by Lu Min
The incident occurred in a flash, and there were, furthermore, several vague aspects to it.
Si Jia had a sudden urge for a midnight snack. Maybe someone had intentionally woke her up, or maybe she was pretending to sleep and sought out the opportunity. Maybe someone forgot to close the bedroom door or had secretly opened it. Was the stepfather overacting in his fervent participation and indulgence, or was it mere physical instinct? Was he really unaware that the door was open with a familiar, dark figure planted there?…
Like fish in water and their bodies in their proper environs, its participants could only put their minds and energy in that one place. No matter if they were old or young, good-looking or ugly, fat or slender, it could be said without reservation that they did whatever pleased and whatever they found to titillate them. But it's different when there's an observer, a child or a relative-or especially a stepfather's daughter like Si Jia. Imagine what she saw to her surprise. The bedsheets rumpled up into a horrid whirlpool, yellowing underpants stripped off onto a calf, foot soles and callouses swinging everywhere in the air, two balls of filthy, old meat curling up together like worms-their ears, nose and mouths choking up, moaning and groaning-how incredibly ugly and sick!
So that's how it was. Si Ji stood by the door in her thin pajamas in obfuscated night light. She peered for a bit, listened for a bit, and even thought for a bit. She was only a step away from theory to awareness and from hearing to seeing, but that was the difference from heaven and hell…rumble, rumble…a skyscraper slams into the ground as the dust blooms out over the ruins. She'd stepped past those ten years of passionate adoration for her stepfather. So that's the way he is.
Si Jia let out an abbreviated chuckle, her teeth translucently shining, standing there cryptically attractive. An idea was flickering in her mind.
The next day she wanted formal dates seeking marriage. With fierce velocity, she made offers her suitors could never refuse, and they would, instead, merely happily concede their defeat.
A Fetus in the Belly
[1]
Danqing, I have to tell you something-something big. After all it's been six years since you've passed, and a whole lot has happened…However first I want to talk to you about time, a subject that'll serve as a short segue.
Did you know that starting from about four years ago, from the end of spring to the beginning of fall, they've implemented daylight savings time nation-wide. For example this year, starting from April fifteenth, everyone in China must set their clocks ahead one hour, and then when September sixteenth comes, the clocks go back again…
They say it's the new scientific thing. I hear it's a good, foreign method that's worth learning, that it saves energy and whatnot. I don't know why, every year when daylight savings time comes around I get really angry about it. It's as if I just can't stand this delusional method anymore. What in the world could you say time is, that everyone can fool around with it, adjusting it from fast to slow? Now isn't everything just a mess?…When they do it, I can feel my inner surveyor's staff being moved. It's like my connection with the past gets twisted and broken. The first time it happened, I had a minute though extreme anxiety about changing time. I felt if I changed it even just one hour, I wouldn't be able to find you anymore. Our common rhythm would start to dissipate and there would be no way to get it back in sync…
I stubbornly refused to adjust my watch, keeping it at the same time and passing my days accordingly, which at the most compromised my work schedule…Even your mother couldn't understand why I'd pig-headedly refuse to go along with this insignificant trend.
When I go out, I keep running into an old classmate of yours who stops and calls me uncle from a long distance. He seems to be dating now as he always has his arm around a long-haired lady. When I walk by him I think to myself that he's surely told her about the Christmas dance affair. It pains me a lot to think about it. The two of you should have been very similar-a good twenty-five years old, dating as normal…but time is with you, forever stuck, and all the watch motors of the world couldn't pull time free for you.
What would be the best way to explain my sensitivity and hostility towards time? At every which holiday or season, on your birthday or execution memorial day, whenever Christmas is coming or the freezing winter arrives, I get shoved into a mire of suffering. If I could, I'd surely refuse time's tyranny, insanely destroying every calendar and clock in the world…
In reality, I know well that even without daylight savings time or all the various holidays and memorials, that my temporal rhythm with you, son, would still surely be out of sync. If you think about it, I'm getting old, but you're forever stuck at nineteen years old. The distance between us is already being unstoppably lengthened…After a few years when I'm sixty or seventy, you'll still be nineteen. If our next child ends up surviving, we'll only see it mature to eighteen or nineteen years old again-what a practical joke time is! How couldn't I hate it?
