An Empty Room, page 11
(Sandra likes my wordiness. I might as well send her these words. She believes her loneliness in Geneva is real, implying that my loneliness here is false. I once told her that if she could distinguish real loneliness from false loneliness, maybe she really wasn’t lonely.)
The plate on the fifth tombstone is missing, revealing a dark hazel spot in the lower right-hand corner.
The other thirteen tombstones remain intact. But one of them bears no name of the deceased, making one wonder who might be buried underneath.
Once again my eyes scan the grass, half hoping to find the missing plate somewhere near the platform.
On the platform is a penny. A coin may be dropped accidentally on the footpath or in the grass, but how could it end up on the platform so high above the ground?
I pick up the coin, and for some reason when I place it back down I feel a sense of emptiness and bewilderment. I end my walk disappointed — an incomprehensible occurrence is frustrating.
(I include these thoughts in my diary to show that there is nothing to be recorded.)
Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, famous lovers of the twentieth century, have now become part of the past. Newspapers around the world mourned her death as if they were holding a retrospective exhibition for an artist. Photos of the younger Wallis glamorized the newspapers for several days.
Because the exhibition looks retrospectively at the love between the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, worldly men and women seize the occasion to recall their own experiences of falling in and out of love.
This has clearly been a most vulgar century — both brutal and overly sentimental. No wonder when people today suddenly find themselves remembering the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, what seems to be a mildly classical fragrance greatly confuses them, so much so that they feel, all too sadly, that time is being pulled backward. Some wonder aloud: Is love real and really possible?
Who knows in what era someone first thought, Life is like a dream. Before then, who had heard such a figure of speech? Life is like a dream: those who heard it must have felt the lightning bolt of a revelation, and spread the sentiment widely until everyone was saying it. From this we can deduce another story of remote antiquity. Someone — a man or woman, we cannot know — was the first ever to say to the person closest to his or her heart, “I love you.” Following the same logic, there must have been someone who first created the word “love” and placed an “I” before it and a “you” after it. Those who heard the sound of “I love you” and who saw those words for the first time must have felt the most intense ecstasy, for who could’ve thought that heartfelt passions could be translated into the sounds of words? Afterward, for generations of men and women born into this world, the word “love” became so overused in speeches and writing that it became stale, awkward, and clumsy. This is why when the lovers of Windsor announced their love with such clear voices and wrote about it in such a neat hand, others once again felt that life is life and dream is dream, and once again thought: life is like a dream. In fact, at that moment, these people exist in life and not in dream.
At Cartier’s in Paris, at different times Edward VIII purchased for Wallis a whole range of jewelry, totaling eighty-seven items.
From Van Cleef and Arpels, he purchased twenty-three items, including a necklace of rubies set around diamonds, bearing this inscription: My Wallis. David.
A sapphire watch encased in diamonds, also purchased from Van Cleef and Arpels, is inscribed: For our engagement: 18V-37.
From Cartier’s, a ruby bracelet with diamonds for their first wedding anniversary, June 3rd.
An evening handbag decorated with pearls and diamonds.
Belts and mirrors encased in precious stones.
Leopard-shaped and tiger-shaped bracelets and hair clips set with Cartier’s famous cat’s-eye cabochons.
A red crane pin decorated with rubies, sapphires, jade, and diamonds.
A total of two hundred and sixteen items. As if words were not enough, the Duke of Windsor used jewelry to enhance his expression of love to Wallis, the woman for whom he abdicated his English throne. She was, perhaps, innocent, or at least despondent, her whole life; the royal family and upper class society secretly watched her as if she were a bad omen. It’s said that before her death, for eight years she had secluded herself upstairs in her home at Boulogne, France, and for seven years had been unable to speak. Those two hundred and sixteen objects of love’s promises have since been deposited in a bank; they could remain frozen there forever, no longer shimmering with the crystal in the candlelight.
The deepening of autumn doesn’t mean bleakness in the cemetery. Trees are denuded of leaves and their fine twigs reflect the azure of the sky. Their splendor delights the eye in the season of their nakedness. Summer is the season of naked humans, as winter is the season of naked trees.
My speculation that the cemetery is deserted has been proven wrong. It’s no longer my own solitary enclave. The coin placed on the platform of the fifth tombstone has been flipped over. I remember when I first picked it up and put it down, Lincoln’s portrait faced up. Now it shows his Memorial.
Someone else has seen this penny, picked it up, and replaced it.
I flip the coin back to the side of Lincoln’s portrait.
Several days later I return to the cemetery to find the Memorial facing dim twilight.
