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THE ETERNAL
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Excerpted from
SURREALITY
(An Unusual Collection
of Irrational Stories
for Disordinary People)
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by Dave Workman
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< Excerpt #1 >
始
B E G I N N I N G
MY NAME IS MEI XING, and I will soon depart from this realm. I have lived so very, very long, a life rich beyond reason. I now accept mìng yùn willingly, guided by the gentle hand of my beloved. My death will be my husband’s ultimate consummation of our love, his final gift to our blessed union. Before my passing, I must reveal a most extraordinary tale. I speak not for myself, but rather of my husband’s own astounding journey. This is my gift in return, a bequest to all who are and who will ever be. Only with his consent do I write these words.
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壹
O N E
THOSE WHO KNOW ME, know nothing. I have carried my secret in darkness for too many years. Yet mine is a secret that must unfold, for it is truth. Listen, my children, and consider all that has come before us.
I was born in a distant land, amidst the turbulent uprising known as Yihetuan. I was birthed in the blood-soaked dirt of Shandong, my father already dead at the hands of the Christian foreigners and my mother soon to become a slave of Prince Qing of the First Rank, a great-grandson of Emperor Qianlong. The prince (I would later discover) was the most unscrupulous of leaders, an insatiable man who traded China’s tears for gold.
My earliest memories? I remember a palace—although whose palace, I do not know. To a small child, a castle is a remarkable realm, a playhouse of great possibility, ripe with dark, secret rooms and gleaming marbled hallways without end, of pungent spices and swirling colors, of uniformed men and temple priests and silk-draped women of high esteem and confidence.
But I was not a child of the palace, simply an urchin within its magnificent folds. Soon enough, along with many other girls my age, I was taken by oxcart to a sailing ship, under the watchful eye of a stooped, elderly gentleman whom I had barely met and did not trust. My sisters and I had been instructed to call this man ‘Grandfather Lau’ with utmost affection. As the morning sun rose, our sails unfurled. I watched with sorrow as my homeland vanished into the past.
The bright colors of the world quickly disappeared, replaced by the ugly brown wood of our worm-threaded vessel. Ahead, I saw nothing but the tepid grey expanse of sea and sky. I remember vividly the tired moan of old planking, the creak of wet hemp and the wails of my sisters. Even the birds had given up their playful cries, ultimately abandoning us to our providence. I constantly scanned the horizon for the edge of the Earth, eager to plunge toward whatever fate that I imagined would only improve my dismal, mortal existence.
As I feared, the waters did prove endless. Our provisions grew scarce and for several days we were given only cold rice and water that tasted—to the best of my childlike recollection—green. Even the sailors grew restless and ill-tempered, and then afraid. Min Min fell sick and Jiang died. Around me, my sisters prayed and wept.
One morning, a sudden brightness illuminated the sky. The overhead sun caressed my face with its warmth. A wind of blessed forgiveness filled our slack sails and our vessel plowed through each wave with swift vengeance. Instead of an infinite hole, there eventually appeared before our mast a fog-shrouded silhouette of low hills and dark forests.
I watched this strange land approach, barely aware of the barefooted, half-naked sailors rushing to prepare the ship to dock. I could soon discern tall, block-like shapes of many, many buildings behind a gradually receding haze—not the ornate, angular forms of those I had left, but stark buildings that spanned a far greater distance than any castle I could ever imagine.
The only word I remember on Grandfather Lau’s lips is this: “Fiscow!”
And what a wondrous place, this Fiscow. I had never before seen a steamship or a railroad train. I had never seen pale men or tall women with yellow hair. So many remarkable novelties filled my senses.
My sisters and I were taken from the bustling wharf by a horse-drawn wagon, up a hill and then up a larger hill, along a muddy road to an imposing red brick building with few windows. Men carrying large burlap sacks, and who smelled of tobacco and opiate smoke, accompanied our wagon, their overseers yelling and cursing, brandishing bamboo reeds—many of my sisters cried—and Grandfather Lau hovered over us with a clucking, fussing intensity. At the top of yet another hill the wagon groaned to a stop. My sisters and I stomped up a lengthy flight of narrow, squeaking stairs. We found ourselves in a perfumed room of silk draperies and satin pillows and alight with many candles. Beautiful ladies sashayed among us, and whose enchantingly painted faces reminded me of the intricate opera masks I remembered from the palace. The ladies delighted in our presence, giggling and singing and purring words of soothing assurance against our ears.
