by Geling Yan
The man said, I wish I could see you now, your eyes full of homesickness, a pang of guilt in your heart. You find it strange to be so moved. You’re embarrassed; you’ve turned your face aside.
Hongmei wrote, Thank you for your patience, listening to me tell a story millions of miles removed from you. I know Americans don’t like tragedies. My husband doesn’t.
Then she thought, No, that’s not right. What was this? Criticizing Glen in front of this man?
So she deleted that last sentence.
4
It was four in the afternoon when Hongmei entered the library. First she went in the direction of the restrooms. Two drinking fountains, one tall and one short. She chose the shorter one. The water formed a perfect arc, which her lips disrupted. Her eyes swung around—no one was following her. She turned to the left, dabbing at the water droplets on her mouth and cheeks with a Kleenex. Six people in sight, but none of them could be him—too young. She’d already covered one-fifth of the library’s area. There were fewer than a hundred thousand people on campus, and she was always running into familiar faces in the library. She kept walking, as if searching for someone, though she could equally have been looking for a seat. Another fifth. Including her walk from the entrance to the drinking fountain, she’d covered more than half the room. She stopped and quickly checked if she could feel someone’s attention burning into her. She thought she could.
Finding a free computer, she sat down and logged into her email.
The man said he’d seen her strolling by and tried to connect her with the story she’d told him the night before. He was starting to understand what was up with her. He said he’d never seen anyone with such a weighty, twisted love for their hometown.
Hongmei thought, He wants to call it love—all right, then.
He said the weightiness and twistiness gave her a distinctive bearing. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t give her up. He had watched her walk across the lawn, not because he wanted to lie in wait for her but because desire had left him helpless. He had watched her leave through the glass doors of her condo, stopping for a chat on the lawn with an acquaintance walking his dog, saying the weather’s so nice, hope it stays this way. Then Hongmei had patted the dog tenderly, so he could tell she got on well with animals and was comfortable around them. As she had bent to stroke the dog, her shawl had fallen on the ground. He said that shawl had made her thoughtlessly put-together outfit come together in a powerful statement. The near-extinct pattern and color had made the vast grass plain pale in comparison. The red had put him in mind of Native American rugs, made by crushing a species of bugs into fragments. Saturated, animalistic, different from any other shade of red, antiquity itself. And then Hongmei had walked on, her posture as modest and evasive as always, the stark white bourgeois condo building behind her, its sixteen stories housing more than ten of this college’s professors, living their stark white lives.
So he even knew how many professors lived in her building? Hongmei looked around. A young guy nearby was laughing loudly, chatting animatedly with some unseen person. She’d heard they could have parties online, ten or more of them gabbing away, thousands of miles apart.
The man said he was surprised at himself, ruthlessly abandoning his usual ethical standards and giving in to desire, behaving in such an underhanded manner. There were several long benches around the lawn. He’d sat on one of them, and when she had been within twenty yards of him, he’d said to himself, All right, time to make my entrance. He only had to stand and reach out a hand. But when she was just five paces away, she suddenly had turned back to the condo and waved at a sixteenth-floor balcony. Her gesture had been mundane, just like her smile, full of the security and numbness of her present life. From his angle, he had been able to see a furled, pale blue picnic umbrella, white plastic chairs around a table, and a steaming mug. Perhaps her husband had been having his last cup of coffee for the morning. And so the man hadn’t stood and started things off with her. Perhaps he wanted to wait a little longer, so the feeling of uselessness caused by desire would have a chance to dissipate. Not just desire, also vague, shameful schemes, he frankly told her.
He was afraid that if he walked out from behind the shelter of words, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. Your body grants tacit consent to men, he wrote, but luckily only a very few of us are able to see this.
His language was turning creepy and Nietzschean again, she thought.
As she had passed his bench, she finished the apple she had brought and tossed the core into a trash can, pulled a Kleenex from her purse to wipe her mouth and hands. The dog walker came back, and she turned around to avoid a second bout of small talk, but her plan was foiled by the dog, which jumped up and rested its front paws on her thigh. Beneath this show of eagerness, it humped her leg. Neither she nor the owner had acknowledged this fact. Instead, they had chatted about how great the morning was!
