The Golden Pheasant

Have you ever heard about the noon market selling flowers, birds, fishes and insects? The one hidden inside the village inside the city. Yes, and you went there when you were ten years old. You had to take a bus and get off at the village, and then ramble inside the winding labyrinth that was the alleyways of the village to find the market. It opens right at noon, when sunlight disregards the surrounding skyscrapers and crushes upon the flat village like an orc’s foot. The entrance was guarded by an old stone lion and shaded by a giant fiddle leaf tree, and the wooden door was painted in pale, aging, bleary red. The fiddle leaf tree must have grown even bigger now, and the wooden door even blearier, as so many years have passed since the day you went to the market — it was sunny and the fiddle leaf tree with all its fiddle leaves dusted bright light onto the lion, onto you, onto the high threshold as you strode across it. It was right at noon, and it was the last day I resided in you. 

You entered the market, led in first by a narrow pathway paved by bumpy and stumpy stones upon the entrance which soon split into a few, each of which, defined by booths and stalls as shabby as sturdy, as impermanent as aeonian, soon assumed autonomy to multiply, merge and intersect. You started wandering and discovered wonders. And what wonders indeed, everywhere, everything! The market was full of wonders! The noonlight was blocked outside by the weathering tarpaulin roof stretched by concrete poles, and the wonders, the mysteries penetrated by dampness, the fishes and flowers, the insects and birds, and you, others, many, all pent-up inside! Were you excited? It was like entering the dark stomach of the filthy Taotie — watching its motioning organs, looking at what it had devoured alive, seeing it digest. It had devoured flowers, birds, fishes, insects, and people, yourself, and you were all alive, making croons, chirps, cries, and conversations about species and prices. You were swinging hands, skipping steps, and you stopped at an aquarium. Inside the tank, tropical fishes wearing sheen and iridescence were like floating green pearls, golden jades, silver golds in the transparent space lightened against a deep blue background. You pressed your left index finger against the chilly glass, and a fish came to kiss it. A full jar of bloodworms was set next to the aquarium on the same table. The tiny, glistening worms in warm amber form their own ocean with rising and ebbing waves, flowing undertows, yet muted in sound, dyed in brown. You gazed at them squirming, forgetting about the fish, but quickly looked away as a spasm ran through you, and then timidly yet irresistibly looked back up again at them squirming, but you shivered again, looked away again. You knew that soon, they would be fed to the fish next to them, but until then, they were kept alive, taken care of, and remained a proud, colorful, rivaling, riveting spectacle. The same can be said about those mealworms for parrots and canaries, longer, thicker than bloodworms, yellow, wriggly, kept in clear plastic bags hanging underneath the hanging cages. The parrots and canaries were lovely, but you’d started to suspect that the sellers did it on purpose, putting those worms in see-through plastic bags claiming as much spotlight as their consumers—the worms must attract something in the passersby, too. In you, in particular. But not just the mealworms were kept in plastic bags hanging in your face to catch your attention, small goldfishes, too, chubby ones, skinny ones, white ones, red ones, motley ones. They swam in each of their tiny liquid universes, next to one another, yet absolutely isolated in those little water bubbles, those blisters bruising the air — what if I pop one? A fleeting thought that may or may not have flashed across your mind. But not just small goldfishes were hanging in your face in their cubic inches of territories, crickets, too, green ones, yellow ones, loud ones, quiet ones, mute ones. They were trapped in weaved bamboo icosahedrons the size of a fist tied to a long pole by cotton strings, and you could see the crickets hopping inside the icosahedrons through the gaps of braiding, singing sounds that would soon melt into the sticky summer sweats or sneaked-in summer light. But not just the crickets were hanging in your face sharpened by the sneaked-in summer light, flowers, too, roses, marigolds, lavenders, geraniums, violets. They were happy in their dirty black pots, some with hazy roots poking out at the bottom and they were the best at stealing the sneaked-in summer light, better than the crickets, better than you, because they wanted to shimmer and expand. You enjoyed their company, the fishes, the crickets, the parrots, the flowers, but you were always on your feet, you kept on penetrating the market, always drawn to the next curious thing deeper inside. And the market seemed endless, getting vaster and vaster as you ventured in as if an open disk being stretched to infinity. You saw some spiders, amphibians and reptiles, a turquoise turtle, an otiose tortoise, a draconian dragon, a salmon salmon, a hissing white snake, a pouting salamander, a strutting tarantula, a cosplay chameleon… You breathed in denser and denser humidity, waded through thicker and thicker mud, brushed aside more and more bushes and branches that seemed to close in, until at some point, only tresses of trembling tumbling greens remained — Where did all the stalls and people go? Weren't you inside the market? Where did it go? It looked like a rainforest. No, this was a rainforest. You were inside a rainforest now, and the market had long exited the edges of your sight. The transition was continuous, though, if not smooth. 

