Yue Tao bends down and puts her hands in the suitcase to shift some of the items towards the centre of the bag. She then pushes down on the corner and nods at Zhihong. He pulls the zipper around to the end of its track and feels his temperature drop by a degree.
Hao le,” he says. Good.
He puts the suitcase on the floor and rolls it out of the bedroom, leaving it by the front door. Yue Tao follows him.
“There aren’t any others interested?” Yue Tao asks as she throws an orange and a sweet bun into a small plastic bag.
Zhihong shakes his head as he removes the slippers and slides his feet into a pair of fake leather shoes. “All of the scripts I have are worthless. They could make great films but they don’t follow the formula everyone is using now.” He takes a file out of his satchel, from which he pulls the screenplays, and brings them over to a garbage can. Yue Tao stops him from dropping them. She takes them and puts them back in the folder which she slides back into his satchel.
“Tastes are always changing,” she says. “Keep them. Maybe they’ll be more welcome a year or two from now.” She hands Zhihong the plastic bag with the orange and the bun.
“Eat this at the airport,” she says. “The food there is expensive and lousy.”
In a cab, stuck in traffic on the east Fourth Ring, Zhihong isn’t thinking much about the meetings he and his colleagues have scheduled in Hong Kong. They’ll be reviewing storyboards and concepts and Zhihong will hate all of them. The trip will be meaningless until they hop on the ferry for a night of gambling in Macau where he’ll see Dawei again.
Zhihong tells himself to forget about films and get behind his wife’s plan to buy an apartment with a spare bedroom for a child. Artistic pursuits seem as futile as his parents warned. “Artists starve,” they said, when, as a primary school student, he’d bring home a drawing from school. He knew the drawings were good. He saw it in the faces of his teachers who looked puzzled when he worked on them. They’d lift the paper to see if Zhihong was tracing something underneath. They’d tell him that he’s talented but said it in an almost pitying tone. When Zhihong told his parents and grandparents what his teacher said, they only had one thing to say. “Artists starve.” And they said it in the same distant tone his teachers used when they remarked on his abilities, as if everyone around him was genetically imprinted with the ability to provide only one response to any discussion of art. He also got the same response when he told them he wanted to apply to the Beijing Film Academy for his university education.
What is the value of art anyway? DVDs, regardless of the quality of the films burned into them, regardless of the years the screenwriter had spent, the sacrifices actors made to pursue an impossible career, all are available for next to nothing on any street corner of any city in China. Artists starve and property owners eat. And now that apartment prices are rising by 30 percent a year, property ownership is the new social imperative. Salary increases don’t keep pace so, the longer buyers wait, the more difficult it becomes to get into the market.
Every weekend, Yue Tao drags Zhihong to see residential developments hitting the market throughout Beijing. Enchanted by the clean and efficient layouts on display at the presentation centres, she doesn’t see any risk or downside.
She loved the last one they visited, about a week earlier. Yue Tao brought it up every evening since they visited. The sales agent, a woman in her twenties wearing what looked like a flight attendant uniform, led them into a model unit in the first of six buildings still in varying stages of construction. A five minute walk from the subway stop under the Third Ring road, southeast of central Beijing, the location would allow both of them to get to work within 30 minutes. Zhihong could feel Yue Tao’s approval even before entering the unit. The corridors were carpeted and wallpapered, which deadened the sound. The silence made their own building feel, by comparison, too public, too institutional, like a hospital or an office building. The lock on the show unit clicked quietly and cool air carrying the scent of newness greeted them as the door opened. The agent remarked on the door, weighty but fluid in the way it swung open, made of solid wood. The kitchen was open to the living and dining area, making the apartment feel spacious, and its fixtures and appliances, still coated in blue-tinted plastic, were integrated seamlessly with each other. Some kind of mechanism on the cabinets and drawers prevented them from slamming. They glided slowly into position.
