by An Yu
‘You know what I decided today?’ Jia Jia said, her tone determined. ‘I’m going to Tibet.’
‘You’ve come to say goodbye,’ said Leo. He stopped himself from asking her why she was going to Tibet – she had her own reasons, reasons that had nothing to do with him.
She looked away towards the corner of the room.
‘And I am to wait for you?’ Leo asked.
‘I don’t think you should have your life all tangled with mine any longer. I don’t want you to.’ She finished the rest of her wine in one gulp and started filling both of their glasses. While she did that, he just looked at her hands. ‘Drink with me tonight.’ She clinked her glass against his, on the counter. ‘Let’s remember this night as a happy one.’
It was a Sunday and the bar was quiet. Jia Jia’s agent paid his bill and left, telling Jia Jia that he would send her a lease agreement later on in the week. Leo closed for the evening. He removed his bow tie and stuffed it into his bag without folding it like he usually did.
They drank more and spoke less throughout the night. During the few conversations they did have, Jia Jia laughed in the most honest way Leo had ever seen her laugh. She went behind the bar and started rummaging through his whiskeys; she delved into his bag, pulled out his bow tie, tied it around her own neck and took a picture with his phone. She felt more familiar to him than ever. He became regretful for the life he had never had with her, for the nights they had never spent together behind the lit-up window of their own apartment.
They played disco music from their phones and danced. At some point, Jia Jia made fun of Leo for only owning jazz records. ‘How can you dance to these songs?’ she said while flipping through his collection.
When the sun peeped through the window, he walked her out the door and told her he loved her.
‘How much do you love me?’ she answered.
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Very well.’
She re-tied her hair and headed towards the subway station.
Back in his bar, Leo washed and wiped all the glasses except the one that Jia Jia had used. He sat at the counter for a long while, in the seat at the end, holding her glass. When he finally felt drowsiness creeping over him, he washed the glass thoroughly and hung it above the bar counter with all the others. He arranged Jia Jia’s lantern on a small table at the corner of the bar and headed home for a deep, long sleep.
*
When Jia Jia got back to her grandmother’s apartment, the aquarium was on fire. There was a single flame the height of a child, thrusting up on one side of the tank from the base towards the ceiling. The corals swayed like metronomes and the fish continued their sluggish, aimless wander, oblivious.
Jia Jia rushed through to the kitchen in search of a container of some sort. Her grandmother was washing rice, and like the fish, she did not have a clue about what was going on. Jia Jia dragged out a bucket from under the sink, knocking over a bottle of cleaning fluid, filled the bucket with water and hauled it back to the living room. She launched it at the tank, spilling half of it on herself. The water seemed to calm the flame somewhat and she began the process again. By this time, her grandmother had emerged from the kitchen and was yelling things.
‘Quick, quick, quick,’ she kept repeating as she shuffled her feet as fast as she could.
Jia Jia’s aunt appeared from her room, saw the flaming tank, and immediately turned to the bathroom to fetch another bucket, all the while shouting at Jia Jia’s grandmother to stand out of her way. Jia Jia was not sure how many buckets of water she hurled at the fish tank. She was running out of breath, and her arms refused to lift themselves any more. With one last effort, it was her aunt who managed to put the flame out.
Jia Jia unplugged the aquarium and the blue fluorescent light went off, leaving the fish and coral dull and dusky. The three women stood around the tank, none of them saying anything.
10
Jia Jia’s aunt and grandmother began taking turns to sleep at night. They wanted to make sure, they said, that someone would be awake in case the fish tank sparked another fire. An electrician had come during the day and identified the cause of the fire to be an old socket. Ever since then, although the wiring had been replaced, Jia Jia’s aunt persisted in pacing back and forth in the living room for hours until her old mother took over the watch at around two in the morning.
Jia Jia needed to finish her work at Ms Wan’s home. The restlessness of her aunt and grandmother was oppressive and she needed the balance of the payment for her travels. When Jia Jia phoned to make the arrangements, Ms Wan said that she was in America with her children, and she found it a pity that she could not be there to witness the completion of the painting. The maid will be at home, she told Jia Jia.