You reached a standstill, in the rainforest, and started counting the shades of green surrounding you, what were they, let me help you, sap green, emerald green, and their mixtures, cadmium green, cobalt green, with some brown in them, but my words run dry quickly to distinguish your counts. You then tried to smell the green, taste the green, listen to the green. What were your sensations? Was it damp? Was it cool? Was it fresh? You were there, your whole being, as if when you saw, not just your eyes, but your arms and skin saw, too; when you smell, not just your nose, but your hair and mouth smelled, too; when you touched the air, it was not with your hands, but with your ears, as your hands were busy joining the choir of the rattling leaves. Was it soft? Was it dark? Was it sweet? Rain was drizzling down on your cheeks, as you were inside a rainforest. You remembered the sunlight of noon. Where is it now? And butterflies, millions of butterflies. You were not Nabokov, you couldn’t name them, neither am I, so I couldn’t help you this time. Neither could you name the trees, nor the flowers. Except for a few, but with absolute certainty, as they were among only the most recognizable. And you were proud of identifying an amanita. Don’t eat it, though. A butterfly landed on your shoulder. It was blue. You stood there and I think of William Gass as you thought of something that he would call blue, as the blue butterfly intimately rested on your shoulder, something blue but not because the butterfly was blue. Blue because perhaps the word vermiphobia was blue — the word that encapsulated your fear of those wriggly, squirmy beings, but not just fear, your fear and fascination, only together they were blue, only as one they were blue, inseparably blue, your fear and fascination. That the blue butterfly landed on your shoulder was so blue, the butterfly, once a caterpillar, just like those bloodworms and mealworms, and still a caterpillar, only now with two blue wings hinged to its back. Maybe the butterfly wasn't even blue, maybe it was white, you couldn’t be sure because it doesn’t matter, how convenient. 

I sense something dark in you, something sad, something twisted, something unrequited. A voice permeated you from an ambiguous focal point, but undoubtedly high up. You looked up and around. You saw a bird the size of an ostrich, but it was not an ostrich. You knew it wasn’t an ostrich, but you didn’t know what it was. It was a golden pheasant, not that you knew, but it was and I say so. A huge golden pheasant, then, a talking one, too. 

What? You murmured soundlessly, soundlessly confused. Squinting the bird from a distance, you thought of a clown, a flamboyant prince, an autumn-themed tussie-mussie. (Feel free to google golden pheasant to see what it actually looks like, and you might even be reminded of many other things, it is not an arbitrary choice of literary device, read about it on wikipedia, a couple of things to note include that it’s a species of sexual dimorphism, and that it’s native to China.) You thought it resembled a flamboyant prince more than the other associations you made—one wearing a puffy blond wig, a ruff alternating in black and orange, and a velvet robe in turquoise, crimson, gold and ultramarine, with a grandeur sweep train in leopard pattern attached down-low.

You came here for a reason, all the way from the market into the wilderness. Not a coincidence. You carry something dark, something sad, something twisted and unrequited in you, that something sent you here. You are trapped. You want changes. I can help you. Let me help you. The golden pheasant said in a low-pitched voice. A short pause.

You want to be pretty, don’t you? You wish you were a boy, don’t you? The golden pheasant continued, coyly. Anything but yourself, you don’t want to be yourself, do you? I know. Be pretty, or be a boy. You are neither but you can be both. I can make it happen. Do you want me to?

You stood there. You stared at the golden pheasant as it talked, and couldn’t be sure if its voice was more cunning or melancholic. You had never thought about being pretty, or being a boy. You were ten years old. Just a little girl lost in a rainforest. The golden pheasant was lying, baiting, conning, manipulating, so blatantly, and you were just you. I know, but… But you couldn’t call it out, you couldn’t talk back, manipulation was not in your ten-year-old vocabulary, and it was like, it was like you were reminded of — Don’t I want to be pretty? It’s true, mom would be happy. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were a boy? It must be fun to be on the neighborhood soccer team, and dad would be happy, too. And did I hear right, a pretty boy? You stumbled, you couldn’t let go of the “maybe”. Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it? Maybe.