Oh, I mentioned our second child just now. I guess it scared you. Indeed, that was the "something big" I wanted to tell you about.
Honestly, I hesitated a lot before writing this familial letter today, because I don't know if it's good news or bad news. After a long period of uneventful days, the news came crashing down from above and smashed out a huge pit out of my daily life.
…It was last night that your mother told me she was more than two months pregnant. If everything goes smoothly we should be able to give you a little brother or sister by the end of October. Six years after you've gone away, your mother and I will again become parents.
It's surely come as a great shock to you, and you're finding it difficult to accept. I've already told you once before that your mother and I stopped being intimate…It was true at the time; I didn't lie. Our love life had indeed frozen over back then. But ultimately, after all these years have passed…
Actually, only in recent years and under extremely random circumstances did we start having normal conjugal relations again. It's important to note that your mother's hormones were already going out of balance and the symptoms of menopause were setting in one after the other. Her face flushed, she got hot flashes, she had sudden fluctuations in menstrual fluid etc. In reality our conjugal relations were more symbolic than a celebration of actual happiness. It was akin to mutual sympathy, a common struggle against our aging bodies…Because it was a rare occurrence-and also because we greatly underestimated our bodily functions-we didn't take any precautions. But who'd have guessed that this would happen?
I'm even more surprised than you, and I reject it even more. So since yesterday I've been considering how I could convince your mother to get an operation, take the opportunity to stop before news gets around, and cover up this embarrassing event.
[2]
Lan Ying's face blushed in embarrassment, tugging at the edges of the blanket she was holding. At first, I thought I was already through menopause, so I wasn't careful the last two months. But for the last few weeks I've been intolerably nauseous…Hurried and ashamed, she didn't dare put her hand on her belly, even though there hadn't been the slightest change there.
Lu Zhongsheng was just getting ready to turn over and lay in bed with half his body still outside the covers when he promptly stopped. It seemed like only by maintaining stillness could he overthrow the substance of what his wife just said…So I went to the hospital for a checkup. I'd have never guessed it, but that's what it was.
Lu Zhongsheng's face and ears instantly turned crimson, as if he took a huge slap in the face in front of a crowded public square. He briskly calculated that he was 53 years old and Lan Ying 51, and that-aha!-that totals just over 100 years! A hundred-year-old couple having another child would physiologically repulse your average man, who'd just have to laugh under his sleeves. The only reaction anyone could typically have is to be reminded of sex, thinking of what a sex life is like, and imagining an old couple squirming around in bed…
Heavens! Another disgrace. We've already lost our first chi
ld, and losing him was already hugely shameful and the talk of the town. Fortunately as time passed, it's already been pretty much forgotten, and we've just barely regained a shred of dignity. Our honor is like a paper-faced drum that was rashly pounded open and made mute the year Danqing died, and after recent years after painstaking repair, we seem to have patched it over. But this time around, wouldn't birthing and raising another child at such an inappropriate age be like handing them a material to mock us with or looking for a way to embarrass ourselves? …Lu Zhongsheng's inclination to worry about social perceptions had resurfaced. He couldn't imagine how people would look at him if they were to find out-the congratulations to his face and guesses behind his back…
Why not take a trip to the hospital? Old-age pregnancies are very dangerous. We'd be better off if we…finished it. Furthermore, if you'd really wanted another childbirth, don't you think we should have done it earlier? It's too late now…Nowadays, medically speaking, these operations are easy. He tried consulting her as he hemmed and hawed, wanting to feel out Lan Ying's actual thoughts. Perhaps it was unnecessary for a husband to beat around the bush like that with his own wife, but as it concerned a child he figured he should tread gingerly.
