A Lover's Discourse

by Xiaolu Guo

  ‘I don’t feel I’m rootless. And I’m passing my mid-thirties.’

  ‘You might not feel that way. But I do.’ I gazed at the water, imagining we were surrounded by floating lotuses and dancing dragonflies. Suddenly a gust of wind came and the lotuses dissolved. Only the rippling dark water remained. ‘And this kind of life has made me feel even more rootless.’

  I thought about those workers in south China, who spend their days painting copies. And the sweaty afternoons I’d spent in their studios with their children and grandparents, filming and eating watermelons. Did they feel the same rootlessness? Despite the fact that their city life was cut off from their past, these artisans still lived among their families with a village lifestyle. Were they happier, even though they were poorer?

  Over the next few nights, I could not stand sleeping in the boat unless it was heated. You went to buy charcoal. I looked for abandoned newspapers. I found plenty of discarded copies of the Daily Mail and the Sun outside Tube stations. We lit the paper in our stove. It was a bit warmer, but we inhaled fumes every day. Coughing in the smoke, I joked bitterly:

  ‘My potential cancer cells are being rapidly activated with this lifestyle, but it’s romantic. So I can die early without complaining too much.’

  You didn’t seem to want to comment on that.

  ‘You know, every year thousands of Chinese women die of lung cancer, even though they have never smoked in their life. But they spend their days in kitchens breathing in gas and fumes until cancer takes them. That’s what happened to one of my aunts.’

  You remained silent.

  The fumes grew heavy. I could not open my eyes. Leaving the cabin, I stood on the deck to get some fresh air. It was dark and cold outside. I looked at the houses by the canal – those warmly lit windows inhabited by normal people, normal families with proper gas pipes and heating and loos. We had all that before. Why did we abandon it?

  Future Continuous Tense

  – I shall be going soon.

  – Oh, why? I thought you didn’t have to be at work until tomorrow.

  – But I shall be preparing on site.

  We had been on the move for two days, because we had to get to a new mooring. Now we were miles away from Victoria Park where we used to moor. The new area was not as pretty, and our only view was of a massive rusty gasometer. But there was space for Misty. At least there was no double mooring. I felt that I had just come back from China, and now I had to get used to a new place again, and to find out about the nearest shops and toilet facilities. Was I a gypsy’s wife?

  And once we were settled, after a few nights, you got up and said:

  ‘I shall be going soon.’

  ‘Oh, why? I thought you didn’t have to be at work until tomorrow.’

  ‘But I shall be preparing on site.’ You added, ‘I need to know the place as much as I can. Besides, the company still haven’t sent me the contract.’

  The contract. Yes, I knew. Your contract would bring money, but I didn’t remember the last time you had a contract. That was another issue. But right now, there was this issue – your verbs and especially your linking verbs were strange. Perhaps I should learn a man’s character by paying attention to the way he uses verbs. I found it difficult to understand the way you used the future continuous tense. I hadn’t learned to speak like that. I was still a foreigner, a linguistic outsider.

  Really, how should I understand this ‘I shall be working . . .’? Did you feel you were wasting time at home with me, and wished to be somewhere else? Or did you feel guilty about not working as much as you should? Either way, you didn’t want to be on the boat with me. What if I just went out, and stayed in the British Library all day? Would you feel more at ease alone? I didn’t want to ask any of this. I just watched you gathering your paper and your laptop. You kissed me, unloaded your bike from the roof, and said you would be back around five that evening.

  The Garden of Cosmic Speculation

  – I can say our kitchen sink is more like a black hole than this garden.

  – Well, I say you still don’t understand about landscape.

  It seemed while I was away, you’d begun to receive more work commissions. You had a garden design project in a national park in Wales, then you got the go-ahead to restore a dilapidated mansion house in Sussex. You must have been so relieved that you could get out from our enclosed cage and be somewhere else. One morning, you told me:

  ‘I have to be away for quite a few days, maybe even two weeks. To work.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Scotland – a forest park near Ae.’

