Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir. Amy Tan

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СКАЧАТЬ gaze and caress remove all doubts that she has made the right decision in following desire. He has healed her, and only then does she realize she has been ill. He has warmed her, and only then does she realize her bones have been cold. She sees in his eyes that she truly is beautiful. She has astonished him. In the flickering light, his eyes appear to be gray, then pale blue, turquoise, ice blue, and silver. He leads her to his bed, a low cot covered with a blanket of rabbit skins. As soon as she lies down, she casts off shyness and her clothes immediately follow. No one has ever touched her skin. His hands know this. They murmur and whisper nonsensical words. She cries, knowing his whispers are about her, that he is telling her about the dimensions of his love. She cannot make out exactly what he is saying and will have to ask him to repeat it later—although perhaps she already knows. After all, their thoughts and feelings are identical. The exquisite sensations of their bodies are identical. She exults aloud: These moments together have already been enough for a lifetime of dreaming.

      As if her thoughts had been an incantation, the spell is broken. Their time together is over. [Shades of Cinderella, the plot driven by a mindless keeper of time.] He looks at her sadly. He seems to be telling her with his eyes. Time still divides us, but now we have eternity. They unwrap arms and legs, and from one body they are again two. She is instantly cold. He bids farewell, and when she steps out, she sees that it is early morning. The night passed as if it had been only a few moments before falling asleep.

      6:17 Anna walks home, light-headed, still caught in the dream. The old ache of loneliness is gone. She can hardly remember how she once felt. She has a destination now, a reason to live. When she reaches home, she sees how dingy the rooms are, how cavernous and yet constricted the place feels with its small chambers and long hallways. How had she been able to bear it for so long? She wants to go to him this instant and tell him what she has suffered and what he has changed. Why did she leave him in the first place? She cannot recall his saying it was time for her to go, not in words. Perhaps he had wanted her to stay and was wounded in thinking she had made the decision to leave him. She should return to him now. But then she remembers his shuddering groan. He believed they should savor desire and not be consumed by it all at once. He is right. She will wait and come to him when he cannot bear to be without her, when he, too, feels life is meaningless without desire. Warmth will always be at the other end of the road and she now knows how to reach it.

      6:55 The simple diatonic melody begins. Anna is once more on her way to her lover. She looks older. It is evident that years have passed. Her step is not quite as lively. The incline feels steeper. This is simply a journey to get to where she needs to be. It starts to rain and the road soon becomes muddy. She slips several times. She considers whether to turn back. She still desires him, but when she returned home yesterday, she wondered why desire was still there when it should have been fulfilled long ago. Her mind holds so many worries it is hard to think clearly about any of them. She does not know his name. He does not know hers. She had reasoned that it did not matter because they knew each other in more important ways. But how? She never asked him. She never asked that of herself. They have spoken only in grunts and gasps, the language of desire.

      A wind comes up and rain beats faster and washes over Anna’s face like a waterfall, making it difficult to see. She is frightened. She cannot go any farther. In the distance she sees a hunched figure coming from the opposite direction. She soon realizes it is an old woman without the cover of a cloak. The woman’s unbound hair streams down her face like long moss. Her once fine dress is soiled, ripped at the armholes. The hem is shredded. She is a wretch of misfortune, Anna thinks, the daughter of a respected family who would now pull up her skirts for the promise of a penny. The old woman laughs, as if she had heard Anna’s unspoken insult. She shakes her head and throws Anna a pitying look. Anna is furious that this lowly harlot would pity her. A moment later, she is startled to see that the woman, although haggard, is not old at all. She could be her age, and in fact, they look so much alike they could have been twins. They have the same long dark hair, wide-set gray eyes, and a mole on the right cheek. Even the dresses would be identical if the whore’s were not dirty and hers were not clean. When she looks down at her dress, she sees for the first time a black oily spot, then another and another. She instantly feels cold, so brittle with cold her spine might snap. The beggar woman does not exist, she tells herself. It is worse. She is the malevolent twin of her imagination who has been waiting to be recognized. Anna tries to calculate how many years have passed since she began these repetitious journeys to her lover’s bed. How many mornings did she rise and leave the narrow cot with him still dozing? It must be thousands. Her skin must be worn thin from so many rubbings. She is afraid to look. Over the years, she refused to let questions about him enter into her mind. Yet she still felt tormented by small doubts: that he did not love her as much. Or that he did not even exist. The first time she had that thought, she immediately turned around on the road and rushed back to the village. On her way there, she noticed that the road had grown longer and steeper. When she reached his home, she peered through the window and saw him sleeping as usual. She was tempted to rap the window and see his delight that she had returned so soon. But then, as usual, she thought it was best to not interrupt his dreams of desire for her. She simply returned home.

      But now, since meeting the wretch on the road, she cannot stop the worries. Does he still desire her? Is his desire the same as what he had for the harlot? Was that why the woman gave her a pitying look? What a brainless fool she has been. She should have banged on the window and broken the pane, then reached in and shaken him to make him speak. Does he, too, believe desire for her is life’s meaning? Who else has he desired? What does he do besides satisfy himself with her body? Her malevolent twin is delighted she has doubts. His incomprehensible groans and grunts were not promises of love, she tells Anna. They were lusty profanity in a foreign language. You saw him only between the hours of dusk and dawn. You had eyes for only what lay at the end of the road and not what surrounds you. Anna looks around her. The woman is not there. Who is speaking to her? She sees the trees around her are dead. How long have they been that way? She sees them as an omen. Love is withering, not just his, but hers. Soon she, too, will resemble the stiff dead trees she passes, their leafless branches clawing upward for more sky. [Shades of anthropomorphic trees in The Wizard of Oz.]

      She turns around to go home. But she cannot. The more she resists, the stronger the wind blows against her.

      10:30 In the past, she could do nothing but succumb to the delusion that he loved her. There is no delusion now. Knowledge is a murderer. She knows now she will not increase the small amount of happiness she receives from her lover. It does not accumulate but disintegrates as soon as she is on the road walking home. Her love for him will always remain gnawing desire. The old argument arises: if she refuses it, she will have nothing. She will be empty. She struggles to retain the vaporous illusion of love. No longer able to decide, she lies on the road and allows herself to be buffeted by the storm. She does not protect herself from the wind. She has already given up self-will. She will soon become a ghost of desire riding a beggar’s back. Why not end it now—but which, her life or her desire?

      12:45 The storm ends. It has purged doubt, and she is grateful she has survived. She finally understands that her resistance to desire had only made desire stronger. Each time she had thought of turning back, desire surged and became fear, a madness that clawed at her until she pushed through her lover’s door again and lay on his bed. In the morning, he had let her out onto the streets where the laundry women could see her. She would then take the road home, carrying her useless satchel of self-knowledge. She had emptied her mind for him. She had welcomed him to use her body as a receptacle. She had asked for nothing. She would have done that until she disappeared—body, mind, and senses. Holding on to this terrible realization, she now turns around to go home. She pushes against strong winds. With each step, the road behind disappears.

      13:17 Anna is home. The rain is nearly over. She finds calm for the first time being alone in her house. The arguments in her head are gone. In the past, she would have been frightened by quiet and loneliness. But now she knows she can leave her house whenever she wants. She does not need a destination based on desire. She СКАЧАТЬ