Though death awaits the titular character of this story, it is a death forever receding on the horizon. Author Prad Aphachan revels in the paradox of an Old-Testament longevity persisting in a world that, despite its many fantasies of immortality, is ultimately teleological. The story’s episodic vignettes, filtered through generations of Methuselah’s proliferating progeny, add up to a fractured account of the old man’s life—both in content and in consciousness. Methuselah cycles through denial and acceptance, and cycles again; the peace offered at the end is uneasy. —The Editors and the Fiction Staff
Methuselah’s Wanderings in Samsara
I.
Through many a birth have I wandered in vain, seeking the builder of this house.
II.
Methuselah drinks red wine with water and only eats medium-rare sirloin and mustard greens without mashed garlic or sesame oil. He insists we call him grandfather, because he hates his name and refuses to be called by his proper title. The neighbors no longer ask for his age, and when I ask him if he still keeps count, he tells us that, yes, he still does. I might’ve missed a year or two, he says, unsure, and, you know, even aging gets old. He loves that one. But time has stolen his cackle, which my mother says was crisper than those firecrackers lit before tomb-sweeping. He finishes his meal with another glass of wine, burps loudly, and leaves the round table, leaving only a drop of red wine on the white, varnished wood.
III.
For a month after his hip surgery, the doctor forbade him to shower. One day, he tried to jump into a river because he was sweating too much. My mother got mad and yelled: You’re already this old, can’t you endure it! Grandpa was calm, but he returned the energy anyway: My sweat isn’t any less sticky! We abandoned Mother and jumped in after him.
IV.
Methuselah recalling his disappointment when the war broke out:
After midnight, I knew the air to be heavier, after the unknown dust settled over the clouds, obscuring the sharpness of the moonlight, and the sailors seemed distracted, and everyone kept wiping their faces more than usual because it was a cold night, and they needed to feel their cheeks, but all that achieved was putting more grime on their faces, and they told us that we all had to breathe through our sleeves because of the gas, but all that did was replace the smokiness with sweat, but then, I didn’t notice when, there was calmness, routine-like and permeating through the movements, like chants, in the screeches of the rats, in the waves, they were all of grace, and then one of my sons was yelling from across the dock, but I did not yell back to him, he wouldn’t have heard anyway, then the night fell in bright flames, a little too bright to see anything, but the warmth that pricked my cheeks was welcomed, and so we hid for some time in the warehouse, and there were some darknesses and some cries, and that was all.
V.
Around the round table, we discussed what to do with him. We are no longer taking care of him. The economy is in a slump. He does nothing but sit in the garden and drink wine. Did you give him anything? No. No? We didn’t either. We did, but not much. We have our own parents and grandparents, some even great-grandparents. They live too long nowadays. We’re cutting him off. But he’s family, and we love him? Who does he even know anymore? When was the last time you talked to him? He probably doesn’t know any of our names.
There were arguments and agreements and nods and sighs and more arguments and agreements still. I was sure that Gramps could hear us from his bedroom upstairs, and when I went to have a glass of wine with him, I could see that he was trembling. Then, I heard him scream, for the last time, the silent scream that writhed all the emptiness between us.
VI.
When asked how does one live this long, he usually replied: Because I don’t eat healthy food, I don’t go to the doctor, and I don’t exercise! He even lived through a year or two eating only sawdust and glue. Is it true, Grandpa? We would ask. Ah, patience, I will get to that part. But why the glue? Why? For flavor, of course!
VII.
Grandpa likes to lay flat on the stern of the cruiser and feel the plastic before it absorbs the sun and burns dark. He named it Edna, after his wife. We thought it sweet, but then we were also scared that he would form an unhealthy attachment to this mass of motor oil and fiberglass. Some wanted to get him a cat or a dog instead. Pets would be a lot cheaper. Or a turtle? He’s allergic, Uncle said, are you trying to kill him?
Even Grandpa laughed at the irony.
IX.
At the funeral, we were arguing about who would get our father’s inheritance, when Gramps came between us and said boo! Then we were not arguing anymore.
X.
Methuselah’s regret:
Grandpa downed his bottle and kept saying: I should have had fewer children. I should. And grandchildren. And great-grandchildren. Less of them. Less. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. So sorry.
He really regretted it that time.
XI.
On Methuselah’s birthday, I sang Elvis and played Vivaldi on the violin he gave me, a Stradivarius. I asked him if it was real, and he said that it was from a sweatshop in Shenzhen. After I finished, he gave his birthday speech. He was quite thin then. His legs rattled like chopsticks as he shuffled onto the stage. Thank you for coming. I hope the wine was good. Someone told me it was kept for more than sixty years; it is very smooth, and so in a few years, I hope I will be even smoother.
He asked me afterwards: Don’t you like the violin? No, I admitted, not even a little, I only felt obliged. Then what do you like? And he handed me a red envelope so stuffed with cash that it couldn’t seal. Do whatever you want, he said, but don’t hate the violin. Why not? Because everyone else is always playing something so loudly that it’s a shame for you not to play along. And play for me again sometime, he sighed. After all, I might not make it ’til next year.