In fact, when Jia Jia arrived, it was Ms Wan’s husband who was perched on the sofa, blowing smoke rings into the air. She was surprised to find him alone with a bronze ashtray overflowing with Yun Yan cigarette butts, walnut shells and used napkins. From what Jia Jia knew of this man, he was never settled at home during the afternoon. His ponytail was tied lower, but it still revealed the few threads of grey behind his ears. His beard seemed to have grown even longer.
‘Sorry for the mess, I didn’t know you were coming,’ he said. With an ashamed smile, he emptied the ashtray, washed a plate of grapes, and left it on top of the shoe cabinet in the entrance hall for Jia Jia.
‘I didn’t mean to take such a long break, sir,’ Jia Jia said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked your name.’
‘My name is Du Fan, you can call me Old Du. And there’s no rush for this painting thing. No rush.’ Turning back towards the sofa, Mr Du waved his hand at the painting as if he were brushing someone away.
‘Mr Du, if I’m disturbing you today, I can come back when you’re not home,’ Jia Jia said. ‘Say, tomorrow.’
‘Not at all,’ he muttered under his breath. He searched, with a hint of nervousness, for something to do with his hands. ‘I’m going to fetch myself a drink.’
An opened bottle of cognac was already sitting on the dining table and the stench of alcohol filled the suffocating, indoor air. Mr Du poured out a glass.
‘Ms Wan and the kids are on holiday in America?’ Jia Jia asked as she mixed a palette of blue paint.
‘She’s in Boston buying duvet covers and pillowcases,’ Mr Du said. ‘The kids are going to boarding school there.’
‘But the children are so young!’ Jia Jia said. ‘Do you have a house in Boston?’
‘They’ll have a guardian there; a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other since middle school. Wan Lian is coming back in a few days, after they start school. She had originally planned to come back yesterday, you know?’
He held his fist to his ear, pretending he was talking on a phone, and continued, ‘But she called me saying, “Oh, the mattress is too soft, their spines will become crooked, I need to buy them a new mattress. I need to buy them shoe cabinets for the new trainers we bought in New York, otherwise the tiny rooms will become smelly. I need to buy a tennis racket for Huihui, I need to buy ballet shoes for Yingying, I need to buy this, I need to buy that.” He drank the glass of brandy in one gulp.
‘When I was young,’ he went on, ‘I would’ve loved to have a soft mattress. The kids need to learn to grow up, and we mustn’t spoil them so much, don’t you agree? Do you have kids?’
Jia Jia shook her head apologetically, as if to show that she was sorry she could not empathise with him owing to her lack of children.
‘Are you married then?’ he asked.
Jia Jia thought about it briefly and then shook her head again.
‘Hold on.’ Mr Du disappeared into the bedroom and re-emerged with an acoustic guitar hung across his body. He pulled out a chair at the dining table, planted himself down, and started tuning his guitar. ‘Can you pass me my glass? And my cigarettes.’
Jia Jia delivered his glass and tobacco along with the bronze ashtray that was stained p
artly black from years of use.
‘Let me sing you a song!’ He gave his guitar a smack. ‘What do you want to listen to?’
‘Anything,’ Jia Jia said.
‘Don’t you look down on me, lady. I sang at my jazz lounge every Wednesday night! I’m pretty good. I rarely even sing for my wife. Come on, tell me what you want to listen to!’
‘Well then, you pick something.’ Jia Jia returned to her painting, picked up her brush, and waited for him to begin.
He lit the last cigarette in the pack and took a drag before balancing it on the rim of the ashtray, making a sort of incense out of it. He picked out a few chords on his guitar, testing the progression to make sure that it was correct. Then he began.
The purity of his penetrating voice surprised Jia Jia; she had expected something raspier. But his singing was like a clear, sunlit day on top of a mountain. It was an English song that sounded familiar to Jia Jia, though she could not identify the title.
His English was well-spoken, but for most of the song he replaced the lyrics with ‘la la la’ or ‘di da la’. The cigarette burned to the end and he ground and crushed it in the ashtray.
