by Yu Hua
Guo Bin said that Horsie’s apartment was like a single girl’s dorm room, with all kinds of knickknacks displayed: “From the bookshelves to the cabinets, there’s little animals everywhere: flannel, glass, bamboo—you name it. There’s even a big black flannel bear on top of the bed. But as for Horsie’s things, you won’t see so much as a pen of his on the table. It’s only when his clothes are drying on the balcony that you have a chance of finding some trace of his property in the apartment.” Guo Bin gave a smirk at the thought of the stuffed bear. “Could it be that even as a married woman,” he asked us—and himself too—“Lü Yuan still hugs her bear when she goes to sleep?”
As time went on, Guo Bin’s familiarity with Horsie’s apartment grew steadily more complete, and he would brag that even if he were to walk around the apartment for half an hour with his eyes closed he could still manage to avoid knocking into a single chair. What’s more, he said he knew how items were distributed and what things could be found in what cabinet, and if anyone was curious he could provide a detailed inventory.
“There’s a drawer in their bedside table,” he said, “which holds all their identity papers and their bankbooks. It’s locked. Under the drawer is a pile of Lü Yuan’s panties and bras. There are stockings and scarves there too.”
As for Horsie’s underwear, socks, and scarves, there was no special place reserved for them, for they were crammed into a wardrobe with the rest of his stuff—winter clothes, summer clothes, spring and autumn clothes—all in a single drawer, no less. One time, Guo Bin saw for himself the immense effort involved if Horsie wanted to put his hands on a simple undershirt. It was as though he were searching through a garbage heap for discarded clothes, first sticking his head into the wardrobe, then his shoulders too, eventually emerging with just a pair of underpants in his hand. He tossed them aside, then took his entire collection of clothes in his arms and dumped everything on the floor. He knelt in front of this little mountain of clothing and spent another half hour rummaging around before at last he managed to find his undershirt.
Guo Bin gave us to understand that only he could grasp the subtle relations between Horsie and Lü Yuan. “You people just can’t imagine what goes on between them.” He gave an example to back up his claim.
Guo Bin was sitting in a chair when he began to tell us his story. He stood up, walked around in a little circle, and then looked at his three friends. Two days earlier, he said, he was about to knock on the door of Horsie’s apartment when he heard the sound of sobbing inside—low but prolonged sobs that he felt could only have been triggered by some heartrending sorrow. So he let his hand drop to his side and stood outside Horsie’s door until the sobs subsided, until he could not hear them anymore. All this time he wondered why Lü Yuan was crying. What could have made her so sad? Had Horsie been mistreating her? But he hadn’t heard Horsie yelling at her—in fact, he hadn’t heard any talking at all.
After the sobbing had ceased, Guo Bin reckoned that Lü Yuan must now have dried her tears, so he raised his hand once again and knocked on the door. It was Horsie who opened up, and what astonished Guo Bin was that Horsie’s eyes were wet, while Lü Yuan was sitting comfortably on the sofa with the TV remote in her hand. It was only then he realized the person who had just been crying was not Lü Yuan, but Horsie.
“Do you get it?” Guo Bin asked his friends, a smile on his lips. Then he went back to his chair and sat down, very much at ease.
ON THIS PARTICULAR DAY, that’s to say the afternoon of June 30, 1996, Horsie stopped by Guo Bin’s apartment. His wife, Lü Yuan, had left for Shanghai the previous day and wouldn’t be back for a week, so Horsie, being all alone, thought of Guo Bin, because Guo Bin had an extensive collection of videos and Horsie wanted to borrow a few to watch at home and enliven this period of enforced bachelorhood.
Guo Bin had been having a nap. Wearing only a pair of jockey shorts, he opened the door and gave a long yawn. “Did Lü Yuan get off okay?” he asked, his eyes puffy from sleep.
Horsie was a bit taken aback. He wondered how Guo Bin knew Lü Yuan was out of town. “How did you know she’s away?” he asked.
Guo Bin rubbed his eyes. “You told me she had a trip planned.”
“When was that?” Horsie didn’t remember this at all.
“Then it must have been Lü Yuan.”
