英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise (52)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 52       1/3




His life, now with busking, seemed to fetch a different hue, peculiarly exciting. Once a week he would appear either in Swanston or Burke Street, making nervous fun of himself, and of the city. Mr. Zhang was right; there was so much to see, to speculate upon. The passers-by, thin or fat, pretty or ugly, black or white, slow or hasty, respectful or scornful, were watched in an unconventional perspective. He was now a cool observer, surveying the fluent human flood; he was now an alienated creature or a species in a zoo which would return its enigmatic yet intelligent glance to the spectators. His favourite spot was near the entrance of Chinatown, a place very often taken by other buskers. Chinatown’s Little Bourke Street was too small and was not on the busking list of council permission.

Mrs. Lin and his other co-workers in the restaurant, though having shown their initial gaping surprise and disbelief, began to understand his busking adventure, especially after listening to one or two pieces of his music. His reputation as a proficient guitar player thus spread to the restaurant, and then steadily, to the Chinatown Chinese community. His opportunity of performing in various payable celebrations was dramatically increased. The extra income was desirable, but more thrilling was the joy he was able to  receive from the audience that he had missed for many years.  

And with more money in his pocket, he could afford a portable amplifier plus a microphone to be included in his performance set, so that, in accordance to the level of street noise and the genre of music, he could adjust the speaker volume to the best effect. He had also learnt and practised a number of new songs he believed more suitable for the street, including some English ones such as Careless Whispers, Sailing, Scarborough Fair, Hotel of California, which had once been very popular in China. But his favourite list was still the same as he had played in Shanghai, and his passion was roaring even better now with a nostalgic hindsight of his young, stumbling adulthood, spent in a country thousands of miles away.

One Sunday afternoon, he was, after a few drinks, singing Yi-Wu-Suo-You (I Have Nothing): ‘Endlessly I have been asking, when will you go with me my darling; but you are always laughing, for I have nothing…I wish to give up my pursuit, as well as my freedom for you; but you are always laughing, for I have nothing…the land moves under my feet, the water flows beside me; but you are always laughing, for I have nothing…’

The coins and notes seemed to be flashing down at his feet, either from a single passer-by or from the members of a group. People came and went, spending their short or long moment, or no time at all, to heed his outburst. Then he noticed a Chinese girl, some metres away, leaning against an electricity pole. She wasn’t looking in his direction, but he sensed that she was enjoying what she was hearing.

At the end of the song, while he was drinking water, she came over to lay a note of ten dollars, the biggest donation he could have expected, especially from a Chinese. Her white skirt was striped horizontally with blue; when she walked, it was wavering beautifully, sunnily, like the quiet waves in the sea, reminding him, in a brief fancy, of his first impression of Vivian.

He intended to say ‘Thank you’ to her, but his mouth only produced a smile in order to respond  to her smile that had taken precedence.

‘You played it very well,’ she said, her tall figure towering over him. ‘That was my favourite in my university.’

‘Oh, really?’ he raised his eyes, gazing at her, studying her face with an unusual eagerness as if he had been long awaiting someone to say such words to him. ‘It was also my favourite.’

‘Was it? Well, very good,’ she said, obviously intending to conclude the encounter. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye…’ he replied, discontentedly, honestly wishing her to stay a little longer. And strange, now that she had turned away, he seemed to have already forgotten how her face looked like. But he still had enough chance to inspect her back. She was wearing a pair of flat-heeled sandals; her feet and calves were as pale as her skirt, which was so tight that her steps had to be trivialized in the similar treading manner of a Japanese lady. The leather bag she was carrying looked exceptionally large, with a long strap bumping against her hip. Her ponytail was thick, wide enough to cover her neck, long enough to reach her shoulder.

