by Ha Jin
When he was finally finished, I removed the chamber pot and put it under the bed. I brushed a V-shaped pubic hair off the sheet and with gritted teeth helped him lie down on his back. Then I rushed out of the room. The second I got into the corridor, I began vomiting. The spinach and rice inside me churned and gushed out, splashing on the floor again and again until my stomach was empty and started aching. My legs buckled, and I put out my hand on the wall for support to get out of the building for some fresh air.
The breeze cooled me down a little, though my face still felt bloated and a buzzing went on in my ears. Something continued tugging at my insides. About fifty yards away, near the cypress hedge, a man in green rubber boots and a yellow jersey with the sleeves rolled up was hosing down an ambulance, the water dancing iridescently on the white hood. At the front entrance to the hospital a pair of red flags waved languidly. I had clenched my jaws so hard that my temples hurt.
26
Mrs. Yang came back from Tibet, but she could attend her husband only in the evening. During the day she had to go to work at her agricultural school in an eastern suburb. On the day after she returned, a distant cousin of Mr. Yang’s, hired by our department, arrived from their hometown in Henan Province. This man, with gapped teeth and thinning hair, would take care of Mr. Yang in the daytime from now on, so Banping and I were relieved. However, I still went to see our teacher every day, usually after dinner in the evening, staying there about half an hour. Apart from seeing how he was doing, I was eager to seek information about Meimei, of which her mother could hardly give me any.
On Wednesday evening I arrived at the hospital later than usual. Mrs. Yang, needle in hand, was darning a calico shirt for her husband; on her middle finger was a gilt thimble like a broad ring. For the first time I saw her in reading glasses. Though the spectacles made her appear older, they brought out a kind of equanimity in her bearing that I hadn’t noticed before. Her features were gentle and amiable, as if she were at their home—she looked like a devoted wife. Mr. Yang, sitting on the bed with his head drooping aside, was humming something, perhaps the tune of a folk song. I remained quiet with both hands in my pants pockets, my back leaning against the jamb of the window. Mrs. Yang lifted her half-gray head and gave me a smile, her face pallid and slightly bloated as though she were suffering from dropsy. She must have been very exhausted. On the windowsill sat a large cassette player; beside it were two tapes piled together. I recognized the contents of the top tape—20 Most Popular Songs, most of which had mellow tunes. Mrs. Yang must have played them to her husband to prevent him from chanting those belligerent songs.
Out of the blue Mr. Yang yelled, “Dance for me! Sway your hips!”
“What do you want, dear?” his wife asked with a start.
“I want you to dance for me.”
“You know I can’t dance.”
“Of course you can, you do it for every man.”
“Wh—why do you say that?”
“You did it when I was away, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
“You slept with him.”
She lowered her head, her face livid though her hands kept stitching the collar of his shirt. I was too taken aback to say anything.
He began crooning an old song, which was on the tape. He sang in a feminine voice:
I lift the saucers clinking them.
Ditties are easy to sing
But my mouth is hard to open.
Line by line I cannot lament enough
Human suffering, yet my songs
Please the rich and powerful.
The hook of a crescent shines
On high mansions, every one
Of which was built by poor men.
But in the teeth of winter
The wealthy smile gleefully
While the needy freeze in grief.
My head went numb as a shiver ran down my spine. I regretted having come to see him this evening, to be caught in such a flash of domestic madness. Noiselessly I tiptoed over to Mrs. Yang and whispered, “We can ask the nurse to calm him down. Do you want me to do that?”
“No need.” She shook her head in despair. “Let him get his anger out. It’ll make him feel better.” Her tone of voice revealed that she was already familiar with this kind of rage and abuse. Although she sounded very rational, her eyes were wet. She looked mortified as she raised the shirt to her mouth to nip off the mending thread.
“Dance for me, bare your shameless thighs!” he yelled.
I looked at his wife, whose face was taut in agony, her thin jaws clenched. I felt so awful I said to her, “I should be going.” Without waiting for her reply, I hurried out of the room.
I stayed a while outside the door and overheard Mrs. Yang shout at him, “Don’t ever do this to me again, Shenmin! You mustn’t pour out your hogwash in front of others! You made a buffoon of yourself. Now stop that! Stop smiling like an imbecile!”
In response he hit on another song, singing with some gusto. She began sobbing.
For some reason Mr. Yang had grown more delirious and more obstreperous these days. He often yelled at others, especially at his cousin, who never talked back. Apparently he didn’t recognize the man as a relative, though the poor fellow always called him Elder Brother. Two days ago Mr. Yang had even refused to eat, and the nurses tied him up so that they could give him an intravenous drip of glucose. However hard his wife tried, she couldn’t placate him.
On Thursday morning I ran into Professor Song in the classroom building, though lately I had avoided crossing his path. He told me to devote myself completely to the last leg of the preparation for the Ph.D. exams, which were just a week away. I thanked him halfheartedly.
Despite having time now, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Whenever I picked up a book, my mind would wander. For two weeks I had been in a quandary, unable to muster my resolve either to cancel my application officially or to resume preparing for the exams. I often went swimming in the afternoons. I missed Meimei terribly but dared not write to her.
