from "The Answer"
They are the pictographs from five thousand years.
They are the watchful eyes of future generations.
Bei Dao
Less then a week ago he was leaving Troy on his horse. The sentry at the gates stopped him and reminded him that he could not leave town, horses were not permitted to leave. So he left his horse and started his 9,385 miles journey by car. Less than a week ago he had not known Xiaohong existed, when life in Idaho was simpler and decisions rarely involved consequences. But now the two of them were bicycling across the city to meet her friend who would take him to a piano that he could play at the National Conservatory of Music. That only a week ago he should read in the paper of the 58-8 defeat of Troys first football game of the season was an accident, for he was not looking for it, but merely taking a departing glance at the local news before saddling up his horse for his trip to the airport.
Xiaohong waited until he cycled alongside, then asked How do I get to your graduate university?
What do you mean?
Do I have to take the TOEFL test?
Yes, I think so; Ive heard it mentioned.
TOEFL is stupid, its not a good language test.
They had to split up again to pass a farmer bringing his fall harvest of potatoes and cauliflower into town on his horsedrawn cart. It was all right to bring horses into Beijing. The night before he left, he had gone with friends to watch that first eight-man football game under Troys new head coach. Troy received the kickoff in the rain, but it was only after Highlander, ranked number one in the state in its class, had scored two touchdowns and two successful conversions that Troy gained its first yardage.
They parked their bicycles at the gate to the music school and headed for the graduate apartments, where Xiaohong introduced him to her boyfriend Luojun, a student in musicology. Inside the one-room apartment, he was further introduced to Luojuns three roommates and invited to join their six-course lunch with wine and beer and nuts and moon-cakes celebrating the autumn harvest festival. After declining a penalty, Highlander took possession of the ball, and its wily quarterback, deceptively adept at the option play, passed again for another touchdown and another conversion.
You cannot play here, Luojun said, only students can play here. But we find a way.
He continued to outline the scheme. The wily quarterback was equally spectacular on defense, a free safety who read every play, whose inescapable tackles terrorized the entire backfield. When the team and its boosters boarded the school buses for the odyssey back to Winchester and Craigmont, did he have to leave his horse at the gate?
You learn some Chinese and, and, be student here and play.
And yes?
And I will unlock room with piano.
Ill be teaching in Beijing for four months. he held up four fingers with his right hand. Can I practice three times a week? he asked, changing the number of fingers. The score kept on changing; the more it rained, the more Highlander scored. He left his friends in the rain and went home to pack for his trip before the first quarter was over.
Yes.
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at two oclock?
Okay. You come to my room first, then I take you to piano. Then looking at him without smiling this time, Luojun continued. If you have trouble, you no know me. I am not friend. I have no key to piano room. Now you eat with us?
Unlike most of the people at Troy, he thought, Xiaohongs friends are not trapped: they are covered, they have it both ways. In Troy crimes are rare, but when they occur they are severe and sometimes terminal, murdering a friend since kindergarten and fishing partner, or a fathers sexual abuse of his daughters. Between crimes they still use hounds to hunt black bear, and the farmers and growers continue to demand and receive reparation from the state for deer and elk damage to their crops and orchards. The landscape has not altered their lives even as they continue to master it with their indiscriminate chainsaws and political dams: in success or failure, almost all continue to be living embellishments to the spirit of mobility and frontier individualism, and as such, as they approach the twenty-first century as never before, they have not accepted any responsibility for it.
Not so with Luojun and his friends, he thought. They have been politically liberated but they have circumvented their responsibility by keeping their personal options loose. Like the parable about language and fact, in which the white horse is challenged if its a horse or an emperor or C.O., rather than, if its white; here if Luojun plants melon seeds, will he get melons? Is eight-man football football?
Copyright © 2001 by Alex Kuo