A Momentary Lapse of Reason - 20
A Novella
20. 面目全非[i]
(miàn mù quán fēi)
The buzz, the bubble, and hoi polloi of the city avenues that was the intersection of Salisbury and Nathan Roads at Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon peninsula in Hong Kong.[ii]
“It is like we have become destitute; how can I switch the bishops?” in two her hands drooped her chin though her eyes stayed on his through the entire signed motion that signified the emotion.
“You know Western Chess and other esoteric ideas that I can only fumble with but let me teach you a lesson from streetwise. You just need to misdirect the audience’s attention and then you make the switch by prestidigitation, which is a skill of the hand not of the mind. Tangled up in Blue.”[iii]
“There was a line in Dante: in giù son messo tanto perch'io fui ladro a la sagrestia d'i belli arredi,”[iv]
“You will excuse me; this is all Greek to me.” There was a happy smirk.
From the other side, a laugh pealed her head back. “ even you know that Dante in the vulgar Italian that became the basis for all that would follow.”
“Explain it to me in a language I can understand.”
“The book was by Dante and a translation by a command called Longfellow, and he wrote: So low am I put down because I robbed, The sacristy of the fair ornaments.”
“What you are saying that the bishops are like the holy ornaments?”
Maggie only nodded.
“It will still be there. we are not taking anything.”
“But they are where they are and we, meditatively, sit down and play with the pieces in the places that are set out for us.”
“You are making a higher-level logic that chess must now down to, as the Dragon bows down to the Empress.” His eyes fixed on hers as if he was a soldier looking at his commander before the Battle of Red Cliffs.[v]
The sleeping montage of green and red was a pattern that he was showing Maggie, and she was slowly learning. To began to realize that it was the misdirection that was the key when chess is a game where all of the information is available to both people and only their thoughts are hidden. Gradually she looked up and saw his gaze and realized that this signal was far deeper than any that he had had before because it was admiration and not just attraction or aspiration. She giggled because she spelled out a word from the second letter of the English.
“DTS.” And she almost laughed because of the meaninglessness of the rhyme.
And he laughed too because there was a meaninglessness of the letters which then came to somehow mean something in their randomness.
Then he said it: “我爱你.”
And she replied: “我爱你”
Sometimes the simple is the best.
If it were just the two of them on some desert island, the spinning trail of events could well have gone very differently, but that was not the time or the place that they found themselves in, instead it was one of the most crowded cities in a crowded world with eyes glancing back and forth knowing and yet unknowing of the events that took place around them and registering the subtle changes in the emotional temperature the need the crowded moon which watched every person that was under her face with a deep disdained detachment.
Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash which reminded him of Lucan but note the poet friend of Nero nor Lacan of the postmodernist psychoanalyticic of the L'Imaginaire whirlwind calmed by Sartre.
It was then that he motioned by motionless this to this woman that he loved. It was a quivering on his lips that sent a shiver down her spine because she knew that something was watching them and perhaps knew what they were planning.
And at once they hurriedly packed up the board and pieces as if they were pieces of ate on flat plates of noodles. Crunching them inside the grudging bag that held everything that they owned to their name, by their name, of their name.
Swiftly they moved down Tsim Sha Tsui Station, away from the fresh dark sky and to the steel beams and marble stone that hurried people along to a destination which the steel did not know but was willing to herd them to anyway. They weighted with expectation for the next train and the seconds ticked away with both of them looking for the shadow of Lucan.
But no shadow haunted them, at least as far as they could tell. There was no blood on the tracks.[vi]
Then when seated in a car they counted up enough money for breakfast and then slept in the tiny room that he had never shown her because he was ashamed of its crass popcorn ceiling and its slovenly white paint. It seems to him like a topless place with men in shoes on laces from Inferno.
But it was enough, twill do, twill do. Tangle up in blues to get back to where they were in the same bed. Public on privacy.
Then it was morning. The sun whispered as the dark rain-soaked clouds went on through. They were up early. Both of them were trained in their lives to be first in any crowd of people. Because one could never know when the lines would close and the people who were still in line would curse but get no satisfaction.
Because they could not get right what they did wrong.
Then on Nathan everyone who wasn’t anyone was going, to make ready the shops and stores for those who were anyone who had everything.
They chugged down coffee from a convenience store, but she wondered who was packaged as convenience for who. Because the convenience store made money and the people who bought things felt the quality was cheap and the prices were expensive. The relationship was still tangled up in spew.
[i] Beyond Recognition
[ii] Not “the hoi polloi” because it is redundant for “hoi” means “the.” And no one would say “the the many.”
[iii] Bob Dylan, “Tangled up in Blue”
[iv] Dante, Inferno 25:137-8
[v] Attributed From Luo Ben, 三國演義 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms)
[vi] Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks