by Ha Jin
How had he discovered the affair? Did Meimei know anything about it? He seemed quite nasty to his wife, unfaithful though she might have been. An affair didn’t have to mean she hadn’t loved him. He had forgotten that he was far away from home and that a woman in her situation would need a man around.
Then I asked myself, If Meimei two-timed you, would you still accept her as your wife? I didn’t know how to answer.
Mr. Yang sighed, “Ah, life, what an ocean of grief!”
For a moment silence filled the room. Then he declared in all sincerity, “I’m only afraid I’m not worthy of my suffering.” His assertion made my gums itch.
19
It was almost midmorning. I opened the window of our bedroom to let in some fresh air. Outside, on the sun-baked ground a pair of monarch butterflies was hovering over an empty tin can, which was still wet with syrup. The colorful paper glued around the can showed it had contained peach wedges. I turned away from the window and resumed scrubbing a shirt soaking in my basin. Huran had athlete’s foot, and from under his bed his shoes emitted an odor like rotten cabbage. Mantao stood in the middle of the room and repeatedly raised a set of sixteen-pound dumbbells above his head. His dark bangs, in a sideswept wave, almost covered his right eye. His face was soft and pale; a film of perspiration coated his forehead. In fact we had another roommate, a graduate student in the Philosophy Department, whose bed was next to mine, but he had never used it because his wife had an apartment in town. His absence pleased us somewhat, as we could have more space just for the three of us, although in wintertime we often wished he had slept in here at night so that his body heat could have made the unheated room a little warmer.
Having scrubbed the shirt and left it in the basin to be rinsed later, I opened my mosquito net and lay down on my bed. With my right arm tucked beneath my head, I began reading a letter from my parents for the second time. Regardless of seasons, my roommates and I all had mosquito netting hanging over our beds so that we could have some private space inside the nets.
Done with his exercise, Mantao came over and drew my net open. Waving his sweaty hand, he said to me, “Can you play volleyball with us this evening? We need you to beat the fellows in the Physics Department.” He was rubbing his hands free of dirt, which dropped in tiny bits on the floor.
I put the letter facedown on my belly. “Sorry, I can’t. I’m not feeling myself.” I could receive and pass the ball better than most of them, but I didn’t want to play today. My head was aching. Heaven knew in what state of mind I would be when I returned from the hospital toward evening.
“Just one game, please.” He nudged me with his elbow.
“No.”
“You miss your girlfriend again?” He smiled, his eyes turning into slits on his baby face.
“Yes, very much,” I admitted.
“Ha-ha-ha, what a man!” He closed the mosquito net. I knew he would talk to others about how lovesick I was, but I didn’t care.
My parents’ letter said they had just renovated the north-wing house, in which there was a new brick-bed now. The walls of the bedroom were freshly papered so that Meimei and I could use it in the summer. To my parents, we two must have been like a married couple (though Meimei still called them Uncle and Aunt), because we had stayed together in their home the summer before. Several times they had mentioned they couldn’t wait to hold a grandchild. I begged them not to say this in front of my fiancée. I had only one sibling, a younger brother, so they expected Meimei and me to give them a grandchild first.
Their letter made me more anxious, because I hadn’t heard from Meimei yet. She must have been mad at me for giving up the exams, and I was uncertain whether we could spend this summer together.
Last July, when staying at my parents’, Meimei and I had often gone swimming in the Songhua River. She wasn’t a good swimmer, always floating and diving in the shallows, whereas once in a while I would swim across the main channel, where the currents were rapid and cold. One afternoon, on our way to the beach, we ran into a young couple walking over from the opposite direction. Below the broad levee birds were warbling in willow thickets; now and again a loon gave a cry like a croupy guffaw. The woman was petite, in a straw hat and a white silk blouse, which rippled slightly in the fishy breeze. She was pretty, like an actress. The man was a tall officer, bareheaded and with his collar unbuttoned, though he wore a uniform. With a wan face and bushy eyebrows, he looked urbane, rather emaciated. The moment they passed by, Meimei whirled around to observe them.
“Hey, what is it?” I asked and poked her in the ribs.
“That man’s face looks so familiar.” She turned back and we went on toward the beach.
