Northern Girls: Life Goes On

by Sheng Keyi

As they waited for Youqing, Liao asked the chairman a few simple questions about the girl’s situation. When he asked about her love life, Dr Lei said, ‘I don’t get involved in the private lives of my employees. I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’

  Liao nodded, appreciating Dr Lei’s respect for his employees’ privacy.

  There was a knock on the door. Dr Lei’s ‘Come in’ seemed to get stuck in his throat. At first glance, Liao noticed that she was wearing the light green earrings.

  ‘You’re Yu Youqing?’ Liao began. She nodded, looking at each person with an exaggeratedly bold expression.

  ‘Please take off your earrings and let me have a look,’ Liao said, pointing at Youqing’s ears.

  She removed the earrings and put them on Dr Lei’s desk. Liao picked them up to have a closer look, put them back down, then stood up to top up his tea with water.

  ‘Where did you buy these?’

  ‘I didn’t buy them,’ Youqing said.

  ‘Please explain in more detail.’

  ‘Why should I? It’s my own private business.’

  ‘We’d appreciate your cooperation. It is crucial that you tell us.’

  ‘A friend gave them to me for my birthday.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘Be more specific. Give me his name. Occupation. Employer.’

  Youqing did not say anything. She wore a pained expression.

  Liao glanced at her. She was staring at Dr Lei.

  ‘I think this is a matter of Ms Yu’s privacy. We should respect that. We cannot let this matter violate the privacy of innocent people,’ Dr Lei said, thinking the police had pressed too far.

  ‘Dr Lei, the case we are investigating has cost another woman her life. Life or privacy? Which is more important? Ms Yu, please continue. We need you to cooperate.’

  ‘Her life?’ Youqing’s shocked expression made her face taper to a point at the chin.

  ‘Yes, her life. It’s a serious matter.’

  The water in the dispenser started to gurgle, bubbles rolling to the surface. A car horn sounded as it passed beneath the open window. A breeze came through the window, ruffling the official documents on the desk. It was warm. Dr Lei’s pale face began to sweat, perspiration trailing down along his ears, drawing two thin streaks down the sides of his face. He shifted his weight in the chair, remaining seated behind his desk.

  Youqing twisted her fingers together uneasily and faced the window. The clock on the wall ticked crisply as it marked time.

  ‘It was… Dr Lei who gave them to me,’ she finally said.

  Dr Lei’s chair creaked underneath his weight.

  VI

  Aunt Chun and her long triangular tear streaks changed her tune very quickly. Because of her daughter’s situation, she was especially critical of Xiaohong, who hadn’t found a job for her daughter. It eventually developed into contempt for the whole city of Shenzhen and a complete rejection of Xiaohong. She looked down on anyone who left their home soil and went far away to hang out with God-knows-what-kind of people. She said Xiaohong’s nose had turned up, just like a monkey’s. And so, Aunt Chun didn’t bother to visit Xiaohong anymore. She scorned the girl, as if in an attempt to recapture her own lost dignity. When Xiaohong’s father died, Aunt Chun still said, ‘My daughter won’t set foot in that little goblin’s place. Who knows what sort of misfortune might come her way there? If she does, her father will beat her half to death!’

  Whenever Aunt Chun got excited over such things, she had a habit of spreading the word around, as if she would choke on it if she didn’t. At the funeral, when she saw Xiaohong, she thought the girl’s mourning was not sufficiently distraught and began once again to spread news of the girl’s misdeeds. The story she cooked up this time was that Xiaohong must have borne a bastard child in Shenzhen and that was why her breasts were so swollen now. Even outside of the village, news hopped from here to there, like corn popping in a pan. Even when the scrap metal collectors came round, Aunt Chun told them all about it, letting the topic slowly wander to Xiaohong’s body. She relished this rendition of the tale and when she had concluded, both speaker and listener were satisfied, each enjoying their own role in the game.

  ‘Things in Shenzhen are not normal for Qian Xiaohong.’

  ‘Qian Xiaohong’s breasts have grown so much because of it.’

  Xiaohong herself knew nothing of all of this.

