Two Lives

by A. Yi

  “Do you know what she did in the KTV?”

  “I learned of it recently from newspapers.”

  “Did she say anything to you or your wife?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like someone hurt her.”

  “Never said that.”

  “Think back a little.”

  “Never.”

  “She didn’t mention it when she lived in your house?”

  “Never.”

  When it was done, he walked over and showed me the written record. I stuck out my right thumb, pressed it lightly on the inkpad, and left a fingerprint the size of a soybean on my signature. “Why does everyone leave such a small fingerprint? Is the public security bureau that scary?” he said but didn’t ask me to do it again.

  “Can I leave?” I said, scrubbing at my inky thumb.

  “Heard you’re a painter?”

  “Just a hobby, no big deal.”

  “What do you think of this case? Take a seat.”

  “Nowadays, death is fucking humiliating.” I was getting revenge for my prior timidity. “In any previous century, death was a private matter, a solemn curtain call. But now, you look now, it’s become material for sensational news. You have no idea how many readers masturbate every day as they read the news about Spring.”

  “What you’ve said is very unusual.”

  “There’s something even more unusual. There something I didn’t believe before, but I believe now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Once in a public security bureau, even an innocent person can feel guilty.”

  He looked elated. I said: “Can I leave now?”

  “Wait.”

  Hands behind his back, he strolled out into the corridor, and poked his head into the conference room. Through the door open a crack, I saw a bundle of dusty electrical wire tangled on the floor. “Can I leave now?” I said.

  6

  It was just a thought like the um-ah I heard was a thought. It’s rooted in the mind, but Lili tried to escape it through the displacement of her body. “Let’s get out of here quickly. I can’t stay another second,” she said. Unable to open the car door, she just slapped it. I turned the key, and the door opened. She got the car started, but then it stalled. So she just kept slapping the steering wheel.

  “You haven’t released the handbrake,” I said.

  She hissed angrily then shouted: “Don’t just sit and stare. Come over and drive the car.” I got out of the car. As we passed each other, she didn’t look at me or speak to me. Her face, fully powdered, looked stiff and cold, her body gave off a smell I’d never smelled before. It was a sign of weariness. She sat back and said with her eyes closed: “What do you see?” I knew she didn’t need an answer. Along the river, the journalists and onlookers were all gone. The prostitute in the qipao had finished her impassioned speech and was now burning paper money alone. She stirred the faint flame with a twig, weeping. She wept for Spring and for herself, most fundamentally she wept for herself. I didn’t tell Lili this. I didn’t say anything.

  When we reached the farm, she was still sleeping. As soon as she woke up, she said: “What is this place?” She must have seen what I saw, dusk hanging over the corner, cool ground, a bunch of strangers. They regarded us with a calm, animalistic look. Didn’t you pick this place? I thought.

  “Let’s eat first,” I said. But Lili followed the staff into the room. It was a room with a large bed-stove.

  “Didn’t you tell me you had single rooms?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry. Look, it doesn’t change anything,” the staff said.

  “Do you still have a single room?”

  “We don’t.”

  “What the hell is this place?” Lili shouted.

  “Men and women sleep on two separate bed-stoves. It’s been like this for seven or eight years.” The staff member bowed and left the room.

  “How can I sleep here?” she went on shouting.

  “I didn’t know it would be like this.”

  In fact, she was the one who booked the place. After venting her anger, she hugged me from behind, acting flirtatious. Not anymore now it seems. “Let’s go eat,” I said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  We went to the dining hall, and she just ate a few pieces of spring onion. I sensed an unsettling air lurk. When the staff put several tables together under a bright lamp, men put down their chopsticks and gathered around. They were going to do some simple, quick gambling. The owner shuffled the cards, and a visitor drew a card. If he got a nine, and the preceding player got a seven, he won two hundred yuan from the preceding player. If the following player got a six, he won another three hundred yuan from the following player. Everyone believed they would win. I drew a card and won one thousand yuan.

  “Stop playing,” Lili said.

  “Don’t be shy.” The owner faked a smile. Now my blood was pumping hard and free, making my whole body itch. “Just a few more rounds,” I said.

  “I said stop playing.”

  “Last five rounds, just five.”

  Lili fell asleep on my shoulder. If I hadn’t suddenly jerked my arm to throw a big card on the table, she would probably have never woken up. She said: “How are you still not done?”

  “Soon. Just three rounds.”

  “How are there three more rounds?”

  “Last three rounds.”

  I meant it, but I just played three rounds after three rounds, until I looked around the room and didn’t see Lili. Then I stopped. I thought really I deserved to die. I walked to the bed-stove room and opened the curtain, looked for her in dim light, didn’t find her. One of them looked a bit like her. I moved her shoulder gently and she turned over, still snoring, a bubble hanging from her nostril. Where’d she go? Anxiously, I walked to every corner of the farm. She couldn’t possibly have been raped and ditched in the well. It was totally dark out. I called her phone, but no one answered, and I couldn’t disgrace myself by calling out loud. I asked people passing by. They tried hard to remember, looked thoughtful, but ended up shaking their heads. I walked out of the entrance; the car was still parked there. I slapped the door and lit the interior with the cell phone’s faint light – no one.

