by Ma Jian
These words filled him with a mixture of grief and anger. ‘Walk in front of me,’ he said, without looking back. ‘I’ll meet you in our place behind the chemical plant.’ Then he slowed down and watched her lumpish body overtake him then waddle away through the crowd towards the sea. His heart jumped. In the editorial department today, he had sensed that something was not right. He had recently taken a shine to a young student from a provincial university who attended his literary study classes at the Municipal Cultural Department. She had a large bottom, and a big round face that smiled all the time like a clay doll. When he’d telephoned the Cultural Department that morning to ask her out for a date, the official who picked up the phone said she wasn’t there. When he asked him to tell her to bring him the manuscript of her novel, the officer slammed the phone down. At the time, he just swore at the officer for being so rude, but now he realised that someone had been spreading rumours.
When his wife had informed the textile worker’s leaders of the situation, they had promised to treat the case in confidence, but news had obviously leaked out. The bastards. Now everyone knew. As he trailed at a distance behind the textile worker’s motherly frame, his legs seemed to grow weaker and weaker.
‘So you want a baby now do you? Bitch!’ he cursed under his breath, watching the textile worker advance through the crowd. His stomach felt heavy and swollen. He followed her down an alley and saw her disappear through a hole in the wall. He continued a few paces, deliberately passing the cavity, then turned back again and jumped in.
Standing inside the crumbling carcass of the abandoned factory, he could hear the waves of the sea bash against the cement embankment below. Sometimes when he came here, he could smell the rancid effluent that poured from the chemical plant behind, especially at dusk when the stench evaporated from the damp earth or was carried over in the evening breeze. In the sweltering heat of summer, the textile worker always brought a tin of tiger balm and gently rubbed the ointment onto Old Hep’s wizened legs to keep the insects away. He could now hear her walking towards him, treading over the loose tiles that lay scattered on the ground. He liked this secret spot. Although it was infested with mosquitoes, the place was usually empty. Trucks from the suburbs would drive past on the road outside from time to time, and people occasionally jumped through the hole in the wall to have a piss in the yard, but no one ventured inside the ruined building. He and the textile worker always met in a room in the middle that had probably served as the factory’s control centre. The three walls that were still standing reached slightly above their heads, and the floor was covered with a smooth layer of cement. When the diesel engine in the chemical plant next door shut down for the day, they would sit back and breathe the salty breeze, and imagine themselves in some beautiful seaside villa. He saw that the textile worker had pulled out the plastic sheet they kept in the corner under a brick, and was now sitting on it. On the crumbling wall behind her, a faded Maoist slogan read: WE MARCH FORWARD, FIRED BY OUR COMMON REVOLUTIONARY GOAL.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said to him softly.
‘Sit down, you say!’ Old Hep knew that the chemical plant hadn’t yet closed for the day, so he was careful to keep his voice down. ‘How did you manage to get pregnant? I haven’t touched you for three months.’
‘Well I am,’ she said defiantly. ‘It happened ages ago.’
They both set out their demands. Old Hep promised to find her a backstreet clinic that provided quick abortions for unmarried women. The textile worker said she would only agree to an abortion on condition that he continue to see her afterwards.
By the time dusk fell, they were still locked in argument. Old Hep’s eyes glowered with rage. He leaned over and snarled, ‘If you don’t stop clinging to me, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.’
The textile worker looked up at him calmly from the plastic sheet. Her body was scarred with the wounds he’d inflicted on her in the past. A few months before, he had kicked her abdomen so hard she lost control of her bowels. She was still having to take medicine for it. Her stomach was also affected, and whenever she ate anything cold she suffered terrible cramps.
‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’ Her eyes looked sore. Today was her nineteenth birthday. She calculated that she had been with him for two years and seven months. Their love story had reached its 940th day. ‘I wanted you to take me out to a restaurant tonight.’ She stroked Old Hep’s shoe and, sensing no resistance, proceeded to move her hands up his calf. She knew how to win him over. When he was in a bad mood, she only had to touch his flies and he would calm down and apologise to her. Because she was taller than him, she always made sure she was sitting down before she touched him, to give him a sense of superiority. Today, she crouched at his feet, then slowly climbed onto her knees. She looked up at him, offering her lips to his, but he pushed her head down to his opened flies, then grabbed her hair and thrust her head back and forth over his groin. Her stomach clenched, her throat was so filled with his engorged flesh she could barely breathe. At last his hands loosened their grip. She slumped to the ground, curled herself up on the plastic sheet and choked on the fluid in her mouth.
‘Don’t cough so loudly!’ the editor yelled, pulling his trousers up.
Night had fallen by now. The white plastic sheet reflected the pale moonlight and scattered it softly over the girl’s body. She tried hard not to vomit. Her puffed eyelids became even more swollen.
‘You bitch!’ the editor swore from the back of his throat. He seemed as though he were about to collapse. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ Ever since he had first slapped her on the face, he’d stopped whispering sweet words in her ear, or buying her collections of poetry. Instead, he’d taken to biting and pinching her, and when he saw her mouth contort with pain, he felt pleased and light-headed. She put up with his tortures, as though she were enduring some trial of love. Sometimes, if she was lucky, Old Hep would give her a quick cuddle afterwards to cheer her up. Tonight she was still waiting for this longed-for embrace.
The editor crouched down beside her and said: ‘So you’re getting an abortion. Is that settled then?’
‘No,’ she said, wiping the sperm from her face. ‘I want you to take me out to a restaurant. It’s my birthday today.’
‘To hell with your birthday! Are you having that abortion?’ He leaped to his feet and kicked her shins. ‘Tell met – are you getting that abortion, or not?’
The textile worker remained silent and refused to surrender.
‘Open your legs!’ he shouted. The textile worker turned round and looked up at him. Her face was even paler than the moonlight. The editor kicked her in the stomach. She shuddered with pain, and pressed her hands over her abdomen. A howl roared from the pit of her stomach, but emerged from her throat as a timid hiss. Gasping for air, she retreated to the wall that bore Chairman Mao’s slogan. The editor walked over to her and pinched her tear-drenched face.
‘I’ll stay with you until the day I die,’ she moaned from somewhere deep inside her.
‘Get an abortion first, then I’ll listen to your crap.’ The editor tried to adopt the authoritative tone he used when answering his subordinates’ questions in the office. This tone of voice commanded obedience. It was used by his leader, his leader’s leader, and every leader above him. Unfortunately, his throat was too narrow to replicate the husky and mellifluous tones produced by the secretary of the municipal Party committee.
‘I’ll give you a hundred yuan,’ he promised, hoping that this would persuade her.
The textile worker was still trembling, her head bowed low. But when she heard those words, she broke into tears again and sobbed, ‘Now that I’ve slept with you, I must stay with you for ever.
‘That’s just what your mother’s taught you,’ he sneered.
‘You said yourself that you didn’t want me to go with any other man.’
‘That was two years ago! I’ve been telling you for months that it’s time you found anoth
er man and got married.’
‘I can’t! You’re the only intellectual I know.’
‘Some workers have a bit of culture too, if you look hard.’
‘I only want a writer. If I’m not with a writer, my life will be over. I could never fall in love with an ordinary man. And as for your troubled past and unfortunate family background – they make me love you all the more.’
‘I made all that up,’ the editor confessed, kicking his skinny legs about nervously.
‘I don’t believe you. Why would anyone make up a story about being sent to prison?’
‘I didn’t really go to prison. I was arrested once by the Young Pioneers during the Cultural Revolution, but nothing serious happened. They just locked me up in an office for a couple of hours.’
‘Does that mean that your promotion to editor on the back of private study was invented as well?’