“You know him?” I asked.
“No, I don’t, but he reminded me of somebody.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Liu, who was my mother’s friend.”
I felt strange about the past tense she used. “You mean this doctor isn’t your mother’s friend anymore?”
“No. He died when I was six, of gastric perforation.”
We didn’t get into the water as we had planned. Instead, we sat at the warm beach, and she continued telling me about Dr. Liu while she absently scooped a handful of white sand and let it trickle from one palm into the other. She said, “I didn’t know my father until I was four. A year after I was born he was sent to the countryside. Life was hard for Mother because the nursery and the kindergarten wouldn’t accept me, a child whose father was a counterrevolutionary. Dr. Liu was very considerate to Mother, and he often came to baby-sit me when Mother was away at work in the lab, where she took care of animals. They were in the same hospital at the time, but they often worked different shifts. When I was three, on a summer day, Dr. Liu took me to a small park close by, which had a pond inside with some waterfowl in it. He held me in his arms, telling me that the big white birds were called swans. I wondered if I could ride on one of them and fly away like a little girl did in a movie. Then three preschool boys appeared. They all wore slingshots around their necks and Chairman Mao buttons on their chests. They came up to us and one of them pointed at me and said, “This is the bastard of a counterrevolutionary.” Another boy tweaked my toes and called me ‘little slut.’ I didn’t understand their words, but I knew they meant to hurt me, so I broke out crying. Dr. Liu carried me away, patting my back and saying, ‘They’re just small hooligans. Meimei’s a good girl.’ When I calmed down, I saw tears on his cheeks.”
She paused and narrowed her eyes, watching two pelicans flying over the other shore, one chasing the other. Then she went on, “He was an older man, in his early fifties. Mother told me that he had studied medicine in Japan and was the most skillful surgeon in the hospital. His wife died of bone cancer in the late 1950s. After that, he lived by himself. It was said that he had loved her very much. They were classmates in college. For some years I was so attached to him that I thought he was my father, although Mother often showed me Father’s photos and said he was coming home soon. When Dr. Liu died, Mother and I attended the funeral. She collapsed in front of hundreds of people, crying and raving beneath his portrait and a pile of wreaths.”
“When did he die?”
“Nineteen seventy-one. That same year Mother was transferred to the agricultural school.”
I felt her mother’s relationship with Dr. Liu might have been more than friendship, so I asked, “Did your father go to the funeral too?”
“No, he didn’t. In fact Father wasn’t happy about Dr. Liu’s presence in our life. I remember he and Mother once quarreled over this. Mother yelled at him, ‘You’ll never understand!’ Perhaps he was jealous.”
We didn’t swim that afternoon, though it was scorchingly hot. Nor did I teach Meimei how to make bird cries as I often did when we were there. I could trill, warble, and twitter like most birds, because in my early teens, having no friends, I had spent many afternoons in the thickets alone, collecting firewood and picking mushrooms.
The sun seemed very close to our head
s. The water sparkled and sloped away toward the eastern sky, where herons and cranes were bobbing beneath the distant clouds. We sat there, now watching the vast grassland on the other shore with our arms around each other, now lying down and kissing passionately. From time to time a passing steamboat would blast its horn at us; some of the sailors must have been observing us through binoculars, but we were too engrossed in ourselves to care.
“Jian, we really need you to join us in the volleyball game,” said Mantao before leaving for class.
“I’ll try to be there, but don’t count on me,” I said.
“All right, see you in the evening.” He walked out, humming the tune of “When Will You Come Again?,” a loveydovey song that had come back into fashion a few years ago after being banned for three decades.
His shortwave radio was still on, giving forth crackling static. I got up and flicked it off. At once the room turned as quiet as if the whole house were deserted. Lying in bed, I tried to connect what Meimei had said about Dr. Liu with Mr. Yang’s accusation against his wife in his sleep two days ago. As I was thinking about the mess of their entangled emotions, a miserable feeling came upon me. Even in our suffering, how isolated human beings can become. Mr. Yang seemed unable to stop taking Dr. Liu to be a mere third party, even though Liu had been dead for eighteen years. By nature my teacher might not be a small-minded man, but in this matter he was a picture of obstinacy.
20
I often wondered how much Banping Fang knew about Mr. Yang’s private life. Had he heard about his unrequited love for Lifen? Was he aware of his marital trouble? Our teacher’s mind now resembled a broken safe—all the valuables stored in it were scattered around helter-skelter. The thought bothering me most was that Banping might have known as much as I did. I was afraid he’d tell others.
The next afternoon Mr. Yang talked to a woman in his sleep again, but for a while his words were too fragmentary to be intelligible. He snickered and groaned alternately as I was leafing through the English-language magazine China Reconstructs. At about 4:30 he started singing. He sang in a sugary voice, impersonating a young woman:
Oh my ring, I lost the gold ring
My groom gave me last spring.
How can I get it back? Oh how?
If an old man picked it up
I’d treat him to dinner at my house
And can accept him as my grandpa.
If a young man has it now
He can do anything with me
Except share my bridal bed . . .
Done with singing, he grinned lasciviously and said, “I can tell you’re not a virgin. I don’t like virgins, I want a real woman.” He chuckled, his voice tapering off.
I held my breath and was all ears, but he only grinned. He seemed to be with a young woman or a girl. What was he doing? Flirting with her?
Then his voice grew audible again. “You’re mine, every part of you belongs to me. No, he-he-he, I was just kidding, can’t help being silly whenever I’m with you. Oh, I’m so lucky.” His face was glowing.
Who was he speaking to? When did this happen? Some years ago? Time was crucial here. If this had taken place before his marriage, the young woman could be his wife-to-be. But he sounded as if he was having a good time with a different person. Who was she? Lifen?
“Ah, look at these legs,” he said, sighing. “Look at these breasts, gorgeous. Aren’t they fresh peaches? My goodness, how you’re dazzling me! Oh, I’ll have a heart attack tonight. I can’t breathe.” He smiled lewdly. “Oh, how come I’m so lucky! Am I dreaming or awake?”
So they definitely went to bed together. Since she had peachy breasts, she must be the same woman whose nipples tasted “like coffee candy,” which I had heard him mention twice. When did this take place? Long ago? Or recently? If only he had revealed some clue to the time, then I might be able to figure out what was going on. Could this—
He cut my guessing short. “Don’t think I’m a bad man. It’s true I’m not a good man, but I’m not a bad man either. To be honest, you’re the second woman I’ve ever touched in my whole life. So don’t take me for a shameless, dirty old goat. I’m just an ordinary man who’s fond of pretty women. But most women don’t like me. I never thought that someone like you, charming and full of life, would be interested in me. If only I were twenty years younger . . .”
After a sigh, he subsided into silence.
He had made love to only two women in his life? That meant that besides Mrs. Yang, this was the only woman he had gotten intimate with, so she might have been Lifen, of whom he still dreamed from time to time. By now I was certain that Lifen didn’t live in Shanning City and that they couldn’t have met regularly. If he didn’t love his wife, he must have gone through a good part of his life without the company of a woman he really loved. In other words, though married, he must have lived an emotionally barren life. His confession reminded me of a handsome, strapping graduate student in the History Department, a Casanova who often boasted that he would not consider marriage until he had “tried it out” with one hundred women. He was so bold that he’d accost a stranger girl, saying, “May I invite you to coffee or tea?” If she replied, “I already have a boyfriend,” he’d tell her, “It won’t hurt to do some comparison.” In this way he often succeeded in securing a date. A friend of his told me that he was reaching his target of bedding a hundred women and would look for a wife soon. I often wondered why he had never encountered a woman outraged enough to harm him.
Then it crossed my mind that Mr. Yang’s last sentence, “If only I were twenty years younger,” might suggest that he had been with a young woman in recent years. What did he mean exactly? If he were that much younger, he would have known better how to love a woman? Or more capable in bed? Or able to spend more time with her? Or he would have left his wife? He was fifty-nine now. Assuming their intimate meeting had taken place recently, which was very plausible, then the woman should be under forty, roughly twenty years younger than he. That’s to say she couldn’t be Lifen, whose age should be close to his. Then who was she?
