I Am China Read online

  Suddenly a sharp sound breaks Iona’s quiet. She looks around; her phone is ringing loudly on her desk and the vibrating motion against the wood makes it hum insistently. Still holding the photocopied pages of the Chinese man’s diary, Iona turns back to the page and tries to ignore it. But the sound is persistent and after the caller hangs up they try again straight away.

  “Yes?”

  “Iona? Is this a bad time?” Her mother’s voice sounds hesitant.

  “Mum, I’m working.”

  “Oh, that’s surprising! Yes, very good, darling.”

  “What’s up? Are you all right?” Iona speaks impatiently.

  “Yes, all good, darling. But the milking machine isn’t working properly, and one of last year’s calves died yesterday. I’ve been in the garden, but it’s so cold I came back into the kitchen to warm up. So I just thought I’d call you while I wait for the kettle to boil.”

  “Oh dear. I’m so sorry.” Iona is hasty and distracted. “Listen, Mum, can I call you back in a bit? I’m just in the middle of something.” She pauses and there’s silence on the other end. “I’m sorry, Mum, I’m sorry, it’s just—”

  “It’s fine, darling. Bye dear.” And she puts the phone down.

  Iona sits down again and picks up her pencil. She resumes where she left off, and starts translating the rest of the passage, this time with a more urgent energy. The words are spilling out of her onto the page.

  … It was one ripple in the churned-up sea, and I was the eye of the storm. Through the smoky air, the vortex of turning lights, I could see some students had lit candles and lighters to match the lines from my song. The disco lights dimmed. We could feel this wave of sound, all of us connected by our music. It was unforgettable! Perfection! And her right in the middle of it! Then all of a sudden the electric power was cut and the double doors at the back of the hall swung open. Police. Now there was just screaming in the dark. And all the lights went out. I felt someone lunge for me in the dark. Mu’s skinny arms had found me in the blackness and her soft cheeks were next to my face, her cold hands tight around my waist. And among the sirens and the mess in the darkness, she screamed into my ear: “Jian, I will come with you if the police take you. I won’t let you be arrested alone!” I found her lips with mine. She, the most delicate girl, the bravest of all, stood there waiting to go under with me. We were very still, in all the noise and movement around us. Then after what seemed like forever, the lights were back on, the venue was quiet and the police were gone. There weren’t many people left and the cafe manager totally freaked out but we didn’t give a fuck. We started playing again. Gradually, more and more people returned to the cafe. We played until this morning, more fervent than before. We came back to my studio (luckily I’d made the bed). And she has only just left for class. I can’t get enough of her.

  Iona puts down her pencil and looks towards the darkening distant skyline. She can hear vans loading unsold vegetables from the market stalls down below, dealers continuing to holler and roar to the crowds before the day ends, and pots and pans banging in the restaurants for dinner. But all she can really see and hear is a Chinese band on an illuminated stage waving their dark hair and revving the crowd with each dramatic lunge and each twang of the electric guitars, then a girl in a white dress squeezing herself into the front row, chanting and crying … And after the concert, what then? Perhaps the silhouettes of two young lovers, their hair damp with sweat, their skin still glowing with the acid neon colours of the disco lights. Shy together, excited together. Iona’s vision curdles. Music and romance—that’s what youth is all about! Suddenly she feels restless, she can’t stand to sit still on her chair. She feels as if her body has been poured like wet concrete into a mould—she has been stuck in her comfortable little prison for too long. Iona closes her computer. Best to get out of here.

  6 LONDON, APRIL 2013

  Iona zigzags through the crowds on White Lion Street, crossing Upper Street, passing Angel Tube station, heading towards her favourite park—Duncan Terrace Garden. The sparks from Kublai Jian’s words flare within her as if she too were walking around with a teenage body and teenage spirit. She has just turned thirty-one, but she looks younger. One couldn’t tell from just a glance that she was a child of the spring of 1982, when Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands and Ronald Reagan became president of the United States. She was born, she still thinks improbably, to Michael and Bethan Kirkpatrick on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. She was the second girl in the family, her parents hoping against hope for a boy. The day after Iona was born, war broke out. As the young mother bathed their new baby, fed her and cuddled her, the father held his ear to the ancient radio in the sitting room and listened to Margaret Thatcher’s speeches. He was convinced with rabid certainty that Britain was on the verge of a Third World War. He collected tins of beans and pulses, tomatoes and peas. The cupboards were filled with packets of pasta and cartons of long-life milk. He was worried. And he was prepared. But no world war came and Iona grew up. Instead of melting in the fires of Armageddon she became a skinny child with knock knees and tousled hair.

  Her childhood was all about waiting, wondering, and the promise of what lay beyond the sea. She would stand on the beach on the Isle of Mull and look across the blackened-purple channel to the hilly shape of the island opposite—the Isle of Iona, looming as a hazy silhouette in the distance. The Isle of Mull that her feet trod every day held no secrets for Iona Kirkpatrick, but the bluish islet in the distance enchanted her. The place that gave Iona her name was still an unknown place. Islanders would talk in whispers; “magical,” they would say, a place to dream about, to yearn for. But she had never set foot there. In the winter it seemed further away, as if it were a blurred brown ship beyond the spray; in the summer it glowed green against the rare blue sky.

