Chang-Rae Lee: On Such A Full Sea

A week passed by, then nearly two. There were scattered rumors and gossip and the broader rumblings of what must be called a genuine vexation, if not anger, that echoed about the lofty ceilings of the grow facility and on the stoops of the narrow-faced row houses. In the past few seasons one heard of similar “call-aways” at other facilities, including B-Mor. Sure, some of us had been summoned from work and sequestered for a few days and then had been returned to our posts. But Reg was gone. Had his clan made noises of dissent, there might have been a swell of emotions but they all went about their jobs or studies and did not air a single word of question or complaint, which at first surprised us but soon enough was like a cold quilt thrown over our corpus, snuffing every atom of ill heat. They were magnificently silent. For naturally you then think, If his kin are this placid, well…

And you could think Fan, too, was mute on the subject, for whenever one of us would approach her to see if she knew anything, she’d simply affix her mask and disappear beneath the densely populated waters, or if out on the block, she’d raise the volume of whatever she was listening to and take an escaping tack on her scooter. She had a typical cohort of friends and acquaintances from work and the neighborhood but she receded from them after Reg disappeared, or they from her, even though there was no shunning going on, more a realization by all that Fan and Reg had come to belong together and that once unpaired, Fan should be perhaps left alone for a while. No one brought up his or her theories of what happened to him or why. You would expect the directorate of B-Mor to put out word official or otherwise of what he had done in order to stall speculation and focus our attention on some act or crime, but the remarkable thing about a silence so total is that it soon squares your attention not on the subject but on your very self. For you can’t help but interrogate your own behavior, actions, tendencies, even the stray skeins of your thoughts, and not wonder how in the course of the days you may have been close to transgressing some unspecified limit. It’s like when a toddler has a toy drum or piano and unconsciously taps away at it without a mote of annoyance from his seemingly copacetic father, right up until one random ordinary clang, which instantly dissipates the man’s patience and the keyboard ends up smashed.

Did Fan know more than what she let on? She must have known that Reg had done nothing wrong. He was an innocent, through and through, which is why she admired him. And isn’t this why we admired Fan, too, this tiny, good girl, who never crossed anyone or went against even a convention of B-Mor, much less a regulation, until the moment she did? And why, despite her present notoriety, we think of her still as one of us, one of our number, even as she left us for the open counties? Some would balk at this, they can hardly utter her name without a stony jaw, unable to forgive Fan for what she did before disappearing of her own accord as much as for the greater troubles that arose afterward. For how unnecessary all of it was. And from a certain perspective this was true. It was unnecessary. She had larger aims for sure, and it can be argued that she attained some measure of them, but why before leaving she had to poison some of the tanks is not fathomable. It makes no sense. The funny thing, the oddest thing, even for those of us who won’t eternally condemn her, is that she caused the deaths of only her own fish, the ones she so carefully raised.

Those poor sweet fish.

Everyone knows it is rough living in the open counties. In this region, where it can get both very hot and very cold, it’s especially unpleasant. Though it seems that’s most places now! Our elders will say there used to be whole seasons in between of perfectly glorious days. Now, of course, those days are few, mere intermittent glimpses of what seems to us a prehistoric world, when the air was drier and clearer and more temperate, when the scent of turned earth or wildflowers or crisp dead leaves made one think of time as a kind, calm clock, rather than a sentence.

Here in B-Mor, along the runway-straight blocks, we can’t avoid enduring the same extremes as in the open counties, but it is a blessing to note that we have numerous places to go for respite, like our indoor gymnasiums and pools, and the subterranean mall busy with shops and game parlors and eateries, where people naturally spend most of their free time. Because it’s rarely pleasant out of doors, we’ve come to depend on the atmosphere of seasonally perfumed, filtered air and the honey-hued halo lighting and the constantly updated mood-enhancing music that all together are hardly noticeable anymore but would likely cause a pandemonium were they cut off for any substantial period.

Last year, in fact, the very thing happened for several minutes because of a power plant mishap, and while we had air and backup lights, there arose in the dimness a distinct odor of cave, which was not so awful as it was alarming, for you couldn’t help but realize that we were lodged in the innards of the realm. Eventually people stopped what they were doing and looked about, their mouths half open, awaiting an announcement. None came. Suddenly some people started running, the trigger unclear, and before you knew it, everyone was racing about, toddlers desperately yanked along, the elderly panting and trying to claw through the scattershot mobs, the young and fit sprinting as if the dogs of hell were chasing them. What panic in those corridors! What knife-in-the-heart terror! But then a great wheeze spewed from the ducts, and they rattled mightily, and then the banks of soft light revived and the old familiar songs that we never quite listened to reset us to the more tranquil rhythms of our souls.

We’re no longer fit for any harsher brand of life, we admit that readily, and simply imagining ourselves existing beyond the gates is enough to induce a swampy tingle in the underarms, a gaining chill in the gut. For there’s real struggle for open counties people, for in a phrase the basic needs are met but not much else; the power is thready, constantly cycling on and off; housing is rudimentary, with shantytowns the rule; water is plentiful only during the wet seasons, and should be boiled at any time. And talking about smell! The system of sewers in the open counties (ours in B-Mor was redone as recently as ten years ago) dates from nearly two hundred years before our people arrived from New China, truly ancient times, such that after there’s a heavy rain and the wind blows from the southwest, you can pick up from our very block the sharp rot stink of human settlement, that undying herald: We are here! We are here! We are here!

We know you are there, believe us.

Maybe Charters can easily forget what it’s like out there, but we B-Mors and others in similar settlements should be aware of the possibilities. We shouldn’t take for granted the security and comfort of our neighborhoods, we shouldn’t think that always leaving our windows open and our doors unlocked means that we’re beyond an encroachment. We may believe our gates are insurmountable and that we’re armored by routines, but can’t we be touched by chance or fate, plucked up like a mouse foraging along his well-worn trail? Before you know it, you’re looking down at the last faint print of your claws in the dirt.

But hold on, you might say. On our street, once called North Milton Avenue and renamed Longevity Way by our predecessors, who saw the nearly three-kilometer run of ruler-straight road and couldn’t help but think of wondrously extended, if not eternal, life, the main infractions are spitting or littering or publicly relieving oneself, most always perpetrated by the very old and very young and those who overindulge on nights before their free-day. There hasn’t been a property theft in recent memory, and a report of a serious crime, some mugging or assault, would likely halt all work and social activity immediately, for how exceedingly rare such a thing would be, like some solar eclipse.