Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

There were no brain scans or tests ordered for Gordon at the clinic, for in B-Mor aging is aging and there’s nothing to be done about it, even when people are stricken well before their time. That’s fine, we know the score. And we know, too, that because of the composition and character of our households those in need will be clothed and fed, washed and groomed, and generally upheld as deserving of our ministrations. Yes, times have changed and demonstrations of filial attention have no doubt diminished in frequency and quality, but it’s still practiced, still genuinely unconditional, being ingrained into our basic strands. But after Charter demand for our goods suddenly dropped, and the entire community fell into a state of anxiety, we seemed to see less of Gordon around the household, and then when we did, we began to notice the first of those telltale signs.

We recall getting up to fetch a drink in the middle of the night and hearing the water running in the far hall bathroom. No matter how often we remind them, the younger children will often neglect to jiggle the flush handle and turn off the light, and when we went to fix it, we saw instead through the ajar door that Gordon was at the basin, the faucet running, pulling on one of his front teeth with his fingers. His expression was not one of distress or pain but instead a kind of dulled regard, his eyes staring at the fellow in the mirror as though his were a familiar but meaningless face, a random person he’d seen before at the park. There was an ugly color to his lip and some bloody spittle trickling down his fingers, and with an off-key grunt, he tugged and the tooth came free, root and all. We would have said something then, asked him if he was all right, but he saw he was being watched and shut the door.

At the morning meal he was there as usual beside his wife eating a cob of leftover corn and although it was glaring that one of his canines was missing and his lip was bulged, no one mentioned it. He worked slowly through the cob, if favoring one side of his mouth, and when everyone was done and idly chatting and picking at their gums with toothpicks, Gordon did the same but remained ensnared in the silence that was steadily webbing his mind.

About a week later, in the late afternoon, we found him in the backyard of the row house. He was sitting on his rear in the grass; apparently he’d fallen. He was lightly bucking himself forward, then waiting, then bucking again, as if that might somehow help him up, and the thought occurred that he had momentarily forgotten how to go about getting back on his feet. He wasn’t in the least frantic or distressed. And for a few long seconds we let him keep trying, despite the fact that he would obviously not succeed, and not because we thought he would eventually figure out a better way. He was stuck in a rut of wrong thinking, or no thinking, whatever you wish to call it, and was never going to break out.

We lifted him up — he was as light as a child — and brushed the dirt off his cotton trousers, which hung loosely about his hips. With a stammer, he thanked us, patting us on the cheek like we were children, when we noticed that the back of his hand showed a pattern of perfectly round burns, as if a lit cigarette had been pressed against it. The wounds were smooth and reddish and just now beginning to heal.

What happened here, venerable cousin? we said, clutching his narrow wrist.

What? he mumbled, suddenly very confused. He thought we were asking about his having been on the ground.

We nodded to his hand.

He pulled it back. For a second his eyes flashed. And then they were distant, his mouth pinching up, his face flushed with bitter shame. He huffed and bit his lower lip, suppressing a cry. He didn’t say anything else and he seemed stuck in place so we pointed him toward the house, watching as he shuffled inside in his poky, inching way.

Who could do this? Could it be his seemingly too-contented wife, or the son who was always too quiet, or another cousin, whom we saw coming up with Gordon from the basement the other day for no apparent reason? And for goodness sakes, why? Good Cousin Gordon had never been mean or cruel to any of us. He did not owe money. He had not crossed or let anyone down. By every measure, he was harmless, a complete innocent, a fellow who should rightly live out his waning days free of untoward attention or circumstance; and yet here he was, ill equipped to defend himself or even to understand what was going on, his mind likely growing ever more bewildered by the assaults, retracting into its muddied depths. And what disturbs one most is the idea that in a densely inhabited household, one in which he had resided nearly all his life with a sense of sanctuary and succor, he now felt utterly alone.

Perhaps the rest of us, too, are experiencing a similar feeling. Do we not pause the slightest bit as we pass one another in the hall or on the stairs, checking each other’s eyes? Do we not scuttle a bit more quickly into our beds at night? Do we not brace ourselves and listen, when the house is silent, for the squelched bleat of an old man’s cry? We wait and wait but somehow it never comes.

Then tomorrow, or some other day, in a moment that catches us by surprise, the poor fellow will limp down the front stoop in his shower slippers, his big toe gnarly and black from being smashed. And a startling thing happens, on having to see this kind of thing once again. We get a quickening in the gut, a vestigial node glows hot behind the eyes. And though we betray nothing, we’re suddenly enraged, our fury hurtling and bounding but no longer for the person or persons responsible, or even for ourselves, but finally, at the pitiable fellow himself. We can understand better now: how when your hand on his neck means to comfort, when it hopes to assure, its grip only kind, can another impetus breathlessly arise, a strangely related volition that craves witness of the most wretched of sights, the just-crushed spirit.

We are the sinister and the virtuous and most everything in between, and we know too well that in their visitations the fates appear to pay us scant attention. One might ask our good Cousin Gordon how he thinks of his current affairs. Or in a certain frame of mind, perhaps Quig would offer some thoughts on the wayward procession of his life. Or if we were put on the spot to take a philosophical stand, we might well decide to no longer demur and full-throatedly say, We do welcome our turn.

That it may never come only prepares us more.

And things can change. We don’t fret so much, despite what is occurring. Instead of anxiety we have discovered, in the face of alarm, a burgeoning hope. Hope that if our livelihood dwindles we will learn to do something else. That we can remake another place. That we have one another and always will. And in certain rare moments, we think, we feel as free as Fan.

This may sound strange, given where we last left her, barely delivered from the most vile of clutches. But she was free, wasn’t she, and maybe well before she left us? For we must now realize how even in the confines of the tanks, Fan had begun to understand the true measure of her world.

Of her control, however, there is a different story. That night in Mister Leo’s house she was terrified, as anyone would be, and we shudder to consider not just what would have happened right then but on subsequent nights, and for a lengthy, miserable epoch. We would like to think that we or our loved ones or especially Fan would have somehow repelled the assault and immediately ended any further terror; but then certain cruelties have a way of engendering compliance, which only feeds the hideousness, the sequence cycling on. Poor Gordon knows this, as no doubt did the girls on Mala’s viewer, and the reality is that Fan might have had to know it, too, for the rest of her days.