Taiwan Today

Taipei native Chang Ta-chun (張大春) was born in 1957 and earned an M.A. in Chinese literature from Fu Jen Catholic University. He currently works at the China Times Express and lectures at the College of Literature at his alma mater.

Chang is recognized as one of Taiwan's leading younger writers. His novel, The Big Liar. (大說謊家), published in 1990, became an instant best seller and attracted wide critical attention. The following story, " A Guided Tour of an Apartment Complex" (公寓導遊), was published in 1986 and was first translated and published in English in The Chinese Pen, Winter 1989.

Please don't expect to hear stories from me. I am merely a tour guide. I thank you, one and all, for taking time off from your busy schedule to par­ticipate in our activities, and for giving up trips which may possibly be more in­teresting, more meaningful, or more worthy of reminiscing about at a later date, such as a trip to enjoy the snow­scape of Hokkaido in Japan, to watch the passing of Halley's Comet at the Cape of Good Hope, to visit the wildlife in Nai­robi or the ancient city of Rome.

The program we have arranged for you is very simple. All you get to see is a very ordinary twelve-story apartment building. On the southern facade of this building, near the top floor, there are two rows of huge characters in black on bronze, giving the name of the building in Chinese and English, "Fu Li Man­sion" and "Fortune Building." Fan Yang-fan, chief architect responsible for the design and the construction of this mansion is currently residing in Apt. A on the twelfth floor. The headboard of his bed is placed exactly against the top of the character Fu. Confidentially, he is not happy with the English translation of "Fu Li," but he cannot find an English word which would transliterate the pro­nunciation and convey the idea of Fu and Li, wealth and civility. In college, his wife Lin Nan-shih was the queen of the English department. She had sug­gested calling it "Fully." Fan Yang-fan did not like it; thought it sounded con­trived and if mispronounced would become "foolish."

One year after the grand opening of Fu Li Mansion, whenever Lin Nan-shih remembered how her proposal was re­jected, the corners of her mouth would still droop in an expression of dissatisfaction. It was the first time that Lin Nan­ shih felt slighted. She believed that from that time on Fan Yang-fan began to keep himself at a distance. Hence, a year later, early one summer evening when she walked back from a neighborhood super­ market and happened to look up and see the name "Fortune Building," she felt a sudden and very strong resentment toward the building. She had a premoni­tion and regarded the building as an instrument of alienation.

Actually, if we get to know each indi­vidual component of the building, we would discover how closely they are con­nected with each other.

First, we must make the acquain­tance of the custodian, Mr. Kuan Yiu­-kai, who is stationed behind a counter on the ground floor. He once was an instructor in a military academy with the rank of lieutenant colonel. After retire­ment he had worked in the north as a guard in various factories, construction sites, and warehouses. When Fu Li Man­sion was under construction, he slept behind the building in the plywood shack used for storing various sample materials. He and other supervisors, workers, and tenants took turns patrol­ ling the place and watching its progress. He usually had the night shift and had, on several occasions, chased away young thieves from the junior high school that tried to steal colored tiles and insulation boards. Therefore, he felt a special at­tachment to the building after its com­pletion. He was uneasy when dealing with the tenants in the first three months. It seemed that these people had robbed him of something or had violated him in some way, causing a feeling of animosity to surface, unwittingly at times. Whenever he followed the passen­gers in and out of the elevator with his eyes, a snort of contempt would escape from his nose, a nose numbed from eating too much pepper and peppercorns. He remembered that not so long ago he used to relieve himself, exuding alcohol­ic fumes, every night where the elevator stands today. Now, all the tenants had to step on his urine. Once in a while, the tenants also detected this animosity in Kuan the custodian, but they didn't give it much thought. Mrs. Wei in Apt. 7A said it all when she said, "That's the way a custodian should be. He has to be tough for us to feel safe."

Mrs. Wei had instructed her son and daughter always to greet the custodian loudly with, "Uncle Kuan, how are you?" In a matter of two weeks all 108 kids and young adults followed suit. Kuan Yiu-kai enjoyed, for the first time, the taste of being a sympathetic elder, and it brought back the glorious days of his military life. As time went by, he soon forgot where he used to relieve himself and took it upon himself to wash the elevator mats regularly. It was a dull and monotonous job, this washing of the mats, but Kuan Yiu-kai had been through all sorts of monotonous experi­ences; he could adapt. Whenever he rubbed soap into the mats and his hands were covered with suds, nice thoughts invariably entered his mind; thoughts for instance, that the single lady Yi Wan­-chun in 8B had nice breasts and a well­ padded bottom.

Yi Wan-chun was, of course, una­ware of it. She habitually bathed around midnight, covering her whole body with suds. Sometimes she happened to do this just when Kuan Yiu-kai was soaping the mats. That's all there is to it. She paid scant attention to things concerning Fu Li Mansion. Yi Wan-chun was unaware of anything special about this apartment complex except for the fact that occasionally she had to suffer being leered at by lecherous eyes while going up and down in the elevator. Whenever her colleagues, former schoolmates, or her family asked her, "How about the place where you live? Is it all right?" she would blink, ponder for a moment before answering, "It's all right; it's a place to live. There seems to be a lecher on an upper floor." She had never looked the lecher straight in the eye.

The lecher lives in 11D. His name is Lin Ping-hung, manager of a trading company. Lin Ping-hung was not aware of the rumors circulating throughout the city among Yi Wan-chun's colleagues, schoolmates, and family that there was a lecher in Yi Wan-chun's building. Unlike Kuan Yiu-kai, he had no designs on Yi Wan-chun, though his neighbor on the eighth floor did look vaguely familiar.

The fact was they both had forgotten that when they were in senior high school, their two schools, one for boys and one for girls, had held a joint field trip one day. The two of them had climbed a stretch of a dangerous moun­tain path, holding hands. Afterwards Yi Wan-chun thanked him.

It was the first time Lin Ping-hung had talked to a member of the opposite sex since his voice had changed. He was very excited. When the vacation was over, he told exaggerated tales to all the other little roosters in his class. The lie festered for one whole school term. In the end it was, "I took her to the stand in the gymnasium and we did it. There's nothing to it. I don't think we'll ever meet again." On Yi Wan-chun's part, imagination and lies took an entirely dif­ferent turn. After the vacation she an­nounced to her schoolmates in a per­plexed and helpless posture that the boy who had walked a stretch of mountain path with her wrote love letters to her every day. She found it most annoying. "I had to tell him to turn his attention to his books in order to get into a good uni­versity." And she added softly, "Till we are destined to meet again."

Lin Ping-hung was, indeed a good student. Even today, after years of mar­ried life, having children and taking on the job of a manager, he still kept his habit of reading at night. The lamp on his desk was always the last in the entire building to be turned off. At two in the morning he would close the book he was reading, Iacocca's autobiography, and walk over to the window to look down at the center courtyard. (Sometimes he saw Kuan Yiu-kai spreading the mats out to dry, a flashlight in one hand.) He would then walk slowly back to his bedroom, slowly undress and get into bed, lying down in the space next to Mrs. Lin, and sigh.

Mrs. Lin would not have been able to figure out why Lin Ping-hung was sighing even if she were wide awake. She might have even asked him, "Why are you sighing?" Lin Ping-hung did not know either. What was he sighing for? But this was the first thing he always did whenever he got in bed. His insomnia was equally unexplainable. He was always telling his wife, "I am dead tired today." Yet yesterday, today, tomorrow or the day after, he would still be unable to fall asleep. He had not been able to sleep for a whole year, and he could not find the cause of it. Business? It kept him very busy, but it was also all very routine and stable. It was the same with his marriage and family. He had leafed through all the popular psychology books on the market to find out why. The books said it might be caused by anxiety, which he rejected for there was nothing to worry him in his everyday life. The books said he was too rigid, which he also rejected; he had plenty of energy and financial resources to lead a leisurely life, to grow flowers, to enjoy tea-drinking and art shows, and to ana­lyze world politics. The books said he was dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, which he also rejected for his wife managed the household most com­petently, his children were bright and good, he had a good job, and business was doing well. The books said there was not enough stimulus in his life, which he silently denied. He still had one or two intimate girlfriends with whom he kept a flexible relationship and spent pleasant afternoons with on Tuesdays or Fridays, no strings attached. He had good reasons to reject all that the books suggested. Always, just as he was winning the battle with the authorities on social or psy­chological analyses, dawn would be breaking.

