by Yunte Huang
I’ve always wanted a man who would really understand me. If he doesn’t understand me and my needs, then what good are love and empathy? Father, my sisters, and all my friends end up blindly indulging me, although I never have figured out what it is in me that they love. Is it my arrogance, my temper? Or do they just pity me because I have TB? At times they infuriate me because of it, and then all their blind love and soothing words have the opposite effect. Those are the times that I wish I had someone who really understood. Even if he reviled me, I’d be proud and happy.
I think about them when they forget me. Or I get mad at them. But then when somebody finally does come, I end up harassing him without really meaning to. It’s an impossible situation. Lately I’ve been trying to discipline myself not to say whatever jumps into my mind, so I don’t accidentally hurt people’s secret feelings when I’m really only joking. My resulting state of mind as I sat with Weidi can easily be imagined. If Weidi had stood up to go, I’d have hated him because of my depression and fear of loneliness. Weidi has known this for a long time, so he didn’t leave me until ten o’clock. But I deceive no one, certainly not myself. The fact that Weidi waited around so long gave him no special advantage. In fact, I ended up pitying him because he’s so easy to exploit and because he has such a gift for doing the wrong thing in love.
December 28
I invited Yufang and Yunlin out to the movies today. Yufang asked Jianru along, which made me so furious I almost burst into tears. Instead I started laughing. Oh, Jianru, Jianru, how you’ve crushed my self-respect. She looks and acts so much like a girlfriend I had when I was younger, that without being aware of what I was doing, I started chasing her. Initially she encouraged my intimacies. But I met with intolerable treatment from her in the end. Whenever I think about it, I hate myself for what I did in the past, for my regrettably unscrupulous behavior. One week I wrote her at least eight long letters, maybe more, and she didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to me. Whatever possessed Yufang to invite Jianru when she knows I don’t want to dredge up my past all over again? It’s as though she wanted to make me mad on purpose. I was furious.
Though there was no reason for Yufang and Yunlin to notice any change in my laugh, Jianru must have sensed something. But she can fake it—play stupid—so she went along as though there was nothing between us. I wanted to curse; the words were on the tip of my tongue, when I thought of the resolution I’d set myself. Also I felt that if I were that vehement she’d get even more stuck on herself. So I just kept my feelings to myself and went out with them.
We got to the Zhenguang Theater early and met some girls from our province at the door. Those girls and their practiced smiles make me sick. I ignored them. Then I got inexplicably angry at all the people waiting to see the movie. So I capitalized on the situation, and as Yufang talked heatedly with the girls, I slipped away from my guests and came home.
I am the only person who can excuse what I did. They all criticize me, but they don’t know the feelings I endure when I am with other people. People say I am eccentric, but no one notices how often I’m willing to toady for affection and approval. No one will ever encourage me to say things that contradict my first impulses. They endure my eccentricities constantly, which gives me even more cause to reflect on my behavior, and that ends up alienating me even further from them.
It is very late and the entire residence is quiet. I’ve been lying here on the bed a long time. I have thought through a lot of things. Why am I still so upset?
December 29
Yufang phoned me early this morning. She’s a good person and wouldn’t lie, so I suppose Jianru really is sick. Yufang told me that Jianru is sick because of me and wants me to come over so she can explain herself. Yufang and Jianru couldn’t be more mistaken. Sophia is not a person who likes listening to explanations. I see no need for explanations of any kind. If friends get along that’s great; when you have a falling-out and give someone a hard time, that’s fair enough too. I think I am big enough not to require more revenge. Jianru got sick because of me. I think that’s great. I’d never refuse the lovely news that somebody had gotten sick over me. Anyway, Jianru’s illness eases some of the self-loathing I’ve been feeling.