‘All of it,’ the editor laughed, gloating over her misfortune. ‘I’m a nobody. A talentless fool!’ he chirped, his legs now perfectly still. ‘Just hurry up and tell me,’ he added in a harsher tone, ‘are you having that abortion or not?’
She paused for a moment, and said: ‘I’m not really pregnant – I just wanted to see you, I wanted you to spend some time with me. Nobody pays me any attention at work, they all swear at me behind my back. Besides, it’s my birthday today.’ She lifted her face towards the moonlight. As the tears sparkled down her cheeks you could see hidden, behind her tangled fringe, two dark eyes filled with terror and love.
‘You lied to me!’ he spluttered. He imagined pounding her to death. The ground was littered with loose bricks and tiles. He considered drowning her – the sea was just a few minutes’ walk away. He stared at her face. This steadfast, stubborn girl had drained him of all his energy. Nothing could shake her resolve. He grabbed a bunch of her hair and shouted, ‘Open your mouth! Open it!’
As he unzipped his flies again, the textile worker opened her mouth, and staring blankly into the sky, she said, ‘When you’ve had your piss, take me to a restaurant and buy me some birthday noodles. I beg you, just this once …’
At night, after he had massaged his wife to sleep, he would stare at the traces of lipstick around her gaping mouth, and think things through in his mind. It was a precious moment for him. Of course, it was impossible to write novels or poetry during this time, but at least he could relax and enjoy the rare minutes of freedom afforded by his wife’s sleep. She was more talented than him, and came from a better family. The day he first met her his pulse had quickened a beat, and had only slowed down since then when he was asleep.
There was a reason for his fear. He had once witnessed his father-in-law, the political commissar, slap the female novelist on her face. The noise of this slap had reverberated through his head, almost causing him to lose his mind. After that, he was always petrified that his wife might decide to slap him in the same way. Before he first hit the textile worker, violence had terrified him. He had grown up in a quiet household that smelled of soap and Chinese medicine. His father was about the same size as him, maybe a little shorter, and had white, delicate hands which, when he moved them, looked as elegant as a lady’s. He would never have dreamed of using them to hurt anyone. When his father was targeted during the Cultural Revolution, his family cut themselves off from others. Only his mother dared raise her voice at home. When she was happy, she would sing her favourite song – ‘The Tibetan Serfs Sing with Joy at their Peaceful Liberation’. When his father returned from work, he would play cards and Chinese chess with him. Had it not been for the Cultural Revolution, Old Hep would have finished his university course, and would probably have been a university professor by now.
Usually, when he lay in bed beside his wife, he would try to disturb her sleep by pulling over the lamp and shining it on her wrinkled skin. He alone knew the reason why she always insisted on sitting in one particular armchair: it was because the light at that spot was the most flattering. One day she had sat in every seat in the room and asked Old Hep to tell her where the light was kindest to her complexion. When she sat in the armchair he’d chosen, she checked her face in her hand mirror and discovered that the light from the orange lamp beside her did indeed give her skin a serene and youthful glow.
Sometimes he would clench his fists and hiss as he looked down at the sleeping tigress. When she started to snore, he would run over in his mind the details of his secret flings. He was proud of having deceived his wife. He would smirk at the breasts that drooped to either side of her ribcage, and cup his hands over them to show how large his latest girlfriend’s breasts were. ‘They’re this big,’ he would whisper, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with glee. ‘She’s got tits this big, and you’ve just got two little ping-pong balls.’
But tonight Old Hep had lost his courage. All he could do was curl up into a ball, and in the dim light stare at the heap of flesh sprawled beside him. Before she fell asleep, the female novelist had warned him she would visit his work unit again the next day. She had already dropped by his department that afternoon, planning to tell Old Hep’s leader about the affair and plead with him not to take the matter any further. She knew that if her father ever got wind of the situation, she and Old Hep would both be finished. But when she walked into Old Hep’s empty office and discovered the huge stack of love letters hidden in his desk (she was able to prise the drawers open quite easily with the aid of an ordinary penknife), she immediately changed her mind. As the scale of his infidelities became clear, her first instinct was to kill him; her second was to spare his life, but ensure it was a miserable one; her third was to kick him out of the house and wipe him from her mind. After she had rejected the first and the third options, she set to work on the second.
