by Yu Hua
“Waitress, change the channel!” a man drinking at the table next to me yelled.
A waitress picked up the remote and came over to change the channel. The news spokesman vanished and a soccer game now occupied the screen.
The man turned to me. “Did you hear what those jokers are saying? I don’t even believe their punctuation.”
I smiled thinly, then bent down again to eat my noodles. During my father’s illness, I had brought him here, supporting him by the arm. We sat at a corner table on the ground floor and I ordered his favorite dishes, but he couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls before throwing it all up. After cleaning up the mess on the table and floor, I had helped him home, saying to the proprietor as we left, “I’m sorry about that.”
He gently shook his head. “No worries. Look forward to seeing you next time.”
After my father’s disappearance, I would come here alone and sit in that same corner, dolefully eating my noodles. The proprietor would come over and sit opposite me and ask about my father’s situation, for he remembered us. On one occasion I broke down and told him my story, how my father had gone off by himself, so that he wouldn’t be a burden to me. The proprietor didn’t say anything, just looked at me with sympathy.
Later, every time I came here, the proprietor would treat me to a fruit plate at the end of my meal and join me for a chat.
His name was Tan Jiaxin. He and his wife and their daughter and son-in-law ran this restaurant together, with private rooms on the second floor and open seating on the first. They came from Guangdong and sometimes they would bemoan the fact that they had no family ties in this city and no network of connections, so life was hard. Seeing how there was a regular flow of customers and business seemed to be booming, I assumed he was making good money, but he always had a look of worry on his face. Once, he told me that people from public security, emergency services, sanitation, and the commerce and tax bureaus would regularly come and eat extravagant meals, but they refused to pay up front, insisting that everything be put on credit, with some private business or other clearing the debt at the end of the year. At the beginning it wasn’t so bad, he said, and seven or eight out of ten of the bills would be paid, but with the economy in poor shape these past few years, many companies had folded and fewer and fewer were coming to settle the accounts, but these government officials still kept coming to feast. So although the restaurant might seem to be doing well, he said, actually the Tans’ expenditures exceeded their income. Nobody dares to offend government people, he said.
By the time I finished my noodles, somebody had changed the channel and again there appeared coverage of the afternoon’s demonstration. A female reporter was interviewing some people in the street, who all expressed outrage at the reckless behavior of those who had vandalized the government headquarters. Then a professor appeared on the screen, a law professor at the university I had attended. He talked with a slick fluency, first condemning the violence that afternoon, then emphasizing how the people needed to trust and understand and support the government.
Tan Jiaxin brought me a fruit plate. “It’s been a while since you were here,” he said.
I nodded. But my expression was gloomy and he did not sit down to chat as was his custom. After setting the fruit down on the table, he turned and left.
Slowly I ate the slices of fruit. I also picked up a copy of that day’s paper, left behind by another diner. I flipped through the pages until a large photo caught my attention. It was a half-length portrait of an attractive woman; I recognized her at once.
Then I read the accompanying story. Wealthy businesswoman Li Qing had committed suicide the day before by slitting her wrists in her bathtub. She had been implicated in a corruption case involving a highly placed official—the newspaper said she was his mistress, and when people from the investigation bureau went to her home, planning to take her in to help them with their inquiries, they found she had committed suicide. The crowded lines of newsprint filled my gaze like a wall studded with bullet holes. It was a struggle to read the details of the case, for they pained me to the core and I found myself losing the thread of the story.
All of a sudden, thick smoke came billowing out of the kitchen door. The diners on the ground floor gave cries of alarm and I looked up to see them dashing for the door and running outside. Tan Jiaxin stood at the exit, shouting to the customers to first pay their bill, but several simply pushed him aside and fled. Tan Jiaxin kept shouting and his wife and daughter and son-in-law, joined by several waitresses, ran over to block the exit. They and the customers engaged in a shoving match and there seemed to be a war of words as well. I desperately wanted to read the whole newspaper story, but the uproar in the restaurant just kept getting louder. When I raised my head once more, I saw that the people from the private rooms upstairs were running down the stairs. Reaching the front door, they thrust the Tans aside and bolted in panic into the street. Other customers picked up chairs and smashed windows, then clambered over the windowsills and fled. Before long the waitresses were in full flight too.
I tried my best to ignore the chaos in the dining room and continued to read the newspaper report, but soon the smoke made it impossible to decipher the words on the page. As I rubbed my eyes, people dressed like officials came running down from upstairs and dashed through the dining room, yelling angrily as they approached the front door. After a moment’s hesitation, Tan Jiaxin yielded passage to them and they fled out into the street, cursing for all they were worth.
Tan Jiaxin and family remained by the door. He stared at me through the smoke and he seemed to be shouting something. Then there was a deafening roar.
