Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Let me dance for you,” she said. “I won third prize in an amateur contest at my workplace.” She spread her arms and began a graceful dance, doing all she could to show off her fair, tender body, before flitting toward him. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 995 words]. For a very long time, a different kind of human passion burned inside them. They forgot all their pain and worries as they recalled the language employed in all the classical texts and even uttered the words themselves. Abandoning themselves to wild movements, they felt as though they had been blown high into the sky and exploded into pieces above the clouds. Or as though it were sunrise on the summit of Mount Hua, and they had leapt over the cliff as the light of Buddha shot through the boundless nebula in the canyon below. They tried every move and position, including those by foreigners on videotapes, those by the ancients portrayed in the sex manual Sunü Classic , even those by wild beasts and domestic animals, and then they created their own. They reached orgasm at about the same time, and amid the screams, Ah-can said: “Do it. Come inside me. I want a baby. I want your baby.”

It came like roaring water from the Yellow River, erupting like an enormous geyser. Then they lay as if dead, like beached fish, quietly, as if hundreds of years had passed, while the rays of the setting sun slanted in through the window to glide slowly over their bodies. They smiled at each other.

“What do you think the baby will look like?”

“Pretty. Like you.”

“I want him to be like you.”

They were in each other’s arms again. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 221 words.]

“How sweet it smells,” he said with a smile.

She reached out to pick a strand of hair from his lip before applying lipstick to her own lips to kiss his body, repeating the process until it was covered in red circles, as if bedecked with medals or red suns.

It was late at night when they parted.

“I want to thank you one last time,” she said.

“One last time?”

“Yes. I won’t come to see you again, and don’t you worry about me. Promise me you’ll forget me. I don’t want anyone to be aware that you know me, so I won’t taint you.”

“I can’t do that. I will look you up no matter what your situation is. I want to see you.”

“Look out the window,” she said with a smile. “It’s so dark out.”

He turned to look. It was pitch-black, only a single star in the distant sky. “That star must be above Mount Zhongnan.” He looked back at her and saw a bloody gouge on her cheek. The hair clip in her hand was smeared with blood. Stunned, he moved closer to check the wound, but she picked up a bottle of ink and poured some into her palm to cover half of her face. There was a smile on the exposed half. “This may leave a scar when it heals. If not, the ink will spread and stay there forever. I’ve been pretty and now I want to be ugly. Don’t come to see me again. I will ignore you if you do.” He slumped to the floor, watching as she opened the door. She was nearly out the door when he reached out. She stopped him.

“Don’t get up. Just watch me go like this. You must forgive me for no longer being able to forward letters for Mr. Zhong. I’ll write to my older sister, and you can send them to her. I’m leaving with your baby now. It’s yours, and you’ll be able to see him one day. What are you crying about? Don’t you want to see me leave happily?” She turned and walked down the stairs, each step accompanied by the echo of her shoes. In all, he heard seventy-eight of them.

. . .

He returned home at eleven that night, in a daze. Niu Yueqing wasn’t home, and an unhappy Liu Yue was quick to complain. He had agreed to see Sima Gong that night, so Meng Yunfang and Zhao Jingwu had come and waited for him. In the end, Niu Yueqing had to go with them on his behalf. As they were leaving, they realized that the calligraphy by Gong Jingyuan was gone and recalled that Zhuang had gone out around noon with a roll of something. In the end, Zhao had to go over to the gallery and retrieve another scroll.

“Where have you been?” his wife asked.

“I found Ah-can.”

“Is Ah-can more important than the lawsuit?” She was indignant.

“Of course,” he said coldly and went into the bedroom. But he quickly returned with a blanket before lying down on the sofa in his study.

. . .

In the meantime, Meng Yunfan, Zhao Jingwu, and Niu Yueqing went to see Sima Gong. He was courteous to them, offering them tea and cigarettes before expressing his views on Gong’s calligraphy. But then he said, “Bai told me about Jing Xueyin’s lawsuit. I read the complaint, and Jing and her husband have come to see me. She’s not merely a stylish woman, but a highly competent one. I could tell she still has strong feelings for Zhuang Zhidie. I get the sense that she could not explain herself clearly to her husband, and being that she’s the daughter of a high-ranking cadre, everything had been going her way with no setbacks before this fiasco. The magazine and its author, as well as Zhuang Zhidie, have yet to apologize and express regret, so she had no way out, which is why the matter has escalated to the point that no mediation is going to work. The best solution would be for her to withdraw the suit, but that’s unlikely. I decided to take a passive approach, not saying whether I would prosecute or not. I thought that if I could delay for a while, maybe she would calm down enough to withdraw her suit. But she has repeatedly gone to see the chief justice and the presiding judge, demanding to know why the case hasn’t been recorded. This afternoon the presiding judge told me that it had to be recorded, and now it has.”

Niu Yueqing was speechless.

“Can’t anything be done to pull it back?” Meng asked.

“That’s impossible, unless you can make the presiding judge change his mind. But his official position will not allow him to retract his decision.”

Feeling her chest tighten, Niu Yueqing began to cry, though she quickly dried her tears. She started sniffling.

“Is your sinus infection bothering you?” Meng asked. “Here’s a tissue.”

Knowing she had behaved improperly, Niu Yueqing said, “I’ll get some.” She went into the bathroom to cry some more, dried her tears, and composed herself before rejoining the others. Sima handed her a piece of candy. She took it with a smile. With the candy in her hand, she said to him, “Please go ahead, Comrade Sima.”

“Recording the suit doesn’t mean the plaintiff will win. The result will have to wait until the court launches a full investigation and reaches a judgment based on provisions of the law. Zhuang Zhidie isn’t here, but you can tell him to get ready. When he receives a copy of the complaint, he must write a convincing rebuttal statement. This is how it will proceed. It won’t look good for me to keep you long. Now that I have the case, I must avoid excessive contact with both sides in my house. Please take Gong Jingyuan’s calligraphy with you.” When he finished, Sima got up to watch TV in his bedroom.

“Why don’t you walk the uncles and Aunty out?” he said to his son.

They had to leave. After a brief discussion in the hallway, they turned and headed to Bai Yuzhu’s house. After hearing about their visit to Sima, Bai could not stop complaining.

“What have you been doing all this time? Even in a rainstorm, I twice saw a woman waiting outside the court to talk to the presiding judge. I asked who she was and was told it was Jing Xueyin. But look how long it took you to move. Mr. Zhuang should have gone, too. Everyone is equal before the law, and the same goes for a celebrity. If you lose the suit, his reputation will suffer.”