Two months in the life of miserable old, me: Part 1

Saturday 12th January.

I’m sitting with my wife in the orbit café on what is a very relaxing Saturday afternoon. We finished our coffee a while ago, but she is reading her book, I my newspaper, both of us happily lingering in the genial atmosphere of this café. The bustle of it, the talk of people around us, the music – all of this is very soothing to us, and it’s lovely to come out here and escape from ourselves, our marriage, our loneliness and somehow feel connected to the world.

As well as the ambiance of the café and the buzz of Saturday afternoon, there’s also a mood of freshness in the air, it being the tenth of January. The misery and doom of Christmas and New Year is now over, and really, I have to admit to feeling quite positive and hopeful about life for some reason.

And so I thought I’d take this opportunity to begin writing my ‘story’. I say ‘story’ because I’m not really sure what exactly it’s going to be yet. It may well be a diary. But I don’t know, I just felt like writing something about my life; it was a New Year’s resolution that I promised myself, and feeling unusually energised this afternoon, I thought I’d make a start. I just want to write a bit about my life. Perhaps to try and explain myself, perhaps as a therapeutic device. I’m really not quite sure.

So then my wife and I are sat at our table. To the onlooker, who sees me with my newspaper and her with her book, sitting here ignoring each other, occasionally snappy and short with one another – my wife trying to tell me something, pointing surreptitiously to above her mouth, indicating. I confused, she getting angry. Wondering what on earth she wants, then realising that I obviously have cream on my face and with embarrassment wiping it off – to the onlooker we look like the typical, middles class, ageing, married couple. Frustrated and unhappy with our lives, lonely; yet all the same sensitive and hopeful, come here to the café in the (admittedly vain) hopes of meeting other people, of socialising, of bumping into I don’t know who, who’s going to miraculously wave their magic wand and rescue us, my wife and I, from the treadmill doom of our lives, and give us back that happiness that once seemed, in our youth, our God given right.

My wife and I usually bicker and argue. Today at least out shopping in town, we were both sufficiently happy at heart that it didn’t take a nasty turn. By the time we reached the café, and sat down to have coffee and lunch, our spirits rose and we were able to put aside the quarrel. On other days though it can get really bad. Thankfully not today.

So we came and sat in the café, not saying a single word to each other, ignoring each other, yet somehow eternally bonded, just like the earth and the moon, or the sun and the earth or what you will. We neither of us have many friends, and ironically it is our marriage, our close union, that has led to our profound loneliness. As she reads and I read, we are both secretly hoping that someone else will approach, perhaps a young person, for her a young man, for me a young lady, though I don’t really care, and bowl us over with the spirit of youth; someone positive and radiant, who can listen to all our problems and complaints, listen to our life stories and bring us back into the world of the living. My wife I know………oh what’s this?……She’s asking what on earth I’m doing, scowling at me furtively, as though it’s a crime to write. I think she knows I’m writing some sort of memoir, or analytical thesis of my life, our marriage and our problems. She’s not impressed at all, and scowls, irritated at me, as though to tell me not to embarrass her and the entire world by writing. Anyway as I was saying I know my wife often talks about going to a psychiatrist to talk of her problems. She is, like me, desperately unhappy. She wants more from life, she wants understanding.

Of course in the end, nobody and no solution, miraculously jumps out of the walls of the café, to rescue my wife and I from the misery of our fate. We are alone, in a lonely world, and only have one another. No one will save us, and we are, as someone once said, like two convicts chained together, left on a rudderless dinghy, floating aimlessly through the emptiness of a dark and barren ocean.

Monday 19th January.

I don’t feel like writing at all today but am forcing myself to do it. Ten days have elapsed since I made that last positive entry. Needless to say that positive mood soon deserted me, I felt sick, sad and sulphourous and in no mood to write and so didn’t. Now I’ve decided to force myself, otherwise it’s not going to happen. I have to do something. There has to be some point to life.

All day and as I write now – I’ve been in the house all day! What a mistake! – I have felt infinitely, infinitely doleful: depressed, low and angry. Just dreadful. On a Monday, especially now that I no longer work, I often feel like this. So, so depressed, so that my stomach aches, moody, angry and aggressive. The last thing I want or desire is sympathy. I loathe myself when I’m like this, loathe myself. I am absolutely vile. I feel such pent up anger in my stomach and breast, I feel so low and dispirited….I just can’t explain it.

I am so irritated and could barely sit with my wife through dinner this evening. She served up her favourite, foulest, platter of filth – the starchy, tasteless, disgusting jacket potato and salmon. I wasn’t even hungry in the first place; but to be forced to plough my way through this bland, lumpy, choking food, so hard to swallow that I had to take drink after drink; when a depression, an irritable and bitter anger is rankling within me, chafing the pit of my stomach and making my nerves jangle and tingle with pins and needles like irritation so that I would just love to whack my wife across the face or slaughter her with my knife; to serve me this dry, dry food which is barely swallowable, when she knows, I mean knows, that I detest it and have done for God knows how long; and as I force my way through this gruelling test, struggling to force the filth down me, my spirits sinking – God I was suicidal – oh so, so low – persistently having to stop myself from standing up and screaming bitterly, angrily, pathetically, violently, displaying all my unspoken unhappiness; as I do all this, as I find myself so bile-invested and oven-baked, as a cauldron of sulphur bubbles away in my innards, I find that she is in one of her gormless moods, where she says nothing, where she is withdrawn and anaemic, a ghoul, a corpse, a zombie and so I stare angrily at her, she oblivious, the mirthless, evil look in my eye scouring over her face, her ageing, horrible face, the coarse and fattening skin, the ever more prominent moustache, her dry, stale hair, the sticky out ears – the look of worn out misery makes her face look awful like a half deflated football, you’d like to punch and stamp on; the tarted up face; her make up unable to hide her ageing skin, her dissatisfied spirits; as I see the mankiness of her face and hair, like a dog that’s had its day, recall how her breath is now bad, just like the dog’s, just like my own – when I see and think all this! – God I’d love to kill her. She was actually attractive in her youth. But as she’s gotten older and when she’s unhappy and doesn’t smile; when moods of withdrawal or dissatisfaction infest her, then God she’s an ugly pig.

I’m disgusted with myself for all of this. When I am in one of these moods, there is no positive thought at hand to lift me. Depression in some of its forms may in some ways be healthy. Sometimes its good to feel sad – it shows a sensitive spirit. But when it comes at you like this, mixed up with such pent up rage, hatred, anger and loathing, so that any seine human being can only be yet further depressed by their own inhumanity; when nothing, utterly nothing can lift you, when it is clear as day that there is no God, no meaning, no hope, no nothing; on such a day I don’t know what to do or where to put myself. You just have to ride out the storm, brutal as it may be. Thinking of stabbing my wife through the neck with a knife is not a healthy state of mind to be in; but it is the state that I’m in.

Tuesday 20th January

I’m feeling better today thank God. Perhaps it just being Tuesday has perked me up. Also I went for an early morning walk with my dog; the purity of the morning, the joy of exercise; the sweet smell of the fresh countryside in the morning dew – all of this was so salutary. As well as this my wife has been irritable today, which rather perversely has cheered me up. I don’t know, I guess I just prefer her when she vents her anger on me. I dislike her when she is withdrawn and gormless, I dislike it when she loses all hope that she stops communicating. So it was nice that we argued a bit and she got angry with me: it means she still has hope that her problems can be solved; in complaining about them to me, she is actually showing some far of hope that her life can get better.

This evening lifted yes, but still in a somewhat sombre mood, I spent forty-five minutes looking at myself naked in the full length bathroom mirror (my wife thought I was in the bath). My naked body really depresses me now. I was never like this when young, and never imagined such a shallow thing could affect one like myself, usually so unconcerned about these things. But it is depressing. I guess in the first place I should describe my general appearance. Physically I’m pretty insignificant. I’m small and thin. My looks are plain at best, my skin coarse and porridgey, the legacy of acute acme in my teenage days. I’ve been balding since twenty-one, and my nose is red. My teeth aren’t great either: manky, miscoloured, misshapen. Though I would never have said that my physical appearance ever really perturbed me too much, now as I get older I see that, the morose and uptight, unhappy persuasion that has been mine throughout life, must at least to some extent be attributed to my physical inferiority. I realise this now somewhat. For had I been, like my brothers, taller, stronger and of better physical pedigree, I think I would’ve had a more relaxed and happier approach to life, would’ve been more at home in this world like they. Especially, I acknowledge now, that my small stature, must have had a strong bearing on my moods, my role in life, my character.

But like I say, I feel my looks have indirectly and from a distance been a cause of my moroseness; low and dispirited as I’ve been throughout my life, I never spent ages in front of the mirror, wishing I had better looks as if that were the key to my unhappiness. No, not at all. I always felt that it was simply in my constitution, my genetic make up to be so. I always felt my problems were of the heart, mind and spirit, not of the body.

So never really prone to worry too much about my looks, even now, in clothes I don’t feel overly worried about myself. But the naked human body, the ageing naked body, this is something that profoundly depresses me.

As I stand in front of the mirror I can see my feeble, pathetic, pasty-white insignificant body: the shoulders and chest, so feeble, unmanly, underdeveloped. Why could I not have inherited the broad, beautiful shoulders of my brothers? Mine are so angular, slanting, so weak and puny. So non-existent. My chest also is as if not present. My nipples are there; but the muscle is missing. My chest looks flat and weany. Plus it’s covered in ugly black chest hair which conceals what chest I do have. Worse than this I’m beginning to get deposits of fat in my pecs, so that my chest is getting saggy.

Yet I am even more depressed by my stomach. Had I been a larger, more burly or overweight man, I don’t think it would look so out of place. But on me, on my skinny frame, it is immensely and profoundly demoralising to see my expanding waist. I don’t know, I wouldn’t even say it’s that large. But unsupported by any muscle tension, as I stand in front of the mirror, it sags and bevels to such an alarming degree, almost making me appear, after a meal, pregnant. My body shape is all wrong. On top no shoulders, no chest, no power. And this insipidness of upper body eventually giving way to the unsupported abdomen which bloats out, naturally I have to say, but all the same so unsatisfactorily.

And when I compare my awful body to the fantastic images our society is constantly inundated with, of muscular men with brawny chests and beautiful shoulders tapering down to a slim, toned six pack stomach, the inverse of my body, how can I not feel but depressed? Don’t get me wrong, I know my body is natural. I know my body is the one dished out to the good majority of men. I know the falsity of celebrity image, that behind the façade that these hunks present, their lives are often incredibly miserable, they are just as depressed as me, their bodies are drug-enhanced, and eventually they loose their shape, succumbing to the natural human vices of gourmandizing and slacking off, as well as succumbing to age. It has never bothered me that some brain-dead, infantile Hollywood star with his pecs, abs and macho body should live his life as he does; the facts are there is more to life. I am intelligent and sensitive, in the end the mind and spirit outlasts the body. It is shallow to obsess oneself with one’s looks. Yet for all this I have to confess, at times, and more so as I age, I am profoundly depressed by the state of my body.

