by Ge Fei
Once my sister saw evidence of emotional activity on Hou Meizhu’s part, she turned to face me. “The two of you can talk about music. You know, what a coincidence, Meizhu is also a what-do-you-call-it you’re always talking about—an audiologist. So the two of you have plenty to talk about.”
By then, I had already established a bottom line: “Anything is possible in this universe except for you marrying her,” and I was feeling much calmer. Out of politeness (and, of course, out of curiosity about what my sister considered an “audiologist”) I asked Meizhu what kind of music she listened to and what type of sound system she owned. Meizhu’s face turned red. She spoke with an impediment, as if she had a piece of candy in her mouth. She said she liked buying tapes and CDs to listen to in her free time, but that her son had broken her sound system a couple days ago, so now sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
“That’s no problem. He’ll fix it for you. Once we’re done eating, he can take a look at it. I guarantee he’ll fix it for you in minutes. Meizhu’s a really good singer,” my sister laughed, turning to me. “I mean seriously good. Every year when we have our New Year’s party at the office, she always sings ‘Road to Heaven,’ and it’s just as good as Han Hong’s rendition.”
My sister gave Meizhu a poke in the arm and whispered something to her, as if she were trying to persuade her to sing a line. Of course Meizhu shook her head and waved a hand. Strangely enough, while she resisted, she kept her timid gaze locked on mine, as if holding out for my reaction. I returned her the most severe look I could manage, pleading and begging her to do the right thing and not sing. For someone to break out in song in a filthy, noisy little dumpling restaurant like this one would be too much to bear. To make Lihua forget her stupid idea as soon as possible, I turned to address the boy sitting next to me.
In a polite tone I asked his name, where he went to school, and so on. He paid absolutely no attention to my low-voiced questioning, not even bothering to look up.
“An adult asked you a question. You mustn’t be impolite,” Meizhu admonished her son.
The boy finally raised his head and looked me over once more with a vicious glitter in his eyes. “Can you answer me a question first?” he sneered.
“Of course!” I spoke without thinking.
“Can the phrase ‘fresh as summer flowers’ be used to describe a boy?”
“That’s hard to say.” The question had caught me off guard. I had no idea how to reply, so I gave a conciliatory smile and added, “But I expect so!”
“Wrong!” the boy shouted back. It seemed he had weighed me, found me wanting, and moved on. He returned to his video game.
I remembered that I had to get up early the next day to take my visiting cousin to see Tanzhe Temple, so I stuck it out until the end of dinner, then immediately stood up and excused myself. Meizhu didn’t object, but my sister wouldn’t have it; she was determined to send me over to Meizhu’s place to “get acquainted.” Hearing Lihua’s tone of voice you’d think I had already agreed to marry her, or something. She mentioned the broken sound system (just waiting to be fixed!) to make it harder for me to back out respectfully. Now, I admit I can be pretty thick when it comes to personal relationships, but I could easily catch the drift behind Lihua’s forceful behavior. And that realization made me very uncomfortable.
Seven or eight minutes later, as we turned down a smoggy back alley, I looked behind me to discover that my sister, who had been keeping a few steps behind us, was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Her amateur disappearing act didn’t surprise Meizhu, nor me for that matter.
Meizhu lived in a tiny one-and-a-half-room apartment. The front door opened into the bathroom; a narrow hallway, barely wide enough for a small fold-out table, served as both dining and sitting room. This lead to a similarly cramped kitchen, with strings of dried sausages and garlic hanging on the walls, making the room look even messier and more chaotic. Farther along a particle-board screen split another room in half, with a small bed on one side and a desk and simple bookshelf on the other—presumably the boy’s living quarters. Meizhu’s bedroom was located at the end of the hall. As soon as her son walked into the house, he ran into her room to watch television, slamming the door so hard it made the calendar that hung by the front door swing back and forth.
