by You Jin
After dinner, we braved the cold wind and went to the must-see place mentioned in every travel brochure: the St. Pauli red-light district. This was a legal red-light district recognised by the authorities, and it was West Germany’s largest, with over three thousand prostitutes working here.
Big and small streets, side streets and narrow alleys, were all filled with brothels, bars, sex shops, sexy dance theatres, and motels that charged by the hour. It gave us a glimpse of the seedy side of West German life.
We walked around observing the scene. Before we knew it, it was past midnight. The temperature had dropped, passing the threshold that I could bear. I practically ran back to our guesthouse.
Standing outside the house, we rang the doorbell. We rang it again and again, but all remained silent inside.
What was going on? Risheng and I looked at each other suspiciously.
We rang the doorbell again, then waited. The cold was seeping through my thin clothes into my body, making my teeth chatter.
When our ringing of the doorbell proved fruitless, Risheng walked to Herr Sanger’s window. He raised his voice, calling “Herr Sanger!”
His voice quivered because of the cold. Hearing it in the quiet night, it had a certain dreary charm. Looking for the humour in the midst of our suffering, I said in a stage whisper, “Hey, are you trying to wake the dead?”
He said irritably, “You just had to go and ask him about the red-light district. You offended him. Now he’s purposely locked us out and you’re still making jokes!”
Not daring to joke again, I looked at the situation more analytically. “Do you think he got drunk and can’t wake up?”
Risheng called again, the last syllable drawing out even more miserably than before down the length of the alley. But still there was no sound of movement from inside the house.
The wind grew colder with every gust. I started to feel anxious. Were we being conned? Was this one of those “tourist traps”? But as soon as this thought flashed across my mind, it fled on its own accord. This guesthouse had been recommended by the tourist board, so surely it was reliable.
Though we rang the bell and called out, it was no use. So we had no choice but to pound the door rudely.
Bang bang bang!
Bang bang bang!
Bang bang bang!
After pounding it three times, we still had no response. So we pounded it again.
Bang bang bang bang bang!
The sound even began to unnerve me.
Finally, the door was pulled open. The person revealed inside the door was not Herr Sanger. He rubbed his eyes sleepily and asked politely, “Who are you looking for?”
As soon as I saw his dark skin, I guessed who he was. I said, “We’re like you, Herr Sanger’s tenants.”
He let us in.
My cold hands were numb. I sat on a chair in the living room, looking at Herr Sanger’s tightly closed bedroom door. A feeling of indignation built up in me, little by little.
“We weren’t even back yet and he’s gone to bed without a care in the world, sleeping so soundly!”
“You mean Sanger?” the Indian tenant said patiently. “He’s not at home.”
“Oh, but he told us plainly that he lives here.”
“That’s true. He does live here, but…” The Indian guest paused here, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile. He went on, “He has a mistress living not far from here. He spends several nights there each week.”
“He should wait for us to get home before going out!” I puffed hot air onto my palms to keep warm, but I couldn’t blow out all the feelings of irritation, anger and rage inside me. “This is so irresponsible!”
The Indian guest explained calmly, “This room where you are staying has been empty for a long time. Maybe he forgot he had even rented it out.”
“Forgot!” It was not easy to contain my temper. “Forgetting is another word for irresponsible! What if you hadn’t opened the door for us tonight? Would we have had to sleep on the street?”
Whilst we were talking, a key scraped in the door.
Herr Sanger walked in. He was carrying two hot water bottles. Seeing us, he immediately offered us a warm smile. Raising the hot water bottles he carried, he said, “Oh, you’re back. Good timing. The weather in Hamburg has turned unseasonably cold these past few days, and you just arrived. I was afraid you wouldn’t be used to it, so I went to a place nearby to borrow two hot water bottles to keep you warm tonight. Keep them under your blanket. You should sleep better that way.”
Ha! I had never felt quite such a surge of self-loathing as I did at that moment.
Village in the Vineyard’s Shade
THE TRAIN RACED quietly down a long stretch of track. On both sides of the track was a vineyard where the plump, juicy grapes grew on vines that wound up wooden poles. The jagged green shadows shaped like the blade of a saw, created by the leaves of the vines, were scattered all along the ground. At a glance, the vineyard seemed to stretch to the horizon in a limitless expanse of green.
Disembarking from the train, we saw a sign in the station with the words “St Emilion” written clearly across it.
St Emilion is a small village in the southeast of France, with a population of only five thousand. When we decided to come to France to visit an old friend, we searched for St. Emilion on the map, but it was so small that, even after a thorough search, we could not find it. I only knew it was in the southern part of France, that the nearest city was Bordeaux, and that Bordeaux was the centre of wine exportation on France’s west coast.
The small village of St Emilion was very quaint. The stone tile rooftops stood stacked one after another along the narrow streets. The sunlit store walls were covered with green vines. Though it was the middle of the day, the whole town seemed quite sleepy, the aroma of wine floating on the breeze that swept through the quiet streets.
