Ben David Trigg

I’ve said that we took Wednesday and Saturday afternoons off, and Sundays. Of course, we took the evenings off too. Though, being missionaries, I’m not sure Mick and Marianne ever really took time off. Please don’t make me trot out metaphors about working vineyards by day and by night . . .

One of the ‘vines’ they were trying to tend was their friendship with a middle-aged British professor of Classical Chinese (at the Univeristy of Hong Kong) who had a smallholding with his own vineyards surrounding his house up in the hills. He was, I was told, a colourful character. Being a British professor of Classical Chinese at Hong Kong U, with vineyards and a house in the south of France, I’d figured he might be quite a fruitcake. Or a generous cheeseboard. Anyway come one evening they sent us to visit him and his wife – ‘us’ being myself and Martin. Heaven knows why they sent an 18-year-old pre-student with next to no knowledge of where he was or why he was there (and not a jot about Classical Chinese either), and a small older man who hid and took pictures and played a flute. Both of us men of few words. God’s glory in vessels of clay, or God working in mysterious ways, or something like that.

So we went, and in the fading light were greeted at the door of a fine, stone-built maison converted from old storage cellars and a barn, by the professor and his wife. She was cooking spaghetti, darling, and we would have some. We were led into an open-plan lounging area which led to a delightful kitchen strung with garlic and pans; I quickly espied the grand piano to one side of the sprawling room and felt my fingers tingle. I suddenly realised how many days it had been since I had touched the ivories. I took a place on a futon with a fur throw and started tapping my knees absent-mindedly. The prof poured a glass of red for myself and Martin.

‘Ben here is helping with the vendange,’ Martin explained. After a couple of platitudes were passed, the professor remarked,

‘Yes I don’t doubt the co-operative are going to run rings around us again this year. Jean-Marc told me they’re being even more stringent. Pour quoi travaillous-nous dur?’

Martin grunted in agreement.

‘I’ve got to get it all in before I travel to Bern next week for a conference. Tell Mick if he has any spare hands . . .’

‘I think we’re pretty stretched as it is, but I’ll mention it.’

‘Either that or Emelie may need a hand bringing it in when I’m away – we’re keeping some grapes stored here anyway you know. In fact,’ he added, fetching another decanter and two more glasses from the cabinet,

‘I’ve been fermenting a few from last year. It’s young, but see what you think, boys.’

As Martin tipped his head back I was beginning to think this might be a very merry evening; I just had to remember Jesus drinking wine with his disciples to know that this was a legitimate missionary activity. It didn’t seem to bother the professor that Martin had to drive us back later. Nor did it seem to bother Martin. I shuffled on the fur throw and took a sip. I wondered if it might help loosen the tongues of these two introverted men who had come to visit a professor of Classical Chinese.

I observed the wall hangings, replete with dragons and Chinese lettering; the artefacts of indefinite ethnic origin that ornamented shelf and coffee table, that were suspended on wooden pegs from the walls or seated on the floor if they were large or heavy. I reflected on the path that lay before me – academia, and not just academia, but study, all of knowledge, the discovery of a world bigger than I could possibly imagine; the allure of the esoteric, the erudite, the eclectic, the eccentric and enigmatic. I squinted to read the spines of books – the ones that had English titles, at least – most of them books I’d never heard of, epistemological niches blown up to hundreds of inches, thousands of pages exploring minutiae beyond the realms of my basic A-level knowledge. Perhaps I too could one day be a professor surrounded by his books and artefacts, a palace for the mind.

I reflect on it now, and I become aware, not of how big the world became since then, but how small, how narrow, how shallow. If I could freeze that moment I might forever think that, for all the good it may not do ethically or charitably, that kind of knowledge exhibited by that kind of life might at least help us remain generously open to the Other, might make us wise as well as knowledgeable, if we remain teachable. I fear we have lost touch with that possibility – at least, those of us who didn’t remain in academic circles. Yet I fear that even academia may be subject to a great narrowing. For where the great mass of humanity was driven to shallow thinking, to political extremes and tribalism by the rise of algorithmically-driven social media, now academia itself faces a Titanic turning-point as Artificial Intelligence drives course subjects, test papers and more – and in many cases, probably helps to write the papers that are answering problems set by AI-generated questions in the first place. Human thought is no longer what it once was.