  ‘Ai?’

  ‘It’s spelled A-e.’

  ‘Is it a town?’

  ‘It’s a village, near Dumfries. Have you heard of Dumfries?’

  ‘Dumb Fleece?’ I shook my head. All those names sounded strange and ancient. Were they Celtic words? ‘What will you do there, in Dumb Fleece? Design a fountain? Repair a church and relocate their gravestones?’

  ‘Oh, please. Give me a break!’

  I didn’t want to be too invasive, so I stopped asking. But then you explained with some patience: ‘The area has a large conifer forest, and now they want to build a lake with a pavilion by the edge of the forest.’

  ‘Build a lake?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘Hmm . . . I’d love to come with you.’ I suddenly felt curious.

  ‘Are you sure?’ You stared at me. ‘It will be wet and cold there.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to be alone for so long,’ I confessed. ‘I can work on my thesis wherever you are.’

  You nodded.

  ‘If you come, I’ll take you to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It’s close by. You’ll like it.’

  ‘The Garden of Cosmic Speculation?’ I repeated in awe. This sounded ten times more interesting than living on the boat.

  But I didn’t expect the journey to take so long. The public transport was bad in this country. It wasn’t that far, but it felt like the amount of hours we spent on the journey would have gotten me to China or America. Not to mention the cost of multiple train fares controlled by different railway companies. Before even getting close to Scotland, we had already changed trains three times due to delays and cancellations. By the evening we were still in miserable England, not getting any closer to our destination. We waited and waited on some desolate platform in one of those sad little towns. Finally, the next morning, we arrived at ‘Dumb Fleece’ about twenty hours after we’d set off.

  Two days later, after your meetings with the locals to discuss your plans, we hired a car and drove towards the place you’d promised: the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. On the bumpy road, looking at the pine forest passing outside, I imagined a mysterious park with simulated Milky Ways and magical vibrations in the woods. But when we got there, I realised that words were just words, the fantasy was nothing to do with the reality. It was not an unearthly place we were throwing ourselves into. First, we had to line up to buy tickets. Really? Tickets to the landscape? While I waited at the entrance, you found out you’d got a parking fine and you had to move the car.

  When we finally got into the ‘Cosmos’, I wasn’t at all impressed. There wasn’t much forest, just ordinary hills and ordinary greenness.

  ‘This is a bit like what I do with outdoor spaces,’ you explained. ‘But of course I have never been given such a space to design. Nor would I ever own such a place.’

  ‘You never know, maybe one day.’

  ‘Maybe.’ You sighed.

  I found the leaflet in my pocket.

  ‘It says this garden design is inspired by science and mathematics.’ I read it out loud: ‘The landscaping is based on themes such as black holes and fractals. Fractals? Maybe. But black holes? Seriously? If you say this garden has a relation to the idea of black holes, then everything has! My hair, your
ears, your ass, anything!’ I grumbled, walking on to a ‘designed’ hill with neatly shaved grass. ‘I say our kitchen sink is more like a black hole than this garden.’

  ‘Well, I say you still don’t understand about landscape.’

  You frowned and shook your head. Perhaps you thought of me as a primitive or a philistine when it came to modern aesthetics – or was it postmodern? You walked ahead of me as if to avoid having to listen to my undeveloped peasant views. When we stopped by a small artificial lake, you contemplated the still water and said:

  ‘I like this place.’ Then you gazed beyond the water. ‘I also love many other landscapes this architect, Charles Jencks, designed. He managed to combine the natural features with man-made curves in an organic way.’

  In an organic way. Hmm. I opened my eyes wider, trying to decipher the secret of this man-made land. But the strong Scottish sunlight and blasting winds forced me to close my eyes.

  Making Meanings in Space

  – I’d rather have mountains with forests, animals and farmhouses in which people really live, than trees encased in iron and designer hills.

  – But a great architect is not concerned with vernacular or domestic function. He is interested in space, and making meanings in space.