As Guo Bin said this, he went into the toilet and had a pee, not bothering to close the door. Horsie sat on the sofa and watched as Guo Bin gave another yawn, rubbing his eyes again with one hand and tugging the toilet chain with the other. Amid the din of the flushing water, Guo Bin came out of the bathroom and shuffled over to the sofa. He hesitated a moment, then turned around and lay back down in bed.
Horsie noticed a camcorder in the corner by the balcony. “Whose camera is that?” he asked.
“It’s mine,” Guo Bin said. “I bought it last month.”
Horsie nodded. “I’d like to borrow a few videos,” he said.
“What kind do you want? Action or romance?”
Horsie thought about this. “Both.”
“Help yourself,” Guo Bin said.
He told Horsie the thrillers were on the third and fourth shelves and the love stories on the fifth shelf and the right-hand side of the sixth shelf. Guo Bin rubbed away gum from his eyes and yawned.
Horsie walked over to the bookcase and scanned its contents. He took out two tapes, one from the third shelf and one from the fifth. When he turned around, Guo Bin seemed to have drifted off to sleep. He hesitated a moment, then said quietly, “I’m taking two tapes.”
Guo Bin opened his eyes. He propped himself up and his head tilted in Horsie’s direction. “Go back to sleep,” Horsie said. “I’m off now.”
A smile appeared on Guo Bin’s face, an odd kind of smile. “How about something erotic?” he asked.
Horsie smiled too. Guo Bin jumped out of bed, knelt on the floor, and pulled a carton out from underneath the bed. When he opened the box, Horsie could see it was filled halfway with videos. “All porn,” Guo Bin said proudly. “Is it Hong Kong and Taiwan movies you want?” he asked. “Or foreign?”
“I don’t know.”
Guo Bin stood up. Seeing Horsie at a loss to know what to choose, he patted him on the shoulder. “Just pick one,” he said, “any one you like.”
Horsie chose one at random. In bed that evening, he first watched a love story that moved him to tears and then watched a thriller that made his hair stand on end. He reserved the porn movie for the finale.
Horsie inserted the video into the warm VCR and went to the bathroom as the tape rewound. By the time he came out, the tape had begun to play. He saw a mass of snowflakes, and after a few moments a picture appeared on the screen: a naked woman lying on her back, her head buried in a pillow, her legs together. A man’s arm moved on the left side of the frame; shoulders appeared, then the man’s back. The man walked toward the bed, put a hand on the mattress to steady himself, then clambered onto the bed. He separated the woman’s legs and mounted her.
Horsie heard a little groan as the man began to move back and forth on the woman’s body. He was struck by the way the man’s buttocks trembled, as though shivering with cold. Horsie heard the man pant, and the woman too, then constant groaning from the woman. In the following frames there was no significant change, but the bodies clamped together on the bed swayed slightly; a quiver had seized them. This uneventful scene lasted a little longer, until two cries were heard. The bodies now lay glued together, motionless, as though dead. After a little while the man shifted his weight and detached himself from his partner. She gave a long, capricious moan. The man knelt on the bed, his back to the camera; he was doing something with his head lowered.
Horsie realized that their job was done, but … “Why wasn’t there any music?” he wondered.
He thought this very strange. “Can it be that porn flicks don’t have music?”
The man lay down once more, shoulder to shoulder with the woman. They linked f
eet and pulled a blanket over their naked bodies.
“How was it?” Horsie heard the man ask.
“Fantastic,” the woman answered.
After a moment of silence he suddenly heard his own name spoken. “Am I better than Horsie, then?”
“Oh, no comparison.”
Just as Horsie was wondering if he had imagined it, he heard his name once more. “What’s Horsie like in bed?” the man asked.
“What a pain you are!” She gave him a little punch. “Didn’t I tell you already?”
“I want to hear it again,” the man said.
The woman laughed. “He doesn’t move.”
“What do you mean, he doesn’t move?”
“You won’t leave it alone, will you?” Another laugh.
The man persisted. “What do you mean he doesn’t move?”
“Once he’s in, he just doesn’t move … You’re such a pain.” She gave him another punch.
“What does he do then?”
