by Tuttle, Dan;
Their walk proceeded back off nature’s grounds,
the bound’ry punctuated by concrete.
They strolled back to the vertical compounds
of urban order’s suite blocks on repeat.
Fast after supper, Stel excused for bed
to stop depressing day from further spread.
254.
Atop her bedside nightstand sat Brocade,
compendium of river poems she liked.
She hoped to sweetly seed her dreams, blockade
subconscious’ flood nightmares that had psyched
her out, drowned her in sense she’s trivial.
By keeping with the theme of water, but
recasting it in light convivial
she hoped to break from nighttime bad dream rut.
Stel opened to the page she’d left ajar:
Behind a ribbon of the evening mist,
distills chill sky, and melody of far
off waterfalls like ten silk strings; she kissed
the cover as she closed it, calm again.
She’d not have been had she read to the end.
255.
Bent also under Mother’s influence,
that night in Fan, Ayi reached toward her tome
by light of kerosene so dim she’d squint,
the same sweet book of Xue Tao’s river poems.
In Chinese rather than translation, she
turned too to “Spring In Autumn”, very same
as verse that Stel read. Its calamity
had been cut short, ignoring couplet’s aim:
…comes to my pillow, tugging feelings and
thus keeping me awake in sorrow past
this midnight. Waterfalls where meadowlands
she’d farmed this life would turn from grassed to glassed:
this feared reality brought tears, boiled blood
each time she thought of life beyond the flood.
256.
Fluorescent flash too fast to follow flung
from ceiling slots inset above the seats,
aseptic light itself well-known among
officials seeking chairs ’neath its deceits.
Attendees filled the same ones as they had
the last time, with a single truancy:
“Forgive me colleagues, I’ve found one comrade
new place to sit so we can fluently
discuss the dam without conflicted views.”
Chair motioned to the seat where earlier
had sat Environment. “We’re overdue
for truth, yet his accounts seemed pearlier
than possible for flood of such a size.
His lakeside holdings left him compromised.”
257.
Twelve well-disguised quick surveys of the room
showed twenty-four dilated pupils’ fear
as brains behind each dreaded Chair’d exhume
his own portfolio as racketeer—
for though not all had holdings that would count
as patently corrupt, they knew the game
that let the higher-ups create accounts
to bring the lower-downs to public shame.
The Chair continued, “All your arguments
for needing electricity are strong:
there’s finite places with bizarre blueprint
for hydro at this scale so those hour-long
and longer brownouts go away. We need
more raw power, this I know, so let’s proceed.”
258.
Two junior-most betrayed allegiance when
they cheered as if attending NBA
and watching Yao Ming slam dunk. Councilmen
with more experience held tongue and stayed.
Frivolity in public – let alone
in Party meeting dictating the fate
of million peasants – wasn’t quite condoned
and here could thoroughly incriminate
offending parties. Men stilled once seeing
the equilibrium in room they’d spoiled.
The gracious Chair pretended there’d not been
a breach, continuing the speech: “We’ve toiled
to craft a better life for folks in town,
distributing the social costs around.
259.
In normal times for normal problems, this
apportioning’s the best way to proceed.
With bigger questions, our shortsightedness
can interfere if unaccompanied
by patient, pregnant, perspicacious pause
to ask ourselves if act for action’s sake
fulfills our obligations – every clause! –
to serve our boss and brethren. Each mistake
at infrastructure’s scale can’t be withdrawn,
they’re irreversible. So any ‘yes’
creates one future, leaving ten foregone.
Responsibilities aren’t dispossessed.
So in right company (he gestured at
the empty chair) let’s be good technocrats
260.
and comb through all the details of the choice.”
He ordered shuffled papers at his hands,
arranging into little stacks by voice
he’d seek for counsel. “Ministry of Lands,
you stated earlier the perils floods
continue posing to our cities, and
suggested dam could best distribute mud
and silt to suit a settlement build plan.
In parallel, math shows that dredging out
that silt accumulating on dam’s wall
incurs recurring costs. Are those about
the same as what we’d budget out to haul
the sandbags called for in emergencies
when floods are coming?” “Cash divergence these
261.
two options have is minimal. Of course,
to take a mitigation mindset curbs
prevention in the long term, since resource
then follows crisis places it perturbs.
Respectfully, I’d recommend a view
toward longer-term prevention, with the dam,
acknowledging the choice is up to you
and subject to competing hard demands.”
