A Momentary Lapse of Reason - 07
A Novella
7. 吹毛求疵[i]
(chuī máo qiú cī)
It was morning on through the night, and Maggie had not been to her parents’ home. And in fact, she did not want to go there again because of her conflicted self. A self as duraden as her city was. At first in 1997 they celebrated the fact that they would be now ruled by people like themselves. Rapidly realizing that people like themselves were as violent as they were in London. finding that the yuan was just as hard a taskmaster as the pound, the pound of flesh is still the same in either currency. 淵 goes down to the abyss. And with each purvanase surpassed the Hong Kong present looks less and less like the Hong Kong of old with graceful chandeliers gradually becoming concrete beams over city streets. Now the city was like bare gnarled trees a selfless narrow bough on the weightless horizon. A far-distant city in time.
She had bleary eyes and looked out over the rice pads of Lok Ma Chau. A 園in clubs. It was the furthest away point in Hong Kong that she could go. The subway would start in little over an hour, and she would bleary eyes stumble her way to the downtown, perhaps. On her way, she had been walking, and walking, and walking. Jangling yuan in her pocket.
In her mind, she had no place to live anymore. Her blood pounded against her temples as she wondered what it was she had to do to escape all of the things that surrounded her position. Just as the rook can only defend or attack she was caught in a bind. Even though she had to admit it was all her own making.
But then she drifted into the dreamland where everything was different to be the same. Air in the dreamland the butterflies chattered to anyone who would listen about the curve simplastique on low brow, in Mandelbrot rhythms accord. In her Victorian blue dress, which she only had on this side of the dream she appeared over 1 m tall mushrooms with giant grass and enormous ferns and the ground rumbled with the coming of centipedes. It all seemed quite natural with your eyes closed. Alice, where are you? Down the rocking all and to the left then straight on till morning where even the sun would not see you again.
Then she came up to a wide mushroom with purple cast and white polka dots each as large as a human hand. And on that mushroom sat a silkworm but one who was at least a meter high. The green silkworm popped a hookah pipe looked down at her and popped once more before questioning: “And who are you on this fine night with the day shining so bright?”
“If you please, sir, I am Maggie, sir, and I do not know which way to go.”
The silkworm blue out of its right cheek and seemed to be mollified by the degree of politeness that Maggie showed.
“That depends on which way you want to end up, or at least where you started from. And which iteration you feel would be sufficient to discover what your endpoint is.”
“Please sir, I don’t understand. I have no home to go back to and that is why I am lost…” and then she said “Sir.” For getting her manners for only a second.
“So it isn’t that you don’t know where to go but you don’t know where you’ll end up.” And the silkworm blew from the left side of its gullet. It seemed to Maggie that the silkworm did not have lungs per se but breathed in and out through the spiracles engulfing the tracheotomy with pure smoke perfection.
Maggie only nodded as the moon nodded to the sun when disappearing on a full moon.
“Why do you not go back to where you came from?”
Maggie looked down at her black slippers and from that position said: “Because they beat me, sir. And often very hard.”
“Sounds delightful, sounds delicious…” And then the green silk worm pushed out who car smoke from both ends and grew slightly redder. “Why do you not return to such a delectable place to rest your head and clench your knees?”
This had been the question that Maggie had asked her so over and over again and did not find the answer to.
Then the silkworm continued: “Flyaway! Flaway!” The echo pervaded every nook of the field. And everything that she heard echoed the call to fly away. Fly away. Fly away. From the buzzing of the bees to the humming of the fly down to the rasping of the flea. It was a commotion inside her head, and she clamped her hands over her ears but that did not even dent the noise and din and raw.
Then she looked up at the silkworm in saw it spin its cocoon and then burst out and readied itself to flyaway, flyaway, flyaway.
But on its face, it looked down at her and said: “You should go to where you belong and take the medicine that is prescribed.” And with that, it flew away, leaving the hookah line on the mushroom.
And it was only then she realized that the mushroom was truly a toadstool. The toadstool preceded to crumble up and feed the soil. Then gurgling upwards was a small stream of water that almost touched her slippers and then bubbled down to find the nearest creek.
The stream bubbled without stopping. She sincerely wished it would.
But then she pulled herself to consciousness. She looked and saw the golden temple rise to the true sky.[ii]
But then she ran, for the first train was leaving and she hurried and just caught on the last subway in the neck of time. On the train, she looked east, towards the firebird ascendant.
The subway ride back was a contusion of people rushing on and off picking seats at random. There was only one older man who looked at her with lust. She could see advertisements for differing sorts of things none of which she wanted to buy or even think about. It was noise to be eye just as her dream was a commotion to the ear. She was empress of nothing she surveyed.
Finally, her station arrived because, in all of the hubbub, she finally knew that she had to ask Kit to borrow a cot until she could save money for a room. It would be a filthy room, but a solitary room all to herself. With that, she could start a room of her own and practice chess to start the tournament. That was her destiny. Her route of origin.
But she had to worry that her time with Kit would be a nasty quarrel over nothing about nothing. But she righted herself because she had started to sway with the fatigue, and entered up through the entrance to find what it was that fate had meant for her. It was a wall to her eye. Ready to stripe her like an ape.
It was morning in Hong Kong where the morning truly starts in earnest with a 肙. And with a circle round her beginning and her ending.
[i] Find a quarrel in a straw.
[ii] Reference to Chu Guangxi, Climbing the Tower with Friends at the Temple of Blessings