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Sport 33: Spring 2005

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

With regard to my worthless Chinese banderole: in search perhaps of balance, centredness, I sometimes contemplate its ghostly torrents, its floaty crags.

page 140

The Chinese seem to manage not to rear psychopathic monsters. The Chinese are sane and fill their jeans nicely (I've noticed that the young men tend to have good legs).

The truth of the matter is, I like the Chinese. I like their restaurants and cafés; I like their tanks of goldfish, their glossy black enamel, their lanterns with scarlet tassels. I like the sweet and sour of their temperate, amusable demeanours.

As the coal-burning city steams its way toward nightfall, I picture myself living in some muggy Chinatown, renting a room above a busy kitchen, playing noughts and crosses on a grimy little board of teak and porcelain. Smoking my opium.

'You wouldn't like it,' says Martin. (A dollop of clarification: my friend the postman is not of course my postman. We meet in town, if we meet at all, only when he's completed his route and is making his way home.)

'You're right,' I say. 'Forget the opium.'

'I'm not depriving you of your narcotic. It's just that you'd find the Chinese world too populace and hectic.'

'Probably. What with all that gambling, all those tong vendettas.'

'Quite. So what are you reading, at the moment?'

'Don DeLillo's Underworld. For the fourth time. Underworld is the book for me.'

'The one you take to the desert island?'

'Absolutely. There are more stories in Underworld … than are actually in Underworld. The Don DeLillo of Underworld extends to infinity in all directions.'

'High praise indeed.'

'Indeed. And don't get me started on the prose itself.'