by Ma Jian
‘But if you cut yourself off from today’s world, how can you hope to write about it?’ the writer said.
‘Writers are the products of their times. A shallow world produces shallow writers. I can’t help missing those years we spent in the re-education camps.’
‘The world has moved on,’ the writer said. ‘You’ve been left behind. Those young women understand today’s society better than you. Perhaps a purer form of literature will emerge from their numb minds. They have no prejudices, no interest in politics. Their problems are purely personal. But you … your time is already over.’)
Old Hep’s passion for the textile worker gradually waned like a poplar tree in autumn, losing more and more leaves with each gust of wind. These winds were caused, of course, by the editor’s increasing number of lovers. The textile worker put up with his neglect, and didn’t lose hope. She believed that her love would finally conquer him, so she stuck to his side and refused to let go. But he only ever agreed to meet her when there was no other prey available. He was determined to live life to the full and make use of all the opportunities his job gave him. He had gained confidence from the textile worker’s adoration, and courage from the advances of the Sichuanese short-story writer. (Although, when the Sichuanese woman had said things like ‘Unhook my bra’ or ‘I love your little bald patch’, he had trembled with fear.) He knew that in order to progress, he needed to continue having these amorous experiences.
The textile worker had been raised in a strict household. Her mother was a government functionary who stuck religiously to the Party rules, her father had died in hospital during the Cultural Revolution. She was an only child, and to support her mother, she had started work as soon as she graduated from high school. If she had gone to university, she would have had to leave town, and her mother would never have agreed to that. So she learned to content herself with what this town could offer her. She knew that if she behaved well in the textile factory, she might be promoted to an office job, and from there perhaps be transferred to a job in the People’s Cultural Centre. She longed to leave the clanking looms behind and find herself a quiet desk job. The editor became her role model. He had told her that as a factory worker he had studied creative writing in his spare time, and on the back of his first film script was promoted to his job as editor-in-chief. When she gazed at him, his short little body seemed Napoleonic, his bloated and lined face reminded her of Beethoven. Having grown up with no paternal love, she looked upon him as a father figure. She only had one aim in life, and that was to remain by his side for ever.
Unfortunately, as soon as she gained possession of him, her joyous mood caused a dramatic improvement in her appetite. The fat she acquired attached itself first to her waist and calves, then spread to her face, puffing her upper eyelids and inflating her cheeks. After two years together, the editor could no longer bring himself to look at her. She had lost all her girlish charm, and now had the body of a middle-aged woman. The other mistresses he had taken subsequently put her in the shade. He was ashamed of her, and longed to free himself from her ties. One Wednesday afternoon, he agreed to meet her behind Red Scarf Park, hoping to use this opportunity to break up with her once and for all.
(Relations between people are very curious, the writer reflects. We behave kindly, even sycophantically towards people we are afraid of, but trample like tyrants over the shy and retiring. Our roles are determined by our opponents. We all possess a dual nature. The editor was a servant to his wife, a master to the textile worker – roles he couldn’t play with any of his other women. We all jump from one role to the next. If I continue to write this story, who knows, the textile worker might become more savage even than the female novelist.)
By the time she finally turned up in the woods behind Red Scarf Park, Old Hep was seething with rage. He had never felt like this before. On the way to this rendezvous he sensed that a physical change was about to take place in him. She ran towards him, her plump body wobbling about as though she were being tossed up and down inside a rattling old car. She apologised for being late, but he continued to glare at her. Her cheeks turned red with remorse. In fact, at this point, she should have thrown herself onto his chest, as she used to in the past, and quashed the fire in his body with the weight of her womanly flesh. But the cold, heartless expression on his face sapped her confidence, and she dared not reach out to him.
Old Hep was pleased by the turn of events, however. Her lateness allowed him to keep his anger on the boil, and when he saw her cowering below him with a pathetic look on her face, he knew he was ready to explode. (Unattractive women should never stand still in front of a man if they want to win him over. They should first arch their eyebrows gracefully, amuse him with a funny anecdote, or smother him with kisses – anything to divert his attention away from their piggy eyes or pointed chin. This is admittedly very tiring, but it must be done. Everybody must learn to do the best with what they’ve got.) The rage must have been simmering inside him for years, because without a second’s hesitation, he was able to lift his hand in the air and bring it down hard on her face.
‘Stupid bitch!’ he shouted after the first blow. ‘Why are you late?’
He had learned these gestures and tone of voice from his wife. During their childless married life, she had shouted at him once in this way, when the jumper he had washed for her and hung out to dry on the balcony was blown away by the wind. She accused him of having done it on purpose, and when he replied that the jumper was so wet that he’d had no choice but to hang it up outside, she slapped him on the face. At the time, he sensed some organ in his body shift place a little. He ran into the kitchen, grabbed a ladle of cold water and emptied it into his mouth. He drank until he was dizzy. Today he returned that slap. Although he had trouble speaking at first, and his voice sounded like a shovel grating against an iron bucket, he soon loosened up. His hand had struck her right on the face. He had succeeded. His confidence rising, he punched her in the chest, and she fell to the ground at the very spot on which she had lost her virginity. The actions she took next decided her fate. Instead of hitting back, she struggled to her knees and pleaded for forgiveness.