“The floors are made of a very durable wood-grain laminate that’s easy to clean,” the sales agent said flatly as she tapped out a text message on her phone. Yue Tao agreed and went to inspect the two bedrooms, lingering in the smaller one.
“Most of the south-facing units are gone so, if you want one of those, you’ll need to secure one with a down payment soon,” the agent said. “You can speak to representatives from our finance department on your way out.”
Yue Tao stood in the middle of the air-conditioned living room as she looked out the floor-to-ceiling window to survey the east side of Beijing baking under hazy sunshine. “Do you hear that?” she asked, directing the question to no one.
Double-glazed windows completely muted the honking below and construction noise from the surrounding buildings, leaving a gentle hum from the air conditioning unit as the only sound. “What do you hear?” Zhihong asked.
“I hear comfort,” Yue Tao said with a satisfied smile. “This is what comfort sounds like. This is what beauty sounds like.”
Zhihong is now sitting in an airport lounge with colleagues from his department, thinking about his wife’s infatuation with the comfortable, cool silence of modern residential living. By the time they had decided to put down a deposit, the developer raised the price. The down payment requirement doubled as a result of a central bank directive aimed at rooting out bad loans.
Yue Tao now wants a child and Zhihong is thinking, almost spitefully, that it might be a good idea. If he doesn’t fall in with the plan, she may never have either. She doesn’t deserve that. They had been there for each other in many ways. Their awkward natures brought them together in university and a friendship born from their need to fit in grew into an assumed engagement followed by marriage.
Zhihong decides that he’ll get some of those blue wei-ge pills in Hong Kong. The ones that make anyone’s dick hard. Perhaps a child will help him put the fantasies of a life in film production to rest. This dream must end, he tells himself.
Waiting to board his flight to Hong Kong, Zhihong is sitting at the gate with his colleagues who are discussing how they’ll manage to steal a night in Macau. “Three to a room,” one says. “Then we’ll just need two rooms and, if we eat cheap, we’ll have enough to get us back to Beijing.”
Another is fiddling with a new cell phone, a Canadian-made device called Blackberry which allows him to check his email. Zhihong lets them sort out the logistics.
Leaning away from the group, he looks across the tarmac and watches earthmovers at work on the site of a new terminal that the government promises will make Beijing’s airport Asia’s largest. The air outside is so thick with a brownish-yellow haze that it’s possible to stare directly at the gauzy rising sun, which blends with the sky. The construction vehicles are clearing an area so large that it dissolves into the distance at both ends. Yellow dust kicked up by the activity makes the crawling machines ghostly and indistinct, creating a scene that looks like a giant impressionist oil painting.
Zhihong wants to disappear in the dust but knows that, just like mist and dreams, there’s no way to inhabit particulate matter.
These thoughts commingle like spoiled stew. They push Zhihong to acknowledge that his dream to be involved in film projects has caused nothing but frustration. How could his wife’s plan cause more anguish? The more he thinks about a child – his child – the more he’s willing to see his wife’s plan as the solution. He won’t let his child make the mistake of chasing unrealistic dreams. He’ll talk softly to his child as he cradles her in the landscaped garden of whichever developm
ent they wind up living in. They all look the same with their groves of saplings and patches of impossibly green grass. He will tell his child that artists starve.
In the meantime, he longs to sit with Dawei by the water and to let the salt air heal his battered spirits just like the first time they met, after he got the first rejection from a production company that once seemed interested in the script. It was a terse message, similar to the one he just received this morning. Remembering how drunk he was that night, Zhihong feels a debt of gratitude for the way Dawei stayed with him instead of bundling him into a cab. Dawei, this naïve fool with artistic aspirations, this muse who is one pay envelope away from starvation, wouldn’t even accept 100 kuai. Without the right connections, Dawei’s lot is where the creative land. Zhihong will see Dawei again in a couple of days but it may be the last time they’ll meet.
