Of Adolescence & Adulthood June 2004 Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Creative Non-fiction

The Mystery of Silence  By emily ding

Photograph by Emily Ding

Barefoot, I tread cautiously up the steep flight of narrow steps. The gritty cement is cold, and I can feel slight shudders pulse up the balls of my feet, sending an electric current throughout my body. Behind me, I can hear the sounds of similar soft slapping of feet, and somewhat unconsciously, I match my footsteps to them, creating a reassuring, unanimous rhythm.

It is sometime after midnight, and we are going for a swim. The quietude is eerie. I can hear the slightest movement of the leaves above our heads; movements, which on a night such as this, can only be discerned by the keenest ears. Only once is the pregnant silence broken, by the muffled sound of a phone ringing persistently until someone answers it. I can make out the bulky silhouette of a woman with a cord extended from her ear in a stark rectangle of yellow light not too far in the distance. The three blocks that make up this condominium loom above us and surround the pool area, so that everywhere we turn we see similar rectangles of yellow lights of several nocturnal households.

I wonder if they can see us from their windows. Two girls bored of the routine of everyday life, trying to make moments count, trying to dispel the uncomfortable silences between them after a long absence. But it is unlikely, for the pool area is completely dark. The four surrounding lampposts stand uselessly in the corners, heads seemingly bowed in surrender. The lights in the swimming pool don't work ­ as far as I know they haven’t worked since my family moved into this condominium ­ and one of them is broken. I know from the times I have been here in the light of day that there are shattered shards of glass at the bottom of the pool in the deep end, where they remain harmless so long as they are undisturbed.

When we come to the edge of the swimming pool, we stand there for a quiet moment, peering down into its depths. There is a palpable tension in the air, a tension accentuated by the stillness of the water, a tension I can feel from the balls of my feet to the stretch in my arms, and it seems at this moment incongruous that ‘flow’ is associated with water. Does water, like our consciousness, come to a standstill as we retire to sleep, in order to give other worldly creatures their time on earth as the superior beings? I do not deny that I have always been a fanciful child, and I like to think that the world is shared between all living things, with each of us taking turns at making it our own. In the day, it belongs to us: employees on their way to the office, the fitness-conscious folks jogging in the park, the fishermen roaming the sea; but at night, we relinquish our hold on earth, and it is at this time that the earth belongs to the creatures of darkness. Thus I wonder: by coming out in the night, are we disturbing the natural order of the universe? Somewhere in the inky darkness, are there eyes staring out accusingly at us, eyes we will never be able to see, never be able to comprehend?

Let’s jump.

These two simple words interrupt my thoughts, said with such succinct punch, a kind of strained breathlessness. I can feel Dee’s elation, as I can feel my own in my stretched, almost painful silence. But I hesitate. I am not sure if I want to jump. Not just because it is cold, but because I feel a sense of apprehension at disturbing the quiet, at stirring the creatures of the night to our encroachment on their space, their time.

I turn to look at Dee, holding herself very still, poised at the very edge of the pool like a bird preparing to take flight, or like a ballerina ­ the ballerina ­ that she is. By the dim moonlight, I can see the intensity in her eyes, and I dispel my doubts. If it will help us go back to where we had left off two years ago, I was willing to do it. She is my closest friend, has always been my closest friend, and I did not want to lose her, in any measure at all, to the tyranny of distance, because as I have learned in the past two years, real friends ­ friends who can finish off your sentences before you even think them ­ are hard to come by.

We inch closer to each other, precariously balancing on our toes at the edge of the pool, our muscles tense, our frayed t-shirts hanging limply over our bare thighs, hands clasped tight. And at the whispered count of three, we jump.

Plunging darkness, and a sudden strange sense of freedom. I resurface with a burst of laughter and water. The tension has been broken. The water is no longer still, but flowing as it should always be, one ripple multiplying, so another forms, then another, and another.

A second later, Dee resurfaces next to me, and I see the shadow of her hand reaching out towards me. I can’t see you. There is an odd note of insecurity in her voice.

I can’t see you either. This apartment’s too old. They haven’t done anything about the lights. Then I laugh. I don’t think too many people use the pool this late at night.

Suddenly, feeling strangely uninhibited and dare-devilish, I challenge her to a lap to the far end of the pool. The rule is not to come up for air. We have done this before in the daylight and we both swim like fishes, but this time, it is pitch black. But I know Dee will not back down from the challenge. I think she thrives on risk and danger, and when we are together, I find that so do I.

We count to three, take a deep breath, and go under.

