by Justin Hill
Madam Fan could smell the diesel fumes from where she was. She finished the aria and felt like crying. Her fists clenched and then unclenched. At last she stepped back inside and slammed the door behind her. She wouldn’t sing to a machine!
The next morning Madam Fan woke up at 6–15 in order to pre-empt the digger, and heard the sound of disco music playing outside her flat. She rubbed her eyes and peered out of her bedroom window: she could make out a group of women, ballroom dancing. They were doing the two step. Madam Fan went straight down stairs and complained, but the women said that the digger had demolished the spot where they used to dance, so now they had to come here.
‘But I can’t sing over all this music,’ Madam Fan complained.
‘You can sing,’ a friend of her husband told her, ‘but no one will hear you.’
When Peach came home she found her mother sitting by the balcony window. A bottle of Great Wall red wine on the table next to her, one hand absent-mindedly stroking her neck as the other played with the bottle top. Peach sat down on the other side of the table but Madam Fan continued staring out of the window. She turned the bottle top over and over in her hand.
Peach reached out across the table but her mother’s fist closed around the bottle top.
‘Ma,’ Peach said, ‘are you still upset?’
Madam Fan smiled, then turned to look out of the window again. ‘Your father’s behind this,’ she said. ‘I know.’
Peach went out and didn’t come back until after sunset. They ate a dinner of egg noodles in silence, watched episode a hundred and eight of A Dream of Red Mansions.Dai Yu was dying, her beautiful face drawn and faded, like an autumn flower. Peach couldn’t stand to watch: it was too sad. She went into her bedroom and put on some American music. She sang along, words she didn’t understand, but which reminded her of Chinese. She was still singing when there was a soft knock on her door.
Madam Fan came in.
Peach sat up and smiled as she slid onto the bed.
‘Mother,’ Peach asked, ‘are you all right?’
Madam Fan nodded. Her dark eyes were bright. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she began and Peach slid down into the bed. ‘Before anyone else does.’
‘Is it about father?’
Madam Fan nodded.
‘Is he coming back?’
‘No,’ Madam Fan said.
Peach wanted to cry.
‘I don’t want him to come back. There’s only me and you now.’
Peach swallowed.
‘Come now, we’ll be all right because we love each other.’ Madam Fan stroked her daughter’s hair. Long slow strokes. ‘Remember how I once told you,’ she said at last, ‘about your father and me–how we got married?’
Peach nodded.
‘My family was starving. Remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was 1968, during the hard times, when no one had anything to eat.’ Madam Fan stopped stroking Peach’s hair. ‘I was assigned a job at a farm on the outskirts of town. Working on a farm meant I could send my parents some food,’ Madam Fan said. ‘That whole year I gave them everything I had. I kept them alive.’
Peach nodded and Madam Fan took her daughter’s hand. ‘There was a young man whose family were classed as Stinking Intellectuals. When it was his turn to be criticised he accepted all his faults. He never complained.’ Madam Fan forced a smile. ‘He looked after me,’ she said. ‘When the criticisms were very bad. He let them beat him. When he saw how thin I was he gave me some of his millet to make soup.’
Madam Fan ran a hand through her hair. ‘We couldn’t talk of love: only “Love the Country!” “Love the People!” Love between two people was forbidden.’
Peach gave her mother’s hand a squeeze.
‘He didn’t care that I was a landlord’s daughter. He never said so but I know he loved me. I am sure of that. Really!’ Madam Fan stopped to take a deep breath. ‘We used to meet at night.’
There was a heavy pause. Peach didn’t want to hear any more.
‘We met at night,’ Madam Fan faltered, her grip tightened on Peach’s hand. ‘One night they followed us! He loved me,’ she said after a long pause. ‘He loved me,’ she repeated then burst out crying.