Furthermore, think about it. Are we still going to have enough energy and enthusiasm? We'll be over sixty years old when the child is ten. We'll be dead before he's married, and he'll be an orphan…Lu Zhongsheng wanted to speak brutally, and indeed he was being frank.
You! You're nothing but a savage beast! They killed my boy, and now you're going to kill this one yourself? The fatality rate in our family needs to be doubled? Don't you dare go there! Lan Ying quickly got out of bed and stood up firmly on the ground. Her smooth thighs were at shoulder width like a flagpole with a guard standing next to it. She grit her teeth with a fierce face, putting on her toughest stance ever. The way she glared at Lu Zhongsheng was as if he were an executioner clenching a knife.
Lu Zhongsheng hadn't expected such an intense reaction and could only wave his hands in the air in concession, asking her to come back to bed first. Don't catch cold. If you really want the child, it would be very bad news to catch a cold, not to mention getting angry…
Sure enough, his words had an effect. Lan Ying had found, in a lightning flash, a talisman. She nodded her head to herself. That's right, actually. I won't get angry or sad from now on-and no matter what, I won't let this child be harmed in any way. Then she turned around, and surprisingly, went slowly to sleep, sweetly breathing as the issue had been emphatically decided.
Lu Zhongsheng lay down with her. The more sweetly Lan Ying slept, the worse he felt about it. She was unstoppable. If you think about it, my wife was being really mean just then. But what she said was true. If she were really to put down the child, wouldn't it be a familial infanticide and yet another life being extinguished?
Lu Zhongsheng suddenly remembered the infant in the basket by the root vegetable stand in the food market several years back-that white, fat child who captivated Lan Ying…Along these lines, Lan Ying's thoughts about children were like an underground spring whose waters flowed far longer than just a couple days. From that time on, Lan Ying had already initiated-although she didn't realize it herself-a desire for an infant, a hope for a new life…And now Heaven had delivered straight to her door, straight into her belly-how could she ever let that slip away?
Apparently there was no other choice. The child's life had to be saved, and no matter what trying ordeals lay ahead, they could only rush desperately on…
[3]
It wasn't Lan Ying's first time giving birth, true. But Danqing's arrival was, after all, twenty five years ago, a whole generation back. She'd practically forgotten the experience, and her personality fluctuated between being a mother or a grandmother as her one person alternately played both roles. She consciously gave herself more love and care, like a mother-in-law would care for her son's wife-from a third-person, older-generation perspective she was superstitious, nagging, and cautious. Concerning every incessant discomfort and pain in her body, she'd report them in succession to someone from the older generation that she herself was playing. This elder would then ask details and take great care, as if her daughter-in-law were the first to give birth.
Part of her would say, Aye. You'd never guess. I threw up-and how couldn't I? I feel so nauseous. After I throw up I get hungry and have to eat, but then I just throw it up again.
Then the other part of her would say, It's no big deal. That's just the way it is. Take your time, you'll get used to it.
Part of her would say, There was a red stain on my underwear yesterday and it gave me a good scare. I rushed into bed thinking, could this be a sign of miscarriage? What would I do if that happened? I'd have to stay in bed for a whole five months to save the fetus. I felt worried and confused for a while, but then I suddenly remembered that my long underwear was red and had a tendency to bleed. You see how nervous I am?…
Then the other part of her would say, It's not a big deal. Being a bit nervous is okay. What if the red stain meant there really was a problem? You've been so weak for the last few months.
A part of her would ask, Why do I always feel dizzy? I have headaches and heart palpitations, too-it's like I can't handle it. What do you think I should do about it?…I don't remember it being like this when I was pregnant with Danqing…
Then the other part of her would answer, You're older now, after all. You're wishing you were my young daughter-in-law.
Then a part of her would say: Aye. My legs are swelling. Look, if I press down on them they stay indented for hours.