“He gets on top of me and lies there, not doing anything, just pressing down on me, so hard I can hardly breathe … Satisfied?” the woman asked.
“How long does he spend there on top of you, not doing anything?”
“It varies. There have been a few times when he fell asleep on top of me …”
“What do you do if he falls asleep?”
“I give a heave and push him off … Is that enough for you now?”
They burst out laughing. Then the man sat up. Turning toward the camera, he got out of bed. “Let’s have a look at our recording,” he said.
Horsie recognized the man who came forward. It was Guo Bin. Toward the back of the shot, the woman was now sitting up. Lü Yuan smiled at the camera.
A WEEK LATER, Lü Yuan returned home. As she pushed open the door, she could see Horsie eating his dinner at the table by the balcony. Lü Yuan observed, needless to say, those familiar parallel lines; a bowl of noodles had flushed Horsie’s face to a deep red. She tossed her handbag onto the sofa. “Go fetch my suitcase,” she said.
Horsie raised his head and cast her a glance, then resumed dining. Lü Yuan went into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and splashed water on her face. She patted her face lightly with the palm of her hand, took some cream from the rack, and massaged her cheeks. When she returned to the living room, Horsie was still meticulously attending to his meal. She looked around. “Where’s my suitcase?” she asked.
Horsie carried on as before, not bothering to look up. “Where’s my suitcase?” Lü Yuan repeated.
Still no answer. Lü Yuan’s voice rose several registers. “Get downstairs now!” she practically bellowed.
Horsie looked up and pulled a tissue from the box on the table. He delicately wiped his mouth. “Why did you say I don’t move?” he asked.
Lü Yuan, having lost her temper, was quite unprepared for this sort of question and did not take it in at all. “Go fetch my suitcase!” she yelled again.
Horsie persisted. “Why did you say I don’t move?”
It began to dawn on Lü Yuan just what had happened. She stopped shouting and looked at Horsie very intently. He took another tissue and wiped the sweat from his face. “Actually I do move …,” he said.
Horsie paused. “At the critical moment, I do move.”
So saying, Horsie lowered his head and attended to the last two mouthfuls of noodles. Lü Yuan quietly went into the bedroom, and after sitting on the bed for a while she quietly went downstairs and brought up the suitcase herself.
There was no further drama. My friend Horsie did not return the videos to Guo Bin, nor did Guo Bin ask for them back. In the weeks that followed, Guo Bin would sometimes, as before, walk the length of the longest street in town, wearing his gray windbreaker. Hands in his pockets, he would arrive outside Horsie’s apartment, curl his long fingers, and knock on the door.
VICTORY
Lin Hong, tidying Li Hanlin’s drawers, came upon an old envelope, neatly folded. When she opened it, she found another envelope inside, folded just as neatly. Inside this envelope she found another folded envelope, and in that she found a key.
It was an ordinary aluminum key, unremarkable in every way, so why would Li Hanlin store it inside three envelopes? Lin Hong studied the key in her hand and noticed that it was a little grimy: clearly it had been in use for quite some time. From its size she could tell the key would open not a door but a drawer or suitcase. She stood up, walked over to Li Hanlin’s desk, and inserted the key into the keyhole of the drawer, but found that it failed to turn in the lock; next, she tried the keyholes of her suitcases and Li Hanlin’s; and then she checked all the other locks in their apartment, but the key didn’t open any of them. In other words, it had nothing to do with this home of theirs, which meant that … it was an interloper.
Lin Hong, a woman in her midthirties, was assailed by suspicion, disquiet, foreboding, and conjecture. Key in hand, she sat outside on the balcony, and for a long time she stayed there, unmoving; the sun above shifted its position above her stationary form. She felt lost. Only when the telephone rang did she rise and go inside to answer it. The call was from her husband, in a hotel far away. “Lin Hong, Li Hanlin here,” he said. “I got here okay and checked in. Everything’s fine. Are you okay?”
Was she okay? She didn’t know. She stood there, receiver in hand. The voice at the other end was saying, “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”
She said something at last. “I can hear you.”
“Okay, I’ll hang up now.”
