by Ha Jin
Whether there had been genuine love between them, I wasn’t sure. Didn’t Weiya tell me that she had outgrown love? Was she really serious about their affair? She might have been at first, but now she seemed quite eager to hit it off with Yuman Tan. She couldn’t be a novice when it came to a romance, could she? Mr. Yang must have been too naive about her.
To some extent, I felt mortified as I realized why Weiya had treated me, a man only five years her junior, as a nonfactor in her love life, as if I belonged to the younger generation. Perhaps her relationship with Mr. Yang psychologically prevented her from counting me as a man. Yes, this might be a hidden meaning in her statement that she wouldn’t do Meimei “a nasty turn”: if one day Mr. Yang recovered, divorced his wife and married her, she would become Meimei’s stepmother and my stepmother-in-law. She’d be a generation older indeed.
Then I remembered the virginal heart she had claimed for herself. What did she mean? Did she anticipate that I might find out about her affair with our teacher? Very possible. Then why wouldn’t she wait until Mr. Yang recovered or died and then see what she should do? Why had she left him for Yuman Tan in such a hurry? This wasn’t very becoming for a woman with a virginal heart, was it? Maybe her liaison with our teacher was just a fling for her, but why did he take it as earnestly as though she were his only soul mate?
These questions puzzled me. Yet one thing seemed true: Weiya might be less serious about their affair than Mr. Yang.
On the other hand, I shouldn’t be too critical of her. She understood their relationship would lead nowhere, as he had made it clear to her that he couldn’t marry her. She had no choice but to look for another man.
Somebody knocked on the door. Before I could get to my feet, Nurse Chen breezed in, carrying a round aluminum tray that held Mr. Yang’s dinner—a bowl of custard, a cup of soybean milk, and seven or eight slices of vegetarian sausage in a dish.
“Din-din,” she announced pleasantly. This also meant that my shift was over and that from now on she would look after him.
“I don’t want to eat dinner,” Mr. Yang replied, still in delirium. “I want to eat you. You’re my best meat, palatable.” He grinned suggestively without opening his eyes.
I was embarrassed, fearful that Mali Chen would take offense, but she didn’t seem to mind his nonsense at all. Instead, she turned to me, smiling knowingly and batting her eyes. It flashed through my mind that she must have heard similar words from his mouth so many times that she was used to them. Her smile suggested that she knew no less than I about my teacher’s private life, as if it meant to say, “Boy, you have no idea what it’s like at night. This is nothing by comparison.” It was as though both of us had been grave robbers, but she had outsmarted me by digging deeper and at richer spots and had found much more treasure. She was a superior thief!
Never had I imagined that she too had been prying into Mr. Yang’s mind. She might already have drilled, mined, and excavated the whole terrain of his blasted brain. How I hated her! But all I could bring out was “I wish he were dead!”
“How could you say such an awful thing?” Wide-eyed she froze, still holding the tray.
I felt giddy and nauseated. Without another word I snatched up my bag and rushed out the door.
21
Weiya Su came to see Mr. Yang the next afternoon. He was sleeping when she knocked on the door. I was surprised to see her because she seemed to me a different person now, difficult for me to understand. Her right arm was hooked around something heavy in a white cloth sack, pressed against her flank. She gave me a smile, which was so familiar and so good-natured that it induced me to say, “Come in. Why stand there?” The previous afternoon I had shaved Mr. Yang, washed his hair, and applied some lotion to his hands and cracked lips, so he looked presentable now, though his face was still puffy, like a loaf of stale bread.
“How is he today?” Weiya asked rather timidly.
“He’s okay, very quiet.”
“We shouldn’t wake him up.”
“All right, we won’t.”
To my amazement, she took a watermelon out of the sack, not a large one, but a seven- or eight-pounder. Where on earth did she get this? I asked myself. It was springtime, not the season for watermelons. At this time of the year, most fruit stores in town had only dried and canned fruits for sale except for fresh apricots and overripe plantains. The latter came from the tropical Hainan Island, very expensive.
Weiya noticed the surprise on my face and said of the watermelon, “I bought it at Swans.”
I nodded without speaking. Swans was a supermarket owned by a Hong Kong man who had invested millions of dollars in Shanning City, mainly in restaurants and retail businesses. The supermarket was the first one on the Western model opened here. I had never been there, but heard that it offered many kinds of fresh produce, all at a tripled or quadrupled price. It wasn’t a place where people living on regular wages would go shopping. I was amazed Weiya could be so openhanded; she had only a meager stipend like mine.
She stepped closer to Mr. Yang and bent forward a little to inspect his swollen face, which had lost its energetic features. She went on biting the tip of her tongue and opened her mouth from time to time, as if trying to say something but unable to get it out. Her eyes darkened, their lids flickering. She kept her hands on her sides the whole time, and her fingers twisted in her green sweater. Then her egg-shaped face softened, a smile emerging like a child’s, as if she intended to invoke some response from Mr. Yang, who remained expressionless, still asleep. Noiselessly I slipped out and closed the door behind me. I meant to leave them alone out of respect for their privacy. I had done this without a second thought.
