Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

Ruan had still not returned by the time Zhuang finished, so he decided to go out. He walked down a narrow lane and arrived at a nearby market.

The market was jam-packed and deafeningly loud. After walking around for a while, he spotted a collier who was carefully piling coal against a wall, leaving the pieces loosely stacked. Then the man took his cart to a noodle shop, where he haggled with the shop owner, who wanted to weigh his goods. The collier insisted on selling the whole load, so the shop owner went over, gave the cart a violent shake, and reduced the pile by half. With the scam exposed, an argument ensued, which soon turned physical. In the end, the collier’s dark face was white with flour, while the shop owner’s fair face was black with coal powder; both were bleeding. Bored by the scuffle and feeling chilled, Zhuang looked into the sky, where clouds roiled and were turning darker by the minute. Rain was likely, so he started back. The wind blew, sending people scurrying and creating chaos at an intersection, where a woman was bent over picking out a pig’s heart and lungs at a pork stand. She was tall and slender, dressed in a dark green skirt that accentuated her buttocks as she leaned forward. Afraid that the wind would blow her skirt up, she had tucked the hem up between her thighs; her legs were crane thin, and she was wearing high heels. Conical buttocks usually define an ugly woman when she bends over , Zhuang said to himself, so a woman with such a beautiful behind must be quite pretty. On the other hand, an alluring figure from behind sometimes turns out to have a regrettable face. How will this one turn out? He walked past her and turned to look; it was Wang Ximian’s wife, a discovery that made him laugh out loud. When she heard the laughter, she looked up.

“It’s you, Zhidie,” she cried out. “What are you doing here? How did you know it was me?”

“I was just wondering where this woman came from. She was so pretty, and yet she was buying a pig’s heart and lungs, so I figured that her husband must be a good-for-nothing bastard. How could I know I was cursing a friend?”

“These are for our cat. We can’t eat this stuff.” She laughed. “I haven’t seen you for ages. Meng Jin’s mother told me you hurt your foot, and I was actually thinking about coming to see you tomorrow. But here you are, running around.”

“I did hurt my foot, but it’s fine now,” Zhuang said. “Who’s Meng Jin? And how did his mother know about my foot injury?”

“That’s Meng Yunfang’s son. Meng Jin must have heard it from his father and gone home to tell his mother.”

“So you’ve been to their place. How’s she doing?”

“Well, that’s a long story,” she said, taking the package from the butcher and paying him before turning to say, “Come over to our place. Ximian left for Guangzhou again, so it’s only the old lady and the maid. I’ll make you some wontons, and you can meet my cat.”

“I’m at Ruan Zhifei’s place, writing something for him. He’s not back yet, so I need to let him know.” As he spoke, loud thunder exploded, making both of them jump.

“It’s going to rain. After the summer drought, we really need it,” she said. People in the market ran like a swarm of bees. The wind picked up, kicking up dust. Wang’s wife squinted and lowered her head to spit it out.

“It’ll rain any minute now. What do you say we go over to Ruan Zhifei’s house to escape it?” The words were barely out of his mouth when coin-sized raindrops pelted down on them, sending them sprinting for the lane, where they ran bent over in sheeting rain. Since she could not keep up with Zhuang, he reached back to drag her along, nearly picking her up, for she was surprisingly slight. By the time they reached the office, they were soaking wet.

They sat down. Thunderclaps came in waves, the sky quickly darkened, and white light flashed outside the window, where the sky looked ink-splashed. The next clap sounded as if it had come from the yard out front. The door and windows shook, followed by the sound of something falling off the wall. Zhuang was about to turn on the light, but he changed his mind at the possibility that electricity could travel through the ground wire. Instead, he lit a candle on the table.

“Afraid?” he asked her.

“Why should I be, with you around? If the thunder dragon came, it would take us both,” she said as she picked up a towel to dry her hair. Her dress was drenched, plastered to her body and shiningly thin, giving Zhuang a clear view of her curves. Noticing that he was watching her, she blushed and tugged at her wet dress before moving over to sit in the shadow cast by the candlelight.

“Did you say you went to see Meng Jin’s mother?” Zhuang asked. “How’s she doing? I haven’t seen her in years.”

“A woman without a man is like a legless crab, and her son has turned out to be quite a troublemaker, another Meng Yunfang. When I ran into her the other day on the street, she looked worn out, and was crying the minute she opened her mouth. I asked, ‘Why haven’t you found someone else after all these years?’ Through her tears she said, ‘Who would want a forty-year-old widow with a son? Not the young ones, for sure, and older men either are too old or have a child of their own. Meng Jin’s a handful already. I can’t afford to have another one, and what would I do if we didn’t get along? He could team up with Meng Jin and cause all kinds of trouble.’ I promised to help her find someone, and as luck would have it, I asked around and learned that one of my neighbors has a relative, an engineer whose wife died two years ago. With the children working out of town, wouldn’t that be a perfect match? I was going to talk to her about him today.”

“You’re a good person. I recall that she has a flat nose and might not make a good first impression. We’ll see which the engineer values most, appearance or living a good life.”

“Hard to say. I told him the same thing when we first met, and he said, ‘I’d count my blessings even if she wasn’t as pretty as you.’”

“If she had half your looks,” Zhuang smiled, “Meng Yunfang wouldn’t have wanted the divorce.”

“You’re mocking me. I might have had passable looks when I was younger, but now I’m old and in such poor health that I’m skin and bones.”

“Not true. I often compare you to Yueqing, and she usually says, ‘Wang Ximian is rich enough to buy an elixir for his wife to keep her young.’”

She laughed, but quickly teared up, throwing Zhuang into a minor panic. “Everything I said is true. You are a bit on the thin side, but I think you should stop thinking of yourself as a pot of water that never boils. Listen to the doctors, but don’t believe everything they say. The way they tell us about all the germs in the air, you’d think we should never open our mouths.”

“Ximian did buy tonics for one thing or another, but I know the cause of my illness.” Her eyes reddened as she sniffled. Deciding to drop the subject, Zhuang went to get her a towel. “Is Ximian going to Guangzhou for another of his exhibits?” he asked. “He’s crazy. After taking the north by storm, does he now want the south?”

“Not an exhibit. He’s there to talk about the sale of a painting. You may already know this, but he’s had health problems in recent years, too.”

“What’s wrong with him? He’s dark and thin, but he’s spryer than me sometimes.”

“He’s really not well. He has hepatitis B, but his liver’s all right. He’s just a carrier.”

“How come no one knows about this?”

“He doesn’t want anyone to know. He takes medicine, but it’s a disease that can’t be easily cured. Let me tell you something that will make you laugh. We haven’t kissed for several years now. And when we do it, which is maybe once or twice a month, he wears a condom.”