The Night Shining Pearl

Sun Jing scoured the terrain. It was a forbidding landscape, wrought inhospitable by the tireless efforts of marauding bands of Red Guards. A pang of sadness ran through his heart. He could never understand how people could spend so much energy on destroying things.
But, apart from the smouldering ashes that used to be a temple, the overturned oxen cart and the rotting vegetables it aimed to carry to the market, a couple of smashed Buddha statues at a smouldering pagoda, and the leaves of a historical book blowing in the wind, the Karst landscape was beautiful. The spectacular hills, shaped like anything your imagination would allow them to be be, rose into a sky where billowing summer clouds formed dragons and warriors. It was difficult for the lone observer to grasp so much beauty and so much devastation all at once.
He shook his head and mused aloud, “So this is the result of four thousand years of civilization.”
Jing craned his neck as he looked towards a distant line of trees that formed part of an ancient plantation or garden shading the dilapidated roof of a temple, that might once have been beautifully pruned.
Jing, himself, was reduced to little more than a beggar. His old skin hat looked like an extension of his parched face. His shoes were two sizes too big, but by now his feet had swollen nicely into them and he hardly felt pain in them anymore. He wore a ragged jacket that smelled like it looked and not even the flies would venture too close to it. On its breast pocket was a badge of Stalin. Although Jing didn’t know to whom the face on the badge belonged, he kept it because he liked the moustache. In his pocket he kept half a packet of cigarettes that he scrounged from a well disposed red guard who swigged too hard from a bottle. Jing didn’t smoke, but the cigarettes were useful for softening hard police hearts or swaying red guards.
In the distance Jing noticed a plume of steam and he instantly knew that it belonged to the train that was to take him from that place, if he could manage to flag it down. He squinted his eyes for a closer look. Shards of glass crunched under his feet. The whole platform was covered in them and they shone like diamonds in the midday sun. All the windows were shattered. Log books found a last use as toilet paper. In fact, the only thing in the area that looked fresh and new was the portrait of Mao, smiling from a soiled wall in the waiting area. The station was a lonely, bitter place and Jing thought about his recent friends, who all had a bad habit of dying. His stomach churned. He did not possess hard cash to procure a breakfast, a luxury that now needed to wait until he was home or in jail.
Jing gave two steps forward. His leg hurt. One of those small, wretched bullets that cost so many lives navigated its way through his leg’s muscles. He wiped the bump on his brow, caused by the very same rifle that fired the bullet. The train became audible. Jing clasped his trouser pocket, which contained, next to the bullet that nearly cost him his leg or his life, a treasure of inestimable value.

****

A student was sitting in a lecture hall in England. In the background he heard the professor’s voice like wind blowing through leaves. He was making a necklace out of staples and wondered what his girlfriend would say if he presented that to her for her birthday. He also wondered whether her lack of English was a disadvantage or a blessing in disguise. He was too young for such commitments, he thought, but she wouldn’t understand. He completed work on his jewellery and pulled at it to test its strength. He smiled at his small feat of engineering.
If only, if only he had listened to the professor who was rambling on about his recent stay in China and what he had learned there, the bored student might have saved himself and a wonderful young woman, unimaginable heartache.

****
One day, about 26 years ago on a dark stormy night, in Mayday Hospital, Southwest London, a stork flew by. This stork presented eighteen year old Rebecca with a bundle, containing John. John was the little harvest she reaped for thinking that she made life’s rules.
Although Rebecca gained a baby boy, she lost her boyfriend, Michael. Michael, a caring, quiet sort of man, bespectacled and working for a new product developing firm, was 16 years her senior and would not accept being entrusted with parental duties. Firstly, he never thought of himself as a father. Secondly, he never thought of himself as the father. Michael was in Belgium learning all about how an old variety of bolt could not possibly be fitted into a new variety of nut.
The young Rebecca’s ambitions were as explosive as her nature. She lived for the moment, cared little for the future and when a rock guitarist from a band only he thought was famous suggested taking drugs to bring out the creativity in them, she agreed to become creative. When reality revealed itself after a nervous visit to the chemist’s she turned to religion. She turned her back on rock stars and designers and decided to bring up the baby herself. For this she had the support of her Catholic Grandmother, who was only too proud to become a grandmother.
Rebecca herself became painfully religious. She tried most of the religions she knew, including Buddhism and Paganism, but eventually settled upon Catholicism after a long visit to a priest along with her grandmother. But being a perfect mother gave Rebecca little time to practise her religion and she became progressively disillusioned with her faith, but thought it wise not to inform the Catholic school where she had become head administrator.
John was watching his mother repacking his bags after he had just carefully packed them. Out flew the things he deemed necessary, like his tequila with a worm in it, imported all the way from Mexico, and these items were replaced by things his mother deemed necessary, like a toothbrush and a small collection of family photos.
John didn’t notice that he had been stuck in his teens for much longer than the average person, but his mother did and she thought that getting away from home would do wonders for her son. So, when one day, he said that he had seen an advertisement about teaching in the far east, his mother started encouraging him to go, knowing full well that in his mind it was his idea. She also looked forward to going to see him. At first he was the reason she couldn’t travel, now, perhaps he might help her realise this dream.
John loved his mother far more than he realised and he thought that in her heart she objected to him going.
“Did you buy that map of Beijing yesterday?” asked his mother.
“I’m going to Shanghai,” he answered, imagining how tomorrow she will tell her friends that he had gone to Saigon, next week to Hong Kong and in a month, God knows, maybe Edinburgh.

