by Xiaolu Guo
‘I don’t know much about tropical flowers. I’m pretty good with ferns and gum trees. I’m an expert on ivy and I love elderflowers. But that’s about it.’
‘But you’re a landscape architect!’
‘We all have our limitations. I have a love of desert landscapes. I prefer rocks, to be honest,’ you said, while we walked along the Tiber River.
‘Anyway, oleanders for me are like elderflowers for you. Though you cannot make them into drinks. Do you remember the famous Van Gogh painting, the one of the vase of oleanders?’
You thought for a moment, and dragged your hand through your hair.
‘You will recognise it when you see it,’ I said. ‘I read somewhere that Van Gogh thought the flowers joyous and life-affirming. I feel the same. All the old temples in Rome, for me, somehow, are not as memorable as those vigorous flowers.’
‘Don’t say that in front of the Romans!’ you laughed. ‘They won’t like to hear that their dead ruins aren’t life-affirming!’
Cabin Fever
– I’m going to Lea Valley. To work on site. I can’t stand this cabin fever!
– What cabin fever?
– Cabin fever is when you can’t stand the confinement of indoor life! Ich kann Lagerkoller nicht ausstehen!
The honeymoon finished quickly and I felt our die Hochzeitsreise really had begun. Die Hochzeitsreise – the marriage journey. Germans seem to be much more sober and philosophical about the nature of marriage.
We had temporarily moved into a new flat in Bethnal Green. The rent was reasonable. The flat didn’t have a balcony or a garden but it was warm and bright, and felt secure. We could smell curry through our neighbours’ windows and walls. We could also tell which TV channel they were watching. Very frequently, I heard kids playing in the yard or babies crying, reminding me of my pregnancy and what was to come in my life.
Since you were a freelancer, you were spending most of your time at home. You moved around the small flat restlessly like a caged animal. Was it because of our excessive coffee drinking? Unlike living on the boat, we now had an unlimited supply of gas and electricity. We kept on making coffee and tea, gulping down the warm liquid. It was clear that you missed the boat life, the outdoor life. Perhaps you were not a man made for the indoors. One morning, you woke up at six. By seven thirty you said:
‘I’ve gotta make tracks.’ Registering my blank look, you added: ‘You know, making tracks! Wo zou le! Leaving! Ich gehe fort!’
‘Oh, where are you going?’
‘I’m going to Lea Valley. To work on site. I can’t stand this cabin fever!’
‘What cabin fever?’ I had never heard this expression before.
‘Cabin fever is when you can’t stand the confinement of indoor life.’ You raised your voice: ‘Ich kann Lagerkoller nicht ausstehen!’
Oh! What a revelation. How long did it take to really know someone? I asked myself. I should have realised this when I first met you, when you were picking the elderflowers in the park. How could a romantic love last if our vision of life was incompatible? But then romantic love exists only because one has illusions about the other. Though maybe this was the final illusion, that love could survive the dispelling of all one’s illusions about the other.
Niedersächsische Bauernhaus
– You know I want to live with you, but not in a flat. I want to live in a Bauernhaus.
– A Bauhaus?
– Not a Bauhaus, a Bauernhaus.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I want to live in this flat for very long,’ you announced one evening, during our dumpling supper.
Somehow I had expected this. But still, it was hard for me to take when it came. I felt a shock. Then a feeling of deep hurt welled up.
‘So, where do you want to live?’
‘You know I want to live with you, but not in a flat. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I want to live in a Bauernhaus.’
‘A Bauhaus?’
‘Not a Bauhaus, a Bauernhaus. A farmhouse, with woods or some outdoor space.’
You stopped eating and put down your glass. Then you said, your voice full of nostalgia, which I hated:
‘When my family left Australia for Germany, we lived in a Lower Saxon farmhouse. A timber-framed brown house from my father’s family. We had animals, and a few pear and apple trees. I also had my little shed my father and I built together. It’s a pity we sold it. Now that we have a baby on the way, I often think of that farmhouse . . .’
Should I support your fantasy? We lived in London, the most expensive city in Europe, and your salary barely covered our rent. You knew that I felt the need to make a family in the West. The need to put down roots. But the big decision had to be made: where were we going to live? In Britain? In Germany? Back in China? How would we sustain ourselves? We lived in a state of indecision. And I had to finish my studies before the birth. I was very anxious, and the pregnancy hormones were making it worse.
Transplant
– I read that in China, people would transplant large numbers of trees and bring them to the newly developed cities. Chinese people seem to be very adaptable, like their trees!
– Yes, but once the trees grow older, you can’t transplant them again. The roots are too embedded into the ground.
It was a strange and important trip, completely different from all the other trips in my life. It was a trip not for me, but for us and for our future child. In June, we flew to Berlin, and made our way on the S-Bahn to the Pankow area, where we could see a lake called Weißensee – the White Lake. I thought about the fact that your family had left the southern hemisphere for a Lower Saxon farmhouse in Germany, and now relocated again to a modern apartment in Berlin. Where would you place your nostalgia, your heimweh, your sehnsucht?
