Joe walked out of his hiding place. He saw Daniel holding the book. Joe moved in front of him and took the book from his hands. But somehow he couldn’t find the sentence his son had just read aloud. He asked Daniel where the sentence was. Daniel said it wasn’t in the book, he had just seen it. He’d strained to look and the sentence appeared. This was the kind of book you could see things in, but usually he didn’t read because it was too hard on his eyes. He wished his father would read less of this kind of book.
“Father, you should just be a gardener, too.” His look as he spoke was both simple and experienced.
Joe thought of the days and nights when he was immersed in the world of his books. There was also the story he had woven, a great undertaking soon to be completed. In comparison to Daniel, all of this was insignificant. He sank back into gloom.
“I don’t want to be a happy gardener, son. My destiny is to work at the Rose Clothing Company. My life is under a spell. Maybe someday I will be able to leave. It’s what my boss expects of me. Daniel, are you still afraid of that bone?”
“No, Father. It isn’t moving now, so I can see it’s a cow bone. I have to go. I’m even happier now, because you aren’t opposed to my being a gardener. I haven’t touched any books for years. Are you disappointed?”
“No, Daniel, I admire you.” Joe spoke in sincerity.
The door shut. Joe heard Maria and Daniel talk in the hallway, then go downstairs together. Joe reflected that he had an admirable wife and an admirable son. He paced onto the balcony and saw the figures of mother and son floating out through the garden gate like ghosts. A cat squatted guard on a boulder, watching them go.
Someone was in his study. When Joe returned to his desk and sat down, the man walked out from behind the bookshelf. He walked up behind Joe with slow steps, then returned back behind the bookshelf. Joe heard him, but did not want to turn around to see him.
“Daniel, your father wants to come out of his cocoon. Will you move back in, darling child?”
“No, Mother. This way is better.”
Maria looked at her son as he walked beside her. His long, thin body seemed to be near her side, yet also at a far distance. She thought of the young women who wore kimonos in Joe’s story. It was possible that in Joe’s eyes those girls were embodiments of Daniel. Joe was such a strange man. At the present moment her son was by her side, and yet wasn’t by her side, and surely he was pondering some remote thing. When he came outside, Daniel had said he would bring her to see the garden he’d designed in the air, but they were already outside the city, where there weren’t any gardens. They followed an embankment down into a dry riverbed. Daniel squatted, scooping the river’s silt with his long, thin fingers, letting it run through them. Maria heard a groan from his throat. The fog gradually grew thicker, and after a bit they couldn’t see each other’s faces. Maria’s mind grew confused.
“Daniel, I can’t remember what I did yesterday.”
Daniel’s answer was scattered in the air with a buzzing weng weng. Maria had no means of understanding the disordered words. She breathed with effort. Surely she smelled the fragrance of a rose of Sharon. The blooms were invisible; probably they were running through her son’s fingers. A vision of Daniel wearing a straw hat, sweating under the sun, appeared in Maria’s imagination. She heard him saying two syllables, Fa-ther. But Daniel wasn’t calling his father. It was like a preschooler practicing his letters.
Steps could be heard on the river embankment. Maria stood and the steps stopped.
“Is that Joe?” she shouted.
“Is that Joe. .” The air vibrated, Daniel’s voice echoing hers.
A magpie flew in front of them, toward the embankment.
“Mother, let’s go back to where Father is.”
Daniel stretched out his hands to restrain her. Maria saw that the arms he reached toward her were the branches of a Chinese redbud, with small flowers swaying cheerfully. They climbed together up onto the embankment, but Joe wasn’t there. Maria’s heart flowed with warm currents of happiness, because she heard again the voice of Joe in his youth. She was moved to tears.
“Joe, Joe. .” she said.
Many years ago, she and Joe had climbed up from the dry riverbed. Over so many years, she had never thought she might return like this, in person, to old dreams. Maybe now she and her son truly were walking into Joe’s all-encompassing story. He wasn’t on the riverbank; he was inside her body. On such a day redbud flowers grew from her son’s body. The year she became pregnant, she’d often seen Chinese redbuds.
Joe was on the embankment. He saw the mother and son in the riverbed, one standing, one squatting. Then they started to walk, groping like blind men, as if neither could see the other. Joe took two breaths of the limpid air. Then he saw a white-haired Eastern woman appear on the opposite shore. The woman’s clothing was also white and looked a bit like a kimono, a bit like the short dresses of ancient China. She leaned on a willow tree, observing mother and son in the riverbed. Joe stared without shifting his eyes from the aged, beautiful woman, in a daze because he had never seen such a fine older woman. He felt his soul spirited away from his body. Someone clapped his shoulder. To his surprise, it was the shopkeeper from the bookstore.
“The person over on that side isn’t real.” The bookstore owner knit his brow, spitting out the sentence as if it hurt him.
“I had also sensed this. What a pity. Where is she from?”
“She is my former wife.”
Joe looked in surprise at the ugly bookstore owner, and had nothing to say. He couldn’t bear Joe’s gaze. He hunched his back, broken down. Joe recollected an image of him sitting proudly at the bookshop entrance on a high stool, and suddenly understood the pain in his heart. In the riverbed mother and son, one before and one behind, climbed up to the bank. They hadn’t seen Joe. Maria’s legs were slightly lame. Seen from behind, her posture was still like a young girl’s.
“Why isn’t she a real person?” Joe asked the bookstore owner, his voice revealing his tender thoughts.
“Because whichever way you go, you still can’t reach her. If you don’t believe me, you can try it.”
“I would like to make an attempt.”
After Maria and Daniel climbed onto the bank, the woman opposite turned around, her back to Joe and the bookstore owner. Joe thought the woman’s figure resembled the immortals in an Eastern myth. Was the East the place he should go? The shopkeeper walked down the riverbank, hunched over. He said he couldn’t bear it any longer. He seemed to cry as he walked.
Joe went down to the riverbed, wanting to cross over to the other bank. As he walked he distrusted his progress, because the bookstore keeper had just spoken of how no one would be able to reach “her” face. Joe climbed the bank anxiously. He saw the woman slowly turning around. Her clothing was a dazzling white. The woman wore glasses. Joe had not imagined that she might wear glasses.
“Are you off work today?” she asked amiably.
“I never expected. . I thought how much. . Today I didn’t want to go to work. Do you live near here? It’s so nice here!”
“Yes, I live here. I’ve observed you, too. Someone is urging you to leave this city, isn’t that right?”
Joe did not answer. He understood why the bookstore owner was crying. Above them, the heavens became like crystal. He wanted to ask the woman whether she knew Kim.
“Do you mean the man who has a pastureland, who lives halfway up a mountain? Of course I know him, there aren’t many people who don’t know him. He is not a real person. Have you sensed that?”
Her dazzling glance watched Joe. His blood bubbled.
“Your former husband said that you weren’t a real person either. Why?” He drummed up his courage to ask.