Candy

by Mian Mian

  3.

  The lights on this street are so bourgeois. Withered parasol trees transform the lights into countless little black spots that tremble before my eyes. When I’m drunk, I only need one of my eyes. I listen to his breathing. He came back, but nothing else came back with him. He can’t control the weather, and in the night his hands find my breasts, but that nameless joy has already vanished without a trace. And memory is like two pieces of glass placed on a dusky nose bridge.

  4.

  Terror and joy have bred a dangerous lifestyle, and we are doomed to suffer bizarre deaths. She says, We’re still young. She says, Everything will turn out fine. I like hearing this. She always brings me hope. I don’t know if she’s still worrying about trying to solve her “writer’s problem.” I know that changing ourselves is always a headache; we can’t completely escape who we are. I don’t know why people always have to get themselves all worked up about things. You should just be happy in your work, although I think it’s also important to give some thought to what lies ahead. She might say that I think too far into the future, but you can’t wait until the last minute to fix your problems. But there are still some mysteries I don’t understand. We’ve heard the story of how three fools together made one wise man, but the truth is that in the end their efforts were wasted. Some people say that when this world comes to an end, everyone will find his own way out, but in any case I’m going to keep trying to understand this transformation into a “writer.” If I make any progress, I’ll let her know.

  5.

  Moonlight sets the road atilt. Our luck is holding. We can see the moon, and we can see that there will always be hope for the children of the moon. Sometimes we see a huge billboard, and it directs us to the next whiskey bar: Manhattan. A place where foreign men and longhaired Shanghai girls come to pick one another up. I think I’d rather go to Goya. The moody woman who ran the place was a bit nasty, and the chemical music there inspired fantasies. When you’d had just about enough to drink, she was sure to give you drinks on the house. In other words, she liked to see you stumble out of the place blind-drunk. But drinking till you’re falling-down drunk is a waste of time. Goya is a dangerous place, and new kinds of dangers are constantly proliferating there. And now even that proprietress is gone. Interesting people never stay in Shanghai for long, or maybe it’s just that the longer they stay, the stupider and uglier they become. The woman who ran Goya went to Beijing, and she says that now just thinking of Shanghai makes her want to throw up. I think that the problem is hers, not Shanghai’s. Shanghai at night is like a beautiful but frigid woman. My Shanghai is always grieving; it’s a city without men. On the way from one party to yet another party, riding in a taxi, we talk about men: as soon as men get hard, they get stupid. Hard men are softhearted, and soft men are hard-hearted. We’re unhappy all the time. The only genuine moments we experience at clubs are when we go to the toilet. In other words, the most trivial thing is the most real. Whatever you say.

  6.

  Her gravelly laugh is warm and freewheeling. How I want to find a new place so we can have another drink! We’re tasting the same old ennui, as if we were living on the last day of the world. As I watch that guy pacing back and forth over there, I feel certain he’s not there because of some woman. From the looks of him, I’d say he’s looking for drugs. Because we’ve been there ourselves. We too used to spend the whole week waiting for Friday. On Friday we’d go out looking for drugs, and once we got them, we took them right away. And we’d feel happy, and then we’d wax sentimental, and after that we’d talk about nothing, and then we’d come down. On the way home we’d start to feel afraid, and when we got home, the sounds we heard inside our ears left us speechless. For the next three days we’d tell everyone we saw that we’d never take drugs again. We weren’t going to touch any of it, ever again. I mean, when did it all start—that whenever you ran into someone, you’d ask them, What colors have you eaten lately? I don’t want to take any more drugs unless there’s a really big party. This town is all wrong. It’s no fun. I want my violin. But I still have to pass through the next whiskey bar before I can go home. My violin is at home waiting for me. A cuckoo clock echoes, and an indescribable fragrance encircles me. When my torments have come to an end, it will be just me and my violin. But first I have to say good night to this lady in red. Good night. And so ends another day.