When Lin Ping-hung changed into his running shoes in the morning, he usually could anticipate the people he would be running into on his way down, or on his jogging route, when he was get­ ting his newspaper, or on his way back. He was seldom wrong.

Only the following people from this apartment complex jog: retired general Liang Lung-jun of 4B, an American cor­porate lawyer James Jennings of 6A, the owner of a tea shop, Liu Chih-jen of 6B, and Kuan Ti-fan, a painter in 12D. Lin Ping-hung had no more than a mere nodding acquaintance with all of them. When they ran into one another they would nod in greeting, but no two of them took the same route.

Liang Lung-jun ran straight for Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, where he met with a middle-aged widow in a folk-dance group. The two of them do nothing more than hold one another's waist and twirl around and around. Liang Lung-jun cursed himself for having the prostate operation done too soon. They might not have gone beyond dancing, but it did not prevent them from throwing them­ selves into the youthful pursuit of test­ing, only testing, each other. Liang Lung-jun would pinch her occasionally. She, too, at times tried to step on his toes, giving him a pleasurable pain and a momentary relief from his sweaty and itchy athletes foot. He found out that she was widowed at an early age; her children were grown and married, and she was living with her daughter. She, on her part, realized that his wife was alive and well and that the Liangs were a happy family of three generations. Both parties faced the situation realistically and hon­estly: there was no force to encourage their mutual secret admiration, nor any to discourage it. They took pleasure in sharing thirty minutes every morning. In those thirty minutes reality perished, and they found their way back to dreams of younger days. But neither was aware of one small detail: her son also lived in Fu Li Mansion. Once he came home drunk and woke up half of the residents in the building. That evening Liang Hung-jun was the first to storm down­ stairs; he picked him up by his tie and belt and threw him into the fountain in the center court. The drunkard, son of the widow, struggled as best he could and crawled out of the fountain, but was too weak to hit back. Liang Lung-jun, arms akimbo, loomed over his opponent and said, "You reckless S.O.B." Early the next morning, he yawned when he complained to his dance partner about the moral turpitude of the young men of today. She nodded in agreement and said, "You are so right. It was never like this before. The people today are not brought up properly."

That morning Liang Lung-jun was not his usual self. After two rounds of Scottish square dances he felt faint and had to take a taxi home. He got off about one hundred meters from the apartment house and ran the final stretch of road for his health, panting and putting up a brave front. When he came in through the front door, he ignored Kuan Yiu­ kai's greeting of "Good morning, Genera!!" and stumbled into the eleva­tor. The American lawyer, J.J. of 6A, and Susan, the young woman he had picked up the night before at the Fisher­ man's Pub, were in the elevator. Susan was one hundred percent pure Chinese. Had her father known that she had dyed her hair yellow and was leaning against the hairy arm of a Westerner, he would surely want to break out of jail and stran­gle her with his bare hands. Susan had realized this when she first ventured into bars. She was used to the glances of hatred and contempt from people of her father's generation, such people as Liang Lung-jun. So she chewed harder on her gum and looked up, staring at the lights indicating the floors. Liang Lung-jun found people like Susan hard to take. They befriended foreigners, thinking it lent them prestige. Deep down inside him a gush of anger rushed up to his trembling throat, and he spat on the mat that Kuan Yiu-kai had just recently washed. J.J. shook his head and followed the barbarous spitting old man out of the elevator with his eyes. Susan also shook her head. J.J. said, "Chinese really have a bunch of spit." Susan said, "Yes, sure. They are all the same." She pushed back a strand of hair and instantly forgot com­pletely that such a man like Liang Lung­ jun had made an appearance in this world. However, had she been aware of the facts, she would then always remem­ber that Liang Lung-jun was not just an ordinary dirty old man. When the case of her father's selling military goods (soy bean and gasoline) broke, it was this General Liang who had insisted that the case be dealt with in a military court. If it had not been for this Liang fellow, Susan would be a model Chinese young lady, black hair, submissive, and dignified. She would not have taken a totally objective attitude toward this dirty old man who was the personification of ancient Chinese concepts and traditions. "I hate them, you know." She threw her gum on the mat and said, "They are trash."

