In the end, there are the trees. Winter touched the earth early this year. The searing heat of summer was already a fading memory. Autumn rains had not arrived to rinse away the smells of summer. The stench of the chicken coop which attracted big blow flies and guided the sly fox to visit remained. Dried chook poo baked hard on the rock-solid earth gave it a random pattern of white, brown and grey patterns, as if the chooks had a hand in adding colour to the canvas of their open-air prison. Both young acers had died, the result of a failed irrigation system. The neighbour simply bought another one, with red thin branches and rich golden foliage. She was decisive, she saw it and said she wanted it. How much? She did not ask and therefore it did not matter. Want it, get it. Money left won’t be yours. Life is a lot shorter for old people. A wise lady, the old man decided.
“In the end, there will be only the trees left,” she said to the old man.
The old man promised to look after the new acer for his neighbour. He lost two of his own many years earlier, big weeping ones with lively light green leaves to welcome the arrival of spring. They were breathtaking when the green turned a fiery red in autumn. But by the next summer both had died. It was said the clay soil in the suburb was not conducive to them. But, he kept it a secret from his neighbour – it was hearsay, after all. He loved Japanese maples and wished to see them in the garden. So, when the neighbour said she would get more, he simply smiled. His neighbours hardly stayed in Adelaide. Their visits were so infrequent the old man practically enjoyed more time in their garden than them. He was more often seen on their side than in his own garden. Separated only by a low side gate, the two gardens sprawled over the two properties as one. One was planned, the other morphed without a design into a wild cottage garden. The neighbour’s was designed partly by the old man. The bridge connecting a stream to the pond was definitely his idea, he insisted. Most mornings, he would be seen on the bridge, doing Qigong whilst his red dog looked on dreamily.
The old man walked around their garden, looking for work to occupy himself that Saturday morning. There were always chores to tend to but the neighbours had recently appointed a gardener to tidy and maintain it. Lots to trim , shape and add fertilisers at the start of every season, the lady said. The gardener was a longtime friend, a quiet achiever in everything he put his mind to. Retired for a few years, he was busier as ever, and evidently, busier than the old man who had yet to down his tools despite telling all who cared to listen that he would.
A husband who did most of the cooking for their dinner guests, a father of two, Alex the boy who became an Italian stallion and the girl, Jay-Jay who blossomed into a siren of great beauty and brains, and a nonno of five grandchildren, all adorable and artistic, John Scalzi arrived in Adelaide from Napoli with his parents when he was a young boy. Wide-eyed and partially deaf, he marvelled at the new world his parents brought him to mid-century Australia. Back then, the Italians were not white enough to be accepted by the poms. The Anglo-Saxons treated everyone else as inferior even though they were descendants of convicts, thieves and murderers banished from their motherland that was Great Britain. The partially deaf, wide-eyed boy grew up into a white man in a white man’s land. He wasn’t a good student in school because of his hearing loss but was clever enough to work as a young male nurse in the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He had his hearing restored pro bono by a kind physician who noticed the male nurse in the operating theatre was deaf on one side. By the time the Vietnamese refugees arrived in their boats as asylums in the late 70s, John Scalzi was no longer mocked as a Wog. The Italians and Greeks had become white enough not to be picked on and people forgot to call them Wogs. It was the turn for the Chinese – the Chinks, and the Vietnamese, Congs or Nogies to be picked on. In advancing age, having assumed the role of his parents as the glue that bonds his large family, John Scalzi looked as imperial as Marco Aurelio, with his big round, kind eyes, white thick curly locks and matching white beard that decorated his well chiselled face. Drape him in a rich robe and he could have been a resurrected Roman emperor.
Saturdays were fun days for the old man. He used to write his blogs dutifully every Saturday from when he woke up till the time he broke his fast, usually before lunchtime. Why do I bother, he asked himself that day. After four years, his readership remained low and his sense of duty waned. He explained that it was a duty to self, a discipline to inculcate, a way to keep his mind active. After his Qigong that day and after noting down the chores for John Scalzi to work on, he ordered a lorry-load of Forever Brown mulch from his local garden supplies wholesaler.
“What? Seven hundred and thirty five dollars? It can’t be,” he shouted into the phone.
“I’m afraid so, sir. Inflation, high interest rates, and so on, you know?” the voice on the other side of the phone said.
“Nah, I am sure it was only five fifty last time,” the old man bellowed before cancelling his order.
“Let me see what I can do for you, sir, please wait,” the voice said.
After what seemed like an eternity, the voice returned.
“Ok, this is what I can do for you sir. Six seventy three, best price,” it said.
After paying for it with his card, the old man walked back out to his backyard. The Mrs had toiled at her veggie patch, added poo and compost and gave it a good soaking the day before. She promised a bumper harvest of snow peas and coriander in the cold weeks ahead. The heavy smell of cow dung had found its way into their house, quite inexplicably as how the mozzies and blow flies did in summer. The crisp morning air was tainted with cow dung and chook poo that day. The old man sighed. He remembered once he commented about the stench the day The Mrs went overboard and dumped two bags of cow dung pellets all over their garden. Peace was only restored many weeks later. Love meant never complaining about the smell of cow dung. Love for peace, to be precise. In a few more years, the couple would have been married for half a century. Many things had already been taken for granted, a few more things left unsaid. Words were quite unnecessary, a mere flinch of a muscle, a twitch of a facial tissue or a tiny movement of a raised eyebrow would be more effective, he said to her and grunted.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry was a famous line in a 70s movie. Fifty years had passed since he watched Love Story. He remembered a young boy leaving the cinema with tears in his eyes, so struck was he by the aphorism about love. Wrinkled, hunched and slow, he gingerly walked down the steps of moss rocks with the conviction of certainty that his weak leg would one day give way. The old man, still a teenager then, had taunted his friend.