By the time we had nearly worn out our shoes walking through the stone streets, we found Alexis’s house. We had earlier written to him that we were coming, so as soon as the door opened, Alexis rushed out and hugged Risheng, then pulled me to him and, kissing me, said, “I’ve missed the two of you.”
“I think what you’ve really missed is my fried rice,” I said knowingly.
“Mm! Fried rice!” His lips and moustache suddenly lifted into a smile. “Let me think, how long has it been since I had your fried rice?” We quickly calculated and cried in surprise, “Ha! Nine years!”
It was true. We had not seen each other in nine years. In other words, not since we left Saudi Arabia. Our only contact had been Christmas cards and the sincere wishes we had penned there.
About ten years earlier, when a global economic downturn swept through France, Alexis, being one of the first to be affected by it, lost his job. At the time, his wife was unemployed, and they also had small children to feed. After considering all his options, he bit the bullet and flew by himself to the lonely desert to look for his golden opportunity.
• • •
Living in Jeddah, he and Risheng met often due to work, whereas I often ran into him at the post office. He was always arguing with the clerk at the post office because he wanted to buy stamps when he mailed things home, but for their own convenience, the staff at the post office preferred to use machine generated bar code stickers instead of postage stamps. This made him unhappy, so he would scold them in French. Unable to understand what he said but reading his facial expression, they gave back as good as they got. Both sides carried on like this, arguing until the atmosphere inside the post office was very lively. Life in the desert was dull and monotonous, so this sort of diversion was sure to attract an audience. I often saw the same postal clerk scolding him. Though I could not understand what was being said, it felt a bit like the character “Ah Q”—engaging in self-mocking so as to offset the feeling of defeat in reality.
Later when I got to know Alexis better, he told me that he had gone to the post office especially for the purpose of sending sta
mps back to his three-year-old daughter. His wife, Maryse, had mentioned in a letter that their daughter recognised the colourful stamps on his letters. Every time she came back from the post office with his letter in hand, their daughter would treat the stamps as a treasured toy. She had a box that she kept the stamps in once she’d peeled them off the envelopes. If she saw an envelope that bore only the printed barcode stickers, she refused to believe the letter had come from her father.
This short explanation told me a lot about Alexis’s concept of family. If the economy picked up again, I was sure he would not continue in this dogged pursuit of work, but would distance himself from it.
Once, he came to our house for fried rice. Living in the desert, I seldom cooked. Our daily meals were often just rice sprinkled with a little oil. Sometimes when rice and dishes sat before us, it was really hard to get the food down, so I might make fried rice just to satisfy our appetite. What was most pathetic was that, even though it was home-cooked fried rice, there were not many ingredients available. The chicken was frozen, and the crab was tinned. Even the green peas were frozen into a hard slab. I never imagined that when Alexis had eaten it, he would give me a big thumbs up, proclaiming loudly that it was very good. Later, every time we met, he would ask, “Hey, when are you making that treasure chest for dinner again?”
“What treasure chest?” I asked, mystified.
“You know. The pearls, rubies and jade that you cook together into a delicious dish.”
This fellow really had a rich imagination. He took the corn as pearls, the carrots as rubies, and the green peas as jade.
Talking so elaborately about my cooking was not only his way of teasing me, but also of getting an immediate invitation to repeat the meal. One time, he arrived at our house carrying a large paper bag full of grapes. When I saw it, I cried, “Alexis, are you going to teach us to make wine with that? There are only three of us. We’ll never finish all those grapes!”
He carefully plonked the bag on the table and signalled for me to be quiet. After we had closed the door, he took a long string of grapes from the bag. Then, he dug deeper into the bag and pulled out something wrapped in newspaper. Unwrapping layer after layer of paper, I saw there before me a sparkling bottle of deep red fluid!
With obvious pride, Alexis smiled and said, “You didn’t expect that, did you? I made the wine myself!”
I certainly had not expected that. I went crazy with joy, immediately going to the kitchen to take out glasses. We did not have any proper wineglasses, so I brought the most ordinary vessels. Then, for once in my life, I felt that my household utensils were too crude for the fine wine my guest had brought.
That wine was really good. It had a mellow flavour and light fragrance.
Living in teetotalling Saudi Arabia, I had forgotten the taste of wine, so it felt like a welcome rain after a long drought. As we sipped, we sang Alexis’s praises. He said plainly, “I grew up in the small town of St. Emilion in southwest France. For three generations, my family has made our living by making wine. My siblings and I have been influenced by it all through life, and we are all able to make wine.”
Alexis was a mechanical engineer. When the global economy had taken a downturn and he had lost his livelihood and, as a result, gone overseas to make a living, why didn’t he just go back to his father’s wineries and work there instead of going so far from home?
He put down his common-looking glass and sighed deeply. “St. Emilion was badly affected by the economic downturn. Even our family winery that had been very prosperous for nine decades closed down.”
When the winery closed down, there was no longer work for him to do. Going to Saudi Arabia was his only glimmer of hope.
We ate our delicious fried rice, drank our soothing wine, and talked of the economic recession. Our spirits were deflated.
