原创英文小说：[Blue Jacaranda] 蓝花楹 - Chapter 5 何木屋语2021-09-11 08:59:56

Chapter 5

澳洲：何木

 

 

Melody awoke in a dome of darkness. It must be about two or three o’clock in the morning, and it was very quiet, except for some baby birds peeping weakly down in a big tree outside the building, as if they were still trapped in the cold winter. 

 

Many hours of sleep had refreshed her, so her mind grew active again. 

 

Since the other day she ran into Peter, things had been playing out naturally, like water flowing to a lower level of ground. Evidently, Peter had grown a bit, within a year, not necessarily much more mature as a man, but easier going in her presence, more expressive in words and more confident in bed.

 

The boy was indeed in the right direction of adulthood transformation. 

 

Compared to Peter’s little den, her living space was a luxury. Soon after she arrived in Sydney, accompanied by her parents, they decided they should purchase or invest in an apartment for her, for four years was not a short time, a stable ‘home’ in a new, unfamiliar city was justified. And her parents could also have the convenience to stay with her should they afford the time away from their business.

 

Three years had now passed; during the first two when her grandma was still alive, every year she went back to Beijing three times, not counting the last time for her funeral. 

 

Now that her grandma was in heaven, watching over her wherever she was, there was no need to rush to that empty Si-he-yuan. 

 

The king-sized bed in the master room was very comfortable. The soft quilt, filled with goose down & feather, was intimate with her skin, or it was her ‘skin’, a second layer of skin. 

 

Peter, and her other boyfriends, had never liked sleeping naked with her, stating that it was not ‘clean’. She certainly knew what they meant by being ‘not clean’. But, to her, the lightweight coverlet, soft and warm to the touch, was helping her body breathe, making her feel alive even in sleep, and safe as a baby in a mother’s womb. 

 

So she had always tried to convince them that the benefit of sleeping naked would outweigh the ‘untidiness’. And if they were stubborn enough to still have their underclothes on, she would steal them off afterwards. Then, in a few nights, they would get used to it and start to enjoy the ‘benefit’. 

 

But don’t get her wrong, she would of course wear pads during those troubling days of women. 

 

Poor Peter, the other night in his narrow bed, demanded by her, had to be fully exposed throughout the night. The stimulation by her skin made him do it many times, till the early morning and rather, exhausted.

 

But it is okay, he is still young, overly sensitive. It is his prime for it and he does need a lot of practice. 

 

And she knew she was his first. 

 

Thinking of this, Melody smiled. In her breast, a warm flow seemed to trickle out of the nipple, to feed the green boy who had nicely shaped lips. In her experience, there was only one other first-timer, at her high school. But that was nothing to be proud of, silly as it had been, under a tree, both of them super-nervous, and lost within seconds.

 

Peter’s first time had been clumsy, but she was not. Oh, my god… as soon as she sat on him, his face kind of turned purple, like he was dying or what, and finished. He was then so embarrassed, as if he had committed some sort of crime. 

 

That was what Peter had attracted her the most, a guy, totally innocent, with no guise, who must attach so much importance to a man’s virility. Perhaps he was worried that he had a problem, which would affect his future performance in bed. Perhaps for her next life she should live as a man, so she would have a chance to fully understand his troubles.  

 

But she liked him. He was more reliable, and more clever than most. And he studied very well, and had often helped her with her assignments. Although art was not his major, he had the kind of talent to quickly learn and apply to issues.

 

However she still thought of him as a boy. Not only because he was younger than her, but he was pretty much a novice about love and about people in general. 

 

He must have thought it had been his decision not to continue their previous relationship, but the fact was she had already begun dating Cooper, a Beijing guy who had come here to do his Media Master study. 

 

Should she have wanted to continue with him, how could he have resisted it? But anyway, Peter wouldn’t know about this. So long as he was okay, not feeling hurt, and kept his innocence, she should have no guilt or regret. 

 

And although from time to time she needed company of men, she never liked dating more than one at a time. It would be an unhealthy distraction, if she did so, compromising her feelings. Sometimes she wondered if she was a ‘maniser’, as what Cooper had once teased her back when she teased him a ‘womanizer’. She believed Cooper was a womanizer, who was inclined to try every different individual for every little difference. Was she also having such a tendency?

 

Suddenly she was not so sure of herself. Each person is unique, with certain things better than others. Does she not want to see and feel what those things are, out of her curiosity as an artist? 

 

For instance, Jason, the boyfriend of that plainly dressed and always smiling Lotus, owned a nice build of body muscles. Last time at a beach party, he was ceaselessly showing off his bulging chest and six belly packs, putting Cooper’s flatness and fleshiness in shame. But the muscle guy was very much a self-centred egoist, whilst Cooper, as tall as 182cm, had the kind of man’s quiet dominance and control, even if he was not quite ‘handsome’ by social conventions.

 

So, what is her conclusion? 

 

If only there were just one man left on earth, she would then have no choice. But would she really ‘love’ the last man remaining on earth?

 

Oh, my god, suddenly she felt she was as bad as Cooper, whom she had hated so much, ‘loved’ so much, and at this very moment, still had a desire for. 

 

She sighed. 

 

 

She got up and went to fetch a glass of water. The carpet, with its lined textile kneading her sole, gave her a different kind of comfort. The central ducted air-conditioner was noiseless, lending her the perfect temperature. And, as she moved, the footlight turned on, articulating the delicacy of her ankles. 

