Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“What crazy talk is this, Mother?”

“I didn’t say anything crazy. I did see Tang Wan’er. Go ask your father-in-law. He was there, and I had to push him aside. I said to him, ‘What are you looking at? You can’t see this.’”

Zhuang woke up drenched in sweat. He didn’t dare fall asleep again, so he drank some coffee and sat up till dawn. He then went to see Meng Yunfang, hoping to tell him about his dream, to see if he could make sense of it. But Meng wasn’t in, while his wife was home crying her heart out. When he asked her why, she told him that Meng had left for Xinjiang with his son and his son’s master. With her face wet from crying, she added that Meng Jin’s master had said that the boy was highly intelligent and would grow up to be an extraordinary man. Yunfang’s doubts were allayed when Meng Jin could recite the “Diamond Sutra” from memory after six months of reading, and he believed that his son might indeed become something special. So he was determined to make the boy meditate, recite sutras, practice qigong, and study Buddha’s Dharma Eye, while lamenting that he had nothing to show for half a lifetime of dedication; he figured he must have been sent by heaven simply to wait on and enlighten Meng Jin, which led him to give up his own studies. He had not planned to go to Xinjiang, not until the mayor, who complained that the revised text seemed worse than the original, had called him. Had Zhuang Zhidie really lost his ability to write? Meng understood why Zhuang had sent the revised article directly to the mayor, so he echoed the mayor’s speculation and said Zhuang was indeed a has-been. Then the mayor ordered him to write the articles himself. He complained about it when he got home, but he had no choice other than to copy the original and send it back to the mayor, which convinced him to go to Xinjiang. Xia Jie opposed the trip, and they ended up fighting, but Meng left anyway.

After telling Zhuang about Meng’s trip, she continued to moan about what she’d gone through at home, grumbling that she couldn’t live with Meng anymore; in her view, he was someone who needed an idol, and that had turned out to be his own son. How could she live with a man like that? Zhuang waited silently for her to finish, then got up to walk out. When Xia Jie, who had begun to cry again, saw that he was nearly out the door, she came after him with a note, saying it was from Meng. There was nothing on it but a line of six digits. “Is this an incantation he wanted me to recite to avert calamities and prevent troubles?” Zhuang asked. She replied that Meng had said it was a phone number, of someone who had asked about Zhuang’s situation, but he did not say who it was. He said only to give it to Zhuang, who would understand. Zhuang took the note, but he did not recognize the number. If it was a friend, there was no need to ask Meng. He shrugged, tucked the note into his pocket, and walked off mournfully, his head down.

Doubt and incomprehension filled Zhuang’s heart after he was unable to see Meng Yunfang. When he walked by a butcher shop under the clock tower, he decided to buy a pig’s bitter gallbladder, which he would lick to help him stay awake if he was visited by strange visions when he shut his eyes at home. Before he knew it, he was standing in line at the butcher shop. The mayor happened to ride by just then on his way to inspect the progress of the site construction for the opening ceremony of the Cultural Festival. He spotted Zhuang, who now sported a shaved head and a long beard, and told his driver to stop so he could watch through the window.

“Can I help you?” the butcher asked Zhuang when it was his turn.

“I want some bitter gallbladder.”

“Gallbladder?” the butcher said. “Are you nuts? We sell pork, not gallbladder.”

“That’s what I want. And nuts to you, too.”

The butcher slammed his cleaver down on the butcher block and said, “Stand over there if you’re not here to buy pork. Next.”

The crowd pushed him out of the line. “The man’s crazy. Totally nuts.”

Standing outside the line, Zhuang just smiled stiffly, which was witnessed by the mayor. “Care to get out, sir?”

The mayor responded with a wave of his hand, and the car drove off. “Too bad about Zhuang Zhidie,” he said.

