by Ma Jian
‘The law only protects those in power. The rest of us are doomed to play the victim.’
The Possessor or The Possessed
Every morning, he woke up beside his wife and counted the hours until his next adulterous tryst. The amorous longing seeped into his body like alcohol, allowing him to savour the numbness of his flesh and the trembling of various organs. He felt as though he were luxuriating in some magical Garden of Eden.
Had the textile worker not ruined everything, perhaps he could have gone on with his life – at least he would still be sitting behind that chief editor’s desk of his, listening for the postman’s footsteps that heralded the morning delivery of love letters that poured onto his desk like wine, ready for his slow delectation.
Ever since the editor of the town’s bi-monthly literary magazine found this new way out in life, he would arrive at his office in the milky hours of morning, carefully make himself a cup of tea, pick up the hairs (mostly white and grey) that had fallen onto the desk, discreetly push the letters addressed to ‘The Editor’ to one side (note: there was no audience for these actions, he was performing them purely for himself), then through the corner of his eye he would scour the envelopes, searching for a handwriting he recognised or was waiting for. After rubbing a finger across the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes to remove the grains of dried mucus, his eyes and head would briefly dart in opposite directions, like a cat that deliberately looks away before it pounces on its prey. He would then remove his fashionable new leather shoes, pull open the lowest drawer of his desk to act as a footrest, and spread out a copy of the People’s Daily to hide his bare feet from the view of anyone who happened to enter the room. Next, he would swing from side to side on his revolving chair, allowing his small body to create a satisfying level of noise, lean his head back on the chair’s headrest and stare up at the ceiling. As his bony shoulders slowly relaxed, he would rub moisturising lotion into his hands, which were dry and wrinkled from years of cooking and washing-up, and only then would he finally begin to open the letters.
Sometimes, as the editor left the magical world of love letters and returned to real life, he would wink repeatedly and flutter his eyelashes. He had read that these exercises helped people regain their youthful demeanour, or at least gave their facial muscles an expressive tone. This was extremely important to a man over fifty who had only recently embarked on a secret love life. He often ground his teeth on his way to work, gnashing his jaws together in time with his steps. This exercise prevented him from falling into a daydream – and also improved his looks.
As soon as he opened the envelopes, he could tell from the handwriting whether it was a manuscript or a love letter. He had three drawers filled with love letters sent to him by young female writers. Some were from serious authors who simply wanted to be published; some from impressionable young girls hoping to fall in love; others were from young women whose respect for his literary talents had developed into an amorous infatuation. Over the previous two years, the editor had published in his magazine such poems as ‘The Road in Life is Twisted’, ‘You Have Left Me, But I Cannot Leave You’, ‘Yet Another Sunset’, ‘An Autumn Leaf Blows Softly into the Window of My Heart’, and had succeeded in having his way with each sentimental girl who had written them. He understood that to get young women to fall into his net, he only had to spout a few pompous statements on the meaning of life, and add a new column to his magazine entitled ‘New People, New Poems’.
When selecting his prey, he always chose poetesses, and avoided female novelists like the plague. His life’s experience had left him with a biological fear of female novelists. He made a point of insisting that everyone submitting a manuscript should enclose a photograph and curriculum vitae. Over the past two years, he had developed an expert ability to guess, just by looking at the handwriting and photograph, which woman would fall into his trap. Experience had taught him that plain women were usually the most talented, and that their gracefully written words often conveyed a sharp sense of observation. Women who wrote about blue skies, rosy clouds and fields of grass were the first to swallow his bait, but they usually had other men in the background and were fickle with their affections. He tended to focus his attention on the melancholy girls who liked to write about sunsets. Their poems invariably included references to wooden cottages in the snow, the last leaves of autumn, teardrops, ‘that night he kissed me’, and ‘a cup of black coffee with no sugar’. Women of this category were average looking, and since most of them came from troubled homes or had suffered heartbreak in the past, they harboured fantasies about a happy future. He knew how to exploit their weaknesses, and give them the kind of love they yearned for. They were used to being let down and deceived, so when the time came to cheat on them, they let go without a fuss. Apart from the young illustrator from the textile factory, who ended up clinging to him like a leech.
