by John Freeman
Hui had had the affair for the general concept of an affair. Neither the physical intimacy nor the secret thrill of cheating had appealed to her. Did it make her a worse adulterer, seeing a weakness in another man’s marriage, and using it to gain – nothing? People expected her to repent, but she repented no more for her adultery than for her other unthoughtful actions: getting married, having a child, or even – against her wish – being born.
Hui felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Are you expecting someone?’ a staff member asked, and when Hui did not right away grasp the meaning of his words, he said that there was a visitor for her.
‘Lucky you,’ the girl said wistfully.
When Hui entered the dining room, her first feeling was relief that she had not been seen by Xinyan sitting on the ground like one of those beggar children in Beijing. In the room, where the only decoration was a chain of American flags around the ceiling and a few visitors in sober colours sat with their incarcerated family members, Xinyan’s silky dress, printed with yellow pears and reaching down to her ankles, stood out like a loud scream of inexpressible joy or grief. Hui pulled her robe closer. ‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘I should ask how you got here,’ Xinyan said.
‘You’re the last person I thought I would see here.’
‘Yet I was the first one informed of your silly choice,’ Xinyan said, and for a moment Hui thought how much she still liked Xinyan, who could talk about a suicide attempt the same way she would talk about a dress that did not fit.
The man who had called 911 had also tried a few numbers on Hui’s cellphone, Xinyan explained, and she was the only one to have picked up the call. ‘Why did you pick up when the call was from my phone?’ Hui asked.
‘I thought you had something to tell me, to apologize, maybe,’ Xinyan said. ‘Wishful thinking, isn’t it?’
‘I would’ve apologized if I knew how to.’
Xinyan shrugged. ‘Who else has come?’
‘Who else have you told?’
‘I hope you understand that I didn’t tell Yang,’ Xinyan said.
‘Of course.’
‘In fact, I didn’t tell anyone.’
Hui nodded. ‘Then I hope no one comes.’
‘How about Wu? He didn’t come to see you?’
‘He and Sophie are in China.’
Xinyan looked up. The man with the gold chain greeted her with a smile and waved hi to Diamond, whose children had just arrived for the visit. They looked at the man, both expressionless with their teenagers’ indifference, the boy with an ink-black cowlick, the girl with heavy make-up. Xinyan looked around at the other tables, and Hui watched her take the place in: a teenaged girl with her father, who was opening a carton of ice cream for her; a family of three, father and daughter talking with each other, and the mother, wooden-faced, listening; a woman faintly smiling at a hand puppet her husband had made; the hooded young man, still watched by a guard, sitting on a chair with both his feet in his mother’s lap, yawning as she massaged the soles in patient circles.
‘Why did you do it?’ Xinyan asked.
Hui thought for a moment. ‘There’s a difference between not sinning and not knowing how to sin.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the affair,’ Xinyan said. ‘I meant why you wanted to kill yourself.’
‘I meant that, too.’
‘Were you not thinking of Sophie?’ Xinyan asked, and then smiled mockingly. ‘Of course, if you knew how to think of her, or anyone, none of these things would have happened.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hui said. ‘You can say all you want. Perhaps I’m just heartless.’
‘Or perhaps you just wanted everyone to feel bad.’
What Xinyan meant by everyone, Hui knew, included people she had met in life, and people she had not met. When Xinyan had discovered the affair, she anonymously posted a complaint about it on an Internet forum for Bay Area Chinese immigrants. Thirty years ago, a wife who’d been cheated on would go to her neighbourhood association to ask for assistance in justice; now, an Internet community could be as powerfully nosy as a group of old women. Within minutes of Xinyan’s post, someone jokingly called for a renrou engine – a flesh-and-blood search; many joined the manhunt, and in a small place like the Bay Area – or in any community, any small world – secrets were merely illusions of secrets. For a while, Hui and Yang were dubbed play-date adulterers, a pun that kept many gleeful in the online community.
‘I only meant to warn you two off,’ Xinyan said now. ‘I didn’t think it would turn out so badly for all of us.’
If she died, Hui thought, the news would take no time to reach that online community, where some people would sigh, while others would make a joke out of the death. But was that so bad? To make people laugh, even for a brief moment, was better than making people cry.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ Xinyan asked.
‘If there’s nothing I can do for myself, there is nothing for you to do, either.’
Xinyan looked despondent but only for a moment. ‘Well, you’re the one to blame, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Hui said. ‘But please understand I bear no ill will toward you.’
‘Then why are you doing these things to me?’ Xinyan said. ‘First, you stepped into my marriage. Then you wanted to kill yourself so there would always be a dead body between Yang and me as long as our marriage lasts. Now that you failed your suicide, I had to lie to him so I could visit you, and I’ll have to keep lying to him because I absolutely can’t let him know you’re here. Who knows – he might even think you were heartbroken for him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But are you? If you think anyone would forgive you because you killed yourself, you’re very wrong.’
‘I’ve never wanted to be forgiven.’
