by Tie Ning
Fei dodged his belt and said, “Little Cui, I really don’t know. I didn’t do anything.”
Little Cui said in a hoarse voice, “Everyone knows but me! Everyone knows but me.”
“What? What does everyone know?”
Little Cui said painfully, “You … you and Director Yu … Yu Dasheng.” He said the three words “Director Yu Dasheng” with great difficulty, but he also felt happy to get them out. The long-repressed thought finally saw the light of day, and now he wanted to know all the details of the imagined situation. He got close to Fei’s ear and asked, as he pinched the flesh of her arm, “Tell me, where did he fuck you and how did he fuck you? Tell me.”
The pain brought tears to Fei’s eyes and she said, “He didn’t. Really … he didn’t … I’m telling you the truth.”
Little Cui pinched Fei harder and said, “In his office, right? It must have been in his office …”
Fei almost fainted at the pain. If telling the truth was so painful, then why do it? So she told Little Cui that she had indeed seduced Director Yu and that it had happened right in his office. She let him see the ulcers on her arm as he sat in his chair and he grabbed her arm, forcing her onto his lap …
Little Cui began to untie Fei during her “confession.” The confession stopped his pinching and he suddenly had a strong desire to fuck her. He grabbed one of her arms and pulled her to the bed, anxiously asking as he removed his pants, “What happened next? What happened next?” Her clothes were all stripped off and, naked, she continued to make up her story. She said Director Yu had trapped her in his arms, groping her, and then pushed her down onto the desk … Little Cui had already started to thrust himself into her violently, and meanwhile continued to press Fei for what Director Yu did and when and how. Listening to Fei’s narration so filled him with excitement, it even led him into the novelty of role-play: as if the woman he entered now were not his wife but a dissolute whore that any man could have. And he was not her husband, either; he was Director Yu and could do anything that Director Yu had done. He was doing it, right along with Fei’s detailed account, and experiencing an unparalleled intensity of stimulation and pleasure. Unsure of whether he was in a struggle with Director Yu or merely having an affair with a shameless woman, he discovered he simply needed this, needed it desperately. In his savage and insulting language Fei also found sexual sensations of a strength and variety that he had never before given to her. So good, she was thinking. To die for—she felt. It was under these peculiar circumstances that her first real sexual pleasure was awakened by her husband. To be beaten painfully, and then ravaged, made her feel a pleasure to die for, such as she had never experienced. For this kind of pleasure she would have been willing to be beaten a thousand times over.
From then on, that became the prologue to their lovemaking: Fei had to tell Little Cui of her sexual encounters with other men. She went back to middle school—from Captain Sneakers, then the dancer, until the time she started to work for the factory. Most of the time she just made things up, normally arranging the accounts of what happened from far to near, eventually reaching the bed in their own home. She told Little Cui that she often brought men home when he was blind drunk, and those men would fuck her in their bed, right next to him. She would say, “Little Cui, what do you think? Don’t you think Fei is too tempting?” Little Cui would throw himself on her body with eyes flaring, as if he wanted to compete with those men, as if a drunk weakling of a husband, who was absolutely not Little Cui, were right then sleeping next to this woman, who was about to be fucked to pieces. Little Cui was not Fei’s husband. It was too hard to be Fei’s husband. He felt cornered.
A marriage like this was doomed to be short-lived. The more these two howled their way through sex and entangled themselves in this sort of love of theirs, the more they knew in their hearts that the end was coming. Finally, one day, they stopped the screaming and storming. Instead, unusually bright mild days began to arise between them. Little Cui eventually found someone else, his apprentice, a girl named Er Ling.
After having Er Ling, Little Cui stopped forcing Fei to tell him stories—he had become like those characters in Fei’s stories, seeing another woman outside of his marriage, which brought some peaceful life back to his long-withered heart. He didn’t feel sorry for Fei; he merely felt that he could begin to forgive her.
It was Fei who asked for a divorce first. That day, she bought him a bottle of One-Acre Spring, two rabbit ears, and a small piece of donkey sausage, and they sat drinking together, face-to-face. She came straight to the point: “Er Ling is an innocent girl from a decent family. Little Cui, you shouldn’t fool around with her.”
