The Pauses
by e.s. liew
I remember my grandfather… seeing him at the farmhouse where my mother would leave me when she couldn’t find a babysitter. I remember him… walking up moss-eaten and sponge-like steps. And climbing those sponges, I would see him surrounded by a halo of bees. Sometimes he would read the atlas he bought for me and the afternoon would be drenched in his gentle voice. The morning glory would smell like purple—if purple could smell like morning glory. I remember this. I can make a prairie with a single clover and a bee and reverie. Or reverie alone if bees are few.
I have
seen this memory in my dreams over and over. Always I would grow older but my
grandfather stays young and the younger him would turn the pages with his
gigantic grown-up hands—hands like continents: this is Egypt… this is a
pyramid… this is Iceland… this is America… this is the Pacific Ocean….
Yesterday,
I told Em that everything goes south eventually; muscle and bone sink into the
earth and trees grow upwards from it. As I walk, I want to claim this ten-mile
radius. I imagine I am the Queen of this circumference: the Giant Eagle, the
Rite-Aid, the Pancake House, the over-grown park, the walk-up apartments with
salt on their front steps, and the grimy gas stations and snow-stained paper
cups rolling along the sidewalks, swirling into gutters. And the take-away
where your ears grow pink next to the chop suey fry-counter and you can say
‘number one, number sixteen, and four number threes’, and get a three-course
dinner for just under seven bucks. I am the Queen of this circumference. And
also the University. And the building in the University Circle that looks like
the Reichstag. Inside, the audience watch The Tragedy of King Lear. It
is late now; the fifth act is ending and the king will die.
I am a
drama student because I like to imagine the missing bits of life. I might have
been Cordelia if I had made the cut, but for now I walk south carrying
substitutes for faith, or good luck, or courage—like those people that attach a
rabbit’s foot to their keys. As a child, I used to carry a security blanket;
now the fabric is as transparent as it once was impenetrable. I used to carry a
charm bracelet; now the silver is black. I used to carry the National
Geographic Children’s Atlas. It was small and I could fit it into my school
bag. Now it sits on a shelf in my mother’s house, as it did the year before and
the year before. And in it, the names of countries that do not exist anymore:
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; East Germany; West Germany; The
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In my bag I now carry The Actor’s
Handbook of Life as a means to define my self. And in my pocket there is
the dry skin of an orange cut into the shape of a star, fragrant, fragile.
I walk
to The Kosher Kitchen where Em is folding paper napkins at the counter. I don’t
know Em as much as I would like because she is quiet. Since The Kosher Kitchen
is usually empty in the mornings, I go there sometimes to keep her company. I
think she doesn’t like listening to the radio alone. Old people are like that
sometimes. She likes to have the difficult words explained to her, with
synonyms. I give her the star and she puts it on the shelf with the other stars
that I have given her. Oranges are expensive in winter. Em understands the cost
of things. She wears clothes that she made from cast-offs. She wants to know if
I am going to the Cathedral of Learning, as it is aptly named by a city in
which gothic spires rise from areas dense with cement and decaying bridges. Em
knows that the Cathedral of Learning is empty most of the time and to my
knowledge no classes are taught there anymore. I say, yes, I will go later. Em
says, you are looking for ghosts? It has been seven months since my grandfather
was murdered. I say to Em, death is absolute. I say it even though I go to
Saint Peter’s Cemetery as often as weather permits. I have seen the path in
spring, untrodden, green. I have seen the brambles curling over stone, and once
watching over it was a crow, and as I bent to clear his name, the crow flew at
me, tearing my face. Yet I keep going back to my grandfather’s grave and in his
absence my memory had magnified him to god-like proportions. I often stand at a
distance looking at the crow looking at me.
Em puts
some perogies before me. She treats me like her grandchild and I wonder if she
has grandchildren. I say, no thanks. She says, you are too skinny and continues
folding napkins. I eat the perogies with sour cream. I look over the cash
register at the photograph of a man. I often look at the photograph but don’t
ask Em about it. I assume it is the late Mr Em because I like to think that Em
has lost someone too—that way, I am not alone. Em has never told me if she was
married when she was younger. I find it hard to imagine Em any different from
what she is now: a woman broken by time. Parts of the photograph are so faint
that it is impossible to determine its time and the place. It is almost as if
it were not a photograph, but another space where the edges are melting like
Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Time; and in Dali’s timeless space-scape
is a man, staring through that dimension at ours; and there is something in his
eyes, they seem to react to nuances in the room, the eyes of Mr Em, following
us. I imagine that this picture is everywhere Em goes, that it was with her in
the Ukraine and now it is here in Pittsburgh. It meant these were Em’s roots.
Pittsburgh did not make Em. Pittsburgh was an extension of Em. And I was an
extension of my grandfather. He was the path to my roots, through memory. I
struggled so hard to remember him that in dreams his memories became mine. I
think, in some timeless space-scape, mine might have been his.
