Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

She probably said a lot more too, she didn’t remember. What she did remember was Lian’s sudden, silent explosion of rage. It left her absolutely terrified. First came a crash so loud that she was quite sure the whole building must have heard it and been shocked into silence. Then she saw her beloved tape-recorder. It was in tiny pieces.

She had acquired it in the third year of university. She had asked a classmate who was good with electrical stuff to come and choose it with her. She was a girl who lived frugally, and when she bought something, she chose with great care. She and her friend went through every item on the shelves, until they finally settled on a Taiwan-made machine, of decent quality. That was 1981, and she had one of the best tape-recorders in her year group. Now, after looking after it so carefully over the years, it had come to a sorry end.

When the echoes had died away and quiet descended once more, she said nothing more. She put on her coat and scarf, flung out of the door and into the teeth of a snowstorm. She peddled madly through the storm on her bike. It did not bother her — she was still young and energetic, still physically fit from her time in the commune. But very soon she realized there was someone chasing her, going as fast as she was. She trod furiously on the pedals but he caught her up at the junction of Weigongcun Road.

‘Get lost!’ she screamed into the whistling gale. The dark figure on the pursuing bicycle braked. She heard: ‘You’re so fierce, no wonder Lian doesn’t stand up to you!’ Up close, she saw the black figure was very slender. It was Di.

The snowstorm that evening seemed to swallow up all the houses. It was too late for Di to go home, so she stayed with Tianyi, and Lian slept on the sofa. Di had little sympathy for Tianyi’s rage. She just said, over and over again: ‘Lian has his reasons. Don’t go making wild guesses, and stop forcing yourself on him.’ The two talked far into the night. The next day Lian apologized but Tianyi felt instinctively that he did not really think he had been in the wrong.

When they separated many years later, Tianyi spent a long time searching her memories. She came to the conclusion that that night, when he broke her tape-recorder, was the beginning of the rift in their relationship, a rift that never healed. It showed how different their values were. Tianyi even believed that if Lian had told her about his mother at the start, she might well not have married him. Of course, that was just conjecture.

N iuniu had been such a lively, chubby baby, but when he came back from Lian’s parents he was listless, and thinner too. His legs looked scrawny and short, as if he was under-nourished.

Lian went on a frantic search for remedies, buying up all the bone-strengthening infusions, zinc and iron supplements he could lay his hands on but nothing made any difference and, when Niuniu started at nursery, he was the smallest in his class. Tianyi just said: ‘What on earth were your parents doing with him?’ Lian pressed his lips together in a furious silence. This made Tianyi even angrier. The more she thought about it, the more she felt it was her in-laws’ fault. Every day when she picked him up, she rushed to the school canteen and peeped in through the crack in the door. She spotted his large head immediately. He was not eating, she could see that. He just played with his food, poking at it with his chopsticks. She found it distressing to watch. This was her son, the beloved baby she had nurtured for nine months in her womb, and given birth to in such agony that the first time she set eyes on him, she glared at him, convinced the nurses were giving her the wrong baby. Of course, the second time, she was in no doubt. He was hers, this small person with his smooth head and flawless complexion. She would never forget his sweet smile when he was two months old. It was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. He had his father’s mouth, small but very mobile and widening into a startling smile. He had been such a sweet child, sucking down his mother’s milk with resounding, greedy gulps that astonished all the other mothers in the ward. Yet this baby, so bonny at birth, had turned into a skinny little runt, his bright, intelligent eyes now dull and listless. It was common in children who did not get enough love. She felt ashamed. She hid her shame deep inside her, but it was exquisitely tender to the touch.

Good mothers needed to love selflessly. She was not a good mother. Firstly, she did not sleep with her baby, the way most mothers did, because his slightest fidget woke her up. Actually, she could not share her bed with anyone. So when, all those years later, she read Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being , she felt a shock of recognition. The surgeon Tomas was an inveterate womaniser yet was unable to share his bed with anyone. Except Tereza, the girl who drifted into his life like a little basket bobbing on water; with her, he had been able to sleep, hand in hand. No doubt many Chinese readers found that sentimental, but personally Tianyi understood it only too well. She felt she was just like Thomas. People like them, whether they were God’s chosen or God’s rejects, or one way or another had been singled out by God’s patronage, had an unequivocal need for their ‘other half’. If they failed to find their other half, then they were reduced to flotsam, destined to drift alone and lonely in the world for the rest of their lives. God had not endowed this child she had thought so wonderful with any natural gifts at all.

There were more and more rows with Lian, too. ‘You have no sense of responsibility to your family … You weren’t made for marriage,’ were just some of Lian’s accusations, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe it was true. She felt torn between her undoubted love for her child (and she really did adore him), and a dreadful feeling that having a child was a life-sentence. She loved nothing more than to let her creative imagination take wing, but she could only do that at night. On paper. She wrote one story after another, finish it, read it, then bin it, showing it to no one. It was like having sex, she got it all out of her system, and then her body was at peace. Until one day Lian happened on the novel she had just completed and read it.

It was called The Tree of Knowledge , and it had a simple dedication: ‘To H Z.’ Who was H Z? An old flame? Lian was not bothered by her past loves, they were all child’s play in his view, so they did not count. But he sensed she had really lived this experience as he read this story. She made her hero sound very attractive: ‘This young man’s features were almost perfect. He had a bright, clear forehead, a prominent nose, the pupils of his eyes were not black but the translucent colour of lake water, brimming with light. He had a noble air, but it was the nobility of a fallen prince …’ she had written. Lian discovered, apparently for the first time, that Tianyi’s prose was beautiful. It was certainly wasted on her academic writing!

Back then, a new generation of young film directors were quietly emerging. Yellow Earth and One and Eight had just come out, among other films. They made a big impression on Lian. He felt instinctively that Tianyi’s novel should be made into a film and, without telling her, he wrote to a director called Ji, recommending it and signing himself ‘A Reader’. He mailed the letter and forgot about it. Two weeks later, out of the blue, he received a reply from a production company overseas. It was signed with a flourish by none other than the celebrated Mr Ji himself. Lian was thrilled.

Another two weeks passed and Tianyi and Ji met in person. He was pretty much as she had imagined him, fashionably bearded, large, expressive eyes. They had a very enjoyable discussion: Ji said he liked her story, though of course he had a few criticisms, it would have to be worked on, and so on and so forth. He said he wanted to use this film to get one up on Zhang Yimou. Tianyi was taken aback. He was talking about using the film to get one up on another director, before he and she had come to an agreement? But she was soon swayed by Ji’s obvious ability. After all, jadeite was still jade, wasn’t it? You couldn’t afford to be too picky with your friends in this business. Or so Tianyi told herself. She had to admit that Ji treated her with much more respect than most directors accorded their screenwriters. ‘Your writing is very good,’ he told her, ‘I’d like to bring you in during shooting, to write a few extra scenes.’ The assistant director, who was in on the meeting, told Tianyi: ‘The director’s never praised any screenwriter for writing well before. Why don’t you do an article about working with Ji when you have time? After all, people were always publishing stuff about working with Zhang Yimou, so why not Ji? Tianyi looked at him, then gently suggested that they should stick to what they were good at and not try and compete. Ji looked at his assistant too: ‘Mrs Yang is right. We should get on with our own project, and let Zhang get on with his, and let’s see who does a better job!’ Tianyi couldn’t help smiling to herself. What children these film people were! What she said was: ‘Please don’t call me Mrs Yang! Tianyi is fine.’ The three of them talked some more, then Ji got to his feet. ‘Time for lunch! Let’s find somewhere good.’