CONTENTS

 
  THE FALL OF A GREY WHALE— In Memory of the 20th Century 灰鯨落海──悼二十世紀
   By Hsia Ching 夏菁
   Translated by C. W. WANG 王季文
 
  SHILIN NIGHT MARKET 士林夜市
   By Duo Sui 朵思
   Translated by John J. S. BALCOM 陶忘機
 
  ETERNAL BED—SEX VIDEO UNEARTHED
永恆的床──出土的A片

   By Bai Ling 白靈
   Translated by John J. S. BALCOM 陶忘機
 
  CROSSING CHIHSIEN THIRD ROAD 過七賢三路
   By Jiao Tong 焦桐
   Translated by David van der Peet 范德培
 
  THE MOTORCYCLE 機車
   By SUN Wei-min 孫維民
   Translated by the poet
 
  TRAFFIC COLLISION 車禍
   By Ko-Hua CHEN 陳克華
   Translated by Patrick CARR 柯英華
 
  A TREE’S NAME 一棵樹的名字
   By Ko-Hua CHEN 陳克華
   Translated by Patrick CARR 柯英華
 
  INVOCATIONS咒
   By Lu Pin 鹿苹
   Translated by Zona Yi-ping TSOU 鄒怡平
 
  THAT ONE那個人
   By Lu Pin 鹿苹
   Translated by Zona Yi-ping TSOU 鄒怡平
 
  THE RESTLESS ROOM無法靜止的房間
   By CHEN Wan-Chien 陳宛茜
   Translated by John J. S. BALCOM 陶忘機
 
 

MY CLASSMATES 同學們
   By Ah Sheng 阿盛
   Translated by Darryl STERK 石岱崙

 
  AH! THE BYGONES 啊,流年
   By Yi-Ting LEE 李儀婷
   Translated by Patty Pei-Jung LEE 李佩蓉
 
  HAVE YOU BID FAREWELL? 你道別了嗎?
   By LIN Tai Man 林黛嫚
   Translated by Danny Hsin-yueh LIN 林心嶽
 
  NANA 娜娜
   By YUAN Chiung-chiung 袁瓊瓊
   Translated by Michelle M. WU 吳敏嘉
 
  FIELDS OF TASSELGRASS 粗坑的菅芒
   By Kun-liang CHIU 邱坤良
   Translated by Chris Wen-Chao LI 李文肇
 
  TEMPER AND METAMORPHOSIS— A Painter’s True Colors 淬鍊與蛻變──畫者的真容
   By TU Chung-Kao 杜忠誥
   Translated by Gen-sheng DONG 董更生
 
  STANDSTILL AND OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE— On Mei-Yu’s Bamboo and Sparrows and The Lotus
靜觀萬物─ 談簡美育的《竹雀圖》與《芙蕖圖》

   By Shou-chien SHIH 石守謙
   Translated by Gen-sheng DONG 董更生
 
  NEW BOOKS BY TAIPEI CHINESE PEN MEMBERS 會員新書
 
  NEWS & EVENTS 文化活動
   Compiled by Sarah Jen-hui HSIANG 項人慧
 
  NOTES ON AUTHORS AND TRANSLATORS
作者與譯者簡介
 
  APPENDIX : CHINESE ORIGINALS 附錄 :中文原著
 
  WHITE LOTUS 白荷,
color on silk, 38 × 40 cm, 1999 .........................Cover
 
 

BELL FLOWER 鐘花, color on silk, 40 × 38 cm, 1999 .............................................................Back Cover
   By CHIEN Mei-Yu 簡美育

 

LIN Tai Man 林黛嫚

HAVE YOU BID FAREWELL?
你道別了嗎?*

Translated by Danny Hsin-yueh LIN 林心嶽


  Early in the morning, you wake up, get out of bed, and leave the warm cuddle of the quilt. This is the beginning of your bidding farewell.
  After breakfast, dressed for the office, you say goodbye to your family and leave for work. Maybe, you live alone. Then, you kiss the tame kitty and tell it, “Be good and stay home. I’ll be back soon.”
  Between your home and your workplace, you will continue to greet and chat with many, and bid farewell. . . . Things like these described here in a running account fashion take place in your life every day, so that you might have become accustomed to bidding farewell.

