CHAPTER 10 LOVE
At the wool-sorting factory, Mr Jiang told me of his unsuccessful venture in Britain so far. He came here as a livestock agent for a major Chinese company. At that time, the British farming industry was in deep crisis and sheepskins were at unbelievably cheap prices. Mr Jiang had intended to make a quick fortune so that he could go home as soon as possible. He told me that he could not live with the English weather. The dump of the island weather got beneath his skin throughout the year. Besides the weather, he really missed his family. However, things did not turn out the way he had expected. The collaboration with the English company here was not smooth-sailing to start with. He had to overcome many months of frustration to get through to the English boss. When the trust was finally there for him to go alone in purchasing sheepskins, the British skins price was flying high again. Mr Jiang really lamented about the missing of a great opportunity. It was a great miss, he reassured me again and again.
His downfall came when he became involved in margin trading of foreign currencies. He went to live in London and wanted to make a quick buck out of the volatile currency market. It went well for a while, then everything went pear-shape. He lost more than he could afford. He went to work in Chinese restaurants and continued gambling on the horses and dogs like the rest of the staff working there. He told me that it was day and night without a breath of fresh air, out of the smoky kitchen and into the smoky bookies. And everybody lost but the bookies. In the end, it became a habit of life, rather than pleasure or trying to win money. He tried to many ways to beat the bookies but failed. He was working like a slave since he had lost many weeks’ wages in advance to the bookies. He owed the boss a lot of money. The funny thing was that he was not alone. In the bookies, he had met many a lost soul in the fellow Chinese who all worked in the catering trade. That was part of being Chinese here in Britain.
He was very much trapped in a deep hole. He could not go home because he had lost more than he could afford and owed a lot of money to people here and there. Besides, he had failed in his dream of making a fortune abroad. He hated himself for letting himself down because he never gambled in China and was always able to make money out of clever business ventured. The longer it went on, the deeper the depression. When he told me his story, I could feel a shiver down my spine. It was a familiar story that I heard or witnessed many times. Easy money or instant fortunes were all part of that perpetually entrapment. But Mr Jiang seemed to be somewhat different from others. He had a belief in himself that one day he would stand up again with his own business skills, which were successful in China. At the moment, he was like a fish out of familiar water. He needed to find his pool again in order to survive and succeed. In his eyes, I could sense the strength of his will which might see him through many difficulties. Before I had a chance to ask him about his involvement in the Omnipotence project, the work at the wool-sorting factory was finished and he disappeared without a trace. I was called back to work for Jane again in the evenings.
Updates on 8 September 2001:
I was actually very happy to go back Jane’s house again. The evenings were mysterious and I missed the rides with Jane. When I arrived, Jane was sitting in the rocking chair reading one of her manuscript. She looked up and somehow I went forward and embraced her. She hugged me so tightly and kissed me on both cheeks, as if she had missed me as badly. It was an extraordinary feeling between the two of us. Ours was no love affair and yet ours was more than friendship. She was very soft and radiant in her complexion. She was wearing a purple pyjama and a white bra underneath. I sat down and looked at her, or rather admired her.
‘Phil, factory work has not changed you for the better. How many times I told you: do not stare! What do you want from me anyway?’ Jane was in her usual good humour that evening, which gave her extra flare of charm.
‘Nothing. I only wanted to look at you and be in your company. It makes me happy, for no specific reason, honestly!’ I was more daring that evening than usual. This reunion after separation and this mutual feeling between us had given me a sense of closeness, which was stronger than ever.
‘Ok, let’s get down to business. I am trying to write an interesting love story. I would like us to go through all the different angles that have been adopted over the decades. We will begin now. We are going to take a ride again by midnight.’ She signalled me to sit beside her and we started to look at the literature on one of those net literature library.