Peach sat up and held her mother tight. Madam Fan’s body shook for a while. Peach rubbed her mother’s back, soothed away the sobs. Madam Fan wiped her eyes and nose. ‘They surrounded us,’ she said. ‘There were so many torches shining at us. They had guns. I thought they were going to shoot. He didn’t want them to see, but they pulled him away.’ Madam Fan sniffed, wiped her nose on her arm. ‘They demanded why he had done that to me.’
The scene played itself back in Madam Fan’s mind, and she breathed deeply, wiped her nose on her arm. ‘They said I was a reformed character. That he was a counterrevolutionary. That he refused to forget his feudal ideas. They made me say it,’ she stated with great determination.
The slogans were still so clear in her head:
A good female comrade should devote her time to the revolution!
Maggots infesting the country will be squashed!
Peach wanted her mother to stop there, but Madam Fan took another breath.
‘I thanked the Party for their protection, then I said what they had told me to say. They made me say it,’ Madam Fan asserted. She looked up and stared at Peach. ‘They asked me to speak louder so that everyone in the hall could hear, so I said it again:
‘He raped me.’
An overturned cart serves as a warning to others!
‘Later my officer found out that I was pregnant. That’s why I agreed to go with your father. We were both bad elements.’
When two lepers fuck, they can’t infect the clean.
‘The baby was a boy. He was your brother,’ Madam Fan sniffed. ‘He was very thin. I had no milk. All he did was cry. We fed him on rice gruel. He got sick. There was no medicine. There was hardly any food. They took the body away in a box. We had to think about the living in those days. We were starving. I had no choice,’ Madam Fan said. ‘I had to marry your father for my baby. And then he died.’ As she spoke she played with a strand of Peach’s hair. She tried to hold it back, but she started to cry again, her mouth curling up in tears.
Peach hugged her mother. ‘I love you,’ she said, but inside she felt cold. She didn’t want to know what her mother had just told her. She shut her eyes and hugged her mother and tried to forget everything she’d just heard.
At night everything in The Drink and Dream Teahouse slept, except for a single light bulb that burnt in the darkness, searing the moths that came too close. A lone bird with a grudge started singing before daybreak and stopped Mistress Zhang from sleeping. She rose early into a grey morning; tried to fill all the empty rooms with her presence, but the daylight was dim and the rooms remained full of shadows. She turned the TV on and turned it up loud. There was a documentary about some Beijing journalists who’d gone to visit a country village: old men and women reminisced, the younger ones talked of going to the city, their parents talked of the difficulties of making ends meet in times like these.
‘Isn’t life better now?’ they asked the old ones at the end of the programme and they smiled their toothless smiles.
‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘oh yes–much better!’
Mistress Zhang was combing her grey hair when there was a knock on the back door. A young girl came in, stood hesitantly in the doorway. She had a round moon face, was plump like a village girl and her skin was a bit too dark.
‘What do you want?’ Mistress Zhang snapped.
‘I want to come and work here.’
Mistress Zhang didn’t bother to hide her irritation. ‘The stream of men is an endless river!’ she said severely. ‘You dip you toe in and get washed all the way to the sea.’
‘I want to come and work here,’ the girl repeated.
‘Then come back next week,’ Mistress Zhang snapped and the girl left.
Mistress Zhang h
ad a couple of girls come to her each week: she didn’t know why. They must be stupid. Maybe they read too many romantic novels, they wanted to be the girl who was discovered by a handsome lover and whisked away. Whatever it was they didn’t come back. Not many of them anyway. Mistress Zhang was even more formidable if they did. There was no turning back for a girl once she became a whore. Why become a used shoe when you could be a house slipper?
Cherry arrived first tiptoeing over the paving stones so she didn’t step on the green moss. Mistress Zhang sent her back out to fetch some lunch from the local restaurant. ‘I want Wugang Dofu!’ she shouted, ‘and tell them not so much chilli this time!’
Cherry swore as she went out and Mistress Zhang bit back her anger. Stupid girl, she thought, if she didn’t have a hole between her legs she’d be penniless.
