《On The Same Days》橄榄树

20、29th October Tuesday 2002 Amsterdam

　　Weer of geen weer (No matter what)

　　One more week she’d be back in China, holding the tickets tightly in hand, Tina left Cathy Pacific travel agency full of disbelief together with Jenny. She never expected or planned to go back so soon, though it felt longer than ages.

　　Johnson was so nice to insist offering Tina a few days back home in north China also, tickets included in the business trip, for her parents sake, he said when Tina polited tried to refuse. Tina was touched that she cried almost decided to just devote her entire future for his little firm till Lisa told her to be careful for this kind of mangers who know exactly how to buy his staff. Sometimes Tina had to laugh at the way Lisa looks at things, precisely the opposite of Tina’s view, which helped Tina a lot to keep in things in perspective.

　　Crossing over the New Market, they headed to the Oriental City again near Dam Square.
　　“How is the new house? How did you move?” Jenny offered to help, she mightn’t be able to carry, but driving is no problem.
　　“It is really nice, a big luxury for only one person. I called a verhuis agent to help. It was a wise decision after all. In no way we’d ever manage the bookshelf, freezer and bed down and upstairs with the two of us.” Tina was totally exhausted that day, together with the very nice Morocco guy who drove the truck.
　　Tina never knew that she had to carry all those things with the porter together, otherwise she’d never accept all those pieces of heavy furniture’s from her landlady and Anna. She assumed it was gong to be the same as in China, you just call the mover company, they’d send a truck with 10 guys and in one hour things would be in order in the new house. She turned out to be terribly wrong.
　　She broke one of her heel on the day when dragging the bookshelf upstairs, it was lucky that that the apartment was just on the first floor, otherwise she wouldn’t survive. 2 nails broke too when they moved the freezer up, one finger bleeding for a very long while. All that she didn’t really care, she had done even heavier labor work at home years ago, even fainted once under the strong summer sun when she had to root out those grass from the corn field. The autumn harvest really hurts too, the corn are so hard to be taken apart from its stalk early in the morning because of the dew and frost, your wrists hurt like hell just in one or two hours, while in the afternoon under the sun those leaves turn into sharp knifes carving your arms, necks and faces into many spider nets, then mixed with sweat, it felt…Tina waved her head just on the thought, felt pain again at the fact that her whole family is still out there doing just the same work year after year, that is what she really cares.

　　“Anything that you may need in a new house?” Jenny felt a bit at a loss whenever she saw Tina stares into the distance, so far away.
　　“Not really, while, maybe some lamps, mirrors and kitchen wares. But I can live without them.”
　　“Shall we go to IKEA after dinner? Jason can drive us there. Oh, I do need to buy something there for myself too.” In order to not make it sounded like a favor, Jenny hastily added the last sentence.
　　So they both had to laugh, “Thanks, Jenny, yes, let’s go, but you have to promise me one thing first.”
　　“What?”
　　“That you are not going to buy anything for me.”
　　“Not even a little gift?”
　　“NO! Otherwise I will call a TAXI instead.”
　　“You stupid proud too much self-esteemed little peacock! I am not going to buy you even one tiny thing.”
　　“That is a trick, promise again.”
　　“Okay, I will not buy you anything for your pride’s sake, may I then give you something that I don’t need anymore? I definitely have no idea to treat you as a garbage pin…”
　　“Accepted,”

　　Jason had already waited for a while with a pot of tea on the 3rd floor. He was chatting with the owner of the Oriental City when Jenny and Tina came in. The owner took over Jenny’s red leather coat and Tina’s ever black feather coat leaving them with the menu. As always, Jenny made the order started with her ice lemon tea, then automatically folding the chopstick bag into a folder while talking. Jason gazed at Jenny tenderly every now and then without much talking. The moment when Jason naturally put the shrimps in Jenny’s bowl after peeled them, Tina felt her eyes get warm. Maybe, this was what a girl should go after for, the happiness of being taken care of rather then dragging pieces of furniture alone even sympathized by the Morocco porter. The porter felt almost guilty to charge Tina that nice amount of Euros, he offered to give her 50% discount if she ever needs to move again. Not in a million years, she badly wished, which might turn out to be a few months if she wouldn’t be allowed to share the house with someone else. She would have to talk with the twin’s father about it.

　　Back from IKEA with a big blue plastic bag of lamps and kitchen wares, Tina asked Jason to drop her off at Anna’s studio. Almost 10 pm, Tina had the key for the mail box where the keys of the studio were hidden. Threw away loads of Pizza delivery ads, she found the key and went into the Studio. Carefully fold her black coat into a plastic bag hung on the door, Tina put the dusty pullover on.
　　One week to go, she still has 100 pieces of sculptures to finish. She has completed half already, a huge test of patience and perseverance. Anna designed the gift sculpture in the size of 18x14x2cm, which was a combination of two identical pieces of marble. The marbles pieces Tina got were all 20x18x2.5cm, therefore she needed to draw lines on those marbles and have them cut in two pieces using the electrical saw, the 4 corners need to be trimmed off too, after that filing, polishing. Tina never knew sculpturing is such kind of a technical work. It was not only about the artistic inspirations. You simply couldn’t make a mistake in any process. Otherwise you would waste a piece of marble. The lines had to be drawn with precision. Otherwise you would get two asymmetric pieces. The strength of holding and pushing the marble when sawing it had to be stable yet accurate. Otherwise you would either break the saw or break the marble in the end. You had to file the two pieces into the right size with the right angles. Otherwise they wouldn’t match when you combine them together. Sometimes an easy piece only took half an hour to complete. Sometimes hours had to be spent on filing and re-sawing and re-polishing on a tough piece. Worst of all, sometimes you just couldn’t save a flawed piece whatever effort you put in. Tina had already wasted 3 pieces of marble so far. They had 10 extra in total, she’d rather not to exhaust them all.

　　Fully equipped with gloves, glasses, headset and mask, Tina decided to saw 30 pieces all at once, so that the next day she could focus on the other less dusty process only. Smoke of marble dusts blowing out, on her face, hair, glasses, it is hard to see the lines on the marble, she wanted to clean the glasses a bit with one hand but urged herself not to do it till the sawing is finished. Thank got the studio found its place in a basement with soundproof walls. Otherwise she’d be arrested for making the terrible noises in such late hours. Overall sweaty, Tina finally finished sawing. Took off those protections, she continued with filing.

　　Thank god again that Tina’s new address was just 20 minutes walking distance from the studio. By the time she headed home after completed another 15 pieces of work and cleaned up the studio, it was already 3:30 am, no trams running anymore. Deeply buried in her dark coat, carrying the big blue IKEA bag, with dusty white hair in the chilly wind of a late October morning, no traffic, not even crazy hooligans hang around by Leids Square, Tina felt as if she was the only survivor on earth triumphantly. She almost wanted to sing if it wasn’t the heavy bag, it got heavier and heavier by each step, before she decided to drop it in some garbage pin; she was home.

　　Outside of her door, she stopped for a breath, searching for keys, carefully opened the door and closed it without making any noise, picked up some posts at the doorstep, Tina quietly climbed up to her room. Congratulation cards from the doctor family, Anna’s sister and another sculptor friend Martie for her new house. Bills for electricity, water, gas, garbage tax, real estate tax...

　　After a shower, 4:30 am, swallowed an Aleve pill, she still got two hours to sleep before getting up for Happy Concern. Tina went to sleep right after her head touched the pillow. The last thought was something like “as long as the spirit is up, one might keep walking even as skeletons.”