‘We’re getting a divorce,’ he said over the final cadence.
Then he strung hard on a dissonant chord, squeezed his eyelids shut, opened his mouth, and cried out loud like a newborn. The skin on his face twisted like a wrung-out towel.
‘We had a fight and –’ he snapped his fingers – ‘just like that, she told me that she wanted to leave me.’
‘What about the children?’ Jia Jia asked.
He buried his face in his hands and did not answer her question.
‘I never thought she’d leave me,’ he said finally.
Jia Jia dropped her brush into the cut-out bottom of a plastic bottle. The forest-green paint diffused and tainted the water a milky green colour. She wondered whether Chen Hang would have asked her for a divorce sooner or later and whether he would have married somebody else afterwards. If he had abandoned Jia Jia that way, would she still be painting here today, attending to Mr Du’s sobs?
It did not matter any more. Watching Mr Du hold that guitar on his lap, crying as if he was going to let his heart break in front of her, Jia Jia, strangely, felt a moment of serenity. As though their hearts had touched, fleetingly.
‘Jia Jia,’ Mr Du, raising his head, blurted out suddenly, ‘I forgot to ask, are you feeling completely well now? Was anyone taking care of you while you were ill?’
‘I moved into my grandmother’s home,’ Jia Jia said. ‘My aunt also lives there.’
‘Your aunt … Li Chang’s wife, right? He’s a good man. Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’ He wiped his tears and smiled.
For the rest of the afternoon, Mr Du sang while Jia Jia painted. He alternated between English and Chinese songs, performing everything from jazz to rock ballads to folk music. When Jia Jia knew the song, she hummed along.
Towards the end of the day, she spent an extra hour perfecting the beggar’s bowl in the centre of the wall painting. Caressed in the hands of the ancient Buddha, it gleamed like sapphire.
Mr Du had not spoken much more, and just waved his hand when Jia Jia said that she had finished. A horde of men and women were queueing up in front of the subway by the time she left. She dropped her bag on the X-ray machine belt at the entrance and a group of middle-aged women with cameras strapped around their necks squeezed her through the metal detector.
She let other people board the train first; they seemed in more of a rush to return home. She decided that she would learn how to drive when she returned from Tibet. Jia Jia felt more at ease now that she had finished at Ms Wan’s. She did not like to leave things undone, and in some way, it felt like a good omen for her trip. She imagined what Leo would have said if he had seen the wall painting.
He would have praised her for it, she thought.
A few days later, Ms Wan asked Jia Jia to call in. The maid had returned and she was loading bottles into the fridge again. They seemed to be Japanese sake this time.
Mr Du was not home.
‘This is exactly what I wanted!’ Ms Wan marvelled as she bowed, and traced her index finger over the painting. ‘These ponds look like they’re real! Oh, and look at the Buddha’s eyes! They’re so kind … so caring.’
She knelt down on the marble floor, held her palms together in front of her chest, closed her eyes and prayed as if the Buddha was really sitting in the painting now that it was complete.
‘I’ll bring you a gift from Tibet,’ Jia Jia said.
‘Only a kind and pure person like you would be able to complete such a stunning painting.’ Ms Wan rose and squeezed Jia Jia’s arm. It was a strong clasp that felt ill-matched to her spare, frail body.
‘I heard that my husband was home when you came last time,’ Ms Wan continued. ‘Did he tell you that I’m moving? The air is too bad in the city centre.’
‘It’s terrible.’
‘I don’t mind telling you, but we’re getting a divorce. The kids are in America now, so I thought it was a good time to get this done. I really can’t stay with him any longer. He’s never at home. I might as well be living alone. We haven’t had a dinner as a family in over two months. Two months! That’s more than sixty days. And this time when I came back, the apartment looked like it could have been robbed! It was a mess!’ Ms Wan twirled around in a circle and pointed at random things.
Then she picked up her bag and pulled out two piles of new one-hundred-yuan notes bundled together with paper straps.
‘How could I spend another day with this man?’ she said as she handed the money to Jia Jia. ‘Count it again, will you? I’m a little disorganised these days. He’s so dirty, you know? Even right after a shower, I still think he’s so dirty.’
