by Su Tong
‘This way, big boy.’ The girl directed the driver with her umbrella towards the restaurant, ‘This way, not over there. It’s wet over there.’
‘You think I can’t find the way by myself?’ The driver laughed. ‘You don’t have to be so attentive just yet.’
‘The boss tells us to be sure to make a good first impression,’ the girl explained earnestly. ‘Last month, our boss took a trip to some other restaurants to see how it’s done there.’
‘What do you mean, "first impression"? I’m a repeat customer. I’ve been here quite a few times.’
‘How come I’ve never seen you before?’
The driver jumped over a puddle and suddenly recalled the name of the girl from last year. ‘There’s a girl called Xue. Is she still around?’
‘Xue?’ The girl’s eyes lit up for a moment. ‘I’m called Xue. You know me?’
‘I don’t know you, I know the other Xue – the one with the round face and short hair. She’s a little bigger than you, and a little darker. Does she still work in the restaurant?’
‘I’m the only girl called Xue here. Who knows who all these other Xues are you’re talking about,’ the girl said. ‘What did the other Xue do?’
‘Same as you. Stand here, attract customers.’
‘No way. I’ve been here for more than a year and that’s my name. How could there be another Xue? No way!’ The girl looked as if she thought he was having her on. She turned her head to look at the driver’s face, and then took another glance at his shoes. ‘Oh, man, look at your shoes. They’re disgusting,’ she cried out. ‘I told you to be careful where you stepped and you wouldn’t listen. Now look at your feet – covered in mud!’
The driver didn’t mind mud on his feet. He frowned, trying to remember something. ‘Well, that’s strange. You’re called Xue, too? I’m sure I remember right. The other Xue had a mole on her cheek, and you don’t. Or maybe all you girls here are called Xue.’
‘No way! How would that work? Everybody would get mixed up. It’d be impossible to manage things. There’s Mei, Hong and Li – they work nights – but during the day there’s only me.’ She raised her voice and said vehemently, ‘I’m not lying. May I drop down dead if I am. My name is Xue.’
The driver was a little bit perplexed and wondered if perhaps he had confused Xue in Weeping Willow with some other roadside girl. But he had always set great store by his memory, and the people he worked with at the transport company agreed that he was good at remembering two things: one of them was his route, and the other the names of the girls he chanced to meet along the way.
The proprietress came rushing out from the back of the restaurant, holding sunflower seeds in her cupped hands. Her bony face was covered in a thick layer of powder and her mouth smeared with lipstick. Her smile revealed jagged, blackening teeth. ‘Why, my friend. What a long time it’s been.’ She squinted as she gave the driver the once-over. Suddenly she extended one finger and poked him in the shoulder. ‘You dockside drivers, you’ve no loyalty at all. We gave you such good service last time and you forgot us all the same.’
Despite this greeting, the driver couldn’t be certain whether the proprietress really recognized him or not. Perhaps she did, perhaps not. He had met a lot of people of this type in roadside inns. The driver just smiled an acknowledgement and sat down on the edge of a table. He said, ‘I’ll have the same thing as before. Two fried vegetable plates and a bowl of noodles with herbs and shredded meat.’
Not far from the kitchen two men were sitting round a cardboard box, playing poker. They cast sidelong glances at the driver and then bowed their heads again. He had never seen them before, but guessed that they were paid by the proprietress to hang around the restaurant. All the roadside places had men like these, sitting idly while the women moved around them. The counter, painted pink, was right by the entrance, and on top of it stood a black-and-white TV set. The girl who called herself Xue had turned it on as soon as they came in. The TV looked like some kind of relic. It made a droning sound, but the screen remained blank. The girl picked up a slipper and hit the set twice, once on the left and once on the right, and suddenly the image appeared, a TV series from Hong Kong. There was a man and a woman, conducting meaningless small talk in a queer kind of Mandarin. After a moment, it turned out they were talking about love.
The driver said, ‘That’s really getting on my nerves. No matter where I drive, it’s always those two voices. They can’t talk normally, they have to drawl like that: "yala yala yala". As soon as I hear them, it gets on my nerves.’
