They stepped out onto a flattened area that was still littered with crushed rock and chunks of sandy soil. She was wearing a pair of Italian sandals with thin, high heels, making her wobble as she walked and forcing her to hold on to Lin’s arm with both hands. His powerful muscles and the sensation from his warm veins gave her the feeling that he was a man she could depend on.
As she steadied herself, she stood with him on the vast, newly paved land; he raised his head and said with smug satisfaction.
“On the land beneath your feet, I will build a real Taiwanese landmark, a plaza for the Taiwanese people, like the Arc de Triomph and the Champs Élysées in France, or the Empire State Building and Fifth Avenue in America. But it will have Taiwanese characteristics, fully representative of Taiwan.”
The land that appeared boundless in the dark night did have the impressive potential for a grand dream. Lin continued expansively:
“This plaza will be surrounded by an eight-lane highway all around, with high rises lining each side. I don’t want people to think that Taiwan can only afford to build seven-story apartment buildings or housing units. We Taiwanese can build skyscrapers like everyone else; we will have a structure with dozens of stories, with Taiwanese characteristics as well as international flair.”
“What will that be, something that is both Taiwanese and modern?” Yinghong asked cautiously, in order not to dampen his enthusiasm. “That has been a cultural issue in dispute for some time.”
“That’s the architect’s job. I’ll give him the best working conditions, and if I can’t do it, no one can.”
She laughed softly over his confidence, before continuing with a bit of a taunt:
“Cultural issues can be hard to deal with, probably not things that money alone can solve; they need time to develop before you see results.”
As she talked, she realized that Lin was not paying attention to what she was saying. Standing with his legs slightly apart under the evening sky, he planted his feet firmly on the land, looking determined, exact, and erect. They were surrounded by darkness, except for an occasional spot of light in the distance. It turned chilly on that late, midsummer night when a wind blew over the land, quietly and slowly flapping his light cotton shirt. When he took out his lighter to light a cigarette, she saw a different face in the flickering red flame. Behind the lenses of glasses that added a refined look to his face were eyes that betrayed a disturbing look of cold distance.
That scared her a bit, and made her lean gently toward him.
He reached out, spun her around and pressed her up against him. Before she had time to react, his lips were on hers.
He was obviously skilled at this; his predatory style of kissing completely won her over. In the meantime he began to expand his territory, moving to her ears and neck; she could not and did not put up any resistance, except for her vague awareness that no man could give her such a thrilling sensation with his lips alone.
I had just removed myself from under Teddy. After prolonged and violent movement, I felt somewhat raw down below; the physical gratification lingered. But under Lin Xigeng’s touch, a different surge of desire came from somewhere and reared its head like a snake.
I shocked even myself. In the past I could not have imagined how bodily desire could be like a bottomless pit lying in wait somewhere in my body; as a woman, I had not known of its existence over the years, and it was only now, when aroused, that I knew it was there.
It was such a special feeling of being aroused, surrounded, and satisfied that, at the moment of exploding pleasure, I sensed another self scrutinizing every part of my body before its eyes came to rest on a woman’s most private and secret part, attempting to find the inner source of that stirring.
I experienced a kind of pleasure that came from something other than genital contact; I was breathing hard and my face was flushed, as a driving heat enveloped me, raising tiny beads of sweat all over my body. I thought I must be drenched, but not so; the sweat seemed to exist only in my imagination.
So maybe the burning heat was not real either; the heat came from his palm. In Taiwan’s summer heat, his body pressed tightly against mine like a blanket. As his hands, seemingly burning hot, moved across my skin, I shuddered and felt as if I would melt. The shudder and his violent kisses stirred me somewhere deep down, and a numbing pleasure spread throughout my body.
I went limp in his arms, as that other self examined and tested me with crystal clearness; in a flash I realized that the primal spot that had gone undiscovered and untouched, even under Teddy’s prolonged movements, was now unfurling, spreading out under Lin’s touch and his kisses. An anxious desire I’d thought could never be satisfied was finally soothed at that moment.
I knew it was all because of love, my everlasting, profound love for him.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
Yinghong could not wait to tell him that her trip down south with Mr. Huang had simply been a ruse. She also felt like telling him how much she loved him. But she didn’t.
What she heard was Lin’s self-satisfying boast:
“See how good I made you feel. I bet no man has ever done that to you.”
Then he followed up, in his usual style of adding further explanation:
“I’ve not been doing so well in other areas lately. I guess I’ve played around too much in the past, so I have to work hard on this.”
Still dazed, Yinghong disentangled herself from his arms and looked up at his face, only to be greeted by an impassive face devoid of sexual desire.
PART III
ONE
Father began taking photographs when he had nearly recovered, though he still needed time to mend. It was about a year after Yinghong had written “I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War” as a third-grader.
Starting out with a Leica III camera, which he’d bought in Germany during his student days, Father took pictures of anything near Flowing Pillow Pavilion that was worth photographing. Mostly it was common landscape photos, usually in medium or long shots, but after they were enlarged and developed, the details were all visible, including the multileveled, winding veranda by Long Rainbow Lying by the Moon, or the swallow eaves on Lotus Tower that soared into the sky, or the undulating green lotus leaves by Flowing Pillow Pavilion.
Back then Father had yet to develop his own film, and Lucheng had no photo studio with equipment good enough for him, so the negatives had to be sent to nearby Taichung, the largest city in central Taiwan. It took many days before they could be picked up.
All she could see on these enlarged black-and-white photographs was dust, grayish dust that seemed to show up everywhere.
She never could forget the dust. Fine grains of dusty sand traveled on the wind from the ocean near Lucheng the year long, roiling and flying around the small hill by Lotus Tower, like shifting sand, and turning into flying pebbles by the time they made their way to Lotus Garden. Winter was the worst, for it was the season of howling north winds, and the lack of rain turned the place dry and cold. Wind and dust were so strong and pervasive that you had to squint when stepping outside. You could never keep up with the dust that gathered on furniture and household items, and the garden seemed buried in layers of it.
It was through a veil of floating dust under fluctuating sunlight that she saw Father’s lusterless face, gaunt after his long illness, looking as if gilded in a patina of gold, gloomy and melancholic.
The entire garden seemed buried in dust. When she came home from school, she was virtually alone, since her mother was busy caring for her father. She liked to wander over to Lotus Garden, with its tightly shut doors and windows, where she would pick out, among all the dust-covered spots, one blocked by less carved wood — usually a large pane of glass on the latticed window — reach out with a slender finger and slowly and carefully write her name. Her handwriting would make the pane look brighter, as if it had been wiped clean, revealing three large, unruly characters: