by Ha Jin
“No, he sleeps in his bed and me in my own bed.”
“Do you know he’s going to divorce you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell you what, climb into his bed when he’s sleeping at night.”
“No, I won’t do that.”
Everyone laughed. Shuyu looked at them with confused eyes.
The haircut made her look almost ten years younger. Her face appeared egg-shaped now, and her eyebrows seemed like two tiny crescents.
The hairdresser poured some hot water from the kettle into a bronze bucket hanging on the wall and added three scoops of cold water. Then she had Shuyu sit over the sink and put her head under a rubber hose attached to the bucket. While soaping Shuyu’s hair, she said to her again, “Don’t be a fool, sister. Sneak into Lin Kong’s bed at night. If you do that, he can’t divorce you anymore.”
“I won’t do that.”
They laughed again.
“Oh my eyes,” Shuyu cried, “stinging from the soap.”
“Keep them shut. I’ll be done in a second.” The woman let the remaining water run over her head, then wiped her eyes and face with a dry towel, which smelled clean and delicious, still warm with sunlight.
“How are your eyes now?”
“They’re okay.”
Shuyu returned to the barber chair. The woman combed her hair to one side and praised its fine texture. She even applied a few drops of sweetish perfume to the hair.
When Shuyu took out the one-yuan note, the woman said, “No, elder sister, you don’t pay for the first visit. You pay next time, all right?”
Shuyu thanked her and put the money back into her pocket. The woman raised the comb to put a lock of hair behind Shuyu’s ear, saying, “You know, you look good in this hairdo. From now on you should keep your hair like this.” She turned aside and held up an oval mirror. “Now, how is that? Good?”
Shuyu smiled and nodded.
Thanking the woman again, she rose from the chair and limped out of the shop. Her hips hurt a little from the half-hour in the barber chair.
When Shuyu was out of hearing, the people in the shop began talking about her. They all agreed she actually was not bad-looking, but she didn’t know how to dress and make up. The cut of her dark-blue jacket was suitable for a woman of over sixty, with a slanting line of cloth-knots on the front instead of real buttons. If she hadn’t worn the puttees, which made her trousers look like a pair of pantaloons, her bound feet would not have attracted so much attention. Probably womenfolk in the countryside had different taste in clothing. Another cause of her unusual looks might have been that she had worked too hard and burned herself out. They had noticed cracks on the backs of her hands and a few tineal patches on her swarthy face.
Gradually their topic shifted to the marriage. How could she survive by herself if Lin Kong divorced her? What a heartless man he was. Shouldn’t the Political Department protect the poor woman by ending the relationship between Lin Kong and Manna Wu? This was a new society, in which nobody should found his happiness on another person’s suffering. Besides, a married man ought to be duty-bound and must not be allowed to do whatever he wanted, or else families would break up and society would be in chaos.
By the next day Shuyu’s answer—“I won’t do that”—had become a catchphrase among the hospital’s staff. When turning someone down, young nurses would utter that sentence jokingly, stressing every word and giving a long lilt to the final “that.” Laughter would follow.
Under cover of darkness, a few curious young officers even went to the long dormitory house in which Lin had been assigned a room recently. They stayed outside at the window and the door, eager to find out whether the couple slept in the same bed. They stuck their ears to the keyhole and to the window screen, but the room was as quiet as if it were uninhabited. Three nights in a row they heard nothing except for a cough made by Lin. One of the men sprained his ankle on the granite doorsteps, having trodden on a sleeping toad; another had his eye whipped by a twig in front of the house. So they gave up and admitted the couple had done nothing unusual.
Word spread—“They don’t do that.”
2
Lin and Shuyu were sitting at the dining table, on which was a white enamel plate containing a melon, cut in half and with its seeds removed. They were having a talk because their court appearance was scheduled for the next morning. The room looked brighter after all the propaganda posters left by the former residents had been removed from the whitewashed walls. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights again drew Shuyu’s attention. She raised her head to see whether a mosquito was in the air. Outside, in the cypress bushes below the window, an oriole was warbling now and then. The fragrance of early chrysanthemums wafted up from the roadside, where the long flowerbed was mulched with pulverized horse dung.
“Shuyu, have you ever thought about what Hua should do in the future?” Lin asked.
“No. I guess she can work at Bensheng’s store. He’s good to her and pays her well. He bought her a hooded overcoat last winter.”
“No, no, she shouldn’t remain in the countryside. I want to get her a job here. She’s our only child and should live close to us in the city, don’t you think?”
She made no answer.
He went on, “Tomorrow when the judge asks what you want from me, say you want me to find a good job for Hua, all right?”
“Why you want me to do that? I never wanted anything from you.”
“Look, I’ve been in the service for over twenty years. According to the rule, the army should take care of our child. Trust me, they’ll find her a job. This is her only chance. Please tell the judge you want that, all right?”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
He took a bite of the melon in his hand. “Try this. It’s very sweet,” he said, pointing at the other half.
She didn’t touch it, saving it for him.