‘If you don’t feel comfortable, you don’t have to come, you know.’ You said this before I had decided to come with you to Germany.
But how could I not come? I had our child growing in my body, and you and your family would be my only family in the West. Even though we had not yet told them that we were married. But perhaps now was a good time to tell them? This child would not be a rootless individual like me. She would feel at home here, either in Britain or in Germany. I wanted your parents to be included in our life.
Transplant – the word you liked to use in your work. It was also my word. But then, when I thought of transplanting myself to Germany – where your family was – I felt goose bumps rising on my neck. Ich bin eine Chinesisch. Ich bin eine Asiatische. It was the same feeling I had when I first got to Britain. How many times could one restart a life?
‘I read that in China, people would transplant large numbers of trees and bring them to the newly developed cities. Chinese people seem to be very adaptable, like their trees!’ You were trying to comfort me.
‘Yes, but once the trees grow older, you can’t transplant them again. The roots are too embedded into the ground.’
We arrived at a top-floor apartment in an ornate residential building. Your mother came out to the staircase to welcome us. She had an English accent which I instantly recognised. You and she had similar cheeks, and similar smiles. Your father, a native German, was preparing food in the kitchen. I could smell the mix of melted butter and baking. The air felt warm and thick when we entered the sitting room. A chandelier glistered above our heads. Suddenly I felt I was in a European home, which I hadn’t felt in any London house. But then how many London houses had I been in during my brief life in the West?
There was a large glass door onto the balcony through which one could step out to view the lake. I was overwhelmed by mixed feelings of excitement and anxiety. The high ceilings, the polished oak furniture, the classical music playing on the stereo, the armchairs with embroidered cushions, all this told me one thing – that your class was higher than my class. I was not sure exactly what you
r class was, but I knew what I came from – Chinese peasant stock originally, even though I had received a scholarship from Europe and I could speak two languages.
‘Which part of China are you from?’ your mother asked, already cutting a slice of home-made carrot cake for you and me.
‘Zhejiang Province, it is below Shanghai, by the East China Sea.’
‘And your parents still live there?’
‘No, they died.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Your mother was surprised, but she refrained from asking more questions.
I looked at my carrot cake, and took a bite. There were walnuts in it. I liked walnuts. At the same time, I was astonished that you hadn’t told your family that my parents were dead. Too morbid to talk about, perhaps? For Chinese people, this would be the first information one would share. So what had you told them about me?
Moin
– There we say Moin instead of Guten Morgen. And we produce the best Würstchen im Schlafrock in Germany.
– So it’s like we say have you eaten? instead of how are you? in our home town.
Almost everything in this apartment was pleasant. I sat in a soft armchair and ate what was offered to me. I studied the bookshelves and looked through the music collections. This was a different type of family home from mine. In my parents’ house, very few objects were to do with the idea of leisure. Here, it seemed that there was room to think. There may even be money to spare.
Your father came to me with a cup of coffee. With a blue T-shirt and black trousers, the way he dressed was simple and modest, like a proper engineer would have done.
‘Did you grow up in Germany?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I grew up in the north, a harbour city called Bremen. You know Bremen?’
I shook my head.
‘There we say Moin instead of Guten Morgen. And we produce the best Würstchen im Schlafrock in Germany,’ your father explained with a laugh.
I didn’t know what Würstchen im Schlafrock was, but I could remember seeing a picture of a sausage smeared in yellow mustard at the airport. And on that picture there was a word – Würstchen. So I could only guess it was some sort of sausage. Maybe a very special sausage from Bremen?
‘So it’s like we say have you eaten? instead of how are you? in my home town.’
Everyone laughed. Then your father resumed his speech.
‘But I hated Bremen, and didn’t like Germany. I could not stand the sight of it, walking down my street each day, looking into everyone’s garden – trimmed lawns decorated with depressing frog statues. Trübselig! You know this word trübselig? Very boring. So after college, I left for Australia! I was interested in seeing the world, especially the southern hemisphere. And I could grow my hair there, like a hippy!’
I smiled. Your father seemed to be a straightforward person, at least very direct. Every word he delivered was with precision and clarity, and with a bit of a German accent.
‘You really were a hippy when I first met you!’ Your mother added: ‘I’ll never forget the bunch of people you were travelling with, camping together in the bush near Perth.’
Your father shook his head ironically. The same irony I recognised from your face. I thought, this is interesting. Is this going to pass on to our child too?
‘So why did you come back to Germany?’ I enquired, eating another piece of cake.
Your father lowered his eyes and he seemed to be searching for some logical answer, like a proper elderly German man. But your mother broke in:
‘One can’t be a hippy for all one’s life. And we both missed Europe. So he returned for an engineering job in Germany and I was able to visit my family in England more frequently.’