Seeing that Fei knew everything, Little Cui blushed and said, “What do you want? What right do you have to criticize me?”
“Don’t worry. It’s true that I don’t have the right to criticize you, but I have the right to tell you one thing.”
“What is it?”
“We should get a divorce. Er Ling is the girl you should marry.”
Little Cui hadn’t expected Fei to say this, which was exactly what he wanted to say but found it was too hard. She allowed him to preserve his dignity, to keep intact that old image of himself as the man who had cut his index finger and, dripping blood, sworn to marry her. Embarrassed, he gulped a mouthful of alcohol as if to wash out the hidden underside of his heart. He said, “Fei, I actually wasn’t thinking about this, but—”
Fei raised her glass and interrupted him. “There are a lot of ‘actuallys’ in our life, but let’s not talk about it. Let’s drink.” She drained her glass, licked her lower lip, and then clasped her hands. “Let’s go and take care of that tomorrow.” She said this very calmly, and, while Little Cui heard every word, he was much more focused on Fei’s habit of reaching out with her tongue to lick her lower lip. He would have been unable to describe the feeling that this small gesture gave him, but it moved him greatly—how she extended the pink tip of her tongue, just a little, and then quickly, almost more quickly than the eye could follow, licked her slightly trembling lip, like a cat, like a small wounded animal licking its wound out of sight. In the background was their empty home, which had nothing in it except for a bed and a quilt. All the money had disappeared into Little Cui’s bottles of alcohol. Even Fei’s salary had been readily taken by Little Cui as convenient for his use. Fei had never argued with Little Cui about money; she just let him spend it any way he wanted. She herself preferred to wear old clothes, or just uniforms all year long. He looked at Fei in her old uniform, at the sudden flicking of her pink tongue. For a moment his resolution to get a divorce almost wavered. He recalled how her attraction for him began with her mouth, how words were unable to describe the beauty of the corner of her mouth; her mouth made him dizzy. Years of drinking had damaged his memory and he had forgotten many things, but now some of them came back. He remembered Fei had never let him touch her mouth, even after she became his wife. So now he wanted to kiss her. When they’d decided to get a divorce, the beautiful, mysterious Fei from before their marriage started to return to him little by little. He wanted to kiss her, but she pushed his face away with her hand. “Don’t,” she said.
“And this alone I will never figure out,” Little Cui said.
Fei stood up and turned her soft young neck slightly, proudly, and sternly, with an expression that seemed to radiate rejection for a thousand miles, as if she were suddenly transformed from a cheap, discardable woman to some unapproachably beautiful creature. She turned her head and looked away. “I’ll move back to the singles’ dorm tomorrow.”
Little Cui looked at this distant Fei and couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that she was a woman whom he had never known. A woman like her was not someone that a man like him could afford. He was afraid of her, and felt that he should, indeed, marry Er Ling. He felt some inferiority as well as some relief. Inferior and relieved, relieved and inferior, that was the way Little Cui divorced Fei.
Fei started to li
ve the single life again. In those days, she missed the friends of her childhood and teenage years. Tiao and Youyou, who used to envy her working-class life, had both grown up. The time she gave them a tour of the factory, and bought them treats, was long ago. Everything happened so quickly. College-girl Tiao and the would-be tourist guide Youyou both tried to persuade Fei to go to college, but she said with a sneer, “Me? Someone like me?”
Things were changing and Fei, of course, hadn’t resigned herself to loneliness. One of Tiao’s relatives was the principal at an art academy, so Tiao planned to introduce Fei to him, in order to get her some work as a model for the oil-painting students. Fei asked about the pay and Tiao said, “The money you’ll make in two half days, which is six hours, would equal the salary you earn in a month now.”
Fei said excitedly, “Damn! Why would I hesitate?”
“But it’s in the nude. You have to take all your clothes off.”
“I like to be nude. Someone should have painted me nude long ago, don’t you think?”