Malaysia,
nineteen forty-six. I remember the emptying of the POW camps, waiting in a line
of men, mostly Chinese (like my grandfather) who were drafted to build bridges
for the Japanese troops and later to dig their own graves. The men in line were
wearing blindfolds. The men who ran were shot. The shots were a warning—don’t
run, stay in line. In the front of the line the katana would come down on the
back of their necks.
What
would I think of as I knelt? Would I feel the blade go through my neck? Would I
watch the ground rise to me as I fall away from my body, and would I watch my
body give in to its last exhale? Would I walk the earth forever after, my body
in search of my head, my head in search of my body? Can one’s soul be cut in
two?
I
remember stepping up. I remember kneeling. And then unexpectedly the katana was
dropped—the ancient blade that passed from samurai to son and to the sons of
sons, like a gene—an accident that it was dropped. In the same moment every
sense was caught by the great roar of a gigantic/unseen/machine. Increasingly
there was the sensation of screaming. I remember tearing the blindfold away. In
the sky were streaks of silver against the sun. The allies had come.
I
remember these things, but these memories are not mine. And so I live.
Sometimes
I dream things I might have seen; sometimes I’m awake and I see things I might
have dreamt. For example an outdoor photography exhibition downtown:
photographs pegged on a clothesline. I might break from the unseeing crowd
going to and fro with briefcases and doughnuts and steaming paper cups. I might
touch the photographs on the clothesline and in them see bodies in bits: an
eye, an arm, a breast, a foot, a mouth, a bayonet. Everything in the
photographs a piece of nineteen forty-six. And looking at these pieces, I might
start to know why we kept moving through each continent of the earth, to escape
the persistence of war. Knowledge like this was a sort of citizenship; the
knowledge that my grandfather was the root of our tree: the tree/the root; the
vein/the heart; our selves/our ancestors; the endless ways to articulate what
cannot be articulated, define what cannot be defined. My grandfather and his
family were displaced people who never had a place.
My
grandfather sat facing the television. On the baby blanket. On the sofa. Facing
the television. His face was pale. His expression was slack. But this memory is
like images in a pop-up book with pictures of parts of things; a polyester
sports coat, a walking stick, a pair of brown loafers, a kinetic wristwatch. I
would have been more attentive if I had known I would never see him again.
‘Grandfather.’
Regan was wearing Dolce Vita Eau de Toilette. We were in Malaysia at the
wedding of some distant relatives. Everyone was there. ‘Remember me?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at Regan. ‘You wrote to me.’ His eyes took a while to figure out who
we were: my sister, Regan, the extrovert who sent him a card every Christmas,
and I, the introvert who never wrote. I didn’t even know his address. If I had
known his address, I would have written but it’s too late now. ‘I used to take
photographs. I took those of your mother and auntie.’ On the bookshelf,
obscured by a random assortment of Lego bricks and Transformer Robots, were
three black and white photographs: two faded girls in matching sundresses on
the beach; two faded boys (our uncles) peering into a puddle with a toy boat…
and there was a photograph of a man and a woman—my grandparents—and a younger
woman in front of a farmhouse. It was an idyllic image: a beautiful house,
beautiful weather, and three people smiling; but she was the other woman and
the reason why anyone only ever saw my grandfather at weddings and reunions.
‘You
were a photographer,’ said Regan. ‘You didn’t mention it before.’
‘I was
an architect.’ We could see that he no longer saw us. We sat in silence, the
clock speaking for us: ticking, seconds; ticking, minutes. I flipped through a
stack of National Geographic magazines: grizzly bears…the aurora
borealis…baobab trees…tattoos….I looked at the programs on television: the
shopping network…the evening news…the science network.
Some
time later everyone else came in and there was the scent of boozy sweat and
edible wedding favours mashed between little fingers. There was Tupperware. And
baskets of fruit. The men and women spoke a language, quick and loud. I did not
understand the language. Someone started making dough for dumplings, cursing an
empty salt jar.
My
grandfather saw unrecognisable faces of familiar people, people from the past
in the present: lips and brows sag with age, waists a little wider, teeth a
little longer. He saw the same lips, the same brows repeated in their children.
It was as if a single person were repeating himself unstoppably, living an
infinite life. He saw them walk by and smile and he smiled back at them.
And then
he saw her, the woman with hair defiant of brushes and shampoos. If the hair
could speak it might say, I thumb my nose at you! And he remembered the
children crying and the woman shouting. And though the memories were as soft as
the melting clocks, it was down to one thing only: the men were murdered and
the women were left to the brutalities of war, entertaining the occupying
troops—that was the first of two choices. And so she had found him to protect
her—that was the second choice. And it wasn’t love that she fought for. It was
more important than that. And that is why, after the war, he left and kept
moving… towards another woman… towards another town… towards lighter things,
perhaps. And now though he looked away, he could feel that she was turning
slowly towards him, as if through the thickness of time. And he could feel her
looking at him, her face contorted revealing the beast beneath the surface of
her skin. She shouted something at him. She turned around to face the wedding
banquet where fruit knives were poised above oranges. She shouted something to
the room; shaking her wing-like arms she gave an unearthly scream.