She couldn’t possibly be a student, he guessed. And fascinated in sighting a Chinese girl who had walked no less leisurely and perfectly than those dainty western girls on the street, his mind was still with her long after she had disappeared from his view. It was only a pity that he could recollect very little about her face; none of her features seemed to be distinctive enough to impress him. But it shouldn’t be ugly, otherwise, he would have remembered it; nor should she be pretty, otherwise he would have remembered it also.

For the rest of the afternoon, the subtle feeling of loss and wistfulness caused by her was well blended in his voice. The songs he sang, including the Ba Gen Liu Zhu (Keep Your Roots) , Qian Wan Ci Wen (Asking Ten Millions Times), and Huang Tu Gao Po (Yellow Soil High Slope), had attracted attention, and the money he had harvested was nearly sixty dollars. And to think the biggest donor was her, a Chinese girl who had lazily trod on the Melbourne Street in a pair of flat sandals!

So he began to miss her; he wished she would visit him again. Well, not for the sake of her donation. Actually, if she just stood there listening to him, telling him that she liked the song, and that it was her favourite, or the second or the third or any position in her music memory, he would rather donate ten dollars to her. Not that he longed so much for listeners’ compliments, but most of them had been ‘good’, a comment that was only general, mediocre, and courteous. Rarely had one indicated that a song was his or her favourite and listened to it with a heart, from beginning to end.

With the hope of meeting her again, vague and really unfounded, he considered an extra busking section on Sunday afternoon, but saw no sign of her; he tried again on the second and third weekend, still no trace of her. At last he surrendered his hope and had to laugh at himself, ruefully and stupidly, long enough to settle his ridiculous mind.

Yet a couple of weeks later, she emerged from the street; this time in pale jeans, and also in sunglasses that obscured her eyes. Nonetheless he recognized her immediately, less by her face, more by her height, by her long-strapped leather bag, by her lazy or in other words relaxed deportment, that had many weeks before charmed him. And her face, with the broad forehead and a few light yet perceptible freckles around her chin, appeared only too sure of what he had already captured in his hidden cells of brain, even though for the queer working mechanism of memory, he had previously failed to recall it.

At the end of the song, Xin Zhong De Tai Yang (The Sun in My Heart), she came forward, and smiled at him, with a ten-dollar note in her hand.

‘Ni Hao,’ she said, her expression seeming to expect for his recognition of her.  

‘Ni Hao,’ he returned, delightedly.

Of course, she couldn’t have known that he had been consciously hoping for her re-appearance . At about thirty, which was a couple years older than himself, she looked mature, shrewd and self-assured, radiating the kind of wisdom that could only have derived from some years of living experience or endurance. Like a soul who has gone through a period of solitude and self-meditation, she must have been given a good chance of exposing her true self and probing a quest for the purpose of life.  

‘Can you play Qian Wan Ci Wen again?’ she asked, taking off her sunglasses, presenting to him a pair of eyes, delicate and keen and steady, not particularly big, but definitely well looked after by her make-up effort.  

‘Again?’ he raised his brows, ‘I haven’t yet played it today.’

‘Not today, I heard you play it last week,’ she explained, clearing his confusion, ‘well, I didn’t give you money, I was standing on the other side of the street.’

Realizing she had mistaken his momentary wonder for a matter of monetary donation, he chided humorously: ‘Really? How could you listen to my music without proper donation?’

‘Haha, it is not an obligation, is it?’ Her chuckle was free, her amusement apparent. ‘But if you play the Ten Million Times well enough, I will give you proper compensation.’

‘Fine, I will try my best, Madam,’ he grabbed his bottle of water and drank a mouthful. He wished he had not already finished all his three bottles of VB for the day, but he believed the influence of the remaining alcohol in his body should sustain the upcoming loud voice.  

She stepped back to the electricity pole where she had stood last time; and after rustling a while in readying himself, he began the song, the main theme of the movie ‘A Native of Beijing in New York’.