I could not have foreseen this in 2004. Forgive me then for wearing rose-tinted glasses as I look back at it, but I think I have reason for mourning the passing of that time.

Two big black dogs lay under the piano. The professor noticed my continual glances.

‘Do you play, Ben?’

‘Yes. I’m going to study Music.’

‘Emelie! We have a musician! No, two! (I hope you brought your flute Martin.) Where are you going to study?’

‘York University.’

‘York! My goodness. Well say hello to Roger Marsh for me. I think he’s head of department there.’ Roger would in fact become my supervisor. ‘It’s been a long time but we both were at Crewe for our undergraduate study. Still hear from him from time to time. Is piano your first love?’

‘I’m going to study orchestral percussion actually.’

‘Ah well be that as it may – of course you play several instruments if you’re going to York – but I didn’t ask about first instrument, but about first love. Is piano your first love?’

‘Well, I suppose it might be yes. Played it since I was six.’

‘What can you do?’

‘A bit of jazz, some Beethoven . . . I did a performance of Clair de Lune recently.’

‘Debussy? Wonderful! Vive la France! Let’s hear some, lad. Please!’ He gestured broadly to the piano.

Warmed and encouraged by the wine, I skipped over to the piano stool. The dogs were snoring not inaudibly, doing a fine job of guardianship.

As my fingers lilted into the tender opening, the professor let out a deep sigh and spread his arms. Emelie announced five minutes until pasta. I let the music wash soporifically, picturing the landscape I had come to discover, as I listened to Debussy’s plaintive melodies, the rise and fall, luscious and full of colour as the French hills in the evening sun. You haven’t played Debussy until you’ve played him on a grand piano in France.

When I finished the professor called for more, but was overridden by his wife calling for dinner, who brought bowls of spaghetti with a simple spiced tomato sauce to us, and a hard cheese and grater. She sat cross-legged in an armchair and waxed lyrical about French garlic and Italian tomatoes, the freshness of colour when you cook with them, the pleasure taken in the simple reward after a hard day’s work.
I’ll be honest, it’s possible Martin and I had already eaten, but I’ll bet I wolfed all of it down as well. The dogs stirred at the scent of food, but soon rolled and resumed their snoring.

After supper, by some unspoken mutual understanding, in confluence with the universe and all things, Martin took out his flute, I arranged myself at the piano once more, the professor twanged on some indefinite ethnic instrument, while Emelie cleared the plates and hummed floridly from the kitchen, and we spun a web of Asian-European-jazz-inspired intoxication, until Martin announced that it was probably time we were leaving, and returned his flute to the case. I made one last loving touch of the piano keys, soaked in one last look at the ornaments and book shelves; then thanking the professor and Emelie, we took our leave.

One other thing Martin opened up to me on the journey back to the village. ‘Have you ever driven by moonlight?’ He said. I responded no. I lived in South East London. We drove by so many streetlights and headlights until you were dazzled and couldn’t get to sleep when you finally got home. ‘The roads are quiet,’ he remarked, but that was an understatement. Nobody drove after dark, it seemed. We were alone. ‘The moon is out full. Let’s try it.’

And with that, he flicked off the lights, and I held my breath.

And we could see, of course, and now everything was silver. Not bright yellow and brown in the heat of day, not golden and rosy with the twilight, but mystically transformed, ethereal, other; monochrome, the landscape somehow glowed with nothing but a hidden light reflected from white rock. The moon, pale mirror of the sun, sallow, bare-faced, humbly lit our way, as we wound down the hillside.