Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Spiritual Beliefs and Universal Wisdom. Adeline Mah Yen

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       3 Hidden and Nameless Tao

      

DAO YIN WU MING

      After I graduated from the London Hospital Medical School, I was fortunate enough to be chosen by the renowned neurologist Sir Russell Brain as his house-physician. One of the fringe benefits of working under Sir Russell was that it gave me the opportunity to treat his roster of famous private patients, many of whom suffered from unusual diseases that were difficult to diagnose. Among them was the great English poet Philip Larkin.

      He was then close to forty, a balding man who worried about everything, with anxious intelligent eyes behind thick glasses. He had a private room and many vague symptoms: insomnia, deafness, lack of concentration, fainting spells. I was ordered to perform a plethora of painful diagnostic procedures on him which he endured without complaint. After each ordeal he would quiz me about the significance and rationale of the tests. On many occasions he would order the nurse in charge to page me ‘immediately’. When I rushed back in response to his summons, I would find him listening to the radio or reading in bed, having forgotten he had sent for me.

      We did, however, have some wonderful conversations: about literature, philosophy, poetry and the art of writing. I was in awe of his talent and flattered that he should want to chat with someone like me, a lowly intern with literary aspirations assigned to look after his health. Once he complained of boredom and asked whether I would consider having dinner with him outside the hospital on my day off. I declined and told him it was against hospital rules for house-physicians to socialise with their patients. ‘The real reason is that there is someone special in your life, isn’t there?’ he asked. But I found his question difficult and left without answering.

      We discussed music and I told him that my favourite composer was J. S. Bach. He mentioned a Dutch artist named Escher, whose drawings consisted of recurrent cyclical themes that reminded him of Bach’s fugues and preludes. Then he asked me, ‘What’s the best book you’ve ever read?’

      ‘Shakespeare’s King Lear,’ I answered without hesitation. ‘What’s yours?’

      He started to laugh. ‘It’s almost too ironical. Here you are – a Chinese girl saying that the best book in the world, ever, is Shakespeare’s King Lear. And here I am, an Englishman, telling you that it’s the Tao Te Ching* by Lao Zi

      Philip Larkin was discharged from hospital without a definite diagnosis. We said goodbye, and he gave me a copy of his poems, The Less Deceived, inscribing it to ‘Dr Yen’ and signing it ‘With kindest regards from Philip Larkin’. A few months later, having completed my term as house-doctor, I moved to Edinburgh (as mentioned earlier) and went to work there. I took the book with me when I moved into the attic of Dennis and Helen Katz, colleagues and close friends of Karl’s. However, Karl continued to write and his sporadic visits were deeply disturbing. At times, I thought I, too, would go mad. At the end of two years I finally made a clean break from Karl and went ‘home’ to my family in Hong Kong, leaving Larkin’s book with the Katzes. On the publication of Falling Leaves three decades later I was doing a reading at the Edinburgh Festival when Dennis and Helen entered. In their hands they held a gift. They were returning Larkin’s book.

      I like to work in public libraries. While writing this chapter, I happened to be in the library on Brompton Road in London’s Earls Court. Looking up from my manuscript one morning while searching for a word, I saw Anthony Thwaite’s Selected Letters СКАЧАТЬ