by Ha Jin
“Hmm—I don’t know.” She blushed, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Give us a guess.”
“Maybe four or five inches.”
“How was that for you?”
She answered almost inaudibly, “It was all right.”
Tan Na thumped the glass desktop with her palm and stood up. Pointing at Tingting’s face, she said, “Your file says clearly that you were a virgin when our company hired you. Didn’t you lie to us? You were already a broken thing, weren’t you?”
“No. He was my first man,” she groaned. “I swear to heaven that I was a virgin then. You can ask him.” Her right hand pointed back at the empty office behind her, as though Benchou were in there.
“All right,” Bofan put in, “Wang Tingting, you seem pretty honest. You understand the nature of your mistake, don’t you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Tan Na said, “I don’t understand why you’ve become such a rotten thing. All right, let’s stop here for tonight. You go back and write out your confession about the four times. Write down everything you remember and examine the bourgeois nature of this affair.” Beads of sweat dotted Tan Na’s puffy cheeks.
“May I ask the Party a favor?” Tingting said timidly.
“What?”
“Please don’t let my home village know of this. My younger sister’s going to be engaged soon.”
“Okay, but you must show us your regret and a sincere attitude.”
Manjin felt disgusted with Tingting, who was so gullible and had fallen for a middle-aged man so easily. Was she the same girl who had turned his breath tight whenever he ran into her? According to her own words, Benchou had hardly done anything unusual to seduce her. Why was she so cheap? If this had been just for sex, why hadn’t she done it with one of those younger men?
The interrogation of Benchou didn’t go smoothly, because he was experienced in this sort of thing. However hard they tried to coax him into confessing the truth, he would insist he had slept with Tingting only once, and he thanked the Party and his comrades for stopping him in time. Finally when they showed him her confession with her signature and thumbprint on the last page, he shuddered in sweat, sniffling and cursing her. “Oh,” he moaned, rubbing his temples with both hands, “I should’ve made the slut bleed, virgin as she was! She swore she wouldn’t tell.”
Manjin stuffed Tingting’s panties into an envelope, sealed it, and put it in her file, together with the confession. He helped Bofan draft a lengthy report on the affair. Within five days, orders were issued regarding the adulterer. Because of his stubborn attitude, Benchou was sent to work as a loader in the Cargo Service at the train station. It was said that his wife was filing for divorce. These days Tingting kept the door of her office shut; the typewriter no longer clicked with a crisp rhythm but with a slow, broken clatter. None of those dandies came to see her anymore. Three weeks later she was removed from the staff and assigned to the Telegram Station to be an apprentice in telegraphy.
A new typist came, a homely girl, bony and with a mouth like a catfish’s. Word went out that the leaders meant to have an unattractive typist in the Political Department from now on, so that no man would fall into the same trap as Benchou and be beguiled by beauty. As a result, the usual gossip about the typist soon disappeared.
Many people were not satisfied with the punishment Tingting had received. In the long run, telegraphy would be a better profession than typing; you could send and transcribe telegrams for thirty or forty years before retirement, whereas you could type well only so long as you were young and had good eyesight. Chang Bofan often said to his clerks, “This is unfair. In our new society, men and women must be equal—equal in work, in pay, and in punishment.” Sometimes he insinuated that Tingting must have had unusual connections among the top leaders of the company.
At the dormitory, Manjin’s roommates asked him to tell them about Tingting’s affair. They had heard he’d taken part in the interrogation. But whenever they tried to make him talk about it, he would either remain silent or change the topic. Dahu, a bricklayer in the Construction Brigade, even proposed to treat him to a lamb dinner if Manjin told him everything, but Manjin refused, saying, “Come on, you’re only interested in matters inside the pants. Nothing is so extraordinary as you’ve imagined.” He despised those brazen, uneducated men.
