Our Missing Hearts (23)

It means seedling, or sometimes crops. Something just beginning to grow. But it sounds like a cat’s meow, doesn’t it? Miu.

And, he says, his voice warming the way it does when he grows excited, when he’s talking about things that he loves, like words. It has been a long time since this happened. And, his father goes on, if you put this, which means beast, in front of it—

He adds a few more strokes, a pared-down suggestion of an animal sitting at attention:

    貓



—this whole thing means cat. The beast that makes the sound miu. But of course you could think of it as the beast that protects the crops.

His father is in his element, as Bird hasn’t seen him in years. He has almost forgotten his father could be like this, that his father had this in him. That his eyes and his face could light up this way.

The story, his father says, is that once there were no cats in China. No house cats, anyway. Only wildcats. Classically, cat was written like this—he sketches another character—

    貍



—which really meant a wild creature, like a fox. Then Persian traders taught them to domesticate their wildcats, and they added this—

He begins to write a third character, made of two halves. First, the character for woman. Then beside it, so close they almost overlap, the symbol for hand.

    奴



Slave, his father says. Wildcat plus slave, a domesticated cat. See?

Together they look down at the characters written in the dust. Miu. His mother. Beast plus seedling meant cat. What kind of beast would she have been? A cat, for sure. Woman plus hand meant slave. Had his mother ever been domestic, or domesticated?

With one swipe of his palm his father wipes the top of the bookshelf clean.

Anyway, he says. We used to talk about these kinds of things, your mother and me. Long time ago.

He rubs his palm against the thighs of his pants, leaving a faint gray streak.

She liked that idea, he says after a moment. That the only thing separating her from a beast was a few little strokes.

I didn’t know you knew Chinese, Bird says.

I don’t, his father says absently. Not really. But I can understand some Cantonese. I studied it, for a while. With your mother. A long time ago.

He turns to go, and then, just as suddenly, turns back.

That book.

And then, after another long pause: Your mother used to tell you that story, didn’t she.

Bird nods.

I remember, his father says.

And as he begins to speak, it comes back to Bird, all of it: not the words on the pages of the book, not the few bare-bones sentences his father uses to tell it to him now, but the way he remembers hearing it, in his mother’s voice. Painting a picture with words on the blank white wall of his mind. Long buried. Crackling as it surfaced in the air once more.

    Once, long ago, there was a boy who loved to draw cats. He was a poor boy, and most of the day he worked in the fields, planting rice with his parents and the others in his village in the spring, harvesting the paddies beside them in the fall. But whenever he had a spare moment, he would draw. And what he most liked to draw, what he drew most often of all, were cats. Big cats, little cats, striped and calico and spotted. Cats with pointy ears and skinny eyes, cats with black paws and black muzzles, cats with white patches on their chests like eagles. Shaggy cats, smooth cats, cats leaping, cats stalking, cats sleeping or cleaning their fur. On the flat rocks by the river, he sketched them with a burnt stick. He scraped them into the sand on the shores of the nearby lake where the fishermen pulled in their nets. On dry days, he scratched them into the dust of the path to his house, and after the rains he carved them into the thick mud where puddles had once glistened.

The others in his village thought this was a waste of time. What use is it to draw cats, they scoffed. It doesn’t put food on the table or bring in the grain. The richest man in town had beautiful scrolls on the walls of his house: paintings of fog-tipped mountains and elegant gardens, far-off things no one in their village had ever seen. But you could simply step outside and see a cat; they were everywhere. They had never heard of an artist choosing to draw cats. What was the point?

The boy’s parents, however, did not agree. Although they had to work many hours in the field—and the boy often had to help—they were proud of his talent. After the day’s work was done, the father collected pieces of bamboo the length of his hand and gave them to his son for brushes. The mother cut the tips of her own hair and bound them into tufts for the bristles. The boy gathered stones—every color he could find, from deep red to pure black—and ground them to dust to make his paints. And every night, he painted cats—on flat pieces of bark, on scraps of paper and worn-out rags—until it was time for bed.

One year, sickness struck the village, and the boy’s parents died. No one in the village would take him in: he had a reputation. A boy who wasted time, a boy who did useless things. Besides, the villagers had little to spare. They had been sick, too; there was little food, nothing left for one who wasn’t their own. Each family took a handful of rice from their stores, bound it all in a cloth, and gave it to the boy. Good luck, they said. May fortune smile on you. He thanked them and shouldered the bundle, tucked his brushes in his pocket, and set off on his way.

It was winter, and bitterly cold. The boy wandered for hours through the dark until he came to a small village, where every door was shut tight. Though he could see the glow of firelight through the windows, no one would answer his knock. A harsh wind began to blow; snow began to whirl around him in the air like ghosts clawing at his face. At the last house, an old woman peered out. I’m sorry, she said. If I let you in, my husband will kill me. We dare not take in strangers. This whole town is afraid. Afraid, the boy said, afraid of what? But the woman simply shook her head.