Exceeded My Gentlemanly Quota

Oh yes, I read another remarkable chapter form “War and Peace” last night with my older one.  She was drawing.  Was she moved?  She said she was.  I was shaken, once again by Tolstoy’s uncanny ability to personalize the epic.  This, was a battle scene involving Rostov, where he imagines a hunt, notes a sudden opportunity, and take the initiative to lead a charge at the French and barreling down upon hapless Napoleonic soldier he cuts at him with his sword. The soldier yells, “I surrender.  I surrender” in French and Rostov notices his childish, dimpled face and the battle stops for a moment.  “Why would I want to kill this man?”  And we are there and we believe.

Later Rostov is lauded and awarded and held up as a hero and a man of action, and in his heart, none of it finds its mark.  This is all for other people.  Rostov is left to wonder why he is even involved in this charade.  Truly there are countless scenes in this book where the realism of someone’s gaze or shudder or shame is so plausible that it feels obscene to be sharing them. 

I was on Dongzhimen near Nanlouguxiang yesterday and I noticed guitar store. Then I noticed two more.  Where bored young ladies from the countryside once stood offering happy-ending haircuts there are now so many boutique shops I don’t know what to make of them all.  I don’t need an artisanal iPhone case but I could use guitar picks.  Five kuai a piece?  That’s nearly a buck a pick.  That seems rich.  “Really?” I ask.  “Really.” She says.  Reimported I suppose, after having been made in China for export.  I’ll take these five.   There sitting on top of my speaker, near my unopened box of new strings.  Now I’ve no excuse now. 

I went to the market to get ingredients for huevos rancheros.  I got a lot of other ingredients too and set them all down to make my purchse.  The young girl from Hunan with the big round face that she makes up ghost white, asks as she always does: “Wanna bag?” I answer in Chinese as I always do that I’ll take two.  Then we talk in Chinese.  I don’t begrudge her practicing “Wanna bag?” with me.  She’s trying.  A Chinese couple come up with a bag of oranges.  “Please, you go first.” I suggest.  The girl from Henan picks her nose and bags the oranges.  I consider her; pleasant, course, odd, far from home.

A man speaking German to a little four-year old girl takes his place behind me with a solitary bag of bread.  I feel stupid with the imposing pile of groceries I have on their checkout.  “Please go ahead.”  He too is graceful.  And as he leaves a young Chinese guy with three bottles of Pepsi rolls up behind.  Once again, I feel a pang of guilt, but I’ve exceeded my gentlemanly quota for the morning.  We start scanning then bagging my goods.

Sunday, 03/25/18