Toward the North Read online

  Then I saw a woman come from the side of the house and step onto the deck. She was quite tall, fair skinned, with brown hair. She was about forty, more or less. White people’s skin can age early, and I could see that her neck seemed to be wrinkled. I thought that she also appeared to be lethargic and fragile. She was wearing a long bathrobe and holding a cup of steaming coffee with both hands. At that moment, I was worried that the homeowner would come to tell me that this was private property and fishing was not allowed. But when she saw me, she merely gave me a friendly wave and didn’t say anything. I thought her smile was sincere.

  This white woman allowed me to fish there, and I felt grateful. She did not disturb me; it was as though I didn’t exist. Sitting on a towel and placing her coffee on a table at her side, she attended to her business. With a serene expression, she gazed out over the lake. Initially I came here to enjoy A. Y. Jackson’s works of landscape, but now I saw a portrait similar to one by the Impressionist master Renoir. The French beauties in Renoir’s style of painting always seem to have a sense of melancholy and fading beauty. I saw in this woman the same beauty and the same melancholy. Just before noon, I suddenly hooked a pike, a ferocious North American freshwater fish. Its body is shaped like a spear; its head resembles a snake; and it swims with incredible speed and formidable power. I exerted all my strength to hold on to the pole. I felt as though that fish wanted to drag me into the water. I strained to control the fishing line, and finally I dragged the fish to the surface. The fish suddenly jumped out of the water, waging a desperate struggle to free itself. The automatic clutch controlling the fishing line suddenly released, and it immediately cut a slit across my fingers. Back and forth, this punishment continued for several rounds until at last I dragged the one-metre-long pike to the shore, only to discover that the fishing line had cut open several painful gashes across my fingers.

  After landing this fish, I felt a tremendous sense of achievement. I turned around to look at the woman’s deck, convinced that she most likely had witnessed the wrestling match between me and the pike. I noticed that the sun had shifted its angle and was now flooding the deck. The woman was lying on the lounge chair, in repose, with both eyes closed as though nothing had happened. I was a little disappointed. Because I had nothing to do, I started wondering what life was like for this woman who lived beside a lake. I didn’t know if there were other people inside the house or not. I thought that she was probably rich and enjoying her cottage, sitting leisurely by the lake and relaxing in the warm sunshine.

  After some time, I ate the lunch that I had brought. I noticed that she was still lying on the lounge chair. I thought that she must be asleep. But this time I spotted something unusual. I saw that lying on her white cheek was something that looked like a worm and that she was completely unaware of it. Because the distance between us was not that close, I was unable to see what it was. I thought it might be a piece of coloured thread. However, after some time had passed, I saw that the worm-like thing on her cheek had become two, but she still had her eyes closed and didn’t react. I was certain something wrong. I stood up, and in this way I saw that the worm-like thing was streaming down from her face to the ground, and on the ground there was an expanding dark-coloured substance. I walked briskly over to her while at the same time calling out “Hello!” in a loud voice. She heard me and lifted up her head. The wormlike thing fell off her cheek at once.

  Now I could see that her nose was bleeding! I had never seen such a serious nosebleed; the blood flowed down to the ground and had made a large pool. She sat up, and the blood immediately flowed onto her chest. She wiped at the blood and smeared it over her face. I ran over and had her lie down and not move. I immediately grabbed a nearby basin, filled it with cold water, and abruptly splashed it on her face. When I was a child, this is what adults did to me when my nose was bleeding. The unexpected splash of cold water causes the person to be startled, which causes the capillaries to shrink, and then the bleeding usually stops. At the same time, I used some paper towels lying on the table next to her to make a plug to stuff into her nostrils. Her nose stopped bleeding at last. My hands were covered with mud, fish scales, and earthworm mucous; there was also blood from the wound I had from the fishing line that had cut my fingers. My hands were both filthy and unbearably stinky. But I wasn’t bothered by any of these things. I used a wet paper towel to clean the blood from the woman’s face and neck, and felt the white woman’s skin, which was as fine and smooth as cream. At the same time, I inhaled the scent of her body—a mixture of her perfume and her sweat.

  After a few minutes, she felt a little better and started talking. She said that she had just fallen asleep and hadn’t realized that her nose was bleeding. She thanked me for helping her. I asked her if we should call a doctor, but she said there was no need as she had had nose bleeds before and there was nothing to be done about it. Also, her private nurse would be coming to see her in two hours. Afterwards, she got up and retreated into the house. I was not in the mood for any more fishing, so I gathered up my things and left the lake.

  After this incredible experience in this alluring landscape, I did not go to that lake again. But the white woman with scarlet-coloured blood flowing from her nose made a particularly intense impression on me and became embedded in my memory. When I read Nabokov’s novel Lolita, I learned that the narrator was a pedophile and obsessed with young girls as a source of sexual passion. And now I began to worry that this lake experience might become the source of an unhealthy obsession for me. And then, when I got to my new house and saw the card my new neighbour, a white woman, had given us, I became aware that my heart was unduly excited. And, to go one step further, when I learned that Mrs. Swanny was also convalescing by a lake, I recalled the woman by the lake even more vividly. Even though I knew that these two things were not connected, I was still intensely curious about Mrs. Swanny. The two situations became blended together in my mind. Also, although I had not seen Mrs. Swanny’s face, I imagined her possessing the facial features of the women at the lake. I really was an incorrigible.