The man was certain Hongmei had known the dog owner for many years, and the two of them were keeping a tight lid on their relationship. He said the instant Hongmei had turned from the trash can, she was a different person: conventional, reasonable, and respectful of pallid petit bourgeois friendships. Who could have imagined a woman like her coming from such a small village, one that had sacrificed two hundred thirteen girls and now sent its female inhabitants far and wide?
She told the man she was glad he’d given her the opportunity to get to know herself. The clarity of his vision, that almost supernatural intuition, made her wish for the first time to open herself up. Her secrets weren’t kept just from other people but also from herself.
These secrets were tightly sealed away. The first time she had known they existed was in 1977, when she was eleven. More winter, more haystacks. Eight teenaged students from the cities, sent down to be reeducated by peasants, had departed, leaving only one, a boy of nineteen. He often would lounge atop a haystack, playing his harmonica, and when he tired of that, he would regale the village children with stories of Nanjing, Shanghai, America. He’d be talking away, then suddenly stop, sometimes halfway through a sentence. He looked bizarre at these moments, staring at them through dirty glasses out of first one eye and then the other, as if he’d just landed among them a minute ago. Then, in a completely different tone, he’d say, “You’re all so lucky—if you grow up in ignorance, then you can’t even tell how ignorant you are.” He said that if only there could be a fire to burn up all the haystacks, then this little village that had trapped him wouldn’t exist anymore. He stayed a full year after all his comrades had left, cursing and raving, his beard scraggly, lying in bed half the time, claiming to be ill. That year Hongmei the little girl heard many stories escape from his lips: Lincoln of America, Bacon of England, Byron and Shelley. No matter what he told the kids, there was always that moment when he suddenly switched, using the topic to show how insignificant, pathetic, and uninformed this village was. Just as he was starting to resign himself to his fate, something awful happened: he was burned to death in a haystack. Several of the mounds on the threshing grounds went up in flames that night. Perhaps the fire wasn’t an accident. People had seen him grabbing a village girl, more than once, and disappearing with her into the soft embrace of a haystack.
5
The village children were sad for a long time about the boy’s permanent disappearance, though on the surface they appeared to hate him. Girls would hum the tunes he’d played on his harmonica, not knowing those were all Russian folk songs.
Hongmei typed, The strange thing is, you see, when I first saw Glen, I suddenly thought of this educated youth.
Now she wanted this person to see Glen as he’d first appeared to her, aged forty-nine, his sideburns stippled with white, but with the build of a young guy. At that time, everything in Hongmei’s life was going well; she and her husband had finally managed to get transferred from the south to Beijing and had just been allocated living quarters. She had a stable job as a military interpreter and was taking English classe
s on side—that was where Glen came into the picture. Unlike the other foreign professors at her school, he had self-confidence and maturity. Glen strode into the classroom, his back ramrod straight, apparently unworried about attracting trouble with how different he was, how confident he could be. He said in Mandarin, “Good morning,” then told the class the second and third phrases he’d learned in their language were “hot water” and “meat bun.” He stopped there, as if waiting for something, and resumed a moment later. “Why didn’t you laugh? That pause was so you could laugh.” He told the students that one of his colleagues had taught in China, and when he got back to the States, he warned Glen that the most important words he’d learn were “hot water”; otherwise he’d miss the attendant coming down the corridor dispensing it each morning, and then he couldn’t even have a cup of coffee. “Meat bun” was important too; otherwise the canteen staff might give him a solid steamed bun without any meat filling. He also knew one other Chinese phrase, “I love you.” As the students gaped at him, he told them he’d memorized this but would certainly never say it out loud to a woman. The same colleague had warned him that if he said it to a woman, the rest of his time in China would be bloody troublesome. He actually used the British swear word “bloody,” which stripped away his scholarly image right away. He told the students, particularly the cute female ones, to be sure to remind Professor Glen never to say “I love you” out loud. He was an old hand at love songs.
