Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

“Rose? What kind of rose?”

We are in garden so you go back in house fetch book.

“A rose like in this poem,” you say, and read me:

All night by the rose, the rose,

All night by the rose I lay.

Dared I not the rose steal,

And yet I bore the flower away.

Poem very beautiful, I want know who wrote it. On book says Anon.

“This Anon very good writer,” I say. “I think I prefer to Shakespeare, much easier.”

You laugh. “Yes, and perhaps even more prolific.”

“?”

“ Anon isn’t a person. It’s just what we say when we don’t know who wrote something.”

Annoyed about this Anon, I look round in your garden. There is no any rose, let alone Chinese rose.

“How can you never plant any rose in the garden?” I say. “Every green finger growing rose in this country, as far as I can see. You should have one.”

You agree with me, this time, no any doubts.

So we now have a climbing rose in our garden, against the wall. Is a skinny plant with five green leafs and some annoying thorn. We had argument in flower market because I want buy rose with blossoms, but you rather buy little sprout and wait for its growing.

You use your favourite tool- spade -to dig the hole. “The hole must be twice as wide as the root spread, and two-feet deep…” You measure the hole with the fingers: “The rose has mainstructural canes and flowering shoots, so the canes must be tied or woven into a support to keep the rose off the ground.” You are so scientific. I look at you. Are you romantic farmer?

Then, here, in new world far away from my home, here, under your fruit tree without flowers, you start sing a song, a famous song which I heard somewhere maybe in China before. You voice gentle and almost trembled.

If people hears this song, and she doesn’t feel moved-then I think that people must not human.

I love you. And you know I love you. And you love me as well.

You tell me song is from Bette Midler-your favorite. You say you like the strong, rude women. You say all homosexual like Bette Midler, Mae West and Billie Holiday. But Billie Holiday not strong-she commit a suicide.

Two days after, you take me watch documentary films double bill. Two crazy women in one night.

Small cinema on Rupert Street. First one about Mae West, an extremely successful Hollywood star, always make audiences happy and laughing. She is a “No. 1” woman without any “competition” in the world, as she said to media. Sexy, always wearing shining jewellery, flirty, confidently. Even in her eighty-seven years old, she dressed a sexy white dazzling fur coat, and all around by young black bodyguards and cameras. And her face still very beautiful and young even in that age. She the tropical sun, nobody can be more brighter than her.

Second film is Billie on Billie , right after Mae West documentary. First scene in the film is Billie Holiday standing on the stage sadly singing, “Don’t talk about me…”-last appearance on TV before she died. She is a extremely sad face, hopeless expression. From the film I learned her struggled by her childhood, her prostitution mother, her sex abuse when she twelve years old, her drug and alcohol, her poor dignity being a black. Billie Holiday, she is not melancholy, she is hopeless.

“I always fear…” she says in the film. A strange fruit. I want leave the cinema to cry. I feel her pain in my heart. And later on when I think of Mae West again I find her story is so surreal, like fairy story comes from the moon…

I want become Mae West, be her courage, her bravery, her humour, her creativity, her challenging to the world. She live with admiration, rich, and confidence. Men all her slaves; men used by her. I want play that role. But is the reality I am nobody, not even painful Billie, I am just obscure nobody with name starts from Z. Maybe this romance with you put some weight into my life.

*

physical adj. 1. of the body, as contrasted with the mind or spirit; 2. of material things or nature; 3. of physics.

For six days now London really hot. Suddenly people almost nudes in street and sit about on grasses chatting. Mrs. Margaret changed to beige suede sandals. I can’t concentrate her lessons in the heat.

Hotness make you unhappy because you must drive van like oven.

I see you always disappear with that white van. A very old van with a side door sunken and another side door cannot close properly , unless you kick it violently. The front and the back windows always covered by thick dust. It is a peasant van, or a working-class van.

The van is your business method to earn money via delivering goods. You say you can get this job only because you have got a big van.

You drive whole day in that van for delivering. The goods are for somebody’s birthday, party, ceremony, wedding, or any day someone has excuse to consume the money.

You drive from 7 o’clock early morning, till late night. You drive seven days a week. Every day on the road, on those roads towards middle-class big family houses.

You come back home in the dark, without any energy left. Life suddenly becomes bit boring. I find you are a physical man, a labourer, using your hands to survive. While lots people in this world just need use fingers to earn living by clicking computer keyboard.

I never see you sell the sculptures. Nobody want buy a suffered and twisted statue, I guess. If they do, they maybe buy a female nude statue. Once I saw you were making a wooden swimming pool model, as the advertisement for Red Bull company. Another time I saw you were making a huge telephone model for Vodaphone. I heard you saying “it looks ridiculous,” “it is so tacky” while you were making these things. But you got paid. Then one day you stop getting these kinds job. I don’t know why.

“You always say physical work makes people happier, but you are not happy now.” I make some tea and salad for you. It is so late.

“I am too tired. That’s why…” You sit on the chair, by the kitchen table. You hair is messy, covered by the dust.

“Physical work doesn’t do any good,” I say.

“But at least you don’t worry about living.” You sip the tea, the tea is sucking your energy.

“For me mental work better than physical work,” I say. “Nobody wants physical work. Only you, and my parents.” I put the salad bowl in front of you.