I really don’t know what to make of myself. Sometimes I can feel a kind of boundless unfathomable misery at the sight of a white cloud being blown and scattered by the wind. Yet faced with a young man of, what, about twenty-five?—Weidi is actually four years older than I—I find myself laughing with the satisfaction of a savage as his tears fall on my folded hands. Weidi came over from Dongcheng with a gift of stationery and envelopes. Because he was happy and laughing, I teased him mercilessly until he burst into tears. That cheered me up, so I said, “Please, please! Spare the tears. Don’t imagine I’m so feminine and weak that I can’t resist a tear. If you want to cry, go home and do it. You’re bothering me.” He didn’t leave. He didn’t make any excuses, either, or get sullen, of course. . . . He just curled up in the corner of the chair, as tears from God knows where streamed openly, soundlessly, down his face. While this pleased me, I was still a little ashamed of myself. So I patted his head in a sisterly way and told him to go wash his face. He smiled through his tears.
When this honest, open man was here, I used all the cruelty of my nature to make him suffer. Yet once he’d left, there was nothing I wanted more than to snatch him back and plead with him: “I know I was wrong. Don’t love a woman so undeserving of your affection as I am.”
January 1
I don’t know how people who like to party spent their New Year’s. I just added an egg to my milk. I had the egg left over from the twenty that Weidi brought me yesterday. I’ve boiled seven eggs in a tea broth; the remaining thirteen are probably enough to last me for the next two weeks. If Weidi had come while I was eating lunch, I’d have had a chance to get a couple of canned things. I really hoped he’d come. In anticipation, I went out to the Danpai Building and bought four boxes of candy, two cartons of dianxin, and a basket of fruit to feed him when he got here. I was that certain he’d be the only one to come today. But lunch came and went and Weidi hadn’t arrived.
I sat and wrote five letters with the fine pen and stationery he’d brought me a few days ago. I’d been hoping I’d get some New Year’s picture postcards in the mail, but I didn’t. Even the few girlfriends I have who most enjoy this kind of thing forgot that they owed me. I shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t get postcards. Still, when they forget about me completely, it does make me mad. On the other hand, considering that I never paid anyone else a New Year’s visit—forget it! I deserve it.
I was very annoyed when I had to eat dinner all by myself.
Toward evening Yufang and Yunlin did come over, bringing a tall young fellow with them. How fortunate they are. Yufang has Yunlin to love her and that satisfies them both. Happiness isn’t just possessing a lover. It’s two people, neither of whom wants anything more than each other, passing their days in peace and conversation. Some people might find such a pedestrian life unsatisfying, but then not everyone is like my Yufang.
She’s terrific. Since she has her Yunlin, she wants “all lovers to be united.” Last year she tried to arrange a love match for Marie. She wants things to work out for Weidi and me, too, so every time she comes over she asks about him. She, Yunlin, and the tall man ate up all the food I’d bought for Weidi.
That tall guy is stunning. For the first time, I found myself really attracted to masculine beauty. I’d never paid much attention before. I’ve always felt that it was normal for men to be glib, phony, cautious; that’s about the extent of it. But today as I watched the tall one, I saw how a man could be cast in a different, a noble, mold. Yunlin looked so insignificant and clumsy by comparison. . . . Pity overwhelmed me. How painful Yunlin would find his own coarse appearance and rude behavior, if he could see himself. I wonder what Yufang feels when she compares the two, one tall, the other not.
How can I describe the beauty of t
his strange man? His stature, pale delicate features, fine lips, and soft hair are quite dazzling enough. But there is an elegance to him, difficult to describe, an elusive quality, that shook me profoundly. When I asked his name, he handed me his name card with extraordinary grace and finesse. I raised my eyes. I looked at his soft, red, moist, deeply inset lips, and let out my breath slightly. How could I admit to anyone that I gazed at those provocative lips like a small hungry child eyeing sweets? I know very well that in this society I’m forbidden to take what I need to gratify my desires and frustrations, even when it clearly wouldn’t hurt anybody. I did the only thing I could. I lowered my head patiently and quietly read the name printed on the card, “Ling Jishi, Singapore. . . .”
Ling Jishi laughed and talked uninhibitedly with us as though he were with old, intimate friends; or was he flirting with me? I was so eager to avoid seduction that I didn’t dare look directly at him. It made me furious when I could not bring myself to go into the lighted area in front of the table. My ragged slippers had never bothered me before, yet now I found myself ashamed of them. That made me angry at myself: How can I have been so restrained and boring? Usually I find undue attention to social form despicable. Today I found out how moronic and graceless I could seem. Mmm! He must think I’m right off the farm.
