THE WITHERING TREE by YEN LING :)

ONE
The excuse of mourning was no longer sufficient to continue putting off grocery shopping for fresh food. For the past week I've been sating my basic needs (i.e. hunger) with nothing but dry cereal because I've even run out of milk.

I turned 75 just last week, and held a modest celebration with my cat Mills over a chocolate muffin with a single lighted matchstick in lieu of a candle. The following day, a funeral was also held, for old Mills. And yes, I cried. I could hardly stanch the tremors in my chest- I was a great weeper, and would cry at any good book, good movie, or if I happened to spot an old friend in the Orbituaries, much less over 5 years of friendship caged in a black, velvety body, in which the heart never beat again.

I grabbed my coat off the chair and slung it across my bony shoulders, over which slack skin stretched, skin that was sprinkled with so many brown spots. It's very odd, how your body changes to suit its age, or rather, degenerates. I plucked my tweed hat from the table and walked out of the door.


The streets of New York were racetracks for the motley fleet of yellow taxicabs and Rolls Royce's and Mercedes'. Within the safe recesses of the shady cave I hailed lovingly as home, time seemed to crawl when compared to its madly accelerating counterpart (or more aptly put, a separate entity that had sprouted) in the outside world of New York City.

I inhaled deeply, granting the cool, crisp air access into my lungs. I
could almost feel the air sacs gorging greedily and bloating on the new arrival (outdoor air pollution was negligible), a stark difference to the stale, indoor air they had been accustomed to. Anyhow, I walked slowly.

The imperious buildings that framed the road stood high and proud, as if boasting of the worth it had to the army of directors, high ranking officers and some officeboys. Except it wasn't a war against invaders they were fighting, it was each other. Neither was it a war for resolution or peace, by a war for money and status.

I found a stone bench by a withering tree, its arms spread spindly and bare, its sunken trunk betraying its imminent death, and sat down.

I watched as a sparse group of business suit-clad corporate beings
spilled out of a building. It was 5pm, and yet, all of them continue to walk at such amazing speeds, mobiles clapped to their ears, briefcases banging against their legs as they sped along.

They spoke in meaningless language, in meaningless conversations, of "stocks", of "shares", of "prices" and of "profits". Those conversations that held no meaning to me could well close a booming deal that might just elevate their career a notch higher up the social ladder, but you can't bring it to eternity.


I imagined a different group of people, the majority of the blind
warriors within the building. I imagined them continuing to tap away at their laptops that were already growing so hot, they could sear the tables. I imagined them picking up a cold sandwich with one hand, the other still furiously dancing about the keyboard, eyes glued to the glaring screen, not noticing what they were feeding themselves. Many a time, they chose cold leftovers from the lunch
they could barely fit into their water-tight schedules over steaming, hearty meals. They chose paperwork and documents as their dining companions over the wives and children waiting in earnest for them at home.

I pushed myself off the stone bench and continued walking towards the grocery store I knew was just a couple of blocks away.

TWO
As I approached the traffic light, I noticed a couple huddled together, the girl with her back to the glass window of a shop. The boy had his arms locked tight around her waist. They were whispering into each other’s ears in intricate, silent intimacy.

The couple's public display of affection epitomised the selfish nature
of Love. It was nothing more than an exclusive connection, one that prohibited the rest of the world, encompassing only two people. Such a difficult connection to understand. I smile inwardly and my mind raced backwards in time.

She came to me one day in the summer of 1941 in Russia. Or rather, I was the one who singled her out of the group of girls she was with. I was walking home from school when I saw her. She was talking animatedly with her friends, and although a bright smile constantly played on her lips, I had a strange conviction that underneath that cheery façade, something restrained her from sharing herself with the world.

From the corner of my eye, I saw her cast me a quick glance that sent my heart pumping wildly. A corner loomed ahead, and I knew she was going to make the turn, while home for me was in the other direction. The sun was already dwindling. But. At that moment, I knew I shouldn’t let this girl slip away. I took a deep breath, and stepped into her world for the first time. With a trembling voice I said hi, and felt my face go up in flames as her friends giggled at my naivety and pluck. The girl looked at me for a little while, regarding me with the look of one who had just lost her favourite book but found it a week later.

It was a fairytale romance. We went out several times, steering clear of the city areas. I remember how we traveled long avenues of birch and hazel on our bicycles, where light and sound took on a repressed quality beneath the canopy of green. It was as if the world around us had shrunk to only those roads we’d trodden upon so many times, where we shared secrets (I learned that Eva lost her mother to cancer when she was five, and that accounted for her reluctance to open up to people easily), dreams and fantasies. It was as if it
was just us left in the world, it was as if Time simply stopped, and turned ours.

I still remember till this day that particular date when I proposed to
her under a great maple with its sturdy branches fanned out like an umbrella, its leaves glistening like tears of fire.

“Sit down, Eva, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
She smiles and sits obediently on the gnarled, exposed root of the tree.
My palms are starting to sweat as I keep my clenched fist behind my back.
“Close your eyes.”
She does.
I place my gift on her apple-white palm.
She opens her eyes and scrutinizes the shimmering object in her palm.
“Gabriel?”
She looks up at me.
I kneel down in front of her.
“Eva, will you marry me?”
“Absolutely not! What’s the meaning of this? You can’t hope to win my heart
with this bit of crushed foil.”
“You just broke my heart. Here I am, presenting my heart to you and you just trample all over it with your huge feet.”

