Blue Jacaranda
澳洲：何木
Chapter 1
He didn’t usually go to bars, especially one where the music rattled your ears non-stop. The bar owners though did have a motive to force customers to speak more and louder, to dry up their mouth and internal organs, to drink more and more and non-stop of their ridiculously pricey drinks.
“What did you say?” asked once again Peter’s rather strained vocal cord. It was the sentence he uttered most this evening, thanks to the mosquito-like murmurs from Melody who sat opposite on the high stool across the small table.
Melody didn’t answer him but served herself another mouthful of Beijing Yan-Jing Beer, a rarity in Australia, which must have stirred much of her homesickness. This afternoon when they met on the campus of University of Sydney, it was her idea to come to this bar, claiming that it was the only place in the country where the Chinese had a chance of drinking the ‘famous’ Yan-Jing beer, as though all Chinese must have it simply because it was from the Capital.
Then just as Peter expected no more of her response, she let loose the much delayed reply, as if only enabled by her drink, “I said, I said," she paused, while Peter leaned forward with his ear nearly kissing her forehead, "I said, I really do not know what to do on weekends.”
“Oh, well, it is not the weekend yet,” he said joyfully, hunched back on the edge of the table, “plus, isn’t here your favourite going, with your closest Gui-mi friends, or of course your, your boyfriend?”
Earlier today, Melody had mentioned or rather, hinted to him that she had already split up with her boyfriend, but Peter, who was unfortunately also one of her exes, needed from her a firmer assurance.
Again, Melody didn’t reply to him at the minute, or she did not hear him at all, in her state of ‘Beijing-beer’ intoxication. Crossing her arms upon the table, she set her head down, like a schoolgirl about to take a slumber during lunch breaks. With her eyes narrowing to a slit, her face coloured to crimson, Peter was really concerned she would soon vomit, or fall unconscious throughout the night.
But that was not what he had anticipated for the meeting, the first one in more than a year after their breakup. For even though he did not particularly enjoy drinking as much as Melody, he found this evening very agreeable, and had taken a little more than his usual limit. Right now he was at the height of drinking, half-drunk, half-not-drunk, when one feels very capable, unafraid of risks and dangers and common treacheries in one's life. Some people could change to a very different person when drunk, and he was one of them.
“Melody, Melody, are you okay?” he cooed closely at her ear, like a caring big brother, or a lover, or a seducer, sending his head across and low, shamelessly taking in the fragrance on her hair, “Melody, at least you have your boyfriend to hang out with, so it is not you but me who must complain about anything. Everyone must find things to do, to pass time and, if only we can get rid of all those damned assignments.”
Melody flickered her eyelids, once or twice, a sign that she was after all conscious of his breath brushing her face, and Peter grabbed the opportunity to keep her awake, “How about Violin? Can’t you play your violin to kill time?”
“Violin?” mouthed Melody suddenly, sitting up unexpectedly, like she was nettled by the mere mention of the instrument she used to love and play. Peter, taken aback, sobered up his position, and to watch Melody animate a dramatic shake of her head, her hair billowing around the neck and shoulder. Then, after taking another sip of the precious beer, her spirit seemed revived, and she declared in a piteous tone, “I already gave it up, I never have the willpower to persist in anything, see, I am getting fat, I am a useless nobody, oh, what the hell...”
Peter laughed out loud at her ‘getting fat’, and quickly went to comfort her with not a little amusement, “Were you fat, no one else is slim.” Beholding her, he increasingly found her rosy yet unhappy face, and the peculiar, languid feminine charm exceedingly attractive. Without hesitation he reached out his hand to cover hers, which was not unfamiliar to him. Many days ago he had often kissed her there and there, even once made love to her. They first met at a welcome party for newcomers to the University. She was from Beijing and he Chengdu. And via the mighty and capable WeChat, their spare time after study was thus occupied, and many of the ancient-looking buildings, and particularly the iconic jacaranda tree in the university, had witnessed their shadows, sunny smiles and intimate indulgence. Their romance, in this far-away, lonely ‘village’ country, was like an Australia bushfire started by a severe drought, flared up and burning beautifully, and then extinguished prematurely by an odd enough downpour.
Admittedly it was him who had grown more and more reluctant in dating her, after their once-off intimacy in bed. Her ‘vanity’, to which he had perhaps been attracted in the first place, had since become an obstacle to developing his chemicals with her. She meticulously tended her face, with her lips constantly red. And the flare-pants she liked to wear had also lost its initial lustre. In his eyes, she acted more and more like a kid whose only purpose was to imitate others, instead of being an independent, ladylike grown-up in her 20s. And of course, their once, not-so-successful love-making experience was the last straw on the camel. He did it too quickly, even before she seemed to have got ready for it. But this was not all his fault, as he had always protested in private whenever recalling the point of failure. Deep down, he had all the confidence of at least making a 'pass' love to any girl he liked, knowing already at high school that boys tended to have less control of it due to their innocence in this matter. And seriously, Melody was just … perhaps a little too dominating in this? Her ways of her being on his top, on their first time?
But how could he have explained to her all of these things, of such sensitivity, him being a ‘short’, ‘bashful’ boy as she had often chided him for?