 

Sydney’s tap water can be drunk directly, and she didn’t understand why Peter had to boil it, as if this were back in China. 

 

In the living room, she spread out on her recliner that resembled the rattan chair at the Si-he-yuan. 

 

The silence seemed to speak to her. The familiar little dots of lights on low buildings outside the glass walls were remote, bringing no intimacy.

 

After a while she turned on the lights and at once the spacious room was put on a milky air, so gentle and sentimental. Then the music was turned on, it was Roxette’s ‘It must have been love’:

 

“Lay a whisper

On my pillow

Leave the winter

On the ground

I wake up lonely

There's air of silence

In the bedroom

And all around

Touch me now

I close my eyes

And dream away..”

 

It was an old song. She heard it first at a party. Cooper played the piano, and a girl sang the song. It was so beautiful, and she had an instant impulse to know and get Cooper, her Beijing country-fellow. 

 

The song had since accompanied many of her lonely nights. Her tears would come, from where her grandma’s face would emerge to comfort her, soothing her back into a little child.  

 

She went to her wine cabinet, and grabbed the 1982 Penfolds Grange, and poured half of it into the tumbler. 

 

She shook the tumbler, and the blood-red liquid was swirling, swirling, and she kept shaking it, and the liquid, as if anticipating an escape for freedom, surging to life, until she realized the time had passed in her minutes of daze. 

 

The first sip was strong and the most beautiful, for the taste bud was fresh and most tender, like Peter to her, or her body to Peter. 

 

She lit a cigarette. It was blinking like stars, the smoke retreating like jellyfish. The wine was okay, but she was never an expert on wines. She drank it for the sake of intoxication. In her cabinet, there was even a couple of Beijing Er-guo-tou she had sought out from a Chinese grocery. 

 

The cigarette burned her fingers. She snubbed it out and, putting down the wine glass, she began to measure her breasts with her hands. Of size B, she wanted it to go to C, but not more than that, otherwise it might lose its stance and fall flat like a puddle. But she didn’t particularly favour any sorts of implants.

 

She was then inspecting the two moles on her body. One close to her pubic mould, the other between her breasts. Cooper once made a nasty comment, that the former stood for pure lust, the latter for pure love. What a taste he was having... But without a doubt he was very experienced with women. He also made another strange reference, that her shape was like a torch. She didn’t quite get it, weren’t all the females having the similar shape? But Cooper was just smirking, refusing to give her an answer.

 

Maybe she needed to explore women as well. Of course not as a lesbian, not like that, just for the kind of physical exploration as a painter who had to scrutinize a model before creating a piece of artwork.  

 

Then she felt a wave of sadness arising to attack her. She poured herself another full glass, and absorbed the large amount to dilute the negative emotions. 

 

Cooper had snatched another girl, a freshman who had just arrived from Xiamen last term. Melody couldn’t say she was heart-broken at his leaving her, but for weeks afterwards she had absolutely no appetite for anything. 

 

No man seemed reliable; even Peter, who would just change as he grew more mature, with his interest ultimately diversified. But she doesn’t blame them. Everyone in the world is pretty much confused by love, like, lust, desire, want, need, win, lose, pride, jealousy, security… how could anyone attach himself to her forever? What kind of man doesn't like a more beautiful, younger, better-shaped, better-sized female animal? 

 

Her waist had lately built up flesh. Maybe it was because she had drunk too much, since Cooper left her, and also had less love-making that, according to research, could help burn a lot of fat around the waist. 

 

Ah, she was so lonely. 

 

There was an attempt to WeChat Peter, maybe asking him over? But no, no, that would be against her basic rule of not taking any of her boyfriends to her place. There were reasons for this. The first was that the luxury of her living conditions might make them feel humble, and inferior, who would then keep a distance from her, not behaving their natural self. 

 

But the most important reason was that it would give them unnecessary imagination that they would one day move over to live with her, like most couples such as Jaspon and Lotus who would live together at least to save rent, if not for other benefits. But she wanted to retain her privacy and freedom and didn’t wish another person to know everything about her. Living together for a while was okay, but it should be at other places such as a hotel, or motel, or for the best, going for a holiday in other countries. 

 

In another minute, she was checking herself in the mirror. Her eyebrows were not quite regular and a little loose, which she had to enhance a bit by paint. The lips had a trifle too much flesh and her nose, thin, as Peter had said, made her look a little sharp, cold and unfriendly, not like the one Lotus had in her round, harmonious face. 

 

She used to do heavy makeup, and she knew Peter didn’t like it. For some reason, the foreigners, her ex white-man boyfriend, preferred the makeup. She couldn’t quite understand why most Chinese men didn’t seem to appreciate it. She had of course sensed Peter’s reluctance to kiss her lips, that was why she had decided to adapt to him this time.  

 

Then she grew dizzy and climbed to bed again. In no time she was welcomed by the daylight filtering from the draperies.

 

At once she sent Peter a message, “Awake?”

 

And his reply was instant, “Of course, 10:10 already, but I didn’t want to wake you up, see..how much I care for you, Melody...”

 

She sent a ‘Kiss’ to him, as a reward to his newly learnt sweet words that made her very happy. “Peter, I feel extremely excellent today, what to do? Any plans for us?”

 

“Well, anywhere is Okay for me. You decide, you always have more fun ideas. But can we go somewhere? I still have days before taking my holiday jobs.”

 

“Then to Hunter Valley for two nights? See, the grapes are ripening... ”

 

“Cool, let’s it, and shall we invite another couple to make a four?”