A Case of Two Cities

Shall I go, shall I go
with my Chinese accent, and a roast
Beijing duck, to her home,
when the evening is spreading out
like a gigantic invitation poster
against the clouds of doubt?
I’ll go, across the Loop, where
a young girl hums a little air,
her shoulder-length golden hair flowing,
lighting the somber wall, singing.
My necktie asserted by a pin,
my alligator leather shoes shining.
(They will think: “How yellow his skin!”)
What will they say-to my quoting
from Shakespeare, Donne, and Hopkins,
In short, I am not sure.
(They will say: “But how strong his accent!”)

He took a gulp of his wine, as if smashed with a bizarre combination of rhythm and rhyme-in a language not really his own, and with those lines coming out of nowhere. It appeared doubtful whether they would make their way into a poem, or into anything readable. But he’d better put them down, he knew, while the inexplicable urge still clutched him.

Would it be worthwhile
to bite a Mac with a smile,
to squeeze the difference and all
into a small Ping-Pong ball,
to dream of her white teeth
nibbling at cheddar cheese,
and in a mirror, a dull toad
with a fair swan, when all is told?
Is it her red-painted toenail
that makes me so frail?
Her toes tapping on a bronze
plaque dedicated to Eliot,
in an evening breeze of songs.
Oh am I not an idiot?
Should I explain a Chinese joke
with the help of an English book-
after baseball, chips and dips
and helpless tongue slips,
after deconstructing the character “ai”
into radicals-heart, water, friend and eye,
after the pallid sleepless stress
smoothed by her golden tress
on the rug of an iron tree,
after turning on the TV
without understanding why
those players laugh and cry.
It’s impossible to say
what I want to say!
What if she, kicking
off her sandals and trimming
her toenails, should say,
“That is not it at all,
that is not what I meant, at all.”
Then how should I begin
to spit out all the butt-ends
of my days and ways
and how shall I pray and pay?
I should be a dragon glazed
along the wall of the praised
Forbidden City. I’m no Li Bai dreaming,
but a damned, chained
monkey gesticulating,
with the name label pinned
on the bosom of a Tang vest.
In short, I am not sure,
walking along a twilight-flooded beach.
I have seen the mermaids dancing
on TV, beyond reach,
beyond reality’s pinching.
I don’t think that, singing on the sea,
they will shell their tails for me.

He was shocked by the lines rising out of the unlikely moment. In his college years, he had read about surrealist poets writing automatically, as in a trance. He wondered how such a similar experience befell him. Perhaps he could think of a number of explanations, but he was not in an analytical mood.

Because he would never be able, he knew, to squeeze the moment into a ball, to start it rolling toward where he would like to go. Not just about what he described in those lines, but more symbolically, like Eliot. No, he was not what he had imagined himself to be-not even in those lines. It was just a moment, and then it was gone.

And it was not a long moment.

He saw a black car pull up in front of her building. A man emerged from the driver’s side and opened the passenger door. She stepped out in that black dress with spaghetti straps.

The man did not go in with her, but they hugged outside the door, his hands lingering on her bare shoulders.

A long, passionate hug.

He kissed her on the cheek before moving back into the car. A shining black Jaguar. She stood on the doorstep, watching, waving her hand, until the car rolled out of sight in the growing dusk.

Chen kept watching, spellbound, like sitting in the movies.

She had been busy with the Chinese delegation for days. It was an afternoon when she had a few hours for herself. So of course she had taken care of her personal things.

It was unrealistic to imagine that a young, spirited woman like her would lead a colorless life like his. There should be a man-or men-in her life. Too absurd of him to imagine her shutting herself in after their meeting in Shanghai, as in a Tang dynasty poem-with the fallen petals in the yard, collected too much to open the door.

A chance encounter, like in the poem he had once read for her, memorable as the light produced out of their brief meeting, and then they had to move on, along their respective directions. In fact, they had both known it the first time, in China.

So it was this time. He really should be grateful for the unexpected second time. There’s no stepping twice into the same river, but it sort of happened to him. Different, yet nonetheless wonderful.

But for her generous help, he would have got nowhere in his investigation. Or worse, his fate could have been sealed like that of the interpreter.

She was the more realistic one. There was no future of them being together. She knew. So parting like this would be best.

Long after she had gone back into the building, he remained sitting there, against the window. He took his time sipping, after the fashion of a regular customer. The waitress put down another glass for him, and he nodded over those lines, like one really lost.