I have grown two inches in the last year. I have big legs. I look at them a fair amount, amazed at them. My thighs are as big as heads. I think of when I was on vacation last summer with my Grandfather Zhe, to the man who wanted to massage them for me. I’m a soccer coach back home, you know, he said. You look like a nice husky boy. The hotel where we were staying had a faux-desert landscape, around the pool area, and so we were hidden by a peach-brown dune of cement from the view of my dozing grandfather and siblings. I told him, I don’t think so. But thanks. He told me his room number, just in case I felt “sore.” Later that night, in my hotel room, I thought of how I could kill him.
My mother appears in front of me at the bottom of the stairs. She has dressed in a foam-green crew-neck sweater under a loden coat she wears on her shoulders, her blond hair arranged there, pulled back with one barrette to her nape, making her look much younger than most of the other mothers. Why are you here on the stairs, she asks. She settles a hand on my leg.
She asks me something I don’t hear over my own thoughts. I’m sorry, Mom? I ask.
You were looking right at me, I’d swear, she says, and she grabs my ear, bending it a little toward her. I said, Are you feeling well?
Sure, I say. All this Christmas stuff just depresses me. I really only like the music.
You’re not very convincing. You’re so angry these days.
I’m not. I’m not angry. I stand up and walk down the stairs to the foyer. See, I say, heading to the main room. See how happy I am?
There’s no call for sarcasm. She crosses an arm over her stomach and props up her elbow, her drink resting up near her face.
Hey Nora, come in here. Aphias, come here. My dad comes from around the corner. His face flushed, he takes my mom by the hand. C’mon.
On the television was some footage from the Spirit of Christmas Concert, taken from two years before. The chorus had sung with an adult choir, the Portland Symphony, and a few guest stars from the Biddeford Opera production of Carmen. My father had seen my face on the screen and looked for it again. You were right there, he said, indicating the corner of the screen in which my face had appeared. Right there.
3
Endless January into endless February. Sunny days hit the snow and make me hate light, cold that snaps my nose numb and then burns me once I’m inside. I spend the days reading.
I had been doing an English paper on the pantoum, a literary form, originally Sri Lankan, that came to Italy in pages wrapped in silks. The same silks that perhaps had arrived with the infected fleas of the Plague. I think of the elegant horses, stung as they ride, carrying the death of nations.
I take a break from studying and find my grandfather leading through the paper in the gray winter light shading the kitchen. It’s the afternoon, just before dinner. He favors our kitchen as a place to hide from my grandmother. She favors her kitchen as a place to hide from him. Anyung haseo, I say, sitting down. I’ve been practicing some Korean, because it makes my grandparents smile.
He chuckles, almost to tears. Pretty good, round-eyes, he says. He learned a lot of his English from G.I.s, and says things like this, or, I take leak. But he’s salty in his own right. He didn’t learn English from them by accident. He sets the paper down. How’s my smart grandson?
Good, I say. And I pick up the paper to look at the classifieds, because I’ve decided I want to work a job and have some extra money. And so I see this:
Wanted: student researcher, for book project. Please be energetic, bright, a fast learner, and extremely quiet, with an interest in history, in particular the 14th century in Europe. Please call Edward Speck, at…
When I call the number listed, the man I speak to is good-natured and reserved, and tells me to come by to see him. He gives me an address in South Portland, nearby, in a part I don’t ever go to, though not for any particular reason I can think of, and the next afternoon I drive over and find myself ringing the doorbell of a large brownstone house that looks out of place, surrounded as it is by new houses. As if this house had been here for a very long time, alone, and suddenly been joined by neighbors just beyond the boxwood shoulders of its lawns.
Edward Speck is a tiny man. His white hair drifts above a cheerful face. He lets me into the house on this afternoon looking like he’s decided, seeing me through the door, to hire me. He tells a brief history of himself (study at Oxford, Ph.D. from Columbia) and that he lives here because it was his grandmother’s house and he had always wanted it. The furniture was all hers and is original. He asks me no questions. I’ve added nothing, he says.
I admire in particular, in the mudroom, a bench attached to a mirror and hung down the sides with bronze fixtures resembling moose antlers.
I’m only here, he says, for the cold months. We sit in the parlor, on matching giant leather club chairs. His has an enormous hassock in front of it. A Persian rug, the color of several wines, muffles us.
Why’s that, I ask.
Because cold air concentrates oxygen powerfully. It’s wonderful for the brain. And also, no one likes to be here in this time of year, so no one visits me, and I am left alone.
I see. And, I do.
We agree on payment (he decides for more than I’d thought) and he outlines some responsibilities: opening and filing all his mail for him to go through, returning books placed to the right of the desk to his library, returning books placed by the door to either the Portland library or the library of the university (check inside flyleaf). Occasionally, he says, I will ask you to look things up for me, and then photocopy what you find, along with related articles, or to take out the book. You won’t have to do any writing or household work, although sometimes I may ask to be driven. I will need you for ten to twelve hours a week.
He stands. Now, for the tour.
The ceilings of the dark house accommodate people much taller than him or I. The library I remember and envy. When I first enter it, I realize I would work without pay to be able to come here. For some genius thought to make a room like this: three stories tall, shelves on all sides, brass ledges to them connected by ladders made of iron. And all the books shelved and stored behind glass doors crisscrossed with iron. Windows edge only at the top, so that light glows into the room instead of falling, and then the ceiling with a fresco of a dark city, a mountain in the center of it.
What is that city, I ask.
Edinburgh, he replies.
The mountain? I say.
Arthur’s Seat, he says. A hill.
On my way out, he looks at me and asks, What is your parentage?
I am used to the question. I know the look: people searching my features for matches, finding few that correspond. It is confusing to some people to look at me. Watching me takes longer than most.
Half Korean, I say, and half Scottish-English.
You look like a Russian, he says. A young Cossack, really.
I think of Mongolia. Lady Tammamo. A little Mongolian too, I say.
An ancient race. He pauses, lit from within inside his doorway. Excellent, he says. We’ll see you soon. And oh, by the way, call me Speck, please. Everyone does. And with that he closes his giant door.
4
The librarians laugh as I carry my piles of books out of the library. My mother is incredulous as I bring them in from the car.