Ma Jian - The Noodle Maker

‘I love you,’ she said to the tiger, without a hint of sarcasm. A second later, the remains of her dismembered body went stiff.

‘May God have mercy on us,’ the writer says. Every sin has its retribution.’

‘We all receive our just deserts,’ the blood donor adds. ‘But I hope we get ours in this lifetime.’

‘Were you in the audience when she committed suicide?’ the writer asks, straightening his back.

‘When who committed suicide?’

‘That woman.’ The writer can’t bring himself to say her name. His square living room looks like a junk shop, with his belongings heaped along the walls. The furniture includes two chests, the revolving chair, plastic stool, a fold-up table donated by the Writers’ Association, and a pair of armchairs. To give the room a neater appearance, he has pasted sheets of blank manuscript paper over the tears in the wallpaper left by the previous occupants. The only picture on the wall is a pencil sketch of a young girl that an ex-girlfriend of his gave him. Looking at it now, it strikes him that the picture is not as good as it once seemed. He thinks that if there were a woman in the room now, and a few more pieces of furniture, it might feel a little more comfortable. He leans over and puts a new tape into his cassette player. Verdi’s Requiem fills the room, the soprano’s voice soars to the ceiling. He slumps feebly back into his chair. ‘That woman,’ he repeats, turning the volume up a little.

The blood donor gets up and paces the room. Perhaps he has eaten too much. When he straightens his back he looks a little taller. ‘Do you think you and I really understand each other?’ he asks.

The writer glances at the blood donor and says: ‘We understand each other better than we could ever understand a woman.’ He leans over, turns the volume down again and sighs: ‘A man whose heart has been wounded should take care in his relations with women.’

‘It was stupid of me to propose to her.’ The blood donor sucks on his cigarette then flicks the ash into a cup.

‘I still don’t understand why she went off with you,’ the writer says. ‘She and I were far more compatible. We shared the same interests and tastes. We even looked alike. But look at you — you’re short and bald, you have no education, no manners …’

‘It’s history now. Put it behind you. We’re friends aren’t we? What do women matter? They just want a man to lean on, they don’t mind who he is. Only friends care about a man’s quality. Women are products of their environment. They want to pity the unfortunate and sponge off the rich. Together, we satisfied both these needs for her.’

‘You mean to say you fulfilled her material needs and I fulfilled her spiritual ones,’ the writer replies.

The blood donor crushes his cigarette out and lowers his head. ‘What do you think drove her to it?’ he asks.

‘It amazes me that she managed to live so long. How did she survive all those years?’ The writer then wipes the grease from his hands, and says to himself: We grew up in a spiritual vacuum, cut off from the rest of the world. A wasted generation. When the country started to open up, we were the first to fall. Foreign culture is the only religion now, but we have no means to understand it, or appreciate its worth. Half a century has gone by, and suddenly we find ourselves in the forest of modern life without a map or a compass. How can a society numbed by dictatorship ever find its way in the modern world? We are unable to think things through for ourselves, we have no reference points, we feel lost and out of our depth. We put on a show of superficial arrogance to hide our low self-esteem.

The two friends stare at the empty egg shells and discarded bones on the table. Every time this moment arrives, they realise they will both have to retreat to the corner of the room and take their places in the two old armchairs.

‘Why do you insist on writing about a real-life woman?’ the blood donor asks. ‘It would be much easier to just make one up.’ He rises to his feet, picks up the bottle of wine and takes it with him to one of the armchairs. There are still a few drops left in the bottle. The writer sinks into the other armchair, and they both lean their heads back against the wall. When two men are alone together, they often adopt this casual position to try to overcome their fear of intimacy. Without waiting for his friend to reply, the donor adds: ‘I know you can’t get her out of your mind. That slut. She deserved to die.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’ A look of rage flashes across the writer’s swollen face.

‘You two had broken up by the time I started going out with her. Or at least, you were having arguments all the time.’

‘Is that what you call breaking up?’ The writer remembers the day Su Yun told him she never wanted to see him again.

‘Of course, I’ve always said it’s best to break up with women gradually. After she dumped you, I advised you to stay away from her, but you continued to see her on the sly. That’s how things were. We were all to blame.’

‘So, what do you think is the best way to break up with a woman then?’ the writer asks with a smirk. In his heart he knows that Su Yun’s only motive for getting involved with them was to make the painter jealous.

‘You should take her to a concert, or to the cinema.’

‘Yes, but most of us can’t manage that.’ The writer looks away and thinks to himself: Su Yun and I were both following paths that were contrary to our nature, and in the end we had to return to the place we started from. Men keep their jealousy hidden, but women need to act it out. Was it us who destroyed her? Did she really exist? My memory of her is like a shard of broken glass that reflects back to me the occasional spark of love. ‘Did you think she was pretty?’ he asks after a long silence.

‘No more pretty than any nice-looking woman you see walking down the street,’ the blood donor says, lighting another cigarette. ‘Women are very pragmatic. If you notice one standing before you with a cold, blank look on her face, you should leave her at once.’

‘Her eyes never lied,’ the writer says. ‘Women’s eyes only light up when they want you. Once they’ve got their hands on you, the light starts to fade.’ The writer looks as though he has just emerged from a dark study. His eyes are glazed. The blood donor is used to this distracted manner of his. ‘There’s nothing so ridiculous as thinking love can be eternal,’ the writer adds. ‘Eternity is a bronze statue caked with green rust. Eternity is death.’

‘We delude ourselves into thinking love will make us happy,’ the blood donor replies. Suddenly the lights go out. In the dark, the men are like two smoking radio sets. The one on the left continues: ‘We divide women up into the beautiful and the ugly. We only ever fall in love with a face.’

‘So you really loved her then …’ The man on the right sounds as dark and hollow as the wall behind him.

‘I loved her in a different way from how you did. She said I was able to give her things you never could.’

‘What things?’

‘Do you have a motorbike? Do you have tickets for next week’s concert? Do you have FECs? Can you take a woman into a hotel where foreigners stay? You have probably never even stepped inside the Friendship Store. Your year’s salary isn’t enough to buy one pair of Italian shoes. But look at me! Not only can I go into the Friendship Store and look at those Italian shoes, I can buy them with my own FECs. What do today’s women want? The answer is everything that you don’t have.’ The voice on the left sounds as gravelly as a rusty bucket. ‘Look, this cigarette lighter of mine is imported,’ he adds, flicking it on with a ttssaa.