by Tie Ning
“I wasn’t blaming. I just said maybe.”
“But you implied it.”
Suddenly Fan sat up in the bed and said, “I know what you mean better than you know what’s going on with me. Just because your friends treated me to food, entertainment, a sauna, and a driving tour, should I be spouting thank-yous every minute? Do I have to compliment everything? Why do you need people’s gratitude so much? Why should I thank you? What have you done to make me thank you?”
Disgusted by Fan’s sulky and difficult attitude, Tiao also got angry and said, “Haven’t you just come back from civilized America? How come you haven’t learned the basic civilized act of appreciation for other people’s kindness?”
Fan was now completely enraged by Tiao’s sarcasm, and maybe she welcomed the provocation so that she could let out her irrational anger all at once. Even if Tiao hadn’t supplied a provocation, she would have picked a fight with her. Otherwise, the indignation pent up in her chest would find no outlet and she would have no peace with herself. Now the chance to get her own back had come. She looked at Tiao coldly and said, “Appreciate other people’s kindness? It’s your kindness you want me to appreciate, right? But I’m sorry. I don’t plan to. Because every time we’ve gone out to eat, other people have paid. Taking the sauna and staying in the villa were Chen Zai’s gift. Why would I thank you?”
Yixun broke in, “How unkind of you to say that. To welcome you home, your older sister took several days off work and drove to Beijing herself to pick you up—”
Fan interrupted Yixun. “I was going to mention the car. That’s the Publishing House’s car. What does it show when she drives a government car to take care of personal business? Yes, you all live a pretty comfortable life here, but it’s at the cost of corruption and darkness. You thought I would envy you? And those friends of yours! That shabby restaurant that changes its prices for different customers is simply vulgar. Only in China can that sort of thing happen! And still you people blab about it with such enthusiasm and you …” On and on she poured out the vicious words, in a way that reminded Tiao of street people who stop ranting only long enough to pick up their bowls to eat and then put them down to shout again. Remembering how Fan loved the crispy turnip puffs at Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry and how she asked Tiao to bring some home after the dinner, Tiao was completely baffled by Fan, not knowing where her towering rage came from. Wu also tried to calm Fan. “Stop, now. Get a hot-water bottle to warm your stomach. We’ll still try to go to the Japanese restaurant in the evening.”
Fan immediately directed her anger at Wu. “I really don’t understand why you constantly ask me to go out and eat. Especially you, Mum. Since I was a little girl, how many meals have you cooked? What can you cook? Why don’t I have any idea? Now that I’ve come back from so far away, why can’t I just stay home for a while? Why do I have to sit in restaurants all the time? I’m not going. I’m not going to eat Japanese food tonight. I don’t want to talk about eating every three sentences. I hate it that you Chinese can’t ever forget about eating. Eat, eat, eat. Why do you get so happy about just eating a bit of good food …?”
Having remained silent for a while, Tiao suddenly said with an air of pride, “Let me tell you: I’m exactly that kind of Chinese—I get very happy as soon as I eat something good.”
Fan knew Tiao was trying to make her angry. She couldn’t help wanting to slap her at this display of phony pride.
She hated Tiao.
4
They fought. Fan stayed in China for only a month, and they fought almost from the moment Fan got off the plane to the moment she got back on the plane. Strangely, Fan’s complexion was getting better and better day by day. She also put on weight and got some colour in her face. All this seemed to be the result of the arguments: she felt at ease in her homeland, both physically and mentally. She argued in Chinese and when she was tired or hungry afterwards, she lapped up Chinese porridge and ate Chinese food. At the end of the day, she could sleep without worrying about appearances—she could sleep late in a Chinese way.
In the aftermath of every argument with Tiao, she’d feel refreshed and relieved, which frightened her a little, and made her wonder if she had come back to China to fight with people. No, it wasn’t something she’d intended, but somehow she couldn’t help it.