The skin gets saggier as well. And mine is so pale and white, so anaemic. It is not pretty. Warts and blotches appear here and there. As I look into the mirror I see my loinal region. It is revolting. My saggy, hanging stomach bevels over the foul coarse hair of my pubis. My small and misshaped penis, hangs over my disproportionally large testicles. My penis looks, and is pathetic. It should be a leader somehow, dominating the testes. Instead the testes appear large and dissatisfied; irritated by the lack of leadership afforded by the feeble penis. My scrotum is saggy. There are some warts on it. Enough.

When I came out of the bathroom, my wife who’d been waiting outside, exchanged a suspicious glance with me. We didn’t say anything but just walked past each other, each of us expressing irritation with the other, in the manner, the close, intimate manner, that has become habitual to us over the past twenty years. I think she knows that I had and have been looking at my body, and that it depresses me, even though we never talk of such things. My wife has not seen my naked body very much over the last ten years. I have only very rarely seen hers in that time. We avoid such things like the plague. As we grow older (and beginning at the point when Joanna, our child, left for university) the mere thought of getting naked with one another, of making love is utterly, utterly nauseous and repulsive. Physically, emotionally and spiritually it would be just unbearable, traumatic. God it would be dreadful. It would open up a Pandora’s box that we are desperate to keep a lid on.

My wife, I know, is incredibly, profoundly depressed by her body. Again she is no shallow person. Not one to be obsessed by celebrity culture. On the contrary she has always been a sensitive, intelligent, decent and kind woman. Yet she is mortified at times over the state of her body. Perhaps as a woman, and perhaps because when younger she was an attractive girl, so that she has been accustomed to linking her looks to her personality – perhaps because of this it is more depressing for her than for me. Certainly in her caring role as a nurse, that she held when younger, her kindness, leadership and the good feeling she infested her charges with, so that the people she cared for were flattered that she cared for them – certainly all of this went hand in glove with her good looks as a young woman. She was something of an angel. And it would’ve been hard to say back then, that that woman could ever be so upset by anything so shallow as her appearance. She seemed so strong and wise you see, and even, in the way she cared for all and sundry, and chose plain old me as her husband, to be disinterested in people’s looks, even to despise good looks. But perhaps that applied to other people and not herself. For herself she liked to be beautiful, it gave her power. It came as something of a surprise to me then, to see that woman so sure of herself, gradually loose her confidence as she aged and lost her looks. As her beauty faded and people thought less of her because of it, she really took it to heart and was acutely aware of her loss of power. And so realising she was less willing to take an interest in other people’s lives, as though she were not wanted anymore; as though it was a bit absurd and embarrassing that an old trout like herself should try and care for other people’s problems. She felt more insignificant, no longer needed. She became more and more withdrawn and deflated, and as a reaction to feeling herself no longer wanted, deliberately huffy with people, uncommunicative. For example, just recently, at a wedding, so many of my family, recalling the spirited, youthful, ever so pleasant Anna of old and seeing the evidence of her physical demise, and feeling sorry for her, made a genuine effort to talk to her. But she answered their questions sparingly and huffily; as though my relatives were just being kind to an old lady. Anyway she is withdrawn and depressed.

And I’ve seen her body. It is, sadly, I have to say, depressing. Her pale skin like mine. The build up of excessive cellulite in the thighs and buttocks. The saggy, bloated stomach; her pear shaped, dumpy body; the old, wrinkling, saggy skin, the coarseness, the warts. The contours of her body tapering hideously around her huge stomach and her huge thighs and finishing at her vagina. The sheer mankiness of the ageing, female genitals, that makes you want to wretch – her pubic area is so misshaped, almost inverted in comparison to that of a fresh, young nymph. Her stomach sags over it from above; her thighs sag onto it from the sides; and the thing itself, surrounded by manky pubic hair, fattened and expanded, saggy and inverted – I cannot express my horror of it.

And in an age of perfect breasts, of unnatural cosmetic breasts, my wife has every reason to feel ashamed and dispirited with hers. Not buxom in youth, it is unclear whether she has any breast left now. Whatever it is that fills her bra, be it fat deposits or breast tissue, lies to the outer edge of each side of her chest; precisely, it is sagging on the west side to her south west, and on the east side to her south east. Two small pockets of breast tissue or fat, miles apart, pointing down and outwards, looking saggy, misshapen and long ago moribund.

This is the fate of most women. It is to indicate that they are past the age of child rearing, to put men off. Go to any of earth’s primitive tribes and you will see women with exactly these breasts. They are utterly natural, but foul and hideous in comparison, with those of a young maiden, and with modern imagery. I do not know what to say. I have seen my wife naked on a few occasions. The feeble saggy breasts, the overhanging stomach, the manky, inverted pubis region – God it is awful. Clothing forms such a profound, profound part of the human condition. Without clothes the human body is by and large dreadful. When I see my naked wife, I think of an ape woman.

Perception and Delusion

One Sunday at noon, a woman exited a church. It was the first time she’d been in a long while, and she felt pleased by herself as if she’d just taken part in something onerous but worthwhile. The people had been so nice. One man in particular, whom she’d shaken hands with and said ‘peace be with you’ had made a deep impression on her.

‘What a nice man, what a genuinely nice man. It’s people like him who make the church. They’re kind, courteous and respectful, they’re pleasant to all, irrespective of what they are like, what they look like. They take the Christian attitude to heart. They go week in week out to church, and don’t have a bad bone in their bodies. It’s from people like that that I have to learn.’

In her heart however she thought him a bit of a bore. As a woman she could never find that sort of man sexually appealing. His grey beard; his skinny, scrawny looking body; his intellectual looking face, his spectacles and unmanly bearing; his niceness, sensitivity and meekness – none of this attracted her, and she found him, in that sense, contemptible. She liked her men to be men.

However she wanted to make peace with the world. She was getting older now, and was more and more lonely. It wasn’t a time to be petit. You had to open your heart and love everyone, even if you felt disinclined to. Otherwise you couldn’t say you were a good person. That man was exactly the sort of person she’d often been derogative of in the past, the sort she’d bullied at school. But she didn’t want to be nasty anymore. She wanted to be fair to all.

‘He is a really nice man. I mean so what if he isn’t cool, if he doesn’t feel at home in a nightclub or at a party or doesn’t have fun. So what if he prefers staying in the house, reading a book or studying the Bible. So what if he doesn’t know how to dress well, or looks a bit of a misfit. Who cares if he sports a beard like that. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter.’

She genuinely wanted to be kind. If she couldn’t make room in her heart for men like him, she really wouldn’t be happy with herself. He was a million miles away from the world she inhabited, the fashionable, chic, trendy world, the world of partying and having fun. But that wasn’t important.

She headed into town and went and had a coffee. She was so pleased with herself for having gone to church and for having felt good thoughts, that now she felt she deserved a treat. It was time to relax. She pulled out a celebrity gossip magazine and started to read. She was glad to get back to this bright, happy world after the stuffy tedium of church.

Shortly after she had left the church a man had come out. It was the first time he’d been to church in a long while.

‘What a nice woman, what a genuinely nice woman. It’s women like her who make the church what it is. Rain, snow or shine they’re always there. They have such good, pure hearts, they have given themselves up to Christianity entirely. That woman is a bride of Christ. The love of Jesus runs through her heart and soul, it flows through her veins. She thinks of orphans, of the homeless, she helps the hungry, the destitute. She is good, honest and decent. I have to learn from people like her, I have to.’

In his heart however the woman was not quite his cup of tea. Apart from the fact that he found her common, uneducated and anti-intellectual, she was also unattractive, not his idea of a woman at all, not with her corpulent, lumpy body shape or her red hair. And her outfit was drab and dowdy. It clashed with her hair.

Yet he knew he had to learn to like her. He had recently gone through a crisis in his life, felt lonely, unloved and out of sorts. And he’d come to realise that if you expected to get sympathy in this world, you had to be nice to all, to overlook such trivial things like appearance, especially in one such as that woman, who was so good and kind hearted, and who deserved to be loved. If he let his natural feelings run wild, he felt only annoyance and dislike of that undistinguished little woman. She was exactly the sort he had scoffed at and bullied at school. He just felt disinclined to like her, she didn’t appeal. Yet he knew that he had to like her, otherwise he wasn’t a good person.

‘She is a really wonderful woman. I mean so what if she’s a bit common and speaks with an accent, so what if she didn’t go to university or didn’t get an education. So what if she’s unattractive or dresses in such gaudy clothes. It’s her right to dress as she likes. You can’t go around persecuting people just because they’re a bit different. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter. And in any case, what a boring world it would be, if we were all the same.’

He genuinely wanted to be kind. Women like her were a million miles away from the world he inhabited, and she was not the sort he found attractive. His world was the world of intelligence, education, riches. He was a somebody in that world. And the woman whom he found attractive – young, slim, intelligent women – were fond of him and found his intellect a turn on, his beard distinguished. But it wasn’t nice not to give a thought to people like that woman, so clearly unnecessary in this happy little world. She obviously felt left out of it, jealous. There was no place for her in it. So he wanted to be kind to her, to be generous, for he wanted to be good.

He was quite a nasty man at heart, conceited and superior. He was prone to becoming snappy and irritable and rude with people. He was glad to have come out to church for once. It made him feel renewed. But he was glad now it was over, happy to get away. He had work to get on with this afternoon, and not looking forward to this, he resumed his typical, terse, irritable demeanour.

Chinese: Part 2

‘And so’ pursued Neil, as Andrew and I tucked into a second bowl of fruit salad and the amazing frozen yoghurt, ‘and so I returned two weeks later refreshed after my vacation and looking forward to the new term and keen to meet my new flatmates. But boy was I in for a big surprise.

‘Even as I walked up the road to our halls there was a bad omen: a sports car racing at top speed, lurched around the corner, terrifying me and driving away into town. I wondered who in halls drove a sports car?

‘When I entered reception I found it swarming with Chinese. Some fancy looking girls, dressed up for a night out appeared to be waiting to go off to town. Others gobbled away to the receptionist, enquiring about something. Others spilled out of the bar, loitered in reception, went in and out of the lifts. Everywhere there were Chinese, everywhere there were yellow faces, everywhere was the noise of their ching-chang-chong vernacular. As I waited at reception to sign in, I saw another sports car pull up, driven by some cool Chinese dude. The Chinese women, in high heels and stockings, and with much hauteur and self-importance, went out and got in. This was something new altogether.

‘As I went up in the lift, I was already feeling like an outsider. I was overcome with such a feeling of petulance and pathetic hatred of Chinese people, as if I couldn’t stand to be around them. As I reached my floor and headed to my room, two people walked down the corridor: two Chinese people.

‘I decided to go and check out the kitchen. Hearing the noise of people there, I slowly and with caution entered. The first thing I noticed was that it was an utter tip, as though a bomb had hit it. Dirty dishes lay heaped everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and five or six rice cookers occupied the benches. A tall, muscular Chinese guy in a white vest pulled out a glass from the cupboard, filled it with milk, drank it back, burped, left the dirty glass on the bench top, and made to leave. As he did so he met my person barring the doorway and looking at him. He gazed at me with vacant, contemptuous eyes. I moved aside. He left.

‘Before me at the kitchen table I saw four young men, deep in conversation and eating their dinner. Three were Chinese, one, so I learnt later, a Frenchman. They spoke in English. They were clearly cool young people and considered themselves so, and paid no attention at all to me, the bespectacled philosophy student. I walked around the kitchen a bit and they continued to talk, heedless. It was as if I was an alien, an outsider, in what just two weeks earlier had been my home. And an undeniable, but persistent annoyance bit at me; an annoyance at having to be surrounded on all quarters by yellow faces. I went and spoke to my friend Wan.

