The art of love

Literary Review, Summer, 2004 by Xu Xi

They say time stops for no man, that time marches on, commonplaces that are still repeated, yet there are people who chafe at the slowness with which it passes. Twenty four hours to make a day, and at the end of the day you discover that it was not worthwhile, and the following day is the same all over again, if only we could leap over all the futile weeks in order to live one hour of fulfillment, one moment of splendor, if splendor can last that long

--Jose Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

--Translated from the Portugeuse by Giovanni Pontiero

Their last night together was spent on a beach. Sonny was not to see Victoria again for eighteen years until November of '99, the year his work was honored by the Academy of American Poets.

She was in the audience the evening he read from his latest volume at the University of Hong Kong, in English and Chinese, as the press took pains to note the next morning. Sonny Pessoa performed, pretending not to see her. Afterwards, Victoria Chang-Howell waited till the crowds had thinned.

"I thought it was you." He air-kissed both cheeks, with just enough distance for fame.

"You look the same," she said. At fifty seven, she passed for younger. Her hair was coal black, dyed to match her eyes; crows' feet, however, were harder to hide. She had dressed for the occasion, uncharacteristically sensual, imitating an earlier self. At fifty seven, she felt their age difference, the way they hadn't, eighteen years earlier.

"And you're," he took in her expensive appearance--quirky, almost artistic, but less effective than he remembered--annoyed because, yes, she still provoked desire. "You're marvelous to see again. What are you doing with yourself these days? Are you still at the ad agency?" His sentences weren't even poetic.

"I left big agency life ages ago." She rarely thought of those days, Sonny being the vestigial exception. "We have our own creative boutique now, and handle mainly luxury and travel accounts. We keep a home in Bali." Realizing he might not know, she added, "by the way, I did marry ..."

"Howell?" He said it for her.

Eighteen years ago, Bruce Howell had been the highest-paid advertising "creative" in town and a painter--British, divorced, childless, older, a worthy partner for Victoria--against whom Sonny, a third-rate copywriter and unknown poet, paled, despite his richer tan.

Then he did know, she thought, miffed. Sonny had been the jealous type. Surely, some spark remained. "And yourself? Are you married?"

"Was. Split up over two years ago." If he could he would have held back time, but the moment for amends was already past.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Yet she was strangely pleased.

"Don't be. I wasn't the faithful type." It felt like an accusation--unintentional--as was his confession--glib, a pose to impress--but despite her half smile--suggestive--he tried to move on and asked. "And you. Do you still paint?"

But she was handing him her card, saying, "I mustn't hold you up," even though no one was displaying any urgency and it wasn't late. "We must see each other while you're here. Have you a card?"

"I don't carry any," he replied, but obliged by dictating his number, giving her, as their history demanded, the perpetual upper hand, with which she touched his, before departing.

On that beach, sand pebbles chafed. Sonny had been twenty four. Victoria liked being on top, exposing her breasts to the night.

It was just spring, too cold for the flocks of summer. Besides, no one will be around she insisted, frustrated by two months of furtive trysts, unsatisfactorily consummated in the back seat of her car. Victoria was in between husbands; with her first marriage not quite over and her relationship with Bruce Howell indeterminate, she had need of, if rarely a bed for, an easier love. Discretion was all she asked.

But that night he gave more, far greater than her imagination could begin to absorb. His heart succumbed to the song of the tide, indulging the art of love.

In the morning, he flung aside the South China Morning Post in disgust.

Their coverage of his reading included the following, "His latest volume, Love's Exile, is a cri de coeur of the emigrant, who leaves but never arrives, tracing song-lines for trans-national lives. Pessoa exhibits only a grudging respect for his origins, the result, no doubt, of an American life. The poet, whose father is the linguist Dr. Antonio Pessoa, is by now only marginally a 'native son,' despite his return to our shores. Nonetheless, his affair with the language tantalizes, even as it irritates."

The local English journalist concluded on this note, "Sonny Pessoa has proven almost his father's equal as a translator."

He wanted to shriek. Could he help his love of the English language?

From eighteen years earlier, his father's voice carped. You should be ashamed of your betrayals, meaning his abandonment of Chinese and Portuguese. His Macanese parents were both Eurasian. After his mother's death, Sonny had been removed from Macau at age four to Hong Kong, where English surpassed both mother tongues.