I can make you a pretty boy. You heard me? A pretty boy. Do you want to be a pretty boy? I can make you one. Just look at my beautiful feathers belonging only to the most gorgeous male golden pheasant. You will be as pretty as me. The golden pheasant was flapping its wings. You seemed to have distinguished a wispy, ambiguous smile lined along its beak. 

Okay. You heard yourself say bashfully, as if it wasn’t your own voice. Your sensations faded, your wanderings and wonders were over, the crickets and worms were put behind your mind, the blue butterfly was no longer on your shoulder, but you couldn’t hold back the excitement about the sudden possibility of being a pretty boy; being just pretty or just a boy would already be a blessing, and now you got to have both, what in the world! You felt flattered. You took a deep breath that tasted more grey than brown or green, it was the making of the drizzling rain. And before you could utter the “But how?”, you saw —

The golden pheasant started dashing toward you like a peal of lightning. You were startled, you closed your eyes, stumbled a few steps backward, and covered your forehead with your arms in reflex. The golden pheasant’s claws brushed through your hair, and it kept on dashing in the air without stopping, now behind you, combing the trunks and branches with its sleet movements. Elevated, it saw you retreating into the shadows of the forest, leaving, and it let you go. 

Life in the rainforest was dry and rainy, and it was true, something dark, something sad, something twisted and unrequited was breeding, growing in the rain, along with the trees of the forest. The golden pheasant carried that something wherever it flew. Time passed, how should I describe it? The passage of time. It’s not my passage of time because I hadn’t come to being. Nevertheless, it was a long passage with many instants, some more distinct, more etched-in, more flint-like than others; there were softer and mushier instants, too. All instants were characterized by the intensity, texture and shape of pain prescribed to it, as all sensations are pains, and time is the domain of the function of pain, its graph a delicate multi-dimensional manifold with possible non-resolvable singularities. Life in the rainforest was a delicate multi-dimensional manifold too dull to contain any singularities, and it was wetted by the rain, mapped to time. I seem to be describing a Morse function, yes, the function of pain is a Morse function of the manifold of life. The golden pheasant traversed through that passage of time, grey and misty again from the rain, searching for critical points so as to renew, regenerate, redefine life, however fruitlessly. It messed around with the female pheasants sometimes, those golden but not golden pheasants, those grey and poor things; it tolerated them hovering around but pleasures were never present in their presence, and further away was happiness. One day, the golden pheasant decided to fly beyond the thick canopy of the rainforest to see what was up there. It used up all of its strength and finally, it reached the top. To its surprise, the entire rainforest was shrouded and trapped beneath an enormous mesh, nothing could escape through the gaps of the mesh except for tiny bugs. Outside the mesh barrier, the golden pheasant saw the vague silhouette of the extending city half hidden in sad mists. The golden pheasant rested at the tip of the bough of the oldest and tallest redwood for hours until the moon had traveled from one side of the sky to the other. It wept a few tears and couldn’t remember how it got back down. Time passed, for how long? The golden pheasant lost track. So did I. And then, she came along, a girl who was ten years old, just like you, but where were you then when she stepped into the rainforest and reached a standstill in front of the golden pheasant? 

I sense something dark in you, something sad, something twisted, something unrequited. The golden pheasant said in a low-pitched voice cascading down as if water overflowing out of a brimming vessel, slightly trembling, nearly out of control. The girl looked up and around and met eyes with the golden pheasant. Her eyes were watery and curious. She didn’t say anything, but was clearly listening intently. 

You came here for a reason, all the way from the market into the wilderness. Not a coincidence. You carry something dark, something sad, something twisted and unrequited in you, that something sent you here. You are trapped. You want changes. I can help you. Let me help you. A short pause.

You want to be pretty, don’t you? You wish you were a boy, don’t you? The golden pheasant continued, coyly, but perhaps in truth, instead of coyly, painfully, doubtfully, shamefully. Anything but yourself, you don’t want to be yourself, do you? I know. Be pretty, or be a boy. You are neither but you can be both. I can make it happen. Do you want me to?

