by Yu Hua
Of the young men in the firm, I was probably the only one not to have tried my luck with her, although sometimes I had felt tempted. I knew I was attracted to her, but self-doubt made me rule out any thought I might have a chance with her as sheer impossibility. Our desks were not far apart, but I had never initiated an exchange. I simply drew some satisfaction from her figure and voice being within close proximity. It was a happiness hidden in the heart, a happiness that nobody knew, that she did not know either. She was in public relations and I was in sales, and occasionally she would come over and ask me some work-related question. I would look at her normally and respond in a businesslike fashion. I enjoyed these moments, for then I could appreciate her beauty at ease. After she had dealt so unsparingly with the kneeling suitor, I hesitated to look her in the eye. But still she would come over and ask me things about work, and she did so more frequently. Every time, I would answer with lowered eyes.
A few days after the incident, I left work a bit later than usual. When the elevator doors opened, she was standing in the elevator by herself, having descended from the executive floor. As I hesitated about whether to join her, she pressed the open-door button. “In you come,” she said.
I got on. It was the first time I had been alone with her. “How’s he doing?” she asked.
I was startled for a moment, before I realized she meant the man who had proposed to her on bended knee. “He looked tired,” I said. “Maybe he spent the whole night walking the streets.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath. “It really made me look bad, the way he behaved.”
“He made himself look bad too,” I said. I watched the numbers of the floors flashing by as the elevator descended.
“Do you think me a bit callous?” she asked abruptly.
I did think that, but what struck me more was the forlorn tone in her voice. “I think you’re lonely,” I said. “You don’t seem to have any friends.”
Somehow my eyes were wet. I had never thought about her outside work hours, because I had always told myself that I was not even on her radar, but at that moment I suddenly was sad for her. I felt a tap on my arm, and looked down to find her proffering a mini-pack of tissues. I took one and gave her the rest back.
In the days that followed, we carried on as before, each of us arriving at work and leaving work at our own time, and with her often coming over to ask me things. I continued to look at her in a routine way as I answered her queries. Apart from this we had no other interaction. Although her eyes would light up when she saw me in the morning, our little encounter in the elevator didn’t make me start getting ideas—I just felt we had formed more of a connection. I was content that I could see her at work and had no inkling that she had developed feelings for me.
In those days the most glorious thing for a girl was to marry the son of an official, but Li Qing was an exception, for she could see at a glance that those spoiled young bucks would not make good lifetime companions. At the business dinners that she attended along with the general manager, she observed the ingratiating manners of many successful men who pursued other women behind the backs of their wives, and it may have been that experience that determined her criterion for selecting a mate, causing her to seek a loyal, dependable man—someone like me.
My emotional state then was cramped and confined, like a room with tightly sealed windows and doors: although love’s footsteps could be heard outside the room, I felt they were steps heading somewhere else—until one day when the steps came to a halt and the bell rang.
It was a late afternoon in spring. The office was empty of people, for I was working overtime to finish an assignment. I heard the sound of high heels tapping on the marble floor and coming closer. When I raised my head, there she was with a smile on her face. “You know what?” she said. “Last night I dreamt we were married.”
I was dumbfounded. How could that possibly happen?
She looked at me. “Funny, isn’t it?” she mused.
So saying, she turned around and walked away. The sound of her high heels hitting the floor was as loud as my heartbeat; even after the sound faded away, my heart continued to pound.
I began to fantasize, and in the following days my mind would easily wander. Late at night, again and again I would think back to her look and her tone when she mentioned the dream, and I would speculate cautiously about whether or not she was interested in me. With her on my mind so much, one night I too dreamt that she and I were married—not in a bustling wedding scene but with the two of us holding hands as we went to the local registry office to fill in the forms. When I saw her at the office the next day, I suddenly blushed. She was quick to notice, and when nobody else was around, she asked me, with a searching look, “Why do you blush when you see me?”
“Last night I dreamt that you and I went to the registry office,” I said timidly.
She beamed. “Meet me outside after work,” she said softly.
What a long day that was—almost as long, it seemed, as the years of my youth. I kept losing focus, giving distracted answers to my coworkers’ questions. The hands of the clock moved with unbearable slowness, and at times even breathing seemed a strain. Finally, through sheer willpower, I made it to the end of the workday, but when I stood on the street outside, I still found breathing an effort, not knowing whether she was having to work overtime or was deliberately dragging her feet in order to test my devotion. It wasn’t until dark that I saw her appear. She paused briefly on the steps, looked around in all directions, and after seeing me she ran down the steps. Dodging the cars going back and forth, she crossed the road and ran up to me, smiling. “Are you hungry? This is going to be my treat.”
She took my arm and marched forward briskly, as though we were longtime lovers instead of on our first date. I was startled, then immediately bathed in happiness.
