by Tie Ning
So he made a point of exaggerating his various relationships with women, intending embellishments and fabrications to carry juicy news of his debaucheries to the world. How he wished he were a real hooligan, or at least a man with hooligan potential.
It was difficult to tell whether his initial approach to Tiao had any clear intent or not, and therefore difficult to say that he had seduced her gradually with his letters. Those letters represented, in part, a test of his own charm as well as his response to the inexplicable impulse of his attraction to this young woman. Later, on the night they said farewell, when she gave him that irrelevant half kiss, his missing her became real hunger and thirst. Hunger and thirst. Yet expressed through avoidance; suddenly he was afraid to see her. He was afraid to smell her breath, to embrace her, to touch her soft hand, or to look into the depths of her large, dark eyes. He was afraid he couldn’t take her, or give himself to her, as a lover; he was afraid to humiliate himself on her body—he didn’t care about other women’s bodies, whom he had experimented on dozens of times already, each more of a failure than the last. He made a fool of himself while feeling superior to those women, an arrogant pretence of superiority he used to cover up his embarrassment and helplessness, which he would rather die than do with Tiao. For a while, he’d put her off stiffly in rough language, even when she took it on herself to come to Beijing and called him. Afterwards he wrote her a passionate letter. He intensified his secret quest for folk cures and “miracle” doctors, and any quack could raise his hopes. Once, late at night, after a visit to an old folk healer, he covered his face and wept in a quiet alley, a grown man crying like a baby, his sobbing enormous and defenceless, like that of a wronged, homeless orphan.
He avoided Tiao and at the same time desperately longed for her. Not until the New Year’s party hosted by the Beijing Film Circle would he encounter her. Certain he would be there, she showed up without warning; she just wanted to see him. Her appearing unexpectedly made him happy as well as nervous. They saw each other but didn’t greet or invite each other to dance. They pretended to concentrate on dancing with others, changing partners frequently until the music died and people began to leave. Tiao went down the street without looking back. She told herself proudly but with anticipation: I won’t look back. I would never look back; never turn my head. But please follow me. Please follow me. I believe you will follow me.
He followed her, and he’d decided to follow her before the party ended. Quietly, he followed her all the way to her hotel, and up to her room. The door gently closed behind them. He locked it firmly and pulled her into an embrace. They both knew what was going to happen. Holding her as she trembled, no longer able to control his desire, he was determined to make love to her, like a gambler desperately betting everything on one last throw of the dice.
It was on this night he discovered she knew nothing about sex. Her ignorance made her doubly precious to him, and also made him want to laugh. He was thinking that it was impossible for him to be embarrassed in front of her because she didn’t even have the most basic means of judgment. Her ignorance and complete obedience touched and pleased him. He had never thought, never imagined, she would be like this; it was impossible for her to look down on him. He suddenly felt relaxed and filled with a strength he didn’t recall—empowered by calm, long absent, appearing in a flash with his happiness and ease. Despite the pressure in his head and with temples throbbing, he went forward, not caring, or else daring to enjoy the happiness, though still afraid that happiness might lead to a carelessness that would ruin his long-awaited recovery, the priceless and joyful recovery.
He finally succeeded. His eyes brimmed with tears and his heart overflowed with a gratitude to Tiao that words couldn’t describe; he had never loved Tiao as he did right now. Also, he also loved and valued himself more than ever. Afraid the recovery might disappear, he insisted unreasonably that Tiao concoct all kinds of excuses to stay in Beijing day after day, wanting to be with her every minute, day and night. He wouldn’t have admitted to experimenting with himself, but their bodies together over and over finally convinced him that his success wasn’t the one-night bloom of a moonflower, but that he would be a real man forever, feet firmly on the ground, able to shoulder the world.
Tiao woke up one morning to find Fang Jing kneeling beside her bed and gazing at her, and then she heard him say, “I want to ask you something: Marry me. I want you to marry me.”