  Your first experience of saying goodbye was with Smokey, your family’s ten-some year old dog. He was older than you, so you couldn’t have known his actual age. In any case, you could only lie in bed, and through the interstices of the overhead cotton mosquito net you saw a pinkish belt-like tongue that was soaking wet and fluttering, accompanied by the noise of him panting. Later, you could crawl on the floor, and he would follow closely behind you. Those who didn’t know better would see the intimidating bulk and worry for the safety of the toddler. But those who knew better believed that Smokey would protect you should there be any danger.
  Smokey was always there, dutifully playing his role of a loyal dog. You never thought there would be a day when he would slack. Innocently, you would grab his tail, and if you weren’t so chubby, his tail could’ve been used as a swing set. When you got older and more entertaining things occupied you completely, you wouldn’t even take a look at him, as if he who fawningly wagged his tail like mad was merely a piece of moving furniture.
  One day, you found him acting strange. All of a sudden, that brawny dog whose tail one could swing on was too weak even to walk, his staggering steps slower than those of grandpa’s. You asked the grownups what happened to him, but even before they had time to answer, your attention was already lured away by things around you, and you simply missed the answer that said, “He’s old.”
  Even if you had heard it, you wouldn’t have understood what “He’s old” meant. Not until you saw him walking out of his retreat in the storage room, a discarded ballpoint pen dangling on one side. The pen pierced his skin as if the skin and flesh were separated. You were horrified at the sight. Keenly sympathetic as you were, it felt as if the pain of the pierced skin was occurring to you. You cried out, “Smokey is dying!” So filled with pain and horror was your voice that it sounded as though death was taking place right before your eyes. The adults heard you and came over; they pulled out the pen, but no blood or wound was visible on Smokey’s body. They threw a glance at you, as if saying you were making a fuss over nothing, you foolish little girl.
  When you first saw Smokey lying still by the red brick wall, you observed him for quite a while before you could tell that it wasn’t that he was so comfortably bathing under the sun and didn’t want to move. You knew he had died. Quietly, you walked away, undisturbed. The grownups didn’t find out until quite a while later; they removed Smokey’s body from there. Smokey would end up in the bottom of a muddy river or a remote ravine. And so you relaxed, thinking that facing death was rather easy.

  When your mother left you, you were actually old enough to feel grief. However, your indifference surprised everyone. They remembered that when you were a little younger you sulked when a few kittens were given away. They also remembered that you were a kind and sensitive child who had nightmares every time you saw someone kill a chicken. Passively, you sweated out the interminable funeral service. When your family threw themselves onto the coffin and wailed, you followed suit but did not cry. As the service drew to its end, though the eight-tone suona horns continued to wail, the people stopped moving, no longer following the funeral streamer. You buried your face behind the mourning cloth but turned your eyes around. And you discovered that, left or right, there was that same reddish-brown world of the mourning cloth. Suddenly, a sense of the absurdity of it all surged up in you. But you knew that this feeling could not be made public and strained to conceal it. You covered your mouth with one hand, and held your belly with another, though this did not stop you from bursting into a compulsive laughter.
  Your sister, who was standing beside you and was worried for you all along because of your unusual response, felt a vibration coming through the mourning cloth. She thought you were sobbing inconsolably and put her hand on your shoulder to comfort you. Perhaps because the motion of your shoulders registered a different frequency, your sister stuck her head into your world of mourning cloth to look and found that you were laughing instead of crying. She faintly chopped the air with her hand as a gesture of reproach. After being exposed, you of course adjusted your attitude immediately. Yet, even to this day you still don’t understand what you were laughing at. Was it just the funeral? Or was it the nonexistence of the affection between a mother and her daughter that should’ve been there?
  You did not cry, not even at your mother’s burial. Oh, it was one’s nearest and dearest kin. The belly in which you were cherished for ten months, the first face you saw after you arrived at this world, the first scent of a person you smelled, and the first bosom into which you were embraced: they were all hers. Yet you grew up in an environment where there was very little loving care. You had no right to complain about anything. Neither did you complain when you were prematurely taken away from your mother’s arms.
  The grownups were busy earning a living, working hard to support the big family. Older kids needed to go to school and prepare for the entrance exams, and younger children like you had to fill up their own bowls with food at the dining table when it’s mealtime and find clothes to put on when it’s cold; go to school when it’s school time, and do your homework and play after school. This was how you caught up with the way of the older children, year in, year out.
  You couldn’t have predicted death, yet unlike other children of your age, you did not cling to your mother but learned to find among brothers and sisters something to take the place of motherly love. This can be regarded as an indication that you knew sooner or later all would be lost, and so you began early on to learn to be independent.
  Henceforth,. . .

 


From Lin Tai Man’s 林黛嫚 collection of essays Ni tao-pie le ma? 《你道別了 嗎?》[Have you bid farewell?]. Taipei: Sanmin Bookstore, 2005, 1-9.


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