by Tie Ning
David came over and asked them what they were talking about. Fan lied and said they were gossiping about a mutual acquaintance in China. David noticed their strange mood, but couldn’t understand a word they said. That was the convenience of the language barrier; they could talk about vaginas and tampons right in front of David.
Fan lied to David and then turned back to Tiao. “You’re right that I’m not happy. It was you who brought me all the unhappiness. You! When I was seven years old …”
Tiao knew very well where they were heading yet again; the unfortunate “before,” the “before” that was embedded in her heart, tormenting her constantly. Strangely, though, she was not as panicky as when Fan first mentioned it in China, as if the change of venue had performed some magic. Even the most shameful thing, when mentioned in a strange place, far from its original setting, didn’t seem that terrible. Strange places are ideal for recalling past horrors. So Tiao wasn’t frightened by Fan’s reference to the event. She even felt that she had the courage to stand here, in Chicago, Illinois, right in front of Fan, to retell the whole story from beginning to end, and simply to declare again, I was the murderer. Her candour, no matter how detailed and complete, would be overwhelmed by the vastness of America, because America doesn’t care—has no interest in denouncing the secret crime committed by a strange foreigner. It made her feel as if she were about to tell someone else’s story—half truth and half fiction—with calm and detachment. This was a new discovery for her, which disconnected her from the incident. Maybe she was not all that detached, but she was at least granted calm by the foreignness of the place. Calmly, she interrupted Fan. “I want to say something that I have held in for a long time, and today I’m going to let it out: don’t you try to terrify me with ‘before.’ Even if everything I did before was wrong, it doesn’t mean what you did was right.”
Even if everything I did before was wrong, it doesn’t mean what you did was right.
Fan must surely have heard, and taken it in—there are words that can force a person to remember.
Tiao left Fan’s home ahead of schedule. She called a taxi and went to the airport seven hours before her flight. It was a day of rain and snow, and Fan drove to the airport after her. She wanted very much to run to her sister and to hug her, as she had done when she’d picked her up two days earlier, and then to tell her, I was wrong. But she didn’t have the courage. A man named Mike went in and out of her mind. Yes, Mike. Didn’t Tiao have too much? She was going to fly to Mike’s city. She was abandoning Fan again. A sharp sadness struck her, and Fan felt a moment of dizziness. She was a victim; she had always been a victim, lonely, with no one on whom to depend. The deepest suffering in her heart was not the loneliness, but the fact that all her life she had no one to turn to, no one to tell.
Chapter 7
Peeking Through the Keyhole
1
Tiao was preoccupied on the aeroplane to Austin; Fan’s bitter face was flashing in front of her eyes all the way. She knew she had upset Fan, and this time she’d used Mike. Why would she mention Mike when Fan was talking about the several brief affairs she’d had? Using Mike as counterpart to Fan’s short-term lovers made it seem like Mike had become Tiao’s lover, or at least implied that Mike was going to. This wasn’t Tiao’s style; it sounded a little like bragging, it was immodest, and seemed like a conscious provocation of Fan. But maybe that was what she had intended; gradually realizing Fan’s weaknesses, she’d provoked her on purpose, although she was reluctant to admit it to herself. Perhaps, though, she hadn’t said it to provoke her but, instead, only wanted to indulge herself. Breathing foreign air seemed particularly conducive to self-indulgent thoughts, even if they merely remained thoughts. In another country no one pays attention to you or bothers to talk to you, unlike those above or below her in the Publishing House, pleasant or unpleasant, and those incompetent little plots they liked to spin and believed to be clever. There were also one or two men in particular who were corrupt. If you went along with them, you would win their cheap approval; if you looked down on their contemptible behaviour, they would get back at you with ten times the contemptible behaviour. You don’t have to notice, but it’s hard to ignore because it’s such a part of the reality of your life. In another country no one pays attention to you or bothers to talk to you, so you pay attention to yourself, which means indulging yourself, caring for yourself and not caring too much about what others think. Yes, not caring too much. In her own country she cared too much, every word she said and every action she took, every time she made a move, her job in the Publishing House, the chance to advance her position, the chasing after national book awards every year, and the profit the Publishing House made … every slipup might result in a huge loss. Caring too much should be the opposite of being cruel, right? She needed compensation, and she had the right to it, any compensation, good or bad. She needed to escape from her own demons and carve out a space for herself, her own space in which she could care for herself. Where was it? Was it here, in other people’s country? Wasn’t the conclusion a little absurd? She could find her own space only in someone else’s country.
