by Ha Jin
“Don’t be so upset, dear,” Lin said.
She was still biting her lip, tears trickling down her chin and falling on the front of her jacket.
“Come, sweetheart,” he said again, “this is our wedding. Try to put on a happy face.”
She raised her face, which looked so contorted that for a moment he didn’t know what to say. He touched her forehead; it was wet and hot.
He asked, “Is this too much for you?”
She nodded.
“Would you like to go home?”
She nodded again. He turned and saw Nurse Hsu sitting nearby with a few little girls and cracking hazelnuts for them with a pair of pliers. He asked her to take his bride home, since he couldn’t extricate himself. Then he found Manna’s fur hat and overcoat and brought them out to the corridor. There he helped her on with them, saying he would join her at home soon.
When he returned to the crowd, the room was full of noisy music. The tables were all pushed against the walls, and young nurses and officers were dancing together. After being banned for almost two decades, ballroom dancing had just come back into fashion. The young men and women were wheeling and swaying passionately as though they knew no fatigue. The older officers and doctors stood by, watching the dancers and chatting. Suddenly a nurse slipped and fell on the floor, having stepped on a pear core. Her fall brought on waves of laughter.
Haiyan and her husband Honggan came up to Lin and congratulated him. They were a middle-aged couple now. Honggan wore civilian clothes and glasses, which made him resemble a ranking official; Haiyan was moonfaced and a little stout, wearing a saffron neckerchief. She beckoned to their son. “Come here, Taotao, and meet Uncle Kong.”
“No, I don’t want to,” whined the eight-year-old boy. He skipped away with a wooden carbine in his arms and disappeared among his pals. His parents and Lin all laughed.
“You and Manna should never have a boy,” Haiyan said to the bridegroom. “It’s much easier to raise a girl. By the way, where is the bride?”
“She didn’t feel well and went back home. She has a cold.”
Honggan patted Lin on the shoulder and said, “My friend, I’m very happy to be here. Listen, from now on if you need any help, just let me know.” His left hand was twirling an empty glass.
Lin looked at his flat face, trying to make sense of his words. He was amazed to see that Honggan had turned into a happy, healthy man and had shed all traces of his peasant stock. His face was quite smooth; only two small pinkish boils on his forehead reminded Lin that the face used to be carbuncular.
“Don’t be polite, Lin,” Haiyan said. “He has power and pull now. His company owns twelve trucks.”
“Oh, thanks,” he managed to reply. In his heart he still couldn’t embrace them as friends.
“If you need to bring home coal or firewood,” Honggan said, “just give me a call.”
“Thanks.”
Silence set in. The summer before last Honggan had been demobilized and had become the vice-chairman of a lumberyard in Muji. Like her husband, Haiyan had also made progress in life; after one and a half years of training in Changchun City, she had become an obstetrician. They had moved to downtown Muji so that their son could go to a better school. Though Haiyan and Manna had made up long ago, Manna still wouldn’t trust her with any secret. Now Lin hoped the couple would leave him alone.
But Honggan was in a talkative mood. He said in a low voice, “Lin, have you heard anything about Geng Yang?”
Lin was perplexed by the question and shook his head, wondering why he mentioned that name at this wedding. Thank heaven, his bride wasn’t around.
“Well, I don’t mean to annoy you,” Honggan went on, “but I heard he got rich, filthy rich. You know, a bad dog is always lucky.”
Lin didn’t say a word, his cheeks coloring.
Seeing the bridegroom’s flushed face, Haiyan pinched her husband’s neck and asked angrily, “Why the hell did you mention that thug here, moron?” She then gripped his ear and tweaked it.
“Ouch! Let go.”
“Apologize to Lin,” she ordered.
“All right, all right, Lin, I’m sorry.”
Lin said with a bland smile, “Let him go, Haiyan. He meant no harm.”
