Jiaan’s Flowers

They boarded up all the flowers again.

Protesters had torn down the fence in the middle of the night, and there had been quite a commotion, or so Jiaan heard when he came to work this morning. The workers had just put the barriers back up, all tall and plastic and laden with signs marked KEEP OUT, and he stood there in his black uniform and helmet, baton in hand, patrolling the area with his partner. There were some parts of the plastic that were still sagging, and as Jiaan adjusted it, he caught a glimpse of the wilted white blossoms within, the smell of carnations still strong; the messages scrawled on notes soaked by rain, the ink dripping; the flags, the food, all offered up to whomever was in the afterlife.

There was even a child’s stuffed toy, which Jiaan picked up and tossed over the fence; though he didn’t see where it had landed, he heard a soft thump as it hit the mounds of flowers below. How many children had died that day? They had been slow in releasing the death toll, and even now, Jiaan was sure that the number they currently had was mostly speculation. Perhaps it had been much more, perhaps much less, but Jiaan didn’t know, and he might never know, for he did not ask questions. He did as he was told, because that was his job.

So many people, treading the ground before them, all swarming the area like it was a hive. A woman was making a beeline right towards him and the mess behind him, seemingly oblivious to the signs posted all around them.

“This area is off-limits, ma’am. Please stick to the path.” Jiaan waved his arm in the direction of the sidewalk, where a tree stood rooted in the brick path. “It’s very dangerous. Please, follow the signs.”

She gave him a raised eyebrow but hurried on, heels clacking on the pavement. Jiaan stepped back and heaved out a sigh, watching the stream of people pass by on the crowded street, the nearby buildings acting as if they were closing in on them. The lights of the shops, blinking, and all the noise, the sound of alarms, advertisements, traffic, people – students, businessmen, storekeepers, workers, all off to have a productive day. Hopefully the protesters wouldn’t be back any time soon. He wanted this to be an easy job, rather than the usual chaos he had to go through. Especially after all that had happened.

A gas leak had started in the subway station right across from where he was standing. It had happened quietly, unnoticed, as these things usually went, and the sensors had long been broken and not replaced, because no one could be bothered. Someone had been smoking, and the whole place caught fire. The escape routes had been poorly designed; in fact, one could even say that there had been none.

Six hundred dead, and for what? The government had told Jiaan and his partner to stand here, to patrol the area and make sure that the people stayed out of the danger zone. Many had laid flowers in front of the entrance to the station, but soon they had been covered up with high barriers, for the public’s safety, the government said, so that they know where to walk.

With a small sigh, Jiaan recognized one of the many people coming towards him. A man who had been here yesterday, the day before, and the day before that. Please, stop leaving flowers here. There are already too many. They don’t need your flowers; they’re dead. And so his thoughts went, on and on.

STOP HIDING, their signs read, words glaring in red ink. Jiaan swallowed and raised his radio. “Protesters on site.”

Bzzz. Crackle. “Apprehend them if need be.”

“Roger that.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” the man called, bullhorn in hand. “Covering up the flowers so that no one can see.”

“We’re simply doing our job, sir,” Jiaan replied, wishing that the people would stop staring. “We’re merely doing what we were told.”

“And you actually believe them? The ones who told you what to do? The ones who allowed this to happen, and refuse to own up to it?”

Jiaan’s partner motioned to him that the man’s words were getting out of hand, and that they should take him down quickly, before he could incite anyone else to violence.

“You’re coming with us.” After some struggle they managed to grab him by the arms and began dragging him towards the station. But still the man refused to shut up.

“You’re Liang Jiaan, aren’t you? Didn’t your aunt just die in the gas leak? What are you doing here? What have you done with your degree? What would your parents say about this?”

“Silence.” Jiaan yanked at his handcuffs harder than necessary. “Not another word out of you.”

The man let out a laugh. “And you refuse to remember me, under that mask of yours? What a pity. I thought you were better than this. Is obeying the government more important than honoring your family?”

Jiaan did not answer. They handed him over to the officers at the station, and Jiaan’s partner made a point that the man should never come back. And then they returned to their post, although there were clear signs of people tampering with the barriers, and the shadow of the flowers stretched farther along the ground than it had before.

Jiaan’s breath felt cold as he stared straight ahead, through the visor of his helmet. So what if his aunt had died last week? That was his personal life, nothing to do with work. What did the man know? He was merely a construction worker; what did he know about this kind of job? The status, the pay…

But still, he remembered his cousin, her eyes swollen, but tears still falling fast, and how she had sobbed against him, and he had held her in his arms, because they had been playmates when they were children. Never again would he taste his aunt’s freshly made stir-fried rice cakes at New Year’s, or any other time of the year, for that matter. Other relatives had made the dish often as well, but his aunt’s tasted the best, and even if no one ever said so, Jiaan had decided that in his heart when he was eight years old and had never let go of the thought since. During that time when he had lived with her during college, she would often make those rice cakes, those “chao nian gao, the ones you like, Jiaan”, just for him, and when his classmate came over, which was quite often, they would both enjoy her food and company and conversation, and those had been bright days in this dreary world. That classmate, he could make Jiaan laugh like no one else could, that same classmate who had carried a bullhorn today and whose whereabouts were now unknown. The results of today’s hard work. That’s what his supervisors would say.

Work, it was so impersonal. There was nothing he could bring with him to his job, not his family, his friends, his past, not even himself, especially not himself, not his thoughts or feelings or personality, just his body, his own two legs to stand on, his own two hands to work with. Someone else’s tools, someone else’s spirit and soul, if there even was such a thing. So if there were tears in his eyes, they were someone else’s, not his own. He didn’t know how they had gotten there. Stop them, please, because he certainly didn’t want to stain the work clothes they had given him.

“How much longer do we have to stand like this?” He hadn’t meant to complain. The words had slipped out of his mouth, but even so, he hadn’t bothered to bite back on them at all.

“Until they forget, I suppose.” His partner checked his watch, as if this was some sort of concrete time that they could look forward to, like when they could clock off of work and go home. But the people never forgot. No matter how many minds they tried to wipe, there were still some who remembered. And Jiaan could see it in their gaze.

The sun began to set, casting its soft golden rays over the city, and with that, they clocked out of work, and Jiaan changed into his casual clothes, a bit of feeling returning to his fingers and feet, and though the heavy weight remained around his neck, he could look at the sun above the flowers and find it beautiful. Walking along the same street as this morning, he decided to stop by a florist for a bouquet of white flowers before returning home.