英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(44)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 43




On 25th of February 1998, in Chengdu airport, Bing was seen off by a group of people, including Qiuyan and her parents, his parents, and Ming and her husband. Kai had planned to come but had to call it off a day before due to a university meeting he said too important for him to miss.

He would first fly to Shanghai, then transfer to Melbourne.

It was not all sadness like eleven years back when he was but an innocent, freshly fledged young bird, flying to a place that seemed even farther than Australia. At twenty-eight, he was now a mature, married man, taller than any of the beloved people around him. He was smiling, repeating the comforting words to his crying mother, who was the only one at present in tears, and who had always grumbled her disagreement with his idea of going abroad.

Ming was a policewoman, with strong mind and bones, even her heart might have been hardened by her numerous exercises and battles in the street. And today, in her uniform, she was standing together with her husband, Gao Hui, the proprietor of a computer company, from whom Bing had borrowed most of the money for his Australian endeavour. From her face, Bing couldn’t trace the sort of weakness he remembered when she had had wept heartily at seeing him off on his first journey to Shanghai.

His wife was talking to her mother as if carelessly, hiding her emotions well. They had thought she should go with him, but after considering the cost as well as the uncertainty of his adventurous nature, they decided he would go there first, and she would stay in Happy Mountain with her parents, spend her time studying English, until he had a clear idea of what living in Australia was all about before she would join him.  

So, after throwing the words, ‘Don’t worry, mum, don’t worry, all of you, I will call you as soon as I arrive in Australia,’ he waved and smiled to them and with his hand gestured a number of kisses to them, as if he was a soldier only returning to the regiment after winning many battles.

His mother began to smile, but her smile was accompanied with more tears that she had to frequently brush away.
So with his mother’s tears in his mind, and with Qiuyan’s pretending coolness, he didn’t enjoy his first flight experience as much as he had hoped. He knew he was forever a child in his mother’s regard, and he knew Qiuyan would miss him, wondering every day in his absence whether their marriage would be able to endure the separation until the time of their re-union. The night before he made love to her three times, in her easy tears and fervent limbs, in many of his whispers and promises, as if it was their last intimacy prior to the end of world.

After three hours of flight, he landed in Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, where, at its domestic terminal, he had witnessed the life of his best friend disappearing around the corner. How could he have imagined then that eight years later he would come here again heading to another country? And where was Vivian at this moment?

Sitting in the lounge room awaiting the next boarding, he did have some luxurious moments for reflecting on his past. However, the image of Vivian and his four years’ living experience in the city didn’t seem to be as vivid as they had been in many of his nostalgic moments back at Emei Mountain. It was as if the shortened distance had diluted rather than enhanced its intensity. At any rate, today he was just bypassing this place, leaving China for a country far, far away, where surely, more layers of substance would be imported to overwhelm the aged sediment in the bottle of his life.     

The flight attendants on the plane, in their one-coloured uniform, looked both serious and beautiful. They didn’t smile often, but they did have very nice and fine cheeks, and good teeth and pert noses. Any one of them seemed to be more attractive than his wife, or Vivian, or perhaps any other girls he had so far had a chance to behold. But, weren’t they just servants waiting on customers, delivering the food and cups in the same manner as in a restaurant? Then why did they appear far more superior and important than the passengers they were serving? Why did they have to be more charming than other types of servants in human society? For the moment in his curiosity as a first time plane passenger, he wouldn’t hesitate to assume that the collective beauty gathered in an aircraft served only to provoke the unnecessary desire of male passengers, make them unsatisfied with their own wives, drive them to earn money like an addict, like a swindler, like a corrupt official in order to assuage their desire. The female passengers would also suffer to no lesser extent, for in the presence of them, they might feel inferior, jealous, unhappy, piteous of their own not-as-good features and body line, worrying about their husbands’ potential infidelity. The only safe place for these beautiful servants ought to be the kindergarten, where the hearts of children are still innocent and able to enjoy the pure beauty without inflicting an unhealthy desire, as it certainly did to a vulnerable man like him.

Now, these servants were demonstrating puppet-like safety measures. Their smiles looked genuine, their gestures well-conducted in time with the voice of the speaker, like school students doing the exercises broadcast over the radio between classes.

There were many seats in the plane, much broader and deeper than the one that had carried him from Chengdu to Shanghai. He was sitting in the middle of six-seat row between two aisles. The whole carriage was just like a packed, big classroom. Chained by the seat belt, he didn’t have freedom, but his eyes were able to look about, peering through the little window at the dusky outside.

There was a Chinese girl sitting close to the window. Frequently, she would take off her glasses and touched her eyes with her hand. Then he realized she was actually wiping away her tears, and he was sure she had a very emotional departing at the airport.  

Most of the passengers had a Chinese face, sad, blank and wooden, as if their hearts were still left in the airport. Some non-Chinese-faced people were talking in English, of which, to him, only words rather than sentences were comprehensible. Now and then, they were giving out free chuckles. Their faces were large, rough and ruddy, and carelessly happy. But their noses were just too long and strong, unnecessary and extravagant, how much air and oxygen did they really need? How much stuff would come out if they sneezed and blew?

Now the plane had stabilized after taking off. He closed his eyes, and some of his Shanghai memories became more active and began to tease him. He wondered what Vivian was doing at this moment, whether she was right under the wings of the plane, whether the spirit of Kang was on the campus, in the dormitory, or still jumping in the basketball courts.

