Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Zhao Jingwu? Jingwu has higher standards than that. Why would he be interested in Liu Yue? Did you say anything to her?”

“Not yet. I’m waiting for the right moment to sound her out. So don’t mention it yet.”

“I won’t. I’m not a busybody. You like her too much to let her go, and you think my cousin’s son is beneath her, so go ahead and marry her off to whoever you want. What would it matter to me if someone living in a mansion fell for her and she became a palace consort? My views mean nothing in this house. Even a maid has more say than I do.”

She went to Shuangren fu the next day, leaving Zhuang at home. He heard the sound of flapping wings and knew it was the pigeon. When he went to the balcony, Liu Yue had already caught the bird with a laugh. “Shameless,” she said after reading the note. “So shameless!”

Zhuang took a look at the note, which turned out to be blank. Threes short hairs had been pasted on the paper beside a red circle. “What’s this?” he wondered, pretending to be in the dark. “How is this shameless?”

“Do you think I’m that stupid? The red circle is lipstick. What kind of hair is this? It’s curly. The shameless one didn’t need to write anything. She just sent something from the top and something from down below. She’s asking you over.”

“How did you recognize the hair?” he whispered.

“You thought I wouldn’t know because I don’t have any? They say a girl with no hair is as good as gold.”

“I never heard that. A hairless girl is a white tiger who will bring a man harm.”

Unhappy, she got up to leave, but he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom to take off her pants. Still upset, she grabbed hold of her pants and wouldn’t let go.

“I’m a white tiger, and if I harm you, who’s going to fuck Tang Wan’er?”

“Things are bad enough already, so what’s to be afraid of?”

“So I have to let you do it whenever you want? I went to you the other day, when you pretended to be asleep. I’m not in the mood now, so don’t try to force it on me. You took my virginity. Now you come to me whenever you feel like it. I’m still single. How am I going to find a husband?”

Seeing that she was not feigning anger, he told her about Niu Yueqing’s plan to marry her off to the son of Niu Yueqing’s cousin and about Zhao Jingwu’s marriage proposal, as well as his own effort to convince Niu Yueqing to pair her with Zhao. When he asked her what she thought, she began to sob.

“Why are you crying? Are you upset because I didn’t bring this up with you before?”

“I’m crying out of self-pity, about my terrible fate, my lack of self-awareness, and my naïveté.” She went to her room and sat blankly as tears continued to stream down her face.

After puzzling over the girl’s wrenching comment, he realized that she was pinning her hopes on him. Was she hoping to replace Niu Yueqing? That thought made her look calculating, which he found repugnant. He decided he would not try to talk her around; instead, he went into the living room to shine his shoes. She walked out, leaned against the wall, and said, “Zhuang Laoshi.”

Zhuang kept shining his shoes.

“Zhuang Laoshi,” she called out again.

“Zhuang Zhidie is no longer a worthy teacher to you. He’s a horrible person, a crafty old scoundrel who took advantage of naïve Liu Yue.”

She laughed. “Was I wrong to say that? Wasn’t it because I was naïve? I’m just a girl. Why can’t I have thoughts about being with you? I now understand that I’m just a maid from the countryside. What do I have except for my looks? Nothing. I was too naïve to let my thoughts run wild. But I don’t regret being with you, so don’t think badly of me. I’ll be happy to be with you as long as you want me. I’ll have enough to remember for the rest of my life, no matter who I marry. All I want now is for you to tell me the truth about Zhao Jingwu. Did he really say that? Did he mean it, or did he just want to take advantage of me?”

Saddened by what she said, Zhuang put down the shoes and walked over to her. “Liu Yue,” he said as he picked her up, “forgive me. Please forgive me. I want you to know that Zhao is a good man. He’s young, good-looking, and talented. He’s better than me in many ways. He really meant it when he asked me to be your matchmaker. I’ll turn him down if you’re not happy with him. I’ll take time to find you a better man.”

She put her arms around his neck and raised her head to kiss him. They were all over each other when a button broke loose and fell to the floor. She strained to pick it up, but he held her so tightly that her upper body was bent nearly double while her lower body was still in his arms. She shook with laughter. He felt something slippery and took a look at his hands. She was so mortified she lay motionless. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 200 words.] When it was over, she said, “I can’t do this anymore. What would Zhao Jingwu think of me if he knew?”

“How would he know? When your dajie comes home, tell her I’ve gone to lead a writing workshop at the newspaper.”

“You’re going to see her?”

“She’s asked several times and I haven’t gone. I don’t know what she’ll do if I don’t go today.”

Unable to suppress her jealousy, Liu Yue said, “Go, then. In your mind I’m worth less than one of her toes. But tell her you had me first today before she can have you.”

After he left, Liu Yue sat alone turning things over in her mind: So that’s what Zhao was thinking. She had always thought he was nice to her, but it had never seemed to be more than that. Zhuang did love her, but he was more taken by Tang Wan’er. If one day his relationship with Niu Yueqing got so bad they divorced, he would choose Tang over her if he wanted to remarry. Besides, she would fare worse than Tang if everything stayed the way it was; Tang was married, which gave her a good cover, while she was single and might have trouble finding a good husband. Now Zhao wanted her. He was not Zhuang’s equal, to be sure, but he was a much better catch than Tang’s Zhou Min in terms of city residency, money, and looks. Following that line of thought, Liu Yue suddenly felt that she was a desirable commodity, and she let her thoughts begin to dwell on Zhao Jingwu. Then again, Zhuang might be toying with her, so she mustered the courage to phone Zhao. When she hinted at Zhuang’s idea, Zhao could not stop saying how wonderful it was. Now that the paper-thin barrier was broken, he loosed a string of expressions about his feelings, making her hot all over. She responded with tender words of her own. He said he loved her; she responded with such intensity that she reached down between her legs and was soon moaning.

Niu Yueqing came in and heard Liu Yue’s voice. “Who are you talking to?”

Startled, Liu Yue broke out in a cold sweat. She put down the phone. “Just a girl calling to ask if Zhao Jingwu was here. I asked her who she was. She said she was his cousin, and she went on and on about Cousin Jingwu. So I told her your Cousin Jingwu isn’t here and hung up. What was Zhao Jingwu thinking, giving our phone number to his cousin?”

Niu Yueqing heard the explanation but didn’t quite believe her.

. . .

The Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching. In the past, Xijing’s four celebrities would customarily get together over holidays, with a different group of three men taking their families to the fourth man’s house each day. They entertained themselves with music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, followed by drinking while they admired the moon. The festivities would last for days. On the ninth day of the eighth lunar month, Ruan Zhifei sent an invitation on red paper, asking Zhuang and his wife to his place on the fifteenth. He had gotten his hands on some Hami melons and giant grapes from Xinjiang. After they enjoyed the fruit, he would hire cars to take everyone to see the lanterns at the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, where, according to him, a new wall had been set up for visitors to write on. They would amuse themselves by reading the lousy poems by people who longed to get published but lacked a venue, and they would add their names to the wall to show up the stupid monks at the temple. A gift was included in the invitation, an enlarged copy of a U.S. dollar bill with the image of Washington replaced by a headshot of Ruan. Zhuang laughed. “Ruan Zhifei is obsessed with money. He thinks those poems on the wall are terrible, but he could probably only write ‘I was here.’”