In the Workers Dining Hall he found that more and more girls would glance at him. The tall basketball center once even smiled at him. He noticed she had a good appetite—eating half a pound of rice or steamed bread or corn pancakes at a meal—but he was never brave enough to speak to her. He admired her long fingers, large feet, shapely bust, and strong legs. Whenever her team played on the company’s sports ground, he would go and watch. He liked seeing the girls in blue shorts and red T-shirts. He felt attracted to almost every one of them. If only he were four inches taller.
One day in August, when lining up to buy lunch, he overheard some nurses talking about a North Korean movie, The Village of Blooming Flowers. One of them assured the others that it was a good movie and was being shown at the company’s theater, and a few said they would go see it in the evening. Manjin seldom went to the movies, but that day, out of curiosity, he decided he would go. If lucky, he might meet the tall center and her friends there.
At seven he set out for the theater. In the dusk a swarm of large dragonflies were flitting about to catch gnats and mosquitoes. Old people sat before their homes, chatting and enjoying the cool air, some waving a palm fan. On the sidewalk shaded by maples and drooping willows, a middle-aged man held the carrier of an Everlasting bicycle, on which a child, obviously his daughter, was learning how to pedal. A company of soldiers was marching past, singing a battle song and heading toward the train station. They left behind a thin mist of dust. Assuming the movie would start at seven-thirty, Manjin strolled without hurry.
At the corner near the company’s hospital, he saw Wang Tingting walking ahead of him. She wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and a pink skirt. Viewed from behind, she looked thinner, her long braids swaying a little. She reached the front entrance of the theater and then disappeared beyond the gate. He had heard she was engaged to a serviceman in the navy. After the scandal, whenever he ran into her she would lower her head and hurry away.
The movie had already started. The theater was not full, a lot of empty seats on both sides and in the front. Manjin sat down at the back, because he was a little farsighted. Though the audience chuckled and laughed as the movie progressed, he didn’t feel it was interesting. Looking around, he couldn’t find the nurses. He wondered if he should leave.
A few moments later a female figure appeared, sliding like a cloud along the unoccupied seats on his right. Noiselessly she came close and sat down beside him. He turned to see who she was but couldn’t make out her face. She wore light-colored clothes emitting a lilac scent. Strange to say, he clearly saw a bump on an old man’s neck five or six feet ahead; why couldn’t he see the face of this woman who was so close? Yet he could tell she was young and slim. He felt uncomfortable and kept wondering why she sat here. More than half the seats in the row were free. Why did she want to be so close to him? Was she not afraid of the people behind them?
Hesitantly she placed her hand on his leg, stroking it as though uncertain that he would allow her to do so. He remained motionless, puzzled but eager to see what she wanted.
As she went on caressing his leg, he began to squirm. She then took his hand and pulled it toward her. He, as if in a trance, allowed her to take control of his hand, which landed on her leg. She lifted his wrist and made his fingers caress, back and forth, the soft inside of her thigh. He got the message, and his hand turned bold and went farther inward. She didn’t wear underpants, which surprised him. His breathing grew heavy and his heart was thumping. Never had he been so intimate with a woman. He felt dizzy, his temples so tight that he couldn’t think of anything except what his hand was touching. How desperately he longed to see what
it was like down there. But he dared not move, afraid to attract the attention of the people sitting around.
His fingers opened her fleshy folds, which were surprisingly warm and wet. He wondered why she was sweating so much. One of his knuckles rubbed her stiff kernel; uncertain of what it was, he twisted it gently with the tips of his thumb and forefinger. She began gasping and whining softly, so he let go of it. His hand proceeded to explore around her lips, tracing the valleys, caverns, gullies. How thick and abundant her hair was, like a forest. If only he were able to see everything. If only he could have embraced her and kissed every part of her body, but he dared not budge. Suddenly the human figures, the buffaloes, and the lush paddies on the screen changed, merging and turning into a huge vulva, golden and bushy, throbbing and steaming. Something stirred in his stomach, and, ducking his head below the back of the seat in front of him, he began retching.
This scared the woman. She hurriedly pulled out his hand and wiped it with a handkerchief. She leaned over and whispered, “Sorry. Thank you.” Then she stood up, turned, and faded into the darkness.