‘I have travelled ten-million miles to look for you, but you don’t care as I have believed. Alas, you are not the one in my dream, for in my dream you uniquely belong to me. Time and time again, I ask myself…’

A few minutes later, after his voice and gestures had ceased, he again gave her his full attention, who had kept her posture unchanged during his performance. The sentimental power of an old song upon a wandering soul, who had travelled so far into a new territory that the past seemed to have been cut off from the present, must have touched her as much as himself.

Fetching his water, he drank to moisten his mouth. Then, she came over, with her sunglasses on. ‘Looks like I have no choice but keep my promise.’ She took out a purse from her bag, stirring the inside content, and as if contemplating a good deed with reluctance, remarked, ‘Wooho, I have only a fifty.’

Cheered by the lightness of her manner, he replied, ‘Fifty is enough for me. I am not a greedy busker.’

Laughing, she handed over the note. ‘Okay then, to an un-greedy busker.’

Taking it over, he looked into the darkness of her sunglasses. ‘How much change should I give to you?’

She was a little surprised, but she replied, ‘Fifty? Or one hundred?’

Feigning a stern expression like one who is making a difficult decision, he said, ‘I don’t think I have received one hundred yet,’ then brushing the coins across the cloth, ‘how about I give all these gold and silver coins to you?’

He began to collect the coins without waiting for her reply.

‘Are you serious?’ she said, ‘all the coins? That is a fortune.’

‘Of course, it is a fortune, look how heavy they are, and how painstakingly people had prodded the Earth’s heart for them.’

‘Ehm, it is not entirely nonsense,’ she said, ‘I accept your generosity.’

Without further comments, she stood there, waiting, watching his way of packing up things.

‘All right, I’m finished for today,’ he stood up, now half a head taller than her. ‘I will carry the coins for you, or do I have the honour of buying you a coffee with your own money?’

‘Oh, Xiao Qi Gui (stingy person),’ she commented, joyously, ‘what a miser, haha.’   

‘I don’t deny it, all buskers are stingy,’ he said. ‘Can you wait for me here? I need to leave my package away in a restaurant.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you need a hand?’

‘No, I already have two,’ he said, and carrying the bagged guitar and amplifier on both his shoulders, he meant to run. ‘In five minutes I will be back. Don’t you dare to disappear, otherwise I will call the police.’

She laughed. ‘Then please make sure you have enough coins to make the call.’

It was actually less than five minutes she had to wait for him.

Along Swanston Street they strolled aimlessly for a little while, before he asked, ‘Where to go? The last thing the city lacks is a coffee shop, but I am not a frequent drinker, do you have any favourite place?’

‘You don’t drink coffee?’

‘Only a little, occasionally.’

‘Then why buy me a coffee? I wish for a big lobster.’

‘Madam, don’t be as greedy as me,’ he wiped his forehead. ‘It is said, coffee is romance, and tea is substance, and, lobster is …’ He was thinking.

She intervened, impatient, ‘Go on, what is lobster?’

‘I don’t know, it has not been said yet, maybe…’ a sudden idea came to him, ‘maybe, well, better not say.’

‘What?’

‘Something inappropriate.’

‘Please,’ she pleaded.

‘All right, but promise you won’t feel offended,’ he gazed seriously at her sunglass-veiled eyes.

‘Okay, I promise.’

‘Well, I mean sex.’

‘What?’ she was only surprised. ‘You mean lobster is sex? How, you are so mean...’

‘Look, it is just a whim. You don’t have to believe it.’

But she was muttering herself, inarticulately, and he was able to guess her words, ‘Coffee is romance, tea is substance, and lobster is sex.’ Then, grinning, she asked him, ‘Are you from Beijing?’

‘Of course not, can’t you tell from my accent? Or do I look like a Beijing Old Grandpa?’

‘I know you are not, but you rotate your tongue in the oily way of a typical Beijing fellow,’ she turned to study him, in slyness, mingled with a mystery behind her sunglasses.

