by Tie Ning
“Where was your mother at the time?”
“She was at home working at the sewing machine.”
“Were you at home working at the sewing machine at the time?” He turned to Wu.
“Yes, I was,” Wu said.
“Did you often leave the child in their care and then use the sewing machine at home?”
“Not often. Sometimes I had to make clothes for them.”
“‘Them’?”
“Them, the three sisters.”
“But I haven’t seen them wearing any clothes you made for them. Can you tell me which clothes you made?”
“I didn’t say I made all of their clothes. I only said I sometimes made clothes for them.”
“But you emphasized the time you spent on making clothes for them.”
“I was answering your questions about ‘often’ or ‘not often.’”
“You said you didn’t often make clothes, then what did you often do? Could you please tell me what you usually did?”
“What did I usually do? … Didn’t Tiao tell you everything when she wrote to you?”
“Don’t drag the children into this. What do you think she would tell me in her letters? Do you think she was required to report your life to me? Yes, Tiao did write to me often, and she was the only one who did. In her letters, she told me things that happened in her school, and with her friends, Fei and Youyou. Why would she write to me? That’s because you never know what she’s thinking. This, I truly don’t understand—you’re … you’re sick, so you have more time than other people. What did you really do with all the time you had these last few years?”
Dumbfounded, Wu thought the catastrophe had arrived. Yixun’s questions were clearly designed to lure her, step by step, deep into a trap. Well, if it’s a blessing, it can’t be a catastrophe, and if it is a catastrophe, there is no way to escape. She might as well confess. She composed herself for the final trial. Licking her already moist lips, she said, “Can we have the kids leave for a while?”
“That’s not necessary.” He raised his voice: “There is no need for such a hypocritical request as having them ‘leave for a while.’ What haven’t they seen in this family? From what exactly would they have to turn their faces? There’s no need.”
“But I need to be alone … to talk to you alone.”
“In my opinion, being alone is pointless.” He interrupted her immediately, as if he were afraid she couldn’t hold back her confession any longer, as if he were afraid she would get hysterical and come out with her ugly story. He was pleased at her nervousness, her panic, her trembling lips, and the sudden sagging of her cheeks, which signalled that she was on the verge of collapse. So he had to change direction, or rather say something to steer the dialogue in the direction he intended. He said, “I asked you over and over again what you usually did. I’m sure now you want to say what you usually did was care for Quan. She was a baby and needed care. But it was precisely under your usual care that she died. What kind of mother were you? Do you deserve to be called a mother? You, you didn’t need to work … didn’t even have a job … but you couldn’t even look after a two-year-old. My daughter, the poor child … this poor child … she died in the manhole, but she was killed by you. You don’t deserve to be a mother.”
Yixun smashed a teacup. Then he walked to the sewing machine, pulled out the little drawer that held needles and threads, and dumped it on the floor.
The violence in his voice, his attitude, and his actions actually calmed Wu. To her, Yixun’s words didn’t sound cruel but, instead, soothed her nerves. She hardly believed what she had heard: he called Quan “my daughter.” More than just an announcement and acknowledgment, it might indicate forgiveness, or at least a willingness to disregard all of Wu’s murky and sordid past. Could he really have said it? What happened to him? He didn’t gloat over her misfortune, and how angry he was at her because his daughter died in her care! If that was what he really had in mind and what he really believed, then why not let him shout at her without mercy? Let him berate her as if she were less than human, hurl dreadful curses at her—that her blood should flow and stink for ten thousand years. What she really wanted was to kneel down before him and submit to a beating. Thinking back to a moment ago, just a moment, just that flash of time—but Wu already used the phrase “think back”—to her it was already thinking back to some “time before,” when, cornered and about to confess everything, she had worked out a version of her plea for forgiveness in her mind. After her confession, she’d planned to remind him that God had punished her for him. Making the sinful fruit, Quan, disappear from the earth was the worst punishment that God could send. So Yixun should just let it go. What else did he want from her? Even a murderer pays for the crime by simply having his head roll onto the ground. Not to mention the fact that the one who should die had already died, and the living should just be allowed to continue to live. She’d made up her mind to take this approach, but never had she expected events to take such an abrupt turn: because Yixun claimed Quan as his daughter, and no one else’s, Wu would never be forgiven and Yixun would be justified in never forgiving. So just when a clear light rippled through her chaotic heart, a deep guilt sank in.
