Little Gods

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by Meng Jin

I led Lan down the roads I’d walked with my sisters when I was a boy. I told stories and remarked on the little things that had changed. I was lighthearted. Overnight, my lie had cemented into reality. It felt right. Without asking, she had become my girlfriend. Now she was my fiancée! I thought of Bo, and for the first time since he’d inserted himself into our narrative I felt calm, even happy.

  We neared West Lake. Before us emerged the stone paths lined with willows, behind which the serene water stretched clear to the horizon. For the first time in years, I thought of my hometown warmly. The ancient poems were right: how beautiful Hangzhou and Xihu were! I said to Lan, Now you know everything about me. When will you show me your shoe factory in Shanghai?

  Lan did not laugh. She said, Your mother has stomach cancer.

  She continued to walk, looking straight ahead.

  They found it five months ago, she said. For a long time your mother did not wish to be treated. But she’s finally changed her mind. She’ll have the operation in a few weeks.

  How do you know all this? I said.

  You should arrange something at your hospital. Have them do the operation there.

  Who told you?

  Didn’t you notice how she ate nothing but rice and soup at dinner? Didn’t you see her slip out halfway through the meal to take medication?

  I had not noticed. I had thought I was watching my mother carefully.

  Su Lan pointed her finger at my chest.

  There’s no room in there for anyone but you, she said. What makes you think I’ll marry you? What makes you think I want to be associated with you at all? The thought of it makes me sick.

  Su Lan had woken early that morning, as was her habit since childhood, and found my mother in the kitchen, rolling pork and pumpkin maibing, my favorite breakfast. Without a word she began to help. In the kitchen, my mother noticed what I might have seen in school, if I had paid any attention: Lan’s natural industriousness, how she immediately assessed a situation and made herself useful. My mother admired Lan’s skill handling the dough, pulling the logs apart then rolling them into small balls, stuffing each with meat and pumpkin before rolling them flat. Lan brushed aside the praise, saying she was a terrible cook. But her mother had made pancakes like these too, she had learned how to stretch the dough thin.

  While they cooked, the sun rose and gray light pressed through the kitchen window. Your mother must be so pleased to have a daughter like you, my mother said. Again Lan shook her head: I’m not a very good daughter. Children are bad at appreciating their own parents, she added. She complimented my mother on the assiduous care with which she kept the house, on the quality of the meat and vegetables she’d bought, on how well she took care of my father and me. As the first maibing fried in the wok, sizzling and steaming, Lan asked my mother how many they should make. How many would I eat, how many would my father eat? Lan herself would have just one. And you, qinjiapo? To which my mother replied, I don’t like such rich foods.

  Lan said nothing, and for a moment the two women listened to the oil crackling in the pot.

  Then Lanlan touched my mother’s wrist and called her Ma, as if we were really engaged. Ma, she said, are you well? You did not eat much last night.

  Su Lan had a way of making you want to tell her everything. She was not only disarming—she asked as if she understood you perfectly, as if, once you opened the doors, she would be able to walk into your soul, treading gently, and know you only as you knew yourself.

  My mother told Lanlan she was ready to die. The pains had started over a year ago, she said. She’d assumed that it was simply age. It was reasonable that an old woman like her, with three children all grown up, should not be eating so much meat and fish, such rich foods covered in savory sauces and oils. But eventually the pain grew so unbearable that she could no longer hide it from her husband. Often, she had to sit down abruptly; many nights it kept her awake until dawn. Half of the meals she swallowed to appease her husband she later vomited up. Finally, she had gone to see a doctor and found the cancer, vigorous from being ignored for so long. She hoped the doctors could help with the pain. She did not want to become an invalid in her last years of life. She wanted to die quietly, without bothering her family.

  Yongzong is busy, my mother told Lanlan. He has his studies and his work; he doesn’t need to worry about me. She had begged my father not to tell me; she only wished that I would come home more often; she wanted to see me a few more times before she died. Not knowing that Lan had heard nothing about my relationship with my father, she confessed that she also hoped to see us reconcile.