Her so-called “sound system” was covered with a square of brown silk and sat on a low shelf next to her refrigerator. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry when I saw it: a dual-deck tape recorder with a CD console and nothing more. Calling it a child’s English practice machine might have been closer to the mark. I pressed a round button and the cover of the CD deck popped up with a stiff snap that startled me. Using my cigarette lighter as a torch, I peered inside and found the problem fairly quickly: the LED reader on the bottom needed adjusting. Meizhu emptied every drawer in her house looking for a Phillips head screwdriver but couldn’t find one. So I made do with a fruit knife and a pair of tweezers, eventually fixing her “sound system.”
I had also polished the LED lens after moving it, so it wasn’t improbable that the sound quality had improved. But for her to flatter me by saying it sounded better than the day she bought the stereo seemed a bit of a stretch. She put on Han Hong’s recording of “Road to Heaven” and sang along, casting a pitiable glance my way as it ended, as if begging to be encouraged to sing it again. Naturally, I paid no attention. Funny, though: when she sang, her pronunciation became impeccable, with no trace of that garbled sound like she had something in her mouth. I couldn’t help but feel quietly impressed. As she prepared to play it over again, I stood up to announce that I should be going.
She hesitated for a second, then reminded me in her mumbling voice; “But, you had a drink at dinner. . . .”
“I had a little; why?” I looked straight at her, not entirely sure what she was insinuating.
“Well, if you leave now, what would happen if you ran into the police?”
“I only had one beer. Even if they did test me it wouldn’t register.”
“Don’t be foolish. It’s always better to be careful. Stay for a while. I just made some tea; have a cup first and sober up a little before you go.” Meizhu turned off her CD player and ushered me over to the table in the sitting room.
Meizhu had laid out a special tea set, with a delicate terra-cotta pot and four miniature glazed cups. She said she had bought them in Yixing, when she and her ex-husband had traveled to Hangzhou for their honeymoon. She was using them now for the first time after all those years. She blushed as she said this, probably with regret. Bringing up her former husband in a situation like this didn’t really seem appropriate. I took a few mouthfuls of tea: bitter, sharp chrysanthemum with a pungent mildew taste. I wanted to remind her that ordinary chrysanthemum tea didn’t require a fancy set like this one. Also that being relatively poor wasn’t something to be embarrassed about; being poor and parroting the habits of the rich, however, was embarrassing. But when I saw her pop a couple pills with her tea (she could have been discreet but chose not to be), I changed my mind and asked her if she was feeling okay.
Meizhu told me that seven or eight years ago she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She had surgery, everything’s fine now, nothing to worry about, thyroid cancer being one of the least dangerous kinds of cancer and easy to cure. The pills merely ensured the effectiveness of the treatment. . . .
“And did my sister know about your situation?”
“What thichuation?”
“The thichuation with the canther.” I realized that I had unintentionally imitated her speech impediment. Luckily, she didn’t seem to take offense.
“Of course she knew. She was the one who took me to the hospital.”
Meizhu must not have noticed the fury rising in my face. She went on to say that she had heard someone was forcing me out of my house, and that I had nowhere to go. If I liked, she said, I could stay with her and her son—the marriage license could be worked out later.
My fury, as you can imag
ine, reached a peak. I nearly shouted as I informed Meizhu that the person forcing me out was none other than my own sister, Cui Lihua!
I chatted with Meizhu until late in the evening. To be honest, I felt extremely well-disposed toward the woman. Lisp or no lisp, she was a compassionate, honest person, no doubt. In a world like ours, individuals like her are scarce and becoming harder and harder to find. That her situation was so much more desperate than mine triggered a sort of impulse within me—the naïve impulse to care for her for the rest of her life. Yet this idea only flickered once, then disappeared. As I cast an eye over the cluttered, airless apartment, I realized with some distress that even if I did marry her, where the hell would I put all my sound equipment?
I made my way home to Shijingshan and went straight to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep. A late autumn draft filtered through the crack in the wall, filling the room with a crisp chill. Frail mosquitoes poured in, probably wanting to escape the deathly cold outside; they whined sluggishly above my head. The mosquitoes weren’t the ones keeping me awake: something Songping recently said to me echoed in my head. His mother, who had run off to Sha’anxi province and remarried while he was still a child, had suddenly sent word that she would be moving back to Beijing to stay with him. Familial love, Songping told me, was basically just a thin sheet of ice floating on open water. As long as you didn’t poke it with a stick or throw a stone on it, it would stay unbroken. But as soon as you put a foot down to test its strength, it would shatter.