  Standing by the edge of the ‘black hole’ in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, my dead mother’s old motto entered my ears: ‘Live to eat, or eat to live?!’ I didn’t know why the words had come to me at this moment. Was it because this place reminded me of the cemetery where my parents were buried? Or was it because these surroundings were utterly ‘unliveable’ according to my parents’ vision of life? For them, all actions and efforts were about surviving, not about fun or play.

  I took a more careful look at the ‘nature’ around me: the bent ‘trees’ made from aluminium, the metal spirals wrapping around branches, the repetitive patterns on the lawns. There were not many plants or trees. Nature had to sacrifice itself for the architect’s grand design. Did architects strive for this sort of landscape? I found myself speaking with my mother’s logic, and asked:

  ‘Is landscape architectural? Or is architecture a form of landscape?’

  You turned round, leaving the lake behind you.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, isn’t all this some postmodern superfluous industrial excess? I’d rather have the natural design of a real landscape, not designed by an expert. I’d rather have mountains with forests, animals and farmhouses in which people really live, than trees encased in iron and designer hills.’

  ‘But a great architect is not concerned with vernacular or domestic function. He is interested in space, and making meanings in space,’ you argued.

  I stared at the shaved hills and tamed woods in the chilly wind. There was little life here. My primitive thoughts begged for a satisfactory answer from you.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  ‘Well, what’s the meaning of anything?’ You raised your voice, getting annoyed now. ‘You could say love, life or cosmos, they are the same – meaningful or meaningless. It all depends on how you project your views onto things.’

  ‘But don’t you think our world is overdesigned and overmanipulated?’

  No reply.

  ‘What is the cosmic speculation going on here anyway?’

  ‘It is a speculation about the nature of the cosmos. So, questions such as: does the cosmos last forever? Is it infinite space? Is the universe ever-expanding? And so on.’ You paused, then said: ‘But we can never answer the cosmic questions.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the universe goes on forever, and we humans are temporary, accidental beings. How could we know its infinity? That’s why we want to play with landscape, so as to express these intellectual ideas. That way, we hope to find some connection with the unknown world.’

  I thought about this for a while, as we walked along the little path on the hills, in the treeless forest. My views were slowly changing. Perhaps you were right, I could understand a bit more now. Still, it felt strange. Humans are the strangest things. It is absurd that we have deciphered so many meanings about love and about life. And yet the cosmos is indifferent and bears no explanation of our emotion at all, just like the Chinese idiom – 无我, wu-wo, no self, no subject. We are not the subject. It is not about us humans. Let alone designing nature. So why do we look to the stars all the time in search of meaning and answers? Is it because this is the only way to keep us moving forward? But moving forward to what? Into a vast black hole?

  Glazing

  – There seems to be no glazing on this copy.

  – You are right, they don’t know about glazing. But they also don’t know which one is Jesus and which is John. For them, knowing the difference is like knowing who is the General Secretary of State and who is the chairman of the Central Party Committee. It’s all the same anyway.

  At first I didn’t show my supervisor the footage from the Chinese village. Instead, I showed him the present I had bought for him from my artisan worker Li Bing.

  Behind his desk, Grant opened the rolled-up canvas. His eyes glistened when glimpses of dark green rocks appeared. A lingering smell of oil paint instantly changed the stifling musty air in his office.

  ‘What is this? Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks?’ Grant erupted with fruity sarcasm. ‘Did you steal it from the Louvre?’

  I tried not to laugh, and said with seriousness: ‘No, this version is from the National Gallery! The police are now after me!’

  ‘Ha, I should be careful then!’ Grant put on his reading glasses, his index finger touching the Virgin’s robes. ‘Actually it’s not bad. Oh, it’s still sticky.’

  I watched him, holding my breath. Would he notice that neither Mary nor Jesus had a halo? But Grant seemed to be carried away by other details. His eyeline moved from John the Baptist to Jesus, and then he fixed his eyes on the black rocky mountains in the background.