Kuan Yiu-kai discovered the discard­ed gum three days later when it had al­ ready darkened and hardened, and was firmly attached to the loops in the mat. At first he suspected that it was the doing of those twins of Wu Pao-ming's in 5D. The twins were always teasing him. One of them would greet him with "How are you, Uncle Kuan?" and the other would answer, "How are you, my young friend." And they never gave him a chance to distinguish one from the other, Hsiao Pao from Hsiao Ming. As he was bending over scraping off the gum, he felt more than ever this insult of being made the butt of a joke. He sighed long and hard. This scene was wit­ nessed by Kuan Ti-fan, the painter, just returned from jogging. The painter burst out with the comment "Beautiful!" Kuan Ti-fan, his arms folded across his chest and rubbing his chin with a thumb, was stricken by an unexpected moment of inspiration. He spent a good ten min­utes watching Kuan Yiu-kai working dili­gently at scraping off the gum, as drop after drop of sweat rolled down his wrinkled face to the floor and was quickly absorbed by the thick mat.

Kuan Ti-fan dashed back upstairs to his studio in 11D. He opened his pad and started to sketch non-stop until twilight. Finally, he took a deep breath, turned and faced the setting sun and heaved a sigh of relief, holding the fifty-third sketch in front of him. It was the picture of an old man very much like Kuan Yiu­ kai (maybe older and thinner) bending over in a watery paddy-field, planting rice. Drops of sweat fell in the water, creating ring after ring, rippling across the field, and showing the reflection of wrinkles and creases on the old man's face. Kuan Ti-fan rubbed his whiskers and ran around the room at an easy pace, sighing in a loud voice, "Out in the room, early and bright; as day is dawn­ing; treading the water-wheels, per­ haps ... " Based on the artistic trend of the past two years, this picture was bound to stand out among all entries and win top prize. He was very sure of it.

For a month or so after this, Kuan Ti-fan regularly went downstairs to engage Kuan Yiu-kai in conversation and listen to his complaint about the low pay and heavy workload of a custodian, about having to keep a sharp eye on everyone coming or going and not to offend any visitors. His old boss General Liang had told him lately, more than once, "Don't let those loose women in our building." "But, tell me," Kuan said, "There are no written words on the faces of prostitutes. In this day and age who can make the distinction as to which one is selling herself, which one isn't?" Kuan Ti-fan kept nodding though he didn't hear a word. He was concentrating on the play of light on Kuan Yiu-kai's left cheek as his muscles contracted and relaxed. One person did hear though, and it was Yi Wan-chun just returning and looking exhausted. She thought Kuan Yiu-kai had discovered her secret and knew that she moonlighted on Mon­ days, Wednesdays, and Fridays at Sister King's place. She lowered her head and passed them very quickly. In her haste she pushed the wrong button and was taken to the twelfth floor instead. As the elevator door came open she staggered to Apt. B, fumbled for her key and in­serted it hastily into the keyhole, and started to turn it impatiently. The door would not open and she began to sweat. Then she looked up and realized she was on the wrong floor.

This should have been no more than an unimportant event. Yi Wan-chun grumbled to herself, turned and went down to her floor. She drew a steaming hot bath and soaped herself three hours earlier than usual. That's all. However, the situation in 11B was an entirely dif­ferent matter.

It never occurred to old Mrs. Chi living alone in 12B that it was only a shamed and worried member of the weaker sex at her door. She first thought it had to be the gunman reported on TV just then. She almost collapsed, but she managed to get up and push a very heavy sofa against the door as quickly as she could. While doing this, old Mrs. Chi's bound foot caught on a loose wire which in turn caused an end table to overturn and a cup of boiling hot black tea to fall and break on the maroon­ colored Roman tiles. If the tiles were not of this particular make, and if the cup of hot tea wasn't eighty percent full, it cer­tainly would not have made a noise like that of a handgun, just the way it sound­ed on TV. Old Mrs. Chi was convinced that the intruder at her door had opened fire. With one hand against her heart and the other holding on to the sofa, she had an attack of vertigo. In the very next moment, she caught a glimpse of the telephone at the corner ten feet away and an image of her son and daughter­-in-law thousands of miles away. All were floating up and away from her, retreating into distant space. The last thing she saw as she slid down on the tile floor was her own claw-like fingers in a puddle of red water. She was not sure if it was blood, tea, or the color of the tiles; softly, she murmured the name of her son.