She selected twenty or so love letters that displayed some literary skill, and put them aside to use later as material for her novels. She chose another twenty of the more intimate letters hidden in a notebook labelled ‘Compendium of Beauties’ – a pink exercise book with a picture of a house and a mushroom on the cover – swapped the letters around, scrawled ‘return to sender’ on every envelope and posted them back, so that a few days later each woman would receive a letter that another admirer had written to him. She collected all the sentimental letters from love-struck girls who hoped to conquer the editor with their youthful charms, and posted them to the Party committees of their respective work units. She summoned the leader of the People’s Cultural Centre and made him dispatch official letters to the work units of over seventy other women who’d written to her husband, demanding they conduct investigations into their lifestyles. The editorial department was thrown into chaos.
When Old Hep sauntered in through his front door that evening, after abandoning the textile worker in the ruined factory, he was met by a flying thermos. Fortunately it struck his chest, not his head. Bowing his head in shame, he could see his wife’s tie-dye skirt printed with pictures of ancient philosophers. (This garment was for export only – no one else in town had one like it.) As it approached him, he searched his mind for a way to handle the situation. But before he had time to reach a decision, a slender leg sheathed in a transparent nylon stocking (also imported) popped out from under the skirt and kicked him in the groin. Old Hep shrieked with pain, and cowered on the floor just like the textile worker had done a few hours earlier. The pain was excruciating. He saw a sea of gold stars dart before his eyes. The female novelist kicked him again and Old Hep’s tired shoulders caved in. Then the novelist dragged him into the light, seated herself in her armchair, handed him his pink exercise book and told him to read from it the passages she had underlined in red pencil.
Everything that happened after that had vanished from his mind by the time he was lying in bed, apart from his tearful confession, and his wife’s demand that he apologise officially to his work unit and submit himself to investigation. ‘If you don’t do as I say, I will take you to court,’ she threatened before dozing off.
Now she was sleeping li
ke a log, and Old Hep was lying awake beside her, miserably counting the hours until dawn. In the past the night had belonged to him, but now everything was finished and all that remained for him was fear. This fear coursed through his blood, then spread to his bones and nerve channels. He felt like the dead rat he had once seen lying on a cold street corner. It had lain there for three days. In his mind, he always connected the rat with a female colleague, because she had dared walk up to within a step of it and stand over it with her legs wide open. When she dragged him over to take a look, he shrieked with terror and felt as though his head were about to explode. It was the same fear he felt when the Red Guards dragged his father to their front door and pulled him into the baying crowds outside. He knew that in these moments of terror, he was naked and alone. The face of the rotting rat flashed once more before his eyes. The Red Guards were pushing him into a well of darkness, the tigress was baring her teeth, ready to devour him. No one was coming to his rescue. He and his father were surrounded. The voices of the crowd were so deafening that all he could hear was the rage thundering through his body. He knew that they – the crowd outside – were one great mass, and that he was on his own. For a moment, he could see his own eyes grafted onto the dead rat’s face. They were dirty and motionless, but alive. They could see everything.
What he had appreciated most after he got married was the security of living under the tigress’s benevolent protection. He could hide quietly behind her while she dealt with any problem that turned up. She was tall and sturdy, a wall he could lean against. Had she not been swept up by the Open Door Policy, permed her hair, glossed her lips and been included in The Great Dictionary of Chinese Writers, his life would still be worth living now. Her strict and inflexible attitude suited him well; he had grown accustomed to it. She was a mother to him and he enjoyed living under her wing. He had hoped that his life would continue like this for ever.