‘He must really love you,’ Jia Jia said, unsure of what else she could tell Ms Wan. She stuffed the money directly into the side pocket of her purse, as a gesture of her trust.
‘We have two children now,’ Ms Wan said. ‘Love and passion are not going to get you through a lifetime together. Marriage eventually becomes about two people getting on and living through the days steadily, having a companion when you’re old. He doesn’t get it.’
‘When you move away, what will you do about this painting?’ Jia Jia asked.
‘I’m sure Old Du will be happy with it. It’ll do him good, if you ask me. You have to call me when you’re back, all right? I’ll have a larger wall in my new living room.’ She stretched her arms wide to indicate the immensity of the wall. ‘I want another painting. A bigger one!’
Jia Jia agreed and laced up her trainers in preparation to leave.
‘Mr Du has a wonderful singing voice,’ she said to Ms Wan on her way out.
‘Did he sing for you? He used to sing at home from morning to night until we had our second child. It was too loud for me. I prefer a quiet environment.’ Ms Wan rubbed her neck and winced. ‘I must be getting old. Even on warm days like today, I still always feel like there’s wind blowing on my neck.’
She wrapped a blue scarf around herself and escorted Jia Jia out the door.
11
On the day of Jia Jia’s flight to Lhasa, she found Xiao Fang waiting for her outside the door. Her father’s wife was wearing a rose-coloured silky blouse and blue denim shorts. Her hair was straight and dyed black, held loosely together by a Burberry-chequered clip. Her deep red lipstick made her ageing lips look like dried cranberries, and the shorts were too high and did not suit her. But she had always been like a girl, stubborn and going her own way with a disregard for consequences; she had always, to herself and her family, been the centre of the universe. Now Jia Jia’s father had joined that family too.
Jia Jia lifted her suitcase down the front steps. The sky was blue towards the east, but where she was, it had turned grey.
‘Jia Jia!’ Xiao Fang removed her sunglasses and waved them in the air. ‘Are you leaving now? I asked your aunt, she told
me you’re travelling to Tibet today. I’ll drive you to the airport.’
Jia Jia looked around for her father.
‘It’s just me,’ said Xiao Fang. ‘Your dad doesn’t know that I’m here. He’s old now, you know? He has constipation problems and his shoulder hurts all the time. Jia Jia, would you like to move back in with us?’
‘Move back in?’
‘We have two empty rooms, one of them has a bathroom, you can—’
‘No,’ Jia Jia said. ‘I mean, there’s no need for that, thank you. I’m living well here.’
Xiao Fang wore a saddened, grim look, like a beaten dog that had just been wronged.
She sighed and said, ‘Your aunt is going through tough times too.’
Her voice had the tone of a mother attempting to explain something difficult to her child in the least upsetting way possible. Jia Jia’s own mother had never spoken like that: she had simply laughed, cried, loved and hated with all the life in her and never sheltered Jia Jia from any kind of truth – beautiful or shattering. But Jia Jia remembered how, when she was young, she had wished that when her mother stroked her hair at night, she would whisper to Jia Jia that they were going to live as a complete family, that this woman standing in front of her now was only her Auntie Fang Fang and nothing more. Instead her mother had held Jia Jia in her arms, sometimes sobbing into her daughter’s hair, and other times rocking her back and forth with a soft, distant smile on her face. She had never attempted to explain anything.
‘My old apartment is empty,’ Xiao Fang continued. ‘If you don’t mind, you could stay there. You, your grandmother and your aunt would all be more comfortable.’
‘Tell my father to take care. I’ll see him when I come back.’
‘Think about it, for your aunt’s sake. Let me drive you.’
‘I’ve ordered a taxi,’ said Jia Jia.
Xiao Fang took the suitcase’s handle and helped Jia Jia drag it to the black Toyota that was waiting at the gate of the compound. She beamed and waved her sunglasses again before putting them on. Jia Jia thought of the way her father had lifted the corners of his lips and exposed his teeth at the table in the Shanghainese restaurant.