Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

Alice walked over to the window and looked out. The sea had flooded the house, reaching halfway up the first story. The waves beat against the walls, sprayed her face. She walked back to the stairwell and saw a lake down below. There were fish swimming over the red tile floor she and Thom had laid together. It was like being dropped into a huge aquarium. A bit dizzy, she reached out to steady herself, resting her hand on the rosewood picture frame hanging on the wall by the stairs. On one side of the frame they had stuck birthprints of Toto’s tiny feet, marks she used to remind herself of hope, pain and determination. But Alice found that now, inexplicably, her desolation seemed to have hidden itself away, like the blue sky that was always disappearing above the island. Alice felt this might be a sign she was already dead. Thinking about it this way, it no longer mattered whether she sought to kill herself or not.

Under the combined onslaught of grief, ocean waves and the shuddering of the wave-battered and wind-lashed house, Alice almost lost her balance a couple of times. She stuck her head out the window for a breath of fresh air and noticed a shivering black shadow on a piece of driftwood right outside the window.

It seemed to be a kitten. No, not just seemed. It really was a kitten, looking at her with sad eyes. Very peculiarly, one of its eyes was blue, the other brown.

Alice leaned out the window and lifted the quavering kitten in. It was so scared it could not even manage a threat display. All it did was curl up softly in her arms.

“Ohiyo,” she said to the kitten. She remembered that morning when she’d said good morning in Japanese to Thom and Toto just for fun. Toto so looked like a miniature adult in his climbing gear. Soaking wet, the kitten was still shaking, like a beating heart. She almost felt like the earthquake wasn’t over yet.

She picked up a towel to dry off the kitten, found a cardboard box as a temporary shelter, and gave it some biscuits to eat. The cat did not eat, only looked at her anxiously. How big had the quake been? And how many casualties had it caused? Alice had no way of knowing. Her ability to reason had returned, but without a television, a cell phone or traffic noise she felt all alone on a deserted island at the end of the world. All she could do was focus her attention on this kitten. It — she — was dry now, and, seeming to realize that the worst had passed, had gone to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, tucking her soft forepaws into her belly and curling up into a fluffy fur ball. Her hind paws would jerk a bit from time to time, as if a dream had slipped in through a crack somewhere and entered her body.

Suddenly there was another burst of roaring. Might be an aftershock. Alice’s body had regained the ability to react. She automatically grabbed the box in which the kitten was sleeping, intent on finding a place to hide.

Only a few minutes earlier Alice had still been hoping to die, but now, in the flesh at least, she needed to stay alive.

No doubt it was because of Hafay that the Seventh Sisid was so well known along the coast. Was it true that Hafay was no longer beautiful? No, you couldn’t say so. The most you could say was that she had put on a bit of weight over the past few years. More precisely, even with a bit of extra flesh she still had her radiant moments. It’s just that her beauty was no longer quite so easy to see.

And to tell the truth, although Hafay’s cooking was distinctive, always making use of wild greens commonly seen in Pangcah cuisine, opinions were mixed about how the meals tasted. There was less disagreement about the drink menu. Who could say a bad word about Hafay’s brews? The only thing for the tourists to buy was millet wine or plum wine in tall colored bottles and cardboard containers. But if you asked Hafay, she’d say that’s not millet wine at all, it’s a box of chocolates. If you asked the customers at the Seventh Sisid, they would say it’s not millet wine at all, it’s monkey piss. Millet wine is supposed to be put in jugs and drunk out of the bowl that you’ve just finished eating with. How can you call it millet wine if it’s packaged up like this? The millet wine at the Seventh Sisid had a fragrant grassy sweetness, with dregs that hadn’t been completely filtered out floating in it. It went down smooth and had a kick. It was wholesome and fierce, and seemed to radiate light and heat once it got into your belly.

Besides millet wine, the Seventh Sisid had another attractive feature, its windows, or perhaps one should say its ocean views. The house was built on omah , uncultivated coastal land, out of bamboo, crape myrtle and Formosan michelia, as well as slate from the local hills. There were windows on all four sides, and from almost every window you could observe the constant waves of the Pacific from a different angle. The decor had mostly been donated by local aboriginal artists. But if you asked Hafay which artist did what, she would say, “What do you mean, ‘artist’? They were just people with nothing better to do who left these things here to pay for their meals. Artist my ass!”

Customers had carved messages all over the tabletops. There was also quite a lot of verse by third-rate poets, some of it incredibly kitschy, some of it passable, just barely, and some of it was obviously plagiarized. More idiosyncratically, each table had a plate of betel nut. If nobody chewed it, Hafay wouldn’t bother replacing it, so if you happen to pay the Seventh Sisid a visit, whatever you do: don’t try the betel nut.

Aside from such details, to most customers the space itself was nothing out of the ordinary. But somehow Hafay shuttling back and forth, her figure nicely plump, lent the place a wonderful ambience, and even the thin film of sand on the floor somehow made people feel at ease. For regulars, indulging in a drunk monologue with Hafay there to listen was almost a healing ritual. The best part about talking to Hafay was that she would never judge the sudden sadness that overcomes people after they’ve imbibed. She never got involved, but those long-lashed eyes of hers made you feel nobody could understand your private sorrow better than Hafay.

But seriously, everyone found it a little hard to believe that Hafay could keep the place going all by herself. There must be elves sneaking in at night to help her prepare the food and take care of all the chores.

Sometimes Hafay would start singing after hearing customers mumble and grumble. Strange to say, Hafay couldn’t speak Taiwanese or English, but she seemed to be able to sing songs in any language. Nobody ever asked how she had learned to sing them, because few people really remembered the songs she sang. Her voice infused people with the essence of a song. It would turn into a windblown seed: you never knew where in your heart the seed would fall, nor when it would sprout. Customers would be back in Taipei, riding on the subway, and Hafay’s voice would just start playing in their minds and drown out the subway noise. Then the other passengers would see someone look out the window, eyes welling with tears. But Hafay did not sing very often, and if someone made a request or sat at the bar and said:

“Hafay, sing us a song.”

Well, then she would reply, “Why don’t I give you a hundred bucks and you sing a song for me?” Nobody who asked Hafay for a song ever heard her sing again.

The client base of the Seventh Sisid was simple, mostly friends from the village, tourists from the local B&Bs, and students and teachers from the U of D. Hafay tried not to bother remembering customers referred by the local B&Bs, but she would give a warm welcome to passersby.