I had reached as far as memory’s path would lead. No matter how hard I tried to recall what happened next, I could recapture no further moments after this—not even the faintest trace. Tan Jiaxin’s stare and the deafening roar that followed it—these were the last scenes that I could find.
In that final scene, my body and soul were transfixed by the news of Li Qing’s death, for it awoke in me memories both beautiful and excruciating. My grief for her had been nipped in the bud, long before it had had time to grow to its natural dimensions. Snow was still blowing and the fog showed no sign of dispersing. I continued to wander along the paths of memory. A weariness came over me as I journeyed ever deeper, and I wanted to sit down, so I sat. I don’t know whether I sat down on a chair or on a stone, but I seemed to rock back and forth as I sat, like an overladen cargo ship tossed by a swell.
A blind man approached, tapping the hollow ground with his walking stick. When he reached me he came to a stop. “Someone is sitting here,” he murmured to himself.
“You’re right,” I said, “someone is sitting here.”
He asked me directions to the funeral parlor and I asked him if he had a reservation. He pulled out a ticket, on which was printed A52. I told him he must have taken a wrong turn, for he needed to head back the way he came. He asked me what was written on the paper, and I explained the reservation system at the funeral parlor. He nodded and set off again, and after he had walked into the distance, tapping on the echoless ground, I began to wonder if I had given the blind man the wrong directions, because I myself was lost.
An unfamiliar female voice was calling my name. “Yang Fei…”
The sound seemed to have traveled an immense distance. It lingered as it reached me, then faded like a sigh. I looked around but could not make out from which direction it had come. All I was conscious of was the name winging its way toward me in fragments. “Yang Fei…Yang Fei…”
It seemed that I had woken up in the place where I had sat down the previous night—a rotting wooden bench. When I sat on it, I had a feeling that it might topple over any moment, and it was a little while before it became as stable as a rock. Rain was falling steadily amid the whirling snow, and oval droplets of water broke open to discharge even more water droplets, some of which continued to fall, some of which disappeared on top of the snow.
A familiar old building emerged vaguely from the rain and snow; in it a one-bedroom apartment had recorded the shapes and sounds of Li Qing and me. I had arrived here in the dark and sat down on a bench as quiet as death, and the fall and flutter of rain and snow were as quiet as death also. Sitting in this silence, I felt on the verge of slumber and closed my eyes once more. That’s when I saw the lovely, brilliant Li Qing and our brief love and fleeting marriage. That world was in the process of leaving, and yet the past events in that world were on a bus that was arriving. The scene where I first glimpsed Li Qing slowly approached.
Squeezed in tightly among the standing passengers, I swayed back and forth just as they did. Someone sitting in front of me rose to get off the bus and I moved to take his seat, only to be preempted as a female shape quickly occupied the spot that should have been mine. I was startled by the speed with which the young woman had seized her opportunity, and was equally struck by the beauty of her perfect features. As she raised her head slightly, the eyes of all the men on the bus lingered on her face, but she gave no sign of being aware of that—she seemed to be preoccupied with her own thoughts. It was vexing to me that she had stolen my seat but didn’t even give me a look. But I was happy all the same, happy that on a crowded, noisy journey I had the chance to admire her pale skin and delicate profile. After about five stops I started making my way toward the door, which opened as the bus came to a halt. Disembarking passengers squeezed into such a tight mass that I was practically propelled out of the bus. Soon the young woman was skimming past me, as light as a breeze. From behind I watched her dress flutter; she walked and swung her arms with vigor and grace. I followed her into an office block, where she quickly entered an elevator. Its doors closed before I reached it; she was looking out but did not see me.
It turned out that we were working for the same company—it was my first job. As an employee I was unexceptional, but she was already a budding star, with attention-getting beauty and intelligence. The general manager would often take her along with him to business dinners, so she already had considerable experience of the informal negotiations that went on at such events. Women were actually the main topic of conversation at these dinners, with business mentioned only in passing. She discovered that a focus on women helped to bring successful men together: within just a few hours bare acquaintances would become best buddies and cooperation on business deals would proceed smoothly. I heard that at the dinner table she was always poised and chic, adept at putting others at their ease and entertaining men who fancied her, making sure they grinned happily even as she rebuffed them. What’s more, she had a formidable capacity for alcohol and could drink most clients under the table. They enjoyed being toasted by Li Qing until they were completely sloshed, and when calling to set up the next banquet they would enjoin our CEO: “Don’t forget to bring Li Qing.”
The young women in the firm were jealous of her. At midday, in clusters of four or five, they would eat lunch by the window and quietly discuss her endless series of unhappy affairs—communicating a romantic history in which fact and fiction were inextricably mixed. Her love interests—all sons of city officials, apparently—were said to have passed her off as rapidly as a baton in a relay race. Sometimes, as she walked past these young gossips, she’d realize they were circulating rumors about how she had been dumped by these leaders’ sons, and she would always send a carefree smile their way, for their gossip and tattle were like scattered raindrops that require no umbrella. Far from having been dumped, she was actually the one who had rejected others’ advances, but, proud and aloof, she kept this to herself, because she had no real friends in the company. On the surface she maintained cordial relations with everyone, but in her heart she was a loner.