  It was just like a nightmare.

  I finally ended up shouting frantically. Staff quickly ran over and led me into the kitchen. A female chef was scrubbing a pot, she pursed her lips: Look how soundly she sleeps. I saw my dear child leaning on a wooden post, fast asleep beside a blazing brazier. I carried her out amid the female chef’s chuckle.

  “Go play, go play again.” She struggled, and I giggled. Then she actually, rudely, maliciously pushed me away, and got down on the ground.

  “I want to go back. When are we going back?” she said.

  “We just arrived.”

  “I want to go back.”

  I regarded her nasty face. “Fine, if you don’t go, I will.” She turned to go. “You stay here playing cards until you die.” My heart was slashed. But I followed her to the locker to get her luggage, then I followed her to the car. I said: “We didn’t get a refund.”

  “Whatever, get it yourself if you want.” She snatched the key from my hand, pushed me away, and opened the car door. I grabbed her, and she jumped. “What are you doing?”

  “Let me, it’s too dark. Let me.”

  When we got home, we still hadn’t said a word to each other. She nodded off in the passenger seat, while I drove, my eyes fixed on the ground lit by the headlights. It seemed the car wasn’t running, instead the asphalt road was sending itself along the tires. Again and again the road rolled out what I wanted to say:

  You can’t reason with a woman.

  You can’t reason with a woman.

  You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.

  You can’t reason with a woman.


  I carried her to bed and pulled the covers over her, then I held her hand and sat falling asleep. I felt like I’d slept for centuries when a rustling sound woke me. Lili was stuffing things into the big duffel bag, furious, it was loud.

  “What time is it?” I asked. She didn’t answer. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 2 a.m.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Going home.”

  “You’re going home this late?”

  “I’m going home, I can’t stay another second.”

  I stood up and sat down on the sofa, getting a bit closer to her. Watching each of her movements and their huge shadows on the wall, I said: “Driving back?”

  “Train.”

  “Ticket booked?”

  “Of course.”

  “What time is the train?”

  “Five a.m.”

  “Why so early?”

  “I told you already, I don’t want to stay here for even another second.”

  She kept banging the bag on the tea table. I mumbled. I could anticipate the vast loneliness. I would live here alone. It would be better if we could live together for a time in a hotel. “What the hell?” She couldn’t find what she was looking for, so she pulled all her clothes out of the closet and jerked them all over the floor. “What the fucking hell?”

  “Don’t, take your time.”

  “I know,” she said. She looked up and cried. The hardened thing in my heart was soft again. I heard her say, “Tell me, dead so many days, still um-ahing?”

  “You hear it?”

  “Yes, endless um-ah.”

  “It’s the old man next door moaning, been moaning two years.”

  “Hope it is.”

  Then to the air she said quizzically, “I never hurt you in this life, nor harmed you in the previous life, why can’t you leave me alone? I invited you to live in my house, is it my fault? Did I ever offend you somehow?”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. I wanted to hold her and whisper in her ear: I love you, I love you now more than ever, I love you so much, right now, I saw you as a relative before, but now I love you so much I’ve never loved you this much. . .but my legs, as if trapped in rumbling currents, couldn’t move. She was wrapped in her sorrow, didn’t look at me. When I held her hand tight, she was still wrapped in sorrow. She drew her hand away and cruelly uprooted herself from the room, the house, and the city. If only she’d said, “Remember to take care of yourself.”

  Through dark fog, I drove her to the train station, went with her to get the ticket, go through the security check, go down to the platform. I clenched the ticket like a defeated general, composed outside, desolate inside, just watching my rivals loot everything. For a long time afterward, I lived alone. Moonlight seeped through the window, the bedding freezing cold, westerly wind blowing making paper scraps dance. Home was hardly home, I hardly a man, free time filled with masturbation.

  Lili walked into the car.

  She never turned, didn’t wave, didn’t engage in anything important. She completely ignored me. She sat down dully and placed the bag on her lap then she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. She couldn’t wait to return to her mother. I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling the sting in my nose. I felt like I ate wasabi. The train had 15 coaches in total.

  7

  I walked down the slope then across the cement road. There was a willow at regular intervals and a long bench after every two. It was the green belt between the road and the floodwall. The stench of the river wafted through the air. People watched that prostitute taking paper money out of a plastic bag. The green belt looked like it had been repeatedly trodden by a bull, the edges of the soil sticking out like daggers.

  “You just love watching.”

  Lili said that before I came. But she never questioned why she herself was such a dawdler. Women were like that, no matter what kind of outing it was they would make it into an important diplomatic affair, making scrupulous preparations, especially with their face. I said: “I’ll wait for you there.” From the balcony I saw another dozen or so people gathering by the river.

  The prostitute gripped the lighter and shook the paper money. She wore a qipao so couldn’t squat down, and therefore bent over. A large teardrop quietly fell to the ground. The small patch of land before her was level and smooth, the withered grass dancing slightly. I seemed to see the depression the body had left on the ground. The small stone was still there.