‘‘You have returned home and seen the changes’ he said to me in a low, depressive voice, as if he was glad to have my company, to commiserate on the situation. ‘There are no girls, no girls at all. The demographic has changed. We are all men. Not even men really. Mostly they are aged twenty to twenty-three. We are now the oldest. Last year you and I were the youngest. They are so immature these new lot. I have kept my distance. Ten of them are Chinese! The Chinese are everywhere! We have been invaded! They are dirty rats! The curse of my people!’

‘Wan began to tell me of the new wave of Chinese students; and later on I was introduced to some of them. Although none were quite as original as Blake, there were, to be sure, some interesting characters. The first of these was Mathew.

‘Hello’ he said, shaking my hand in the kitchen one day. ‘I am Mathew, but everyone calls me Matt.’ He spoke with a slow, aristocratic English twang. He was a cool cat, always strolling around in his vest and flip-flops, showing of his biceps. He was also on the business management course.

‘Welcome’ he said ‘your name is Neil I understand. Welcome.’ I didn’t know how to react to this. Did he not know that I’d already been here a year? I put on an act of being inferior, self-deprecating. Yet cooler than me though he evidently was, it was strange having to demure to a Chinaman.

‘‘Pierre is my best friend. He lives next door to me. Have you met him? He is French. I used to live in France with him. He will come to China one day. We both love basketball and break dancing. Anyway nice to have met you Neil. I will see you later.’

‘And with that he shook my hand once more and left. It was a confusing position for me to find myself in. This Pierre I had already seen: a more arrogant, contemptuous, hip-hop young French man I had never met. He was blond, toned and sexy and he mooched around the halls in basketball tops, disdaining people. He had already ‘dissed’ lowly old me on several prior occasions. I had no love of him. But I noted that his partner in crime, the equally cool Matt, had at least offered me the hand of friendship. That much seemed his due as a Chinaman. Whereas the smug Pierre, as a westerner, need not condescend to me.

‘So was Matt. I couldn’t really fault his good manners or good intentions, but as a non-academic, as a hip-hopping, beat-boxing break dancer and chump did we really have anything in common? I felt stressed by the thought of keeping up appearances with him.

‘Another was Nathanial. More shy and respectable than Matt, he was equally as handsome in a clean cut, teenage heart throb kind of way. He dressed himself well in designer clothes and always seemed in the process of grooming himself. He would get up early in the morning and stand before the bathroom mirror, ceaselessly styling his hair. And as he did so he would sing, singing in the soft strains of the Chinese male. His tune was like a mating call, he was like a shy, soft little bird calling musically to attract mates. He was so nice as well, always smiling and grinning. But he was intellectually light weight, a dandy, a pretty boy, a feather head, and I foresaw it would be a struggle to get along with him for a whole year.

‘And there were others as well. Harrison the vest-wearing martial arts practitioner, who liked to work out; Steish, the beret wearing Bohemian who wanted to be a film star. As well as these guys there were some more traditional Chinese. Men who were here to study, to study food science, computing, or urban planning, for example. At least with these Chinamen I felt much more at home. We could discuss life or politics, we could discuss anything we liked really without being shackled by what was cool and hip. They were true intellectuals, we held common ground. But make no mistake. They were no losers: Lee, the food scientist owned a fancy car; Luke, a PhD student, was tall, athletic, handsome. Even the bespectacled computer wizards seemed different now. As if they were here on an equal footing. The days of inferiority were gone.

‘And so that was the hall I returned to, a one dominated by yellow Chinese faces, a one where the young, rich, offspring of the Chinese elite, with their designer clothes and sports cars, and with their limited intellectual faculties, were ubiquitous. Besides now feeling alone and isolated in what had once been my home, I also perceived that I was now considered by all and sundry as no more than a geek, a swot and a bore. A nobody. Gone were the days of the liberal intellectual atmosphere of last year, when I was Neil the philosopher, Neil the man people liked to chat to, Neil the interesting. No, those days were gone. To the cool young men in our corridor I was now Neil the nobody. Neil who? Some strange, boring creature that did strange things like studying. Strange.

‘So that was that then. I was surrounded on all sides by Chinamen, most of whom I had nothing in common with, and I soon became sick of the farce of smiling with Blake, Matt and Nathanial, of having to face on a daily basis, crammed in as were like commuters in a tube train, people who I didn’t really want to be around. They would have endless parties in the kitchen, and now it was I, with humble, self-deprecating face, who would have to sneak in and use the freezer, glimpsing the splendid party, the fancy women and food. Blake by the way, despite the introduction of the cooler Matt, the more handsome specimens of Nathanial and Steish, and the more muscular Harrison, Blake was still, in his sluggish, contented way, the king, the chief male. One day I happened to see him.’

‘I was dressed up in some new clothes and a new haircut, that well, frankly weren’t me. Walking along the corridor I passed Blake. I smiled at him. Yet he, seeing my new clothes and makeover, could not help a smirk of derision come over his face. It was there just an instant and quickly realising he should behave with more decorum, he removed it. But it was all that I needed. I felt humiliated, ashamed. I felt angry. I needed an excuse for war and Blake had just given it me.

‘After passing Blake, I entered the kitchen. As I opened up, not only was I greeted by an utter mess, but loud hip-hop music blared out. On the centre of the kitchen floor was Matt, in his vest, break dancing with amazing speed and suppleness, dazzling the spectators, amongst whom I saw the arrogant Pierre, an earring in one ear, a cap back to front on his head. There were some Chinese-dolls watching, and some Chinese dudes in vests drinking beer. Feeling insignificant and annoyed, I went to see my friend Wan.

‘‘Right’ I said, showing my annoyance ‘it’s time my friend that we went to war with the Chinese. I’m sick of every single one of them. Especially Blake, he’s an arrogant son of a whore.’

‘Wan seemed pleased by my anger, as if he had been waiting for me to come and see him like this, to scheme and plot revenge for the chaos that we had both slowly watched unfold on our floor.

‘‘I tell you’ said Wan, angrily, ‘that guy Blake, he must have one big penis. I don’t know what his problem is, but it must be that.’

‘In that one phrase of my Korean friends, I felt he had pin-pointed exactly what Blake’s problem was, as Wan so ironically put it. In the way in which we’d both come together to bitch like this; in the way in which Wan so plaintively bemoaned the fact, emphasising the word big as he spoke; in the way in which the two of us were so at a loss to explain our inferiority to Blake, even though physically he was not so much superior, especially to Wan who was outwardly his match; in all of this, in our peeved, undignified confusion, it seemed the only possible conclusion.

‘‘He must have a big penis’ hummed Wan in his unearthly Korean accent. ‘He must.’

‘And so we sat together and had a good whinge about all the Chinese and what we would do to them. But I tell you, we soon adopted some strange ways of talking. For one thing we now referred to the Chinese as chinks; and in deliberately and cynically employing this sort of racist language, completely unbecoming for two research students, we were utterly pathetic and foolish. We would sit for hours and decry the ‘bloody chinks’ in our impotent way. And just as impotently we would draw up ridiculous revenge schemes – we talked of killing Blake or poisoning the chinks, we talked about taking down the yellow men and re-taking the floor. It was all so ludicrous, this gangster talk, this racist slang, for we only did it out of earshot of everyone.

‘But we weren’t alone in our hatred of the Chinese. There were seven or eight other nationalities on our floor, and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt gentlemen, it’s that all the different races, when brought together here as also-rans, to the United Confederation of British Islands, my God, they loathe and despise each other, they’re like bitches at each other’s throats. I canvassed the opinions of our foreign visitors.

‘‘Vikram my Indian friend’ I said one day in the kitchen. ‘What do you think of the Chinese?’

‘‘The Chinese? They are dirty peoples. You see this kitchen, you see this mess? That is Chinese peoples for you. I am living here since maybe one year, okay. Everywhere, everywhere man, I see Chinese peoples. When I am arriving here I am saying to the taxi man as I looking out the window, is this China or England man, and we are making some joke like this. But seriously man, the Chinese are the new power. They are trying to steal Tibet from India. That is why every morning I am praying God, thanking him that America pushes China back.

‘‘Your thanking him for America?’ I asked puzzled.

‘‘Yes! They are pressurising the Chinese man.’

‘And the Pakistanis? ‘Vishnu my friend, what do you think?’

‘‘The Chinese? I hate the Chinese. They are dirty peoples. The Chinese and the Nigerians they are making this kitchen so dirty. The Chinese have no souls. I have seen one movie about the Chinese. A businessman is going to a brothel to have sex with many women. They have no God. They are robots. In Pakistan we are having lots of religion. It is all bullshit! I am not believing in any of it. There is no science for it; they have no proof. I am hating Pakistan, it is one big chaos. The government is using religion to control the peoples. But when I came here and saw the Chinese I am disgusted’ he said, shaking his head, resigned. ‘They are soulless. There were three Chinese peoples making sex in a car!’

At this point, his Pakistani friend, who stood with his back to us, doing the dishes, turned around to look at me.

‘‘There were three of them’ he said emphatically and with shock, delighted to have the chance to tell me, ‘making sex in a car.’

‘‘And Nigeria, how about you.’

‘‘The Chinese? They are dirty man. They are everywhere and so bloody rich.’ He chuckled to himself and shook his head. ‘Look at the kitchen, look at the toilets. There’s shit all over the place. It’s the Chinese man. And the Pakistanis.’

‘‘Mitsu, you’re Japanese, surely you like the Chinese?’

‘‘During the war the Chinese did experiments on my people. They tried chopping off their arms and legs without medicine, without how you say it, being asleep. For that reason I hate the Chinese. They are the curse of my people. Just like the Koreans.

‘‘And Thailand, what do you think?’

‘‘Oh I hate the Chinese. Look how dirty the kitchen is. The Chinese try to control us, to destroy us. They tried to kill my people. That is why I am loving America, for fighting the Chinese.’

‘‘Scott you’re Australian, you’re a white man, surely you’re above all this petit racism?’

‘‘The Chinese? The motherfuckers are everywhere. It’s the curse of the bloody yellow man, man.’

‘‘Okay Erik, you’re from Taiwan, so you are Chinese right?’

‘‘No I am Taiwanese. The China is trying to say that the Taiwan belong to them. But it belong to the Taiwan peoples. They are trying to steal it for themselves. The Americans will help us.’

‘‘Wei, my Chinese friend. You’re an intelligent person, a research student. Why does everyone hate the Chinese?’

‘‘Oh come on Neil, they don’t hate us. Take the Taiwanese guy Erik. Taiwan belong to China. He is telling lies. Taiwan just want independence.’

‘‘Okay Lee, my Korean friend, you hate the Chinese right.’

‘‘Of course. They are the curse of my people. Them and the Japanese. Why, why are you asking?’

‘‘Well’ I said ‘Wan and I are preparing a little war against the Chinese. We’re going to take back the floor. Do you want to be one of our soldiers?’

‘If you want in’ said Wan in his theatrical Korean twang ‘you must prove your loyalty. We want you to urinate in Blake’s milk!’

‘So we laughed and schemed.

