I Am Sovereign
Page 10
Love-teddy!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
Ying Yue grabs an utterly bemused Charles and – still bouncing up and down – hugs him, violently.
YING YUE SOOOO HAPPY NOW!!
8.
LET’S EAT GRANDMA.
LET’S EAT, GRANDMA.
COMMAS SAVE LIVES.
Yes, Wang Shu is always on the phone talking in Chinese, but it would be deeply misguided to automatically glean from this fact that she is – in some crass and unimaginative way – ‘avoiding life’, or ‘never quite in the moment’, or ‘simply bloody rude’, etc.
Oh no. Far from it.
Richard Grannon may well call this too-easy, knee-jerk-y response a ‘faulty perception’.
Wang Shu is indubitably somewhat rude and distracted and self-involved, but she is actually often having quite interesting conversations on the phone in Chinese. Relatively important conversations on the phone in Chinese.
During the course of this brief, twenty-odd-minute house viewing (for example), Wang Shu has organised a visa via her over-worked London ‘arranger’ for a trip she is planning to Bolivia in the spring to try and finally bring about an atmosphere of concord between Bolivia and Chile after the many decades of rancour that have been generated over Bolivia’s loss of sea access (it was actually taken away between the years of 1879 and 1883. And there have been no diplomatic relations since 1978). Yes. It’s a long, interesting and ultimately rather tragic story. But we don’t really have time to go into it here.
There simply isn’t room. This is just a novella (approx. 23,000 words +).
Wang Shu has also come up with an interesting recipe which produces a variant of tofu out of water chestnuts. Wang Shu (and her sponsors) firmly believe that this new foodstuff will revolutionise Western vegetarian cuisine (although the prototype currently contains goose fat).
As she was talking on the phone in Chinese by the front door (early on in the viewing) Wang Shu was actually telling her business partner, Li Qiang (and in no uncertain terms, either), ‘You can’t replace the goose fat! The goose fat is key! Every inch of fucking flavour is contained in the goose fat you big shagua!’fn1
Wang Shu invested £17,000 sterling shortly after she first entered Charles’s kitchen in a small, independent Chinese film provisionally entitled Blue Shadows (Lan se Yinying) about a woman’s passion for her water buffalo. The water buffalo is rescued from a fighting circuit. The woman is a talented calligrapher. The calligraphic sign for water buffalo is very pretty and plain in Chinese: a kind of double K followed by a kind of double T. Obviously there is much more to the plot of Blue Shadows than this (an alcoholic father who manufactures exceptional calligraphy brushes out of wolf hair being just one strand), but little will actually be served by describing its various twists and turns in detail here.
Sorry about that.
Even as I type Wang Shu is telling a bossy, well-educated Chinese girl currently occupying a private birthing room at a hospital in Bangor that a recently delivered baby is a bastard. And no, Fei Hung will not undertake a paternity test.
Forget it.
Get lost.
Had de?
(Okay? In Chinese.)
Lan fu!
(Slut! In Chinese.)
In thirty seconds’ time, Wang Shu will initiate a deal with Charles’s main creditor in regard to the house. She will make a daring cash offer of 20 per cent under its estimated market price. This offer will be impossible for Charles/his creditors to resist.
Wang Shu supposes the place will make a perfectly good home for Ying Yue and that over-sized, over-sensitive, patently deranged finger-tapping chump once they are wed.
Wang Shu has been paying scant attention to either Ying Yue or Charles over the past seventeen minutes, but she has, nonetheless, detected CHEMISTRY between them.
Wang Shu is actually one of the most horribly subtle unsubtle people who has ever walked the earth.
Wang Shu is actually one of the most horribly sensitive insensitive people who has ever walked the earth.
Wang Shu is actually one of the most horribly intuitive …
etc.
(no, that last one doesn’t quite work).
Because:
Good enough is always enough. For Wang Shu.
Wang Shu has not even seen the bedrooms, yet, but she espied the teddy bears while walking through to the kitchen and firing the accountant currently in charge of overseeing an extremely lucrative export business that she has run for the past twelve years shipping Heinz Baked Beans, Heinz Salad Cream and Heinz Mushroom Soup to the burgeoning Chinese market in Shanghai.
On the phone.
In Chinese.
Hmm.
Charles has skills. And Wang Shu – who can smell class a mile off, principally because she has very little of it herself, and very little need of it herself, in fact despises it, for the most part – is the woman best served to exploit those skills of his.
Yikes.
Although this will probably be good for Charles, in the long run.
Although the above sentence is entirely predicated on what ‘good for Charles’ actually means. The phrase is relative.
‘Good for Charles’ from Wang Shu’s perspective. Not necessarily ‘good for Charles’ from Charles’s perspective.
Charles doesn’t really know what’s ‘good for him’, though. Some things Charles thinks are good for him aren’t good for him at all. And some things that Wang Shu thinks are ‘good for him’ won’t be good for him, either.