The conversation continued, but more between your parents. They switched to German at one point. I felt now that just by observing your parents I could unlock some secret about you, the way you were wired. But then you shifted back to English suddenly and I was jolted out of my thoughts:
‘We didn’t want to have a wedding now. Because she’s still studying and we want to wait until she finishes. So we just went to a registry office in London before we came.’
‘Oh.’
Your parents fell silent. They both looked at us and then at each other. Your father was the first to speak but he spoke in German. You all talked in German for a bit. I heard a few words like ‘ja, ja, ja’ followed by a sharp inhalation from your father. And your mother was nodding her head slowly. The situation seemed to be improving. Your mother even began to smile. But at that moment my stomach tightened, a wave of nausea came up to my throat. I got up from the chair apologetically, and walked towards the bathroom as calmly as I could.
Second Trimester
– I read that most women feel energised in their second trimester.
– You read that? What else did you read?
– Well, apparently at this stage, your uterus can expand up to twenty times its normal size. Scary if I try to visualise it.
Among the dusty old LPs on the shelves in your parents’ living room, I found a Scorpions’ album with one of my favourite songs: ‘Wind of Change’. I slid it onto the record player. The ever-familiar line came out: ‘An August summer night / Soldiers passing by / Listening to the wind of change . . .’ So many times I had listened to this song at university, until one day an English professor told us it was anti-Communist. We students were all surprised, as we had never thought it was a song with such an evil intention. Could we still love the beautiful song without agreeing with it politically? I had not listened to it since. And now it suddenly made complete sense. The wind of change. We were in Germany – the Federal Republic of Germany, the strongest economy in Europe – and right now, in Berlin, where the wall had been removed. There were only a few remaining parts left in the city for Chinese tourists to take selfies.
You watched me humming along, and smiled.
‘I didn’t realise you know the Scorpions!’
Then your parents came back from the local Biomarkt with the shopping. When they heard the music playing, your father instantly sang along with his funny croaky voice:
The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.
You and your mother laughed. I thought to myself: this is something I could never share with my own parents. They would never truly understand why I had wanted to leave China, even if they had heard of the Berlin Wall or Western rock music. And even though I missed them, quietly but miserably, they had now gone. They had disappeared into history. Yet I was still here, in the happening of history, listening to the same music with my new parents-in-law.
I could now see that you were your mother’s boy. Luckily, it wasn’t quite the same relationship as between Barthes and his mother. But you had inherited a lot from her. Her Englishness, her reticence, her phrases such as ‘I wouldn’t mind that’, or ‘I’m not too fond of the colour arrangement in this design’ – all this had constructed your character. You father spoke much more directly, and was not a vegetarian. I wondered how long this eating separation in the same house had existed, and if your mother and father had other fundamental different views about the world. ‘I don’t want to see a dead animal on my kitchen table,’ you always said in London while I was cooking meat. But here, you seemed to be oblivious to your father cutting up lamp chops. Perhaps that’s because you were ‘at home’ and everyone behaved in a mutually-agreed manner.
But this time, lamb chops didn’t seduce me at all. The pregnancy made me oversensitive to the smell of meat. I tried to hide my nausea.
‘Are you also becoming a vegetarian?’ Your mother smiled encouragingly.
You glanced at me. We had agreed that we would not say anything to them before the third trimester arrived.
I nodded, reaching for the potato salad. Now your father was left alon
e to eat the lamb. I could see he enjoyed the flesh greatly, along with his Berliner Kindl Weisse. I thought your mother must have guessed that I might be pregnant. But they kept cool, not imposing anything like a Chinese family would. Most of the time they left us alone.
The weather was beautiful – blue and fresh. You took me to the Weißensee. You said we must swim in the lake – your favourite activity in Berlin.
‘Come on, you should do more exercise before you get too big to move!’
‘But the water is cold.’ I tested it with my finger. ‘Are you sure this is not going to freeze the baby? Should I not be careful during my second trimester!’
‘I read that most women feel energised in their second trimester.’
‘You read that? What else did you read?’ I teased.
‘Well, apparently, at this stage your uterus can expand up to twenty times its normal size. Scary if I try to visualise it.’
Yes, it was unthinkable. But it was even more unthinkable that the baby would eventually grow so large and would need to get out from my body. Nobody could know exactly how it felt unless she had experienced it physically. Was I looking forward to that moment? Yes, but I trembled with fear.
You persuaded me to swim, and took off your shirt. After watching a few brave locals jump into the water, I changed into my swimsuit.
‘Do you think your parents are a bit upset that we just got married without telling them?’
‘Yes, a bit. But I think they’re okay with it.’
You swam away into the distance, leaving me in the shallows. I stood in the cold, silky water, and thought, what is this? Am I being baptised? Perhaps I had been baptised into your culture and your landscape, with your family’s subtle but powerful persuasion.