Mornings were an important time for him, and he devoted himself to his tasks with complete attention. By four in the afternoon though, his mind would drift into a series of fragmented and inconsequential dreams. (The professional writer considers that the editor’s dreams were similar to the flights of fancy his own mind takes when the blood donor’s conversation begins to tire him, or when his leader is chairing a meeting at the Writers’ Association.) When he felt himself falling into a daydream, the editor would pretend to be reading the manuscript in his hand, his eyes skimming from one line to the next, or fixing on a particular sentence. His dreams were like a passer-by who just stays long enough to smoke a cigarette, then gets up and walks away.
One afternoon, he dreamed he was trudging through a river of faeces. (The professional writer smiles to himself in his darkened room.) This image was no doubt a subconscious reaction to his excessive indulgence in romantic fantasies. He liked to weave into his dream a few flattering phrases from the love letters he received, bathing himself in a stream of compliments. ‘You are the only man in the world,’ he would hear the women whisper. ‘A man of strength. The most important person in my life. I can’t live without you.’ ‘You are a genius of unbridled talent, the great helmsman of the literary world.’ He gained spiritual strength from these adulatory words, and for the first time in years, enjoyed a sense of self-respect.
He had once hoped to achieve this self-respect through his literary works. His wife, though, a professional novelist, succeeded in confining him to his role as husband, and he quietly entered his fortieth year at his post in the kitchen, surrounded by pots and pans. At first, this ‘househusband’, who was just 1.6 metres tall, tried to leave his daydreams during the brief intervals between washing the dishes and sweeping the floor, and conjure up an elegant phrase or two to jot down onto paper. But he soon gave up on that. Ten years later, he had to accept that all he was capable of was taking a few lines from one of his admirers’ letters and sending them off to another. He knew he was merely the husband of the female novelist, and that any literary talent he’d had in the past was gone for ever.
He came from a family of intellectuals, his father was a doctor, his mother an actress in the local drama troupe. As a young man he had shown some talent. Three of his early poems were published in the China Youth Daily. He wrote an article about the achievements of Zhao Xianjin, a local hero who, like Lei Feng, gave money to the poor and helped old women across the road. It was published in the Guangming Daily, and made him as famous in this town as Zhao Xianjin himself He was transferred from his menial job in a paper factory and placed in charge of propaganda at the People’s Cultural Centre. His good fortune continued to grow. After seeing the Japanese film Peach Blossom about the reunion of a man and wife separated by war, he wrote a story called ‘A Feeling for Home’ about the reunion of a Taiwanese man with his relations in China, and set it in this coastal town.
The story was immediately singled out for praise by the Central Committee’s War Office, as it was very much in tune with their aspirations for national reunification. A film was commissioned, and the Central Committee
sent to the town a team of production assistants and advisers, as well as ten actors, two of whom came from abroad. During the few days of filming, he became the most sought-after man in town, and when the municipal leaders bumped into him on the street, their speech took on a deferential tone. Everyone was talking about his script and the ‘visitors from beyond the sky’ that would soon flock to the town. When he walked through the streets, crowds would form behind him, strangers stopped him to say hello as though he were a visiting dignitary. In the evening, his home was surrounded by the same hordes of curious onlookers who loiter outside the big hotels where movie stars stay.
The proof of those glorious days was still in his home: a photograph of himself and the group of visiting actors that included the two foreigners. At the time, it was the only colour photograph in town. Unfortunately the photograph was taken in hospital – he had the misfortune to contract hepatitis just as the film was going into production. He was very flattered that the foreigners paid him a visit. After his meeting with them, he became the town’s authority on all things foreign. When people who had only seen the foreigners from the front or behind, or who had only caught a glimpse of their hair or trousers, started arguing among themselves, someone would always end the dispute by saying, ‘If you don’t believe me, go and ask Old Hep.’ (It was they who coined his nickname.) When the hospital’s director was suspended for claiming that not all foreigners with black hair are mixed race, Old Hep’s photograph saved him, because it clearly showed that one of the foreign actors had jet black hair. Although the authorities demoted him to the less important position of chairman of the operating theatre, they at least allowed him to retain his Party membership.