And, yes, the watch, Vivian’s gift, must still be ticking in his luggage on the overhead storage. Last night, when he was packing his luggage, without Qiuyan’s notice he took it out from the corner inside his old case. He turned the delicate knob, and after a few rounds, it was ticking again, to his great joy and surprise. Indeed, after so many years, the watch was still functional. What a magic and cruel thing! A half thrill ran through him. He gave the watch a kiss and allowed Vivian’s face to flash a moment in his eyes, like an ember flickering its last life. Then he wound the watch to its maximum limit. The decision whether or not he should bring it with him to Australia was no longer difficult. Gently he stored it, together with his favourite books and photos, into the new case his wife had purchased for him.  

It would keep ticking for at least a couple of days before it was dead again.

Then he felt very tired. He needed some rest and sleep. The sexual conduct with his wife last night must have consumed three quarters of his manhood, and the sexy female flight servants, restlessly shoving back and forth in the aisles, drained the rest.

But his nap was soon interrupted by such a servant, who came over to deliver the supper. She asked him, very friendly though only gazing at his chin, ‘What do you want, the chicken or beef or…?’ and he looked up into her eyes, and answered ‘Beef’.

In the minutes that followed he was absorbed with the first delicate and privileged food provided free, well, not free actually, by the air service. He was enjoying it very much, but not as much as a man sitting two seats away from him, as he noticed. The man, at his fifties, looking thin and healthy, had an impressive eating manner. His food was something like lasagne or soft pasta filled with a lot of sauce or cheese. Using the spoon that he applied horizontally, he scraped the food from the very top, layer by layer like water slowly levelling down, until he reached the very bottom. Each thin layer was completed neat and tidy, leaving no stains whatsoever around the box before he was ready to strip the next. In the end the whole box was so clean that it appeared even cleaner than a woman’s face. Bing observed that he was not really starving, he was just really, really appreciating the airplane-food, and managed to consume it with an ardour like an artist working on a piece of work. And, if his eating manoeuvre was not evident enough to prove such appreciation, then his calling the attendant for a second box was a double indicator. And indeed, he was finishing his second box precisely in the same manner, at the same speed, and with the same mental concentration. Glancing furtively and frequently at him, Bing’s own jaw was slowly dropping. The man must have had much flying experience. A new traveller like Bing couldn’t possibly have known that an extra meal could be asked for.

After finishing his own share, Bing waited for the attendant to come over to collect the rubbish so that he could resume his nap. But for a long time she didn’t come, and when someone finally came, it was not her.

He shut his eyes again, but found it hard to rest. In this craft, there was no rattling sound like in a train lulling one into sleep. The buzzing was constant, like that of a starving, giant mosquito. And all the time he had to strain his neck because of the weight of his head. It was true he was sitting in a nice seat, very comfortable to his lean buttocks, but he could not find a way to alleviate the stress on his neck. The design of the seat was very ridiculous. Sure it had a cushion supposed to support his head, and there was even a piece of soft paper with an advertisement stuck to it for the purpose. But how could he rest his head on it? Hooked and harshly bent over, it did nothing but oppose any such an attempt. Actually it was trying to rest on his head instead of the other way around.

Therefore, for many hours, his efforts to sleep were futile due to the soreness of his neck. Then he had a better idea; he put down the tray and rested his head on his arms on it, like a student stealing slumber in a classroom.

After how long he didn’t know, he awoke to detect the saliva trickling at the corner of his mouth, which was very good, for it meant he had had some quality sleep.  

Straightening up, he found people around him were all sleeping one way or another. The two foreign gentlemen - he meant the passengers without a Chinese face - impressed him the most. Sitting upright, their giant mouths were gaping upwards, in the same fashion as baby birds opening their beaks for drops of food, or as the men he remembered sleeping on the benches in Lu Xun Park. It amazed him that they were able to stick their heads back so comfortably well, against the law of gravity.

For the rest of the journey, he could not do or think much else in the dull protracted hours in the chamber. Like others, he might unfasten the seat belt, go to the middle section, move and stretch his knuckle bones. Once, feeling a vague need to go to the toilet, he waited in the queue and at his turn, slid into the narrow folded door. The space was enough for him, but the flushing sound was so explosive, so frightening that he felt his heart was shocked out of his body. Then, curiously he began to wonder if the waste was sucked directly out and thrown into the sky. But well, it couldn’t be. It was unthinkable to imagine it was directly released to the sky, to be mixed up with the beautiful clouds, to make in part the sweet raindrops as well as the marvellous rainbow. However, from his belief that the train toilet did have the dirty behaviour along the railway, it was still possible the plane had a similar design, otherwise why were the toilets prohibited from use prior to landing?           

Well, so many man-made mysteries, in the air, and on the land!

When the wheels of plane at last touched screeching on the concrete, he could almost hear a collective breath of relief from all passengers, a lucky relief they had indeed survived a trip of 7500 kilometres, high above the sea. And the travellers, with their awakening little spirits, began to fidget and fret about the seats and their precious belongings even before the plane stopped taxing.      

The way to the immigration counter was very long, but the flat escalator, and the shine and polish of the floor, and the colour and smiling posters on the wall, made his steps buoyant, exciting his soul to skip and swell.

So this was Melbourne! So this was Australia, a country, a human society that must be very different from where he had expended the twenty eight years of his life.


-- End of Chapter 43--

End of Part IV