Barbarian Lost (19 page)

I try to help him go somewhere different by referring to his beautiful family. But unwittingly I've stepped on the heart of the matter.

“That's where it's the worst,” he begins, “that clawing filial piety! It's not just that my daughter's grandparents are present in our lives; it's that they attempt to command everything and set the law. How do you think it makes me feel to be told calmly that I can't have a say over my own household? Well done, Confucius! It's madness!”

He recounts how a few months previous, his in-laws sat him down and told him that it only made sense that, since their son has no children and never will, their daughter's daughter should carry their family name: “They assumed that I couldn't possibly care whether my own family name would be carried by my daughter. It's like they're trying to erase anything outside the tradition. Including me.”

“I'm sorry, man,” I say. But I guess I don't seem totally sincere. I can't be, really. Right then the drink gets a hold of him. His eyes cross. Crestfallen, he turns his head to his plate and hangs it there in his own puddle.

Lito has been observing us from across the table. He has tuned in to the Englishman's anger. He's in a good mood and wants to make sure the man's black bile hasn't soured my ideas or spoiled my spirit. He heads my way.

Again we struggle a bit to communicate, but perhaps the
alcohol and the poetry of the occasion have had an impact on Lito's command of English; we somehow manage to make it work.

“You've been travelling?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“Liking your trip?”

“I love travelling. And I love China,” I say benignly, then add, “Travelling has always been my way to know myself. China's showing me a lot about myself and much, much more.”

“You've been to many places?” Lito asks.

“Yes. I've seen a few wonders. But China really fascinates me.”

“You make documentaries, right?”

“Yes.”

“They're travel documentaries?”

“In a way,” I admit. “I guess I don't try to hide that they were filmed on the fly as part of a journey.”

“How do you make films about places that you don't know well?” he asks gently but pointedly.

“You just go and throw yourself in, giving all that you are and everything you have. You try to let the place tell you what to do.”

But I grow impatient to hear from him and abruptly ask, “Anyhow, what are you up? Deryk and James speak highly of you.”

Suddenly, I feel that somehow this passing compliment has hurt Lito. Or perhaps it's the question itself. In any case, Lito answers aggressively. He tells me he's up to nothing worth talking about. I attempt to sympathize with a comment about the tribulations of the artist, but he'll have none of my formulas, true though they may be.

“I used to think a lot about art,” Lito tells me. “This was before I really started making it. At the beginning, I studied art and thought a lot about what it is I wanted or should want from it. But
then I began to find that this approach would not lead me toward art. I decided not to think about art, just to do it. Then I couldn't do it. Now I do whatever I can; it certainly isn't art, and I have no time or energy left over to really create anymore.”

At this moment, Lito's girlfriend comes to his side. I welcome the opening and make awkward attempts at lighter conversation. Deryk also joins the group and manages to bring some smiles back.

In a break in the conversation, Deryk tells me, “There's someone you should probably meet. Unlike the present gang, this person won't be staying late. He taught Chinese to me and James.”

I'm directed to a trellised foyer just outside the pavilion. The night is warm. The scent of flower blossoms is in the air, and the climbing vines that envelop the patio offer some protection from the hum of the gargantuan city.

A man who uses the English name John is waiting with his wife for me. They're both slight. They also have a style that I remember well but am still surprised to see here in the Shanghai night. He wears a white polyester button-down, no tie, with synthetic charcoal dress pants, no blazer. She wears a light dress with a floral print. It has bouffant shoulders and red needlework. It's buttoned to the throat in Chinese fashion. Her hair is long and straight, parted dead centre and brought up and back in the simplest of manners. His hair is shaggy around the ears and back, thick but limp. He wears a pair of robust plastic glasses with an old-fashioned rectangular shape to them. Together they look like a studious young couple of twenty-five years ago. Which is exactly what they were, and remain.

“Deryk tells me you are a filmmaker and an observer of China,” John says.

