Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“What am I supposed to do? All right, if it will make you happy, I’ll go with you. I want to see what sort of rare beauty she is. But I’m afraid you might make her feel even worse, since she’s alone on that side of the gate while you’re holding the hand of a pretty girl on this side.”

Zhuang wavered. “I won’t go, then. She’s in such a bad way, she might not recognize me anyway.”

“Maybe you really don’t want to go,” she said with a smile and a wink. He pinched off a blade of grass to tickle her. She jumped to the side of the road, saying she had to pee. As she walked though waist-high wormwood, the tips of her hair floated in and out of sight atop the grass, creating a captivating air of mystery.

“Go in farther, or people in passing cars will see your rear end,” Zhuang said.

“They’d only see a white rock.” She hummed a tune, even sang a few lines, something she hadn’t done before. It reminded Zhuang of the time Liu Yue had sung her folk song.

“So you can sing too, Wan’er.”

“Of course.”

“What’s that you’re singing?”

“A flower drum song from southern Shaanxi.”

Zhuang was intrigued. “Keep singing, it’s beautiful.”

She sang softly as she watched her urine destroy an anthill:

The skin of my lips misses you so ;

it’s hard to tell anyone, oh no .

The tips of my hair miss you so ;

the red ribbons are hard to get, oh no .

The irises of my eyes miss you so ;

I mistake another man for you, oh no .

The tip of my tongue misses you so ;

I can’t taste the condiments, oh no .

As he listened to the song, Zhuang was worried that passersby might hear it and look in their direction, so he kept careful watch. First he saw a rabbit scamper from one side of the road to the other so swiftly that it was only a blurry shadow; then he noticed four or five people standing a ways off, which prompted him to whisper, “Enough. Stop singing.” When the people didn’t move, he realized they were waiting at a bus stop; his mind at ease, he took out a cigarette. A bus picked that moment to arrive and let out a passenger, who headed his way. Zhuang nervously asked Tang if she was finished. When he saw who the passenger was, it nearly took his breath away. It was Ah-can. Zhuang called out to her. She looked up. The sun was in her eyes, so she shielded them with her hand, then froze. She spun around and started running. The people waiting for the bus had boarded and the door had shut, but she banged on it and shouted until it was opened again. She hopped on; the door shut just as Zhuang ran up and the bus drove off, with the back of her blouse caught in the door. He waved and shouted, “Ah-can! Ah-can! Why won’t you see me? Why did you run off? Where do you live?” He ran after the bus, but he was too late; he slumped to the grass when he got back to the spot where he had been standing.

Meanwhile, Tang had been flicking off the many grasshoppers that had jumped onto her as she was peeing. She amused herself by catching them and tying them together by the legs with her hair, until she had four in a row. As she was bringing the string of insects to show Zhuang, she witnessed his fruitless chase and dropped the grasshoppers. The sad look on his face stopped her from making a joke. “Was that Ah-can?” Zhuang nodded. “How bizarre! We were talking about Ah-lan and Ah-can shows up. Why did she run away when she saw you?”

“She said she never wanted to see me again. She must have been visiting her sister at the hospital, which means she lives around here. She didn’t want me to know where she lives, so she jumped on the bus again.”

“She must have loved you. Women are like that. When they’re in love, they’re like a moth flying into a flame with no regard for itself. It couldn’t care less if it burned to ashes. But when they harden their hearts and choose not to see you, they’ll avoid you like the plague. You were in love, weren’t you?”

Ignoring her question, he said, “Be honest and tell me, Wan’er. Am I a terrible man?”

Caught off guard, she could only say, “No, you’re not.”

“Be truthful, don’t lie to me. You must think that’s all you need to say for me to believe you.” He pulled up some grass around him. “I’m such a fool. Why did I think you’d tell me the truth? I should have known that you wouldn’t be honest with me.”

Her face reddened from the effort to comfort him. “You really aren’t a bad man. You haven’t seen the world’s truly bad people. If you’re a terrible man, then I’m an abominable woman. I betrayed my husband, abandoned my son, and ran away with Zhou Min, and now I’m with you. If you’re an awful man, it’s my fault.” A surge of emotion brought tears to her eyes. Zhuang stared blankly; he had wanted to share his grief, but what she had said only made him feel that he truly had done great harm to the woman. He reached out for her, but she shrank back and fell to her knees, and they cried facing each other.

Zhou Min was not home when they finally made it back. The table was empty except for his xun, which had a tiny yellow daisy stuck in the blowhole. Zhuang fixed his empty gaze on it for a while, but he did not dare touch it. She heated up some water to wash their feet and complained about his long toenails when she saw his. “Doesn’t she trim your nails?” She took out a pair of scissors to trim them for him despite his resistance. After putting his shoes back on, she placed her own small feet in his hands, “Rub my feet. I wore heels all day for your sake, and my feet hurt.” Zhuang massaged her feet, making her giggle. “I can’t stand it any longer,” she said with a sideways glance at him.

“We can’t,” Zhuang said. “He gets off work around now.”

“He’s been coming home after dark lately. You’re feeling low, and only I can help you relax. Do whatever you want, so long as it cheers you up,” she said. She was removing her hairpin to let her hair cascade down when the sound of a bicycle came from the gate. She quickly pulled her hair back into a ponytail, set her feet down to put on her shoes, and shouted, “Who is it? Who’s there?” She ran out to open the gate. Zhuang scooped up her stockings from the bed and draped them over the wire on the wall before walking out. Zhou Min was there to greet him, “So here you are, Zhuang Laoshi. I was going to go see you after we ate. Is dinner ready, Wan’er?”

“I ran into Zhuang Laoshi when I went out for some groceries, so I asked him to come in. We just got back. What would you like, Zhuang Laoshi? How about a fried-egg flat cake with purple rice porridge?”

“Go on in and make it.” Zhou parked his bike. “I heard you were ill, Zhuang Laoshi. Are you feeling better?”

“It’s nothing. I just felt terrible after Gong Jingyuan died and slept for a few days.”

“Everyone’s been talking about it. They’re all saying how emotionally attached you were to him.”

“Are they really?”

“Yes. You’re both celebrities, but your image is so much superior to his.”

“Let’s not talk about that. You said you were going to my house. Have you heard anything new? After all this time, the second hearing still hasn’t begun. Nothing seems to be moving. It could take years. Even a ghost would run out of patience. But Bai Yuzhu has been active, always wanting me to do something or other for him.”

“I’ve been seeing Sima Gong about every third day. I don’t take expensive gifts along, but each time it’s twenty or thirty yuan. I went again this afternoon, and he said there would be no second hearing. They’ve gotten to the bottom of things. The arguments from the writers and literature professors we sent over were critical and timely. The view in the court is to bring the case to a conclusion.”