I believed that my nightmare had ended. This was a world of soft musical notes plucked on a stringed ruan, of mesmerizing colors and scented fragrances—and I wondered if one of these stunning young women might be my mother.
Perhaps the greatest gift of my childhood was my incomprehension that day; I did not understand my intended fate until many years afterward. But on that day, I did not know such words as slavery or concubine—only that I was given a clay bowl filled with noodles and onions swimming in a steaming fish broth. When night fell, I slept deeply in a world I believed would at last become my loving home.
Much later I would learn the foreigners’ calendar date of my arrival in this rambling city of San Francisco: The 18th of March, 1906.
For many weeks after our evening meal, my sisters and I were locked in a large, windowless room, with only the glow of a single candle casting ghostly shadows against the walls. Porcelain pots in each corner sufficed for our necessary toiletry needs. We shared several enormous straw-filled mattresses strewn upon the floor and, each night, I felt safely cocooned amid the warmth of the others, wondering what excitement our next morning would bring.
But quite soon my fairytale reality crumbled. Late one night I was jostled from my dreams by a grumbling tremor. The room shuddered and shook, and I felt myself lifted into the air, only to fall again amidst the flailing bodies of screaming children. Suddenly, the night crashed down upon us, choking our terrified wails into abrupt silence. A ragged cadmium sky appeared overhead, while the floorboards beneath us trembled in agony.
I remember the crack and torque of shrieking wood and I tumbled blindly into an abyss. I most certainly lost consciousness, for when I awoke, the world had again steadied itself. I lay without moving for a long while, listening to the whimpers around me. I called out and eventually we found one another in the dark, five of us, frightened and shivering. Clutching hands, we wove a snakelike path through the debris, the barest hint of morning light leading our way. We stumbled amid the rubble, tripping on the warm, wet bodies of my many sisters.
We huddled together in the mud-chilled street, aware of distant shouts and cries in the murky light of an awakening sky. A few buildings around us had likewise ruptured, littering the ground with debris and the broken dead. From our view atop the hill, I could see a yellow-orange flicker of many fires in the city below. We held each another tightly, awaiting whatever terrible fate would certainly follow. We did not move or eat for two days—until white men in stiff blue suits struggled up the hill, blowing shrill whistles and calling out for anyone who might respond.
Many years later, as a historian of some renown, I would take keen interest in San Francisco’s Great Earthquake. At the time, newspapers reported fewer than 700 deaths in the city. Later revisions would raise the death toll to more than 3500. But among the gu lei—the so-called worker coolies—I would glean evidence of some 8,000 additional deaths. So many transients and immigrants and undocumented slaves had been buried beneath the rubble, forever entombed as the city rose again above them.
But on that horrible day, I remained miraculously unharmed, a whisper-thin waif of child with only a handful of English words in my brain. Poor Grandfather Lau had attempted to teach us our new language in those weeks before the ’quake. But I never saw Grandfather Lau again. Nor do I know what became of my surviving sisters, although I can only assume that none found so exhilarating an existence as soon would I.
For several days I lingered in one of hundreds of hastily-erected army tents scattered throughout the Presidio District, far enough from the smoldering embers of a city I had not yet come to know. Then, one morning, two soldiers brought me before a stunning woman wrapped in white silk, who knelt before me with a most haunting smile and spoke in soothing words I did not understand. An older man, a bearded guilao dressed in blue stood beside her and said nothing. Although the woman confronting me was Chinese, her words were those of this new world, and I struggled to remember my own pitifully few English phrases in return. I bowed, speaking politely and she smiled again, her warm hand feather-light upon my shoulder. When the bearded man nodded his approval, the soldiers turned to leave, and I suspected my life’s course had been once again inexplicably altered.
Mrs. Lin Li Muldoon, whom I would soon learn to call Miss Lin, took me into her home as an apprentice pot scrubber, entitled to a stipend of two pennies a week, which I was free to spend or save until my services were proven sufficiently worthy of a real wage. Miss Lin nicknamed me Marcy—as she deemed Mei Xing too difficult to pronounce. She preferred that her staff speak proper English, Miss Lin well aware that the language of the foreigners represented my future.
Ten of us served in the Muldoon household; cooks, valets, porters—even a doorman. Their sprawling estate had been slightly damaged by the ’quake, but its hillside location in Presidio Heights had saved it from the raging fires that had destroyed much of the city.