Old Mrs. Chi's sudden heart attack did not disturb any of her fellow resi­dents. Mr. Liu Chih-jen, the tea mer­chant in 9C whose shops specialized in top quality black tea went jogging as usual at 8:30. As he jogged to and fro, he kept tapping at his chest, which had been cooped up in an air-conditioned room all night, and he kept count all the way, even in the elevator, "1,2,3,4; 2, 2, 3, 4; ... " Mrs. Wei of 7A went up with him on the same elevator. She was afraid that the bottle of soybean milk in her hand would spill, since his jogging motion caused the elevator to shake. As soon as she got home she said to her husband Wei Tan-cheng, "Tarzan lives on the floor above us." That remark struck a wrong chord in Wei Tan-cheng; for him, the day was shot. He called home eleven times to check up on his wife, asking what she was doing. On the eighth call Mrs. Wei simply answered, "I am answering the phone." Wei Tan-cheng had to pretend that he wanted Mrs. Wei to buy a packet of medicine for indiges­tion for him, but added, as an after thought, "If you are not too busy, that is. I am afraid I may forget." When he called for the ninth and the tenth time, Mrs. Wei was still at the pharmacy. The last call got through, but Wei Tan-cheng cursed, "Where the devil were you?" Mrs. Wei slammed down the receiver without saying a word, but she muttered to herself, "Crazy!" Wei Tan-cheng, on the other hand, was convinced that his wife was having an affair with one of the Tarzans upstairs. He stormed out of his office; stormed into their building; stormed into their apartment; and en­gaged Mrs. Wei in a long battle which lasted two hours and twenty-seventy minutes. When they had been at it for two hours and fifteen minutes, Wei Tan­ cheng brought up the matter of Mrs. Wei's telling their children to call the custodian "Uncle Kuan." "He is old enough to be my father. Why do you tell them to call him 'Uncle'? 'Grandpa' would have been more likely. Why 'Uncle'? What's there between you two?" Wei Tan-cheng tried to soothe his upset stomach by rubbing it. He also sus­pected that the activity of latent cancer cells in his body would now be picking up speed. The thought so enraged him that he dropped into a rocking chair and with the sweep of one hand, knocked a vase to the floor.

He was determined though, not to bring up the subject of "Tarzan." Mrs. Wei was accustomed to this; she kept quiet and picked her way around the broken vase to turn on the TV to watch "The Empress Dowager Queen," and at the same time, threw the packet of medi­cine at Wei Tan-cheng. Wei Tan-cheng inspected the packet very carefully to make sure that the seal had not been tampered with before he opened it. He continued to curse as he tried to swallow the medicine, "I am not being petty; a woman has to be more careful. Don't think I don't notice things just because I work my tail off day in and day out. Let me tell you; I am well aware of your behavior."

The couple of young lovers in Apt.C next door stopped flirting from the very moment the vase was smashed to pieces. The tenant Huang Hsiao-ling raised her index finger to her lips in a gesture to silence her boyfriend. The boyfriend Chu Kuo-tung said as he lit a cigarette, "At it again?" Huang Hsiao­ ling nodded and continued to eavesdrop. Chu Kuo-tung blew two smoke rings before he said, "That's the way it goes after marriage, a skirmish every couple of days, a battle every five or six days. When will there ever be peace between them?"

Although Huang Hsiao-ling contin­ued to eavesdrop, her head tilted and ears perked up, she no longer heard the piercing voice of crazy Wei Tan-cheng next door. She began to wonder what Chu Kuo-tung was hinting at. She soon reached the conclusion that he was hint­ing that there would be no happy ending for the two of them after marriage. In other words, Chu Kuo-tung had no in­tention of marrying her. Unfortunately Chu Kuo-tung chose this very moment to reach for her under the sheet. She exploded and slapped him. "If you want peace don't start anything. "

They didn't fight like the Weis. Chu Kuo-tung knew well the temperament of his counterpart. He got out of bed in a black mood, dressed and left. He walked the streets for a while and eventually decided to go to Diana's to enjoy himself and to dance the time away. (On the street he heard the deep sigh of a fellow stroller. Chu was tempted to invite him along but thought the better of it. Now, even if Chu Kuo-tung had actually prof­fered an invitation, he would have been rejected. The fellow was in very low spir­its because he had not been able to sleep night after night for reasons he could not fathom.) As soon as Chu Kuo-tung walked into the dance hall, he caught sight of a fashionably dressed woman about thirty-five, looking ill at ease. In the past, he had never erred in judging them: this woman's husband was either a seaman or a doctor, and she was trying her luck for the first time, perhaps to find out if she was still attractive to the opposite sex. He followed the rhythm of the music and danced to where she was. He made a gesture as if inviting her to dance. His partner allowed him to lead her around the floor a couple of turns.