“Yes, but I haven't done any filming in China yet. I've written a little about China, that's all.”

“About what?”

“About Beijing and the changing shape of Chinese politics.”

“Politics? That's what interests you?”

“No, not really,” I'm forced to admit, “but it's work, and perhaps politics come easy to me and seemed a good place to start.”

“So how do you feel about Chinese politics?”

“At bottom, I think that political structures are an easy way to access the Chinese past. For one, I argue that the dynastic cycle is still very much alive. That the Communists are just another dynasty. A bit different, but the logic's the same.” I'm treading carefully, but John seems to accept what I'm saying.

“Yes, they're the same, but the times are different. So they're different. And the dynasties are all different among themselves. Have you been to Hangzhou?”

“A long time ago, in 1990, with my family.”

“A peculiar time to be in China,” John muses.

“It was. But I liked Hangzhou. I remember visiting the stone boats on its lake. I also remember a traditional medicine shop in the old city. Quite impressive, a beautiful merchant home made of wood, with a stunning assortment of natural medicines in jars and drawers. You're from Hangzhou, I take it?”

“Yes,” John says.

“So tell me about Hangzhou.”

“It's a great city, especially if you're interested in the dynastic cycle.”

“Yet it was a centre of the Song dynasty,” I say. “When China was at its smallest.”

John tells me that the Song era was the most beautiful and
important period in Chinese history, a beautiful time in the shadows, an epoch of doubt and laughter in the warm night, of despair and creation in the final hours.

He goes on to explain that the Song period was unique. In its poems and in its paintings, he argues, the people of that time were reflecting deeply on the human condition and on the mysteries that envelop humankind. It was an existential period for China. So, sure, it was an era of slow contraction, but the sense of doom was cause for philosophical contemplation. “Wisdom,” he adds, “doesn't come from triumph or success, but from defeat and a broken heart.”

“I confess to having thought that existential doubt was something Western and recent. And that the malaise required modern individualism and its comforts.”

“No. You would probably be surprised by how many ideas occurred here long before they were known in the West.”

“Maybe not. I try to have a nuanced view of the West,” I counter.

“The Song had the printing press and many books,” John explains. “The empire was small but wealthy. People spent their time in craft and in studies. They had an active fleet. But power was limited, and the world was dangerous, so to protect against ruin, the merchants would buy shares in each other's commercial expeditions. There was paper money as well. The notions of value and community were already complex. There was material comfort, and the idea of the individual was taking shape.

“There was doubt as well,” he says, arguing that doubt is perhaps the cause of individualism. He speaks of how doubts creep into the world around us and isolate us, making us feel alone, then says, “Art capitalizes on this doubt and creates a bond
among people that restores community. A community of free men, perhaps?” he asks, toying with me. “Individuals who have hurt, lost and come to know themselves in solitude, who see the hurt in others and can empathize, then choose the rules of society for mutual protection and benefit?”

“So what happened to the Song? Where are they now?” I ask, prodding.

“The Mongols happened,” he says with a grin. “The Song were a fleeting shadow. The empire prospered but was not capable of repelling such a big force. The days of the Song were good but couldn't last.” He pauses wistfully, then says with a shrug, “While on the other side of the globe, the West triumphed and went on to claim free society as its own. But we who love and know the Song caught glimpses of it long ago. In those shadows.”

I learn that this intriguing man is a teacher of literature. He has taught Western literature, for which he has long had a passion. His favourite period in the West is also one of shadows: from the late 1800s until the Second World War. He sees it as a period of great doubt and despair but also one of incredibly personal insight and great art. We talk about Dostoevsky and Proust and T.S. Eliot, about the celebration of the oh-so-unique and perishable human being. About our songs and beautiful illusions of truth.

I'm surprised to learn that John knows many of the young men here tonight. Deryk and James, the groom, were his students. Lito had also studied at his university. He introduced Lito to Deryk and James.