‘Am I oily? Then maybe my ancestors were from Beijing,’ he said, then he decided to lodge a complaint, ‘would you mind taking off your sunglasses? You look very cool, but I feel very cold. ’

Chuckling, she took them off, folded them and placed them into her bag. ‘Where do we go?’

Conscious that they had been occupied with conversation and forgotten about their destination, he paused, and at that particular moment, an idea came to him, ‘I have a new plan…’

She regarded him steadfastly, waiting for his words.

‘I live in Box Hill, and there is a restaurant over there, Chongqing restaurant.’

‘Oh, Box Hill, a long way from here,’ she was thinking, ‘but is it good? Spicy?’

‘Yes, but there are plenty of other dishes.’

‘I am quite okay with spicy food.’

‘Excellent, then can we go?’

‘I live in Toorak,’ she said, ‘better go in my car.’

‘You have a car?’ This was unexpected. ‘You are a rich person, I don’t even have a bicycle.’

‘Don’t worry, with your busking income, in due time, you can afford a private jet,’ she said, turning back in Chinatown’s direction. ‘My car is parked in Collins Street.’

Ten minutes later, the couple chatted easily in her red hatch-back Toyota heading to Box Hill. Along the street, the lights of shops and cars glittered against the dusky background into which the sky had gradually retired. The tram was rattling; pedestrians on the sidewalks were probing their heads here and there, looking for a method to escape into an evening’s leisure.  

Her name was Li Pan, from Beijing. She had arrived in Melbourne as a skilled migrant four years before. Her given name, Pan, in Chinese, meant ‘looking forward to.’ She was married, but without children; her husband was still in Beijing and worked in the wealthy China Telecom as a manager in a research unit.



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洋八路

Chapter 52    2/3



Back in China Pan was an accountant. After taking an accounting course at Melbourne University, and with her competent English, she found her first job in the Accounts Payable department in a large retailer. Then she studied for  CPA (Certified Practising Accountants), passed the test, and moved up the professional ladder to her current role as an accountant in the same company.

‘English is the number one issue,’ she said, beginning her story soon after they were ushered in and seated by the sweet waitress in Chongqing Restaurant. ‘The main criterion, I think, when the local companies employ new immigrants, is still competency in English. They don’t worry much about the technical side of qualification, such as the math, analysis and calculation, we Chinese never had a problem with that.’

‘How are you so accomplished in English?’ he asked, picking a fat piece of steamed fish from the red-hot soup.

‘Well, you were an English teacher,’ she paused to drink the beer, ‘you know the best.’

‘Hehe, I am more having the classroom or textbook type of language,’ he said, modestly, ‘not as practical as one who has led a real life in an English-speaking country.’

‘The first two years were the most challenging,’ she went on, ‘I had to bury myself in a complete English environment, actively talking and listening in any situation, making use of any available resources, books, magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and movies, even the outdoor advertising, when I found its words worthy of my attention to enhance my vocabulary.’

Bing raised the glass to meet hers. ‘Cheers, for your success. You are quite established here, with a career, a car, and probably a house too?’

‘House? Not yet, it depends on my husband,’ she said lightly, but in a somewhat subdued spirit. ‘We have discussed it many times, but he could not make an ultimate decision to come here.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he said he didn’t know what he was going to do over here, which is true, really. If he comes here, he has to start over again. English, a new occupation mostly like your IT, all that he has to study nearly from scratch, and, then, after graduation, worry about a job.’ She drained the remaining beer in her glass, and didn’t stop his filling it up again as he did so. ‘I know quite a few IT graduates who are unable to find a job after a long time in the market.’

‘That will be my worry, soon,’ he drank his own share of liquid, ‘but first I need to get the PR.’

‘PR is not an issue,’ she said, drinking again, ‘the first job is always most difficult. Work experience is kind of damned deadlock, you can’t enter the door to your career without proper experience, and you can’t get the experience without first entering the door.’