“He’s stupid, such a killjoy.” She released his ear. “As if he hadn’t done enough damage and hadn’t hurt Manna at all.” She turned to her husband and asked, “Why did you try to spoil this wedding?”
Honggan realized his blunder. “Sorry, Lin, I didn’t mean to do anything nasty. There was an article on Geng Yang in Role Models a month ago. I just want to say it’s unfair that son of a bitch is doing so well.”
“I understand,” Lin said. He didn’t read that magazine and had no idea how rich Geng Yang was.
“We should be going,” Haiyan said to her husband.
“Yes.” Honggan turned to the bridegroom. “Don’t forget I’ll be happy to help you. Any heavy work.”
“I’ll remember that.” Lin wondered if the couple had drunk too much.
“Bye-bye.” Honggan waved, then grasped his wife’s arm. Together they merged into the crowd.
Most of the dancers were in sweaters or shirts now. The room seemed to Lin like a large cabin on a ship, foggy and swaying. This feeling made him giddy.
He couldn’t dance, so he stayed with the older officers and their wives, receiving congratulations and answering questions. By now, most of the children had left with candies and fruit in their pockets and with all the balloons, so the room became less noisy and the tables were stacked with empty platters, plates, jackets, hats, mittens. Lin was tired and couldn’t stop wondering how his bride was doing alone at home. How bored he was by their wedding.
5
Manna turned out to be a passionate lover, and her passion often unnerved Lin. He wasn’t as experienced in bed as she had expected. He tired out easily, most of the time before she could calm down. At night when taps was sounded, they would go to bed immediately. They would make love for half an hour, not daring to remain awake longer because they would have to join the morning exercises at daybreak. If it snowed, they would get up early as well to clear roads with their comrades.
Manna seemed frustrated sometimes, but never lost her temper. One Saturday night she joked with Lin, saying good-humoredly, “I wonder how you could have made a baby with Shuyu. In just three minutes?” Her chin was resting on his chest while her eyes were dreamy and half-closed.
“I was young then,” he muttered.
“So you had a different pecker?” She chuckled.
“She wasn’t like you.”
“In what way?”
“She didn’t make me feel like an old man.”
“Come on, you are still my young groom.” She started kissing his mouth again and swung her leg across his belly.
“Sweetheart, I need more time,” he said.
“Okay, take it easy.” She lay still alongside him, but her hand went on caressing his thigh. It took a while to get him ready. They made love for an hour that night, since they wouldn’t have to rise early the next morning.
Before the wedding Lin had feared that the rape of a decade ago might continue to trouble Manna, especially in bed; so he had often reminded himself to be gentle with her. But she showed no sign of discomfort. Every day she insisted they make love before going to sleep. Sometimes they even went to bed after lunch. What a woman, he would say to himself.
To satisfy her was not easy, yet he tried his best. Exhausted every night, he wondered if he should use an aphrodisiac—getting some ginseng or angelica roots or seahorses and steeping them in a bottle of wheat liquor. But he decided not to concoct such a drink, believing those things would help burn him out sooner. He hoped Manna could slow down a little, but she was passionate as ever. Are other newlyweds like us? he asked himself.
In bed, at the climax, Manna often moaned, “Oh, let me die. Let’s die like this, together.” At times she would weep and even bite his nipples or
shoulders. In the beginning her words and tears frightened him, and he thought he must have hurt her. But she said he hadn’t, claiming she was happy, so happy that she wished they could lie together in bed forever.
Once, however, she confessed to him, “I don’t know why I feel so sad. If only we had married twenty years earlier.” He gave thought to her words, but was unsure what they meant exactly. Did she imply that if he were younger, he would have been more virile?
Every time after sex he found her slightly different—tired and older, although pink patches would appear on her cheeks and make her a bit more charming. But the flaccid flesh on her stomach and arms, her soft breasts, and the small crinkles on her throat, all indicated that youth had left her. He would wonder how her body could generate so much desire, which seemed ageless and impossible for him to meet. He felt old and begged her not to indulge herself too much, but she didn’t seem to care.