The first love theme was a classic one. Two people grew up together and fell in love when they grew to that age. Then they got married and they lived happily ever after. Although this was the theme or logic behind many stories. In reality, writers knew it was too good to be true or too boring to be written about. So here writers tended to add a lot of flavours to this theme to make the stories into tear-jerking tragedies. One classic flavour was the class struggle or war, between the two families. Or inherited animosity between older generations. Or the two of them grew out of each other. Or one of them died in tragic circumstances…
I stopped because there was a sudden sadness descending on us. It was in the atmosphere and I could feel it coming from nowhere. Jane closed her eyes and was trying to hold back her eyes. Even so many years later, she was still so sad about the loss of her beloved husband. What sort of love that must have been! I held her hand. At first, she almost resisted and then she just relaxed. She knew I was hers for the company, nothing more and nothing less.(to be continued next week.)
Updates on 29 September, 2001:
When Jane had calmed herself down, she started to talk to me about her own life. She was apparently one of those girls who had discovered sexuality and the attraction between the two sexes much earlier than others. She found her first boyfriend at the age of five. He was seven, living in the city. He would come to the village where Jane lived to visit his relatives. The two families were no friends over the years. But the two children were instantly attracted to each other when they first met. Village life as it was then, it was very easy for children to get away from whatever they wanted to do. With a blush in her face, Jane admitted that they explored each other’s body and almost made love, if that boy knew what was required of him and was able to do it. Jane let out a melodic laughter, almost laughing at her folly at that age and laughing off the embarrassment this confession had her feel. She told me that she had never ever told anybody about this secret. In hindsight, Jane said it must be one of those flashes of hormones when children grew up. After that summer, the boy went to the city and never came back. And that was that, Jane’s first boyfriend.
Her honest and trust in confessing to me this secret of her made my heart thump with a lot of tender love for her. I knew we must be closer than ever before. Looking back, I was one of the boys in the streets or in the field most of the time when I was young. I was climbing all over walls, trees and buildings. I was always leading a gang of kids doing something naughty. At that age, I was very much my own boss. If I dug deeper, I must say that there were girls sometimes in our gangs too. But they were treated much the same as boys. I did not make that sort of differentiation until a much later age. Jane’s experience was certainly very far away from mine.
After the boy disappeared out of her life, Jane’s life became more like any other girls’. It was not until she reached 15 that she had her second boyfriend. As she was one of the pretties girls in the school, she was constantly bothered by boys from all quarters, and sometimes men. She felt rather vulnerable and somewhat helpless. On top of that, she was not doing that well in her study, which became an embarrassment for her parents, both were highly-educated intellectuals, however too busy to educate their own children. She picked up a local college young man who was 3 years older than her. He was handsome and intelligent. As a bonus, he had several girlfriends before. So her first sexual encounter was not as painful as she feared.
Jane signed and closed her eyes, as if she was looking at herself all those years and flicking through the memories of that first love affair of hers. They had a few romantic months together. She was his trophy for his college friends, who all admired her youthful beauty. He would show her off at the parties and they had great time together, dancing, drinking, smoking, and of course enjoying great sex whenever they had the opportunities. Then, things started to become complicated. In hindsight, Jane admitted that she became very jealous and possessive in the relationship. She was constantly jealous about his close encounters with any girls, and above all, his former girlfriends. Sometimes, he would compare Jane to those girlfriends, which became rather annoying to Jane. As Jane was growing up into womanhood, she had inherited a fierce temper from her mother. They started to have fights and rows over tiny little things. At times, they could almost kill each other. Then, their sex life became a bit mundane, with the early fire now going out of the window. It was particularly painful for Jane sometimes to endure some of his sexual advances, as sometimes he would almost try to rape her in a violent way. The worst was to come for their relationship when Jane suddenly found herself pregnant one day. She was in a total shock. She confessed to her best friend. She suggested maybe they should get married. Maybe the birth of their child would rein him in and make him more settled and focused on Jane.
The day Jane broke the news to her boyfriend was the day of a nightmare. He flew into a rage and became very mad and physical. He literally raped her on that day, when Jane was already a few weeks in pregnancy. Afterwards, he just ran out of the flat he was staying in and was never seen again. Jane called for help from her best friend. She was very kind and loving. Between them, they decided to go back to Jane’s parents where she could be best cared for. They went back and told Jane’s mother. Her mother hugged Jane and they cried together for a long time. At that particular moment, Jane realised that her mother was the one in this world who really loved her the most. She felt much loved and safe in her mum’s care. There was a painful abortion in private. And that was that, Jane’s second love affair.
