her dream of being a writer. To do so she thought she should choose to live somewhere that seemed far from the crowd but was actually at a suitable distance for people watching. The week before Alice hastened to Haven, Thom had already gotten in touch with an alpine club and gone on an expedition to Great Snow Mountain. After he got back to Taipei and heard Alice talk about Haven this and Haven that, he decided to move there with her and see how it went.
At first they lived in the faculty housing on campus, but because they weren’t legally married they could only be assigned a cramped single’s residence. Living quarters designed by public agencies in Taiwan are generally uninhabitable. The condensation was so bad in summer that when the air cooled at dusk even the duvet cover would get damp. A flatlanderon a hilly island, Thom went climbing everywhere, and started practicing rock climbing with some local friends. Although Thom had started too late in life to become a true mountaineer, his attitude seemed to be: see how high you can go.
“This place is really humid, not like Scandinavia.”
“Tell me about it. It’s a tropical island. Hey, don’t you need to worry about money?”
“That piece I sent back to Denmark has been published in a travel magazine. For now I’m all right. Do you really think I would’ve come all the way here just to sponge off you?” Thom winked his right eye. Alice had discovered that he did this when he was not being completely honest with her, so she did not ask to have a look at the magazine or inquire further into his financial situation or family background.
Wasn’t it great? You don’t have to know a person’s family to be able to live with him, Alice thought, as Thom enthused about his newfound passion for rock climbing: “Up on a cliff, you can only see part of the sky. You feel your paltry strength through your feet and you thrust your fingers into the clefts in the rock, but you can’t share anything you see or smell with anyone. You ever had that feeling? You can hear your heart beating, you sense your breathing is getting labored, and if you’re really several thousand meters up on a cliff you know you could die at any time. That’s the feeling.” Thom’s eyes were shining now. “Like you might be one moment away from a vision of God.”
Alice looked into his eyes, which had always charmed her so, and still did. But somehow the qualities that had attracted Alice to Thom in the first place were now her biggest worry.
As the days went by, Alice became more and more anxious that this sexy guy might up and leave her at any time. She wanted to let go of him, but a certain expression of his—melancholy, profound yet innocent—was just so appealing. She almost felt that the rot in this humid residence had seeped into her heart. She did not know what to do.
Alice had spent a long time researching a local writer named Kee and become close friends with his much younger wife. Kee’s second wife fellin love with him during an interview (but that’s a story for another day). She had short hair, spoke slowly and liked to wear sandals. Though not exactly beautiful, she had a certain fresh quality. She was especially fond of the fiction of Paul Auster. Love causes people to make strange judgments, including to try to rise above sex across a thirty-year age gap and the difficulties involved in any marriage. People who thought they were having a platonic affair were shocked when the old fellow divorced his wife to marry her. Friends thought that either Kee would end up leaving behind a young widow and a pile of manuscripts or his second wife would eventually get tired of living in seclusion with the old man and awaken from the literary spell he had cast on her. Nobody guessed that Kee’s young wife would leave the world one step ahead of him.
Kee’s wife was swept away by a huge wave that appeared out of nowhere one day when they were at the beach for a walk. Reportedly,
At first they lived in the faculty housing on campus, but because they weren’t legally married they could only be assigned a cramped single’s residence. Living quarters designed by public agencies in Taiwan are generally uninhabitable. The condensation was so bad in summer that when the air cooled at dusk even the duvet cover would get damp. A flatlanderon a hilly island, Thom went climbing everywhere, and started practicing rock climbing with some local friends. Although Thom had started too late in life to become a true mountaineer, his attitude seemed to be: see how high you can go.
“This place is really humid, not like Scandinavia.”
“Tell me about it. It’s a tropical island. Hey, don’t you need to worry about money?”
“That piece I sent back to Denmark has been published in a travel magazine. For now I’m all right. Do you really think I would’ve come all the way here just to sponge off you?” Thom winked his right eye. Alice had discovered that he did this when he was not being completely honest with her, so she did not ask to have a look at the magazine or inquire further into his financial situation or family background.
Wasn’t it great? You don’t have to know a person’s family to be able to live with him, Alice thought, as Thom enthused about his newfound passion for rock climbing: “Up on a cliff, you can only see part of the sky. You feel your paltry strength through your feet and you thrust your fingers into the clefts in the rock, but you can’t share anything you see or smell with anyone. You ever had that feeling? You can hear your heart beating, you sense your breathing is getting labored, and if you’re really several thousand meters up on a cliff you know you could die at any time. That’s the feeling.” Thom’s eyes were shining now. “Like you might be one moment away from a vision of God.”
Alice looked into his eyes, which had always charmed her so, and still did. But somehow the qualities that had attracted Alice to Thom in the first place were now her biggest worry.
As the days went by, Alice became more and more anxious that this sexy guy might up and leave her at any time. She wanted to let go of him, but a certain expression of his—melancholy, profound yet innocent—was just so appealing. She almost felt that the rot in this humid residence had seeped into her heart. She did not know what to do.
Alice had spent a long time researching a local writer named Kee and become close friends with his much younger wife. Kee’s second wife fellin love with him during an interview (but that’s a story for another day). She had short hair, spoke slowly and liked to wear sandals. Though not exactly beautiful, she had a certain fresh quality. She was especially fond of the fiction of Paul Auster. Love causes people to make strange judgments, including to try to rise above sex across a thirty-year age gap and the difficulties involved in any marriage. People who thought they were having a platonic affair were shocked when the old fellow divorced his wife to marry her. Friends thought that either Kee would end up leaving behind a young widow and a pile of manuscripts or his second wife would eventually get tired of living in seclusion with the old man and awaken from the literary spell he had cast on her. Nobody guessed that Kee’s young wife would leave the world one step ahead of him.
Kee’s wife was swept away by a huge wave that appeared out of nowhere one day when they were at the beach for a walk. Reportedly,
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