She thought about her intense feelings
toward him as a young man. She imagined
the lives they would have shared as an artistic couple – he would paint like a Picasso,
Cezanne, and photograph like a Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton of his generation;
she would write the greatest novel of the century. She dreamed of making the trip half-way
around the world to Taiwan to meet the onetime love-of-her-life:
**********
They meet for a cup of coffee.
He is handsome now in the
middle-aged way, thicker-set,
slightly stooped, with graying long hair, more neurotic and
faster-talking than she remembers about him, same soulful
eyes and luscious lips, wiser and a bit tired.
slightly stooped, with graying long hair, more neurotic and
faster-talking than she remembers about him, same soulful
eyes and luscious lips, wiser and a bit tired.
She is pretty with graying long hair
and small wrinkles, still
slender and naturally elegant, more thoughtful and reserved
than he remembers about her, same luscious lips, her smiles
marked by one distinctive, massive dimple.
slender and naturally elegant, more thoughtful and reserved
than he remembers about her, same luscious lips, her smiles
marked by one distinctive, massive dimple.
The conversation between him and
her goes like this:
“I think I started seeing you after
your photography show when I was 19. I
was dreamy and clueless, you were charming and driven. I survived various doubtful moments about our
relationship because you were so sweet and genuine. What I remember about you was your full mop
of hair, your eyes, and the Greek leather sandals that seemed never to leave
your feet. You looked like a
free-spirited Picasso, with a camera in your clutch instead of a paint
brush. You showed up in my life like the
fresh air of spring, and you were so sensitive, so kind, so reassuring that I
just wanted to fall in love with you, and I wanted the relationship to work for
us.”
“I really enjoyed your company, and
that probably came across…” He stares at her, trying hard to connect the woman
in front of him with the woman of his past long ago, in the old black-and-white
pictures he took of her. He likes what
he sees. He likes the faint milk and
honey scent of her.
“I loved school. I went off to college to study history. But once I got there, I became unhappy with
the narrow, boring, dreadful Confucian scholarship. I read translated novels by Virginia Woolf
and philosophy by Nietzsche, and decided that art and literature had the answer
to the questions that interested me. I
looked around and found you, someone who was unafraid of following his free
will to become an artist, against all the naysayers of his times. You were my love, my idol and inspiration. It was a beautiful thing.”
“I would move away and move back to
Taiwan after you, but the memories of you always stay with me. I still keep those delicately hand-written letters
that you sent me the first year after we parted ways. I’ve driven by your old house several times
after I moved back, wondering where and how you have been all these years. Your hand-writing is so alive that I could almost
smell and feel your touches. The old
house is still there, giving only a glimpse of what could have been inside…Could
it be you, your mother, or your sister?”
“Oh my god, what kind of a man
would keep letters of an old girlfriend for thirty years? You surprise me!” Their romance was nothing but a series of
accidental surprises. He was unlike most
other people she has ever known. But the
biggest surprise is to find out that she would have meant anything to him after
all these years.
“You were special…I am sorry I had
let you down.” He seems to hold back his
emotions. Those early years were
complicated times for him - so much was going on in his personal life, and so little
he could afford to confide in her.
“My heart was broken when you left. I always wondered how difficult it would be
for me to meet another man like you. I
thought I would probably never get married.”
“Ah, but I had married and divorced
twice since. And I had never set out to
become anyone’s husband.”
“Well, I did get married to a good
man, few years later. We packed our bags,
and went to America to start a new life.”
“How is America treating you?”
“It wasn’t as easy as I
thought. Do you remember high
school? Before high school, everything
was so easy, I was coasting in my class and still getting good grade; in high
school, I learned for the first time that I was getting a C in my chemistry
class, and nothing was easy after that. Coming
to America was a bit like going to high school.
After thirty years, I am coping better, but not coasting yet.”
“I see your point. I had lived in France for twenty years. Challenges and rewards always go hand in hand
together. I wouldn’t know where I’d be
creatively without those twenty years. My
French experience has expanded me in every other way. It illuminates what I am doing now. It shows
me the possibilities I haven’t thought of. It broadens my eyes, enriches my heart and
soul. It makes me more human, it makes my
life much more worth living. At the same
time, life there as a foreigner was a daily struggle, as simple as that.”
She understands the life of a
foreigner – free and alone. The
foreigner is free from the rules and responsibilities imposed by his old
country. The foreigner is lonely because
he has no ties, no connections, no background.
Not until he finds meaning in his wandering, he leads a pointless sort
of life.
“I turned to writing to ease my
loneliness. Writing takes me out of time
and releases me from the pain of being myself, being a foreigner in those early
years. I write about my childhood to
give comfort. I write about life in the
Northeast, specifically in the woods and hills and lakes of upstate New York,
because it is home."
“Can I tell you that I enjoy your
stories about us (I think)? They read like glasses of fine wine -
timeless, smooth, deeply romantic.”
“I like your old photographs too. They trigger all sorts of memories, grounded
in the personal stories of our lives…like good poems, murky, mysterious,
beautiful. We live in a world that we
explore, absorb, remember and forget.
You were gone - then my memories of you faded. You were the love of my life - then I forgot
you. Thank you for preserving all those precious
moments.”
“But I wish you had written your
stories in Chinese, instead of in English, so that more Taiwanese people can
read them.”
“James, I write in English because my
English is already so much better than my Chinese, after thirty years. Culturally speaking, I am almost 70% American
and 30% Taiwanese. Someday, I may become
99% American if I live long enough. I
don’t mind, for all the good things I’ve gotten out of living in America.”
“You have grown up…”
“I should hope so. After all, I am thirty years older,” she
says. “Now I came back to you, where do
we go from here, James?”
“I have no idea…I just wish I could
be young again, and relive the dreams and excited passions like a child, like
love. Every time I closed my eyes, I
wished you were here…”
Oh James, you haven’t changed…
**********
Vicky, Eve’s older sister, knows Eve’s
feeling all too well. When Eve told her
about her plan to make the long trip to Taiwan to see James, she warns her that
nothing good will come of it, “Eve, you
are wasting your time. If you go to see
him, you will never stop seeing him again, in spite of your families and
friends or his.”
It is complicated for Eve. Rationally the more she knows about James,
what he has done in the past thirty years, all the men and women who have
crossed paths with him, the more likely she will be puzzled by his motive for
hanging on. Truth is that she really
doesn’t believe him. James is a wild cat,
difficult to pin down, bound to be unreliable.
“Why keep his ghost around? It is unhealthy. I need to move on.” But the fantasy of the unknown,
re-acquaintance with a long-lost love is simply too beguiling to give up. She misses him after thirty years of
separation.
The choice makes her queasy - To
chase after the ghost for one last blast of excitement? To abandon the ghost of the past that never
existed?
.JPG)
