Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  The interrogation was sometimes so quiet that it was almost soundless, then sometimes it burst into a deafening roar, like a loudspeaker with a faulty connection. No matter whether the questions were bellowed or quietly spoken, Zhang Jian did not utter a word from start to finish.

  Finally they heard Zhang Jian open his mouth: ‘What’s a problematic lifestyle?’

  The interrogator explained to him: he had a spouse, but was carrying on with another woman as well.

  ‘I don’t have any problems with my lifestyle,’ Zhang Jian said. ‘I only do that with my spouse.’

  ‘You go running off to the club to enjoy yourself with your spouse?’

  The people outside all laughed, the female typists blushed from ear to ear and wrinkled their noses: this filthy language really wasn’t fit for their ears.

  ‘Well, what made you and your spouse take a fancy to the backstage? Go on, enlighten me.’ The interrogator thought that the accused was taking the most appalling liberties.

  Zhang Jian again brought his skills with silence to bear. The questioner threatened him: offending against morals and decency and blackening the face of the working class before the Great Leader Chairman Mao’s inspection will incur a heavy punishment. A Party member would be expelled from the Party, a non-Party member’s wages would be docked. If he did not come clean and admit to his fault in a decent manner, rather than making up lies to bamboozle the security section, that was adding another degree to the offence. Not talking? Fine. It’s good that you like silence. We’ll say nothing for three minutes.

  ‘I’m asking you again, who was that woman with whom the problematic behaviour was taking place?’

  ‘My spouse.’

  This time it was the turn of the security head to be silenced.

  ‘Your spouse? Then what did she run off for?’ Director Xie from the club asked. His logic seemed to be a bit clearer than the head of security.

  ‘Run off?’ the security head said. ‘If it was his spouse they wouldn’t go to that kind of dark corner in the first place. When they could do it at home under the quilt, so clean, so warm?’

  The listeners at the door burst into a roar of laughter. A thought suddenly came to Xiao Peng. He backed out of the crowd, jumped on his bicycle and pedalled at lightning speed towards the residential area.

  No wonder Zhang Jian and his sister-in-law were always coming home one just a bit later than the other. Zhang Jian, who seemed so quiet and unassuming, was quite the ladies’ man, gobbling up all the tender grass on his own home turf. There could be no other explanation for any of this.

  When he reached Zhang Jian’s home, the neighbours told him that Xiaohuan had gone to the canteen run by the Neighbourhood Committee. Xiao Peng followed their directions, and found the canteen, two big rooms above the grain shop. Next to the window of one room several big stoves had been built up out of bricks. The other big room of the Neighbourhood Committee had been converted into a crèche, where a few dozen children were rolling about on reed mats and singing, ‘If you want to wear a flower, wear a big red flower.’

  Xiaohuan, having joined the group on the spur of the moment, could not then immediately take herself off again. All the female cadres in the Neighbourhood Committee kept giving her pep talks to encourage her to stay on and be their head chef. They gave her lectures, explaining that ‘labour is glorious’, and made her watch the dependants practising a little song-and-dance routine: ‘She rubs her face with scented powder, she combs her hair until it shines, but just because she takes no part in production, everybody calls her dirty.’ After two weeks’ work Xiaohuan started to go to the hospital to get sick notes for a day here, half a day there.

  As soon as Xiaohuan saw Xiao Peng, she ran over, bright-eyed and beaming, waving two fists coated in white wheat flour.

  ‘Miss your sister Xiaohuan, did you?’

  ‘Where are the children?’ Xiao Peng asked.

  ‘In the crèche.’ Xiaohuan tossed her sloping shoulders in the direction of the big room next door. With a twist of her body she ran back to the stoves, uncovered a steamer, and took out a roll from inside. ‘Fresh out of the pot!’

  ‘Sister, listen to me.’ Xiao Peng was retreating towards the door. ‘Zhang Jian’s in trouble!’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Xiaohuan immediately untied her apron, and hung it on the railings in the corridor. ‘Is it serious?’

  Xiao Peng motioned her to go with him straight away. On the staircase, Xiaohuan missed a step, and almost fell on top of him. In one breath she asked several times over: ‘Where’s he injured?’ When they reached the foot of the stairs, Xiao Peng looked at her.

