Готовый перевод Крошка из Шанхая / Baby from Shanghai: 1 Встреча с любовником / 1 Meeting with her lover

1 Meeting with her lover

You know, the white light, so much, all,

Landscapes strange and wonderful.

But I want only one thing –

Lover, not boring [3].

Joni Mitchell [4]

My real name is Nicky, but my friends just call me Coco. As the famous French, Coco Chanel [5], who lived almost ninety years. She's my idol, of course, after Henry Miller [6]. Every day I Wake up, I only think about how to become famous. This is my only dream and goal of existence. Really want to hit and shake this city coming down upon him noisily and suddenly as a volley of fireworks.

Probably the fact that I live in Shanghai. The city is shrouded in a mystical fog, immersed in an atmosphere of rumors and innuendo and full of easy contempt for everything around – an echo of a bygone era were made of anchan - foreign concessions [7]. Here reigns the spirit of stiffness, arrogance and complacency affects me inexplicably: it attracts and repels.

Well, I'm only twenty-five. A year ago he published a collection of my short stories. He did not bring a penny, but were attracted to my attention. Readers-men even began to send me emails with erotic photos. Three months ago, I left the editorial Board, eventually left journalism and now work in a shabby cafe with a strange name "Green stem" – like waitress was barefoot in a mini-skirt.

***

Among the permanent clients of "Green stalk", I noticed a tall, handsome young man. He stood for hours at the counter with a Cup of coffee, reading a book. I liked to observe the change of expression on his face, his every movement. He seemed to know that I'm gradually watching him, but said nothing.

Never said a word until the day when he suddenly sent me a curt note, and in it only one phrase: "I love you", his name and address.

This man, born in the year of the Rabbit and a year younger seemed to have bewitched me. Hard to say what exactly drew it, but I think I was most attracted by excessive weariness of life and longing for the love that I felt skin.

We are totally different. I am energetic, ambitious. For me, the world is a heavenly garden full of ripe and juicy apples on the trees, that I really need to eat, and immediately and completely. He's always self-absorbed and terribly sentimental. For his life – bitter, poisonous fruit. He bites his a piece of and sensitive like a deadly poison slowly spreads through my veins. But our striking dissimilarity only increased the attraction with the inevitability with which the attracted particles with different charge. We are rapidly immersed in love.

***

Soon after meeting Tian-Tian [8] shared with me a family secret. His mother lived somewhere in a provincial Spanish town and a couple with some Spaniard owned a small Chinese restaurant. It turns out that in Spain you can make good money by selling lobster and wonton [9].

Father Tian-Tian died suddenly, quite young. Died in exile, when I went to Spain to visit his wife. The death certificate was written "from heart attack". The urn with his ashes was brought home with the aircraft, "McDonnell Douglas". Tian-Tian still remembered that Sunny day and wept uncontrollably as his grandmother – a short wizened old woman. She was crying and tears were constantly running down her wrinkled cheeks in thin streams, like someone pressed a wet linen.

Grandmother is sure it was murder. My father never had a broken heart. Keeps telling me that he killed my mother. She had a lover and they were together. – Tian-Tian looked at me weird and gaze and asked: – would You believe in this? I don't understand. Just guessing. Maybe grandma was right. But whatever it was, and her mother sends every year a lot of money, so I have enough to get.

He stopped talking and began watching me. It was a strange story immediately captured me: I like tragic stories with complex intrigue. When I studied Chinese language at Fudan University in Shanghai, it was my dream to write a killer Thriller. In the blink of an eye things and buzzwords like "dark omen", "treacherous conspiracy", "dagger", "poison", "fatal passion", "crazy" and "dead moon" flashed in my head. With aching tenderness, looking at his slim and beautiful features for the first time I understood the reason for his constant grief.

– The shadow of death over time, only slightly pale, said I, Tian-Tian. Between your current life and past pain will always be only a thin glass.

His eyes were full of tears, he curled his fingers.

But I found you, and now you're my faith, ' he said. – Don't stay with me just out of curiosity. But don't leave immediately.

