talk 756

Does He Speak Often of Me?
(Est-ce Quil Parle Encore de Moi?)

Ted Hsieh

She is a handsome woman. Elegantly dressed in her Versace summer beige, she carries herself with unusual confidence that is nurtured by a life time of successes and admiration from both men and women. There is also poetry in her steps. She walks softly like the night, just like a poet once wrote. Nearly seventy years old, she is more beautiful today than at age 20 when she left Hong Kong to study at the famed London School of Economics.

Although she had been back to Hong Kong several times for business during these fifty years, she has never been back to this area of Waterloo Road in Kowloon. For almost fifty years, she had avoided to set foot on the campus where she had spent, on and off, all her twelve years as a school girl.

Several days ago, she received from her friends an invitation to attend the 50th anniversary class reunion in Hong Kong, on the ground of their old school beloved by many. Through out the years, her classmates had held many reunions— in Hong Kong and in Europe, in Toronto and in Vancouver, in San Francisco and in Australia. She had not attended any of them. She has no intention of attending this one neither. But a certain urge inside of her made her take this hastenedly arranged trip from Nice in South of France where she has called home for the last twenty years. She knows that in the month of August she is not likely to meet any of her classmates in this their homeport; certainly, he will not be here at this time of the year.

Does he always live in France/between Avignon and Valence?
Does he always keep/this abandoned house?
Does he remember the times/of our adolescent games?
Does he still carry on him/the ring that I chose?

She walks slowly under the bristling summer sun from the Front Gate of the school at Waterloo Road up on a sidewalk covering the length of the campus. This used to be a little foot path just outside of the low school wall fifty years ago. But now it is a busy thoroughfare bearing the name of the school. The noon-day concrete pavement is hot under her feet and the human and auto traffic is heavy around her. But she is cool and relaxed. Her steps carry with them memories and images of a life time. Occasionally, tears drop from her cheeks on her smiling face. She came prepared. She knew that there will be tears. In her brown Louis Vuitton handbag, the nicely folded tissue papers are ready to catch them. She knows now why she had not been back all these years and why she is back here now on this very spot of the world.

Tell me, tell me, does he speak often of me?
Tell me, tell me, does he know I am here?
Tell me, tell me, his memories are of me?
Their seats were next to each other when they started the first grade. But they did not talk to each other until they were in fifth grade. He sat on a desk behind her in the row by the window-well on the first floor of a three-story building called the Back Block. Above the window-well was the huge play ground with lanes for track, sand-boxes for long and high jumpers, and three basketball courts in the middle. She smiles when she is remembering the smell of mildew from that window-well not reached by the sun. He was not an attentive student, playful and forgetful but very funny. He was an active boy. He always came in sweaty after recesses, playing and running more vigorously than most of his friends on the play ground. He smelled and his white summer uniform looked yellowish from sweats and his hair looked like a field of wild grass after the rain. She was the top student in their grade. Besides, she was always well groomed and her shinning white uniform properly pressed. She was also very humble and tried hard to hide her academic achievements. But he knew where to get help for his school work and he needed help all the time. For reasons known only to her, she was always eager to help this lovable and lost boy.

Tell me the truth.
Is he happy and married?
Please, I want to know.
His story is my story.

They went on their first date on the first day of their seventh grade. It took place in a dive of a restaurant called ABC right next to the Front Gate of their school. She had already transferred to a prestigious school for girls on the Hong Kong Island. He had just moved in to the dormitory on the second floor of the Front Block inside of the Front Gate. Her chauffeur dropped her off in front of the restaurant. She had changed from her school uniform into a dark brown skirt and beige shirt. He rushed in from the dorm through the back door of the restaurant and was still in his uniform, new and white. His hair was freshly cut the day before. In the evening of the first day of school, he was a model of decorum. She smiles at the memory of that evening and is not surprised that she is able to remember every detail.

Tell me the truth.
Tell me if he has changed?
Even after all these years,
Me, I did not forget him.

They ordered a large glass of Coca Cola with two straws and shared the drink. It was a fashionable practice of couples on dates in Hong Kong at the time. He talked non-stop about the things he did during the summer, about visiting his grandparents in the Philippines, about spending two weeks on Chaung Chau Island doing nothing but swimming and playing basketball, and about going to Stanley on the Hong Kong side for a youth conference. He said that there was a prison in Stanley near his camp ground. He would not mind being a prisoner there because of the cool breeze blowing in from the South China Sea. He was very funny, she remembers. He did stop talking from time to time when the juke box played the songs that he liked and he would ask her about her favorite songs. She remembers she told him that she liked every song that he mentioned. Hearing that, he smiled the biggest smile that evening, she remembers.

Does he sing from time to time
The songs of our fifteen years?
Does he remember us
And our first rendezvous?

She also remembers his dorm buddies coming into the restaurant several times that evening to “spy” on them. She was relieved when her chauffeur finally came at the appointed time to get her. She was happy to be with him. But his buddies made her blush. And she always wondered what they talked about in the dorm that evening.

They dated through high school and frequently professed their love for each other. She had transferred several times between the elite school for girls and the Baptist-related school that he and his friends cherished with a great deal of affection. He grew and became a rather popular schoolboy in Hong Kong for his formidable athletic and dancing skills. But she developed astonishingly into a young lady with a wide spread reputation for her beauty and brain, especially among the older university young men and their parents. The line of her admirers, both secret and open, was long and their credentials, impressive.