  ‘It’s not that kind of trouble. If only it was. Injuries can be mended,’ Xiao Peng said.

  Xiaohuan’s mynah bird’s mouth was silenced now. She understood it all.

  Xiao Peng talked her through what he had heard outside the door of the security office. Xiaohuan looked at his earnest, portentous expression, and let out a titter of laughter. Xiao Peng thought that this woman was crazy past the point of common sense; didn’t she know that after this her husband would never be able to hold his head up again?

  ‘And there was I thinking he’d run out with me! I waited here and waited there and never saw him anywhere, I thought he must have taken a wrong turning. Come on, get a move on, take your sister to your factory headquarters!’

  Xiao Peng mounted his bicycle, and Xiaohuan sat on the back seat. They had been riding for more than five minutes before Xiao Peng finally said: ‘Sister Xiaohuan, do you mean to say that the person who was with Zhang Jian in the club … was actually you?’

  ‘If it wasn’t me, would I be prepared to bring down this crock of shit on my head for his sake? Is your sister Xiaohuan such a pushover?’

  ‘But then … the pair of you …’

  Xiaohuan started laughing again. This laugh was a little bit dirty, a little bit wicked.

  ‘Xiao Peng, little brother, wait until you have a woman of your own, then you’ll know, when a monkey’s desperate he can’t control himself at all!’

  Xiao Peng did not speak. He did not believe what Xiaohuan was telling him, but he did trust his understanding of Xiaohuan’s character: it was impossible that she would make a concession of this kind for another woman, not even her own sister.

  Xiaohuan bounded up the steps of the factory headquarters, twitching at her clothes and tidying her hair as she walked along the corridor in the direction of the security office. Xiaohuan’s hair, yellowed from too much perming, was held back behind her ears with a kerchief, and even well into her thirties she was still a good-looking woman. When they reached the door of the security office, she turned the handle and went straight in without knocking.

  The door opened wide, Zhang Jian was sitting opposite the desk with his back to the door. Like a lead actress coming onstage, Xiaohuan sauntered in.

  ‘They say you’ve put out a reward for me. So here I am!’ Her slightly red, slightly swollen eyes were smiling into curved lines, but with a certain ferocity shining through. ‘What article in the law of the land forbids a husband and wife from carrying out their marital relations? Sleeping with your wife at home is called marital relations, but go outside and sleep with your wife and it’s called problematic behaviour? Is there anyone here who hasn’t got himself a wife yet?’ She cocked her head and swept her eyes over the faces in the room. ‘If there is then please leave, what I’m about to confess isn’t fit for you to hear.’

  The secretary in charge of the security office looked at this woman, slender and graceful, but also quite capable of taking off her shoe and laying waste with it.

  ‘You are Zhang Jian’s spouse?’

  ‘Legally married, a proper matchmaker and everything.’

  At this moment Xiaohuan was standing by Zhang Jian’s side, her hips tilted, and she gave his shoulder a nudge, to show that she wanted him to shift over and make a bit of room. No sooner had Zhang Jian moved over to the right tha
n she sat down with a bump, half of her bottom landing on the corner of the chair, the other half pressing against Zhang Jian’s leg. She chattered away aimlessly with the head of security and the club workers, about how she had married into the Zhang family, and how she and Zhang Jian’s mother hadn’t got along, which was why she had made Zhang Jian move here from the North-east. Zhang Jian noticed that while she was gossiping away she was looking all around her, everywhere but at him. In these people’s eyes, Xiaohuan was fierce, lively and full of charm, but he knew that her heart had taken a blow; she hated him.

  ‘You’re man and wife, you’ve got three children already, don’t you care about losing face, running off to do it outside?’

  ‘We can’t do it anywhere except outside.’ Xiaohuan’s shamelessness was making all the men in the room blush. She was not afraid, and no matter how meaty her talk became, they would still be hanging on her every word. ‘You go to our home and take a look – if your bum’s a bit on the large side don’t even think about turning round! And we’ve got three children, our lass is almost as tall as me now. The least little noise and our Girlie asks: Ooh, Mummy, has a rat got into the house? Well, hey, we’re all married here, aren’t we?’