These were the longed-for words that she never expected to hear. Overjoyed as she was, a voice from her heart had already begun warning her: maybe this wasn’t right. Later, from deep within, that warning voice would continue, but she ignored it—and when her actions conflicted with the warnings of her inner voice, she trusted her actions. Even when Fang Jing in ecstasy forgot himself and shouted out wildly, “I want to fuck every woman in the world,” she still failed to grasp the insult to her in the words. She preferred to credit Fang Jing’s truthfulness: this must be the secret desire of many men. Who else would blurt out the truth the way Fang Jing did?
Once they took the bus to the zoo. Tiao casually tossed away their used bus tickets when they got off, but Fang Jing immediately picked them up. “From now on, don’t throw away these tickets. I want to take them back and get reimbursed. Hmm, I’d even claim reimbursement for a five-cent ticket—not that I need money, but because of how much they owe me.” He cast his gaze into the distance, and the expression in his eyes was cold and faintly indignant. His eyes and words chilled and surprised Tiao, and she felt there was hatred inside him, but to whom did “they” refer? Unable or unwilling to make the connection between Fang Jing’s “getting reimbursement” and his “I want to fuck all the women in the world,” she was just a confused girl in love who rejected logic. Only many years later, in retrospect, would she recognize the common thread in his two desires. He was a middle-aged man who had suffered greatly. Once free of suffering, he couldn’t help demanding compensation—urgently, madly—from the entire society, the human component, all the men and women. Time flows on like water and he knew more and more clearly that he was no rival for time.
Tiao had no concept of that kind of demand for compensation. Was it because she was still young? Youth is capital. It was because of that perishable capital that Fang Jing was jealous of her even when he loved her the most. Her dewy fullness, her lack of romantic experience, and even her ignorance of her own value made him groan with jealousy. Ah, all this proved that she still had plenty of time to gallop through the broad world as she pleased, but for him a faint, strange voice resonated constantly in his ear, telling him he was getting old.
This alone provided him ample reason to make demands on the world, and it formed the psychological basis of his misuse of his status, talent, and gender to manipulate society and people. It made him treat Tiao capriciously, sometimes even harshly. Once he said to her suddenly, “I don’t think I can marry you. Our age difference is too great, and sooner or later you’ll get tired of me. I would always worry about someone taking you away from me. Do you know worrying will make me age faster?”
Tiao swore to him, “I’m not afraid of your getting old. I want to get old with you. No matter how old you are, I’ll be with you to take care of you. I want to take care of you.” Not only didn’t her words move Fang Jing, but they made him fly into a rage. “I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t want you to see a mouthful of my dentures and the fungal nails on my feet. You’ve seen them, right? Tell me you’ve seen them, and they disgust you, don’t they?”
Even when preparing to divorce his wife and marry Tiao, he was still chasing women indiscriminately or being chased by those women who pursue celebrities. He couldn’t explain himself: it seemed as though the more he loved Tiao, the more he felt compelled to be with other women, as if by continually abusing others and himself he’d prove his youthfulness, charm, and value. Then he would be worthy of Tiao, for how could a man who proved so attractive not be worthy of Tiao? This was Fang Jing’s logic. H
e couldn’t extricate himself from it because he was so obsessed with the years of his youth that were gone forever.
It was indeed an era when celebrities were idolized and talent revered, so much so that all Fang Jing’s capricious and extravagant behaviour was blindly rationalized by Tiao. It truly was blindness, of a new sort, derived from the pursuit of civilization, progress, and openness, that allowed the public to accept martyred celebrities with such enthusiasm. When Tiao, a victim of this blindness, told Fei everything about Fang Jing, Fei just sneered at Tiao’s affair. “Never get involved with a married man!” she warned Tiao from the very beginning.
Never get involved with a married man.
“But he’s no ordinary married man!” Tiao defended herself.
“What’s so unusual about him? Does he have three legs? Who gives him the right to divorce his wife and beg to marry you while he keeps chasing other women nonstop? Who gives him the right?” Fei said in disgust.
Tiao said, “I’m willing to forgive him everything. You don’t know how much he suffered!”
Fei snorted and said, “Don’t give me that crap over the little bit of suffering he’s had to bear. Academically, I’m not as good as you two—I didn’t go to any fucking university—but I despise Fang Jing’s kind, who hold up a high-powered telescope to their suffering. They magnify it infinitely, until society has no room for any other but theirs. Their suffering is everywhere, and everyone owes them, left and right. Don’t others suffer? Are we not supposed to because we’re young? What is suffering? Real suffering can’t be told, unlike in the movies and novels … Don’t you know that if suffering can be put into words, then it’s no deep thing?”
Tiao’s face turned red and she said, “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, either.”
“Didn’t I just tell you? Why do you still not know? Do you pretend you don’t know, or do you really not know?”
Tiao said, “I know you suffered a lot and you haven’t found love. But I’ve found love, and love can heal suffering. I’ve been trying hard to love—”
Fei interrupted Tiao and said, “What the fuck is love? The most fragile thing in the world. I noticed long ago how you lost your head over ‘love.’ I really hoped you and Fang Jing could eventually marry, but I’m sure that Fang Jing won’t marry you. And if he doesn’t, it’ll be the biggest blessing of your life.”
“Fei, don’t talk to me like that. Don’t say such unlucky things.”
“My God,” Fei said. “My words might be a little unlucky, but think about it, what about Fang Jing was lucky for you? Which of the things he said to you and did to you was lucky? How many men have you known so far? What the fuck do you know about men?”
Fei’s rough talk brought the past back to Tiao. She remembered when Captain Sneakers took Fei away from Youyou’s house, when he slapped Fei, and Tiao questioned him in a shrill voice about why he would hit her, and he said to Tiao in contempt, “You know fucking nothing.”
Their words might be rough, not educated or elegant enough, but only years later did Tiao understand the truth in Fei’s rough words.
2
Generally speaking, truth is hard to take in; at least it’s not pleasing to the ears. But Fei’s true words sank into Tiao’s heart and were hard to dislodge. The harder she tried, the more they would move through her, circulating through the cracks in her soul. Reluctantly, she pretended she was waiting with all her heart for Fang Jing to divorce his wife and marry her, but in the end she had to admit to herself that her hopes for marriage had become increasingly faint.
Fang Jing told her about a recent, unconsummated “amorous encounter” of his with a painter in Guangzhou—he made the confession to get some credit for what he had done, and he really expected Tiao to be proud of him.
He said, “I stayed in the same hotel with the painter. We made each other’s acquaintance at dinner. She recognized me first and immediately introduced herself, adeptly spotting the key that I’d put on the table. She looked at my room number on it and said, ‘We’re actually neighbours!’ She was a big, strong woman with broad shoulders and back, who walked in strides—a bit slovenly and careless in her appearance. After dinner, she came to my room, asked me if I was working on anything new, and also brought me an album of her paintings published in Hong Kong—she’d just had a one-woman show in a gallery there. After a while, she asked me whether I was lonely or not. Before I said anything she said she was lonely. She recently had got divorced because her husband couldn’t stand her using male models, making it a rule that if she had to paint a male nude, he had to be over seventy or under fourteen. For that reason, he often showed up at her studio unannounced to check on her. But the checking hurt no one but himself. He found his wife didn’t really care about his rule; in her studio there were young men in immoral poses. When she got home, he grabbed her by the hair and beat her—he really couldn’t take the fact that there were so many male organs on display in front of his wife. The painter laughed at this point. She smoked, and cigarettes made her voice hoarse.
“She said to me, ‘So, my husband and I just broke up. I feel lonely, but it’s a free sort of loneliness. What about you? The newspapers say you have a happy family. Actually you’re also lonely. And your loneliness is worse than mine, because yours is not free.’