Dawei looks up whenever someone walks through the entrance. Dishes are piling up in the kitchen because he’s spending more time busing and setting up tables so he can look out for Zhihong who hasn’t been back for two months.
“Dawei,” the restaurant manager barks, “get back to the sink.”
Taking a last look toward the entrance, Dawei turns and heads to the kitchen with a half-full basin of tableware. Time has warped his memory of Zhihong’s face he laments while scraping abandoned vegetables and noodles into a garbage container. He then places the plates in a plastic rack and douses them with steaming water shot from a nozzle hanging over the sink. When Dawei tries to picture Zhihong, he now sees Yiming, his uncle in Harbin, whom Dawei hasn’t seen in more than a decade.
Dawei lashes out at the dishes and silverware with a blast of steaming water. He loads a rack with dripping flatware and shoves it so hard against the end of the steel basin that two of the plates break. It’s the peak of the evening with orders coming in so quickly that the cooks and waiters don’t react. Dawei grabs the broken pieces and throws them into a garbage bin before the restaurant manager, who is taking orders out on the floor, comes back in. He turns back to the sink, releasing another blast of hot water.
Counting cash, the manager ambles with a slightly uneven, arthritic gait over to the corner of the kitchen where Dawei is stacking plastic racks of tableware. “A friend is out there asking for you,” he says.
Dawei looks at his boss to be sure he heard correctly. Then, catching himself, he looks at the floor.
“Ok, thanks,” he says, gathering a few stray pieces of silverware which he drowns in lukewarm, soapy water and throws into the rack. When the boss walks away, Dawei unties his apron, pulls it off slowly and throws it into a hamper. He looks at the oyster sauce stains on his white shirt and brushes at them, uselessly.
“Our meetings ran late,” Zhihong says apologetically as they walk under the streetlights along the embankment. “The others went directly to gamble. I told them I had a headache.” He smiles at Dawei.
The sound of hammering from the construction sites in Zhuhai, glimmering in hazy light across the inlet, continues even though it’s after midnight. Autumn on the Mainland has brought cool breezes down to the Pearl River Delta, giving Dawei relief from the constant shock he feels as he shuttles dishes between the restaurant’s chilled dining room and its sweltering kitchen. He glances at Zhihong, noticing the distinctions between his face and his Uncle Yiming’s and resolving to keep the image clear in his head.
“It’s becoming more difficult to get over here after our Hong Kong meetings,” Zhihong explains. “They look at our expenses more closely.”
Dawei wants to thank Zhihong for returning every couple of months, to tell him that he’s happy to see him, to explain how he finds himself looking at the calendar, wondering when they’ll get together again. But, he keeps this inside.
“Hong,” Dawei says. “I’m stuck here and I need to get out. Can I come to Beijing and stay with you for a while?”
Zhihong looks down.
“I know they’re making more films in Beijing now. I...I was thinking maybe you could help get me a job in one of the studios,” Dawei blurts out, hoping to change whatever thought is causing Zhihong’s expression.
“Dawei, I’m not very high up in my division,” Zhihong says apologetically. “Besides, even if I tried, there would be a lot of questions about my connection to you.”
Dawei thinks. “Okay. I could get a job myself. I hear there are so many restaurants opening up there now. If I just had a place to stay, I could start saving some money.”
Zhihong stops and rubs his chin while he stares at the ground. He’s trying to put his words together. Dawei starts to regret bringing the subject up.
“Dawei, I’m married.”
They look at each other for a moment.
“What?”
“I said I’m married.”
Dawei doesn’t understand. They’ve shared so much about their backgrounds. He knows how Zhihong wound up studying political philosophy instead of film production, how he detests his work, how much he likes to sit quietly and look at the ocean to clear away his frustrations while his colleagues gamble. Dawei thought he’d heard about the most important moments of Zhihong’s life but the wife never came up.
