Li Ang: The Lost Garden

“The local gentry and elders all think you ought to donate Lotus Garden to the government, which would take over its management. You really needn’t go through so much trouble to set up a foundation. It doesn’t seem legitimate, and the garden doesn’t have what it deserves. That’s what they said.”

Yinghong laughed softly.

“How could I give my father’s garden to a regime that had persecuted him?” She paused and continued in a firm voice:

“I can’t.”

“That’s all in the distant past. What’s the point of bringing it up again?” Lin said with a rare tenderness in his voice.

“Yes, it’s all in the past. That’s why I want this garden to belong to Taiwan, to the twenty million Taiwanese, not to any government that oppresses its people.”

Lin went quiet, and they sat in silence as they ate. It was a while before he began again with some hesitation:

“Quite a few people are also against your decision to include Zhu Feng in the clan history, saying that, no matter what, he was a pirate and did not deserve the amount of effort and money that you’ve spent in research and investigation.”

She gazed at him with a look of surprise.

“But the facts show that he was indeed our ancestor. We can’t disown him simply because he was a pirate, can we?”

“That’s not the reason for their objection. Some families in the Zhu branch openly refuse to accept the family record you created.” He continued with his usual willful directness, “I think they’re afraid of Zhu Feng’s wife, the woman who swore a vicious oath of revenge.”

He reminded her:

“Don’t you remember the malicious vow that people still talk about?”

She shook her head.

“Didn’t the woman swear that whoever dares to include Zhu Feng in the family record will bring ruination to the Zhu clan?”

She looked at him calmly.

“Don’t tell me even you’re afraid.”

He was quiet; a shy look that had long been absent flashed in his eyes briefly. It disappeared almost immediately, but in that instant Yinghong experienced a vague feeling that it hadn’t been all that many years since she met him.

She looked at him silently. He hadn’t changed much, except that he’d put on a bit of weight; and yet there was something different about his expression. Gone were the poise and expansiveness; he now seemed more grounded, with more gloom showing between his brows. No longer coming across as insecure and fidgety, he seemed somewhat aloof but sure of himself, quite composed; gone also was the momentary apprehension and shyness that occasionally flashed in his eyes.

They finished their dinner in silence. Afterward, she turned on all the lights in the garden, instantaneously flooding the darkness in the open space with a brilliant glow unique to the human world. Bathed in the light, the soaring eaves and winding loggias gained a patina of ancient warmth, like a familiar beacon in the Zhu family bloodline. Time and place seemed to have changed, replaced by a backdrop that framed famous ghost stories, in which a night traveler traversed boundless space in the dark and a splendid, well-lit manor suddenly rose up before him. He was not unsuspecting, but the cozy light was a lure for one’s most primitive need for home. It was so nice and welcoming, he couldn’t help but walk right into it even if it was a somatic trap, which gave the scene a lasting, dreamy sentiment that would die only with death, the ultimate romantic splendor that one would be willing to die for.

As if mesmerized, they walked around the garden, with Yinghong leading the way most of the time, while Lin walked along at a leisurely pace. Once he insisted on a direction of his choice, only to find himself trapped amid a pile of rocks. Unable to continue, he had to circle back to where he had been and hurried to catch up with Yinghong, who had stopped to wait for him.

“I keep getting lost in this garden when I walk alone,” he grumbled.

After a few swift turns along stone paths, she quickly cut across the garden, where she opened the north-facing moon gate and arrived at the hill. Cassia trees grew big and tall, with abundant branches laden with thin, pointed leaves that did not block out the watery moonlight, no matter how densely they grew.

“This was where I let down my guard and fell for you years ago,” he joked as he pointed to the grove of cassia trees.

She did not respond, so they continued down the path flanked by cassia trees and walked slowly to the top of the hill, where she finally spoke with some hesitation:

“I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t proposed to me.”

Now it was his turn to stay quiet.

After a few moment of silence, he asked gently:

“Do you regret donating the garden? In the future you can’t come back to live here, you know.”

She nodded and then shook her head.

“It’s not that I don’t regret it, it’s that I can’t. Otherwise, what would happen to this garden when I’m no longer Mrs. Lin?”

He obviously knew what she was getting at, but changed the subject anyway:

“Otherwise, I’d raze it to build an apartment complex when the price was right?”

She smiled mirthlessly. Before returning to Lotus Garden, she’d heard he had a new woman, which was only one of many similar incidents in their marriage. A sudden rage rose up, and she said pointedly:

“The garden will at least remain intact when I donate it as a historical site for the public to visit.”

He took her into his arms.

“So you’re worried, silly girl,” he said, holding her tight.

“I thought you wouldn’t care no matter what I did, because this garden was all you wanted.”

Closing her eyes, she felt herself stiffen. When was the last time he’d held her like that? Too long, so long she couldn’t even recall. He bent down to kiss her gently, his overpowering embrace forcing her to lower herself to the ground. Sensing his real desire, she began to respond slowly.

Under the light from newly installed lamps along the path, she saw that the ground was covered in a layer of tiny, fuzzy cassia flowers, each no bigger than a mung bean, but together forming a dark yellow carpet.

He undressed and caressed her, boasting as he readied himself:

“Remember the last time we were here and I said it was as if your great-great-great-grandmother, the pirate’s wife, were watching us?”

She looked up at him. Under the light from mercury lamps, the green cassia leaves were dotted with clusters of yellow flowers, as if to fill up the spaces between them; the lush trees with their abundant branches created enough shade to blot out most of the moonlit sky. Suddenly a cold wind blew over, flitting across the tips of the leaves and sending a loud roar over their heads. The leaves fluttered in the wind, and with help from the wind gusts, turned themselves into waves that pushed and crashed into each other; the slender blades offering crevices for the wind to whip through, creating a seemingly unending whiz as they turned in the gust, sprinkling the sky with dots of tiny yellow flowers.

Surprised that a gust of wind could produce such an impressive sight, they stopped what they were doing; he resumed his movements only when the wind had died down. But at that instant, she realized that the man on top of her had gone soft.

Uneasily he tried again and again, but nothing happened. They were both unnerved by the new development, when an idea came to her.

It was the vow, from two hundred years before, that the clan would come to ruin in the hands of whoever dared to include Zhu Feng in the family chronicle. She was the one who donated Lotus Garden, which was a different form of ruination. She sat up, too agitated to worry about Lin, who continued to try in his frustration. Maybe she would never have another child by him, she said to herself. An urgent desire rose inside her; she wanted to see the garden one more time, for otherwise, it might vanish before her eyes, erasing everything that had happened and everything that she had owned.