My sister knew perfectly well I had nowhere to move to. In order to get me out of her apartment as fast as possible, she shut her eyes and pushed me onto Hou Meizhu, with her lisp and her even more difficult life. She had withheld a detail as significant as Meizhu’s cancer from me. I was beginning to feel that Lihua wasn’t as good a person as I had been willing to believe. The crying over the phone must have been fake—all that about Chang Baoguo kicking her in her groin, pissing blood or whatever—of course it all had been bullshit! She only harbored one purpose, which was to get me the fuck out as soon as she could. I should have seen it long before: her letting me live in this apartment wasn’t an act of kindness. After our mother died, half of the courtyard on Mahogany Street should have been mine. How could I have not noticed that after marrying Chang Baoguo, that scheming bastard, her behavior, her tone of voice, her morals, even her appearance had been gradually changing to resemble his.
I woke up at 1:15, smoked a cigarette, then at 3:40, smoked another, until finally nodding off just before sunrise, instantly slipping into a dream.
I dreamt I saw my mother, seated in the lotus pose on an iridescent cloud, floating toward me from far away. She looked stately in a black jacket with a silk front and an upright collar—the burial clothes my sister had bought for her. Her face was as white as plaster, expressionless. Even though I knew it was only a dream, and that it was my mother I dreamt about, I still felt afraid.
With sincerity, I asked her if I should marry Hou Meizhu. She didn’t smile. She gave a silent but definite shake of the head, then vanished from sight.
The following morning, I took my cousin out for a tour of Tanzhe Temple. I could hardly believe that I dreamt such a dream. Perhaps, without knowing it, I had already resolved not to marry Meizhu, and my mother’s appearance served as one more excuse to avoid my own responsibilities.
6. AUTOGRAPH
IN MID-November, my cousin and his daughter came up from Yancheng to visit Beijing. My apartment wasn’t far from the scenic area at Mentougou, so my sister asked if I could take them out for a day—to Jietai Temple, Tanzhe Temple, anywhere would be fine. After my date with Meizhu, my loathing for Cui Lihua and her husband reached a new high, and yet while we were on our excursion, I reminded myself repeatedly to not let my anger out on my innocent cousin and his child.
On the way home that evening, I took the two of them to dinner at a farmhouse restaurant. While looking for the bathroom outside, I caught sight of a “For Sale” sign pasted onto a brick wall of the courtyard. The space for sale turned out to be two large, square rooms that bordered the western wall of the courtyard. An old locust tree with a magpie nest in its branches stood outside the front door; two big pumpkins grew on the rooftop, their dry vines scraping and rustling in the autumn breeze. I found the owner. He said the asking price was three hundred and eighty thousand yuan, which seemed a little ridiculous to me. Still, it was only a half-hour drive from my apartment in Shijingshan. I made a mental note.
The next morning, after sending off my cousin and his daughter, I returned to the property. The owner quickly agreed to lower the price to three hundred and fifty thousand. He cautioned that the house only came with a forty-year purchase lease, no seventy-year available. I didn’t have a problem with that. Forty years seemed like more than enough time to me—I couldn’t imagine living that long anyway.
The interior of the house was in good shape, the spacious courtyard a real luxury. As the rooms faced east and a creek ran behind the property, I could imagine the summer sun heating the place up, and plenty of mosquitoes. The owner promised to include a plot of land in the courtyard as part of the deal, so that I could grow “totally pollution-free vegetables.” If I didn’t garden, his wife could garden for me. She had a quick tongue, a light step, and a glow to her cheeks so bright it looked like she had rouged them. I hadn’t come across anyone so healthy and energetic as her in a long time. I asked them when I could move in if I decided to buy. “Any time,” they replied. Apparently, they needed the money. Their profligate son, a student at the University of Aix-Marseille II, continued to flush away all the money the old couple had managed to save through years of frugal living. With voices full of regret, they confessed that they had no choice but to sell the family house. Still, they didn’t forget to remind me twice that Marseille, located in the south of France, was the setting for The Count of Monte Cristo.