  When the corpse was first thrown there, it was covered by a rotten, blackish straw mat, showing the wet hair and one leg. The boatman squatted there, coughing, smoking, and blowing his nose from time to time. His eyes were fixed dully on the corpse all along, as if he couldn’t believe it was the result of a morning’s work. People rode bikes, eyes fixed straight ahead, riding past the cement road. They came and went, until someone suddenly braked, jumped off the bike, and ran a few steps with it. One of her feet stepped on the pedal to get the bike going again but suddenly she stopped. Sure enough, she’d been watching. The newcomers put their toes on the ground and turned their bikes. They watched with her, stunned.

  “None of my business,” the boatman said, eyes fixed on the ground.

  A leg stuck out from beneath the straw mat. The ankle was eerily pale, the sole shriveled. The pants were drenched and dripping with water. One platform shoe that was tossed aside was unusually swollen from soaking. People were struck by the sight of the death of their own kind, saw their own destiny. They mumbled, their faces taking on a pure, philosophical look. But not long afterward, as the sun brought heat, they became restless. Those in the rear jostled against those in the front, and those in the front strained against them. Then within the crowd, a hand reached up, waved incessantly, and the newcomers who lingered on the cement road resolutely hurried. At the far end of the main road, many more were cycling over. One of them rode an electric bike whose battery was dead. He pedaled twice, and the wheels turned, the bike wriggling as the man burned with impatience. When people gathered their black heads were a horrifying sight like a bunch of starving vultures, continuously pushing and jostling.

  “What’s the matter?” one of them said.

  “They asked me to recover it. None of my business.” The boatman walked away. He tucked his shoulders and restrained himself from walking too fast. The speaker regarded the boatman for a while, then he turned and raised a finger. Oh. He took out a business card. “A story on this is worth at least 50 yuan.”

  Then three women rushed over on a pedicab. They wore gaudy clothes and heavy makeup. People all knew what they were and from their anxious looks, what the deceased was. They walked in through the path people automatically made for them.

  “Unlikely,” one of them said.

  “Why not? Look there,” another said.

  They all looked at the platform shoe. “Her little thing is still tied to the shoelace,” the second one added. Then the prostitute in the qipao who had been silent, opened her mouth, twisted her face, and broke into dramatic laughter. Only when a choking sound came did I realize she was crying. Her wrist was tattooed with the character for loyalty. People regarded them scornfully, the way city folk regard country folk or human beings regard animals. Their scorn didn’t diminish when she started crying. They just had a new perspective: even hookers have feelings. They exchanged looks to confirm one another’s opinion. Their looks were like a hand that pulled the arms of the newcomers, making them focus on the heavily made-up women. When the women left tearfully and the journalists came, they reported noisily: “They are from the nearby KTV. Prostitutes. Pussy sellers.”

  The journalists jumped over. The cameramen stood straight, squinting one eye, moving their cameras this way and that. The photographers sometimes got down on one knee, sometimes stood on tiptoe, sometimes ran somewhere higher, snapping and snapping without pause. The writers scribbled away in the
ir notebooks, finishing a page then flipping it over violently. Onlookers gathered behind them, tiptoed, necks craning. “Go away.” The journalists waved at them.

  Only the dumpy journalist in a V-neck sweater remained silent, squatting by the corpse, contemplating. When someone called out to him, he reached a hand to hush them. Like a prodigy, he frowned, tilted his head, remained still, as if listening to something from the corpse. He found a twig and lifted a corner of the straw mat. The onlookers tilted their heads too. They wanted to see something. There was only shadow. He stared awhile then suddenly threw the twig aside and lifted the straw mat. He lifted it as he stood up then put it to the side. He took out a camera and kept taking pictures. When he was done, he put his hands in his pants pockets, turned, raised his head, and went on contemplating.

  Spring lay there, clothes clinging to her body, showing plump breasts. In places they weren’t tight water collected. Her exposed skin was horribly pale like a pig thoroughly bled and shaved. Around her neck, back, and waist, there were light-red speckles. They didn’t bulge from the skin but were hidden under it. Word was pressing them made them disappear, but when the hand was removed, they would reappear. On her waist there were three triangular holes with smooth edges from the corpse pressing against a small stone when it was thrown there. She was like someone snoring in an eternal sleep, lips pouting, a bubble hanging from her nose. Her eyeballs slanted, a blood clot on the eyelid membrane. Her hands grasped the muddy grass, and the bones of her right index and middle fingers stuck out. Though tied, her dead hands still grasped muddy grass.

  I found it unbearable. Although I’d known all along the ending would be like this, knew this would be the inevitable ending of this deranged girl – even still, I found it unbearable, threw up. I vomited like a man whose belly is cut open and can’t stop his bowels from pouring out. I pressed my palms on the ground, squatting, vomiting like a high-power pump. The onlookers dashed off. A white-haired man with a walking stick vomited too. The filth gushed out, some clinging to his clothes around the chest. “You insisted on looking.” His wife was furious, kept wiping him with a handkerchief. “You’re addicted.”