Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Why is there no blood? You aren’t a virgin, Liu Yue. Who was your first?”

“No,” she said, “you’re wrong.” She writhed on the bed, unable to control her body.

Tang Wan’er, who was at the door watching them the whole time, went over and put her arms around Liu Yue when she and Zhuang finally separated.

“Liu Yue, you and I are real sisters now.”

“How could I ever dream to be your sister? Who’d have even noticed me if I hadn’t seen you? He did this simply to shut me up.” She was besieged by regret. Wanting to win him on her own at first, she had taken the moral high ground when Zhuang had tried to get on her good side. She teared up when she realized she had been sacrificed for their sake.

“You’re a rare treasure, Liu Yue. How could I not be fond of you? I’m always on your side. It’s just that you’re so watchful, I’m afraid that my wife has told you to spy on me.”

“You think she’d trust me? She’s usually on her guard with me, too. Whenever the two of you have an argument, she vents her anger on me.”

“Don’t mind her. Just blame everything on me when there are problems from now on, all right?”

“You’re household help,” Tang joined in, “not a slave. If it gets really bad, just go find another employer, and when she has to take care of everything herself, we’ll see if she still throws a fit.”

“Don’t give her any of your bad ideas,” Zhuang said. “Why does she have to leave? I’ll arrange something for her when the moment is right.”

That made Liu even more despondent, and she began to sob. Seeing her cry like that, Zhuang and Tang knew they could not console her for now, so they went back to the bedroom to get dressed.

“What lousy luck to have her see us like that,” Tang said.

“It’s all right. At least we don’t have to watch out for her anymore.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re falling for an even younger girl. I was watching you earlier; you didn’t have to have sex with her to shut her up. You’re her employer. All you had to do was scare her a bit. Do you think she’d dare go around talking about it? But no, you had to actually do it. Even if it was necessary, couldn’t you just have humored her? Did you have to be so eager, so intense? She is fresher and younger than me, so you probably won’t want me anymore.”

“I can’t believe it. You’re the woman who told me to go to her, and now you don’t want me to say anything.”

“I have to tell you this, though. She has an aura of calamity. I noticed when you were in bed with her that she didn’t have a single pubic hair. People are always saying that a woman without pubic hair is a white tiger, a sign of calamity. A man whose chest hair extends all the way to his back is a black dragon. Great fortune will visit a man who’s a black dragon when he meets a white tiger, but disaster will fall on a man who’s not. You had sex with her today, and I’m afraid that may be trouble in the future. Be careful.”

Her words sent a chill down his spine. After seeing her off, he mixed some brown sugar in water and took the glass to his study to drink.

. . .

But Zhuang did not heed Tang’s advice. After the first time with Liu Yue, he had sex with her again and again. A close examination verified that the lovely creature was indeed a white tiger, but her secret spot was such a luscious mound, bewitching as a peach blossom when opened and a piece of flawless jade when closed, that he forgot all about possible disasters or calamities. A bit more money came her way with the attention from Zhuang, which in turn made her think quite highly of herself. Taking the missus less seriously, she disobeyed Niu Yueqing on several occasions, and nothing Niu Yueqing said to her made a difference in her attitude. One day, before Niu Yueqing went to work, she told Liu to buy pork and leeks for dumplings, and not to stuff a coin in one of them for fortunetelling. Liu said she would do it, but ended up buying mutton and fennel, and placing a two-fen coin in one of the dumplings. At lunch, Niu Yueqing asked why she had bought mutton, since the gamey taste made her nauseous. Liu Yue insisted that the mutton was not gamey, even went so far as to gulp down one of the dumplings without chewing in front of Niu Yueqing. That led to an argument, which Niu Yueqing more or less lost, so upsetting her that she went to nap without eating. Liu Yue sent an invitation to Tang Wan’er via the pigeon, and when she arrived, Liu told Niu Yueqing that she had invited Tang over to cheer her up. Before Niu Yueqing had a chance to chat with Tang, Liu Yue brought out a bowl of dumplings.

“Big Sister Wan’er, Dajie doesn’t like these, and I don’t want to throw them out. Why don’t you have some, unless you think I’ve poisoned them?”

Tang took the bowl from her and, saying they didn’t smell gamey, took a bite, only to chip her tooth. She opened her mouth, and a coin clinked into the china bowl. Liu had her hands all over Tang. “You’re the lucky one,” she said, “with a strong life force. I ate more than you but didn’t find the coin, and here you find it with your very first bite.” She pinched Tang between the legs.

The sight of the two women having so much fun annoyed Niu Yueqing, but she could say nothing, and that caused her to belch and suffer shortness of breath. Worse yet, feeling unclean, she began washing her hands with soap, cleaning every crease, including under her nails with a tiny brush, over and over, often for half an hour.

Liu Yue started going out more and more, as if she could not bear to stay home. Every time she went grocery shopping, she took the opportunity to window-shop, watch a movie, or play video games at an arcade.

“Liu Yue,” an unhappy Zhuang said one day,” you’ve changed.”

“Of course I have. With something of yours in me, Liu Yue is no longer a pure Liu Yue.”

What really upset Niu Yueqing was that Liu Yue was always coming home with a new blouse or a different hairstyle. When she asked the girl where she had been, Liu always had an answer.

“I didn’t see you send money home this month,” Niu Yueqing said. “Obviously, you spent it all on yourself. Don’t you think about repaying your parents for all it cost them to raise you?”

“They say they never have enough money. I’ve been away for a while now, and they’ve never come to see me, yet they expect me to have found a gold mine for them here. How much do I make a month, anyway?”

That effectively shut Niu Yueqing up.

When she came home from work one day, Niu Yueqing walked into a house full of young women, all heavily made up, crossing their legs alluringly or twisting their hips as they drank. When they saw the mistress, they gulped in surprise and left noisily.

“Who were they?” Niu Yueqing asked Liu.

“All girls from my hometown. Did you see how well they’re doing? They’ve long wanted to visit the writer. Everything in this house was new to them. I treated them to a bottle of wine because I wanted us to look generous in their eyes.”

“Does this look like a tourist destination for shady characters? Who knows what they do in those hotels, but in any case, we’re not running a brothel,” Niu Yueqing said.

“What gives you the right to call them prostitutes? If they are, then I am, too.”

Liu’s retort made Niu Yueqing furious. “You learn from the people you’re with. You changed after meeting them. You’re a different person. Go check yourself out in the mirror and see what you look like.”

“I don’t need a mirror. I can see myself in my own pee. I’m a prostitute, all right? I am a prostitute. This house is more like a whorehouse than those hotels.”