It was an era during which China had just opened its door to the West. For many people, unfamiliar with the idea of models and alarmed by it, nude modelling fell into the category of the shady and unrespectable. The first generation of models in this new era, even when they lived in big cities and worked for art schools, still modelled without their families’ knowledge. The high salaries they commanded were a happy surprise to them and made them the first group of women in China who could afford furs and luxurious clothes, long before the women who made money in business. Models didn’t risk wearing those clothes at home, concealing their despised profession from parents or boyfriends, along with the considerable money they earned. They often left home in ordinary clothes, changing to expensive fashions to promenade the streets glamorously, smugly enjoying their secret.
But Fei had nothing to fear back then; she was her own family. When she mounted the stage nude in the studio, she knew what to expect from the teachers and students. Not evil looks but appreciation showed in their eyes, along with some repressed excitement. So she simply stopped going to work at the factory. What was so special about being a typist? How much money did a factory director make? Director Yu? No, Bureau Director Yu—he had been promoted to the directorship of the province’s Bureau of Manufacturing. How much could a bureau director make? she thought with contempt. Busy and popular, she was on sick leave all the time. By then she had gained some fame in the art world, and besides universities and colleges, individual painters were also willing to hire her to model at their homes. Young artists often fought over her, which she handled in a simple and straightforward manner by going with whoever gave her the most money. A young painter fresh from some training at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (one of the sort who likes to toss his long hair) paid five times the going rate, and she, of course, immediately went with him. He lived with his parents in their spacious house, and had his own studio. Later, Fei learned that the young painter’s father was the vice mayor of Fuan. The painter told her what pose to take and started to paint, but after just a sketch, he threw away the brush and held his head with his hands. Fei said, “Hey, why have you stopped painting?”
The painter said, “You distract me.”
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Sleep with me,” Fei said calmly. So the painter slept with Fei and then was able to focus on painting. He even fell in love with Fei.
He was an innocent young man, quite a few years younger than Fei. She told Tiao that when he buried his head in her breasts, she felt he was like a baby. He told her it was his first time, but Fei remained unmoved, and only by remaining unmoved could she conquer all. Later, he fell out with his vice mayor father over Fei because the vice mayor himself expressed a particular interest in her. He insisted on taking her out to dinner after seeing Fei a couple times at his home; he also asked to stay in his son’s studio to watch him paint.
Fei didn’t like the painter’s father: his worldly laugh, his shifty looks, along with that oily face of his, all disgusted Fei. She believed the attractiveness of this sort of person came solely from his power; he was a symbol of power. Once his power disappeared, what would be left for him as an individual? Her opinion of the father didn’t mean she loved the son more than the father. No, she didn’t love anyone. She told Tiao that she was eager for father and son to get into a fight, so she could get away from the pair. She didn’t want to waste any more time on them.
Fei thought Tiao was an innocent listener, but she was not. Having graduated from college that year, Tiao was assigned a teaching job at a high school in Fuan. She had never liked the teaching profession, and wanted to work for a publishing house. Based on what she read, she believed that publishing would become a big industry at the beginning of the new century. She was worried about her career; she had no powerful connections to get her out of the high school and into publishing. And then she heard Fei talk about the vice mayor, which turned her into a not-so-innocent listener. A little despicably, she told Fei what she wanted, begging Fei to talk to the vice mayor for her.
Maybe it was a mutual and tacit understanding that Fei owed Tiao something. The debt was long-standing but never forgotten. For so many years they hadn’t asked anything of each other, but now that Tiao brought it up, Fei knew it was time to pay her debt. She didn’t hate Tiao for it, and even felt happy that Tiao had given her the opportunity.
Fei went to the vice mayor and took care of the business. It wasn’t that hard for her, only a little disgusting. Trying to ignore the shudder that went through her when he rubbed his fat, oily belly against hers, she just kept thinking about Tiao: How I want to do this for you.
So Tiao preserved her own innocence by sacrificing Fei’s dignity and got into the Children’s Publishing House as she wished. Ten years later she was the vice director.
Once, she confided in Fan about it, wishing with all her heart that Fan would side with her as Fan had when she was little. She wanted Fan to say, That’s nothing. That’s nothing at all. Fei is that kind of person to begin with. What’s the difference between selling yourself once or ten times? How Tiao longed for someone to say something like this for her. Then she could feel free of guilt, and not so despicable. But Fan didn’t say that. Instead she said, “Shame on you. You’re so shameless!”