Once again, I found myself wandering amid the princes and princesses of this new realm. Miss Lin’s home was indeed very much a castle—tall and immaculate, filled with mystique and so many splendid rooms, long and winding passages, anonymous doors locking their secrets behind thick, brass key plates. Heirlooms of my homeland abounded; paintings and sculptures and tabletop objects fashioned from ivory and jade, gold and pearl. We were forbidden to touch and sometimes I would stare at these objects until I cried, for they reminded me of my birth land, of a mother I’d never known.
For several weeks I sat on a high stool in the Muldoon’s enormous kitchen, with little else to do but watch and wait. I quickly realized the way to Miss Lin’s heart was through stillness and rapt attention to detail, and I was very, very good at absorbing the duties of those around me. Two mornings each week, the Muldoon’s household chef, the robustly rotund Mr. Fréchon, explained every detail of his activities. In the afternoons, I often polished silverware or scrubbed a bevy of large copper pots, enormous vats that would sometimes consume my tiny body. Yet I would scrub and scrub until Mr. Fréchon—muttering Ça suffit! Ça suffit!—snatched the vessels from my grasp, my hands raw and red and occasionally bleeding from my efforts.
Most other mornings were crowded with math, English and American history, my studies overseen by Mrs. Livingston, an older woman who had lived in Wenzhou for many years. She spoke Mandarin very well, although she rarely permitted me to converse in my native tongue.
The days and then weeks and then months passed in a blur. Soon enough, I was rousted at daybreak, expected to perform more rigorous duties. I delighted in plucking feathers from various fowl, tending ovens and dumping ash buckets into an outdoor bin. I sliced onions and peeled carrots and, standing upon a rickety wooden stool, stirred simmering sauces and gravies. Within five years I would be preparing vegetable and potato dishes for the family—and by the age of fourteen I ascended to prominence as the Muldoon’s primary cook.
Mrs. Lin Li Muldoon, only twenty-seven years of age when she found me, had once upon a time been a Jiangsu princess who’d fled across the ocean ahead of a scandal that would have severed her head in the lightning flash of a dao. Gifted with the perplexing beauty of royal blood and having arrived on these shores with trunks filled with Chinese artifacts worth a substantial fortune, she quickly captured the attention of a local sea captain. Raphael Muldoon was a kind and gentle soul, some twenty years his wife’s elder, and quite smitten with his young princess.
Captain Muldoon proved to be a most wonderful man, sea-bound much of the time but who eventually became very much a father to me. I learned that soon after their marriage, he and Miss Lin had begun their crusade, frequenting brothels and opium houses, buying up the children of the damned and leading them to freedom. Not far away, on Lake Street, The Muldoon School for Orphaned Children of The Orient housed some 80 students a year, young girls once destined for an otherwise brutal and savage existence.
I was one of the fortunate—quick of mind and spirit, wide eyed with wonder and endowed with a persistent smile despite my perilous youth. In the Muldoon household, I knew myself as neither slave nor servant, but rather as a skilled and respected employee, indentured only by my age and ensured to one day become a free woman who might come and go as I please. And yet I could not imagine parting from the Muldoon family, for I wished to remain within Miss Lin’s employ for the whole of my life.
Wished for nothing more, that is, until I met Captain Sebastian T. Renaud.
He was quite handsome, this captain; tall and statuesque, perhaps thirty years old, although he wore his age like a shroud. Clearly a man of youthful vigor, clean shaven and polite, he possessed an extraordinary command of the English language, with a wisdom and ken beyond his years. The first time I gazed upon Captain Renaud my heart swooped as might a dove in flight, and I eagerly absorbed as much gossip as I could from the household staff: That he was a dear friend of Captain Muldoon’s who had been a frequent guest in the past. An anthropological expedition to Egypt and Sudan had kept him abroad these last several years. But now, much to my heart’s joy, he had returned to California.
An exceedingly intellectual man, as one might instantly perceive by his grace and air, he nonetheless lacked the excruciating conceit of many who are well-travelled and properly educated. Although quiet and reserved in conversation, he was conversely a fine narrator—and before his journey to The Dark Continent, I learned that the Muldoon’s six children and many of the staff would often sit in the parlor after supper and listen in rapt attention as he spoke of ancient wisdoms and cultures.
