Mulberry and Peach

by Hualing Nieh

  ‘I call him the empty man,’ I said.

  Betty smiled darkly and drew closer. ‘That is why he can’t leave me: I give him freedom to live his vacuum life. If he were willing to leave me, he would have left a long time ago. When I met him, he was working hard on his Ph.D. At that time he wasn’t interested in anything Chinese, he didn’t even have Chinese friends. But now, it’s just the opposite! Anything Chinese is good! Chinese culture, Chinese literature, Chinese food, Chinese style clothes, Chinese women! He especially likes young Chinese women.’ Betty got up to open a cupboard, took out a pile of letters and threw them in my lap. ‘These are all love letters Chinese girls have written him! I won’t mention anything before, but when he went to Taiwan to visit he added quite a few more! You know, you yourself wrote him a lot of letters, when the man from the Immigration Service came to ask about you, he asked if I had any material to give them, so I gave him your letters.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less!’ I picked up that bunch of the girls’ letters and weighed them in my hand, then threw them back at Betty. ‘Are you jealous?’

  She shrugged. ‘We’re very fair, he has his life and I have mine.’ She pointed to the half-naked man lying on the mattress watching television.

  ‘All these letters, and yours, he gave to me, to show his faithfulness to me.’ Betty laughed. ‘Last night, he thought I was dead; I was lying on the floor, in a daze. I thought I saw him walk in, I kept on thinking: I want to die once, I want to die once, I want to die once to scare him. I was thinking and thinking and didn’t know where I was. I was floating in the clouds. The wind was blowing, the clouds floating, the flowers were swaying. I swayed along with those white round flowers, swaying, swaying. I suddenly understood why the wind blows in such a way, why clouds float along like they do, why the flowers sway like they do, that’s the dance style of the wind, clouds, and flowers. I have my own dance style, too. We’re each an independent life, and when we’re together we dance differently to the same rhythms. I got up off the floor and went down to the basement, I came across Bill down there, that’s the only time he’s ever come down to my basement. He was holding a bunch of letters and looking through them, probably looking for the letters you wrote to him. “I’ve already given the letters you’re looking for to the Immigration Service. I also know Helen’s going to have a child, your child,” I said standing in the doorway. He jumped. I laughed and said, “I’m not dead.” He started laughing too. He said that bunch of letters was meaningless, he wanted to burn them. I said I still hadn’t finished looking at them, I don’t know Chinese, but those different characters look like different pictures. He said, well, then, save them for you as a pastime. Bill and I have been together for more than twenty years, our children are already married, and I still don’t understand Chinese people. But I can communicate with you. We’re very frank with each other. Now, I want to ask you a question. Do you want to keep the child?’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘I can raise your child. I need a little something in my life.’

  ‘Thanks, Betty. I want my child for myself.’

  The people upstairs began singing Peking Opera. It seemed they were competing to remember opera verses - a line here, a line there, everyone scrambled to sing it first, intermixed with the singing was a girl’s laughter.

  ‘. . . Who was your first love?’

  ‘At sixteen I slept with that King . . .’

  ‘The feudal lords do not cooperate, with sword and lance they contend. Day and night I dream a thousand plots. I want to sweep the wolf out with the smoke, so peace will reign within the four seas like in the time of T’ang Yao . . .’

  ‘Yo ya ya ya. But wait! On all sides are the songs of Ch’u. Can it be that Liu Pang - he, he, he’s already captured the land of Ch’u?’

  ‘Ah, great king, do not be alarmed. Send someone out to investigate, then you can make your plans.’

  ‘Can it be my son is insane?’ We switch operas.

  ‘When I hear it said I’m mad I get so happy I just play along with it. I lie down in the dust and babble nonsense.’

  ‘My son. Are you really mad?’

  ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘Mad.’

  ‘Ha ha ha . . .’ Chiang I-po laughed in a woman’s voice then suddenly stopped.

  I was standing in the doorway to the upstairs living room.