Strange to say, Secretary Peng assigned me some new work. The Party branch of our department was considering inducting Banping Fang into the Party and was investigating the personal history of his immediate relatives to make sure his family background was clear. Ying Peng wanted me to help with the investigation. This assignment was quite odd because I wasn’t a Party member and shouldn’t have been involved in it. As a rule, trips of this kind were entrusted only to the faculty members in the Party, not to a graduate student like me. What was Ying Peng hatching? If only I could have seen through her machinations. Though doubtful, I had to accept the job.
“According to regulations we shouldn’t let you go to Yimeng County,” Secretary Peng said to me in her office. “But we don’t have anyone else available at the moment. Besides, it’s an easy job and will take you only two or three days.”
I nodded to show my gratitude for her seeming trust, though I wondered all the while why she deliberately interrupted my preparation for the exams, which she still believed I was going to take.
She told me, “Three months ago, we sent an investigation letter to Hanlong Commune where Banping’s uncle lives, but we haven’t gotten a word back yet. We need an answer immediately. Your task is to go there and get the reply from the local Party branch. There’s a form in the letter. Make sure they fill it out properly. You see, it’s very simple, just a procedural thing.”
“Sounds good, thanks,” I said.
“I know you’re busy now, but our Party branch must give final consideration to Banping’s application for membership before he graduates. You’re his friend and should help him.”
“Of course, I’d love to go to Yimeng County for a couple of days. Mr. Yang’s illness has really gotten to me and turned me into an insomniac. A trip to the countryside will definitely help, and I’ll come back with a fresh mind.” The moment I finished the last sentence, I realized my tongue had gone loose. She might intend to undo me. This trip wa
s by no means just “a procedural thing”; it must be a move in her scheme of things, which I couldn’t figure out yet.
Her sparse eyebrows joined and her forehead puckered as though she had smelled something unpleasant, then a smile broke on her large face. She said, “That’s fine. I hope the trip will put your mind back in good order. But don’t let Banping know where you’re going. Keep this secret, we trust you.”
“I won’t breathe a word.”
“Good.”
With a black fountain pen she wrote me an official letter, which informed the Party branch in the countryside about my mission and would enable me to obtain board and lodging on the way. “Here, you’re all set. You can leave tomorrow morning. Have a pleasant trip.” She smiled as a double chin appeared at her throat.
Having left her office, I wondered why Professor Song as the chairman of the department hadn’t mentioned my new assignment this morning when I bumped into him. Maybe it wasn’t the Party branch, of which Mr. Song was also a leader, but Ying Peng herself who was sending me on the trip. By rule, she ought to have informed Professor Song of my new work. Why did she keep this so underhanded? Why was she so interested in me? I had never applied for Party membership, and politically I was a straggler, the last person who should participate in this business. She had never trusted me. Then why would she let me take part in the investigation?
27
Although I boarded the bus at 9:30 the next morning, it didn’t depart until an hour later. The driver did not show up for work, having drunk too much at a wedding the night before, so the company had to call up another driver. In the bus all the passengers sat quietly. Many of their faces were sullen, but nobody dared say a word for fear that the supervisor on duty, a scratchy-voiced woman, might hold the bus forever. Not until we pulled out did people begin complaining; some even cursed the drunken driver and the rude personnel at the station.
The crowded bus crawled through the vast Yellow River Plain, which looked parched, gray, and dusty. The torrid heat made the late-spring morning feel like a sweltering summer day. The pale blue sky curved toward the horizon mottled by green-and-white patches of small villages. The lethargic clouds hung so low that they almost touched the fields, in which corn stood over two feet high and millet about one foot high. Here and there peasants were hoeing, all in conical straw hats. Once in a while some of them stopped to watch us passing by, and a few young men would let out meaningless shouts.
Farther to the north the Yellow River curved away eastward. Though the spring drought had shrunk the water, the river still looked like a broad highway, on which lines of black barges towed by tugboats crept west at a snail’s pace. The river is said to be the cradle of Chinese civilization and to possess a legendary power. But for some reason the sight of it reminded me of a poem by Mantao. It began like this:
While the rickety ferryboat
Is crossing the Yellow River,
I, under an urgent call,
Rush into its toilet,
Open my pants and hunker down
Watching my golden bombs
Pop at the sandy water. . . .
Nothing was sacred to Mantao, such a defiant man. Yet the poem gained some popularity for him on campus. Unlike me, he often went to literary gatherings, at which budding poets and fiction writers would talk about their theories and writings and argue heatedly. These days, however, they all discussed politics instead of literature, thanks to the crisis in Beijing.
Now in the immense plain everything seemed inert except for our six-wheeler wobbling and jolting along. The bus was so full that four men had to stand with their backs bent, patiently waiting for someone to disembark so that a seat would become available. The window near me rattled without stopping, but because of the heat I dared not roll it all the way up. The passengers behind me would have complained. A carsick girl, seated two rows ahead of me, vomited into a plastic bag time and again, making such a racking noise that I thought she might hurt her larynx. But between her vomiting bouts, she would chatter and laugh with her pals excitedly as if nothing was bothering her. Country girls are tough, I said to myself.