As he stopped retching, the thought came to him that he must follow her, find out who she was, and do something more. He rose to his feet and moved to the gate.
At the front entrance stood a girl in a white blouse, with her back toward him. There wasn’t another person around. It must have been her that he had caressed just now, so without a second thought he hastened toward her. The plaza in front of the theater was lit bright by mercury-vapor lamps. The elm crowns formed a skyline, beyond which stars were blinking.
The girl heard footsteps. She turned around, stared at him with her mouth half open. Although her eyeteeth protruded, she looked rather sweet and delicate, perhaps a college student. He rushed over and threw his arms around her, moaning, “Honey, let’s do that again!”
She gave a piercing scream, which almost collapsed him. Two men ran out, shouting, “Hold it there!”
“Help!” she yelled. “Catch the hoodlum, he attacked me!”
Manjin dashed away on shaky legs. “Stop, stop!” the men shouted. They followed him, their leather shoes thumping the cement ramp.
After two turns, Manjin reached the brick wall of the hospital. He scaled it and landed in a flower bed, sending up a cloud of pollen and dust. He jumped to his feet and sprinted away. The men climbed over too and continued pursuing him, shouting to people ahead, “Stop that bastard! Stop him!” Manjin rushed through the cypress bushes and turned toward the front gate.
Seeing a security guard raising a pistol and running toward him, Manjin stopped and put up his hands. The two men grabbed him from behind and pinned him to the ground. One of them kicked him in the face; his nose began bleeding. “It was a mistake!” he moaned. “I mistook her for another person. I meant to do her no harm. Oh, don’t, don’t beat me, brothers!”
“Shut up!” The taller man chopped his neck with the edge of his hand. “Let’s go to the police station.”
Manjin knew it was useless to beg, so he made no noise while they were binding his thumbs together from behind with a shoelace. His mind was busy trying to figure out what had actually happened. Heavens, how could he convince the police that he hadn’t intended to assault the girl? He was afraid the policemen would beat him too.
Fortunately one of the men on duty at the company’s police station knew Manjin, so they unbound his hands and didn’t slap and punch him as they would ordinarily do to such a criminal. Instead, they locked him in a small office, whose walls were decorated with framed certificates of merit; then they returned to the girl and the two male witnesses in another room and asked them questions. Looking at the blood on the front of his gray T-shirt, Manjin couldn’t help weeping. In his heart he was cursing the unknown woman for getting him into such trouble. If only he hadn’t gone to the movies. If only he hadn’t been lazy this evening and had stayed in his office to finish his daily handwriting exercise. A few flies buzzed furiously around him, eager to land on the bloodstains on his neck; he went on waving his hand to keep them at bay. Despite his self-disgust, time and again he sniffed his fingertips; a unique smell, something like raw chestnuts, still emanated from his nails.
He heard the girl sobbing in the adjoining office and claiming that he had attempted to attack or kidnap her. Cold sweat broke out on his back, and he began shivering. Looking out, he saw below the window two pairs of power lines stretch along the street. He was on the third floor, impossible to escape.
Half an hour later, the door opened and his boss, Chang Bofan, stepped in. With him were three policemen; one of them was fat with a beer belly, another skinny and bald, and the other so young that he looked like a teenager. They sat down and began interrogating Manjin. Bofan said, “Comrade Shen Manjin, you know this is a very serious charge. I have always believed you to be a good man. You must tell us the truth. If you committed the crime, admit it before it’s too late.”
Manjin burst into tears and for a minute couldn’t say anything. Meanwhile, the bald policeman took a leather flyswatter out of a drawer and, one by one, brought down the droning flies.
The fat man snapped at Manjin, “Stop it! You just pawed the girl, where’s your spunk now?”
“No. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“All right,” Bofan said. “Shen Manjin, explain it to us. You will go to jail if you can’t prove your innocence.”
