Ha Jin - Waiting

"You two have not slept together for seventeen years?" asked the judge.

She shook her head.

"Yes or no?"

"No."

"Would you accept a divorce?"

She didn't answer, her eyes fixed on the wide floorboards, which warped in places. Lin stared at her, thinking, Come on, say yes.

For a minute or so she made no sound. Meanwhile the judge was waiting patiently, waving a large fan, on which a tiger stretched its neck howling with a mouth like a bloody basin. He said to her, "Think hard. Don't rush to a decision."

Her brother raised his hand. The judge allowed him to speak.

Bensheng stood up and said, "Judge Sun, my sister is an illiterate housewife and doesn't know how to express herself clearly, but I know how she feels."

"Tell us then."

"It's unfair for Lin Kong to do this to her. She has lived with the Kongs for more than twenty years, serving them like a dumb beast of burden. She looked after his sick mother until the old woman died. Then his father fell ill, and for three years she took care of the old man so well that he never had a single bedsore. After his father was gone, she raised their daughter alone and worked inside and outside the house like a widow, although her husband was still alive. She has lived a hard life, all the villagers have seen it and say so. But during all these years Lin Kong kept another woman, a mistress, in Muji City. This is unfair. He can't treat a human being, his wife, like an overcoat — once he has worn it out, he dumps it." Bensheng sat down, his face red and puffing out a little. He looked a bit tearful.

His words filled Lin with shame. Lin didn't argue, seeing his wife wipe her tears. He remained silent.

With a wave of his hand, the judge folded up the tiger fan and clapped it against the palm of his other hand. Then he brought his fist down on the desk; dust jumped up, a few yellowish skeins dangling in a ray of sunlight. He pointed at Lin's face and said, "Comrade Lin Kong, you are a revolutionary officer and should be a model for us civilians. What kind of a model have you become? A man who doesn't care for his family and loves the new and loathes the old — fickle in heart and unfaithful in words and deeds. Your wife served your family like a donkey at the millstone. After all these years, the grinding is done, and you want to get rid of her. This is immoral and dishonorable, absolutely intolerable. Tell me, do you have a conscience or not? Do you deserve your green uniform and the red star on your cap?"

"I–I've tried to take care of my family. I give her forty yuan a month. You can't say that I — "

"This court declines your request. The case is dismissed."

Before Lin could protest more, the short judge got up and strode away to the side hall, where the bathroom was. His fat hips swayed while the floor creaked under his feet. His cap still perched on the desk. The policewoman eyed the back of the judge, a faint smile playing around her lips.

It was noon. The sun was blazing outside. Because many people had left the fair, the street was less crowded now. Harness bells were jangling languidly in the distance. A group of schoolgirls skipped and danced over a chain of rubber bands on the sidewalk, singing a nursery rhyme. The cobbled street, whitish in the hot sunlight, had puddles of rainwater here and there. Seeing a young woman selling plait ribbons, Lin stopped to buy a pair for Hua. But he wasn't sure of what color his daughter liked. Shuyu told him "pink." He paid half a yuan for two silk ribbons.

Together they went into Sunrise House at a street corner, a small restaurant that offered mainly wheaten food. They sat down at a table by a window. The oak tabletop looked greasy, its center marked with a few grayish circles. A ladybug was crawling along the rim of a glass jar containing a bunch of chopsticks, its wings now rubbing each other deliberately and now revolving like a pair of miniature rotor blades. A waitress came and greeted them pleasantly as though she had known them, saying, "What would you like for lunch today? We have noodles, beef pies, leek pancakes, sugar buns, and fried dough sticks."

Lin ordered a plate of cold cuts — pork liver and heart cooked in aniseed broth — and four bowls of noodles, two of which were for his brother-in-law. Shuyu and he would each have one bowl.

In no time the dish came and then the steaming noodles, which were topped with starchy gravy made of minced pork, snap beans, scallions, coriander, and egg drops. While stirring the noodles with a pair of chopsticks, Shuyu spilled a blob of gravy on her left wrist. She raised her hand and licked it clean.

They ate quietly. Lin didn't want to talk, his heart numb. He had tried to hate his brother-in-law when they left the courthouse, but he hadn't been able to summon any intense emotion.

After finishing his first bowl of noodles, Bensheng broke the silence, saying to Lin, "Elder brother, don't take to heart what I said in the court. Shuyu's my sister and I had to do that." His thin eyes were glittering as he chewed a piece of pork heart.

"I understand," said Lin.

"So, no hard feelings?"

"No."

"We're still one family?"

"Yes."

Shuyu smiled and sucked her noodles vigorously. Lin shook his head and heaved a sigh.

The tractor driver, Dragonfly, had promised to wait for them at the crossroads by the post office, but when they arrived there after lunch, there was no shadow of the tractor. Apparently it had left for home, so they had to walk a mile to the bus stop in front of Green Inn. Bensheng couldn't stop cursing Dragonfly all the way.

Manna Wu had been in love with Lin Kong for many years, still waiting for him to divorce his wife so that they could get married. Summer after summer he had gone home and tried to carry through the divorce, but never succeeded. This year Manna did not expect a breakthrough either. According to the army hospital's rule, established by Commissar Wang in the winter of 1958, it was only after eighteen years' separation that an officer could end his marriage without his wife's consent. The commissar had died of hepatitis the next summer, but for twenty-five years the rule had been strictly observed in the hospital.

By 1983, Lin and his wife had already been separated for seventeen years, so with or without Shuyu's agreement, he would be able to divorce her the next year. That was why Manna was certain that he wouldn't make a great effort this time. She knew the workings of his mind: he would always choose an easy way out.

The day after Lin was back from the countryside, he went to Manna's dormitory and told her about the court's rejection. She responded unemotionally, "Before you left, I knew it wouldn't work out."

He clasped his hands around his knee and said, "Don't be so upset. I really did my best."

"I'm not upset."

"Come on, next year I'll divorce her, whether she agrees or not. Let's just wait another year, all right?"

"Another year?" Her voice turned rather shrill. "How many years do you have in your life?"

He remained silent for a moment, his chin propped on his palm. Then he said, "After all, we've waited so many years. Only one year more."

She lifted her face, staring at him. "Look at me, Lin. Am I not becoming an old woman?"

"No, you're not old, dear. Don't be so grouchy."

True, she wasn't old, just in her early forties. Her face had a few wrinkles, but her eyes, though a little wide set, were still bright and lively. Despite some gray hair, she had a fine figure, tall and slender. Seen from behind, you could easily take her for a woman of thirty.

The door opened and Manna's roommate Nurse Hsu came in, humming "On the Sun Island," a popular song. Seeing Lin sitting on the edge of her bed, which was opposite Manna's, Nurse Hsu stuck out her tongue and made an apologetic face at the couple. "Sorry for disturbing you," she said.