隨筆三

My passion

One time I was sort of in a goddam party, and around the stage there were some putrid disco music. Surrounding it was a bunch of hysteric teens dancing around. I went out. Merely because no one except the middle-ages stay in the tables. I wasn’t feel like dancing anyhow. So what I did was, I stood like a statue between them. I mean, when everybody were bouncing, shaking or whatever, I helluva stood like a statue between them, right between them, at the center.

I enjoyed it. I did not care about the music nor dancing nor most importantly the dancers around, like how they do not care about me. Arms were shoving me and shoes are stepping on mine. I didn’t even notice that ‘till a madman fell on and nearly made this statue collapse.

All of sudden, I feel like I want to be a goddam translator.

I was imagining I was inside something like a global conference, with a bunch of president and prime ministers and kings, sitting round a table discussing some big deals like global warming, oil crises, famine…… then right beside the US president, and suddenly there appeared a jerk waving around his fingers, like all the nations hired a dancer to watch while they were having a conference…… and that moron would be me, a sign language translator. Some people in front of the television was hoping me to put up my middle finger or something, I’m not doing it. I wished to, but I would rather not satisfying them anyway.

Then I was imagining I was at a ceremony in a school. I was standing at the middle of the stage of the school hall, well there’s another guy at the middle though. He is a big foreign hot-shot, a Nobel Prize winner. There were about five million students in the hall, and a few thousands of journalists. The winner is giving his speech, but no one was listening, they were all listening to me. While both of us were talking about the same thing, people chose to listen to me instead of the Noble-Prize-winner guy! The only difference was that he was speaking French, and I Chinese.

After all I was in a church on Christmas Eve. I can see the pope from about twenty meters away. Right in front of me, was a yellow-skinned lad. He was pretty cool, wearing suits and sat up straight like a right-angled triangle. It is a Holy-mood in the church, everyone’s face would not show a least a sip of emotion, and they do not speak either. I was the only guy at the audience’s area speaking. I nearly yelled…… I was yelling, in Chinese, a language that no one understands in the entire goddam church expect that pity yellow guy in front of me. But I made everyone heard me. I was like the one who was cursed, or an anti-Christ, annoying every single in the person, challenging the faith of the pope and so on.

Then I can be a visitor all time being a translator. I am yellow-skinned. When I am being a translator in some yellow-skinned places, I can tell them though my parents were yellow-skinned, but my whole goddam childhood was in the US, you ought to regard me as an American. When I am being a translator in other-colored countries, I gotta complain: can’t you see my skin color, my nose, my eyes and all? I am a goddam visitor of yours.

I am always a foreigner anyway. I am a foreigner, a translator. L'Étranger.