In between the fights, when she consumed with relish the plain rice porridge, the porridge with red beans or pork, and the preserved eggs that Americans would never touch, when she found her sister Tiao didn’t hate her at all but even tried to please her, she felt a little guilty. Guilt brought temporary peace to their home, as if nothing had happened—as if Fan had never gone abroad and still wore that expression of hers when she’d come home from high school and toss the swollen bulk of her fake-leather backpack onto the desk, sending out a burst of overripe classroom smells. Once, rushing back from a mediocre performance on a college entrance exam, she was like that, lips parched, face pale and dripping hot sweat, saying, “Bad, bad, bad,” in a trembling voice as soon as she entered … Tiao missed that Fan with a helpless face; her nervousness and helplessness were more genuine and convincing than her arrogance and toughness.
When they were calm, they managed some small talk. Fan praised David’s talents and complained about his naïveté. She said once David saw an old baby bottle—and insisted on spending fifteen dollars on it just because it looked like the one he had used when he was little. The old milk bottle could bring him back to the good days of childhood. Fan said, how could an old milk bottle be worth fifteen dollars? But he insisted on buying it anyway. Tiao said, “That makes sense. It’s human nature to want to look back on the past. You two don’t share the same past and he can’t reminisce with you, so he wants to indulge in a little nostalgia through an old milk bottle.” Fan immediately got touchy again. She said, “It’s true that I don’t have that past with David. When he talks about his childhood with his cousins I always shut up. I only have the present. The present. So what?”
Tiao said, “You have a past. Your past is in China. I don’t understand why you have to banish your past, our common past. Those high school classmates of yours—why don’t you have any desire to see them?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to see them now. I never had anything to say to them.”
Tiao said, “One of my high school classmates went to Australia. Every time he came back, he would have a reunion with his classmates. I went to the reunions quite a few times, not what you’d call intellectual but very touching. He’d been in my class since the sixth grade and liked literature—although there was no real literature back then. Once our teacher assigned us to write a composition titled ‘Our Classroom,’ and this classmate wrote, ‘Many of the windowpanes in our room are broken, as if our classroom’s face were smiling.’ His composition was severely criticized by our teacher, who believed he’d insulted our classroom by making the pattern of broken windows into the personification of a smiling face. This classmate explained that that was what he sincerely imagined, and that he didn’t think broken windows would necessarily make a place look desolate and embarrassing; they truly gave him feelings of happiness and freedom because then he could look outside during class without anything blocking his view.” Tiao said many years later his classmates still remembered what he’d written. At the reunion, when someone recited from this old composition—”Many windowpanes in our room are broken, as if our classroom’s face were smiling …”—people smiled, as if they had travelled back in time to become their younger selves.
Fan said, “Are you comparing me to your classmate in Australia? You know how I hate that. I hate it that you always compare me to others. If you go on, you’ll probably give me a series of examples—so and so bought a house for his family when he came back, or so and so got ten of his relatives out of the country after he went abroad … just the sort of thing Mum has been nagging about. This is exactly what I can’t stand—this sick attitude that Chinese people have about going abroad. They
believe people go abroad to get rich, that everyone who went abroad should get rich. Why do you put so much pressure on people who have gone abroad? Why do I have to listen to you even about whether or not I should see my high school classmates?”
Tiao said, “You’re being unfair. No one in our family wants you to get rich abroad. We just want you to have a peaceful and happy life. And if you talk nonsense, ignoring the simple truth, then there is a problem with your character.”
Tiao’s stern words overpowered Fan’s bluster a little bit, but then she used Yixun as an example. “And Dad pressured me in other ways. He kept asking me why I didn’t get a PhD degree. It’s my business whether I want to get a PhD or not. I’d like someone to tell me why Dad doesn’t push you to get a PhD. You don’t even have a master’s but you seem successful. How did I become the one who didn’t try hard enough? What kind of person do I have to be to satisfy you all?”
There was an interval of awkward silence.
Tiao said, “You’re too sensitive. Since when have you become so sensitive? Why do you hate life in China so much?”
“I’m disgusted by your fraud and tax evasion—you told me yourself that you never pay taxes for most of your extra income. This is your so-called good life. Do you know that in America you’d go to prison for evading taxes?”
“Yes, I’ve evaded tax, but I think you’re not angry about my tax evasion, but about the fact that you can’t do it yourself.”