  7.

  One day I lost faith in myself. I didn’t understand my body or its mood swings, and I was always making a complete mess of things. What lessons does life hold for us? By all rights, this man ought to vanish into my embrace in some impossibly beautiful way. It’s been ten years, and that’s what he should do, but there’s no way to slash open this black sky, and extremely beautiful ways of doing things have always been difficult to find. The city is growing up, and we’re growing up with it. Standards are constantly changing. There’s a car in front of us, and another car behind us, and the people in both of these cars have taken head-rocking pills. I don’t know if they’ve been listening to music, because the cars are taxis. Is it even possible for people to bob their heads without that head-rocking music? Left, right, right, left, the left side has forgotten all about the right side, and that old guy has taken off his jacket, and he’s rocking his head back and forth. He’s naked—we can even see his fat belly. He has such an ordinary face, so he must have some dirty secrets. I bet he’s committed some serious transgressions in his life. Maybe, starting in childhood, everyone does the same things, which is why everyone wants to stick together now, more than ever. In this age of vast and sweeping changes, in this fucked-up head-rocking culture, we don’t have any tomorrow. They shake their heads; I shake my ass. We’re all the same. So I’ve sworn off all drugs. I just drink vodka and tonic. And when I go out, I feel compelled to drink until I’m totally fucked up before I can go home—even if I end up drinking myself to death in some wretched little bar.

  8.

  Maybe the process we’re engaged in counts as some kind of progress. Maybe things are about to start looking up. A pair of big shoes tromping down the street like a couple of mountain goats. Everything is moving forward, toward another world. This poor girl, she’s never been abroad. I have to take her somewhere beautiful, where there are animals, and music, and friends, and a bed, and the purest drugs. When we look out at those mountains and rivers, conceptions of purity will come to us as a matter of course. We have to go away. She said we had to find the way to the nearest whiskey bar.

  9.

  Maybe you think that there’s something wrong with my language, but problematic situations are the most worthy of analysis. All I want is for the two of us to find a sign, some newly created symbol. Or maybe what I want is to let myself go with you. Let’s just let ourselves go! That’s an exciting thought. Every time I hit the street, I feel as though I’ve lost everything and that I’m about to be reborn. And here we are, back on the street, “troubled youths” who grew up on the street. But what is “youth culture” anyway? We’re looking for a sign, but this street can’t give us an answer. It never could.

  10.

  We need to give ourselves a dream, an entirely new dream. Her fingers are on the keyboard in a dull-witted and hopeless search. Blindness has guided our blood all along, and my patience is gradually spilling over. I’m mixed up; I know that the grass is always greener on the other side, and maybe that’s nothing more than a street corner. She just keeps on typing, tirelessly, gently striking the keyboard. Floating on Shanghai’s sweet water lilies because the leaves have all been eaten by frogs. Toes are sinking deep into the mud, and it has everything to do with her. Where will she go at the end of 1999? That frog has gone crazy tonight, leaping free and out of the line of sight. Tonight is my best chance to lock myself up.

  11.

  There are always bits of news flapping along the street on the evening breeze. This never fails to remind me of the bad things I’ve done. This little bird that only knows how to sing, her innocence flick
ering in and out of view, her dull eyes shot with anxiety. She suddenly says, I will always love you. She says, If I give up this right, then even the little bit of sweetness that remains will also disappear. I know that there are things that have left her feeling confused, just as I’ve always felt confused. A cat rolls off the windowsill, its eyes moving, like a big stack of data. People walk by, and we’ll never see them again. Life has always been this way.

  12.

  Night comes to my spirit. When a tattered cloud causes me to lose my vision, when my fingers touch my violin but have no strength, she will take away all of her clothing. She’s always been this way: She told me a bunch of pure stories and turned me inside out, but I didn’t even realize it. She made me believe that if I stood by her, I wouldn’t need heaven’s holy waters anymore. This was how she made a fool of me, but I think she’s just as mixed up as I am. I feel like this confusion will never end. We’ve dragged ourselves ashore, and while we’re nostalgic for the pain of the past, our bodies no longer supply us with the necessary breath. It’s hard to respond in a situation like this. Of course there are other problems, like the fact that people have begun calling her a writer. Like the fact that our finances are getting shaky. Like the fact that she often goes out to pick up men. I haven’t been seeing any other women, and I haven’t become a writer, either, but we carry in our hearts the same terror—I know it. But what I’m really trying to say here is this: I’m all mixed up.

  13.

  There’s another kind of music here that we can breathe. Little insects, little plants, filthy air, arrogant cars, enticing boulevards, houses with stories to tell—we have an unspoken understanding. This is our music for tonight. The ears that can hear this music have been opened by this man. But he stole all my shoes. My shoes were the eyes of the night, and now the night has no eyes. His curving, mobile lips can no longer bear witness to the worlds of my dreams. So why are we still together? Because we don’t have anything else. Isn’t that right? This is a mistake that anyone could have made.

  14.

  She said she wanted some ice cream. We walked into the supermarket, and she rushed to open up the freezer. She looked over all the cartons until she finally picked out a brand she really didn’t like. Neither of us liked that brand, but she said, It’s cheap, and it doesn’t taste too bad either. I said, You can pick out something you actually like. No! she insisted. I want this one. In the past, as long as she had enough money in her pockets, she would never have bought a brand of ice cream she didn’t like. She used to think of herself as a rich girl who was just temporarily out of money, but only last week she began to realize that she was poor. She said the truth was that she’d always been poor, and she told me that this knowledge had given her a new perspective and that she was going to have to change her lifestyle as a consequence. No wonder she felt compelled to pick out a kind of ice cream that she didn’t even like. In any event, she’d got me all mixed up again. She told me that she despised intellectuals, but it seemed to me that she was becoming more of an intellectual herself all the time.

  15.

  He suggested that we buy some whiskey to drink at home, but I said, Tonight we’re going out to drink. He said, But what if we can’t find an interesting spot? I said, If I were you, I wouldn’t expect too much. But I want to find a bar tonight, even if it kills me. He laughed. He started calling me sweetheart. Whenever he calls me sweetheart, I get thrown off balance. It makes me think that when other people call me baby, they don’t really mean it. I think that this is love.

  16.

  She came to understand even more completely that nothing was going to happen. Because we both knew it, the Shanghai nights no longer belonged to us. Because we’d grown up and had had some wonderful nights out together, we were getting harder and harder to please. So why did we still want to go out? Where could we go? Seeing all of those head-rockers had given her a fear of the dark. Of course, there were plenty of people who took drugs and didn’t loll their heads around, and they were happy; but whenever she popped one of those pills, she started thinking about those head-rockers, and she was afraid. She was constantly on edge, fearful that she might accidentally hear a snatch of head-rocking music as she browsed in a store. And because she was also afraid of the dark, she couldn’t stay for long in a dark room, and at night she had to sleep with the lights on. Every day we swore we were going to quit taking drugs. We hated trendiness, and we still felt a need to put on a show of being cool. But the truth was that the streets were full of happy people and she was simply being much too neurotic—because the streets should be full of happy people. The desert inside a glass of alcohol crumbles ahead of us, and my nerves are scattered to the winds. We need to think of some way to have a party somewhere outdoors. How I want to see mountains, rivers, sunshine, and ruined fortresses! Let the wind course over us until we become beautiful. A lot of world-class DJs have come to Shanghai, but they haven’t changed a thing. We have to have our own party. She’s DJ No Mix, and I’m DJ Good Music, and we’ll play some nice hard house. We’ll get China’s youth to dance and wave their arms in the beautiful outdoors.

  17.

