《On The Same Days》橄榄树

14、13th Sep Friday 2002 Amsterdam

　　Garnaal is ook vis, als er anders niet is?(If there is no other choice, shrimp is also fish)

　　Yes, Friday the 13th. Not the worst day in Christina’s life at all. She just missed her bus by one second then missed her train by half of a second and late for work for forty minutes after caught in a sudden heavy shower during the 15 minutes walking from the train station to Happy Concern.
　　She dripped all over in the hallway. With one or two drops of angry tears no one would able to tell. No, of course she wasn’t beaten down just by a shower; she took one herself every morning anyway. What she hated was she had no idea what was she doing there, and what was she supposed to do.

　　* * *
　　It was all so different than she thought. The first day she went there, Johnson, the only person she knew, was away on trip, actually the first whole week. He left her an e-mail told her to stay with each regular staff for a day to learn, and that would settle her first week. The fact was after a few colleagues said “morgen”, nobody paid her any further attention. She smiled very sweetly at the conference table pretend to observe each side of the blank wall, till most of the staff came, each holding a cup coffee, talking about their past weekends.
　　Christina was offered a cup of tea; she tasted it with the lowest speed ever as if it was a cup of mercury, and listened to their weekends’ affairs attentively and nodded a lot. Carry, the assistant sales manager was telling her night in the bar, that she saw just in the corner a girl gave a blow job in public. Christina managed to drop her cup on the table not too sudden, cold tea went into her windpipe, she cough with red cheeks, unable to breath.
　　“Was you there too?” had Carry asked.
　　“No,” she denied too quickly with a high pitched voice, “sorry, I am kind of having a bit of a cold.”
　　“What fun did you have last weekend?” asked Mike, the logistic clerk.
　　“While, I was kind of having the bit of a cold already…”Christina did bite her own tongue for that kind of stupid answer, by that she succeed to shift the focus of the conversation away, might well be once and for all.
　　But she couldn’t tell that she sent the twins family away, she would never disclose the fact that she was a babysitter, not in a million years. Aside from that, she cried on the phone with Anna too, she was so guilty that the only time she wasn’t in China, Anna was to have an operation there, and she couldn’t even hold her hand, for all what Anna had done for her…

　　After tea chat, everyone went hiding behind his own computer surfing, mailing, making phone calls, kind of busy. Christina took out her new expensive notebook (not a laptop), notebook as in note-book, checking on meeting records, scratching Jesus Christ and god damn it in Chinese. Mike was interested and asked what she was writing about, she said she was trying to record anything useful for her placement report.

　　“It was a casual morning chat just now, you know, not a meeting.” His eyes wide open, suspected if the new trainee had proper nerves,

　　“No, I know. But it reflects management culture.” She was very glad to manage something so professional in Dutch. His eyes got wider, shocked.

　　“Wow, just what does that mean?” he pointed at “Damn it” on Christina’s page,

　　“Your name in Chinese, like it?” she smiled.

　　“It is beautiful, please write it here big, on this paper,” he took a blank A4 sheet. So she wrote it very big with a thick blue pencil.

　　“I am going to ask Philip to design it into a nice card; you will see it in a second.” Off he went, to the art department. Christina decided to follow him and she did. She wrote nice names for the two boys in Art department too, watched how did they scan and make nice cards out of “Damn it you Dutch clowns” in Chinese character with Photograph 9.0.

　　Company lunch was the worst part of the day. Christina had to go with them to AH to buy those breads, milk and all kinds of cheese, ham, marmalades or smashed pâtés. Never before had she missed so much the company lunch she used to have when she worked in China. Those delicious take away boxes packed with 5 different sort of warm dishes from dinning halls nearby.

　　That afternoon she started her one hour “getting to know each other” mission from Mike. But an hour later, she has done the task left by Johnson. No one took more than 15 minutes to tell her what they were doing there. She’d make a fool out of herself if she insists to sit beside them watching how they’d compose their private e-mails.

　　She hanged around in the showroom most of that afternoon, tried to imagine those hairclips or bracelets were made by valuable pearl and crystal instead of plastic rubbish. She told herself a thousand times, no panic, try to smile, just like the weird plush piglet key chain with one side of the face filled bigger and rounder than the other side.

　　The first day on work always tends to be a disaster. Hadn’t she shocked the tea into the general manager’s windpipe on the first day of her work in XY Corp? the car parts company in Shenyang. Hadn’t it turn out that the general manager liked her a lot, and somewhat treated here like a daughter? Although she ran away after the company had paid her some 10,000 RMB for her residence permit in the city.

　　The whole week turned out to be a disaster. She didn’t want to mail Johnson for help, whenever he called; they politely asked if she had anything special to report, of course not, she had absolutely nothing to tell at all.

　　She did get a computer to hide behind almost each day as staffs were taking their free days off on different weekdays, which was the best out of the worst, she went through all sorts of available documents on the server, tried to compose a complete story piece by piece. She tried to get whatever possible information of suppliers from China from Internet, only those who had English page. Their Dutch computers had discrimination against Chinese script. She couldn’t download any program yet as she wasn’t sure where would she sit later.

　　The next Monday Johnson was back, she never felt so happy to see anyone in the world like that, till he asked her everything about their marketing strategy and European distribution chain. She lost her words. Then he told her Mike and Carry would be both fired, each had only limited time ahead.

