A Chinese Affair

by Isabelle Li

  Would Sam and I have become a couple if I had been more open with him? I never know how to flirt. A boy became interested in me at university. For our first date we went to the zoo. When we were looking at the giraffes, he tried to ruffle my hair and touched my scalp. I shoved him, and his sunglasses dropped in the enclosure. He said he did not mind. But I jumped down and retrieved them. The giraffes retreated, still chewing, showing their black tongues. He never asked me out again. Last year I used Love@1stSite at Sam’s encouragement and found someone. He came from the UK, used to be a policeman, and was now an accountant. We met in an African restaurant. He had many teeth, but showed less and less of them when I did not want to tell him about my family or my childhood. We never had a second date and I stopped using online dating services.

  I open my eyes. How long have I been in the bath? The water has turned cold and the candles have gone out. From between the slats of the blinds, silver light shines in. I stand up in the eggshell tub, steady myself and open the blinds. The moon is very bright, casting sharp shadows of the trees on the lawn. I pull the blinds up completely to let in the moonlight. My skin is dripping water and shines like a silver fish.

  I settle into a routine, working on the house in the morning and on the garden after lunch. Then I have an afternoon nap, and go to the village, looking at the windows of the real estate agents, calculating what I can afford. Sometimes I accompany Dan on long walks to find vantage points with good views, but I come back on my own, leaving him to paint. My legs are growing stronger and my face tanned. In the evening I ring Mr Mortlock, sort the books, rearrange the shelves, and check online library catalogues when I am unsure about the classification. I go to bed early and lie in the dark to think about things, counting the days, not wanting them to end.

  I wake up on my last morning and find the lawn and the conifers covered in frost. The sky is a light blue. There is black ice in the birdbath and the small sculpture of a mermaid is frozen, with part of her bottom sticking out of the ice. I walk along stone paths dotted with moss and lichen, among the birch, maple and cherry trees that have lost their last leaves. The girl with an urn is still looking into the distance, and the harlequin is still playing the violin. It is so quiet, except for the magpies flapping their wings in the crisp air and, far off, birds singing.

  The taxi arrives at eight o’clock.

  Mr Mortlock climbs out, stretches his legs and picks up his luggage from the boot. He walks up to the house, paying no attention to the newly mowed lawn and neatly trimmed hedges. He takes his keys out of his pocket, hesitates, puts them back and pulls the rustic door chime.

  ‘Mr Mortlock, I’m here.’ I reveal myself from the bench beneath the cedar, where I have been camouflaged.

  ‘Ivy.’ He looks at me as if he has forgotten how I look.

  We walk through the door. I cannot wait to see his reaction to a clean and tidy house.

  But Mr Mortlock goes straight into his study. ‘I need to take a quick look at the mail, and then I’ll join you. I’ve got some wholemeal shortbread if you care to make some tea.’

  He means the blue envelope, I think.

  I put the kettle on. The gas stove has been scrubbed and the cobwebs have been dusted off the corners of the ceilings. The kitchen cupboards have been cleaned and rearranged. The timber floors are shiny. The table is no longer covered by books and magazines, and the surface shows a reddish dark sheen. I am proud of my work.

  Mr Mortlock’s footsteps sound heavy. He appears at the door with an ashen face and hunched shoulders.

  ‘Would you like sugar and milk in your tea?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. No. No sugar please.’

  We sit at the table, each holding a cup, wordless. Clouds start to gather and the kitchen turns dark.

  ‘I must pay you. You’ve done an excellent job.’ He looks out the sash window, which has been extremely difficult to clean. ‘Pity I have to move.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The house was let to me on the condition that I never invite a lady friend.’

  ‘You can explain. I’m housesitting.’

  He shakes his head, looking into his empty teacup. ‘Have you heard of the expression “Never complain, never explain”? Anyway, that’s beside the point. If you’d like some shortbread, it’s in my bag.’

  When I come back with the biscuits, he is in the living room, stoking the fire. My small suitcase is standing in the middle of the room, with my scarf hanging from the handle.

