Straight Lines — Web Exclusive
By Yuan Qiongqiong
Translated by Kevin Hsu
Whenever she felt her mind was in disarray she would began drawing straight lines. It had been about four or five months since this began. Whenever she began to feel balled up, she would find a piece of paper and, with great care, began drawing straight lines. Holding the pen, she made a line straight across, leaving a trail of a long, somewhat quivering and crooked line. Even those quivering lines could calm her. She was drawing straight lines. Without distraction, she stared at her pen, connected to her wrist and her palm, as if it were a slender fingertip that had sprouted from the extremity of her body and flesh, leaving trails of long, frail moan-like lines. Of course, only ink flowed from out of the pen's tip, black ink, but she would always feel as if something would flow, too, out of the inside of her body, something vital, black, which evidently was her blood. Perhaps the blood inside of her had two colors, red and black, like some sort of cocktail, with a red layer and a black layer next to each other, never mixing, as if they had talked it over one with the other, to follow their own paths, only barely touching. Yes, she firmly believed that these two kinds of blood must flow through her body, the black being from him, having been polluted by him. Therefore when she drew straight lines and watched the black lines frailly but firmly trickling out from the extremity of her body, she would feel an indescribable sense of liberation, and an indescribable sense of joy.
She had never done this in front of him. She could not do anything else simultaneously while she was talking to him. She had to really concentrate, like if she did not focus all of her attention, the entire world would gradually, like liquid, melt and seep away. She had to concentrate hard. She stared at him, and stared at this world, as if the world depended on her gaze for its persistence. If she closed her eyes, this world would in that sudden moment topple, shatter, and vanish. She was like the monster in that myth that never slept, eternally with one eye open while the other eye rested, and at the moment when they switched, the world would be seen by both eyes, thus creating a parallel universe. That was what the book said.
Maybe in a parallel universe, he and she would have a different kind of relationship, not like this now.
When they first met, she did not think it would turn out like this. He did not talk much. She thought he was a calm, stable person.
He sat in the crowd, his face pale, quiet. He appeared so the several times she met him after that. He was brief and taciturn.
It was afterward she realized that he was a very argumentative person. It was something she had first gotten a taste of the time when she went to his office.
She hid under his office desk; it was a game. In love there are many games, many fantasies, and attempts to make the fantasies become reality. The purpose of this game was to make his fantasy become reality. She hid under the office desk, unseen by anyone, while he sat squarely, as if there were no one else in the room. She was an invisible lover, an unseen object. Maybe, for him, what excited him in this fantasy was this fact.
She caressed him under the desk. At this point someone came in. He immediately pushed his chair forward, completely penning her in the space beneath the office desk.
His office was a stand-alone. It was just his. All of his employees were in the big office just beyond his door. The one who came in, a female employee, had actually remained inside the big office. After she entered, she began working at her own station. She never understood why he would not let her out.
Maybe this was part of the game. Perhaps when she crawled under the office desk, she ceased to exist, became invisible, and was quickly relegated to a parallel universe.
She crouched under the desk, screened, protected, and blocked by his legs and lower body. Then the girl came in; she came in and left, and then left and came in again. Chatting with him about nothing in particular. She listened under the desk. She heard the woman asking how his wife was doing. At that point she sensed the woman was not chatting with him, but warning her, warning her that this was a man who had a wife. In other words, she had been noticed.
She hid under the desk for nearly three hours. The woman finally left, and she came out from under the desk. Afterward she stood at his office door examining her little jail cell, and discovered that there was about a 30-centimeter space between the desk and the floor, without any coverage. If someone tried to hide underneath there, they could easily be seen.
His love had probably disappeared at right about that moment, that moment when he discovered she had been seen. When he would not let her out, ensconced her beneath the desk, and thought she could therefore disappear, he still loved her. But when he knew an outsider had discovered her, real love turned into a real game. It was as if two people who had originally been in love were riding a merry-go-round and then changed seats into parallel spaces, and she could never catch up with him; there, those in love continued to be in love, but here, she had become a role in a game. When he did not play, she no longer existed.
Afterward he escorted her back. He was castigating her on the road; she had never heard him talk so much at once. She had originally been an accomplice, but now she was an opponent. Because she made a mistake, by being seen. She sat in the car without a word, listening to all his pointed attacks, like if he reprimanded her enough, or denied her enough, she could disappear, and thus revert back to her original invisible form.
It was then that she realized her position in this relationship. She realized she was something disposable at any time, and realized she was walking along a cliff, and no matter how careful she was, falling and shattering into a million bits was her destiny. And he would not save her. Perhaps the most fun part of this game was watching that fall. Perhaps from the outset of this game, there was a straight line leading toward that fall. Sooner or later, she would come face to face with this ending.
It was then that she began drawing straight lines. She would have to think long and hard even just about calling him, or meeting him. Her brain was confused and jumbled, and in dead knots. So she took out a piece of paper to draw straight lines. First she drew horizontal ones, and then she drew vertical ones. She let the vertical ones and the horizontal ones intersect at precise right angles. Enveloped by those extremely tiny checkered squares, it was as if she had returned to a state of order and harmony, a state of quietude.
It was raining that day. She called him from the sheltered walkway below. She stared out from the walkway, underneath the sky, at those white straight lines, absolutely straight, connecting sky to ground.
She had been in treatment for six months then. She had gotten rid of the habit of drawing straight lines, and perhaps also the habit of thinking about him, because the only thing that made her anxious was he. Every time she saw the doctor, she would just talk about him. Endlessly, she would talk about him. In terms of many, various things—what happened between them, what she suspected, what she doubted, what she did not understand. She would always sink deep into the couch, her fingers crossed, legs dangling off the edge of the couch. Afterward the doctor said: “See, you haven't been drawing straight lines.” He said: “We have gotten rid of this habit.”