The house became a fantasy that ensnared me. For several successive nights I dreamt of the courtyard and the magpie nest in the old locust tree. In one such dream, I watched Yufen work in the garden while reclining on a deck chair in the shade of the tree. To my astonishment, she paused from her weeding to hitch up her dress and squat down among the cucumber leaves and trellised morning glories to pee. The afternoon sun made the air as hot as an oven; all was silent save the hurried, spattering stream of her urine driving a shallow hole in the garden soil. I tried to lower my head to peek under her dress and banged my forehead on the bedside. As I woke, the image of Yufen’s bewitching smile still glowed in the darkness before my blurry eyes; then it faded, swept away by a cold breeze.
I decided to buy the house. I hoped that once I fulfilled this desire, all my other problems would disappear into thin air.
A stupid plan slowly began to emerge in my mind.
You might remember how, a couple weeks back in his study, Songping had recommended to me a client named Ding Caichen, who wanted me to build him “the best sound system in the world.” I have no idea what would really qualify as the “best.” If it’s just about the price, and you simply want the most expensive stereo system in the world, you can spend tens of millions without much trouble. Still, based on my own biased opinion (as well as on my financial limitations), the Autograph line of speakers from Tannoy are the best you’ll ever experience.
In fact, I happened to have a pair of them babies myself.
In the 1990s, Mou Qishan, the celebrity tycoon, was a household name in Beijing. He liked calligraphy, climbing mountains, and hanging out with female movie stars—all an open secret. Other rumors, however, told of his eccentric, often unpredictable, behavior. The wildest story I heard was that he could show up at any event unseen because he wore an invisibility cloak. I never witnessed this myself, so I don’t know the real story behind it. But Mou Qishan presided as a godfather figure in the hi-fi community. Every year during the Lantern Festival he’d rent out an entire floor of the Powealth Mall and set up a private exhibition of high-end audio equipme
nt for only us professionals. Then he’d take us all for hot pot to chat about our current business. He loved Bartók and Prokofiev—clearly no mere layman’s tastes. I met him myself at two such dinners, which ought to dispel the invisibility cloak rumor.
In August of 1999, while climbing the summit of Mount Minya Konka in Tibet, Mou Qishan got caught in an avalanche. The news hit us pretty hard. I even attended a small memorial service for him, organized by the community. Bartók’s “Evening in the Village” played on repeat during the service.
After Mou Qishan died, his wife organized a semi-public auction of certain items from his estate to pay off his debts. I say “semi-public” because not many people actually knew about it. Jiang Songping had the runs that day, and couldn’t even leave the house. He called me up, asking me to go try my luck and possibly find him a bargain among that bounty of beautiful equipment.
During the auction, all eyes remained fixed on Mou Qishan’s scrolls of calligraphy and paintings, his antiques and rosewood furniture. No one paid any attention to the pair of hexagonal Autograph speakers that stood bashfully in a corner like gorgeous twin sisters. From the time I entered the building to the end of the auction, my eyes never left them, not even for a second. I guarded them silently, not daring to breathe too loudly until the auction floor emptied. By the time I had acquired the speakers for a mere eighty thousand yuan, I felt totally drained, as if I had been drunk the whole time, the world around me shimmering like a mirage.
The Autograph line first appeared in 1954. They’re considered the magnum opus of the great engineer Guy R. Fountain—supposedly designed to maximize the potential of the 15-inch Dual Concentric speaker drive. Having selected the best horn driver, Fountain went on to create an incredibly complex, almost labyrinthine amplification path for the sound. Of course, the English word “autograph” has plenty of direct equivalents in Chinese, but for whatever reason, someone in the hi-fi community translated it as “autobiography,” and the mistake has been accepted as the norm. Original production of the Autograph stopped in 1974, due to the exorbitant production costs and the increasing scarcity of samarium cobalt, a rare earth magnet used in the driver. The speakers have become valuable collector’s items. To my knowledge, there are only three sets in the whole of East Asia. The ones you now see in the secondhand markets are either copies or Autograph minis.