Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

On Christmas morning, it starts snowing. The farm has a layer of light snow. I hope the farm is happy to receive the snow on a very special day. After a big brunch, we watch the Queen’s speech on TV, then we say goodbye to your family, and hit the road again. Your mother and your two sisters are waving their hands in front of the house. When I look at them from the van I feel sad. Maybe we should stay more time here, eat the Christmas turkey they prepare all day. But you say you can’t stay in there any longer. Not even one more afternoon, you say. We leave Lower End Farm behind. We leave the mud, the sheep, and the winter grass behind.

We drive all the way back to London. There is nobody in the street, not even a ghost. It is surreal. Almost too perfect.

The snow is like feathers gradually covers dirty London. The snow knows its own power. It understands how to make a city less bleak and more gentle.

We stop in a local café on Hackney Road, probably the only one open. The café owner is a foreigner, maybe from Middle East. I guess he prefers to work in café at Christmas rather than spend a lonely day on his own in his rented east London basement. There are beautiful red flowers on every table. It is a kind of green-leafs-turn-to-red-flowers. I am having fish and you are having chips. We look outside. The snow is falling from the sky. The café owner says “Merry Christmas” to us. He must be so happy to see eventually two customers visit him on such lonely day.

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betray v. 1. to hand over or expose (one’s nation, friend, etc.) treacherously to an enemy; 2. to disclose (a secret or confidence) treacherously; 3. to reveal unintentionally.

I don’t know if time takes us into its fast whirlpool, or we suck time into our inner world. It feels like Christmas just yesterday, but now here comes New Year’s day. Last night we made love like desperate people. And we made love again this morning. It feels everything so empty. Desperation. Or fear. We need make something unforgettable in our memory.

The only thing I love completely, without any doubt, is your body. I love it. Temperature. Softness. Forgiveness. Maybe I can let you go, but not your body.

Kissing. I hug your warmth. I think of other bodies I encountered, which I never really in love with. I start to talk.

“You know lots of things happened in that month.”

“That month?”

“Yes, that month.”

“…When you went Inter-Railing?”

“Yes.” I look into your eyes. I really want you to know. If we don’t have much to talk anymore, maybe we can talk about that month, when you were absent with me.

“Are there things you didn’t tell me?” You put out your hand touch my face.

“But you never ask me! It’s like the newspaper is more interesting to you than reality. You would rather read the paper every day than talk to me.”

“So, talk to me now,” you say.

I’m annoyed again. Why everything has to be like this? Why I am always demanding? Why there is no curiosity inside your heart anymore?

“OK. I met some mans on the trip, you know.”

“What do you mean you met some men?”

“Yes, one in Amsterdam, one in Berlin, one in Venice and one in Faro…” I suddenly can see all these faces. I can see that Portugal man with the missing teeth walking beside with me down to the dirty rocky beach under the highnoon’s sun…And I can see Klaus standing in a street of Berlin waiting for the bus. Probably now he walks into a shop to buy a bottle of mineral water with red star brand.

“And?” You become serious.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing serious. Just, I had sex with a man who I only met for half an hour.”

You stare at me. Your face is frozen. There is only four centimetres between my face and yours.

“But I didn’t like that experience, actually…” I am a little worried to carry on this story.

There is no specific impression on your face.

Suddenly I remember a sentence I read from the bible on your shelf recently: Father forgive them for they know not what they do .

“I thought I should let you know, even you don’t ask me,” I continue. “And in Berlin, I was very much attached to a man, whom I met on the train. He was ill at that time…”

Now I’m upset, but at the same time I feel relieved.

You get out from the bed and walk to the kitchen, naked. You add some water into the kettle, without any words. You put some dry mint into the tea pot. Then you stand there and wait for the water to be boiled.

“So if you didn’t like it, why did you do it?”

Finally, you are angry.

“Because…I don’t like distance.”

“So you have to have sex with a stranger?”

There is silence between us.

“Every time I thought you might be with another man,” you say, “I thought we should leave each other.”

“Why?”

“I mean I should let you go.”

“Go where?”

“When I was your age, I was like you. I wanted to experience everything, and wanted to try all kinds of relationships, all kinds of sex. So I know what’s going on inside you. If you stay with me, and I see you going with other men, I will be lost.”

Those words, I don’t want to hear. You are afraid of being lost, but I am the person in the relationship being lost first.

“But you wanted me to travel alone!” I am crying.

“Because you are young…too young to be so serious with me,” you say. “When you were away I often imagined you with other men, but then I stopped thinking about it. Even when you told me you were pregnant, I didn’t think about it.”

You stand there, let the water boiling in the kettle, without move.

I feel your coldness covering this house. I am afraid of you. I am afraid of this kind of manner. It is the coldest manner in the world.

You start drinking your tea. A vegeterian shepherd pie is in the oven, the kind of English food I hate. Such a sad food. A kind of food shows how boring the life is. A kind of food without any passion.

We don’t talk rest of the day.

You are doing something with your sculptures. Pouring hot wax into the mould. The shape is obscure. I am watching a New Year’s TV programme, an animation about a nightingale. Oscar Wilde again, but this time it is visual and vivid. The nightingale is bleeding and dying, and the red rose is abandoned by the young man. “Love is better than life,” the nightingale says.

Love is better than life! Even love brings death. Is this our New Year’s wish?

infinity n. an endless space, time, or number.

When I was in the primary school, the mathematics teacher taught us to count until we were too tired to count anymore. The teacher said that the last number is “infinity.” It is a number but numberless. One can count and count until the numbers become uncountable.

Infinity, it is an uncountable future.

Here, in our kitchen and bedroom, our battle is an infinity.

“Listen,” I shout. “This is serious. I need to know if I should give up my job in China to stay here with you, or if I should go back to my country.” I look at my passport on the table.

“What is your job there?”

“Did you never know my job?”

“I never understood when you talked about a government work unit.”