The connection was broken, and all that came over the line was a long silence. Lin Hong hung up and went back to the balcony to stare at the key. Her husband’s call had been a routine formality, a simple confirmation that he was still alive.
That was one thing there was no doubt about. His clothes were drying on the balcony, his smile was mounted in a frame on the wall, cigarettes he had stubbed out were still lying in the ashtray, and his friends were calling on the phone, unaware he was away. “What?” they’d say. “Another business trip?”
She looked at the key. Her husband’s entire existence seemed to hinge on it. But just what did this grubby key signify? Someone she had thought was so close to her had kept a secret from her, just as neatly and securely as those three envelopes had guarded the key, and this secret had been concealed by time, concealed by time that she had imagined to be happy. Now that secret was about to be revealed, and—she felt sure—it was going to do her damage. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Steadily they approached her door, paused, then continued the climb.
The following morning, Lin Hong went to Li Hanlin’s office and told his office mate that she needed to pick up a few things from his desk drawer. The colleague knew her. Wives were always fetching things from their husbands’ offices. He pointed to a desk by the window.
She inserted the key into the keyhole of Li Hanlin’s desk, and the latch snapped open. And that was how she discovered her husband’s secret, inside a large envelope. There were two photographs of the same woman, one of her in a swimsuit on a beach, the other a black-and-white portrait. She looked younger than Lin Hong, but not more attractive. Then there were five letters, all signed “Qingqing.” The name made her eyes burn. Qingqing … this was obviously a pet name. For a woman who was completely unknown to her to share a pet name with her husband … The hand that held the letters began to tremble. The letters were full of sweet sentiments and touching endearments. It seemed that this woman and Li Hanlin often met, and frequently chatted on the phone. That was the way it was. And there was no exhausting their sweet sentiments and touching endearments; letters had to be exchanged to allow more room for their expression. In one of the letters, the woman told Li Hanlin she had a new telephone number.
AFTER LIN HONG GOT HOME, she sat down on the sofa and studied this seven-digit number. She tried to collect herself, and then she picked up the phone and dialed. She heard ringing, and then a woman answered. “Hello?”
“I�
��d like to speak to Qingqing,” Lin Hong said.
“Speaking. Who’s calling?”
Lin Hong detected a husky quality to the woman’s voice. “I’m the wife of Li Hanlin,” she said.
For a long time there was no reply, but Lin Hong could hear breathing, uneven breathing. “You’re shameless,” Lin Hong said. “You’re despicable, you sneaky little …” Lin Hong didn’t know what to say next; her whole body was shaking.
The other party now spoke. “Tell it to Li Hanlin.”
“You’re shameless!” Lin Hong shouted into the phone. “You’ve destroyed our marriage!”
“I haven’t destroyed your marriage,” the other woman said. “Relax, I’m not going to do that. Li Hanlin and I won’t go any further; this is our limit. I’m not interested in marrying him—not all women are like you.” She hung up.
Lin Hong stood there, quivering from head to toe, as tears of indignation poured from her eyes and the dial tone rang in her ears. After a long time she put down the receiver, but she remained standing there, and then she picked up the phone again and dialed another number.
At the other end a male voice could be heard. “Hello? Hello? Who’s calling? Why don’t you say something?”
“This is Lin Hong.”
“Oh, Lin Hong … Is Li Hanlin back now?”
“No.”
“How come he’s not back yet? It’s been a while now, hasn’t it? No, it can’t be that long. I saw him three days ago. What’s he doing this time? Is he still promoting that water filter? What a scam that is! He gave me one and I tried it out. I put filtered water in one glass and water from the faucet in another glass, and I couldn’t see any difference between the two. Then I drank a mouthful from each glass and they tasted the same, too.”
Lin Hong interrupted him. “Do you know Qingqing?”
“Qingqing?” he said. There was a pause. Lin Hong waited, holding the receiver. “I don’t know her,” he said finally.
Lin Hong tried to stay calm. “Li Hanlin is having an affair. He’s hooked up with some woman behind my back. Her name is Qingqing. I just found out today. They meet, they talk on the phone, they write to each other. I have the letters she sent him. They’ve known each other for more than a year now—”