  Here, my mother began to cry, and crying, her desires—those tempered yet unrelenting desires—broke through the surface. She looked to Su Lan, for a moment, like a girl.

  My mother gathered herself, checked the time, wiped her face. At least he’s come and brought me this gift, she said. Now I can die, knowing he is engaged to you. And Su Lan reassured her with the words that every mother wishes to hear:

  Yes, I love him, I will take care of him forever, I promise. But you mustn’t die. Look at you, you are still so young, so full of life.

  By the time my father and I came down for breakfast they had both rearranged their masks.

  I did not lie to your mother for you, Lan said to me on the train ride back. I lied for her.

  Again we sat next to each other. But we did not touch, not even our knees. She stared out of the window and told me these things, as if speaking to the passing fields.

  So you don’t love me? I asked.

  Her laugh was like a bark. Do you love me? she said.

  Yes. I tried to take her hand. She jerked it away.

  You men are all the same, she said. All you know is take, take, take. You, your father, all of you. You think you are better than your father but you’re just like him, you’re worse. You think you love someone, but you only love yourself. You want a mirror, not a woman, any woman who marries you will be worse off than your mother.

  I wanted to protest but Lan was not finished.

  I’ve only met one decent man in my life, she said—your friend, Zhang Bo. He’s the only one who’s ever treated me with any respect. You don’t deserve to wash his feet.

  Bo Cai? I stood up and began to shout. Don’t tell me you’re in love with Bo Cai. You came all this way to tell me you love someone else? I called her a liar, a cheat, a whore.

  That was when she laughed, as if delirious, as if drunk, and held up the train ticket to my face: Do you know who I am, Li Yongzong? Do you know me at all? Shaking the ticket, she said, Fifty yuan! What a waste of money!

  In Shanghai, she grabbed her bag out of my hands and stomped off the platform. I ran after her, remorseful, thinking that my mother was right. Before I left, my mother had gripped my hands and said so only I could hear: I don’t know what you did to deserve that girl, but don’t you ever lose her.

  I reached for Su Lan’s arm and tried to take her bag from her.

  Please, I said.

  Don’t you dare speak to me again, Li Yongzong, she said, and then she disappeared down the street.

  Many things happened in the following year. I returned to work. I lost myself in clinic, in the advancement of my career. I did as Lan suggested: I brought my mother to Shanghai to be treated. But it was too late, the cancer had spread to her lungs, her liver, her spleen. Little of my mother remained her own. I visited Hangzhou many times, my father and I pretended to reconcile, my mother died wretchedly in July of 1986. I arrived home only in time to smell with clinical recognition the first rotting odors of her corpse.

  In this time, I went to Beijing twice for work. I did not seek out Bo or Lan. I reached out to other high school acquaintances and friends of friends. It was not uncommon to hear gossip about Su Lan within the high school group. Everyone had heard about her transformation. She was a heartbreaker, people said. She was endlessly pursued. Men arrived at her door like dogs, throwing down gifts that she threw back at their feet. Some proposed to her
on first sight. As far as anyone had heard, she had not dated a single one. There were rumors that she was engaged to the son of a top party official, but no one had any proof. There were rumors that she loved women, that she lived a secret underlife, that her heart had been replaced with rubber after a childhood accident and she was actually a highly functional machine. I laughed and said, Who would’ve thought? I didn’t ask about Bo, not because I wanted to protect him, but because I was afraid of giving myself away.

  I dated here and there; I did not care for anyone. I was surprised how easy it was to convince girls to sleep with me, now that birth control was free and widely promoted as part of the one-child policy. I was a good catch, I reaffirmed with each conquest. I dated girls who were prettier, more fashionable than Su Lan. Pretty waitresses, pretty shopkeepers, pretty strangers I approached in cafés and restaurants. I even slept with a model for a month. I stayed away from educated girls.

