Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“What did you say? Why are you cursing my house?”

“Do I dare curse your house? If I did, how would I make any money pimping?” She banged her teacup down on the table, sending it sliding into the teapot, which crashed to the floor.

“Well, well.” Niu Yueqing jumped to her feet. “Now you’ve started smashing things. This isn’t your house, not yet, and you have no right to break things.”

“I’ll pay you back. I’ll pay you for the teapot, and for the bottle of wine we drank.” She sobbed all the way back to her room.

. . .

On the same day, Zhuang Zhidie assumed a woman’s style and wrote Zhong Weixian to say that an injured leg had made the trip to Xijing impossible. After sending it, he went to the Performance Evaluation Office and spent the morning talking to the man in charge, who insisted that he could not increase the quota; he could do nothing unilaterally, since quotas were decided at meetings. All he could do was contact the Department of Culture and ask for a fair hearing. He immediately placed a call to the chief of the department. Zhuang listened to the conversation and complained that Zhong’s name had not been mentioned.

“How could I mention anyone’s name? It’s unwise for someone in a supervisory position to interfere in personnel issues in the office he oversees. If he does, he risks an outcome that is the opposite of what he wants.”

Zhuang returned home in a low spirits. Before he had a chance to vent his displeasure on Niu Yueqing and Liu Yue, he heard them quarreling as he reached the stairs. A crowd was eavesdropping in the hallway outside his apartment; they quickly and quietly dispersed when they saw him coming. With mounting anger, he walked in and shouted to stop the two women, before scowling and asking Niu Yueqing what was going on. Seeing how cross he was, Niu Yueqing softened her tone and told him about the women Liu had invited over.

“We live in professional housing, where our neighbors are all intellectuals. When she invites shady characters over to eat, drink, dance, sing, and raise hell, what will our neighbors think of us? I talked to her about it, and she threw a temper tantrum. She even smashed a teapot.”

Zhuang went to Liu’s room to talk to her. After sleeping with him, Liu thought she had become his favorite, so she defended herself with her head held high, spraying him with spittle. He had planned to scold her a little and let the whole thing drop, but her inflexible attitude told him that Niu Yueqing might grow suspicious, for it did not seem normal for a domestic helper to behave that way with the head of the household. As he tried to hide any sign of their relationship, Niu Yueqing showed up at the door to the room.

“You see? If she treats you like that, how do you think she behaves with me? Does she even act like a domestic helper? She’s more like my own mother!”

Zhuang slapped Liu gently. She froze momentarily, staring wide-eyed at him, and when her status in the home finally became clear to her, she slumped to the floor and banged her head until her forehead bled. Husband and wife fell silent at this violent reaction; they brought a bandage for her forehead, but she fought them off, wailing as she tore at the door.

“Do you plan to go screaming into the courtyard?” he demanded sternly. “Listen to me. Don’t even think about coming back if you go out bleeding like that.”

Unable to go outside, Liu went into the bathroom and opened the faucet all the way to let the water gush.

Zhuang phoned Meng Yunfang and asked him to go ask Tang Wan’er to hurry over. She arrived dressed to go out, and was shocked when he told her about the fight. She was, however, pleased to learn the reason behind the quarrel; she went to the bathroom and got Liu Yue into her room to smooth things over.

A while later, Zhuang led Tang to his study, where he asked if she could take Liu Yue home with her to let the girl cool off.

“She did deserve to be punished,” Tang said softly, “but you shouldn’t have hit her in the face. No one could have seen if you’d spanked her till her behind was black and blue.”

“I didn’t do it. She banged her head on the floor.”

Tang laughed. Then she kicked a chair to make a creaking noise so she could give him a loud kiss before walking out to say good-bye to Niu Yueqing. She managed to get Liu Yue to go home with her, while Niu Yueqing, still stewing in anger, refused to get up to see them out. So Zhuang walked the two women to the door and took out ten yuan for a taxi. Refusing to take his money, Tang pointed at his face with a barely concealed smile before walking down the stairs with Liu Yue. Puzzled over the reason behind Tang’s smile, Zhuang went to splash some water on his face in the bathroom and saw in the mirror a faint red mark on his left cheek. He quickly washed it off. The house felt too quiet when he was done. A sadness rose up inside when he saw the few laundered garments floating in the tub. He took them out to dry on the balcony before going back inside and saying cheerlessly to Niu Yueqing, “Happy now? You have what it takes to bring a man so much good fortune.”

“So it’s my fault? She learned her bad habits from those women from her hometown and will become a prostitute one of these days if nothing changes,” Niu Yueqing said.

“Don’t talk like that! What was she like before? She turned bad after coming to work here. It’s you who indulges all her whims.”

“That girl doesn’t know what’s good for her. I treat her well, and that’s gone to her head; she does whatever she wants, any way she likes. She’d shit on my head if she could get away with it!” Using her complaints about Liu Yue to vent her unhappiness on her husband, she added, “She wouldn’t treat me like that if you showed me some respect. When your man looks down on you, even the pigs and dogs move in.”

“Are you finished?” He stormed into his study and slammed the door.

After Liu Yue spent the night at Tang Wan’er’s, Zhuang told Niu Yueqing to go see the girl. She refused. Liu Yue returned on her own. Without saying much, she went into the kitchen and started cooking, a sight that removed the anger from Niu Yueqing’s face. She behaved as if nothing had happened. Starting that night, she ate with them at the same table. When she finished, she asked without looking up, “What do you want for the next meal?”

“Up to you,” Zhuang said.

“How do you make ‘up to you’?”

“Then how about braised noodles with tofu?” Zhuang said.

That was what they had next.

After having the same thing for several meals in a row, Niu Yueqing decided to write down what she wanted for the next meal before going to work in the morning. She put the note on the dining table, where Liu Yue saw it, but while Niu Yueqing was changing into her work shoes, Liu Yue shouted at the door to the study, “What do you want for the next meal?”

“Didn’t she write it down and put the note on the table?” Zhuang asked.

“Rice with something chicken.” She picked up the note. “Zhuang Laoshi, I’m not educated enough to know if it’s stewed chicken or what.”

“You work for a writer, and you don’t know if that’s stewed chicken?” he said from inside the study.

“No, I don’t. If I did, I wouldn’t be working here.”

Niu Yueqing was so annoyed she snatched up the note and tried to pinch the girl’s lips, making her giggle. Zhuang came out and saw them.

“Good, good. Now you’re back to being sisters again.”

Though Niu Yueqing was still angry, she had to laugh. “Liu Yue,” she said, “you don’t act anything like a maid.”

“That’s my problem exactly,” the girl laughed along with her. “I came with you because you were so nice to me. I’m not a maid.”