Brutal end
of affair ~this
dialogue appears in Admit2.
See here.
HE: The steady pouring
rain opened a new page of the raging
night.
SHE: Our electricity paused; we forgot where we kept the batteries for
the radio. Nobody could tell us which streets had been flooded.
HE: We did not know the time, but we thought we must make sure the
Cheungs living next door had enough food for the evening.
SHE: So I thought I'd cook. I never realized before how little food,
how little anything, how little everything, we kept. We might as well
have been living on a railway platform, drinking tea and eating noodles
out of styrofoam, as to call home this place we squatted like
refugees, migrants, beggars and thieves.
HE: I told my wife there was no time for cooking. We should just go
over to their place and see what we could do. Hard times were many and
the old folks cared for us and lent us the little money they had
with open arms, unknitted brows.
SHE: That's when I realized how little he had ever thought like
me. Like--how can I say it without sounding awful--like us.
Like normal people. When Mrs. Cheung let us in, she almost cried
because without power, she could not boil water and offer her guests
tea.
HE: The first thing I noticed was Mr Cheung's armchair. He always sat
on it and I would sit opposite him and we would chat about the
temperature or about women. That night he wasn't sitting on the
armchair.
SHE: Mrs. Cheung said, "He's in the street, measuring the depth of the
rain. He says he cannot remember what happened when it last rained so
hard, but that I should pack everything worth saving into a
suitcase light enough to carry in one old man's hand.
HE: It was then that I thought perhaps we needed to pack as well. I
looked out of the window and saw his shadow rippling on the flooded
street. He was waving to someone but there was no one else in sight.
SHE:
But when we brought his woman downstairs, he was
nothing but a hand out a taxi window. He loved her most, but he
saved his old bones.