‘And so it went. But I tell you, being at war with the Chinese was just as hard as being at peace. Every time I saw Blake in the kitchen or corridor now, I ignored him or gave him a hacky look. He knew I was not happy with him. I couldn’t help but like the guy for it. He was emotionally sensitive like that, he knew why I hated him. So it was easy to play games with Blake, he indulged me as it were. And I began to see that he was sick to death of having to share the flat like this, tired of all the tension. For example one day, meeting him in the kitchen, I found him on his mobile phone, listening to a girl telling him some story. ‘Get to the point or just shut up!’ he barked out in his dominant way, at the end of his tether. In his terse, moody manner, I recognised that he too was sick of the war.

‘As for the lightweight, airhead, bimbo and singer Nathanial, I treated him like dirt whenever I saw his groomed personage or heard his melodic strains. I gave him acrid looks, slammed doors in his face and yet for all this he always tried to smile at me, to be friendly, to be my friend.

‘But though I could control Nathanial in this way, and though Blake indulged me and allowed me to emotionally target him, the break dancing Matt was a harder person to be nasty to. I could never find it in my heart to ‘go to war’ with him, since he always addressed me ‘Neil’ and talked to me directly. Whenever he spoke to me, I responded submissively and with kindness. With him, I limited myself to the occasional disapproving look, the occasional tut of disgust as I saw him partying with his friends. And backed up by the arrogant Pierre, who as a white man could laugh in my face, out and out war with Matt might have been foolish.

‘So I scowled, huffed and gave dirty looks whenever I could and there were many chances to do so, Chinese people being here, there and everywhere. I would also gossip with the cleaner or the secretary, and full of bigotry, racism and bare faced lies, swap tales and complain about the ‘fucking’ Chinese. And whenever I had the opportunity, I would slam a door in the face of a passing oriental. So it went.

‘But like I say, acting like this was just as tense and unnerving and at heart I really loathed myself for it. What I really needed was to be somewhere else. The most difficult thing about the war though, was my relationship with Cynthia.’

‘Cynthia’ I asked ‘who is she? Your girlfriend?’

‘No, no, no’ responded Neil ‘Cynthia was the name of the prostitute, remember, who I first saw with Blake.

‘After a few weeks here she changed. I think it must have been under the advice of Blake. She seemed suddenly more respectful, more pleasant. In addition she seemed to always go out of her way to be nice to me, to smile at me personally, as if Blake had informed her that I didn’t approve of her.

‘So I began to perceive that she was really a likeable girl, and it was now that I figured out just why she had been dressed that day like a prostitute. You see’ said Neil, looking at us with a glint in his eye as if he’d solved the mystery ‘it’s all to do with the Chinese perception of the west. They take us for a Godless, soulless nation where women go around virtually naked, and where everyone is constantly having sex, bed-hopping without thought or consequence, a cool, liberated, modern place where nobody cares what you get up to. Instead of seeing us for what we are, a sexually repressed, prim and proper nation of prudes and scoutmasters, who scowl, frown and are not amused by the sexual shenanigans of any he, she or it, let alone of Phil and Francesca foreigner. So you see that outfit, that gaudy, overtly sexual way of dressing, that had simply been a reaction on the part of a sensitive, young girl, intimidated by her preconceptions of our liberal culture, trying to impress people and show herself of worth. With all her insecurities, and pressurised by false impressions, she had been trying to ‘adapt’ to our society.

‘But I guess I was not the only one to show her my moral outrage. In any event she had cottoned on and not only did she now dress down and more sensibly, she seemed at pains to placate everyone. Take for example the English security guard. Not comfortable amongst students in any event, that middle-aged, uneducated, unmarried man would often come across the Chinese hosting a party. One day I recall overhearing him, telling the Chinese off for being too noisy. And the response? The kind and soft spoken Cynthia apologised profusely, speaking directly to him, possessing like Blake, that emotionally sensitive faculty that made her aware of the feelings of others. She offered him some food. He refused, but was incredibly taken aback. He wished them a happy Chinese new year. They thanked him graciously. Cynthia especially so, as if it was a big deal, as if his patronisation was important.

‘So did I come to see what Cynthia was like. And every time, every time I promise you, that I saw her, I could count on her to pay me attention, smile at me, look demure. However I responded by looking even more grouchy and irritated. I even recall one day travelling alone in the lift with her. I scowled the entire time, showing her my displeasure. And when she got off the lift, when it stopped at her floor, she simply said ‘sorry’, as if to say there was nothing she could do; she was sorry, sorry that I was a nobody and a bore, a bespectacled philosophy student and couldn’t ever mix in her fashionable world, her sexy world, the world of fun and excitement; ‘sorry’, a sad little sorry, as if she’d done all she could for me, commiserated with me, would change the world if she could, but was sorry she couldn’t, sorry that she was cooler than me, sorry that she was way out of my league, sorry that life was so. Sorry.’

‘I felt bad about my response to her, especially so, as when other Chinese girls happened to come onto our floor, and I showed my displeasure and hatred of them, huffed, scowled and tutted, they simply responded by ignoring me, scoffing at me or treating me as if I was a nobody. At such times I felt impudent and enraged, angered. And when I saw how Cynthia ceaselessly made the effort to play my game, just as Blake did, I felt like such a fool and a child and a loser.

‘So I was sorry for Cynthia, and thought about being pleasant with her. But then I recalled exactly why I had gone to war. I could make nice-nice with Cynthia, be kind to her, show her I forgave her. But the next day, when I saw her having a party with her fashionable friends, or when I saw her entering the odious Pierre’s room to get up to I don’t know what, or again, when I saw her getting into the sportscar of her greasy Greek boyfriend who I so despised, when I saw any of this, I would feel again that resentful, prudish annoyance, that feeling of jealousy and insignificance, that feeling that she belonged to a superior world, a world in which plain old me could never be accepted.

‘And so that gentlemen’ said Neil, seeming to bring things to a conclusion ‘is my tale, a tale of how overnight I became a petit, raging, bitter racist, how I employed racist language, went around talking of killing and wars, how I came to detest the Chinese. A tale of how I wouldn’t live and let live, but how I systematically went about, in my priggish, pathetic way of trying to stamp the joy out of other people’s lives. Forever jealous and feeling left out of the fashionable, hip-hop world of those about me. Playing childish, emotional, psychological games with Blake and Cynthia, being the archetypical English racist, feeling sorry for myself, being in a word a complete pain in the ass.’

‘And that’s your confession’ said Andrew immediately ‘that’s what you wanted to tell us?’

‘Actually’ said Neil ‘it’s not what I had to tell you and it’s not in fact my confession. It would’ve been my confession, it might have been, in another life time, all that I would have done. But things turned out differently. You know, for all the talk of war and revenge, I genuinely never thought anything would come to pass. But in the end there was an incident.

‘Wan and I were often on the lookout to make some mischief, to throw a spanner in the works. One night we stood in my room looking out the window, down to the reception area below. At one point a Chinese girl arrived. She’d obviously been to a nightclub, and had with her an Englishman at her heels. Standing outside, she went about snogging him, like an animal she was all over him.

‘‘Slut!’ I said angrily to Wan. ‘What a fucking slut she is.’ I was so peeved and jealous, so consumed by envy at this sight.

‘‘Has Blake ever had an English woman?’ I inquired nervously of Wan.

‘‘No. I don’t think so. Only the Italian and Finnish.’

‘I felt slightly relieved. ‘Well’ I said in my impotent way ‘if I ever catch him with an English girl, I’ll chop his penis off and stuff it in his mouth.’

‘We stood there awhile brooding and angry. Then a sportscar pulled up.

‘A Chinese guy got out and slowly, with unsteady footing, wandered to some bushes were he was agonizingly sick. Evidently he was drunk. When he was finished he got back into his car. The security guard came out.

‘‘Are you sure you’re in a fit state to drive?’ he asked.

‘The Chinese guy humbly assured him he was. The security guard asked again ‘are you sure?’ He assured him once more, and the security guard, though not truly convinced, went back inside. The Chinaman, ever so cautiously, started to drive off.

‘‘Quick’ I shouted to Wan ‘let’s go!’ and we sprinted off downstairs and outside. When we got there I took out my mobile phone. Wan and I raced around the corner and saw the car slowly driving off. We got the first four letters of the registration. Our plan was to call the police and hopefully have the Chinese guy arrested for drink driving.

‘Yet the moment slipped away. The car drove off into the distance; the police would no doubt take a while to respond; plus we didn’t have the full number plate. I desisted from dialling 999; and ultimately, I think it was because I didn’t really have the heart to go through with it, to shop this guy to the cops.

‘On another occasion, word came back to the hall one night that a Chinese guy, on his way to the supermarket, had been beaten up by local youths. This was a common problem where we lived, the teenage residents roundabout resentful of and simply despising us students, and they would stand and intimidate and insult you as you passed through their lair. Last year a German exchange student had been beaten badly, an event that all of us had taken to heart, and I especially had been vehement in my outrage at the incident. However that had been last year. Things were different now, and I had not failed to notice that the disenchanted youths of these parts had on several occasions cast angered, jealous looks upon the Chinese sports cars, the fashionable women, their wealth, riches, and apparent arrogance. I had not failed to notice this, and in the shifting power circles, I wondered now where my sympathies lay.

‘Anyway one dark night we received this news, and Wan and I stood at our window, looking out over the vacinity of the hall waiting for people to return. The incident had occurred one hundred or so metres away, but shrouded in the darkness of night, we could not see anything. An ambulance had been called by a returning Chinese shopper. We awaited the return of the others with interest, not least because, included in the wave of Chinese students that had gone off to the shops that night, were Blake and Cynthia.

‘‘Oh please God! Let it be Blake!’ preyed Wan cynically as we stood at the window, laughing maliciously.

‘Eventually however, Blake returned, along with Cynthia and the others. We felt annoyed to see his arrogant, supreme person, sauntering back into camp, as if he were an indestructible force, not to be messed with; and when the next day, I discovered which Chinese student had been beaten, I was really angered.

‘Of all the Chinese students they had chosen to target, the youths had not gone for a Blake or a Cynthia, but instead for a small, round, bespectacled, computer wizz, who I might as well call Chen, the most inoffensive man in the world, who had taken his sorry, lonely little person off to the shops alone. This Chen had caused us all in halls to smile with joy, when one day, we happened to see him play table tennis, a game gentlemen, which the majority of us played with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Not so this Chen, who with consummate professionalism, played in shorts, t shirt and sweat bands. Ah yes Chen, he-he, it had been a wonderful sight. And it was him of all people who had been targeted.

‘A few days later I saw him and his subdued, sad little face, scarred and beaten. I also saw how Cynthia, in her gentle, soft, Chinese voice, asked of him, a man she’d never before met, how he was. I saw how he responded, how he plaintively spoke to her, subdued, on the verge of tears, saw how Cynthia spoke even more softly, in that calming, soft, soft tone of the Chinese, that birdsong of theirs; saw the genuine feeling of support between the two, a camaraderie under this foreign moon, on this foreign soil; saw how gentle Cynthia was, as with womanly affection, she examined the marks, and lovingly, tenderly rubbed them, and touched Chen’s sorry, boyish little person.

‘I felt regretful and sad for all my bad thoughts. This, this should’ve been a warning to me, to end the war and give up all that nonsense. Yet just three weeks later, I was back to my old-self and this time the fire crackers were lit.

