Waiting for Your Embrace

By Wu Nien-Jen

I left home at the age of 16. While I was still living in my family's home, we slept seven to a bed. It was a small, humble thing with just a wooden frame, a straw woven mat, and a comforter to keep us warm during the chill of those icy winter nights.

By all rights, a family like this should, be as close as peas in a pod, wouldn't you agree? But this pod had no room for the likes of my father.

My father had been trying to figure out how to get close to us kids throughout our childhood, but always missed the mark.

My siblings and I could never find that mark either.

Growing up, I looked forward with bated breath to the time when my dad had to work the swing shift, because he wouldn't be there when I got home from school. And his absence would relieve the house of a sinister apparition-like tension that pervaded the atmosphere. My mother would say, “When the cat's away, the mouse will play.”

As we kids slumbered soundly strewn about in a jumbled heap all over the bed, my weary father would come back shortly after the stroke of midnight and have to move us one by one to make a small space to lie down.

I was often woken up by the rusty creek of the door opening, but continued trying to sleep, waiting pensively for my father to finish his shower and go to bed.

He would stand up for a while and sometimes even mumbled to himself curmudgeonly, “Oh, for God's sake, just look at these rug rats...” Then the bed would gently rock back and forth, and the acrid odor of lemon soap would linger lazily through the drafty room. I would feel his big hands, strong and sure, pass over my shoulders and thighs, and finally pick me up and put back into place. Finally, a quilt would be pulled up snug under my chin.

I liked it when my father worked the night shift. It seemingly gifted us with a special moment. The chance at a warm embrace from my father that would last for almost a minute.

One day after I was all grown up, I came clean with my younger brothers and sisters about how I felt as I pretended to sleep when Dad came home from work. It really blew my mind when they replied, “Same here, same here.”

With such a shortage of opportunities to be close, some memories of paternal closeness really stick out.

The time when my father's leg was crushed by a fall into a pit in the mines where he worked is still vivid in my mind. The injury was so serious that he had to be transferred from the miners' hospital to a private surgical hospital in Taipei.

As his hospital stay dragged on and on, my mother was forced to go out into the world and find work to raise the family. Meanwhile, his condition in the hospital was almost unknown to anyone. One Saturday afternoon after school, on a whim I just jumped on a train bound for Taipei. After getting off the bus, I asked directions to the surgical hospital from every willing passerby like a super sleuth until I managed to track it down. I made my way to the ward where he was staying and finally to his room filled with six beds occupied by patients chatting pleasantly with their relatives. The moment when I saw a father lying there in a frump with both his faculties and dignity severely compromised is burned into my brain for all time.

我16歲離家之前，我們一家七口全睡在一張床上，是那種用木板架高、鋪著草席、冬天加上一層墊褥的通鋪。

這樣的一家人應該很親近吧？沒錯，不過，不包括父親在內。

父親可能一直在摸索、嘗試與孩子們親近的方式，但老是摸不著門道。

同樣地，孩子們也是。

小時候特別喜歡父親上小夜班的那幾天，因為放學回來時他不在家。他不在，整個家就少了莫名的肅殺和壓力，媽媽形容是“貓不在，老鼠嗆須”。

午夜父親回來，他必須把睡得橫七豎八的孩子一個一個搬動、擺正之后，才有自己躺下的空間。

那時候，我常被他開門閂門的聲音吵醒，但我會繼續裝睡，等著洗完澡的父親上床。

他會稍微站定觀察一陣，有時候甚至會喃喃自語地說：“實在啊……睡成這樣。”然后床板輕輕震動，接著聞到他身上檸檬香皂的氣味慢慢靠近，感覺他的大手穿過我的肩胛和大腿，最后整個人被他抱起來放回原位，然后拉過被子幫我蓋好。

喜歡父親上小夜班，其實喜歡的仿佛是這個特別的時刻，短短半分鐘不到的來自父親的擁抱。

He was fast asleep, and the jagged shafts of the afternoon sunlight cut across his gaunt features.

