北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)

东 London, 2001 - 11

11

Above Heathrow

2001

He was sitting in a plane, along with the first-class line; sipping tea with milk. He did not know if he had gone through to her, in the way that he wanted – a kind of confused confection of the delight and despair, which was looking for more than companionship. He hoped that he would see her in years - time to engage in all of the strangeness that they enjoyed while sparring together. But, in truth, that would just be a dream. He closed his eyes, seeing the sun for just an instance across the light gray seats, and reflecting that they were the same as the seats in the parliament building. Smiling at the connection between the two pictures, it was not what he expected. He looked again but did not feel the same connection. One look, and it was gone. He thought about the coming war in Iraq - though no one had publicly mentioned that one was coming, all of the people intimately connected already knew. The problem was that serving in such a war is like a gateway drug - you must have more wars to get your fix.

The one point that troubled him, was that she was telling him that he could not have seen 花樣年華¹ when in his memory he had seen it before another Chinese film. She said it had not been out in America, just the coming attractions were in some of the foreign film shops. But he remembered that he had seen it, around the same time he got Bernstein conducting Copland on CD when that was the hippest format available; also, a long conversation with his more Senior consultant in Olean. But he would look this up, because keeping his memory in strict compartmental order was one of the key methods to, on one hand, being a consultant – and on the other (in that very Greek fashion) be a, to be blunt about it, spy. One could just get away with that Aristotelian phrase if one tried. And try he did.

Sadly, remiss to confuse such little details as this, because they were the lifeblood of his cover. The very reason – actually raison d'etre – of his very existence. He must check his story as one of the first things he did. It may seem strange, but it seemed to him that his life depended on it, and began playing out the typing conversation that he would have to - spontaneously it seemed – have with the woman on the next time they spoke. He could not help but remember how he kissed her shoulder, which was a delicious act in itself. The very light tan skin was a powerful intoxication to him. It reminded him all speeding along on that toward empty highway in Eastern New York State the time he had tried driving to the minuscule place where for a brief moment there was activity in Western Pennsylvania. But then it was gone, swallowed up by the controlled twin cities of law: New York and San Francisco. Who under no circumstances would allow the techies to be in charge of the longer, the maws would have no one in charge but the law itself, as interpreted by lawyers, of course. Highly priced lawyers, who made their fame on important cases to cash in on the remunerative cases. It was the way things were done in this world. Though he had no idea how they would be done in the next. Where best minds of my generation congregated. All the boys think she’s a spy.²

How many times these gifts are given and refused because the mind has other things to think about, and only in retrospect does it realize that this was a moment that should have been enjoyed. But that moment was truly gone by the wayside, never to return again. Even, as just now would be the case, a moment which had evaporated just an instant too long, when the eyes could not see. And then everything went forward to miss the next instant. And yet people kept falling for it every time as if the more intelligent centers of the brain took just a bit too long to recognize the internal and eternal conflict. Oblivion is what you crave.³

Strange to him how these visions were powerful in a moment and then gone like the wind. One would think that every vision would encapsulate the now, and that would be enough. But instead, there were visions past, and sometimes future, which would compete for his attention, even though they were not anything extraordinary, and sometimes he would try and fight them away. If only he could live in now. What a joyous thing that would be. It would be like a Buddhist monk, alone on a high fingertip spiral of porous Limestone, overlooking a series of peaks; many of them also stones which were also delicately proportioned. Fingers to the air.

Not to think of the stock market, because he knew that this was not a real rally, by not a real president. He had stolen the election, but the other party accepted this – it was their turn. So, two wars were started, and America became Team USA, as the natural thing to have happened. Whereas in another land, Germany would be Kafkaesque in a trial – everything is formalized, and nothing is taken for granted. Then, after the two wars were ended – no one wished to talk about them again, which left the same cycle in place. It may have been called other things, but it was still Mesopotamia, an effervescence if not in name.

And in that now, he looked over towards the windows, and in the midst of rising to the sun; he wrote upon the back jacket of a book, with a pen that was handed out to him, while he was on the ground searching for his ticket. The exact opposite of Hugo's novels, which were large and opulent. The poem read:

“Nor winds would guide us from the calm,

the moon and all the stars seem hung

not as if affixed to distant sky.”

“The air is rich with moisture

movement made heavy thereby.

It is August, in these regions without

summer, autumn, winter, spring there are,

only seasons of wind:

becalmed, tradewinds, bestorm.”

Looking around and saw many fewer faces than when times were good, a lot of money had been spent making rich people feel at home. But many of those same rich people wanted to be gone from the merely well-off people. And they were going to do something about it – as if this color of the sun was red, if only in the snow. Not given the way Ulysses was told by James Joyce, but bright as the original telling by Homer.

Racing away the time, without which even such doggerel would be a blessing and half. He rolled over and without trying to, was asleep. In time the dreams came to him, and they were confusing, but the central theme was about one word. That one word which would not be mentioned, as if marriage was a fortress besieged. It was a French phrase, translated into a Chinese novel. And it meant only one thing.

Love.

1 Mistranslate by the director as “In the Mood for Love” but more accurately “In Full Bloom.” But in Chinese there is a lilt of intoxication.

2 Kim Carnes, “Bette Davis Eyes”

3 Robert Palmer, “Addicted To Love”