Leslie Shimotakahara - Red Oblivion

Copyright Leslie Shimotakahara, 2019

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All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Kathryn Lane | Editor: Jess Shulman
Cover designer: Laura Boyle
Cover images: Hong Kong Street Scene: wikimedia commons/DDMLL; grunge texture: istock.com/lukbar
Printer: Webcom, a division of Marquis Book Printing Inc.Cover images:

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Red oblivion / Leslie Shimotakahara.

Names: Shimotakahara, Leslie, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 201900682642 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190068272 | ISBN 9781459745216 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459745223 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459745230 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8637.H525 R44 2019 | DDC C813/.6dc23

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To Mr. Wong,
in memory

Alack, tis he: why, he was met even now

As mad as the vexd sea; singing aloud;

Crownd with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,

With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,

Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow

In our sustaining corn. A century send forth;

Search every acre in the high-grown field,

And bring him to our eye.

Cordelia in King Lear, Act IV, Scene IV

The last time I saw my father, he seemed all right really, he did. He was his old self: a tiny, quail-like man with the gleaming eyes of a guy half his age. We were headed to the bank, the sky white and misty, the tropical air touched by a slight chill that people on this side of the world consider freezing; Ba was walking even faster than usual. The sole of his shoe came loose and slapped against the sidewalk like an old flip-flop, while he just continued on, navigating his way through the crowd of pinstripes.

Ba, lets get you some new shoes. I tried to pull him into Marks & Spencer, but he shucked off my hand with a fidgety shake of the shoulder.

I followed him beneath the billboards of enigmatically shaped handbags, past the shops on Queens Road, a sea of diamonds and metallic objects glinting and floating by on the edge of our vision. A watery reflection came into focus and I barely had time to recognize myself before the crowd jostled me forward. The sidewalk seemed to be shuddering, everyone elbowing past, barking into phones. But my wily father had no trouble weaving his way through it all as I struggled to catch up.

After cutting across Grand Millennium Plaza space opening up enough to breathe, around the ornate fountain we made our way along Des Voeux into Sheung Wan. Although the neighbourhood had gentrified in patches, it still had the old money exchanges and remittance shops with faded red signs and tarnished gold currency symbols. Dry goods stores here and there, big bins of dehydrated mushrooms, scallops, and shark fins before the open windows.

Where are you going, Ba? Grabbing his arm, I gestured at a storefront with rows of bright runners and plastic sandals awash in fluorescent light.

Ignoring me, he kept right on walking. We wended our way into the narrow side streets, past the herbal medicine shops.

Once when I was a kid and had a bad cough that wouldnt go away, even after antibiotics, Ba had taken me to one of these places. We sat at the time-worn redwood counter, the walls decorated with bright paper fans and posters of ox bones and folk legends. After taking my pulse, an old man, who looked like a gravedigger, served me a cup of tea the colour of sewer water and not much better tasting. But my cough had cleared up.

Cmon, Ba, lets just get you some shoes. I dont have all day here.

His hand slipped into his pocket, fingering the wad of cash always there. Not because he was on the verge of buying anything, not because he was afraid of being pickpocketed. Ba has simply always liked the tactility of money. Its like satin to his fingertips.

We werent far from his old office, so he ought to have known the area well, yet he seemed puzzled, disoriented.

Its right around here I know it is.

Probably, the store was long gone. It was a different, older city he was always seeking, remembering.

Finally, we ended up at Wing On department store, where I encouraged him to try on a pair of black Rockports, but they were too expensive, in his view. He picked up a pair of electric-blue sneakers with three gold stripes along each side, similar to the ones my high school boyfriend used to wear, twenty years back.

They were on sale hallelujah this being the real reason theyd caught Bas eye. And they were comfortable, he claimed. Not that hes ever put much stock in comfort. His own or others.

I remember thinking that at least in sneakers, hed be unlikely to slip.

Or maybe its just easier for me to remember things that way. Me, the sweet, caring daughter, patiently cajoling the old guy, impossible as ever, yet strangely endearing in his stubbornness. Electric-blue sneakers and all.

In reality, on that day, I probably saw him as nothing close to endearing. The self-entitled frugality, the insistence on his way or the highway, the past hes always seeking to resurrect and wear like a badge of honour all these things would have driven me crazy, his small, inescapable presence casting shadows over my mood.

But in seeing us in a soft, forgiving light, in telling myself these tales that make us seem more like a normal family, Im doing what my sisters long accused me of doing. Im like a child seeking enchantment in repeated stories that take on the weight of truth only through an act of imagination.