A Lover's Discourse Read online

‘Exactly, property rights! What a bourgeois concept!’ I found myself speaking like a little Red Guard from Mao’s time.

  Grant stared at me, with a look of irritation, and said in a slightly clipped tone:

  ‘Okay, it looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree.’

  I didn’t reply. Because I didn’t understand what he meant by we’ll have to agree to disagree.

  A Landscape Architect

  – But aren’t landscape and architecture opposite concepts?

  – No. That’s like saying love and marriage are opposite concepts.

  The hay fever season continued into the early summer. Everyone in England seemed to be red-eyed and sneezing. It was as if the whole nation was weeping out of some collective grief. The book club met again for the second and last time on a Saturday afternoon. No one wanted to talk about the book we were supposed to discuss this time either. Instead the topic of conversation was the new prime minister, who had come to power after the referendum. I listened with some interest but had nothing to contribute. And I noticed you holding the book but not engaging in the conversation. You were unshaven, but pleasing to the eye.

  I turned to you. ‘I never asked what you do for your work.’

  ‘I’m a landscape architect.’

  Oh. I thought for a moment. This was a new concept for me. I had not met a proper landscape architect before, but plenty of humble gardeners and builders in China. Then, uncertain, I said:

  ‘But aren’t landscape and architecture opposite concepts?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Architecture is invented by people who want to change the landscape. But landscape doesn’t need architects.’

  ‘No.’ Your blue-green eyes locked on to me. ‘That’s like saying love and marriage are opposite concepts.’

  Ah. But aren’t love and marriage opposite concepts? I wondered. Only fools would get married. Maybe you were a fool, I would find out.

  ‘So tell me, what does a landscape architect do?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a gardener, we design outdoor spaces, like community gardens, public parks, children’s playgrounds, with details such as where the cars park and where to locate flower beds.’

  The women from the reading group were leaving. We stood up, hugging them goodbye. Now only you and I were left on the sofa. You asked:

  ‘So what will you do after finishing your PhD?’

  What a question. The British only granted me a three-year visa. And then what? Would I find a job here? Or could I go back to China, with my non-practical qualifications? Should I talk to you about this? I wondered. We didn’t know much about each other yet. And, perhaps, you might think I was just like all those Chinese who come here purely with practical aims. Few of them show any imaginative life during their time overseas. That’s how Chinese people appear to Western people – in America, in Britain, in Italy, in Spain. Everywhere in the world. Young Chinese students study hard, while old Chinese people work hard. Faceless and voiceless. Should I talk to you about this? Was this a pressing matter for me? The truth was, I had no one to talk to in this country. This was not my country. I knew very few people here.

  In the pub, as I was about to reply, a football match started on a giant TV screen above us. Liverpool versus Arsenal? I had thought arsenal was a weapon factory, I didn’t know it was a football place too. The noise level became unbearable. I stared at the screen, and thought I could never become an English person. Let alone an English football fan.

  爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū

  – In Chinese we say, 爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū. Which means if you love your mansion you’ll love the magpie too.

  – Why? What’s the connection between mansion and magpie?

  – In Chinese ‘mansion’ and ‘magpie’ have the same ­pronounciation – wū.

  A room with a view was not my first concern. But a warm bedroom upstairs (no matter how small) with a south-facing window was my basic need in England. After a desperate period of searching, I found a top-floor flat on Richmond Road with two bedrooms. One of the flatmates had decided to go back to Spain. Apparently he was not keen to live in Brexit Britain. The rent was reasonable. I decided I would take it. The other flatmate was a post-doc student, from Italy. She didn’t mind the situation in the UK. ‘Naples is worse, so I can’t complain!’ Besides, she was writing a thesis on Swinging Sixties. ‘Thank God I got myself out from Naples. I love London. A great city,’ she said, while cooking some ravioli in the kitchen.

  There was only one bookshelf in the living room. Our books were mixed together. After a few nights, I discovered that she only took my books to read at bedtime, and I, too, took her books to read at night. We both discovered our perfect books to fall asleep with.

  Since meeting you, I had bought two books about Germany. One was a history book about Berlin. Another one was The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I was told at university that the magic mountain was a Swiss mountain and not a German one. But it would do for now. I placed the novel on my bedside table, not in the living room. I thought of buying an Australian novel too, perhaps Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. But maybe I should ask you first.

  While I was on the sofa leafing through the Berlin book, my flatmate asked:

  ‘Are you going to Berlin soon?’

  ‘No. But I met a German, actually a half German,’ I explained. ‘That’s why.’

  She giggled, and asked: ‘And the other half is?’

  ‘Australian,’ I answered. ‘I know. Opposing characters, like yin and yang.’

  ‘Ha, so you prefer reading books about Germany than Australia?’

  Perhaps, I thought. But what do I know about either of these cultures?

  ‘In Chinese we say, 爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū. Which means if you love your mansion you’ll love the magpie too.’

  ‘Why? What’s the connection between mansion and magpie?’

  ‘In Chinese “mansion” and “magpie” have the same pronounciation – wū.’

