Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

He shook his head. “I just can’t. I’m sorry, Wan’er. It’s getting late. Let’s go where it’s quiet, all right? I’ll be able to do it again. I can satisfy you. When we go out and calm down, we can go to the House of Imperfection Seekers and spend the afternoon, even the whole night, there if you want.”

She lay there quietly before saying, “Don’t talk like that, Zhuang-ge. You’re nervous and you’ve been depressed. We didn’t do anything, and yet I’m satisfied. I’m completely contented. Being with you on this bed in your room lets me feel like the mistress of the house, and that makes me very happy.” Fixing her eyes on Niu Yueqing’s photo on the wall, she continued, “She hates me and is probably calling me a shameless slut. She’s one of the city’s happy women, but she doesn’t understand me; she’ll never know the pain of another woman in different circumstances.” She got up and turned the photo around.

After leaving the compound, they walked aimlessly before stopping at a diner to get something to eat. When they passed a theater, they bought tickets and went in to see a movie, agreeing that they would return to the House of Imperfection Seekers after the show. They would buy enough food and drink to fully savor the feeling of being together all day and all night.

“One whole day,” he said.

“Two days.”

“No, three days.”

“Then we’ll die in our sleep.”

“If we do, it will be a beautiful death.”

“If that happened and we were found, would people eulogize the House of Imperfection Seekers as a place to die for love or as a den of iniquity?” They laughed at the thought, and then continued to talk and laugh while they watched another story play out on the screen. As she put her head on his shoulder, he recalled the picture they had taken together, but he quickly put it out of his mind; instead, he whispered to her that their posture reminded him of an interesting Chinese word.

“Which word?”

He wrote it on her palm, and she wrote another, even more suggestive, one on his. Lifting her legs to lay them on his lap, he took off her shoes to massage her feet and whispered in her ear, “I’m hopeless. When I wanted to use it, it was useless, but now, when I can’t, it’s ready for action.”

She groped in the dark, and indeed it was as hard as a stick, so she unbuttoned his fly and bent down. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 39 words.] Concerned that people behind them could see, he pushed her away. “I’m wet.” He touched her and found she was very wet. Pinching her nose to shame her, he said, “I’ll go buy some melon seeds.” He got up, and as he walked up the aisle, he saw two men squatting by the wall. They looked like latecomers who were looking for seats, so he gestured to show them there were empty seats up front, which made him laugh, since they wouldn’t be able to see his signal in the dark. Besides, why was he worrying about those people?

He went to the concession stand for watermelon seeds, but they were out. “I’ll have some pumpkin seeds, then,” he said. Pumpkin seeds were good for summer days, but they were out of those, too. All they had were sunflower seeds. He recalled seeing a grocery store not far from the theater, so he told the ticket taker where he was going, and walked out. When he went back inside, there was no sign of her, other than her handbag. She must have gone to the toilet. He even wondered whether she had gone to the toilet to pleasure herself after the earlier moment of intimacy. But ten minutes later, she was still not back. Growing suspicious, he went out and called her name from outside the toilet; there was no response. He asked a woman who was going in to look for her. She came out and told him she wasn’t in there. Worry built as he wondered where she could have gone. The lounge? She wasn’t there. She liked pranks, so surely she was hiding somewhere in the theater waiting to jump out and scare him when he walked by. He began checking the seats, row by row, before looking around the front and back of the theater. When the movie was over and the viewers were filing out, he stood at the exit to check everyone, until the theater was empty. There was still no sign of her, and he panicked. He phoned Meng Yunfang, who asked him why he had disappeared from the wedding. What had he been doing? Zhuang had no choice but to tell Meng everything and ask him to go to Zhou Min’s house to see if she had gone back on her own. Meng told him that he had gone to Zhou’s house with Zhou Min right after the wedding ceremony; he hadn’t seen Wan’er there and had in fact just gotten back from their place. Zhuang put down the phone. His one remaining hope was that she had gone ahead of him to the House of Imperfection Seekers; he hailed a taxi, but she wasn’t there, either. His last stop was Meng Yunfang’s house. Zhuang burst out crying the moment he went inside.

. . .

Niu Yueqing was immediately suspicious when Zhuang did not return after walking out of the wedding ceremony. Since all his friends were there, he might have gone to meet Tang Wan’er. But she could not leave the restaurant; when the mayor and his wife asked about Zhuang, she had to lie and say he had been called away on urgent business. The mayor insisted that she go take a look at the newlyweds’ room after the banquet and stay until the guests had their customary antics with the couple. It was eleven that night when Niu Yueqing finally got home, and one look told her that someone had been in the bedroom. Suspicious, she combed through the bed and found a long strand of hair and three curly pubic hairs, along with the overturned picture of her on the wall. Outraged, she snatched everything on the bed and began throwing it out, starting with the pillow, then the sheets, and then the blanket. She screamed and kicked open the study door and knocked down the books, writing paper, stone carvings, and pottery. When she finished stomping and smashing the objects, she sat down to await his return.

She waited the whole night, but he did not come home. Another day went by, and there was still no sign of him. Her anger finally spent, she lacked the energy to smash anything else; instead she packed some clothes in a large suitcase. Then she heard someone knocking at the door. She walked over and pulled the latch but left the door shut. She went to the bathroom to wash her face, and felt terrible when she spotted a new wrinkle, which spurred her to massage her face using Princess Diana’s method. “You’re back,” she said without turning to look. “There’s longan extract in the fridge; go make a glass to replenish your energy. Make sure to clean up the hair when you finish in the future.” She got a loud wail for a response.

She turned at the unusual sound and saw someone keeling over in the living room. But it wasn’t Zhuang Zhidie; it was Mr. Huang, the pesticide factory owner. Niu Yueqing came out and, making no attempt to help him up, asked in a cold voice, “What’s wrong with you? Did your factory go under?”

“I want to see Mr. Zhuang.”

“Well, go see him, then. Why are you kneeling there and wailing like that?”

“My wife took pesticide again.”

She sat down to paint her brows with a mirror. “She did it again? Then she must have been hungry or thirsty.”

“I mean she ingested the pesticide.”

“Hasn’t she done that before?”

“But this time she died,” he said as he got to his feet.

Her body twitched, and she dropped the mirror. It cracked. “Dead?”

“I always thought that 102 couldn’t kill anyone, so she could drink as much as she wanted. I was out all morning. When I went back at noon, the pot was empty, so I flew into a rage. I yelled at her for getting lazy and not cooking for me. Then I went to the bed and saw her lying in there, one leg raised high in the air. I pulled at it and she rolled over, cold and stiff.”