Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

Zhuang coughed, but got no response, so he called out, “Is Mr. Huang home?” Still no response. As he pushed the gate open, he heard a roar; a brown creature leaped out, accompanied by the sound of clanging metal. He saw a wolf-like dog whose leash was tied to the wire overhead. Though restrained by the leash, the animal, which was only a few feet away, growled like a wild animal. Startled, he backed up to the gate just as a woman walked out from the kitchen. She looked at the visitor through red, puffy, somewhat glassy eyes. “Who are you looking for?”

“Mr. Huang, the plant owner. Is this his home?” The woman spat into her palm and smoothed her messy hair, which was so thin her scalp showed. He knew it must be Huang’s wife. He was balding, and so was she. The graffiti on the door must have been a vandal’s prank.

“I’m Zhuang Zhidie, from the city. Are you Mrs. Huang? You don’t know me, but Mr. Huang and I know each other quite well.”

“Of course I know you. You’re the one who wrote an article for 101. Come in.” But the dog refused to back down, incurring a string of insults from the woman, as if they were being directed to a human. She went over and pinned the animal’s head between her legs, then smiled and invited Zhuang inside. He walked toward the main door of the three-story building, but the woman called out, “Over here. We live on this side.” She ran off to open the kitchen door. The house had three rooms, with a half-wall in the middle — three wood-burning stoves on one side, a kang, a sofa, a reclining chair, a TV, and some other household objects on the other. When he sat down to smoke, the woman set some water on to boil, making a loud noise with the bellows and filling the room with smoke.

“Don’t you use a gas stove?” he asked.

“We have one, but I think it’s dangerous. A wood stove gives a stronger flame. Besides, it doesn’t feel like cooking if I don’t use the bellows.”

That made him laugh. “Is the building rented?”

“No, it’s unoccupied.”

“Then why do you live on this side?”

“I prefer single-story houses, and sleeping on the kang is so much better because it doesn’t cause me back pain. He smokes all night long and needs to spit, and a brick floor is better than a carpet.”

She brought over a pot of boiled water; instead of tea, it contained four poached eggs. As he ate, Zhuang mentioned Huang’s earlier invitation and the purpose of his visit.

“That’s wonderful. You can do your writing here. You’ll be my advocate. I probably would have looked you up anyway if you hadn’t come.”

He smiled, knowing that she had no idea what his writing was all about; instead, he asked if Mr. Huang was at the plant and when he would be back.

“He’ll be right home now that you’re here. I’ll send for him.” She asked if he was tired, and said if he was, he could go upstairs for a nap. She led him over to the three-story building, where they entered a room furnished with an oversized desk surrounded by armchairs. To the left was a staircase with bamboo and orchids painted on the handrail spindles. She showed him the second and third floors, where every room was carpeted and had a bed with a canopy frame, poorly constructed but carved with brightly colored fish, insects, flowers, and birds. The mattresses had been placed on the wood frames in such a way as to show off the gold-plated aluminum edges. A wall mirror was painted with a dragon and a phoenix, with two ribbons. There were also a shoe brush and a backscratcher. A thick layer of dust coated the floors, the beds, and the desk. Thumping the bedding, she cursed the smokestack at the village refinery; like a crematorium, it brought disaster to the villagers. “With ash flying the way it does, a bride could pee black for three years,” she complained.

“You’re in fine shape financially. Not even the mayor can afford to live in such a big house.” Zhuang secretly laughed at the furnishings, so typical of newly rich country folk.

Sitting him down on the edge of the bed, she told him how happy she was that he had come. She had heard from her husband that he’d be coming and that his favorite food was cornmeal noodles. Why would he want something even the peasants refused to eat? Could he have such a poor palate that he can’t enjoy cuttlefish and sea cucumbers? He wanted to explain to her, but found it impossible to do, so he just smiled.

“How do you write? You must write me into your work so everyone will know I’m his wife.”

“But you are his wife.”

