by Mian Mian
For the first time, Saining talked about himself. He had been bullied terribly as a child. Both of his parents were what was then known as “artistic political criminals.” They had met at a labor farm somewhere in the Northwest, where they had both been sent for “Reform through Labor.” His mother was a passionate admirer of the Soviet poet Sergei Esenin, so she named him Saining, which was the Chinese equivalent of Sergei. He was born at the labor camp. When he was nine, his parents were rehabilitated. They divorced soon thereafter. Saining said, Chinese marriages can withstand hardship and disaster, but they can’t survive the good times. Sometime later, his mother remarried and moved to Japan. When he was twelve, Saining immigrated to England with his father. When I met him, he had been back in China for only a year.
His father had stubbornly hoped that Saining would become a violin prodigy. His first violin had been made for him by his father, out of bamboo, and the violin tunes of his childhood had all been hummed to him by his father. Saining said, Maybe this is why I got into the bad habit of always running away from things.
His parents had had to wait a long time for their political rehabilitation, but it didn’t take them long at all to get a divorce. My parents are both really good people, he said, but they’re both crazy. Until I was nine, we all lived at the labor farm. The three of us had been buffeted around too much already, and when it was all over, we just couldn’t live together anymore.
Birmingham is a terrible place, he went on, an especially ugly place, and its streets are always full of worried people. I don’t feel any connection to the place at all, but I truly loved the English countryside. If you haven’t been to England, you can’t possibly understand their literature or their music. England is unique, and the English don’t like anybody who isn’t English. When I traded in my violin for a guitar, I thought that my life was finally going to get interesting. Music was not going to shut me out anymore. But my relationship with my father deteriorated; we were always arguing. Things got out of control.
We pushed together a bunch of small tables to make a big one and began loudly extolling one another’s virtues. Sanmao had brought along a U2 CD and he put it on the bar’s sound system. The food at the bar was terrible, the beer was warm, and the waitresses were frank to the point of rudeness. When Sanmao caught someone spying on my man from the door to the toilet, our “wedding banquet” disintegrated into a free-for-all. Two opposing gangs turned the bar upside down while the bar owner just looked on without trying to stop it. I saw one guy who was missing not just one but both of his shirtsleeves, and meanwhile Sanmao had got ahold of a shovel and was standing stock-still in the middle of the room, and somehow Saining ended up with a tiny hat on his head that made him look like a train engineer’s son.
Finally somebody in the other group yelled out, Stop fighting! None of us are from around here. Let’s not give the locals an excuse to laugh at us!
The brawl ended instantly.
Saining returned the hat to its rightful owner, everybody contributed some money to the bar, and in the end they were all shaking hands.
You could call this “happiness”: knowing for certain that that dead-of-night bar, in the darkness before dawn, is now very distant. Still, it’s something I look back on.
5.
We started kissing, and we kissed until it became a kind of agony.
I’d never drunk so much alcohol before, and my head ached hotly. I’d never looked at a man’s naked body until now, and I felt I couldn’t distinguish between his skin and mine, couldn’t tell for sure where my skin ended and his began, and we were enveloped in the softness of our own silence, and my desire lay hidden inside his body.
He traced a moist fingertip over my lips, saying, These are yours. When you’re happy, it turns me on.
When he kissed my sex with his lips, I cried out. I had found the sense of total safety I had always craved.
He was slowly changing into another person, a sleepwalker, his hands getting heavier and heavier, his penis growing larger and larger inside me, and he let out a moan, this pitiful man. I finally heard that sound.
I said, Do you have to do that?
I hurt all over, but his cries had an eerie sweetness that made me reel, and I couldn’t tell whether I was moaning with joy or with pain, and this made me feel ashamed. His sweat dripped onto my face, my breasts. I felt like a pathetic little girl. I looked up at him, loving the feeling of his sweat rolling across my body.
Finally he moved me on top of him, tonguing my breasts and breathing hard and warm against me. Suddenly I saw that his eyes were wet. He said, Remember me, remember me like you remember yourself.
My body broke with joy. I thought that this was probably a climax. Catching the scent of the substance flowing from inside my body, I saw into my own future, saw that I would become a woman with many stories to tell. But every story would have its price.
6.
Lying in bed in 1992, I thought back on that night three years earlier, thought back on all of the passion and pain and hunger and terror connected with it. I was still confused. Three years had passed, and I was still asking myself, What is love, anyway? The only thing I knew was that it was impossible for me not to see this man. We needed each other. There were secrets that only we shared.
And what was a climax? Qi told me that she had passed out once when she was coming, and this left me feeling more confused than ever. I loved the turbulent mood Saining and I shared when he was screwing me—this moment was more real to me than anything. I loved it when Saining screwed me like a total stranger while his lips spoke the sweetest words—it was only when he was fucking me as if he didn’t know me that he would say things that really touched me. That was his style.
I know, language hurt me. Language hurt me, and there was nothing I could do about it!
One night, Saining repeated something he’d said to me early in our relationship, Remember me, remember me like you remember yourself! I didn’t know if he was saying this to me again on this particular night because he’d just had a really good orgasm, or because I’d found out that he was cheating on me again.
