Read Andersen’s “Under the Willow Tree” for Maomao last night before bedtime. He felt asleep towards the end but it lingered with me for a while after I finished it.
This story goes with me everywhere all these years because of Dad. Back when I was applying for college, shooting for PKU, Dad was largely reticent in the whole process. I thought he didn’t particularly care one way or another, which, at that time, was strangely calming for me. A few weeks before I was set to leave home he said to me one afternoon, pretty much out of blue, that somehow he always thought it would play out so that I’d end up in a local college, ideally a medical school, and stay in Chengdu afterwards. And he made a vague reference to this story called “Dream under the Willow Tree” before he hurried off, maybe he suddenly thought of something more important or just felt a tad embarrassed, I had no way to tell. I didn’t know that story, and there was no way for me to find out (it being early 1990’s). Three or four years later I came upon that story in the PKU library, I stood there and read the whole thing and I remember couldn’t move for a long time afterwards. I read the letter Knud’s Dad wrote him over and over again, just that One sentence, I somehow always remember it afterwards along the line that “You are not really Danish at heart, we Danes like to stay at home but you always crave adventures in foreign lands.” And I always picture a forlornness on his dad’s face (or mine, in that afternoon) when he wrote (said) it.
But this particular line was inexplicably missing in the Delphi version I read to Maomao. I searched it online (this being early 2010’s) and found a version that has it. The exactly translation is “You are not really Danish as we here at home. We love our country, but you love only a strange country.” Not quite how I remembered it.
Same thing happened a few weeks ago when Maomao and I walked Argos for the first time. I told Maomao where Argos’ name came from, and by extension the story of Odyssey in a nutshell. I mentioned that the part that impressed me most was Chapter XI where Odyssey went to Hade, lit a great bonfire by Styx and saw the ghost of his dead mother. I mused, out loud, that Dante must have read Homer and was likewise impressed by the scenes where Odyssey saw the pale shadows of ghosts emerging from total darkness and converging towards the fire, and how he received stark visions of his future from a dead prophet. As I turned around and looked at him I thought, did I just reminisce fondly of hell to a 7-years old, bright and early and before breakfast. But he took it in stride and said “Read it to me when we get home.”
The scene I wanted to read him most was where Odyssey tried to hug his mother three times and each time came up empty. As I was reading them out loud I hesitated a bit and remembered thinking “hmm… this is not how I remembered it.” I remembered it to be… more. Or rather, less. The bitter sweetness, the Resignation, the farewell a mom said to her son, again, in One line. Maybe it’s because this is Fagels? I did write a 3000-word blog post extrapolating why I prefer Lattimore to Fagels. So I spent some time to dig out Lattimore as well — at this point it’s not about Maomao anymore. And looking at Lattimore’s version it felt equally unsatisfactory. I just remembered it to be, maybe I just wanted it to be, more, succinct but impactful than these. I remembered it to be along the line that “Son, this is the way we are now.” Without the graphic reference to sinews and all. For a moment I replayed in my mind a time-lapse movie of how these lines took roots in their original form in the memory, but were gradually trimmed away, by contemplation and circumstance, by wishful thinking and forgetfulness, into the line now I vaguely remembered with exaggerated expectations. Speaking of which, I looked up and Maomao was reading Captain Underpants while picking his nose, blissful and content.
Wang Maomao 