We ate, drank, and chatted until both wok and wine bottle were drained to the bottom, then Alexis bade us farewell. As he was leaving, we set a third appointment. I would provide the “treasure chest” meal and he would provide the “magical drink”.
But before we could open our next bottle of wine together, we met once again. This time, it was at the hospital.
Alexis met with an accident at work and his right index and middle fingers were caught in a machine and severed. When he was brought to the hospital, he was not taken immediately into the emergency ward, so there was no hope of reattaching the severed fingers.
In his ward, his right hand was heavily bandaged, so he was practising smoking with his left hand. When he saw us, his expression was not especially sad. Before we could even get a word of comfort out, he was at his usual habit of wiggling his thick, black eyebrows. He laughed and said, “Hey, I’m really not used to smoking with my left hand! I’ve almost stuck the cigarette in my nose several times.”
Not much needed to be said about how his fingers were cut off and how he felt afterward. He did not mention it then, nor did he bring it up afterward. I just saw him work hard to face it and to adapt to the new state of affairs. From this incident, Alexis showed me a tough, optimistic character.
After several days, he suddenly resigned and prepared to go back to France.
When he came to bid us goodbye, he looked very unhappy. We wanted to give him a farewell dinner, but he wouldn’t allow it. We asked him why he was leaving so quickly and furtively. He did not offer an explanation, but just said, “There are some problems at home that I need to attend to.”
After he had been gone a short while, we received a letter asking Risheng to help him look out for employment opportunities, as he wanted to send his younger brother to Saudi Arabia to work. There happened to be a company that was short-staffed, so Risheng helped him make the arrangements. His brother came over soon after that. He was a very quiet fellow and did not speak English very well, so we did not get to know him very intimately. But Alexis always remembered this incident, and every now and then he would send us a small gift from France. He did not write letters often, so to us, his return home was always a puzzle we couldn’t quite figure out.
Just before we decided to go home ourselves, we met Alexis’s brother in a supermarket in Jeddah and asked after our old friend. It was only then that we got a clue that was quite shocking. Alexis’s brother, speaking broken English, told us, “Alexis recently split up with his wife. His daughter is living with her mother. Alexis is helping my parents start the winery up again.”
How had things turned out this way? I stared at Alexis’s brother in disbelief, pondering what he had said.
Surely a marriage was not just something one could fly away from like birds in a forest? After Alexis had worked so hard in Saudi Arabia, why couldn’t his wife even bear the strain of a few years of separation? Thinking of how he had told us he was leaving because there were “some problems at home” that he needed to attend to, I wondered whether that meant he had been rushing home to save his marriage from crumbling. The image of him in the post office arguing with the clerk for the sake of a few postage stamps popped into my mind. My heart filled with sympathy for him.
• • •
Now, nine years after we had parted, we were reunited here in Alexis’s hometown of St. Emilion.
After so many years, Alexis’s face bore traces of the hardship he had endured. There were many wrinkles on his face, especially on his once smooth forehead. When he smiled, they surrounded his crinkled eyebrows. When you looked more carefully, though, it became clear that they were not wrinkles, but remnants of his feelings. They were where the blade of sorrow had had its way with him.
What had not changed was his eyebrows and his straight moustache. They remained as thick and black as ever.
He ushered us into the house, asking warmly, “How long do you plan to stay in St. Emilion?”
“One day,” I held up a finger emphatically. “This evening, we will catch a train.”
“My friends, we’ve been apart for nine years and here before you’ve even warmed your chairs, yo
u’re leaving!”
We had planned to take twenty days to see all of France. We had to maintain a breathless pace and, to be honest, if it were not for Alexis, we would not have come to see St. Emilion with its few thousand people. Though this was how we saw it, we didn’t dare say this to our host. Even so, I felt he understood us perfectly. But, having said that, St. Emilion was a charming town with a rich flavour. If it were not for our tight itinerary, I would have happily extended our stay there for several days.
Alexis took us to a small garden. There we saw a stone table and chairs arranged under a trellis covered with grapevines. The thin vines climbed up the metal trellis, and the jagged leaves formed a natural canopy over us. The grapes were exquisite, each hanging delicately among the leafy cover. The green light that filtered through the leaves enveloped us, and bees buzzed as they flew nonstop overhead.
It was two in the afternoon, and the sunlight that bathed us was warm, but not too hot. There was an intoxicating sweetness in the light breeze. In the green light that filled the vineyard, I said, “St. Emilion should change its name.”
Alexis set a bunch of grapes on the stone table. Hearing what I said, he stopped, smiled lightly, and asked, “Why? What’s wrong with the name St. Emilion?”
“There’s nothing wrong. But if you called it Grape City, that might be more accurate.”
“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “In St. Emilion, everyone grows grapes. In the whole town, you can see the green shape of grapevines everywhere. It is June now, and the grapes have just appeared. They will mature in July and August, then in September they will be ripe. If you were here then, you would see the intoxicating sight of ripe grapes everywhere.”
The population of St. Emilion was about five thousand. Interestingly, about seven hundred of them worked in a winery. Every family had its own style of making wine, so the wine that each family produced had its own flavour.