Without the gallbladder, Zhuang fell into another daze that night after finishing his noodles. He imagined that he was writing a letter to Jing Xueyin; it seemed to be the fourth or even the fifth letter he had written. The contents appeared to be the same: he was telling her he loved her more and more, no matter what came of the lawsuit. Since she and her husband had never gotten along and he had become a cripple, Zhuang hoped they would both leave their spouses and live together to fulfill the wishes of years ago. He had the impression that he had posted the letter and had been waiting for her reply at home, when there was a knock at the door. He thought it must be the noodle shop owner, but it was Jing Xueyin. They stood there looking at each other, but neither spoke, like two people who barely knew each other. But a moment later they were talking with their eyes, and they knew why they were meeting; each finally understanding what was being said, they rushed into each other’s arms. And then they planned their wedding. In that room, he saw her in a variety of hairstyles, a bun, a single braid draped loosely around her shoulders. He spotted the tips of a pair of white shoes on feet peeking out from under the door curtain, then a pair of crossed feet under the sofa, followed by a pair in high heels at the side of a table. Urging her to buy some fine furniture and bedding, he published a wedding announcement in every newspaper. The ceremony was held at a luxury hotel. When the usual wedding night pranks were over, he would not let the guests leave, but shut the door to their bedroom. Imitating both ancient Chinese and modern Westerners, he invited her to bed, where he read her passages from the pornographic novel Golden Lotus and showed her adult videos to arouse her. When they lay naked in bed, he touched her all over, using his hands, a feather, and his tongue to so excite her that she lost control, while he continued to caress her and arouse her; he was laughing as he touched her most sensitive spot, until finally, amid her moans, he saw fluid bubbling out from her splendid hair. After rubbing his fingers on her belly to clean them, he picked up a broken tile he had hidden under the bed earlier to gently cover her, put on his clothes, and walked out. The guests were still in the living room. He announced in a loud voice, “This marks the formal dissolution of the marriage between Jing Xueyin and me.” His declaration was immediately broadcast on TV, stunning the guests. “Didn’t you just marry her?” they wondered aloud. “Why divorce her so quickly?” He laughed. “Mission accomplished!”

When that miserable night was finally over and the day was breaking, he still could not tell if the marriage and divorce had been a sweet fantasy or a real experience, but he was in a good mood. After downing half bottle of rice wine that morning, he said to himself: “I have finally accomplished what I needed to do in this city.”

. . .

Dusk had descended as Zhuang Zhidie, suitcase in hand, arrived at the train station alone. As he lined up to purchase a ticket, he was aware that he was about to leave a city where a woman was carrying within her a tiny him. He was about to leave, but felt he ought to say good-bye to that self. He turned and walked toward a phone booth. The train station was located outside the north gate; the phone booth was beneath an old pagoda tree. It was dark outside, but the distant city was ablaze with light. The wind turned gusty as he stepped inside the booth, only to see that it had been vandalized. The dial, now filled with sand, was useless, while the handset hung down like an enormous black spider or a worn shoe. Among the several improvements the mayor’s office proclaimed to have accomplished for the people, sidewalk phone booths were at the top of the list. Yet three or four out of every ten had been damaged, like this one, in short order. He opened his mouth to curse but stopped before a sound emerged; instead, he gave the handset a vicious kick, which produced a gratifying noise. When he came out into the dim light, he noticed that the tree trunk was plastered with all sorts of ads, one to teach self-defense, one to share a family secret formula for lasting erections, another to report on the accomplishments of the master of a certain school. There was even a scandal rag with two items called “Strange News from Xijing.” After giving it a cursory look, he felt compelled to walk up and read more carefully. One of the pieces went like this: A woman in X Lane of X Street in the city had not come out of her house for several days, and her neighbors thought that something must have happened. They broke down her door and found her dead in bed. An examination of her body showed no sign of injury, so she hadn’t been murdered, but there was a corncob stuck in her vagina. A pile of corncobs was found near her bed, all smeared with blood. Obviously she had masturbated herself to death. The other item was about a hospital in the city where on such and such date a woman had given birth to a limbless baby with a belly so transparent its internal organs were all visible from the outside. The terrified doctor threw the newborn into a trashcan, but the mother bundled the baby in her clothes and left.