  Who is that? I don’t recognise her. She must be a ghost attaching itself to my body she frightens me she embarrasses me. How can I explain to people how can I make people understand that she isn’t me? Since I barged into I-po’s house since Betty and I criticised him I haven’t the nerve to see I-po again, no matter how close we used to be I still need him with all my life the child in my womb is his. I call him and tell him I’m thinking of giving the child to Teng’s sister, Tan-hung. That would solve two problems: Tan-hung will have a child and my child will be safe. He says that’s a good idea he tells me to go to New York immediately to talk it over with Tan-hung. He wants to buy my plane ticket I say that’s not necessary Teng and I are driving there together we’ll stay at Tan-hung’s place. As soon as I mention Teng he stops talking. I tell him Teng’s sister, Tan-hung, and I are old classmates he’s always treated me like an elder sister, he’s almost finished with his Ph.D. and already got a job at a New York hospital, he wants to marry a very attractive girl, Chin, as soon as possible. I-po hangs up. I don’t know why I wanted to lie to him.

  New York. The Ford Building. I’m on Forty-Third Street.

  The Ford Building is a huge glass tank, divided into smaller glass tanks. There’s a person in every tank. Each person has a telephone by his side. There’s a courtyard in the middle of the tank where flowers of all seasons bloom.

  A blind man walks past the tank, led by a large fat dog.

  Suddenly the blind man begins running and yelling in a frightened voice: ‘The Ford Building is falling. The Ford Building is falling! My dog, where’s my dog?’

  I’m the only one who looks at him. I laugh.

  It’s drizzling, a good day for a funeral. There’s a long long procession of anti-war protestors on Fifth Avenue. White, black, yellow, one by one, streaming from Greenwich Village, past Washington Square, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral (a sign hangs on the door: please come in and rest and pray), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, streaming toward Central Park.

  Not a single pedestrian turns to look at them. The pedestrians are pushed along in the mob, pushed into the entrances to the iron ribbed, concrete buildings.

  Only one person follows the demonstrators. His body jerks up and down, his head rolls backwards, he stretches out a crippled hand and waves at the protestors, laughing, ‘Hello, hello, can you hear me? Hello! I have something to tell you: a monster from outer space has invaded New York. It’s taken over the Empire State Building. Hello ... Did you hear me? A monster from outer space has taken over the Empire State Building. Did you hear me?’

  The demonstrators don’t listen to him. The pedestrians don’t listen either.

  I approach him. I’m listening, I tell him. He invites me to the Red Onion for a Bloody Mary.

  Mulberry, I’m glad I’m the one who came to New York, not you. I’m having a wonderful time. I’ll be certain to write down everything interesting that happens. If you show up by chance, you will know what’s been happening. Look, I’ll cooperate with you if you won’t spoil all the fun.

  I don’t know how long I disappeared or what happened then. I’m really scared. Where am I? There’s a black wall with a large water colour scroll. The furniture is so black it makes me panic. The people? Where is everyone?

  Tan-hung walks in led by a Pekinese dog on a leash the Pekinese runs right toward me. From the sofa I climb onto the table and stand there as the Pekinese leaps up at the table. Tan-hung laughs and says she knows I don’t like dogs but she didn’t know I was that scared of dogs my face has turned green. She calls the dog A-king, A-king. The dog rac
es over and buries itself in her breast she sits on the sofa with the dog in her lap and rubs her face against his fur, its tongue licks her arm slowly, methodically, relentlessly, licking, licking.

  I get down from the table and sit in a chair in the far corner. I don’t know how to begin talking with Tan-hung I can’t remember anything I ask what day is it where did Teng go? Tan-hung laughs and says I look like someone who just fell down here from the moon I don’t know anything at all, today is 9 September, Saturday Teng and I went out together in the morning, I came back alone in the afternoon. She says he came to New York to apply for jobs but he doesn’t seem to care a bit about that, every day he’s holding ‘Action Meetings’ with a bunch of people those people are radicals, her father was killed by the Communists she and her brother must never side with the people who killed their father. Perhaps one day she’ll go to Taiwan again. She wrote some poems just for fun and to her surprise they got published in Taiwan. Finally, after a pause, she laughs and says she can tell I’m really close to her brother. I say I’m a jinx whoever comes in contact with me is in for trouble, that’s not fair to Teng, I’ve decided not to see him anymore after we go back. Tan-hung asks whether I still want to keep the child? (She seems to know everything, how does she know? Did I tell her?) I say I want to give the child to her. Her eyes light up. She says the other day I firmly stated that I wouldn’t give the child to anyone. She hopes it’s a boy she even talks about how she will decorate the child’s room she wants to hang pictures of the holy child all over the room, but, but ... She suddenly stops.