The light from a convenience store across from them switches off. Dawei feels a flush of anger and then a familiar wave of hopelessness. Injured, he sits down, dangling his legs over the embankment. Zhihong crouches beside him.
“Dawei, I’m as trapped as you are,” he says, punching his chest, each impact producing a hollow thud. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. How could it be any other way for me? I’d never get anywhere at the bureau if I wasn’t married by this point. It’s painful for me to talk about it, especially with you, here, where I feel like I’m removed from everything that’s wrong with my life. Zhihong hangs his head. I wish I could help you, Dawei, but I’m as stuck as you are.” Zhihong turns away and wipes his face.
His mannerisms and the pain in his expression blunt Dawei’s anger. He’s not sure what right he has to feel so disappointed, or jealous or possessive, for that matter. They’ve shared more with each other than with anyone else in their lives but there’s no word for what they are to each other.
They resume walking in an awkward silence which Dawei breaks after a minute or two because he’s afraid this void will cut their connection permanently.
“Do you have a child?” he asks.
“Not yet but we may in the next year or two. My wife wants one before she turns thirty-five, and that’s two years away.”
Dawei thinks to ask for the woman’s name but decides to wait to see if Zhihong volunteers the information. Knowing her name would give him something the wife doesn’t have and the balance would be in Dawei’s favour. She doesn’t know he exists, let alone his name. But Zhihong remains silent.
Approaching the end of the promenade, they sit on a bench.
“Who knows? With a child to feed, I might move higher in my bureau. The married ones with a kid always get more respect,” Zhihong says. “Maybe I’ll wind up in a place that will allow me to help you.”
Maybe, Dawei thinks, but probably not. He tries not to be cynical. Married or not, Zhihong is still his only connection to a world he dreams about. They’ve spent hours sharing their stories and, within that time, they inhabit a world free of desperation, a place he’s not ready to vacate even if Zhihong has a wife. He knows the space he shares with her can’t possibly be as happy.
Zhihong continues.
“In the meantime...”
He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a document encased in a clear, plastic folder. He hands it to Dawei who looks puzzled. Zhihong doesn’t offer an explanation, just a wry smile. Dawei takes the document out of the folder. The text centred on the front page is sparse, leaving room for what appears at first to be abstract illustrations which fill most of the empty space. Looking at them more closely, Dawei sees the drawings reveal themselves as human characters surrounded by mathematical formulae rendered in an undulating, cursive
script. The numbers emerge from celestial clouds and encircle the characters. In the lower right-hand corner, there’s a poem in highly stylized calligraphy with numbers and characters alternating in a way that Dawei has never seen.
He begins flipping through more of the document, finding on random pages more calligraphy and drawings in the wide margins. Dawei recognizes the text as dialogue but he can read only some of the characters.
“Is this some kind of comic book?” Dawei asks, as he looks up.
Zhihong lights two cigarettes and hands one to Dawei. “It’s a screenplay,” he says.
Dawei flips through a few more pages, carefully, as though it’s an ancient text from an airtight vault. A bit of ash drops from Dawei’s cigarette and lands on the page. They both wipe it away.
“Don’t worry. I’m afraid it’s not very valuable,” Zhihong says with a mournful smile.
Dawei looks puzzled. “Has it been made into a movie?”
“No. I’ve tried to convince producers in Hong Kong that this author’s stories would make great movies but they’ve turned me down,” Zhihong says, exhaling a stream of smoke. His smile vanishes. “It’s too late now, anyway.”
“What’s so special about this story?” Dawei asks.
Zhihong pauses. No one has ever bothered to ask him this question. Producers want to know whether it’s action, drama or comedy. Have any big names expressed interest? People in the industry ask the practical questions, the ones that ensure Chinese films are always the same, just like Hollywood.
“Well, first off, the author is a theoretical physicist,” Zhihong says, realizing as his words come out that Dawei won’t understand. “I mean, the writer is a scientist.”
The Wounded Muse Page 7