  Her parents had honeymooned on the Isle of Iona, and constantly talked of going back. But they were always too busy. As the years passed, the story of the island became a kind of fable in Iona’s mind. It seemed to change with each retelling, as her father embroidered and exaggerated, and the truth—whatever that may be—was submerged in a swirl of youthful images, as turbid as the sea itself. Perhaps they had seen dolphins from their hotel window one night, and perhaps they might even eke out their retirement there. But Iona could never be sure what to believe, and her mother would always give her at best an enigmatic smile.

  Her teenage years went by on the island pretty quietly, until the day she left with two large suitcases. That year she was seventeen. She still remembers the morning in late August, she was taking a ferry, leaving the Isle of Mull for her college study. Her mother was standing by the bank waving a hand and smiling, and her father, as always, was standing further back, without any gesture. He never liked to show emotion in front of women, at least on the surface. And her sister Nell, far away in Russia, had already left the family for ten good months. As the ferry was leaving, a gust of wind started to blow. Suddenly Iona heard her father’s shout in the blasting wind: “Send me postcards, Iona, will you?!” She looked straight to her grey-haired father and her small-built mother. Her father’s face was reddened—had he been drinking into the early hours the night before? Or perhaps he had always been like that. His skinny arms were now raised in the air, and his body seemed to quiver and tremble in the invisible wind. He looked sad and weak. Suddenly, her throat snagged on itself. Instinctively, she gripped her hands on the railing, set her jaw and twisted her face into a smile. She didn’t want to show any sign of anguish to her parents. It would be weak, a sign of indecision, and failure to be adult. After all, she had always wanted to leave the place. And hadn’t she outgrown it? The ferry headed towards Oban, the biggest town near their island, where she could take the train. But as she glanced at the ever smaller and smaller figures of her parents by the shore, she found her tears were flowing. The waves slithered past like white-backed green lizards coiling under each other. She turned back and saw the mainland coming monot
onously closer to her with each surge of the ferry. Her tears soon turning joyful, sliding down her cheeks, then dried by the wind.

  Years later, when Iona thinks of her father, the image of the man standing by the shore shouting to her through the blasting wind sticks in her mind. It’s an image of a man, aged in body yet still with a youthful energy and sinewy masculinity, but broken by the coarseness and isolation of island life. His mouth is open as he shouts, but she cannot hear the sound of his voice. It’s like a still from a silent black and white film, and makes her shudder. It’s hard to believe there was ever any spark of love between her parents, looking at them now. Perhaps when her elder sister, Nell, was born. But it seems like it had already exhausted itself by the time they had her—the mistake, the interloper. She had felt so free as the boat pulled away from the harbour, and she left her complicated feelings about her parents behind. And now, she still feels free despite these echoes from her past. Free and open to a world of possibility. A world beyond the confines of a dark sea-ringed island, combed by raw winds.

  7 LINCOLNSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2012

  The nurse’s morning visit wakes Jian. He opens his eyes, sees his diary lying open beside his pillow. His pen is still held loosely in his right hand. He hears the rain. Another rainy Midland morning in Lincolnshire Psychiatric Hospital. But there is a surprise today. His nurse not only brings pills and water for him, she also hands Jian a letter.

  This is the only thing that’s arrived from the outside world since he’s been here: an immaculate white envelope in heavy white vellum with a raised golden Buckingham Palace emblem in the top left corner, and his address leaving little indentations into the paper. This is truly noble. He hadn’t thought calligraphy was so developed in this part of the world. His heart beats with anticipation as he tears open the envelope. How strange: he finds his own letter to the Queen inside, and a little card. It reads:

  BUCKINGHAM PALACE

  Please take note: anyone who wishes to communicate with Her Majesty should address their correspondence to Her Lady-in-Waiting at Windsor Castle, Berkshire SL4 1NJ, and affix a Royal Mail stamp.

  Jian frowns. Why can’t someone in Buckingham Palace just forward his letter to an official “Lady-in-Waiting”? What’s the point of sending a tired, staggering Nigerian postman all the way to this Thatcher town just to give him instructions in how to address the Queen? No efficiency, bureaucratic bullshit. Nevertheless, Jian stops cursing and requests two sheets of paper from his nurse. He drafts his second letter to the Queen.

  To: Lady-in-Waiting

  Windsor Castle

  Berkshire SL4 1NJ

  Your Majesty,

  I wrote you a letter earlier this month dated 1 February which has returned, presumably unread by you. But I will not give up, I need you to hear my story and I need your help urgently.

  Now, Your Majesty, because I write to you from a madhouse, you might think I am not worthy of your time and patience. But I am sober and steady. I have managed not to take those mad pills. You may not know about those pills, but I tell you, dear Queen, if you ever have problems, I advise you never to take “spredee” or “darvon.” They tell me this shit can provide anxiety relief to calm me down. But I don’t want to be calm, Your Majesty! I feel very uncalm! I am writing to you with a serious heart. Please read my first letter.