The moment I was in the corridor I regretted having left stealthily, because Weiya might construe my deliberate withdrawal as an insinuation that I knew about their affair. In other words, I had treated her as his mistress rather than his student. I felt stupid, hoping I hadn’t offended her. On the other hand, if I had kept her company, I might have observed her too openly.
I loitered in the hospital building, just to while away an hour. There were so many patients that outside some offices people waited in lines to see doctors. Numerous patients were lying on planks or stretchers on the floor. Nurses in white robes and caps passed by like ghosts, most of them wearing broad gauze masks. A chair with ill-oiled wheels was pushed past, in which sat a disheveled young woman moaning vaguely, her legs encased in plaster. The air stank of a mixture of urine, phenol, and Lysol; there was also a whiff of decaying flesh. At the end of the hall a man was quarreling with a woman doctor, calling her a harridan, while she yelled back at him. Some people gathered there to watch.
By accident I wandered into a dark corridor. As I walked, I heard some women groaning. My eyes were not yet attuned to the dimness when a shriek rang out from somewhere on my right. I stopped to look into a room, which was curtained off.
When my eyes were fully adjusted, I saw a long line of beds set against the wall along the corridor. On them lay about a dozen women in labor, moaning in fear and pain. A few were crying for help. Some were motionless, their swelling bellies uncovered, but none seemed concerned about the presence of the men around them. Since there weren’t enough delivery rooms, it seemed that some of them might have to give birth here. Most of the husbands stood with their backs against the opposite wall, and looked downcast with dull faces. Two were chatting in whispers; one was reading a picture storybook while nibbling the end of his long mustache.
An old nurse in horn-rimmed glasses turned up and stretched out her shriveled arm to bar my way. “What’s your wife’s name, young man?” she asked severely. Her other hand held a glossy purple folder, which must have contained information on the patients.
“I—I don’t have a wife yet,” I fumbled.
“Then why are you here?”
“Just looking around.”
“What? You came to see these women without their pants on? Shameless. Get out of here!”
I flinched. She raised her withered hand and put two fingers against her thumb, as if to pull me away by the nose. I swung around and took flight.
As I was approaching the door through which I had come, from behind suddenly arose the squealing of a baby, mixed with hearty laughter and chattering. “It’s a boy!” cried a man.
Coming out of the maternity ward with a burning face, I saw a large mirror on the wall, beside a white tank of boiled water set on a wooden stand for public use. I stopped to see how I blushed. To my horror, in the defective mirror the right side of my face appeared larger than the left—I had different-sized eyes and ears. Hurriedly I went out of the building and sat down on the concrete steps at its front. A cool breeze wafted, soothing my feverish head a little. In the copper-gray sky a helicopter was flitting away like a giant dragonfly, its rotor ticking faintly. Somewhere a female voice shouted through a bullhorn, “Eradicate corruption!” Then, “Reform to the end!” Students were demonstrating in town again. A brass band started blasting out the Internationale.
When I returned to Mr. Yang’s room, he was sitting on the bed with his legs curled up, his lips wet and glistening. At the sight of me Weiya jumped up from the bedside, stuttering to me as if in self-defense, “He—he woke up himself.”
“Don’t worry. He slept enough.”
My words put her at ease. She asked me with a childlike smile, “He’s better than last week, don’t you think?”
“I think so.”
The amiable look on her face made me relax. Apparently she wasn’t miffed at all. Nothing had changed in her manner except that her eyes were a little brighter. She didn’t seem very upset. She unfolded her pink handkerchief and wiped Mr. Yang’s mouth twice. He smiled serenely.
On the bedside cabinet sat the watermelon, cut in half, and a stainless steel spoon stood in the red pulp. She had fed him! She didn’t even bother to conceal their relationship. I was touched and upset at the same time. A feeling of isolation overcame me, as though she had been the only person I could turn to for a bit of solace, but she too had gone beyond my reach. I had planned to ask her about how she was getting on with Yuman Tan, but now there was no need to be so inquisitive. In her eyes I must be either a lad or a eunuch, never having amounted to a man. I remained silent, feeling hurt.
“I should be leaving,” she said to both me and Mr. Yang. Then she turned to me. “Please help him with the watermelon when he wants it.”
“Sure, trust me, I won’t partake of any of it.” I tried hard to be funny.
“You can have a bite if you want.” She gave a smile, the same shy, sweet smile. “Good-bye, Mr. Yang.” She waved her small hand at him.
“See you later, Weiya,” he muttered. Evidently her visit had calmed him down; he looked so gentle now.
Having taken leave of me, she made toward the door. Her lustrous hair, loosely tied into a ponytail, swayed against her pea-green sweater and almost reached her curvy waist. Her slim legs and hips were swinging a little in her long jeans, whose cuffs almost touched the floor, covering her red vinyl sandals. When she had disappeared beyond the door, I closed my eyes and couldn’t help but think of the words our teacher had used to describe her body.
“What have you been doing?” Mr. Yang interrupted my thoughts.
“I—I’ve been preparing for the exams,” I answered him, though I hadn’t opened a textbook lately.
“What exams?” he asked.
“For the Ph.D. program.”
“You should learn how to grow millet instead.”