In Old Hep’s mind, her supplicant pose affirmed the correctness of his behaviour. He abandoned all sense of restraint. At last he was making up for all those lost years.
As dusk gave way to night, Old Hep felt an uncontrollable urge to possess her. He climbed on top of her and took command of her weak and feeble body. She clenched her teeth and croaked as he bit her nipples and tugged her hair. Although she was taller than him, each time she struggled to her feet he managed to kick her down again.
‘Will you leave me alone now?’ he shouted.
‘I’ll do anything to make you happy,’ she answered, gazing up at him adoringly before collapsing again onto the grass.
‘Haven’t I made myself clear?’ he said, pulling up his trousers. ‘I never want to see you again!’ Then he spat on the ground and walked away.
(Suddenly the lights come back on in the eighth-floor flat. What is love exactly? the writer asks himself. He glimpses a cloth doll slumped in the corner of his room, and wonders what it’s doing there. He often catches sight of it, although he usually suspects his eyes are playing tricks on him, because he only ever sees it at night, or when he’s drunk or lost in thought. Perhaps there really is a cloth doll under the chair. Maybe it was given to him by some woman, or left behind by a friend. Or perhaps the previous occupant of the flat flung it in the corner in a fit of anger. No one has ever bothered to lean down and pick it up. The dirtier the doll gets, the less willing he is to touch it.)
The editor’s drawers were filled with love letters. Because this town is built beside a deep-water port, it was one of the first places to benefit from the relaxed trade regulations of the Open Door Policy. As its economy flourished, the town grew and a new urban district was constructed on the farmland that lined the coast. Hordes of peasants from inland villages poured into this district to sel
l their produce and search for new jobs. Soon everyone in China had heard of this town, and the name of Old Hep’s literary magazine grew in prestige. He was happy with his job. His colleagues in the editorial department regarded him affectionately. In the political study sessions, his fellow Party members admired his open-minded opinions and his courage in giving voice to minor grievances. The new recruits looked up to him; when chatting with them, he would always drop words like ‘sexy’, ‘contemporary’ and ‘tasteful’ into his conversation to make them feel at ease. He knew that as long as the textile worker didn’t decide to cause any more trouble, he could remain safely in his post until retirement. He racked his brains, thinking of ways to get rid of her. Since she had lost all her self-respect, he knew he could torture her as he wished. As the weeks passed, he discovered that he enjoyed tormenting her, and since she was a willing victim, they ended up seeing more of each other than ever.
He was aware that it was he who had fallen for her first. On her first day in his office, he told her about how hard he was working on his novel, and about the chess competitions he’d won at school. He presented himself as a man who had suffered much in life, and who was in desperate need of consolation. When the textile worker glanced up at him, there was no love in her eyes. But she needed a father figure, and was flattered that the editor was paying her so much attention – no man had shared such intimate thoughts with her before. So when he wrapped his arms around her in the woods behind the park, she didn’t push him away. For a while everything was fine, they satisfied one another’s needs. The textile worker wasn’t wrong to fall in love with Old Hep, her mistake was to cling to him after he had moved on to his next prey. Her love for him destroyed her.
Each time Old Hep tried to break up with her, she said she would only agree on condition he gave her a baby before they separated. This demand crushed his spirit, and he soon resumed his habit of escaping into daydreams.
Although the editor still walked to work each morning with rosy cheeks and an eager smile, he would now return home with an ashen face. After he entered his flat, he would remove his shoes, sink into his sofa and start dreaming he was hauling furniture around the room. Sometimes a heavy jujube chair weighed down on him so heavily that his head dripped with sweat. One day, as smells of boiled chicken bones wafted from the kitchen, he dreamed he was dislodging a huge fitted unit from the wall. When he woke up a few minutes later, stirring the chicken soup, he felt a sudden urge to smash the unit on the head of the boorish two-bit writer from the provinces who was showing off to his wife in the living room, then grab his lousy novel and tear it to shreds. Instead, he diluted the beer with water and sprinkled sand over the rice before he carried the meal next door. Then he watched his wife and the guest wince as their teeth grated against the sand. His legs trembled with excitement. He swore that if that wretched writer stayed one more day in their flat, he would dilute the beer with piss.
But at home, he was still a servant, always having to check the expression on his wife’s face before making a move. She ordered him about with the ferocity of a tigress, and he did as he was told. After completing his marital duties, he would squeeze the sperm from his condom, as she requested, and smear it over her face and thighs. (She’d read in a magazine that the most expensive French face cream was manufactured from sperm, and always insisted that Old Hep rub the entire contents of his condoms into her skin.) When he was with the textile worker, he was able to ejaculate into her mouth then demand she swallow every drop.
‘On my face!’ the tigress growled, as the editor climbed back onto the bed and leaned over her. Old Hep noticed that there was very little sperm in his condom, and put it down to the secret tryst he’d enjoyed the day before. As he carefully rubbed the remaining drops onto his wife’s face, he cursed inwardly: ‘You ugly old bat. Your face is as furrowed as the fields of Dazhai.’
