Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

He went into her room, where the window was tightly shut and the drapes were drawn. He was sweating the moment he stepped inside.

“You think this is hot?” she said. “When I was young, it got so hot on the sixth day of the sixth month, when the sun was bright red, that people hung their bedding out to dry, along with the old folks’ funeral garb. But your granddad walked out of the village under an umbrella without a word, so the villagers took in the laundry, some hurried, others slow, just before the sky opened up and rain pelted down. It’s not hot today. If you think it is, it’s all internal heat. Put some spit on your nipples and you’ll cool down.”

Zhuang merely smiled. The old lady spat on her finger and rubbed it on his nipples. A pair of chills entered his heart. He shuddered.

“Zhidie,” she said, “your father-in-law came back a while ago, sat where you’re sitting now, and told me he was upset. He can’t abide his new neighbors, says they’re always arguing and that their child is a handful, even comes over and steals food from them. I want you to light a stick of incense for him.” A funeral photo of Zhuang’s father-in-law stood on a table in the corner beside an incense burner filled with ashes. Zhuang lit a stick and looked up at a dust-filled cobweb in a corner of the room. He picked up her cane to knock it down.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “It’s his favorite place to sit.” Before Zhuang could say anything, she continued, “He came as soon as you lit the incense. Where have you been, damn you? How did you get here so fast?” Zhuang looked around but saw nothing. Smoke curled from the burning incense, rising like silk to the ceiling. She said that the old fellow was opening the box with the water district plaque. “That is the only antique that’s been passed down,” she said. “The mayor came to see it the last time he visited. Are you going to take it with you? If you do, what will I show him the next time?” She slipped the box, which she normally kept under her pillow, under her buttocks. That tickled Zhuang’s fancy; he was about to say something when his wife called to him: “What are you and Ma talking about in there? You’re free to leave when you’re done talking, but I’ll be afraid to go in there.”

Zhuang left the room. “Mother has some strange tales to tell, and I think she’s telepathic. The nineteenth is your father’s birthday, though we haven’t celebrated it for more than ten years, so this year buy some spirit paper for her to burn.” He turned to Zhao Jingwu. “Something on your mind?” he asked.

“Not really,” Zhao said. “I was just going to invite you to my place. It’s an old-style courtyard dwelling, one of many that the mayor wants to tear down to build a gymnasium. This might be your last chance to see it.”

“I keep meaning to go,” Zhuang said, “but I can never find the time. Let me remind you that you promised me some antiques.”

“No problem,” Zhao said with a laugh. “Anything I drag out from under my bed will be as good as your wall bricks. Your wife needn’t make lunch today. I’ll treat you both to a lunch of hulutou, that soup with pig entrails. There’s something important I want to talk to you about.”

“Hulutou, on a hot day like this?” Niu Yueqing said warily. “It’ll stink something awful. Count me out.”

“That shows how much you know,” Zhuang said. “It’s a Xijing specialty. Although it’s just steamed buns soaked in soupy intestines, the spices give it a unique flavor. The kind you get at Dongmen’s Fushunlai is inferior. The genuine article is served at Chunshengfa in Nanyuanmen, where legend has it that the ancestral founder was given a recipe by the famed Daoist healer Sun Simiao. You’ve never tasted anything like it. It could work wonders on your chronic constipation. You need to structure your diet for what your body needs. You really should try it.”

“Work wonders?” she replied. “Then why didn’t it work on Jingwu?”

“What about him?”

“He complained to me a while ago that he had his eye on a girl who lives on Tangfang Street, but he was embarrassed to tell her how he felt, so he watched her go to work in the mornings and leave in the afternoons. He mooned over her for a month. Then three days ago, while he was waiting, he heard firecrackers. He went to see what the commotion was about, and discovered it was the girl’s wedding — to someone else! Everything comes easy to Jingwu, everything but romance. Does he need to eat pig guts when he already has a pig brain?”

“Jingwu is unlucky in love, so what will work wonders on him is a woman,” Zhuang announced.

Zhao laughed heartily and said he had decided to remain a lifelong bachelor. He stood up and took Zhuang by the arm.

“Don’t leave yet,” Niu Yueqing said. “Not till you’ve taken care of my business. Then you can stay away for three days and nights, for all I care.”

“What business is that?” Zhuang asked.

“I bought Mother a backscratcher at the Zhuque Department Store this morning because she says she has fleas. How can she possibly have fleas? Your skin starts to flake as you get old. Well, when I got home with it, I was surprised to see that our neighbor, Aunty Wang, had given Mother a backscratcher that was nicer than the one I bought. I want to return it, but I’m not sure I can. What should I do?”

“How much can a backscratcher cost?” Zhuang asked her. “Aren’t you overdoing it?”

“And who are you, the rich man Gong Jingyuan?”

“Your wife knows how to manage money,” Zhao said.

“I have to. If not, we’d be poor no matter how much he earned,” she said. “Zhidie is like a rake with no teeth, and I can’t let the spending get out of control. Jingwu, I think that when I go to the department store, I’ll need to tell them that I wanted to buy the backscratcher when I saw how well made it is, never dreaming that my husband had already bought one, also one of theirs. Does an old lady need two to scratch an itch? We have to work for every cent we earn, and having an extra one of these lying around would be wasteful, don’t you think? So I’d like to return this one. If they refuse to take it back, I’ll reason with them, stressing the need for fairness in business. If people these days are free to quit the Communist Party, who says you can’t return a purchase? A young clerk might not listen, and if she argues with me, what should I do? Argue, I guess. My question is, should I be genteel, or do I use the coarsest language I know?”

“Let’s hear the refined,” Zhuang said.

“You people are using lame arguments, so go screw your old lady, you bastards, no-good sons of bitches!”

“You’re so used to coarse language,” Zhuang said, “that a slip of the tongue turns your genteel words coarse. Instead of ‘screw your old lady,’ you should say ‘screw your mother.’ Much more cultured.”

“Jingwu,” she said indignantly, “you see what kind of man your Zhuang Laoshi is? He’s never taken my side in anything.”

“Young people worship Zhuang Laoshi, he’s their idol.”

“I married a husband, not an idol. Those people have given him a big head. Not one of those youngsters knows that Zhuang Laoshi’s feet stink, that his teeth are rotting, that he grinds them in his sleep, or that he farts while he eats, and won’t come out of the toilet till he’s read a newspaper from beginning to end.”

Zhao laughed. “Here’s what I think. If fighting with them doesn’t work, ask to see their supervisor. If that fails, call the mayor on his private phone.”

“That’s what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll go now. Don’t leave till I get back.”

When she heard that Niu Yueqing was going out, her mother told her to put on some makeup, but Niu Yueqing ignored her and left. The old lady grumbled: “She won’t wear a mask and doesn’t like makeup. How can she let people see her real face?”