‘The Chinese were having a party, a big one. Blake, Cynthia, Nathanial, Matt and Harrison were all going. I saw them as they went about preparing the food and dining room, dressed splendidly in their designer clothes. Other Chinese were coming from other floors. It was a big event. Pierre was there too, as well as a cohort of Grecians, slick, handsome, swarthy men, bronzed and greasy, one of whom was Cynthia’s boyfriend. Some Americans came as well. Yet what most surprised and upset me was to see just who in our hall had been invited.

‘The Australian guy was there, so too the Nigerian, so too the Taiwanese guy, the Japanese, the Thai, and even the Indian. When I happened to pass into the dining room, to get something from the freezer, and saw them there, I felt really annoyed with them, betrayed. To see them currying favour with the Chinese like this, flattered to be invited to their grand party, enjoying themselves eating their cuisine, apparently bought off – well you can imagine how I felt.

‘When I returned next door to the kitchen and found myself alone, I started to see that just about everyone on the floor had been invited to the party, and that I perhaps was the only one who had not been. I felt sorry for myself. Then another thought crossed my mind: I wondered if I would be invited? If not Blake or Cynthia might ask me to come? But then, even they over the last few weeks had at last gotten sick and tired of me and my games. They’d finally had enough.

‘So I went about my cooking, preparing my tasteless pasta and tuna, and popping into the dining room once more, I caught a glimpse of the party, of the fashionable Chinese, the swanky Greeks and Americans, the bought off Taiwanese, Australian, Nigerian and Indians, who, oblivious of my person, ate and chatted happily, pleased that they’d been invited to the party. Then when I returned to the kitchen, hoping to find myself alone so that I might brood and feel sorry for myself and escape everybody, I looked over to my pasta and saw the Italian doctor kissing his Italian girlfriend.

‘They looked irritated by my interruption, and broke off their kissing, as if I’d invaded their privacy. The Italian doctor sighed and turned to stirring his saucepan, whilst the Italian girl smiled at me and with well meant but tired, patronising intonation said ‘hello’.

‘The Italian doctor had moved in recently, and as well as being intelligent, was also tall and handsome. There was a combination of cool and intelligence in his bespectacled, superior face, and he was not unlike Blake. He was so superior, often seemed irritated and tetchy, and was loved by women. I didn’t know how to react to him. Unlike Blake, he was undoubtedly more intelligent than I. He always seemed irritated, busy, important, though occasionally he would condescend to me and say hello.

‘So the three of us stood there at the cooker making our dinner, I feeling like an unwelcome guest, the Italian doctor sighing, irritated, and complaining to his girlfriend in that Italian dialect, that Latin way of whinging that’s such anathema to us Brits. Anyway shortly a Chinese girl entered the kitchen. I recognised her as a PhD student in biochemistry from another floor, who I just couldn’t stand because she was always pretending to be above people like me, to be fashionable, cool and superior, instead of admitting that, as a fellow research student, we probably shared some common ground. She had been invited to the party and to all pretence and purposes was at home with the lightweight, petit-bourgeoisie Chinese. Ignoring me as if I didn’t exist, she excitedly asked the good, comme il faut Doctor and his girlfriend if they wouldn’t like to come to the party. That they’d only met briefly before, and barely even knew each other, didn’t seem to matter. The facts were that they looked cool and so they were invited.

‘And flattered, the good doctor and his girlfriend said they would be delighted to join them, and that they would bring along some of their spaghetti Bolognese.

‘Meanwhile my sorry person stood at the hob, feeling mortified, foolish and ashamed. My body language must have been awful as I tightened up, my face becoming sensitive and expressing my thoughts. I really didn’t know where to look. There was almost a tear in my eye as I avoided looking at those people, tried to bury my head, my person, to pretend I wasn’t listening. But my face gave the game away.

‘I was beset with agony and shame at that moment, full of hatred of these people. I simply wanted the scene to end. Yet I have to confess, I was also terrified of being invited to the party. The thought had crossed my mind: I wondered whether the Chinese girl would turn to me and say kindly ‘and you, do you want to come?’ I imagined sweetly acquiescing, saying okay, and, like the lowest of dogs, tagging along with them. I imagined it, but in truth I didn’t want it, I didn’t want any invitation from these alien people who I hated. I wanted no mitigating circumstances. I wanted all out war.

‘In the end I wasn’t asked. I don’t know whether the Chinese girl tactlessly ignored me. I don’t know whether, as I half suspected, after speaking to the Italians, she turned to look at me, in thought of offering me a respectful – though not cordial – invitation; a consolation, as though she didn’t really want me there, but I could come if I wanted to. I don’t know whether she thought about doing this, but that, in seeing my sensitive face and my hurt-ridden eyes, telling her not to dare humiliate me any further by inviting me – my body language saying ‘don’t you dare!’ – she decided it was best to just leave me alone, this, as I say, I don’t know. In any event I wasn’t invited.

‘Eventually the Italians cleared off to the party and I sat in the kitchen alone eating my miserable food. Wan entered.

‘‘Wan, were you invited to the party.’

‘‘No’

‘‘Good’ I said relieved. ‘I’ve had enough of these Chinese’ I said. ‘Look at this’ I said standing up and showing him a pan of Chinese food. ‘How the fuck can these animals eat chicken’s feet!’

‘‘It’s a delicacy’ explained Wan. ‘Blake I know loves them.’

‘‘Ugh! That is the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘It really was. A pan of pink, defrosting chicken’s feet, their claws prominent, like nails, had been left on the bench before us. It could not have been more disgusting had it have been a pot of pink, human fingers.’

‘‘The time has come’ I said growing nervous but excited. Wan watched on as I went to one of the Indian’s cupboards and pulled out a tub of salts or additives, I didn’t exactly know which. There were several Chinese dishes on the hob, simmering away, ready to be eaten, the Chinese occasionally popping in to take the food next door.

‘‘Right watch this!’ I said to Wan, and opening up the tub, I poured huge amounts of these additives into the simmering pots, cauldrons and woks that were bubbling and boiling on the hob. I stirred it in and it seemed to dissolve. ‘Let’s see what they think of that!’

‘We sat at the table eating our meals. Fifteen, twenty minutes elapsed, during which time the Chinese took away the various dishes they’d been cooking on the hob. To be honest though, I don’t think either myself or Wan expected anything to happen: we’d grown so accustomed to our impotence. We waited, we waited still. Then a cry went up next door.

‘It was a sort of cry of horror, a Chinese scream, and as soon as I heard it, I was overcome with remorse and angst. I was terrified, my face burned red, and I was suddenly horrified at what I might have done. Within seconds we saw, through the kitchen door, the figures of Blake and Harrison running into the toilets.

‘I looked at Wan, gulped, and said ‘Oh God’ trying to laugh off my guilt. I was full of regret, fear and hatred of myself, as if I’d spoiled all chance of happiness in my life. We got up and went into the bathroom.

‘By this time two more Chinese had entered. However, unable to enter the toilets occupied by Blake and Nathanial, they stood over the basins instead. They were desperately trying to vomit, and contorted and in agony, brought up piles of spew all over the basins. Other Chinese, unaffected, were close at hand trying to help them. Wan approached one of these carer Chinese and asked gently what the matter was, expressing in his voice a sympathy, an Oriental sympathy, that really touched me, and made me feel more guilty, more inhuman. I stood back, full of regret, pretending to be shocked and sympathetic and saying ‘oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Then the bathroom door burst open and Cynthia ran in. Her face was contorted with pain, she was clearly desperate to reach the toilets. They were of course all occupied. Realising this she turned, presumably with the intention of going downstairs to the toilets on her own floor. However it was simply too late. As she headed back out, just as she passed by me, so that the two of us were almost alone together – I with a shocked, alarmed face, totally engrossed in watching her in her agonised fate – just as she passed me, she broke wind loudly and disastrously, and a spattering of diarrhoea charged uncontrollably out of her, spraying through her knickers and miniskirt, falling on her naked legs and on the floor. I watched all this in coldness. The poor girl, ashamed and embarrassed, desperately ran out, where, escorted by her Greek boyfriend, who hadn’t known where she had gone off to, she was taken downstairs to her own toilet.

‘That night I sat alone in my room, cornered by an empty, hollow feeling, a deadness, a coldness, as if I were no longer alive. Eight members of the party had been affected, I later learnt, and had spent the next day in agony, vomiting and having diarrhoea.

‘Later that evening, I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. The kitchen, as well as the dining room and corridor was dead and deserted. It was like a ghost town. Matt entered the kitchen.

‘‘Did you hear of the troubles Neil’ he said, speaking in his slow, measured, aristocratic voice. ‘It is a very bad day for us. Seven Chinese students and one Nigerian are lying in bed, vomiting and constantly needing the toilet. It is very bad.

‘‘The Chinese’ he continued in his slow, pregnant, unearthly voice ‘are not just dogs to be treated like this. Someone has done this to us, we are sure. Someone who dislikes Chinese people, dislikes us for what we are, and cannot stand to see us happy. Someone who cannot take us for what we are. We are not just dogs to be treated like this. I feel such anger. This is not the way things should be. It is not reasonable now is it? You know in China we have a saying: the rat who gnaws at the cat’s tail invites its own destruction. Do you understand Neil?’

‘I could hear my heart thudding and I blushed in a mixture of shame, fear and self-loathing, unable to decide whether this was a generic speech Matt was giving, or whether he knew I was to blame, and was artfully playing with me. Nervous, guilty, shyly, I pronounced

‘‘Yes’ I do.

‘‘I knew you would Neil, I knew you would. We are not dogs. I like you Neil, you are a good man. Goodnight my friend.’

‘And with that he left the kitchen, and ashamed, I stood there alone.

‘Well aren’t you surprised’ said Neil addressing me after a pause in which he waited for comment.

‘I’m never surprised by anything’ I responded. ‘In any case there were mitigating circumstances. I understand your predicament. You had good reason to feel upset.’

‘But did I?’ persisted Neil, questioningly. ‘I don’t think so. I think I acted like the typical childish, self-pitying Englishman, deliberately huffy and resentful, whatever the Chinese did.

‘Anyway, the next day I sped off to my parents house in London for an emergency holiday. I needed to get away from the halls. When I got to London, I went out to walk the streets, giving myself up to philosophising. And the first thing I remembered happening was that I went and took my downbeat, miserable soul to a coffee house. At the counter, a Chinese girl served me, and smiled kindly into my face. In my dejected, mirthless state I couldn’t find it in my self to smile back at her. Instead, I just observed her acme covered face, her goofy teeth and felt annoyed by her, as if she was a nuisance. And there, you see gentlemen, I saw the error of my ways, what a charlatan I was, that I should be so disgusted by her. I recalled Cynthia. How she was beautiful, elegant, fashionable. How she had tried to be kind to me. How I had hunted her remorselessly like a dog. How her face had been contorted, how she’d been in agony, how she had so unceremoniously discharged her diarrhoea in my presence.

‘What would I have done had I been invited to the party? I would’ve said no. I’d said no twice before, several months earlier. On each occasion I’d simply felt, when a Chinese guy had put his arm around me, and said do you want to join us my friend, that he was just being well-mannered, courteous. It would’ve been awkward to intrude my non-Chinese speaking presence into their happy little party; it would have spoilt it for them, and having nothing in common with them, I would have been ill at ease. But, the facts remain, they had twice already invited me.

