This woman! I thought, gazing at her from across the table. Lin Ping: poised and graceful, great in bed, and overflowing with all the virtues a woman should have in the home. Without question, I was going marry her. It was time for Lan Yu and me to have a talk.
A week after returning to Beijing, I removed Lin Ping’s necklace and went back to Tivoli. Instead of giving me a hello kiss, Lan Yu grumbled that I hadn’t called first.
On the third day of my return, I finally built up enough courage to have the talk I’d been waiting for. Lan Yu was busy at work in the bedroom we had converted into his work studio. When I tiptoed through the door, he briefly turned around to glance at me, then went back to his drawing.
“What’s up?” he asked with his back to me. “You scared me.”
“Lan Yu, I’d like to talk with you about something.”
When I first stepped into Lan Yu’s studio, his voice had been neutral, indifferent. But now he turned around in his chair and looked at me attentively. Judging from the earnestness in his eyes, I could tell he knew it was something big. “What is it?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and resolved to be blunt. “Lan Yu, I’m getting married. And I’ve found the right girl.”
Lan Yu stared at me in silence. It was a look I knew all too well, the same one he had given me over two years earlier when I had cruelly told him I was sick of him and didn’t want to see him anymore. Fear, despair, hopelessness. These were the emotions written on his face.
I was as hard hit by Lan Yu’s reaction as he’d been by the news I’d given him. It was hard for me to see him so immersed in anguish. I myself couldn’t believe it, but I suddenly felt I was going to cry.
“You knew this day was coming sooner or later, Lan Yu,” I said, looking down at the floor. He remained silent. I couldn’t bear his silence.
“Lan Yu!” I continued. “Things can stay exactly as they are! The only difference will be that I’ll have a wife!” I looked up from the floor with a pleading look on my face. This was my promise to him. And it was something that I truly believed could work.
Lan Yu looked at me with eyes full of tears and lips that trembled. He quickly tore his eyes away from me, however, shifting his gaze to the ceiling as he pushed a knuckle under a puffy eyelid to hold back the tears. He had never been the kind of guy who cried easily.
After what seemed like an eternity he looked at me again, this time with firm resolution in his eyes. There was also a trace of bitterness.
“When you made me go into therapy I knew this was the reason,” he said, forcing out a laugh to conceal his tears. I couldn’t bear seeing him this way, so I took his hand and lifted him out of the chair. I held him close to me.
“I don’t like it either, Lan Yu,” I said, kissing him with lips that were, by now, as trembling and dripping with tears as his. “But I have no choice!”
Lan Yu gripped the back of my head and pressed his cheek firmly against mine. His tongue touched my face softly, catching tears as they rolled down my cheeks.
We stood this way for a while, holding each other and periodically peppering each other’s faces with soft kisses. Unexpectedly, Lan Yu pulled away from me and turned around to grab the box of tissues resting on the mahogany drafting table behind him. With comic incongruity, he blew his nose loudly, then handed me a tissue of my own. I blew my nose too, and we laughed and stood there in his studio, laughing and crying at the same time. A good deal of time passed, and he leaned into me with a kiss.
We stripped off our shirts, slowly, gently, without any sense of urgency. Lan Yu clasped his hands against my shoulders and pushed me downward. Together we descended to the carpeted floor of his studio, where we lay as he gently kissed my neck, my chest, my nipples. I gasped in pleasure, but when he went down farther, there was nothing I could do: my dick hung lifelessly between my legs. Eager to excite me, Lan Yu played with my cock for a while, but no matter what he did the idea of sex just wouldn’t move from thought to action. Thinking a new strategy might work, I went down on him, but he was just as limp as I was. Just as I was about to abandon the idea of sex altogether, he suddenly motioned for me to stop. With a look of discomfort, he twisted his arm around and pulled out an eraser that was wedged between his back and the floor. We looked at each other and laughed.
We didn’t need to have sex. At least I didn’t. All I needed was to know that he was mine, to have the peace of mind of knowing we were going to be together. But peace of mind was nowhere to be found. How could it be, when everything was about to change?