I held Jane’s hands and put my other arm around her shoulder to hold her close to me. For no reason at all, I started to talk and talk about my own life. I talked and talked, never knowing why and what was driving me to do that. All I knew was that I wanted to soothe Jane in some way. Soon, Jane fell asleep. I just held her, closing my eyes to swim in my own memory sea, of love, hatred, pain and joy.
Jane slept very peacefully, which was a surprise to me. I thought she was going to have nightmares. Some people were naturally capable of switching in and out of certain modes of thoughts or existence. When I was at the university in Shanghai, I used to have a very good friend who was just like. One minute he could be having a fierce argument with me, another minute he’d smile and say, ‘Let’s go for dinner.’ I admired this quality of his very much. Over the years, I had tried to improve towards that sort of mental stability. It had certainly got much better now. Jane kissed me on the cheek and asked me to join her for our ride. We had a great ride on the treacherous roads in a thinly foggy night. I felt we were closer than ever.
After the ride, we did some more work. Later, Jane led me to her bed and we slept together in her bed. She seemed to enjoy my shoulder and went into a sweet dream. We were both almost naked, apart from our underpants and her bra. But I felt extremely happy just to hold her and feel her silvery cool female skin against mine. The kind of peace and harmony was something that I wanted at that moment, more than anything else. I remembered the lecturer at the university who taught us the sensible use of the word ‘intercourse’, since a lot of us were using it to mean spiritual communications. I almost quietly chuckled to myself and took my arm and shoulder from underneath Jane. It was time for me to finish work here and go home.
On the way home, I thought about Jane’s love story so far. Two themes had emerged. One was mutual curiosity. This could happen to people of innocence at any time, in Jane’s case, when she was very young. Another was social protection. The natural physical and sexual vulnerability of young girls increased the likelihood that they would seek a partner who could protect them in the social environment in the first instance. If there was love in the relationship, it was an extra bonus. This sort of romantic relationship seemed to be built on practical needs, rather than pure love. In this case, it was highly likely such relationships would not last for too long, as it was almost like building a house on running sand, with the young girl growing up and stronger over time and the older man losing his protector or guardian’s status because of that. Besides, with gratitude playing a part in this sort of relationship, the partners were always on a unequal footing, with the male partner highly likely over-estimating his own worth of the more experienced and the stronger between the two.
Both themes were also popular ones in love stories all over the world. While the innocence of the curious young couples were much appreciated, the greed and betray of the protector or guardian (e.g., in the form of teachers, seniors, millionaires and so on) were much despised or perhaps laughed at (e.g., Hurtswood in Theodore Dreiser's 'Sister Carrie'). It was human nature to side with the innocent, the weak, the young, and perhaps the female.
Such was the distinct advantage of femininity, while over the modern times many women had rebelled against this macho mentality to the extent of destroying their own individual femininity altogether (e.g., the male element in lesbian relationships). The side-effect of such rebels was that western women seemed to have nurtured a sexual mentality and behaviour which seems to be built on the principle of two equal partners, each taking advantage of the other’s physical sexual differentiation. In my own opinion, this seemed to be a much better preposition for the society, than the one which was still dominating societies like China, where the female was supposed to be a perpetual losing/devaluing/defacing ground in a sexual relationship.
In the following weeks, we went through a lot of the love themes in the literature. One night, Jane had suddenly fallen ill, which was so serious that she could not get out of her bed. I sat beside her bed and held her hand, which went feverishly hot and then icy cold. I suggested to take her to the doctors. She told me that it would be of no use, because she knew what she had got and she had taken the drugs to deal with it. I believed in her because she seemed to exist in a entirely different world from ours, far more advanced in technology, science and perhaps medicine.