Guilt is a feeling worthy of study. Yixun had found a method to express his emotions in a way that would position him as a victim all his life, venting what he wanted to without appearing cruel. He would use his “innocence” to maintain the normal operation of a decent family and his own dignity, and at the same time he would also control Wu through guilt.
Guilt is indeed a feeling that needs to be studied. The gift of inducing guilt in another is a very ruthless and a very effective mode of vengeance. Guilt is not dependent on a person being in the right or in the wrong, and it is unpredictable. It enters our hearts unexpectedly. More often than not, it isn’t aroused by remorse. Paradoxically, it’s at the moment that we have the most combative feelings for our antagonists, when we hate them the most, that we suddenly feel guilty. Maybe Yixun didn’t know what he was doing at first. He thought he would control Wu through guilt all their lives, but he didn’t expect that in later years it would be Wu’s obliviousness to what was going on that would incite his own guilt.
He might accuse her of not washing the cucumber clean enough and she would say she had washed it a number of times. Whenever he heard “a number of times” his head would explode. The stupid, vague exaggeration got to him because “a number of times” does not equate with “clean.” Yixun’s criterion was “clean” and Wu’s criterion was “a number of times.” He and she had never reached an accord on this minor standard of measurement. Yixun had no choice but to shout at her that there were chemicals and dirt on the cucumber skin and you needed to use a vegetable brush to clean it. “That’s why I washed it a number of times!” Wu said. God knows why she had to avoid the crux of the issue; she had to say “a number of times” to avoid admitting that she had not used the vegetable brush. If Yixun continued to press her, she would lie about the brush. In those moments Yixun couldn’t help being tempted to reach out his hands and choke her from behind. He would run to her at the sink and, frightened, she would hurriedly grab the brush. She’d scrub the cucumber with mad ferocity, so fiercely that the bristles scraped the skin and exposed the light green young flesh beneath, which made Yixun desperately want to throttle her again. Guilt arrived right then; just at the moment Wu acted unusually sulky, when she hunched her shoulders and revealed her total lack of virtue, and when he ground his teeth from hatred, guilt suddenly arrived. There was not even a small transition point between the two contradictory emotions, but such a feeling is so real and palpable that it forces us to compromise with life and be less sure of ourselves.
4
When Tiao saw Fei afterwards, she could hardly resist the urge to tell her, Do you know, Fei? I was the one who killed your cousin. I killed her! In her heart, she bellowed and shouted the statement again and again, not sure if she wanted to use the confession to make at
onement herself, or to accuse Fei. Wasn’t it Fei who stirred her to action? Before Quan’s accident, Fei went to see Quan frequently, even pointing out the cruel fact of Quan’s resemblance to Dr. Tang. If Fei seemed like the director of the play, the lead actor would be Tiao. Who was more guilty? Tiao couldn’t decide. In the end she had to judge Fei innocent because at most she merely provided the idea for Tiao. Just a suggestion to follow or not.
Everything was over now and both Tiao’s and Fei’s families returned to a state of calm. The extreme awkwardness and secrecy between Tiao and Fei disappeared. When they saw each other again, Tiao clearly sensed Fei’s serenity. Tiao might have been able to have the same peace herself, but she had no one with whom to celebrate her successful revenge. She didn’t even have the opportunity to feel fear. In order to forget, she buried it deep in her heart. It was the sort of feeling that she couldn’t communicate, particularly when faced with Fei’s peacefulness. Fei had unconsciously discharged her own heaviness onto Tiao—letting Tiao live to suffer. Tiao harboured a vague resentment toward Fei because of this, but she was not able to end their friendship, nor could she help thinking about Quan because she would suddenly see Quan in Fei’s face. If Quan hadn’t died, she would have become another Fei. Tiao had an absurd feeling that Quan actually hadn’t died; that she instead possessed Fei and became a part of her.