In the days that followed, I often wondered if this was really happening. We arranged to meet every morning at a bus stop and take the bus together to the office. I would arrive at the stop at least an hour before the appointed time and get nervous that she wouldn’t show up; I wouldn’t feel at ease until I saw her elegant figure loping toward me, her arms swinging by her sides. That’s when I knew it was real.
Together we arrived at work and together we left, and even after ten days of this nobody had realized that we were dating, probably assuming—as I had earlier—that for us to get together was unthinkable. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I would have finished my work and she would have more to do, so I’d sit at my desk waiting for her.
“How come you’re still here?” a coworker asked.
“I’m waiting for Li Qing,” I replied.
A strange smile appeared on his face, as though he was amused to see me falling into the old familiar trap.
At other times she would finish first and I would have more work still to do, in which case she’d sit down next to me.
When coworkers passed, they would have a different expression on their faces, and they’d ask her in astonishment, “How come you’re still here?”
“I’m waiting for him,” she would reply.
News of our romance spread like wildfire. The men found it baffling: in their eyes, Li Qing falling for me after rejecting the sons of city officials was like someone favoring a sesame seed over a watermelon. Thinking themselves in no way inferior to me, they smarted with the injustice and muttered to each other that “it’s true that ‘the fresh flower gets stuck in a cowpat’ and ‘the scabby toad gets to eat swan meat.’ ” The women, for their part, rejoiced at Li Qing’s lapse of judgment: on seeing me they would smile meaningfully and draw a lesson from what had happened. “No need to set your sights too high when looking for a mate—more-or-less is good enough. Just look at Li Qing there—she spends all that time playing the field and ends up with a loser.”
For the two of us, immersed in our love, these comments were—in Li Qing’s words—just “grass blowing in the wind.” But she had quite a temper, and when s
he found I was being written off as a cowpat, a scabby toad, and a loser, she resorted to coarse language and said they were talking through their asses.
“You’re handsome,” she said, gazing into my face.
“I’m a loser, it’s true,” I admitted.
“No,” she said. “You are good. You are loyal. You are reliable.”
We walked hand in hand along the evening streets and sat for a long time on a bench in a quiet part of the park. Tired, she leaned her head on my shoulder and I put my arm around her—that was when we kissed for the first time. Later, when we sat in her apartment, she revealed her tender side, detailing the ordeal of accompanying the CEO to business banquets, the lustful glances and indecent language of those high-flyers, how she loathed them but still had to flatter them with a smile and down shots in their honor, then go to the bathroom to throw up, after which she continued to toast them. That she dated the sons of city officials was all just rumor—she had only met three such young men, introduced to her by the boss, and each of them displayed his own version of the playboy style: the first was full of himself, the second spent all his time ogling her, while the third started feeling her up the first chance he got. When she resisted, smiling apologetically, he said, “Don’t give me that act.” Her parents lived in another province, and after such humiliations she would call them up in a tearful mood, but then force herself to be cheerful, telling them that everything was fine and not to worry.
Her story made me feel sad. I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes, tickling her until she smiled. She said she had noticed me from early on and realized that I was a hard worker, observing too that when an office slacker claimed credit for my achievements, I never made an issue of this. I told her there were times when I was really angry and wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I found I just couldn’t get the words out.
“Sometimes I hate how weak I am,” I told her.
“You won’t get tough with me, will you?” she said, caressing my face affectionately.
“Certainly not,” I said.
When the other young men in the company pursued her in their various fashions, she told me, I seemed to remain completely cold. That’s what got her curious and that’s why she came over to ask questions and study my reaction; she found that I gave her a simple, friendly glance quite different from the way her other male coworkers looked at her. Later, that incident of the suitor declaring his love on his knees left her with a positive impression, for she quietly observed how amid the laughter I collected the man’s possessions and delivered them to him. She paused for a moment, and then said that the more favor she enjoyed in the business world, the more lonesome she felt when she returned at night to her rented room—that was when she really wanted to be with someone she loved. When we happened to meet in the elevator and my eyes got wet, she suddenly felt the warmth of another person’s concern, and in the days that followed she became more and more convinced that I was the right man for her.
Then she pinched my nose. “Why didn’t you pursue me?”
“I just lack ambition,” I said.
We married a year later. My father’s dorm unit was too small to accommodate all three of us, so we rented a one-bedroom apartment as our new home. My father was overjoyed that I was marrying such an able and attractive wife. And Li Qing was good to him: on weekends, when he stayed overnight with us, we would both go meet him, and after we all crowded onto the bus she could always somehow find him a seat. This reminded me of the first time I saw her, and I would smile at the thought. During Spring Festival we took the train to see her parents, who worked at a state-owned factory. Kind and down-to-earth, they were happy that their daughter had married a solid, dependable man.
Our married life was calm and happy. She continued to escort the boss to business dinners, however. After dark I would wait at home alone and often she would get back very late and very tired. I would smell alcohol on her breath when I hugged her, and she would rest her head on my chest for a bit before we went to bed. She hated these boisterous banquets but found it impossible to decline such invitations, for by this time she was the deputy head of public relations. She didn’t care for this position, which in her words amounted pretty much to “deputy head of swigging and swilling.” “Beauty is a woman’s travel permit,” she once said to me. But she was using the permit for the company’s benefit, never for herself.