Xue stood by the counter. ‘No way! It’s cool to speak like that now, don’t you know that, big boy? If you don’t like a programme this good, why would you even want a TV?’
The driver said, ‘My TV at home is strictly for decoration. Of the three hundred and sixty five days of the year, I’m not at home for a hundred and eighty. I don’t have time to watch. When I do, it’s sport. I don’t watch anything else; I fall asleep if I do. The series from Hong Kong and Taiwan are OK, so far as the stories go, it’s the dubbing that gets me. As soon as I hear two voices like that, I want to fall asleep right away.’
Xue said, ‘No way! If I feel sleepy, I just watch TV and then I’m not sleepy any more. I’m watching this show – it’s the last two episodes now, so don’t interrupt or I can’t hear.’
The proprietress came out of the kitchen with his food. She kicked at the cardboard box and shouted, ‘Cards! All you do is play cards! It wouldn’t occur to you to go into the kitchen and help with the vegetables, I suppose?’ As she approached the driver, her expression quickly turned into an easy smile. She remarked to him, ‘Just look how hard it is to run a place like this. The staff are all lazy. I’m the busy one while they’ve got it made: the card players with their cards; the TV-watchers with their TV.’
The driver had wanted to say something, but then yawned. ‘I can’t stand the sound of that show. I get sleepy as soon as I hear it.’
The proprietress blinked suddenly and scrutinized him. ‘You look awful,’ she shouted, as if she was genuinely alarmed. ‘Your face looks terrible. You really should take a rest. How long have you been driving? You look exhausted.’
The driver shook his head, and leaned back on his chair, giving the proprietress an ambiguous smile.
‘Are you all right?’ She put out her hand to feel his forehead, saying, ‘You don’t have a fever. Well, then, as long as you’re not ill. Hey, it’s not easy the work you do, and it takes the best years of your life, too. Aren’t I right? I can tell you’re tired. You’ll be fine once you’ve had a rest.’
‘It’s not that I’m tired. To tell you the truth, I had a bit of a shock. There was an accident out by Siqian.’
‘Who caused it?’ The proprietress suddenly seemed a little nervous and took a step back from him. She asked tentatively, ‘You’re all right, though, aren’t you?’
‘I’d hardly be sitting here if I weren’t, would I?’ The driver chuckled and moved his legs restlessly under the table. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘What are you staring at me like that for? I didn’t do it, it was the coal truck in front of me!’
‘Yeah, those are the worst. Their drivers are all mad. It’s as if they’re deliberately looking for people to hit.’ The proprietress was going along with him now and demonstrating appropriate interest in the accident itself. ‘Did you see the person get hit? Who got hit?’
‘It was an old man. All I saw was this old man going off like a firecracker. The coal lorry was along with me the whole way. The trucker had just passed me when I saw him hit someone. I heard a big bang – hell, it was just like a firecracker. In all the years I’ve been driving, I’ve never seen anyone be hit. Just like a firecracker!’
‘Did the other driver get out and help him? There’s the rural hospital in Siqian.’
‘Help him? He didn’t even get out of his truck, he just took off! I was right behind him and didn’t know what to do. It was one of those situations
where you can’t really win. I just gritted my teeth and kept driving. I hadn’t counted on the old man still being alive, though, and as I drove past he suddenly popped up, his whole body covered in blood, and tried to flag me down!’
The proprietress gave a frightened shout and said, ‘That is scary! You mean he wasn’t dead? Is he dead now?’
‘How do I know? I was scared half to death myself.’ The driver had started eating his food. As he chewed he said, ‘I’m guessing he didn’t survive. He was walking from the fields on to the road. The raindrops were big as soya beans, you couldn’t really see for them. He was an old man from a village and his reflexes were slow – you know how they all walk along the road with their heads down, as if the national highways were built for their personal convenience. He was carrying a basket full of chilli peppers. When he was hit, there was a bang, like a firecracker, and the peppers flew all over the place. I’m not kidding, the guy and the peppers both flew up, just like a big firecracker.’
