The tide wakes her from her nap. Not sure since when, the water has swept across the balcony, ankle-high. In the setting sun, a few roofs peek through the water. Far in the distance to her right are the soaring domes of the Basilica di San Marco, slowly swallowed by the glimmering tides.

Swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the water.

She pushes hard against the arm chair to lift herself up. One hand on a cane, the other against the wall, she shuffles back into the living room, the knock of the cane muffled by the soggy carpet.

It’s a quarter past nine, still. The clock battery has given its last sigh long ago as time froze, an iceberg waiting to be dissolved by the dark green water. The ornate furniture, the beautiful artwork and the feeble flame of a half-burnt candle are as though a photograph, only the growing sepia betraying the swish swash of time. Whoever lived here must have left in a hurry, not taking much with them. She wonders whether they had felt as she did a few days ago.

“That’s all,” She had stared at the half-empty suitcase that summarized her seven decades of life.

She decides to have butter chicken for dinner. Putting on her glasses, she finds the pill bottle with a picture resembling the dish. She takes out a tablet and chews it, savouring the rich taste of artificial curry. Once invented for people who are way too busy to cook or eat, these nutritious chemicals are now the only food available.

She wonders what George would say if he sees her now, munching butter chicken with her bare feet dangling just off the water, filling the protagonist role of a deserted photograph. Maybe George would laugh – he loves her and finds whatever she does amusing, her outlandish ways and irrational rationalizations and all.

Maybe he would cry like a little kid and tell her he misses her.

George was right that she was the only soul insane enough to spend a lifetime’s savings to go to Venice. The young pilot who flew her here – she cannot recall his name – most likely thought so too. The incredulity in his eyes leaked through his gentlemanly politeness, silently thundering “do you know how many other ways we could have used the fuel to win the war?” She continued reading Shakespeare. He had grown up with the patriotic rhetoric of the resource wars, she thought. Like vultures scavenging the last flesh of a giant corpse, the armies wave the glorious banners of freedom and democracy and kill over the last hint of fresh water, the last chatter of leaves in the wind, the last blush of a real apple, and soon, the last glint of oil.

She starts to trudge up to the penthouse bedroom before the tide gets knee-high. The narrow staircase aches and squeals with every step. The first time she was in Venice, she raced up one of these ancient staircases. She was twenty-two – or twenty-three? – back then. Her turquoise summer dress was soaked from dancing and splashing at the St. Marco’s Square. It was acqua alta, and the water had pooled all over the square. The reflections of the lights that lined the square were drenched into millions of shooting stars.

She leans against the bedroom window and gazes out. The riddles of narrow streets woven with light and shadow, the people who came from all over the world, the St. Marco square replete with lights and memories and laughter and heartbreaks… shrouded way beneath the rippling dark green, forgotten. All she can hear, is swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the sea.

                                              ————

The idea of this story came to me when I was traveling in one of the most beautiful places in the world knowing that one day it will be under water.

[This story also appeared in The Terry Project]

Everyday, as the second hand covers the hour and minute hands, me, the puppet, and the old man would form the apexes of an equilateral triangle. Without a shadow, we would divide the circular piazza precisely in three along its circumference. At 12:02pm, a crowd would emerge from the subway, squinting in the flooding midday sun.

This would herald a few buses of tourists. The tourists would sit in columns and rows like neatly arranged eggs in an egg carton, occasionally a head impatiently poking out of the window.

“Look, it’s an angel and a puppet!” Someone would say as they approach us. Sometimes this would be a father holding the hand of his little daughter, who would only be as tall as his knees but have the aura of my Grandma. She would tug my white robe with her little hand and see if I would move. Sometimes this would be an old Chinese lady muttering in rapid Chinese, sometimes a teenager taking a been-there-done-that picture with his iPhone before moving on, sometimes a local grandpa weaving through the crowds unable to catch up to his grandson.

Beads of sweat emerge from my temples, crawling along gravity.

Most people wouldn’t notice the equilateral triangle – not that the triangle has been planned. I would be the first one to set up. Then the puppet would come, then the old man. And inevitably, we would form the apexes of an equilateral triangle, each of us tacitly obeying the natural attraction and repulsion laws of the universe.

In a dark suit that has forgotten its hues in the washer, the old man would sit on the marble stairs polished by thousands of steps. The piazza is very small, so that I can recognize the “Au Bon Pain” logo on his sandwich bag. The old man spends the whole afternoon eating his lunch, as if a mill of teeth trying to grind bits of muffin into atoms.

The puppet is my biggest competitor. His bucket and mine graciously fight for the same wallets. He has an easier time – he sits motionless on two hollow wooden cubes, one stacked on top of the other, so that he emerges from the sea of heads from waist up. I think the boxes are hollow because of the way he sets up these boxes. About 10 minutes before 12pm, he would arrive carrying one box on top of the other with his palm skyward, like a waiter nonchalantly entering the scene with a plate of steaming lobster.

A sound of coins plummeting in to my bucket. I slowly move my legs into a demi-plié and bow. Merely making good use of the ballet I learned as a kid.

The puppet painted his face white so that his reindeer nose stands out. He wears a puffy purple checkered costume with sleeves that are wide in the middle and narrow at the ends.  Playing a discarded puppet, he has his head, legs, and arms connected via strings to a wooden cross. The cross dangles lifelessly along the side of the cubes so that little kids could reach it, and accordingly he would move his arms and legs.

People would perch by my feet amidst pigeons, futilely fanning themselves with a pamphlet or a map. Then a lick of gelato.

-        So I asked the server if there is udon.
-        Was there?
-        Yes. And I asked if there is miso.
-        I’m sure there is.
-        I said I wanted udon in a base of miso soup, but he said no, there’s ramen in miso, no udon in miso. So I asked if I could replace the ramen with udon, and he said no, we have ramen in miso, udon in another soup.

Unknown to their owners, tiny shadows would start to tail beneath everyone’s feet, like daydreams unwilling to let go. They would elongate, and eventually glide over each other.

At 1:46pm, a teenage boy in a giant black T-shirt and baggy jeans would set up his speakers and guitar somewhere in the centre of the piazza, and jam jambon.

-        You think the puppet and the angel would fall in love?
-        Huh?
-        You know, love at first sight?
-        I don’t know, maybe. But you see, the world is always more boring than our imagination.

A middle-aged lady screams in pleasure as she finds that the cell phone she has been looking for everywhere is safe and sound by my feet. Amen, amen, palms together. A coin shimmers into my bucket. This time I pirouette, careful that I don’t fall off the bench.

Then the tourists would file back into their buses, eggs being put back into the egg carton by a meticulous housewife.

[short short story]