John wasn't renowned as a big drinker, but he certainly fancied a tipple. The night before his flight, he went out for a few drinks with his friends and ended up being carried out of the bar by the bouncers, having passed out. He thus made the arduous trip to Heathrow in utter agony and had to endure his mother repeatedly warning him about the evils of overindulgence.
As John walked down the tunnel to the aeroplane, he thought that this was not the way he envisaged his flight to Shanghai, or Saigon or wherever he was flying. He felt terrible. He cursed himself for drinking so much, since he went out telling himself that he would not drink more than two pints. That now, was water under the bridge and the headache and nausea would not be left behind in England with his bottle of tequila and his soiled name.
John could not believe how plausible his drunken antics seemed the night before. Today however, embarrassment and shame made him happy to leave England. Maybe a year abroad would make The George’s faithful forget. Last night he felt like a conqueror, today it feels as if he was going into exile.

****
One rainy afternoon in South London nearly turned into a disaster for Wilhelm. He had just arrived that week from Stade, a small town outside Hamburg to take up a position in an engineering company. But as he was walking back to his home in Balham, his key fell through a hole in his pocket and disappeared down a gutter. He could just about spot the key dangling perilously close to a torrent of water by peering through a hole.
At that moment a woman appeared. She looked just as scruffy as he did and wore a hemp pullover and a striped woollen hat. Over her shoulder she carried a big duffel bag. Seeing the worried man, she asked what the matter was.
“My key,” he said, pointing down the hole and feeling embarrassed about his lack of English.
“I can see it,” she said, in an accent that betrayed her middle class upbringing.
“Fortunately a modern girl always has something handy in her bag,” she said and put the bag on the ground before opening it. Out fell a bag of oranges, a dog-eared passport, two soggy sandwiches wrapped in yesterday’s Sun and a crowbar.
Seeing Wilhelm’s eyes stretched, she sweetly said, “You never know when you might need one of these.”
A torchlight, a large set of keys and finally a wire coat hanger appeared. She took the coat hanger and turned it into a long hook, with which she deftly fished out the key.
Wilhelm decided to treat her to dinner, since she was the first person to be nice to him since coming to England. Within the next three months he discovered that she was called Christine, was a qualified teacher, but didn’t teach as she was living in a squat, was thirty three years old, had a boyfriend called Tom and was pregnant with his child, and not Tom’s.
She showed up late one stormy Wednesday evening at Wilhelm’s bedsit and he ushered her in, seeing that she had something to say.
He immediately brewed some coffee. At that time, he already had a very good idea why she was there, because it radiated from her face and a month ago the they had a little issue with torn latex. But he was happy. Perhaps this was the chance to erase Tom out of their lives.
She took the cup in her icy hands and smiled at her man. She instantly knew he would not object to the baby and she was right. Two minutes later they were sitting on the threadbare sofa, mingling their tears of joy, before finally she looked up to him and said kindly, “I guess I owe Tom an explanation.” That was the end of Tom.
And thus, from its humble beginnings in the presence of a Balham gutter, a fairy tale began and out of this fairy tale two daughters were born, of which Rosa was the younger. For the next few years they lived in London and then moved to Switzerland and Rosa changed from being an English maiden, to a Swiss Mädchen.
Rosa looked the typical Swiss girl. Her natural blonde hair and big blue eyes made her attractive. She might have been considered slightly big boned, because she was not a tall girl, but she prided herself that there wasn't an ounce of fat on her body. She went for a swim every day and a long ride through the village past the first few farms right to the railway line and then back home on her two wheeled wire mule, otherwise known as a bicycle. This she did come rain or shine. She especially loved it when it snowed, but hen she usually opted for a walk. Most of Rosa’s life was spent in Switzerland, but apart from the beauty of her surroundings, she felt largely indifferent to the country in which she lived. In fact Rosa was indifferent to civilization.
Outwardly, Rosa appeared the epitome of civilization, always impeccably Swiss, but, as she said to friends, this was just a ruse for the barbarian that lay beneath. She wasn’t much of a barbarian either actually, and avoided most forms of trouble, despite saying that she intended to either die young or not at all. Rosa was predisposed to places she called “wild”, and Zurich’s famous night clubs were not on her list of wild places.
She loved Africa, South America and Asia and their simplicity, which she viewed in stark contrast to the self-righteousness of the west. Rosa wanted to be in real places with real people and she had spent all her short adult life looking for the soul of humankind, because, perhaps, she thought, it would be easier than finding her own. As far as she was concerned westerners lived behind a façade, hid their insecurities behind makeup or newspapers and therefore she felt a stranger among the familiar places of her youth.

