Ha Jin - The Crazed

She paused and narrowed her eyes, watching two pelicans flying over the other shore, one chasing the other. Then she went on, “He was an older man, in his early fifties. Mother told me that he had studied medicine in Japan and was the most skillful surgeon in the hospital. His wife died of bone cancer in the late 1950s. After that, he lived by himself. It was said that he had loved her very much. They were classmates in college. For some years I was so attached to him that I thought he was my father, although Mother often showed me Father’s photos and said he was coming home soon. When Dr. Liu died, Mother and I attended the funeral. She collapsed in front of hundreds of people, crying and raving beneath his portrait and a pile of wreaths.”

“When did he die?”

“Nineteen seventy-one. That same year Mother was transferred to the agricultural school.”

I felt her mother’s relationship with Dr. Liu might have been more than friendship, so I asked, “Did your father go to the funeral too?”

“No, he didn’t. In fact Father wasn’t happy about Dr. Liu’s presence in our life. I remember he and Mother once quarreled over this. Mother yelled at him, ‘You’ll never understand!’ Perhaps he was jealous.”

We didn’t swim that afternoon, though it was scorchingly hot. Nor did I teach Meimei how to make bird cries as I often did when we were there. I could trill, warble, and twitter like most birds, because in my early teens, having no friends, I had spent many afternoons in the thickets alone, collecting firewood and picking mushrooms.

The sun seemed very close to our heads. The water sparkled and sloped away toward the eastern sky, where herons and cranes were bobbing beneath the distant clouds. We sat there, now watching the vast grassland on the other shore with our arms around each other, now lying down and kissing passionately. From time to time a passing steamboat would blast its horn at us; some of the sailors must have been observing us through binoculars, but we were too engrossed in ourselves to care.

“Jian, we really need you to join us in the volleyball game,” said Mantao before leaving for class.

“I’ll try to be there, but don’t count on me,” I said.

“All right, see you in the evening.” He walked out, humming the tune of “When Will You Come Again?” a loveydovey song that had come back into fashion a few years ago after being banned for three decades.

His shortwave radio was still on, giving forth crackling static. I got up and flicked it off. At once the room turned as quiet as if the whole house were deserted. Lying in bed, I tried to connect what Meimei had said about Dr. Liu with Mr. Yang’s accusation against his wife in his sleep two days ago. As I was thinking about the mess of their entangled emotions, a miserable feeling came upon me. Even in our suffering, how isolated human beings can become. Mr. Yang seemed unable to stop taking Dr. Liu to be a mere third party, even though Liu had been dead for eighteen years. By nature my teacher might not be a small-minded man, but in this matter he was a picture of obstinacy.

I often wondered how much Banping Fang knew about Mr. Yang’s private life. Had he heard about his unrequited love for Lifen? Was he aware of his marital trouble? Our teacher’s mind now resembled a broken safe — all the valuables stored in it were scattered around helter-skelter. The thought bothering me most was that Banping might have known as much as I did. I was afraid he’d tell others.

The next afternoon Mr. Yang talked to a woman in his sleep again, but for a while his words were too fragmentary to be intelligible. He snickered and groaned alternately as I was leafing through the English-language magazine China Reconstructs. At about 4:30 he started singing. He sang in a sugary voice, impersonating a young woman:

Oh my ring, I lost the gold ring

My groom gave me last spring.

How can I get it back? Oh how?

If an old man picked it up

I’d treat him to dinner at my house

And can accept him as my grandpa.

If a young man has it now

He can do anything with me

Except share my bridal bed. .

Done with singing, he grinned lasciviously and said, “I can tell you’re not a virgin. I don’t like virgins, I want a real woman.” He chuckled, his voice tapering off.

I held my breath and was all ears, but he only grinned. He seemed to be with a young woman or a girl. What was he doing? Flirting with her?

Then his voice grew audible again. “You’re mine, every part of you belongs to me. No, he-he-he, I was just kidding, can’t help being silly whenever I’m with you. Oh, I’m so lucky.” His face was glowing.

Who was he speaking to? When did this happen? Some years ago? Time was crucial here. If this had taken place before his marriage, the young woman could be his wife-to-be. But he sounded as if he was having a good time with a different person. Who was she? Lifen?

“Ah, look at these legs,” he said, sighing. “Look at these breasts, gorgeous. Aren’t they fresh peaches? My goodness, how you’re dazzling me! Oh, I’ll have a heart attack tonight. I can’t breathe.” He smiled lewdly. “Oh, how come I’m so lucky! Am I dreaming or awake?”

So they definitely went to bed together. Since she had peachy breasts, she must be the same woman whose nipples tasted “like coffee candy,” which I had heard him mention twice. When did this take place? Long ago? Or recently? If only he had revealed some clue to the time, then I might be able to figure out what was going on. Could this—

He cut my guessing short. “Don’t think I’m a bad man. It’s true I’m not a good man, but I’m not a bad man either. To be honest, you’re the second woman I’ve ever touched in my whole life. So don’t take me for a shameless, dirty old goat. I’m just an ordinary man who’s fond of pretty women. But most women don’t like me. I never thought that someone like you, charming and full of life, would be interested in me. If only I were twenty years younger. .”

After a sigh, he subsided into silence.

He had made love to only two women in his life? That meant that besides Mrs. Yang, this was the only woman he had gotten intimate with, so she might have been Lifen, of whom he still dreamed from time to time. By now I was certain that Lifen didn’t live in Shanning City and that they couldn’t have met regularly. If he didn’t love his wife, he must have gone through a good part of his life without the company of a woman he really loved. In other words, though married, he must have lived an emotionally barren life. His confession reminded me of a handsome, strapping graduate student in the History Department, a Casanova who often boasted that he would not consider marriage until he had “tried it out” with one hundred women. He was so bold that he’d accost a stranger girl, saying, “May I invite you to coffee or tea?” If she replied, “I already have a boyfriend,” he’d tell her, “It won’t hurt to do some comparison.” In this way he often succeeded in securing a date. A friend of his told me that he was reaching his target of bedding a hundred women and would look for a wife soon. I often wondered why he had never encountered a woman outraged enough to harm him.

Then it crossed my mind that Mr. Yang’s last sentence, “If only I were twenty years younger,” might suggest that he had been with a young woman in recent years. What did he mean exactly? If he were that much younger, he would have known better how to love a woman? Or more capable in bed? Or able to spend more time with her? Or he would have left his wife? He was fifty-nine now. Assuming their intimate meeting had taken place recently, which was very plausible, then the woman should be under forty, roughly twenty years younger than he. That’s to say she couldn’t be Lifen, whose age should be close to his. Then who was she?