The small apartment is almost completely devoid of furnishing—only a couple of rugs and cushions to sit on in the living room. Although tidy, the place seems half-inhabited, as if it were a stop along the way.
Gia has hung paintings and photos on the bare walls, edgy and urbane pieces if a little effeminate. The rooms are painted pastel pinks like a doll’s house.
“I’m lucky to live here. My parents were smart. Property values have really increased in the past few years,” Gia says as she leads us to the front. She paints on a glassed-in balcony overlooking the grand boulevard, which we can spot through the trees.
“I hesitate to show you my paintings because I don’t consider myself a painter,” she confesses to me. “I have no training. I don’t paint for others; I paint for myself. It relaxes me.”
As she begins focusing on her canvas I ask, “Can you imagine yourself getting married, buying a house and a car, having kids?”
“I want to imagine myself like that,” she says, “but I feel it’s not my destiny. Whenever good things happen to me, bad things always happen as well.”
Drawing her brush across the canvas, she grows more oblivious to the world. Only after she steps back to look at what she is doing does she turn to me to say, “I really don’t know where I’m going. But I don’t care.”
Pollution has hit hard this night in north Beijing. I’m riding a bicycle down an empty road, the streetlights forming halos through thick smog. Overtowering the lights and thus lit from beneath, the mass-planted poplars that line the way and veil the bleak plain so coarse and vulgar during the day are shadowy titans whose dappled foliage merges together overhead like some mysterious firmament cloaked in smoke.
I’m returning from a boozy banquet. Red eyes and irritated throat don’t bother me at all now. The effect of bad air is pleasing, beautiful even, like a Hollywood night scene. True darkness does not make for a good show on the silver screen and is not welcome. Spotlights and smoke are used for effect to define and illuminate the darkness, just like the street tonight. In this movie, the capital’s outskirts seem like a mountaintop immersed in clouds. The illusion weakens with the realization that the air’s still save for my own movement and that the haze brings little moisture.
Tonight I’m staying near the airport with my old friend Deryk and his wife. They are now teachers at a fancy English school in the capital. They’ve started a family and have relocated to the northern edge of Beijing. Hoping to offer their two young daughters another experience, in a detached home with a yard planted with shrubs and flowers, hoping to get away from the pollution so prevalent in central Beijing—a strategy that seems to have failed if the thick dirty air of this evening is any indication.
My head is buzzing from the discussions of the banquet—an impromptu reunion of thoughtful, soulful people, both local and foreign—as I ride in the shadows, as I once more fall asleep in a strange bed in a strange land. As I board the big plane and take position at the portal, as I slowly return to my home and family, all the banquets blend into one. They’re one long conversation, filled with wisdom and surprises.
We know the future cannot be predicted like a story. But it’s never silent either. Even now its messengers have already arrived in our midst.
We ask, who are they and where do they hide? What message do they bring about who we are to become? We all see vastly different meanings.
Memories are built with desires and intentions. It’s not what we think we saw and heard that really matters. The future is not hiding there. It hides in our memories like an unnoticed backdrop, a hidden detail or face blurred in the shadows, only to be released with time, deep reflection or art.
We live for stories, the ones that leave us uneasy and excited, the ones that are fresh and new. As we bring them forward and draw them up for friends, we know our words will not quite make them real, but real enough perhaps to share the feeling of what lies behind, should it ever be ready to step forward.
I suspect I’ll always be a little lost in China. That the endless banquet and smoky firmament are a reminder that a part of me never made it out, of knowledge not yet acquired.
We are still ghosts upon the river, and Viv is telling me that we have not much longer to go. But the journey is never complete. China will surely haunt me forever. China comes for us all, wherever we are. Its cup spilleth over. Its stories and people come to mix with us and share its many conundrums. Its spinning absorbs us in its rhythm.
The need to remember and the need to forget grow clearer for us all now. The need to preserve and the need to destroy. The need for knowledge and the need for secrets. Our overwhelming power and our great fragility. The more they all dance together, seeking balance, the more they glitter in the shadows and beckon us on.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Vivien, without whom none of this would have been possible. Deryk Fournier, bridge builder. Alex and Jane Cockain, generous friends. Jacques Hébert, fellow traveller. Ling Xia, who started me on this road back in 2005. Maurice Strong, for early guidance. Alphonso Lingis, Philippe Rheault and Ron Graham, patient readers. Stephen Valentine, the man in my corner. Scott McIntyre, first supporter. Jim Gifford, faithful editor. Michael Levine, navigator and friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEXANDRE TRUDEAU is a traveller, filmmaker and journalist. Over the past decade and a half, his films and reports on issues of geopolitical importance have been seen and read by millions of Canadians. Trudeau was a trusted witness in Baghdad as the bombs brought shock and awe. He charted out the intimate realities on both sides of the Israeli security barrier, explored the pluralism of Canadian identity, stood up for the rights of arbitrarily imprisoned terror suspects in Canada, tracked youth-driven democratic awakenings in the Balkans, shed light on the origins of unrest in Darfur, Liberia and Haiti and deconstructed the Canadian peacekeeping legacy fifty years after Lester Pearson’s Nobel Prize. Born into one of the country’s most prominent political families, Alexandre has been familiar to Canadians since birth by his nickname, Sacha. He lives in Montreal with his wife and three young children.
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CREDITS
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: KEVIN LEE
COPYRIGHT
Barbarian Lost
Copyright © 2016 by Same Adventure Productions Inc.
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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EPub Edition: August 2016 ISBN: 9781443441421
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