She was now packing her bags to go to Shanghai. She applied for a transfer to the United Nations’s office for Economic and Social Affairs and was delighted to get in. It was only going to be an office job in Shanghai, but she would have a lot of free time and holidays so she could travel almost as much as she wanted too. China wasn’t the most exotic place she’d been to, but among 1.4 million people she was sure she would find something that would interest her.
“Rosa, you better check that you have packed your passport,” said her mother, who no longer possessed even a single crowbar.
“It is packed,” said Rosa. Even though living in Switzerland, they always spoke English at home. Rosa usually spoke English to her father too.
Rosa’s mother had travelled a lot and Rosa often thought of her mother’s travels. Christine had been to China before. She had, in a sense, been to China. She’d been to a part of China that wasn’t China when she was there: Hong Kong. Incredible, thought Rosa, the power man has over geography.
That night her friends came round for the quintessential Swiss meal; fondue, a meal organised by her mother and lamely objected to by Rosa. Even the red wine was Swiss, a wine called Gamaret, palatable and fruity said her father, but according to Rosa it was just wine and she ate her fondue in the company of chattering friends, all wondering who would drop the first bit of bread in the creamy sauce and be forced to respect the time honoured tradition associated with this sin, which is jumping into the nearest lake.
****

John boarded the aeroplane. He had been to Malta and the south of France, but had never been on a plane this size and he was happy for its size, because he could not imagine how he could ever get his head, which felt at least three times its normal size, into a smaller aircraft. He slowly made his way past countless people already seated. Finally he sat down, but soon another man told him that he was sitting in the wrong seat.
John moved to the seat behind the one he was just getting comfortable in and sat down next to a morose looking man. The stranger was looking out of the window, with an intense, longing gaze. John wondered why the man was in the aeroplane if what he was looking for was clearly outside.
The stranger was well-dressed, early thirties, tall and muscular, and he was casually, but stylishly dressed. John thought that this was the type of man women liked. Still, there was something about the fellow that filled John with apprehension. John did not think that this could be a good man.
A few young Chinese girls came walking past. The man suddenly looked up and appeared to scrutinise them intently. It seemed as if he was looking for someone, or something. The girls, wearing glasses and being very studious in appearance, wore their bright rucksacks on their chests, each had a small stuffed animal or two dangling from her bag. They were chatting happily in their native tongue. They were certainly students going home to see their families for the holidays. As the girls passed, the stone faced looking man sunk back into a reverie. John wondered what possessed the stranger, but could not imagine that it was something aboveboard. At least, thought John, he only had to share a few short hours in this man’s company, and then he would be free of him forever.
A young woman sat down next to John. She looked much friendlier and started to chat to him. She asked John where he was going, and John said Shanghai. She was going to Shanghai too. She said her name was Rosa and she was working for the UN.
Despite John’s silent disproval, she asked the other man his name. He said that he was called Harry. He was friendly enough, but didn’t look like someone who liked speaking much and the wry smile he produced appeared to take more effort than singlehandedly building the Great Wall. It was obvious to John that he was a man full of secrets. The man said that he was an engineer and Rosa said that her father was one too. Harry asked her whether she had been to China, but she said she hadn’t. Harry mentioned that he had lived in China before.
Rosa asked him what he thought of China. For the first time a smile that looked more natural crept across his cheeks. The smile lingered a few seconds and then his faced turned stony again. He looked out of the window of the aeroplane, then back to Rosa. “China is an interesting case,” he said, sounding almost clinical, but then his tone became grave. "China is a powerful country and it defeated me the first time round. Now I'm going back to settle the score."