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Chapter 56 1/2
The interview he did over the phone with a software company in Sydney, was a success. And only one week later he packed his things up and made his move.
Pan had a Beijing country-fellow in Sydney, and she had advised him to stay in his house until he could find his own place. His name was Jim Wu, a taxi driver, married with a baby boy of just five months. His wife, Alice Li, who worked as a company account assistant and was presently on her maternity leave, was also from Beijing.
Needless to say, every piece of Bing’s initial knowledge essential for a starter’s living, was obtained from the friendly and communicative couple. But their baby was a real noise. Every night he would wake up wailing at least four times, and each time, the parents, mostly Jim, would get up to feed him, or walk him, or change him, or whisper to him, doing everything they could to settle the little devil.
Because of his lack of sleep and his laborious hours on the run, Jim’s face was invariably haggard. But the spirit of a father was never low. For he had a son, which, to a Chinese man, to a lonely couple in a foreign land, was paramount.
As a person reaching everyday into Sydney’s nooks and crannies, Jim knew a lot of things about the city. Not only the roads, but also the scenes on the roadside, the faces of the passengers, and the news or gossip that constantly circulated in the veins of an urban society, that even the prime minister or the mayor wouldn’t know of. All this benefited Bing greatly, even if he had only slept, or merely dozed in their spare room for three days, before he rented a two-bedroom unit in a flat near the Northmead railway station.
Two weeks later, Bing, in Jim’s taxi, went to the airport to pick up Qiuyan.
It was Sunday. Her arrival had to be on the weekend; otherwise, Bing wouldn’t have had the time to fetch her. He was new to the company; he needed to behave, trying his best to present himself as a loyal, industrious, obedient employee before his manager, a software genius of Indian origin.
She came out of the exit channel. A little bewildered, her eyes was browsing about, not unlike a lamb entering an open space uncertainly. But he had caught sight of her as soon as her small face emerged around the corner. He waved to her, then her eyes glinted with a light of one who has just spotted water in a desert.
‘Bing,’ she called, her face blooming.
So, at Sydney’s international airport, and on the ground polished mirror-like by the Australian people, and among many Chinese-looking faces, they touched each other. He pushed the trolley, and she pushed his waist. She was excited; he was excited too, and humorous. ‘Oh, first time in a plane, and first time out of China,’ he said, ‘don’t suppress your happy tears, let it go free, hehe...’
‘Why should I cry?’ she said, her hand reaching up to pat the back of his head, ‘did you ever cry on your first time?’
‘I certainly did,’ he was serious, ‘but my tears were not happy ones, because I had nobody to pick me up, and it was raining, as I remember, not like today, look, please look at the blue sky, and the clouds, and everything you won’t easily see in Sichuan, in your Happy Mountain.’
She raised her head, let the sunshine touch her watery face. For a moment too long, she seemed to enjoy it.
Then with his fingers he brushed her cheeks, ‘No, no, don’t show off your face to it for so long. Otherwise your skin will be steaming, and burning.’
She lowered her head at once, ‘I heard Australians have to use sun cream everyday to prevent skin cancer.’ She looked at him questioning, ‘have you brought cream for me?’
He laughed, and spoke importantly, ‘Not just people, all the trees and birds and flowers here, even the cars, have to be protected by the sun cream, that is why they all look so shiny.’
It took a while for her to detect his false statement. She pursed her lips, which to Bing, was more like asking for a kiss, which he was about to do, but then interrupted by Jim, whose hand was over there flagging.
The car was parked at the other side of the building. Jim admiringly but not quite overtly looked at Qiuyan several times. So that Bing was very proud, so that although he didn’t sit together with her on the back seat, he turned his head several times to check, to confirm her beauty. Her eyes, under her husband’s gaze, grew unnecessarily shy, less defiant and more acquiescent, which further enhanced her charm as well as his own pride.
