Ben must have been thinking the same because after a while he said, 'I wish that crazy boyfriend of yours would leave us alone.'
I was quiet. Then I said, 'Maybe you can help me, Ben.'
He took his arm away. 'Oh, Fenfang. You know I want to. But I don't know how much I could offer after a while.'
What did that mean?
'Maybe we should just run away,' I said, with hope. 'Why not? China is big. We could hide ourselves in any corner, we don't have to be in Beijing. Yes?'
Ben didn't say anything.
We travelled to Changchun, a city in the north-east, in old Manchuria. When we finally unbuckled our seat-belts and got off the plane, we entered a world of ice. It was a city of heavy industry, and it seemed like it hadn't changed since 1949, the year when China became communist. The snow was black on the ground from the muck pumping out of the chimneys.
I reminded myself that this place had played such an important role in history. The Japanese had forced the last Emperor to create a fake state here in the 1930s. He'd lived in this city, surrounded by his concubines. Ben insisted we visit the Last Emperor's Palace. It was now a desolate museum. When we walked in, there was only one other visitor, a foreigner burdened by a huge backpack, squinting at obscure old photos. It's only foreigners who know about China 's history, I thought. I know nothing. But still, in that half-hour in the rotten old palace, I learnt about Pu Yi. About how he'd been crowned Emperor at the age of three. How he'd married a girl the eunuchs selected for him when he was 16. How he'd been forced to flee from the Forbidden City in Beijing. How, during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, he tried to avoid marrying a Japanese woman imposed by the occupier. How he'd been imprisoned by Stalin in Russia. How, in 1962, Chairman Mao arranged for him to marry again, to a member of the communist party. Pu Yi. A man who had lived as a prisoner, as a citizen, as the last Emperor, and yet someone without any choice. The old man Pu Yi had obviously not defeated the sea.
Ben and I walked down a street lined with shabby shops. We ate pickled cabbage and duck-blood soup served in bowls as deep as basins. People were very generous here. It felt like any city in China was better than Beijing. We watched local teenagers skating on the frozen river, each swathed in thick padded cotton jackets. We wandered along the city's perfectly straight roads. Xiaolin couldn't reach us here. If we were to die here, in this frozen icy north, he would never know.
But the shark constantly swam back to the old man. My mobile started to ring. For some reason, I felt unable to switch the phone off. I couldn't reject Xiaolin's call. As a compromise, I turned the sound off and felt the little mobile vibrate silently. I could imagine Xiaolin, alone at home in Beijing, slamming the phone down so hard the walls shook.
That night in the Banners and Flags Guesthouse, I woke in panic. My phone had lit up. Ben could hear it vibrating against the table edge. He opened his eyes, and we both stared at it as it twinkled menacingly in the dark.
'Just leave it, Fenfang. He'll get fed up.'
'You don't know him,' I said.
Ben looked at me. 'Why can't you switch it off? I don't understand you.'
He turned his body away, exhausted.
People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite – a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you've lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there's still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.
Fragment Thirteen
WHERE WAS I? I sat up in bed, trying to see stuff in the dark. There was a door to the left. A bathroom to the right. Shelves over here. Drawers there. A half-dead bamboo plant on the table, and a TV by the window. The window was directly in front of me. Okay. I knew where I was now. As soon as I found where the window was, I was all right.
I was in Haidian, in my new flat. Rent: 850 yuan per month. Hassle: 0. All the other tenants in the block were either university students or professors. They were quiet and reasonable people. Everybody wore glasses and carried at least two books in their bags every morning when they left for work. There were no old hens in the elevator pressing buttons and watching your night life. Most importantly, there was no Xiaolin. He didn't know where I'd gone.
Haidian stirred me. Haidian was the greatest area in Beijing. It made my heart beat faster.
What I loved about Haidian was you could find whatever you were looking for. Banned books like SoulMountain by Gao Xingjian, or that memoir by Chairman Mao's private doctor where he spills all the dirt. A little old man sold Taiwanese Fried Ice and it was the best in Beijing. His stall had clear plastic walls. Through them, you could see bowls piled with sweet yellow Hami melon, red Western, juicy green and bright purple grapes. Crystals of brown sugar glinted. You could fill a plastic bowl with any fruit you wanted for only 1 yuan. He'd spoon snow-white fried ice on top of your fruit mountain. He'd add sticky sugar syrup on your ice. Oh, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, nothing tasted like that.
Past the ice stall were cramped side streets where the walls were like the scales of a fish – tall shelves tightly packed with pirated disks. You could find anything you wanted here. CDs, with a hole punched into the middle by customs. VCDs and DVDs of old classics like The Goddess with Ruan Lingyu, Zhao Dan's Crossroads, even the 1940s film Spring in a Small Town. And so many foreign films. Mamma Roma. Central Station. The Lost Weekend. Plus films by Takeshi Kitano and Shunji Iwai. All piled on top of each other like firecrackers at Chinese New Year. I loved piracy. It was our university and our only path to the foreign world.
It was in Haidian that you could track down the film Ben loved most: Betty Blue - 37°2 le matin. It was now my favourite film too. The main character – a handyman called Zorg – inspired me to keep writing. If a lonely builder in a nothing town could eventually become a writer, then maybe an extra could one day become a Third-Rate, Second-Rate or even First-Rate scriptwriter. In the film, Betty is mad – a crazy woman who always wears a red dress. I thought I was like Betty, except I never wore red. At the end of the story Betty dies. I would cry every time I watched this film. Even after 15 times. I could never forget the end. Betty was dead and her man Zorg was writing alone at a table. Suddenly, his cat jumped on the table and stared at Zorg. And then it spoke. Oh, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky. The cat started to speak and it was Betty's warm voice asking Zorg, are you writing now? Zorg looked at the cat. And that was it. The End. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky! Even just thinking about this made me want to cry.
Anyway, that afternoon I went to the Book City mall to stock up on novels by my new favourite author, Marguerite Duras. I came out of the shop with my green Eastpak rucksack bulging. Destroy, She Said, The Sea-Wall, The Sailor from Gibraltar and a book about her life. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I knew I would love Duras the moment I read the first line of The Lover. 'One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said: "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.'" Genius! I could feel my heart swell beneath my Eastpak just thinking about it.