Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

He went home, feeling light-headed, and knocked on the door, before realizing that Niu Yueqing wasn’t at this house. Quietly opening the door, he went in and stood blankly in the living room, as a sense of loneliness gripped him. He could write letters on behalf of Zhong Weixian’s love life and he could testify about Jing’s family life, but he had no idea what to do when it came to his own marital problems.

Someone knocked on the door. He thought it might be Liu Yue, but, no, it was Tang Wan’er, to his surprise.

“You poor thing. Shimu and Liu Yue had an enjoyable day eating, drinking, and playing mahjong at Meng Laoshi’s house today, while you were here all alone.”

“I have my music.” He played the tape again.

“Why do you listen to this? It’s so depressing,” she said.

“Only music like this can comfort me,” Zhuang said as he took her hand and sat down on the bed with her. He gave her a mirthless laugh and lowered his head.

“Did you two have a fight?” she asked. He didn’t respond. Tears ran down her face, which she buried in his chest as she cried. Feeling even more agitated, he reached out to dry her tears before taking her hands and stroking them as if they were made of rubber. They fell silent for a while, before she reached for the bag behind her and took out its contents: a vitamin C fruit drink, a pack of fried cakes stuffed with leeks and sauce, three tomatoes, and two cucumbers that had been washed clean and put in individual plastic bags.

“It’s late, and you probably haven’t had anything to eat,” she said softly

She watched him as he ate. When he looked up at her, she smiled but did not know what to say, though she wanted to say something.

“Xia Jie told us something really funny,” she recalled. “A man from the countryside went to North Avenue but couldn’t locate a toilet, so he found a deserted wall and relieved himself. Seeing a policeman come over just as he was pulling up his pants, he took off his straw hat and laid it over the excrement, keeping his hand on the hat. ‘What are you doing?’ the policeman asked. ‘I caught a sparrow,’ the man said. The policeman wanted to remove the hat, but the man said, ‘Don’t do that. Wait till I buy a cage.’ He ran off, while the policeman cautiously kept his hand over the hat. Isn’t that funny?”

“It is. But why are you talking about shit while I’m eating?”

“Oh, no! I—” She slapped her forehead and laughed as she went to the kitchen to find a napkin, her long legs ending in high heels. Zhuang wiped his lips with the napkin when she came back. “I never noticed how gracefully you walk, Wan’er.”

“So you’ve noticed,” she said. “My left foot splays out a bit, and I’ve been trying to correct that by walking straight.”

“Walk for me again.”

She turned around, walked a few steps, and smiled back at him, before opening the door to the toilet and going in. When he heard the sounds from inside, like spring water flowing down a gully, he got up, walked over, and opened the door. She was sitting on the toilet.

“Don’t come in here. It smells.”

But he didn’t listen. Instead, he picked her up in the seated position and carried her out of the toilet.

“I can’t today, I’m having my you-know-what.”

He checked, and indeed there was a sanitary napkin in her panties. “But I want to. I want you, Wan’er. I need you.” So she agreed. They laid out a thick layer of paper on the bed. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 100 words.] Bloody fluid fanned out on the paper; bright red blood snaked down along her porcelain-white legs.

“As long as you’re happy, I’ll do anything. I will bleed for you.”

Avoiding her eyes, he pulled her head to his chest and said, “I’m ruined, Wan’er, washed up.”

Startled, she struggled to look up at him, detecting the heavy smell of cigarettes and alcohol. She reached out to remove a whisker the razor had missed. “Are you thinking about her? Were you pretending I’m her?”

He didn’t say a word, merely paused briefly in his heavy breathing. She could tell. But he wasn’t thinking only about Niu Yueqing, he was also thinking about Jing Xueyin. At that moment he could not explain why he had been thinking about them and why he treated Wan’er that way. But reminded by them, he turned her over as if crazed; with his arms on the bed to support himself, he entered her from behind without looking into her eyes. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 300 words.] Blood dripped noisily onto the paper, creating a plum flower pattern. It was impossible to say if he despised the woman under him, or if he despised himself and the other two women. He collapsed on top of her when he came and lay there as funereal music continued to swirl around the room.

They lay in bed exhausted, as insubstantial and languid as waterlogged adobe bricks. Their eyes closed, neither said anything, and before long Wan’er dozed off. Some time later she opened her eyes to see him still on his back smoking a cigarette. She looked at his crotch and sat up when she saw nothing between his legs. “Your—”

“I cut it off,” he said calmly.

Startled, she spread his legs to check and found that he had tucked it between them. “You scared me,” she said with an irritated laugh. “You’re terrible.”

He smiled and said he was starting on a new work, which he had been planning to write for a long time. It was to be a long novel. “Wan’er,” he grabbed her shoulder, “I want to tell you something, and you must understand. Everyone has issues, but mine are worse than most. I must write, for only that can free me. But writing a novel requires time and peace, so I must leave all these activities and people, including you. I’m going out of town. I can’t write anything if I stay here in the city. That would be my downfall.”

“You finally said it. I’ve been waiting for you to say that. You once told me that I inspired your creativity, but you haven’t written much lately. I was also wondering if I’ve been greedy and disrupted your peace. But I have no willpower, and I can’t stop myself from coming to see you, and when we see each other, we—”

“It’s not your fault, Wan’er. It’s precisely because of you that I want to write a great novel, and I desperately need your support and encouragement. I’m telling no one but you. I will write when I get where I’m going. Will you come if I ask you to visit me?”

“Of course I will, as long as you need me.”

He kissed her again and licked a spot under a rib where he found a patch of ringworm, but she stopped him.

“It’ll get better once I lick it. See, it’s almost gone after I licked it only three times.”

She lay still to let him kiss the spot like a dog.

. . .

He could not reach any of his friends who lived in neighboring county towns, so he decided to go see Mr. Huang, the owner of the 101 Pesticide Plant, in a suburb. Huang had told him once that he had many rooms in his house, perfect for writing, adding that his wife, who did not work, was a great noodle maker. Leaving a note to say he had “gone away to do some writing,” Zhuang got on his scooter and left. He reached Huang-zhuang at noon. Huang Hongbao lived in a newly built multistory walled house. The building closely resembled a traditional brick structure, with a round mirror on the roof ridge, soaring eaves made of carved bricks, red lanterns at the ends, a heavy door made of tong wood reinforced with steel bars, and a horizontal board inscribed with “A Family of Farming Scholars” above the door. There was some meandering writing in chalk on the half-open gate panels. Zhuang went up for a closer look. One panel had “Acutely Smart,” the other “Smartly Acute.” Having no idea what they meant, he looked in through the gate and saw a large yard and a high entryway. The house had three stories, each with five windows and a balcony with a balustrade decorated with four-season nature scenery. It was in an L shape, with a row of single-story structures connected to the wall to the left; a tall chimney rose above one of them, which marked it as the kitchen. A stone path linked the yard entrance to the front door. Nothing hung from the clothesline stretched above it.