by Ha Jin
“Come on, don’t try to scare me. Just tell me your opinion. What should I do?”
“All right, let me be forthright. A real man should put his career before his woman. If you get the job at the Policy Office, Meimei may not cancel your engagement at all. Even if she does, you can always find a better girl.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Believe me, lots of good girls will want a man like you if you hold that position. Women by instinct always look for a good provider in a man, because they think of raising kids. There’s nothing wrong in this, just biological—human nature. Before I became a college student, no girls in my hometown would look at me. But after I entered college, several of them wrote to me. Imagine, a nondescript man like myself received a dozen love letters in a year, all packed with sweet words and honeyed phrases . . . Brother, I’ve known you for almost three years and can see a weakness in your character.”
“Which is?”
“You have a broad romantic streak and tend to take a woman to be a goddess. You’re so impressionable that anyone who dangles a skirt looks pretty to you.”
“You imply I’m a sensualist?”
“No, you’re a woman worshiper. You adore women so much that when dealing with a real woman, you don’t know your own worth anymore.”
“Truth be told, I do like women, a lot.”
“All right, but you shouldn’t worry too much about Meimei. Remember what Frosted Flute said about love?”
“What did he say?” Frosted Flute was a well-known local poet, though he hadn’t published his first book yet.
“He said: I won’t pick lilies and keep them, because along my way flowers will bloom one after another. I can’t recall the lines word for word. Anyway he said something like that.”
I wanted to laugh, because the quotation was altogether out of context. In his poem Frosted Flute didn’t talk about love but about the gains and losses in one’s life. Besides, women are not flowers that you can dump without qualms when you no longer need them. I said to him, “The fact is I don’t see any meaning in becoming an official either.”
“Jian, you’ve read too much and your brain has ossified. Why should we hold a powerful official position? My answer is, pure and simple, the pursuit of happiness. Once you have power, you’ll have more comfort and pleasure. We must suck all the juice out of this life!” He said the last sentence almost ferociously.
I was amazed by the earnest look on his face, which was still weather-beaten and bronze-colored. We seemed to be talking at cross-purposes. He couldn’t see that what I sought was not material gain but something significant to my being, something that could make me feel my life was properly used and fulfilled. He couldn’t understand our teacher’s cry—“I must save my soul!” He was only concerned with the flesh.
The door opened. In came the rear of a brand-new Flying Pigeon bicycle, gingerly pushed backward by Anling, her right hand holding the leather seat and her left the handlebar. She stood the bicycle alongside the wall. “Welcome. What wind brought you here?” she said to me pleasantly. She had on a pink dress with a cloth waistband fastened by a gray plastic buckle. The fashionable dress didn’t become her and made her appear rather countrified. She looked tired despite her apparently high spirits.
“I just dropped by to see how you’re doing,” I said to her.
“Any news from Meimei?”
“Yes, she’s well.”
“Good. You and Banping go on chatting. Don’t stop because of me.” She went over to the washstand behind the door and began washing her face with the water her husband had prepared for her in a basin.
Banping and I talked for a few more minutes about Mr. Yang’s condition and some undergraduates’ planning to go to Beijing. When Anling had laid on the table the stewed eggplant, corn porridge, and some steamed flower buns, I took my leave in spite of their urging me to stay for dinner. I was a bit disappointed, as I realized I shouldn’t have come to seek Banping’s advice. Granted that he treated me as a friend, speaking with complete candor, he and I by nature were different kinds of people: I was too sensitive, too introverted, and maybe too idealistic, whereas he was a paragon of peasant cunning and pragmatism. However filthy and ugly this world is, a man like him can always manage to be at home in it. People of his type have few nerves, are full of vitality, and are more likely to endure, survive, and prevail.
Unable to decide what to do, I wrote to Meimei that evening to sound her out.
May 10, 1989
Dear Meimei,
Your father is recuperating, though slowly. Don’t worry about him; he is in good hands now.
Recently I have been going through a crisis. I can no longer see any point in earning a Ph.D. I love you, Meimei. Rationally, I am supposed to take the exams, so that I can join you in Beijing and we can build our nest there. Yet deep down, I cannot help but question the meaning of such an endeavor. By “meaning” I mean how this effort is significant to my existence as a human being. I know the capital can offer me better living conditions and more opportunities, but I cannot see any meaning in the material benefits. To be honest, I don’t care much about creature comforts.
At the bottom of my crisis lies this question: What is the good of becoming a scholar who serves as no more than a clerk in the workshop of the revolution? I cannot answer this question, which your father thrust on me. At times he is delirious, but at last he speaks from his heart.
For a week or so, I haven’t been able to study for the exams. Now I feel reluctant to attempt them; probably I will withdraw my application. Don’t be angry with me, Meimei. I will explain more when you are back. Please write to me, my love.
Yours always,
Jian
PS: Your father once suggested that I apply to graduate programs at American universities. This is infeasible now. Even if I passed TOEFL and got a scholarship from abroad, my school here would not allow me to leave. A faculty member in the Foreign Languages Department got a research fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania, but she could not obtain a passport, which is contingent on the official permission from our school, so she had to forfeit the fellowship. You may know her. Her name is Kailing Wang—she collaborated with your father in translating Brecht. I just heard that outraged, she has joined the student movement. In fact, I saw her demonstrating on the streets four days ago. She claims that her human rights have been violated.