  Meanwhile I spoke less and less to my father. He did not ask about my life, my work, or the marriage I had once announced. My mother had asked for Lanlan a few times before she died, but I told her my fiancée was busy, Beijing was too far away. To make up for the lack of visits I wrote letters to my mother from Su Lan, copied by my roommate so they would not appear in my handwriting. These letters assured my mother that Lan was fine, that once she finished her master’s she would be looking at doctorates and teaching positions in Shanghai, perhaps at Fudan University. I gave Su Lan sentiments I was too cowardly to own. I remembered the way she had spoken about my mother on the train, with a tenderness and knowledge that shamed me. You have given too much all your life, I wrote. Now you must take all you can. My mother kept the letters in a silk pouch and read them when she was alone, opening the pouch only after my father and I left the room. I pretended to assume their contents merely casual. How I wish I could have had the chance to know you before now—to have truly known you as a mother, I wrote. Did Lanlan mention the purse I bought her? I asked.

  I hoped that my mother would write back to imaginary Lan. Instead, she gave me presents to pass on to her: a jade bracelet, an embroidered vest, a silk scarf. As she got sicker the gifts grew stranger: a handkerchief wrapped around a small stone, a ragged old blanket with a pattern of stitched persimmons, a wrinkled photograph of herself as a young woman. I tucked them all inside a drawer I never opened. Just seeing the closed drawer was enough to hollow me and make me numb.

  From my father I never heard a word about my supposed fiancée. When my mother was still alive, we spoke of her health and treatment. He deferred to me in all health-related matters.

  I expected my father would blame me when the treatments failed, but he did not. After my mother died, he became helpless. It was not just that he could do nothing for himself. He seemed not to know what to do, and spent hours standing with his hands in midair, looking for something to clutch. My sisters alternated visiting his house to cook and clean until I hired him a maid. They encouraged me to marry soon and buy a house, then bring him to live with me. But I hated my father’s uselessness even more than I had hated his tyranny. I returned to work in Shanghai, busying myself during the day and getting drunk at night, calling up the girls I had met. The girls started to make more demands. They wanted gifts, jewelry, proof of my devotion. I promised them all I would marry them. How easily that word came out of my mouth now, marriage. I lost them one by one.

  Then, in May of 1987, two years after the high school reunion, I got a letter in the mail.

  It was a plain envelope, without a return address. The handwriting looked familiar. It was unsigned. There was no letterhead, no greeting. Rather than a note, I found a list of numbered items. It started:

  1. Li Yongzong, you win.

  Li Yongzong, you win.

  Congratulations. I know winning is what Yongzong likes best.

  I must have known from the day I met you.

  You were small, but you had that ferocious look.

  I thought: maybe this boy can teach me something.

  I thought: with his look in my eyes, maybe I could become someone.

  You had that big-city carelessness, that certainty you would succeed.

  I began to care for you, to desire your success, as one desires good things for those he loves.

  Still I did not trust you completely.

  After the gaokao, I thought I had misjudged you.

  Perhaps I have misjudged you again—perhaps you are still my brother.

  Still I cannot help but think that even if we had ended in this same place, we might have gotten here differently.

  For example, you might have told me the truth.

  When I confided to you that I was in love, you encouraged me.

  Finally I asked her to marry me.

  Her answer: I am engaged to Li Yongzong.

  I felt as if I had been doused with cold water. I blinked and reread the letter.

  Finally I asked her to marry me.

  Her answer: I am engaged to Li Yongzong.

  I had been wrong about everything, I had been hiding from and chasing the wrong things, my energy had been flying down all the wrong roads.

  I still had a chance with Su Lan.

  Bo was lost forever. A friend, a true friend, once.

  But I still had a chance with Su Lan. She was not engaged to Bo, she was not so disgusted with me that she could not say my name. I had given up too easily. She had been waiting for me to try harder.

