Gold, or the Echo of Some Sinking Metal

The news came on the radio while I was cooking pasta. Not any special kind of pasta, just the most ordinary type, with canned tomato sauce from the supermarket, sprinkled with some powdered cheese. Outside, a light but steady rain was falling. April rain, carrying a sticky feeling that washes everything yet washes nothing away. The announcer, in a well-trained, emotionless tone, reported: "Gold prices plummeted sharply again today..." followed by a string of numbers and analysis, sounding like signals from a distant planet, utterly unrelated to the steaming pasta in my pot.

But I stopped stirring anyway.

In the corner of the kitchen sat a small, dark brown wooden box. One of the few things left behind after my father passed away. My father was a man of few words. We probably exchanged fewer words than I do with the cashier at the convenience store downstairs in a year. The things he left behind were like him, lacking warmth. Besides a few old clothes, there was this box. The box wasn't locked. Inside, lined with dark blue velvet, lay a small gold bar. It wasn't exquisite, rather crude actually, like a randomly cut piece of cheese, only golden and heavy. There were no markings on it, no year, no purity indication, nothing. Just a piece of gold.

I rarely touched it. Like my father himself, it sat silently in the corner, forming a vague part of my life's background. I don't know much about gold, nor do I need to. My life is simple. I run a small second-hand bookstore, the income isn't high, but I get by. I listen to jazz, occasionally drink whiskey, and have a black cat named "Wasabi." Wasabi was currently curled up on the sofa, equally indifferent to the rain outside and the gold prices on the radio.

Gold price plummeting. These words tapped at the edge of my consciousness like raindrops. Plummeting. A very visual word. I imagined a piece of gold, clumsily, reluctantly falling from a height, plunging into bottomless water with a plunk, followed by an endless descent. Where would it sink to? The mud and sand of the seabed? Swallowed by some strange fish? Or would it remain forever suspended in some intermediate layer, neither rising nor falling?

Maybe it was the sound of the rain, maybe the steady tone from the radio, or maybe just the smell of the pasta sauce, but an impulse grew quietly like damp moss. I turned off the stove, wiped my hands, walked to the corner, and opened the wooden box.

The gold bar lay there quietly, reflecting the dim kitchen light. Cold, hard. I picked it up. It was heavier than I expected. This sense of weight was peculiar, seemingly concentrating some kind of constant value, something that doesn't fluctuate with time or emotion. But now, the radio told me, it was "plummeting." Its value, or rather the value people assigned to it, was slipping away, like sand in an hourglass.

Isn't it strange? A piece of metal, its physical properties unchanged, its atomic structure stable, yet simply because some people somewhere reached some consensus I couldn't possibly understand, or broke some other consensus, its 'value' took a high-speed elevator straight to the basement.

I put on my coat and slipped the gold bar into my pocket. The pocket sagged with the sudden weight, making me feel slightly off balance. Wasabi lifted his head, glanced at me lazily, then closed his eyes again. He probably thought my actions were pointless. Maybe he was right.

The rain was still falling. The streets were wet, pedestrians hurried past under umbrellas of various colors, like moving mushrooms. The air was filled with a mix of moisture and exhaust fumes. I had no specific destination, just wanted to walk, to feel the "depreciating" metal in my pocket.

After walking about two blocks, I saw a pawn shop. Its neon sign was somewhat blurry in the rain. "Everything Pawnable," read a line of small text below the sign. Sounded rather bold. I hesitated for a moment, then pushed the door open and went inside.

The shop was small. Behind the counter sat an old man wearing glasses, his hair meticulously combed, examining a postage stamp with a magnifying glass. He looked up, his eyes behind the lenses sharp as they swept over me.

"Want to pawn something?" he asked, his voice dry like rustling old paper.

I reached into my pocket and grasped the gold bar. It was still cold, heavy. But suddenly, I felt a sense of absurdity. What was I doing here? Exchange it for a stack of depreciating paper currency? Or for something else? For me, the only meaning this gold bar might hold was its connection to my silent father. That connection couldn't be measured by the "plummeting" gold price.

"No," I said. "Just passing by, taking a look."

The old man didn't seem surprised. He nodded and went back to examining his stamp. It was as if countless people like me walked in every day, carrying all sorts of things, harboring all sorts of thoughts, only to leave empty-handed.

I walked out of the pawn shop. The rain seemed to have lightened a bit. The gold bar in my pocket felt even heavier. It wasn't just its physical weight; it was overlaid with an intangible weight from the past, and a confusion about value itself. What was it, really? Potential wealth? An echo of a cold father-son relationship? Or just an insensate piece of metal, constantly rising and falling according to the rules of human society's game?

Perhaps it was everything, and perhaps nothing. Like a character in a Kafka novel, suddenly finding oneself in an incomprehensible situation, where the rules are vague and the meaning unclear. The rise and fall of gold prices, the clamor of the market, were like indistinct commands from the Castle, or incomprehensible verdicts in the Court. You're in the midst of it, yet you can never truly grasp it.

I returned home. Wasabi was still asleep on the sofa. The pasta was cold. I reheated it, sprinkled on the cheese powder. I had already turned off the radio. The rain outside had stopped too, and a faint light shone through the clouds.

I took the gold bar out of my pocket, placed it back in the dark brown wooden box, and closed the lid. It returned to its corner in the kitchen, resuming its silent role.

After finishing the pasta, I washed the bowl. I poured myself a small glass of whiskey and sat by the window, looking out at the damp street and scattered lights. My pocket no longer sagged; my body felt balanced again.

Is the gold price still plummeting? Perhaps. But what does it matter? For me, the value of that gold bar depends neither on the market nor on my father. It's just there, like a silent question mark, reminding me of existence, of value, of things that cannot be quantified or traded.

Perhaps what's important isn't whether the gold sinks, but how we find our own anchor amidst all this chaos and uncertainty. Like listening to old jazz on a rainy night, or simply being quiet with a cat.

Night deepened, and the city gradually grew quiet. Only the occasional sound of a car driving through puddles echoed from afar, like some distant reverberation. Everything was as usual, yet it seemed something, along with the weight of that metal, had settled deep within my heart.