  She looked at me, as if I had grown three heads. Then she yawned and walked away, carrying her Swinging Sixties book.

  On my bed later that evening, in my pyjamas, I looked at Internet images of those ice-age lakes in and around Berlin, and their strange German names: Schlachtensee, Wannsee, Müggelsee, Plötzensee. So they call their lake see (sea). And they call their sea meer. Curiously non-English, I thought. This was of course obvious. German is different from English. But still, I realised, I was encountering a third language. This was very different from learning English, because English was always in the atmosphere like pollen from the plants permeating the air, whereas German was like a specific mountain in the landscape which you had to have a particular ambition to climb.

  Der Mond – Moon

  – Why is moon masculine in German?

  – There is nothing objective about how you feel about stars or planets. It’s all literature.

  The next time I met you, I asked many questions about your German-ness. Or rather, I interrogated you and even accused you of being Germanic. I found German culture confusing.

  ‘So you are half German. Can I ask you a question? In every culture, moon is feminine. In Chinese too. Why is moon masculine in German? Do you really see the moon as a male character?’

  We were in a Turkish cafe near Dalston. Everyone around us was eating brown mushy chickpeas. People in east London seemed to eat a lot of chickpeas.

  ‘Why is moon masculine in German?’ You repeated my question.

  As if you sensed this was not a simple linguistic question. You thought about it for a few seconds. Then you answered:

  ‘Well, der Mond. In some old languages like Sanskrit, the moon is masculine and the sun feminine. I remember learning in school about some pre-Babylonian Sumerian languages, and the word for moon is explicitly masculine, as it is in Arabic, in whic
h the word for sun is feminine.’

  It was like you were giving me a lecture, presenting the findings of some research you had carried out on historical linguistic study.

  ‘I thought you were a landscape architect. But you sound like a linguist. You know a lot about language!’

  ‘A landscape architect knows everything.’ You smiled. ‘Well, to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this by a non-German speaker.’

  ‘So you think it’s just a different tradition that we see the moon as female?’

  ‘Yes, there is nothing objective about how you feel about stars or planets. It’s all literature. People put too much feeling and emotion into these things.’

  I thought about what you said for a while. Perhaps I was just one of those romantic and cultural preservationists who view things according to convention? Or according to the ­clichés of literature, as you pointed out? But I continued:

  ‘So if der Stuhl – the chair – is masculine, then why is the table not feminine? I thought chair and table make a perfect match.’

  ‘There is no logical explanation. There is no why. You just can’t ask a question like that about a language.’ Your eyes were looking for something, then you pointed to my cutlery. ‘For example. You have die Gabel – the fork, der Löffel – the spoon and das Messer – the knife. A fork is feminine, a spoon masculine and a knife neutral. Why? No reason. Just convention. So, the only way to learn the genders of nouns is to treat their articles as a component of the word.’

  ‘That’s very unnatural for Chinese people. In our language we don’t have articles.’

  ‘You don’t have any articles?’

  ‘No. Why bother? We save time for something else.’

  ‘Something else like what?’

  ‘Like enjoying the taste of green tea, or staring into a pond, checking out frogs and lotus flowers.’

  You raised your eyebrows, not commenting, but almost laughing. Now the waiter appeared. We began to study the menu, which was full of pictures of all sorts of cooked chickpeas.

  ‘German is a hard language, no?’

  ‘Not as hard as Chinese, probably.’ You chuckled. ‘I remember when I first came to Germany from Australia. I was in my late teens. One day I learned a word at school: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. I got back home and told my father proudly that I’d learned the longest word I’d ever heard. Then he told me that it was the most useless word to learn.’

  ‘Geschwindig . . .’ I tried to copy this weirdly long word. But I couldn’t. You wrote it down on a napkin:

  Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung

  ‘You don’t need to remember it, if you don’t drive.’

  ‘Do you mind to tell me what it means?’

  ‘Speed limit.’

  Ah. I instantly lost interest.

  ‘Do you want to share some chickpeas?’ you proposed.

  I nodded, tossing the speed limit napkin away.

  TWO

  南

  SOUTH

  无语 – Wu Yu

  – I am feeling wordless. I call it wu yu. It’s like I have lost my language.

  – Why lost? If you have really lost one language, aren’t you gaining another?

  There had been this feeling of wu yu – wordlessness and loss of language – which had enveloped me. It reminded me of something I read in one of Barthes’s books. He described how he felt when he visited Japan. The strange signs and sounds. The miscommunication and the silence. The Japan of my world was London, and the strange signs and sounds were from Britain. In my flat, I had not spoken for some days. My flatmate had gone back to Italy to see her family. Four days, alone, in this enclosed place. I listened to the radio, and there seemed to be only two types of news: Brexit and sports. Neither could I connect to, nor could I participate.

  It’s strange but accurate that English people use the word flat to describe a home. Flat is a sad concept of home. My flat did not feel like a home at all. It was more like a space defined by legal status, where I, as a foreigner, could cook and sleep legally. I owned nothing in this country. Come to think of it, I didn’t even own myself in this country. My visa, my non-­existent income, or my supposed doctor’s degree – none of these belonged to me, even though they might temporarily belong to me. Every morning I woke up with anxiety. I made coffee with my flatmate’s espresso machine. I chewed anything edible in the kitchen and worked on my thesis till noon.