As she wrote these words, Hongmei realized she was smiling at the Glen she was conjuring up. She knew how attractive he was. She told the guy, You have no idea how I felt when Glen said those three Chinese words, “I,” “love,” “you.” They were beyond the capabilities of his mouth, and he looked like a child trying to spit them out.
Glen had licked his lips as a bold female student corrected his pronunciation. He had tried again. Hongmei had barely been able to listen. The words had been raw, tender in his mouth, precisely because she couldn’t bear to hear them. So many years later, she still couldn’t explain how she felt. Was it that she couldn’t stand seeing a professor in his forties playing the fool in public, or was it the sight of his impenetrable innocence that she found impossible?
Everyone had laughed loudly. Hongmei had been silent. She had thought she must be bewitched by something. She’d never met a man like Glen, revealing so much of himself so quickly. After that, she had wanted to get close to him.
Words, when compared with feelings, are too concrete, too arbitrary, whereas feelings are richer but more elusive—ambiguous, if you will. Where words are muted, feelings begin.
* * *
She played Ping-Pong and tennis against him, fetched him alcohol from the infirmary when he needed it for a cheese fondue, led him on photo expeditions in hutongs, squeezed through the crowds of Xidan night market with him. She more or less forgot reality. Female classmates asked her presumptuously where she’d bought this or that new garment, and when she said it was secondhand, overseas discards from Xidan market, they exaggeratedly praised her powers of observation, clamoring for her to make another trip there, to pick up similar items for them too.
Once in the students’ canteen Glen came in and joined several female students. He said the foreign instructors’ cafeteria was out of food, and could they spare him a bite? The girls jostled to go stand in line a second time, returning with a dozen dishes for him. Then they noticed his eyes light up as he half rose from his bench. Turning around, they saw her walking in. All the while Professor Glen was bantering with them, he couldn’t take his eyes off Hongmei. They abruptly realized that he was in the students’ canteen to see her. Hoping to see a good show, they called her over to join them. She happened to be dressed simply that day, in a white blouse and olive-green trousers.
A short while later, Glen asked, “Did you get something on your sleeve?”
She replied, “It’s ink. It was there before.”
The other women didn’t say a word, just listened to the pair of them talk. Glen wanted to know how the ink had gotten onto her sleeve. She said she’d done it herself. When she couldn’t think of an answer in an exam, she’d drawn circles on her sleeve, ending up with a big blot. Glen said it could be washed off, and she said no, not possible; she’d tried everything. All eyes were on Professor Glen, then on Hongmei. There was something else going on here, but no one could tell what. Glen said, “You must be doing it wrong. Give it to me. I’ll clean it for you.” The women gasped, but Glen didn’t seem to notice. “Let me have it, and I guarantee I’ll hand it back tomorrow spotless.”
Hongmei already had a sense of Glen’s frankness, but even so, she didn’t know how to respond. Her mouth was full, so she could only blush. Then she said the professor should change his line of work and open Glen’s Laundromat.
He earnestly explained that he was used to doing housework. With fewer chores in China, he found he had too little with which to distract himself. He said, “If you don’t believe me, just watch—I promise I’m not as bad as you think. I can definitely clean clothes like a pro.”
The women departed soon after that, leaving Glen and Hongmei with a dozen dishes between them. There was an awkward silence, and she knew something was up.
This, she told the secret talker, had been a turning point in her relationship with Glen.
She more or less forgot that as a military interpreter, she was a first lieutenant, even though she mainly translated operating manuals. She couldn’t go around so openly with a foreigner. But the worst part and the most worrying, she forgot she was supposed to be happily married. Every day she spent with Glen made her situation more and more dangerous. Staring at the tableful of food, she glanced at Glen. “What should we do now?” At the time, she’d had no idea this ambiguous, innuendo-laden question would create a secret space clearly separating inside from out, and place enormous pressure on both of them. They were now forced to quickly define the nature of this relationship, as well as what they were to each other.
Glen looked at her as if he were a child. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Do you really want to wash my blouse?”
