The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [31]
It seems very lonely to me.
That depends on how you look at it. I think it’s peaceful.
I put down my cup and studied her face, as if for the first time. To me the word peace, the word ningjing, has a very specific, private meaning: it means the sound of the sea, of waves slapping against the board underneath me, and the feeling of crossing the bay on a stormy day when no other boats are out, and the water is the color of slate, and I’m all alone underneath a ceiling of clouds. Hong Kong people don’t use this word very often, and when they do, you get the feeling they don’t know what they’re talking about.
I suppose you spend all of your free time in karaoke bars, she said.
No, I said. That’s what I was just thinking about. It’s exactly the opposite. Do you know what windsurfing is? She shook her head. I’ll show you, I said, reaching for a napkin. Do you have a pen?
So I drew her a picture of a sailboard, and explained a little bit about how it’s done, the way you stand and hold the crossbar and tilt the sail to turn, the way you feel the wind’s changes on your shoulders and calves and the back of your head. While I was talking her eyes began to flash a little, and she started asking questions. Why don’t you fall over? What do you do if the wind dies? She laughed and shook her head with exasperation, as if she couldn’t quite believe my answers. By that time it was almost five, and we both had to leave; when she asked me if I wanted to meet again I said yes, automatically, and then thought, this is the first thing that has happened in my life that I could never explainto anyone.
For the next month we met once every week, on Saturday afternoons, always at the Shangri-La. Once afterward we went down the street to a Shanghai restaurant and ate lion’s-head meatballs and Shaoxing pork. I always asked for the check; outside, so as not to embarrass me, she paid me for her half, in old two-yuan bills so soft they fell through my fingers and fluttered to the sidewalk. When I protested, the crinkles of laughter disappeared from the corners of her eyes, and she gave me a cold smile. If you want to see me, she said, you’ll let me pay my share.
But it’s ridiculous, I said. They won’t even take these at the exchange window, do you know that?
She stooped and picked up the bills, bending her knees to one side, and stuffed them into my vest pocket. Keep them as a souvenir, she said. They’re not so little to me.
I laughed, but I was the only one.
I would be the first to admit I’m no expert on love. Before Lin I’d had other girlfriends, but really only by accident, and never for longer than a few months. A secretary in another division of my company, after we met at an office party. A friend of Siu Wong’s little sister, who asked me to help her with some accounting problems. Every one of these relationships ended with some variation of the same phrase: You’re a nice man, but I don’t think this should go any further. This isn’t love. And it was true, of course: I didn’t feel anything special for any of them, not even during sex, not even at the moment of orgasm. The whole performance to me was so physical, so lacking in personal feeling, that I always felt a little embarrassed afterward and wished she would simply leave. After a few encounters this embarrassment became so strong that I couldn’t even hold a conversation, and so it ended, quickly and quietly, with little protest from either of us.
There was a time in my mid-twenties when I wondered if I was gay, or asexual, if I would be happier as a lifelong celibate or a monk. I even considered going to a psychologist to see if there was something hidden in my past keeping me from being able to love. But I never went through with it. The sad truth is that it didn’t bother me all that much. I had my friends; I had my health and strength; and I had the ocean, the waves, and the wind—the one deep love of my life, you could say. You