Early the next morning, Lin went to fetch breakfast for Shuyu and himself. Hundreds of people were eating in the mess hall. From inside the kitchen came the brisk clank of a shovel stir-frying something in a cauldron. The air smelled of sautéed scallions and celery. Manna turned up with a lunch tin in her hand. Coming up to Lin, she tried to smile, but the effort distorted her face, two wrinkles bracketing her nose and mouth. Her eyes were shining, glancing left and right; apparently she was uneasy about meeting him in this place. He noticed a flicker of resentment pass over her face, probably because he had not seen her for several days.
She said to him, “Don’t talk too much in court, all right? And don’t argue with the judge.” She bit her lower lip.
“I know. There’s no need to worry. I talked to Shuyu yesterday evening. She agreed to stick to her word this time. It’s final.”
“I hope so,” she muttered. “Good luck.”
She walked away, not daring to talk with him longer than necessary in the presence of so many people, some of whom had already begun darting glances in their direction. Since Shuyu’s arrival, Manna had kept a low profile. She avoided meeting others, not going anywhere unless she had to, and wouldn’t even eat lunch in the mess hall. As a result she looked anemic.
Lin brought back to the dormitory four steamed buns, half a pot of rice porridge, and a tiny cake of fermented bean curd. For the first time since she had come, he and his wife ate together.
While eating he had a strange realization. These days he had seldom met Manna, as though she were gone on vacation somewhere. He had stopped walking with her in the evening for fear that people would gossip about them and exert pressure on the leaders to stop the divorce. Somehow this temporary separation from Manna didn’t bother him at all, just as sleeping in the same room with Shuyu did not discomfort him either. To tell the truth, he didn’t miss Manna, though he felt sorry for her. Is this what love is like? he asked himself. No wonder people say marriage is the death of love. The closer we are to getting married, the les
s attached I feel to her. Does this mean I don’t love her anymore? Don’t be a fool. She and I have waited for each other so many years. Now it’s time to be united. Yes, true lovers don’t have to stay together looking at each other all the time; they look and move in the same direction. Who said that? It must have been a foreign monk. How about Manna, what does she think of my staying with Shuyu in this room? Is she irritated by it? She must be. Does she miss me?
His mind turned to the divorce, which became almost an inevitable thing to him now. He didn’t need to make any effort to bring it about, as though the whole matter was like a ripe fruit that would fall after being touched by frost. He felt as if there was some force beyond his control, of which he merely served as a vehicle, that would realize the divorce and start him on a new life. Perhaps this force was what people called fate.
As soon as Shuyu had done the dishes, a Beijing jeep pulled up in front of the house. She put on the yellow taffeta shirt Lin had bought her a week before. The couple got into the jeep, which drove them to the courthouse next to the city Police Station. Together with them, in the front seat, was Ming Chen, representing the hospital. He was the director of the Political Department now; he had grown stout with thick shoulders and a fleshy face.
It was half past eight. The poplar-lined street was speckled with people bicycling to work or returning home from their midnight shifts. The concrete buildings, their red tiles covered with dew, were steaming and glistening in the sun. As the jeep was passing an elementary school, groups of boys were playing soccer on the sports ground, shouting and chasing five or six balls. Girls were skipping ropes or kicking shuttlecocks. Obviously the pupils were at their first recess. At the corner of Peace Avenue and Glory Street a walking tractor was lying on its side, knocked over by an East Wind truck. Zucchini were strewn on the ground; a crowd gathered there watching and chatting; the truck was left on the sidewalk, its fender bent against a thick tree trunk. Several old women were pushing carts, each of which was loaded with a sky-blue box; they were shouting, “Milk and chocolate popsicles, ten fen apiece.” A siren was screaming a few blocks away, growing louder and louder. The jeep carrying Lin and Shuyu nosed through the crowd and then turned left into West Gate Road to the Police Station.
At the entrance to the courthouse, which was a chapel built by Danish missionaries in the 1910s, Lin saw a young couple coming out. The husband looked sullen, while the wife sobbed into a white neckerchief and was supported by an older man, apparently her father. A guard told Director Chen that the judge had just turned down the woman’s plea for a divorce. She had accused her husband of physical abuse and stealing her money. The judge had not agreed with the latter part of the accusation. As a married couple, they lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed, and ate from the same pot; of course they should share a bank account. By no means should the husband be charged with theft.
Several rows of benches occupied the center of the courtroom. A long table covered with green velveteen stood on a low stage in the front. Above the table, a sign with these giant words was suspended from an iron wire: Secure the Law like a Mountain. Beyond the slogan, on the front wall, the national emblem—five stars embraced by fat wheat ears—held the position once belonging to a crucifix. Lin was impressed by the chevron-shaped windows, the crystal chandeliers, and the high ceiling, which didn’t need a single pillar to support itself despite the massive, well-hewn beams and rafters. He wondered what the chapel would have looked like if all the lights had been on and if there hadn’t been any of these metal-legged chairs and tables. It must have looked splendid.
After everybody was seated in the front row, the judge, a middle-aged man with a wispy mustache and narrow eyes, walked onto the low stage and sat down at the table. He poured himself a cup of tea from a white porcelain teapot. To his right sat a fortyish woman, who was the court clerk, and to his left was seated a young man, the scribe, with a felt-tip pen in his hand. The judge coughed into his fist, then asked the husband to present his case.
