A Chinese Affair

by Isabelle Li

  I’m an impostor. That’s why I crossed over the line—to hang on to the real.

  Subject:

  Oceanic Smile

  Date:

  21/09/2012

  Status:

  Not Sent

  It’s the equinox, autumnal for me, and vernal for you. Today a polar bear, a king penguin and a macaw will be watching the sunrise at the same time if they stand on the same longitudinal line. Isn’t that wondrous? Each day has its hidden significance, which we often fail to discover.

  The mangoes here are excellent and I have them for breakfast. ‘Our Philippine Idol said a mango a day, all your skin complaints will go away,’ says the boy at the fruit stand. In the mirror, my face looks tanned and its angular features softened. The tropics, they have unstitched me.

  Should we have written our stories differently? We could have cultivated a friendship with respectful distance, and you’d still be in my life. But I wouldn’t have known those endearing details, like how your arm felt when it was close to mine. Or how you could skim a book while waiting for me, your legs extended and crossed at the ankles, your back leaning against the double pillows of yours and mine, turning the pages, your index finger sliding across the lines as if it had its own sensory input. You have an astonishing ability to concentrate. When I was ready, you’d shut the book and sum it up triumphantly: ‘Existential thriller.’ ‘Oneiric phenomenology.’ ‘Palimpsest!’ You’d toss the book aside, your hands eager to open a different one, your fingers impatient.

  Was our encounter meant to be as light as a feather? It started with delight but was soon weighed down by guilt, and it couldn’t thrive without the nourishment of hope. Each time I pressed my lips on the back of your hand, the ring of pale skin, where the symbol of wedlock had been thoughtfully removed, was a phantom reminder. The more I cherished, the more I felt for the others in your life, and the thought of their loss pained me so much that I could only wish it upon myself. I remember the tears seeping from your eyes tightly closed, refusing to take in any more of the world, the smooth contour of a marble statue, its features forbidding and its spirit withdrawn so the stony heart wouldn’t break. Maybe we never completed our sentence: ‘We have to part before …’ The second half was swallowed, choked, behind lips sealed.

  I’m alone today, but I’ve learned how to embrace the sea. The water is soothing and familiar. The warm current and the sunshine caress me like the melody and lyrics of a song from long ago. This feels like a return, though it’s a farewell.

  Last night I dreamed of you. We swam towards each other in a slow dance, with the fish singing around us. Your hair twirled and a few bubbles rose from your lips. I realised you were smiling. You’ve begun to melt, too, in the tropics.

  The coral reefs look like a moss and lichen covered forest floor. I try not to tread on them, for fear of damaging the small living beings residing inside the polyps. The lifejacket stops me from swimming fast. So I take my time to observe the fish, say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to them. Not too far out is a half-circle of white buoys. ‘Don’t swim beyond the boundary—no lifeguard, no insurance,’ Qiuyu told me.

  But I swim through the gap. The water is cooler and there’s more depth. Fish are increasing in number and variety. I feel like a balloon floating in the atmosphere with bird’s-eye views. And below me is an oceanic garden with an abundance of life.

  I’ve found the perfect place to bury my secret.

  Two Tongues

  You wade through the crowd, arms forward, elbows out, shielding your white blouse.

  ‘We don’t mind standing.’ ‘Or sitting on the stairs.’ ‘Surely it isn’t completely full!’

  ‘The building will be shut down, folks, if I don’t follow fire regulations.’ The security guard in all black enunciates with a doughy accent, hands in the air, his curly mane rolling.

  You emerge, a waterlily out of the muddy swamp, elongated, towering over his stocky stature. ‘Hi, I’m the interpreter.’

  ‘Ni hao!’ He twists the door handle behind his back and waves people down with even more authority.

  You slip in.

  The door shuts with a thud, blocking out the shouts and closing in the murmur. Is everyone’s head filled with mosquitoes? You scan the audience: forty per cent Chinese. A few of the rest have probably studied Chinese, and they’re the most vocal. All up, you have a large panel of judges. Your heart quickens, your stomach churns. Stage fright! Breathe. Chin up, chest out, take up space. It’s not how you look but how you carry yourself that makes the difference. And you don’t need to hurry. Willow in the wind. The original expression has delicate and the verb lean in it. Should it be delicate willow leaning on the wind?

