Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“You’ve got an idea, don’t you?” Huang asked urgently.

“Your wife brought on all this trouble, so let her go and spread the word.”

“Let her spread the word?” Huang fumed, “If I don’t divorce her this time, you can call me the illegitimate child of a teenage nun!”

“If that’s what you have in mind, then we have nothing to talk about.”

“So you mean—” Huang was puzzled.

“Since everyone will soon know about your wife’s failed suicide, you might as well use that as a pretext for a different kind of publicity, the more the better. While you’re doing that, add some more components to the formula before telling people that your wife didn’t take 101, but a newly developed product, 102, or 202, or whatever you want to call it. You tell them it was specifically produced for the benefit of families throughout the world. You see, ninety percent of the families these days are barely coping, especially those who have gotten rich in recent years, men who either keep a mistress or sleep with prostitutes. Even those without money can’t avoid having lovers. Everyone is having affairs, and only the experts can keep it hidden. But even with them, how can a family live in peace? As the saying goes: For a day without peace, invite some guests; for a whole year without peace, build a house; but for a lifetime without peace, take a lover. When that happens, the betrayed spouse will raise hell, and that’s where your pesticide will come in handy. If she takes it, her husband will be frightened into inaction, and no one will die. Can you imagine the demand for something like that in today’s society?”

Huang smiled broadly.

“Mr. Zhuang, you are truly brilliant. This is the second time you’ve come to my rescue. But how do I go about making that public? If I mention the function of 102, everyone will know its function is only to scare someone, that it’s not a real pesticide. Who will want to buy it?”

“That all depends on how you sell it. You have to be secretive. If you tell a man, then you can’t let his wife know, and vice versa. You must promote it personally at government offices, where there are few couples working side by side. Many of these offices have private clubs for henpecked husbands. Why don’t you go see them?”

Grabbing Zhuang’s hands, Huang insisted on taking him to dinner. Zhuang declined, so Huang hailed a taxi, tossed a wad of money at the driver, and told him to take Zhuang home.

That night, Zhuang stayed in his study to work on the rebuttal. At eleven o’clock, as usual, he prepared to bed down, but the blanket had been taken back to his bedroom earlier, when Liu Yue was tidying up. So he stepped into the bedroom for the blanket before Yueqing went to bed and shut the door. With her pants off, she sat in bed flipping through a pictorial magazine. When she saw him going for the blanket, she said: “Are you sleeping in the study again?”

“I have to work overtime on the defense, and I don’t want to bother you.”

“Bother me, you say? Am I forcing you to sleep on the sofa?”

“That’s not what I said. Why are you still awake?”

“So now you’re worrying about my staying awake? Do I still have a husband or not? Why do I spend every night alone in this bed?”

“What about me?”

“You can write. Who knows what you’re writing anyway,” Niu Yueqing said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“I told you already, I’m writing a rebuttal.”

“So you can have a good time reminiscing about what you did with Jing Xueyin years ago.”

“That’s nonsense. I’ll show it to you.”

He went to get the unfinished statement for Niu Yueqing, who read a few pages before saying, “Go sleep there, then.”

“Why can’t I sleep here?” He tossed the blanket he had been holding to the side. “I want to sleep here.”

She ignored him, but did not object when he got undressed. He crawled into bed; she poked him on the forehead.

“I hate you. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. You can come out in the open and ask for a divorce if you find me so unattractive, but don’t kill me slowly like this.”

“Stop that. I came here to sleep. Why can’t you ever say anything nice?” He climbed on top of her. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 117 words.]

“Don’t kiss me.” She tossed her head back and forth. “Your mouth stinks of cigarettes.”

He stopped moving.

“Are you just humoring me?”

“You really know how to kill a man’s desire.”

She fell silent, but with her mouth still clamped shut, she complained about pain. He reached out to pull the cord on the lamp.

“Why did you turn off the light? I’ve asked you to in the past, but you wouldn’t, saying it was more exciting to see. Now you turn it off. Is it because I’m no longer exciting to see?”

He quietly turned the light back on, and when he was in the mood again, she said, “Did you wash up? Or did you climb on top of me without washing up?”

So he got up, went to the bathroom to wipe himself clean, and started over, but it didn’t work. He told her to change positions, but she asked where he had learned all these tricks, forcing him to go back to the old way. Now nothing worked, no matter how hard he tried.

“Forget it,” Niu Yueqing said with a sad face.

Feeling a hint of remorse, he was sorry. “I’m impotent,” he mumbled. “How could I become impotent just like that?”

“When have you been potent over these years? You can hardly get it up and barely give me any pleasure at all. With the way you are, you have the nerve to complain about me this and me that, and all the while you can’t keep your eyes off other women. They wouldn’t be as tolerant as I am. They’d kick you out of bed.”

Zhuang held his tongue. Breathing loudly, he turned his back to her. She turned him around to face her.

“Don’t fall asleep yet. I have more to say to you.”

“What else do you want to say?”

“What are your feelings about Liu Yue?”

Unsure what she was getting at, he decided not to respond directly.

“What about you?”

“We have trouble with domestic helpers. Every time we hire one, things are fine at first, but then they slowly deteriorate. Look at this one. She makes herself up like a princess and loves to shop. She no longer does a good job in the kitchen, and she argues with me at the slightest provocation. Should we let her go?”

“Do you want to fire her?” Zhuang asked.

“Not fire her. What would people say if we fired her so soon after hiring her? I’m thinking about finding another family for her. A few days ago, when my cousin came to see my mother, I mentioned Liu Yue to her, and she said we should marry her to her son. That got me thinking. Sure, Liu Yue is three years older than the boy, but it’s an appropriate age, for as the saying goes, a wife three years older is better than gold. For a girl from the mountains in northern Shaanxi to marry into a suburban family would be like stumbling into a den of good fortune. I’ll bet that’s something she never dreamed of. And people would say we cared enough about her to help her find a family for the rest of her life.”

Reassured by what he was hearing, Zhuang said, “Better not get involved in this. What could she do in the suburbs? With her looks and talent, she could easily find a husband in the city. Besides, I’m not so sure about an engagement to your cousin’s son. He’s a scrawny little monkey. I don’t much like him. And don’t forget that people in the countryside want a wedding soon after an engagement. When she’s gone, how are we going to find a clean, hard-working helper like her? I’ll lose face if you hire an ugly girl or a dimwit, and I won’t have that. Then you’ll have to do everything yourself.”