Presently Peter dared his eyes to drink her face and below pervasively, in an effort to reconcile his old and new impressions of her. Strangely today Melody seemed to have done very little makeup to her features. Her lips shimmered with a natural, healthy colour, eyelashes no more artificially curved and long. Sure enough, no lipstick would stain him if he kissed her this minute, or tonight. And with her fine skin, and a thin little nose, she was not too distant from the look of some kind of internet idol. And the slender figure that she proudly owned, was only two centimetres shorter than his, that was, sadly, a primary reason she was not quite happy with him as an ideal boyfriend.
Was it just for today, that she did not take him seriously enough to do her usual makeup? Or had anything happened to her that might have atoned her values and manners?
A fresh impulse spurred him to touch her again. And after a feigned resistance from her, he had succeeded. He ran his fingers through her hair, caressed her hands tamed by Beijing Beer, puffing more nonsense out of his shell, “So you don’t play Violin, but … where is your boyfriend?”
He felt her fingers suddenly twitch at his question, but he held fast.
“I already told you, didn’t I?” she snapped, in her typical sharp voice when in bad moods, which would have made him flinch in normal times. But this moment, with his wicked power obtained through alcohol, he simply tossed her a sly smile, pressing her baby-bamboo fingers ever more. What the magic fingers the human beings possess, he sighed, so sensitive and lovable, and loving, with nerves meshing the tiniest cells to send the most beautiful pleasures to their brains.
But her eyes kept glared at her, “Otherwise why did I ask you out today?”
Ah, she was not drunk; she still had the reason, like a man's. Peter, absorbed in the little pleasurable act of his, remained quiet, eyes twinkling, ears all on her rambling speech, a mere flirtation to him, “Oh, Peter…am I drunk? So sleepy, I know you don’t like me like this, I have been trying not to drink so much… you know, Peter, I used to drink a lot, back in Beijing, and even with you, with my .. ex, oh, but...it has been boring to death these days, now I fully understand why some people say Australian Chinese are living in a grave cultural desert.”
Interesting a topic as it was, Peter decided to join the conversation, “Yeah, there is no comparison to your Beijing, the cultural centre, and my big Chengdu, is great also for great fun, with hundreds of thousands of featured teahouses, Majiangs, and hot-pots, Karaoke, and the most important is that, you have no difficulty in finding bars with pleasing airs and styles, not like this drab and noisy so-called hotel bar, funny, isn't it? The hotel with no bedrooms, haha, ... but fairly enough, you also get drunk very easily back in China, which was no good, was it, Melody,” he babbled on, short of reminding her of her unbecoming tantrums when drunk. “Melody, if we had not run into each other today, we may never see each other again, imagine, Melody, we will just die separate, at who-knows-where in the big wide world, like two strangers who have never made love at all, ah, how dreadful,” He had to fetch his drink to accompany a sudden sadness elevated by his own wistful speech and, only seconds later, to squash a twinge of jealousy aroused by his sour memory of seeing her walking with another guy, much taller than him, who must be perfect for her in terms of body length. “Why didn’t you contact me? Have you forgotten me completely? You are so cruel, Melody...”
Abruptly and frighteningly Melody sat bolted up, shoved his hand away, with an incredible force, nearly toppled one of the glasses on the table, and shot him an eye of fire, “Peter, stop playing games! I am not a fool you can make, do you not understand?”
Her warning, like a wintry chill, at once set him off fumbling for his proper place. Her vivid temper buried in his memory came out alive. Embarrassedly speechless, Peter resorted to his drink. And Melody, with her rising indignation and her own set of bitterness about everything, did the same.
A long silence ensued, while Peter took the time to smooth out the hype of awkwardness. He thought that she wouldn’t have minded much of what he had to say in a drinking campaign like this, even with his apparent hypocrisy. Her ferocious reaction had proved him wrong, and her temper was in no way improved, unlike her lips and eyelashes, and her pants. Women are not to belittle in any circumstances. The tigress can jump at you at the time when you think it least possible to attack.
“Have you ever loved anyone at all?” the tigress pressed on.
“Emm, well, Melody, it is a difficult question, the honest answer is that, I am not sure,” he said meekly, unconvincingly, as he never liked this kind of topic. Why are girls so much into it, as if life is all about love and nothing else? To him, sex is more a talkable and actionable than the all so mystery of love.
Clearly she was not impressed by his reply, or she already knew his answer beforehand. For, seemingly having yielded to his idiocy she, like carefully moving a tumbler with a quarter of wine, shifted her body bit by bit away from the high stool. Then, finding her feet on the ground, she made up a remarkable display of her curves and shapes, of her hair tumbling, before pointing out a delicate finger, “Toilet, over there?” commanding an answer from him, a junior university student, who was made even shorter and smaller than her.
“Yes, go down and turn left,’ he obeyed with his finger, which was upset by having lost the feel of hers. He knew she was just pretending she didn’t know where the toilet was. How many times has she come here with her ex boyfriends, him included? He grunted, making an ugly face of revenge at her back, looking after the sway of her not-so-wealthy hips, in her high-heeled march to her release.
~To be continued~
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