  The poet couple beam at you. Yang’s eyes hover at your waist, while Ting’s travel along your arms, circle the jade bracelet and zoom in on your vacant fingers. Take note: best to wear a mock wedding ring. Yang’s hand is large and fleshy, and it envelops yours for just a tad too long. Ting’s is cool and dry, and she shakes yours with sisterly solidarity. They’re termed ‘Poet Couple in Exile’, although their best work is erotica: his explicit, hers metaphorical.

  They introduce you to the Tibetan writer, Zhaxi, who’s been standing quietly in the shadow. You read his short story in People’s Literature in high school. You were surprised when he was criticised by major newspapers and radio stations for his political incorrectness. You had thought characters had their own life, stories their own truth, and the writer was merely the teller. But they shot the messenger. Unlike Yang, who wears a red suit one size too small and a red tie, Zhaxi is in jeans and a denim shirt. His thick hair and white teeth afford him a youthful look, despite the deep wrinkles. He reminds you of a Tibetan mastiff, indolent and aloof, but rather likeable.

  The last panellist, Yu, is a Taiwanese poet in his seventies. His early poem ‘Nostalgia’ was well known in mainland China.

  The five of you walk on to the stage and sit behind a row of trestle tables. Hereafter, you’re invisible. You become two tongues speaking themselves. You assume the persona, the world view, the speech pattern of the speaker, and translate the source into the target language without embellishment, correction, explanation or judgment. If they use the word ‘asshole’ for anatomical purposes, it’s wrong to translate it to ‘anus’ or ‘backside’. If they exclaim, you exclaim; they swear, you swear, to the same level of graphic explicitness. If they burst into tears though, you slow down. When you set a rhythm, the audience and the subject will forget about the extra person and the time they have to wait, and listen and anticipate.

  The topic is ‘Loss of Homeland and Location of Self’.

  The moderator, O’Connell, begins with a brief introduction. You’ve been positioned at the end next to Zhaxi, who doesn’t understand English at all. Next to Zhaxi is Yang, who knows some English. You translate in a low voice to them. But Ting, who’s supposed to be fluent in English, turns her head towards you. So does Yu, who studied in America in his youth and spends half of his time in LA. They must have found O’Connell’s Irish lilt hard to follow.

  You raise your voice, cup a hand around your mouth to form a half trumpet. Ting and Yu copy you, cupping their hands around their ears to form half receivers. Zhaxi leans back to allow you more room.

  Yang speaks first. The two of you get up and walk to separate podiums, with the panel in between. Standing behind the lectern, you’re blinded by the spotlight. Below the stage is a shimmering space. As you hear Yang’s voice from the speakers, faces start to appear in the dark sea like death masks, close to the surface, yet far away and irrelevant.

  Yang says that exile is not a subject on its own but a state of existence whence all poetry arises. He cites examples of a poet’s relationship with the homeland, society, tradition and habitual use of language. ‘Not having a comprehensive set of grammar has had a profound impact on Chinese culture. People have no sense of rules, yet they cling to convention. Language and thought are two sides of the same coin. So I mus
t be in exile—physically, spiritually and linguistically.’ You replicate his pitch and rhythm, beefing up your chest. As his face flushes, your body temperature also rises. He’s used to being translated, pausing when he’s conveyed an idea, and not going on for too long.

  The next speaker is Zhaxi. He talks about the development in Tibet and the loss of dreams, visions and man’s ability to see beyond the material. He speaks in short bursts and then casts his eyes your way. You nod to encourage him to continue until it’s a suitable length to translate, at which point you turn to the audience, and he takes the hint to pause. You utter each word deliberately, your voice as deep as his, weighed down by sorrow. In preparation, you’ve checked the English names for Tibetan places, though it’s not technically wrong to translate them based on Pinyin. Zhaxi also uses words like ‘bodhicitta’, ‘dharma’, ‘samsara’, which you’ve learned from practising yoga and dabbling in meditation. Take note: absorb all knowledge; it may save the day.

