Yu Hua: Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China

Lin Hong interrupted him. “Do you know Qingqing?”

“Qingqing?” he said. There was a pause. Lin Hong waited, holding the receiver. “I don’t know her,” he said finally.

Lin Hong tried to stay calm. “Li Hanlin is having an affair. He’s hooked up with some woman behind my back. Her name is Qingqing. I just found out today. They meet, they talk on the phone, they write to each other. I have the letters she sent him. They’ve known each other for more than a year now—”

This time it was the man at the other end who interrupted her. “I know Li Hanlin pretty well,” he said, “but I don’t know anything about this Qingqing person. Could you have misinterpreted? Perhaps they’re just friends … Excuse me, someone’s knocking at the door. Hold on.”

He put down the phone, and after a moment she heard two men talking and steps coming toward the telephone. The receiver was picked up and the man said, “Hello?”

She knew that he was waiting for her to go on, but she didn’t want to say more, so all she said was “If you have a guest, I’ll let you go.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about it later.”

He hung up. Lin Hong still clutched the receiver. She looked up the number of another friend of Li Hanlin. She dialed and heard someone pick up the phone. “Hello?”

“This is Lin Hong,” she said.

“Lin Hong, how are you? And how’s Li Hanlin? What’s he up to these days?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you know Qingqing?”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. She had no choice but to continue. “Li Hanlin has been carrying on with another woman behind my back.”

“Surely not.” Now, at last, he spoke. “Li Hanlin wouldn’t do that kind of thing. I know him. Is it possible that you’re being a bit … over-suspicious?”

“I’ve got evidence,” Lin Hong said. “I’ve got the letters this woman wrote, and the photos she gave him. I called her up on the phone just now, also.”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

His tone was frosty, and Lin Hong knew she would get nothing more out of him, so she hung up the phone and went to the balcony and sat down. Li Hanlin had a few other friends, but she didn’t want to call them. They would simply come to his defense and show her no sympathy. A long time ago she had had friends of her own — Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning — but she had drifted apart from them after her marriage, hanging out with Li Hanlin’s pals, chatting and joking with them, going shopping with their wives. Those wives had replaced Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning. Only now did she realize she had lost all her friends.

She had no idea how to get in touch with Zhao Ping or Zhang Lini. She had only Shen Ning’s number, scribbled down a year ago when they had run into each other in the street. She had written the number in her book and then forgotten all about it.

It was Shen Ning’s husband who answered the phone. He told Lin Hong to hang on, and then Shen Ning came on the line. “Yes, who is it?”

“It’s me, Lin Hong.”

She heard a yelp of delight at the other end, then Shen Ning unleashed a stream of comments and questions: “It’s great to hear your voice! I called you once, but nobody picked up. Are you doing well? It’s been ages since we saw each other. A year now, right? It seems like ages. Have you heard from Zhao Ping and Zhang Lini at all? It’s been years since I saw them, too. Are you doing well?”

“No, I’m not doing well,” Lin Hong said.

Shen Ning went quiet. “What did you say?”

Tears began to spill from Lin Hong’s eyes. “My husband has been cheating on me. He’s been carrying on with some woman …” She was sobbing too much to continue.

“What happened?” Shen Ning asked.

“Yesterday,” Lin Hong said, “yesterday, when I was tidying his drawer, I found a folded envelope, and when I opened it I found two more envelopes inside. He had hidden a key inside those three envelopes. I got suspicious and tried all the locks in the apartment, but it didn’t open any of them. So I thought maybe it was the key to his office desk, and this morning I went to his office, and that’s where I found the letters that this woman wrote to him, as well as a couple of photos—”

“Outrageous!” Shen Ning started cursing.

Now that Lin Hong had an ally at last, her grief and resentment could find release. “I did everything for him,” she said. “I never gave a moment’s thought to whether there were things I should have. All the time I was thinking of what I could do for him, what he’d like to eat, what clothes he should wear. After we got married, I completely forgot about myself. All that mattered to me was catering to his needs, and now look what he gets up to …”

“What’s your plan?” Shen Ning asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you,” Shen Ning said. “You can’t afford to be weak at this point, and you can’t be softhearted, either. You have to punish him. No more crying from now on — whatever you do, don’t let him see you cry. You need to look furious and ignore him. Don’t cook his meals; don’t do his laundry; don’t do anything for him. Don’t let him sleep in your bed — make him sleep on the sofa. At the very least, make him sleep on the sofa for a year or so. He’ll beg you, he’ll get down on his knees, he’ll even slap himself on the face, but stick to your guns. He’ll make all kinds of promises — men are good at that, but their promises are worth no more than a dog’s bark. Don’t believe a word of it. In short, you need to make him understand the costs incurred when he has a romantic adventure, you have to give him a taste of hell on earth, you have to make him feel that life’s not worth living, that he’d be better off dead.”

A FEW DAYS LATER, Li Hanlin came back from his trip. He found Lin Hong sitting on the balcony, indifferent to his homecoming. He laid his bag on the sofa, went over to Lin Hong, and looked at her. She seemed to have been struck dumb. “What’s wrong?” he said.

Lin Hong’s eyes were fixed on the floor. Li Hanlin waited by her side, and when she still said nothing he went over to the sofa, opened his bag, and dumped out the dirty clothes, then looked at her. He was displeased to find her still staring at the floor. “What’s the meaning of this?” he said.

Lin Hong turned away from him and surveyed the view from the balcony. Li Hanlin went back to rummaging around in his bag. He took out his other belongings and laid them on the sofa. Then he began to lose his temper. He walked over to Lin Hong and started to shout. “What the hell is this about? I come home and you put on a sourpuss face. What have I done to offend you now? You—”

He could see that Li Hanlin stopped abruptly. A key was clasped between Lin Hong’s finger and thumb. There was a buzzing noise in his head. He stood there a moment, then went to his study and opened a drawer. Some magazines were stacked inside. He groped around underneath the magazines, but failed to find the neatly folded envelope in the right-hand corner. He realized he was breathing heavily.

Li Hanlin stood by the window for a long time. Then he left the room and walked quietly over to Lin Hong. He bent down. “You’ve been to my office?”

Lin Hong sat there motionless. Li Hanlin looked at her. “You’ve read Qingqing’s letters?”

Lin Hong began to tremble. Li Hanlin hesitated, then put his hand on her shoulder. Lin Hong jerked violently, knocking his hand away. It returned to its original position and hung there for a moment before he put it in his trouser pocket. “This is the situation,” he said. “I met Qingqing two years ago, at a friend’s house. She’s a cousin of his, so she often stops by. One day I ran into her in the street and we began seeing each other. She lives with her parents and I live with you, so we’re not in a position … What I mean to say is, she and I are not in a position to have sex. When we meet, it’s in a cinema or a park or just walking in the street. She and I, all we’ve done is … all we’ve done is kiss.”