  ‘I’ll drive you to the station.’

  We get into his small four-wheel drive.

  ‘Can you drive?’

  ‘I have a licence for an automatic car.’

  ‘This is automatic. You want to give it a go?’

  So we swap and I take the driver’s seat. I reverse carefully out of the garage and along the driveway. There is enough space to turn around in front of the house, and I drive slowly out of the front gate.

  ‘Watch out!’

  I brake hard and we are both thrown forward and back.

  In front of us, in the morning mist, a lyrebird runs across the street, long tail trailing behind. At the downward slope, it opens its wings and scampers over the clearing, before disappearing into the eucalyptus forest.

  ‘I had not seen any lyrebirds the whole time.’

  ‘They are very shy but quite interesting once you know more about them.’ He withdraws his hand, which has enveloped mine on the steering wheel. At the top of the road, the sky is green and the clouds lead-heavy. ‘It might snow.’ He turns on the air-conditioner and adjusts the temperature for warm air.

  I sit upright and draw in a deep breath. ‘I’ll have the key to my own place in five weeks. I’ll only be there during the weekend.’ I run out of breath. ‘It’s rather basic, though, just a log cabin.’

  He looks at me curiously. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘The land is not very expensive in the valley, not yet. I’d like to build a nursery on a large parcel of vacant land there. It’ll take years, but I’m not in a hurry.’

  ‘Do you need any help?’

  I think for a moment. ‘I need to learn the botanical names in Latin.’

  Mr Mortlock laughs for the first time. ‘Would you care to show me the place?’

  I drive gingerly up the road. Mr Mortlock sits back and tells me to speed up a little and to relax. But I cannot, because I have to figure out the directions and watch out for the occasional car. The village is still asleep. I turn onto the highway.

  I pull over at the highest point of the road, from where we can see the pond, the rustic shed and the log cabin. But Mr Mortlock has fallen asleep. His face has softened and he looks younger. My train is approaching from the west. The next train is due in an hour. I will just wait for a while, sitting in the car, watching my future home in the valley.

  The first snowflakes fall on the windscreen.

  Narrative of Grief

  ‘What’s the matter? Your spirit is not guarding your house.’

  There has been a cold snap and my mother had preset the oven so we could wake up to the aroma of baked sweet potatoes. Unlike her friends, who do elaborate stir-fries, my mother likes automation in the kitchen. ‘Let the train take the strain,’ she often says, quoting the railway advertisement. But I have no appetite.

  ‘It’s the jetlag.’ My father is browsing Chinese websites, occasionally looking over his glasses to tell us some breaking news. ‘Lili should spend the day in the sun and involve herself in mild physical activities. A bit more serotonin and melatonin would definitely help.’

  My mother rushes through breakfast and asks me to meet her for lunch.

  My parents indulge me because they are afraid that I might have depression. We lead a quiet life, happy in an uneventful way. But I have been drawn to the sad side of human existence since a young age. I avoid carnivals, rock concerts and sports tournaments, where people are collectively elated. Such ostentatious happiness seems false, like the momentary satisfaction from binge eat
ing.

  When I turned eighteen, I volunteered for a counselling hotline. Most people rang simply to talk to somebody. ‘I’ve been feeling depressed in the past two years. I have another issue, but I won’t talk about it now. I’m depressed but I don’t have depression.’ ‘I’ve never worked. I’m too ill to work. I suffer from chronic fatigue, schizophrenia and asthma.’ ‘I used to write poems. I lost them because I moved a lot. Also sometimes you think things have no value.’

  On a winter’s night, a man rang after taking a large quantity of diazepam. He said no-one cared if he was to die, and his voice was fading away. ‘I care,’ I told him. ‘Please don’t die.’ I pressed the button to trace the call and alert the police. I cried for a long time afterwards. We were never told the outcome of the interventions, but I knew he would live.