If only Richard Grannon were here to sort this stuff out.
But he isn’t here (he can’t be), because at this precise moment in time he is probably addressing a symposium in Latvia on narcissistic abuse, or standing – breathing deeply – on a pristine beach in Ibiza and posting a photo of it on Instagram to his ten zillion followers before being interviewed by an improbably attractive brunette on a local news programme in Spanish.
Richard Grannon doesn’t think that people are simply entitled to be happy. But he does think that people are entitled to fight (tooth and claw) to live their happiest, their most productive and their most authentic lives.
To be Sovereign.
To be present, positive and boundaried.
The happiest people are generally those who are willing to be flexible.
And to compromise.
Richard Grannon says that you need to ‘kick the legs out from under negative beliefs by dint of critical thinking’.
It’s all about taking a quick step back, drawing a deep breath, and gently telling yourself, ‘Okay, so this feels pretty bad as things currently stand, but why not take a moment to try and focus on what is actually right about this situation?’
Of course this is just so much hot air to Wang Shu who doesn’t really have time to think about how she is feeling or how anyone else is feeling, least of all Charles.
Wang Shu likes a man who can do his own washing, though.
And Charles is tidy. A tidy hoarder.
Although in actual fact Charles isn’t really a hoarder, but is simply a hoarder for the benefit of this narrative.
Okay. Don’t freak out.
He really is a hoarder.
Honest.
Charles hoards.
He has been hoarding his feelings, too. Storing them away in giant, impermeable vats and never actually feeling them.
Poor Charles.
Charles needs to prise open the cardboard box of his emotions (or the impermeable vat of his emotions – you choose) and check out what’s inside.
Ouch!
Feel it.
Writhe around for a while, sobbing, plaintively.
Punch the walls.
Then repair the walls (because Wang Shu now owns the house and he doesn’t want to incur her formidable wrath).
Then pick himself up, dust himself down and get on with LIVING HIS BEST LIFE.
Same as everybody else.
Yea
h.
Put all those pesky feelings to good use.
Because if you won’t let yourself feel the bad stuff, you automatically lose the ability to experience the good.
You become zombie-fied.
Tap, tap, tap …
I am king of my own …
Charles is currently feeling:
Absolutely fucking terrified.
Let. Me. Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. Here.
Avigail has a fair idea, though (a fair idea of what might be ‘good for Charles’). Avigail would be able to summarise her extensive theories on this matter in approximately six, long, heavily claused sentences (à la Denny Neale). One of those sentences would definitely contain the colloquial phrase ‘a good kick up the arse’.
And Ying Yue?
What does Ying Yue think might be ‘good for Charles’?
That would be hard to say.
Ying Yue thinks Teflon is a variety of apple, after all.
Although in an alternate universe Teflon may actually be a variety of apple.
And commas may seriously endanger lives.
Uh-huh.
Think: tiny, (Ka-boom! ) grammatical hand grenades.
9.
PROCRASTINATORS UNITE!
Denny Neale actually has a teddy bear stuffed down the back of his dungarees. It is his teddy bear (um … morally speaking). It belongs to him (um … ethically speaking). It has been paid for, in advance. It is a teddy bear that he – Denny Neale – commissioned from Charles over eighteen months ago and Charles has refused to part with it, even though Denny Neale has sent him a succession of pleading letters/emails (and some threatening letters/emails), none of which has Charles read because Charles is officially In Hiding From Reality.
The teddy bear in question is dressed like a goth. Its beautiful, little costume has been fashioned (by Charles) from an old, Damned T-shirt and a pair of black German-issue military combats once owned and worn by Denny Neale’s former lover/partner Samson Horny (this was not his given name) who worked for many years as a second-hand CD seller in the thriving coastal town of Abersoch on the Llyn Peninsula.
‘Excuse me,’ Avigail suddenly interrupts.
(As it happens, nobody is currently speaking, since Ying Yue is still hugging Charles – while bouncing – and Charles is still feeling complete astonishment at being hugged –
Yes. Charles is feeling:
Astonished.
Delighted.
Mortified.
Invaded.
Overwhelmed.
Ridiculous.
and Denny Neale isn’t currently speaking either – he is choosing not to answer Charles’s slightly clumsy question about how long he has been blind for, remember? – because he is presently too preoccupied with debating how the heck he is going to get out of this stupidly tiny room which is now stuffed with three other people; and can’t he hear yet another – a fourth person? – talking loudly in Chinese in some distant corner of the house?)
‘Excuse me,’ Avigail repeats, ‘but would you mind telling me what actually became of the oyster shell?’
This question appears to be addressed to Ying Yue.
It would be difficult to know why Avigail has chosen this precise moment to re-open the whole ‘oyster-shell-strike/non-strike farrago’.
Hmm.
What is the story that Avigail is living now about this situation?
Or – perhaps more pertinently – what is the story that we are living now about what Avigail is living now about this situation?