In the middle of the night, we awoke to the sound of the wind blowing outside. Shadows of leaves fluttered through the windows and danced on the curtains like ghosts. In the darkness we started to make love all over again. This time it was beautiful, powerful. We shared something no words could express, but we intimately understood. Our future was uncertain, and our lovemaking was filled with hopelessness and despair.
After we had both climaxed, Lan Yu sat up in bed. I rested my head in his lap, gazing up at him, lazing dreamily in the serenity of the postorgasmic afterglow.
“Well, I guess everything turned out better than I thought it would,” Lan Yu said suddenly with a gentle smile.
“What did?”
“I was sure you were going to end things between us.”
I looked up at his fluttering black eyelashes and lush red lips. “I could never do that,” I said. And yet, we both knew it was far from settled what would happen after I got married. However nice my words might have sounded, even I wasn’t convinced.
Eighteen
It took some mental preparation, but I eventually sat my mother down and told her about my new fiancée. At first, she took issue with Lin Ping’s family background, saying it was too humble for a family like ours. She said she wanted me to find someone whose family was better matched in socioeconomic status, or perhaps someone from a family of intellectuals. When I heard this I clenched my fists and ground my teeth. If she really wanted me to find a mate from a family of intellectuals, Lan Yu would have more than fit the bill.
I was increasingly worried about my mother’s ability to find endless fault with my choice of bride, but the moment Lin Ping stepped over the threshold and into the house, I knew everything was going to be fine. Her warm, charming demeanor and impeccable manners won my mother over instantly; even my sisters pulled me aside to whisper, “Wow, not bad!” Standing in the kitchen doorway, I peered into the living room where I saw my fiancée pour her future mother-in-law a cup of tea. Ma beamed with happiness. Nothing made me happier than seeing her smile.
In the early stages of my relationship with Lin Ping, I thought that Lan Yu and I would be able to go on just as peacefully and contentedly as before, at least for a while. But I was wrong. Arguments became the central feature of our daily life. Our fights weren’t even over matters of principle or about substantive issues like my impending marriage or the future of our relationship. We fought over petty trifles: who came home at what hour, who had forgotten to do this or that household chore. We always patched things up quickly, though, and each time it was Lan Yu who initiated the ceasefire.
One afternoon as Lan Yu and I were in his white Lexus on our way to lunch, we made our way past the gates of Tianda University, where a long line of students had formed. “What are all these people waiting for?” I asked.
“They’re registering for the TOEFL exam,” he replied. “They’re trying to study abroad.”
“Wow,” I laughed. “That’s dedication!”
“That’s nothing!” he said, turning the car southward in the direction of Houhai Lake. “When I first started at Huada, I heard that an entire section of the biology department’s graduating class of 86 left the country after graduation.”
“Is that what you want to do?” I asked.
“I can’t,” he said wistfully. “If you want to go to the United States, you have to prove you have a relative who’s a US citizen. Besides, it’s tough with architecture. Eve
n if you get into a program, you’re not going to get funding unless you know someone who’ll go to bat for you.”
“Well, if you really do want to go, I can help you arrange it. All we have to do is get you a business visa and you can go with a group. When you get there just switch to a student visa. Easy.”
I knew from his silence that I had said something wrong. He was visibly upset, but instead of saying so, he just kept his eyes on the road ahead of him. I switched on the radio to act like nothing had happened, but the racket of the news announcer’s voice was even more uncomfortable than silence. By the time Lan Yu parked in front of the restaurant we were headed to, the whole thing had become unbearable. He pulled the key out of the ignition and turned to me. “Are you really so eager to get rid of me?”
This time I fell silent. If the car had still been running, I would have kept fiddling with the dial on the radio.
“I don’t want to go anywhere, okay?” he continued as he opened the car door. “I like it here, I like Beijing.”