Her face crinkled, a horrendously ugly sight that startled him. Then she began to cry.

“I helped him build up 101, but he stopped loving me once he got rich. I’m not ashamed to tell you this. He could wrap his arms around me when he needed me, but push me off a cliff when I was no longer useful to him. He was so wretchedly poor in the old days that if he’d been lying in the road, people would have covered him and walked off. I was the one who was willing to marry him, and I even gave him a child. It was his fate that he couldn’t keep the second one, but he blamed me for scalding the baby to death. Now, you be the judge. I was boiling water in a wok, and when I ran out of firewood, I went out to the yard to get some. When I returned, there was no baby. I looked inside the wok, and the baby was in there! He’d been playing on the kang next to the stove and had fallen in. Was that my fault? Now he complains about my blackened teeth and short, stocky figure. I was born this way, and he didn’t complain when he married me. Now when we’re in bed, he looks at a movie pictorial, working away on me while looking at the slutty women in the magazine. So I said women are all the same, and that spot isn’t all that different from the eye of a dead pig. He said a man fucks a woman but looks at her face, and he said I have a disgusting face. We fought over that, really fought, so he walked out and refused to come home. He wants a divorce. Tell me, how can I agree to a divorce? He’d make my life not worth living, so I’m not going to make it easy for him, either, not as long as I’m alive. I’d never let those sluts into this house. Not one of them will ever sleep on one of these springy mattresses.”

His scalp tingled as she went on, and he knew it would be impossible to write here, no matter how delicious her cornmeal noodles might be. He stood up.

“How could Mr. Huang do something like that? I just came to look around. I’ll come back another day to write about you.”

He walked out into the yard and started up his scooter.

“Ai! Why are so impatient? Can’t you wait a second?”

Even after he had pushed the scooter to the road outside the village, he could still hear her shouting to someone at the gate, “See him? That’s a man who writes books. He’s here to write about me and speak up for women. Ai-ya! Don’t go in there; that’s where the writer left his footprints.”

He rode all the way to the south-side city gate, grumbling about the lack of a quiet place. A weakness washed over him when he went through the gate, as he wondered where he should go, to the compound or Shuangren fu Avenue, or maybe Wan’er’s house. After a few moments of indecision, he parked his scooter and went up to the city wall, where he paced listlessly. He wished he could run into Zhou Min and ask the man to teach him how to play the xun. Zhuang was convinced he could learn to play it. But the city wall was deserted, not even a bird in sight. Wild grass had overtaken the spaces where the large square bricks met, making the wall look like a fine rug with a green-and-white checked pattern. Walking along the parapet, he saw lovers cuddling in the woods outside the wall. Watching out only for people around them, they were oblivious to the pair of eyes above the city wall. Zhuang looked at them as if they were animals in a zoo; he kept walking with the hope of gaining a clearer view until he reached a corner of the wall. Birds soaring in the sky abruptly disappeared into the wild undergrowth as if sucked into a void. Feeling calmer, he wanted to see where they went to rest and why the area attracted birds from the city. Then he spotted someone sitting there; it had looked like a rock at first, but he quickly realized it was a man. So someone else was searching for peace and quiet? Moved, he was about to go up and introduce himself when he discovered that the man was masturbating. He lay back with his legs out before falling backward into the reeds, where he groaned, startling the birds into flight. Flustered, Zhuang did not know what to do, so he just stood there; when he gained his composure, he spun around and took off running, castigating himself for not leaving sooner. His stomach churned, and he knew he was going to throw up. Supporting himself with one hand, he climbed down off the city wall in time to retch yellow liquid onto the ground. Darkness filled his eyes when he was done. He wondered if they were playing tricks on him or if he was delusional. There was water in the marshy reeds all year round. Could he have seen his own reflection? At that moment, the junkman came out of a deserted lane near the city wall, pulling his cart and shouting in an undulating voice, “Junkman! Collecting junk and scraps!” He walked toward Zhuang, chanting a bit of his doggerel: