A sudden pain in the butt

There is so much wine in this suitcase that the wheels and handles are useless. Moving it is a two-person job, like it’s a fridge-freezer or a table. Lucky, then, that I’m with James, with whom I’ve spent most waking and working hours for the last two weeks.

I have never had a conversation with James.

I’ve come to China for a work project with a wine importer, and James is one of a small team of colleagues I’ve been getting to know. Kind of.

James is Chinese and speaks no English; I’m Irish and speak no Mandarin or Cantonese. I’m told that he does “logistics”. Conversations take place among the wider team, in English and in Chinese, though James and I are never part of the same one. He and I communicate nonverbally: facial expressions, nods of the head, a toast now and then. For anything more complex, we rely on our one multilingual colleague or, when needs must, the questionable real-time translation feature on WeChat.

Hours and days roll past without James and I exchanging a single word out loud. In the car, we move gradually through dense traffic, within and between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the biggest, busiest cities I’ve ever visited. At mealtimes, we sit outside around small plastic tables in the muggy heat of early summer. We share big bottles of Chinese beer, and we eat food that is generally delicious and often spicy as all hell. And in the office, we prepare for an upcoming trade fair in Hong Kong.

That’s where we are now, on the second or third floor of a conference centre overlooking Victoria Harbour. It’s the last day of the fair and everybody’s packing down. James and I are on suitcase duty, tasked with lugging the thing through the exhibition halls and down to the car. It’s heavy, full to the brim with wine samples from all over the world.

We’re face to face, each of us carrying one end. We take turns: one of us walks awkwardly backwards, trusting the other to wordlessly guide the way while avoiding impact with stairs, stands or people. Then we swap. A shared language would help, but we manage.

The suitcase begins to dip a little on James’s end; we gently set it down on the floor. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m glad to have a moment’s reprieve. This is sweaty work. James grabs his phone, taps away quickly and then gestures towards me. I check my phone to find he has sent me a WeChat message, automatically translated into English.

“There was a sudden pain in the butt.”

I take the words at face value. A pulled muscle on or around the buttocks, maybe; a literal pain in the arse. I laugh, and he does too. We stand around goofily for a minute before returning to the task at hand.

That was the last time I ever saw James. Years later, it remains something of a mystery. I’ll never know if what I read is what he meant to say, or if something deeper was lost in translation. The same goes for much of the trip, really. What gets lost when you can’t clearly express yourself on your own terms? And what, if anything, do you gain?

I think of the winemakers I’ve interviewed and written about for whom English is not their first, or their preferred, language. Even those with fluent English are likely more eloquent in their native tongue. I think of many close friends, colleagues and acquaintances that I know only through English – my mother tongue, not theirs. I think also of the few French people that know me only through my relatively limited French. How much deeper, richer and more complete might those connections be without a language barrier?

Now and again, I think about James. I still clearly remember his face, the sort of clothes he wore and his general demeanour. I won’t ever forget his WeChat message. But I couldn’t really tell you about James the person on anything more than a superficial level. I don’t know if he’s got a family, or if he likes doing logistics, or what he hopes for, or what he’s afraid of. I wonder if the pain in the butt ever came back.

I wonder what he could tell you about me.