I got out of the car, slipping on my sunglasses and feeling puzzled. Not long ago Lan Yu had clearly told me he wanted to go to the United States for graduate school. So why was he saying this now? Perhaps he was hinting he would want to stay in Beijing only if the two of us could be together. Whatever was going on inside his head, he didn’t want to share it with me.
“Man!” I said as I shut the car door behind me. “Dr. Shi was right. You really are paranoid!”
Lan Yu cast a conciliatory smile in my direction. This was normal for him. When one of our discussions hit a zone of discomfort, he would extend an olive branch by laughing it off or by saying something pleasant. Not always, but most of the time.
After lunch, I went to the office for the rest of the day. When I came home that night, my ears were greeted by the gentle rhythm of Chinese pop music. I was surprised, since Lan Yu had never been a fan of contemporary pop. He was more attuned to traditional folk music, especially the Chinese fiddle.
“Hey! I’m home!” I yelled.
Lan Yu didn’t hear me, so I opened a bottle of wine and sat on the living-room couch, where I listened quietly as a couple of songs, both unfamiliar to me, drifted from his studio. I don’t remember many of the lyrics from the first one. Something about telling my darling not to say goodbye, about whether a wind should blow or a rain should fall. But the second song I remember clearly:
No one loves you more than me.
How can you bear to see my pain?
When I needed you the most,
You just silently walked away.
Listening to the two songs, I couldn’t help but wonder whose feelings they better described, mine or Lan Yu’s.
I started spending less and less time at Tivoli in the weeks that followed. I told Lan Yu that I was staying at my mother’s house, but the truth was I was almost always at Ephemeros with Lin Ping. Pretty soon, however, I found out Lan Yu wasn’t sleeping at Tivoli every night, either. Unless we made specific arrangements to spend the night together, he usually slept in his dormitory. Sometimes I wondered if there was anywhere else he was sleeping, too.
Although I had already asked Lin Ping to marry me, we hadn’t set the date yet and I hadn’t begun even the most basic preparations. Consciously or otherwise, I was stalling for time. I wanted to resolve things with Lan Yu before moving on.
One August evening, we went to a Korean restaurant called Arirang. Lan Yu had heard about it from a Korean architect friend and had been wanting to try it. I liked it fine, but didn’t see what the big deal was since most of the food was pretty similar to Chinese cuisine: rice, noodles, meat, and vegetables. As we were eating, I asked Lan Yu if he wanted to hang out with some of my friends later that night.
“Not really,” he replied offhandedly. In a period of great uncertainty in our relationship, one thing was for sure: Lan Yu was no longer the docile, compliant guy he had been when we first met.
I gave a shrewd smile. “Believe me,” I said, lowering my voice. “You’ll have a good time. They’re like us.”
He looked puzzled by this remark. “What do you mean, like us?”
“I mean, they mess around with this kind of stuff, too,” I said with a mischievous grin.
Lan Yu looked at me in confusion. The confusion quickly turned to anger.
“You have got to be kidding me!” he said, raising his voice. “So you’ve ‘messed around’ long enough, huh? Is that it?” The group of Korean exchange students at the table next to us turned to look. I don’t know whether they understood Chinese, but our voices were more than loud enough to catch their attention.
“You want to pawn me off to someone else before your wedding!” Lan Yu continued, fuming with anger. I had no idea what he was going on about.
“You want us to go hang out with Yonghong, don’t you?” he continued. “You fucking piece of shit! Fuck you!” Lan Yu stood up from the table and stormed out. I ran out behind him, but was unable to stop him from getting in the car, which was parked on the street outside. All I could do was open the door on the driver’s side and grab him with all my might.
“Don’t touch me! Take a fucking cab!” he shouted.
“You can’t drive like this!” I yelled. “You’re going to crash!” Lan Yu didn’t listen. He threw my hand off his arm, shut the door, and started the engine.
“Stop, Lan Yu, please!” I screamed, opening the door and grabbing his shoulder again. “You want to get yourself killed?”
