Seid Quan strolls down Pender Street in Chinatown. The shopkeepers nod to him, although these are not the men with whom he played mah-jong or drank whisky. It is their sons now, young men in nice cars, young men whose families live in South Cambie, young men whose homes have a view of the downtown core, where tall buildings blot out Chinatown. He wonders what they pay in property tax, whether their fathers died in nursing homes.
He is now at the corner of Pender and Main. He stops and gazes at the large herbalist’s store that used to be his barbershop. It is not so different, really; the exterior is the same red brick, and the same single-room apartment hotel is on the second and third floors. The old women still hustle up the street, sharp eyes examining the dried currants and beans as they walk by. The herbalist, a middle-aged hustler from Hong Kong, looks up briefly at Seid Quan and looks away again. I suppose I am too old to even really be seen anymore.
These streets are so familiar to him; his feet navigate every bump and turn automatically. He dreams of his beginnings here: his first coffee, his first meal, his first suit. He remembers the day when he and Pon Man explored the city together, the day when it seemed possible that Seid Quan could know his son. They strolled in Stanley Park, took pictures to send to Shew Lin. They posed for each other at the seawall, Pon Man laughing at his father’s stiffness.
“No, Father, you look old. Move your head. Yes, Father, just like that.”
When it was Seid Quan’s turn, he looked through the viewfinder and was surprised that his son needed no direction, that his body knew just what the camera wanted. Seid Quan waved his hand to tell Pon Man not to move and snapped, knowing that this was a perfect shot.
They bought ice cream at English Bay (rum raisin for Seid Quan, mint chocolate chip for Pon Man) and sat on a bench together, quietly watching ladies and their dogs, young couples with their arms around each other. Seid Quan felt fortified, strong in his conviction to make his son love him and confident of his progress. They would buy a house, just in time for Shew Lin to come and decorate. Pon Man would take over the barbershop, maybe expand enough for a decent pension and to support his parents. There would be a daughter-in-law, grandsons galore and fresh meat and vegetables to be had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Seid Quan would work in his study, practising calligraphy and listening to opera. No more cafés, no more one-room apartments, no more fourteen-hour days with hands immersed in other men’s hair.
Seid Quan smiles, slows down slightly as he walks north on Pender. Somehow, as he walks through the late afternoon light, he cannot remember the bad parts, the times when he was eaten up by loneliness, or the times he thought he might die if he could not see his wife one more time. He sees only the light reflecting off the tall houses, the pigeons pecking at the remains of steamed buns littered over the ground. He thinks he would like to embrace his son just once.
He comes to and finds himself sitting on a bench in a small grassy spot just off Gore. A bus rattles past, and his right knee is sore. He watches the sun dip past the roofs of the shops, feels the evening breeze push through the grasses that graze his ankles. An old man, perhaps even as old as Seid Quan himself, walks across the street, guided by a young woman in jeans and sneakers. In his right hand, he carries a cane, although his hands shake so much, Seid Quan wonders why he bothers. As he totters closer, he looks up at the trees and smiles. Seid Quan realizes he has seen that smile before.
“Lim,” he whispers. He holds out his hand, grabs the edge of the young woman’s sleeve. She turns, frowning.
“Lim, is that you?” The old man raises his bushy white eyebrows, peers at Seid Quan’s brown face. He starts to cough.
The young woman leans over. “I’m afraid he doesn’t know his name anymore. Are you one of Uncle Lim’s old friends?”
“Yes, yes.” Seid Quan stands up straight, holds one of Lim’s spotted hands in both of his. “Old friends, from the village. You are one of his relatives?”
She smiles. “No. I volunteer at the nursing home just up the street. Uncle Lim and I are good friends, aren’t we?” Lim leans his head against her shoulder.
Seid Quan fishes in his pockets and pulls out a handful of bills. “Please, take these. In case Lim needs something extra. Maybe you could buy him new slippers. Take it.” He shoves the money into her hand. “We were good friends once.”
“I really shouldn’t take this, but thank you. You should come visit. Uncle Lim likes the company.”
Seid Quan watches them walk up the street, stares at Lim’s hunched back and skinny legs. Sammy will look like that girl when she grows older, he thinks, then remembers that none of his granddaughters would ever hold his arm as they walked down the street together. He tries to think of the last time he had a conversation with any of them, the last time he made eye contact. Nothing.
He knows he must move eventually, return to the house where his daughter-in-law stares at a blank television, but instead he stands in the slowly emptying street, reasoning that no one will miss him. When it is so cold that he feels the familiar stiffness in his joints, he leaves, but not before.
When Min Lai asks him if he would like to move to Toronto to live with her, he understands that it isn’t really a question. There is nothing else to do. His son is dead. He is too old to live alone. There is nowhere else to go. His daughter says that, one day, he might come back to Vancouver, after Siu Sang pulls herself together, after things settle down. He wonders what that means.
His daughter and granddaughters pack all his necessary clothes and books and leave him to deal with his papers. He rifles through the top drawer of his dresser, wondering how much he’ll need, knowing, of course, that policemen don’t stop Chinese men on the street anymore and demand to see their documentation, but thinking that maybe he should bring it all anyway.