Mistress Zhang checked her hair in the mirror. She had it curled up at the back, one of her clips had slipped. She could feel her hands begin to sweat as she fiddled to put it back into place. It made her swear.
‘Shit!’
She’d have to start again.
The next morning Liu Bei pushed her mother’s door open and stepped inside. Inside it was cool and dark, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the shadow.
‘Mother?’ she called. ‘Mother!’ The room was empty except for a glass jar of wild flowers, wasting their smiles as they slowly wilted.
Liu Bei found her mother sitting in the backyard, peeling potatoes. She wiped a stray lock of hair back from her face and smiled, pulled a boiled sweet out of her pocket and gave it to Little Dragon. ‘Here you are!’ she said. ‘You handsome young man!’
‘Why don’t you go and play outside?’ Liu Bei said. ‘Go and see your friends!’
Little Dragon put the sweet in his pocket and refused to move.
‘Go on!’ Liu Bei said. ‘Off you go! Your friends will be waiting for you!’
Little Dragon reluctantly let go of Granny’s hand and went back into the house and Liu Bei pulled up a stool and sat next to her mother.
‘How are things?’ her mother asked.
‘Fine,’ she said, running her hand through her hair.
Liu Bei’s mother studied her daughter’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
Mistress Zhang was still spraying her hair in place when Liu Bei arrived. She shouted a hello and went straight upstairs. Liu Bei wanted to be alone but when she got upstairs the cleaner was there, spreading clean sheets on the beds, muttering to herself about the amount of dirt men brought in on their shoes.
Liu Bei went into the girl’s room, which was in its usual state: make-up and clothes strewn all over the place. One of Cherry’s magazines was on the table, Lotus’s fluffy slippers had been kicked across the floor. Liu Bei sat at the table and flicked through the magazine. There was an article about a female officer in the People’s Liberation Army: ‘Brave Girls Clamour to Protect our Homeland,’ the title read. ‘Wang Hao, twenty-five-year-old member of the Communist Youth League and officer in the People’s Liberation Army talks of her life in the ranks.’
Liu Bei turned the page over. There was a piece about the boom in plastic surgery clinics in Shanghai. She skimmed the article over, then flipped over again. Adverts. More adverts. Buy this, buy that. Liu Bei put the magazine back and picked up the next one in the pile: Liberation Army Daily, one of the customers must have left it here. She flicked through, and there was a long line of articles she couldn’t be bothered to read. On the back page was a picture of a phoenix and dragon entwined. ‘Green Bridge of Magpies’ the title read.
The letter of the month was from a group of soldiers in Qinghai:
… we have high-quality clothes, new houses, and can watch TV or go to the cinema. We all enjoy our life very much. Our only regret is that we lack virtuous wives to follow our ideals of honesty and bravery. We ask any patriotic girls who want to help us to protect the Motherland to come and join us.
Liu Bei shook her head. She scanned the lists of lonely hearts.
I’m a university graduate and lower-ranking officer who wants to meet a young girl, with degree in foreign languages, who can share my goals in life and share a long and meaningful marriage.
I’m a retired army officer with good eyesight and a strong heart. Childless and divorced. Wants to meet healthy educated girl without children.
Are you a ‘True Man’?: Educated girl striving for the chance to live a meaningful and productive life wants to meet a man with similar ideals.
Liu Bei put the magazine down and then picked it up again. She scanned the list again and found the one she was looking for.
Lonely Widower. Wants companion not love. Women over thirty only.
Liu Bei tore off a corner of the page, took the address down, checked the PO Box number and then put the scrap of paper into her purse.
Peach stood by the window, one hand on the cool glass pane, watching people move silently though the factory. The summer felt like it was fading already; soon autumn would strip the hills bare. Everyone seemed sad today; the world had never looked so bleak and dreary.
It felt like a year since her father had left, but it couldn’t have been more than two weeks. In those two weeks he hadn’t come back once. His relatives had come instead.
‘He’s very sorry. Why not let him come and apologise?’ they asked, and Madam Fan listened.
‘Think of the shame,’ Peach’s great uncle said.
‘The gossip!’ a distant cousin put in.
‘Your daughter,’ the great uncle continued. ‘She needs a father at home. What will her friends say if her parents get divorced?’
Yes, think of me, Peach thought. Nobody thinks of me.
‘Peach does not need him back!’ Madam Fan declared, ‘and nor do I!’
That had been the final word. There was nothing else to say. Peach listened as her mother showed them all to the door, the door closed with a metal clang! and their voices faded away into silence. Take me away from this, Peach thought, then tried to see how the sentence would fit with his name: ‘Da Shan take me away from this,’ she whispered. It felt just right.
Peach looked through her music tapes for one that she wasn’t bored of, but couldn’t find any and let out a frustrated sigh. There was nothing new at all, nothing she had any interest in any more. She collapsed onto the bed and it creaked. She shut her eyes and tried to sleep, not being able to see only made the world of sounds more vivid. She turned over onto her side and pulled open the drawer on her bedside table. There was an irregular wad of photos from her middle-school days: one of her making a snowman with a couple of classmates, the picture blurred by falling snow; another of a spring day they’d climbed up to the temple with pots and pans, with jars of chopped vegetables and meat, and then they’d cooked a picnic; one of herself with thumbs up, and her friend doing rabbit ears behind her head; Peach smiled for a moment, then carried on turning the photos.
At the bottom of the pile was the photo her class had taken on the day they’d finished their high school exams. It was the last time they’d all been together. Peach went through the smiling, excited faces: maybe a third of her class had gone on to university in Xiangtan or Changsha, or even further away to the big cities. Two of them had even gone to Beijing. Peach looked into her own grinning face, and looked back and couldn’t think why she’d been so happy, even school was better than this.
Of the other students in the photo who’d also failed their exams, Peach wasn’t sure. She saw some of them around town occasionally. Two of the girls had got married, a few of the boys had got jobs in Shaoyang, but most of them had disappeared–gone back to farming in their villages or off to the big cities to look for work.
Peach put the photos back in the drawer and lay back on the bed. She just had to get out of the house. She wanted to be held and loved and for the first time in days she thought of Sun An. What with everything that had happened she’d forgotten to go and collect his letters. It wa
s his punishment, she decided, for making her touch his thing.
I’ll go and see him, Peach told herself, and see if he’s learnt his lesson.
She listened at her bedroom door and when she was sure the coast was clear she dashed through the door before her mother could catch her. She ran down the steps into the late afternoon sunshine; giggling with the excitement of being discovered. For a moment she felt she was being watched and glanced over her shoulder, but there was no one there. Her walk speeded to a trot and then she ran down and out of the factory gate.
Sun An was sitting in the front porch of his shop, looking up the street just on the off chance that Peach would come. He’d sent letters daily, and at first they’d been collected, but then she’d stopped taking them. He thought that maybe she had stopped loving him. Yesterday he’d sent his sister with another letter to put under their secret stone, but again she’d come back saying ‘The last one you wrote’s still there, stupid!’ so he had given up.
All Sun An’s misery disappeared when he saw Peach walking quickly down the street. He sat and held his breath, making sure she was coming to his shop, then he stood up and waved, started jumping up as he called her name. Peach smiled and Sun An grinned and imagined her pace quicken towards him.
‘Peach!’ he said, coming out to her. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.’
She looked at him as if she didn’t care. ‘Why?’
Sun An swallowed and paused. ‘It’s been quite a few days. I’ve missed you.’
Peach gave him a look and he stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.
‘For what?’
Sun An didn’t answer, so Peach gave a little ‘Hmph!’ and she sat down. She took the tea without speaking and gulped it down, held it out for a refill. She could feel the water sloshing inside her as she twiddled with a thread of cotton on the bottom of her T-shirt.
‘Didn’t you get my letters?’ Sun An asked.