As the plain grew hilly, the road became bumpier. The bus lurched along slopes and curves and swung at elbow turns like a boat, rocking most of the passengers into a drowse. We passed village after village and town after town. I dozed away most of the time. Though it was unpleasant to travel like this, my mind was relaxed. This was a change nonetheless.
It took almost five hours to arrive at Hanlong, a small town in Yimeng County. Its dirt streets were rutty in places, flecked with animal droppings and bits of cornstalk spilled from fodder sacks carried by ox and horse carts. Most houses here were built of adobe and a few of brownish rocks. Many chimneys were belching out white smoke; the air smelled of charcoal, and bellows croaked one after another. Before a larger house, which boasted two show windows and a roof of cement tiles and looked like a department store, three knots of small boys were waging mantis fights, their cries and curses sputtering. Most of them were barefoot, running about nimbly.
Since it was too late to go to the Commune Administration, I found the town guesthouse and checked in for the night. I told myself, Take it easy, tomorrow you’ll have a whole day for the investigation letter.
Even dinner was a change, too. In the dining room of the guesthouse I bought a bowl of sorghum porridge, a plate of stewed tofu, and a large chunk of sponge bread made of cornmeal and wheat flour mixed together. I disliked corn stuff, which was thought of as “coarse food,” but the bread was the only kind offered here. It was soft and sweetened with saccharin; somehow it tasted surprisingly good, and I ate it with relish. The tofu was fresh, different from the sour thing sold in my school’s dining hall. More interesting, at the other end of the low-ceilinged room a banquet was under way. I couldn’t see the attendees because a line of sky-blue screens separated them from us, the common diners. The banquet was boisterous—laughter and shouts surged up from time to time. I ate slowly on purpose, curious to find out what the country banquet was like. Soon my appetite for my dinner began dwindling, as the spicy, meaty smell of some dishes served at the feast pervaded the room, caressing my nostrils.
“To your health, Magistrate Chang!” a thick voice proposed loudly beyond the screens.
“Yes, he can swallow a lake!” added another man. What an odd way of praising someone’s capacity for alcohol, I thought.
“Drink up!”
“Hoo-ha-ha, raise your cup, everybody!”
“No one here should leave the table without getting drunk. Come on, drain your cup.”
“Who’ll take us home if we can’t walk?”
“We have plenty of rooms here.”
“Besides, his wife doesn’t want him back tonight.”
“Shut up, you bigmouth!”
Peals of laughter rang out and made some of the diners on this side of the room turn toward the screens, which carried the figures of prancing tigers and frolicking dragons. The creatures were golden, painted against the sky-blue backdrop. Then six waitresses in red aprons and orange pants and short-sleeved shirts stepped out of the kitchen, where burst forth the sizzle of a wok searing meat and the sound of a spatula scraping a cauldron briskly. They each held a large tureen containing a steamed turtle, on whose black carapace were stuck cooked garlic cloves and scallion stalks that made the dish look slimy. The second the waitresses entered the screened area, a commotion went up. “Goodness, we’re doing turtle!” cried a man.
“Armored fish!” several voices shouted. The air beyond the screens was almost gray with tobacco smoke.
Then came the clatter of ladles, porcelain spoons, and bowls. One of the waitresses gave a little shrill laugh and said, “Thank you, I don’t drink.”
“Come on, just a sip!” invited a man.
“That’s a good girl,” another voice piped in.
A rotund man eating at my table said to us, “That’s an expensive dinner, isn’t it?” He pulled a piece of gristle
out of his mouth and threw it on the dirt floor.
A young fellow, who looked like a salesman, said over a bowl held under his chin, “They’re eating the peasants’ blood.” He slurped his cabbage soup.
Soon after the waitresses came out of the screened area, some men at the banquet began playing a finger-guessing game, and the room at once sounded like a marketplace. Several voices chanted together:
There’s a large red rooster
With a fluffy tail.
He digs into dirt like a miner
But won’t touch a snail.
His hens cry, “Stop, mister!”
Still he won’t give a damn.
No matter how they holler
He eats turd like yam. . . .
The smell of tobacco and alcohol grew so thick that I felt a little woozy. Hurriedly I finished dinner and left the table. Fascinated by the ditties they had been chanting, I sashayed to the entrance of the screened area in hopes of catching a glimpse of the finger-guessing game. But a beefy guard stood there with his arms crossed before his chest, his hands invisible as if holding concealed weapons. I dared not step closer, and instead headed away for the door. Before I could walk out, a balding, husky official, apparently coming back from the public latrine in the backyard, wobbled over from the opposite direction, holding a bottle of Five Star beer. He came up to me and put his free hand on my shoulder, saying with an obscene smile, “Come, take a swig, my pretty girl.” His face was as crimson as a boiled shrimp, dark goo around his lips.
I was perplexed, then realized he took me for one of the waitresses, perhaps because of my long hair and my yellowish short-sleeved shirt. I spat on the floor and cursed, “Pig!”