“Really.” He still had no idea what was wrong.
“You’re hopeless,” said Hongmei. She’d never felt so strange before. She had a sudden urge to stroke this overgrown child’s head and tell him what was in her heart, though she shouldn’t say the words out loud.
He must’ve felt close to her, deep down, and so displayed this intimacy in public for everyone to see.
“Can’t I wash your clothes?” he asked.
“Do you do laundry for other female students?” she retorted.
“Depends on whom,” he said.
“Who?” she pursued.
“I can’t say. If I feel like doing it, then I will. Everyone makes me feel differently.”
Hongmei tapped away at the keyboard, telling the secret talker that after that day, she understood what “ostracize” truly meant, a word Glen had taught her. The other students began ignoring her in class and in the cafeteria. Perhaps they were jealous, or she was getting too close to the foreigner. Yet Glen still invited her to read in class and praised the accuracy of her pronunciation, sometimes too much, more than a professor ought to compliment a student. For instance, he might say, “Wow, you have an exquisite voice.” Glen openly gave in to his feelings, and she was the one who suffered for it. Every one of her classmates, male and female, thought she was shamelessly flinging herself at their tutor. Only several years later could she finally and openly admit to this person that she now understood she had indeed been pursuing her professor. From the very first class, she had spread a net for Glen. She couldn’t be without a target; she was a woman who pursued men. She had also hunted down her first husband. She told the secret talker that she knew what sort of woman she was, a source of disaster, always causing trouble—at least that’s how she saw herself. When in pursuit, she could be as fearless as a man, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences.
Take a breath, Hongmei told herself. Who’d have thought what we actually caught was each other as we are today?
You seem disppointed, the secret talker interrupted, misspelling the word again.
Yes, it did feel a bit like she’d been tricked. She wrote, Not long after I’d moved from my little village to the military academy in Nanjing, I experienced this faint disappointment. The world outside my little village wasn’t as big as the educated youth had made it sound, nor even as big as I’d imagined. I wanted to see somewhere larger. I mean the unknown, like when Glen first showed up, and his every word and movement uncovered new ground. Even his smallest, most overlooked gesture. For instance, holding his sunglasses in his mouth while tying his shoelaces, or turning his baseball cap to the back when aiming a camera, picking up the napkin from his lap to wipe his mouth . . . It was after one of these gestures that I knew very clearly I’d fallen in love with him.
The person asked what the gesture had been. Hongmei felt a wash of warmth in her heart. When she first fell in love with Glen, these waves of tenderness often had overtaken her. Now they felt unfamiliar, as if she hadn’t experienced them for many years. She wrote about this sensation, then described the evening Glen took her to Jianguo Hotel. This was about two weeks after her classmates had started giving her the cold shoulder. She no longer remembered if they’d had a big meal, but they probably had—back then Glen always ordered enough food for six. Then the bill came—Glen’s lips didn’t stop their stream of light conversation, nor did his eyes leave her face, but his right hand slipped into the left inner pocket of his suit and pulled out a black leather wallet. Moving casually, his second and third fingers fished out a credit card. The movement was infinitesimal and yet spoke of great generosity. He was still speaking to her, occasionally correcting her English grammar, then warmly apologizing. When the waitress came back with the receipt, he pulled a pen from his pocket and, with just a few wriggles of his wrist and an energetic tilt upward, he signed it. There it was, the living embodiment of someone from the wealthiest nation on Earth, a rich man who didn’t care about money, giving her a new sense of cash with a flick of his pen. She pondered how rich a country would have to be to breed such nonchalance around money. She couldn’t understand why that gesture had made Glen look so good, so American. They took the bus home. It was after eight, and the sky had just darkened. Glen’s breath smelled faintly of wine, mixed with his after-dinner coffee. It was Sunday night, and the bus was crammed—everyone was rushing home. She and Glen stood facing each other, the alcohol swirling inside them. When the vehicle swerved violently, she took his hand. It was like the closing of a dam—in an instant, her drunkenness dissipated, swept away.