A Case of Two Cities

with a smile,
    to squeeze the difference and all
    into a small Ping-Pong ball,
    to dream of her white teeth
    nibbling at cheddar cheese,
    and in a mirror, a dull toad
    with a fair swan, when all is told?
    Is it her red-painted toenail
    that makes me so frail?
    Her toes tapping on a bronze
    plaque dedicated to Eliot,
    in an evening breeze of songs.
    Oh am I not an idiot?
     
    Should I explain a Chinese joke
    with the help of an English book —
    after baseball, chips and dips
    and helpless tongue slips,
    after deconstructing the character “ai”
    into radicals — heart, water, friend and eye,
    after the pallid sleepless stress
    smoothed by her golden tress
    on the rug of an iron tree,
    after turning on the TV
    without understanding why
    those players laugh and cry.
    It’s impossible to say
    what I want to say!
    What if she, kicking
    off her sandals and trimming
    her toenails, should say,
    “That is not it at all,
    that is not what I meant, at all.”
    Then how should I begin
    to spit out all the butt-ends
    of my days and ways
    and how shall I pray and pay?
     
    I should be a dragon glazed
    along the wall of the praised
    Forbidden City. I’m no Li Bai dreaming,
    but a damned, chained
    monkey gesticulating,
    with the name label pinned
    on the bosom of a Tang vest.
    In short, I am not sure,
    walking along a twilight-flooded beach.
    I have seen the mermaids dancing
    on TV, beyond reach,
    beyond reality’s pinching.
    I don’t think that, singing on the sea,
    they will shell their tails for me.
     
    He was shocked by the lines rising out of the unlikely moment. In his college years, he had read about surrealist poets writing automatically, as in a trance. He wondered how such a similar experience befell him. Perhaps he could think of a number of explanations, but he was not in an analytical mood.
     
    Because he would never be able, he knew, to squeeze the moment into a ball, to start it rolling toward where he would like to go. Not just about what he described in those lines, but more symbolically, like Eliot. No, he was not what he had imagined himself to be—not even in those lines. It was just a moment, and then it was gone.
     
    And it was not a long moment.
     
    He saw a black car pull up in front of her building. A man emerged from the driver’s side and opened the passenger door. She stepped out in that black dress with spaghetti straps.
     
    The man did not go in with her, but they hugged outside the door, his hands lingering on her bare shoulders.
     
    A long, passionate hug.
     
    He kissed her on the cheek before moving back into the car. A shining black Jaguar. She stood on the doorstep, watching, waving her hand, until the car rolled out of sight in the growing dusk.
     
    Chen kept watching, spellbound, like sitting in the movies.
     
    She had been busy with the Chinese delegation for days. It was an afternoon when she had a few hours for herself. So of course she had taken care of her personal things.
     
    It was unrealistic to imagine that a young, spirited woman like her would lead a colorless life like his. There should be a man—or men—in her life. Too absurd of him to imagine her shutting herself in after their meeting in Shanghai, as in a Tang dynasty poem— with the fallen petals in the yard, collected too much to open the door.
     
    A chance encounter, like in the poem he had once read for her, memorable as the light produced out of their brief meeting, and then they had to move on, along their respective directions. In fact, they had both known it the first time, in China.
     
    So it was this time. He really should be grateful for the unexpected second time. There’s no stepping twice into the same river, but it sort of happened to him. Different, yet nonetheless wonderful.
     
    But for her generous help, he would have got nowhere in his investigation. Or worse, his fate could have been sealed like that of the interpreter.
     
    She was the more realistic one. There was no future of them being together. She knew. So parting like this would be best.
     
    Long after she had gone back into the building, he remained sitting there, against the window. He took his time sipping, after the fashion of a regular customer. The waitress put down another glass for him, and he nodded over those lines, like one really lost.
     
    The window of her room was lit up. He pushed back his chair one or two inches farther from the window. Dimly, he could see her figure silhouetted against a scroll of