In that golden year of his, the female novelist – his future wife - sent a love letter to him in hospital. She called him ‘China’s Pavel‘
, after Pavel Gorrchagin, the hero of a Soviet propaganda film. She said he was the sun around which she revolved, the shore on which she longed to moor her boat. It was the first time Old Hep had received a piece of paper inscribed with the petit-bourgeois phrase ‘I love you’. He immediately passed the letter to the head of the Municipal Propaganda Department who had come to visit him in hospital. After a thorough investigation by the Party organs, he was informed that she was the daughter of the political commissar of the local army regiment. In under a week, the Party organs gave Old Hep their permission to embark on a relationship with her. They were also kind enough to return the letter to him, having made sure, of course, to draw a black line through every unhealthy, petit-bourgeois word it contained.
So she started to pay him visits. Had he not been suffering from a fever at the time, Old Hep might have noticed that the skirt she was wearing was identical to the one the actress Zhao Xiaohong had worn on her last visit to the town.
She sat down opposite him, her bare white legs dotted with goosebumps. ‘All the nurses and female visitors seem to be wearing those skirts,’ he remarked.
His future wife replied, ‘These skirts have been around for ages. These days, everyone in the streets is wearing Zhao Dashan’s jacket.’
‘Who’s Zhao Dashan?’ he asked.
‘An actor. You know, the big stocky one.’
‘I can never remember their names,’ Old Hep admitted guiltily.
‘Even my little brother has heard of him!’ She couldn’t forgive Old Hep his ignorance.
Before she left his hospital room, she would always leave a few things behind to ensure that she remained in his thoughts. She left books inscribed with affectionate messages to him, discarded pear cores, the lingering fragrance of her talcum powder, a strand of her hair. He knew she was the daughter of a high-ranking Party cadre, and was overwhelmed by his unexpected stroke of good luck. The great disparity in their social standing inevitably caused him to review his own attributes: he was thirty-six years old, a Party member, earned a monthly salary of forty-seven and a half yuan, and had once been awarded the title of ‘advanced worker’ by his leaders at the paper factory. These details probably meant little to her. He knew that his professional success, however, would impress her more. He was the original screenwriter of the film Feelings for Home; he had managed to get nearly 200,000 words of material published by the China Youth Daily and Guangming Daily; on the strength of years of private study, he had been transferred from his menial job in the paper factory to a cadre’s post in the People’s Cultural Centre; he had driven in the municipal leader’s red-flagged car, and had represented his paper factory on a visit to Beijing to meet the famous model worker, the ‘Iron Man’, Li Guocai. Everyone in town knew about these achievements. Although the female novelist had grown up in a home with five rooms and two toilets, her salary was no higher than his, and besides, she had only visited Beijing once, and that was as a child. Thinking this over in his mind, Old Hep felt a little more at ease. When he inhaled her fragrance in the air after her next visit, he felt a sudden surge of passion, and lying down on his hospital bed, he made up his mind to marry her.