In my crisis another question is also overwhelming, namely, what can I do?
18
When I entered the sickroom, Mr. Yang was sleeping with the quilt up to his chin. The room was brighter than the day before; a nurse’s aide had just wiped the windowpanes and mopped the floor, which was still wet, marked with shoe prints here and there. The air smelled clean despite a touch of mothball. “How is he today?” I asked Banping.
“Awful.” He shook his heavy chin, then motioned for me to go out.
In the corridor he said to me, “He’s been sleeping since eight o’clock. At the beginning I thought it would be a quiet morning, but it turned out to be awful.”
“What happened?”
“He had bad dreams, shouting at the top of his lungs and kicking his feet. He also talked about you.”
“Me? What did he say?”
“He said you were studying at Beijing University. He was proud of you and praised you to somebody.”
“Did he really mean that?”
“I think so. By the way, do you know who asked him for a recommendation besides yourself?”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure. Somebody asked him to write a recommendation for a young man, but Mr. Yang wouldn’t do it and said, ‘I know nothing about your nephew.’ He was mad at that person, and they had a row.”
I was puzzled and said, “He never quarreled with anyone except Professor Song.” Then I remembered that the other day Mr. Yang in his sleep had begged someone to leave him and his family alone and refused the offer of a large apartment and a full
professorship. But that didn’t sound like a fight.
“It couldn’t be Professor Song,” said Banping. “He can write recommendations himself.”
What confused me more was Mr. Yang’s praising me in his dream. Did he really want me to become a Ph.D. candidate at Beijing University? Why this reversal of attitude? I wished he were himself so that I could ask him.
After Banping left, I began to mull over the letter of recommendation he had mentioned. Intuitively I felt it might have some bearing on Mr. Yang’s stroke. The thought came to me that probably the person asking for the letter might be the same one who had promised Mr. Yang the apartment and the full professorship. What kind of recommendation was this? Perhaps it was for college admission. But what did the person’s nephew want to study? For what kind of degree, a B.A. or an M.A.? In what field? Classical literature? And at what school?
Unable to figure out any answers to these questions, I began to read the current issue of Beijing Review, an English-language weekly, to which I had subscribed ever since I was a graduate student. It carried a lengthy article about Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to China; I could follow its general drift without consulting a dictionary.
About an hour later, Mr. Yang started to talk in his sleep. He said calmly, “Why did you turn down my proposal?”
At first I thought he referred to some departmental business, so I didn’t think much of it. Gradually it became clear that he was having an exchange with a woman. I closed the magazine, trying to follow him.
“I don’t give a damn about my scholarship!” he said, gnashing his teeth. “Can’t you understand? I wrote you more than two hundred letters, which you discarded like trash. How much time did it take me to write them? Couldn’t I have used that amount of time to make a book? Nothing but my love for you mattered to me at that time. I wanted to waste everything on you, even my life.” He stopped with a catch in his throat, his lips bloodless and quivering.
He had written over two hundred love letters? Evidently this woman didn’t reciprocate his love, so she couldn’t be Mrs. Yang. Who was she? Was she someone I knew? Was she still alive? She must be. Did he—
He cut my thinking short. “Don’t cry. I just want to speak the truth. You are old enough to take the truth now.” He swallowed and bit the corner of his mouth.
Where was he now? Had the woman expressed her regret for turning down his proposal and ignoring his love letters? That seemed implausible; otherwise he wouldn’t have spoken with such an unforgiving heart. Did this exchange actually take place, or was it just a figment of his imagination?
“Ah, my scholarship,” he said bitterly. “After you dumped me, how could I have killed time except by reading and writing, creeping like a worm among book piles? If only I could have found another way to while away my life!” He chuckled mockingly. “Who would want to be a useless scholar and a lifeless bookworm? I’d prefer not to.”
My mind was spinning. Why did the woman refuse his offer? He couldn’t have been a bad-looking man when he was young. At least he must have been very intelligent and a good conversationalist.
“What do I mean?” he scoffed. “I mean I’d prefer to be a househusband, as I told you thirty years ago. Have you forgotten that? Ah, my dear, what a poor memory you have. I wanted to cook meals, wash laundry, take care of our kids and home after we got married. I promised you to do all that, didn’t I? . . . I would prefer to be a happy donkey bearing the whole load of the family without a murmur. To hell with my scholarly work! To hell with my lectureship! To hell with my books! My true ambition is to become a househusband. But how many women would take such a family man seriously? Who wouldn’t think of him as a weakling or a disgrace? Oh, my real dream will never come true.” Although his voice was impassioned, the words were as clearly articulated as if spoken by an actor. He must have rehearsed them many times to himself.