Chapter 6
Fan
1
Some people are fated to leave their own land and live with people from other races, like Fan. When she was in high school and Tiao asked her about her future plans, she said without hesitation, “To go abroad.”
She had a gift for learning languages and an excellent memory. In elementary school she already could recite the famous “Little Match Girl” from the middle school’s English textbook. She also carried on English conversations with her mother, Wu, on weather, food, hygiene, etc. She got excited whenever she saw foreigners in the park, volunteering herself to be their tourist guide, even with her limited English. Later she went to the Beijing Foreign Language Academy to major in English, and her foreign classmates often asked her, “What year did you return to China?”
Her English made people think she’d grown up among native speakers. She would tell them clearly, “I have never been anywhere. I learned my English in China.” Later, she made the acquaintance of an American fellow named David, and she followed David to America. Tiao asked her, “Do you plan to come back?”
She said, “No, I don’t. My life will be much better than yours, plus I have David.” She was very conceited, perhaps because she had the capital for conceit: her American husband, David, and her fluent, slightly British-accented English—she even corrected David’s grammar from time to time. She had passed level B for typing in English while in high school, and TOEFL was a breeze for her. Unlike those Chinese who seemed daunted and uneasy, unable to open their mouths as soon as they left China, Fan was comfortable speaking to foreigners.
A traveller who can communicate with pe
ople anywhere on earth is guaranteed success in life. Fan thought about this sort of success constantly; she had to go abroad just to be worthy of this beautiful English she spoke. In America many, many wonderful things seemed to await her, more than China could offer, much, much more. What could China offer? China had her family, but at her age then, she didn’t much value family ties. She had valued her older sister when she was little. She had loved her, worshipped her, and her older sister had been the first person to whom she would run when she was in trouble. They shared happiness and sufferings and … and also the evil little secret that nobody else in the world knew. Fan never doubted her memory; what she remembered was what had happened—the open manhole on the small road at the Design Academy, the waving little hands of Quan when she fell into it, and the unusual clasp of hands between her sister and her, icy-cold, moist, and cramped … it was not that she’d pulled Tiao’s hand, but the other way around. Over and over, she’d repeat to herself that she hadn’t pulled Tiao’s hand but Tiao had pulled hers, that she had been passive, and had been pulled, had been stopped. Twenty years had passed, but the force that Tiao had applied was left frozen into her hand. That wasn’t the reason she had left China, was it? She didn’t want to analyze all this too closely. Although she’d only been seven that year, even then she had a strong desire to be a very good child. The manhole, Quan, the clasping of hands between the sisters … their gesture of vengeance and the elimination of the alien element … all this made her desperate to be an excellent child, the best child, as if it were the only way for her to be worthy of the death of that other child who, ever since her birth, had made Fan unhappy and jealous.
As great as her desire to be that good child were her expectations of Tiao. Under a shadow that couldn’t be lifted, Fan no longer loved and worshipped her sister single-mindedly, and Tiao couldn’t have her unconditional obedience anymore. Yet Fan longed intensely for Tiao to love and spoil her so she could show in every way that she was the most important person in the family. Their first disagreement started with a windbreaker. She was studying at the Beijing Foreign Language Academy then, and Tiao, back from a business trip to Beijing to solicit manuscripts, called her to go out. They could hardly wait to go to an ice-cream shop for yogurt, for which they both had a passion. Back then, Kraft’s and Wall’s dairy products hadn’t made their way to China yet, and yogurt in Beijing was sold in thick, clunky white porcelain bottles, sealed with waxed paper tied in rubber bands. People used a straw to poke through the seal and then made hissing noises as they sucked up the yogurt—it was delicious. Tiao treated Fan to yogurt and also took out a short woollen knit skirt that she had bought for Fan when she attended a conference in Shanghai. She liked to buy clothes for Fan, always remembering to do it wherever she went. But what Fan noticed that day was not the skirt but the windbreaker Tiao was wearing. She said, “Tiao, the windbreaker is very nice. I like it.”