She cast a glance from the corner of her eye at the neighbour on her right, an American man with blond hair and conservative dress, who had the look of a senior corporate executive. He let down the tray table soon after the aeroplane took off and started to write something on a stack of paper. He was left-handed, as many Americans seemed to be. That was how Tiao noticed the fancy oval cuff link on his expensive-looking shirt. It must have been silver, with a kind of black luster like titanium’s. Even senior executives wouldn’t wear cuff links every day, so the appearance of the left-handed man beside her suggested that an important occasion awaited him as soon as he got off the aeroplane. Of all the accessories for men, Tiao was fondest of cuff links, and found them elegant. The impression might have come from a pair of cuff links that Wu had, which were eighteen-carat gold and diamond and had belonged to Wu’s father, Tiao’s grandfather. The story went that the grandfather’s lover had sent the cuff links to him as a gift when he returned from studying in England. The gift from the lover eventually came into the hands of his daughter, Wu, which must have made her feel uncomfortable. She had saved them probably because her love for the cuff links surpassed her disgust for her mother’s rival. It was the pair of old diamond-studded cuff links that wakened Tiao’s initial secret yearning for men. She asked Wu hundreds of times about the lover, with appreciation, sympathy, and envy that crossed generations. Only at a distance of generations could someone respond to a family’s complicated suffering with those emotions. Unfortunately, Tiao had never seen pictures of her grandfather’s lover, which, according to Wu, had all been burned by Tiao’s grandmother. Later, when Tiao’s relationship with Fang Jing was at its unsteadiest, she’d even thought about stealing her grandfather’s cuff links and giving them to him. She was really crazy, so crazy that she got the roles thoroughly confused. Obsessed with becoming Fang Jing’s wife, she decided to follow the example of her grandfather’s distant lover, who was so tenacious with her love. Did she understand this as the dream of all women—to be the best wife for a man and at the same time to be his best mistress? No, Tiao wasn’t aware of it; she was far from reaching this kind of self-realization.
She had become acquainted with Mike at a conference in Beijing, sponsored by an American research institute for women and children. Tiao was invited to attend the conference and to present her paper, “A Lecture to Mothers.” The paper explored the mother-child relationship, and Mike was the interpreter the sponsor had hired. He was studying Chinese at Beijing University then, and dreamed of becoming a translator and helping cultural communication between China and America. His fluent and accent-free Chinese made him something of a star at the conference. It was hard to believe he was an American if you listened to him with eyes closed. He was six feet tall, had curly auburn hair, a pair of clear green eyes, and his voice was soft and gentle. During the break Tiao was
waiting behind him to get water from the water dispenser. Mike got himself a cup of water, and filled another for Tiao. He turned around and handed it to her.
Holding their cups, they moved aside and chatted. Mike said attentively, “I know you don’t like to drink cold water. What you prefer is colder than hot water, but hotter than lukewarm, am I right?”
Tiao savoured the temperature of the water in her cup and said, “You managed the temperature perfectly. How did you know what I wanted?”
Mike put on an air of mystery. “If I want to get to know someone, I can find out everything about her.” Tiao smiled without saying anything. Mike asked, “Why are you smiling?”
Tiao said, “I smiled because you used the word ‘lukewarm.’ I thought you wouldn’t know the Chinese for that.”
Mike said, “I can also recite some Chinese nursery rhymes. I’m sure you learned them when you were young.”
“Really? Say them for me.”
“Do you really want to hear?”
“Yes, I really do.”