  Halloween was over, and the leaves had started falling. Within a few days, one after the other, the leaves of the maple trees in our family’s backyard had dropped off and covered the entire lawn. Every day my wife and I had to collect piles of leaves and pack them into special paper bags in order to recycle them. Then we placed the bags on the side of the road to wait for a leaf collection truck to come and take them away. During this time, other people from the nearby homes also came outside to collect their leaves, and this provided my wife and me with the opportunity to get to know our neighbours.

  We quickly became acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, our French-speaking neighbours, in the house on the right. They both love to smoke and to tell jokes. As they did not smoke in the house, we would see them run outside from time to time, even when it was windy or rainy, just like whales regularly come to the water’s surface to breathe. Still further to the right was a Taiwanese family surnamed Zhen. The roof of their house was particularly large and shaped like a mushroom; it crossed my mind that this house was from a fairy tale. As a matter of fact, Mr. Zhen and his wife actually resembled two little white rabbits. Their driveway was narrow, and their house was smaller than ours.

  On the left, across from Mrs. Swanny’s house, there was an elderly, Cantonese-speaking man who was always digging holes in his lawn. He was planting tulip bulbs. Tulip bulbs look very much like onions. My wife said that when she saw the old fellow planting the tulip bulbs, he would place some peeled garlic on the surface of the soil. At other times, he would put a few peanuts on the surface of the soil above the tulip bulb, and he even went so far as to put a chicken leg in some of the holes. My wife is not able to speak Cantonese, and she had a hard time talking with the old fellow. He gestured and talked until his meaning became clear. He said squirrels love to dig in the soil and will gnaw on the tulip bulbs, but they were repulsed by the smell of garlic. Putt
ing some peanuts on the top of the soil is another deterrent. When the squirrels bury the peanuts, they are satisfied just knowing they have hidden something underneath the ground. Burying the chicken legs helped to cope with larger animals such as skunks and the like. Once they find the chicken leg, they will not dig any deeper, thus leaving the tulip bulb intact.

  Our neighbour on the left is Mrs. Swanny. Her house occupies a lot of land and is not in the same architectural style as my house. It is one of two linked houses, one behind the other. Her front garden is professionally designed with a rock and shrubbery landscape. There is also a large umbrella tree which covers most of the front garden. There is no garage at all, but there are often many vehicles. I discovered that the family’s cars were all like SUVs. Some vehicles were high-powered vans, and once I even saw a camper with a bedroom, kitchen, and washroom.

  I soon realized that the Swanny family had another member. Mrs. Swanny had another son, and this young man was extremely tall, probably already in high school. Swanny’s husband, Mark, was polite and had a moderately firm build, but he looked as though he had already started to age. Their family was energetic; the two sons were particularly robust, and I often saw them leaving the house loaded down with hockey equipment. They also had two black German shepherds, usually quiet, with glossy, polished coats. When they went out, they sometimes took the dogs, too. The dogs are so excited that they usually race out the door and around the yard, but never bark randomly, and they instantly come and jump into the car along with their master when it’s time to head out. However, I never caught sight of Mrs. Swanny. Every now and again, I saw several women come out of the house. I didn’t know who they were, but I thought none of them could be Mrs. Swanny because when they saw me, they showed no reaction. I believe this would not be the case with Mrs. Swanny. Her son said that sometimes she comes back at night, so when cars go in and out of their driveway at night, I always look out my window. Perhaps I had seen her in the dim light of the night, but I have never been able to identify her.

  Then winter came. In Toronto, it snows continually. Before one snowfall has stopped, the second one has already started. As a result, there was already an accumulation of snow in many places. I don’t have any special memories of this winter except for a small incident that was difficult to understand. One day when I returned home from work, my daughter told me that someone had knocked at the door that afternoon. Through the latticed window panes of the door and windows, she was able to make out the blurred image of a white man. I had always warned her never to open the door to a stranger, so she hadn’t opened the door. In itself, this incident didn’t mean anything. I had often met people who came knocking at the door to sell something or to proselytize. But that day, I could see that, in the snow on the ground outside the door, there was a trail of footprints leading from the front door to the backyard’s wooden gate. I opened the wooden gate and saw that those footprints went straight in. The snow on the ground in the backyard had never been walked on before, but now there was a big jumble of footprints left there. On top of that, I was surprised that there were several rows of animal tracks that seemed to belong to big animals.

  Recently, I had heard people saying that several wild coyotes had turned up in Dufferin Park and even bit a hiker on his calf. I also heard that a Canadian skiing champion disappeared while skiing on Snow Mountain, and it was later discovered that she had been devoured by a cougar. But since my house is located in the city, how could such wild animals get here? Even more suspicious is that these animal tracks didn’t come in or go out from the garden gate. So where did they come from? My family’s backyard is half an acre in size. There is no way to enter from the outside except by the wooden gate. On the left and right-hand sides there is a closed plank fence. The Taylors’ home is on the right, on the left is the Swanny’s home. And in the back there is the chain-link fence of my newly-acquainted Armenian neighbour. If this animal came from inside one of these properties, then it would have to jump over a very high wooden fence or deal with the chain-link fence, and then somehow jump back. This was obviously impossible. The next day was the weekend, and I stood guard at the backyard window to watch. Except for few squirrels foraging for food, I didn’t see anything. After that, it never happened again, but I kept thinking about it and felt a little uneasy.