Yufang and Yunlin got the feeling that I didn’t like him, I was acting so woodenly, so they kept interrupting the conversation. Before long they took him off. They meant well. I just can’t find it in me to be grateful. When I saw their shadows—two short, one tall—disappearing through the downstairs courtyard, I really didn’t want to return to my room, now suffused with the marks of his shoes, his sounds, the crumbs of his cake.
January 3
I’ve spent two full nights coughing. I’ve lost all faith in the medicine. Is there no relationship at all between medicine and illness? I am sick to death of the bitter medicine, but still I take it on schedule, as prescribed; if I refuse medication, how can I allow myself any hope for recovery? God arranges all sorts of pain for us before we die to make us patient and to prevent us from rushing toward death too eagerly. Me? My time is brief, so I love life with greater urgency than most. I don’t fear death. I just feel that I haven’t gotten any pleasure out of life. I want . . . all I want is to be happy. I spend days and nights dreaming up ways I could die without regret. I imagine myself resting on a bed in a gorgeous bedroom, my sisters nearby on a bearskin rug praying for me, and my father sighing as he gazes quietly out the window. I’ll be reading long letters from those who love me, friends who will remember me with their tears. I urgently need emotional support from all these people; I long for the impossible. What do I get from them? I have been imprisoned in this residence for two full days: no one has visited me and I haven’t even gotten any mail. I lie in bed and cough; I sit on the stove and cough; I go in front of the table and cough—all the time brooding over these repulsive people. . . . Actually, I did receive a letter, but that just completed my total wretchedness. It was from a tough Anhui guy who was pestering me a year ago. I ripped it up before I had even finished reading it. It made my flesh crawl, reading page after page of “love, love, love, love, love.” How I despise grandstand affection from people I loathe.
But can I name what I really need?
January 4
I just don’t know how things went so wrong. Why did I want to move? In all the fuss and confusion I’ve also deceived Yunlin. The lies came so easily I felt I almost had an instinct for it. Were Yunlin to know Sophia was capable of deceiving him, how wretched he would be. Sophia is the baby sister they love so much. Of course I’m upset now, and I regret everything. But I still can’t make up my mind. Should I move? Or not?
I had to admit to myself, “You’re dreaming about that tall man.” And it’s true: for the last few days and nights I have been enmeshed in wonderful fantasies. Why hasn’t he come over on his own? He should know better than to let me languish for so long. I’d feel so much better if he’d come over and tell me that he’d been thinking of me too. If he did, I know I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, and I’d have listened to him declare his love for me and then I’d let him know what I wanted. But he didn’t come. I guess fairy tales don’t usually come true. Should I go looking for him? A woman that uninhibited would risk having everything blow up in her face. I still want people to respect me. Since I couldn’t think of a good solution, I decided to go to Yunlin’s place and see what would happen. After lunch I braved the wind and set off for Dongcheng.
Yunlin is a student at Jingdu University and rents a room in a house in Qingnian Lane near the university, between the first and second colleges. Fortunately I got there before he’d left and before Yufang had arrived. Yunlin was surprised to see me out on such a windy day, but wasn’t suspicious when I told him I’d been to the German Hospital and was just stopping by on my way home. He asked about my health. I led the conversation around to the other evening. Without wasting any energy, I found out that Ling Jishi lives in Dormitory No. 4 in the second college. After a while I started to sigh and talk in vivid terms about my life at Xicheng Residence Hall, how lonely and dismal it was. And then I lied again. I said I wanted to move because I want to be near Yufang. (I already know that Yufang was going to move in with him.) When I asked Yunlin if he would come help me find a room near theirs, he seemed delighted and didn’t hesitate to offer his help.
While we were looking around for a room, we just happened to run into Ling Jishi. So he joined us. I was ecstatic and the ecstasy made me bold enough to look right at him several times. He didn’t notice. When he asked about my health and I told him I’d completely recovered, he just smiled, skeptically.
