End of East, The (24 page)

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Authors: Jen Sookfong Lee

BOOK: End of East, The
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I imagine that my grandfather, so long untouched, cries.
Crumpled into his brown brocade chair (once his wife’s, with his wife’s scent, but after all these years, it is only himself he smells), he cries into his hands, not caring that he will soon have to accompany his daughters and granddaughters to his son’s funeral and look dignified and stately, not caring that his suit may be wet, not caring that he has never cried in his life, only now.
How could it be that it is the year 1988 and I am still alive?
Seid Quan pounds his own head with his fists.
I should have died a long time ago.
Outside his bedroom door, he can hear the wailing from his daughter-in-law, who is now, finally, able to weep and scream publicly His daughters have flown in, Min Lai from Toronto and Yun Wo from Guangzhou. He can feel them hovering in the hall, waiting to hold him up should he collapse. Waiting to surround him and protect his ninety-three-year-old ears from the assault that is Siu Sang’s grieving.
When a man has lived long enough to need protection, then he has lived too long
.
He stands up, brushes the wrinkles out of his grey wool pants. He will stand as straight as he can, walk like a soldier to keep himself from stumbling blindly. His friends—the ones who are still alive—and their sons will be waiting for him. They will tell him how sorry they are and place their hands on his shoulder in sympathy. They will not be comfortable with an old, weeping man, and Seid Quan hasn’t disappointed anyone yet.
He eats dinner with his son’s family and does not speak to anyone, not even to his five granddaughters, who, one week after the funeral, are all still staying with their mother. They speak rapidly in English about money and the mortgage, and ignore Siu Sang, who chews slowly, placing one grain of rice in her mouth at a time. He steals a glance at her (sneakily, for, in his experience, direct eye contact does not end well), sees her blank eyes as she eats. Strangely, he misses the rage and fear he had once been so used to.
This emptiness
, he thinks as he pushes the food around in his bowl,
is much worse.
He wonders if he could help her—perhaps they could remember Pon Man together, maybe even Shew Lin as well. But as soon as the thought enters his head, he dismisses it.
She hates me
,
and I can be no comfort to her
. Afterward, Seid Quan carries his dishes to the sink and walks slowly back to his room, his eyes fixed on the orange-gold of the carpet so that he will not see Siu Sang picking up his plate as if she expects cockroaches to erupt from its surface.
He looks out his window and sees the wall of the house next door, his bedside light reflected as a perfect square of yellow on the white stucco. He turns back to the piles that surround him on his bed, pulls out a thin brown envelope, the address
written in thick pencil. A letter from his son when he was still a child living in the village.
Seid Quan finds that he can only let his eyes float over the contents (he is afraid that he will cry again, and he is not sure his body can take it). Phrases jump out, appear like lighted matches before they vanish.
“The others say I look like a girl.”
“Mother made dumplings.”
“I am sticky from the heat.”
“Do you miss us?”
He asked his son, six years ago, why he never talked, why he never looked him in the face. Pon Man turned red and said nothing, choosing, instead, to walk away from his father and leaving him with his questions and an image of his son retreating.
He wonders now if he could have returned permanently to the village, if he would have been a conquering hero or simply a finished man, one whose useful days were irrevocably over.
The village
, Seid Quan thinks.
It took me seven years, working day and night
,
to pay back the village
. He thinks of the word
slave
, then dismisses it from his mind.
I can’t be that way, always a victim, always the one being put upon
.
He pushes the letter back into its envelope and drops it on the floor, where it settles into the carpet delicately, deliberately. He gathers up all the rest and carries them to an apple crate in his closet. Carefully, he stuffs the letters into spots that are seemingly too small for the papers that fill his arms, but Seid Quan is a patient man and, after a while, he has packed the crate so tightly that the lid almost doesn’t fit. He pushes down until he hears that click—the click that means the parts of his past he can no longer look at are contained again. He does not
remember what the crate hides anymore, can only guess at the contents that could be seventy years old. He is not quite sure if this pleases him or not, only that the hiding is necessary because he has lived this long and could live even longer.
Seid Quan stands up and walks to the kitchen, where his daughter-in-law is washing the dishes. He places the kettle on the stove, murmurs something about making tea and stands there, watching her hands move quickly through the soapy water.
As he opens his mouth to say something, she turns around and says, “Is there something you need? Because I’ll just get it for you and then you can sit down and be out of my way.”
He looks at her angry face, the tenseness of her neck and takes a step backwards. “Well,” he says, “if you could just bring me that tea when it’s ready.” And he turns around and heads back to his bedroom, tripping on a stray shoe lying carelessly in the hall. He closes the door and leans against it, relieved.
Seid Quan strolls down Pender Street in Chinatown. The shopkeepers nod to him, although these are not the men with whom he played mah-jong or drank whisky. It is their sons now, young men in nice cars, young men whose families live in South Cambie, young men whose homes have a view of the downtown core, where tall buildings blot out Chinatown. He wonders what they pay in property tax, whether their fathers died in nursing homes.
He is now at the corner of Pender and Main. He stops and gazes at the large herbalist’s store that used to be his barbershop. It is not so different, really; the exterior is the same red brick, and the same single-room apartment hotel is on the second and third floors. The old women still hustle up the street, sharp eyes examining the dried currants and beans as they walk by. The herbalist, a middle-aged hustler from Hong Kong, looks up