  I called Bo.

  He came to the phone and so I spoke, hoping that he was listening. I started: I am not engaged to Su Lan. But yes, I have been a shit friend. I told him everything—almost everything. I told him that we had fallen into the same trap. I shifted the order of events to exonerate myself. I had gotten that same postcard, I too had thought it a confession of love. Even before he told me about his love I had courted her. I had already planned to take her back to Hangzhou, where my mother was sick, dying, expecting to meet my girlfriend. At the end of this trip I proposed to her but she rejected me. By the time I knew about Bo and her, I had already been tossed aside—I was too heartbroken, too ashamed, to admit what had passed between us. But now—now there was nothing. I hadn’t spoken to her in over two years. This much was true.

  Forgive me, I said. After many minutes of the two of us breathing into our receivers, I heard a click, and the dial tone.

  I bought a train ticket to Beijing. I would leave the following Friday evening. I would go from the train station directly to Su Lan.

  It was an excuse, Su Lan said. It meant nothing, now go.

  She tried to close the door. I held it open with my foot.

  You ruined our friendship, I accused. You must have a better explanation.

  I didn’t do anything, she said.

  You didn’t do anything. You didn’t lead us on. You didn’t realize we both loved you.

  It seemed to me that Lanlan had changed. Grown wiser, less transparent. What had been a searching curiosity in her eyes was now calculating, shrewd. The look suited her. It made her more fiercely beautiful, her lips pale, her eyes bright, her skin white and cold.

  You don’t deserve to be Zhang Bo’s friend, she said.

  But you’d rather be engaged to me than to him.

  Go. Leave me alone.

  I just want to hold you to your word.

  So leave.

  The three most important people in my life think we’re engaged: Zhang Bo, my father, my mother.

  I had not meant to speak of my mother as if she were still alive. Su Lan must have noticed a change in my face. Her pressure against the door softened. She looked into my eyes fully before narrowing hers.

  It was a game you invented! she said.

  She pressed on the door again.

  Go, or I will call the police.

  I relented. The door slammed and I started down the hall. I had expected this. I had another visit to make before the day was over. When I turned for the stairs I heard the door open again. Lan called out:


  How is your mother? Is she well?

  Without turning my head I shouted, She’s dead.

  Bo glared but let me inside. His roommates were out at dinner. I sat next to him as he watched the evening news and ate leftovers. He did not offer me any food. The news update ended. The television began to broadcast the weather forecast in all the major cities. We stared at the placid blue screen and listened to the lady announcer’s voice skipping with false urgency over bland music. It was raining in Sichuan, high twenties in Hainan. Bo flipped through channels, then turned off the TV.

  Do you want to know the truth? he said, not getting up from his chair. He put his empty bowl on the floor.

  I loved her even in high school, he said.

  I had no idea, I said.

  We were friends back then too, but nobody noticed. Not even you.

  I never saw you with her.

  You never saw her at all.

  Fair.

  We stared at the blank television screen.

  In high school I got up hours before morning exercises and jogged around the track, he said. I was always trying to tire my body out. Many of those mornings, Lanlan joined me.

  He added after a moment, She has no trouble falling asleep, but often she wakes early from bad dreams.

  Most of the time, they did not even speak. But somehow she could tell he was lonely despite his gregarious personality.

  I loved her before anyone else did, Bo said, before anyone even knew she existed. I am the only person who knows who she truly is, the only one who saw her beauty before she went and made herself into this beautiful thing.

  That was what he’d told her when he begged her to marry him. She did not have to deny who she was with him.

  Su Lan had pleaded obliviousness. His love letters had been full of politics, current events, Bo’s most recent thoughts on the state of national affairs. She had read them as intellectual inquiries, correspondence between two active minds. She became icy. She said without hesitation that there was no way she could marry him, as she was already engaged.

 

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