John thinks highly of Lito. His bravery is to be admired, he professes, then explains that he knew him a long time ago during the Tiananmen incident. He tells me that the teenaged Lito—he was but a young man of fifteen or sixteen at the time—protested
a lot. He was often out in the streets alone, criticizing the government loudly. Coming from such a bold young man, the words were strong and people listened.

John excuses himself; he and his wife must take their leave, he says. All through our conversation she has stood quietly by his side, smiling in support of her husband, impressing upon me a sense of her complicity in his every word, as though he had spoken for the both of them. Our farewells are warm and rich. Deryk was right: John is a great teacher.

When I return to the party, people are moving to another pavilion, to what was once perhaps a clubhouse or mess hall, now transformed into a sumptuous nightclub. The stone patio at the front where people once came to drink lemonade or gin and tonics after tennis or croquet has been glassed in. Instead of tables and chairs, the area is laid out with huge low beds, each looking out through the windows at the dark lawn and the city lights beyond, each separated from the next bed by thick red curtains, each offering luxurious cushions and tiny tables—to rest the stem of one's opium pipe on, it would seem. The club ranges through various rooms over two storeys. The walls are painted scarlet. The lighting is veiled and strategic. The several bars all offer fancy cocktails.

The guests fill the chambers. We're a smaller, younger group. The ceremony and banquet are now over. This is a cash bar and an open club. A few elders—some very elderly—remain in the corners. An old woman takes a discreet perch off to the side, where she wears an expression of mild reproach, as if she were a chaperone. Yet she watches the youth intently. Almost a little too curiously, a little too interested in the revelry of youth. Secretly dreaming, perhaps, of her own youth, now so distant.

The night grows progressively looser and vaguer. A DJ beckons to us, first with easy and familiar rhythms, then gradually increases his forays into beat. The bride and groom lead the way. Their love is playful and infectious. We smile and cheer and laugh, and lose ourselves in the twilight.

A group of us take position in a nook off the dance floor. We lounge around a big sofa. I barely notice the waiter who keeps the drinks coming and am remotely aware when a bill for our many drinks arrives. Lito, seated beside me, takes one look and becomes agitated. He shouts quick hard syllables at the waiter from across the coffee table. Then he jumps to his feet and grabs the terrified young man with both hands and violently pulls him forward across the table. The slender chap sweeps the drinks off the tabletop with his kicking legs as he flies toward us. Lito winds up to clobber the man, now pinned to the sofa. But Allen and I grab Lito and pry away the young waiter, who quickly clambers to safety.

I'm not sure what is happening or why. Did Lito object to the tally? In any case, no part of me accepts that this waiter should be beaten here in front us. Luckily, I have no untangling to do. Allen helps Lito regain his balance and is talking to him calmly. I don't understand what is being said, but I can tell that Allen is simultaneously allowing the man to vent and figuring out what happened—and trying to turn Lito's mind away from the occurrence and the emotions it has brought. Allen is calm; he's acting as if nothing has happened and nothing about it will be said. Before long, he has succeeded in dispelling the tension and everything's back to normal.

But Lito's seat is empty; he has moved to the back of the room and now stands against a wall with his head low. A moment later,
he has disappeared, not perhaps from the party but from our vicinity. Once more we are joyous and make merry.

I find my old friend Deryk leaning against another wall. We laugh heartedly at the drama that just unfolded. We both feel that Lito, the poor soul, will probably never be seen again after tonight. Deryk shakes his head for a while, then lifts it once more, to smile at his own adventure in this crazy world; at fate, which has brought him to be marooned on Chinese shores; at how people come and go from his horizons bringing knowledge, yes, but mysteries too. “So let's raise a glass to present company,” he muses.

I join him in raising our glasses, then pass Viv on the way to the dance floor. She's sipping a glass of water. She has been dancing; her cheeks are rosy and her dark eyes are sparkling. “Are you going to dance?” she asks. “I wasn't sure you were the type.”