  From early on, Xiaohong had no intention of returning to the village to live. She couldn’t get along with the old fossils here. That was her reasoning and she was proud of it.

  The morning of her father’s funeral procession, Xiaohong could clearly feel the increased weight of her enlarged breasts. They were falling forward, pulling her down with them. They pulled until she felt she would fall to her knees, crouching forward on the ground. It was as if she had no choice but to acknowledge her imagined guilt before the whole village. Xiaohong began to feel it was as cumbersome as carrying around a pair of boulders. She tried to put on a snug-fitting camisole, tightly binding her breasts in place. It turned them into shapeless fatty lumps, no longer looking like breasts at all. She felt oppressed and sad, all her self-confidence collapsing into frustration. Finally, she decided to just release them, preferring to let them swing.

  Along the route of her father’s procession, according to village customs, she continually stopped to kneel, get up, and walk a little further, before repeating the whole procedure. She was breathless with exhaustion. Perspiring, she felt even her tears had turned to sweat. The two mingled together, falling from her face to the road. Along the way, accompanied by the hammering, humming chant from the temple, she kept pace with the slow, steady rhythm of the pallbearers. When they were supposed to cry, they cried. When they were supposed to speak, they spoke. When they were supposed to be silent, they gritted their teeth and kept quiet. Because of the weight of the coffin, they could not speak anyway.

  Jin Haishu was the lead pallbearer. He walked on the front left corner of the coffin, with a towel on his right shoulder to prevent the wood from chafing his skin. He had another long towel across his shoulders, with which he constantly wiped his sweat away. Like everyone else, he wore no shoes. His bare feet moved forward, one step at a time. But unlike the rest, his eyes were always on Xiaohong and the pair of breasts that were weighing her down.

  Xiaohong’s sister wept in a most professional manner, tears streaming down her nose. Every performing artist in the world would be put to shame by the stellar performance this uneducated woman put on in portraying her grief. She was simultaneously in high spirits and in despair, both of which were important to her sense of rhythm. It was a tedious process. Xiaohong had never noticed before but her sister was an artist. She was a folk singer and a dancer. Her mourning voice made the flesh on Xiaohong’s back creep.

  Her sister’s confused cries were like the chattering of a life. It made Xiaohong want to laugh. She stood beside her sister offering what comfort she could, but felt like an outsider who had nothing to do with the funeral party at all. Infected by her sister’s mood, Xiaohong gazed about her. Each time she saw Jin Haishu’s gritted teeth and sweaty form, she somehow felt he was a part of her own family tree. Which branch of the family, she did not know. She only knew she felt a warmth for him. This warmth was too vague to identify but, to put it bluntly, Xiaohong wished that those gritted teeth and that perspiring body would do her. Do her with this silent momentum. And that he would do her to death. She was aware of her physical desire growing stronger recently, as if her body had suddenly discovered some new hormone.

  The men in the village were not slow to pick up on emotions. On the contrary, they had a rather keen sense for it. How could Jin not sense what she was thinking now? Even if he couldn’t see into her thoughts, he could certainly see what those big breasts had in mind, loafing like vagrants inside Xiaohong’s clothes. Were they not just waiting for a chance to be engaged in a good day�
��s work? Jin picked up that message easily enough and he quietly gave his reply.

  ‘Qian Xiaohong, when you come back, I’m going to marry you and settle down,’ he said.

  Fourteen

  I

  Xiaohong had not answered Jin Haishu. After a few days, she hit the road, carrying her huge breasts. ‘Carrying’ being the operative word. They had grown again, quite severely, and were also drooping quite badly. Before long, she would not be able to see her belly or her knees when she walked. From her point of view, it looked like she was floating over the ground, except that her body was heavy. She wished they would just turn into Sijiang-style oranges. Honestly, oranges would be absolutely fine.

  Thinking of Sijiang, she temporarily forgot about the weight of her breasts. She wondered if Sijiang had recovered and been discharged from the hospital, and whether Specs had made the complaint yet. Logically, Sijiang should receive some compensation.

  And then there was the matter of Youqing’s earrings. Were they Julia’s? Had the murderer been found? That pervert! They ought to let him be raped by a bull, then chop off his cock and feed it to the dogs, she thought.

