Ma Jian - Red Dust

Fu Yi always carries a magazine, so he knows about everything from butterflies to Freud’s theory of sexuality. He knows that the new president of the Soviet Union is called Gorbachev, that the Chinese women’s netball team won the world cup again and that the American rocket Challenger exploded live on world television. He knows a lot but does very little. He attaches the springs with two nails instead of six and says, ‘Don’t worry, it will look fine once the vinyl is on. Everyone has to live, you know!’ He repeats that last phrase at least twenty times a day.

If a bird flies overhead or his saw hits a nail he shouts, ‘Typical!’ and sits down to admire his biceps.

‘Look, her arse has dropped,’ he says, lighting a cigarette and gobbing onto the floor. ‘Must have got laid last night.’ The girl who passes at this time every afternoon is wearing ankle socks with her stilettos today. The road is muddy in the rain and dusty in the sun, but the girls who walk past always look good enough to eat.

‘It was still tight yesterday. One more virgin lost forever. .’ Fu Yi stretches his legs over the half-upholstered sofa.

I walk to the corner for a piss. The pack of Marlboro Lingling sent me from Guangzhou is nearly finished. In her letter she said Shen Chao is having an affair with the Hong Kong hotel manager and Pan Jie has returned to Beijing in a huff. The printers are still nagging Wang Shu for their costs.

She said she typed up my story ‘Yin Yang’ and sent it to Flower City magazine, but the editor wouldn’t touch it. I will post it to Old Xu this afternoon and see if he wants it. It is the story of a girl who gasses herself after being raped by a gravedigger. Her family take her for dead and bury her the next day. The girl wakes inside the coffin, struggles to escape but dies slowly of suffocation. Later that night, the gravedigger opens her grave, hoping to rape the corpse, but when he sees her tormented expression and the scratches on her face he understands she was buried alive, and is overcome with pity and remorse. He climbs into her coffin, lies down beside her and slits his wrists.

I return to the sofa.

‘O virgin, thy trembling lips. .’ Fu Yi waves his head and flashes his yellow teeth.

‘Save me your poetry, please. You are lucky to have a nice girlfriend like Xiao Yu. Why are you so obsessed with virgins?’ Last night, his girlfriend walked into the communal bathroom with a washbowl and toothbrush. I could not see her face, but when the moonlight from the open window fell onto her shoulders I wanted to take her in my arms.

‘Take it from me, Old Ma, virgins are something special.’ He rolls up his sleeves and flexes his muscles.

I am tempted to tell him Wang Ping was a virgin, but decide to keep it to myself. She seems very far away now. I have felt restless these last days. I went stiff just now when I pissed in the corner. ‘I could do with a woman tonight,’ I say, sucking on my cigarette.

‘You can borrow my mistress if you like. She’s got much bigger tits than Xiao Yu.’

‘All right. Tell her it’s just the once though. No strings attached.’

‘Fine. Yanzi likes artists, she’ll be happy to help you out. Hey! I read they spike Marlboro with dope to get you hooked. What? I know they taste good. Just think though, I have to work a whole day for just one pack. What a life! In foreign countries the restaurants let you eat bread for free. It’s true, I read it in a magazine.’

‘You have to order a meal too, though. You can’t just sit down and eat bread all night.’

‘Tell me, Old Ma, why do you write stories? What? To feed yourself? Hey, do you believe in wild yetis?’ Then he tosses a cigarette stub on the ground and says, ‘You’re not happy, are you?’

‘Pick that stub up, you bloody idiot!’ I remember hearing that if anyone drops a stub in the meadows, the herders will beat them to death.

‘Calm down, brother. Everyone has to live, you know.’

When we finish for the day he rinses his hair under the tap and carefully buckles his watch. He is taking me to the library tonight.

The boss finally agrees to my idea of selling paintings together with the sofas. He hands me a photograph of an evening seascape and promises to pay me fifteen yuan a copy. I go out to buy canvas and paints and finish two pictures before dusk. Once I get the hang of it I manage to churn out six paintings a day.

On Tuesday afternoon I visit the offices of Guizhou Press to see Old Xu. He hands me a pile of letters that have accumulated for me over the last month. There is a lot of news about the stories I have submitted to magazines. Wang Ping tells me Northern Fiction has accepted ‘The Last Rain’ and Beijing Literature will publish ‘White Fruit’. Li Tao says ‘Black Earth’ will appear in next month’s Modern Writing and that Special Economic Zone Literature is interested in ‘Virgin’. Horizon magazine writes to say ‘Waves’ was published in their autumn issue and my fee has been sent to Wang Ping. I decide to give up the sofa job and wait for my cheques to roll in.

Old Xu says he liked ‘Escarpment’ and ‘Yin Yang’ but his boss said they were too dark and decadent and refused to publish them. I say, ‘Never mind, there are two thousand literary magazines in China, one of them is bound to take them.’ Old Xu has arranged for me to talk to the Guiyang Teachers’ Book Club tonight. I will receive a fee of twenty yuan. We make our way to a classroom in the Telecommunications College, and with the aid of some notes I have scribbled in the library, I ramble on about the influence of Daoism on modern Chinese verse, then discuss my approach to creative writing.

When I am finished, fourteen teachers seated behind a horseshoe of school desks start firing questions at me.

‘My name is Zheng Guang. Please tell me, do you think traditional culture will influence the future development of society?’ Zheng Guang is the chairman of the book club. He wears a suit and tie and has a big smile on his face, and looks very out of place in this cold, dark classroom.

‘Well, it can’t influence the past, can it? Tradition is an inevitable part of life. Of course it will influence our future. But modern societies are driven primarily by the concept of individualism.’

‘Mister Ma, the reforms have so far been limited to the economic sphere, but I feel that what our country needs most is political liberalisation. What is your opinion on this?’ I glance at the questioner opposite me: bald, smiling, middle-aged, doesn’t look like an informer. He cracks his knuckles as I reply.

‘I was asked similar questions at Anhui Normal College and Shenzhen University. The authorities talk about reform but they have no intention of loosening political control. Political freedom gives one a sense of self. Economic freedom encourages greed. If one has the latter without the former then society becomes warped and this can be very dangerous.’

‘I read in a magazine that robots have reached the intelligence of a three-year-old child. Does this mean that in fifty years’ time they will achieve the intelligence of an adult?’ The questioner at the back clenches his hands into tight fists.

‘Forgive me, all I can tell you is that foreign countries use calculators to control their production lines. I know nothing about computers.’

‘Why are you a Buddhist? Do you believe in heaven?’ The man in the front row has no legs. All I can see is a head perched on the table.

‘Buddhism eases one’s spiritual pain. I will not let a political party tell me how to live, when to die or what to believe in. Our souls are linked to the universe, but we can never see heaven, because our flesh ties us to the earth and the people around us. But when the people around you have lost their will to be free, then earth becomes a hell.’