Page 112 - RKJ 2019 Online Flip Version

The Photograph
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Reno. “That
guy with the hat. He your granddad, by any
chance?”
It was a slow day in the Department of
Administrative Research. Reno, who’d stopped
by to shoot the breeze, had put his feet up on
the corner of Tseng’s desk, and was pointing
at the small tinted photograph, six inches by
six, that Tseng kept in a camphorwood frame.
“No,” said Tseng.
“I kind of like it.” Reno picked up the frame
to take a closer look. “With that fog steaming
round the trees, and the sun trying to break
through. There’s sort of a mystical vibe to it.
Reminds you of home, huh?”
“I wouldn't say that. I simply enjoy looking
at it.”
“What’s that thing he’s holding? Wutaian
pixie trap?”
Tseng leaned forward and held out his
hand. Reno made a face, but gave the picture
back. “Yeah, don’t say it,” he sighed, rising to
by LicoriceAllsorts
his feet. “Break’s over. I guess I could find
some work to do. Catch you later, Boss.” He
remembered to shut the door on his way out.
Tseng began to tidy his desk, carefully re-
aligning the picture to its customary angle. He
had told Reno the truth. The figure in the hat
was not his grandfather, who had died before
he was born. It was his grandmother. She’d
been forty-one years old when the picture was
taken. Tseng had been ten. He’d written a big
exam only the day before. All the ten year old
boys in the village, and all the ten year old
boys in all the villages in Wutai, had sat the
same exam on the same day. If a boy did well
in the exam, he could expect to be summoned
by the Emperor to the palace in the city. Many
stories were told about what might happen
then. Some involved dragons; some,
princesses. All promised adventure.
On the morning of the examination his
mother had wakened him, dressed him, fussed
over his sash, combed his hair, prepared a
bowl of rice and smoked eel for his breakfast.
He was too excited to eat. Watching him pick
at his food, the sadness in her eyes deepened.
“Little prince, are you in such a hurry to leave
me? The Emperor has a hundred sons. This
poor mother has only one. Soul of my heart, if
you wrote the wrong answers on purpose,
nobody but Leviathan would know.”
This was nonsense, of course. They would
all know. Everyone knew he was the cleverest
boy in the village. Tseng was afraid that she
might start crying, or, worse, insist on walking
with him to the village hall where the
examination was being held. She might even
try to hold his hand. If he had had a father, the
two of them could have walked together, as the
other boys did with their fathers. But his father
had died so long ago that Tseng barely
remembered him any more. He was a boy
being raised by women. He was already as tall
as his grandmother, and stronger than his
mother. He chose to walk alone.
Nevertheless he permitted his mother to
accompany him as far as the front gate, where
his grandmother was waiting for them,
clutching a fistful of weeds she had just pulled
from the garden. “Good luck,” she said,
pressing her thumb to the blessing-mark
tattooed on his forehead. Then she put her arm
around her daughter’s waist and held her tight.
“Let him go on his own,” she said.
Until he came to live in Midgar, it had
never occurred to Tseng to think of their family
as poor. His grandmother was a hard worker,
always thinking up new schemes for making
money. His mother kept the house clean and
wove rugs that she sold to the landlord’s agent.
Poverty was a relative concept; by village
standards, he had no cause for complaint.
There was always food in the house, he slept
on a quilt instead of a plain straw mat, and only
went barefoot because the shoes his mother
had bought him pinched his toes. If he needed
new brushes for school, or ink, or paper, all he
had to do was ask.
But there was a wider world out there,
beyond the rice paddies in the valley bottom
and the cloud forests of the encircling
mountains. Intimations of that world were all
around him – above all, in the village store.
When he wasn’t at school, or helping his
mother and grandmother in the field, Tseng
liked to spend time leaning against the store’s
dusty counter, his thoughts wandering among
the colourful marvels that stocked its shelves.
How many unnecessary yet desirable things
there were in this world! He wondered who had
made them, and from how far away they had
come. Ball-point pens - he wanted one so
badly. Bottles of soda pop, flavoured like no
fruit he’d ever tasted. Specially softened and
whitened rolls of paper for wiping the backside
after shitting. Now, who had thought of that?