Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“You like things like this?” he asked.

“Guess what just occurred to me?”

“What? Were you still sighing over the woman with the festering sores?”

“I was thinking that humans have developed from crickets, not apes. Maybe crickets are our ancestors.”

“Then why didn’t you ask the man the winning cricket’s official rank?”

They moved on to the dog market, where Zhuang had his eyes on a longhaired shih tzu, a lovely animal with a leonine head and pretty eyes. When it saw them, it sat up on its hind legs and greeted them with its front paws together.

“The dog looks a bit like Tang Wan’er,” Zhuang said.

“Since you like her so much, why not buy the dog and give it to her? But if you want my opinion, I’d say men should not keep cats and women should not raise dogs. Let’s go to the flower market. You can get her a potted canna lily. It’s strange she doesn’t have a single plant in her house.”

“No more talk about flowers. I’m getting a headache. We did a terrible job caring for that pot of unusual flowers, so what business do I have buying a canna lily? Besides, I asked her why she doesn’t plant flowers in the yard, and she said hers never live long, no matter what she plants. The flowers are jealous of her and she’s jealous of them.”

“The little tease is always saying things like that. Women all have the same problem. Xia Jie often tells me that so-and-so is fond of her or so-and-so is interested in her, but it’s all meant to show me that someone else is in love with her if I’m not. So I say to her, that’s great. If someone gives you an opening like the eye of a needle, you send a gust of wind the size of a bowl through it. She gets angry and starts crying.”

Zhuang smiled and turned to look around. “Is there a pigeon market?”

“You want to raise a pigeon?”

“It’s the only bird I like, so I’d like to get one for Wan’er.”

“I see. That must have been her idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no phone at her house, so she can have a messenger pigeon.”

“Only you could think of such a scheme.”

Meng took him to the pigeon market, where he checked out the birds by feeling their necks, tugging at their wings, examining their color, and looking at their toe rings.

“Are you buying a pigeon for her or picking a consort for yourself?”

Zhuang finally settled on one and walked away feeling terrific. He spent another night at Meng’s house, away from his own home at the compound.

. . .

When she learned that Zhou Min and Zhuang had had a falling-out, Wan’er was furious with Zhou, but only told him not to ruin a friendship.

“Even if you lose the job because Zhuang Laoshi can no longer watch out for you, and you can’t stay at the magazine, don’t forget that he was the one who gave you the job in the first place. Besides, he’s like a tall tree with deep roots, so he’s Jing Xueyin’s match. If you get on his bad side and he begins to ignore you, you’ll be the one who’s lost even if you win the suit.”

Zhou calmed down after hearing her out, for he had to agree with her. So he brought out his xun and, looking at what was written in a notebook, played softly, a strange tune that was alien to her ears. When he tired of that and went out for a walk, she looked at the notebook, surprised to see it was not musical notations but a poem he had written:

I traveled everywhere and visited everyone. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find a place for my soul to settle. I got a new woman, but she’d been married before. I stayed in a brand-new house, but it had only old furnishings. Moving from a derelict town to a bustling city, I met only old men and hear nothing but the ancient past and present. Mother, you gave birth to this son of yours, but when will new ideas begin to sprout in his head?

Realizing that he had been playing his xun while reading the poem, she felt sorry for him and shed a tear, followed by a sigh. But she was put out by the line “I got a new woman, but she’d been married before.” So you’re unhappy that I was married before , she said to herself. You knew about that beforehand, didn’t you? I threw away a stable life because of you, but this is what you think of me . The more she thought about it, the angrier she grew, and she couldn’t wait for him to return to explain himself. She sat down angrily by the window, but then changed her mind. Forget it. I no longer care for him, so what’s the point of getting mad and arguing? If we break up, he might feel he has nothing to lose, particularly with the lawsuit. What if he were to go off the track at court? Wouldn’t that make things worse for Zhuang Zhidie? Eventually, she decided to hide the notebook for the day Zhou found out about her and Zhuang. If they had a fight and decided to break up, the notebook would be her best defense for a counterattack. Then she took the bronze mirror from the bedside table and put a string through the hook to hang it high on the living room wall. She knew Zhou needed to be mollified for now, so she went to Meng Yunfang to see if he would talk some sense into Zhou Min. Meng agreed and came over with the pigeon.

“Zhuang Zhidie wasn’t really angry,” Meng said to Zhou. “He said what he did that day for the sole purpose of winning the case. He was an innocent bystander who got dragged into the suit. If this were anyone else, he would have sued you already. But no, he stands by you, and in fact has turned an old paramour into an enemy. What do you have to be mad about? Look here. He’s not petty like you; he actually bought you two a pigeon.”

Taking the pigeon from him, Wan’er laid her face against it. The white feathers perfectly matched her complexion, making her eyes a more alluring black and the pigeon’s red beak even brighter.

“Which one is fairer, Meng Laoshi, me or the pigeon?”

“You know I have only one good eye, so what can I see? Let’s wait until Zhuang Laoshi comes and have him take a look. His eyes are sharp.”

A look of slight intoxication appeared on her face when she said, “Meng Laoshi, do you believe that Jing Xueyin was Zhuang Laoshi’s lover?”

“Stop that nonsense,” Zhou Min said. “You ask too many questions.”

She was thrilled to learn that Zhuang had bought the pigeon for her and hadn’t bought anything for anyone else at the emporium. When she was alone, she had many fanciful thoughts and spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. When she was done, she would smile seductively and call out softly, “This smile is for you, Zhuang-ge.” She would then lose control and satisfy herself with her hand. Over that period, Zhou Min had wanted sex, but she had put him off, claiming she wasn’t feeling well. When she could no longer say no, she told him to hurry and washed herself repeatedly afterward.

“Have you lost your sex drive?” he asked her.

“I’m getting old.”

“They say a woman is like a wolf in her thirties and a tiger in her forties. How old are you now?”

She smiled and changed the subject. “I have an idea. To make up for the argument you had with Zhuang Laoshi, why don’t we invite him over for a meal? The human heart is made of flesh, and he’ll forgive you if you take the initiative and make some concessions.”

Reminded of the headache from the lawsuit, he hemmed and hawed without saying yes or no before going out into the yard, where he fanned himself to cool off.

A few days later, when Zhong Weixian asked Zhou Min to get in touch with Zhuang, he offered to have everyone meet at his house. After agreeing on a time, he returned home to inform Tang, who was thrilled by the news and said she would get something really nice ready. But she could not decide what to make, so she went out with a flashlight that evening. Zhou asked where she was going, to which she replied, “You’ll know when I get back.” She went all the way to the woods by the moat, where she turned on her flashlight to catch cicadas that had just emerged from near the roots to climb up the tree trunks. After mating in the trees, the cicadas dropped their eggs onto the ground, and the newly hatched cicadas climbed up the trunks to grow wings. They were particularly tasty and nutritious when stir-fried.