‘Yes,’ he said, recalling his setbacks of even finding a job of dishwasher or kitchen hand, of which relevant experience had been so much demanded by the fussy employers. He was inclined to tell that part of the story, then seeing Pan drinking again without touching her chopsticks, he reminded her, ‘don’t just drink, eat some food.’

‘Oh, my…’ she exclaimed, ‘I forgot I have to drive back home. How much have I drunk?’

Looking at the five empty and a half full VB bottles on the table, he said, ‘Probably three? But it is still early…’

‘Just three? I thought at least four.’

‘No, I think we have been sharing six of them equally,’ he said, ‘but I want two more, do you mind?’

‘No, since you don’t have to drive,’ she said, her eyes beaming, ‘drink as much as you like. I have to drive, otherwise I’d like to have more.’

‘Do you drink often?’

‘Yeah, every Friday afternoon, when our company is gathering, free drink, so…’

‘Oh, good on you, how nice is the free drink…’ he gave himself a gulp, then called the servant for three bottles of VB, one more than his previous whim. ‘You know, I have to drink some, I meant, before I am ready to sing in the street.’

‘Haha, no wonder you looked a bit…’ she threw him an arch glance.

‘A bit what?’

‘Well, how to say, a bit real, or just crazy, you know, “I Have Nothing”, as if you have nothing, not even pants, and, howling like a wolf, haha.’

‘Haha, it is true, indeed, I have nothing.’ He felt he had to be shy by who knows what kind of comment of hers.

‘But it was really good,’ she said, ‘you know, I was moved.’

‘I know.’ He twisted open the bottle, filled her glass, and his, and then raised it for a silent toast.

They drank, and she, still not touching her chopsticks, said, rather emotionally, ‘Since then, I went to listen to you three more times, not including today.’

‘Really? Strange I hadn’t seen you until today. You know, for a number of weeks I had been looking forward to your appearance, ever since your first donation of $10, hehe, so handsome, from a Chinese, and a lady, really, a heavy compliment to me,’ Bing felt his tongue slippery in the spirit of beer.

‘I stayed on the other side, and in a different dress, only one or two songs though, you couldn’t possibly have seen me.’

‘Oh, that might be the reason.’

‘But today I really wanted to hear again Asking Ten Million Times, so…’ she smiled at him, the little freckles having a pretty colour of pink.

‘And I have earned fifty dollars from you.’

‘But you need to give me change of $100, remember?’ her eyes, now glaringly charming, had a near seductive quality.

Avoiding her direct, naked gaze, he attended to his drink, carefully, and changed the topic. ‘So why did you come here, since your husband was not prepared for immigration?’

Lapsing into a sudden gravity, she didn’t offer him an immediate answer.

The air stifled for a long while before she asked, ‘Would you mind if I smoke?’

‘Of course not,’ he answered, quickly enough to conceal his real surprise.

She opened her big, warehouse-like bag, searching roughly inside, taking out a box of cigarettes as well as a nice silver lighter.

It was the first time Bing had closely watched a female administering so delicately the smoking process. The style and elegance she incurred was remarkable, reflecting certain scenes in certain movies that had been caught in his memory. And moreover, her teeth, he just realised, were as fine and white as a group of pearls arranged in neat order, not in the least stained by the tobacco as one could have imagined.  

Smilingly, and indulgently, he asked, ‘Can I have one?’

She was instantly amused. ‘Ha, only if you don’t mind a cigarette for girls.’ She pulled one from the box and gave it to him, ‘but it is not so much discriminative, especially to one who doesn’t smoke.’

He took it from her and, seeing Pan motioning to light it for him, he said, ‘Let me do it myself.’ Then, in the manner of a curious monkey when provided with such a treat, he toyed a little while the slender cigarette and the slender lighter in each of his hands, turning and touching, not without an intent of kissing, before placing it into the very middle of his lips. Then, with a flip and a click, the fire was on, orange, wavering beautifully. He brought it near the end of the cigarette and sucked it once and twice, perhaps too vigorously, to manifest a gesture he had seen numerous times but with no practice.   