A message. Between the portrait, which is my side, and the Memorial, which is the Other’s, there is a message. The heads and tails of the message are linked. Other than that, there is neither beauty nor ugliness, wisdom nor folly, strength nor weakness. Anyone can pick up the coin between the thumb and index finger and turn it over.
No wind, or rain, or snow can make the flat coin flip; birds will not peck it; squirrels only follow their sense of smell to look for food — whatever turns the coin from heads to tails is a human force.
I, the head; the Other, the tail; after turning the coin several times, the message deepens:
I exist.
I do not forget.
I am willing to continue.
As the heads-to-tails turning increases, the message acquires a new value:
I am the reason that the Other still exists.
How can I forget.
I can no longer discontinue this continuity.
At first, this is but a simple hand gesture using two fingers — the initial message is as natural as heads or tails — but as I and the Other, each representing a side, keep turning the coin, we create with our own hands a fated cycle that we fall into.
If I no longer visit the cemetery, or if I visit the cemetery without going near the fifth tombstone, or if I walk past the tombstone without turning over the coin — each of these three possibilities is immoral, almost sinful.
Execution grounds, casinos, battlegrounds are all places where brutality is exercised. Sotheby’s is also such a place. April 1987: Sotheby’s in Geneva plans to sell the two hundred and sixteen promises of love the Duke of Windsor gave to the Duchess.
The Duchess has donated the majority of her property to the Pasteur Center, a medical research institution that cannot think of a more caring and appropriate way to handle these gifts of love than to submit them to Sotheby’s who have them locked in a Geneva bank.
The voice of Sotheby’s says: We have invited jewelry experts in Geneva to appraise this collection; it is only reasonable that we hold the auction for these items.
Does love need appraisal? When the jewelry experts appraise the love between the Duke and the Duchess, what should be priceless will be given a price.
April: a warm season suitable for growth. Switzerland: a fortunate country. Geneva: a city of clear lakes. Sotheby’s: a place for exercising brutality.
The necklace of rubies and diamonds is insured by the bank for 600,000 pounds sterling. Experts, however, estimate its actual value at 500,000 pounds. An American film actress is the first to make an offer; a member of the Dubai royal family counters with a price of 550,000 pounds; a German steel tycoon bids 600,000 pounds, an amount that equals the insurance cost; the king of Greek shipping adds 20,000 to this amount. Then comes Mrs. X, widow of the platinum king, who had a close relationship with the Duchess of Windsor. She once saw Wallis wearing the ruby necklace at an evening party and was deeply impressed.
It is now February. Two more months remain. Sotheby’s has announced that the auction will take place under the most confidential conditions. Not even the list of guests will be made public.
Nearing the fifth tombstone. . . .
Ordinarily a coin would just pass between my fingers without my careful examination, but now I read, on the obverse side just above the Lincoln Memorial, that line in Latin — e pluribus unum — which figuratively eulogizes this country. The eulogy, however, certainly doesn’t limit the possibilities of what this can suggest.
Turning over the coin sends messages; not turning it over also sends messages, such as:
I am dead.
I have completely forgotten you.
I do not come anymore.
Apart from death, which is ordained by Heaven, the other two messages might be saying to the Other: I am frivolous and fickle. A judgment is then implied: the Other is a romantic fool, since only a fool will communicate for so long with someone frivolous and fickle.
It is also possible that the Other has fallen into the fated cycle and cannot break free from it. Or the Other is already tired of sneaking into the woods, morning and evening, just to turn the coin over. This possibility is my sorrow.
I’m afraid of the intrusion of a third person who might see the coin, pick it up, and throw it away. If this happens, there will be confusion and the messages will change:
Stop.
This is absurd.
Eliminate the absurdity.
If the coin is not there, the intrusion of a third person should be the first explanation. Then another similar coin should be placed there, with the portrait turned up.
I’m also convinced that if my Other finds the coin missing, my Other will, upon reflection, put another coin in the same place, with the Memorial turned up.
If so, is the essence of the situation not dissimilar to vows of love?
If the flipping of the coin is the work of either a divine will or a demonic will, it can be ignored — whatever tricks God or the devil plays on someone, this person can still be tenacious enough to deal with them. What is in question, however, is the human will. The gender, age, appearance, and personality of the Other are unknown. The more time that passes, the less I’m interested in knowing the personality, appearance, age, and gender of the Other. What I have in mind is a purely human thought. Is it not like the line in Latin: e pluribus unum?
