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

Pingping sat down in the chair again, and as I sipped my water I said, “In the past, every time I came to your house, I would always find Shen Tianxiang and the others here, or if they weren’t all three here, at least one of them was bound to be. Today, not one of them has come, and even Lin Meng is not at home, so it’s just the two of us, and you’re not a great talker …”

Pingping was all keyed up, I suddenly realized. Her head had swiveled round in the direction of the door, and she was listening to something, listening, apparently, to the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. They walked with a very slow step. They seemed to be in no hurry. They reached the landing just outside, then continued up the next flight of stairs. Pingping exhaled, then turned to look at me. Her face was so pale it gave me a shock. She smiled again, the way that made her skin tighten. I couldn’t stand to look at her smile, so instead I glanced around the room. The balloons had disappeared. No pink colors anywhere, so far as I could see, and I couldn’t help but take a quick glance at the balcony, but Pingping had no panties hanging there, so there was no pink there either. “Do you not like balloons anymore?” I asked.

Pingping’s eyes were watching me in a way that gave me a feeling she heard my voice but didn’t hear what I was saying. “The balloons are gone,” I said.

“Balloons?” She looked baffled.

“That’s right, balloons,” I said. “Didn’t you used to have lots of balloons hanging in your apartment?”

“Oh …” She remembered.

“I get the feeling,” I said, “that today you’re acting a little … How shall I put it? A little strange.”

“No, I’m not.” She shook her head.

Her denial didn’t seem very confident. “I wasn’t originally planning to come and see you, did you know that?” I said. “We’ve moved to a new place, and I was helping my mother to get things sorted out in the kitchen and helping my father to get things sorted out in the study, and they were both driving me crazy the way they were bossing me about, so I hotfooted it out of there, and at first I had the idea of going to see Shen Tianxiang, but he and I were together just a couple of days ago, and I often hang out with Wang Fei and Chen Liqing, so you two were the only people I hadn’t seen for a long time. That’s why I came to your apartment, not realizing Lin Meng wouldn’t be home. I’d forgotten he’d be at work today.”

I didn’t reveal that I had made up a story about her and Lin Meng having a fight. Pingping was a serious person. “It didn’t occur to me you’d be at home on your own …”

Finding Pingping alone and so preoccupied, I thought I really should leave. I stood up. “I’ll be off now,” I said.

Pingping got to her feet at once. “Why don’t you stay a bit longer?”

“No, I should go.”

She said nothing more and simply stood there waiting. It looked increasingly as though she wanted me out of there right away, and I took a couple of steps toward the door. Then a thought occurred to me. “I’ll just use your bathroom. There are no public toilets on your street,” I added, closing the door behind me.

Originally I was just going to have a pee, but after I’d finished peeing I felt like having a crap, so it was going to take me a while. Just after I squatted down, I heard a thudding outside as though someone was running upstairs at high speed. There was a cry of “Pingping, Pingping!” as he reached the door to the apartment.

It was Lin Meng. I heard Pingping saying, with a quiver in her voice, “How come you’re back?”

The door must have opened; Lin Meng had come in. “Today I was sent out to pick up a shipment,” I heard him say. “I was desperate for a pee, but I couldn’t find a toilet anywhere on the road, so I had to rush back home.”

Lin Meng seemed to charge like a wild boar toward the bathroom. As he tugged at the bathroom door, he suddenly went quiet. He must have been shocked to find the door locked, and I heard him ask Pingping in a flustered voice, “Is there someone in there?”

Pingping must have nodded, for the next thing I heard was Lin Meng bellowing, “Who’s in there?”

Inside the bathroom, I couldn’t help but grin. Before I had the chance to reply, Lin Meng started kicking the door and shouting, “Come out of there!”

At this stage, I had only just squatted down and had had no time to do my business, but given how the door was shuddering under the impact of his kicks I had no choice but to pull up my pants, fasten my belt, and open the bathroom door. When Lin Meng saw it was me, he was dumbfounded. “Lin Meng, I haven’t finished yet,” I said, “but you were kicking the door so loud. I was about to dump my load, but with you kicking like that, it went back in again.”

Lin Meng stared at me, his eyes as big as saucers. “I never expected it would be you!” he said, through clenched teeth.

His expression made me laugh out loud. “Don’t look at me that way,” I said.

But Lin Meng just carried on staring, and pointed at me, as well. I kept my distance from his extended forefinger. “You’re giving me the shivers,” I said.

“It’s you who’s giving me the shivers!” Lin Meng roared.

His shouting so alarmed me that I began to take his indignation seriously. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I had no idea you would carry on with my wife,” he said.

“Carry on?” I said. “What do you mean ‘carry on’?”

“Cut out the playacting,” he said.

I threw a glance at Pingping, hoping to get some idea of what Lin Meng was on about, but I found her face had gone completely white, like a sheet of paper, with just a trace of gray around her lips. The way she looked made me even more uneasy. Now I understood what Lin Meng had in mind. He thought I had slept with Pingping. “Lin Meng,” I said, “you’re making a big mistake. There’s absolutely nothing going on between me and her.”

I saw that she was nodding, but Lin Meng seemed not to have the slightest interest in my declaration or in her nod. He pointed at me. “You can give up trying to deny it,” he said. “As soon as I came in the door, I could see she was acting strange. Right away I knew there was something fishy going on.”

“No,” I said. “What you think happened didn’t happen at all.”

“It didn’t happen?” He took a step forward. “Why were you hiding in the bathroom?”

“I wasn’t hiding in the bathroom,” I said.

He pointed at the bathroom. “What’s this — the kitchen?”

“It’s not the kitchen, it’s the bathroom,” I said. “But I wasn’t hiding there, I was having a crap.”

“Bullshit!” With this, he ran over to the toilet and took a look down, then stood triumphantly by the door. “Why don’t I see any crap?” he said.

“I didn’t have time to do it,” I told him. “The way you were kicking the door, it wouldn’t come out.”

“Who are you trying to kid?” He waved his hand contemptuously, and then spun on his heel and dived into the bathroom, slamming the door shut, and I heard him saying inside, “The two of you have got me so mad I’m losing my senses. I practically forgot I was dying for a pee.”

I could hear his urine splattering on the toilet. I took a look at Pingping. She was now sitting on a chair. Her face was buried in her hands and her shoulders were trembling. I went over to her. “What on earth is happening?” I asked. “I still don’t get what’s going on.”

Pingping raised her head and looked at me. There were tears on her face now, but what really struck me was her look of sheer panic. It seemed as though she wasn’t really clear what was happening either. At this moment the bathroom door was thrown open. When Lin Meng came out, it was as if he were a different person, calmed by his peeing. “Sit down,” he said to me.