In my
memory his back shrank in retreat as he walked out the front door; he melted
from the room like a shadow in sunset. In my memory, I am stuck in the moment
before the moment that he left. In my memory, the path out the front door grows
under my feet as I beat the rhythm of blood into the asphalt, into a path as
unending as time. As I walk, the Queen of this circumference, I see the
overgrown park, the walk-up apartments, the gas stations, and the path is still
there, growing before me as I walk through Pittsburgh.
In my
university dorm, in my little room, I see the path in my sleep. I dream I am
running through a corridor that goes on and on. In the corridor there are
things: spots on the wall that weep, a rocking chair rocking itself, a woman
slicing oranges; the juice runs into the creases in her skin like a zillion
paper cuts. Sometimes in the dream, a line of sixth graders march along the
corridor into an auditorium. I dream that I am running to catch them. I
dream that I am running into the auditorium and getting into line and I am
looking at the audience. My grandmother is there in the front row. And next to
her sits a crow. And in its face are the eyes of Mr Em, following me.
I
remember my grandfather in beats, like the beats in The Actor’s
Handbook of Life, meaning ‘the pauses between’, the pauses interrupting
dialogue to indicate a significant shift in the direction of a scene, the pause
that connects one action to another action. He was a man who had seen murders,
escaped murder, and was then murdered himself in what should have been a time
of peace. In retrospect, the way his life ended seemed like an ironic deus
ex machina for my grandmother, who swore that she would murder him—at
weddings, at births, at reunions. I wish I knew what she had said when she
heard he was murdered. If I had stayed, I might have found out. I was leaving
on an airplane flying across the Pacific Ocean from Malaysia to America. I had
first-semester classes in two days time and I didn’t want to miss anything. I
remember putting the airplane headphones on and to my horror John Denver was
singing: tell me that you’ll wait for me, hold me like you’ll never let me
go. I’m leaving on a jet plane; don’t know when I’ll be back again. Oh
babe, I hate to go….
I
would try to talk about it but for some reason, everyone would only say, I am
sorry, were you close to him? Was I close to him? Why did I laugh when I got
the phone call? Wasn’t I close to him?
‘I am
sorry, were you close to him?’
Wrong
question. Words are not enough.
In
Pittsburgh I would walk alone into the city, looking at the street bums looking
at me. They understood by looking, not to ask me for money. Instead they
offered me things, which I did not take: dolls, cigarettes, toothbrushes. I
liked to walk in the dark when it was snowing because it was silent. In the
Cathedral of Learning, I saw invisible students huddled over books in search of
meaning.
Once,
lost in my thoughts, I fell in the snow. It felt like everything was a
snowflake moving slowly through space. I saw myself descend toward the ice. It
was a moment suspended in time. I watched myself from a distance. And it hurt.
I laughed, acutely aware of my breath, slow, steady, present, and I thought of
the moment when I heard, on the phone, a voice telling me that my grandfather
had been murdered, that the cause of death and the events surrounding it were
inconclusive, they presumed it was a robbery. I said, he’s been what
now? And then I laughed into the telephone receiver. I peeled my knuckles off
the ice. I saw in the ice, the reflected shape of a man. I stood up. I knew it
was he; it wasn’t a question of feasibility. He was standing in front of the
Cathedral of Learning and looking at the spires with amusement. I think he was
aware of me; there was a tightness in his back. I watched him walk away. And
then I blinked and he was gone. And it struck me that he had not turned to
acknowledge me.
I
was under the blanket. I felt my breath, slow and warm, against the cotton. I
heard a clock ticking. I watched the clock. I watched the hands. I watched the
numbers. I thought: if it gets to nine, then can I go back to zero? And if I
fall asleep thinking of zero, then can I go back to the start? If I could, I
would keep an address book, write letters, make phone calls. If only zero could
turn back time.
I was
disconnecting from my flesh. I was floating away from myself. I heard ringing
and lifted the receiver. I heard speech starting to make sense. It was Regan,
mid-sentence.
‘I don’t
have a black dress. I want a dress that I can wear to cocktails after the
wake.’
A beat.
‘I was
trying to sleep.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
A beat.
I heard
her say, ‘wake.’ I hung up. A beat, the clock or my heart, it made no
difference which one filled the gap.
A beat:
from The Actor’s Handbook of Life meaning a bit. A bit:
meaning the pauses between… and now there are nothing but bits, remembered and
imagined:
a clock;
a black dress;
a hearse;
a coffin;
a coffee cake;
a vase of calla
lilies;
a plate
of
oranges;
a
photograph
over the cash register with eyes
that smile down at Em—it’s only a photograph. Em folds the napkins and their
edges stick out like wings envious of flight.