“Why?”
“The more you know, the crazier you’ll go, like me. Intellect makes life insufferable. It’s better to be an ordinary man working honestly with your hands.”
I kept quiet, afraid he might throw another fit. Soon he began hiccuping spasmodically like a sick rooster unable to crow.
Weiya’s visit puzzled me in an odd way. Usually a mistress wouldn’t bring a watermelon to her lover’s sickbed and feed him without any trace of unease, but Weiya had done that as if it were a natural thing for her to do. Her manner revealed a good deal of innocence. What really motivated her? In some way she acted like a child, as if she were performing a filial duty. Yes, “filial” might be the right word to describe her manner. She behaved like a daughter dutifully caring for her sick parent.
It dawned on me that she must have seen a father figure in our teacher to compensate for the father she had lost long ago. From Mr. Yang she might have sought not only intimacy and love but also consolation and assurance. Whether she herself had been aware of the true nature of their affair, I couldn’t tell, but I believed my guess was close to the truth. This also explained why no matter how friendly we were, she had never been interested in me as a man and I had always remained a big boy in her eyes. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man younger than herself.
If only I were ten years older.
22
At lunch Little Owl was delivering a speech again. He always wore his blue jacket and pants whose legs had lost their original color, whitish and stained with grease in places. A stout fountain pen was stuck in his breast pocket, just above a large blotch of dried ink and a crust of snot. He had never worn underclothes or socks, not even in freezing weather, when he would just put on a quilted, felt-collared overcoat. Winter and summer alike, his feet were sheathed in the same pair of suede shoes, which were often broken but always patched up for him by someone. Today he was babbling about artillery and tanks, every now and again shouting, “Bang-bang-bang!”
“Comrades, more than a dozen Russian tanks are coming across the frozen river,” he went on. “They’re crawling toward our position like giant turtles. Bang-bang-bang, our cannons fire at them, but they won’t stop. They are all shaped like an egg, so our artillery shells cannot damage them—even our armor-piercing rounds cannot penetrate them. One by one the shots slip off their turrets as they’re coming closer and closer. But our brave soldiers are not intimidated by the Russian Big Noses. They hide in the trenches covered by snow, waiting for the steel turtles. Not until the tanks get within twenty feet do our men fire their bazookas, bang-bang-bang. Launched so close, every shell finishes off a damn tank. . . .”
What he was describing was a battle between Chinese and Russian troops on the Wusuli River twenty years before. Although most of the students in the dining hall knew little about the battle, they paid no attention to the madman’s ranting.
When I was a little boy, I had dreamed of becoming an officer in the People’s Liberation Army someday, though my father’s problematic political status would have disqualified me for army service; so I had often browsed through some old magazines that carried reports and pictures of battles. The tanks Little Owl referred to were T-62s, whose oval, streamlined bodies were almost impervious to the Chinese cannons. But some of them were destroyed by bazooka shells launched from an extremely short distance. One soldier, who later became a national hero, fired his bazooka within twenty feet of a tank. The explosion not only shattered the track shoe of the T-62 but also knocked him out. Although he was saved and hospitalized for half a year, he lost his hearing for good. I remembered reading in an article that the Russians, fearing that their most advanced tanks might fall into the hands of the Chinese, had shelled the ice around those disabled tanks to sink them into the river, but under cover of darkness the Chinese troops and militia hauled one of the tanks ashore and shipped it inland. After taking it apart and studying the technology, the Chinese made our own model of the tank, which I heard had less armor but a similar cannon.
Tired of Little Owl’s old story, I picked up my lunch and went out, despite a wall of heat already rising outside. Somehow he seemed to have an eye on me these days. As I was passing him, he brandished his tiny fist, shouting, “Down, down with this Russian Chauvinist!” He even shoved my shoulder from behind. My radish soup spilled, and a slice of pork the size of a rose petal landed on the dirt floor. A few girls in the Foreign Languages Department giggled. I turned
around, about to curse him, but his glowing eyes invoked so much pity in me that I went out without a word. Meanwhile he kept yelling, “Put down your arms, we’ll spare you!”
“Knock it off!” shouted my roommate Mantao. That made the madman turn on him.
I squatted down with my back to a brick wall, on which remained Chairman Mao’s instruction in gigantic characters: BE UNITED, ALERT, EARNEST, LIVELY. I was eating alone and unhurriedly, but in no time Little Owl began to bother me again, calling me a running dog of the new Tsar. I pretended I had heard nothing. Now and then he fired a shot in my direction. I decided to eat at a food stand or a noodle joint for a few days, so that he might forget me. There was no way to call a truce with him. Full of belligerence, he was always looking for an enemy, ready to hurl invective.
Dr. Wu had instructed us to let Mr. Yang sit at least a few times a day as a kind of exercise. During my shift, besides sitting him up, I always made him lie on his stomach for half an hour and rubbed him with a warm towel. Recently he often complained of lumbago, probably because he had remained in bed too long; I tried to massage his lower back every afternoon, which seemed to help ease his pain. In the morning, sunlight often fell in through the window, so I told Banping to make Mr. Yang sun himself a little whenever it was possible. I believed sunlight would do him good.