Manjin stopped sobbing. Gradually he began to tell them what happened. The boyish man was writing down his words in a large folder. From time to time Manjin was interrupted by the policemen’s chuckles. He tried to remain coolheaded so as to convince them of his honesty. To make the unknown woman resemble the girl more, he insisted that she had worn white clothes too, and that he had seen her hurry away to the front gate. But when he finally said, “From behind I thought the girl was the woman in white,” all three policemen shook their heads.
“What did the woman look like?” asked the bald man.
“I couldn’t see her face in the dark.”
“If you can’t identify her, how can we believe you?”
“That’s true,” the fat man chimed in. “The sentence for attempted sexual assault is three years, minimum. We don’t believe any woman would do such a thing in a public place. This sounds like a joke.”
“Please, I really mistook the girl for the woman.” Manjin realized that at any cost he must cling to the story of the mysterious woman, whether he could prove her existence or not. This was his only way out.
“Wait,” Bofan broke in, raising a red folder. “Here’s what the girl said.” He read it out: “He grabbed me and said, ‘Honey, let’s do that again.’ ”
“So?” The fat man shrugged.
“It seems something had happened in the theater before he approached the girl. Or else why did he use the word ‘again’?”
The fat man took the folder from Bofan and looked over the paragraph in question while exhaling a puff of smoke, a jade cigarette-holder clamped between his teeth. Then he said, “He has to tell us who the nymphomaniac is. If not, how do we explain this to the girl’s family? She’s Vice Mayor Nan’s daughter.”
The last sentence almost paralyzed Manjin. Things turned foggy before him, and he closed his eyes, too giddy to think or answer their questions.
“Let him rest for a while, all right?” Bofan suggested.
The policemen got up and went into another room for tea. Bofan moved closer and patted Manjin on the shoulder. “Little Shen, you must take this incident seriously. Even if you don’t go to jail, your political life will be over if you can’t clear your name now. You are lucky they called me. Otherwise, who knows what would happen.”
“Director Chang, I really don’t know who the woman is.”
“Try to remember who you met in the theater.”
“I saw nobody but Wang Tingting.”
Bofan’s eyes lit up. “Did she sit beside you?”
“I don’t know where she sat.”
“Wh
at kind of clothes did she wear?”
“A white shirt and a pink skirt.”
“Good. You must tell them this. It’s an important clue.” Bofan stood up and went into the adjacent office.
Ten minutes later the three policemen returned and resumed the interrogation. “You saw Wang Tingting at the theater?” asked the fat man.
“Yes, but I’m not sure if she was the woman.”
Bofan said to the police, “He saw her in a white shirt.”
“Yes. It was before she entered the theater,” Manjin said.
“Did the woman in white ever speak to you?” asked the fat man.
“Yes.”
“She did? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Sorry. Thank you.’ That was all.”
“Could you tell it was Wang Tingting’s voice?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why did she say that?”
“I don’t know. She wiped my hand and said that before she left.”
“She wiped your hand?”
“Yes.”
“With what did she do that?”
“A handkerchief or something.”
“Wait,” the bald man cut in. “What kind of handkerchief, do you remember?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Was it silk?”
“No.”
“Dacron?”
“No. It must be cotton, rather crumpled and soft.”
That night the police went to Tingting’s dormitory and searched her pockets. They found a lavender handkerchief and brought it, along with her, to the police station. She denied having done anything with Manjin in the theater. She wept and claimed he was framing her. To the interrogators she described in detail the second half of the movie; then she challenged, “If I left in the middle of the film, how could I know the entire story.”
“Well, you could have seen it before,” said Bofan. “And you didn’t have to leave the theater afterward.”
Manjin was surprised to see that her eyes were so sunken that they appeared larger than they used to be. Blubbering as she was, she couldn’t establish an alibi. Nobody would believe what she said. The police let Manjin feel the crumpled handkerchief, which indeed did feel familiar to him. So this was it. Obviously Tingting hadn’t reformed and had started seducing men again. What an incorrigible slut!