The Chairman nodded, shifted topmost stack
of papers lower down and looked at next.
“Security, we know you’re crackerjack
at making sure decisions that have vexed
the masses don’t cause revolutions. Mum,
preserving public equilibrium,
262.
you ease decision-making in this room,
for which we thank you. Order’s paramount.”
Whenever PSB came up, a gloom
descended on some faces. Their account
of that department was not unlike hens
suspiciously regarding costumed wolf
that paces just beyond securing pens,
disguising noxious hunger ’neath lamb’s wools.
Another stack of papers shifted down,
and Chairman turned to Sci-Tech to explain
assessment asked for, detailing what drowned
grassed hectarage would do to air and rain.
“Combustion in industrial process
creates airborne acidity, smokes stress
263.
ionic bindings hydrogen pursues—”
“No need to wade through technicalities.”
“Of course, Chair, beg your pardon. Air infused
with this discharge won’t cause fatalities.”
Supporters ’round the room sighed with relief,
each knowing that approval’d likely stall
should scientists conclude with strong belief
that dam would cause more acid rain to fall.
“There is, of course, a second type of harm,”
overtly prompted Chair, “so please go on.”
“Indeed. Perhaps the c
ause for more alarm
is way decomposition’s undergone
aquatically in absence of—” “The gist!”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Methane’s what we missed.”
264.
The Chair’s Socratic style too challenged to
continue given time pressures, he said,
“Like many of you, comrades, I pursued
a PhD. I studied watersheds.
Decomposition anaerobically
of plant material will loose a gas
much worse than CO2. Our probity
demands we calculate how much this mass
of methane impacts our ability
to honor Paris’ Agreement signed
to law by President. Agility
is limited in governance. Confined
by that, state’s aegis isn’t infinite:
we’re duty-bound to act within state’s writ.
265.
Yet, independently of that, we’ve failed.
We’ve failed to zoom in past our macro views:
debates have been incredibly detailed
on large-scale consequence, from rains to coups.
I scheduled us this meeting after break
Mid-Autumn Festival would give us all
so I could see myself the place the lake
would flood if we move forward. What befalls
these people living in that basin? We’ve
the power now to displace our uncles who
themselves once shouldered revolution, heaved
outdated feudal China into new,
more modern times. They fought so we could live
these better lives. Is this what we then give
266.
as payment? This displacement? Honor past
and present, future with an equal weight
to build a China we’ll be sure outlasts
the disagreements time will procreate.”
He paused to let the silence emphasize
his point, and knew his words would make them think
of aunts and uncles, mothers, fathers, wives,
and husbands, cousins, friends, all social links
they and their families had to rougher times
when cataclysms crashed each decade’s dreams.
“Recall our relatives who spent their primes
constructing China, building this regime
that’s brought us order, growth, stability.
Have not they earned old age tranquility
267.
to live out days on farms they’ve tilled since we
officials in this room could barely crawl?
To take a million mostly elderly
and force them anywhere would cast a pall
of loss across the venture, turning folks
against us during times we’re doing fine.
It takes a crisis nationwide to coax
the people to support an act maligned
against their ancestors. We’re not there yet.
I won’t approve the dam. I know we need
more electricity. For that, I’ll set
Sci-Tech, Finance, and Industry to lead
the search for better power source that won’t jilt
our forefathers. Dismissed!” And so was guilt.
268.
Decision echoed in his head. The room
cleared out at his command. In emptiness
a voice spoke up, though he knew not of whom.
His eyebags showed him under plenty stress,
enough, perhaps, to hear things. His face blanched.
“Chirr after chirr, as if in unison
though each one stands alone on its own branch,”
the words familiar as if used in one
close memory – oh, what could it be? – that tone
was muffled, feminine, and foreign. Wait!
Of course! It was in English. Wife had shown
their homestay daughter verse she would restate,
aloud through wall at night he’d hear her say
the poems aloud, recited like one prays.
269.
Satori shocked his senses, sparked surprise
as suddenly he thought back through debate
with comrades in the room, thought improvised.
But no… subconsciously threads did predate
this conversation and the tack he took.