In two months he began to have a numb pain in the small of his back, and a soreness was developing in his right sole. He knew that too much sex might have hurt his kidneys, but he wouldn’t shun it, feeling obligated to satisfy her in any way she wanted, because she had waited so many years for him. A large dose of vitamin B1 was injected into his foot, around the sore spot, to soothe the nerves. It alleviated the pain to some extent.
His colleagues noticed he had grown thinner. Since the previous summer he had lost fifteen pounds, and his chin jutted out further. When there was no woman around, his comrades would outdo one another poking fun at him. Shiding Mu, the head of the Propaganda Section, said one afternoon in the recreation room, “My goodness, Lin, you’ve been married for just three months. Look at yourself, you’re running out of sap.”
Lin sighed, not knowing how to reply. He went on writing the phrase “Warmly Welcome” with a brush on a large sheet of paper. They were making posters for a general’s visit to the hospital. Lin was among the few skilled with the writing brush, so he had been assigned to the work.
Shiding Mu nudged him and went on, “Already tired out, eh? This is just the first step of a thousand-mile march.” He gave a long laugh, which was so loud that it set the pane on a cabinet door rattling for a few seconds.
“Stop it!” Lin snapped.
But they wouldn’t leave him alone. A junior officer chimed in, “Lin, by next summer, you’ll be a skeleton if you go on like this. You must slow down.”
Another man said to Lin with a wink, “You know, lust is the worm that sucks up your marrow.”
Then a clerk in round-rimmed glasses dipped a small broom into a bucket, stirring the hot paste made of wheat flour, and recited loudly these lines from an ancient lyric:
For her I have grown bony and pale,
Yet I do not regret my robe
Is turning baggier day by day.
They laughed out loud, then continued to talk about women. No wonder the saying went: “At thirty she is like a wolf; at forty a tiger.” An old maid must be a wolf as well as a tiger, so only a young lion should engage her in battle. From the outset Lin should have known he was no match and should have set up a few rules with her. The office echoed with chortles. Their jokes made time pass so fast and the work so delightful.
Though he didn’t show his anger, Lin was exasperated at heart. He told himself he had to do something to stop people from talking like this.
At home he looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, which was the only piece of furniture he had bought for the wedding. Indeed his eyes had sunk deeper and seemed larger. His face was pallid, and more white hair appeared at his temples and crown. The gray strands gave him a sense of finality. At medical school twenty-five years before, he had grown some white hair, which later turned black again. Now there was no hope of reversing the gray.
One day he and Manna jumped into bed after lunch and made love. Afterward, he was so exhausted he fell asleep. Manna didn’t wake him when she left for work. He went on sleeping until a nurse came at about three to get the key to the storage room. She said a technician from Harbin had arrived to repair the inhalator Lin had locked away. How embarrassed he was. Without washing his face, he set out with the woman for the medical building. On the way he kept telling her that he didn’t feel himself.
That evening he said to his wife, “Sweetheart, we can’t continue like this. We’re no longer young. People have been talking about us.”
“I know it’s bad,” Manna said, “but I can’t help myself. Something’s eating me inside, as if I won’t live for long and have to seize every hour.”
“We should save some energy for work.”
“In fact, I don’t feel well these days. I had my blood pressure checked this afternoon. It was high.”
“How high?”
“One hundred fifty-two over ninety-seven.”
“That’s awful. We shouldn’t have sex so often.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.” She sighed.
They agreed to protect their health from then on. That night they slept peacefully for the first time.
6
“It’s like a cinerary casket,” Lin muttered to himself. He referred to a small sandalwood box underneath Manna’s clothes in the wardrobe. A bronze padlock always secured its lid. He couldn’t help wondering what was inside. Probably money, or her bankbook, or the certificates of merit she had received. Somehow the varnished box had begun to occupy his mind lately.