Mike drained the water in his cup, stepped forward to throw it into the nearby trash can, and then returned to Tiao and started to chant solemnly, “‘Eat the milk. Drink the bread. Beneath your arm, carry the train. Ride on a briefcase, instead. Afterwards, get off the case. Eastward, then, turn your face. There you’ll see a man bite a dog. Pick up the dog. Give a stone a whack, but then the stone will bite the dog back …’”
Tiao couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Mike said, “Listen to this one: ‘Riding on a bike, arriving at the bank. Meeting the head banker and giving a salute. The banker said, that’s all right, that’s okay, we all work in the bank anyway.’”
Tiao asked, “What else?”
Mike said, “‘A little car is honking, beep, beep, beep. Chairman Mao sits in the backseat.’”
“What about the one that goes, ‘The car is coming but I don’t care. I’ll give the car a phone call over there. The car turned around and ran my little feet down’?” Those old wordplays and nursery rhymes gave Tiao a familiar, warm feeling, especially “The car is coming but I don’t care. I’ll give the car a phone call over there.” It was a nursery rhyme that came out of her childhood, a period when both the car and the telephone were rarities. For children, the proof that they were not afraid of a car was that they were bold enough to call it on the phone. Ah, the car is coming but I don’t care. I’ll give the car a phone call over there.
Over the next few days, Mike and Tiao were pretty much together all the time during the breaks. He would pour her a cup of water at the right temperature, she’d take the water with a thank-you, and then they would start to talk about things related to their studying and work. One day Tiao took half a day off from the conference because her publishing house needed her to preside over a book release in the Great Hall of the People. During the break the next day, before Tiao walked up to the water dispenser, Mike, who could hardly contain himself, ran to her and said, “Finally I see you. You weren’t here yesterday and I thought you wouldn’t show up again. I was terrified.”
“Why would my disappearance frighten you so much?”
“I don’t know, but I meant what I said. How are you?”
“I’m fine. You sounded like we hadn’t seen each other in years.” Tiao was just joking, but Mike got serious and said, “I did have the feeling that we hadn’t seen each other in years.”
All of a sudden Tiao felt a bit awkward about Mike’s serious turn, or maybe she didn’t want anything else to come out of it, so she said to him calmly, “Mike, can you satisfy a small wish of mine?”
“Of course, what is it?”
Tiao pretended to be nervous and lowered her voice. “Please, get me a cup of water, cooler than hot water but hotter than warm water.”
Mike tapped himself on the forehead and said, “Of course! I forgot about the water.” He quickly disappeared from Tiao’s view and then cheerfully returned with a cup of water. He handed Tiao the water with two hands and said, “Please, cooler than hot water but hotter than warm.” He watched Tiao finish the water, and then the bell rang to resume the conference. When Tiao was going to throw away the paper cup, he took it from her and said, “Allow me. Let me throw it away for you.” Tiao never noticed that the cup remained in Mike’s hand all the way back to their seats.
On the night the conference ended, Mike invited Tiao to a readers’ salon, a discussion group, at a bookstore called Distance near Xidan, saying he was very friendly with the couple who owned it, and they often recommended good Chinese books to him. Mike said, “I’ve noticed that the Distance Bookstore almost never sells children’s books, which is unfortunate because China has so many children and they get so much more attention and love than those of any other countries because of the birth control policy. Why don’t you recommend some good books published by your publishing house? Your publishing house will be better known, and the Distance Bookstore will also gain customers.” Tiao listened politely to Mike’s suggestion, although she didn’t take it too seriously. Mike didn’t know much about publishing. Tiao was much more familiar with the business, the distribution networks and connections than he was, but she didn’t want to spoil Mike’s generous gesture; his consideration for her work touched her. Together they went to the Distance Bookstore, and the owners were very friendly, asking Mike and Tiao to stay after the salon to chat and have an evening snack. They prepared poached eggs in rice wine for Tiao and Mike, saying that Mike was especially fond of their poached eggs. Tiao also liked poached eggs, but her great concern at that moment was to find a toilet. She’d planned to head for the bathroom right after the salon, and hadn’t expected the couple to invite them so enthusiastically to stay. She held her bladder and pretended to eat the poached eggs calmly. After a bowl, her need only grew stronger. She looked around and saw no bathroom. She was reluctant to ask the woman, because she didn’t know her well, nor was Mike an old acquaintance. It would have been a little embarrassing for her to ask people she had just met where the bathroom was, and what was more irritating was that Mike still sat there talking to them endlessly. Tiao had held herself for too long and her face apparently showed concentration. If Mike continued to talk she would simply stand up and run out. Fortunately, Mike stopped. When the woman asked him another question, he glanced at his watch and said, “I’m sorry, but we have to go. It’s getting very late.”