‘If a fashionable, wealthy, beautiful Chinese girl happened to be in our halls and ignore me, I hated her and was enraged by her; but if such a woman made, like Cynthia, an effort to be nice to me, I ignored it and was not worthy; there again, if an ordinary Chinese girl, plain, humble and modest happed to step onto our floor, I huffed, puffed and showed her my disdain, equally as if she was a bitch. In all cases they were doomed.

‘I can’t remember why, but for some reason, the case of the Chinese cockle pickers, was at that time, back in the news. Twenty or so Chinese, here illegally and working for gangsters, had been forced into slave labour, and, going out everyday into the treacherous sands of Morecombe bay, had been trapped out at sea, and there drowned. They had died a horrific death, an awful, tortuous, horrible death, compounded, of course, by the knowledge that they were dying a million miles from China, in an unforgiving, foreign sea. One man had telephoned his mother in China, as he found himself drowning. The whole story was tragic.

‘With this in my thoughts, I sauntered along Oxford street, on that icy, dark, December evening. Up ahead there was some commotion.

‘I don’t know why, but some brain-dead, common Londoner had gotten out of his four-wheel drive and aggressively, in cockney, stood swearing at a diminutive looking Chinaman shouting ‘don’t you dare do that again, you hear me’. The Chinaman, a weak, small, frail looking man was dressed badly, and held in his hand a collection of gaudy lights, some yellow, some green, some pink, you know the tacky tourist sort, and was obviously a street peddler of these goods. He was so inoffensive, pathetic and pitiable and I wondered what on earth had caused the ever so angry, common cockney man to be so aggressive toward him. I don’t know what was more demoralising to the Chinaman: the fact that the wife of the cockney, a common and verbose woman, straight from a scene out of Dickens, got out the car, and exactly like her husband, like a pigeon copying her mate, berated the poor Chinaman in an aggressive, cockney harangue. Really it was a scene, the poor Chinaman, like a lesser bird, set upon by those two bigger pigeons, male and female both, and pecked at, head butted, and chased away remorselessly by those two common, despicable, bossy birds; I don’t know whether that was more demoralising or the fact that no passer by bothered to intercede or help out. Everyone simply passed a casual glance at the scene, and presumably unwilling to intervene, and not knowing the full details of what had happened, and assuming the Chinaman must have done something to provoke his aggressors, walked on.

‘So I walked along and saw all this. And as the shabby, wrinkly, worn-down old Chinaman backed away terrified, I could see the indignation in his face, how humiliated and incensed he was. I won’t ever forget his words as he backed off, trying to stand his ground, but inevitably having to concede it.

‘‘Fu o!’ he shouted with such a sense of grievance in his voice. ‘Fu o!’

‘He couldn’t pronounce the words properly you see. Such a sad figure, impoverished, old, what a sorrowful sight he was, here on foreign turf, a million miles away from his home, at the mercy of those cockney pigeons, selling cheap, tacky lights that no one in their right mind could possibly want. Selling them for what must be peanuts, uneducated, dirt-poor, despised and alien in this world, a shabbily dressed peasant with no hopes here, a slave in England, presumably also a slave or a dead man in China, I really don’t know. An alien and a nobody in a dark, ruthless world, at the mercy of those two cockney pigeons who treated him like filth.

‘I saw that scene and nobody stopped to help the poor guy, nobody except two people, who after the guy had backed off, and the pigeons had flown, stepped in to inquire if he was alright.

‘They were two rich, fashionable young Chinese passers by, a Blake and Cynthia. I saw them ask if he was alright, I saw the Blake put his arm around the man, I saw the Cynthia ask what had happened, I saw the old man tell his sorry tale.

‘Deeply affected by the scene, I followed the dejected figure of the man as he now, after separating from his Chinese countrymen, walked off alone. Shortly he met up with a young Chinese girl standing on a street corner, also selling these worthless, kitschy, luminous things. I watched as they had a conversation, saw the sympathy writ expressively along the Chinese girl’s face, as she listened to the older man, saw how in this alien, bleak, lonely world she at least could offer him some comfort. Then spurred on by guilt and determined not to let the moment slip and have the Chinaman believe nobody cared, I stepped up.

‘‘I’m really, really sorry for all that’ I said putting my arm around his shabby, smelly, diminutive figure. Resentful, scared and angered, he removed himself from my grasp. ‘Please’ I said ‘I am really sorry. That man had no right to treat you like that. Please accept our apologies’ And realising that perhaps he couldn’t understand, and that in any case he was full of hate toward the English at that point, I made to go, pulling out a tener from my wallet, putting it into his hand, and with sympathy patting him on the back and saying ‘I’m sorry my friend, take this.’ He looked at me confused. He didn’t understand it was guilt money.’

A Chinese waitress brought us the bill. With it there were some fortune cookies.

The restaurant had by now emptied. A few diners remained; staff went about clearing things up. Neil was silent, waiting. So too I. Andrew though, seemingly as if he hadn’t been listening to Neil, occupied himself in opening up a fortune cookie.

‘Reshape ones foot to try to fit into a new shoe’ he pronounced.

I opened up a cookie, and Neil, seeing that apparently we weren’t listening to him, hid his embarrassment in also opening one up.

‘Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’ I read.

‘Flowing water never goes bad’ read Neil ‘our door hubs never gather termites.’

There was a silence. ‘So what was your announcement then Neil’ I said after a while.

‘Well I have a new job you see. My miserable two year stint on the dole is soon to be over thank God. And it’s a good job too. A cushy job. A one where I will broaden my horizons. I’m going to teach English in China. They’re crying out for people. I get a good salary, accommodation is provided, I’ll be well taken care of.

‘And in my spare time, which is much thank God, I intend to learn Chinese, and to engross myself in Chinese history, philosophy, Chinese literature, art and culture. Think of it. What a gigantic nation. Yet can you name me one Chinese artist or writer? Hmm? No you can’t. What complete ignorance we’re all steeped in here in England. I intend to immerse myself in Chinese culture and I intend to live and let live. There’s no point staying here, going bad in stagnation, cursing the darkness, I need to open my horizons. I want to go to China, and stop being the smug, conceited, little Englishman I’ve become. I want to be an outsider, to feel the lonely but salutary feeling of being a foreigner, having to scrape and bow to my hosts, I want to be humbled like that. Travel will broaden my outlook. I will only stagnate here. In China I will have to adapt to their culture, to change my preconceptions, to reshape my foot. I intend to aspire to the principle, behave with virtue, abide by benevolence, and immerse myself in the arts. Yes I do.

‘The Chinese are the future, they are coming. In thirty years time, I predict they will dominate politics, business, every major sport. Believe me they are coming. And look what wisdom is contained in these cookies. Look.’

And with this, he intimated to Andrew to open up another cookie, and with the reading of the proverb so prove his point about the Chinese. Two cookies remained. Andrew took up one.

‘Do not employ handsome servants’ he said, in a deliberately confused intonation, as if Neil’s magic trick had gone awry.

Andrew laughed. Neil looked disappointed, despondent. I opened up the last cookie.

‘Well, how about this’ I said encouragingly to Neil. ‘Do not waste your time worrying over past transgressions; concentrate on living well in the present.’

Chinese: Part 1

‘Experience is a comb which nature gives to men when they are bald.’ Chinese proverb

In the Soho district of London, in the chaotic vicinity of Trafalgar square, one comes across the small but colourful quarter of China town. Resplendent with a Chinese arch and Pagoda, with many Chinese restaurants, housed in buildings with frontages of typical, antiquated, oriental architecture; with Hanzi, the Chinese script, displayed all over shops and restaurants; and with a high concentration of oriental people here, the most characteristic and eye catching of whom are the old men and women, who, with infinitely wearied, worn, yet wizened old faces, sluggishly saunter around the environs looking old, finished and above the typical petit concerns of life, one finds here a miniscule but very picturesque glimpse of the far east.

On my journeys, I found myself here, in a Chinese restaurant one Friday evening with two old friends. All of us thirty-somethings, we were none of us career men: Andrew was a part time computer programmer whose real love was for composing music; Neil, whose interests are wide and varied, had been on the dole for the last year or so. It was he who had arranged this little shindig.

The restaurant was an eat as much as you can buffet, and in conversation, the three of us talking about what we’d been doing, and happy to have one another’s company again, as old friends do, we casually walked around the food counters, past all the mouth-watering dishes, crammed plentifully with stock, looking forward to this meal. Orange and lemon chicken; sweet and sour pork; spring rolls; beef and vegetable dumplings; chicken chow mine, shrimp and noodle soup – piles and piles and never ending piles of it, of this beautiful, hot, delicious food; and as much as you could eat of it as well; what a happy, contented feeling it produced on this Friday evening, in the hearts of all the happy, excited, talkative diners in the restaurant. We filled our plates high and sat down and ate.

And so after a couple of returns to the buffet; and then a sortie amongst the equally mouth-watering and plentiful desert buffet, choc-a-bloc with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream, with fruit salad, with oranges, with pineapples, bananas and battered apples of which we ate heartily; we found ourselves full, sated and recovering; and drinking red wine, reclining in after dinner conversation.

‘Well’ I said during a lull ‘what was it you wanted to tell us all Neil. I admit I’m in suspense.’

‘Yes me too’ said Andrew. ‘You’re not going to get married are you?’

‘No, no, no, of course not, no.’ Then after a silence he resumed ‘no, no, no, it’s nothing like that.’

He sat there not looking at us, seemingly shy and reluctant to talk. But in his sensitive little face you could see he wanted to tell us something.

‘Well’ he dared to begin, looking nervous as if he’d prepared a speech for us, a story which he’d rehearsed, but now in the actual moment, he faltered to deliver. ‘Well, let me ask you, what do you think of the Chinese?’

‘The food or the people?’ said Andrew instantly, laughing and making a joke. I laughed too. However Neil just looked irritated, annoyed by the both of us and our feeble joke.

‘You know I mean the people’ he said. I could see by the serious look on his face that he wanted to tell us something important. He looked into the distance as if he was displeased by our foolishness. I sobered up, realising that he obviously wanted to enlighten us with some tale of his.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know what I think of the Chinese’ I said honestly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What’s your impression of them is what I mean. Not in political terms or anything like that. I just mean, take the average Chinese person in Britain, a Chinese student say. What do you see when you see that person?’

‘I don’t know’ said Andrew, ‘I guess the women are pretty attractive. Oriental women make good wives so they say.’

‘You see, there you go’ said Neil immediately, as if he’d proved his point. Andrew and I were somewhat at a loss; we couldn’t see what Neil was getting at.

‘You say the Chinese women are pretty, attractive. Yes? But you wouldn’t say the same about the English or the French or the Italians? Or for any of the women on this planet? They make good wives do they? You know I’ll tell you what you meant, when you said that Chinese women are pretty, what you meant to say is that they’re submissive and can be controlled, that they’re somehow more manageable, more kind, more respectable and decent than western women. And moreover they’re all in need of husbands, strong, tall, dominant husbands just like the good old Englishman, because their own men, God bless them, are shy, obsequious, self-defacing Chinamen, who yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, can be easily fended off just by laughing at them. That’s what you meant now wasn’t it?’

‘No’ said Andrew annoyed by the suggestion. ‘Don’t be so stupid’ he added, clearly displaying a bit of contempt for Neil, as if he spent too long thinking about things, and that he exaggerated.

