This post is in memory of a man whose name I never knew.
As I’ve never learned to speak Chinese, although I have lived in Taiwan for more than ten years (what are families for if not to translate?), and realizing early on that in this almost village like environment of Tainan I was sticking out like a gum tree in a rice paddy, I decided that my best demeanor would be a smiling, friendly manner; that way at least I would be casting a beneficent glow instead of looking like what I was – a unassimilated, linguistically-challenged alien.
This has worked for me over the years, and I have a number of ‘friends’ around the neighborhood, friends as in people I wave to as I pass and with whom I exchange greetings at Xmas and Chinese New Year. I can count about a dozen ‘buddies’ including the guy at the all-day parking lot, the guys at the shop where I buy my coffee, the cops in their patrol cars, and selected residents of the apartment where I live, and until recently, Mr. Alley Man.
I met Mr. Alley Man one day a couple of years ago. Every day I walk down the same alley near my home and each time I’d see this guy sitting outside his house wearing shorts, sandals and no shirt, aged I guessed between sixty and seventy, washing glasses. Lots of glasses, maybe fifty or so at a time. He’d sit on his doorstep with a rack for drying and a basin for washing and a box of tumblers, and feed the dirty ones through the basin and onto the rack.
I probably passed him half a hundred times without either of us once making any sign of recognition. He didn’t invite pleasantries by his manner; he seemed to be a closed-off sort of guy, focused deliberately on his glasses to the exclusion of everything else, and he wore a fixed frown that said he wasn’t particularly happy with his life and that nothing was going to change that.
On the occasions when I saw him standing, I estimated that he was about five foot tall and this side of emaciated; absolutely no fat on his frame at all, small bones like a girl’s; sinewy; darkly tanned skin; drawn, lined face; black or dark brown hair that he wore combed back from his forehead in a Humphrey Bogart style; usually with a cigarette hanging off his lip, one of those white-filtered cigarettes that always look incongruously long in a Chinese mouth.
I didn’t take offense that he never looked up although I knew that every now and then his eyes would follow me once I’d passed. My usual tactic for making buddies is to wait until I catch someone looking at the strange stranger and then smile and nod, but the opportunity never arose with this man. I supposed that either he was deliberately not acknowledging me because I was a foreigner or he simply never acknowledged anyone.
One day I was feeling particularly bright and gregarious, pleased with life, passing along the alley with a spring in my step and I saw him up ahead with his glasses. Before I’d consciously decided to, I said, “Hello!”
His eyes flicked up from his basin, met mine for an instant and quickly lowered again. I could’ve taken it as a brush-off gesture, irritation at my effrontery, but being in a cheerful mood I detected or imagined that I detected the faintest, fleeting glimmer of interest in that look. In any case, that was the start of a friendship. That probably sounds an exaggeration or a presumption on my part; to number him among my friends when we knew nothing about each other, clearly came from very different backgrounds, and were going in quite different directions. Still, week after week we built on that first moment of contact.
He’d look up as I approached, at first with his usual frown, and go back to his washing. Later he’d look up, his expression would lighten a little – and then he’d go back to his washing. After about two months we were up to the giddy stage of smiling at each other: on his side the smile was barely detectable above the resident frown, no more than a slight change in the shape of the mouth, less disinterest in the eyes; but it was there and I was willing to take what I could get. We eventually graduated to a friendly nod, still delivered on his part with a conscious abbreviation as if he didn’t want to let this thing get out of hand, but compared to where we’d been we were now soul-mates.
On one landmark occasion he offered me a cigarette and lit it for me. We stood there puffing at each other, at a loss for what to do next since we couldn’t communicate verbally, and eventually he went back to his glasses and, unoffended, I continued on my way. The next day I offered him one of my cigarettes and we performed the same ritual.
After a few months of this, on and off because I often travel and could be away for weeks at a time, we’d settled down into a companionable routine. He’d puff away at his cigarette looking off down the alley and I’d puff away at mine looking in the other direction. I’d seen farmers do this, stand together at some boundary gate without speaking, communing silently until their pipes went out, so I enjoyed these minutes for what they were: evidence of the natural affinity one has with another of his kind.
Over time I noticed that he had a daughter, most likely married, who visited infrequently. Apparently he lived in his little house alone: I assumed that his wife had died and he was soldiering on, making a buck by washing tea glasses for a nearby restaurant. I admired him for that and was pleased with myself for having drawn him out of his solitude.
Each time on return from a trip I’d look for him in the alley and we’d resume our odd relationship where we’d left off, both keeping a record even after prolonged intervals of whose turn it was to provide the cigarette. We’d share an amused smile at this rule, and our friendship, whatever you might call it, grew warmer if no more substantial.
A month ago I came back from a trip and looked for him without success. Another week passed, and one day he was back on the door step but without his basin and glasses, wearing a shirt, looking gray and haggard, a bandage on his wrist. He didn’t look up even when I called a greeting. I stopped because I thought he hadn’t heard me and took out a cigarette but he sat with his head down and after a minute I moved on. Perhaps, I mused, he was mulling over something that was none of my business and I was an unwelcome distraction; but I also pondered the bandage on his arm, a hospital bandage covering an IV site, and wondered if the shirt was concealing another bandage. I decided he’d been ill while I’d been away.
I didn’t know what to do about that: I was surprised at how much it saddened me that he was not doing well. The next day he was not there; I could sense him sitting inside his house watching me through the curtains; but if I knocked on the door would he open it, and if he opened it what could I possibly do to help him? I knocked anyway but there was no answer.
The following day I went off again for a long weekend and on my return I saw funeral regalia outside his house. His daughter was carrying objects out the door and packing them in a car. I paused for a minute: I wanted to ask his name because it had struck me that I didn’t have any way to mourn his passing except as Mr. Alley Man, but she refused to meet my eye. Apparently a family tradition.
So, this post is in memory of Mr. Alley Man. Who you are I will never know, where you are now I don’t know either, but for a short time you were a friend and may my fondest wishes for a better life, next time, go with you.