It was not as pungent as his distant memory of raw cigarette smoked by his uncle. It was mild, and moreover, his tongue was feeling a touch of sweetness. Could the beer have a part contributing to this pleasant taste? He was wondering, whilst looking at her, with an open admiration for the sophisticated air of her puffing indulgence.

And, in spite of himself, he found her thick, clear-edged lips, now with a cigarette in between, were sexier than ever, even if the rest of her face seemed serene and pacific, which, when perused more carefully, were somehow sad and distressed.

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked, bluntly.

‘Me?’ he raised his eyes, ‘I am also married. She is still in Happy Mountain, Sichuan province.’

‘Really?’ her tight composure thawed into a shallow smile, ‘I thought you were just an elder student.’

‘I am almost as old as you,’ he responded to her smile with his own cordiality. ‘But literally, I am still swimming in the sea, not yet reached the bank of Australia.’

‘Why didn’t you bring her with you?’ she said. ‘You could have done so, you know.’

‘I know, but I just wanted to make sure I can stand firm first in the new place, to get ready for her.’

‘Hehe,’ she eyed him, giving him a look that made him uncomfortable. ‘Maybe, but from a woman’s point of view, that is more like an excuse.’

Uneasily, he resorted to his drink. ‘…maybe…’

‘You know,’ she pursued further, ‘a woman, if she loves you, needs nothing but being with you.’

Bing had another sip, ‘Well …’

She didn’t give him a chance to explain, or, rather, to protest, ‘So, I can only guess, please don’t mind, you don’t love her enough to have asked her to come here. Otherwise how could you suffer without her being with you? Leaving her alone like this? And, how could she, if she loves you so much? How many years? You said two and half years?’

Bing had to smoke and drink alternatively, and more quickly to match her speed of words. ‘Yes, but we are just waiting…’

‘Yes, waiting,’ she interrupted him in haste, as if about to reproach him more seriously.

But she didn’t go on with the same, harsh thread of speech. Quietly, she was enjoying her cigarette, making a series of swirling wisps. Then, she broke the silence and said grimly, ‘Yes, waiting, I am also waiting.’  

Bing detected a crack in an egg, and did not waste his opportunity. ‘So, why? If you love your husband, can’t you just go back to China?’

Her reply was immediate. ‘That is exactly what I have been asking myself ten million times.’

‘The answer?’

‘No answer,’ she returned simply, attending to her smoke. ‘Probably I don’t love him as much as before, or he already has someone else in China.’ She snuffed the pink-coloured cigarette in a piece of tissue, making it die completely, before resuming her discourse. ‘It was first his idea of migrating overseas, because he was then disgruntled with his boss, so I applied by using my own qualification, quit my job, and as agreed, came here first, to be soon afterwards followed by him. But four years have dragged by, he’s still there preparing for the journey. Obviously he could have accommodated better and better to his old work-shoes.’ Now, Pan was talking in a voice more like whinging. ‘I already knew from a friend he had another girl. I wanted to deny it, but how could I? How could I hold a faith in a man in China, where everything seemed to have shifted and distorted by a great measure of money and greed?’

He could not say anything but lift his glass of beer to touch hers.

The extra three bottles were emptied sooner than expected. Bing was about to ask for more, but Pan shook her head, ‘No, no more, enough. Seriously I have to drive.’ Then she called over the waitress for the bill. Bing took out his wallet, but Pan shook her head, ‘No, I will pay for it, I should thank you for your music, and your company.’

‘But…’ he was ready to insist on his payment, but his insistence was overtaken by her excessive show of assertiveness and confidence, that had undeniably been nurtured and enhanced by her successful settlement in Australia.