After a couple of years we began planning the purchase of an apartment of our own, and at the same time decided it was time to have a child—she thought that then she would have a compelling reason to turn down those tiresome engagements. So she stopped using contraception. It was precisely at this point, however, that events took a different course. A chance encounter on a business trip drove home to her the difference between us: she was the kind of person who could shape her own destiny, whereas I could only be carried along by my own fate.
The person sitting next to her on the plane was a Ph.D., recently returned from the United States. Ten years older than she, with a wife and child, he had just started up his own business, and during their two-hour flight he spoke with passion about his glowing prospects. I think it must have been her looks that first attracted him, inspiring him to wax so eloquent and say so much, and having attended so many functions with our CEO she was well-positioned to give him helpful advice. Enchanted by her beauty, he must have soon been impressed by her acuteness of observation and attention to detail, and so he issued an invitation right there on the plane: “Why don’t you join me?”
When they reached their destination, he didn’t stay at the hotel that he had booked but moved to the one where she was staying, to show how much he valued her advice. That’s what he said, at least, but I suspect it was something else he was after. During the day they worked separately at their jobs and in the evenings they sat down at the hotel bar to discuss the challenges of entrepreneurship. She was full of ideas. Not only did she brainstorm new business strategies, she also briefed him on the subtle arts of getting things done in China, like how to cozy up to government officials and supply them with perks. After all those years in America, he was a bit out of touch with the unspoken rules that govern Chinese realities. When the two went their separate ways, he again expressed his interest in working with her. She smiled and did not answer, but gave him her home phone number.
In her heart, a change was taking place. To our CEO, she had good looks and a good head on her shoulders, but he never realized the full extent of her talent and ambition. Now, at last, she felt she had found someone who could truly understand her.
After she got home, she resumed her use of contraception, saying it was too soon to have a child. Then every evening he would call and she would talk to him on the phone, sometimes for an hour, sometimes twice that. At the beginning it was often I who answered the calls, but later I stopped picking up when the phone rang. Initially, it was all about business: he asked her questions, she pondered for a minute, then answered him. Later, she would just hold the phone and listen to him talk, saying very little herself. After hanging up she would fall into deep thought, and it would be a while before she realized that I was sitting there and forced a smile. I could tell that their topic had moved on. I said nothing, but my heart was racked with pain.
Six months later he arrived in our city, by which time he had already finalized his divorce. After dinner that day she told me she was going round to his hotel. I sat on the sofa the whole evening, my mind completely blank, as though I’d lost the capacity for thought. She didn’t return until dawn. Expecting me to be asleep, she opened the door carefully, only to find me sitting on the sofa. She gave a start, then came over timidly and sat down next to me.
She had always been such a confident woman, and this was the first time I had seen her so ill at ease. Her head bowed, she told me shakily that the man had got divorced for her sake. She felt she belonged with him—they were such an ideal match. I said nothing. He had divorced his wife for her, she repeated. I n
oticed the emphatic tone in her voice and I thought: Any man would be willing to get divorced for your sake. But I said nothing, knowing I had lost her. With me she would only have a humdrum, uneventful life, whereas with him she could build up a whole business. In fact, six months earlier I had already had the faint awareness that she would leave me, and this sensation had only grown stronger during the intervening time. Now that premonition had become fact.
She gave a deep sigh. “Let’s get a divorce.”
“All right,” I said.
After saying this, I couldn’t help shedding a few tears. Although I didn’t want us to break up, there was nothing I could do to make her stay. She raised her head and saw me crying, and she wept too. She wiped her tears away with her hand, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
I rubbed my eyes. “Don’t say sorry,” I said.
That morning the two of us went to the office together as usual. I requested a day’s leave and she handed in her notice, then we went to the neighborhood registry office to attend to the divorce paperwork. While she went home to pack her bags, I went to the bank and withdrew all our savings, which came to sixty thousand yuan—the money we had set aside to purchase an apartment. Once I got home, I handed her all the cash. She hesitated a moment, then took twenty thousand. I shook my head and urged her to take the full amount. Twenty thousand was enough, she insisted. That’ll make me worry, I said. She bowed her head and said I didn’t need to worry, I should know how capable she was; she could handle everything perfectly well. She put twenty thousand yuan in her bag and left the rest on the table. Then she gazed fondly at the home we had shared. “I should go now,” she said.
I helped her collect her clothes and other belongings, which we stuffed into two large suitcases, and I carried the cases down to the street below. She was going first to his hotel and then the two of them would go to the airport, so I hailed a cab and put her cases in the trunk. The moment of parting had now arrived. I waved goodbye to her, but she came forward and hugged me tightly. “I still love you,” she said.