The girl stood there in silence, gazing up with a burning, scorching, infernal innocence. The golden pheasant felt like time was thickening up, and guilt was consuming its body, but it wanted a way out, it wanted a way out, could she be the way out? 

I can make you a pretty boy. You heard me? A pretty boy. Do you want to be a pretty boy? I can make you one. Just look at my beautiful feathers belonging only to the most gorgeous male golden pheasant. You will be as pretty as me. The golden pheasant pressed on, repeating like an automaton those ancient, distant, echoing words it once heard, but its own endless rumination through the passage of time had imbued the sound of those words with a dirty patina. I sense something dark in you, something sad, something twisted, something unrequited. The golden pheasant was telling the truth, wasn’t it? Whose truth, though? Who are you? Thinking was beyond it, but I know.  

Okay. The girl replied, in a soft voice, eventually. The golden pheasant shivered, and for a split second, it became clueless about what to do now. The next moment, driven by some inexplicable animal instinct, the golden pheasant started dashing toward the girl. 

And then I came into being. I sensed the movements of the claws of the golden pheasant brushing through strands of my hair, and I saw it dashing away from me, further and further above. I turned around and started to walk in the direction that you once came from and then disappeared into, how long ago was that? Escaping, I brushed aside fewer and fewer branches and bushes that seemed to lead my way, waded through thinner and thinner mud, breathed in lighter and lighter humidity. I saw a cosplay chameleon, a strutting tarantula, a pouting salamander, a hissing white snake, a salmon salmon, a draconian dragon, an otiose tortoise, a turquoise turtle, some spiders, amphibians and reptiles… And at some point, I became sure that I was back inside the market that you once were, as if no time had passed. 

But who am I? Who am I now that I’m no longer you? This girl whose body I now occupy, I know nothing about her. Who is she? What’s her name? Where does she live? I don’t know. And I decided that I didn’t want to find out. Let me just wander, as the world is just another market selling flowers, birds, fishes and insects. Let me just wander. I am ten years old again, but I’ve been around for much longer, I could manage, and yes I did. Time passed, this time it was my own passage of time. I went to places, read books, loved people, let them go. I felt pains because I was alive, and I still am — happiness is sweet pain, sadness is mauve pain, content is musical pain, peace is translucent pain, I like them, but not most of the other variations, such as when it boils or freezes, or becomes infested with evil algae and turns dark and foul, when it becomes thick and viscous and clogs. Longing is ambiguous misty pain. Love is pain itself deprived of verbs, nouns and adjectives, so is life, so is death. My life had singularities. I didn’t always get blowups to resolve them, but it was okay. I was okay, and I still am. Time passed, many years, and then, I saw you again. In a foreign city. Years later. 

You were just standing there, browsing a bookshelf. You looked much older than ten years old, of course. Much older than me as well, of course. You, the body that I once occupied and once let go, how are you? You look so beautiful, do you know? Or rather, do I know? That you are beautiful, all along. How could I ever have let you go? I wanted to rush to you and tell you everything, that I know you, that I used to be you, that I’m sorry and I love you. But I couldn’t, and I knew that all I could do, that the only right thing to do was to be caring and tender to the person I am now, to grow up truly, with all my might, on the girl’s behalf, and to hope that she whom I hurt and deceived can see her own body again one day and think that she’s beautiful. Simultaneously, I hypothesized the nanoscopic possibility that you were, in fact, my mother, or rather, the mother of the girl — perhaps you left the rainforest that day and kept on with your life, and fell in love, and gave birth to a child, a baby girl, and the baby girl grew up, and she turned ten years old, and one day she wandered off into the market, into the rainforest… Then you’d know me, wouldn’t you? But soon I dismissed the thought. No, your daughter would never have fallen for the golden pheasant's ruse. She’d know better. You’d make sure of that, wouldn’t you? I walked to you and said, I love your dress, you look so pretty… I saw an orange smile on your face and there was a moment of silence. Also, have you ever heard about the noon market selling flowers, birds, fishes and insects? The one hidden inside the village inside the city, inside which there was a hidden rainforest. (Not this city, the one that’s far away…) Yes? And you went there when you were ten years old? (I watched you talk and knew you knew who I was now…) You had to take a bus and get off at the village, and then ramble inside the winding labyrinth that was the alleyways of the village to find the market. It opens right at noon…

*This story belongs to the manuscript.