“I responded, ‘How do you know I’m lonely?’ She said that my question was naïve. All highly intelligent people are inherently lonely. She looked at me meaningfully, with either the eyes of a painter studying a model, or those of a woman looking at a man. I wasn’t sure which—maybe both. Whichever it was, her eyes were confident, confident about her charms and my inability to resist them. I didn’t feel nervous with her; this type of woman doesn’t make me nervous. But to be honest with you, I didn’t want to make love to her, not that I looked down on her, but—Tiao—I really thought about you at that moment. I felt I should save myself for you. This I’d told myself thousands of times, although I was often unable to do it—but I did this time. I swear to you I did it for you. Seeing that I didn’t respond to her, she simply stood up, took the pipe from my hand, and put it on the table. Then she took me by the hand and said, ‘Come.’ I didn’t want to, so I picked up my pipe and continued to smoke, puffing jets and billows, as if to use the smoke to shield myself from her attack. Indeed, she did stop, and said with a sigh, ‘I guess you must have someone you love very much.’
“I said, ‘Yes, I do have someone that I love very much.’
“She said, ‘Can you tell me what kind of woman she is?’
“I said, ‘Sorry. I can’t.’
“She said, ‘Why do you make simple things complicated? I don’t want to replace anyone.’
“I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’ Tiao, do you know, when she came near me and took the pipe from my hand, I smelled something in her hair that I simply couldn’t stand? You know how important smell is between men and women. For me, if it isn’t right, there’s no way I can get aroused. I just couldn’t get used to hers, and I couldn’t even exactly describe what it was. In short, something that put off a man like me. The closer she came to me, the more unexcited—even limp—I got, until she left my room. What do you think, Tiao? Don’t I deserve praise? I beg you to congratulate me.”
Fang Jing thought Tiao would be moved by his story and proud of the loyalty shown on that occasion: his rare rejection of another woman, hard for him to believe it himself. He didn’t expect Tiao to fix on the “smell” aspect of his story.
“You claim you saved yourself for me, and then you said when she got near you smelled something in her hair that you couldn’t stand. A woman with the wrong scent simply couldn’t arouse you. So, what if her smell hadn’t put you off but, instead, aroused you when she approached? Would you still have saved yourself for me?”
He said, “You really surprise me. With a devoted heart, I tell you everything about the well-behaved me in Guangzhou, and I expect your encouragement and praise, but listen to you.�
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“What do you want me to say, then? You make the basic moral code that a man should follow into a special case, an achievement to brag about, an unusual event that a woman should be thankful for, but even you admit that it was the woman’s smell that turned you off, right?”
“What I did wrong was that I was too truthful with you. I wanted to tell you everything, but instead you have to split hairs with me.”
“It’s not hair-splitting; it’s a fact! I’m never your priority. Your need—your need for the right smell is your priority. You thought I would be grateful to you? If I have to thank someone I should thank that painter with the wrong smell. It’s her smell that propelled you back to me. Isn’t that a fact?”
He said, “Can you just shut up and stop talking about ‘smell’?”
She said, “I’m very sorry, but I’m not the one who brought up ‘smell.’”
He said, “Okay, okay, okay. I mentioned it first, but why can’t you see the side of me that values and loves you? Why have you become so cutting and bitter?”
“Maybe I have got bitter—” Tiao said. Right then Fei’s warnings came to mind, which annoyed her and increased her anger. She was no longer the generous, forgiving Tiao who dreamed of saving Fang Jing. Her sense of her role had changed; she was judging his behaviour as Fang Jing’s would-be wife, and it made her cutting. She’d suddenly woken up to certain aspects of their relationship. The more she wanted to establish her everyday, number-one status in Fang Jing’s heart, the less she could accept his “truthfulness” as if she were a stranger to him. His “truthfulness” seemed like domination, a way to demean her rather than a demonstration of respect and trust for a partner. She told Fang Jing, “Maybe I have become bitter, but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else accepting your truthfulness without getting bitter. Try and find such a person. Go find her …”