‘Well I don’t know’ said Neil ‘but I think a lot of English people hold that mindset. I too admit to once thinking along those lines. I mean take the typical Chinese male student, Wan, Chen or Lee. What has he been over the last twenty or thirty years or so? I’ll tell you. He’s the lone Chinaman. Small, round, and bespectacled, he’s a wizard with computers, is utterly miles ahead of all the western students, studies hard, understands algebra and knows what a lepton is, all of which you might think would make him unpopular. However because he’s so shy, pleasant, meek and inoffensive, because his English is so scratchy, and he’s so child-like, introverted and intimidated by women, because he’s never been to a party and has never taken alcohol, and because one day he turns up to a student party, drinks half a glass of vodka, becomes completely inebriated, and everyone finds it hilarious, and goes home slapping him on the back and shouting ‘he-he Chen/Wan/Lee or whatever the fuck your name is, he-he you’re such a good sport, because of all this he’s really well-loved in a loser, hopeless case, last dog in the window kind of way.’

‘No, come on’ said Andrew, irked by this.

‘But yes it’s true’ said Neil. ’Why do you think so many Englishmen fly out to the Far East? It’s with the smug and presumptuous intention that they’re going to get lots of sex, that the women will roll over for them, in what is, what with all the deficiencies of the Oriental male, a kingdom of unrivalled alpha-male dominance, a land essentially populated only with women. The Chinaman apologising, doffing his cap, excusing his sorry personage as you make hard, passionate love to his wife. Or a Chinese disco. Full of twenty something, bespectacled Chinese geeks, who’ve never partied before. ‘Oh-hokey-cokey-cokey’ they sing. Or the birdie song. It’s like a children’s disco. They all come along, the nerds, dressed in western clothes, imitating our best known pop stars. They get up and do some karaoke. They just want to be as cool as us you see. He-he! Those twenty-five year olds, having a sip of whisky, dressed up like our pop stars, like the Beatles or Elvis, like Madonna or Jacko, partying the night away. Jesus Christ! The nerds! Oh and they’re poor as well. The Chinaman is the poor man. Have to work for the white man. Za goo ole why ma. Zhankyou zir.’

‘Where is all of this going?’ I said frowning, embarrassed.

‘Well you see’ said Neil, resuming a more serious and sensitive, thoughtful demeanour, after his cynical, sarcastic rant. ‘I have a confession to make.’

‘I guess it all took place about four years ago, when I was living in halls at university, the time when I was studying for my doctorate in philosophy.

‘The halls I stayed in were in every way excellent and cheap, comfortable, well-kept and so on, but the flat mates with whom I was housed for the first year were what made it such a good place to live. All of us mature students, both in name and personality, we got along so well, never arguing or bickering, but cooperating, respecting one another’s privacy, keeping the place tidy, and creating such a genial atmosphere. It was all the more fun because the students came from such a multitude of foreign nations: there was a French girl, an Italian, a German and a Swiss; there was an Australian, a South African, and an American; there was an Indian, a Thai, a Korean, a Japanese and a Chinese; and there was a Nigerian and an Ethiopian. There were also four Brits of whom I was one and my British Indian Muslim friend another. We got along like a house on fire; we cooked for each other, sampled each others dishes, had long discussions and debates on politics, history, current affairs and philosophy, we swapped tales of our diverse lives and cultures. We were, as we called ourselves, a sort of mini United Nations.

‘One day Said, the British Indian Muslim and my neighbour, knocked on my door. I was sat down reading a text.

‘Go away!’ I shouted. He entered all the same.

‘What do you want Said?’ I said with a mixture of annoyance and happiness at his childish interruption.

‘Eh voila’ he said, revealing something on a plate.

‘What’s that?’ I asked

‘It’s a pain au chocolat. I made it.’

‘A pain au chocolat? You made it? You’re meant to be writing your dissertation, you lazy fool. What’s all this in aid of. It’s not another pathetic attempt to impress Lysia is it? She’s leaving on Thursday, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time.’

‘And Said began remonstrating in his amusing way about how impressed Lysia would be. He was intelligent and mature, kind and passionate, and he always went around the flat in his slippers, a true pipe and slippers man, always slacking off work and heading to the kitchen for a philosophical discussion. He always pretended to have a thing for the ever good hearted Lysia, a French exchange student, a charming, sensitive, young girl. This baking pain au chocolat idea of his was done half seriously, half in jest; Lysia having bemoaned of him that English men could not cook.

‘I went to the kitchen with Said to try the pain au chocolat. Mullegeta, the Ethiopian, was already there, and game for a laugh and a diversion and something nice to eat, decided to try Hussein’s cooking. I did so too. He gave us each one and we tucked in. It was unbelievably heavy and dense. For a while we both tried to politely eat it; but after a while, realising how dense and difficult to eat it was, we were unable to hide our laughter, and overcome with merriment, we gave it up for hopeless, and coughed it up in the bin. Hussein, in his good natured way, took it all well, saying that it was the thought that counts, and Lysia would respect that. Afterwards, we went off down to the bar.

‘Later, after I left, I took the lift back up to my floor. On floor three it stopped and two people got on, two people who in this middle class student hall of ours seemed utterly out of place and incongruous. They were’ said Neil, looking seriously at us and holding our attention ‘a Chinese prostitute and her pimp. At least that was the only conclusion I could draw. The girl, tall and slim, had a tarted, painted face, heavy with mascara: she bore the mask of a harlot, a geisha. She wore a mini-skirt and knee-length stockings with high heels. I felt really intimidated by her, as I always have done whenever I’ve had any brief encounter with a lady of the night. It wasn’t just her dress, it was her attitude, her demeanour. She seemed tough, aggressive, totally dismissive of me, and she talked ten to the dozen to her pimp in Chinese, bossy, sullen, as if I didn’t even exist. I don’t know what it was in the person of the male that made me think him a pimp: he wore thick rimmed black glasses; he wore a leather jacket. He was tall and sturdy. There just seemed to be a presence about him, an aurora of manly superiority. And speaking on his mobile phone, he loudly and bossily gave out some orders in Chinese, simultaneously haranguing with his harlot. Again he seemed totally oblivious of me.

‘When I got back up to my room I was glad to be on my own again. I opened up my window and stood by it, looking out onto the dark, solemn, moonlit night, watching the sequence of lights land in the distance at Heathrow airport, listening to the strains of music float upwards from the pub. I was sad in my heart as if crushed. Why had that prostitute and pimp been here, of all places? Who were they? I felt sorry, disheartened, I felt they had upset the rhythm of lightness and peace that pervaded the hall; I just felt that, whatever the rights or wrongs of prostitution may be, I didn’t want to have to bump into such characters here, I didn’t want to have to face the issue; I wanted to be cosseted, happy and oblivious.

‘Of course I didn’t really believe they were a pimp and a prostitute, I just couldn’t rid myself of that impression. It was a mystery. I had something to think on. In the meantime, just about all of the people on my floor were set to leave, to return home. We were holding a party to mark this event.

‘Everyone on the floor had cooked some dish of their native country, excepting myself that is, who skillfully avoided the ordeal. When the cooking was done, Said came and knocked on my door, and I went with him down the corridor to the dining room, a bottle of wine in my hand, my contribution to the party. As we walked I saw up ahead of me a Chinese guy enter his room. He had just moved in the other day, replacing the man from South Africa, who unfortunately had had to shoot off before our celebration.

‘‘That new Chinese guy’ I said to Said ‘shouldn’t we invite him along. I mean I know he’s only just got here, but won’t he feel left out, seeing as the entire floor is going to the party?’

‘Oh don’t worry about it’ replied Said ‘It would just be awkward to invite him.’

And so we entered the dining room and began the continental feast. Everyone was in good spirits, we had a good laugh, ate up all the foreign food, swashed back all the wine. The American guy brought a CD player and we listened to some music, the Nigerian and Ethiopian guys showed us how to dance, and Said waltzed with Lysia and made humorous efforts to chat her up. It was all so good natured, the party I mean, a party for adults, conducted so pleasantly and in such good spirits. You could hear our good natured laughter some distance away. At one point however, an uninvited guest appeared.

‘It was the new Chinese guy. He came in, in order to procure some food from the freezer, and just as quickly left. He glanced at the party, obviously intimidated, and there was just a sensitive expression on his face, slightly embarrassed, slightly awkward. He was in and out in a flash.

‘And I realised straight away that it was the pimp. I was thoughtful once again. That was a new light in which I’d seen him.

‘The party eventually ended, and over the next few days the mass exodus of our floor began. Three days later only three of us remained: Said, myself and a Korean Wan. One day I happened to be talking with Said.

‘‘Have you seen the new Chinese guy?’ he said. ‘Everything he wears is designer. I saw him this morning slapping on designer aftershave. It costs a fortune. Everything, all his shirts, jeans, jackets, even his socks and underpants are designer. These Chinese are so flipping rich and arrogant.’

‘I was surprised to hear the normally sanguine Said speak like this, for he was usually so friendly, open, ready to be friends with anyone.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked probing, interested. ‘Surely he’s alright.’

‘Well he might be, but I’m not making friends with him. No’ he said ‘I don’t know what it is about the Chinese, they’re just such robots. Rich robots as well. You know there’s more than a billion of them, a billion! In a few years time every nine out of ten people will be Chinese. They’re the new superpower. Them and India mind you. But Indians are different. Indians have soul, they’re cultured, philosophic. Indian people can think, I mean think for themselves. They’re individuals. Look at our religions, for example. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, what a richness and diversity we posses there. We have soul. But the Chinese are soulless, they’re like robots. Even Buddhism isn’t really a proper religion; it’s an atheist’s religion. All they care for is power and money. Their government is nominally communist, but at heart they’re just as avaricious as America. They’re even good at sport now. And not just ping-pong and martial arts. Did you see the Olympics? The 110 metres hurdles: a Chinese guy won gold.’

‘A Chinese guy won gold?’ I said puzzled. ‘An African guy, running for China?’ I inquired uncertainly.

‘No!’ said Said with passion ‘a true Chinaman.’

‘He beat all those black guys’ I said perplexed.

‘Yes!’

‘Is he short?’

‘No he’s tall’

‘Oh’ I said taken aback, shocked even. ‘Is he muscular?’

‘No, fairly lightweight’ replied Said ‘like a ballet dancer in physique.’

‘Oh’ I said. I was overcome by surprise.

‘Well if you ask me, he must be on drugs’ piped up Said again, ‘the Chinese are so desperate for success, they’ll drink dog’s blood for it.’

As much as I was in puzzlement and put out, I was also a little annoyed by this comment.

‘On drugs? How do you know that? Just because he’s Chinese, he must be on drugs?’

‘Well he must be’ persisted Said ‘how else could he have won?’

‘My conversation with Said fuelled yet more thought and reflection. I didn’t like his hostile, negative attitude toward the new guy, toward the Chinese. I felt him to be better than that. Plus, I had seen a new side to the pimp, seen that he could be self-deprecating, sensitive. All the same, didn’t I share some of Said’s feelings? I mean if the pimp dressed in designer clothes and expensive aftershave, if he was wealthy, rich and fashionable, were we ever going to get along? However one issue, that of the Chinese gold medalist, really stuck in my thoughts; and I thought back to how Hitler had been so insulted that a black man, Jesse Owens, should win Olympic gold in Nazi Germany.