They had been talking very loudly, annoying Xue sitting over by the counter. ‘Look, please keep it down. I can’t hear a thing. Ms Fang is writing a suicide note. She wants to kill herself!’
The proprietress looked over to where Xue was sitting, and craned her neck a little to see the screen. Obviously she too was preoccupied with the series. ‘I thought she was going to die in yesterday’s episode – so they dragged the suicide note out until today.’ The proprietress said to the driver, seemingly in apology, ‘It’s a really good show. I watch it every day.’ Then she lowered her voice and whispered in his ear, ‘In a minute I’ll set Xue to work on your back, and then you can get nice and relaxed. Xue’s not bad-looking is she?’
The driver hesitated for a second and said, ‘She wants to watch the programme. Let her watch. I’ll go into the back rooms and have a snooze.’
‘Now how could we just let you snooze?’ The proprietress gave the driver a knowing nudge. ‘Never you mind. When you’re as tired as that, you should get some proper relaxation. I’ll tell her what to do for you.’
The driver looked at the girl in front of the TV and then glanced out of the window. The rain had stopped briefly, but now it was back. There were no vehicles on the highway and with the rain falling it looked peaceful, like a black river, with little glittering lights. A chicken or duck belonging to the restaurant had ventured on to the highway and was taking a leisurely walk. The driver looked out at the sparsely planted mahogany and pagoda trees lining the road – they were only about half the height of a man – and he reckoned they had just been planted when he last called here about a year ago. He suddenly recalled that the place was called Weeping Willow. How come there wasn’t a single weeping willow to be seen?
‘Why is this place called Weeping Willow?’ he mumbled, but the proprietress didn’t hear. She’d already resumed her place in front of the TV and was staring at the flickering screen while spitting out sunflower seed shells. The girl called Xue was now sitting on the counter. Apart from her black silk stockings and the little pearls embroidered on them, the driver could see only the side of her face and her back; her rounded breasts were carefully concealed by her sleeveless top, like corn in its husk. She had put her hands underneath her legs and was sitting on them, and it seemed to him that he had seen this posture before – surely the Xue he remembered had sat like that? Maybe she was the same girl he had met last time after all. Or maybe he was mistaken; after working as a long-distance driver for so many years, the girls he knew from roadside inns were beyond counting. What perplexed him was Xue’s attitude towards him; if it was the same girl, she ought to have recognized him. Last year in Weeping Willow the Xue he had met was a tearful country girl; totally clueless, like a lamb being led to the sacrificial slaughter for eighty bucks. He hadn’t even done anything to her; her tears and meek acquiescence had moved him to compassion. He had done nothing, but he had still paid, and even given a tip. He remembered how Xue had clumsily kissed him on the face to express her gratitude, saying, ‘Mister, I’ll never forget you all my life. You’re a nice man.’ Of course he was a nice man: he hadn’t done anything, but had still paid, and he felt satisfied when he thought of that. He had been positive that Xue in Weeping Willow would remember him, and so he felt a double sense of loss now: he couldn’t be sure if it was the same girl, but she didn’t seem to know him.
The room’s furnishings were shabby and rustic: an old-fashioned slatted bed, a washstand and basin; walls covered with posters of stars from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The plastic matting had just been scrubbed and was slippery to walk on. He saw they still had the kind of mosquito net that had long since disappeared from the big cities hanging from the ceiling over the bed. It all felt very familiar, although he didn’t remember there being any such net last year, but that might have been because it was autumn then. The driver crawled under the mosquito net and checked everything with his hands; the bedding seemed clean and had been sprayed with perfume. Slowly he lay down and heaved a sigh; he knew what the proprietress was going to fix up for him, what it was he was waiting for, and while he waited, he combed his hair back with his hand. What was different from other times in similar roadside inns was the heaviness of his heart. This time, he was waiting for something without really knowing whether he wanted it.
Xue came into the room carrying a Thermos. It was obvious that she had been hectored inside by the proprietress as she didn’t look willing and the smile on her face was stiff. ‘Have a wash first,’ she said from outside the mosquito net, ‘orders from the boss. She says you’re to have a wash.’
