Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Perfect!” Zhao complimented him as the bamboo curtains parted and a voice said, “Which of you is the writer Zhuang Zhidie?”

Zhuang saw that it was the young nanny from across the way.

While Huang was washing up outside, she’d asked him how his hand had gotten so black. He’d told her he had asked the writer Zhuang Zhidie for a piece of his calligraphy. It just so happened that the book she was reading was by Zhuang, so she stuck a pacifier into the baby’s mouth and rushed over. This was Zhuang’s first encounter with someone who called him by name without adding “laoshi,” but for some reason he liked her straightforward nature. Looking into that pretty face, he said, “I’m Zhuang Zhidie.”

The girl eyed him closely. “Liar. How could you be Zhuang Zhidie?” The startled plant owner gulped and cast a glance at Zhao Jingwu.

“What do you think Zhuang Zhidie ought to look like?” Zhao asked her.

“He has to be taller than you, about so tall.” She held her hand up in the air.

“Ai-ya!” Zhuang exclaimed. “The price of everything keeps going up, everything but a man’s height. I could never be Zhuang Zhidie.”

Now pensive, she took a good look at him. And as her face reddened, she hastened to say, “I’m so sorry, I’ve offended you.”

“You work for the family across the way, don’t you?” Zhuang asked.

“I’m a nanny,” she said, “so go ahead, laugh at me.”

“Why would I do that? I said to Zhao Jingwu a while ago that you don’t often see a girl reading a book while she’s taking care of a baby.”

“Well, if you don’t find me undeserving, then you should give me a piece of your calligraphy.”

“The way you say it, I can’t refuse. What’s your name?”

“Liu Yue.”

“Another moon,” Zhuang muttered before writing a couplet from an ancient poem:

In the wild the sky presses down on trees

By the clear river the moon comes near people

“You are a lucky girl, Liu Yue,” Zhao said. “I laid out the ink, paper, and stone, but you get the poem. To pay for this gift, you must get a girl from your village to come work for him.”

“Our villagers are too clumsy to serve someone as august as Zhuang Laoshi.”

“Just seeing you tells me all I need to know about them,” Zhuang said. “You will be able to find one for me.”

“Then it will have to be me,” she said after a thoughtful pause.

Zhao Jingwu couldn’t have imagined that those words would come out of her mouth, and he tried to signal her with his eyes.

“That is precisely what I had hoped to hear,” Zhuang said with a clap of his hands.

Encouraged by that statement, Liu Yue taunted Zhao Jingwu: “What were you trying to say with your eyes? I knew I’d be his maid the minute I discovered who he was.”

“Impossible. You have a contract with the family across the way,” Zhao insisted. “If you leave and they find out that I introduced you to someone else, I shudder to think what they’ll accuse me of.”

“It’s not like I’m expected to marry into their family, is it?”

“How’s this,” Zhuang said. “Once you’ve fulfilled your contract with them, ask Jingwu to notify me.”

. . .

Back on the street after lunch, Zhuang Zhidie commented that Liu Yue was too charming to be a country girl.

“She was a fast bloomer,” Zhao Jingwu said. “When she showed up, she was dressed in handmade clothes, she kept her eyes down around people, and you couldn’t get a word out of her. Then one day, while her employers were at work, she went into the closet and tried on the mistress’s dresses, modeling them in the mirror. A neighbor spotted her and told her she looked like the actress Chen Chong. ‘Really?’ she said before bursting into tears. Why that made her cry, no one knew. When she received her first wages as a nanny, the mistress told her she should send some back to her family, since life was so hard for farmworkers. She didn’t. Instead she spent it all on clothes. Clothes make the woman, a saddle makes the horse. Overnight she became a dazzler. Everyone in the compound said she did look like Chen Chong, and she grew livelier by the day. Her personality changed drastically.”

Zhuang had tossed off his comment about hiring the girl because she had caught his fancy. “Are you serious?” Zhao said. “Don’t make the mistake of hiring a maid and acquiring a pampered young mistress.”

They spotted a lush persimmon tree in a private compound as they passed a narrow lane. A dead leaf whistling on the wind landed on Zhuang’s right eye. “Jingwu,” he said, “isn’t the Clear Void Nunnery down this lane?”

“Yes.”

“I met someone who lives nearby the other day. Why don’t we see if we can all go for some hulutou?”

“Are you talking about the nun Huiming?”

“No, not her. She’s a Buddhist, so she can’t eat that.”

“My mistake,” Zhao apologized. “But since you have a new friend, I’d like to meet him.”

“I’ll go now and be right back.” He rode off.

The sound of the scooter at the gate brought a full head of hair poking above the ivy-covered wall. “Zhuang Laoshi!” came the cry. He saw that it was a smiling Tang Wan’er and wondered how she had discovered his presence so quickly. Her powdered face disappeared amid the greenery. “Wait a moment,” she said. “I’ll open the gate for you.”

He had arrived just as she was squatting in the toilet, looking at the watery smudges on the wall and imagining the people’s faces they formed; for some reason, the image of Zhuang Zhidie floated into her mind, and she blushed. It was then she heard the motor scooter at the gate. She stood up, flustered. It was Zhuang Zhidie, of all people. She rushed toward the gate, nervously fastening the belt of her baggy trousers.

Zhuang watched her through a narrow opening. But instead of opening the gate, she ran back inside the house. The sight of her ample behind sluing from side to side sent a tingle through him.

Tang Wan’er hurriedly touched up her hair, added some rouge to her cheeks, and put on lipstick before rushing out to open the gate. Then she stood in the gateway, bestowing upon Zhuang the most fetching gaze she could manage. He looked into her eyes, in which a tiny human figure appeared. It was his reflection. “Is Zhou Min not home?”

“He left early this morning, saying he needed to go to the printers. Won’t you come in, Zhuang Laoshi? You shouldn’t be out in the hot sun without a hat.” Zhuang experienced a moment of confusion. Should Zhou’s absence be a disappointment or a cause for hope? Bag in hand, he walked in. Once inside, he sat down. She brought him tea and cigarettes and turned on the fan. “Zhuang Laoshi,” she said, “we can’t thank you enough. Most people never have a chance to actually meet you, while we’ve been the recipients of your favors.”

“What favors might those be?”

“You gave us all this tableware, not only more than we can use now, but more than we’ll be able to use once we get settled.”

He had forgotten about having the things delivered. He smiled. “That was nothing. What I get for a short essay was enough to pay for everything.”

She moved a stool up, sat down, and crossed her legs. “One short essay for all this? Zhou Min says that publishers pay by the word, punctuation included. Just think how much you could get for the punctuation alone in one of your books.”

“No one would pay for a book with only periods and commas,” he said with a laugh.

She laughed, too, as she raised the collar of her blouse, which had slid down, revealing a bit of cleavage. Zhuang’s heart raced, and he made a conscious effort not to look there.