Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

Willa Cather: “The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.” I’m not sure I believe the sentiment but her words never fail to unsettle me.

It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he can’t show us that he does.

We ate bitterness and tried a thousand ways, a hundred plans, but when the tiger ventures from the mountains to the plains, it is bullied by dogs.

After all, when poverty enters, love flies out the window. I understood better than anyone that smoke does not come out of the chimney from love alone—and never forgot that Amy, Ma, and Pa were counting on me back home.

Now, many years later, I was not sure if we had truly loved each other or merely the versions of ourselves we had seen reflected in the other’s eyes—as if we had acted out a play together, both of us player and audience alike.

It was a complex language, filled with challenging sounds and a wrapped-up word order. Despite its intricacy, it was the language of my soul.

I learned that curses were impotent unless powered by shame and the appeal of the forbidden.

When you truly love someone and you see them again, even if it is many years later, their new face blends back into their old face and it is like no time has passed at all.

I never even taught them how to pray, though I believe we all find our own path to the gods.

The great gods have great compassion. Let the good draw near, let evil desist. Please protect my Sylvie, let her be safe, let her be healed.

The disorienting feeling of jet lag remains, as if my brain has been packed in wool.

traditional Mun Shou Chinese mug, the type where the ceramic looks like it’s been embroidered with blue lotus flowers.

hagelslag?

tijgerbrood

“Modular origami,” he answers with a smile. “I began with regular origami and moved on to the 3-D version.”

a house on the Prins Bernhardstraat

Kuan Yin manifested herself on the surface of a muddy lake, the beauty of a lotus that bloomed above the muck.

“When you love someone, there is no shame. When I see you, I only know that you are my grandma and you are beautiful. You did this for me when I was young. Now it is my turn. You always said, the old become children once again.”

“The water wind is good here. Better than people mountain, people sea,” Grandma had said one morning—she had always hated crowds—and suddenly her eyes were awash with unshed tears. “But it is still not the Central Kingdom.”

best jade could command a fortune on the market, especially the types I recognized here: kingfisher, moss-in-snow, and apple jade, but mainly, and the most desirable of all, imperial jade.

Tell your mother she should sell whatever she needs. This gold is meant to serve the living, not to enslave them.”

Amsterdam-Rhine Canal where the deep water sparkled.

“Especially because we usually do not have any basements. The ground is too soft and wet. The entire country is below sea level.”

uitsmijter

Brouwersgracht, one of the most beautiful routes in Amsterdam.

We walked onto the boat and Lukas rang the doorbell.

“When the sandpiper and the clam oppose each other, it is the fisherman who benefits.”

costume jewelry.

flinty.

menorah?”

“That is quite different from here. Most of us have been killed or left for other countries. The Jewish community here is small and very aware of being survivors. Do you remember that kid Rafael from our class?”

“It is like people become blind and they just yell things that have no connection to who you are.”

segued

“It is sad how trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. Helena, my own ma and pa: They taught us to keep our heads low, to hold our secrets as closed as an oyster. Keep ourselves apart from everyone else. At a certain point, you wind up dividing yourself internally into so many different people you do not even know who you are anymore.”

“That is it exactly. My mother told me everyone was anti-Semitic. Do not stick out your head in case it gets cut off. Never trust anyone outside of the family, while the family itself was, of course, completely untrustworthy. Do not reveal what you are truly feeling or thinking. Never show who you are. She wanted me to become a rabbi.” I asked softly, “And now?”

“The cello is difficult because unlike the guitar, it does not have any frets. You must search for the note on the string yourself. But before you can find the note, you must be able to hear it.”

I kept my attraction a secret because I had learned that to do otherwise was to invite the gods to mock you. My relationship with Jim had been a mad rush, out of control and consuming everything in its path, like an avalanche. From the day we met, we had been inseparable. No more of that for me.

Love was an asymptote I neared but could never reach, edging ever closer for eternity.

This past Saturday, 14 May, the body of an unknown woman was found in the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal in Diemen. She was located inside her rental auto.

canal, which is not secured by any type of guardrail. If this were the U.S., someone would drown there every five minutes, but in Europe they seem to believe that if you’re dumb, you deserve to die so you don’t pass your genes on to the next generation.

saucijzenbroodje.

A Moroccan man in a janitor’s uniform is playing Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight”

Then I stroll along the Brouwersgracht, a canal lined with tall and thin canal houses—each

“Your playing style reminds me of Starker.” His head whips around to face me. “You are full of surprises. Why do you say that?” I scrunch my head down into my jacket. I always put my foot in my mouth. I mumble, “I felt bad I only complimented your running with your cello, though you did that very well too.”

Women. Love. How can something so beautiful turn wicked? They say that once you see the ocean, no other water can compare. My love story started so many years ago. Pa and I began our marriage with the strength of a tiger’s head but it slowly transformed into the weak tail of the snake.

But then the burden of years weighed upon us. Love can change. It can grow and twist until the most beautiful sapling in the wild turns into a prison of stunted wood.

polonaise

Even small amounts of light peeking through my curtains in the morning had started to irritate me. I was not used to companionship, and like a dog that had been abused as a puppy, I shied away from it. Joy was no longer something I could trust.

But those who wish to eat honey must suffer the sting of the bees.

In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories. We are the ultimate unreliable narrators. If we desire to forgive someone, we tell ourselves one version—he did not mean it, he is sorry and will never do it again. And when we are finally ready to walk away, something else—he has always been a lying bastard, I never should have trusted him and you could always see the lie in his eyes. That day, I called in sick to work and read their