Is it Avigail’s Toxic Super-Ego suddenly declaring war on her newly-blissed-out/faith-infused Adult/Inner Child?
Is Avigail feeling weird (and – quite frankly – inexplicable) pangs of jealousy due to the sudden bond being forged between Ying Yue and Charles? Is her apparent antipathy to Charles actually a subconscious rejection of a surreptitious unconscious attraction to Charles?
Is Avigail simply displacing the social/emotional anxiety (recently generated by Denny Neale suddenly/randomly using the word ‘testicles’) by reverting her attention back to another socially/emotionally contested incident from earlier on in the viewing?
Yes.
All of the above.
No.
None of the above.
Actually, both.
Yes, both. At the same time.
Because people are, by their very nature, contradictory.
Because people are, by their very nature, paradoxical.
Aside from Wang Shu, that is.
Wang Shu is terrifyingly single-minded.
Wang Shu is possessed of an almost supernatural coherence.
But where is the oyster shell?
Huh?
Was there actually an oyster shell?
Huh?
Is Ying Yue currently in possession of said oyster shell?
Huh?
Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo actually researched online (when he was still featured in the novella – although not while ‘on page’, but while ‘off-page’) and discovered that seagulls do habitually drop oysters from great heights to smash them and devour their innards, but very rarely – if ever – do they carry them beyond the confines of the beach to do so. Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo shared this information via Snapchat with a group of his friends, none of whom have had the chance to read the novel I Am Sovereign yet (and none of whom have been invented by The Author yet) because the book is still actually being written (this will be difficult for The Reader to understand, as they hold a perfect copy in their hand, but it makes perfect sense to The Author as she types this sentence, so The Reader will just have to suspend judgement and go with it) and – let’s face it – Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo is a relatively insignificant character in I Am Sovereign who has now been virtually expunged from the narrative by The Author.
Damn him.
Damn Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo and his fatuous interruptions.
Damn Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo and his persistent thrusting for narrative significance/insignificance.
The Author knows FOR A FACT that Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo’s glasses are knock-off Burberry Doodle Square Frame Sunglasses, not Tom Ford Dimitrys, as stated earlier in the text.
The Author has also (only recently) come across the sentence:
‘What are the stories, the fictions, from which you derive your sense of self?’ in Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks and thinks that this may actually be the original source of Richard Grannon’s sister’s yoga teacher’s phrase.
Unless Eckhart Tolle actually derived this phrase from Richard Grannon’s sister’s yoga teacher, that is.
Who’s to say?
Everything’s up for grabs, here.
The Author is also thinking about re-writing the chapter about Avigail and silence (Chapter 5) because she is now wondering whether stillness is inherently more interesting (conceptually/spiritually) than silence, and more rarely addressed – as a subject – by other writers.
It’s so wearying when everything is being perpetually challenged and contested like this, though, isn’t it?
But shouldn’t fiction strive to echo life (where everything is constantly being challenged and contested)?
Or is fiction merely a soothing balm, a soft breeze, a quiet confirmation, a temporary release?
Why should it be either/or?
Can’t fiction be exquisitely paradoxical?
But then which of us goes to Dreams or IKEA to buy a new mattress and then takes the thing home and carefully peels back the strong, clean fabric that neatly covers it to reveal the springs?
We don’t. We just bounce on to the mattress, stretch out, sigh, and fall blissfully asleep.
The Author suspects that this novella (which is currently in danger of becoming a novel so needs to end quite soon) is either extremely deep or unbelievably trite.
It’s impossible to tell.
The Author (Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo claims) will persist in calling it ‘unbelievably trite’ because she is fundamentally disingenuous.
Nothing of much note happens, really, does it?
Aside from the oyster shell strike?
Everything else is merely filler and back story.
And a certain amount of waffling on about Richard Grannon whose work The Author greatly admires (and who has recently closed down his Instagram account and declared war on the word ‘narcissist’), and Lucy Molloy, who The Author enjoys watching on YouTube. Lucy Molloy gave birth to a baby (Hendrix) a short while ago. This development has filled her life with an immense joy and a renewed purpose, which, to be perfectly honest, is slightly irritating for The Author in terms of the narrative/moral/social commentary The Author is surreptitiously asserting. Or not actually asserting but kind of asserting.
The Author is recently returned from a trip to Normandy, in France, which she undertook with a friend – also called Nicola – who owns a farmhouse there and happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on the vulva. The Author wrote much of Chapter 7 while sitting on the grass in the other Nicola’s paddock under a giant oak tree with acorns falling down all around her. On the final day of her trip, the other Nicola mentioned, in passing, that sitting in long grass may have placed The Author in danger of being attacked by a local burrowing insect which lives in the long grass in that particular region of France. Said insect burrows stealthily into the body’s warm folds and crevices and generates an almost unspeakable level of itching. There is no known treatment for this itching. Although – on a positive note – the parasite can only unleash its itch on a single occasion. After falling prey to its wiles the first time, the victim will then become immune.