“Look at me, thinking like an immigrant,” he says to himself.
He ignores the crate in the closet, packed full of his secrets. He briefly considers throwing it out, or burning it, but immediately decides he cannot. He wonders if he will feel lighter when the crate is thousands of miles away.
He leaves almost all of his official papers, neatly bound by rubber bands, folded up into airmail envelopes and stuffed into an old cigarette tin, and takes only his citizenship card and passport. His personal things, though, require more consideration.
On the back of an old takeout menu, he finds an inventory list, written quickly in pencil.
Straight-edged razors, box of 100
Barber’s scissors, 4 sets
3 barber’s chairs
4 stools on casters
Cash register, used
17 combs
3 jars of disinfectant
4-quart jar of shaving cream
7 tins of hair wax
Aftershave, variety of brands
He thinks of how a man can identify with his work, can say to people he meets, “I am a dentist,” and know that it’s complete and true. “I am a barber,” he says to himself, trying to remember what it felt like. He feels nothing, thinks that perhaps I am lonely or I am arthritic might be closer to the truth. He leaves the list behind too.
He wakes up at four the next morning, unable to sleep even though his flight does not leave until the evening. He knows without looking that his one small suitcase is downstairs by the front door, that all he has to do is put in his dentures and get dressed. Really, what could be easier? Perhaps he will grow to love Toronto as he grew to love Vancouver. And maybe, this time, it won’t take so long.
If someone were to ask Seid Quan about his dreams, he would say that he doesn’t have them. All his life, when he woke up in the morning, a pleasant blackness blanketed the events of the night. He went through his days—working, reading, eating—unburdened.
Tonight, he is on an airplane for the first time, hurtling through the darkness. He sits upright, staring at the small reading light above his seat. Min Lai sits beside him, her mouth slightly open as she sleeps. She shifts in her seat, draws the thin
airline blanket to her chin. The cabin is quiet (human noise dwarfed by the constant roar of the engine, the hiss of stale air circulating through vents) and his eyes close.
He runs his hands through Pon Man’s hair, through the thick tuft at the top, the wispy hairs at the base of his neck. Seid Quan cannot see his son’s face, only the black hair, his thin shoulders. He is unsure whether this is the young Pon Man, the small fifteen-year-old boy, or the older, sick Pon Man, the one who lost so much weight he was like a heron, all joints and bones. He decides that it doesn’t much matter; as long as it truly is his son, he is happy.
As he trims the hair around the ears, he listens for the sounds of Pon Man’s breathing. He can hear the snip of the scissors, even the plop of the damp hair when it hits the floor. But Pon Man remains perfectly still.
It is only now that Seid Quan realizes he is cutting the hair of a dead man; worse, his dead son. But he finds he cannot stop, and he goes on, his hands shaking as the hair drops on his wrists, sticks to his sleeves.
He hears Shew Lin. “It’s over now. You can stop.”
He looks for her but cannot see her. How is it that I can see only my son and hear only my wife? He turns around, and there is nothing but a deep darkness.
“Father? Wake up. They’re serving breakfast now.” Min Lai pats Seid Quan on the shoulder.
He rubs his eyes and stares blearily at the tray in front of him.
“We’ll be home in an hour and a half,” says Min Lai, peeling open the top of Seid Quan’s apple juice. “And then you can have a really good sleep.”
The windows across the street glow amber, the setting sun giving the otherwise expressionless houses an air of mystery, of kept-back knowledge. Seid Quan walks back to his daughter’s house in Toronto after a day of walking around a different Chinatown.
Only five months since his son’s death.
It was beyond him, then, to imagine the things he would want to say to his son, the kinds of things he would want to ask forgiveness for. Now, as he shivers in the sharp and dry autumn air, his mind will not stop. Even though his feet propel him slowly forward, his memories, the snapshots in his head, keep his thoughts circling endlessly. He walks through a pile of dead leaves and does not notice the crunch, the sound of withering, of dryness.
It was simple; he wanted his son to love him.
A father has a right to his own son.
He feels so far away, farther away than when he lived in Canada alone and could only return to the village every four or five years. Vancouver calls to him (he swears he can hear the ocean even from here, while he walks up and down Spadina, fingering the slippers and fans and lanterns), and his face is always turned west. Here, in this strange city, he has begun to forget what Shew Lin looked like; Min Lai has never had time to organize her photos, and they sit somewhere in her attic in an unmarked box. When he wants to remember, he shuts his eyes and remains perfectly still for several minutes. Even then, he can see only a shadowy outline, a fuzzy version of his wife, as if he is looking through a dirty window.
He is so frustrated that he could scream. But he does not.
He looks up and sees that he has walked two blocks out of his way. He turns around to retrace his steps, hoping that no one is looking out a window and feeling sorry for the addled old man wandering the streets.
Such small trees here, he thinks. Like starved children.
