Ho Sok Fong - Lake Like a Mirror

Lake Like a Mirror

Lake Like a Mirror

Ho Sok Fong

Translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce

Copyright 2014 by Ho Sok Fong

English translation 2020 by Natascha Bruce

Originally published in Chinese as (h min r jng) in 2014

by (Aquarius Publishing Co. Ltd), Taiwan.

First published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2019.

The moral right of the author and translator have been asserted.

Two Lines Press

582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

www.twolinespress.com

ISBN 978-1-931883-98-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ho Sok Fong, author. | Bruce, Natascha, translator.

Title: Lake Like a Mirror / Ho Sok Fong; translated from the Chinese by

Natascha Bruce.

Description: San Francisco: Two Lines Press, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019034371 (print) | LCCN 2019034372 (ebook) | ISBN

9781931883986 (paperback) | ISBN 9781931883993 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ho Sok Fong--Translations into English.

Classification: LCC PL2937.5.O64 A2 2020 (print) | LCC PL2937.5.O64

(ebook) | DDC 895.13/6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034371

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034372

Cover design by Gabriele Wilson

Cover photo Cig Harvey

Design by Sloane | Samuel

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This book is supported in part by an award from the National

Endowment for the Arts.

Contents

The Wall

WHEN THE DEVELOPERS said they were building a wall to keep out the sound, everybody thought it was a good idea. For the past few years, the expressway had been expanding, coming closer and closer to our houses. It used to be a full sixty meters away, but now had come so close we were practically run over every time we opened our back doors.

One morning, a seven-year-old girl really was run over outside her back door. Late that night, the developers started building a wall along the side of the road.

Theyre laying bricks straight onto the ground, said the aunty next door. From her upstairs window, she watched the workmen spread a layer of cement, then position a line of bricks, then smear on more cement.

Its got no foundations, she said to her husband, when she came back downstairs. He was watching a football game on television, and when they scored he clapped and cheered with the South American sportscaster, so didnt hear her.

His wife wasnt surprised. She went back to watching the workmen build the wall. She thought they looked thin, as though they were too feeble for a job like that. But their wall looked very thick, thick enough to hide one of them in it. It grew higher and higher, until it blocked her view. When it was over one story high, she went to bed.

The next morning, all the tenants in our row woke to find the wall was finished. It cut off the sunlight, making our back gardens and kitchens dark. But everybody agreed that sunlight wasnt much of a price to pay, considering the seven-year-old girl whod been killed by a car. The only thing was, the wall blocked our back doors too, and now they opened only a little wider than the width of a foot. Wide enough for a cat, or a small dog, but too much of a squeeze for a human.

The next-door aunty wasnt happy. Wasnt this the same as having no back door at all? No back door meant no way out. Her husband agreed. Its like having a mouth but no asshole, is what he said.

But, gradually, they got used to it. Theres nothing a person cant get used to. It wasnt too much of a hardship, anyway, not compared to what that girls mother was going through. Two days after the incident, the aunty and her husband saw a tiny coffin being carried out through the other familys gate. A few days later, the mother lit a fire in a big metal trashcan by her front door and burned her daughters clothes and schoolbag. The thick white smoke reeked of melting plastic and choked up the whole street.

The aunty couldnt remember if her husband had ever left the house. He sat glued to the football on the television. The light was gone from their windows, but they carried on as best they could.

The aunty had no kids to take care of and spent most of her time in the kitchen. If she closed the kitchen door, she couldnt even hear the television. Before the wall, the kitchen had been filled with the roar of cars hurtling along the expressway. After the wall, the noise was muffled, like a person humming deep within their chest. After a few days, she was used to it, and didnt mind much one way or the other.

She did do things a little differently after the wall. It blocked the sunlight, making her eyes too tired to read the newspaper. Instead, she turned her attention to her tiny garden, about the size of a toilet stall, just next to the kitchen. In the first week she planted cacti, and later added dumb canes, bush lilies, hydrangeas, and gerbera daisies, filling the little space to bursting. Youd have been impressed, if youd seen itbig fat leaves springing from such a tiny patch of soil, spreading out so that there was almost nowhere left to stand. And it seemed to be because of the wall: the gloom meant the soil stayed moist and the plants flourished. In addition to the plants in her garden, the aunty kept a bowl of goldfish in the kitchen.

Her husband hardly ever came into the kitchen, so he didnt know she also kept a fluffy tabby cat. Hed had a lung infection a while before, and had been wary of dog and cat hair ever since. The cat had sneaked in the day after the wall went up. The aunty had been trying to push open the back door, and it had squeezed through that sliver of a gap. She guessed the cat belonged to one of the houses farther down the row, and that, because her slightly opened door had barred its way, it had decided that it might as well come in. It leaped boldly onto a chair, then strolled right into her little garden, where it relieved itself. After that, she couldnt bring herself to put it back outside again. She hugged it close, feeling its weight against her, like the weight of the loneliness in the pit of her stomach.

Because of the goldfish, she had to keep the cat shut away in the garden. She couldnt let it inside, but neither could she let it leave. It often fell asleep out there. When it woke up it would prowl around in circles, and when it was hungry it would rub against the door, meowing. She was careful never to feed it too much: if it was hungry, it needed her. She felt there was an invisible rope between them, and when the cat was hungry, the rope pulled taut. At first, shed thought about finding a real rope to tie the cat up with, but then shed decided that as long as she shut the door tightly things would be fine as they were.

One morning, while she was out shopping, her husband went into the kitchen. He opened all three doorsto the back alley, to the little garden, and to the rest of the houseand then went back to the living room, where he sat contentedly reading the paper. When his wife came home, she found the goldfish bowl smashed to pieces and water all over the floor. Her husband was just sitting there, without a care in the world.

What happened to the fishbowl?

Her husband glanced up, but said nothing.

And the cat?

He shrugged. She glared at his expression, hating the way he acted as though this had nothing to do with him. A chill swept through her chest; bit by bit, she felt her heart turn to ice. And so, when she spoke again, she was even frostier than him: Cat got your tongue?