Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

You tell me my love to you is like a possession. But how could I possess you when your world is so big? Maybe it not about possession, it more about me trying to fit into your life. I am living in your life. I am living inside of your body, trying to understand every single movement from your command. Every night I inhale and outhale your breath. The smells from your hair and your skin cover my hair and my skin. I know nobody in my life is as close as you.

I just hope night carry on like this, go on for ever. Hope our bodies can be always close like this, and our souls always can be side by side. I don’t want the sun comes, the day comes. I know the light of day takes you away from me. Then you live in your own world, the world that has a big gap between us.

In the daytime, you stay with your sculptures, with your clay, your sand, your wax. You are making many moulds of human bodies. All the materials they lie there, quiet, with vague and unclear statements.

The conversation on the bed after we make love:

“Why you are always so interested in the body?”

“Because you will never get bored with the body.” You rub the sperms on my skin slowly, trying to dry it. “Eating, drinking, shitting…The body is key to everything.”

“But why your sculptures ugly and miserable?”

“I don’t think they are ugly. They are beautiful.”

“Maybe. Beautiful in ugly way. But they are always in pain.”

“That’s what life is like.”

I can’t agree, but I can’t deny either.

“My body always feels miserable, except for when I am making love,” you say.

Your voice becomes sleepy, and you close your eyes.

I turn off the light. I stare at the darkness. I have enough thoughts to talk to the long night, alone.

Christmas n. 1. an annual festival on December 25 commemorating the birth of Christ; 2. period around this time.

Tomorrow is Christmas. We wake up to noises from neighbours’ kitchen. They are probably arranging tables or chairs for their guests. You tell me we will stay in London until lunch, and then you will take me to see your family in the afternoon. I am curious, but also worried. Meeting your family is a big thing for me. That is again something to do with the future.

What happened to Jesus Christ at Christmas Eve? Was he hung on the cross? Did he almost reborn? We were taught when we were little that only the phoenix can be reborn. A beautiful huge bird, with the neck of a snake, the back of a tortoise, and the tail of fish. She eats dewdrops. She lives for a thousand years and, once that time is over, she burns herself in her own funeral pyre, and is born again from the ashes. Jesus must be something like a bird, the symbol of high virtue.

Winter is such a long season in England. Hackney Road is dim, dark, wet and obscure. But there is something extra which makes you and me nervous about this time. Neither you nor me kind of person likes celebrating festivals, plus I don’t have any family here. Outside, neon lights are twinkling, shining like the fragile happiness.

Almost a year has passed. In the beginning, we were so passionate about each other. Now everything grows older, and covered by the dust. Every morning you go to that corner shop to buy newspaper. You sit in a small café having a breakfast and reading. You would rather read the paper outside somewhere, because you say you can’t relax at home. Should I leave the house and give the space back to you?

Afternoon. We are in your white van. We are driving to the southwest of England, to Lower End Farm, the place where you grew up. The road towards the countryside is so quiet. Like a road nobody knows, as if nobody has driven through it before. It is getting darker. It is grey. The houses beside the road are all lighted. Ah, others are all happy, with their family. I hate Christmas.

I start to cry.

You look at me one moment, then look at the road. You know why I am crying. You keep quiet. Only the noise from the engine carries on.

“It will be all right,” you say.

But I don’t know what all right even means.

I stop crying. I calm down a bit. It’s only four in the afternoon, but the sky in countryside is already deep dark, and the rain comes with the chilly wind. The wind blows the pine trees, the grass, and the oaks in the fields. The leaves are shivering, and the branches are shaking. There must be too much wind in English’s blood.

Dim and muddy, it is the road leading to your childhood…

That evening, you show me around the farm with the flashlight. It is a big farm, extended to the horizon. Some sheeps or maybe cows in the distance, mooing.

There are four old womans in this house: your mother, your grandmother, your two sisters. Three cats live in this old farm house too. I wonder if these cats are all females? No man. Your two sisters, one is 42, another is 48. You told me they never get married. Maybe they get used to this old-girl-life, so they don’t need or want a man anymore. Your father died long time ago, and so did your grandfather. But all womans survive.

These womans, in your family, they are all farmers. They look like they have had a hard life. Their faces, reddish on the cheeks from the chilly wind. They are simple and a little tough. They are very straightforward, and have very strong impression towards every little thing. Their questions are like these:

“Zhuang? What kind of a name is that? How do you spell it?”

“Do you watch TV, Z?”

“Z, how many hours does it take to fly from China to England?”

“Bloody hell! One billion. Are there really so many people in your country?”

They talk loudly, and laugh loudly, and chop the meat loudly in the kitchen. They remind me of my family. They are very different from Londoners.

There are about twenty silver and golden badges on the wall of dining room. These badges are hung under the photos of sheep and cows, the winners of some farming competitions. Several local newspapers are pinned on the wall, with pictures of your sisters hugging her award-winning cow. And the cow has a big badge hung on its neck too. I don’t understand this competition between cow and cow.

In TV room is a huge poster about sheep. Every sheep has its different name, and they do look like very different. The one on the left is called Oxford Down , look like a big fat dog, but with burnt black nose and ears. The one on the right is called Dartmoor , with messy curly wool like a woman in hair salon having an electricity perm. The bottom one is called Exmoor Horn with curly horns and short body like a snow ball…There are no pictures of human beings. It is like a sheep museum.

I walk into the kitchen. Your mother is preparing Christmas Eve supper. I see the plates with drawing of sheep, and tea cups with the picture of cow, and the tea pot is the shape of a little goat.

Everything in the house looks aged , as old as your grandmother. Your grandmother is ninety-seven. She lives upstairs. You take me to say hello to her. She is skinny. She is too old to move around. Also she is too old to talk. She doesn’t seem to recognise who you are.

I try to understand these four womans, with their strong accent. I can’t tell if they are tough or friendly. There is a certain kind of brutal feel from your sister when she chops the meat that makes me timid. Is that one of the reasons you left your hometown, came to London, and didn’t want to be with any womans when you were young?

After the supper, everybody is tired and goes to bed. We sleep on a sofabed in the living room. It is midnight. The whole farm outside is covered by a big piece of silence. No neighbours, no pub, no shop, no car, no train. It is a place far away from civilisation. It is even worse than my hometown in China. So quiet, like it’s on the edge of the world. Occasionally, one or two fireworks blow in the distance. But rest of the world is as frozen as ice in the Arctic Ocean.