Mu Xin - An Empty Room

With a twinge of regret, I thought to myself, What if she were like this when we had first met?

Anyone who believes that a whole-hearted devotion is invincible in love is completely mistaken! Physical attraction is so powerful a factor that sometimes you are swayed to swallow your words of rage in silence. Virtuous deeds, sorrowful pleas, and other such things are really not related to love, though they might bring you a small dose of sympathy and respect, and though you might even want to construct these acts into something you call love. But this concoction can’t intoxicate you nor your beloved. It will turn sour and bitter and become something you must push away. Or perhaps you won’t know if you should push it away or drink it. Love isn’t a universal fact recognized by all. It isn’t a treasure the world has rarely seen. It simply means that the one I love is the one who intoxicates me. A homely appearance is beautiful when it enchants you. Lovers have unique eyes and hearts, and think: “No one but me can see my love.” What else makes us happier than feelings of pride and confidence in love?

Yet I soon cooled my heart. Even though we had known each other for five years and had written each other many letters immersed in elusiveness, I knew nothing of her intentions. I knew she wasn’t hypocritical or pretentious. But indifference, timidity, and a slight self-centeredness also added to her personality. I visited her at her parents’ home a few times and sensed that she offered only half her heart, or a quarter of it, to her parents and siblings. Her interest in music and literature was cursory at best. It wasn’t that she never did anything wholeheartedly; it was as if the Creator had given her this half-or-quarter of a heart. I somehow felt consoled by this small sense of fatalism.

Another letter from Fong Fong while we were both in the same city — she could somehow enhance her elegance with stamps.

This letter I read over and over again, my initial surprise turning into ecstasy. The end of it read: “Even if I wasn’t in love with you before, I long promised myself that I would be yours. As I fear this letter may arrive a day too late, I’ve chosen the day after tomorrow, the 24th, which happens to be Christmas Eve. I’ll come and stay through Christmas. So this is it. When we meet, it’s not that we need to speak but that we don’t need to speak. I love you, I am yours, the day after tomorrow at six in the evening. I guess no need to ring the doorbell.”

If I had held to my principles, I would have felt my pride injured. How could she be so confident of possessing Christmas Eve? That she loved me didn’t mean that I loved her. I was merely on the receiving end; she was making a rendezvous with herself. “I am yours” she wrote, but didn’t I deserve a chance to say “I am yours,” too? What did she expect?

But none of this crossed my mind at the time. I only felt unexpected excitement. She wasn’t the Fong Fong I had known for so many years: usually detached, an observer, evasive, someone who feared fire and water, a non-adventurer who never bothered to explore further. . Yet, all of a sudden she was decisive and enthusiastic, her voice insistent and clear. . These contradictions only intensified my sense of triumph at the time. I seemed to be the one who had won, so much so that I was almost apologetic: What merits did I have to entice her in this way?

I turned down Christmas invitations from friends, cleaned the living room, bedroom, and bathroom, bought flowers, wine, and sweet and savory foods. .

It was six. She arrived. The doorbell didn’t ring.

Fong Fong wasn’t dressed any differently. Her eyes, her voice, her smile weren’t that different either. Our dinner was quiet and simple. We weren’t sure what to say after we ate. I almost thought we’d drink our tea and smoke our cigarettes till late in the night and I would, as usual, walk her to the bus stop.

Did Adam and Eve first make love in the dark? Do all the ardent acts of love depend on the darkness? When the lights switched off, she suddenly became that person she described in her letter, the one who loved me and was mine. I repeated her name softly a few times; she replied and then motioned for me to stop. As I was about to pour out a surge of words from my heart, she fell asleep. I didn’t close my eyes until the break of dawn, and then pretended I had just woken up so that I could speak to her as she rose from bed.

When she returned from the bathroom, she sat on the chair and stared at the lowered blinds.

I quickly got up and made some breakfast. As the fear of leaving her alone grew, I walked over to kiss her but she pushed me away.

I wondered if the glimpse of dawn through the blinds made her shy. I approached her again, but she stood up and said, “It’s time I went home.”

Then I saw the indifference in her face. Anxiety gripped me: “Don’t leave, please!”

“I have to leave.”

“But. . when will you come back?”

She shook her head.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Please. . don’t start.”

She didn’t want me to see her off. Fong Fong opened the door and closed it behind her, then descended the stairs.

Five to six, Christmas morning.

I can imagine the remorse an alcoholic feels after getting drunk, followed by the temporary resolution to quit. I don’t think it was absurd that Fong Fong wanted an ephemeral happiness. Nor do I think we made a mistake. There was obviously something she wasn’t telling me but, still, there was no reason for her to leave like that even if she didn’t want to stay together.

For two days I didn’t hear from her. I went to her home and was told that she had returned to Anhui. I later learned that she had headed further north. I don’t remember who told me that.

I didn’t gain anything from her loss and she didn’t gain anything from my loss. It was as if I had found a ring in a dream and then lost it in the same dream.

A riddle. I tried to search through the rules of human emotions, the wide range of varying rules, but could find no answers and so I suffered.

The suffering of searching for an answer in vain. . There is no way to continue searching if the suffering continues. Gradually the picture became even more blurry.

Great misfortunes often descend without warning. The first two years of the Ten-Year-Catastrophe were unbearably painful as I watched several colleagues in our music circle disappear one after another, until trouble unexpectedly found me. Without getting into too much detail, what followed was a long, dark period of feeling neither dead nor alive. Two fingers on my right hand and one finger on my left hand were broken, and the Catastrophe finally ended. Once again I was invited on judging panels. Does this prove the proverbial wisdom of “affirmation at the end of negation”? I was even elected Secretary General of the Municipal Association of Musicians. Dignitaries of all kinds floated toward me with smiling faces and flattering words. Yet my home was the same place; I was still my same single self. Every day the same morning passed into the same evening.

Then one evening the doorbell rang. After fourteen years I still recognized Fong Fong’s voice.

Her thinning hair was turning gray, and her loud talking echoed in the hallway without pause, though I could barely understand what she was saying. She was dressed in the northern style from head to foot — from the back I could have never guessed who she was. I showed her to the living room to sit and turned on another light so that I could look at her more closely. Her eyes, mouth, and nose were somehow shrunken. Her high and slightly wrinkled forehead I had never seen before. It was drizzling outside as it always is in March in Shanghai, but her face seemed to be covered with dust. She looked withered, even her clothing looked withered.