  ‘Well, these mountains are almost like those depicted in Chinese paintings! Some people could probably tell the copy was done by a Chinese artisan.’

  He didn’t spot the missing halos. Maybe Li Bing was right. Halos would make the painting look amateurish, or rather, more fake.

  It seemed that Grant liked the painting. But then a look of hesitation appeared on his face. Now he sat back, further away from the painting. Should a PhD supervisor take a present from his PhD candidate? Especially when the present is da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks – even though it was a hand copy of the original?

  ‘Did you buy it?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Of course. Three hundred yuan – that’s like thirty-five pounds!’ I quickly decided to reduce the actual cost by ten pounds. It would make my supervisor feel better.

  ‘Seriously?’ He shook his head in disbelief.

  Our meeting was an appointment to discuss my thesis, and some major revisions that he had suggested. But we didn’t have time to talk about that at all. Instead we discussed da Vinci’s painting at length – I mean, the worker-artisan’s copy of the da Vinci. Grant asked me what the village was like, how many could paint without any training, and how did the workers paint shadows when they had only iPhone images as a reference.

  ‘I think you are doing a very valuable piece of ethnography!’ My supervisor praised me. ‘It’s also timely that you discuss the significance of artisans and reproduction in the current commercial world. I hope you made plenty of notes.’

  ‘Yes. I wrote a whole new chapter, and got about sixty hours of footage.’

  Grant smiled at me, and then continued to study the faces of the Madonna and Child – their faces had a strange quality under the fluorescent light in the office. They looked slightly Chinese.

  ‘I’m really interested in knowing more about their actual painting process – maybe you can show me some footage next time. There seems to be no
glazing on this copy. Do they care about this sort of texture?’

  ‘You are right, they don’t know about glazing. But they also don’t know which one is Jesus and which is John. For them, knowing the difference is like knowing who is the General Secretary of State and who is the chairman of the Central Party Committee. It’s all the same anyway.’

  Grant nodded, though seemed unconvinced, even bewildered. He now raised his eyes, looking at the white wall above his desk, which was pinned with various university schedules and conference leaflets.

  ‘Do you think it’s a good place for her?’

  ‘Sure, you can pray to her before your lectures,’ I quipped.

  Grant laughed.

  This was indeed a better present than the melted choc­olate, I thought to myself.

  Britain is Sinking

  – Look at the title: ‘Britain is Sinking’.

  – Oh, how surprising!

  I stared at the water. The algae had been growing so much that it now covered this part of the canal completely. Weeds were everywhere as far as the eye could see. There were no ducks, since the weeds had changed the movement of the water. It was totally static. There were dead fish. Occasionally I could see their white bellies turned upwards, floating, clearly no longer alive. The algae had invaded their space and had sucked the life out of the water.

  Then I thought of the Grand Canal in Beijing. It was built thousands of years ago and rebuilt by later dynasties, to provide a transportation link between northern and southern China. When I first went to Beijing to study, I went to visit the Grand Canal with my father. Only two days before, we had arrived in the capital and registered at the university. My father had to return to our home town the next day. So we came to see the famous canal together. It was September and still very warm in Beijing. I remember the sun was piercing and the air was dry, even though only two months later it would snow heavily. A desert climate, I later learned. There were old willow trees standing beside the Grand Canal, their trunks bending and their long branches coming down to the water with elongated leaves swinging back and forth. The water was yellow – it was the colour of the sandy and muddy Yellow River nearby. At that time, the water was still flowing, but there were no boats at all. We were told that it was forbidden to use boats on the canal. We didn’t know why. We would have enjoyed boating on the ancient Grand Canal. There were many things forbidden in Beijing, as I would increasingly discover as each day passed at the university. For example, no protests, no marches, even CNN news was forbidden. But that day, I was new to the city, just as I still felt new to London now. That day, my father brought a bag of food with him, and we sat by the bank, eating our lunch under the September sun. I remember my father said: