Student Translation Project
HKBU TIIS 2022
Fish Door
By Hon Lai Chu
Translated by: Chan Chak Hin, Chu Pui Shan, Kwan Wing Yan, Lau Yan Ting, Lui Choi Sin, Luk Ka Lam
Edited by: Kwan Wing Yan, Lau Yan Ting, Luk Ka Lam
Designed by: Chan Chak Hin, Chu Pui Shan, Lui Choi Sin, Wong Viola
That scorching noon, he fell on Shine’s head like a leaf, alerting Shine to the weight he could not endure, changing his breathing rhythm irreversibly. They were standing on a gigantic reef, and the waves of the faulty sea were crashing against the reef behind them. If one fell into the sea, there would be no aid. However, they had sturdy legs and plainly understood where they were. Shine forgot his name and named him Leaf in his mind because Leaf let Shine discern his name. His real name, which he loathed, was given to him by his mother. But Leaf had never seen Shine’s mother because they met at the rocky beach, coming from different directions, 72 days after Shine’s mother was buried.
That day, Shine returned home and outlined Leaf’s body shape on a piece of white paper. It was a map he made for himself, and he sketched the route of the impending journey. He had never had a person as a destination. Therefore, he was not aware the distance was so vast it would take him his whole life. He hung the map on a wall covered with outstanding bills and pending to-do lists. However, the travel plan gave him a false impression that he had found a new direction. Deep inside, he knew this was the road indicated by his alcoholic mother.
“There is little hope in life,” she said to him after getting drunk. “Sometimes, you must wait for someone to open the locked door. That person can hew off the faulty lock, go straight into your heart and ransack your world.” During her whole life, Shine’s mother was never admitted to the treatment center, and neither was Shine. They thought it was better to get into a deep waking state by drinking different wines than wasting time on quitting drinking. So, Shine got extremely disappointed at her funeral, where nobody drank liquor. All those who came to offer their condolences looked like passersby. Their eyes dull, and their skin dry. At the funeral, they chatted, laughed, and exchanged cards at inappropriate times. They also faked a mournful look or casually scrolled down on their phone screens. They were all not yet drunk but irrecoverably dazed and bewildered. Shine failed to realize that the one he despised most was himself and not the guests who were just like him — they couldn’t get drunk. At the same time, he did not know that Leaf and his own mother would give him the biggest blow, making him die at least twice in his short life.
When Shine arrived at the superintendent’s office, he couldn’t see that he was wearing the expression of a drowning man. The air conditioner in the office froze him. So, he told the superintendent in a trembling voice that he had lost the last key in his pocket. “I can’t go home.” He said that as a cry for help. The superintendent did not dig out the thick phone book as Shine expected. Instead, he pointed his stubby fingers at the erratic sea behind his back.
Shine followed the superintendent’s description and found the locksmith standing at the seashore. He was gazing at a fishing rod hanging in the sea. Shine felt as if a vast dark shadow had fallen on his tiring life. So, he saw beyond the locksmith’s name and walked to Leaf like a fish plunging into a snare.
“Take me out of this treacherous sea.” But Shine was not the one who said that.
The direction the superintendent gave was correct. “Opening a door should not be a problem for him. There were people locked outside after going out to throw rubbish; people stuck in their toilets or bedrooms for no reason, or people afraid of the outside for different reasons. He opened their doors at crunch times, and finally, those people could get back to the office on time in the morning.” He squinted and showed Shine an intriguing smile. The wrinkles stacked on his face looked like a maze, simple and crude.
When Leaf was in front of him and opened the stubbornly closed door, sunlight entered the house through the window and came into view. It made him feel a sense of golden drowsiness. Finally, tiredness struck after he took off his long-term camouflage.
“What an elegant house,” admired Leaf. To acknowledge his help, Shine led him into the house. Leaf brought strange footsteps when he wandered around Shine's house. The sound of footsteps seared on his eardrum as an omen that this would be a timeproof echo. However, Shine was concerned about Leaf's footsteps; Shine was concerned about what to bring for Leaf next.
Leaf did not mention the charge. Instead, he just demanded a cup of strong coffee to moisten his mouth, which was dry under prolonged exposure to the sun. In the dense smell of baked beans, they occupied the two opposite sides of the table. Shine clearly knew that the elevated heartbeat was not caused by caffeine but by the start of an exchange. Shine just wanted to hand over himself completely and trade for something. He realised it was a wrong decision after such a long time. However, he never blamed himself at any moment in his life. After all, he was born in a barren land. People were busy exchanging new houses, new tools, new lovers, new clothes, new pets, new cars, new enemies, new neighbours, new faces, or the new 'new.' Only exchanging could manufacture profits. Those who stayed there, including him, hoped they could become a person who changed or at least pushed the process of changing. Also, he was not tired of this way of life. It was essential to wrap himself up if he wanted to keep his distance from it. Some found jobs that made them tired. Some lived in houses for the cost of debt. Some had lovers who left them with scars all over their bodies. Some got a few kids. Some wandered around the city. Some made homes filled with filthy grease. However, Shine just wanted to grab a locksmith and ease his plight of having nowhere to go, though he understood it was hard to pretend to have a key stolen.
