Grandfather and grandson blowing on dandelions - Impermanence fiction story

IMPERMANENCE: The ever-persisting cycle of youth and age

Last updated: January 3rd, 2024

In central Beijing on a cool, smoggy Monday morning, an old man who’d come down from a village in the north to visit his successful son sat on a park bench with his grandson.

“Such a city, my boy. Fortune has smiled on you and your parents to live in such a grand place. Not like where I grew up.”

He watched in wonder the river of humanity that flowed in front of and around the two of them, intent on life’s business, each masked droplet anchored firmly to a cell phone.

“Tell me a story of those old times, Grandfather.” The boy licked an ice cream cone they’d purchased from a street vendor.

“Times were hard. I really don’t like to remember. I’d rather watch all this.”

“That one about your own grandfather. You’ve told me before. Wasn’t he a monk?”

“I never said that. He lived in a monastery when he was about your age. He was an orphan.”

“My age?” His grandfather shrugged his shoulders.

“Tell it, Grandfather. Please.”

The old man sighed, frowned, trying to remember. “He was a character, that one… hmm. It was so long ago. Yet he told it to me many times. I think it meant a lot to him. It went something like this …

The old, blind Master rested on a granite bench in the monastery’s garden, his hand firmly wrapped around his walking stick. At his feet, his young student and companion, clad in an undyed tunic and trousers, sat in the lotus posture on the grass, customarily tall and awkward but at that moment, graceful as a swan. Close enough to touch, a rivulet gurgled past them on through the rhododendrons to the cliff’s edge.

“Today, young Lin,” the Master said, “I want to tell you a story. One day, a certain farmer’s horse escaped. It was his prized possession. His jealous neighbours, who came to console him, told him how unfortunate his life was. The farmer simply said, ‘Maybe so.’ The next morning his son went out to search for the horse, found it and three more wild horses and brought them back to the farm. Seeing this windfall, his busy neighbours returned to congratulate him on his good fortune. ‘Maybe so,’ the farmer replied. The next afternoon his son, his only help, fell off one of the new horses and broke his leg. Again, the envious villagers descended on the farm and berated the farmer for his bad luck. ‘Maybe so,’ was all he would say. The following day, the Emperor’s agents arrived, intent on conscripting recruits, but they passed over the injured boy. And then—”

“Yes, Master Po. Forgive my interruption, but you’ve told me this tale many times. It’s an old one, truly. Perhaps even older than you.” The student smiled shyly, indulgently, affectionately.

“Do you think it thus?” The Master laughed. “How perceptive of you, my son.” He took a deep breath of the mountain’s clear air, then shook his head. “Yet I wonder if you truly understand it, child.”

Turtle on rock - Impermanence fiction story

The boy said nothing, but kept his gaze on his teacher. A dragonfly buzzed past them and overhead, a hawk screeched. Time passed like the turtle sunning itself on a rock in the little stream.

By and by Po nodded and said, “Good. Silence can teach one many things.”

Suddenly, Lin rose and gently embraced the old man, then kissed him on his bald head, his hands resting lightly on bony shoulders. Delight and puzzlement spread across the Master’s face while the youth stepped back, pleased at his teacher’s reaction, but as he gazed more intently at the teacher, the outline of a young man’s visage appeared beneath the wrinkles and dark spots; a man whose strength, though diminished, still pulsed beneath the skin through those old, constricted veins. The image startled him, striking him first with wonder, then sadness in his dan t’ian, deeper even than the sorrow he felt when marauding soldiers had murdered his mother and father. Yet still he looked, summoning his courage, unwilling to break the vision’s power. Eventually he saw, though more faintly, like the final notes of a song, a boy not unlike himself. How can this be? he wondered. Joy, intertwined with inexplicable sadness, wrapped around his heart so tightly he thought he would burst. He tried not to weep, knowing full well his teacher would not approve.

The Master sensed his anguish, took the boy’s wrist and gently pulled him to his side on the bench. “Ahh, my son,” he sighed, his sightless eyes intense as two suns. “I see you understand even better than I.”

Motionless they sat, the Master’s arm draped lightly around the boy’s shoulder, listening to the stream’s wordless wisdom, caught up in its eternal Now, until at last the turtle slipped into the water.

The boy looked up at the old man. “Please, Master, tell me the story once again.”

“He made me memorize every detail. That was hard. But it’s good to know a little bit about your ancestry, I think.” The grandfather shook his head. “You have to remember, this was an old man telling a story a long time after it happened. Probably made up a lot. I doubt half of it’s true. In any case, nobody speaks of such matters now. The eternal now? I don’t know what that means at all. Anyways, the government doesn’t like such ideas. Look at all of these people. Why should they care? They want to get rich. They play games on their phones.”

“I liked it.” The boy nudged closer to the old man. “You loved your grandfather, too, didn’t you?”

“Finish your ice cream, Lin.”

Eugene McCreary lives in California, in Sonoma County. His new book, Gift of the Tiger, is set in China during the Second World War. Gene also won the Grand Prize in the San Francisco Writer’s Conference 2015 Contest.

image: Asian grandfather playing with grandson via Captain YeoShutterstock.com; image 2: Western painted turtle via Shutterstock