A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (18 page)

nostalgia
 
 
n.
sentimental longing for the past.

nostalgia

“You need nourishment,” you say to me.

So you buy lots of food for me from Tescos. The baby is gone so I shall eat a lot to fill the emptiness. Salad, shrimp, fried chickens…Everything on the back of the package is
“Produced for Tesco Stores Ltd.”
In my hometown, when a woman has abortion, her mother cooks eel ginger soup, or a soup made from dates and lotus seeds. But not here. Here, Tesco packages look after you.

You are cooking some obscure pie for me. It is called q-u-i-c-h-e. I have never seen it before. On the bag it says:

Even Real Men Eat Quiche!

Quiche, q-u-i-c-h-e. I can’t believe it when I am swallowing this piece of shapeless hot stuff. Such an ambiguous piece of food. Totally formless. I wonder about what my parents would say if one day they come to this country, and they eat this. My mother probably will say: “It is like eating something from other people’s mouth.” And my father will say: “It must be left from earlier meal so they re-cook it but inside are already messed up.”

I will agree with my father: it is a piece of big mess indeed. You tell me it is actually from France. I don’t believe you. I think the English are too ashamed to acknowledge it is their food. So they say it is French to defend themself.

But, in the evening, you cook a fish for me. Not cod, not seabass, not any typical English fish. It is a silver carp. It is like my hometown’s fish. It smells of the river nearby our house. I remember I studied a word before, and I remember how to pronounce this word. No-stal-gia. Eating carp causes my
nostalgia
.

age
 
 
n.
1.
the length of time a person or thing has existed;
2.
the time of life;
3.
the latter part of human life;
4.
a period of history;
5.
a long time.

age

Today when you unload some box from your van, you become extremely tired. You become really old. We used to look like five years difference in other people’s eye, but now obvious twenty years gap between us. This makes me feel a little sad about you. You look at me, a small smile. There is a shadow underneath your eyes. Maybe it is me made you old. I not go out earn live. And I always demand love from you. I demand love by showing my vulnerability, again and again. I remember at the beginning of us, you have a perfect hair. But now, there is a bit grey hidden behind your ears. And your wrinkles, they are at the corner of your eyes. Sometimes I wonder if you saw these wrinkles, if you saw your grey hair hidden behind your ears.

You used to believe in totally individual life, no family, no marriage. You used to think that a personality could never be change. But recently you said, “People do change, they always change.” Look at now. You are forced by my vulnerable to show a solid love to me, to show a practical love to me. Since abortion you try hard to keep a family with me, by doing the practical things. You are tired, physically, and maybe spiritually as well.

Is this the love I want from you? Maybe I always want you become old, always want your charm in front of others disappear. So you would be weaker. Then we could be
equal
.

I walk towards to your van, and I help you to move the boxes which are full of bottles of wines. These boxes will be delivered to some shops in two days. The box is heavy. You will not leave in the van, because gangs in Hackney smashed your van and tried to steal whatever they could steal. You can’t trust people here, you said. We carry the box into kitchen, and put on ground, carefully and slowly.

“Why you have to do this kind of job? Why don’t you try hard sell your sculptures?” I ask. “Why you need always more money? You own your house. Is that not enough?” I continue. “If big problem, we can just move to China where your West money make you rich.”

“Listen, why can’t you just shut up for once and let me do my own thing,” you say.

I hate myself being so needy. The way I want of love, is like a hard toothbrush try to brush bad teeth, then it ends up bleeding. The harder I try, more blood comes out. But I believe love can cure everything, and eventually the teeth will not bleeding anymore. I still think love is the hope, of everything.

“Just the two of us, we can make it if we try. Just the two of us, building castles in the sky. Just the two of us, you and I…”

The music is very loud comes out from neighbour’s window.

lighthouse
 
 
n.
a tower with a light to guide ships.

lighthouse

The train takes us to Wales. It is our first holiday together. It feels fresh. We should have done this long ago, we should have done this before we started fighting, before everything fell apart. Now I know why there are so many holidays in the West.

It was your idea to come to this place. You want to leave city, you want your lungs to inhale the air from the mountains and the sea. And I agree. I agree because I think travelling together may help us, may remove the illness in our relationship.

In the windy afternoon, we arrive at west Wales. Coming out from the train, I breathe out the filth from London. The Irish Sea is underneath the mountain. The sky is high, and the trees are dark green. People in Wales walk slower than in London. They move slowly, drive slowly, laugh slowly, they spend time slowly. You said to me, ancient people believed humans would lose their soul if they walked too fast. So people here must have strong soul.