***

I moved to Tian-Tian, in his big apartment with three bedrooms, located on the Western outskirts of the city. The living room was simple and comfortable furnishings: against one wall stood a sofa bed from IKEA with fabric, the other piano company "Strauss". Right above him on the wall hung the portrait where Tian-Tian was depicted with unusual smooth hair that looks like you just emerged from the pool.

Honestly, this area I did not like. Almost all roads are pitted with potholes, and on both sides of the huddle each other the old, miserable shacks are ramshackle and crumbling billboards, and in between are towering, stinking pile of garbage. Near our house there is a pay phone. In rainy weather the roof of the cabin leaks like the Titanic. From the apartment window can not see any green trees or well-dressed passer-by, a single piece of pure heaven. In this bleak place it is impossible to think about the future.

Tian-Tian was fond of saying that the future is a trap for the human mind embedded in the brain.

For some time after the death of his father Tian-Tian was speechless. He just couldn't speak. Then he stopped going to school. Because of a lonely childhood, he has turned into a real nihilist. The denial of reality was expressed from him mainly in that he could spend hours lying in bed, read, watch TV, smoke, philosophize about the confrontation of life and death, spirit and flesh, to participate in competitions of television, play computer games and sleep. The rest of the time he painted, walked with me on walks, ate, bought groceries, wandered around book shops and record shops that have long sat in a cafe or periodically looked to the Bank. When I run out of money, went to the post office and sent the mother letters in beautiful blue envelopes.

Grandma he almost never visited. He had to move because their life together has turned into a nightmare. She is literally obsessed with this story with "murder" in Spain. Her heart was broken, spirit broken, and his face faded. But life still flickered in the frail body. She now lives in his built Western-style house, indulging in anger and cursing his ill-fated destiny and the treacherous sister-in-law.

***

Saturday. The weather is nice. The house is warm. I Wake up exactly at 8.30. Lying next to Tian-Tian opens his eyes. Second we look at each other, then silently kiss. Our morning kisses full of tenderness, love and freshness. The touch of lips is light, like two frolicking fish, touch the smooth, silvery sides, dancing in the cool water. It is our indispensable morning ritual and the only manifestation of mutual sexual attraction.

***

Have Tian-Tian did not go well with sex. Whether motivated by worries about the unexpected and mysterious death of his father and due to it complexes, or for any other reason, but it did not work. Remember the first time we were in bed and I suddenly realized that he can not do anything. I was so shocked that he did not know whether to stay with him. In student years the sex has always seemed to me a very important and indispensable party to the relationship (although since then my opinion has changed).

Realizing his complete helplessness, he is in despair looked at me from head to toe covered in cold sweat. For twenty-four years he was first alone with a woman.

In the mind of any man's sexual worth in importance is not inferior to life, and any deviation or failure give rise to a painful, painful experiences and emotional pain. He cried, I did too. The rest of the night we kissed, caressed and cradled each other, whispering tender words of comfort. I loved his tender kisses and tender touches. I felt the tip of his tongue in my mouth like ice cream that melts, slightly burning the sky. He taught me that a kiss has a soul, that every kiss is unique and has its own set of colors and shades.

He was kind, affectionate and trusting as a Dolphin. He won my heart wild, unrestrained temperament. And the fact that he was not able to give me – the languor and anguish of the sensual impulse, the happiness of intercourse and the final delight orgasm – all this is lost to me.

In the book "the Unbearable lightness of being" Milan Kundera [10] gave the classic definition of love: "making love and sleeping with a woman are two different passions. They not only exist separately, but are opposite to each other. Love is embodied not in the carnal lust and the desire for copulation (it is just a bodily desire can spread to countless women), and in an effort to sleep peacefully next to (usually one)".

At the beginning of our relationship with Tian-Tian I had no idea that someday I will feel the same. However, a whole series of subsequent events and the arrival in my life, another man convinced me of the correctness of this assertion.

***

We got up at nine o'clock. Tian-Tian got into a huge tub, and I smoked first in the day a cigarette "Mild seven". On a tiny kitchen made Breakfast – eggs, corn broth and milk. On a summer morning, when the sun's rays illuminate the surrounding area with honeyed light, inadvertently fall into a poetic mood. The soul peace and rest. The sound of gurgling water coming from the bath, rocked.

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