  No time left, you excellent Queen! My visa will be expired tomorrow and they’ve decided that they don’t believe I’m suffering from a mental disorder, but they’re planning on handing me to the Border Control Police! And I plead to them if they send me back to China I will be yet another imprisoned artist. So Your Majesty must lift your finger! You are now my Nüwa, our ancient Chinese goddess who repaired the ceiling of heaven and rescued all humanity. Woman is always greater than man, I know it.

  Last but not least, one thing more, dearest Queen, you actually met my father once, on your 1986 China visit. I have a photograph he gave me when I was little. He was sitting behind Deng Xiaoping but I’m sure you don’t remember his face. Anyway, my telephone number here is 01498 67803, it is the reception number but if they know it is Your Majesty calling they will have to take it serious.

  Yours,

  Kublai Jian

  PS If you already decided not to help me, can you return my CD? My album is the only proof of my achievement in a foreign country.

  8 LINCOLNSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2012

  In the midst of grappling with written English, Jian befriends his nurse. Beth is in her mid-thirties, chubby and warm with soft blonde hair. She tells him that she has her own Chinese connection—her father works for a pharmaceutical company that exports most of their products to China. She’s barely been outside Lincolnshire, she tells him, but one day she will visit China, “walk on the Great Wall, learn to practise tai chi,” but Jian isn’t convinced.

  Today she greets him with questions.

  “Good morning, Kublai Jian, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? How about your family? Do you have a wife back in China?” She leans a little closer. “Kublai Jian?”

  “A wife?” he repeats blankly.

  She looks at him enquiringly, just a light tilt of her head as if to say, yes, tell me more.

  Jian is bewildered. Wife? He shakes his head dully.

  “Not married? Did you have a girlfriend?” She hesitates. Jian smiles and shakes his head again. Not any more, he thinks.

  It was the beginning of his third year in college, twenty-one years away from this odd Lincolnshire life. The university had organised a volleyball match to welcome the students to the new term. They were sitting on the thin concrete kerb by the court, watching the match and sucking sugared ice sticks. The girl sitting beside him was thin and small, but she wore a large man’s shirt, light blue in colour, with a huge pocket on her left breast. When the wind blew, her shirt billowed as if she were about to fly away in a blue balloon.

  “Where did you get this shirt?” Jian said.

  “From my father,” the girl answered. “I like to wear men’s shirts.” She smiled, revealing a row of perfect yet gappy front teeth, like small pillars of pearl.

  Maybe it was that first impression of the girl’s gappy teeth, so pretty and dear to Jian’s eyes, maybe it was her billowing shirt that revealed so little, but whatever it was he began to like her. There was a break in the game and together in silence they watched the players walk off court to the changing rooms. Then she turned to Jian, looked at him curiously for a second and said:

  “You know, you look like Peking Man.” She laughed. “Peking Man who lived in caves half a million years ago!” She turned at a noise from across the court and asked, “Which department are you in?”

  “History,” Jian answered, awkwardly.

  When the girl heard this, she laughed even louder. “How fitting!” She coughed, in between fits of shaking laughter.

  Jian was taken aback. He wasn’t thrilled to hear that he looked like Peking Man. “I’m not that ugly! Peking Man wasn’t even a man, he wasn’t even a Homo sapiens!”

  “But look.” The girl traced Jian’s jaw with a soft finger and he shivered. “Look, your jawline and bone structure are exactly like the fossilised head I saw in a museum once. I remember it so well—he had a very big jaw just like yours, and his forehead was as steep as yours!” All Jian could do was smile at her insistence; being compared to the supposed original ancestor of all Chinese men couldn’t be a bad thing.

  “Which department are you in?” Jian gazed at the girl’s front teeth.

  “Literature,” she answered, suddenly more serious, “Western Literature.”

  Jian remembered well those few days after the volleyball game—he had looked out for her in lectures and around the campus, and even spied her looking at him from across the room. She told him of her mild obsession with Peking Man since her middle-school days. Like other students in her history class she had to recite facts about the ancient apes, especially Peking Man: “… he lived 750,000 years ago, but as primitive
as he was, he already knew how to use fire and tools in his cave.” She told Jian about her trip to the museum in Beijing’s Zhoukoudian—the original cave where they discovered the fossils of Peking Man—and how she had stood in a large and empty exhibition hall and looked at the skull. It was like the head of a modern human, except its teeth looked oversized and fierce. “And now I get to meet a real Peking Man. Alive!” Her moon-shaped face glowed as she talked and she tugged the billowing shirt over her knees and coiled her small body up inside it like butterfly in a cocoon.

  9 LONDON, MAY 2013

  Standing in front of a mirror in her bathroom, Iona brushes her hair; black strands glisten under a battered art deco lamp, and her face looms beneath, familiar, inescapably her. There is a tug of entangled hair at the back; she tries to comb it straight, but it won’t behave. Her phone rings in the kitchen. She continues to brush her hair. The phone rings again. No, I should not go out tonight, or even this weekend. I must work. Lots to do. She talks to herself in the mirror, and her hand cuts down through the black fall of her hair.