  As Xiaohong pondered, she grew angrier. Despite her anger, she took in the rural scenery as she went. She suddenly felt that the landscape had undergone a great change. There were no more wide vistas. The land that had been empty before now housed newly built residential buildings. The windows were plastered with the sort of banners normally seen at weddings, with colourful words slapped on them. The young never like having the elderly hanging around them, preferring, instead, to be surrounded with their own kind. Nowadays, the younger generation think of all sorts of ways to live in separate quarters from the older generation of their relatives. Thus, their sex lives can be free from restraint and they can enjoy their freedom under their own roof. Once they married, they were all anxious to have children, at least two, and so the sound of a baby’s cry was as common here as a dog’s bark. Either could creep into the ear at any time.

  When she had boarded the bus to the train station, Xiaohong leaned against the window on the right side, staring out of it. Suddenly, the scenery on the road seemed very familiar. Two minutes later, the bus turned into the road where Mr Tan, the scrap metal dealer, had his shop. Xiaohong saw two men and a woman at the door. The woman was well on her way to having a little one. The men, chewing on betel nuts, shook hands with her, and they all parted. Xiaohong saw the bald head and proud demeanour of Mr Tan and could almost hear his raucous laughter. Seeing this brief scene, like a shadow from her past, Xiaohong decided, When I get back to the hospital, the first thing I’m going to do is go for a check up and find out what the problem is.

  Dr Chen was the one who did the examination. She seemed like the type who could do it all. With her index, middle and ring fingers, she pressed the area around Xiaohong’s breast. Her mind elsewhere, she pressed the breast down, letting it spring back up, then pressed again. After she had done this a dozen times or so, she said mysteriously, ‘Youqing was cheating with Dr Lei, did you know?’

  Xiaohong was used to the way doctors would talk about matters completely unrelated to the check-up they were carrying out. Hearing Dr Chen’s news, she said, ‘Dr Lei was cheating with all the female doctors. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d had an affair with you too!’

  ‘Dr Lei, that satyr, I can’t seem to get away from him! He was hauled in by the cops. You didn’t know?’ Dr Chen leaked out all the information she knew.

  Xiaohong was shocked. She grabbed Dr Chen’s hand and held it. Amazed, she asked, ‘What had he done?’

  ‘Raped a prostitute. Then murdered her so there wouldn’t be a witness.’

  ‘No! What do you need to rape a prostitute for? Just give her money and you can have your way.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Could be he did it and didn’t want to pay so the hooker objected. Anyway, he got caught. What the circumstances surrounding it were, I don’t really know. I just heard that Youqing had some earrings that belonged to the dead hooker.’

  ‘Oh!’ It suddenly hit Xiaohong and she grabbed the three fingers Dr Chen was pressing against her breast, saying, ‘You mean Julia Wilde’s murderer has been caught?’

  ‘Ah Hong, what’re you so excited for? You mean to say that prostitute was a friend of yours?’ She extracted her three fingers from Xiaohong’s grip and pulled out the mammogram reader. She looked at it for about ten seconds then turned it off.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ Xiaohong did not understand the grey lumps she had seen on the screen.

  ‘Nah. You’re alright. A bit of breast hyperplasia. I’ll give you a prescription for some medicine you can take. Make it a habit to do some massaging before you go to bed and then again when you get up. That’ll increase the blood circulation. When you bathe, make sure you scrub yourself thoroughly.’ From Dr Chen’s reply, it seemed as if she had seen a lot of such cases.

  ‘Dr Chen, do you think they’re a lot bigger than before? Will they just go on growing and growing like this? That’s too scary to think of!’ Xiaohong didn’t quite trust the machine and she was also a little sceptical about Dr Chen.

  ‘Ah Hong, you’ve got quite an imagination. That’s just an old wives’ tale. You think they’ll grow so much they’ll be like sacks of rice? If that ever happens, you’ll certainly make the news! Silly girl.’

  Dr Chen said the final two words in a drawling Cantonese. Amused, Xiaohong punched her playfully, saying, ‘Give me a cheaper, more effective cure. If you can save me a little money that would be best.’