Weeks had passed by. The reunited couple, like two swallows dwelling in a new nest, were breeding love, indulging in the warmth and plenty of soft whispers. Every day, he looked forward to coming home, where she was waiting, with hot dinner and cool body, for him. Compared to his experience in Melbourne, the life was principally different, she was his wife; enjoying her was absolutely legal; the shame, or guilt would never sneak out to dim his moments.
Then, at the dinner of one day, she said, ‘I think I am pregnant.’
He halted his tongue, but soon resumed its rotation, ‘What news! Things do come one after another.’
In that moment, her face was tenderer, even fatter, her eyes talking as if in a dream, in which a baby had already reached up to suck her breast.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it has always been regular.’
‘But maybe the Australia, or your long trip has disturbed it a bit?’
‘No,’ her expression was changed, ‘what, what do you mean? Aren’t you happy?’
‘Of course, I am,’ he said, innocently, surprised by her tone that was chafing, ‘I mean we need to see a doctor.’
For the moment, he felt the woman across the table was not the same as a minute before. He smiled at her, but his mind was toying with a whim. Has she already switched to the instinctive nature of mother, touchy and jumpy, defending her baby even before it exists?
But then, to agree with her motherly instinct, the test result was positive. At once the news was wired back to China, across the Pacific Ocean. The voices of their parents were satiated with happiness; even those dolphins who happened to swim about the submarine cable might have sensed its cheerful pulse. Advice and knowledge, accumulated from many a generation in Chinese context, as how to rear an all-round and sound baby, began to busy the line and crowded her mind.
‘Where to buy the Chinese herbals?’ she asked.
‘Let’s go to Chinatown this weekend, there must be something there. And you haven’t visited there yet.’
So on the Saturday they got up early, though not as early as they had planned the night before, for they both found it rather difficult to forsake the comfort of the bed. Then they had to hurry each other; she had to spend too long in front of the mirror, while he, after closing the door, had to open it again, as he felt or imagined a need to go to the toilet.
When they reached the Opera House, a place he had advised going to before doing their business in Chinatown, the sun was very high. The cloudless sky was all but one colour - blue, but not as blue as the water of the sea, or pale, but not as pale as the wings of the gliding seagulls.
It was not the first time he had visited the Opera House, but to a new resident like him, the place was, in each of his city-bound trips, too prominent to miss. Every time it seemed to give him a fresh impression. Today, its surface was reminding him of something. He squeezed his memory to ooze an answer.
‘The wall is very like that of a building in Deakin University,’ he said to her.
‘You mean your university in Melbourne?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the white-plate building on the campus.’
‘Is it as good as the Opera House?’
‘Of course not, the Opera House is the pride, the crown, the icon of Australia.’
She mocked, ‘You talk like it is the pride, the crown, the icon of yourself.’
He chuckled, ‘Not yet, I am just a resident, a permanent tourist in the country.’ Then he challenged her, ‘How about you? Every time you talk about your Happy Mountain, the giant Buddha, isn’t it as if your crown and icon?’
‘Of course, that is the greatest Buddha in the world.’
‘Hehe,’ he grinned, grabbing her long fingers, ‘but, that surface…’ he trailed off the rest ‘is stained, blackened, and dirty.’
But she was determined to defend her iconic building, ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I mean, well,’ he stammered, estimating her spicy eyes and her bony nose, ‘I mean it is not as clean and shiny as your face.’ So she let him go, but then he went on further, ‘And even the Opera House is not as pretty as…’ Her interest was piqued again, her eyes checking him intensely, to spur his words on; but on that particular moment, he had a sudden idea flaring up, ‘as your buttocks.’
She was shocked, ‘Oh my…Mr. Wang…’ She had to ease a bit her amused indignation, before she could proceed, ‘how could you… oh, you such a bad-egg!’
And predicting she was going to hit him, he rushed away, and she was after him, and she caught his arms so that they walked hand in hand again.
‘Now, I seriously suspect something,’ she said, without looking at him.
‘Something?’
However, her upcoming answer was stemmed by a Chinese lady in Chinese, ‘Comrade, can you take a photo for us?’