  Ting’s speech is in English. You return to your seat and translate only for Zhaxi, because Yang knows his wife’s speech and Yu seems able to understand. Ting speaks about her relationship with the remote place where her parents were forced into exile, how she hated it while growing up but missed it after leaving.

  The last is Yu. He speaks about the sense of loss shared by his generation of poets after the political separation of Taiwan from the mainland, and how nostalgia has shaped their ethos. His speech is in English, so you translate for the remaining panellists.

  O’Connell opens up the Q&A by asking about global Chinese literature. The panellists respond that although there’s a large number of Chinese writers, there’s not a significant body of work or an iconic figure to bring Chinese literature to the world stage, due to the short history of Chinese modern literature and the disruption of the Cultural Revolution. You have to be vigilant with the on and off button of the microphone, because the audience needs to hear only the English translation.

  A Chinese woman tries to address Yang in her broken Mandarin. She asks why Chinese culture … beautiful though … it is, has been so easily lost … through the modern era in China. Her voice quivers so much that she has to stop a few times. She then translates the question into English. Yang responds: ‘Chinese has no conjugation to designate tenses; timescale is mostly implied by the context or indicated by suffixes. So there’s often no clear delineation between past, present and future. Such ambiguity has resulted in Chinese people’s inability to reflect on their own past. That’s how it was possible for China to go through so many dynasties without a real revolution. We, as a people, have been re-enacting our own history in a Dream of the Red Chamber, refusing to wake up.’ Like Yang, you finish by knocking your forehead with a clenched fist. There’s a spontaneous round of applause.

  A Chinese man wearing a bandana asks about the purpose of erotic poetry. Yang says he’s explored death and immortality, and now he wants to test the boundaries of the self and the other, the immoral and the sacred, and cultivate a tantric power by merging the yin and yang of the Chinese language. ‘Tantric’, another word you’ve learned through the left-hand path.

  A woman with a voluminous bosom asks Yang to read one of his erotic poems. He reads with a theatrical passion, his chest heaving and his face glowing with perspiration. The act of physical love sounds more heroic than erotic in his poems, though there’s no shortage of adjectives like ‘wet’, ‘hot’, ‘slippery’, or verbs like ‘grope’, ‘plunge’, ‘penetrate’. They are not your vernacular, but you’re in a flow and no longer feel self-conscious, your mind’s sharp and your tongue limber. You translate with equal passion, stressing the same words.

  A girl with spiky hair asks Ting about her obscure lesbian poems. ‘Wouldn’t they be more powerful in supporting the gay community in China if they were more direct?’ Ting tackles the question from the aesthetic perspective: there needs to be a level of enigma; poetry is designed to be subject to interpretation and just a little elusive.

  A thin woman with a woody expression asks Yang’s view about Falun Gong. He shows little understanding but great sympathy.

  Soon it is closing time. O’Connell thanks everyone, including you. You exhale as if you’ve been swimming through a tunnel, and now you resurface from the other end, exhausted but elated.

  This concludes your official duty. The panellists and you are all friends now, having fought a splendid battle together. You’re dragged around by various hands, and you pose in front of the exposed brick walls, the festival stands of gold and green, and the portraits of famous people, exhibiting the same measured smile regardless of whose arm holds your waist, or whose camera is flashing.

  You take the lift to the next floor. Most sessions are in progress, and you find a quiet bathroom behind the last theatre.

  You comb and brush your hair, wipe and powder your face, and reapply lipstick and rouge. But in the mirror, under the dim light, you look tired; your long hair is casting a shadow down the sides of your face, eclipsing your features. You tie it in a ponytail, but you look like a kung fu master or a samurai. You plait it and tie the end with a royal blue silk ribbon. Your face looks angular now, more energetic—you are ready for your next mission.

  On the mezzanine level, the ‘Pathos and Pity’ reading session has finished, and the reception has just started. The crowd is made up of women dressed with casual elegance, and men in skinny jeans and turtleneck black tops, wearing John Lennon glasses and carrying satchels with the edges of notebooks exposed. There’s a buzz in the air, bouncing off the low ceilings.

