There is no storm, just mist and fog, cloud and wind. You tuck behind my shoulder. I am your bulwark against
discomfort. This is what bulwarks
are for: less discomfort. Being a lee to cold, to wind. Being a lee to water and salt. Being a shoulder to split through the
weather. Being a shoulder against
the message.
Below us the Pacific claws against the stones. It chews the wall’s foundations. Nothing is forever (isn’t that what
they say?) So in the end these
battlements will be eaten. But
only in due time. So not yet — not
in short order. This is not the
message. No, the message is: You are to be a victim. Nothing more and nothing less. This wall is a stalwart guard. Try if you dare — you will be a victim,
either by stone or by sea.
You peek from behind my shoulder, eye the gray sky and chop on
the water. Between the two grays,
the line of the horizon is missing.
You clasp at my elbow. “Why
does anyone ever get married?” you say.
* * *
(You once told me:
Fences fence us in. Without
fences, we can go anywhere. Let’s
not tie ourselves down. Let’s just
be ourselves. I don’t want to
become somebody else’s idea of what we should be. Of what we can be.
Of what someone other than us thinks we should be. Because we already are. We’re already all we need.
This is what you said:
I don’t want to be the one to ruin something good.)
We are at Mutianyu, where we march the rise. The wall rises and dips; we march the
wall; together we rise and dip. On
some inclines the sloping brick transforms into a staircase. We march the stairs alongside Chinese
tourists clasping their hands behind their backs. Who stare at their shoes to watch their footing.
The crenellations face north. This is the message — this is the direction of the
hordes. But in the southerly
direction nothing has been built to hide from arrows. There is only a short wall, over which we lean to look out
over the trees. Which stand draped
and veiled and hooded in mist and dew and fog. The air is windless.
You and I stand together wearing jackets, staring at the green and the
gray. Further uphill stands a
squarish tower. Past the tower,
more wall snakes the ridgeline.
Then further trees and wall and towers are lost in the clouds and fog.
Where the hillside flattens, so does the slope of the wall. So here the vendors collect, hawking
trinkets and hats and umbrellas and Coca-cola from cardboard pallets. They call out and wave their hands at
everyone passing. Without
prejudice they call and wave at the hordes passing by their tables. This is their message: for sale. This is their message:
buy here. Their message
is: Coca-cola. Which is obvious even though the
bottles’ writing is in Chinese. Every
hawker holds a solar calculator they finger at to bargain the price.
You tell me:
“Freedom means there’s nothing you can’t do.”
(We can go, you said.
We can go and make this happen.
If we want. If we try. If we don’t try, we’ll never go. This is the world and the world is our
oyster. But only if we try. Without trying, our oyster will never
be.
Let’s not constrain ourselves, is what you said.)
We are at Badaling — we stand in the shadows. Northwards in the wall, slits are
narrowed for firing arrows.
Southward in the opposite wall a pair of arched windows open. Their sills are so deep almost no
sunlight reaches the interior. The
only light we see is the archway shapes:
negative space. And around
the spans of the archways: only
interior dark.
The ceiling is fit with a hole. To which a wood ladder leads, which we climb to the roof
crenellated northward in the direction of the hordes. The light is squintingly bright following the darkness
within the tower. More so, given
the weather: a misty whiteness
blanketing the circle of the horizon.
Unrelenting, the fog brightens.
Easier would be blue sky on the eyes. But instead we squint, we blink, we blinder our vision from
the unmitigated light from above.
The message is:
Here we stand — here we watch — here we protect. Break, if you will, on this bulwark —
we are made to withstand. We are
made to endure, to outlast, to carry on.
We are permanence. Time
will yield to us like water. Try
if you will — break if you choose.
Crash and boil and dissolve.
Sizzle back to yourselves to try again. The message is:
We won’t be broken.
Down the ladder again and further out we march the wall, now
beyond the calling and gesticulating of any hawkers or vendors. Beyond the women stepping by in their soft-soled
shoes. Beyond the men under the
brims of their Mao-style caps.
Beyond the tour groups coordinated in their matching T-shirts. Out to where the wall empties, where
the brick breaks, where the crenellations crumble. Out to where, between the cracks, grass grows in the dust
blown down from the north.
Quenched, no doubt, by the mist and dew and fog. Setting their crawling roots in the
seams and narrows. Spreading the
gaps and crevices with the passing drum of every season.
Our footing we watch — scree scatters the steps, which
themselves crack and tilt. We keep
marching for the next tower clearing out from the mist and fog. When we reach it there is no darkness. Whiteness pours in past the absent
roof. The walls are crumbling, the
floor is buried beneath brick and dust.
Two windows are left facing south, framing twin views of the ridges
rising out past the slumping stonework.
A bush grows in the tower’s corner.
“Limits are for little people,” is what you say.
(I thought: every
day constrains. Every event —
every happening. Every
circumstance, every decision, every chance. Everything tunnels.
The sum of everything is a tunnel to our life. But the way in which we tunnel is our choice. The manner and fashion we negotiate our
tunnel is all we have. This is all
that matters. Manner and fashion
are everything that counts.
This is what I should have said.)
We are at Shuidonggou.
We squint from the wind, turn our eyes from it. Here nothing is obvious, here what’s
left is too worn to make out from a distance. Only up close can we see: layers of earth mashed with layers of vegetation. A construction cake. A wall made up from dust blown down
from the north. Alternated with
seams of collected, local flora.
Which grows low on the steppes where we stand, ducking from the wind’s
cavitations.
The message was, here we reached. Here we aspired and here we attained. Here we completed. You could not do this — this made an
unmatchable feat. You were
incapable — your aspirations failed.
You could not rise to meet our challenge. Your inferiority submitted to this demonstration of what
lengths could be achieved. Of what
glories could be accomplished. But
not by you — you were only a victim.
You were always a victim.
You would always submit.
This is the lasting message.
Nothing is sold and nobody is here. Only us both — you and I together. We hunch behind this layer cake too rounded to shield from
the wind. Air keeps rolling over,
tactile with dust and grit. With
leaves and seeds. With smells and
hordes. With chance and choice and
time.
You curl at my chest, alee. Alee from the smells and the grit, the powder and the
air. Over the sound of the wind
you call out something to my chest.
“What?” I yell.
You turn to thinly answer between the buffeting gusts: “I said aren’t you glad we finally
seized the day?”
...Elmo Lum's short stories have appeared in a variety of print and online publications including StoryQuarterly, the New England Review,Web Conjunctions, and Narrative. He has completed a novel for which he is looking for an agent. Elmo lives in San Francisco and is currently working on a new book.
