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

He sat on her bed for a long time, but when she made no reply he stood up and left. After he had gently closed the door behind him, she began to weep. How could he just slip out like that, so nonchalantly?

He went back to the sofa, and after he lay down the progress that had been made was nullified; they were back where they had started.

AFTER TWENTY-SIX DAYS OF THIS, Li Hanlin finally couldn’t take it anymore. He told Lin Hong that he had a constant ache in every joint, an agonizing crick in his neck, and a chronic stomachache as well. “We can’t go on like this,” he said.

Now, at last, he was speaking assertively. He was circumspect no more. He stood gesticulating before Lin Hong, the image of self-assurance. “I have already punished myself,” he said, “and still you won’t forgive me. If we carry on like this, I won’t be the only one to suffer — you’ll find it equally unbearable. I really have had more than I can take. I just can’t go on like this anymore. The only thing to do is …” He paused for a moment. “The only thing to do is get divorced.”

As he spoke, Lin Hong had her back to him, but when he said this she spun around. “Forget about divorcing me! You hurt me, and you still haven’t paid the price. You want to hightail it out of here. You want to run off to your Qingqing, but I won’t have it. I am going to pin you down, pin you down till you’re old, pin you down till you’re dead.”

When a smile appeared on Li Hanlin’s face, she suddenly understood. He wasn’t at all opposed to being pinned down, being pinned down until his hair had gone white, until he was dead. He wouldn’t raise the slightest objection. So she broke off and stood there, unsure what to do. She felt tears falling, and this simply added to her humiliation. So many days of misery, and a smile was all she got. For weeks she had been waiting for his repentance, his self-indictment. At the very least, he should shed some heartfelt tears, demonstrate true remorse, but he wasn’t doing anything like that; instead, he was standing in front of her, declaring boldly, “The only thing to do is get divorced.”

She raised her hand and wiped her tears away. “All right, forget it,” she said. “Better to get divorced.”

At this, his smile vanished. She went into the bedroom, locked the door, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep with her clothes on.

THEY WERE WALKING TOWARD the registry office. That was where they had gone to formalize their marriage, and now they were going to dissolve it. A wall ran along one side of the street and Li Hanlin walked in front, Lin Hong a few steps behind. From time to time he would stop and wait for her to catch up, then walk on. Neither of them said a word. Li Hanlin bowed his head and knitted his brows, as though weighed down by worry. Lin Hong walked with her head up, letting the autumn breeze toss her hair about. Now and again, a wisp of a smile could be seen on her otherwise expressionless face. It was a smile like a falling leaf, desolate, lifeless.

They passed shops they used to frequent and bus stops where they had waited together. As they walked on and on, it seemed as though time were running backward. When Li Hanlin reached a coffee shop called Sundown, he came to a halt and waited for Lin Hong. He stopped because he’d remembered that they had come here right after registering their marriage: they had sat by a window overlooking the street, and he had ordered a cup of coffee and she a Sprite. “Shall we go in and have a drink?” he called.

By now Lin Hong had caught up with him. She turned, looked upward, and saw a neon sign above the eaves, the tubes of light forming the words “Sundown Café.” She agreed to his suggestion and together they entered. It was afternoon, and customers were few. They selected a table by the window, overlooking the street, and once again he ordered a coffee and she a Sprite. They thought about what they had drunk that earlier time.

Li Hanlin was the first to smile, followed soon by Lin Hong, but they quickly suppressed their smiles and avoided each other’s eyes. He looked out the window, and she looked at the other people in the coffee shop. She noticed a young woman dressed in red, sitting alone on their right. The woman was watching them. It seemed to Lin Hong that she had a strange look on her face. Lin Hong put two and two together, and a name flashed into her head: Qingqing.

Lin Hong threw Li Hanlin a glance. He, too, had seen the woman. From the surprised look on his face, it was clear he had not expected to run into her here. When he turned his head, he found Lin Hong’s eyes on him, and he knew that she knew. He gave a wry smile.

“So you told her,” Lin Hong said.

“What?”

“You told her we were going to get divorced, so she came here.”

“No.”

Lin Hong felt her heart flood with pain. “You needn’t have been in such a rush.”

“No,” he said again. “She doesn’t know anything.”

She looked at him intently. He had such a firm expression on his face that she began to give some credence to what he’d said. She looked back at the young woman. This Qingqing was watching them, but as soon as Lin Hong glanced at her she turned away. “She’s staring at you,” Lin Hong said. “You’d better go over and say hello.”

“No,” he said.

“We’re about to get divorced. What are you worried about?”

“No,” he repeated.

She looked at him. His unshakeable attitude suddenly gave her a warm feeling. She took another peek at Qingqing. This time she wasn’t looking at them; she was drinking from her glass. One leg was perched on top of the other. In her posture, she seemed to lack the composure one might have expected. Lin Hong took another look at Li Hanlin, who was staring grimly out the window. “Kiss me,” she said.

He turned around in astonishment.

“Kiss me,” she repeated. “After this, you’ll never kiss me again, so I want you to kiss me now.”

He nodded and reached across the table.

“Sit next to me when you kiss me,” she said.

So he stood up and sat down next to her and pressed his lips to her cheek.

“Put your arms around me,” she said.

He put his arms around her, and he felt her lips brushing over his face and meeting his lips. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and her arms embraced him. It seemed to him a kiss as long as night. She used her hands to hold his body in place and her tongue to keep his mouth in place. Her ardor entered his body through his mouth, spreading and expanding boundlessly.

Through it all, Lin Hong’s eyes were fixed on the other woman. She watched as Qingqing kept glancing in their direction, as she uneasily fingered her glass, and as, in the end, she stood up and hurried out. When her red silhouette slipped past them, Lin Hong’s heart filled with joy, for she had the sudden conviction that victory was hers. After twenty-seven days of grief and indignation, insomnia and emptiness, her enemy had surrendered without a fight.

Her hands slipped off Li Hanlin’s body, and her mouth disengaged from his. She turned to him with a smile.

My father used to be a surgeon. He was a strong, robust man with a resonant voice. He regularly stood at the operating table for ten hours at a time, but at the end of his shift his face would not show the slightest signs of fatigue, and as he walked back to our apartment his steps were loud and firm. Nearing home, he would often take a pee by the corner of the alley outside. His urine would splash noisily on the wall, like a sudden downpour of rain.

When my father was twenty-five years old, he married a pretty young worker from the textile mill, and in their second year of marriage she gave him a son, my older brother, and two years later she had another son, who was me.