They arose for departure, heading to Bank Street, where her car had parked. He checked his watch, it was half past nine. The streets, or precisely the restaurants, were still at their high comings and goings on the Saturday night, with diners’ clamour flowing out of the glass doors and windows as they passed by. Looking up, a half moon etched in the sky, pale, cool, and innocent; its beaming was overpowered by the low but conspicuous lamplights hung on those triangle, scale-like poles along the street.

Pan was walking faster, a step in advance of him, as if she had to hurry for something. Her ponytail was flapping about her neck; her round, swinging hips, in jeans instead of the tight skirt that had once made her steps quick and short like a Japanese lady, were increasingly attracting and enticing his eyes. His desire for her was genuine; but he didn’t know how to embolden himself to take the first step. Because, this woman, in spite of the influence of the alcohol which one could imagine should have turned her into a hot and wild species, seemed to have become more aloof, more distant to him, whose sexual inclination, on the contrary, was rapidly elevating. She walked along, as if independently, as if she was beside no one; at times even proceeding more than two steps for him to catch her up.

If only he could hold her hands or even kiss her. Highly affected by the amount of VB he had taken, and brushing loosely or tightly at her side, he was really aching for something, something native, soft and feminine that he had not touched for the number of years in Australia.

But he didn’t dare to reach her and take her swaying beauty and elegance. And with his mind fully occupied, they soon arrived at the entrance of the subway that tunnelled under Station Street, despite the fact that they could have just crossed the street in the little traffic of the night.

Entering the tunnel, and in the sudden, cave-like quietness and dimness, his courage was inflated and expanding. And further, if the seclusion was not sufficient to gather his wild nerves to enable an action, a passing train just then hauling out of the station, booming his ears like an ancient Chinese drum, was a trigger to leap over his tempting threshold.



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洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-7-25 23:06
Chapter 52    2/3

Chapter 52   3/3




Without completely halting his pace, he reached forward to catch her hand. An instant of fear and wariness seemed to hinder a second of his approach, but the feeling of her fingers in his hand was too delicious to give up. She stopped, and turned to him; but thanking paradise she didn’t pull her hand away, nor did she utter any reprimand to thwart his impertinence. She raised her face to him, turned her face to his, keeping a thin gap for a timeless time. Then feeling safe and detecting no signs of alarm, he placed his other hand on her broad forehead, gently brushing it twice before sliding it to her right ear and there it remained.

Then she took her hand from his, and as if immersed in a flood of unanticipated passion, lifted both of her arms to wrap around his neck. His lips sought hers; the thin distance between them vanishing. And tipping her head sightly over, he tasted her edges and soft thickness. Her tongue, like a fire, in the little damp haven, had its own mind; it looked to search, to pity, to pass her sorrow and loneliness to him, to also receive his. The sweet-sour-bitter-spice of a living experience in a place far away from their home country was condensed in the minutes of their mouths’ exchange.

He was fumbling with her ponytail, soft and sleek, full and substantial. But the knot of the rubber band was stiff and strong, as severe as his full arousal. With his hard chest cushioned by her breasts, and his swift breath stifled by her warm features, they stood long in the middle of the tunnel, until the strain was gathering in his legs and thighs.

They moved for the support of the wall, where, with his back leaning against the concrete, their interaction went on unflaggingly. But his more daring penetration towards her three points had been frequently hushed and pushed away, until he was fully aware of her steely resolve of refusing to budge.

‘No,’ she heaved, ‘please.’

But he tried again, and she said ‘No’ and ‘Please’ again. ‘Please’ uttered after ‘no’ was a confusing signal to him, but her gesture bespoke a definite ‘No’. Then, he heard people entering the tunnel; judging by their voices, they were two male students, probably just coming back from their dish-washing night shift. They came to near them, for a moment petrifying them, who had buried their heads into each other’s neck, until the nuisance was gone, until the tunnel was returned to them.

But the disturbance, as well as her denial to his more meaningful intercourse, calmed him down. With a final kiss that bade for departure, they straightened, and holding each other’s waist, left the place that had hosted his first romance in Australia.