When you open your eyes underwater, all is night, and it is easy, so easy, to imagine frightening things. And absurd as it may sound, the first thing I imagine is a preying shark swimming stealthily towards us, but because of the dark, we cannot see it, we cannot see it until it is right in front of us, its jaw open so wide until all we can see is a prison of white teeth and an infinite abyss of doom. It is also this fear that compels me never to swim with goggles tinted black or blue or yellow or green, only clear ones, though on a night as black as this, it hardly makes any difference.

I touch the wall a split second before Dee does, and when we resurface, flailing for each other and laughing, I feel rejuvenated, a sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins. With Dee, one always feels the dash of life, an urgent need to take action, to be involved in everything. I cannot say the same about many others, and have often wondered if the deficiency lies with me, or if the simple truth is that one has to find their own kind, and things will naturally just… happen.

Content now, at ease, we slowly tread water back to the shallow end. We are afraid of the dark, although of course we do not say this. Instead, we stay close to the periphery of the pool, treading water, slowly moving around in circles, enjoying the quietude and the rhythmic lapping of the water. That is the nicest thing about being around Dee ­ once the initial walls are broken down, the silence ceases to be deafening.

After a while, Dee starts talking about how she has been, about her new life, and I listen, trying to catch up with everything that has been going on with her since we last saw each other. She speaks of the multiplicity of things she has done, escapades tinged with school-girl glamour and adventure, which could happen only to someone with a desire to reach great heights. Nevertheless, despite her nonchalant tone and her devil-may-care attitude, I discern a slight note of discontent. But how dare a person express discontentment explicitly when on the outset, they expected so much success and happiness beyond their imaginings? The trouble with young people, with us, is that we think success will make us happy, that success and happiness must surely go hand in hand. But we do not understand that by trying so hard to succeed, and inevitably failing at times or trying to surpass our previous achievements, we demand too much of ourselves, and cease to lead the carefree life of our less-ambitious cohorts Or perhaps we do know, as I must, since this is what I am telling you now, but it is difficult to try to escape this mindset. Am I speaking from personal experience, you ask. Perhaps.

I do not dare to call her out on this, though we both drift into a diatribe on the little dissatisfactions we feel with our new lives. Regrettably, however, there is a slight dishonesty in these confessions, as in some small measure they are also a way to ascertain if the other party feels the same, if the dissatisfaction one feels is quite normal. I guess what is discouraging about the human race is that we are never completely honest. No matter how close you may be, no matter how good a friend, how old a friend, no one is ever completely honest. There is something in the human heart afraid of ridicule, afraid of exposure, seeking secrecy.

After a while, the conversation turned to boys. This surprised me a little. Sure, we had talked about the opposite sex before, about how we both thought Michael Owen was the sexiest man alive and when we were little, how Todd Wilkins in Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series was such a sweet guy, but we never really spoke of the boys in our lives. I think we had our childhood to live up to.

When we were younger, much younger and gung ho, we made a childish pact to stay away from the boys. Not having brothers, I was painfully shy around them, compounded by being in an all-girls school for the whole of my elementary years. They seemed foreign to me, strange and unfamiliar. In contrast, with two brothers she was immensely close to, Dee seemed immune to them. The boys we (sort of) grew up with ­ sons of our mothers’ circle of friends ­ were always ready to do whatever Dee told them to do. She tells them to get her a drink, and they do. She tells them to carry her luggage on our trip to Thailand, and they do. Being an only child, I preferred to do it all myself, and was often uncomfortable about others helping me. I remember the faces of the adults looking upon us, admiring Dee’s audacity, amused at my self-imposed hardship, single-handedly lugging my heavy luggage up the steps of the van, heaving and panting.

Only one boy ever ignored you, you know, I say to Dee. He even lost his temper with you once when you ordered him around.

I remember.

You were very bossy, I tell her, laughing.

Still am.
Then on a sudden, sober note. Some people don’t like it.

I do not say anything to reassure her otherwise, for it is true that her domineering attitude has sometimes frustrated me in the past. So we simply lay floating on the water, contemplating in companionable silence, and I realize you are friends with someone because you accept the good and the bad. And most importantly, because your hearts and your minds connect.

A thought passes through my head. Is it not true that in this modern world, we so often stay in the comfort of our living rooms at night, the noise and the images from the television crowding out everything else, that we never know what the night is really like ­ how every shift of a shadow startles you, how one can so effortlessly blend into the darkness, how easy it is to let secrets slip, to want to let them slip? And at this moment, I feel closer to Dee than I have ever been, as if the quietness and the darkness erodes the clutter of the real world and diminishes the distance between people.

Satisfied with this thought, I close my eyes and stop thinking. When you lie on your back and cease all motion, letting your body float on the surface of the water and then look up into the vast expanse of black sky devoid of stars, you can easily lose your sense of place, even of time. If you stay there long enough, you can even forget who you are.