Her red lips were trembling ever so slightly, and her legs were a bit shaky too. Chu Kuo-tung knew he was right and collected her in his arms and began to get intimate. To his surprise, the woman pushed him away and rushed off the dance floor and out, without ever looking back.

Lin Nan-shih felt like vomiting as she sped away in her BMW 5201, running through six red lights and over an unluc­ky fox terrier. Finally she reached Fu Li Mansion. She had to force herself to give Kuan Yiu-kai a smile. When she eventually reached her apartment, how­ ever, she no longer felt like vomiting. The apartment was in total darkness, a sign that Fan Yang-fan had not yet re­ turned. She regretted coming back too soon. She fell on her bed, fully dressed, and cried like a baby.

Forty-eight hours later, Fan Yang­ fan came home. Lin Nan-shih was still in a corner in the living room reading Madame Bovary, a book she had not touched since college. Fan Yan-fan men­tioned casually that he had to go to Tai­-chung to oversee a job there; he had called but no one was home. He went on with more trivia a while longer. Then, suddenly, as if hit by a very important thought, he raised his voice and asked, "Do you smell something funny?"

Kuan Ti-fan in Apt. D had smelled it a long while back. At first, the odor distracted him from concentrating on paint­ing the old farmer's straight nose, and it annoyed him. He went around the apart­ment, sniffing like a hunting dog and discarded all the garbage in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the storage room. He threw out things from the refrigerator, the drawers, and under the bed. Still the odor persisted. Finally he gave up the idea of searching for the source of the odor and fell into the deep trance that all creative artists had a habit of falling into. The strange odor, he imagined, came from the sweat gland of the old farmer in the picture. After thinking in this way for a while, Kuan Ti-fan began to believe that his picture was not only going to win the grand prize at the Provincial Exhibit, but was a living thing with real flesh and blood. "Perhaps there really is such a farmer in this world," he muttered to himself, "And he is now living in a small village on the Chianan plain, and is, at the moment, engaged in washing the mud off his feet." Kuan Ti-fan picked up his paint brush once again and dabbed at the nose of the farmer lightly with a trace of maroon paint. "Furthermore, he is suffering from an inflammation of the nose."

The inspiration for this picture, Kuan Yiu-kai, covering his nose with one hand, was cleaning the street right in front of their building, picking up the remains of the dog which Lin Nan-shih had run over two days ago. The dog's owner was Chang Teh-chung of 10C, assistant manager of an insurance company. When Chang Teh-chung left home in the morning he covered his nose and drove on the fast lane without so much as a second glance at the dead dog. He had already forgotten that his one and only true friend had disappeared for seven days in search of a mate. These past few days, the dangerous crisis at work was foremost on his mind. The insurance company had probably already found out about his private arrangement with the auto repair shops to jack up prices. At the moment he was still carry­ing on as usual, taking care of routine business. Occasionally, he still went to the scenes of accidents to act as an ar­bitrator on the spot, to determine who was at fault and decide on compensation, etc. But these days, when the parties in­volved tried to tell him what had hap­pened, he was not as sure of himself, nor as authoritative as before. With lumi­nous eyes, his glance shifted from the broken chassis to their beseeching faces, and a picture of him ingratiating himself to the customers in the early days flashed through his mind. To those cus­tomers who didn't like the idea of getting nothing after paying for insurance and who would not accept responsibility, he would very much like to say that he too was a humble person awaiting judgment. At such times, however, he despised the little people more than ever. He conclud­ed that their courting for sympathy was merely an escape route out of a debasing situation. Chang Teh-chung, therefore, would take a hard line when questioning these people. "If you had a feeling before the accident that the brakes were not working quite right, you should have had them inspected and fixed. Where do you propose to shift the blame now that there has been an accident?" Or else he would say, "You are too careless. You are courting disaster if you continue to be careless." The customers reacted ad­versely to such rudeness. Chang Teh­ Chung, though, was not aware of it, nor did he care. Deep down, he was actually chiding himself for having erred. He re­gretted his avarice; he regretted not being more cautious in his avaricious dealings.