briefly at Seid Quan and looks away again.
I suppose I am too old to even really be seen anymore.
These streets are so familiar to him; his feet navigate every bump and turn automatically. He dreams of his beginnings here: his first coffee, his first meal, his first suit. He remembers the day when he and Pon Man explored the city together, the day when it seemed possible that Seid Quan could know his son. They strolled in Stanley Park, took pictures to send to Shew Lin. They posed for each other at the seawall, Pon Man laughing at his father’s stiffness.
“No, Father, you look old. Move your head. Yes, Father, just like that.”
When it was Seid Quan’s turn, he looked through the viewfinder and was surprised that his son needed no direction, that his body knew just what the camera wanted. Seid Quan waved his hand to tell Pon Man not to move and snapped, knowing that this was a perfect shot.
They bought ice cream at English Bay (rum raisin for Seid Quan, mint chocolate chip for Pon Man) and sat on a bench together, quietly watching ladies and their dogs, young couples with their arms around each other. Seid Quan felt fortified, strong in his conviction to make his son love him and confident of his progress. They would buy a house, just in time for Shew Lin to come and decorate. Pon Man would take over the barbershop, maybe expand enough for a decent pension and to support his parents. There would be a daughter-in-law, grandsons galore and fresh meat and vegetables to be had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Seid Quan would work in his study, practising calligraphy and listening to opera. No more cafés, no more one-room apartments, no more fourteen-hour days with hands immersed in other men’s hair.
Seid Quan smiles, slows down slightly as he walks north on Pender. Somehow, as he walks through the late afternoon light, he cannot remember the bad parts, the times when he was eaten up by loneliness, or the times he thought he might die if he could not see his wife one more time. He sees only the light reflecting off the tall houses, the pigeons pecking at the remains of steamed buns littered over the ground. He thinks he would like to embrace his son just once.
He comes to and finds himself sitting on a bench in a small grassy spot just off Gore. A bus rattles past, and his right knee is sore. He watches the sun dip past the roofs of the shops, feels the evening breeze push through the grasses that graze his ankles. An old man, perhaps even as old as Seid Quan himself, walks across the street, guided by a young woman in jeans and sneakers. In his right hand, he carries a cane, although his hands shake so much, Seid Quan wonders why he bothers. As he totters closer, he looks up at the trees and smiles. Seid Quan realizes he has seen that smile before.
“Lim,” he whispers. He holds out his hand, grabs the edge of the young woman’s sleeve. She turns, frowning.
“Lim, is that you?” The old man raises his bushy white eyebrows, peers at Seid Quan’s brown face. He starts to cough.
The young woman leans over. “I’m afraid he doesn’t know his name anymore. Are you one of Uncle Lim’s old friends?”
“Yes, yes.” Seid Quan stands up straight, holds one of Lim’s spotted hands in both of his. “Old friends, from the village. You are one of his relatives?”
She smiles. “No. I volunteer at the nursing home just up the street. Uncle Lim and I are good friends, aren’t we?” Lim leans his head against her shoulder.
Seid Quan fishes in his pockets and pulls out a handful of bills. “Please, take these. In case Lim needs something extra. Maybe you could buy him new slippers. Take it.” He shoves the money into her hand. “We were good friends once.”
“I really shouldn’t take this, but thank you. You should come visit. Uncle Lim likes the company.”
Seid Quan watches them walk up the street, stares at Lim’s hunched back and skinny legs.
Sammy will look like that girl when she grows older
, he thinks, then remembers that none of his granddaughters would ever hold his arm as they walked down the street together. He tries to think of the last time he had a conversation with any of them, the last time he made eye contact. Nothing.
He knows he must move eventually, return to the house where his daughter-in-law stares at a blank television, but instead he stands in the slowly emptying street, reasoning that no one will miss him. When it is so cold that he feels the familiar stiffness in his joints, he leaves, but not before.
When Min Lai asks him if he would like to move to Toronto to live with her, he understands that it isn’t really a question. There is nothing else to do. His son is dead. He is too old to live alone. There is nowhere else to go. His daughter says that, one day, he might come back to Vancouver, after Siu Sang pulls herself together, after things settle down. He wonders what that means.
His daughter and granddaughters pack all his necessary clothes and books and leave him to deal with his papers. He rifles through the top drawer of his dresser, wondering how much he’ll need, knowing, of course, that policemen don’t stop Chinese men on the street anymore and demand to see their documentation, but thinking that maybe he should bring it all anyway.
“Look at me, thinking like an immigrant,” he says to himself.
He ignores the crate in the closet, packed full of his secrets. He briefly considers throwing it out, or burning it, but immediately decides he cannot. He wonders if he will feel lighter when the crate is thousands of miles away.
He leaves almost all of his official papers, neatly bound by rubber bands, folded up into airmail envelopes and stuffed into an old cigarette tin, and takes only his citizenship card and passport. His personal things, though, require more consideration.
On the back of an old takeout menu, he finds an inventory list, written quickly in pencil.

Straight-edged razors, box of 100
Barber’s scissors, 4 sets
3 barber’s chairs
4 stools on casters
Cash register, used
17 combs
3 jars of disinfectant
4-quart jar of shaving cream
7 tins of hair wax

Aftershave, variety of brands

He thinks of how a man can identify with his work, can say to people he meets, “I am a dentist,” and know that it’s complete and true. “I am a barber,” he says to himself, trying to remember what it felt like. He feels nothing, thinks that perhaps
I am lonely
or
I am arthritic
might be closer to the truth. He leaves the list behind too.

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