  It’s getting dark I turn on the lamp on the coffee table. The Pekinese dog has disappeared. Tan-hung walks over to her bedroom door, looks inside and grins then waves at me to come over. I walk over and see the dog sprawled on her bed asleep. She whispers in my ear that A-king is her son.

  I absolutely refuse to let you give the child to Tan-hung.

  Teng and I go out sightseeing all day in New York. We go out at night. We go see a Broadway play. The people in the audience go up on stage, strip off their clothes and dance; the cast goes down and sits in the audience. They throw fruit peels at the people on stage. Teng explains that in that kind of play every person in the audience takes part. We don’t tell Tan-hung about the play. She’s too genteel to understand.

  Suddenly I find myself lying in the bathtub and the bathroom door is open. Tan-hung’s husband Jerry is standing in the doorway. His face is red.

  I don’t know what has happened. How did I get into the tub I must be insane. I wish I were dead.

  I’ll tell you what happened.

  Jerry and I were in the living room with the black walls. Tan-hung and her Chinese friends had gone to the Chinese-American Friendship

  Association to sing Peking Opera. Teng was at a meeting. Jerry’s face was the colour of steel. Even when Tan-hung calls him Jerry darling his face remains the colour of steel. He was sitting at the table playing with his cameras. All in all he has fourteen different cameras, varying in size from a large box camera to a tiny match box. Recently he bought the latest German model, the one that fits into a match box, so the unlucky number thirteen became fourteen.

  I sat on the sofa watching television: a girl in a long blond wig, blinked her long false eyelashes, thrust out her pointed breasts (perhaps, they’re false, too!) and held up a Cralow electric mirror, her lips kept turning from pale white to pink to purple: ‘... All the mirrors of today reflect your face from only one source of light. In fact, there are many different light sources in the world. For this reason, Cralow Company has invented the Cralow True Light Mirror, all you need to do is press a button on the mirror and you can see your face in the various lights of sunlight, lamplight, and fluorescent light . . .’

  ‘Pretty soon they’ll be creating electric children,’ Jerry said in English. ‘Electric children would have one merit: they’d never grow up; they’d forever be in the state of infancy, then the world wouldn’t have any more wars. Now we can use test tubes to make babies; the baby’s sex and personality can all be decided beforehand, scientifically.’ He was still playing with the cameras on the table.

  I looked at his wristwatch: under the round glass shell were small cog wheels—the most recently invented toy. The knees of his tight pants were zipped closed with zippers. ‘Tan-hung likes kids, you can make a baby in a test tube.’ I was speaking in Chinese. I can’t speak English to yellow faces.

  ‘I don’t like kids. I’d rather let Mary keep a dog.’ He’s never called her Tan-hung.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘People are more dangerous than dogs. If the world only had one-tenth the population it has now, it wouldn’t be so chaotic. People create the chaos. Machines create order. It’s best to interact with machines.’

  The telephone rang. He went over to answer it, he listened a while, then said one sentence: ‘Yao-hua, you must get hold of yourself.’ Then he hung up, returned to the table and dusted the cameras with a soft cloth.

  A-king ran over and tried to crawl up his legs, pawing at the zipper on his knees.

  ‘Pete, don’t move!’

  ‘Pete?’ I begin to laugh. ‘Tan-hung calls him A-king; you call him Pete! Now which one is his name?’

  ‘Both of them. Anyone can give him a name. You can call him John, too. This is the good point of keeping a dog: he doesn’t protest. Mary calls him A-king. She says that name sounds like Peking, I can’t pronounce Chinese names, so I call him Pete.’

  The telephone rang again. He walked over to answer it, listened a while then again said only one sentence, ‘Yao-hua, what you need is a good night’s sleep.’ Then he hung up. A-king leaped up at him. He picked him up, put him in the bedroom, closed the door. A-king scraped at the door.

  The telephone rang again. He went over to answer, listened a while: ‘OK, Mary, I’ll bring Pete to the phone.’ He opened the bedroom door, carried the dog over to the phone. It barked into the phone. He said into the phone receiver: ‘Mary, hurry back. If you don’t come back, Pete won’t behave.’ He hung up.

