:: :: Sleepless in Melawati :: ::

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

An Empty Room

As the mountain crested, it sloped more steeply. I was already sweating. There was a church at the top. I thought I should rest there a while and then decide when to descend.

The war was just recently over. The church was deserted. The altar and tables and chairs had long been taken apart and removed. Only the holy statue remained, the face covered with dust now revealing a special quality of steadfast perseverance. I tried the piano and found that half the keys were still capable of a kind of grating sound. If someone could compose something to fit its current condition, that would be very interesting indeed.

There was nothing else to see. It was a wonder that I should be hiking alone today. Winter days in the mountains seemed dull; creeks were dry, and bamboo forests barely kept their green.

Traveling through a bamboo forest, I found another path to descend.

In the twists and turns of the path I suddenly saw a temple. If there were monks, we could have tea together. I had decided to hike by myself because I was weary of the crowded city. But since I had not seen a soul for quite some time, I thought it would be good if I could find a monk for a chat.

The gate was open. Fallen leaves in the yard and dust in the lobby indicated that this was another place in ruins. The temple seemed more appealing than the church. Its corridors zigzagged and its ancient trees stood high and provided a heavy shade. Somehow, there was a tranquil beauty in the decay. Behind the main hall was a two-storey building. I called out a few times but got no response. So I went upstairs to look. Three rooms were in a row. Two of them had no doors and bared their spotted earthy walls. Empty. I came to the last room and found a screen door ajar. I pushed it open and withdrew my hand immediately—a sudden flood of pink. The walls inside were painted the color of flowering cherry. My first impression was that it was “occupied,” but after a close search I found that it too was empty. But it was evident that the walls were freshly painted and the paint had nice evenness. No furniture. The floor was covered with pieces of paper and piles of empty Kodak boxes. While I was stepping on the paper scraps, I felt that there were more and more of them, almost like a carpet covering the entire floor.

One. This couldn't possibly be a room for monks since the walls were pink.

Two. The tenants who once lived here must have been young people, likely newlyweds.

Three. They were photographers or lovers of photography.

Four. They had taken residence here recently and had left not too long before I arrived.

These speculations seemed far from the time and space of war and this remote mountainous region. The war had lasted eight years. Was it reasonable to assume that they had been here to seek refuge? And had they had the leisure to paint the walls and to take photos? Where could they have found food in the mountains? If they had no money, they couldn't have lived here long. If they had money, they would have been robbed. Even Erich Maria Remarque’s wartime lovebirds wouldn’t choose such an eerie ancient temple.

I picked up some of the papers and saw they were letters. Picked up some more from another spot; still more letters. Why so many letters? The pages had no order, so the letters lost their sequence. They were more difficult to understand than the most absurd novels. Yet they were communications between a man and a woman. The man was Liang, darling Liang, my Liang, your Liang. The woman was apparently named Mei, dearest Mei, my Mei forever. All that they spoke of was their love affair, characterized by constant ups and downs; you could tell that their education was that of college liberal-arts majors.

I was frustrated. Sitting in the piles of paper, I felt that my legs itched from flea bites. That there were so many fleas was proof that humans had inhabited the room. I got a headache and burning cheeks from reading—the setting sun tinted windowsills orange; evening wind rustled in dead twigs and branches outside. I thought it would be best if I went down the mountain.

But not before I inspected the walls and the corners for the last time. There were no bloodstains, no bullet holes. The door and windows were not damaged either. All the Kodak boxes were empty. All the scraps of paper were letters. Yet I saw no envelopes. Was it possible that someone set this up as a location for shooting pictures? That wouldn’t make sense since the letters had real substance. I couldn’t take away all the letters. So removing my scarf, I wrapped up as many as I could. I stuffed my pockets with a few Kodak boxes. I rushed downstairs, walked around the temple, and found no trace particularly noteworthy. There was not a single family within sight. All I could see was wilderness. A sense of horror grabbed me; I descended carrying the letters like a woodcutter carrying his firewood.

For several days I read the letters and worked out, from the chaos, something of a sketch: Liang and Mei had been in love for a long time. But both families strongly objected. Liang, out of despair, repeatedly said that being dead was better than being alive. Mei asked him not to take his life lightly; his first priority should be his career and future; she confessed that her own days living in this world were numbered. The rest was made up of intensely passionate yet somewhat empty words of love. It was also strange that letters from both of them included dates, months, but not years. None of them touched upon the turmoil of the war, as if love had nothing to do with time and war. Since it was after all not literature, I grew jaded.

I reasoned again:

One. If they had lived together in the temple, then they would have been reluctant to part with the letters when they had left.

Two. If Liang had lived there alone, it was puzzling that his letters to Mei should be mixed with Mei's letters to him.

Three. If Mei had died first and she, before death, had returned to Liang his letters to her, then Liang should have cherished these letters enough not to scatter them around like that.

Four. If, after Mei’s death, Liang had committed suicide for love, then he should have handled the letters properly before he had died rather than leaving them to strangers who are only capable of gossiping.

Five. If they had died the Japanese way—that is, both jumping from the mountain or throwing themselves into fires—then he still should have burned the letters before their death. That would be the clean way to break from this world.

Six. Unless Liang had been murdered and he had been robbed of everything valuable except these useless things. But then the criminals would not have bothered to open all these letters to read. Besides, why take away all the envelopes?

Seven. If Liang had been arrested for political reasons, these letters would have been valuable evidence to the authority and they would have taken away all of them.

I was young then and did not have sufficient reasoning capacity. When I picked up the paper scraps, I only concluded that Liang and Mei were no longer in this world. After that, I moved several times and lost the letters. I was never able to go up the mountain for another investigation. None of the cases of murder and robbery reported in newspapers mentioned Liang or Mei or anything similar to what I saw in the temple. I have indeed met men and women who are named Liang or Mei but none seemed to answer to the description of those two.

A few decades have passed. I still remember my surprise when I first pushed open that screen door. The dull and dead winter scenes on that mountain, the church and the temple abandoned as if all of humanity had died were a striking contrast to the blaze of flowering cherry color suddenly coming into view-—humans, life . . . white and bluish letterheads, golden yellow Kodak boxes, all seemed like the welcome of spring or an unexpected encounter with an old friend.

And those fleas which bit Liang perhaps also bit Mei. A poet once compared the mixing of bloods of a man and a woman in the black body of a flea to a marriage temple. What refined feelings of tragedy! It happens that my blood too was involved here, but I am innocent. I am not witness to the marriage of Liang and Mei.

I recorded the above in memory of my youth. I still cannot comprehend what this is all about--which only proves that I have not improved that much in these past few decades.

A FEW DIFFICULT WORDS

All Thinking Men

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