Three days after the fox terrier was run over, a fact unknown to Chang Teh­ chung, he decided not to go near the insurance company ever again. He took down all seven panels of a painting from the wall, put aside all furniture of resale value, wrote a letter of resigna­tion, threw all calling cards in the gar­bage, changed into a sports shirt and jeans, and made a call to an agent he knew to arrange the sale of his apartment at the earliest possible date. Now from under the glass on top of his desk, he pulled out a well-flattened map of the United States, lit a cigarette, and began to peruse it with great attention.

This went on until lunchtime, when Chang Teh-chung had already circled out eight cities: San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, etc. He sank into deep thought, wondering how these eight unfamiliar cities would welcome the likes of him, a man of ideals, willing to work; a man who had erred but was willing to start anew. What would be his choice? Or who would want to choose him? Chang Teh-chung put out his last cigarette, crushed the empty box, and threw it out the window.

A gust of wind hit the crushed box, made it spin around a couple of times in midair on its way down and finally blew it back towards Fu Li Mansion, where it landed on the balcony of 3C, Lai Ching­ tsai's apartment. It lay there quietly for a good thirty hours, then it began to rain and it was soaked through and through. The box was thus flattened out, exposing a lottery ticket.

A week later Lai Ching-tsai cashed it for three million dollars Taiwan curren­cy, and it also made a believer out of him. He believed that in the great void, Buddha or some gods were keeping an eye on all mankind and keeping a perma­nent record of their deeds, good as well as evil ones. He told his wife, "I have done some calculations. Each good deed is worth about fifty thousand dollars." He then produced a list of all the good deeds he had done since his younger days, although he only mentioned the ones he could recall in his agitated state. As a matter of fact, he had done a lot more, not only giving up his seat on the train to the very old and very young. At the least, he had forgotten all about help­ing a blind man across the boulevard the other day.

The blind man was visiting Apt. 5D to give Mr. Wu's old father a massage. Ever since that day, the twin grandsons of old Mr. Wu were obsessed with play­ing a game of being blind. They walked around the apartment, circling in a tandem, eyes closed, hands on the shoul­ders of the one in front. Within a week they were able to manage in darkness without the benefit of sight. From the very beginning Mr. and Mrs. Wu Pao­-ming had been annoyed with their game and had berated them for not having any sympathy. But Hsiao Pao and Hsiao Ming found great fun in such exploits. They practiced several times a day, mostly after their parents and grandfa­ther were in bed or before they got up. After all, this was the most stimulating game the apartment had to offer.

Hsiao Pao and Hsiao Ming had gone beyond the confines of their apartment on the night Lai Ching-tsai bought him­ self a Peugeot 505 automatic sedan. The twins left their apartment very quietly and were groping in the darkness of the hallway between Apts. A, B, C, and D. Their lighthearted laughter could occasionally be heard. The brothers were aware, simultaneously, of the monotony of playing in familiar territory, and the possibility of being summoned back while in such close proximity to home. They walked toward the elevator, felt for the button, and pushed it to go up.

They encountered a stranger in front of 9A, residence of Ke Kai-ti, a movie producer. Neither of the twins broke the rule of never opening their eyes to look. If they had, even just a little bit, they would have given up their game immediately and screamed in delight, for the stranger was none other than Tao Ta-wei, an emcee of their favorite children's program. Tao stroked their heads and was hit with an idea which he later incorporated in his pro­ gram and gave the twins a good laugh. It never occurred to them that the two of them had inspired Tao Ta-wei's double exposure on the screen. At the moment, though, the twins were in the elevator, going further up.

They walked back and forth in the hall between 10A and 10B a few times. Suddenly neither was laughing as much as before. The air was deathly quiet. The sounds of the numerous jumping fleas hidden in the carpet became clearly evi­dent to them, as clear as the rhythm of their own heartbeat. Their heads turned at exactly the same moment, and they listened and heard a mysterious sound. It was the sound of approaching tid­al waves, pushing ever closer. They couldn't make out what it was, yet they did not dare to open their eyes to peep. They had obviously discovered the mys­tery of being blind: if they opened their eyes, all shapes conjured up by the sounds would instantly evaporate.