His daughter’s house is brightly lit, and he can see the shadows of her family moving from room to room. Her sons are good boys and often drive him around the city, showing him the things they think he might be interested in: the CN Tower, Maple Leaf Gardens. They laugh loudly, slap each other on the shoulders, play cards at night in the basement. He is grateful for all the noise.
His son who had no sons himself.
As he walks in the door, his daughter peers out from the kitchen and smiles at him. “I’m so glad you’re home,” she says. “I’ve made your favourite dish.”
Outside, the wind picks up the fallen leaves and throws them at the house. Seid Quan turns around. “Like dead fingers tapping on the window,” he whispers.
Outside, the cars on Queen Street speed past, kicking up fragments of dead leaves. Inside, Seid Quan lies in a hospital bed. He has had a ruptured brain aneurysm and is dying quickly and quietly. He is not conscious.
He hears the shuffling of his daughters, grandsons and nurses around him and their soft murmurings; it is as if they think that loud words will frighten him into death. He can see nothing except the differently coloured stars underneath his eyelids. He is dizzy. Faces spin, lopsided. He sees Lim slowly cracking in two, blood pouring from the split. He sees Shew Lin’s brown, lined skin. Babies. Little girls. Heads of hair.
He wonders if that sound is breaking glass, or if it is simply the sound of his hearing splintering off before it stops working entirely.
He has not moved and has no wish to. There are many things he has outlived, and ninety-four is too old to want to remember. When he sleeps, he dreams as he never has before.
On the last day of his life, when, to everyone else, it seems that nothing has changed, Seid Quan sees his son as he was when he first arrived in Vancouver in 1951. His boyish face smiles; as he turns to walk away, Seid Quan’s eyelids flutter and he goes to follow.
Seid Quan and Shew Lin walk together in a park not far from their house, taking a break from their son’s growing and noisy family. As they hold each other’s hands and look north toward the mountains, they both tuck the minutes away inside their minds. These are moments not to be forgotten.
It is so easy, she thinks, to forget, to wake up in the morning and see nothing but the old man beside me.
Those trees are so green, he thinks, and the mountains so blue, the colour of truth, if we could but see it.
chinatown
I don’t often return to Chinatown. It’s hard to look, really look, at the messy beginnings of our lives here, the bustling community whose backdrop consists of damp produce boxes and alleys criss-crossed with sagging power lines and trails of urine. It doesn’t sound pretty, and it isn’t. The beauty of these twelve square blocks is not why people stay—or are unable to leave.
I walk toward Gore and stop in the grassy area just in front of my grandparents’ old apartment. I look down at my feet, firmly planted in the uneven lawn; I don’t want to move. A bus drives by and the trees sway in the after-breeze.
In my head, I can hear my father complaining about having to come here. “It’s dirty, and there are always street people hanging around.”
It’s easy to forget about Chinatown, bypass it altogether when you’re moving through Vancouver. The tall buildings of the downtown core dwarf it, and there is really nothing here anymore that you can’t buy somewhere else. But it remains an uncut diamond in the back of my mind—shining dully, its glow persistent and unflagging.
In this place, which is both familiar and anonymous, no one cares about the rest of the world, only about the price of gai lan today, or the freshness of the cocktail buns. I can become anything I want: the girl who is no longer afraid of herself or the one who spends her nights numbly trying to escape her own body. I have travelled here because I am looking for my mother.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a familiar moving shape. I turn around and watch my mother struggle with five full grocery bags stuffed with food so she can fill the stomachs of my sisters, their husbands and their children, all heading home tonight for the first family dinner in a long time. She tries to make her way to the bus stop as I stare at the apparent emptiness of her body (the hollowness, as if there is nothing under the skin anymore; is she still unbreakable or even scary?). She looks small and worried, and I feel ashamed somehow. I take a step toward her. She sees me, and the lines drop from her face like a garment. I take her bags and we go home together.
acknowledgments
To Kendall Anderson for her incisiveness, diplomacy and vision.
To Louise Dennys, Diane Martin and M
arion Garner for their enthusiasm and faith.
To Carolyn Swayze for knowing from the very beginning that this novel would find a home.
To Mary Novik and June Hutton of the SPiN Writing Group for ideas, solutions and unflagging good cheer.
To Andrew Gray and the Booming Ground Writers’ Community for the opportunity.
To Thomas Wharton for knowing my novel could be something better and being the very first person to say so.
To Keith Maillard, the best teacher I ever had, for pulling my real voice out of the muck.
To Alden Habacon for shamelessly promoting me everywhere he goes and truly believing I can write no wrong.
To my sisters for recognizing the writer in me when I was seven.
And finally, to Troy, for everything.
JEN SOOKFONG LEE was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, where she now lives with her husband. Her poetry, fiction and articles have appeared in a variety of magazines, including The Antigonish Review, The Claremont Review, Horsefly and Jasmine. She was a finalist in the Stephen Leacock Poetry Contest and was a Knopf Canada New Face of Fiction for The End of East.
Visit her Web site at www.sookfong.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
THE END OF EAST. Copyright © 2007 by Jen Sookfong Lee. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
End of East, The Page 21
