by Xue Yiwei
“Who do you want to get even with?” her little sister asked anxiously.
“I’m going to get even with whoever hurt me,” she said.
“Any kind of retribution is only a retribution against oneself,” the younger one replied. “It’s the person who takes the retribution that ends up victimized.”
The big sister could not understand what she meant. She knew that destroying a man meant sapping his pride and dignity. She said that she wanted the man who had betrayed her to lose all worth in the eyes of others.
“I never expected that you could be so vindictive,” the little sister said.
“Isn’t all of this your fault?” the older replied spitefully.
She finally went out on a Friday afternoon, and only returned the next day at noon. She easily conquered the company president who had wanted to teach her ex-husband effective strategies, or “positions.” She had won the first battle.
The president understood her intention before she finished her first sentence on a public payphone. He told her to stay where she was, and he would be right over.
He took her to a Chinese restaurant in a five-star hotel. He encouraged her to eat to restore her health and listened carefully to her grievances, to which he replied with disdain. He said that his subordinate, whom he had held in such high regard, lacked even the most basic moral standards. He didn’t deserve to be promoted to vice-president.
She pretended to be anxious. “Work and personal life are two different things. If he deserves a promotion, then you should promote him,” she said.
He praised her for her magnanimity. He said that she was still young and shouldn’t worry herself unnecessarily about her future. He said that in the future if she had any trouble, anything at all, she could come to him. He would give her any help she needed.
After dinner, the company president told her, a bit awkwardly, that he had actually arranged a hotel room for her. If she were willing, she could spend a relaxing night there, and he would come pick her up the next day at noon.
The big sister answered in an equally awkward tone, saying that if he would help her relax, then she was willing to stay the night in the hotel.
The company president grasped her hand and walked with her into the elevator. When the door closed, he cupped her breasts with his hands from behind. Excitedly, he told her he had dreamed of this day since the day he first saw her.
Her second target was her ex-husband’s right-hand man, whom she had tried asking out many times before. Only now did the young man, who was eight years her junior, finally agree to have coffee with her. She had a strategy. She would not mention her ex-husband in the course of the conversation, as she did not want to pressure someone so innocent.
The young man forthrightly told her that he was hesitating between two girls who were pursuing him.
She gave him some guidance, like a big sister.
After hearing her candid advice, the young man said that he didn’t like either of the girls.
She asked him what kind of girl he liked.
“I”—the young man paused with trepidation—“I would like to find someone like you,” he said.
She laughed out loud. “Someone as old, or someone as foolish, as me? Or someone divorced like me?” she asked naughtily.
The young man bashfully looked down.
She reached out and took his hand, and asked him if he would go with her to see a Hollywood movie that had just started playing in theatres.
He did not say he was interested or that he was not.
She got out two tickets she had bought.
He followed her into the theatre.
About ten minutes into the movie, she put her hand on his leg. She could feel how tense he was. She saw him stare at the screen, not moving a muscle. She thought he looked comical.
Halfway through the movie, she tried pulling at the zipper of his jeans.
He just stared at the screen without moving.
Then she tugged down the zipper ….
When they came out of the movie theatre, she asked the young man, who was still staring straight ahead, why he had always made excuses when she had tried to ask him out for a date.
He said he had been afraid.
She asked what he was afraid of.
The young man said he was afraid of losing his job.
“Some guys would give up the imperial throne for the sake of a woman,” she said sarcastically. “And you’re so attached to your job.” Then she gave him a pinch on the behind.
Her third target was the old man, whom her ex-husband respected very much and always referred to as “the old leader.”
She never expected that the old leader would already be so incensed on her behalf, even before she had parted her lips to complain. He started swearing about how her ex-husband was an abusive pig, an immoral little man. He said he had misplaced his trust in someone for the first time in his life. “And this was a major mistake,” he acknowledged.
The old leader’s condemnations and self-criticism moved her so much that she started crying.
Her tears made outraged him further. He grasped her hands and told her not to be sad. He said that she should not concern herself with such a scoundrel.
The old man’s care for her made her all the more anguished. She grasped his hand, and pressed it against her breast.
He trembled with excitement. Then he massaged her breast with a practiced hand, and with great emphasis encouraged her to keep her chin up and her chest out.
The old leader’s reaction gave her another thrill of retribution. She placed his hand between her thighs, and he started dropping excited kisses on her cheek.
He kissed her and promised he would never let the pig get away with what he had done. Then when he delivered her to the door, the old man told her that, no matter what she needed, she could come and ask him.
She said she did not need anything.
He praised her for having not only a beautiful face but also a heart of gold. He said there were too few good women like her left in the world. He invited her to come to his house as a guest. He said that spending time with young people made him feel younger too.