I settled on a small, moldy room with low ceilings in the Dayuan Apartment House next door to Yunlin. Both Ling Jishi and Yunlin said it was too damp, but nothing they said could shake my determination to move in the next day. The reason I gave was that I was tired of the other place and desperately needed to be near Yufang. There was nothing Yunlin could do, so he agreed and said that he and Yufang would be over to help me tomorrow.
How can I admit to anyone that my only reason for choosing that room was because it’s located between the fourth dormitory and Yunlin’s place?
He didn’t say good-bye to me so I went back to Yunlin’s with them, mustering all my courage to keep on chatting and laughing. Meanwhile I subjected him to the most searching scrutiny. I was possessed with a desire to mark every part of his body with my lips. Has he any idea how I’m sizing him up? Later I deliberately said that I wanted to ask Ling Jishi to help me with my English. When Yunlin laughed, Ling Jishi was taken aback and gave a vague, embarrassed reply. He can’t be too much of a bastard, I thought to myself, otherwise—a big tall man like that—he’d never have blushed so red in the face. My passion raged with new ferocity. But since I was concerned that the others would notice and see through me too easily, I dismissed myself and came home early.
Now that I have time for reflection, I can’t imagine my impulsiveness driving me into any worse situation. Let me stay in this room with its iron stove. How can I say I’m in love with this man from Singapore? I don’t know anything about him. All this stuff about his lips, his eyebrows, his eyelashes, his hands, is pure fantasy. These aren’t things a person should need. I’ve become obsessive if that’s all I can think about now. I refuse to move. I’m determined to stay here and recover my health.
I’m decided now. I’m so full of regret! I regret all the wrong things I did today, things a decent woman would never do.
January 6
Everyone said I was being terribly foolish when they heard I’d moved. And when Jin Ying from Nancheng and Jiang and Zhou from Xicheng all came over to my damp little room to see me and I started laughing and rolling around on the bed, they all said I was acting like a baby. That amused me all the more and made me consider telling them what’s really on my mind. Weidi dropped by this afternoon too, miserable because I’d moved withou
t discussing it with him first and because now I’m even farther from him. He looked straight through Yunlin when he saw him. Yunlin, who couldn’t figure out why he was so angry, stared right back. Weidi’s face darkened even further. I was amused. “Too bad,” I said to myself, “Weidi’s blaming the wrong man.”
Yufang never brings up the subject of Jianru anymore. She has decided to move into Yunlin’s room in two or three days. She knows I want to be near her and won’t leave me alone longer than that. She and Yunlin have been even warmer than ever.
January 10
I’ve seen Ling Jishi every day, but I’ve never spoken more than a few words to him, and I’m determined it’s not going to be me who mentions the English lessons first. It makes me laugh to see how he goes to Yunlin’s twice a day now. I’m certain he’s never been this close to him before. I haven’t invited Ling Jishi over either; and although he’s asked several times how things are going now that I’ve moved, I’ve pretended not to get the hint and just smile back. It’s like planning a battle. Now I’m concentrating all my energy on strategy. I want something, but I’m not willing to go and take it. I must find a tactic that gets it offered to me voluntarily. I understand myself completely. I am a thoroughly female woman, and women concentrate everything on the man they’ve got in their sights. I want to possess him. I want unconditional surrender of his heart. I want him kneeling down in front of me, begging me to kiss him. I’m delirious. I go over and over the steps I must take to implement my scheme. I’ve lost my mind.
Yufang and Yunlin don’t detect my excitement; they just tell me I’ll be getting better soon. Actually, I don’t want them to know. When they say how improved I am, I act as if I’m pleased.
January 12
Yufang already moved in, but Yunlin moved out. I can’t believe the two of them; they’re so afraid of her getting pregnant that they won’t live together. I suppose they feel that since they can’t trust themselves to make “good” decisions when they’re in bed together, the best solution is to remove sexual temptation completely. According to them, necking is not too dangerous, so their list of proscriptions doesn’t preclude the occasional stolen encounter. I can’t help scoffing at her asceticism. Why shouldn’t you embrace your lover’s naked body? Why repress this part of love? How can they be so preoccupied with all the details before they’ve even slept together! I won’t believe love is so logical and scientific.