by Xiaolu Guo
I was surrounded by white people. White Europeans, talking and laughing. I thought, even though I speak English, and I can read and write in English, still, I feel monolingual. Really, I had only one language. And even worse, I could not possess this language. It alienated me and it was never mine. I didn’t know why I felt this way. Whatever I spoke, whether it was my borrowed English language or my native Chinese Mandarin, I didn’t feel I had that language in me. That language spoke for me, instead of my speaking it. That language had existed before me and would continue after me. And I just wore it like clothes. Then it would abandon me when I die.
‘I’m monolingual.’
‘You can’t say you’re monolingual.’
‘But I really feel I am. Whether I speak English or Chinese.’
We had left the New Year’s Eve party. You were yawning and I was waking up in the cold wind. I was not sure that you really understood what I was trying to say but you didn’t ask more about it. This made me wonder, do you sometimes feel you are monolingual, even though you were brought up bilingual? You didn’t seem to want to follow me in this train of thought, but I really wanted you to know that I felt impoverished and was suffering quietly every day somehow, in my verbal existence, thus my very own existence.
Privatisation of Nature
– But at the same time, I dislike the practical challenges of designing a house like Fallingwater. It is the privatisation of nature.
– Privatisation of nature?
From the end of January, I spent almost every day in the library. I was getting close to finishing a draft of my thesis. Every evening when I got back home, you would be in front of your computer. A half-eaten banana or apple core next to you. You looked melancholy. Your mood was like the lead-coloured winter sky outside, heavy and despondent.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
You didn’t respond. You inserted a piece of bread into the toaster, and just stared, waiting for a burnt slice to jump from its metal mouth.
‘Is it to do with your work?’
You breathed out heavily and shook your head. Then you said: ‘There was a big project that I was pitching for. But I didn’t get it. They’ve gone for a boring cheap design instead.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? My design got rejected either by the environmentalists or by the councils. My proposals are always too expensive. So now, with my fancy ideas and high costs, all I can design is my own toilet!’
Your toast jumped out and I watched you buttering it, feeling your quiet bitterness.
‘If you could choose, what would be your favourite project?’ I asked, trying to lift your mood. ‘Would it be something like . . . hmmm . . . Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, or Chamberlin’s Barbican Centre?’
This time, you didn’t think my question was silly. You answered without hesitation: ‘Fallingwater, for sure.’
Fallingwater is a private house sitting on top of a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania in America. It was featured in a documentary film we watched about Wright. A unique design. This comes across, even in the pictures we saw in the film. But what was it like to live inside the house? I wondered. The ceiling of the house looked very low, and you could not see the waterfall at all from inside, as the house was perched on top of the fall. Would it be lonely to live in such a concrete space, artificially imposed onto nature?
‘I think it’s inspiring. But at the same time, I dislike the practical challenges of designing a house like Fallingwater.’ You munched on your toast, looking thoughtful. ‘It is the privatisation of nature.’
‘Privatisation of nature?’
‘Yes. Rich people getting to own nature, by doing things like building big houses in places of beauty, which really should belong to everyone. And that means no one else can enjoy the waterfall, climb on it or be with it. Imagine a rich person building his villa in the middle of Lake Geneva or Wansee. This sort of endeavour turns nature into a vanity project.’
A vanity project. I remember I read somewhere about Fallingwater, that they had built a driveway to the back of the house, so the owner could drive all the way up to access the home. What a contradictory idea of living in nature. One might as well live in a video simulation with a remote control in your hand.
‘Apparently, the owner was unhappy that Wright had designed the house to sit on top of the waterfall. He had wanted it to be on the riverbank facing the falls.’
‘Ah, that’s the opposite of what a Japanese architect would do!’ I had read that Frank Lloyd Wright had been inspired by Japanese architecture. ‘Putting the house on top of a waterfall was a sacro-legion!’
‘What? You mean sacrilege, I think.’
‘Whatever!’
‘Yes, I agree in a way,’ you said, and sighed. ‘Nowadays, you could never get approval to design a house like that. There’re endless rules. An architect can’t play too much with ideas any more. We are just better-than-average builders or estate agents, who know the numbers and costs. That’s all.’
Again, you looked frustrated. Your mood reminded me of a book I had read – The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The novel’s protagonist, Howard Roark, is an architect who designs modernist buildings and refuses to compromise with the traditional establishment. The critics claim the book is about individualism versus collectivism. But I wondered if the book is actually about man versus nature.
I was going to ask you about the novel and whether you had read it, but you had disappeared into the toilet with a tape measure. You wanted to put in floating shelves and a minibar in the toilet as part of your grand design, on a miniature scale. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Historical Records
– We Chinese have very vague historical records of everything, especially after the Cultural Revolution. We burnt everything original.
– Unlike us Germans. We record everything, especially the terrible things.
Every time I caught a cold or flu I would lament the boat life. Especially when my joints ached from the damp English weather. Also, I would moan that I could not cook a slow hearty soup on the boat to cure my cough.