  Imperceptibly, winter came to an end. One particular night while I was sleeping fitfully, I gradually became aware of a tiny bird twittering outside the house in the dark of the night. I was actually still in a dream at this time, but a part of my consciousness may have been awake. In the dream, I was drawn into another dream. I was back in southern China in my mother’s house, asleep in a newly added non-regulation small shed. While asleep and still in the dream, I heard a burst of sweet-sounding bird song, and I felt very satisfied. Ah! I thought. It is only in the remarkable environment of Canada where such birdsong can be heard. I woke up from the dream, but the song continued. It was my elderly neighbour’s caged songbirds that were singing.

  These two dreams intertwined and prevented me from sleeping soundly. Then, the next day, high up in a tree in my backyard, I saw a big flock of red-breasted birds playing noisily on the branches. It made me extraordinarily happy. I didn’t know what these birds were called. I went to the nearby library and found a book entitled Distribution of North American Birds. According to the pictures in the guide, I identified the birds that were perched on my backyard tree as “robins.” When I was young, I would kill a lot of birds in the countryside and mountains outside my hometown using an air rifle. There were grey starlings, northern shrikes, orioles, and woodpeckers. But I had never seen this red-breasted robin before.

  From that day on, I realized that spring had actually come. I often saw large numbers of birds flying past in the sky, and I noticed that the leaves on the trees had started to grow. Flowers were blooming everywhere; among the earliest was the tulip. The onion-like tubers that the elderly Cantonese neighbour had planted last year had now all blossomed into big wineglass-shaped flowers. Canada’s winter is so long, but almost immediately after the winter season, it is summer; therefore, the plants have learned to grow within a very short period of time.

  Except for a large, green lawn, our backyard didn’t have any flowers or plants. I used a lawn mower to cut the grass several times. The lawn resembled a green blanket and gave off the cool and refreshing scent of freshly-cut grass. This season we started to plant some flowers. In Canada, the winters are cold, so flower gardens have a mixture of perennial flowers and bushes that can survive the winter, such as roses, supplemented by annuals planted in the spring, such as trumpet flowers, fragrant carnations, Chinese flowering crab apples, and so on.

  In the back half of my garage there is a space for my garden tools. The former owner, Doug, left behind enough equipment to start a small farm. I immersed myself into the pleasure of working with the soil, the flowers, and the plants. I bought many varieties of flower seedlings and the various components of soil fertilizer. In the backyard, based on the angle of the sunshine, I made several flowerbeds for a number of plants that love sunshine and shade. While gardening, I wore a battered straw hat and stripped to the waist; I was as pleased as Punch with myself. I sweated profusely, and I sometimes attracted mosquitoes that bit me. The mosquitoes are big in Canada, and each slap left a smudge of blood. So I learned to keep a bottle of calamine lotion in my pocket and smeared it on the mosquito bites as soon as I got them.

  Spring had just arrived when several weed-like plants sprouted in the middle of the lawn and quickly produced bright yellow flowers. These yellow flowers are called dandelions. In China, we did not understand dandelions. We thought they were lovely flowers. When my daughter was small, she would sing songs like “I am a dandelion seed” and other kinds of nursery rhymes. But when it comes to gardening, is another matter, for dandelions grow and reproduce quickly, taking over the entire lawn in a short period of time. After the dandelion has blossomed, wh
at remains behind is a thick, round stalk with a round fluffy pompom on top. The wind then blows these dry, sallow seeds all around to propagate them. When my daughter saw the dandelions, she would get goose bumps of happiness. My wife saw them as the most abominable of all the weeds.

  Usually people in Canada use a chemical herbicide to eliminate the dandelions, but the shop that sells it also sells a tool that can uproot the weeds. My wife insisted on uprooting the dandelions by hand, and she would not wear gloves. That is the sort of person my wife is. For example, she doesn’t like to use the washing machine; she would rather scrub the clothes by hand. She doesn’t use a mop to wash the floor; she likes to get down on her hands and knees and use a cloth instead. Sometimes, I would try to persuade her not to do that and say, “You should learn to use these tools. Engels distinguished between humans and animals by defining humans as those who can use tools, and animals as those which cannot.”

  However, my wife continued to weed the lawn in her own way. She would sweat profusely from being in the sun, and her face became very tanned, but she refused to wear a sunhat. When she stooped down and hunched over to weed out the dandelions, her pants and T-shirt would separate at the back, revealing a patch of flesh, sometimes exposing the upper end of her buttocks. In the evening, after pulling out a big pail of weeds, she would complain that her knees were excruciatingly painful. She would use an electric pulse machine and her own hot compress physiotherapy, as well as many bruise plasters.