Next she thought of the executive in the communications equipment company, her ex-husband’s former rival, whose defeat in love had been an unprecedented boost for the reliable one’s pride. She arranged to meet him in the café where they had met for the first time.
She arrived early to grab the table where they had sat on their first date.
She did not expect that all these years later, he would still have his dashing good looks. Still less did she expect the striking change in his personality. He did not look as self-confident as in the past. He no longer talked a mile a minute. He had become a good listener. Similarly, she had not expected that he would still remember every detail of their time together. While revisiting these details, his nostalgic expression filled her with remorse.
Her regret suddenly changed her attitude toward her chosen suitor, her ex-husband, the reliable one. She had ceased to hate him; her hatred had turned into disdain. He was just a bad decision she had made, not at all worth her hatred, she thought proudly. Her sudden change of heart healed her emotional wounds.
But she was surprised that the vanquished one was still so emotionally scarred. Well before she had finished her outpouring, his eyes were glistening with tears, which made her regret her decision all the more intensely in the depths of her soul. All worked up, she was anticipating his words of comfort and imagining how romantic it would be to lie next to him. She believed that if they were to make love, he would demand musical accompaniment, probably Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She didn’t realize that what she was seeing was not romance, but abysmal despair.
“I’m sorry,” the man said in anguish. “I can’t help you now. With anything.” He didn’t provide any fur
ther explanation.
She did not want to know. It was enough that he was different from all the other men. She found his attitude deeply moving, which intensified her regret so much that it stifled her.
She rushed out of the café, out of the shopping centre. And when she had run several steps down the poshest street in the city, she suddenly stopped at a public payphone. She picked up the receiver and dialed the number at her ex-husband’s new house.
This was the first time she had ever wanted to call him since the divorce. She nervously waited for him to answer. But all she got was a notice to leave a message. She hung up. She looked at the strange couples passing by, not sure if they were unmarried or husband and wife, or people having an affair. She felt suffocated.
She dialled the number again. After the beep, she calmly said into the receiver: “You know what? I don’t hate you anymore. You’re not worth my hate. Our marriage was a mistake. I never loved you. I only married you because you were reliable. That was my mistake. Now I just hate myself. Now all I have is a deep regret.”
But the fact that she no longer hated her ex-husband did not end her reprisals. One day at a restaurant, she saw her ex-husband’s biggest business rival. She remembered how he had described this man as a predator. She remembered the highs and lows her husband had felt every time they went head to head. She had only seen him once. But he recognized her immediately.
He took the initiative and walked over to her table.
A few casual words of conversation were enough to make them realize the opportunity. They quickly ascertained each other’s needs. He asked her to come to his home the following afternoon. He said his home was very quiet, because his wife had taken the children to Europe on vacation.
She arrived as asked. And he took her right into the master bedroom.
In the next three hours, he brought her to orgasm four times, which she had never experienced in her married life. Those three hours were an eye-opening experience for her. They overturned her worldview. At the first orgasm, she realized her mistake. How stiff a man could get was the true measure of his reliability, she thought in the throes of pleasure. Riding his tremendous stiffness, she no longer saw herself as a victim. Thanks to her failed marriage, she now had an opportunity to experience true reliability.
And the man who gave her multiple orgasms credited his hardness to her. He said that she had given him a huge boost, gratified his pride. She made him believe that no matter how many times he had bested him in business, her ex-husband rival was a loser, a total loser. Three hours of passion did not tire him.
After the fourth orgasm, he let her lie in bed and rest. And he went to the kitchen and made her a hearty meal.
They kept criticizing her ex-husband over dinner. She was surprised that she could sit back and relax, beaming with pleasure. Her enemy’s intelligence gave him an amazing dose of self-confidence.
When she said that her ex-husband was lousy in bed, he said, in a derisive tone of voice: “What kind of groundbreaking property development can come from a man who can’t even help his own wife develop in bed?” He had obviously forgotten all about the psychological scars he bore from years of competition.
The older sister was not able to realize all of the revenge she had envisioned. After five months of insanity, her body hit bottom. She often felt dizzy and enervated. She would see blood in her urine. Her eyesight was deteriorating.
Her little sister noticed her decline and urged her to go to the hospital to get a complete physical examination.
But the big sister said she never had time, and was always making excuses.
Then one day, she arrived at the entrance to the community in a taxi, and after paying, she discovered that she was too weak to get out of the car. Only with the taxi driver’s help did she finally manage to stand up and take a step. But on the second step, she fell to the ground.
The taxi driver took her to the emergency department at the People’s Hospital. The doctor took a blood test and immediately summoned her family to the hospital.