Very often I would sit on the windy deck to rinse salad leaves. Pouring the dirty water into the canal, my joints aching. When I came in to warm up one evening I said with sarcasm, a style of humour I had learned from you: ‘I can’t wait to grow older so that my decrepit body can plop into this beautiful canal and sink to the bottom.’
‘Oh, it’s all part of the natural process. Soon London will sink beneath the mud and a new ice age will come.’
As if this useless conversation was not bad enough, I would then react angrily:
‘But it is not that easy to die! We don’t just die. We get ill first and then we suffer for a long time before we eventually expire. I don’t worry about death. But I dread disease and the long process of ageing and suffering. No wonder some advanced countries have legalised euthanasia. If only we knew how much suffering we have to endure before we actually die!’
Your mouth twitched. I could see you were trying not to laugh.
This was getting silly. But I would not stop. I could not resist foolishly reciting a poem from the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai.
‘You remember this Chinese expression fu sheng? I explained it to you once – it’s in Li Bai’s poem?’
‘Fu sheng?’
‘Yes. Floating life. In the old days, if a poetic Chinese man felt sorrowful about life, he would speak about his existence as a “floating life” – fu sheng.’
‘So what did he say about fu sheng? Remind me again.’
‘One of his poems is called “At a Spring Night on a Banquet with My Cousins in the Peach Garden”.’
‘Prepositions!’ You corrected me: ‘You mean “On a Spring Night at a Banquet with My Cousins in the Peach Garden”.’
‘I hate prepositions.’
‘Okay, calm
down. But what does the poem say?’
I grabbed a pen, and wrote down the verses, remembered by rote from my childhood:
夫天地者，萬物之逆旅也。
光陰者，百代之過客也。
而浮生若夢，為歡幾何.
‘Jesus, that looks so lovely. What does it mean?’
You were impressed each time I wrote Chinese characters, as if you could never get your head around how I managed to remember putting these strokes together in such elaborate patterns. But then equally I could never quite understand how you could remember to put der, die or das in front of each noun.
I looked at the verse for a moment, and roughly translated it.
Heaven and earth are eternal;
Generations pass, mere shadows and light.
Ah, this floating life, just a dream.
Happiness, a deceiving mirage!
You listened, with a smile. Then you repeated:
‘This floating life, just a dream . . .’ You picked up some salad with your fingers and started to eat. ‘And how did he die? All geniuses have unusual deaths, as far as I know.’
‘We don’t really know how Li Bai died. We Chinese have very vague historical records of everything, especially after the Cultural Revolution. We burnt everything original.’
‘Unlike us Germans. We record everything, especially the terrible things.’
‘The most well-known version is that Li Bai drowned after falling from his boat when he tried to embrace the reflection of the moon.’
The reflection of the moon. You walked to the front deck, your eyes fixed onto the water. You looked a bit sad, and I knew why. Two days ago, I had found a studio flat in the area at a good price. There was even a small balcony. We could move in any time. But you didn’t want to leave this boating life. We could not afford both places. We had to make a choice.
I followed your line of sight, gazing into the night sky. It was a cloudy London night. There was no moon, no reflection. There was only the sound of sirens from the streets cutting through the air and making tiny waves on the canal’s stagnant skin.
Art is Gone
– So art is gone, home is not working, what’s left for me to hang on to?
– Well, neither art nor home could save you anyway.
When we were in Australia, we had promised ourselves that once we returned to London we would visit the National Gallery. It was probably a conversation we had on the Gold Coast, with the holiday resorts around us. And now, back in London, we had not bothered to visit any museums or galleries. Finally, I erupted:
‘Let’s go this afternoon.’
‘Well, it’s a bit late. It’s nearly three.’ You glanced at your computer. ‘Let’s do it tomorrow.’
‘No. Either now or never. I know what we are like!’
So we dragged ourselves to the Underground and squeezed into a loud train, heading towards Trafalgar Square.
Once we were inside the National Gallery, I wanted to go straight to where da Vinci’s works were hung. But you said we should have a look at some of Van Eyck’s paintings first. You really loved Van Eyck, especially the one with the couple holding hands – The Arnolfini Portrait. So I stood behind you, watching you looking at the painting. Such an awkward gesture, I thought, between the man and the woman. Did that body language explain something of the psychology of northern Europeans? I wondered to myself, looking at your body language. We were very different, you and I, for sure. For example, our chins. Your chin always tended to hold inwards, towards your chest. While mine, outwards, towards others. And then our hands. Your hands were often in your pockets, and mine were always exposed, even in the winter.
When we finally got to the da Vincis, we couldn’t find The Virgin of the Rocks. I moved about, from one room to another. I really wanted to see the original. Yes, the original! This was a desire that had been growing since I had filmed Li Bing painting Mary and Jesus in that Chinese village. His Mary and Jesus were without halos. At least, I thought, I should check out the real halos here. But after looking in every possible room, the piece was nowhere to be found.
Feeling drowsy in the warm museum, I walked to a guard and asked:
‘Excuse me, where is The Virgin of the Rocks?’
The guard was a middle-aged man in a black suit. He stared at me serenely, and answered with some precision in his tone: ‘It is not on display at the moment.’