I was likewise invited to hear the Captain’s tales this evening (once the dishes had been cleared) and a thousand questions bubbled forth inside my head.
Yet the first time our eyes touched, we spoke not a single word. I had rushed from the kitchen bearing a plum-and-sausage glaze forgotten by one of the servers and perchance the Captain was passing the doorway into the dining room. He paused, mid-step—as I nearly collided glaze-first into him—and I shall never forget the way he gazed at me.
I fell in love with him in that same heartbeat—a profoundly dreadful realization, as I knew such desire would burn hollow in my soul for all of eternity. But within the span of that chanced glance, I had discovered a depth to my own being that I had never before known. I returned to the kitchen and wept like the child I knew myself still to be.
< Excerpt #2 >
A SLIP OF THE TONGUE, a single errant thought, would soon change the fabric of my life forever. One evening, late in the autumn of 1934, my husband and I shared a brandy on the upstairs veranda overlooking the Pacific. The sun had magnificently painted the western horizon in pink and orange hues. Our conversation, as it so often did, touched upon the perverse culture of slavery and on those we hoped to soon assist. Bondage and servitude continued to prosper amid the world’s economic collapse, the children younger and younger each year, so seemingly helpless and most without a modicum of hope.
“I have known many forms of oppression in my life, but none so aberrant as this,” Reni admitted in the midst of our discussion.
“I’ve not found any form of slavery dear to my heart,” I said with some intended irony.
“No, no—you’re quite right, my love. I misspoke. Neither the Negro in the South nor the uneducated immigrant on either shore is yet free of peril, despite this—this illusion of liberty that our Caucasian Christian brethren dare to espouse. That oppression abounds amid such civility, even in this modern age of radio and automobile and electric appliance, I am appalled. Having myself felt the sting of the slaver’s whip, I cannot fathom the act of subjugating children so young, ripping young daughters from their mothers’ arms for a life of prostitution and debauchery. This is not simply suppression of the body, but conquest of the very soul. It is beyond redemption.”
“I agree,” I responded, although my brow had creased. Reni had never spoken of slavery in personal terms before. Might this finally be a glimpse into his inner darkness? His inner pain?
“In these many eons passed, seldom have I known a separation of mother and child so young. Nor such a perverse domination.”
“Oh?” I asked, becoming quite confused.
“Children of yore were seldom torn from their families. Not taken to be abused in the most despicable of ways.” Reni stared off into the distant ocean and spoke as if entranced. An appropriate word from my lips might have broken my husband’s spell, but I remained silent.
“Even amidst the cruelty of life, children were spared. Fed and housed and loved by their parents. Not until puberty…”
I held my breath.
“Not until puberty,” he said again, barely a whisper, still enraptured with the thoughts colliding inside his head. “Not until then…”
“You know so absolutely of such times?” I asked gently.
Before he could regain a semblance of propriety, he said, “I was once held captive by Sh’lomoh ben Dawidh, King of Judah. Today we call him a wise man, but he was driven to lust and arrogance and often to utter irrationality.” Reni took an angry sip of cognac. “I was imprisoned because I spoke a single word of kindness to a young maiden whom the man coveted. Sh’lomoh would seduce any virgin brought before him because he considered his seed the divine extension of Yahweh’s love. An absurd notion.”
I stared intently into my husband’s eyes. “Sh’lomoh?” I asked finally, my voice barely audible. “You speak of… Solomon, Son of David?”
“Aye, the same.”
“Solomon,” I repeated, unable to escape the dizzying illogic of this conversation. “The king who offered to cut in half an infant claimed by two mothers?”
“The suggestion was not his,” Reni said, “but rather that of a plump eunuch, an oracle who would often whisper in the king’s ear. The oracle, whose name escapes me at the moment, was far more cynic than fair man. As I recall, much wine was consumed before the decree. You might say that Sh’lomoh was merely—”
But my husband fell suddenly silent. I believe only now did he realize the extent of his unfettered thoughts. After several moments, Reni emitted the slightest of self-deprecating laughs, his eyes attuned to the distant horizon.
“Ah,” he said simply. “I appear to have broken the vessel, and so the wine spills forth.”
I remember the stillness of that moment; the silence of the night, the serenity of the distant ocean, the crickets suddenly muted, as if the entire world held its breath.
“I am ready to listen,” I said softly.
