There were times when I thought she was quite stupid. I'd have to tune her out sometimes, or I'd have to pretend I didn't hear her.
My difficulty being that she repeats herself so often, and every time I try to tell her something I have to say it three different ways, just so that the factuality of what I'm saying sinks in. Sometimes I even have to say it a fourth time, in a slightly different tone of voice, for still greater clarity.
But I later realized that she's not stupid. The repetition, her way of saying everything multiple ways, is just her way of talking, carried into the city from a dusty village beyond the parts of Taiwan that most people think about. She isn't stupid. She just comes from a place where people shuffle around meanings, and where no one ever cuts to the chase.
I suppose that I learn patience through our conversations. That is, I like to think I'm a more patient person now. So many years of talking to her, and now I'm used to saying the same thing in several different ways; I'm used to hanging on to every little idea before introducing the next one. It's not an easy thing to learn, but I'm trying.
There is of course also her upbringing to consider. She comes from a place where girls are encouraged to be beautiful and submissive, to marry into a good family, and to listen to their mothers in law, no matter how domineering these mothers in law might be. In the village where she grew up the integrity of the family looms above everything, and to step outside of that integrity, into something like divorce or not sending back money from abroad, is unthinkable.
She's talking now and I wasn't listening. What is she saying?
Ah yes, the cost of apartments in Ciaotou. This cost is going up all the time. I used to try to argue with her about this. I used to talk about bubbles in the local real estate market, but I gave up after realizing that she has a very static picture of the real estate market, compiled as it is from bits of information overheard in the office where she works. She's never thinking of supply and demand, scarcity and inflation. She's never thinking of contingent relationships. She's thinking instead of fixed rules which operate according to a kind of social geomancy. This social geomancy is itself her own invention, put together from years of overheard conversations on the subject of houses, apartments and money.
She knows what she knows: the cost of apartments is always going up, and that's all there is to know. I cannot tell her otherwise.
While she is relating this information we're on a scooter she's driving through an industrial area. Prefabricated buildings hulk around us for kilometers in every direction, with only the distant lump of Banping Mountain to interrupt the view. It's early morning, and the sky above us is an uncharacteristic blue. We cross a bridge leading into Dzeguan.
On our way to the fishing port we stop at a few houses with gigantic shou ("for sale") signs plastered over their first and second floors. She asks me to take pictures of the address plates on each house. I'm supposed to send her these pictures on Line later, so that she can check their listings. At one point she even goes so far as to accost a woman living next to one of the properties on the road, asking the woman how old the house is, who lived there before, and how long the house has been on the market. The bewildered neighbor does her best to answer these questions, though of course there's a lot she doesn't know.
Eventually we arrive at the fishing port via a series of turns that I'm later unable to remember. There's a bigger, newer building in that place hosting several seafood restaurants, all of which are closed because it's a Sunday and it's very early. A few older people sit around near the water, but overall the place is very quiet.
I suggest walking to a nearby beach. At least I assume it's a beach. On Google Maps it's a beach. Google Maps has, however, steered me wrong before.
She agrees and we slowly walk in that direction. As we leave the fishing port the streets grow even quieter, with only a few fishermen zooming this way and that between the beach and the port. On the other side of the shuttered seafood restaurants there's an open expanse of concrete where the fishermen mend their nets, and behind that we find the beach. It's not a pretty beach, but anyone living that far north into Kaohsiung might find it adequate.
We continue talking. I've known her for over two decades, and even so her mind takes sharp left turns that often surprise me.
"That woman on the road," she mentions, "Says we have the same look in our eyes."
I can only take her word for it. Her conversation with that woman took place in Taiwanese, a language I struggle with. I hadn't been listening that closely anyway.
"We have the same look in our eyes?" I answer rhetorically. My brain isn't entirely sure how to process this bit of information. Does it make me happy? Does it cause me to worry? Does it make any kind of sense? For a second or two I consider some moment in the distant past, a branching-off point between universes, where the little girl she must have been resembled the little boy I was. Perhaps there is some kernel of truth to the statement that "we have the same look in our eyes." I really don't know.
Sometimes I feel like talking to her is like sitting in the middle of a very dark room, where the person you're speaking to doesn't want to be seen. She darts in and out of shadows. Her real meanings lurk behind cryptic statements that seem plain, but aren't.
We walk to the other end of the beach and then slowly retrace our path through the port. I've been taking pictures while we've been talking, carefully stepping over bits of garbage along the seawall as I do so. Slowly we walk back to her scooter, past the fishing nets and onward to the other side of the seafood restaurants where her scooter is waiting.
I wonder if people always resemble one another more closely over time. Have I become more like her, and less like the ignorant foreigner I once was? Do I dance around meanings the way she does? Do I worry every fact, within every conversation, to its barest outlines? Or has knowing me changed her instead? Has she become less the model of a traditional, obedient wife? Has she absorbed some of my cynicism? Some of my foreign pride?
I glance briefly into her eyes as we put our helmets back on, preparing for the ride back to Ciaotou. Yes, I think, I know her well. Even when I wasn't listening, she was still speaking inside me.
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