…
Lu Zhongsheng would see her talking to herself as he passed the kitchen or restroom, hearing her asking about the weather, answering with wisdom, nagging in kindness or talking as if someone else was really there. He'd listen for a while and then feel afraid and depressed. He reflected, Surely the only reason Lan Ying would deceive herself and play act like this is because she's so neglected and unloved. Furthermore, there's 51-year-old physiology. Surely she's afraid about what'll happen, like a hard birth, deformed fetus, breech birth, pregnancy-induced hypertension, excessive bleeding-all crises that an older-aged woman might face when giving birth…But she's chosen to persevere. No one's there to help her and there's no way out. Thus, she had to create an imaginary guardian angel, someone to be her mother or mother-in-law who talks to her, consoles her and helps her resolve issues…
In reality, Lu Zhongsheng was already completely on Lan Ying's side, supporting her and cooperating with her. But still, Lan Ying had apparently rejected him. She'd always behave shrewishly and confidently-straight to Lu Zhongsheng's face. She'd flip through birthing magazines and clip out articles on occasion. She was collecting information on older women and birthing and how to increase physical strength, thinking of ways to supplement her nutrition. You have to eat nuts for the first three months, supplement protein and vitamins in months five and six, and eat soups, grains and fruits in the last trimester…Her previous experience going to the food market gave her the chance to display her acquired talents, having a real knack for washing, chopping, stir-frying and stewing. The dinner table transformed into something like a stage presenting a gaudy act-but the audience, surprisingly, was still just the two of them. Lan Ying would always pat her belly in ritual fashion. We're eating now, dear. Even with an unborn child, there was still an over-abundance of dishes (as juxtaposed to a backdrop of overpowering frigidity) …
Lu Zhongsheng watched one of the empty place settings at the table, always vaguely feeling that Danqing was sitting there, silently watching them. With profound emotion and sympathy, he saw his father's thick eyeglasses and his chin as loose as a pocket…And his mother, who was badly out of shape and whose bookishness had vanished in the blink of an eye, was seemingly putting full concentration into eating and nutrition as if it were her whole life.
It could be said that it was right in the year of her pregnancy that Lan Ying's personality and i
nner world started changing in a fundamental way. She developed unprecedented motherly instincts and had buried away previous traits like her perceptive mentality, scholastic airs, appreciative ability and keen judgment. Lu Zhongsheng fancied that all these characteristics were sucked away by a gust from a huge, outside force, which pulled them over to somewhere strange to her. What came in their place was the fetus in her belly, and the entirety of Lan Ying's thoughts and intelligence was from all appearances completely focused on that alone…
The hardest thing for Lu Zhongsheng to accept was her frigidity on Danqing's birthdays and memorial days-she'd even completely forgotten them twice. To his surprise she'd make comparisons to Danqing when planning the infant's upbringing, but her tone was devoid of any sadness-as if Danqing were just the neighbor’s child.
Was that the strength of this vital force, mother's love? Was mother's love exclusive and solitary? Was it cautious and greedy? Lu Zhongsheng reached out to caress his wife's belly. What of all things would it bring, that intangible umbilical cord, the one that connected the infant to its mother?
[4]
But amid the crowd, however, it was yet another situation…
Every time they went to the hospital for a checkup, Lu Zhongsheng would offer to see Lan Ying in and out of the doctor's office, because he doubted if she really had the courage to go it alone. If this same, big belly was of a young woman it would emanate purity and chaste beauty. But on Lan Ying, who was over 50 years old, it seemed like some kind of a farce or practical joke. Out on the busy streets, they struggled to walk along under their graying hair, like trying to swim upstream. The crowd came upon them as waves in the ocean at high tide, lapping up on them and trying to push them backward. Those relinquishing their seats to them on the public buses would turn their heads and could hardly suppress their smiles. The more direct, non-resident outsiders would directly ask Lan Ying her age out of curiosity…Every time they went out, it was like a never-ending journey through nasty weather, using up unfathomable stores of energy just to get to the hospital unharmed.