When he finally gazed toward me, I saw such heartfelt anticipation in his eyes. “And I am ready to speak. I suspect that this will be… difficult. For both of us.”
“I am your wife,” I reminded him.
“Yes. My zhenguì.”
My heart burst forth with joy, with pride. “I am here for you, my husband. Always.”
“King Sh’lomoh ben Dawidh,” my husband uttered again, as if remembering a long forgotten memory. “An intimidating man. He had several growths on his neck and shoulder, each the size of a ripe olive. And only three fingers on his left hand. History omits those details.”
He paused, as if in reverie.
I waited, wondering if these preceding moments had been a glimpse of madness—or else some subliminal cry in the wilderness? I noticed that his snifter was nearly empty. “Shall I pour another brandy, my love?”
“No, no,” he said quietly. “I believe you should bear witness without suspecting me of drunken rhetoric. I don’t wish for you to ogle me like some startled baboon.”
I smiled, amused by the absurdity of that notion.
But Reni’s gaze remained solemn. “You have not yet heard my story.”
“If you were Satan himself, I could not love you less.”
“Not demonic perhaps—although I fear you’ll decide me insane. Some secrets lay beyond even the sanctity of matrimony.”
When I said nothing, Reni found the courage to begin his tale. “My beloved,” he whispered, “I am older than time.”
And so very aware of my husband’s tenor, I did not believe him to be speaking metaphorically.
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T W O
“I DO NOT KNOW the year, nor the century. Not even the millennia,” he began after a thoughtful pause, once again regarding the blood red sun on its descent toward the horizon. “And yet, as God as my witness, I believe that I may have been born fifty thousand years ago—perhaps sixty or eighty or even one hundred thousand years, as I have absolutely no way of knowing for certain. Great holes, you see, exist in my memory. And yet, what I know for certain is that sister Earth was a great paradise in my youth, a strange and wondrous realm. My story I cannot prove, but ask only that you hear me out, and decide for yourself that I am not certifiably bonkers.”
Again I did not speak. Perhaps Reni thought me intrepid. My heart raced however; I had not spoken for fear of emitting the shrillest of sounds. I sat, rigid, and allowed my husband to continue.
“Please understand that when I was born, humankind did not yet know of kingdoms or kings, of priests or sacrifice, nor of politicians and the inevitable suffering they cause. Mine was a world frozen in its own naiveté—a time in which time wasn’t even the slightest of notions. Remember that the Roman Empire is merely two thousand years old, the kingdom of the pharaohs but six or eight. I was born perhaps fifty or more thousand years prior—before the concept of paper or the words to write. Before man rode a horse or harvested grain for bread. A great deal has transpired of which modern man knows nothing. Yet these are the moments I remember.
“Our thoughts, our tongues, our needs were incredibly primitive. I have read many histories of late Paleolithic man over the last several decades—some foolish and others remarkably astute, although I have no idea of our species’ birthplace, no early memories of any primitive advancements or philosophies. Nor do I have any chronological references prior these last few millennia. Some say the pyramids of Giza have seen but five thousand years—others say ten—and I simply don’t have a clue, although I have admittedly observed these structures in their most opulent glory, adorned with ornately carved wooded balconies, cascading with red and blue flowers, and capped in gleaming silver. Yet without clocks or calendars or seasons, one’s perception of time is quite imperfect. That I don’t know the exact millennia of my birth may sound absurd, but understand that for countless eons, little change occurred my life. In those distant ages there were no seasons, nor night and day, as our planet did not revolve around the Sun as it now does. I can only—”
I stood suddenly, clutching my throat with one hand, wondering if Captain Sebastian Renaud might indeed be mad. Or worse, that his words were somehow fermenting insanity inside my head. I was horrified to recognize Reni’s prophesy as truth—I had acted very much like a startled baboon.
I instantly regretted my lack of faith and struggled to find my voice. “I don’t disbelieve you, dear husband. But I fear that I cannot believe my own ears. No day or night? I don’t understand the meaning of such words.”
“Yes, of course—you’re quite right,” he said, reaching out to take my hand. “I’m unforgivably cruel beginning my journey with such aplomb. So many mysteries abound, and each deserves its own tale. Permit me to begin with only the most believable of the unbelievable. When I have finished, if you are comfortable with the veracity of my story, I shall divulge more. But only at the proper time.”
I settled back in my chair and managed a polite smile. “Perhaps that is best, yes.”
< End Excerpts >
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