And Quan was a part of Fei, an integral part. In Tiao’s presence, she would intermittently shine out of Fei for Fei’s entire life, and be forever present in Tiao’s life. It was an intermingling. Fei was a version of Quan who could open her mouth and speak, and she brought Quan into adulthood.
By then Fei had moved out of her uncle’s place. She had worked in a factory before she finished high school and lived in the single person’s dorm; otherwise she would have gone to the countryside to accept the peasants’ reeducation, a fate similar to that of Captain Sneakers and her only other option. She feared the countryside. To avoid working there, her classmates with connections all dropped out of school and tried to find jobs. Some worked as salespeople in the stores, some worked as ticket-sellers on the buses, and one girl even worked at a pickle factory, staying in Fuan by stirring a vat of pickled vegetables all day long. She complained to her classmates about how her hands and arms got soaked in the pickle juice and became so chafed. But she had a job, and could stay far from the countryside. Every day, after finishing her job of stirring pickles, she could go home. No matter how nasty a pickle vat was, the factory was still located in Fuan. Its nastiness didn’t rise to the next level; it belonged to a city’s nastiness, and therefore could be accepted, if reluctantly. Although not much when compared to situations above it, it was better than the ones below. Sometimes even this kind of nastiness, though, could make a person smug.
Fei observed her classmates with a cold eye. She felt their opportunities were all better than hers. But she also held them in the deepest contempt. Her highest goal was to become a real manufacturing worker, and those few major factories located in the western part of Fuan were the objects of her yearning … She believed the “working class” that Chairman Mao referred to in his maxim, “The working class leads everything,” specifically meant the workers in those factories. Their temperament, their style, simply represented the pinnacle of the spirit and status of the age. Salespeople, ticket-sellers, and workers in a small pickle factory didn’t count as working class at all; they were at most in the outer circle, and even saying that had a hint of “passing off paste as pearls.” Back then, with Fei’s background, that she could have such an exaggerated notion of the range of her abilities made her like the fox that couldn’t get the grapes. The sour grapes.
Maybe Fei was that fox, but she wasn’t so ready to declare that the grapes were sour. She presumed to eat a bunch of grapes that were simply impossible for her to eat, and she had the guts not to quit until she got them. Her courage probably came from her new view of life, which started from her abortion, from the night when she and her uncle embraced each other, weeping without restraint. Her childhood had ended, and she simply couldn’t depend on her uncle blindly, nor did she want to be defeated by the ambiguous stares of her classmates. They all knew her family background, and all expected to see her miserable in the countryside someday. But she insisted on becoming a member of the working class, had to become a part of the working class. Only when she entered the working class would she stand unassailable. She did set a presumptuously high standard for herself because only such a standard could really fire the soul.
When graduation approached, word had it that a manufacturing plant had sent a senior worker to their school who was going to recruit two outstanding students with advanced political consciousness and superior moral character from the boys in the graduating classes. The selection process was based on the combination of a teacher’s recommendation and the factory’s interview. The news made the boys rub their hands together with eagerness and the girls sigh despondently and then become indifferent. Fei kept mulling over the information, even though there were only two positions and the factory requested boys. She was thinking that maybe she didn’t have a chance this time, but she should try to make the acquaintance of that recruiter.
A school campus is like a village sometimes. The arrival of a stranger puts the entire place on alert. Although people might not know everyone in their village, they would immediately spot an outsider. That was how Fei discovered the stranger on campus; she saw a man in his thirties holding a bicycle as he stood in front of the administration building talking to the principal. Her first glance told her he wasn’t a teacher. She wondered whether he was the recruiting worker. She dawdled purposefully around the entrance of the administration building, hoping to get close enough to eavesdrop. In the end she didn’t hear much of their conversation except for the principal saying, “Master Qi, let’s go to my office and talk over the details.” Master Qi locked his bike and entered the building with the principal.