When the twilight immersed the windows, talkative Leaf had already built up a black forest for Shine using his utterances. It made him figure out he did not necessarily have to be a fish.
“That large housing estate near here has a lot of apartments, but most of them are empty because no one can pay the expensive rent. After dark, all the windows with no lights prove what I said is true.” When the night became darker and darker, Leaf told Shine that humans lost their shadows; he sometimes would open the slightly rusted door lock of a vacant flat and lay on the floor. He had a house of his own, but it was similar to most of the houses in the city — they had a layer of emptiness that could turf everyone out.
“Why?” Shine asked, but Leaf didn’t reply.
“Looking for someone?” Shine asked again.
He shook his head and said he did not intend to find anyone again.
“To find the afterimage of home?”
“Not interested.”
“Then, is it to get the furniture others left behind?”
“There is only dust over time.” Leaf only said that the meaning of making a living was first to let yourself survive using that technique and then make other people survive using the same technique.
The sky was already very dark. So, the time the locksmith spent at Shine’s home exceeded the courteous limit. Shine showed Leaf the room his mother occupied when she was alive and the door that had not been opened for a long time. “It has been abandoned for a long time. Perhaps you could try to occupy it causally like an empty flat.” When Shine said this, it was surely not for the exchange but to end their exhaustion.
Leaf found that opening that door required no unlocking skills but bravery. He thought it must be stacked with the mementos of Shine’s mother, but there was nothing except for the suffocating smell of alcohol, reminding him of the antiseptics everywhere in the hospital, and he felt the same kind of paranoid mysophobia. He had to leave the fishy fishing tackle there.
Shine did not say much to Leaf afterwards. In the days to follow, they often shared a staunch silence, thick and slippery like the mucus in the center of an aloe plant. The shape of Leaf was a long airway. Shine did not know where the destination was. He just hoped that it would be somewhere more distant. He did not tell Leaf that after his mother died of alcohol poisoning, he quit the job that allowed him to leave on time after graduation. It was not because the death shocked him, but he realised immutably that he had been in a lethargic status. It was not because he never drank, but he never did outrageous things.
During the hot summer, they always went to the seaside in the afternoon. Leaf fished while Shine did not swim and just collected rocks. Shine would count the catch accurately, and if a certain even number were reached, he would release all the fish back into the sea. His purpose of fishing was not to wait, neither to catch nor release; he just needed to practise repeatedly, to open the fish's mouth.
“We must take the hook out of their mouths to help them escape the trapped situation,” Leaf said.
“What if they insist on not opening their mouths?” Shine knew little about fish.
“They will get serious injuries.” Leaf said the mouth was the source of all gates.
Shine was sure that Leaf had never tried to open his mouth. He opened the door of his house, then opened the door of his mother’s room, and then opened some doors he never knew. Shine was not fearless, but certain things must happen. He could only accept as they passed, just like he seemed to see the shape of the future. But while it followed his sorrowful imagination to pave its way, he had to stay in gloom for a while.
Since the first typhoon that year struck, Leaf has neither appeared at the seaside nor returned to his mother’s room, though his fishing tackle was still on the beach as usual. Shine went to the superintendent’s office in the rain to inquire about Leaf’s whereabouts.
“Did you lose your key again?” The superintendent asked, knitting his brows.
“Nah,” Shine said insincerely. “I have already been able to return to my house.”
“Then why do you need a locksmith?” The superintendent could not understand.
Shine built a new habit - pursing his mouth daily, strolling from the superintendent’s office to the nearby private housing. The city's night sky was dark and broken, but the dense lights in the buildings were brighter and more dazzling than the stars in the wilderness. He gazed at every lightless window for a long time until his eyes started hurting, and he could accept that Leaf was not there.
Leaf’s hint could not have been more apparent. He had opened all the doors for Shine, and Shine had to go through the last one alone. However, Shine persistently hesitated outside the door, not because he was afraid of what lay behind it but because there might be nothing, just as he expected.
Shine would still walk alone to the seaside after the typhoon. To count the days clearly, he looked for a rock every day and picked it up like a piece of his own disintegrating self. However, he was not a rock after all and thus could not become complete. He thought that the rocks would fill the pockets of his clothes and bring him to the bottom of the sea. Nevertheless, after a few seasons, the surface of the rocks gradually became smooth, and he put them together on the floor of his house so that he could again feel the weight that did not belong to him after he had gone to sleep at night.
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