Friday, November 16, 2012
Dearest Christina,
In war and its aftermath, in cities large and small, there
are message boards covered with hastily written letters on whatever scrap of
paper and with whatever writing instrument was at hand in a fleeting moment before
a hurried departure.
They flutter in the wind and often overlap each other, those
lost notes to displaced loved ones. They
are left there in the vain hope that someone, sometime will read them to learn
of the writer’s passing or disposition:
‘Sasha! If you find
this, I have taken the children with me to Uncle Leonid’s farm in the
Urals. I will wait for you! I love you! Anna’
‘Dear husband Johann
Gertrudis, we have been evacuated to a refugee camp near Garmisch—I won’t know
which one till we get there. If you read
this, I hope you are alive and not being held prisoner by the Russians! I pray for you and will watch for you
always! Your loving wife, Katarina.’
Hope is that glimmer within that longs for reversal of
fortune, change of heart, fulfillment of dreams. Hope often lingers long after the floods of
human events have all but washed it away.
This is such a message of hope, this letter that I should
have written to you long before my sunset years. It is posted on the message board of time and
space, with no prospect at all that my words will ever carry to your aging
eyes.
By now, you must be a grandmother, or even a
great-grandmother. Because you are the
one true mystery in my life, I chose to believe you are alive, cared for by many
sons and daughters; and surrounded by grandchildren, who flock to you crying,’ Lao lao ke-li-si-di-na’! That would be Cantonese for ‘Nana
Christina!’
It is comforting to envision you sitting on one of those
tiny apartment balconies, several stories up from the bustling street
below. Warm in the morning sun, warmed
by the love of your family, you look out on Hong Kong and tell the children of
your days on the streets and the excitement of an era gone by.
It has always been a source of joy and intrigue to daydream
of you and build a story of ‘what if’.
What if I had returned? I had
your name, both your street name and your Chinese name; but no photograph, no
address, no other means to find you.
Would I have paced the streets, looking in every bar on Kowloon, asking bored
girls and disinterested madams if they know of you?
As I drift on to the gossamer of ‘what if I had found you?’,
it fitfully darts away, lest the magic of you be revealed. Like an illusionist’s parlor trick, I cannot
have my vision of you sullied by any semblance of reality.
For you remain pure and unsullied through every chapter of
my existence. There were none of those
real events ever present: You with
another man. You resisting my attempts
at marriage. You to return with me. You to live with me. You to learn from me. You to bear children by me.
Because of this gentle enigma, you have come to symbolize
all the dreams and aspirations that I never achieved in life.
To be sure, I had
my moments of glory, of success, even of love.
But each of those memories must be sifted through the skein of
experience to render them pleasurable and apart from the chaff of lost causes,
dashed plans, crushed hopes. The stuff
of life is never pure and unsullied like the moment in time I spent with you.
And so, my darling Kwan Foo Mong, my sweet Lao
lao, I will have you thus till the end of days. I loved you, I love you, I will always love
you.
Wait for me.
From a man you do not
remember, from a time you do not recall.
surely you will meet again...
ReplyDeleteWow. I really like this one.
ReplyDelete