(In her letter, Sandra says that her daughter has been admitted to a school nearby so that she can at last devote herself to her work as a journalist. As if I were one of her regular sources, she asks without explanation:
Are you coming in April? I mean, of course, the end of March. I’ll be glad to take you to see those items the Duchess of Windsor has left behind. The most touching piece is, undoubtedly, the ruby necklace. Wallis Simpson was wearing it when I first met her at Mrs. X’s salon. She was forty then, pretty as a clear spring in the forest, a beauty unmatched by anyone of her generation. She belongs to the last century. Or, rather, hers is a nineteenth-century personality adrift in the twentieth.
I hope you can come. Of course you will have to resist the temptation of going to Sotheby’s. If you end up deciding not to come, I wouldn’t miss the six days of the exhibition, from March 17th to the 22nd, when it will be in New York. If you see it, at least you will have something to talk about later.
I imagine you must regret that the Duchess’s personal things will soon be scattered. Being scattered means they will be lost, but I won’t be able to persuade Mrs. X to purchase the whole lot. Oh, those wretched buyers! As for the ruby necklace, I have already lobbied the queen of platinum and made her furious enough to pledge that she will get it no matter what. How happy you would make me if you could come and see for yourself to whom the necklace will finally belong.
You know Wallis always lived in the shadows. Of course this means she also lived in David’s love. When the Duke died, she turned gray. He and she had no cause; they only had their love. Just as you once mocked, love was their cause. Well, what of those who take such love as their cause?)
(My letter in reply: I cannot come to Switzerland at the end of March. I’m not even sure if I can make the trip in April or May.
I will come though. When I come I will tell you what has been happening here.
Please don’t ask, and especially don’t try to do your detective work over the phone. I cannot make myself clear. I know I can count on your understanding. And please forgive me for not writing you for so long. I’ve stopped writing in my diary.
When I come to Geneva, I will bring something for you to compare with the ruby necklace. I wouldn’t speculate though — you won’t be able to guess what it is. It’s neither good nor bad. At any rate, I’ll stop mocking those who take love as their cause, but I will not stop mocking those journalists who uphold the news about love as their cause. You’re an exception because you know you always are to me.
When the ruby necklace is on display at Sotheby’s in New York, I will pay homage to it as you asked me to — it will still be a legendary and therefore sacred object. After that, after April, it will become a vulgar piece of commodity. Yes, I am slightly dejected. The world is so large, yet there is no hiding place for a woman’s jewelry. Why must they be dismembered like a corpse and scattered about? It is indeed a sentimental education. I remember the auctioning of Madame Arnoux’s belongings, which happened when she was still alive. That was cruelty, pure cruelty. Incidentally, literature is . . . it will succeed when you exquisitely fail at writing.)
I visit the cemetery every Friday now. One afternoon, I found the coin had been turned over again. There was no mistake about it. Ecstasy stung me like needles.
A few heavy snowfalls have piled up snow, particularly in the north-west corner of the cemetery. I have now learned to see a difference between the naked trees: some can hold snow on their branches, others cannot. After a heavy snowfall, for instance, the arbor trees of varying heights still show their branches, clean and bare.
When the coin is covered by the snow, I have an ominous feeling that the fated cycle has come to an end. I reach out my palm to tenderly brush the snow aside like someone looking for treasure, or a dead body.
February 6th. I’ve spent an entire day in Manhattan handling my worldly affairs. Not until I’m finished do I realize the depth of the snow and the depth of the night. Traffic is difficult. When I drive up to the church, the gate at the entrance is lowered, prohibiting one from parking. The silver-colored plaza is wide and spacious. In one of the monastery’s upstairs windows, a light, seen through the snowflakes, glows a soft orange color. More than a month has passed since Christmas.
Falling snow on a windless day has a moist warmth. Under my steps, fresh white snow crackles, and I feel a strange mixture of guilt and gratitude. The silence on this snowy night is innocent the way the snow of a temperate zone has a childishness that won’t last.
A thick layer of snow covers the platform of the tomb. My hand reaches into the surface beneath the snow. I pull out the coin. By the flame of my lighter, I see it clearly. I turn it over, push it into the snow, making sure it’s flat on the stone.
The cemetery is enveloped in white, whirling snowflakes and seems quite foreign, recalling the snowy wilderness of my now distant childhood.
I light a cigarette. I already know and see that I’m known and seen.
(12:00 a.m., midnight. When we leave the cemetery together it is 3:30 in the morning. E pluribus unum. Snow keeps falling.)
Translator’s Afterword
More than twenty books by Mu Xin — an internationally renowned writer and painter — have been published in Taiwan and mainland China. The thirteen pieces of An Empty Room — his first collection of stories to appear in English — were specifically chosen by the author from three of his books:《散文一集》(Collected Sanwen: Volume 1; 1986), 《温莎墓园》(Windsor Cemetery; 1988), and《巴珑》(Barron; 1998).