  He said that we could buy a bottle of Black Label and drink it under a tree, just as in the old days. I said, We’ve already drunk beneath the trees. We should find someplace new. He said, Has it ever crossed your mind that we don’t have to drink? Seriously, we don’t have to drink. Like right now, you’re eating ice cream. Therefore, I conclude that drinking isn’t strictly necessary. I said, Please shut up. Or else think of a way to get me to shut up. Let’s talk about not talking.

  18.

  I love all the service workers in this town. They’re the prettiest anywhere. There’s one girl I absolutely adore, the provincial girl who washes my hair. She lets her gentle fingertips roam around my head just so she can earn a few coins. And then there’s the woman beside me. One day she wore all black, from the inside out and from head to toe. Except for her socks. They had a multicolored print on a white background. She always made it easy for me to find her flaws. I think about how she was, ten years ago, when she was a virgin, and how she didn’t know where to put her legs. She was a cookie laced with poison. Dressed in a borrowed overcoat, she slept beside me in the early morning. We gazed at each other, and I thought it was love.

  19.

  A nine-headed bird is circling in my head, descending, descending, descending. This is how I fall into depression. He wants me to see a psychiatrist. I say, I despise bourgeois charades. Sinking down, down, down. I have sunk into a depression. I think that the music at my funeral should be that song by Teresa Teng that goes, “If flowing water can look back, / Please, take me with you.”

  20.

  Every day when he wakes up, he takes a shit. Then he bathes, and then he combs his hair, and then he has some coffee. All day long, caffeine courses through his clean body. He’s so beautiful (I say he’s beautiful because I love him, I suppose). He lightly touches the coffee foam to his lips, and one of his eyes is swollen. It’s like that every day. I want to make him disappear, and he knows it. He’s a useless diamond. I can’t explain his radiance. But I can’t say no to him, because neither of us has anything else.

  21.

  We went to YY’s, and I rolled a joint, but she doesn’t even smoke grass anymore. She says that even one puff makes her emotionally hypersensitive, and her thoughts run away from her. I say, If you smoke just a little more, you won’t feel afraid anymore. She says, When I smoke too much, I get close to the truth. I’m afraid. I said, What is Truth? Do you think it’s that easy to get close to the truth? Rolling a joint, now that’s Truth. Cocoa came in. He played the piano and sang “Good-Bye, My Love.” Last year there always used to be a group of people who didn’t want to leave, and just as it was about to get light, Kenny, the boss, would say, Coffee, tea, or me? But now we’re in a hurry to get back out to the street. Kenny says, Shanghai is fadaga. Shanghai is over.

  22.

  Without the warmth o
f the sun, how can we play our music? And if we can’t see the moon, how can we keep this strangeness under control? The moonlight is well versed in the art of the caress. It lingers over her body, illuminating her interior structure. A lock of hair still hangs over her forehead. We’ll press our black lips too close to the street, but whose creation is this? I cried. I love her. I can’t stop thinking about it. Looking at her breasts, I’m at a loss for words. I don’t even belong to myself. But I imagine that we’ve embarked on some kind of task and that we’re making progress. One day I’ll kiss her, and it will be like falling in love for the first time. Or perhaps sometime before we die, we’re destined to meet that someone again. Life is more mysterious than we can imagine. And then again, maybe we should just drop everything and go engage in some hard physical labor. Her father says labor makes people strong.

  23.

  A dark red sky—already it has the luster of velvet. Beloved brothers, beloved sisters: we are defeated, and the whole world knows it.

  After Saining came back from Japan, he didn’t fall back into his old slacker ways. Instead he moved his book-and-record store from Beijing to Shanghai. The store was full of his paintings and the records he’d collected, and customers could come to the store to read, drink tea, and listen to music. Although the store didn’t make any money, it didn’t lose money either. But arranging for licenses and moving around like that did burn up a lot of cash. He couldn’t just pick up and go whenever he pleased anymore. He had to watch his money.