‘What am I going to wash? You mean my feet?’
Xue stood there awkwardly, saying nothing. It was clear from her expression that she was being forced to attend to him.
‘What do you want me to wash? Come on, tell me.’ The driver pushed his face out of the net. He lowered his eyes when he saw that she had no intention of answering, pulled his head back and said, ‘I won’t wash. I’m not dirty, so why should I wash?’
Xue said, ‘It’s not my business if you want to be filthy. In any case, I’ll tell you straight out, I’m not on night shift, I don’t do that stuff.’
‘What stuff is it you don’t do?’ the driver chuckled inside his net and said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl like you before. If you don’t do anything, why are you here? Get me the boss.’
‘No! I didn’t mean to offend you.’ Outside the net, Xue’s voice had suddenly grown milder, more defensive. She put the Thermos on the edge of the bed, and seemed to be pondering something. Then, hesitantly, she said, ‘Look, if you don’t want to wash, then don’t. I’ll wash your feet for you, I’ll massage your back, I’ll even scratch you where it itches if you want, but you have to promise me something, OK?’
‘What are you making such a big deal of it for? I just want to relax. I’m hardly going to romance you, am I? What am I supposed to promise you anyway?’
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Xue said. ‘Fifteen minutes, OK? After that I’m going next door to watch TV, and you won’t tell the boss.’
‘No way.’ The driver, having now understood what she was after, could not suppress a smile. Mimicking the girl’s voice, he repeated, ‘No way!’ And then, ‘Fifteen minutes, enough to relax me? How about I only pay half, then?’
‘Look, I’m begging you, OK? The last two episodes are on today. It’ll start again after the ad break’s over. Promise me! Promise, OK?’
‘No way!’ The driver said in a falsetto. ‘What do you take me for?’ Suddenly he remembered something and asked, ‘Why not just ten minutes then? Why fifteen?’
‘The first five minutes are for the opening song.’ Xue realized that this question was a sign the driver might be willing to accommodate her, and the thought lifted her spirits so she said, ‘You know, you’re a nice man. I knew all along you were a nice man. I’ll remember you all my life.’
‘You said the same thing last year.’ The driver gave a hollow laugh from inside his net. ‘What do gi
rls like you remember anyway? All you remember is the cash.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Why turn nasty all of a sudden?’ Xue sounded flabbergasted. For a moment it seemed she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She pulled back the one that had been lifting the net. ‘Why would you say something like that? Girls like me? What kind of girl am I, then? How do you know what kind of girl I am?’ She cocked her head and looked at the posters on the wall. Then she whispered, ‘If you treat me like shit I’m hardly going to want to serve you, and I don’t care if you do tell the boss. Creep.’
‘Are you swearing at me?’
‘I didn’t swear at you. When did I ever swear at you?’
‘You called me a creep.’
‘That’s not swearing. They dock your salary if you swear at a guest. Don’t go telling lies about me.’
‘How old are you, anyway? And how come you’re so clueless? Do you really think you can earn money here without having the first idea about anything?’ The driver stared at the girl, and his tone of voice changed. It was halfway between reproachful and teasing. ‘Tell me, are you really Xue or not? Do you really not remember me? I came here last year and you kept sobbing like some kind of Lin Daiyu.3 I didn’t even touch you but I paid up, and you said over and over again that you were going to remember me for ever . . . and now, damn it, in less than a year you’ve forgotten about me altogether! I’m called Lin. It’s me, Lin!’
Xue turned her head; the driver’s words had caught her attention. She lifted the net an inch. Perhaps she wanted to take a closer look at his face, but in the end she was too embarrassed, so she plopped herself down on the edge of the bed. It looked like she was straining to remember something. She just sat there on the edge of the bed, supporting herself with her hands, swaying back and forth as if the movement were helping to jog her memory. But in the end she shook her head and said, ‘No way. If you did something as nice as that, how come I don’t remember it at all? You’re pulling my leg, right? You drivers all like to joke. I’ve never met you before, Liu.’