The little sister hurried over.
By that time, the older sister was already in hospice care, and the person on duty told the younger sibling that the patient’s days were numbered. They hoped that the little sister would be able to help them track the patient’s sexual relationships in the past six months. They needed the names of all the people she had slept with.
The little sister immediately relayed her big sister’s health condition to their estranged mother. She made a point of not mentioning what terminal disease her eldest was suffering from.
But her mother immediately guessed. She started swearing at the other end of the phone. First she said she had dug her own grave. Then she said it was punishment for her sins. She said that she did not want to hear any more news about her older daughter
The younger seemed prepared for her mother’s reaction. She calmly put down the receiver. Then she called her best friend’s husband.
His reaction was much less intense than her mother’s; it was as though he seemed prepared for the news. He coldly said that the woman’s life or death had nothing to do with him. He would not go to see her, and still less would he let his daughter go.
The little sister took care of her big sister alone for three months. And then she handled her sister’s funeral arrangements alone.
The day that her big sister stopped breathing, her best friend called to ask if she needed any help.
She answered bluntly, “No, I don’t.”
It was on a day when she really needed help. She was so busy that she didn’t get back home until one in the morning. She was thinking about having a quick shower and a good sleep, because the next day she still needed to deliver her sister’s body to the crematorium. But standing outside the door to her complex, she suddenly found it all too hard to bear. The keys fell from her hand to the ground. She did not pick them up. She just collapsed on the stairs by the door.
The sound of her crying woke up the dramatist who lived upstairs. At first, he thought he was dreaming. He walked to the door and opened it a crack. The sound of someone crying downstairs did nothing to dispel the impression he was still asleep. Curious, he walked down the stairs until he came to the young woman’s side. He asked her what had happened.
She did not reply.
He asked her why she did not go in.
She still wouldn’t say a thing.
The dramatist hesitated, and then sat down next to her. He remembered a similar scene a year before. He had a powerful sense of déjà vu.
The dramatist sat there in a reverie until a cold draft snapped him out of it. He looked at the little sister. “Are you cold? It looks like it’s starting to rain.”
The little sister still did not reply.
“I’ve never seen you smile,” the dramatist continued. “I hear that you have a charming smile.”
“Says who?” the little sister asked.
“Says your sister.”
“You talked to my sister?” the little sister asked.
“We talked once,” the dramatist said. “It must’ve been about a year ago. How time flies.”
The dramatist’s words gave the little sister a funny feeling. “She wasn’t living here at that time,” she said.
“No, she wasn’t. But she came here to see you,” the dramatist said. “And it was at about this time of day.”
“Why didn’t I know about it?” the little sister asked.
“Because she did not want to bother you,” the dramatist said. “She did not want to wake you up.” He paused. “She was sitting here just like you, and just as sad.”
“Well what did she say?”
“She talked about you. She said that your smile was charming, even legendary.”
“I mean did she say why she had come to see me so late?”
“She didn’t s
ay it in so many words. But she kept on repeating these two lines. I imagine that she was wounded emotionally.”
“What two lines?”
“She said that it’s an absurd world, and that there aren’t any truly reliable men to be found anywhere in it.”
Hearing her big sister’s famous last words, the little sister started sobbing out loud again. “She’s already gone,” she said.
“Where has she gone?” the dramatist asked.
“She’s never coming back,” the girl said.
The dramatist looked at the little sister, anxious. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s all my fault,” she said.
The dramatist was going to ask her why, but a stifled rumble of thunder stopped him short.
The little sister shivered and wrapped her arms around her body. Then she glanced at the Shakespeare T-shirt that the man wore all year round. “I read the interview in the newspaper,” she said. “When I was in the hospital taking care of her.”
“You did?” the dramatist asked.
“At the time she was really out of it, drifting in and out of consciousness,” the little sister said.
The dramatist let out a deep sigh. “If she knew who I was, she might’ve understood the answer I gave to her question that evening,” he said.
“What question?” the little sister asked.
“What’s the point?” the dramatist said. “From her tone of voice I could tell she was in deep despair.”
“Yes, what is the point? I’ve been wanting to ask the same question,” she replied. “What’s it all for?”
“To me, it’s for the drama,” he said.
“Then what is life for me?” she asked anxiously. “And what about her? What was the point of her life? What was she living for?”
“According to Shakespeare, all the world’s a stage,” the dramatist said. “That’s what I told her that evening.”
“If it’s a play, then it must be a tragedy,” the little sister said.
A surprised expression appeared on the man’s face. “You two sisters are so interesting,” he said. “Funny how you both asked the same question and said the same thing in response to my reply.”