Ha Jin: In the Pond

SHAO BIN FELT SICK of Dismount Fort, a commune town where he had lived for over six years. His wife, Meilan, complained that she had to walk two miles to wash clothes on weekends. She couldn’t pedal, so Bin was supposed to take her on the carrier of his bicycle to the Blue Brook. But this month he worked weekends in the Harvest Fertilizer Plant and couldn’t help her. If only they had lived in Workers’ Park, the plant’s apartment compound, which was just hundreds of paces away from the waterside. These days Meilan prayed to Buddha at night, begging him to help her family get an apartment in the park soon.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have one this time,” Bin told her Wednesday afternoon.

“How can you be so sure?”

“They should give us one. I have more seniority than others.”

“That can’t be a guarantee.”

Indeed he had worked in the plant for six years. According to the principle of need and seniority, this time it seemed the Shaos should have a new apartment, but Meilan was not optimistic. “You know,” she said, “if I were you I’d give Secretary Liu and Director Ma two bottles of Grain Sap each. I heard that lots of people have visited them in the evenings. You shouldn’t just sit and wait.”

“Forget it. I won’t spend any money on them.”

“Stubborn ass,” she said under her breath.

Bin was a small man. He used to be healthy and stout, but in recent years he had lost so much weight that people called him Skeleton behind his back. Despite his physique, he was both talented and arrogant. He was better read than others in the plant, and he knew a lot of ancient stories, even the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. What is more, his handwriting was handsome. That was why some women workers used to say to one another, “If only the man was as good looking as his handwriting.” When he was engaged to Meilan five years before, people had been amazed and remarked, “A beauty loves a scholar indeed.” Although Meilan was not beautiful and Bin was not a true scholar, compared with him she was a better match, having several suitors.

Since they were married, they had lived in one room in a dormitory house on Old Folk Road, owned by Meilan’s work unit, the People’s Department Store. They now had a lively two-year-old, for whom alone the room, twelve feet by twenty, was hardly enough. Besides, Bin was an amateur painter and calligrapher, though officially he was a fitter. As an artist, he needed space, ideally a room for himself, where he could cultivate and practice his art, but that had been impossible. Every night he stayed up late, wielding a writing brush with the table lamp on, which disturbed his wife’s and baby’s sleep. And the room was always saturated with an inky smell. Often Meilan had to open the windows in the cold winter, yet Bin had no other way to do brushwork. How the Shaos were longing for decent housing.

These days Bin had been trying in vain to find out whether or not his name was on the list being considered by the Housing Committee. Most of his fellow workers grew reticent and mysterious, as though all of a sudden everybody had struck gold; they became mean to others.

Now it’s my turn to have an apartment, Bin repeated to himself on Thursday morning, when he was repairing a hydraulic jack for the Transport Team. The night before, Meilan’s words about the workers’ bribing the leaders had sown some fear in him; yet he kept reminding himself not to lose heart.

Sooner than he expected, in the afternoon the final list was posted on the notice board at the plant’s front entrance. Bin went there but didn’t find his name among the lucky ones. He was outraged; so were many others. In all the workshops angry voices were rising while those who had been assigned apartments turned silent at once. Some workers said they would put out big-character posters without delay, to expose the leaders’ corruption. A few declared they were going to demolish the four larger apartments built for the leaders, blowing them up with packages of TNT at night. But this was merely bluff; the same thing had been said many times before, and nothing of the sort had ever taken place here.

As soon as the electric bell announced the end of the shift, Bin left the plant. He was cycling home absently, an army cap askew on his head and his white shirt unbuttoned, its tail flapping gently behind him. His mind was full. How should he break the bad news to Meilan? She would be so disappointed. How could he console her?

The moment he passed the railroad crossing near the northern end of the plant, he saw the Party secretary, Liu Shu, walking ahead with his hands clasped behind. Bin caught up with him and got off his bicycle. “May I have a word with you, Secretary Liu?” he said.

“All right.” Liu stopped and straightened up a little, his hooded eyes half closed.

“Why didn’t I get housing this time?” Bin asked.

“You’re not alone. Over a hundred comrades are still in line. Don’t you know that?”

“I’ve worked in our plant for six years. Hou Nina has been here for only three years, but she got an apartment this time. Why? I cannot understand this.”

Liu told him bluntly, “That’s a decision made by the Housing Committee. They believe she needs it more than you. Women and men are equal in our new society. You have a place to live now, but she has stayed with her folks in the village all these years. She needs her own place to get married. Her wedding has been put off twice; she can’t remain single forever.”

Bin wanted to yell: She can live with you, can’t she? But he didn’t say a word; instead, he turned and hopped on his National Defense bicycle, riding away without saying good-bye to the secretary. He couldn’t help cursing Liu to himself, “Son of a tortoise, you’ve had a good apartment already, but you took a larger one this time. You’ve abused your power. This is unfair, unfair!”

The stocky secretary shook his head and said to Bin’s back, “Idiot!”

Bin planned to break the bad news to his wife after dinner, but seeing his dark face, Meilan sensed that something was wrong and asked him several times what it was. He went ahead and told her; he even mentioned that Hou Nina, the junior accountant, had received a new apartment. At this, tears came to Meilan’s eyes, and she cursed the leaders loudly. She also blamed Bin for his stubbornness, saying, “A few bottles of liquor are a small cost. How many times did I tell you? But you wouldn’t listen.”

“Come and eat,” he said, picked up a pair of chopsticks, and lifted a bowl of noodles to his mouth, slurping the soup. Then with a spoon he put some minced toon leaves into his bowl.

“I don’t want to eat, I’m full of gas.” She turned and pushed the window open. Outside, a breeze passed by and shook a few raindrops off the aspen leaves, pattering through the trees. A frog was croaking hesitantly.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“They’ve maltreated us. You should report those corrupt men.”

Bin didn’t answer and went on eating. Shanshan, their baby daughter, was stirring her bowl of custard with a green plastic spoon, waiting for her mother to feed her. A short noodle was lying on her white bib, near the red bill of an embroidered dove.