God only knows how many illicit sexual encounters took place on any given evening at the nightclub where I sang. A lot of girls came from the countryside or from other cities to make a living here. Qi was just one among many transient “cocktail hostesses.” She wore a perpetually quizzical expression; her face even looked like a question mark. I found out that her name was Qi, that we were from the same city, that she’d gone to university, and that she had no father. On another occasion, we were having drinks together, and after talking about Freud’s Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, we became friends. But one day she called me up out of the blue and asked me to come over to her place. She said she wanted to break up with her boyfriend and that she needed to have an audience. It had been a long time since I’d seen Qi, and this was the first I’d heard about her having a boyfriend. I also hadn’t known that she had a place of her own—she’d always moved around a lot.
It used to be that I didn’t like having a fixed address of my own, she told me. But then I met him. He looked after me, and I could be myself with him. Even though he knows what I do for a living, he still loves me. We can’t keep our hands off each other. We just want to make love all the time. He helped me learn to love myself.
Qi poured me some Chivas, and I looked at her slim legs. Pretty Shanghai girls all had these beautiful legs.
I realized that she didn’t have any mixers, but she said she liked her drinks straight. Saining also took his drinks that way, but I didn’t like Chivas, and I especially didn’t like drinking it plain. It was too much like being an alcoholic.
Little Qi was playing it cool that day, but it was all an act, because not once did she mention her boyfriend’s name.
There were times I had turned my apartment upside down trying to find some book or other to lend to Qi. I told Saining how sorry I felt for her. Saining had reacted coldly, saying, What gives you the right
to feel sorry for people? You just can’t resist the weak or the sick, but frankly, it’s immoral. You’re a phony, and you just use people to make yourself feel better. I said, What are you talking about? You’ve gotten so weird lately; you used to love meeting new people. All I know is that she needs help, and I feel as though I have to help her.
I looked around Qi’s apartment. I liked the way she had decorated it—simple, cozy, sensitive. I was thinking that I’d been right about her, that she had a lot of depth.
We sipped our drinks and listened to a Hong Kong radio station, and when we were just starting to feel a little bit drunk, we heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.
And who should step inside but Saining?
I screamed.
Is this your idea of a joke, Qi? I asked.
Saining stood stupidly in front of us, his full mouth hanging open, but his eyes were unclouded. He didn’t appear to be the least bit uneasy or embarrassed.
Saining, I said, we’re going home, now!
Without uttering a word, Saining made to follow me out, but Qi’s icy voice was right behind us: I love him more than you do!
I turned and hurled my glass. Go ahead, I said. Take him and love him all you want—he’s yours!
What the hell are you doing? Saining asked. What the hell do you think you’re doing?
I said, Nobody has the right to talk to me like that!
I looked at Saining. My father had told me that this man wouldn’t love me for more than a year. The bark of the poplar tree has the most beautiful eyes a hundred miles around, the saying went. Looking at Saining’s eyes, those eyes that still had the power to hold me, I wondered whom I could believe. I didn’t want to go; I wanted to stay and see what would happen next.
Qi walked over to us.
Saining, she said, do you love me?
Qi’s face was the classic “melon seed” oval, her eyes were clear and liquid, but she also looked damaged, and her clear skin appeared almost bloodless. A long, narrow, classical nose, full lips that bowed upward, discolored teeth, a flat chest, tiny nipples. She always wore stiff, Chinese-made bras, had spindly, malnourished legs, long, skinny toes like Shanghai scallions, a thin waist, a flat ass. Her sexual technique was average, but she was good at suppressing orgasms because sex for her was a means to other ends. She was a typical Shanghainese slut—they’re the world’s best fakers, the world’s best liars. A lot of these Shanghai sluts become professional prostitutes. They aren’t as businesslike and efficient as girls from the Northeast or girls from Sichuan, who meet, conduct their transactions, and are on their way. They excel at deception. They aren’t afraid to spend a lot of time and effort on the slow seduction, because what satisfies them is a successful lie. And they aren’t like girls from other parts of the country who sell themselves to pay off their fathers’ debts, or to buy land or a house. They aren’t driven into prostitution by hardship, because their lives aren’t all that hard to begin with. They go into the business to feed their egos. This is the typical Shanghai slut. These are women who never tell you what they’re thinking. They’re smart, but almost always too smart for their own good. Most of them had useless fathers and capable but unlucky mothers. Like their mothers, they’re status conscious, in love with Western things, good-hearted but naturally selfish, suspicious of men but in love with the gratification that comes from stealing another woman’s man. I believed that Qi had genuinely fallen for Saining, but she wasn’t about to throw away her rich clients on account of him. That’s what Shanghai sluts are like; they want to have it both ways. They’re good at letting slip, bit by bit, the details of their sad stories, not knowing themselves what’s true and what’s a lie. In bed they’re apt to blurt out, Do you love me? And they’re good at faking orgasms and feigning madness. They always have trouble putting their heart into what they’re doing, especially when they’re making love.
But who they were going to be, what they were destined to become, was determined long before they were born, by the men who fucked their mothers and the men who fucked their mothers’ mothers.
