This Is It?
Walter Becker
© 2011, 2018 Walter Carl Becker.
All rights reserved.
International copyright secured.
b: this is it?
g: this is it. What do you think?
b: well, let me see - “Wing’s Chicken Bucket - 22 generations, same location” - I guess we’re having lunch, then, is that it?
g: we will be having lunch, correct, but that is not it.
b: I see. In that case. dear cousin, I find myself wondering - in what way would this rickety old bench, standing by this little lunch wagon, situated in the midst of the busiest square of the busiest city in the world, in what way could this be the “secret place’ you mentioned? And, if I may be so bold, for what reason have we come here today?
g: a secret place - well let me give you an example. You are aware of the fact that I am the family historian in this current generation, right?
b: I am indeed.
g: And this is why I am able to tell you now, for example, that in the year 1746, your maternal cousin Siu Li sat in this very place and informed your maternal cousin Siu Mao, on the eve of his departure for the mandatory 5 years of service in the warlord So Miao’s army, that the child she was expecting was not her husband’s - but was his, Siu Mao’s instead, and that no matter what happened, he would always be the love of her young life.
b: Very romantic. And what did happen?
g: Siu Mao was killed in battle, they never saw one another again. Or, for instance, I might tell you that it was at this place that your great grandfather Chu Lian’s proposal of marriage to your great grandmother Mei Liao was categorically rejected by her -
b: Siu Mao was not my great grandfather, he was my great uncle.
g: ....although she did agree to spend the remainder of the afternoon with him at a nearby inn, Inn of The Silent Dragon, the afternoon of the day before she announced her engagement to Chu’s brother Chu Lao..
b: How do you know all this?
g: ...and it was on this long afternoon that your father, Mei Liao’s only child, was engendered, of which fact I am aware because it is my job to know these things, these secrets which have been passed down by the women of our family for many generations, so that the past may be understood in its proper sense, despite the occasional improprieties that may have occurred from time to time.
b: just so, dearest cousin.
g: exactly so. and it is also the case that it was here, in precisely this spot, that most of these intimate secrets of our family’s true and, may I say, most romantic history, were passed along to me by your ostensible paternal grandmother -
b: Ostensible paternal grandmother - you mean to tell me -
g: I mean, dearest cousin, that you and I are not related in precisely the way you have imagined - but rather in a different and much more intimate way.
b: so that my father...
g: is actually your uncle, who is ostensibly my father, but
b: your father is my father?
g: yes, but he is not mine
b: so we are brother and sister?
g: Imbecile. My actual father was a drinking buddy of your actual father’s, he met my mother at the munitions factory’s New Year’s festival 21 years ago. where he had her in a loft not far from the main hall where toasts were being made. Evidently she was the heir to the legendary first night fertility so characteristic of the women in our clan. So we are not related at all, in actual point of fact, but in name only.
b: So tell me if this is the truth, dear cousin, or whatever you are, tell me if this is what you want me to understand: this most public place is a “secret place” in the sense that it is here that the great secrets of our ancestors have been passed along, it is here that the true history of our families have been recorded..
g: and here that this history has been made, the secret history of love and tenderness that has ultimately brought us to this place on this day -
b: At which time you are now going to import to me, your ostensible cousin - what?
g: only this: the fact that I have loved you for as long and with as much, if not more fervor, than your great grandmother loved your actual great grandfather, and for as long and with as much if not more passion -
b: than I have loved you, beautiful and beloved stranger?
g: that, my soon-to-be lover, is it, in a nutshell. And one more thing -
b: yes?
g: the Inn of the Silent Dragon, Under New Management (Since 1854), has relocated....
b: my love!
g: ...to a quiet tree-lined street not far from here. Come, let me show you the way.