Read Online Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind by Anne Charnock - Free Book Online
Authors: Anne Charnock
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ornate wooden gateway to the Master of the Nets Garden.
They buy tickets at a small kiosk inside the entrance and wander, as though stepping through a secret doorway, into a fairy tale. They hear a soundscape of flowing and falling water and stand transfixed, trying to assimilate a tight vista of craggy limestone rockeries, lush but controlled flora and narrow pathways, one of which leads over a zigzag stone bridge to a small pavilion. Toni and her dad approach the signpost by the bridge: “To the Waterside Pavilion of Washing Hat-Ribbons.” They look at one another with raised eyebrows.
“You’ll have to rename your garden shed, Dad.”
Whitewashed walls separate one section of the garden from another, but latticed openings provide teasing glimpses of far pavilions, shocking-pink cherry blossoms and bulging purple magnolia buds.
“Can I explore on my own?”
“Go on. But—” She’s already off.
Toni follows the brick path—inlaid with pebble mosaics of fish and chrysanthemums—crosses the bridge and starts to climb a craggy outcrop towards a viewing point. She notices that the miniature mountain is made from large limestone rocks cemented together. That’s a bit naff, she says to herself. And standing at the top, looking across the Master of the Nets Garden, she remembers their Shanghai hotel—the glass tanks with carefully lit lumps of grey rock. Why do they like making little landscapes? She recalls making her own gardens as a small child, in baking trays, and for a moment captures the smell of wet black soil. And she remembers her mum helping her to make a fence with spent matches and wire.
From this high point, Toni can see the garden’s white perimeter wall; it’s high, with no window openings. She can’t decide if the garden feels like an oasis or a prison. It depends what’s outside. Maybe, she wonders, the Master of the Nets was afraid of someone or something. Was he afraid of dangers that lay beyond the garden? Maybe this was the only safe place in Suzhou, and people were . . . Toni can feel another apocalypse taking shape.
Flesh-eating creatures, half-human, clamber over one another in a heaving mass—she has seen the movie—so that one, just one of them, can scramble high enough to leap over the wall and . . . That’s it. The Zombie Wars of Mainland China. The Master of the Nets was the last survivor in Suzhou, and at the end of the war, he set out across China—with only his walking stick and the clothes he wore—to find other survivors, to start the world all over again.
Picking her way down the cemented outcrop, she feels proud of herself; she’s imagined something seriously worth worrying about. It’s all a matter of perspective. There’s always someone worse off, unless you’re a zombie.
She steps through the circular opening to another courtyard within the garden, and when she looks back across the tiny lake, she sees her dad. He’s taking photographs.
He must love it here, she thinks. She can imagine the kind of photographs he’s taking, because she knows he sees things that no one else notices. That’s what her dad always says: the artist sees things that normal people are in too big a hurry to see. That’s his job, he says: to help people to see better.
Toni sits on a smooth boulder, folds her arms and watches him. His photographs, she decides, will mainly be close-ups—for example, photographs of the floor. He likes photographing floors. Not the predictable things like the fish mosaics; that’s what everyone else will photograph. No, he’ll find some random arrangement of pebbles with a discarded cigarette butt. And he’ll definitely photograph the latticed openings in the plain white walls . . . with something jutting into the picture—a bare branch or three angled tree trunks. He won’t be able to resist taking a snap of the old couple chatting in the Waterside Pavilion of Washing Hat-Ribbons. She noticed them holding hands and whispering to one
They buy tickets at a small kiosk inside the entrance and wander, as though stepping through a secret doorway, into a fairy tale. They hear a soundscape of flowing and falling water and stand transfixed, trying to assimilate a tight vista of craggy limestone rockeries, lush but controlled flora and narrow pathways, one of which leads over a zigzag stone bridge to a small pavilion. Toni and her dad approach the signpost by the bridge: “To the Waterside Pavilion of Washing Hat-Ribbons.” They look at one another with raised eyebrows.
“You’ll have to rename your garden shed, Dad.”
Whitewashed walls separate one section of the garden from another, but latticed openings provide teasing glimpses of far pavilions, shocking-pink cherry blossoms and bulging purple magnolia buds.
“Can I explore on my own?”
“Go on. But—” She’s already off.
Toni follows the brick path—inlaid with pebble mosaics of fish and chrysanthemums—crosses the bridge and starts to climb a craggy outcrop towards a viewing point. She notices that the miniature mountain is made from large limestone rocks cemented together. That’s a bit naff, she says to herself. And standing at the top, looking across the Master of the Nets Garden, she remembers their Shanghai hotel—the glass tanks with carefully lit lumps of grey rock. Why do they like making little landscapes? She recalls making her own gardens as a small child, in baking trays, and for a moment captures the smell of wet black soil. And she remembers her mum helping her to make a fence with spent matches and wire.
From this high point, Toni can see the garden’s white perimeter wall; it’s high, with no window openings. She can’t decide if the garden feels like an oasis or a prison. It depends what’s outside. Maybe, she wonders, the Master of the Nets was afraid of someone or something. Was he afraid of dangers that lay beyond the garden? Maybe this was the only safe place in Suzhou, and people were . . . Toni can feel another apocalypse taking shape.
Flesh-eating creatures, half-human, clamber over one another in a heaving mass—she has seen the movie—so that one, just one of them, can scramble high enough to leap over the wall and . . . That’s it. The Zombie Wars of Mainland China. The Master of the Nets was the last survivor in Suzhou, and at the end of the war, he set out across China—with only his walking stick and the clothes he wore—to find other survivors, to start the world all over again.
Picking her way down the cemented outcrop, she feels proud of herself; she’s imagined something seriously worth worrying about. It’s all a matter of perspective. There’s always someone worse off, unless you’re a zombie.
She steps through the circular opening to another courtyard within the garden, and when she looks back across the tiny lake, she sees her dad. He’s taking photographs.
He must love it here, she thinks. She can imagine the kind of photographs he’s taking, because she knows he sees things that no one else notices. That’s what her dad always says: the artist sees things that normal people are in too big a hurry to see. That’s his job, he says: to help people to see better.
Toni sits on a smooth boulder, folds her arms and watches him. His photographs, she decides, will mainly be close-ups—for example, photographs of the floor. He likes photographing floors. Not the predictable things like the fish mosaics; that’s what everyone else will photograph. No, he’ll find some random arrangement of pebbles with a discarded cigarette butt. And he’ll definitely photograph the latticed openings in the plain white walls . . . with something jutting into the picture—a bare branch or three angled tree trunks. He won’t be able to resist taking a snap of the old couple chatting in the Waterside Pavilion of Washing Hat-Ribbons. She noticed them holding hands and whispering to one
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