Free The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi

to radiate light and heat once it got into your belly.
    Besides millet wine, the Seventh Sisid had another attractive feature, itswindows, or perhaps one should say its ocean views. The house was built on
omah
, uncultivated coastal land, out of bamboo, crape myrtle and Formosan michelia, as well as slate from the local hills. There were windows on all four sides, and from almost every window you could observe the constant waves of the Pacific from a different angle. The decor had mostly been donated by local aboriginal artists. But if you asked Hafay which artist did what, she would say, “What do you mean, ‘artist’? They were just people with nothing better to do who left these things here to pay for their meals. Artist my ass!”
    Customers had carved messages all over the tabletops. There was also quite a lot of verse by third-rate poets, some of it incredibly kitschy, some of it passable, just barely, and some of it was obviously plagiarized. More idiosyncratically, each table had a plate of betel nut. If nobody chewed it, Hafay wouldn’t bother replacing it, so if you happen to pay the Seventh Sisid a visit, whatever you do: don’t try the betel nut.
    Aside from such details, to most customers the space itself was nothing out of the ordinary. But somehow Hafay shuttling back and forth, her figure nicely plump, lent the place a wonderful ambience, and even the thin film of sand on the floor somehow made people feel at ease. For regulars, indulging in a drunk monologue with Hafay there to listen was almost a healing ritual. The best part about talking to Hafay was that she would never judge the sudden sadness that overcomes people after they’ve imbibed. She never got involved, but those long-lashed eyes of hers made you feel nobody could understand your private sorrow better than Hafay.
    But seriously, everyone found it a little hard to believe that Hafay could keep the place going all by herself. There must be elves sneaking in at night to help her prepare the food and take care of all the chores.
    Sometimes Hafay would start singing after hearing customers mumble and grumble. Strange to say, Hafay couldn’t speak Taiwanese or English, but she seemed to be able to sing songs in any language. Nobody ever asked how she had learned to sing them, because few people really remembered the songs she sang. Her voice infused people with the essence of a song. It would turn into a windblown seed: you never knew where in your heart the seed would fall, nor when it would sprout. Customers would be back in Taipei, riding on the subway, and Hafay’s voice would just startplaying in their minds and drown out the subway noise. Then the other passengers would see someone look out the window, eyes welling with tears. But Hafay did not sing very often, and if someone made a request or sat at the bar and said:
    “Hafay, sing us a song.”
    Well, then she would reply, “Why don’t I give you a hundred bucks and
you
sing a song for me?” Nobody who asked Hafay for a song ever heard her sing again.
    The client base of the Seventh Sisid was simple, mostly friends from the village, tourists from the local B&Bs, and students and teachers from the U of D. Hafay tried not to bother remembering customers referred by the local B&Bs, but she would give a warm welcome to passersby.
    Hafay did not herself run a B&B, not because she was on her own or because she did not need the money, but mainly because she felt the B&Bs here weren’t what B&Bs were supposed to be like. They were mostly little inns operated by pretentious people from Taipei. Most people who chose to stay in such places were boring, run-of-the-mill. The vulgar and garrulous greatly outnumbered the pleasant and engaging. There were middle-class families who would not tell their noisy kids to shut up and big clans who wanted to spend the whole evening singing karaoke. Then there were couples who had just started seeing each other. They would come for a holiday but end up