  II

  The fellow with big feet was mysterious. His senses were better than a dog’s. The previous time he had come to the hospital, he had caught Xiaohong on her birthday. Now, having just returned from the funeral, here he was again. She had spent half a day on the bus, then taken the overnight train. Her legs were sore and her bones ached. All she wanted to do was sleep as soon as her shift at the hospital finished. And yet, here stood Bigfoot, having gone to the publicity department looking for her again.

  He ate half an apple, fidgeting constantly. He’d just begun his manoeuvres when Xiaohong said in an indifferent tone, ‘Please don’t come here looking for me anymore.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You’ve changed!’ Frustration shaded his face.

  ‘No reason. And I haven’t changed. It’s no different from the way I slept with you without any reason. Whatever happens just happens. I don’t force myself to do anything.’

  Xiaohong could not even really explain it to herself. Why had she gone to bed with Bigfoot so easily, without a second thought? It was as if she were as easy as a prostitute. But, in another sense, she wasn’t like a prostitute at all, in that she didn’t need anyone to give her money to do it.

  Xiaohong really wanted to shed some light on the matter, but felt it was no use. Bigfoot would just give her a good scolding anyway. But then, hadn’t Xiaohong herself just said she was like a prostitute? What suitable words could he find to curse her after that? All the same, he did want to curse her.

  ‘Fuck! I’ve been duped!’ Humiliated, he tested the room’s floorboards, stomping up and down. ‘You women! Such bitches! You’re heartless!’ His gait was like Charlie Chaplin’s, though not quite as exaggerated.

  Strangely, only now did Xiaohong take in Bigfoot’s appearance clearly for the first time. She looked at him carefully. This was the third time she had seen him since they had met. After they had parted on the previous two occasions, she had not been able to recall what he looked like, no matter how hard she tried. Even the feeling of him against her body was only a vague impression. She had never given him a serious thought. He had come to look for her again, which she found quite incredible. She really didn’t want him to come back. She didn’t want to carry on with him, so there was no reason for them to meet again.

  ‘Am I toying with you? Did that woman you lived with toy with you? Isn’t it you who didn’t want her? I haven’t played with your feelings at all.
Did I ever say I loved you? Did I even say I wanted to fall in love with you, or to marry you?’ Xiaohong got more upset as she spoke. She felt the swelling of her breasts. They were tight and numb. She felt an urge to massage them.

  Bigfoot still stood there staring at her, not moving. It seemed he could not make himself believe that this was actually happening.

  ‘Bitch! Bitch! You’re all bitches!’ Bigfoot stomped as he cursed.

  ‘If you’re not leaving, I’ll go. When you do go out, please make sure you close the door behind you.’

  Xiaohong turned to go, but as soon as she had spoken, Bigfoot manoeuvred his way in front of her and squeezed past. She heard the pounding of his feet as he ran down the stairs.

  III

  Xiaohong dragged her feet as she exited the publicity room. She leaned against the wall. It was cold. Her muscles seemed to latch onto it and she immediately felt more comfortable. She overheard the new girl in the publicity department saying, ‘Her waves are huge. When you men see such big waves, what do you think?’

  Xia retorted, ‘When you see a strong, muscular guy, what do you think?’

  The girl immediately responded, ‘I want to do him! I want to do it with him!’

  Turning the corner, Xiaohong could not hear Xia’s response. As she started down the stairs, she noticed she had left a handprint in the dust on the handrail and that there was a thick layer of dust on her hand. So she kept hold of the handrail and walked down the stairs, revealing a freshly cleaned coat of red paint as she went.

  Before Bigfoot had shown up, Xia had told her, ‘Personnel decisions were made by Dr Lei and the hospital – though Dr Lei isn’t here at the moment. If you want to change jobs, you’ll have to wait for him to come back or until a new chairman takes office.’

  Xia, that cocky bastard, looked at her helplessly. She was on the verge of blowing the whistle on him and Youqing but her swelling bust always seemed to hurt more when she got angry, so she dropped it. She tried to keep herself calm.