  She was gesticulating wildly as she spoke, so that not even the official in charge of security dared to interrupt. She was a female firebrand, the kind of country woman who was more than capable of pulling down a man’s trousers in the course of a good-natured quarrel, and when she was not happy, she would have the nerve to pull down her own trousers and stand in your doorway, cursing and blocking the way.

  ‘All the families have the same little bit of room, and they’ve all got nests of children. If they were all like you and took it out of doors, how could anyone bear to look at this steel factory? Our Great Leader Chairman Mao is coming to inspect, would you have him inspect that?’

  ‘Yes, if the Great Leader were to come looking, he’d know that the houses of our working class aren’t big enough to live in, so we all have to seek out corners to breed up the next generation.’ Xiaohuan was having a fine old time, talking away, slapping her thigh and Zhang Jian’s thigh and laughing loudly. While she was laughing she ordered one of the workers from the club: ‘Pour me some water!’

  The head of the security section temporarily confined Zhang Jian and Xiaohuan in his office, and went personally by motorbike to Zhang Jian’s work section. The Party secretary there had sponsored Zhang Jian’s application to the Party, and he stuck by his original statement: Zhang Jian was not afraid of hardship or hard work; when at his post he never left the crane except to relieve himself. The section head also rode his motorbike to the building where Zhang Jian lived, and asked the neighbours about the relationship between the Zhangs, and their general conduct. The neighbours all said that the two of them were practically joined at the hip; when Zhang Jian went out fishing, Xiaohuan could not bear for him to go, and chased him from the fourth floor to the ground. Xiaohuan enjoyed a good row: when Zhang Jian insisted on going she would pour a pitcher of water down on his head over the walkway railings.

  The security head thought, Looks like they’re a real treasure, one in ten thousand. He assigned another security officer to observe and monitor their behaviour and conversation. The result was that there was no conversation between the two of them, not so much as a sentence, even their positions did not alter: the man sitting on the cane chair under the window, the woman on the wooden chair by the wall, big eyes staring at small eyes.

  They had no idea that without moving a muscle or making a sound, separated by a distance of a few metres, this man and woman had already said it all. Just as Duohe had discovered many years earlier, the pair of them were so close they were like a single person. Sitting face-to-face like this, Zhang Jian felt that he was sitting with his other half, the other half of him that had not been possessed by Duohe, and never could be possessed by Duohe.

  Xiaohuan’s nose had gone red. He saw her raise her head and look at the ceiling. She was not willing for her tears to flow. She did not mind shedding tears in front of Zhang Jian, but she was unwilling to weep in front of outsiders. Outsiders were concealed in the crack of this door, and the cracks of the walls, here, there and everywhere; it was just that they could not see them. Xiaohuan delighted in crying in front of Zhang Jian; women get into the habit of shedding tears in front of people whom those tears might move. Many years before, this man’s one sentence – ‘Save the mother’ – had led her into this habit.

  On that day, Zhang Jian had held aside the temporary cloth curtain hung up over the door, and walked in the room. She already knew her place in his heart, knew she could use her power over him. From then on she would exert her power over him from time to time, and bully him in small ways. The door curtain was a bed sheet; Xiaohuan’s mother had woven the cloth herself, and then had it printed with white plum blossom on a blue background, as part of her dowry. The door curtain shut out a dusk that was the same as usual: in the dusk there were the voices of mothers calling children home for supper, the clucking and crowing of chickens in front of their coop, and the sounds of Erhai’s mother blowing her nose and of Erhai’s father’s dry cough. The twenty-year-old Zhang Erhai stood inside the door curtain, his shirt bleached yellow with washing. His stomach, chest and sleeves still bore the remains of Xiaohuan’s blood, and that of his son, dead before he saw the light of day. How had he died? Please don’t tell her. The blood had already dried, the traces of that awful deed were now a dark reddish brown. The young father stood by the sheet with its white flowers on a blue background for a good while, looking at everything except his wife, who they had to put their son to death to save. And he had not just killed his son, he had also defied his parents, to bear the evil name of unworthy, unfilial son, breaker of the family line. Xiaohuan’s tears flowed swiftly and violently, like a thaw in the mountain wilds at the start of spring. From then on they only had each other. The child was gone, and they had offended the people involved and people uninvolved too. She had so many tears, even she had not realised that to let herself go and cry could be such a relief. The Zhang Erhai in those tear-filled eyes was bigger and taller than he was in reality, as if soaking in her tears had made him grow. Two kerosene lamps were reflected in her tears, and he walked over to her through the mass of shadows from the flames of the lamps. He stretched out an enormous paw; she did not know whether he was wiping away her tears or her sweat. She took his hand in both of her own, and placed it on her mouth; the palm of the hand was very salty, with sweat running from every line. She did not know how long had passed, she had strength to howl with grief to her heart’s content, wailing for that son in a piercing voice. She howled and howled, until her mind moved on to other thoughts. ‘You stupid bastard! What did you save me for? With our child gone, will your parents let me live on? Those gossip-mongers, those finger-pointers, can they let me live?’ Terrified by her weeping, the twenty-year-old Zhang Erhai had bundled her up in his arms in a clumsy, awkward hug. After a while she realised that he was howling too, but entirely without sound.