  The telephone immediately rang. He picked up the phone and said: ‘Hello. It’s you again. Yao-hua.’ He listened a while. ‘You’re not going to kill yourself. Get a good night’s sleep and you’ll be alright.’ He hung up, walked back and sat down by the table.

  The telephone rang again.

  He shook his head and said: ‘I can’t stand it. Crazy.’

  I laughed. ‘Now you know machines can also be crazy.’

  ‘I mean that person who’s calling. That’s Mary’s cousin Yao-hua. He came from Taiwan several years ago. Mary doesn’t like him. Dirty and muddle-headed. He studied philosophy at the University of Philadelphia. His English isn’t any good. He hired someone to write his thesis. When the professor saw it, he asked him if he had hired someone to write it. He said yes. He was expelled. He worked as a waiter in a restaurant for three days then the boss fired him. Now, he calls several times a day, yelling that he’s going to kill himself. Every Chinese has something wrong with him.’

  The telephone started ringing.

  He continued, ‘Now they can use a scientific method to freeze people, you know that? Like freezing beef, freeze them for as long as you want, say a hundred years. For those one hundred years, he’d automatically defrost and he’d start living again from the age he was when he was frozen.’

  ‘Then the present can be cancelled?’

  ‘Right, cancelled; just live for the future.’

  ‘After one hundred years, when you’re defrosted, if there weren’t people anymore, only mechanical people on all the planets, who would you make love with?’

  Jerry laughed. ‘The mechanical people can take care of that, too.’

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  I wanted to play a joke on Jerry. I went into the bathroom and filled the tub. I stripped off my clothes. I lay in the bath water. I didn’t close the door. I watched my pubic hair reflect off black light in the water.

  Mulberry, just at that
time you reappeared. You saw his face turn red. You had to take over just at that moment, didn’t you? I’ll get even with you.

  Teng and I are in the living room with black walls (Tan-hung’s interior decorating is certainly unique!). Jerry went to Wall Street. Tan-hung took A-king to Fifth Avenue.

  The telephone rings. Teng answers it. ‘Hello . . . Yao-hua? ... Please speak louder, I can’t hear you ... Yao-hua, you mustn’t think about killing yourself, you’re a man, you can take action, do anything you want as long as it’s meaningful to you. The only way out is to die? OK! Then go find a way to do it. Go back to Taiwan! Use your actions to kill yourself; but for heaven’s sake don’t kill yourself with your own hand ... hello, hello, Yao-hua, say something . . .’

  The telephone rings. Teng answers it. ‘Hello . . . Wang? If Yao-hua’s locked the door then you must pry it open! He could try to kill himself ... Ah, the police are coming ... Yao-hua is coming up by the stairs! ... What! He ran when he saw the police! ... Do you think he’s been smoking dope? ... Please find him by all means. I’ll wait for word from you. I can’t come. If I were to drive it’d take at least two hours. Please keep me informed about Yao-hua. Thanks.’

  The telephone rings. I answer the phone. ‘Hello.’

  ‘This is Yao-hua. I didn’t die. I just came from the apartment of a Puerto Rican girl. I was having a little fun there. You could say she’s an old “flame”. I saw her once before. The first time I met her in a bar on 86th Street. We went to her apartment. I said I was hungry. She said all she had were some eggs. I said let’s eat fried eggs then! After we ate the fried eggs we went to bed, slept a while, were hungry again, ate some more fried eggs, went to bed again, slept a while, were hungry again! Ate some more fried eggs. By that time it was already getting light outside. We had just finished eating a dozen eggs. Today I ran into her on 42nd Street. I didn’t even have any money to buy peanuts. I said her fried eggs were really good. She said then eat some more. I just ate two fried eggs; when I left she said she liked me. Tan-hung, don’t you think that’s wonderful? Tan-hung ... can you lend me a little more money ... I know, I’ve borrowed too much already, and haven’t paid back a cent. But I’ll pay you back someday. If I don’t pay you back I would never forgive myself. Tan-hung, why don’t you say anything? Are you Tan-hung? You won’t lend me money, right? The hell with you! I’ll show you! Goodbye!’