Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

‘Uncle? Uncle’s dead? When did that happen?’

‘When? When you were off on your travels, that’s when,’ Lian said, with a sarcastic curl of the lips.

She looked at the date. The third day of her trip to Taiwan.

‘What about Aunt Hui?’

‘Your other uncle wrote saying your aunt wanted him to tell us the news. She absolutely doesn’t want a visit, she’s just letting the family know and then she wants nothing more to do with you.’ Lian sounded delighted at the news.

‘No, I’m going to see her, right now.’ She jumped to her feet. Go ahead and have your dinner. Don’t wait for me.’ Behind her, Lian asked sarcastically: ‘Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit? Are you sure it’s the right thing to do? If she really doesn’t want to see you, you’ll just get egg on your face!’

She ignored him and went anyway. Her uncle and aunt’s house held such happy childhood memories for her. Now, though, it was deserted. Just a couple of security guards, motionless in their sentry boxes. Not a breath of life in the place. Even the trees and flowers had disappeared.

In 1971, her uncle had been implicated in the fall from grace of Mao’s one-time comrade-in-arms, Lin Biao. Demoted to chief of staff of Fuzhou Military Region far away in the south-east of the country, he returned to Beijing only when he retired. Tianyi visited them once. Aunt Hui had seemed much less spiky, even cracking jokes as she made chicken and mushroom stew. Her food was as good as ever. She had put on a lot of weight and was comfortably plump. When they had finished eating, she lay down and opened Anna Karenina . Then she spoke in a low voice: ‘The old man’s just like Karenin in this book, he’s never given me an ounce of freedom in all our life together. He’s crushed the life out of me. If it hadn’t have been for him, I would have gone to university!’ Tianyi looked at her, bewildered. Aunt Hui sounded like the bitter, sharp-tongued woman of the old days. She wondered if that would ever change.

Inside the compound, Tianyi found one of her uncle’s aides-decamp. He hesitated, then said: ‘Tianyi, your aunt wouldn’t want you to visit her, she’s living with the minister, Mr Chai, now.’ Tianyi was shocked. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined her aunt, now in her sixties, as an Anna Karenina. Under her uncle’s very eyes, his best friend and wartime comrade had become his woman’s Vronsky. How dreadful. Her husband was scarcely dead before she was off, leaving behind only an empty, lonely house, desolate as a ruin. It made her own mother seem like a saint by comparison.

She thought of her uncle’s final days. Had he known? There was little point in speculating about it now, but she hoped he had not. At least that way, he would be at peace, not buried with a broken heart that no one could mend. Tianyi remembered Lian’s sarcasm. He said horrible things, but he told the truth. That was what happened nowadays. He was a shaman when it came to knowing what other people were up to. It was too bad he could not apply the same insight to himself.

The next evening Lian went out to dinner. Tianyi made a simple meal of noodles for herself and her son. He sidled up to her, leaned against her shoulder and said, ‘Mum.’ Then he buried his head in her chest. Tianyi put her arms around him and stroked his hair gently. Suddenly he raised his head and said something that made Tianyi tremble. ‘Mum, I don’t want to go on living.’

Tianyi was alarmed. She looked at her son’s thin face, and felt as if a knife was being twisted in her gut. She waited for him to continue, but he said nothing more. When did her little boy become this withdrawn young man? ‘Has your dad been giving you trouble?’ He shook his head. She sensed his feelings bubbling like molten lava under the surface and knew that eventually they would erupt.

One evening — Tianyi would never forget it — Niuniu came back from school, called out his usual greeting, then went to his room. He closed the door. This was a mistake. Lian refused to let anyone in the house close the door. If they closed a door, he had the right to open it. It was proper to have the door open. In fact, he would kick it open if necessary. That day, he kicked the door open and discovered his son’s secret. He had failed his physics exam, and was in the process of changing the grade on his report.

Lian grabbed him by the collar and hauled him out of the room. There was going to be a fight, for sure. Tianyi rushed to shield her son with her body. ‘Lian, just say what you want to say, okay? He’s a big boy now, if you keep hitting him, he’ll end up hating you!’ But Lian pushed Tianyi to one side, and she fell back onto the bed. The whites of Lian’s eyes had turned a dreadful yellow and great gobs of spittle flew from his mouth as he yelled: ‘I don’t care if he ends up hating me! I don’t care if anyone hates me! I’m not scared! If we don’t get him under control, he’ll be done for. Done for, get it? With grades like these, he’ll be chucked out of school, and then what future has he got? He’ll never be good for anything! He’ll be nothing but scum!’

Lian said a lot of ugly things that day, she no longer remembered exactly what. The only thing she remembered was her son silently opening a drawer and taking out a knife.

The sight of blood galvanized her and she pounced, quicker than a female panther. She was in time, the blade had nicked the skin and drawn blood, but the wound was superficial. In that instant, she saved her son’s life, and at the very same instant, abandoned fifteen years of marriage. ‘I want a divorce. Now.’

The change in her voice surprised her. It sounded muffled, as if someone had covered her mouth. But it was loud, loud enough for the neighbours downstairs to hear.

Lian did not refuse. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go now.’

Both looking angry and distressed, they got on the bicycle. Lian was in front, she sat behind, just like they had done fifteen years earlier when they were courting. The wheels turned, and they were back where they had started, with nothing.

This was not the sort of divorce registration office she had heard about, where the staff try desperately to save your failing marriage. A middle-aged man asked them a few perfunctory questions and made them an appointment to deal with the paperwork. They parted at Haidian Library. Lian went to buy books, and she took her son to her mother’s.

Her mother was old, and finding walking a struggle. The sight of her hobbling around made Tianyi’s heart ache. ‘I’m getting a divorce,’ she told her, as calmly as she had when she told her she was getting married fifteen years previously.

She thought she was being calm and resolute but the tears came anyway. Once she had started, she could not stop. Only the frosty look in the old woman’s eyes helped her get a grip on her emotions.

‘What are you crying for?’ Her mother asked coldly. ‘If you can’t do without him, you know what to do.’

That was too much. She went into the kitchen and started hacking some vegetables into pieces, but could not help hearing the jibes. ‘Listen to her! She wanted the divorce, so why’s she crying?’

The thing that really scared her was that she felt no pain. She was numb. What had she ever done to deserve a mother like this?

Once she finished preparing the vegetables, she and Niuniu left. They would not stay for dinner, she decided, even though her mother tried to persuade her to stay, as she always did. Tianyi could at least wait until her brother, Tianke, came back, she wheedled. Tianyi could not look her mother in the eye, in case her resolve wavered. Instead, she decided to take her son out for a nice meal.

She chose an expensive Macau restaurant nearby, but after they sat down, her son looked disconsolate. Every time she suggested a dish, he said: ‘I don’t like that,’ but refused to order for himself. The waitress stood for a long, long time, watching this strange pair failing to order their food.