The mountain climbs up from some huge rocks. Piles and piles of black rocks tumble down to the sea. We walk from the valley to the mountain. The mountain is enormous. It is continually connected to another mountain, and another mountain behind. So high, it is close to the heaven. The cliffs are steep, without any plants. Perhaps the wind too strong for plants growing. Such a bleak landscape, there seems no hesitation, no confusion. When we walk on the mountain, we see the grass grows short and hard, rooted into the soil like needles. And the soil underneath my feet is very hard too. Climbing, climbing, I can hear my breath and yours, heavy and strong.

We walk into the bushes, the yin side of the mountain. It is dark and muddy. Roots are everywhere underneath my feet. We walk into the forest. The forest is decaying, wet and lush. The world becomes even quieter. You are loving it. Your body becomes lively, and you look like a man in his twenties. The birds are singing on branches, and leafs brush against each other in the wind. We sit down, inhaling and exhaling. You pick up chestnut case beside you. Green case is old, brown and sad. But when you open it, inside is silky and smooth and gentle. It smells of spring.

I see your love towards that chestnut, and I can feel my love to you.

The dark clouds quickly cover the sky, and the early evening of the winter arrives. There is something unknown hidden in the forest. There is something sucking the human soul. And I feel like soon we will be swallowed by the nature. I find the beauty of the nature can be a terror, but I don’t know if you feel the same way.

We stay in a B&B, a very old stone house. It is a village in Pembrokeshire, a village on the mountain, a village buried in green weeds, a village hidden in the night fogs, a village which have the sky holds the stars and the moon.

I lose sleep during the night. It is raining all the time. Since we arrived here I haven’t slept for one second. I think it is because I can’t get used to the quietness here. The quietness is so strong that it is almost unbearable noisy. It is so quiet everywhere that I hear all kinds of noises. I even can hear moss growing.

While I am lying on the bed with you, in this strange stone house, I know the rain is covering the woods, and the sea is tossing, ceaseless, in a not very far distance. The moon seduces the wave and the tide is moving like crazy. The rain drops on the ceiling above our bed, on the pond outside of the house, on the stinging nettles by the window. The whole world is raining. The whole world is drowning. There is no single place can remain dry, not even an inch.

The next morning, the rain becomes lighter, and the wind is less strong. We come down to the sitting room, having hot coffees with breakfast by the fire. It is safe and warm inside. Outside is
gloomy
. That is the word. But you don’t agree. I say I don’t want to go out anymore. I swear. You laugh at me. You say you love this kind of weather. You say that is what you love about the nature. Nature is powerful, and this power is beautiful.

“Shall we go to the lighthouse?” you ask.

“Lighthouse? Virginia Woolf’s lighthouse?” I remember the book you gave to me.

“No, this one is more beautiful.”

“Where is it?”

“Come with me.” You stand up.

We borrow an umbrella from the old lady who owns B&B, leaving the fireplace and head to the nature again. My boots are still wet from yesterday’s mud. It is a pair of city boots, losing shape here. They don’t belong to this place. I should buy a pair of rubber boots, and a raincoat.

It is a long walk, through the woods and farms. After about one and half hours, we see the lighthouse. It is standing at the bottom of the hill. It faces to the sea. There is nothing else around it, not even a sheep. It feels like is built at the end of the world. We walk towards it. The lighthouse becomes closer and bigger. It is tall, thin, erect, like a young man’s penis. It is total solitude.

We sit down by the lighthouse. The seagulls are diving in the water. The waves are deep green. I imagine during the night, in the darkness, the light turns around, wiping off the mountain, the grassland, the path, the beach, the sea. I imagine the light searching, but maybe searching for nothing.

“Is any boat going to the other side of the sea?” I ask.

“Yes, but not today. Not everyday,” you say.

“Shall we ask around when there will be a boat here? So we can take the boat to see the other side.”

“You go if you want. I’d like to stay here,” you answer.

“But there is nothing here,” I say.

The current is quiet. The lighthouse is keeping something secret, a secret which I don’t understand.

The city weakens your energy. But you become alive again in this place. Finding a snake or an earthworm under the grass is more surprising than making art; seeing a dolphin dancing in the sea is more interesting than making art; watching a beam of red flowers turned into a string of beans is more satisfying than making art; listening a bumble bee sucking a bud is more pleasant than making art. I think you are born for nature. Why not stay here? Why force yourself to return London? You should stay, without considering me.

I open my notebook again, looking at my everyday’s study, my everyday’s effort. I see myself trying hard to put more words and sentences into blank pages. I try to learn more vocabularies to be able to communicate. I try to put the whole dictionary in my brain. But in this remote countryside, in this nobody’s wonderland, what’s the point of this? It doesn’t matter if one speaks Chinese or English here; it doesn’t matter if one is mute or deaf. Language is not important anymore. Only the simple physical existence matters in the nature.