Fei walked over to Master Qi’s locked bike, which she recognized as a Phoenix Manganese 18, the most fashionable of the day, brand-new and shiny. She squatted down and pretended to tie her shoe. Seeing no one around, she deflated both tyres of the Phoenix and pulled out the air valves. With the valves clutched in her hand, she ran out the gate and all the way to the bicycle repair shop on the street corner west of the school. She’d made up her mind to wait for Master Qi there, confident he would come.
Half an hour later, Fei indeed saw someone push a bike out the school gate. As the person drew nearer, she could make out the Master Qi who had been talking with the principal earlier. He knitted his eyebrows together slightly, obviously unhappy about the vandalizing of his new bike. He walked directly toward the shop, and his unhappy expression frightened Fei a little, or rather what she feared was not his expression, but how he would respond to her over her little trick. The closer he got, the faster her heart beat. She felt it almost jump into her throat and she had to swallow hard in order to get it back down. She gulped and watched Master Qi set the kickstand to let the bicycle repairman fit the new valves and fill the tyres with air. Unless she could open her mouth and talk, she would have no chance, but she was like a mute and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t speak. It was as if her heart were still bouncing around in her throat and once she opened her mouth it would fly out onto the floor. Master Qi had already raised the kickstand and wheeled his bicycle to the pavement. She must open her mouth, and there was no turning back. She addressed the back of Master Qi, who was about to swing his leg up to mount his bicycle. “Master Qi. Aren’t you Master Qi?”
He stopped and turned to look at her. He said, “Who are you?”
“Me? I’m a student at the high school.” Fei raised her chin toward the school and got closer to Master Qi.
He looked her up and down. “How do you know my name is Qi?”
“I guessed,” she said.
“Guessed? What can I do for you?” he asked, still carefully studying the girl in fron
t of him. Clearly, he didn’t know what she wanted from him, but he had changed his tone from surprise to calm.
Fei finally gathered herself enough to say, “Well, it’s like this—I have to confess my error to you. You came to the bicycle repair shop to replace your air valves, right? You must have been very unhappy to find your bike tyres had been deflated at our school. I wanted to tell you that I was the one who deflated your tyres, and that the person who took your valves was also me.”
“Can you tell me why you did this?” Master Qi asked. He had started to walk with his bicycle, slowly, not trying to get rid of Fei, just not wanting to stay anywhere in the vicinity of the school for too long.
Fei kept up with Master Qi’s pace. She said, “I wanted to get to meet you and I thought, if I pulled out your air valves, you would have to come here, where I planned to wait and greet you.”
She said this in a naïve way, and Master Qi couldn’t help smiling. When she opened her fist to show him the two little air valves in her palm, her young, sweaty pink palm, a vague tenderness stirred in him. He didn’t dislike this girl who had pulled out his air valves, but he still didn’t know what she wanted. An ordinary lathe operator who had just got promoted to work in the political department, he had a worker’s temperament, simple and straightforward. He was not used to Fei’s indirect way of talking, the hint of mystery that made people wonder, but this strangeness clearly attracted him. “There must be an important reason behind all this trouble you took.”
“Yes, it’s very important. I want to work in your manufacturing plant.”
Master Qi became quiet, surprised by Fei’s request. He felt he couldn’t help her. He had just discussed things with the principal and the two positions had been pretty much assigned. Besides, their factory didn’t want to hire women this time. Uncertain of what to say, he kept silent.
By then, though hardly noticing, they had reached the riverbank. It was dusk in early winter. The wind from the river was very harsh and there was no one around. It was not clear that such a quiet and out-of-the-way route had been his unconscious choice or under her conscious direction. She broke the silence. “Actually, I was quite unreasonable to make such a request of you. You don’t even know my name. What right do I have to make such a request?”
