Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind Read Online Free
Author: Anne Charnock
The delivery address? Or a Chinese proverb? Or “Happy Birthday, Mai Ling”? That’s the name of her best friend in the denim-jacket-pimping embroidery group. The tsunami roars towards the Bund. She grips the steel railing, and the leading edge of the wave lifts the coal barges so they’re half as high as the buildings of Pudong on the opposite bank. Yellow-coated coal pours as easily as cornflakes from a box.
Toni feels much better for that. The world looks super normal now.
Daylight is fading, and the digital advertising on the Pudong skyscrapers starts to pulsate: “Dunlop” to “Range Rover” to “I ♥ SHANGHAI.” She wheels around, too quickly, for she now attracts attention. It’s not as though she looks foreign; her hair is dark. But when anyone sees her ice-grey eyes, they seem to freak out; she must look like a ghost. Two girls with that Harajuku look—white net tutus, white lace-up high tops and preppy, tight sweaters—smile at her, take out their smartphones and snap her photo. She snaps them back. They’re delighted. Toni could get used to this place with all the smiley faces.
With her back to pullulating Pudong, she takes in the sedate granite buildings ranged along the Bund—the near-uninterrupted vista of 1920s solidity—and she picks out the Waldorf Astoria where her dad took her this morning for a white-chocolate mocha in the Long Bar. So swanky, but in a dark-wood way, with huge, lazy ceiling fans.
Toni turns back to the Pudong skyscrapers, a cityscape built in the last thirty years on swampy farmland on the east bank of the Huangpu. Small passenger ferries ply across the river, miraculously avoiding the heavy traffic of barges and container ships. The biggest ships are guided around the tight loop of the Huangpu by tugs pulling on their sterns. Between the commercial traffic and the passenger ferries, a golden galleon twinkles its carefree way, seemingly indifferent to the possibilities of waterborne calamity. “300 Tourists Drown in Huangpu as Megaton Ship Rams Golden Galleon.” Toni wants to be a reporter when she grows up.
She isn’t the only person twisting back and forth trying to reconcile the two banks of the river. “Colonial Past Meets Confident Chinese Future.” Toni wonders whether, if she travelled at light speed back and forth across the river, she would travel back in time. She read about an astronaut going into space and back at high speed. He lost a second, or something.
If she could go back in time and fix things, then she wouldn’t be here now on a business trip with her dad. He’d said she could stay home with a friend, but she knew he wanted some company. In fact, he follows her around the house now, always sitting nearby. Even if he’s doing some admin, he’ll sit close with his laptop. She doesn’t mind; it’s good, really, but she knows there’s something she can’t ever say, and it hangs there. And she’s never, ever, going to say it aloud to him, or anyone. She’s sticking with his version. So she says the words in her head once more, hoping this will be the last time. She hopes she can throw the words in the river and lose them in, where, the Chinese Sea? Here goes, one last time: He should have collected the parcel. It was his parcel.
He would have driven a different route, or maybe set off a few seconds sooner, because her mum always opened the back passenger door to hang up her jacket on the hook, and she always checked the rear-view mirror before setting off, which he didn’t. So even if her dad had stepped out of the house at the exact same time as her mum did, he’d have driven past the timber depot half a minute before the wrong-place, wrong-time accident —as her dad describes it. He never mentions the parcel; he just says she was driving into town.
A few texts are exchanged, and as Toni makes her way along the Bund, she spots her dad. It isn’t difficult, because he’s taller than most people around him, and he’s wearing an
Toni feels much better for that. The world looks super normal now.
Daylight is fading, and the digital advertising on the Pudong skyscrapers starts to pulsate: “Dunlop” to “Range Rover” to “I ♥ SHANGHAI.” She wheels around, too quickly, for she now attracts attention. It’s not as though she looks foreign; her hair is dark. But when anyone sees her ice-grey eyes, they seem to freak out; she must look like a ghost. Two girls with that Harajuku look—white net tutus, white lace-up high tops and preppy, tight sweaters—smile at her, take out their smartphones and snap her photo. She snaps them back. They’re delighted. Toni could get used to this place with all the smiley faces.
With her back to pullulating Pudong, she takes in the sedate granite buildings ranged along the Bund—the near-uninterrupted vista of 1920s solidity—and she picks out the Waldorf Astoria where her dad took her this morning for a white-chocolate mocha in the Long Bar. So swanky, but in a dark-wood way, with huge, lazy ceiling fans.
Toni turns back to the Pudong skyscrapers, a cityscape built in the last thirty years on swampy farmland on the east bank of the Huangpu. Small passenger ferries ply across the river, miraculously avoiding the heavy traffic of barges and container ships. The biggest ships are guided around the tight loop of the Huangpu by tugs pulling on their sterns. Between the commercial traffic and the passenger ferries, a golden galleon twinkles its carefree way, seemingly indifferent to the possibilities of waterborne calamity. “300 Tourists Drown in Huangpu as Megaton Ship Rams Golden Galleon.” Toni wants to be a reporter when she grows up.
She isn’t the only person twisting back and forth trying to reconcile the two banks of the river. “Colonial Past Meets Confident Chinese Future.” Toni wonders whether, if she travelled at light speed back and forth across the river, she would travel back in time. She read about an astronaut going into space and back at high speed. He lost a second, or something.
If she could go back in time and fix things, then she wouldn’t be here now on a business trip with her dad. He’d said she could stay home with a friend, but she knew he wanted some company. In fact, he follows her around the house now, always sitting nearby. Even if he’s doing some admin, he’ll sit close with his laptop. She doesn’t mind; it’s good, really, but she knows there’s something she can’t ever say, and it hangs there. And she’s never, ever, going to say it aloud to him, or anyone. She’s sticking with his version. So she says the words in her head once more, hoping this will be the last time. She hopes she can throw the words in the river and lose them in, where, the Chinese Sea? Here goes, one last time: He should have collected the parcel. It was his parcel.
He would have driven a different route, or maybe set off a few seconds sooner, because her mum always opened the back passenger door to hang up her jacket on the hook, and she always checked the rear-view mirror before setting off, which he didn’t. So even if her dad had stepped out of the house at the exact same time as her mum did, he’d have driven past the timber depot half a minute before the wrong-place, wrong-time accident —as her dad describes it. He never mentions the parcel; he just says she was driving into town.
A few texts are exchanged, and as Toni makes her way along the Bund, she spots her dad. It isn’t difficult, because he’s taller than most people around him, and he’s wearing an
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