We wish he would eventually stop saying so every birthday.
XII.
He didn’t.
XIII.
The week of Grandma’s funeral felt longer than a week. Of course, we were all crying except for me, who was perhaps a little too young to understand. But ignorance did not prevent my sister from grieving. Really, I just didn’t understand what death was. Methuselah grabbed Grandma’s shoulders and shook her like he was trying to loosen a stiffness or an ache. Even when he had already died many deaths and seen countless more, it seemed that he also didn’t know what it was. Perhaps, because he never actually died. Even when he had known half of time.
XIV.
I was scared of him at first because his teeth and lips were bleeding black and red from betel nuts. When he noticed, he laughed and smiled, baring glimmers of white, and said that he would stop chewing them. For years after that, his teeth were still black and bleeding. He tried.
XV.
Grandpa loves fishing, but he doesn’t go as often anymore. He blames it on his eyes, which can still discern colors and forms, but not distances, depths. We believe that he must feel a certain kinship with the froths, the wind and the sand, and the rest that seems eternal—a bond of permanence.
He also likes the gulls and the fish, only because they all look more or less the same to him, with their quivers not of generations or life but of singularity—like lusters of rekindled candles, like a thing that disguises itself each time with subtle diversion, with glossier feathers, with misplaced scales.
He feeds them dried squid and chocolate. But isn’t chocolate toxic to birds? we shout. Many of us are quite mad. Ah, no, no, it’s alright, he tilts his head and smiles, then they’ll make room for other birds, and when they fall, they’ll make feed for the fish. But isn’t chocolate also toxic to fish? Then—more food for other fish.
Sometimes, we wonder if we are also gulls and fish to him.
XVI.
At noon, during tomb-sweeping, when we were burning the gold and silver papers for our ancestors, the wind blew cinders toward the rice and ducks and caught the rest of the offerings on fire. Great-grandpa jumped and yelled: Naughty children! Impatient children! Wait or you’ll get a beating! So the wind stopped and the fire died and we continued to sweep.
XVII.
Methuselah’s hope when a grandson was born:
Methuselah was so drunk, he could not sleep the night a boy was born. He had been waiting for a child he could take out to sea and teach to fish squid and dorados. But as he waited for the boy to grow up, he felt too old to fish. The boy heard that it was because of rheumatisms and gouts and cataracts and others the old man picked up along the way. When he was old enough, the boy would buy a boat for the old man and take him out to sea, and the first thing they would catch would be a shrimp. The boy would ask: Why aren’t we catching a fish, something bigger, a whale? A marlin? And the old man would say: Ah, no, child, let’s wait until you are older.
XIX.
Methuselah disliked getting a haircut. He railed against the pomposity of salons, with their rolling flags and crisp scissors. He insisted on cutting his own hair, but he never really did. His beard, however, was always trimmed according to the latest style. Now, with a straight back and toned muscle, he would look like a sailor or a lumberjack.
XX.
Great-great-great-grandpa is very superstitious about the number eight. He thinks it’s both lucky and unlucky because, as he said, it just keeps going round and round and round and round.
XXI.
Methuselah constructing a round table with a rotating tray:
He wakes up before dawn and takes a glass of wine before turning on the drill. Yesterday, he sanded all eight legs unevenly, but all of them were still sturdy in their own uneven ways. The drill spins sawdust into his nose and mouth and eyes and all over the newspaper spread and terrazzo and plastic. Each turn of the drill recollects the tremors of age and all the fears that wrinkled his skin. One after another, he bores each leg with a deep space that enables darkness, and screw by screw, he slides them onto the metal frame that will eventually support the weight of black chickens, sliced abalones, sea cucumbers, and fish maw soups. Then he brushes the wooden top with soft careful strokes, curbing the irregular edges in white. After midnight, amidst the settling fumes of paint and sawdust, he heaves up the huge glass tray and slides its center onto the axle. After a bottle of wine, he scrubs clean with his rough, withered hands the varnished wood, the welded joints, the disc of deep-green glass, and goes to bed dreaming, praying for them to anchor his blood against time.
XXII.
Grandpa started chanting some sutras a few years back. Something about burning and burning everything and liberation and exhausting births. For a while, we had to keep the matchboxes somewhere he couldn’t reach.
XXIII.
Methuselah loathed Death very much. Perhaps, their feelings were always mutual. Or was it the other way around? When he fell down the stairs and thought he was going to die, he let off the most magnificent cry. But all he got after a month of tube-feeding and stubbornness was a hip surgery.
XXIV.
Having slain mother, father, two kings, and destroyed a country together with its royal treasury, ungrieving goes he. O house-builder, now you are seen! You will not build this house again, for your rafters are broken and your ridgepoles are shattered. My mind has reached the unconditioned; I have attained devastation.