　　An even more disastrous week followed. Heavy clouds from Mike accompanied by showers from Carry, Christina had to sit beside them as Johnson insisted Christina learn them out before they go, so she had been watching them composing mails full hatred, disgust, tears day after day, about the bad economy, about how a terrible cunning fox Johnson had been. Actually Christina was so surprised at the fact that Johnson typed e-mail by himself, sent fax by himself; printed and copied by himself, even cleaned dishes after lunch every now and then. Her Chinese manager never made himself a cup of tea, she served.

　　* * *
　　And there he was, laughing loud from the stairs, “Chris, soupie, come to my office when you stop dripping.” But her Chinese manager wouldn’t never soupie her in a million years. Friday, the 13th, indeed.
　　“It is not so polite to soupie Christ,” Christina closed his office door behind, stood in front of his desk, she couldn’t sit down, she stopped dripping, but her cloths were still wet from the rain.
　　“How about cookie then? Tell me what do you think, smart cookie.”
　　“About what? ”
　　“The two you’ve been spying on the whole week.”
　　“A big conspiracy, you were found to be a cunning fox, and I agree, it was a smart decision from a cunning fox to fire them, they somewhat worth it.”
　　“Explain.” See, a manger could be as short. She had to search her dripping brains to make some sensible blablabla.
　　“First they haven’t tried to perform any better than before to beg your sympathy, which is understandable as a cunning fox like you do not possess a cell of sympathy. But they could have used your facility to find new jobs instead of groaning and moaning. The problem is, once you drive them both away, you got no audience anymore for your blue jokes on lunch table.”
　　“Christ, what a compliment, how long have we sign the contract?” he kept laughing.
　　“Don’t you worry, 4 and a half months as it is, I wouldn’t stay for a second longer unless you beg me to,” She tried to make it a mock.
　　“May I beg you now?”
　　“To leave right away?”
　　“To show me your great report on European wholesalers right now, and find me a plush toy maker ASAP.”

　　Christina was happy she did stay up almost the whole night trimming that report. She was also allowed to download things on Mike’s computer since she’d inherit it from him soon. Time went by much faster with surfing those plush toys websites, and talking with those southern Chinese folks in all kinds of funny Mandarins.

　　* * *
　　Later in the Oriental Sea Food nearby the Dam Square, she told the day as a black humor to Jenny back from Hong Kong a few days ago. Jenny was in her gorgeous red leather coat nodding and smiling at half of the neighboring tables while ordering her ice lemon tee in Cantonese. Christina tried to smile around too, to those ancient beauty paintings on the wall, she felt even more like a stranger inside here than on the street; she doesn’t know any of these Cantonese people. For a moment she wished she could be Jenny, a recognizable hostess of a Chinese restaurant.

　　“What are you thinking about,” Jenny noticed Christina was dreaming around again.
　　“I just wondered how ugly would your coat look like if I am in it.”

　　“Actually you may try some bright color, have you got anything not in black at all?” Jenny asked, skillfully folding the paper bag of chopsticks into a chopstick holder.

　　“I thought I do, are you saying my skin turned dark too?” Christina didn’t even try the folding; she’d only make a mess instead.
　　“No, you lunatic, I am serious, you are still so young,”
　　“Let’s don’t debate over my old soul every time all over again. How was it at home?”
　　“Fine, helped my sister with her book shop, nice and quiet, I’d never be able to do the same as often in the restaurant here.”
　　“Why not just hare some students, they wouldn’t cost as much.”
　　“Too risky, once a waiter was caught with no working permit, the restaurant got fined near 10 thousand Euros.”
　　“Law always kills the weak. Is the gym so effective or what, why are you getting skinny and skinnier every time I see you?”
　　“Would you like to join me?”
　　“In a few years when I get a regular job; but you have to promise that you won’t lose all your weight by then yet, otherwise it would be too dreadful for the gym center to have an old soul plus a skeleton.”
　　“I am not on diet; it is my bad health that causes the weight loss. My hands are ice cold even in summer.” She put one hand into Christina’s. The hand was indeed very cold.
　　“But you don’t have any specific disease or something?”
　　“Both my appendix and tonsillitis were gone already; I hope the rest of my body wouldn’t go on strike soon.”
　　“You eat like a cat; you have to eat twice as much to get a little more strength.” Somehow, she failed to feed Jenny, but went back to Anna’s summer -house with a giant belly herself.

　　* * *
　　She started to sort out her things and packed them. Anna would be back on Monday. The operation went well; they were on the phone yesterday. 3 big screws were put in her hip to connect the broken bones. She should have leave the weekend free for packing and moving, but when Happy food called her for some help, she said yes without thinking, she needed the money badly anyway, in Happy concern one got paid till the end of the month, but she had to arrange those monthly train ticket, discount card and so on first by herself, that cost money.

　　The Chinese symposium committee booked Anna a flight space for two persons so that she would be able to lie down in the air. They loved Anna even more as she turned down their offer for payment for the operation while asked her insurance company in Holland to do it.
　　Tina volunteered to move in by Anna for the moment to be a handy girl in case anything needed as Anna has to be in a wheelchair for some time, of course sisters and brothers of Anna all made the same offer, but they all had families, it would be most easy for Christina to stay over night, as a matter of fact, even more at her own convenience as it was much shorter to go to Happy Concern from Amsterdam Centrum.

　　Besides, as the autumn began, though a lot warmer than Shenyang, the chilly wet sea wind made the summer house a bit too chilly for a home. Yet she’d only able to move in her new dream house somewhere starting October at the earliest, the old tenant hasn’t moved out yet, Tina sometimes still wonder if that was simply a dream.