Lin stood up and spoke. “Respectable Comrade Judge, I am here today to ask your court to allow me to end my marriage. My wife Shuyu Liu and I have been separated for eighteen years, although we have stayed in marriage nominally. There has been no love between us since our daughter was born. Please don’t mistake me for a fickle, heartless man. During the eighteen years, I have treated my wife decently and had no sexual contact with another woman.” He reddened at the word “sexual” and went on, “Please consider and approve my request for a divorce.”
The judge had read the written petition, so he turned and asked Director Chen to testify to the truth of Lin’s statement. Ming Chen didn’t bother to stand up, because he held a higher rank than the judge. He said in a strong voice, “What Comrade Lin Kong said is correct. I have been his superior for many years. He has been elected a model officer several times, and there has been no serious problem in his lifestyle. He’s a good man.”
Lin cast a sidelong glance at Ming Chen. So I have “no serious problem,” he thought. That means I have some small lifestyle problems. No wonder they haven’t given me a promotion for the last ten years.
The judge asked the director sternly, “Do you, the hospital leaders, approve this divorce?” He lifted his teacup and took a sip.
“Of course we don’t advocate divorce, but the couple have been separated for a long time. According to our rule, after eighteen years of separation, an officer can terminate his marriage without his spouse’s consent. Lin Kong has been separated from his wife since 1966, already long enough. So we see no reason to decline his request.”
The judge nodded as though he was familiar with this rule. He turned to Shuyu and asked what she would say.
“He can divorce me,” she said unemotionally. “But I want something from—”
“Stand up when you speak,” the judge ordered. She got to her feet.
“Now, what’s your request?” he asked.
“We—we have a daughter, a big girl, almost eighteen. She’s his child. He should get her a good job in the city.”
Director Chen threw up his chin and laughed sonorously, the flesh on his neck folded. The judge looked puzzled. Ming Chen explained, “Our hospital is trying to have Shuyu Liu’s residential status changed. This means their daughter will join her here, and we’ll help the girl find a decent job. Because she is Lin Kong’s child, she will be treated the same as the other officers’ children. No problem, we’ll see to this matter.”
The judge then announced that according to the law Lin had to pay Shuyu thirty yuan a month in alimony. Lin agreed readily, but Shuyu waved her hand.
“What do you want to say?” the judge asked. “You want more?”
“No. I don’t need so much. Twenty’s enough. Really I don’t need so much money.”
The woman clerk and the scribe chuckled, and the three guards guffawed from the back of the courtroom, but they stopped at the stare of the judge.
Then the couple were asked whether they had property under dispute. They both shook their heads. Shuyu owned nothing, and the house in the village belonged to Lin.
The judge signed two divorce certificates, pressed a large seal into a case of red ink paste, stamped it on them, and handed the couple one apiece. He stood up and spoke in a resounding voice. “Although you two are divorced, you are still comrades belonging to the same large revolutionary family. Therefore you should treat each other with respect, care, and friendship.”
“We will, Judge,” Lin said.
“Good. The case is now settled.”
The judge stood up; so did the woman clerk and the scribe. Another petition for divorce was waiting to be heard that morning, and the court had to hurry up a little.
Moving toward the entrance, Lin couldn’t help feeling amazed by the whole process, which had turned out to be so easy. In less than half an hour, all the years of frustration and desperation had ended and a new page of his life was ready to start.
After the divorce,
Shuyu didn’t return to the country. She moved into another room in the same dormitory house. From now on she cooked her own meals and lived by herself. A young officer was assigned by the Political Department to deal with the district police in charge of residential registry and with the Splendor Match Plant, which was asked to employ Hua.
It occurred to Lin that his daughter might refuse to come to the city, because she must have been angry with him. When he returned home in the past few years, he had tried to talk with her and find out how she felt about his divorcing her mother, but she had always avoided being with him, saying she had to feed the pigs or go wash clothes in the creek. She seemed to have grown more and more remote from him. So now he decided to write a letter begging her to come to Muji.
At night when he sat at the table holding his Gold Dragon fountain pen, he was overwhelmed by the realization that this was the first time he had written to his daughter. What an awful father he was! Why had he been so absentminded all these years that he had never thought Hua might like to hear from him? No wonder she had been resentful.
He wrote:
My Dear Daughter Hua:
Your mother and I went to the city courthouse last Monday, and we went through everything smoothly. We asked the army to help you find a job in Muji, and the leaders agree to have you transferred to the Splendor Match Plant here. As a matter of fact, this was your mother’s only request in the court. So please respect her wish and come and join us after you receive this letter.
Hua, please understand that this arrangement is absolutely necessary for you. You will have a better life in the city. Your mother is old, and I am reluctant to let her return to the village. Please come without delay. No matter how you feel about me, trust me just this once. I am your father; I want you to have a happy life. If you stay in the countryside forever, I will be filled with grief and regret.
Your father—Lin Kong
Uncertain whether she could be persuaded only by his words, he wrote another letter to Bensheng, asking him to urge Hua not to miss this opportunity.