what we’ve been doing from one generation to the next into the present. Today I’m taking a stroll as I wasn’t exactly taking one yesterday in the heavy rain. Through the hazy maze of Manhattan, I was sharing an umbrella with a friend. Either the two of us were too big or the umbrella was too small — we quickly got drenched save our hair. We entered the library to pay the fine I had received last month. Whoever first thought of imposing a library fine was indeed intelligent. Why don’t we sit down and read, my friend suggested. I suspected that the soles of my shoes were cracked because my socks were soaked. You cannot read with feet in wet socks and shoes. So we walked back outside. New York in pouring rain gives one the illusion that there is no New York. When it pours in London, too, there is only rain and no London. Imagine two armies in ancient times engaged in battle on a plain, their flags fluttering and waving, soldiers on horseback falling to the earth when, all of a sudden, it starts to rain. The rain would become a primary force and the battle secondary. This was what the two of us talked and laughed about as if New York were nonexistent. Behind the iron-wrought fence of a bank I spied some yellowish white flowers that resembled a kind of autumn chrysanthemum I used to admire in China. I cried out: Look! Chrysanthemums are growing on trees and how awkward they appear in the pouring rain! My friend said: A tree full of dejected flowers. . it must be some kind of woody plant. Us humans are indeed wordy. We try to name anything we like or dislike. When we discover the name of something we feel contented and relaxed, but if we cannot name what we see or hear, we become slightly shy, vaguely apologetic, and mildly bashful. In this foreign land, I’ve felt dumb countless times not being able to name certain plants. Some purple flowers in bloom I think must be some type of lily magnolia blossom as they couldn’t be those of the
yulan or mulan magnolia, but who knows what Americans call them. The flower buds are smaller and thinner than the Chinese varieties of lily magnolia. I often don’t have the confidence to identify even common plants and trees such as the maple, azalea, iris, and narcissus, if the variety looks slightly strange to me. One day I will return to China and will once again be able to call most of the plants by their Chinese names. I already feel happy knowing I still can. My own name isn’t difficult to pronounce, but Westerners have to practice it, spell it out again and again, often smiling as they do so. Courtesy, culture, and the arts make people in this world slightly shy, vaguely apologetic and mildly bashful. In times of peace, people from different national and ethnic backgrounds can still communicate, coexist, cooperate. . When a war breaks out, we don’t feel shy or apologetic or bashful toward each other, so of course war is terrible, so terrible indeed. Diametrically opposed to war is music. No matter how remote the country is that you travel to, when you hear music, particularly the music of your childhood, it’s as if you’re no longer lost, drifting on a boat during a stormy night, but suddenly floating into the harbor of your homeland, knowing that someone, regardless of wind or rain, is expecting you. I know a handyman, an elderly American man, who sometime works in the basement of my apartment building. He can really whistle. Many times I’ve heard him whistle and it’s the essence of Father Haydn and Mozart the Son, without a hint of Uncle Sam. Once I responded with my own whistling. He stepped closer to listen, apparently surprised that the whistling of this Chinese man could evoke such a pure tune of the First Viennese School. In relation to music, another riddle demands explanation. When human beings cry, laugh, yawn, and sneeze, these actions are universally understood. So why are there so many complex, disparate language systems in this world? Animals don’t have such complex language systems and so we’ve assumed they’re dumb and inferior. Humans have created so many language schools, yet they walk in and out of them silent and sad. What then does life mean? Life means that you often don’t know what to do. . I often lose my way, especially when I run an errand or try to make it to an appointment. If this happens late at night and I see a person standing in a parking lot, I’ll quickly approach him. He says: I’ll tell you how to get there but can you give me a cigarette? I’m happy to give him a cigarette, thinking that it’s hard to find one’s way and he’ll need a cigarette to help him give clear directions. He inhales and inhales again before he points his finger and says: Two blocks from here. I feel very happy and even savor his humor. Suppose, though, I already know my destination is only two blocks away but see he badly needs a cigarette, and as I approach him he thinks I want to ask for directions but instead I greet him with a good evening, hand him a cigarette, light it for him, and walk away. That would be wonderful! But this doesn’t really happen because you don’t know if a stranger even smokes or, if he does, has run out of cigarettes. The feeling of swimming in fresh air that inspired you at the start of your stroll will eventually disappear. A breeze — a clear, passing breeze — brings a strong scent of flowers. I look around but don’t see any flowers and cannot figure out where the aroma is coming from. Humans, not unlike canines, store memories of the past through scents, and a scent, at this moment, is what swiftly takes me back to those springs of my college years, to the narrow street in that colonized city in China, where the flower shops, record stores, and restaurants of the French concession scrolled on and on, where residents and businessmen were primarily Jewish, where there was an artificial Parisian mood, where White Russian drunkards and beggars loitered, where bookshops stayed silent while record stores roared, where the sweet smell of simmering tomato sauce drifted out of restaurants, where brewing coffee gave away half its essence to passersby for free, where the dense aroma from flower shops flooded the street. On clear, warm afternoons, with subtle smells swirling in the air, sunlight shone through tree leaves, dividing the street into shadowy, bright patterns. And if two ex-lovers met by chance on that street, the one who first noticed the other would walk head lowered. The college wasn’t too far from the street. Rivaling students frequented the bookstores and bars in the vicinity. They secretly harbored their soaring ambitions, although after a few cups of cherry brandy, they’d feel so profoundly sad about their great futures that they wouldn’t be in the mood to sympathize with the poor White Russian men and women in the streets, let alone consider that the same poverty might await them in their futures. Strong scents flowed in waves, but the sweetest and most potent emanated from carnations and