by Koh Choon Eiow and Mok Sio Chong, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
— The doctor helped me win a lot of time. I’ll go on living for him. But the problem is. Look at me.
— My son cries over the phone. I say what are you crying about, don’t you dare come home, finish your studies, I can take care of myself. Dad’s here, anyway. My husband said he’d stay with me. In the beginning, his company was very understanding. After a while, I told him not to take any more leave. A boss can’t be soft like that. I hate fussing. I don’t want him by my bedside any more.
— All by myself, I go to the Kwan Yin temple.
— So much effort catching the moon in water, and after all that, nothing.
— My fortune is a line from a poet who got drunk and tried to catch the moon’s reflection. He fell in, got sick and medicine didn’t help.
MISS CHEN: Wait a minute.
— I ask myself.
MISS CHEN: Why?
— Thirteen, fourteen …
— I convert all my money to chips. A preview.
— It’s spreading. The doctor says my numbers aren’t good. A new treatment? But how long can that last?
— I put all my chips on zero. Everyone laughs. Zero just came up in the last round. I don’t care. The wheel spins. The little ball rolls. It stops. I lose. I get more chips and put them on zero.
MISS CHEN: Fuck it. I’m in the final stage of bone cancer. Show up now.
— The roulette wheel turns. I lose. I get more chips and put them all on zero.
— It spins. Look, zero.
MISS CHEN: Didn’t I say? As long as I still have one breath left, you have to listen to me.
— Eighteen, nineteen …
— I keep playing. Baccarat, blackjack, craps, roulette, slot machines. Every time they throw the dice or show a card, fresh blood flows like gambling chips into every one of my cells. I’m alive. I’m alive. Like a tornado I charge over to every table.
MISS CHEN: Final stage of leukemia, motherfucker. Give me a high card. High.
— I keep playing. The cancer cells lurking in my body start to wake up. In my veins, my pores, my marrow, they begin devouring me, staking a claim. My face is grey and swollen.
— Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five …
MISS CHEN: I’m dying of colon cancer. Hit me.
— I like how this feels. They should make hospitals more like casinos. Such a joyous noise. Clinking and clicking, music to my ears. Not the smell of disinfectant and decay. Not the silence, the suffocating drip drip. Look, hospitals can’t remind patients how precious life is—that just stops them living. They need to make death alluring.
MISS CHEN: You. Didn’t show up when I bet on you, and now here you are. Why do you hate me? I’m in the last stage of stomach cancer. Take pity.
— Thirty, thirty-one …
— When I was a kid, a fortune-teller told me my palm was thick and the lines clear, so my fate was good. My dad believed, and so did I. I took over the family business. Fast and sharp and ruthless, just like him. At its height, our partners stood in line outside, waiting to be chosen. Turning stones into gold.
All those people at the gambling tables, clutching banknotes, counting and counting, trying to work out the magic formula. I know they’re going to lose. Poor things. Poor, poor people. They don’t know what they’re gambling with. Not understanding numbers is the same as destiny. Nothing is inevitable.
MISS CHEN: We stare at the table. An oasis.
— Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine.
— I take the elevator to the top floor. Faint moonlight.
— I open the emergency exit onto the roof. So much wind.
— Climb the steps to the balcony. Fireworks in the distance.
— Look. A flash, then it’s gone.
— That’s permanence.
— A dog runs over to me, smiling at the fireworks.
— How did a dog get up here?
— A thought.
— I pick up the dog and climb over the railing. I look down.
MISS CHEN: Don’t be scared.
— How many moments in a thought? How much life and death?
MISS CHEN. Down.
— 39, 38, 37, 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 …
MISS CHEN: When I let go, the dog falls into the sky. The whole city reflected in its eyes. Neon lights. Office blocks. Video screens. Crowded streets. Elevators rising and falling. Birds leaving the nest. The whirr of cash-counting machines. Excavators shaking the sky. So the city rises over the heavens. Dice fall like leaves, all over the streets, look, boxes and boxes and boxes, straight and crooked lines, circles within circles, colliding, moving beams of light. Just a few seconds, and the rivers will run with oil, the wilderness turn into skyscrapers. Reach out to pick the stars, step lightly across the Taiqing. We spin endlessly around the Milky Way, flowing towards the light, surging towards better luck. And the dog says
DOG: Woof! Everyone shouts and cries. I … Woof! I say … and then … Woof! My hand puts down, and other hands reach in, following mine, all of them full of hope. I win whatever I play. Turning over hand after hand like clouds into rain. I, unique and blessed by heaven, I am my own world, I am my death, I am my rebirth, I am my illness, I am my recovery.
— Look.
— Still falling.
— Still falling.
— Still falling.
Koh Choon Eiow is an award-winning contemporary theater director, playwright, and actor. He was born in Malaysia and educated in the theater department at the Malaysian Institute of Art, and earned an MFA from Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. Now based in Taipei, Koh usually collaborates with theater troupes in South Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, and southeast Asia. In 2011, Koh’s Chronology on Death earned him recognition as one of the leading figures in Taiwan avant-garde theater. In 2014, he founded Approaching Theatre with his long-term partner, Cheng Yin-chen. They offer acting workshops throughout many countries.
A theater critic, playwright, director, and event coordinator, Mok Sio Chong has written and directed many productions, such as Curry Bone’s Travel, Mong-ha 1849, The House of the Vagrants, Rain of Stone, and Circles. He is also the co-author of A Gambling World and A Gambling World II and the editor in chief of the quarterly Performing Arts Forum and critical website Macau Theatre Reviews.
Jeremy Tiang‘s translations from Chinese include novels by Su Wei-Chen, Zhang Yueran, Chan Ho-Kei, Yeng Pway Ngon, and Li Er, as well as nonfiction by Yu Qiuyu and Jackie Chan. He also writes and translates plays, and is the author of It Never Rains on National Day and State of Emergency, which won the Singapore Literature Prize. He is the managing editor of Pathlight and a founding member of Cedilla & Co., a collective of literary translators. (Photo credit: Edward Hill)