She enjoyed the attention from these elite young men from Hong Kong’s elite families. Genetically, almost, she had a very subtle flirting style that would drive these young men, and older men no doubt, crazy. You see, her father was a lady’s man. He was one of the most successful businessmen in his time. He had four wives and she was the daughter from the fourth wife. Her father and her older half-brothers, many of whom were more than twenty years older than she, loved her and treated her as the pearl in their hands. She, therefore, was used to dealing with men all her life and she was also used to all the advantages that the limitless family wealth was able to offer.

He came from a family with moderate means. Both of his parents were teachers who were able to provide him with a comfortable home and a good educational opportunity but no material advantages whatsoever. But they did teach him good manners and proper respect for himself and others. It was this self-respect that allowed him to keep an emotional distance from her in their relationship as they grew older and a rather cool detachment about her many suitors and her busy social life apart from him. But, in side, he was hurt, very hurt, and she knew it.

Could a young woman be able to express a full range of emotions appropriately in all social situations but actually be without any emotion inside of her?

She thought she had a real affection for him. She knew that the feelings he had for her were the same that she thought she had for him. But obviously she was not able to experience the difference and could not tell the difference. However, she knew that increasingly as they grew older, he was not the same person when he was with her compared to when he was with his friends. He continued to treat her with kindness and respect. She continued to shower him with kisses and affection, and with expensive gifts and intimate dinners on her family yachts. But she also loved the attention from those older university men, their parties, and the adoring comments from their parents. And, in side, he was hurt, very hurt, and she knew it.

Although they continued to consider themselves a couple, they spent less and less time together after 10th grade. She transferred back to that elite school for girls on the Hong Kong side the final two years in order to better prepare for the university examinations. He was busy in sports, school and community services, and writing. They did not meet even once during the summer of their graduation from high school. Near the end of the summer, he was ready to fly to America for college. She called and asked if she could come to the airport to see him off. He told her in a very kind way that they could say goodbye over the phone. He also congratulated her for her tremendous achievement in the all-Hong Kong school certificate examinations and her acceptance to the University.

As she hung up the phone, she knew that she had lost something very precious in her life.

She spent the first two years of college at the University in Hong Kong and decided to pursue a career in business and economics. She was heavily recruited by several leading universities in the United States and United Kingdom. But she chose the London School of Economics. As expected, she achieved a star student status at the School after a mere three semesters. The faculty became aware of the presence in their midst a student with unusual intellect, drive, and beauty. She also became aware of the unusual attention paid to her from a young faculty member. It would be unbelievable to think that for a person as intelligent as she was that she did not know the effect on man, any man, of her unusual feminine power. So in a couple years, the young faculty member was totally overpowered. A distinguish doctorate from the economic hotbed, the University of Chicago, a beautiful wife and two adorable young children were no match to the smart, driven, and beautiful undergraduate from a rich Hong Kong family. They were married five weeks before she started her own doctorate program. The wedding took place only two months after he completed his own divorce process.

But the young faculty member had not really been divorced, not emotionally anyway, from his wife. They were high-school sweet-hearts, growing up in upstate New York. He began to spend more and more time with his former wife and their children. Those times turned into days and then, nights. Although she could not feel the pain of betrayal, she knew that she was in a situation in England similar to her father’s arrangement with his four wives in Hong Kong. She could not accept this situation but was determined not to get a divorce. So she left London for Paris and completed her doctorate in economics in a heavily socialist environment. A capitalist bourgeois at heart and her father’s daughter after all, she thrived in her business dealings and her investments in shipping paid huge dividends while France was deep in political and ideological struggles. She was also among the first to invest in China when China was open for business. Financially successful and socially prominent, she has homes in Paris, Shanghai and Dubai. But she loves the one in Nice the best, where she spent her 50th and 60th birthdays, alone. Those were the times and Nice is the place where she allows herself to be in touch with herself and to be in touch with her memories.

Her memories are the memories of her young friend when they were young in Hong Kong.

Once, many years ago, he came to Paris with his wife and children during a vacation trip. He phoned her. “Hai wo ah” (It is me). Even after more than twenty years, she recognized him at once from the voice. He was calm and confident. But she had lost it. Trembling, she was not able to answer. I just want to call, he said, to let you know that I have been thinking of you. I know you are very successful but I also want you to be happy, he said. I want to thank you for all the years we had when we were in Hong Kong. They were very good years, he continued, but I was too young to appreciate you and what you meant to me.

She cried after that phone call and cried like a baby. She didn’t cry when he told her not to come to the airport to see him off. She didn’t cry when she was leaving London. She didn’t cry when her father died. But she cried that night, after she heard his voice for the first time after a long time.

Twenty more years had gone by since that phone call, she is determined to come back to the city where she had spent her youth and to the spot where she thought she had given to a young boy her heart. She had lost him. She had also lost her way after losing him. All these years she has plunged herself into her work and some relationships that would not require involvement of her heart. She has lived like a homeless soul moving from one of her extravagantly furnished homes to another. Yes, many years later he did tell her in a surprise phone call that he had not forgotten her. But that too was many years ago. She needs to be in touch with her lost heart and locate her lost soul. She needs to breathe the same air of her youth and watch the same sky she watched with her young friend when they were young. After all, she had given him her young heart and he has kept it all these years.

Has he changed? Is he still married? Is he happy? Does he sing from time to time our songs? Does he remember? Does he still remember us and our first rendezvous? Does he speak often of me? She is not looking for answers to these questions of the heart. But as she is standing on the same spot where the old ABC Restaurant once stood, the answers are already there.

(The lyric is from the song Est-ce quil parle encore de moi, sung by Mireille Mathieu with English subtitle on Youtube.)