Fare Well

by Changming Yuan

Finally, the time has come for us to part from each other. No matter how much we’ve been enjoying our clandestine honeymoon, we must leave Zhuhai today for White Cloud Airport, one to fly to Melbourne, the other to Canada.

To really fare well for the rest of our lives, we’ve decided to spare no effort to keep our extramarital relationship a secret. It’s certainly not that we enjoy cheating or telling lies, but that we want to avoid hurting our families, even if we had to do so at the cost of our own consciences. Since both of us have already retired, we plan to spend at least ten days privately every year until we lose mobility.

After a simple breakfast, I helped Hua tide up her whole suite and cover every piece of furniture with plastic. While she proceeded to pack her baggage, I collected a few household items as souvenirs, which included a small handcrafted peace talisman, a round bowel with a lid and a color-changing bed lamp. Then, I asked her to give me her cap, comb, towel and teacup.

“What for?”

“These personal belongings of yours will serve as tangible extensions of your body. Once I’m back in Vancouver, they will allow me to stay in physical touch with you every day.”

“That’s a very sweet idea. I want some from you as well.”

Except for a towel and a pair of scissors, I have nothing else to give her. I know that unlike me, she would be simply too occupied to think of me the moment she lands in Melbourne to fulfill immigration requirements and perform her duties as a loving and diligent wife, mother and grandma. Though I cannot bear the thought of tearing myself away from her, I can readily visit the treasure house of memories we’ve been co-constructing since we joined each other in body on October 12. Indeed, sensitive and sentimental as I am by nature, I’ll need more and better instruments to help me overcome my lovesickness as well as my loneliness, a sense that I constantly feel in my own home.

Looking at her queen-sized bed, her master bedroom, and her high-end condo, which have not only appeared as imaginary objects in my published poetry but witnessed my happiest moments in my entire emotional life, I find myself so deeply attached to them I long to take them with me. So, around ten o’clock, I video-recorded our little earthly paradise with my iPad.

Then, I was trying to take a good selfie in it when Hua came over and shot a perfect one for me. Because it was taken by Hua in her art studio with me wearing the T-shirt she had bought for me, I would use this enriched picture as my author’s image for all my subsequent publications. But for safety’s sake, she didn’t take any photos together with me.

“Like my silk brief you consecrated last night, all these items will function as a remedy for my lovesickness across the Pacific.”

“Should people know what we’ve been doing here, I would die of shame!”

“Why bother about others? They’re totally irrelevant in our world!”

“After all, we are not a married couple.”

“But our romance started well before, and would long outlive, our official marriages.”

“That being said, we are two adulterers as a matter of fact.”

“But the larger truth is, every marriage is eventually a chicken rib, which is tasteless to eat but a pity to throw away. So we may well live with infidelity as a fact of life in human history.”

“Let’s not dwell on marriage. All I want is just to follow my heart.”

“That’s more like it! Following our own hearts may prove more moral than conforming to social norms...”

“No more lecturing, Ming! Go to Yiduolian to have your favorite vegan buffet.”

When we met again and got on the coach, we took a back seat so we could fondle each other without being seen by other fellow passengers. As we’d had little sleep since we hit the sack on the previous night, both of us soon dozed off.

Waking up first, I sneaked a few photos of us sitting together. When Hua was roused by a big swing of the bus, I forwarded the pictures to her and said that the ride would last another two hours at least. Seeing how she looked dozing beside me, she told me to delete the pictures because she didn’t like them. But I persisted in keeping them as I could hide them with dozens of other photos in a secret place once I regained access to my Gmail accounts.

“Nobody but myself alone could find them,” I assured her. “As I always enjoy looking at you, they will serve as visual marijuana to me.”

“You’re exaggerating again, but such remarks are music to my ears.”

“Are you going to write our honeymoon into another book?” she asked as if she had been reading my line of thought.

“Sure, to write about us is to prolong our time together. As I’ve done in my poetry, I can live a double life with you by writing about you. For me, to write is to love, just as to love is to live.”

“But don’t write down any erotic details!”

“Those are exactly what I enjoy writing about most, because to do so is to reenact our happiness.”

“It would be terribly mortifying to us, and extremely disgusting to others, especially young people.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll first record them as entries in a diary. Then I’ll keep revising them. By the time I get it ready for publication, I’ll have made it decent enough to the public.”

However, deep in my mind, I’d never self-censor any of my writings in the revising process. Since it’s going to be a novel, readers will take it as something ‘fictional’ rather than factual anyway.

“No matter what, no sexual descriptions please!”

I replied half-heartedly, “I’ll try.”