  I studied psychology but chose not to be a psychologist, because psychotherapy heals only those who want to be healed. There are many who do not want to share their stories, for fear of losing them. Or they do not want to label their feelings, because whatever can be named does not represent the complexity of a human heart. I often contemplate what true love is, and I think the nature of love is private, introverted and melancholy.

  My father walks me to the train station after peak hour, and buys me a hot chocolate. ‘The magnesium will cheer you up, and don’t forget lunch with your mum.’ He was once a researcher in histology. He retired early to take advantage of his pension scheme.

  The train whistles across the countryside of Surrey. The morning sky is powder blue, and the autumnal light is dusty yellow, low to the horizon, casting faint shadows on the frosted fields. What is Kieran doing right now, in the city of white bridges and distant snow-capped mountains? For a yogi, time is not supposed to matter. ‘Every moment is eternity,’ he said in the class. So is there any need to make a promise, since forever equals now?

  I do not fall for men easily. My friends talk about their sexual encounters casually. But for me, there is no casual encounter. Or rather, each encounter is so rich with meaning that it takes a long time to ponder over, and to forget. I examine and re-examine every detail, things I did not notice at the time, and words I could have spoken.

  During second year of university, I met a professor in Transcultural Psychiatry. He mostly worked from his home in Belfast and came to Oxford only when he had classes or meetings. He liked to tell jokes in his Irish lilt and was always the first to laugh, and easily laughed to tears. After we became lovers, he often pretended that he had a Hindu hallucination, describing erotic scenes in exotic settings and ending with speaking Hindi gibberish. I think he was just shy. We maintained a clandestine relationship for three years until he retired. I re-read all his emails, and found a clear pattern. They always started with the recollection of our last meetings, followed by detailed descriptions of his domestic duties, including cooking, washing, cleaning and grocery shopping, and a brief account of the ups and downs of his wife’s multiple sclerosis. I re-read them many times and shed tears for him, for his wife and for myself. But the tenderness, restraint and mild resignation in his writing stayed with me.

  I went on to become a researcher, and focused my work on the impact of narrative writing on grief. My hypothesis is that the very act of writing will change the nature of a memory. I have been working on a long-term study of the survivors of the London bombing on 7 July 2005. The subjects are invited to write about their experiences continuously or periodically. They do not need to share their writing with me, and the outcome is not prescriptive, like coming to terms with the loss, healing, forgiveness, etc. The participants merely reflect on the process of writing and its impact. The same survey is conducted every year to understand the influence of time.

  I alight at Piccadilly and find my way to Harley Street. The wind is cold and the streets are submerged in blue shadow. I button up my coat.

  At the door below street level, Bianca greets me with her generous hug. We met when we both volunteered at a hospice. I only read to the residents, but Bianca trimmed their nails and massaged their feet. She now works as a dental technician in a world of plaster, porcelain, magnifying glasses and diamond drills. We huddle together and make our way to a Vietnamese cafe.

  ‘In Ho Chi Minh City I took a three-day cooking course. We bought fresh produce in the market to make the local dishes.’ She shows me the photos on her phone. ‘There were happy faces everywhere. The people have very little, but every additional thing is a bonus. We have everything, too full to enjoy the next scoop of ice-cream.’ She takes a sip of her Vietnamese coffee, percolated in a glass pot and poured over condensed milk. ‘So how was Australia?’

  I look into my cup as if to read the tea-leaves, wondering where I should start.

  When I came across the symposium ‘Living with Loss’, I was ruminating over my supervisor’s advice of stepping out of my comfort zone. I had initiated various research topics, but none seemed authentic. ‘Good research is an ontological experience,’ Seema said. Her office was decorated with wall-hangings and artificial flowers, and smelled permanently of Indian incense. She munched on colourful treats and offered them to me during our meetings. They were so crunchy that I could hardly hear her words. Sometimes she wore a sari, and on those days she was more sympathetic, more maternal.

  My paper was accepted and I was to participate in a panel discussion. I researched the other symposium participants if they were not known to me already. Kieran’s name must have been added at the last minute.