One evening he asked her in a joking tone, “What are you hiding from me in the box?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The sandalwood box in the wardrobe.”
“Oh, nothing’s in it. Why are you so curious?” She smiled.
“Can I see what’s inside?”
“Uh-uh, unless you promise me something.”
“What?”
“Promise you won’t laugh at me.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“Promise that from now on you’ll tell me all your secrets.”
“Sure, I won’t hide anything from you.”
“Okay, then I’ll let you see.”
She got up from the bed, went over to the wardrobe, and took out the box. Removing the padlock, she opened the lid, whose underside was pasted over with soda labels. A roll of cream-colored sponge puffed out, atop the other contents. She took the roll out and unfolded it on the bed, displaying about two dozen Chairman Mao buttons, all fastened to the sponge. Most of them were made of aluminum and a few of porcelain. Their convex surfaces glimmered. On one button, the Chairman in an army uniform was waving his cap, apparently to the people on parade in Tiananmen Square. On another, he was smoking a cigar, his other hand holding a straw hat, while talking with some peasants in his hometown in Hunan Province.
“Wow, I never thought you loved Chairman Mao so much,” Lin said with a smile. “Where did you get so many of these?”
“I collected them.”
“Out of your love for Chairman Mao?”
“I don’t know. They look gorgeous, don’t they?”
He was puzzled by her admiration. He realized that someday these trinkets might become valuable indeed, as reminders of the mad times and the wasted, lost lives in the revolution. They would become relics of history. But for her, they didn’t seem to possess any historical value at all. Then it dawned on him that she must have kept these buttons as a kind of treasure. She must have collected them as the only beautiful things she could own, like jewelry.
As he was thinking, a miserable feeling came over him. He didn’t know how to articulate his thoughts without hurting her feelings, so he kept silent.
He glanced at the box, in which there were about two dozen letters held together by a blue rubber band. “What are those?” he asked.
“Just some old letters from Mai Dong.” She seemed to keep her head low, avoiding his eyes.
“Can I see them?”
“Why are you so inquisitive today?”
“If it bothers you, I don’t have to see them.”
“There’s no secret in them. If you want, you can read them. But don’t do that in front of me.”
“All right, I won’t.”
“I won’t lock the box then.”
“Sure, I’ll read them and see what a romantic girl you were.”
In his heart he was eager to go through the letters, though he didn’t show his eagerness. Never had he seen a love letter except in novels; never had he written one himself. Now he could see a real love letter.
The next afternoon, he came home an hour early and took out the sandalwood box to read the letters. Many of them smelled fusty; they were already yellowish, and some words were too fuzzy to be legible, owing to damp. Mai Dong’s writing wasn’t extraordinary by any means; some of the letters were mere records of his daily activities—what he had eaten for lunch, what movie he had seen the night before, what friends he had met. But occasionally a phrase or a sentence would glow with the genuine feelings of a young man desperately in love. At one place he wrote, “Manna, whenever I think of you, my heart starts quickening. I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about you. This morning I have a terrible headache and cannot do anything.” At another place he declared, “I feel my heart is about to explode. Manna, I cannot live for long if this situation drags on.” One letter ended with such an exclamation, “May Heaven facilitate our union!”
Seeing those words, Lin almost laughed. Obviously Mai Dong had been a simple, gushy fellow, hardly able to express himself coherently.
Yet having read all the letters, he felt a doubt rising in his mind. What troubled him was that the desperation Mai Dong had described was entirely alien to him. Never had he experienced that kind of intense emotion for a woman; never had he written a sentence charged with that kind of love. Whenever he wrote to Manna, he would address her as “Comrade Manna,” or jokingly as “My Old Lady.” Maybe I’ve read too much, he reasoned, or maybe I’m too rational, better educated. I’m a scientist by training—knowledge chills your blood.
At dinner that evening, he said to Manna, “I went through the letters. I can see that Mai Dong was really fond of you.”