And one by one those threads’ loose ends frayed out
displaying selves in places overlooked:
pork price ask came from Stella’s probing snout
bewildered by this meat she didn’t know
back home; compassion’s plea for elderly
was sown from story of Stel’s friend’s plateau
collapsing when they’d shifted shelter free
from Middle Eastern or’gin to a place
where foreignness reset earned social grace,
270.
and seeing parents’ dignity so wane;
the probing questions on the Sanxingdui
arose when he found way to entertain
the kids on ride home, so he planned swing they
would make to a museum to see preserved
these artifacts displaying where they’re from.
He’d never recognized these small things swerved
the ways that he’d then turn around to plumb
his colleagues, test their reasoning. Mere kid
approaching life with curiosity,
agendaless herself had put on skids
some trillion yuan at full velocity
toward terraforming turf. Child’s words reversed
so deftly who would, wouldn’t be, submersed.
CHAPTER 14
271.
That night Stel slept perturbed again by dream
in which the flood swept her to aqua brine.
This version was more nightmarish extreme,
as she adream lived as a Frankenstein:
imagined psyche lived in different shape
amalgamating what she thought Abu
looked like with her own body. The seascape
subsumed shared frame and sank them into blue.
They quarreled such that by time she awoke
who’d domicile there was never solved.
Of course, dreamed mix would not directly yoke
reality, so in sunlight dissolved.
Long days stretch longer when what intervenes
is not sleep’s rest so much as replayed scenes.
272.
Perturbed Stel lived next day two ways, at once.
She lived it easily, as people do,
in thoughtless movements through irrelevance.
She also lived it watching self for clues,
in metacognitive self-critic mode,
the one employed when conscious of one’s ways
and seeking further data. It bestowed
examples interactions overstay
their welcome, sponging up resulting mood.
Some whipsnap words from nettled teacher slipped
into her morning psyche; they’d preclude
participation when friends tried conscript
her into lunchtime games. Rigidity
of self-inspection blanched the day of glee.
273.
“Where do I land,” Stel wondered, “on Ai’s line
between intentions true to self and those
made by and for society?” Entwined
two selves still lingered from seen image dozed.
Her vulnerability to influence
of dream did disempow’r to nth degree.
She sought to snap out of continuous
autoptic scrutiny. “It’s new to me—
and haunting. Let’s dispel this mental haze
with Ab once and for all, since it’s his feud
that got under my skin these past few days.”
Come homework time she barged in, thoug
h ’twas rude.
From scholar’s fortress he prepped to recite
books’ memorized subsections through the night.
274.
“Abu, we’ve gotta talk. You’ve known me for
the longest time of anyone. You’ve seen
the me I was when littler.” He pored
through book with fervor of mujahideen,
without regarding entrant guest’s request
he disengage. In doorway statuesque,
Stel stood distressed with shock of heart abscessed.
Myopically, Abu kept eyes to desk
and shut them time to time as lips retraced
the sonic foils of incantations writ
in lifeless Chinese text, the savored taste
of memorizing, sweeter bit by bit,
of words that left his mouth addictively
cued dopamine feedback predictively.
275.
“Ab. Really. Over here.” He snapped from plane
collapsing colorful dimensions of
the lived experience to dull, contained
pursuit of marks. To Ab, naught stood above.
“What’s up?” “I’m still upset about our fight.”
“Why? You have your way, I have mine. I asked
for space.” “What if I want to reunite?”
“I’m not convinced you ever fully grasped
exactly what I’m doing here. If you
want social time, go get it. Millions wait
for English buddies.” “No…” “But me, my tru-
est colors show at desk, on tests, on straight-
and-narrow climb up out of pit of birth.”
Such path would sacrifice once-moving mirth.
276.
Since finding him in Gumi’s class, he’d been
lead rider in race peloton toward fate:
she’d followed him when he sets sights to win
the scholarship above all their classmates.
Perhaps they’d better balance earlier
before their choices held much consequence,
when escapades and quests seemed pearlier,
and so much so that play was common sense.
Stel wondered how she’d get by if he weren’t
in pole position for decisions faced,
blew her one way. She’d drafted close and learnt
she needed separation from the pace.
“Recall the dragonfly, Stel. You envied
its windward flight. So why not commend me?”
277.
Enough. Enough! She tried. She felt absolved,
if scared. In own room she distracted with
a ritual in which she laid, dissolved
into a cuddle puddle with BLING, smith
of her first maturation years ago.
She played fond film reels of the hijinks they
enjoyed together, frozen mind’s tableaux
of time they’d since outgrown. Outgrown? Betrayed?