They took their leave. As soon as they walked out of the bookstore Tiao blurted out, “Mike, I’m sorry, but I’m desperate to get to a bathroom.” She didn’t expect Mike also to grimace and say, “I’m sorry, Tiao. I have to go right away myself.” Single-file, they ran to look for a restroom on the street. Tiao complained, “Why did you talk non-stop if you also had to go to the bathroom?”
Mike said, “Isn’t that good manners in China? They were so courteous, how could I interrupt them? Besides, you seemed to be listening so attentively.”
“That wasn’t attentiveness. My eyes were fixed because I was holding the pee in so hard.”
Mike said, “Me, too. I squeezed so hard, tears almost came out.” They spotted a restroom by the side of the road, stopped talking immediately, and rushed in. When they came out, they looked relieved, and their walk turned to a leisurely stroll, ease written all over them. Their shared trial and embarrassment brought them closer to each other and they laughed with tacit understanding.
It was late at night, and they were walking on the quiet Changan Avenue. Stepping on the rectangular concrete bricks with sharp edges, Tiao asked, “Mike, do you know what’s underneath these bricks?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Let me tell you. There were toilets here. Years ago—you were probably not born yet, or just born—when Chairman Mao received the Red Guards during a parade for National Day, because of the crowd, they had to build temporary facilities at these spots underneath our feet.” Mike lowered his head to observe the ground. “I can appreciate latrines, because now I understand how painful it
can be if you can’t get to them.”
“They were restrooms, not just latrines,” Tiao corrected him. Mike looked into Tiao’s eyes and said, “Do you know you’re very lovely?”
Tiao said, “I’ll accept the flattery.”
“It wasn’t flattery. It was what I had on my mind, particularly when you became serious and had to correct me. You were just like a schoolteacher.”
Tiao interrupted him. “Let’s talk about something else.” She suddenly ran off the pavement and onto the empty street. Mike caught up with her from behind and took her hand.
She didn’t try to avoid his hand. They stood on the street holding hands. Looking at the occasionally passing cars, both started to recite the rhyme about the car at the same time. “‘The car is coming but I don’t care. I’ll give the car a phone call over there. The car turned around, and ran my little feet down …’” This children’s rhyme made their hand-holding intimate and innocent, with no ambiguity or awkwardness. It was a perfect connection, Tiao thought.
She already sensed Mike’s love clearly, and she liked this young man who was holding her hand. But love was not easy for her. The inoculation from the plague of that other love still had its impact on her. Love would never again come easily for her.
But she told Mike that she was going to America to attend a conference. Mike said that coincidentally he would be in the States during that time and hoped that, no matter what, she would accept his invitation to visit Texas.
The left-handed man on her right side lifted up his tray and Tiao realized the aeroplane was landing. She’d arrived at Austin.
Mike welcomed Tiao at the Austin airport. While rain and snow took its toll on Chicago, Austin in the south was still very warm. Tiao saw Mike, who had on an eye-catching red T-shirt and was waving at her. Tiao felt a little nervous; the closer she was to Mike, the more she wanted to run away from him. She resented this urge, which she often had when she decided to take action. It made her seem neurotic, like an actor with stage fright. She finally got close to Mike. She reached out her hand, and he opened both his arms to her.