Suitors pursued her avidly, sending her flowers, giving her presents—sometimes she would be offered several such gifts at the same time, but she would always decline them with a courteous smile. One of our coworkers wouldn’t take no for an answer. After trying unsuccessfully for more than a year to induce her to accept his offerings, he ended up declaring his love in the most drastic and dramatic terms. As people were heading off to the elevator at the end of work one day, he knelt down in front of her with a bouquet of roses in hand. Everyone was startled, but soon burst into a round of applause. She turned to him with a smile. “If you kneel down to propose to me,” she said, “you’ll be on your knees all the time when we’re married.”
“I’m willing to kneel for you all my life,” he answered.
“All right, then,” she said. “You kneel here for the rest of your life, and I’ll stay single the rest of my life.”
So saying, she walked around him and into the elevator, and as the doors closed she gazed back toward the office with a smile. If she had noticed me then, she would surely have seen an uneasy expression on my face, for her callousness—or maybe just her composure—made me shiver a little.
The cheers and applause, no longer appropriate, quickly subsided. The kneeling suitor looked around in embarrassment, unsure whether he should stay kneeling or get up right away and make his escape. Much stifled mirth ensued, as women snickered and men looked at each other and chuckled. The onlookers crowded into the elevator and a huge burst of laughter—along with a few coughs—broke out as the doors closed.
When I left the office soon after, the man was still kneeling on the floor, and I wanted to console him but didn’t know quite what to say. He wore a wry smile and seemed on the point of making some kind of comment, but ended up saying nothing, simply bowing his head as the flowers lay helplessly on the floor.
Too embarrassed to stay, I entered the empty elevator, and as it made its descent my spirits dropped as well.
The next day the poor man didn’t show up for work. The office rang with peals of laughter and everyone was talking about how he knelt to beg for Li Qing’s love. Men and women alike said they were burning with curiosity on their morning commute, eager to see if he was still kneeling when they came out of the elevator. His absence was a disappointment, as though life suddenly had lost a lot of its interest. That afternoon he tendered his resignation, arriving in the lobby downstairs and placing a call to one of his coworkers.
“I’m busy right now,” the colleague said.
He waved his hands in the air the minute he put the phone down. “He’s resigned,” he announced loudly. “He doesn’t dare come up, so he asked me to collect his things and take them down to him.”
After a round of laughter another coworker’s phone rang. “I’m in the middle of something,” he answered loudly. “How about you come up?”
Laughter again rippled around the office, even before he had time to announce who had called. After a moment of hesitation I stood up and walked over to the suitor’s desk. I sorted the things on top of his desk into different categories, then emptied the drawers of their contents, and finally fetched a cardboard box to put all the stuff in. During this time he called a third coworker. “Yang Fei is packing up your things,” I heard the colleague say.
When I walked out of the building with the box under my arm, I found the man standing there with an exhausted look on his face. He didn’t look me in the eye but simply said “Thank you” as I handed him the box, and then turned and left. As I watched him cross the road with his head down and disappear in the flow of pedestrians, a disconsolate feeling surged up in my heart. He had worked for the company for five years, but in the end his coworkers treated him no differently from a stranger in the street.
After I returned to my desk, a few people came over to inquire what he had said and how he looked. I didn’t raise my eyes from my monitor. “He just took the box, that’s all,” I said.
That day our office—all ten thousand square feet of it—was overflowing with cheerful spirits. I had been working there for a couple of years, and this was the first time I had seen so many people in such a good mood. They recalled the scene of him kneeling on the floor and remembered other ridiculous things he had done in the pa
st, such as how he had once been robbed when walking in a park. Two strangers approached him in broad daylight and asked, “Have you seen any police around?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said.
“Are you sure?” they pressed him.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
That’s when they put knives to his throat and demanded his wallet.
The office workers found this story hilarious, and it seemed as though I was the only person who didn’t laugh. Later, I just tried to concentrate on my work and made a conscious effort not to listen to their gossip. There were a couple of times when I had to make photocopies and Li Qing’s glance happened to rest on me as I got up. She was sitting diagonally opposite and I turned my head away and didn’t look in her direction again. Later, several men went up to her and said ingratiatingly, “No matter what, kneeling at your feet is worth it.”
She responded with sarcasm. “You guys want to give it a try too, do you?”
Amid a chorus of laughs, the men had to beat a hasty retreat, saying, “Oh no, we wouldn’t dare.”
I couldn’t help but grin. She had always maintained a cordial tone and this was the first time I had heard her speak so cuttingly. Somehow it made me glad.