Li Ang - The Lost Garden

The Cape lilac flowers are particularly dense this year. The seemingly endless patch of white, for some reason, has instilled in me a feeling that everything will soon turn into nothing.

I picked this spot for the tree solely because only Yinghong Pavilion had a large-enough space for it; I didn’t give it much thought or consideration. Now when I look at the misty, bitter white flowers serving to contrast “yinghong” in the name of the pavilion, I have to marvel at the coincidence and how everything seems to have been predestined. White bitter flowers against shadowy red. The flowers will bloom and fall to the ground. The flowers in the water are left in the shadowy red. Isn’t everything an illusion, and won’t it all turn to nothing?

Planting the Cape lilac by Yinghong Pavilion was a purely unintentional act, and it wasn’t until just now that I finally understand the profound implication of its location. If everything in the past and in the future will turn into nothing, then won’t even the “bitterness” also be an illusion? Wouldn’t what I never managed to forget, and even planted a bitter berry tree as a reminder to myself, also be illusory and punctilious? It’s easy to see through the prosperous side of life, for, if one can be at ease with bitterness, then what else should one pursue?

But, Ayako, do not be affected by my mentality, which is a result of old age, a time when I have learned to take everything lightly. You need to remember, however, the couplet from our ancestor at the lily pond closest to Yinghong Pavilion:

In a quite little garden, startled geese soar into the sky on the wind ,

In the boundless green leaves, feathered friends frolic in shadowy red .

This is the real origin of your name. Just imagine how happy and bustling it is, with a pond filled with red water lilies serving as the backdrop for the startled geese, our feathered friends.

Speaking of bustling, I must tell you about the flame trees in the garden. Ayako, you must still remember when the garden was renovated, how I planted many flame trees in the garden because they were my favorite. I hadn’t realized that they would continue to grow and, more than a decade later, tower over everything; their trunks are now so thick only an adult can wrap his arms around them. Their leaves and branches spread into all the terraces and pavilions, press down on eaves, and take up so much space that they have become an oddity, unfit for the overall look of the garden. But I did not want to trim them and turn them into dwarf trees. In the end, I had no choice but to move them elsewhere. Now even the small hill by Authenticity Studio has only three left, but that was the only way to keep the branches from crisscrossing so much they could crowd each other out of existence.

I planted the flame trees because they were my favorites. I never expected that one day I would have to move them out of Lotus Garden. You see, Ayako, how the world can be so mutable. Perhaps the only way to live a carefree life is not to care too much about love and hate.

It was May, but there was still snow on the streets of New York that year. A muddy gray was all anyone could see — an ashen sky and melting gray snow on the roadside. The only exception was some scrawny forsythia that kept up with the season and struggled to open a few sprigs of yellow flowers.

She thought she could hear her father saying:

“The flame trees can be considered typical Taiwanese flora. On an island nation with its high temperatures, the fiery red flowering trees, with their resilience, are just like the Taiwanese, who maintain a burning red heart no matter what setbacks they encounter.”

There were sparkles of tears in the eyes of her father, who had just recovered from the long illness.

“Ayako, do you know that what I want to do most now is fill the garden with flame trees and change its name to Phoenix Garden? Wouldn’t that be more Taiwanese? But …”

In the end Father never did change the name. In New York, where spring was so late in coming, she read the letter from her father and breathed a sigh of relief for him, though she couldn’t stop herself from tearing up. Then a sudden, unusual idea dawned on her for the first time in her life.

Years ago, when Father was thinking about changing the name of the garden, in additional to personal reasons, could it also have been intended to commemorate Zhu Feng, the ancestor who made a fortune as a pirate, and whose name refers to a phoenix?

She would ask her father when she returned to Taiwan, Yinghong said to herself with a tearful smile.

But she never got the chance. Father didn’t live to see the bitter berry bloom again the following year. The doctor said he died of liver disease caused by prolonged worry and unhappiness.

After Lin Xigeng left, Yinghong suffered pain the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

The idea that abstract, mental anguish that was impossible to measure could actually be transformed into real physical torment was new to her. For nearly a week, sound sleep eluded her, replaced by chaotic dreams bordering on the nightmarish. Feeling dimly awake, she was in fact in the grip of even more terrifying sleepy memories that had to be relived.

She was floating in a vast body of water, an endless aquamarine world. Water everywhere, and no sky. Suddenly the color around her darkened; instinct told her that sharks were nearing, but she could not see them. No waves, no tides, only a dense body of water that formed a solid mass and began to tilt and roil. After a series of violent tremors, she sensed that the invisible sharks had swum off, and she was finally freed from the water.

At first everything felt the same, as she was relieved to find her body uninjured; but when she pushed down to sit up, she discovered that her hands were powerless, and that thin blood was oozing out through bite marks. Her arms, which were lying flat, were sliced open down the middle, revealing zigzagging bite marks, clearly visible long lines of wounds caused by sharks’ sharp teeth.

A further discovery showed that the sharks’ teeth had bitten through her body, cutting it into horizontal halves separated by neat, visible rows of teeth marks.

Blood seeped out slowly, and the pain was not unbearable. But the injury was so utterly eerie, beyond understanding and imagination, that it caused a terrible fright.

That was followed by an even more terrifying scene: the blue sky, which had originally merged with the body of water, had at some point undergone sudden changes. It too was sliced down the middle, separated by two colors; one a ghastly blue and the other a bloody red.

A divided sky. Her childhood’s worst fear came to mind. Father had vanished, and she woke up in the dead of the night; the bed in Lotus Garden retained no body warmth; she groped in the dark but there was no one, and she struggled to wake up. A long time later Father returned, only to lie in Flowing Pillow Pavilion for several years, virtually out of sight. After she was startled awake, her first thoughts were of Lin Xigeng, of his departure and the heartrending ache it produced.

After many sleepless nights she sank into a state of blurry wakefulness, in which she had but one wish: to hear from him. In the office and at home she waited day and night, turning down all invitations and seldom going out. Sometimes she’d wake up at night and grab the phone to see if it was working.

She held her breath and forced herself to be calm when answering the phone. At first, she feigned lethargy and indifference in how she said “hello.” After a week of that, she began picking up the phone with a measured low voice so as to sound affectionate and seductive. She wanted him to hear her enchanting voice as soon as the call went through.