Thus, the twins stood there motion­ less, trying to make out what had caused the wave after wave of noises which became louder and louder ─ Uncle Kuan downstairs yawning as he did his laundry. The Ting brother and sister playing with their electric trains. The singing of a yellow canary from the bal­cony of 3A. A voice from 5B claiming victory in a round of a mah-jong game. A broken toilet in 6D dripping water. Four adult women from four different families on the eighth floor, all wheezing shrilly at the same time. A few mosqui­toes humming noisily as they flew around in 9B.

The brothers kept listening, and they felt that the sound had an odor too. It also had shapes and temperature. It was a new sensation which made them uncomfortable all over. Hsiao Ming said, "Ke-Ke (older brother), let's go home. I can hear Mama getting out of bed." Hsiao Pao said, "No, we agreed to go all the way to the top floor." He dragged his younger brother into the elevator, though he too wished that the game would be over soon.

They ran around the eleventh floor without any interest, and were not at all interested in Lin Ping-hung's sighs nor the noise he made turning the pages of the book he was reading.

At the very spot where the wall separated Apts. A and C they detected the smell of farts and belches. They stuck their tongues out, again at the same time, and wrinkled their noses to indicate it was more than they could take. They went back to the elevator.

But they would never forget their ex­perience on the last and top floor. As the elevator door opened, they were fright­ened and fell back a few steps, pushed by the smell and the noise that hit them in the face. The smell of milk and a baby in C, mixed with the smell of liquor on Aunt Fan's breath from Apt. A, further mixed with the smell of watercolors and the soft rustling of a paint brush against paper from Apt. D. Mixed with all these was still a very huge and powerful and bloated thing pushing its way from behind the door of Apt. B. It smelled of decay. It gave out a piercing noise and brought up a very clear and unfamiliar picture of a death scene. The brothers, eyes tightly closed, holding on to each other, saw in their minds the traces of tea and blood on the tiles, the over­ turned end table, the wire, the sofa, and the body of old Mrs. Chi.

While old Mrs. Chi was being taken away, Kuan Ti-fan was standing on the balcony for a breath of fresh air. He wit­nessed the scene of Liang Lung-yuan getting out of a taxi and running the last stretch of about 100 meters of the road for good health. A jeering noise escaped from his nose. Liang Lung-yuan reached the middle court of Fu Li Mansion at almost the same time as Liu Chih-jen. When he heard Liu roaring like Tarzan and beating his chest, he automatically straightened his back a little more and waved his right arm and hand smartly as he returned Kuan Yiu-kai's salute. It brought Kuan Yiu-kai a few short mo­ments of excitement, which evaporated when Yi Wan-chun came down, yawning and unkempt, to get her milk. He was embarrassed and he stuttered a "Goo ... ­ good morning, Miss Yi." Yi Wan-chun, as usual, ignored him. Fortunately, just when Lin Ping-hung, paper in hand, turned to Kuan Yiu-kai and said, "Good show today. America against Libya. Something to watch indeed." Kuan Y iu­ kai responded without knowing what the other was talking about, "That's great." But before Kuan could finish, J.J., look­ing fresh and full of pep, dashed down and yelled, "What a nice day, folks." In J.J.'s own homeland it was actually the night before and raining. The first thought that crossed Chang Tah-chung's mind as he deplaned was: "I wonder if it is raining in Taipei?" The weather pic­ture was different to different people in the apartment complex. Mrs. Wei was dreaming of thunder. Hwang Hsiao-ling and Chu Kao-tung were back in bed renewing their interrupted playful fun, even fancied seeing glimpses of a rain­ bow. Wu Pao-ming, on the other hand, found the change in weather puzzling, because his twins were no longer their rambunctious selves. As for Lai Ching­ tsai, who just came out from the south­ern entrance of Fu Li Mansion, he had the wrong impression about the weather that day, because Mrs. Fan was coming down from the top floor of this twelve­ story building, passing fleetingly the two rows of names in black on bronze which her husband gave the building, and she was looming right above him like a clus­ter of black clouds.

Those of you who do not wish to wit­ness any tragedy may go to the north side of Fu Li Mansion where the sun is bright and the road shaded. There are children walking to school, and beautiful women on their way to the supermarket. There is also a large park with green grass, a perfect picture offering the best of city life. Ours is, after all, only a tour covering many activities and facets. Any criticism or suggestions from you will be greatly appreciated.