He kept rubbing until the sperm had dried onto her skin like white face powder. ‘I could do what I liked with her,’ he said to himself. ‘She let me grab her tits and suck them dry. Hers were much whiter and softer than yours.’ When he got out of bed to wash his hands, he felt his empty testicles begin to warm again.
Once he started taking mistresses, he was no longer plagued by his recurring dream about tipping truckloads of earth into the sea. But when the textile worker said she would only break up with him on condition he gave her a child, he once again stepped into the cabin of the huge truck, and looked through his rear mirror at the mounds of earth dropping into the waves of the ocean. During his afternoon break in the editorial office, he would drive the truck back and forth in a daze. His colleagues would notice him staring at the wall, smiling, then frowning at the calendar that was already two years out of date. They knew that he was sinking into a daydream, and they would take advantage of this time to slip off to buy a snack or make a telephone call.
When he was in this dream state, his colleagues could tell what he would be capable of doing from the different expressions on his face. If he was frowning, he would still be able to hear the telephone and look at his manuscripts; he could even stand up, shake hands with a visitor and pace about the room. But when he woke up, he would forget everything that had happened. When his lips curled into a faint smile, the most he could do was rise from his seat, walk to the thermos flask and empty some hot water into his cup. He alone knew that at this point the truck he was driving was moving with particular speed and agility. However, when the truck started racing across the surface of the sea and was about to carry him into the blue sky, his expression became deadly earnest, and his eyes would fix on some distant point. Sub-editor Chen, who knew a few things about the art of Qigong, claimed that this was the look of a man gazing into eternity after emerging from a deep meditation.
‘He’s entered the realm of emptiness,’ ‘Old Qigong’ explained to the art director who was attempting to grow a goatee. ‘His soul has left his body. He’s as dazed as you were that night you got drunk and pulled your trousers down.’
Although the editor’s daydreams were very intense, they seldom lasted more than twenty minutes.
When it first became obvious that he was daydreaming at home, the female novelist made fun of him. ‘Have you lost your ears, you moron?’ she laughed when he failed to respond to her question. At that moment, he was staring at the crockery in the sink and the water gushing from the tap, while in his mind he was climbing a tree to pick from its branches the candyfloss he loved to eat as a child. When he failed to answer her a second time, his wife stormed into the kitchen, grabbed a carrot, and with the might of an army general, stabbed it into his back. Immediately, he leapt from the branches, crashed into the trunk, then landed in a confused heap on the kitchen floor. He woke up to find himself sprawled on a pile of potatoes, looking up at his wife with a ladle in his hands.
From then on, he was careful to dream with just one side of his brain, and use the other side to carry out his duties in the real world. Although he couldn’t always avoid some overlap between one world and the other, he usually managed to keep things under control.
Then one day, the textile worker finally found her way to his flat. She had tried to follow him home for days, but since he always took a different route, she often lost track of him. Old Hep was not in when she knocked. She considered leaving straight away, but the female novelist could sense that something was up, and that the young woman was embroiled in some way with Old Hep. When she asked her how they knew each other, the textile worker burst into tears and refused to say a word. The novelist promptly shooed her away, and decided to wait until Old Hep’s return before commencing her investigation.
‘Did you sleep with that girl or not?’ she asked her husband as he walked through the door.
He looked up at her with terror. He knew how fierce she could be, and knew that what stood behind her was even more ferocious. Her commissar father could beat the life out of him. He saw her standing before him, legs apart, as steady as a suspension bridge, and he confess
ed everything.
The textile worker was immediately interrogated by her leaders. They criticised her ‘petit-bourgeois liberalism’ and told her that she would be denied promotion for two years. Her supervisor took advantage of the situation and ordered her to straighten her perm and stop wearing flared trousers. The next day she turned up at the factory in plaits and baggy slacks. But her spirit was still strong, and as soon as she clocked off after lunch, she let her hair down again, put on some lipstick, and made her way to Old Hep’s office.
‘I don’t care about anything any more,’ she whined, as she chased him around his desk.
‘If my wife catches sight of you again, my life will be over.’ His leaders had passed by that morning to warn him to pay attention to his lifestyle. ‘You must leave now. I have a meeting to go to,’ he lied.
‘But there’s something I must tell you.’
She followed him out of the building. They walked through the crowd, one in front of the other, as though they were strangers.
‘What did you tell your factory leaders?’ he asked.
‘I admitted that we’ve been sleeping together for years,’ she said to the nape of his neck, desperately trying to keep up with him.
Old Hep felt as though his head were about to explode. His steps became heavy.
She followed him closely, refusing to fall behind. ‘I’m not afraid of them.’
‘Go away, will you, just go away!’ he hissed through his teeth.
She stood still for a moment, but he kept walking.
When he heard her catching up with him, he said: ‘If I see you again, I’ll kill you!’ As he was about to run away, he heard something that made him stop dead in his tracks. He had clearly heard her utter the words: ‘I’m pregnant!’