‘Not on display?’ I repeated, almost offended. ‘But why?’
The man in the suit shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, sometimes the paintings are on tour, or being reinstalled. I can’t tell you the exact reason.’
You stood beside me, looking just as disappointed as me. What was the point of coming all the way here, changing trains three times, only to see Not on Display? I would have brought Li Bing’s copy and hung it here!
‘So, art is gone, home is not working, what is there left for me to hang on to?’ I grumbled under my breath, walking out of the room and feeling weary.
‘Well, neither art nor home could save you anyway,’ you responded in your usual sardonic way. ‘That version was only a reproduction anyway – the National Gallery pretended it was the original.’
‘No, there were always two versions! Both are original. One has been displayed here, and the other is in the Louvre!’
‘You’re right. Both are original.’
On our way out, we stopped in the shop. I found a postcard of The Virgin of the Rocks. There they were, two halos, like gymnastic rings, hovering above mother and child.
Quickening
– It is moving!
– It is quickening.
With coal and logs burning in our multi-fuel stove, we stayed on the boat and tried to keep warm. We watched a BBC programme reporting on Brexit and the government’s negotiation with the EU. They discussed the possibility of a new referendum and a new prime minister. You were agitated, but you could not stop yourself listening with fascination to any news connected with this act of self-destruction.
I told you I must be pregnant, after missing my last period. You didn’t say much, but you looked concerned. I went to the chemist alone, and bought a pregnancy test. Once I was back home, I did the test right away. Positive. Now both you and I felt strangely nervous.
We went to see the local GP – the test result was the same. When we came out, the world suddenly felt different in front of our eyes. The weather warning on your phone read: a new storm is arriving in Britain. In a few days the country would be covered in showers and snow in the north. You put away the phone, and took my hand. We stood on the pavement, gazing at the streets like an old couple, frail and confused. The sky was dark and gusts of wind already descended. The leafless trees somehow looked shorter and thinner than they usually were. The pavement was full of problematic details we hadn’t paid any attention to before. Why was the manhole not covered? When did they move the bus stop a few yards away? I noticed children passing by with their mothers or nannies, snot hanging down from their nostrils. Did they know the storm was coming? Everything felt new and abnormal, and everything demanded that I look at it again carefully.
We rushed back to Misty before the storm began to swallow the streets. Closing the door behind us, I wondered whether I would get used to this peculiar state of being – carrying a fertilised egg and walking around as it grew limbs and body parts?
You were beside me, and you were involved. But you weren’t freaking out as much as me. We began to pay attention to what I was supposed to eat. In the supermarket, we looked for organic products. Was the GM soy milk safe for pregnant women? What about farmed salmon? Too much antibiotic in them? I took vitamins every day. I ate almonds and apples every morning. I made my bras loose, so they wouldn’t hurt my swelling breasts. By the end of the fourth month, when I first felt the foetus moving, I was overwhelmed.
‘It is moving!’
‘It is quickening,’ you corrected me.
‘Quickening.’ I repeated this enigmatic word. ‘Yes, I really feel the movement of it – the foetus, whatever it’s called.’
Who would have the right words to describe the feeling of this little thing quickening in my womb? No, it was nothing like a butterfly. Or a small bird flapping its tiny wings. These metaphors were too light and pretty for this sensation. It was a finger tapping inside my lower abdomen, then my uterus tightening slightly because a small bubble was swimming inside. It was indescribable.
CD Player
– Where does this CD player come from?
– From a friend. A goodbye present.
When I thought of my first pregnancy and the abortion, I saw a teenage girl walking around her southern home town in her blue school uniform. And I saw her carrying a silver-coloured Discman – a CD player – in her pocket. The Discman was very much connected to that event, and I often wondered whether without that little machine I would still have got pregnant.
It was my final year of high school. I was half-heartedly in love with a boy in my class. In my year, everyone was burying their heads in their books in order to pass the university entrance exam. But I was not studying, at least not as hard as the others. My marks were never good and I was convinced that I would not pass the exam. This boy was in the same situation. He told me he would not go to university. Every evening, after supper, the school would remain open till eight thirty for self-directed study. Instead of staying in the classroom, reviewing equations, I would hang out with the boy in the playground. He had a Discman, charged with three batteries, a fancy thing to own at that time in a small town like ours. And he would lend it to me sometimes, with whatever CD was inside. One evening, we wandered into a little forest at the back of our school. In the pitch-black, we sat on the grass. We hugged and kissed. He then played his CD, with one earbud in my ear and the other in his. This time, he had a new album. It was Sinéad O’Connor. And the song we were listening to together was ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. I remember that song very well. Not because I loved the song, but it was very intriguing and exciting for a schoolgirl like me to hear a high-pitched Western woman singing about something I didn’t really understand. Before the song was even finished, we were having sex. It was not my first time. But it was the first for him. He came quickly. At that moment I wasn’t worried. I thought a woman couldn’t get pregnant that easily. It was a chance, or a lottery – according to the older women I overheard. The next day we resumed our revision, half stressed and half bored.