Who was this woman? She had been with him thirty years ago, when he was twenty-nine. She must have been somebody before Mrs. Yang, because Meimei was twenty-four now and she had told me that she was born three years after her parents got married. This meant his marriage had started twenty-seven years ago when Mr. Yang was thirty-two, three years after the unidentified woman turned him down. Why wouldn’t she accept his offer? He was not persecuted in the late 1950s as hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were, so it was unlikely that she rejected him for a political reason. Then why? Because she didn’t love him? Or for some other personal reasons?
“Don’t judge me by my appearance!” he cried. “It’s true that for years I never spoke to you and treated you like a stranger. But let heaven witness how in my heart I was dying for one woman only, and that was you! If I had spoken to you, believe me, I might’ve collapsed at your feet. Except for avoiding you, there wasn’t another way to contain my emotions and keep myself together in appearance. Now I’m too old to conceal my true feeling. It doesn’t matter how you feel about me, I’ve always loved you—loved you. At night when I can’t sleep, I’ll turn in bed thinking of you, only you.” He gave a long sigh.
So for all thirty years his heart had been possessed by this woman. Didn’t he love his wife? Probably not. Small wonder their marriage wasn’t a happy one.
He continued, “Don’t cry, Lifen. Don’t cry, my dear. I used to think that my heart would grow cold and exhausted as my belly grew forward. But no, in here”—slowly he drew his right hand closer to his chest—“there’s always the young man’s heart that desires and desires, hungrily.”
He fell silent, tears spurting out of the wrinkled corner of his eye and running down toward his ear. I moved over and wiped them off with my fingers.
So her name is Lifen, but Lifen who? I wondered. Does Meimei have any idea about this woman? Mr. Yang transferred to our school from Nanjing University twenty-eight years ago, and Meimei grew up here, unlikely to have known Lifen in person, who must have remained in Nanjing. Could Lifen have been the cause of his job transfer? In other words, did he come to Shanning University, a smaller and shabbier school, so as to shun her?
“Oh, I hate you!” he roared with a contorted face. “If only I had known your cunt was never idle at home!”
His ferocious voice shocked me. Why was he so furious at Lifen? They must have gotten quite intimate, or he wouldn’t have made such a crass remark. Then I remembered that three weeks ago he had mentioned some woman’s nipples that tasted “like coffee candy.” Maybe they belonged to Lifen.
My train of thoughts proved wrong. He croaked, “I— I believed that at least I had a faithful wife and a lovely daughter at home, but you betrayed me!” His face twisted, its wrinkles deepened into furrows.
Now he was accusing his wife! So this might have no connection with Lifen. It was almost unthinkable that Mrs. Yang could have had an affair. She was a high-cheeked woman and kept to herself most of the time; on the other hand, though rather shriveled now, she must have been quite pretty when she was young. Mr. Yang’s words—“a faithful wife and lovely daughter at home”—implied that he had been separated from his family, so the conversation might have taken place soon after their reunion. When could this separation have happened? During the Cultural Revolution? It was possible, perhaps when he was sent to the countryside.
This time I guessed right. He spoke again, in a relaxed tone of voice. “In the fields we worked like beasts of burden. When we were gathering in soybeans, I had to bend so low and so long that I couldn’t keep my back straight the next morning. But I always gritted my teeth to endure the back pain. I could do that not because I recited poetry in my heart but because I saw you and Meimei in my mind’s eye—you two were my hope. Little Chang couldn’t stand the torment any longer, and one afternoon he slashed his wrist with a sickle, bleeding to death. We wrapped him in a reed mat, buried him on the bank of a swamp, and didn’t even have time to find a stone to mark the pile of dirt. I didn’t kill myself, though I thought about it many times. Why not put a period to the endless sentence of suffering? Perhaps death was no
more than a long sleep from which you didn’t need to wake up. Yes, why not uproot this misery once and for all? I didn’t take my life because I wasn’t cruel or courageous enough to desert you and our daughter. So I hoped and hoped, dreaming that someday I would come back as happy as Tu Fu when he returned home from the war-ridden land. I would shout his lines, ‘My wife and children are aghast to see that I’m alive, / All our neighbors gather along our walls watching me home.’ But my home was no longer the same. It’s broken because of you!” He burst out sobbing.
I felt so miserable that my jaws went numb, but I wouldn’t blame Mrs. Yang. Unlike many women who divorced their condemned husbands at that time, at least she hadn’t left him; instead, she waited for him, raised their daughter alone, and kept the family intact. It wasn’t easy to live like a widow with a husband alive who was a Demon-Monster. Meimei told me that for two years people would point at her mother’s back on the streets. Besides, Mr. Yang might never have loved his wife wholeheartedly, if his love for Lifen was that deep and that hopeless.
Seeing that more tears were coming out of his eyes, I picked up a towel. As I was about to wipe them off, he wagged his head, striving to lift his hand to stop me. “Leave me alone!” he cried without opening his eyes.
I obeyed him, standing back. He went on, “You ask me to forgive you for sleeping with him? I forgive you for that, but I shall never forgive you for writing me those false letters telling me how much you loved and missed me. You deceived me. It would’ve been better if you had told me the truth. That would have prevented me from dreaming. I survived only because I held fast to an illusion. Oh, what a fool I was! Why was I such a coward? Why didn’t I slash my wrist too?”