A few months later, Old Hep took her as his wife, and soon after was appointed editor-in-chief of the Cultural Centre’s new bi-monthly literary magazine. He had reached the peak of his career. But his luck was not to last, and in less than two years, his wife quickly caught up with him. Two of her novels were published by the most respected national journals, and she was suddenly proclaimed a ‘regional and municipal talent’. She made visits to Beijing and Huangshan for two separate literary festivals. The month she and Old Hep were invited to join the newly established Literary Union, she alone was chosen by the authorities to be the town’s first ‘professional writer’. The government paid her a monthly salary so that she could stay at home all day writing novels. This turn of events didn’t suit Old Hep at all. His wife stopped referring to him as ‘China’s Pavel’, and started calling him Old Hep like everyone else. She made contact with other professional writers around the country, and became an authority on the latest cultural developments. She knew the name of the girlfriend of the Beijing writer Tan Fucheng, and was aware that the novelist Li Tiesheng had a paralysed leg. When the Open Door Policy was launched, she proved to be a fearless trailblazer of reform. She was the first woman in town to wear a padded bra, dye her hair and perm it like a foreigner. She read the daringly realist novel Form Teacher by Liu Xinwu, and the literary journal Today that was sent down to her from Beijing. She also took to composing romantic, melancholy verse. By the time Old Hep had finally managed to write the word ‘love’ down on a piece of paper, she was already using phrases like ‘sexually aroused’. She corresponded with various young Beijing poets, sent them affectionate cards, and in return received letters in which they addressed her as ‘my little lamb’, ‘my far-away treasure’, and ‘the angel wafting through my dreams’. She was completely in step with the fast pace of reform.
One night, Old Hep was leaning over his copy of Selected Writings from Modern Western Literature and about to doze off when his wife returned home from a party. He looked up and in the dim light saw, to his horror, a pair of hands with long red nails. He was terrified. At the time he felt the fear was more than his fragile body could stand. She looked down at him serenely, then glanced at her hands and said, ‘It’s nail varnish, you fool. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen nail varnish before!’
‘Blood-stained hands!’ The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.
‘Nail varnish!’ she snapped angrily. ‘All the foreign actresses in the glossy magazines have red nails. Haven’t you seen?’
The image of blood-stained hands slowly retreated from his mind. It didn’t worry him that he had never seen, or heard of, anyone painting their nails before. He knew he was incapable of keeping up with the pace of change. Trying to make up to her he asked: ‘And why do they paint them red?’ His voice sounded frail and sad.
‘To make their hands look pretty, you idiot!’ The novelist was angry. She could not tolerate this man who was frightened by her lipstick and nail varnish.
She vowed never again to discuss modern cosmetic products with him.
Soon afterwards, she bought herself a pair of shoes with kitten heels, and started wearing her hair loose. Then she progressed to wearing stilettos, smoking foreign cigarettes, discussing Hemingway, drinking beer, spraying perfume on her neck, and celebrating her birthdays with a cake and candles. She boarded the Open Door Policy’s express train, and soon she had read every translation of Milan Kundera’s books, equipped her home with running hot water, a door bell, a telephone line, and arranged decorative ornaments and toys behind the glass front of her new bookcase. She was a fully-fledged modern woman. But it was a full decade later before Old Hep finally got round to reading The Catcher in the Rye and One Hundred Years of Solitude, watching a pornographic video, taking a mistress and buying a Western suit.
Since his wife was so much more at home with the climate of reform, he always ended up feeling excluded. The female novelist took him to parties, but Old Hep was conscious that he was short and unattractive and lacked any sense of rhythm. So when the disco music started, he would tremble with fear and retreat into the corner, staring miserably at the men and women cavorting before him. His wife even started meddling with his magazine. She turned up at his office to check manuscripts and commission pieces, and he would have to bow to her decisions. At home, she was the only one who received visitors. Her friends would drop in to engage her in literary discussions. As he listened in from the kitchen, Old Hep would hear them spout streams of unfamiliar terms such as ‘linguistic weight’, ‘spherical structure’, ‘fragmentary style’.
On their third wedding anniversary, his wife’s name entered The Great Dictionary of Chinese Writers, and he knew that from then on, he would have to assume the role of clown. That night, his wife invited a crowd of young admirers to the flat to celebrate her good fortune. A long-haired youth dragged Old Hep out of the kitchen and demanded to hear his opinion on some issue or other. Old Hep stood in the centre of the room, lost for words. He looked up through the forest of guests, and saw his wife’s face redden with rage. In a panic he said, ‘Ask my wife. She’s much more intelligent than me.’ The guests laughed. He heard his wife whisper to him, ‘What kind of man are you?’ He had never heard her speak so softly to him before.