  Look at this chap! It’s bad enough to carry extra weight around the waist, but it’s worse to have it on the face: chubby cheeks popping and drooping like a rubber mask in the middle of summer, clammy and clumsy; extra chins flattening and forming with each nod, like an accordion miming music.

  ‘Why are you staring at me?’

  Startled, you can’t think of anything to say. You blush.

  His name tag says David. David seems at a loss. It hasn’t occurred to him that you’re judging his weight.

  You conjure up a redundant question, pointing to the book under his arm, probably an autographed copy he hasn’t had a chance to read. ‘Is that interesting?’

  ‘I’d hope so. You read science fiction?’

  What a relief. You can handle this. You suspect he’s mistaken your outfit as futuristic, some kind of space uniform. Your long, narrow white blouse is covered with little glass beads at the front, diffracting iridescent light, like the scales of a rainbow trout, and you’re wearing a pair of black Indian pants to create a professional but informal look.

  When asked about your favourite author, you manage to pluck the name Carl Sagan from a total blank. You quickly divert the subject to sci-fi movies. ‘I love the classics: Blade Runner; 2001: A Space Odyssey.’ This soon leads to Twelve Monkeys: ‘It made me cry— especially when Bruce Willis watches himself die.’ And then The Fifth Element: ‘I love the alien diva singing opera.’

  ‘You’re quite a film buff!’ On close examination, his eyes are warm and bright. It’s a handsome face slumbering inside a blob of clay—a work in progress, a sculptor might say.

  You’ve started to enjoy the conversation and can foresee a pleasant evening shaping up, regardless of your agenda, when you see Walter in the distance; like a ripple, the effect is felt from afar. ‘Not at all,’ you answer half-heartedly.

  You once thought you were destined to burn like a torch, casting a dome of light through the night. But the sparks in you were smothered by the lapping of the mundane, the monotonous day in and day out. So you quit your job. ‘I’ll write and supplement my income with translation,’ you told your parents.

  Twice a year you take groups of doctors and lawyers and their wives on cultural tours to China. It’s always unpleasant to start with, when their eyes oscillate between you and their luggage at the airport. You have to be assertive. There’s no second chance for a first impression. You dress in
a long Chinese costume and wear delicate high heels, no matter how inconvenient and impractical they are. There are occasions for casual clothing, but even then you wear pantaloons and ethnic print tops. No T-shirts or jeans—they’re for the porters. If it happens to be a smoggy day, as it is most of the time in Beijing, you liken the experience to seeing flowers in the mist, elevating the pollution to quintessential Chinese aesthetics. When trapped in traffic congestion, you quote the percentage increase in car sales and the new policies to reduce the vehicles on the roads—for example, by allocating certain numberplates to certain days of the week. This then leads into a discussion about China’s determination in winning the green revolution, at which point you quote China’s production of wind turbines. It’s tiresome, always having to prove yourself. But if you didn’t, the women would think you’re their chambermaid, and the men would make passes at you. They would mistake your courtesy as submissiveness, thinking just because you smile, you don’t feel the rage. So you orchestrate situations to showcase your intelligence, while drawing a line in the sand. Though you lose weight during each trip, you’re making ends meet. But what you really want is to translate poetry, in a journal or book, starting with Walter.

  Here he is, just as he appears in photographs, crushingly handsome, although not as polished and less cheerful. His face is a hybrid of a saint and a drug addict, its exquisite contour eroded by doubt, anxiety and self-imposed exile. For a year you’ve been stalking him, combing through his lines, thinking his thoughts, looking for clues to his heart, and tasting his words on your tongue.

  ‘What’s amusing?’ David has caught the smile on your face.

  ‘I’m wondering …’ You blink. ‘What’s the latest trend in genre fiction?’ When flustered, ask a big question.

  ‘Well, science fiction, fantasy and horror genres have become mainstream, and the line between genre fiction and literary fiction is increasingly blurred. Genre fiction used to be considered part of pop culture, but now some consider it modern mythology that’s worthy of analysis.’ He then starts on the concept of ‘singularity’.