Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

“Are you finished?” Zhuang said. “You’re only making it worse.”

“You probably think I’m jealous, don’t you? I just feel sorry for you.”

Liu Yue tried to smooth things over while Zhou blamed himself.

“I’ve put up with a lot,” Niu Yueqing said, “but I’m disappointed that you’re not angry or upset with her even now. How can you explain your relationship if it wasn’t love?”

“We were comrades, friends,” Zhuang said.

“If that’s the case, then why didn’t what was in the article happen between you and someone else at the magazine?”

“We were just closer than most comrades and friends.”

“I’ll go along with whatever you say. But are you being realistic? What was written reeks of a true romance, so the magazine and Zhou Min will suffer if you insist upon your denial. Then what will people say about you? They’ll say Zhuang Zhidie can sacrifice friends who support and promote him on account of a woman.”

“Are you forcing me into an admission?”

“You treat something considered trash by others as treasure, which can only mean you’re still thinking about her. So go ahead and do whatever you want.” She turned to Zhou and said, “Go tell Zhong Weixian and the others that you all deserve to suffer because you wanted to promote Zhuang Zhidie. You should pack up your things and return to your job at the nunnery tomorrow.” She got up and went into the bedroom.

Zhuang paced the living room with a sour look on his face, while Zhou looked on blankly, unsure of what to do. Pained by the sight, Liu Yue went into the kitchen and brought out a plate of plums for Zhou Min, who did not want one, despite her insistence. They went back and forth until Zhuang came over, picked one up for Zhou, and took one for himself.

“Here’s what I think we can do. You insist that what you wrote was based on truth, and you can even say it came from me. But I didn’t say it was between Jing and me; it was based on what has happened between me and all the women I’ve known. What you wrote could be about Jing Xueyin, but it could also be about someone else entirely. It was a realist piece based on the principles of literary creation. You gathered material, generalized and summed up what happened between me and all those women, and then represented the scenario through this symbolic image called X. Would that work? That way you can be free of responsibility, no matter what accusations they hurl at you.”

Zhou thought over the suggestion. “All right,” he said, “that’s what I’ll do.” He bade them good-bye and left.

Niu Yueqing knew that Zhou had left when she heard the door open, so she called out from the bedroom, “In here, Zhidie.”

Zhuang opened the door to see his wife leaning against the bed as she wiped her face with facial cleanser.

“You’re amazing!” he said. “Instead of dealing with Zhou Min’s mistake when he was here, you decided to go off on something else. What will he think of me now? He’s going to say I’d sacrifice him and others in the magazine.”

“Would you have come up with that idea of yours if I hadn’t?”

“What do you know about Zhou Min? We have just met, after all. I wasn’t too happy when he used my name to get a job at the magazine, and now he’s stirred up so much trouble, and yet you’re on his side. What can I say to Jing Xueyin when I see her?”

“Oh. So you’re still thinking about seeing her?”

With a curse, Zhuang shut the bedroom door and went into the living room to smoke. He heard the faint sound of a xun. When it finally stopped, he told Liu Yue, who was dozing on the sofa, to go to bed, while he stayed in the living room and inserted the funereal tape in the player. Keeping the volume low, he turned off the light to immerse himself, body and soul, in a state that even he found hard to explain.

. . .

Over the next few days, Zhou Min left early in the morning and returned home late at night, not straying from the magazine. At home he had little time for Tang Wan’er. Always itching to go somewhere, she complained that they hadn’t been to the Sheraton Dance Club for a long time, but he kept putting her off. She told him that Zhuang Laoshi had opened a bookstore to the left of the Forest of Steles Museum and said they should go check it out, see what sort of books they stocked, and show Zhuang Laoshi that they cared about what he was doing. Zhou replied impatiently, “I don’t have time for that. You can go if you want.” He did nothing but play the xun on the city wall and sleep. Upset, she ignored him. When he left for work in the morning, instead of going out on her own, she stayed home and tended to her appearance, putting on perfumed rouge and painting her brows thin and smooth. She kept her ears pricked, thinking it was Zhuang coming to see her every time the metal ring on the door made a noise. When they had made love that first time, she was elated that the barrier between them had been removed. As she thought about how she was now his, her face burned and she got hot all over from arousal; when she saw how the people passing by the door outside looked indifferently at the pear tree, she laughed coldly as her anger rose: Just you wait, one of these days you’ll know what I mean to Zhuang Zhidie. Then I’ll watch you come fawning over me and embarrass you until you look for a place to hide . But it had been so long, and Zhuang had not shown up again, so she vented her anger on herself by mussing her hair and by pressing her lips on the mirror and the door to leave red circles. That night, the moon was as bright as water. As usual, Zhou Min went to the city wall to play his xun. Wan’er shut the gate and went in to take a bath. Then, draping her nightgown over her naked body, she went out and sat on the lounge chair under the pear tree. Utterly lonely, she thought about Zhuang Zhidie: Why don’t you come? Were you, like all the other men, just satisfying a sudden urge that day and put me out of your mind once it was over? Did you simply want the memory of another woman added to your list of conquests? Or, as a writer, did you merely use me as material for something you were writing? She thought some more, and as she savored the memory of that day, she retracted her earlier thoughts. He would not be like that. The look in his eyes when he first saw her, his timid approach, and his madly urgent behavior when they were together gave her the confidence that he was truly fond of her. Her first sexual encounter had been with a manual laborer, who had forced her down on the bed, and that had led to their marriage. After the wedding, she was his land and he was her plow; she had to submit to him whenever he felt like cultivating his land. He would climb on with no preamble and finish before she felt a thing. With Zhou Min, she naturally enjoyed what she hadn’t had with her first man, but Zhou was, after all, a small-town character who could never compare with a Xijing celebrity. Zhuang had started out shyly, but once he entered port, he was immensely loving and tender; his many tricks and techniques had finally taught her the difference between the city and the countryside, and between one who was knowledgeable and one who was not. She came to know what makes a real man and a real woman. She touched herself as she followed this line of thought, until she began to moan and groan, calling out to Zhuang. She was writhing and squirming on the chair. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 37 words.] The chair creaked and inched slowly toward the pear tree; squinting at the moon through the branches, she fantasized that it was Zhuang’s face. As she flicked her tongue, she wrapped her legs around Zhuang until she was up against the tree trunk, where she moved, rocking the tree and swaying the moon, until one final, forceful push of her body before she went limp. Three or four pear leaves circled above her and then settled onto her body. Exhausted, she remained in the chair, lost in thought, so weak it felt as if all her bones had been removed.