Of course, I can, he thought but didn’t speak out. He simply took over the camera from her, and began to do a favour for his country-fellow. It was a group of Chinese tourists, from the way they were dressed, and from their cool to cold, authoritative expressions, with which he had not been unfamiliar, they looked like some mid-rank officials, whose flight tickets, and many other things, must have been paid for by public funds.
Yet, as soon as they had readied their posture for the imminent shoots, they all began to smile, some more natural than others, some teeth awfully black under the sun. A young man, not handsome at all, was hitching up his fingers for a ‘V’ behind a very beautiful head. Bing was adjusting the focus, his mind reckoning the young man must have been desiring that beautiful head, but not yet successfully.
Finally, he pressed the button. Then a number of mouths in the group noised together asking him to take another shoot, ‘in case the first…’ they said. So he pressed again, even if he was absolutely certain the first one was good enough for their once-in-a-lifetime touring experience. Why did they want a second one, to be safe? Because two was better than one? Oh, what logic! A greedy logic…You either live, or not live, as soon as you can live twice, you will have more trouble. Because now that your greed is fired up, you want the third, the fourth, and better and better, and at the same time, your dissatisfaction and unhappiness will also be escalating tirelessly…But, if the first one is a failure, we will have at least the second to back it up, is it not? Say, you have two women, if…But, if the first one is a failure, how do you know the second will not be?…But, two would make the possibility of failing far less than one? … Well, if you want so much safety and security, why don’t you do it three or four or ten times? …But, that won’t be necessary, and maybe unviable. Under the circumstances, twice is the best and most economical number. Say if we ask you to press the camera more than three times for us, you will be less willing to do that, and even if you are not, we may lose our own patience, so…
‘What are you thinking?’ his wife, one of his women, interrupted him. ‘Now I am suspecting…’
‘What?’ he recovered from his little micro debate. ‘You suspect?’
‘I suspect you are thinking of some other person.’
‘How did you get such an idea?’
‘Your tongue is sometimes very oily, I wonder how many girls you might have talked into something, for example, your classmates in the university?’
‘Well,’ the figure of Pan came to his mind, as well as others whose faces were for the moment blurred. ‘Of course, I have talked to quite a number of people.’
‘Tell me, hehe..’ her smile was vicious.
‘I will introduce them to you when we find time to visit Melbourne,’ he said, ‘but you are not serious, are you? See I am the best husband in the world.’ He tossed her a convincing kiss.
She relented, ‘Is Melbourne good?’
‘Of course, good, that is my hometown in Australia.’
‘I mean the city.’
‘Well, everything is good, except for the likes of the Opera House.’
‘No iconic building?’
‘Don’t know which, but there is a station, a bridge, and twelve apostles,’ he said, then decided not to pursue it further, ‘But, really, I am almost as fresh as you to Sydney, not in a position to make comparisons.’
‘What is that arch thing over there?’ She was pointing to an arched entrance with a huge gaping mouth at the other side of the bridge.
‘Don’t know,’ he said, ‘maybe a park, or something.’
The water sparkled, heaving enormously as vessels boomed past. The air was clear, the clarity was second to none. The buildings on the distant banks glinted and shone in front of his eyes. The dark Harbour Bridge that spanned the waves was exuding a masculine quality, in contrast to the whitish, feminine Opera House. The pair must have lived together for many years, and surely they would go on, as long as the people and the land could last.
The wife and husband leant on the rail; his arm embraced her body. Against the bank, the waves were bobbing, to occupy their ears and minds. The breeze stirred strands of her hair, as well as her eyelids. And the seagulls, with all the freedom in the world, burst into the flesh of air, pricked the skin of water; they walked, they cried, they hissed, they also attacked people’s food. But still, they were not as good as the swallows in his memory.
She said, ‘I am hungry.’ He replied, ‘I am hungry too.’ She said again, ‘I just realized I haven’t put on sun cream,’ and complained, ‘why didn’t you remind me?’
He turned, and with two hands held her face, ‘Why, because it is more beautiful so.’ He kissed her heated cheeks, one after another, seriously.
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