:: Deux ::

Beijing. An old city, made older by the indolent merging of my previous romanticism towards China and the present reality of its moneyed mirage. Burdened by work, and welded in by a routine exhaustion, I saw the city only as a body of tangled blood vessels―veins rich with commercial miracles, feeding with a ferocious hunger. But for all the economic endorphins, a certain erosion has set in, a deadweight sinking the old, and heralding all things new and Western. Now a graveyard of nerves―both for me and the city―some of my early sentiment towards China has unfairly dissipated.

I was taken to a fashionable part of town after a long, harrowing day of meetings and site recces: Gui Jie, they call it, or Ghost Street. 'Big clubs are completely passé now, and little cafés and restaurants and street bars are much more trendy,' said JD, my colleague and my only guide in Beijing, as we got off the cab and stepped into an evening smeared with smog. 'So all these little places started here, and the locals call it Gui Jie because most of the cafés and bars close around 3 or 4 in the morning.'

'When ghosts and nightcrawlers roam the street,' I remarked with a smile.

She laughed at my literal understanding. I entertain her, I think, and she likes that. There is always something distant about JD, something contained about her. It was the first thing I noticed when I first met her at the conference in Barcelona: she observed everything and everyone at a self-sustained length, an outsider on a social permit pass to life, almost. It's like she understands the need for human warmth and friendly interaction, but she doesn't care much for it. It doesn't make her unlikable, though. Just―honest.

'A certain sort of ghost,' she retorted, casting a conspiratorial eye at a middle-aged Caucasian man, his beefy arms encircling the slender waist of his Chinese companion.

'In a different sort of hell,' I countered. She grinned, cat-like.

'Not always so bad,' she said, her smile filled with secrets.

'Not always so bad,' I agreed, my secrets filled by smiles.

We walked down Ghost Street, which was lined with cosy establishments: bars and pubs and little eateries. Red lanterns were the decor du jour―from far, the street was set aglow with washes of crimsom, titian lights cast down by lanterns and signs strung on trees or fixed on doors. Like scarlet spirits, the contemporary Beijing crowd weave themselves in and out of the street, laughing to the rhythm of music, conversation, and the general noise of youthful enjoyment.

NJ, a young chap from the agency, was waiting for us at one of the restaurants. Next to JD, who is extraordinarily well-travelled for her age and infinitely more authoritative, NJ pales with his scholarly shyness. We made little small talk, while our table was quickly laden with quirky dishes: pepper-tossed shellfish, seared with buttermilk; fresh prawns, boiled in a sweet, tangy waterchestnut broth; chilli lobsters, their reddened shells in echo to the russet interior of the restaurant; barbequed items, dripping still with oil.

I nursed my beer, grateful for the sleepy solace alcohol brought. I was glad for the experience of contemporary Beijing―fodder for my stories, if nothing else!―but again, anchored by the call of work and a disconcerting sadness for impending loss of meine schöner Fremder, I wanted only the siren song of sleep.

Back in the hotel, back in the familiar strangeness of clinical white sheets, I settled down with a copy of Anaϊs Nin's erotica femelle. Between her sensuous prose and the interjections of my own memories, I fell into the darkening of another day done.

***

From another memoir:

'You smoke like you're in love with the cigarette,' I teased.

And he did. He drew deep, desperate breaths, as if his cigarette was a lover, and every contact could be their last.

He shrugged. 'Twelve years. Almost a wife,' he grinned, showing even white teeth. The law of genetic beauty prevails, it seems. More than a decade of nicotine abuse, and he wears the smile of a toothpaste ad. But he does not indulge in his own physical beauty; his aesthetic worth is a part of him, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing better. 'And I really love smoking,' he declared, curling the o in 'love' and drawing it out with passion.

'Then this is a love that will kill you,' I said pleasantly.

A slight wisp of a smile―sardonic and sensual―tugged at his lips. He dragged deeply, as if to prove a point. And then, inching close to gently curl a slender finger into my hair, he said: 'Ah, arme Jean. So das liebt. Und so ist das leben.'