Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Well, a country has its borders, and so does a province,” Muzi said. “It’s easy to find a lost object, but a person, that’s hard.”

“The thieves you nabbed just now,” Meng said with great interest, “how did you know they were thieves?”

“I was at the number 12 bus stop as people were getting off. The last one was an old man who was shouting that his wallet was gone. I took a closer look and knew immediately that it was them. Every profession gives off an aura, and I know it, even if I can’t tell what it is.”

“Sort of like the ‘feel’ for something that writers talk about,” Meng said.

Muzi’s pager chirped. “He’s calling back,” he said as he got up and walked out. The others sat wordlessly, their hearts in their throats, and stood up when Muzi appeared in the doorway. “Did you find her?”

“He said no.”

Their faces fell. Sitting back down, they finished their meal distractedly before taking another taxi to Meng’s place.

“What do we do now, Yunfang?” Zhuang asked.

“Should we report it to the police?” Meng asked.

“That’s not necessary,” Zhao said. “What can the police do if Muzi can’t find her?”

“Since it’s gotten to this point, Yunfang, why don’t you do a divination with the eight trigrams?” Zhuang asked.

“I can do it for fun, but this is too serious for that. Let me try something else. We often use Master Zhugu’s Magic Numbers to look for people. Give me three characters, Zhou Min,” he said, but Zhou came up blank. “Anything that pops into your head.”

“Rock beside door,” Zhou said. “I noticed one there.”

Meng began working on the number of strokes for the characters, coming up with three numbers that led him to a poem:

To the east by the water / a grove of peach trees / the birds call in the evening / the clouds obscure and dim the moon .

They puzzled over the lines.

“East?” Zhuang asked him. “Where would that be? It would be the eastern district if it’s in the city, and outside the city it would be the eastern suburb. So where is it?”

“Could she have returned to Tongguan?” Zhou Min blurted out. “Tongguan is in the east.”

“Very likely. Do you still have pals there?” Zhao asked.

“Lots of them.”

“Then start calling,” Zhao said.

“But I didn’t notice any signs of her wanting to go back there,” Zhou said. “She’d have told me if she wanted to return.”

It took him a while to get through, but when he did, he learned that she had indeed returned to Tongguan. According to his old pals, news of her return had spread all over town. People were saying that after Zhou Min tricked this woman from a good family into running away with him, her husband had hired two men to look for her in Xijing and found her at a movie theater within a week. So he and one of the men hailed a taxi while the third man went inside. She knew the man, and when she inquired about her child, he asked her to come outside to talk. There her husband and the other man grabbed her, shoved her into the taxi, stuffed a towel in her mouth, and tied her hands and legs. They drove all the way back to Tongguan.

Zhuang was the first to sob after Zhou Min told them what he had learned. “That’s how you treat criminals. How could they do that to her? Who knows how much she’s suffered since returning. Zhou Min, take the train back. You have to save her.”

Zhou Min squatted down and said nothing.

“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to go?” Zhuang asked.

“This is what I feared would happen one day. If they can find her in Xijing, like finding a needle in a haystack, I wouldn’t be able to see her if I went back there.”

“What nonsense is that? If that’s what you think, then why did you bring her here in the first place? You’re a grown man. Can’t you even protect a woman? She must have been blind to be in love with you.” Zhou Min slapped himself, and then Zhuang did the same thing.

. . .

Meanwhile, Niu Yueqing had taken up residence at Shuangren fu. The lowland reconstruction project was underway, and the people in the lanes to the north had begun moving out, causing her elderly mother to panic. It would be her turn the next month or when winter came. Soon the lane with the former Water Board and the kiosk with the ancient well platform would be gone. She took out the water tokens to look at several times a day, chattering to her daughter about the former dynasty and later generations, mixing human words with ghost talk. Niu Yueqing took care of her mother’s daily needs, but her mind was always on Zhuang Zhidie. She had thought that after leaving the compound and its many distractions, she would be able to think about her relationship with Zhuang with a clear head, but she had grown so used to all the activity that the absence of it now made her feel lonely. She had left the place out of anger and vowed never to see him again; she hadn’t realized how much she loved him until she was alone. She tried to imagine his reaction after reading her letter. Did he fly into a rage, or was he beset by grief? If the latter, then he would have rushed over to explain things to her tearfully, showing remorse for his errors and vowing to leave Tang Wan’er right away. When that happened, she had said to herself, she would kick him out the door, humiliate him with a broom, and dump a basin of filthy water on him; she wouldn’t take him back until she had vented her anger and resentment. But Zhuang never showed; he did not even call. Had she done precisely what he had been wishing for? He might have been looking for a reason to divorce but did not want to initiate the discussion, so he waited for her to say those things and start a fight. That would have been what he was waiting for, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he was really upset, she thought. He was normally easygoing, but he had a stubborn streak; he might be holding out, unwilling to relent until she returned on her own. As a celebrity, he was used to being revered, and she had coddled him at home. After he hurt her feelings, might he have been waiting for her to mollify him before coming back? Several times she went to check the compound, but turned back halfway there, afraid she might further incur his displeasure by giving him the erroneous impression that she could not live without him. Besides, why had she written that letter and walked out on him if she planned to go back all along?

She phoned Meng Yunfang, who, after learning what had happened, reprimanded her for her unwise move. How could she leave home and not go back? How could she be thinking about a divorce? Her temper flared at his reproachful attitude. “Why is it all my fault? I might not have dealt with the situation properly, but was he right to do such sordid things? Should a wife treat a whoring husband with respect? He’s a celebrity, so naturally you’re all protecting him. Even a sore on his body is like a lovely peach blossom to you.”

She slammed down the phone after her outburst. Meng had also gone to the dark side, she thought, so she was surprised to see him show up that evening. He was all smiles as he walked in, even saying that he was there to receive a tongue-lashing from her. They sat down to talk, and she told him she couldn’t understand how Zhuang had become so degenerate.

“I can’t figure it out, either,” he said. “Other men have done worse, and they got off scot-free; poor Zhuang Zhidie, on the other hand, after meeting Tang Wan’er, sank to the point of losing his family, though he managed to stay alive.”

“Do you think he’s not degenerate enough?”

“What I can say is, he’s better than the other people in the city’s literary circles.”

“But he’s different from the others,” Niu Yueqing said after a moment of silence. “No one would think twice about it if it had been Ruan Zhifei, but people see Zhidie as an upright man with high moral standards, and they’d be hard-pressed to accept what’s happened. Who knows how many people he’s destroyed, in addition to himself? He didn’t walk out on the marriage, but he’s been sleeping in the study; he hasn’t asked for a divorce, but it’s only a matter of time. Why would I want to hang on to him if that’s what will happen eventually?”