‘Then what do you want? You’re the greediest person I’ve ever met,’ Xinyan said. ‘You want everything, and when you have everything, you want the freedom to walk away.’
The greed of desiring nothing – that must be the most unforgivable sin she had committed. ‘Do you remember the kung-fu novels we used to read?’ Hui asked. ‘Those masters at the top level who can walk on the water to cross a river or a lake?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at,’ Xinyan said.
‘You know it only happens in fairy tales,’ Hui said. ‘No one can walk on the water like that.’
‘You’re making up excuses.’
Perhaps she was; perhaps those things, solid in other people’s eyes – career, marriage, a daughter and other accumulations in life – were not solid enough for her to skip across the water. But it would be preposterous to say that to anyone; it would be easier just to sink, and to leave puzzlement behind.
‘Well,’ Xinyan said, looking at her wristwatch, ‘what are you going to do with your life now?’
‘What would you do if you were me?’
Xinyan laughed. ‘I’m not as stupid as you are.’
Hui smiled. She wished she could say a few nice things to Xinyan. They had known each other long before they had known what life would bring. In the past few years, they had organized things together: summer picnics for visiting high-school students from China, the purchase of Yamaha pianos at discount prices for needy parents who had high hopes for their children, an annual fund-raising dinner to build and maintain an elementary school in Gansu province. The schoolchildren had sent pictures and letters, which Xinyan had kept in a file, saying that one day, when Sophie and Valerie were old enough, they would be proud of their mothers’ achievement, and perhaps they could visit and write about the school for their college applications.
‘You’re brave to come,’ Hui said now. ‘You didn’t worry about running into anyone?’
‘I asked the receptionist. I thought if you had other visitors, I would just leave.’
When they had little else to say to make each other feel better or worse, Xinyan stood up, and Hui said she would walk her to the door. ‘D
o you remember the song we used to sing in middle school?’ she asked. ‘About sleeping under the peach tree and petals falling in a dream?’
‘I’m surprised you remember that silly song,’ Xinyan said. ‘It was from a love story, you know.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ Xinyan said. ‘That’s why I’m telling you now. You used to make us feel bad for reading those silly romances because you were so serious, so ambitious, so haughty. And then you were sweet with all the parents. You don’t know how we laughed behind your back, because you were the model daughter every mother wanted. You don’t know how we resented you for that.’
‘I really liked your friend’s dress,’ said Maria when Xinyan disappeared beyond the metal door.
‘Thank you,’ Hui said, even though it didn’t sound right.
‘There’s a group in the conference room in five minutes,’ Maria said. ‘Go join the others.’
‘I don’t feel like it,’ Hui said. She did not recollect any animosity from the girls in middle school, but why would Xinyan have lied about that?
‘Now, now,’ Maria said, as though she were encouraging a nervous toddler on the playground. ‘Just go give it a try. See, you’re so pretty, you have to make an effort to be good again.’
Had she been a dream daughter for other mothers? She had not known. She wished Xinyan had not told her these things.
‘Don’t look so sad. Things happen,’ Maria said. ‘Who knows. Some day I may be in your place, too.’
A blonde woman introduced herself as Rachel and handed Hui a worksheet. She took a seat by the bookcase; the only book on the shelf was an AA manual. The group was focused on some self-empowering technique, but as soon as Rachel opened the discussion, she lost control of the subject.
A woman, who had already folded the worksheet and thrown it into the trash can, pointed out the hypocrisy of such a topic, as the day before, against her will, she had been given an injection. Booty juice, booty juice, sang the teenage girl who had been dreaming about her ex-boyfriend. Colette hushed the girl, raised her hand, and started talking. She’d been there, she said, and she could tell the group how upsetting it was to see a female patient pinned down by four male staff. Before she could go on, the man with the gold chain cut in, reminiscing about a similar episode in LA, where he refused an injection and broke a window and led the facility on a highly entertaining chase. Someone should make a film about me, he said, unable to stop laughing. A man sitting in a corner started a monologue – he had not slept with a woman for fifteen years now, he said, but he had never lost his heart; every day he prayed, knowing that everything he did was filmed and examined, and one day, when he passed the test, he would find her.
An older man, one of the two who had been playing chess, coughed. ‘I would think,’ he said slowly, enunciating each word, ‘as a community, we leave our personal quirks behind. For instance, I respect everyone’s rights, but as a man, I can tell you it’s upsetting for me to see a nude woman practising yoga.’
Her mother, Hui thought, would find herself belonging in the ward: here, as everywhere, people wanted confirmation that they were part of something bigger than themselves. Minds that were mystified, damaged, enhanced, crippled by both the tangible and the intangible substances nevertheless found consolation in the presence of others. In chorus, our despairs make great tragedies, our follies great comedies, but alone our happiness and sorrows make us commonplace: nothing frightens us more than our private feelings; nothing is more predictable than our mediocre fate.