Mr. Yang coughed dryly and went on to say in a clear voice, “Weiya, don’t you think I’m silly? Sometimes I feel I’d like to grow potatoes at the foot of a mountain rather than teach literature. I could live a happy life if I were a farmer. With knowledge comes misery and grief. Why are you smiling? You think I’m too mawkish? Or too quixotic?”
Heavens, Weiya was his mistress! My scalp tightened and I closed my eyes. A feeling of being betrayed surged up in me while my nose turned stuffy. I shook my head as if a hard object had hit it. Who betrayed you? I asked myself. Probably both Mr. Yang and Weiya had.
On the other hand, I was quite ridiculous—how could they have included me in their liaison? Weiya had never wanted a triangle, so I couldn’t possibly fill an emotional corner in her heart. I remembered Banping had told me that Weiya often came to see Mr. Yang in the mornings and that she was “very emotional.” Why wouldn’t she visit him in the afternoons when I was here? Did she deliberately avoid me?
“If I were a farmer in another life,” Mr. Yang went on, smiling mischievously, “say a cabbage or soybean grower, would you live with me as my wife?” He paused, his face radiating childlike innocence. “Don’t smile, Weiya,” he said. “I’m serious. We can’t be together in this life, but we may in the next life when I won’t be a bibliophile feeding on paper every day. I will be a man capable of honest work and worthy of a woman like you . . .”
They even discussed marriage! Did she really love him that much? He seemed absolutely serious about this relationship. Did his wife get a whiff of it? She might have. That must be why she had left for Tibet.
“Don’t say love,” Mr. Yang said fretfully. “I hate the word ‘love.’ People say they love each other, but they’ll change their hearts later on. Love is a chameleon. No, worse than any reptile, it can be sold and bought with power, money, Party membership, and even food coupons. So just say you want to be with me, or you are attached to m
e. That makes more sense.” He stopped as if waiting for Weiya to say something.
“So am I to you,” he said in reply. “But heaven always contradicts human wishes. I’m too old to deserve a woman as young and as good-hearted as you. I’m so sorry, if only I could marry you.”
She actually loved him? She was willing to marry him? Why wouldn’t she mind the twenty-eight-year age difference between them? He could have been older than her deceased father. Maybe she just wanted to have a fatherly man. Somehow I often had difficulty with women who were only fond of older men. Four years ago at Jilin University where I got my B.A., I’d had a crush on a girl and even proposed to her, with full expectation that she would accept me, but she declared to me that she’d never marry a man younger than herself and that she could trust but not love me. She wanted to continue our friendship, which I refused, because it hurt me to see her date an older fellow, who was a mere half-wit, a braggart, though he headed a student poetry group called Open Road.
Mr. Yang was wordless now. He seemed to be dozing away, still whining faintly.
How could Weiya fall for such an old man? What made him so attractive to her? Could it be his acute mind? Not likely. There were other men who had perceptive minds too, even younger and quicker than his, if not deeper. Then what could draw her to him? His erudition? His limited power as the director of graduate studies? His reputation? His eloquence? None of these was thinkable to me.
To my mind, his only quality that might have attracted Weiya was his disposition. I had noticed a kind of hidden melancholy in him. Although he seldom expressed his emotions in front of his students, his voice occasionally betrayed some kind of misery that seemed peculiar to him, as though he had been born with it. Weiya didn’t live a happy life either. Her maternal grandfather used to be an accomplished epigraphist in Tianjin City, owning a Japanese bungalow, which later was confiscated by the Communist government. She told me that her father, an architect in a construction company, unable to endure the torture inflicted by the revolutionary masses in the summer of 1967, had killed himself by jumping out of an office building. Some years later she was sent to the remote Yunnan Province to be reeducated on a rubber plantation. She might have lost her virginity there if Mr. Yang’s remark about it was true. A woman of her experience and background could hardly view life with cheerful eyes anymore and must have been very sensitive to the melancholy that arose from Mr. Yang’s disposition. Actually some people might enjoy sadness and suffering, because their lives have been nourished only by miserable feelings. They can endure anything but happiness, which is alien to their systems. Mr. Yang seemed to be one of those people; so did Weiya. This must be the grounds for their mutual sympathy, attraction, and affection.