“You’re projecting your own corrupt psychology on me. Americans’ sense of responsibility about taxes is much stronger than your’s.”
“Don’t make living in America sound like wearing the seamless garments of heaven. Didn’t you go through the back door to become an American citizen three months after you got there? You told me yourself that your father-in-law got you a false birth certificate to prove you were born in America. Were you born in America? Were you? You’re a Chinese who was born in Beijing and grew up in Fuan, and your Chinese name is Yin Xiaofan!”
“I would rather I hadn’t grown up in Fuan and I wish I didn’t have that history.”
“What history? What part of that history makes you so bitter?”
“Do you really want me to say it?”
“Yes, I really do,” Tiao said.
“Seven years old,” Fan began. “One day when I was seven years old, I was knitting a pair of woollen socks and you were reading in front of the building. She … she was shovelling dirt under a tree, holding a toy metal bucket. After a while some old ladies called her from a short distance away—they were gathered there to sew the bindings of The Selected Works of Chairman Mao. She couldn’t hear them calling her, but I did. But then she saw them waving at her and clapping, so she … No, I won’t say the rest and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tiao’s heart started to sink as Fan was telling the story. She thought Fan would never mention this long-suppressed history; she thought perhaps Fan didn’t have such a clear memory, but she did remember, and now was bringing it up at last. Tiao had no right to stop her, nor could she, either. Maybe her day of judgment had come at last. Let Fan tell their parents and announce it to society and let Tiao be free from that moment on. Now, into her sinking heart came a desperate sweetness, like that of an abandoned lover assaulted by an overwhelming surge of hopeless love for the one lost. So she urged Fan to go on; she couldn’t stand to have her drop the subject right in the middle. Fan should have the courage to finish if she had the courage to start.
She urged Fan to continue, but Fan refused. She said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Sorry, I won’t talk about it.”
“You have to finish,” Tiao said.
“Then she saw them; they were waving and clapping their hands at her,” Fan said. “So she … she dropped her little metal bucket and went towards them. She ran down the small road, and there was the manhole in front of her, which was uncovered. At that moment both you and I saw the open manhole and her running towards it. The two of us were standing there, behind her—twenty metres away, thirty? I remember I wanted to call out to her to avoid the hole, but I knew it wouldn’t work because she wouldn’t hear. I wanted to run over, and then … then you pulled on my hand; you didn’t just pull, you stopped me, not just pulling but stopping.”
“Yes, you’re right, I stopped you. Everything you said is true,” Tiao said. “The pull was to stop you.” She added that one last sentence.
There was another brief interval of awkward silence.
Tiao’s frank admission of the way she stopped Fan came more or less as a surprise to Fan. The blame finally belonged to Tiao, and Quan’s death had nothing to do with Fan. Fan finally emerged from the shadow of twenty years before, the sickening history that so disgusted her. But she didn’t feel relieved, because she was unable to bring herself to face the question that Tiao raised then: “Did you like Quan?”
The adult Fan presented her seven-year-old self as a hero who was about to save someone; but who could prove she really meant to perform the rescue when she stepped forward back then? If she had truly dashed forward, Tiao would not have been able to restrain her. She had taken Tiao’s hand herself, and maybe she had done that out of fear—they stood, hands clasped, almost shoulder to shoulder that day—though all her life she refused to remember it that way. It was a fact that Fan couldn’t digest, either through her conscience or her intellect. Only a pragmatist would attempt to make such matters appear reasonable, which was Fan’s unconscious strategy now. Maybe she didn’t feel too guilty about long-dead Quan; what she wanted more than anything was to keep Tiao down—the pull on her hand twenty years ago was originally Tiao’s shame, and Fan wanted her sister to know that there was no chance that she had forgotten. Only when the discussion returned to the basic “Did you like Quan?” did Fan’s evasiveness begin to emerge, and she said nothing about it. But Tiao told her frankly, “I didn’t like Quan.” She almost told her the real reason behind her dislike, which certainly didn’t resemble Fan’s instinctive jealousy. She couldn’t tell her what it was, though. Other than Fei, she couldn’t tell anyone the real reason.
