I'm ashamed to acknowledge how badly I've loused things up. I should have done much better than this: I'm in Taipei after all, one of Asia's little El Doradoes.
But things here aren't quite what they used to be. Just look what's happened. Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo--they've all fallen to their knees, faces everywhere with the stunned look of someone who's been slapped good and hard by a hand out of nowhere. Given all that's gone down, I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Maybe I should give myself a break.
Still, global economic factors don't matter much in my case. If Taipei isn't the gold mine it used to be, so what? That has little to do with my own doggy fate. My failure, I'm saying, should be chalked up to my own account.
It all goes back to my leaving a red paper folder on a chair at the airport. I'm talking about the Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport just outside Taipei. I left a red paper folder there. A pretty simple mistake really. Any of you may have done it, and you've probably made even worse mistakes in your lives. I'm willing to bet you've made worse mistakes than any of mine, if you want the truth.
But how can I say things like this, right in the first chapter? Here I was just admitting my guilt, and I start hinting at your failures too. It’s a cop-out, right?
There's something I don't understand though. Even with all the irresponsible, crackpot things you've done, even with all that, you always manage to get by without trouble. You somehow manage to slip through things unscathed. I don't understand it--how you do it I mean. But that's how it usually is with readers--you're a lucky bunch. And you know very well, you've known all along, that we writers, writers like myself I mean, we're never as lucky as you. You take that for granted.
"It's the way the world is," you say. "Anyone who spends so much time scribbling in notebooks deserves what they get."
With such an attitude it's no wonder you're so ready to get your laughs at our expense. You watch us stumble, and you laugh. That's how it works, isn't it? You laugh at me or at anyone else foolish enough to work so many months at something and make not a dime off it in the end. You take us writers for idiots or obsessives. Your every remark proves it. I can see straight through your "interest in literature." You're interested in literature the same way people in the 19th century were interested in freakshows. You think I don't know what you're after?
Even so, I'll give you no freakshows, only the truth. So be prepared not to get what you want.
My mistake, I was saying, was initially pretty innocent. If I hadn't left that red folder behind at the Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport, everything could have been different. I wouldn't now be telling you such a wayward and depressing story for one thing. And the story I'm telling you here--it's the most wayward-tending and depressing story I've ever heard. I’d never believe it myself if I hadn’t been stuck in the middle of it.
On to Chapter 2
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