Lan Yu stepped on the accelerator and the car lunged forward, taking me with it. “Okay! I’m a bastard!” My voice quivered and my eyes filled with tears. “I’m a no-good piece of shit, okay? Now stop the car! I’m not going to let you do something reckless!”
Lan Yu stepped on the brakes abruptly. The night air was silent and I heard the unsteady, almost violent sound of his breathing. He gripped the steering wheel in front of him and his head hung low. Soon, the uneven sound of his breath was replaced by soft, choking sobs. He was unable to hold back the tears. I squatted next to the open car door and rested my hand on his leg.
“That’s not what I was trying to do, Lan Yu!” I said, looking at him in desperation. “I would never do that. I just wanted to introduce you to some people who—I mean, just some people who are a part of this circle. I just wanted to make you feel better . . .” I, too, was nearly sobbing at this point, but reached up to wipe away his tears. I was desperate to make him understand. Near the entrance to the Korean restaurant, two employees stood in silent amusement, watching the spectacle. I didn’t care what they thought. Standing up, I gently nudged Lan Yu, signaling for him to move to the passenger side. When he did, I got in the driver seat and slowly drove us back to Tivoli.
Neither of us said a word on the way home. After I parked and we went inside, I sat on the couch. Lan Yu immediately headed toward the staircase—most likely, I thought, to go to his work studio, the only place in the house he wanted to be lately. I wanted to talk before he vanished into the other room. I didn’t want us going to bed without patching things up, at least to the extent possible under the circumstances.
“Lan Yu, hey,” I said. He stopped, midstep, and turned around to look at me from the staircase.
“Will you come sit with me for a while?”
He hesitated, but came back downstairs and sat on the sofa opposite me.
“Will you sit next to me?” I wanted him closer. He moved next to me and I put my arm around him. He didn’t stop me, but the stiffness of his body told me he wasn’t eager to be touched, either.
“Have you been assigned a job yet?” I asked. He had already graduated, but it had been ages since I’d asked him anything about what was going on in his life.
“I’ve been working for a few months now, Handong,” he said coldly.
“Oh, really?” I asked in surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me? Which work unit is it?” I had been so preoccupied by my ambitions of becoming a mighty official—not to mention by my relationship wi
th Lin Ping—that I had shown practically no interest in him for months.
“City Construction Number Nine,” he said mechanically. “City Nine. It’s a construction company. Most of the workers are demobilized soldiers who’ve been transferred to civilian work.”
I knew he couldn’t have been happy with this job. During most of his final year at Huada, he had been saying he hoped to be hired at the Institute of Design. He had also told me on a number of occasions that he hoped to attend graduate school in the United States, but anytime I myself raised the subject he became quiet and sullen.
“If you don’t like City Nine, you should go work at a foreign enterprise. A friend of mine manages the China division of a construction company. I can contact him.”
“I already signed a five-year contract.”
“So what? Give them a little cash and they’ll let you go.”
He scoffed. “You really have a lot of faith in money, don’t you?” I didn’t want to talk about it, so I changed the subject.
“Hey, did you know there’s a place in Beijing called One Two Three? A lot of people like us go there. You know, just regular people,” I said, intentionally stressing the word regular. One Two Three was one of the first gay venues to pop up in the capital.
Lan Yu looked at me in surprise when I told him about the bar. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned it?” he asked.
“I don’t know . . . I didn’t think you’d like it,” I said, though this wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t want him to know the real reason I had never told him about it. The mere thought of him being surrounded by men he might find attractive was enough to make me feel as though my heart had been ripped from my chest.
“And here I’ve been thinking this whole time that you and I were the only two people in Beijing who were like this!” he managed a laugh.
“No, there’s a lot,” I said, pulling him into my arms. “But you have to make an effort to find that world or else you would never know about it. I rarely go to those kinds of places. You get a lot of different kinds of people there, some decent guys, some garbage. You have to be careful.” Lan Yu lay in my arms, quietly listening.
Beijing Comrades Page 18