Fan envied Tiao’s complete frankness. She suddenly realized that freedom did not lie in transferring responsibility onto others; in fact, freedom meant facing one’s own responsibility directly. When Tiao felt the overwhelming approach of the dark cloud, she had actually started to free herself, but Fan had lost this opportunity forever. That was why she had no sense of victory, although Tiao had been so defeated by this subject. Tiao sat there staring off somewhere with her large, dispirited eyes, and her body seemed to have shrunk in on itself. How was it possible for Tiao to judge Fan’s life in America with calm and detachment? How could Tiao enjoy her easy, secure life? That was the crux of the matter—Fan’s annoyance with those who could live that easy, natural way in their native place.
As the separation approached, they tried to be polite with each other, but it was futile; the pretence was suffocating. Tiao flattered Fan. “Fan, your figure seems to be getting nicer and nicer. Does that have something to do with scuba diving?”
Fan said condescendingly, “Older sister, all your clothes are so much prettier than mine.” No sooner was it said than each attacked the other’s hypocrisy. Later, to ease the tension between them, Tiao bought for Fan from the Friendship Store a boy rag doll in a red flower-patterned cotton jacket and infants’ split trousers with a traditional watermelon cap. The doll’s manufacturer was obviously pandering to foreigners’ taste. Clearly, it was especially designed for them. Tiao remembered Fan saying that she wanted to buy a gift for David’s little niece. What was more suitable than this Chinese doll who wore split trousers? Fan immediately named the doll Wang Dagui and was particularly amused that Wang Dagui could even have his little tool exposed, which was two inches of cotton thread.
Fan’s China trip ended with Wang Dagui. When she brought the doll with her to Beijing International Airport and said goodbye to Tiao, she abruptly grimaced and burst into tears
. When she finished checking her bags, confirmed her ticket, and was about to go through customs, she suddenly turned, waved at Tiao, and called out to her, “Older sister, I always miss you.”
Tiao would probably remain the person she’d miss most in the world.
Tears welled up in Tiao’s eyes and her feelings were as tangled as a bunch of twine. Looking at Fan, who was disappearing from her view, she suddenly felt she had abandoned her. Fan had come home especially to tell her this long-past incident, to denounce her, with a victim’s deep compulsions. She had abandoned her sister on that long-ago Sunday, when they stood behind Quan and she pulled Fan’s hand, providing this American citizen in her red wool coat a chilling excuse to torment her anytime she wanted.
5
From then on, it seemed to Tiao that every time Fan came home, her purpose was to make her family suffer—and she had made many trips back since then. The international company she was working for did business with China, and as a departmental manager, she had to travel every year—Beijing, Paris, Toronto, and Tokyo. She always set aside some time to visit her family on these business trips. Having accused Tiao of corruption, she could hardly ask her to drive the publishing house’s car to Beijing to collect her. Forced into a corner, she turned to Chen Zai for help. He had his own car and Fan was willing to ask him to pick her up in Beijing. A hundred times more calculating than Tiao, Fan was determined not to spend any money on car rental.
Or maybe there were other reasons. In America, every time she talked to Tiao on the phone, she would call Chen Zai afterwards. Not that she was checking up on Tiao and Chen Zai or trying to find out how intimate they were. Nothing in particular, she just wanted to chat and hoped that, during her stay in China, she could spend a few hours with Chen Zai, on the drive from Beijing to Fuan, say.
Twice, Chen Zai drove to pick up Fan. On the highway, Fan even asked to try his car for a while. Here in China, she said, she hadn’t dared to drive. When she was in high school, she’d bicycled very well but was now even afraid to ride a bicycle. She just couldn’t get used to so many people anymore; it made her nervous. She drove beautifully, and her long, elegant hands, with their fingernails polished in glossy red, rested confidently on the wheel, looking very stylish. Constantly she’d bring her hand up to tuck back the hair that fell in front of her ears—she wore her hair long. Every move, and every gesture of hers, the rhythm of her speech, the control in her voice, and the expression on her face when she tilted her head to observe Chen Zai, all displayed the manner of a worldly American. She asked Chen Zai casually, “What do you think of me?”