  One day, with an empty stomach, and a doomed feeling about staying in England, I put some rice and water in the rice cooker and plugged it in. I locked the front door and walked to Mare Street to buy groceries. Each time I passed the bus stop, there would be a few Jamaicans or West Indians speaking to each other loudly with their own particular accent. I could not quite follow what they said. Instead I stared at them, like a cold metallic camera. Then there was an ambulance rushing down the road, its siren shrieking. It was so loud that it set off my tinnitus. Before I could escape from the horror of the open-door life, a police car zoomed past, with an even louder siren. Everything seemed to be sending out a message, saying: ‘Go home, jobless people. Go home, foreigners. Go home, losers.’

  I walked back to my flat and cooked some minced tofu. There was no soy sauce left, but I found a bottle of brown sauce. I opened the bottle and sniffed, without knowing what was in it. I poured some onto my tofu. I thought the white bean curd needed some dark sauce. I tried a little. It tasted awful. Really awful! I spat out the strange-flavoured tofu and looked at the label on the bottle. It said that it was based on the famous Worcestershire Sauce. But what was Worcestershire? A province in England? A rainy place with some cows wandering around? Do the locals produce special herbs for Brown Sauce? Did this sauce distil the essence of the place? Would I ever visit there?

  In the afternoon, I read books related to my study. I felt aches growing stronger in my back and neck. My throat was dry. And I needed to go out. Perhaps, I should talk to people, speak in some language, any language, and hear the language of others too. Any language.

  In the evening, I was thinking about calling you. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to make you think that I was a needy person. I thought I should walk to the canal, to my lock-­keeper’s cottage. But I was a little afraid of dark. So instead, I wrote to you:

  ‘I am feeling wordless. I call it wu yu. It’s like I have lost my language.’

  You wrote back:

  ‘Why lost? If you have really lost one language, aren’t you gaining another?’

  I read your words a few times. I thought, why can’t I hold on to one language while gaining another at the same time? Why do I have to lose one first? I looked out into the dull night sky, and got no answer.

  Vibrations

  – We could play in a band together. I feel there are musical vibrations between us.

  – Vibrations?

  You told me you had always lived in this part of London since moving here several years ago. You said you ‘love’ this area. Love – a strong word, I thought. But maybe you meant you ‘really like’ the area.

  We were in Kingsland Road. It looked nothing like a King’s Land should be. Nor did I understand its ‘trendy-ness’. For people like me from China or other countries that have only recently escaped poverty, the sight of poor people barging into each other in a chaotic market with rats running around and fish rotting on the pavement was not that ‘trendy’.

  ‘At least our two countries have something in common when it comes to naming streets.’ I looked at the road signs around me.

  ‘Really? Tell me.’

  ‘In China, we name streets with upbeat Communist concepts. For example, New China Road, Army-Worker Avenue, Deng Xiaoping Pathway, May First Drive . . . and in Britain you have Tudor Road, Kingsland Road, Victoria Park, Queensgate, Knightsbridge . . .’

  You laughed.

  ‘I d
on’t understand why people think propaganda is a Chinese thing – what’s the difference here?’ I muttered, with some bitterness.

  ‘Well, there are some differences between communism and feudalism.’

  ‘If so, at least we are more advanced than you guys.’ Then I remembered something: ‘Especially that Olympic park. What is it called again? Queen Elizabeth’s Park! What did she contribute to it? I bet her feet never landed on that part of the world.’

  ‘You’re right, England has never been a modern country.’ You guided me through the busy street. ‘My house will be a good example.’

  We came to a side street where your house was. Your house? You mean a real house? A fangzi? I wondered to myself.

  We stopped before a dilapidated factory building with rusty pipes everywhere forming a giant spiderweb on the wall. You brought me into a dark and narrow staircase that led to your flat.

  You told me you shared the flat with a musician. ‘That’s why all these instruments,’ you explained, and seemed to be embarrassed. ‘Sorry for the mess.’

  It was a bachelor’s home. No doubt. Oily plates and dirty cups filled the sink. Big leather boots here and there. On the dining table, there was a heavy picture book, entitled Brutalist London. Then another big photo book about Frank Gehry. By the sofa, there were two guitars and a small ukulele with loose strings. Why a ukulele? This instrument was normally played by a woman, or a hippy, or a Polynesian prince. At least that’s what we Chinese thought.

  ‘Do you play the ukulele?’ I asked, plucking the strings. It was out of tune.

  ‘Not much. But guitar, yes.’

  You began to tidy up, putting the guitars away so I could sit on the sofa. It felt to me like you rarely had visitors here. Your gestures were clumsy, and I didn’t think you had ever tried to clean up your place before.

  While you were making me some tea, I fiddled with the broken ukulele. I learned to play when I was in college. I thought four strings were easier to handle than six. And I always loved the small shape of a ukulele. I found the instrument beautiful.

  ‘You play well!’ You brought me the tea. ‘Even with a missing string!’