  At this moment the man in front of her was no longer Zhang Erhai. There was a lump in Xiaohuan’s nose and throat, and her head swam. That Zhang Erhai was no more, he had become Zhang Jian, and this alone was sufficient for her to let go and wail in mourning.

  Zhang Jian knew he had done wrong. He had wounded her.

  He had done nothing wrong to anyone else, and he would rather die than be forced to admit it. But to Xiaohuan, he had done wrong.

  She had never, ever thought that he would be so heedless of dignity, make such a spectacle of himself, behave as disgustingly as it was possible to be. Had she not cherished him sufficiently, not loved him enough? They did that kind of thing behind her back, and concealed the matter from her, treating her as an outsider. Just how long had they been concealing it? Quite some time. More than two years.

  As if she would have made difficulties for them! Was it not she, Zhu Xiaohuan, who had urged him to go and ma
ke peace with her? Was it not she, Zhu Xiaohuan, who had reasoned with him: women are always half reluctant and half accepting? Was she the kind of person to have the wool pulled over her eyes? Had it not been she who time after time had made space for them?

  But this was different. Making a space for them was not the same thing.

  Why was it not the same? What kind of thing was it?

  It was not the same thing in the heart. It was hard to say for sure about things within the heart.

  Did that mean that his heart had changed, that he had ceased to be faithful?

  No! It was not that simple! What is this thing called a heart anyway? Sometimes we don’t know ourselves.

  His heart had changed indeed.

  An injustice as great as the heavens!

  When had the heart changed?

  Zhang Jian was looking at Xiaohuan. The look in his eyes was both fearful and confused: has the heart changed?

  If it had not changed how could he have been the way he was with Duohe, unable to look at her, or touch her, because as soon as he touched her his whole body caught fire? Had the change begun with that chance meeting in the free market over two years ago? No. It had started earlier. After Xiaohuan had told him Duohe’s life story; the very next day, he saw Duohe tacking quilts for the children in the little room. A meaningless tenderness surged up in his heart. At that time she was kneeling on the bed with her back to him, the button that held closed the round-necked shirt with no collar she wore around the house was open, exposing the hair beneath her hairline, very soft, like the downy hair of an infant. Just that section of neck and that little bit of hair caused him to be seized by an unreasoning impulse, to come over and gently hold her in his arms. No matter how young they were, Chinese girls never seemed to have that hairline, or that baby hair. Perhaps because they rarely knelt in that peculiar posture, so that section of neck had no exposure. He found it so strange, he detested anything that was Japanese; in the past, whenever Duohe had acted the slightest bit Japanese it would always increase the distance between them. And yet, since he had learned about her life history, he had changed, and Duohe’s downy hairline and the way she knelt filled him with tenderness! During these two years, he and she had shared joy and love, had sent speechless messages of love with their eyes, then a few moments would pass, and it would occur to him that it was this Japanese woman he loved, and it was this moment of awakening that had him beside himself with emotion, close to tears: she was a woman from a foreign land, who he had got by such a fluke! It was not until he had lost that enmity that he had truly made her his. He had passed through so much defensiveness, loathing and coldness before he could start to fall in love with her.