I could easily picture what Qi had done to get Saining into such a mixed-up state.
Now she was telling me, Don’t try to influence him. There’s only one thing I want from him right now. I just want to hear him tell the truth, just once.
This was the first time Qi had looked at me since Saining had walked through the door. In my mind, this tiny woman was pure evil, but she had a hypnotic power, which had Saining and me standing there as though we were in some kind of trance.
I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it, she said to Saining. I don’t ever want to see any of these clothes again. You’re such a bore!
Qi started tearing off her clothes and flinging them at Saining, piece by piece. With purposeful movements, she stripped down right in front of us, and as I watched, her “frailty” took on an unexpected power, became an object of respect. I discovered that this little whore was actually very beautiful. Until now, I wouldn’t have been able to define her beauty. It was a melancholy beauty and inseparable from her body.
I’ve seen through you! Qi took a stack of CDs out of the cabinet and hurled them at Saining.
He knelt down and began trying to gather up the disks. He had a nasty expression on his face, which made me sick at heart.
Do you understand? I don’t feel anything for you at all! I want you out of my life! I don’t want you ever to come near me again.
Saining had heard enough, and with his arms full of CDs, he opened the door and went out, with Qi wailing after him: You worthless shit! I was so wrong about you! I’m always wrong about people!
I said to Qi, I’ll say! You were dead wrong about him. He was already in love with me. He couldn’t fall in love with you too. He couldn’t have done it, and you shouldn’t have expected him to. He and I are really in love. We love each other very much.
I started to cry.
Qi also began crying. I’m so sorry, she said.
I said, You’re sorry? After all I did for you, you went and seduced Saining behind my back, and now you say you’re sorry?
Qi’s voice went cold. She spoke deliberately, choosing each word carefully: There’s just one thing that I think you should know. Saining came to me. He got into my bed, not the other way around.
All of a sudden, things looked very different to me. In a panic, I burst out of her apartment.
When I got to the ground floor of her building, I found Saining huddled there, and a conversation that Qi and I had once had came back to me in a rush. She’d told me how she’d made love with a friend’s boyfriend, that he’d really screwed her brains out, and we’d talked about how maybe a big part of the excitement came from the secrecy, from cheating on someone. Now I realized that the man had probably been Saining, and I cursed him, before running outside.
I tore down the street recklessly, my emotions in constant turmoil, until I became too worked up to calm down. Rushing along on foot, I couldn’t stop picturing the two of them in all sorts of erotic scenes, and I was getting more and more upset, and I kept shaking my head, until finally even I had to conclude that speculating about other people like this was pretty disgusting. When I thought of Saining buying clothes and CDs for another woman, I started to shake. And whenever I start to shake, it’s a very bad sign.
I thought he was mine and I was his, and that there was no one else in our lives. I thought that was love.
Maybe the kind of love that I’d believed in was something you could never have in real life. I felt a sense of bitter disappointment.
Later, when I got home, Saining was sitting in my doorway.
The moment he entered me, I knew once again that I couldn’t be without him, and that nothing else in the world made sense to me except this, and that nothing else mattered to me.
I began to cry, and I said, Don’t leave me; you’re all I have!
My body shuddered with his, and my eyelids fluttered. It had been a long time since we had
made love—I’d thought he was putting all of his energy into his music. Saining could put me into a dreamlike state when we made love. He became another person when we made love, someone absent, and he went somewhere else, somewhere outside of life, to a place that only he knew. He never spoke to me about what would make me happy, and he certainly wasn’t an expert lover. He just wanted what he wanted. But I felt driven to make him happy. I didn’t know how else to make him need me. When he was sick, I loved his sickness like my own. I wanted to be controlled by him because I didn’t know it could be otherwise, and there was something absolute and pure about our need to obey our emotions, and this gave me a certainty. I reveled in the shameful feelings our couplings gave me, as if this was what I was living for.
We were drinking, and it had been a long time since we’d drunk together. Between sips I said, Saining, we have problems. He said, You’re right. We do have problems. I said, Like what? He said, I can’t really explain it.
At first light I got up and started to gather my things. And then I realized that Saining was behind me, like a shadow, sitting on the floor at my back. In the early-morning light his skin looked even paler and his eyes even brighter than usual.
Do you really have to go?
Three years ago you slept with one of our neighbors, and you left me feeling like I had no place in the world to call my own, but I stayed with you anyway. I didn’t even blame you—I just held on to you tighter. That was a mistake. I should have left you and waited for you to ask me to come back. I won’t make the same mistake twice.
Saining picked up an ashtray and struck himself on the head with it. I saw blood.
Grow up! Even if you were dying right in front of me, I’d still leave. You make me feel unclean, as if I’d had sex with millions of people, and I can’t stand that.
Saining lunged at me and pulled me to him. He leaned against the door and said, OK, how about you wait until my head stops bleeding? Then you can go.
You’re even more careless with your life than I am. I can give you a few more minutes of my time, but you’re not going to convince me to stay with you. You don’t understand love; neither of us does. Why else do these things keep happening?