But what the doctor did not know was that straight lines are everywhere.
When she was sitting in the sheltered walkway making the call, she did not take out a pen and paper to draw straight lines, but watching the falling rain hanging down right before her eyes, she felt the world was crawling with straight lines.
Lines of rain, and the columns of the arcade, and the pedestrian walkway, the edges of the corridor. And glass windows, French windows, roadside trees, railing posts.
Slowly, in the walkway, step by step, she walked toward the building of his office.
She walked very slowly, and in that state of order and restraint, felt like she was walking in a straight line. The road bricks were straight lines, and so was the high-rise building far away. One storefront after another, between one wall and the next, she passed through one straight line after another straight line. Straight lines are everywhere.
He said on the phone: he did not want to see her.
Every once in a while, she would call him. He would always pick up her call; she did not know why. It was something she could not understand, unless refusing her repeatedly was a pleasure for him.
He would say on the phone in his argumentative tone: I don't want to see you. So she began to talk, and began to cry, suppressing her sobs while she cried. She used words to send off pieces and fragments of herself. An invisible straight line floating in the air, extending into an infinite distance. That straight line connected her and him, and was extremely distinct, nearly, almost, visible. Then, in the pause between her intermittent words and sobs, he would say: “Are you done?” His tone was light and brisk; he said: “I'm hanging up.” And so, at the other end of the receiver a dead knot was made. The connecting straight line, like a beaded necklace with a broken string, exploded, and fell. And shattered, vanished.
Yet she was now walking right to the building of his office. She looked at the innumerable orderly straight lines that extended beyond ahead of her, and felt at peace. She had thought about it for a long while, and finally decided she had to resolve this once and for all.
It was still the concept of a straight line. Between two problems, the shortest distance is a straight line. Between two people, the longest distance is also a straight line. Straight lines are borderless, limitless, endless.
She did not have a precise plan in her mind. All she had were two points. Beginning, and end. The beginning was her walking on the street, quietly, along straight lines. The end was he. How the beginning was going to connect to the end in a single path, she did not think it through. She just felt it would not be a problem.
When you have been in a world of straight lines long enough, when all you see of the world are only countless straight lines, you will become simple, and you will trust everyone, and everything, has a beginning, and an end. It is connected by two points that are visible or invisible; that is all.
The building his office was in was said to be the tallest structure in the world. When she walked to the bottom of the building, the rain stopped. But she found traces of rain on her body, straight, one streak next to another, tracing a dank spot on her clothes. She thought she had been rained on; it was strange she had not noticed it. She did not bring an umbrella. Before walking to this building, she had crossed the plaza, and crossed the street.
But now the rain stopped. The sky was bright, the sun was shining, and the air was moist, quiet as if they were all waiting for something.
She rode the elevator up. She envisioned herself gazing out the windows, and that because of how tall the building was, right outside the windows there would be cloud and fog, there would be dampish, yet-to-fall rain. And maybe she would be sitting on the windowsill, like a child, her legs dangling downward. Up, or down, she would look; she could not decide on this point yet. It would depend on where he was.
But he would look at her; that was certain. She envisioned he would be taciturn, expressionless, watching her emptily and transparently. Their gaze would form a straight line. He would not pull her up; that was for sure. But, they would gaze at each other, her eyes connected to his eyes, and when she was falling, something in him would certainly fall along as well.
His floor level was not high, but there was still enough distance to the bottom of the building. She felt that was enough.
As soon as this game began, there was a straight line leading toward a fall. She had spent six months figuring this out.
Thus she came running to face this conclusion.
At the bottom of the building. Some people raised their heads and were looking up. From above, maybe the top floor, slowly, something was floating downward, one piece, and another, flying and flittering through midair, evidently because they were too light, and could not fall straight down to the ground. Those things, flew and flittered in high air, like odd, lone birds, in all bizarre forms and shapes, and spread out their wings in every which direction.
White, or maybe gray, black birds, they were not very distinct. In front of the building's exterior that was composed of innumerable straight lines and checkered squares, they were falling, floating, and lifted occasionally by currents of air upward.
In the empty plaza in front of the building a crowd gathered, raising their heads and watching.
Then, she left. Transparent, untouched, unseen by anyone. Barefoot, she walked down the fire escape stairs. There were many steps, and she would walk for a long time. There was no light in the stairwell, which was perfect for concealing her naked body. While she was descending floor after floor, making turn after turn.
She had finally arrived at a world where there were more things than straight lines.
Yuan Qiongqiong has been a prolific author in Taiwan since the 1970s and is highly acclaimed for her short stories and essays. She has also published poetry under the name Zhu Ling and has written a novel, numerous scripts, lyrics, and criticism, as well as having been a radio show host. Her last major work is from 1998, Kong bu shi dai, "Times of Terror," a collection of postmodern horror/fantasy stories. The book from which the present piece is taken, "Perhaps, It Has Nothing to Do with Love" Huo xu, yu ai wu guan, published in 2009, is her first fiction work since then, and it contains a noticeable shift in style, tone and presentation.
Kevin Hsu was born in Taipei and lives in Austin, Texas. His writings and translations have appeared in PRISM International, Words Without Borders, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien, Switzerland.
Original text: Yuan, Qiongqiong. Huo xu, yu ai wu guan. Taipei: Jiu ge, 2009.