‘And so with all these conflicting thoughts in my mind I happened to bump into the pimp on several occasions in the flat. And eventually I decided that, somehow or other, I should introduce myself, and get to know him, as I did everyone else who washed up here, as was my custom. It seemed rude not to offer him the hand of friendship.

‘So one day in the kitchen I did exactly that. He could not have been pleasanter, nicer, friendlier, he made such an effort to be deferential, extremely aware that he was on foreign soil, that somehow, I was his host. He was astonishingly fluent in English! Incredibly dexterous in his use of our language, very communicative and fluent, whilst his grasp of grammar was simultaneously supreme. He easily understood all that I said; there was no need to speak down to him. However the most shocking thing about him was his accent. Usually, the oriental will struggle with the European tongue, his pigeon English, though understandable, deficient and holey, devoid of ls and rs. Yet this guy spoke with an English accent, half aristocratic, half cockney-John.

‘‘Imagine that!’ he said laughing good humouredly ‘we went out to the country and spent a night in a castle. Such a typical old English castle. I didn’t know what to expect as we roamed around all those dungeons and courtyards. It was like being in a Shakespeare play! I honestly expected to see the ghost of Hamlet or Macbeth in my dreams, jumping out of the wall to stab me!’

‘And later

‘‘But it’s so quiet here in England. Everywhere shuts down on a night time. We stayed in an hotel up in Brighton one evening and ended up in a nightclub, cos everywhere else seemed so shut down and deserted. The same is true here. Nothing to do on a night time. It’s so depressing in the winter. I come from the south of China, it’s more like Italy than England, with short winters and long summers. But here is so depressing! I mean what are you supposed to do on an evening? I just spend my time indoors, getting depressed, getting fat because I eat so much!’

‘And with this he good humouredly patted his stomach as if he was getting fat and old but also philosophic: it was self-deprecating.

‘Well I have to admit, I never in my whole life met such a peculiar specimen, such a strange, intriguing creature. He really was a find. In terms of his sensitivity and intelligence I couldn’t fault him. Pleasant and self-deprecating, he seemed to empathically understand people, and if he felt like it, be kind to them. His emotional sensitivity was second to none. Intellectually he was bizarre. Speaking brilliant English, and casually referring to Shakespeare, he was for all that enrolled on a business management course, one of those utterly lightweight diplomas, offered by our English universities, that cost excessively high fees, that no English student in their right mind would pay, and that amount to a handful of meaningless lectures per week, a few flimsy essays and exams, and a congregation ceremony, complete with cap, gown and glass of champagne, in the grassy, leafy campuses of aristocratic England.

‘So he wore glasses, both intellectual and fashionable, and his attire, his black leather jacket and white scarf or cravat, his jeans, his boots were all of designer stamp. He wore them with such panache and style. He was tall as well as sturdy, and in the face fairly handsome. Yet there was just a presence about him that made you understand he was the chief male. A total assuredness about the man, a confidence, a superiority complex I might say. Not expressed in arrogance or talk or cockiness. Absolutely not. It was very much the reverse. Silent, calm, supreme, his dominance was unquestionable. You could just sense it, oozing off the man. For instance I would see him, casually dowsing his face with designer aftershave in the morning, and when he saw me watching he would smile genially, self-deprecatingly, and say good morning. I liked him for that. Yet I knew that behind closed doors he was surely something else.

‘So there he was. I was full of confusion toward him. Undeniably he was a genial man, and always, every time I saw him, he would, without fail smile pleasantly and offer some greeting. I couldn’t deny his intelligence. Yet I also saw that he possessed a lot of vulgar trappings, things, ideas, possessions, with which I just could not relate. Designer clothes for one. The suspicion that he was phenomenally rich, for another. The insipid, anti-intellectual course he was taking. He had come to England a year or so hence and improved his English, at some expensive school for a year. Prior to that he had studied at a Chinese university, but the degree he had earned there, being so common and worthless, it had been necessary to come here and gain an extra diploma in order to satisfy the demands of Chinese business, whose echelons he would one day enter. And there I saw him, a silent, cool, suited businessman, bossy and psychopathic when need be, just as I’d first seen him when on the phone, casually sleeping with sexy business women, soulless, oh, so soulless, making easy money. I saw him in expensive clothes, unhappy, headstrong and testosterone fuelled, whilst everyone around him tried to please him, to get in his good books. You see for all the good I’d come to recognise in him, that tough, psychopathic, pimp behaviour remained undeniably intrinsic to him, and I wondered whether I had been wise in making friends with an alien such as he; I wondered whether there wasn’t something two faced in my behaviour, that I was a tad hypocritical.

‘But above and beyond what I thought, and above and beyond our gentile, civilised manners, there was some subtle, archaic understanding between us, that he, and only he was the dominant male. Physically we weren’t, bit by bit, so mismatched. Yet there was an undeniable presence about him, something, something difficult to pin down and point to, but something which informed me that he was the natural stud and bullock around whom all the women should flock; whilst I, and I knew it only too well, was meek, insignificant and flimsy, in no way attractive to the opposite sex. I guess he was sturdy, he was strong. His back was so erect, he was well built. But so are many others. He had something else.

‘And the way in which he had self-deprecatingly felt his stomach and told me he was getting fat, spoke volumes, I felt, for how he truly regarded me. I had detected a false note in his words when he had said that. Not that he was supercilious, his intention had been completely sincere. However I felt that his words had sprung from out of his superiority complex, in the way in which a slim girl, full of well meaning but false smugness, will, when she comes into contact with a fatter woman, pretend that she too is getting heavier and oh my gosh aren’t we all in the same boat! I sensed how he felt then, that he considered himself superior to me, and to be honest, I couldn’t really refute that. He was superior.

‘And if his sexually charged presence and persona were not sufficient enough to inform me of his superiority, he spelled things out in universal language, by decorating himself in women. And I don’t just mean Chinese women.

‘There were plenty of Oriental pearls mind you, but there were others besides, notably a Finnish girl and an Italian’ said Neil, looking at us keenly. ‘And it was easy to see why they liked him. Women seem to find his type so appealing. Intelligent, calm, a good listener, he was also clearly able to manipulate and mentally dominate them; hold their emotions subject to his will. Physically as well, I guess he was attractive, although here he was no athlete or sports hunk. And you know I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but women I think prefer his lazy, indolent, sleepy type, men who are happy just to eat and get fat and not concerned about their figure; corpulent, easy and well fed, an arrogant, lazy, superiority, languidly draped about his person – women I think prefer his type to the fit, toned, energetic, sporty type, who keeps in shape and is worried about being so. No, that satisfaction and comfort that he manifested in his lazy, superior, fat cat way – women I promise you love that. And always well dressed and well groomed. They loved, they utterly loved, to have dinner with him. That seemed his only pastime almost, to sit and have dinner with a girl, he quite and somnolent, she talkative and appealing to him.

‘So he was then. I think I should tell you his name, it was so typical of this unclassifiable, enigmatic man. For her was no Lee or Wan or Chen. No. He took an English name: Blake. Imagine that. We were gratified by the presence of Blake.

‘So like I say, I went and made nice-nice with Blake, and though I did so with good intentions, I later came to regret it since in my heart, I felt I couldn’t ever really like him, and moreover the idea of being his inferior, I mean inferior to a Chinaman in my own land, was a bizarre notion to me. Whenever I saw him though we were always affable, always smiling and being good mannered. But there was a tension in the air. And it was soon exacerbated.

‘For instance one night, I awoke at two o’clock to a commotion outside. I opened my window and looked down to the hall’s entrance beneath me. It was the usual scenario: students coming home drunk from a nightclub, getting out of a noisy cab. I’d gotten used to such incidents as soon as I’d moved here, but this time, seeing it was a posse of Chinese, amongst whom was Blake, I allowed my anger at being woken up to rankle me, as if this wasn’t suitable behaviour for our Oriental guests.

‘Then one evening, exiting the kitchen, I witnessed something completely novel. A Finnish girl came out of Blake’s room. Before they became aware of my presence, I saw them embrace, as if to say goodbye and thanks for the sex. I saw them do one final kiss, and then as the Finnish girl exited the corridor, she turned one more time, looked intimately at Blake, and, raising her finger to her mouth, ‘popped it’ in a coquettish way. Blake responded by popping his own finger, as if it were a secret message between lovers. By this time he’d become aware of my presence. I put my head down, acting as if I hadn’t noticed, and he made his usual self-deprecating smile. I just smiled back and walked on.

‘But the chief cause of tension with Blake remained his Chinese whore girl. I would come into the kitchen often and find them both seated over dinner; and though Blake ceaselessly made an effort to be gracious, the prostitute did not. She would just sit there, gabbling ten to the dozen in Chinese, looking beautiful, completely indifferent of me as if I didn’t exist, in the kitchen of what was my floor, and what had been my floor for over a year, in the kitchen where I had spent so many happy hours with my now departed ex-flat mates. Anyway there was tension there, and I felt perhaps it would’ve been better never to have made friends with Blake. However for the moment we both put on friendly faces.

‘And I didn’t too much care either for I was going on holiday now for two weeks. The night before I left I went to see my Korean friend Wan. Said had by this time left, so we were the two remaining survivors from our previous year.

‘‘Our new flatmates will be here by the time I return’ I said to him happily. ‘I can’t wait to see who we’re going to get.’

‘‘Maybe some nice girls!’ he said breaking into laughter. We both knew what was on our minds: we recalled the lovely French, Italian, Swiss and German girls of last year.

‘He-he! Last year there were four girls, this year I’ve heard at least half the floor will be female – that means nine!’

‘Oh Good! Good! Lots of girls for you and I.’

He opened up his top drawer, took out a bottle of Martini, and two small shot glasses.

‘Cheers!’ we said clinking our glasses, ‘here’s to lots of new foreign girls!’ I said. And we spent the night chatting and relaxing. Finally, at around twelve, I left.

‘Now, I had to go downstairs, onto the girl’s floor, to quickly say goodbye to one of my female friends. However, just as I got into the corridor, I saw someone up ahead: it was Blake. He came out of one of the girl’s rooms, knotting up his cravat as if redressing, with a young Italian girl in tow: she was small, slim and lithe, she was dark-haired and wore glasses that made her look very intelligent. I held myself back hoping he wouldn’t see me. He didn’t. And so thinking himself alone, I watched him exit with the Italian girl; and turning their backs on me, I saw them walk down the corridor. And there and then I was given a glimpse into the secret personality of this man. For as they walked, the petit Italian girl walking submissively ahead of him, he – the supreme, the dominant – casually and with smut raised his hand and slapped her backside satisfactorily; her peachy, slightly flabby backside, he slapped with such satisfaction. She didn’t turn around to face him as he did so, she just walked straight on, submissive, controlled, at his will; whilst he walked erect and dominant, slapping her butt with supremacy. As I saw this, it was as if I had caught a glimpse of a male and female gorilla stealing through the forest, the strong male, the submissive female.

‘And mind you’ said Neil excitedly, ‘this was just two days after he’d introduced Miss Finland to the delights of chicken chow mine. No it was some sight that, I seemed to see it almost in slow motion. That dominant male slapping the Italian girl on the backside, as though she were his slave, his chattel. Never have I seen a more dominant, comfortable man. I went off for my holiday the next day.’