‘Phil, I am dying. I will die in a few days’ time.’ One night, she said in a calm and clear voice while looking at me rather lovingly, as if I was to be left in a hopeless world while she was going away to somewhere far better. I could not speak, as if I was staring at the face of my grandpa’s. Death was no longer a taboo for me after his death. Death seemed to be a finite state whereby we drew our conclusions on our existence on the earth. What was beyond life had to remain a perpetual mystery for the living. And the search for immortality and the subsequent failure of such endeavours had puzzled so many great minds in the history.
‘I am going to leave you with Omnipotence, with which you can change the whole world for the better. However, people will still have to die when their time is up.’ She chuckled wickedly in a good state of humour. I admired her immensely for her lack of fear for death and curiously I was not excited about the prospect of becoming the master of this awesomely powerful software, perhaps the most powerful on the earth.
‘Physically, I had been dead for many years after I murdered my husband.’ She stopped and stared at me into the depth of my soul. Of course, I was deeply shocked by this confession at her death bed. I wished at the bottom of my heart that she was only joking.
‘No, it is the truth.’ She had already read my mind. ‘I murdered him because he committed adultery with other women. The main reason was that I could not live with the deceit. He pretended to be in love with me all the time, while he had cheated on me with several other women. Had we had an open relationship, I would live with the fact that he went out to sleep with others, as long as he still loved me at heart. But ours was supposed to be the most conservative marriage of all. We had promised each other to be faithful and in love with each other all the way through our marriage. I had my fair share of love affairs and failed marriages before this last one. We were working on this Omnipotence project and things were gelling so nicely for us as a couple or team. With our love, we were achieving things unimaginable for us as individuals. That is the magic of love, isn’t it? It enables individuals to transcend their own limitations, because of the total coupling of the souls and the bodies.’
‘But why would he want to betray you that way, while he could choose to walk out or have a divorce?’ I asked with a huge blank in my head. I could live with all sorts of people, as long as they were true to themselves, be them murderers, addicts, thieves, or whatever. But I could not live self-deceit, the kind of self-deceit most of us used so often to live behind a veil of alleged decency or correctness or whatever which was supposed to be right in the eyes of the others’. My own belief was that the older we got in life, the wiser we should got to be about these self-deceits. We should strip them off layer by layer and by the age of our 30’s, we should all learn to live quite honestly or at ease with our bodily and spiritual defects, as an individual and a social being. My motto was: ‘If you have to lie to yourself to live at ease, you must be the saddest soul on earth!’
‘Because the source code for Omnipotence at that time was based on the coupling between our two hearts. It is like a lie-detector, only that it also measures the level of togetherness between the two hearts. In other words, he cheated on me and also used me and my love for him for practical reasons. And he was a damn good liar too. Even Omnipotence could not tell whether he loved me truly or not.’ She had lost a bit of her calm self. I thought to myself that it could be that he was truly in love with her at that time. So he did not actually lie. Our hearts or souls were invisible beings capable of things beyond our physical (bodily) capabilities. It was possible that we could truly love a number of people at the same time, however differently. There was no way that Omnipotence could tell the difference between these kinds of love, for differentiation and measurement could only come in physical presence or beings based on a set basis. It was a logical error for the human being to entrust the computer on this sort of tasks. That was also why trained spies could get away from lie-detectors, because they could train these brains to exhibit patterns which fitted the thinking of truth. In a way, I pitied Jane for her possible fatal error in this tragedy. While all conventional marriages prevented the adultery of the body from either side, there was no way we could restrict the minds in similar fashions. The oath stopped only at the body, never at the mind. The freedom of our souls was something beyond control, by default. I could not raise this possibility with Jane. Since she was rather agitated in her own thinking, she could not tune into my thinking at that time. The connection of the minds was something of a miracle, which meant that it could happen but not be controlled as easily as switching on a machine or mechanism. It often had a will of its own. That was why we did not proceed further from the mind-net idea. It was almost as sacred as all our treasured emotions, love being one of them. Its mystery should remain as long as mortals could not know of the truth of death. One could not have it both ways. (finished at the end of 2001).