  A reception was held the night before the symposium. ‘Don’t overlook private foundations—the symbol for success these days is to have a charity under one’s name,’ Seema had prepped me. I put on a black dress and a silver scarf, hoping to look inconspicuous and at ease.

  In the ballroom under the chandeliers, people exclaimed, hugged and exchanged kisses. Waiters and waitresses sneaked in and out of the crowd, serving drinks and canapés. I dived in. ‘Never join two people in conversation.’ I joined a group of three. ‘Try to be a good listener if you can’t think of anything to say.’ I nodded avidly at others’ comments. When a new wave of people arrived, my small group dissolved.

  I was roaming at the back of the crowd when the host, a handsome woman, tapped on her wineglass with a knife. She then made her speech, the knife and the wineglass still in her hands. I wished someone had taken the knife off her while she was toasting and brandishing, but nobody seemed to care. She introduced Kieran as the founder of Indigo Yoga in Vancouver, who would offer three group sessions each day, and give one-on-one classes at other times. I had associated yoga with corporate women and artistic bohemians. Hatha, Bikram, chakra, pranayama. They were irrelevant to me, like trendy diets. Kieran, in his white outfit, bowing with his hands in front of his forehead, was a figure outside the realm of my life.

  Crystal arrived from the side entrance, wearing an elaborate Chinese costume. She scanned the crowd, spotted me, and walked over decisively. After the round of applause for the associate dean, she started speaking to me in Chinese. I spoke Chinese back. We exchanged our names.

  ‘Li as in beautiful?’ she asked.

  ‘No, li as in encouragement,’ I said.

  Her name was Xueqing, which means clear weather after snow.

  Crystal took an interest in the abstract paintings on the walls, and suggested that we guess what the subject was before checking the title. We got all of them wrong, but it was fun.

  My parents came to London when I was five, leaving me with my grandparents in China. After they finished their studies and found jobs, they brought me over. By then I was ten. Because my English was inadequate, I had to go down one grade. My mother decided that we should speak only English at home, to help me practise. That was how she and my father had learned in their early days. When there were just my father and me, he would speak Chinese to me, but I was too proud to accept his kindness. Only when talking to my grandmother on the phone did I speak Chinese, and I would be choked with tears after the first
two words: ‘Nai Nai!’ I held back my tears, knowing the flat above the Day & Night Pharmacy in Croydon was to be my new home. This deliberate effort was made in English, and a single Chinese word would have spoilt it.

  I developed a curious condition, which my mother called ‘numbness’ and attributed to my overconcentration on studying. I became oblivious to the taste of food and often forgot to put any sauce on my spaghetti. Sometimes my parents would come home to find that I had forgotten to turn on the heater and was icy cold. When Grandma died, I did not cry. At some stage, my parents realised that I had lost my Chinese. When they spoke Chinese to me, I replied in English. Only in my dreams, inside the cramped unit where I had spent the early years of my life, or on the concrete pavement near the iron gate of our compound, were the voices around me distinctly Chinese.

  I raise my eyes from the teacup. ‘I spoke Chinese there.’

  ‘Of course, you are Chinese!’ Bianca giggles.

  ‘And I did yoga.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tell me you’ve started on that fad!’ She is laughing now.

  So I tell her about the place where the symposium was held: a World Heritage listed area covered with eucalyptus forests, where the fine droplets of eucalyptus oil under the sunlight make the mountains bluish. The resort overlooked a misty valley, with cliffs and escarpments in the distance. Every morning a flock of crimson rosellas would graze on the lawn outside my window and I could hear them pulling up grass.

  The next day I attended the sessions of the Chinese scholars, whose research was about women who married gay men. Both Tong and Lei could speak some English but still preferred an interpreter, which was why Crystal was there. I admired her elegant translation.

  At lunch, Tong asked where I was born and why I’d gone to the UK. I felt nervous, and the Chinese words eluded me. Crystal asked about the popularity of yoga in China. That got them started, because yoga was one of the regular activities for the women’s support group, Sisters’ Alliance.