Beside her car, on the pavement, he held her.

‘When can I see you again?’ he looked into her eyes, his hands caressing the line of her waist.

She checked his gaze, and said: ‘No.’

Her short, one-syllable answer seemed to have taken a long time to reach his intoxicated head. Baffled, and bristled as if very much offended, he was questing for clarification, ‘What?’ Then emphasizing his incredulity, ‘Why?’

‘You should have known this,’ she said, patronizingly. ‘No good can come from it.’

Though muddled and unsatisfied just the same, he seemed to catch a sober light of sense. Without finding more words to say, he loosened her, who seemed to have all at once turned back into a remote stranger to him.  

Seeing his disappointment, she held his hands to placate him. ‘Look, Wang Bing, we can be friends, but anything more than that would sour our friendship,’ and now keeping an arm’s length from him, she went on her dogma of morality, in her mature and sensible manner, and with her breasts distending under her clothes, ‘and if we continue to see each other, I don’t think we can control ourselves, so the best way is…’

‘But, well, this is ridiculous,’ he cut her words, as a blood of nameless resentment was then surging to his head, rendering him utterly beside himself. ‘This is absurd, why, in the name of Chinese, in the name of Buddha, and…and…in the name of thousands of evolution and civilization of mankind, does the good time you and I are here to share have to be denied and deprived…by whom? By what kind of devil and hell? By what kind of false and pathetic temple figures and phantoms and doctrines?’

‘Haha…’ she blurted out a laughter, but immediately resisted it by pressing her lips hard enough together not to show him offence; and subsiding, she threw him a remark, ‘Oily mouth.’

Staring at her, managing his evil emotion of which he had now come to be aware of, he opened a sad smile, ‘Sorry…’

‘That is all right,’ she said. ‘Frankly, I may divorce him sooner or later. We have been thinking of our permanent separation as hard as of our eventual reunion. But, you see, you are different, you won’t likely be in the same boat as me.’

Upon her cool words, that had somehow called for his wife’s image to flash in his eyes, his heightened, ballooned sexual spirit was as if pricked, retreating, flattening out. Yet standing there fairly wretched, he experienced no relief but a feeling of desertion, of betrayal to his masculinity. He wanted to escape immediately from her, from the mere sight of her, who had aroused him and then smothered him and sickened him by her great sense and reason and discretion.

Finally, in a low and half hateful voice, he said, ‘Okay, I understand.’ Then in his effort to be polite and like a gentleman, he put on a smile that must be more like a grimace. ‘Are you okay to drive?’

She didn’t give an answer; and seconds later, she pleaded, ‘Please, don’t be upset.’ Then, patting his arm like an elder sister, ‘You are not angry with me, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to hear the truth?’

‘What?’

‘If I give myself to you, I want all of you,’ she raised her voice as though she was the one, not him, being victimized. ‘But you won’t be all for me. Sooner or later, you will leave me for your wife, and my life will be ruined, worse off. Do you understand?’

Again he was speechless. He looked at her; and in her still, loving gaze, his self-pity was gradually transformed to a sort of compassion for her. But he felt too weak to touch her, then in a similar manner as she had done a while earlier in the subway, she threw out her arms, wrapped around his neck, pulled him down towards her bosom, kissed him soundly, once on his lips, once on his cheek.

‘Wang Bing, thank you,’ she said, and releasing him, she turned and walked round her car to the driver’s side. She opened it, slipped into it, closed it, started it, made a U turn, and gave him a gesture of goodbye through the window; she was then, officially, leaving.

He was stationed on the spot, seeing her car diminishing until she turned into Station Street and, with its tail lights flicking for the last time, was perfectly lost.

He thought he had at least lifted his hand and waved her a goodbye with it; but, after she was gone, when he began moving to his home for settlement, he realized that, during all the while of her pulling off, his hands had remained limb and floppy.  

‘A strange woman,’ he muttered.




--End of Chapter 52--