With feigned anger, Eva lunges at me and we wrestle for a few moments before collapsing into fits of laughter, rolling around in the bed of crackly, yellow leaves. Then the first drops of rain began to fall, forever bounded by gravity.

1942 eased in. The German Third Reich was at the height of its power. The Nazis were already advancing upon Russia. The Red Army began its conscription for the imminent battle at Stalingrad.

Eva and I spent one last night together in the shed tucked away in a
corner of my garden. We made love. Soft stripes of moonlight filtered through the wooden boards, chilling our naked bodies. As we snuggled close together, skin to skin, Eva’s shoulders started shuddering, her chest began heaving. Soon, I felt a thin rivulet trace my left cheek.

The next morning, I walked Eva to the port, before I was required to
report to the Army Headquarters, our fingers entwined. There, we held each other in a long embrace as pandemonium arose around us, with people laden with hefty suitcases bursting with clothes and prized possessions, perhaps photographs of their beloved that have gone to fight the war, lunging for the boats in a mad rush. I could barely hear the commotion as she whispered to me, the raggedness
of her voice interspersing with my heavy breathing, “I’ll be waiting for you because I know you’ll come back to me.”We sealed the promise with a kiss, then I watched her retreat reluctantly to the boats, her eyes shining with tears, her lips forming a quivering smile.

I wish I could tell you she was able to sail away to America (where
we’d agreed to meet again) and after arduous months of waiting, finally reunited with me, or in a darker scenario, was struck down by shrapnel so that our love could continue, unchanged, the way she would continue living in my heart.

Alas.

I returned alive from the war in 1945 and for 6 years, scoured the whole of New York for her. I stopped on 19th June 1951, when I read about her in the newspapers.

She had married another- a wealthy oil magnate for that matter. I still kept the clipping in the top drawer of the chest by my bed. I take it out sometimes, and spend a whole hour sitting on my bed, fingering the yellowed paper, staring at her beautiful face in the photograph (“Igor Tolstoy, 34, with wife Eva Vodianova, 26”).

Stapled to the clipping was another. It was dated 10 April 1955, speaking of the magnate and his wife dying in a car crash, along with their children Veronika and Daniil , aged 2 and 4. (Tolstoy’s younger brother inherited their mansion in Boston and the bulk of their fortune, the remaining portion of it was donated to the Red Cross.)

I never loved another since Eva, because now, fifty years later, I still loved her like I did when we first met in the hustle and bustle of Moiseyevskaya Square.

THREE
A sudden loud series of intermittent beeping dropped me hard on my feet onto the New York City pavement. The green man started flashing at me, as though displaying its annoyance at my inattentiveness. I tread across the tarmac carefully, afraid of tripping over my own skeletal feet. How unattractive and
embarrassing! (Moreover, my joints hurt.)

My foot connected with the pavement the moment the lights signaled for the next motor race to begin. A woman in a navy blue pants suit brushed past me roughly, as though I wasn't there, and her briefcase rammed into my calf. I tried to ignore the throbbing pain and watched as the woman wheedled her way through. Her eyes stared blankly ahead.

Inside, my mind was restlessly churning with memories and thoughts, yet outwardly I was just another laconic senior citizen on the streets of New York where I looked most incongruous amongst the 20-, 30-somethings with the rest of their lives still gleaming ahead, their careers lying in wait like crops yet to be harvested, and lovers they have yet to marry and have children with.

And yet, I prickled with pride, because I knew I was both young and
old.

FOUR
The key turned in the lock, and the door clicked open. Gabriel Chernousov shuffled to the dining table, his arms laden with so many paper bags you can barely see the top of his hat (the bags contained mostly vegetables and fruits so it wasn’t quite so heavy).

After a quick shower, Gabriel sat down at his writing desk, pulled out a writing pad from a drawer and began to write. All lights were turned off. The lamp at his elbow threw a pool of light on the pad. It seemed to act as a spotlight trained on Gabriel’s solitude. It acted as a candle in a room with black walls and no windows.

5 five minutes passed. Another ten minutes passed. At the end of forty minutes, Gabriel gathered up his eight-page-long letter, rummaged through another drawer and fished out a brown envelope and slipped the sheaf of letters in. He sealed the brown envelope with a kiss, and wrote “EVA VODIANOVA” on the front. Then his breath caught in his throat, and it started to get hard for him to breathe. He had realised he did not have anywhere to mail the letter
to.

He removed his reading glass and set the fountain pen down on the table, on top of the sealed envelope and went to bed.

He died peacefully that night.

He died like a baby, cradled in the thick, warm bedsheets.

He died dreaming of himself and Eva in 1941, at the avenue. Eva had accepted the love letter with a smile and Gabriel watched her with endearing eyes as she savoured every single word he’d penned with all his heart.

The End.


r.

& 7:38 PM
&they scribbled;

http://neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=656

& 9:48 PM
&they scribbled;

HELLO!

How to do business with two cows

TRADITIONAL CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create clever cow cartoon images called 'Cowkimon' and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You break for lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows and none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment and high bovine productivity.
You have the newsman who reported on the numbers arrested.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A MALAYSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You signed a 40-year contract to supply milk at RM0.06 per litre.
Then midway through, you raised the price to RM0.60 or you cut the supply.
When the buyer agrees to the new price, you change your mind again and now want RM1.20.
The buyer decided you can keep the milk.
They go look for milk that comes from recycled cows or the cow urine instead. Your two cows retire together with the Prime Minister.

A SINGAPOREAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
One cow-peh and one cow-bu



r.

& 4:06 PM
&they scribbled;