His stringy hair was uncombed, it lay there in clumps strewn about his head, wiry and gray. He had grown a shaggy beard as his face appeared to not have been shaved for a few days. The plaster encasing his right leg was peeking out from the quilt covering him, exposing long, dirty toenails.

For the life of me I'll never know why, but the very first thing that came to mind was to help him cut those filthy toenails. The nurse said that there were no nail clippers available, but that I could borrow a small pair of scissors. Fighting back the tears, I lowered my head and began carefully clipping his toenails right in front of all present in the tiny, dank hospital room.

As I did the work I happened to glance up and it suddenly hit me that my father's eyes were open and he had been staring at me for God only knows how long.

“Mom told you to come over?” he asked in a croaky frog voice.

“No.”

“You came by yourself? Didn't you tell your mother?”“No.”

“Bakayaro.” He muttered in Japanese, which is an insult in the language that basically translates to “stupid lowly one of meager education.”

Gradually the scintillating glow of day turned to the Cimmerian darkness of night； by and by the incandescent fires of the neon lights burned a psychedelic rainbow around the little room. “It's getting dark. I will take you to the movies. You can sleep here tonight.” Father offered.

That night, propping himself up for support on one shoulder and holding a cane in one hand, father carefully negotiated the weekend crowds, walking through the long winding streets to the cinema.

It was the first time in my life that I had ever been to Taipei alone. I slept alone with my father for the very first time. I helped my father cut his toenails for the very first time, but it was the last time I would ever watch a movie with my father.

In a sprawling cinema called the Far East Theater, we took in a Japanese documentary directed by Kon Ichikawa, called “Tokyo Olympiad.”

The film seemed so very long that night. It's been 20 years since my father's passing, but that long film still often plays in the theater of my mind. (FromThese People, Those Affairs, Yilin Press. Translation: Chase Coulson)

長大后的某一天，我跟弟妹坦承這種裝睡的經驗，沒想到他們都說：“我也是，我也是。”

或許親近的機會不多，所以，某些記憶特別深刻。

有一年，父親的腿被礦坑的落磐壓傷，傷勢嚴重到必須從礦工醫院轉到臺北一家私人的外科醫院治療。

由于住院的時間很長，媽媽得打工養家，所以，他在醫院的情形幾乎沒人知道。一個星期六的中午，放學之后，我一時沖動，竟然跳上開往臺北的火車。下車后，不斷地問路才找到那家外科醫院，然后，在擠滿六張病床和陪伴家屬的病房里，看到一個毫無威嚴、落魄不堪的父親。

他是睡著的。4點多的陽光斜斜地落在他消瘦了的臉上。

他的頭發沒有梳理，既長且亂，胡子也好像幾天沒刮；打著石膏的右腿露在棉被外，腳指甲又長又臟。

不知道為什么，我想到的第一件事，竟然就是幫他剪腳指甲。護士說沒有指甲剪，不過，可以借我一把小剪刀。然后，我就在眾人的注視下，低著頭忍住一直要冒出來的眼淚，小心翼翼地幫父親剪腳指甲。

當我剪完所有的腳指甲，抬起頭，才發現父親不知道什么時候已經睜著眼睛看著我。

“媽媽叫你來的？”

“不是。”

“你自己跑來的？沒跟媽媽說？”

“沒有。”

“馬鹿野郎。”（日本的國罵“八嘎牙路”漢字寫法，意指對方蠢笨、沒有教養）

直到天慢慢轉暗，外頭霓虹燈逐漸亮起來之后，父親才開口說：“天暗了，我帶你去看電影，晚上就睡這邊吧。”

那天夜晚，父親一手撐著我的肩膀，一手拄著拐杖，小心地穿越周末熙攘的人群，走過長長的街道，去看了一場電影。

那是我人生第一次一個人到臺北、第一次單獨和父親睡在一起、第一次幫父親剪腳指甲，卻也是最后一次和父親一起看電影。

那是一家很大的電影院，叫遠東戲院。那天上映的是一部日本紀錄片，導演是市川昆，片名叫《東京世運會》。

片子很長，長到父親過世20年后的現在，還不時在我腦袋里播放著。（摘自《這些人，那些事》 譯林出版社）