“Why, you have the emotions of a pebble and the coldness of stone. Crying over a love story was just so cliche,” he said to his friend, who a few years later went to Australia and was called a Chink. He had vowed to shield himself from mortal distractions such as love and lust as he embarked on his journey to a tertiary education overseas; the sum of airfares and initial living expenses then was a hefty price paid for by his parents. Leaving home was a big sacrifice and he was not going to waste his time and the opportunity many did not get.
“Amore. Was it the chink in the Chink’s armour, eh?” I asked.
The old man continued his story about the lanky teenage friend all those years ago in his hometown, in Penang. Scrawny, scruffy and dark in complexion due to his passion for football, his face was bony, riddled with pockmarks and active pimples that were ripe for daily eruptions. He had crooked teeth and poor dental hygiene yet somehow he attracted the girls that his friends wanted to attract, and because of that, the Chink was always unpopular with them, even those he deemed as his best friends. As much as he desired to protect himself from criticisms, he somehow ended up caught in the crossfire of some and in the crosshair of others.
There was a boy, Chink’s best friend of many years since primary school who fancied a rather attractive and lively girl. She had a great physique and a sweet angular face adorned with shiny daring eyes and a broad smile of white even teeth. She had a dimple too. Chink’s best friend pursued her for many weeks and one day in a bus on a group holiday to Phuket, he revealed his interest to be her boyfriend. She liked him a lot but not as her boyfriend. Unable to tell him to his face, she instead left her seat next to his and went towards the front of the bus and sat next to the Chink. Before they reached Phuket, she pretended to fall asleep and rested her head on his shoulder. I like you, he heard her whisper to him and that was how the Chink’s heart melted. He told the old man that the mateship with best friend wasn’t the same after.
“Perhaps his friend felt Chink stole his girl?” I asked, but immediately dismissed the idea. No one can steal another person’s love.
It was pretty much the same story a year or so later with another girl who was reputedly voted the most popular girl in school. She was not a stunning beauty queen but she was the most thoughtful and considerate, and therefore, according to the Chink, the most beautiful person. Again, one of the Chink’s best friend was madly in love with her – it did not matter to him if it was puppy love or a crush, he just needed to be with her. Same story – the girl only wanted to be friends but he failed to get the message, so the only way he could see her was to bring along the Chink. “I know I am just the lamp-post,” the Chink said to his friend. But, after many visits together, his friend got more and more upset as she got more and more attached to the Chink. One moonlit night on the beach, when they were alone, she told the Chink, “I like you.” That was how his heart melted and he was again accused of stealing a friend’s girl.
The old man said to me he could not figure out what both those girls saw in the Chink.
“He was just an awkward shy boy, not very smart, and certainly not charming,” he said.
“He should have walked away,” I reasoned.
“Knowing his friends’ keen interest in the girls, he ought to have said no to them. His best friends should be more important to him than his raging hormones,” I said apprehensively, sensing that the old man would defend the Chink.
“Easy for you to say,” the old man retorted. In fact, he did do that when it happened again, many years later. But, he still ended up losing a friend.
“What is it about boys who have to be resentful and blame a friend for losing their girlfriends?” I asked.
That time, the Chink was in Kuala Lumpur after a long absence from Malaysia. They were all grownups already. He was married with kids and this other friend who he met up with was going through a divorce. The friend was a successful entrepreneur with a few offices around the world. In school, they were best of friends despite the friend being a rather cocky boy with limitless confidence in his own looks and abilities. He grew up unchanged in that regard, if not even more absolutely sure about his ego. Anyway, the two friends had a great time catching up with old times and spent the whole afternoon in a karaoke bar, drinking beers and singing old love songs. The friend had brought along his new girlfriend who once upon a time was a pageant queen. She didn’t sing or couldn’t but she was happily a heavy drinker. She bragged about how they could skip meals but never could shirk a drink. It was well past dinner time when they decided to call it a night.
“What? No dinner?” the Chink asked.
“Oh, hahahaha, We already had our beers and whisky,” she said.
“Come, I’ll drop you home,” the Chink’s friend said.
Just five kilometres out of the city, the girl, imbued with too much alcohol, had the hots for the Chink and tried to grab him in the car. She was in the front passenger seat and he was in the rear but she lunged back and reached his crotch once, due to the surprise attempt. The Chink sat back in shock. She tried again and again, laughing louder and louder like a kid having great fun in a playground, but he managed to evade her arms which were both covered with tattoos. She wasn’t tall but had a sexy face and wore a rather skimpy white dress. But, the Chink behaved properly and suggested to his friend to just drop him off on the side of the road. His friend, face unseen in the darkness but visibly fuming by the way he slammed the brakes, said to the Chink, “Get off here,” and without a handshake or a goodbye, he sped off into the distance once his friend had stepped out of his car.
“See, although the beauty queen did not melt his heart, he still lost his friend,” the old man said.
“Amore. This is the chink in the Chink’s armour, eh?” I replied.
In the end, there is no end. The trees will remain when we are all gone. The sun will continue to rise and when evening comes, the moon will win the battle between them. Men will fall in love and some will lose their girlfriends to their friends. They are not stolen though, for no one can steal another person’s love. Love can only be given.
If you want some good, get it from yourself.
Epictetus, Discourses, 1.29.4