When Hui was eleven, her mother had undergone an emergency appendectomy. The usual three-day hospital stay was prolonged by a complication, as her mother had insisted on ignoring all signs of discomfort until the last moment. Every afternoon, Hui went to the visiting kiosk directly from school, waiting in line for one of the two wooden sticks printed with her mother’s ward and bed number; only two visitors were allowed at a time. But there were others who wanted to see her mother – teachers from the school, neighbours, student representatives from each class bearing a stack of get-well letters and cards, a group of former students who had gone on to an elite high school – and they all, of course, deserved a turn. Hui gave away the stick to whomever asked for it.
On the fifth day, Hui finally got a chance to climb to the sixth floor, to the ward of general surgery. Before entering, she heard her mother’s voice. Despite the slow recovery, she seemed to be in a spirited mood. She told a joke about one of the surgeons, and the roomful of patients and their visitors broke into laughter.
For a moment Hui hesitated, and thought about going downstairs and dropping the wooden stick in the return box without seeing her mother. Over the past few days, she had been cared for by a rotation of schoolteachers, who took her quietness for a daughter’s filial worry.
Perhaps she should have left, Hui thought now; perhaps everything would have turned out differently. There had been no words of accusation when she’d entered the ward, but in her mother’s eyes she had seen hurt and fear. How could she not have come visit her own mother for four days, the eyes said; how could you think of abandoning me; how dare you.
A child walks into her parents’ life as though she is a creditor, Hui’s mother liked to say, as a comment on Hui’s ingratitude. Once upon a time, Hui had been fortunate that her twin had been there, sheltering her from her mother. What a mistake to get rid of the twin; now that she was gone, Hui was no longer able to save herself from her mother, or to save her mother from her.
On the way out, she’d stopped by an open window in the hallway and looked down: the garden in front of the inpatient building, which was maintained with a perfect geometrical pattern, looked like a perfect place to spend a day, if not a life, yet no patient would be allowed to leave the building, and no gardener could be seen. Next door was a clinic, with the paediatrics department on the first floor – Hui was used to taking herself there when she had a fever, and later lining up at the second-floor pharmacy because her mother was too busy, always too busy. Across the street from the hospital was a wheat field, one of the last before Beijing transformed itself into a real metropolis; in the street were rusty red buses and flatbeds pulled by horses and streams of bicycles with clanging bells.
Too late, Hui thought, it was too late to go back to that autumn afternoon in 1984, and to claim the window and the garden and the freedom beyond. The skyscrapers that would replace the wheat fields had only been planned in blueprint; what came between the dream of life and the dream of death – education and career, her life in two countries, marriage and childbirth and everything else – could have not been. In her mind she could see herself again climbing up onto the windowsill; if someone in the hallway had screamed for her to stop, she did not heed the warning.
It would have been the only moment she had let out that sob from deep in her body, as she had not been able to when she had released the katydid on the platform of the train station in Beijing, as she was unable to when Sophie hugged her with soft arms and whispered a child’s love. Nothing matters, her father had hoped to make her see it, but how could he have known that in the end, everything mattered, and for that reason one had no other choice but to turn one’s back so the world would not see the violence directed inward?
Her mother would have believed it an accident; she would have grieved, but eventually she would have found consolation in more meaningful work in her community, for her community; perhaps she would have been awarded more prizes, a dedicated mother who had transferred her love of one child to generations of children. Would Hui’s father – for whom loneliness had been a habitat, as it had later become for his daughter – would he also have believed that it was an accident? But it didn’t matter what he would think, in the end: he would’ve held his heart like a bucket, waiting for his suffering to disappear, drip drop, drip drop.
GRANTA
* * *
STALKERS
Hari Kunzru
* * *
/> The village war memorial stands in a grove of maple trees. A fresh wreath has been laid at the feet of the youthful bronze soldier, who wears a pensive expression, as if he’s aware that the world has become more complex since the heroic days of the Great Patriotic War. As I walk down the path behind him, the dosimeter begins to beep. The numbers on the display rise quickly. If I stood by the soldier for an hour, my body would absorb 0.59 microsieverts of radiation. A few paces further on the level is 2.89. Then 5.51. On the ground outside the nursery school is a rusty toy truck. Nearby, at the base of a tree, lies a plastic doll, missing one leg and both its arms, half buried in yellow leaves like a little murder victim. The level is 7.71, about seventy times the background level this morning in Kiev.
I photograph the doll, its hair bleached grey, the rubbery plastic of its head weathered to a sort of sickly puce. Then one of the Germans steps in front of me, crouching down to get his own shot. ‘Come now,’ says the tour guide. ‘We will look at the school. It is very emotional to think of the little children.’
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Kiev is a recently reinvented place. Ten-year-old gold-domed churches dominate the skyline, exact replicas of those destroyed by Stalin in the thirties. Big black SUVs pull up outside private views at the art centre opened by Viktor Pinchuk, the billionaire steel magnate, who also owns four TV stations and is married to the ex-president’s daughter. At Murakami Sushi you can try ten kinds of Philadelphia roll, unless you’re across the street at Tarantino’s, eating pizza. You can shop at Dior or Zara, but GUM, the Soviet-era department store, has closed its doors.
