Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Yet it was not simply the limits of the room but also their own order that had formed them, the expressions of which Fan could see played out on the wall. For there was now nothing that could happen to them, no new experiences whatsoever save their routine, and aside from the more plain, commemorative images that appeared whenever a new girl entered their realm, the scenes portrayed in certain detail the fantastical alternative lives of each: picture tales of the broods of children One and Two bore (and even those they sadly had to bury, a pair from a sleeping sickness and one, of all things, by a fall from a tree), or of the dazzling acting career of Four, who starred in an imagined long-running program about women cattle ranchers in Argentina, or the unsung missions of Three, who brought much needed basic dentistry to counties children by opening a string of spotlessly clean free clinics. And if the trajectories of these seven interlacing mangas were variously modest, heroic, unlikely, they were also thoroughly voluble and peculiar and dense enough in their particulars that after hours of study Fan herself began to feel that it all must have transpired. And she supposed that in a manner it had, and with enough vigor that their yearnings were sated.

Naturally, they began pushing for Fan to reveal what “happens” to her. Six was excited to begin drawing it out, the coloring of Fan’s arrival and attendant documentation already completed. They kept clamoring: We want to know where you go! Finally, Fan said she had some ideas but that they were not yet fully formed. This was half true; the distant future indeed was blank, but Fan’s sighting of the near was as concrete as anyone’s, we B-Mors and now others know this well, she was as clear-eyed as the fortune-card readers in our malls purport to be. A self-visualizer, as they say, one who engenders the path on which she’ll tread by dint of her pure focus, her unwavering belief. And so she would have had to describe how she led them out of this room, out of this house, perhaps even through the secured gates of the village altogether; but of course she did not. Who could know how they might react? Who could anticipate the shape of their fascination, its hot gleam or trembling?

She didn’t want to incite anything like a rebellion. She figured any direct push against Miss Cathy would be futile, given their utter acclimation to their lot and devotion to her. Miss Cathy was not their antagonist. There was no antagonist per se, not even Mister Leo, who for them was the most distant star in the most distant galaxy, undying yet irradiant. She had still not revealed that he was a bare fraction of his former self, again afraid of the psychic consequences. Instead, she began to tell them about Reg, of her love for him — hiding her true age, at least from them, seemed no longer necessary — and that he had disappeared, and how she was still, in fact, on her journey to find him.

The information unsettled them, with One almost unable to comprehend the idea that he was not a story boy; she kept asking what happened to him next. Fan responded by asking Six to sketch him out.

You mean right now? Six said.

Only if you want to.

Sure! Six said. She got right to work, starting with a panel of Fan on the road with a ghostly beanpole of a boy floating out on the horizon. The Girls were instantly enamored of his cheery face, his puffy, imperfect Afro.

He’s as cute as a play doll! one of the girls cried.

He is a play doll, but tall!

He looks so kind and sweet!

He is kind and sweet, Fan said, with enough pause in her voice that the Girls magnetically clustered about her, their warm breath slightly tangy from the dried fruits they constantly snacked on.

Tell us more!

Fan did, saying how Reg did not enjoy being alone, and how he would hold her hand through an entire evening program, whether it was scary or not. How he never hesitated to walk right through the middle of a puddle.

He’s perfect! Two said, to which One responded by saying she thought him perfect, too.

What have you learned of his whereabouts? Three asked. Anything?

She shook her head.

No! Nothing?

She shook her head again, causing a pall to shade the Girls’ faces. And with one voice they groaned, keyed in purest sorrow.

Please don’t worry, sisters, Fan said. I will find him.

But how?

Fan said: Bo Liwei.

Who?

She told them more, and they were doubly astounded. A brother? And one who lived in this Charter or one nearby? Three said that if he was a true Charter he might be powerful or have powerful friends, and so could at least learn something of Reg.

It’s what I must hope, Fan said.

Right away Six quickly drew the scenes of Fan approaching Liwei, his face like hers but squarer-jawed, leaner, heartbreak in his eyes. How agonizing! How wistful and ironic! It was almost unbearable to see, even in the faint pencil, Six able to render the moments with so much saturated longing that Fan herself felt something like a shallows in her chest. It was then that the Girls realized what they must do: help Fan. And to help her, they agreed, meant that she must leave them. Four and Five wanted her to be away for just a short while, but then return. One and Two unhelpfully suggested she wait a few months, as they had gotten into their heads that it was already winter. Seven, with surprising astuteness, asked if Fan still had a pair of her own outdoor shoes. Six was mum as usual, already back at the wall, doodling. Finally, Three made a decree: Fan must depart as soon as possible, as there was no more time to waste.

The funny thing about the tale of Fan is that much of what happened to her happened to her. She showed plenty of her own volition, really more than any of us could ever dream up, and yet at the same time her tale demonstrates how those who met her often took it upon themselves to help her, without really any hesitation. Without always a ready self-interest. Every once in a while there are figures who draw such attention, even when they aren’t especially charismatic, or visionary, or subtly, cleverly aggressive in insinuating an agenda into the larger imagination. For some reason, we want to see them succeed. We want them to flourish, even if that flourishing is something we’ll never personally witness. They draw our energies so steadily and thoroughly that only toward the finish of events can we recognize the extent of our exertions, and how those exertions in sum might have taken the form of a movement.

We have noted the sundry demonstrations such as the chattering commentary on the web boards, snide and earnest and critical, if rarely outraged; the strange acting out at the ponds as well as other, more disquieting, expressions, as seen in the plight of sorry Cousin Gordon; or the most recent sign, which is that a notable number of people are shaving their heads, men and women alike, some old and even a few children.

That’s right. Bald heads are popping up here and there at the mall and in the facilities and maybe even at your own morning meal, when daylight enters at such an angle that the reflection off the clean-shorn pate momentarily casts upon the usually dimmed, cheerless room an illumination that seems generated from within, this lustrous fire. You pause at every sighting, that paleness bobbing across the street, or leaned over the rail of the catwalk above the grow beds, and if you’re close enough, you can’t help but take an extra-long look at the particular scalp and try to read the sheen and textures of that most vulnerable-looking skin, for a clue to why this person has done this to himself. Do they have something in common? Are they nubbier than normal or creased in a similar but distinctive way? Do they appear just that bit transparent so that you’re almost believing you can see the workings of their recusant thoughts? And does it seem that the faces of these people are more unyielding than what the rest of us offer to one another, which is not exactly warmth but rather what you expect in the wordless company of an old friend or cousin, that easy nonchalance?