THE SOUL OF SING LEE
The years have made a cartoon out of Sing Lee. A withered yellow face with motionless black eyes. Thin fingers that move with lifeless precision. Slippered feet that shuffle as if Sing Lee were yawning.
A smell of starch, wet linen and steam mingles with an aromatic mustiness. The day's work is done. Sing Lee sits in his chair behind the counter. Three walls look down upon him. Laundry packages—yellow paper, white string—crowd the wall shelves. Chinese letterings dance gayly on the yellow packages.
Sing Lee, from behind the counter, stares out of the window. The Hyde Park police station is across the way. People pass and glance up:
Sing Lee, Hand Laundry,
5222 Lake Park Avenue.
Come in. There is something immaculate about Sing Lee. Sing Lee has been ironing out collars and shirts for thirty-five years. And thirty-five years have been ironing Sing Lee out. He is like one of the yellow packages on the shelves. And there is a certain lettering across his face as indecipherable and strange as the dance of the black hieroglyphs on the yellow laundry paper.
Something enthralls Sing Lee. It can be seen plainly now as he sits behind the counter. It can be seen, too, as he works during the day. Sing Lee works like a man in an empty dream. It is the same to Sing Lee whether he works or sits still.
The world of collars, cuffs and shirt fronts does not contain Sing Lee. It contains merely an automaton. The laundry is owned by an automaton named Sing Lee, by nobody else. Now that the day's work is done he will sit like this for an hour, two hours, five hours. Time is not a matter of hours to Sing Lee. Or of days. Or even of years.
The many wilted collars that come under the lifeless hands of Sing Lee tell him an old story. The story has not varied for thirty-five years. A solution of water, soap and starch makes the collars clean again and stiff. They go back and they return, always wilted and soiled. Sing Lee needs no further corroboration of the fact that the crowds are at work. Doing what? Soiling their linen. That is as final as anything the crowds do. Sing Lee's curiosity does not venture beyond finalities.
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