Jiao-liang was effusive at having secured a temple member without having to offer them drugs. He could tell his mother of his success, and perhaps she would think well of him. It rarely ever happened, for as she got older she became infinitely harder to please. She started to control him with merciless criticism after his father died penniless.
Returning to his home, Jiao-liang turned on the hall light and found his mother sittng in a chair.
“Look at this mess!” she shouted at him. “Why should I keep supporting you to give you time to study? You’ve piled mountains of Hongshan figures on this table and have made it look like a garbage dump! Do you even know if all of these are real?”
The U-shaped carvings...” Jiao-liang started to say.
You’re a hoarder. I give you the time to learn, and what do you do? You make a shit out of everything!” The comment still stung him, even though his mother used it on almost every occasion.
“Mama, do you remember the Portuguese man you led into the Chinese Ancient Books Chamber?”
Oh, is he still alive?”
;“I won him over with debate alone! He is coming to my temple, and will make a donation.”
Jiao-liang wasn’t sure of this of course, but he was desperate for something that would meet his mother’s approval.
“Temple? You mean the opium den that belongs to the 14K Triad gang? I hope you make them gamble first.”
She was tired. Her son poured her a cup of tea. “It’s cold,” she said. “Why don’t you join the Chinese Linguist Society and die from the politics? Give me some peace. Then I can throw away everything in your apartment.”
When the last moment you can bear abuse comes, you know it. Jiao-liang could not fight to please his mother anymore. She saw an air of finality his eyes. “OK, I’m sorry. I went too far. I will go home.”
Jiao-liang caught a tear that fell down the corner of his eye without blinking. It unnerved her. Of course, Mrs. Chang’s apartment was disheveled, too. It was the perfect excuse not to let anyone in. Just after her husband died, Jiao-liang had let a neighbor visit because he thought, ‘That’s what normal people do.’ “Well, if you want to live like this,” the neighbor had said. When his mother found out, she had beat him.
That memory filtted through her mind as she took the scroll Pedro had given her in the library, and put it in the top drawer of her husband’s desk. He had started collecttng calligraphy as his fortunes diminished, and mixed in his own work with the scrolls of others. Before she rolled it up and put it away she looked at the explosion of ink. Her husband could make distorted characters match the meaning of his poem. The last character even looked like a boat on the sea.
Mrs. Chang knew she had set off the chain of events that led to her husband’s death by forcing this great scholar to become a stationery salesman. After that she was never able to let anyone else see how much she still loved him, especially her son. Deeply hidden was the man who filled a copy of the Tao Te Ching with rose petals and wrote on the opening page, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.... Therefore I’ll not tell you I love you.”
A romantic artist with courage and principles like his shouldn’t have married the daughter of a peasant. She did not understand his inability to make money while being talented and bold enough to move prominent scholars toward a greater consideration of humanity in their philosophy.
;Being married to a stationery salesman was good enough for her. It would bring in a steady income. Of course, when his colleagues at the Macau Museum’s Linguist Society found out this change of calling they called him a fake and threw him out. She knew it would happen, but didn’t care. Mrs. Chang put the scroll back in the drawer and squeezed her hands together tightly. Tears ran down her face.
Murder does not have to be committed directly. When you know you’re the one responsible, you own it. Lying to yourself becomes as impossible just as lying to others becomes a practiced art.</p> Some stop believing in evil to avoid the inevitable responsibility that would invade their thoughts. Some go to jail. Whatever happens to the criminal, punishment always lingers silently in the room where evil has occurred, just as it lingers in the imagination.
;Mrs. Chang hadn’t realized that the calligraphy collection her husband left in that drawer had amassed in value to over 3 million Macau patacas, and she never would. She ended up working in that library, struggling to feed herself on her paltry salary, for the rest of her life.
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