The Scent of my Room

Well because I know no Mandarin I will soon starve. I am in a section of town with a few westerners and a spaceship for a dormitory. American’s use the term: what is that in real money? But they are eating and I had to ask a Spanish woman to order me an espresso and an egg sandwich. I am happy though, Beijing smells a bit like Paris, it is busy but not aggressive, people and cars generally avoid each other. My room is extravagant. Apparently the Chinese insist that the foreign professor will be well cared for; even humbled a bit.
The strange thing is the smell; not the smell of Beijing but the smell of my room. Before I came across to China I had a strange, slightly prescient moment. I smelt my grandmother’s room. For me the scent is a combination of Elizabeth Arden, new carpet, and the heat of the day mixed with tea and a hint of coconut. Gran liked the perfume and my cousin would spray the perfume as she lay dying. The smell became a sign of what was occurring. It made the whole experience overwhelming and you were confronted with a room ballooning with a ‘beautiful’ scent but introducing what was actually Jean’s repose. She lay on the bed and you tried to sit around her without much to say and being unable to talk. Gran had a noble face; with hard lines fixed with a determined forehead. She was a strong woman and it was hard for us to see her on her deathbed.  We could hear her slow breathing even mixed with the TV news and a boiling kettle. Toward the end her breath began to rattle and rasp and there was an increasing time between. I would sit there and listen. As a breath ended, every time, not just the first time, but every time she breathed you anticipated that she would not breathe again. Every moment was an anxious wait for death. Soon she passed away.
As I was about to come to China I had a strange insight when I smelt the room again. I was preparing a meal in a house where Mum was staying with Kevin. Staring into a cupboard I turned and remembered the smell of Gran's room again as I was thinking about taking the trip to China. It was a sweet smell mixed with tension and a heightened sense of being alive and witnessing something. Given all of the relationships and events which this smell held for me I thought this instant signalled death, or something approaching a crisis. I was quite disturbed and took close notice. it made me very nervous as the day I was to leave to Beijing approached. These prescient moments are rare; they happen without warning. I began to think that, perhaps, the trip would be dramatic, and the choice to go might confront me; perhaps I would die. At least, by considering the possibility that death might come with the change, you take your choices seriously and carefully.
As I entered the room in the hotel where the foreign teachers stayed I smelt the scent again. It was in the office. It was the smell of new wood cupboards; slightly sweet with wood dust and varnish. The smell made me very uncomfortable and even now, as I sit in it, I am disturbed a little. However, I realise it was a predictive smell, something more like an anticipation, not good or bad per se, but I instantly recognised the room. I hardly feel at home though. Yet this scent, in its new place, is changing my memory; I can feel it shifting toward something new.
The room overlooks the tennis courts, soccer fields; I see pale apartments that are coloured like bones and skeletons. There is a ‘mist’ in Beijing which causes the night and the morning to be eerie. But I am alive and I arrived safely. Nothing was taken and the only thing that was damaged by the trip I did myself, as I attempted to lift up my heavy bag, the top ripped.
         Beijing is always busy, so even being there a short time can make one nervous. I was euphoric as I arrived and my escorts picked me up to take me to the university. The room is on the tenth floor of a huge building built for foreign students and Chinese students learning English who can afford the expense. I don’t know how long it will be before I will be able to enter the room thinking about it as an office rather than it reminding me of my Grandmother passing away. I think this will not take too long. I am not sure whether Jean’s death was a spiritual event or not, but the smell in the room has something of incense about it; but there are no gods to eat and enjoy it in Beijing.