“And?” You become serious.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing serious. Just, I had sex with a man who I only met for half an hour.”

You stare at me. Your face is frozen. There is only four centimetres between my face and yours.

“But I didn’t like that experience, actually…” I am a little worried to carry on this story.

There is no specific impression on your face.

Suddenly I remember a sentence I read from the bible on your shelf recently: Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

“I thought I should let you know, even you don’t ask me,” I continue. “And in Berlin, I was very much attached to a man, whom I met on the train. He was ill at that time…”

Now I’m upset, but at the same time I feel relieved.

You get out from the bed and walk to the kitchen, naked. You add some water into the kettle, without any words. You put some dry mint into the tea pot. Then you stand there and wait for the water to be boiled.

“So if you didn’t like it, why did you do it?”

Finally, you are angry.

“Because…I don’t like distance.”

“So you have to have sex with a stranger?”

There is silence between us.

“Every time I thought you might be with another man,” you say, “I thought we should leave each other.”

“Why?”

“I mean I should let you go.”

“Go where?”

“When I was your age, I was like you. I wanted to experience everything, and wanted to try all kinds of relationships, all kinds of sex. So I know what’s going on inside you. If you stay with me, and I see you going with other men, I will be lost.”

Those words, I don’t want to hear. You are afraid of being lost, but I am the person in the relationship being lost first.

“But you wanted me to travel alone!” I am crying.

“Because you are young…too young to be so serious with me,” you say. “When you were away I often imagined you with other men, but then I stopped thinking about it. Even when you told me you were pregnant, I didn’t think about it.”

You stand there, let the water boiling in the kettle, without move.

I feel your coldness covering this house. I am afraid of you. I am afraid of this kind of manner. It is the coldest manner in the world.

You start drinking your tea. A vegeterian shepherd pie is in the oven, the kind of English food I hate. Such a sad food. A kind of food shows how boring the life is. A kind of food without any passion.

We don’t talk rest of the day.

You are doing something with your sculptures. Pouring hot wax into the mould. The shape is obscure. I am watching a New Year’s TV programme, an animation about a nightingale. Oscar Wilde again, but this time it is visual and vivid. The nightingale is bleeding and dying, and the red rose is abandoned by the young man. “Love is better than life,” the nightingale says.

Love is better than life! Even love brings death. Is this our New Year’s wish?

infinity

infinity n. an endless space, time, or number.

When I was in the primary school, the mathematics teacher taught us to count until we were too tired to count anymore. The teacher said that the last number is “infinity.” It is a number but numberless. One can count and count until the numbers become uncountable.

Infinity, it is an uncountable future.

Here, in our kitchen and bedroom, our battle is an infinity.

“Listen,” I shout. “This is serious. I need to know if I should give up my job in China to stay here with you, or if I should go back to my country.” I look at my passport on the table.

“What is your job there?”

“Did you never know my job?”

“I never understood when you talked about a government work unit.”

“Well, I worked in a welfare office.”

“And what’s that got to do with a government work unit?”

“Everybody in China has a work unit, and I don’t want to lose that if I have to go back. It is a lifelong paid job. It is safe, you know. If I lose that, I have no choice except making shoes with my parents.”

“OK, whatever. You can’t make decisions about a relationship just because you don’t want to lose a job.”

Indecision, that’s the term belongs to you. Is that why you are unhappy with your life?

“Do you want live with me for ever?” I start again. I have to. I’m too worried.

“I cannot say that. Nothing is for ever.”

“You don’t believe in that concept?”

“No. Because I don’t know the future, do I? I don’t know what the future will be like.”

“But don’t you wish you will be with me in the future?”

You are in silence for three seconds. Three seconds is very long for this question. Then you answer: “The future will decide for you, not you for the future. You’re from a Buddhist country, I would have thought you would know that.”

“OK. From now on we don’t talk about future. All I know is: our Chinese live in the expectation. Expectation, is that the word close to Future? The farmers grow their rice in the spring, and they water it and expect it grow every day. The rice sprouts turn into green and the rice pole grow up taller. Then summer comes and the farmers look forward to grain growing bigger. Then the autumn harvest, and the grain becomes golden. Their expectation is nearly fulfilled, but not complete. After the harvest they separate the straw and millet. The straw goes to the shepherd’s pens or the pig’s yard, and the millet goes to the market for sale. All this is so that a family can have better life in the winter and in the coming Spring Festival. In the winter they burn the roots and grass on the fields to nourish the soil for next year’s re-plant. Everything is for the next step. So look this nature, life is about the expectation, but not about now, not about today, or tonight. So you can’t only live in today, that will be the doom day.”

You stop listening. You are busy pouring hot wax into a mould. There are three different moulds, one is like a brain, and another one look like an eyeball, the third one is a big nipple. After wax pouring, you are waiting for it is cooled down, so you can pull the mould away from the wax.

Your pencil drawing is on the kitchen table. A drawing, lots of human organs, lie inside of a bath. Human bone, a leg, ears, lips, eyeballs, arms, intestines…it is almost ugly. Actually, very ugly. But also very strong. Once you said to me you think youself are ugly, though I don’t feel like that. You said you are always fascinated by ugliness, ugly people, ugly buildings, ruins, rubbish.

I raise my eyes, contemplating the plastic bath you made. It sits there, silent, holding something vague, holding something heavy.

expel

expel v. 1. to drive out with force; 2. to dismiss from a school, etc., permanently.

Today, my government work unit calls me. Suddenly, I am dragged back to that society.

The officer in the phone say seriously, in the Communist way: “You have a contract with us. We have to warn you to come back before you do wrong things there. Don’t break our rules. Return back in one month according to the rule in our work unit, otherwise you will be Kai Chu (expelled) from our organisation.”

Kai Chu!

Expelled!

I am so angry that I want to throw my phone away. A year in this country, I had almost forgotten how stupid those Chinese rules are. An individual belongs to the government, but doesn’t belongs to herself. Yes, I want to be expelled. Please expel me. Please. But I also know they just threaten me. They always threaten the little people, in the name of the whole nation. And you don’t have a chance against it. It is like Mao’s little red book, it is written in the imperative tone.