A deathly stillness fell. The Arts Department staff were like an audience that needed time to absorb a highly significant play before bursting into applause. The trouble was that they did not know whom to applaud.
20
T ianyi went home from her confrontation with Qiang to be met by a long-faced Lian. He waved Niuniu’s exercise book in her face and shouted: ‘Just take a look at this! Look! Am I a single parent? I’m so busy and you pay absolutely no attention to Niuniu … Do you know what your precious son has been doing? He’s been skipping school, that’s what! Skipping school and going to internet cafes! He’s spent the last forty-eight hours in one!’
Tianyi stared at Lian appalled. She could not think of anything to say. As Lian carried on shouting, she could not help thinking that she had come home from being yelled at at work to more yelling at home. Really! Chinese men! She found it rather funny, and started to laugh but that just made Lian angrier. ‘Just what are you laughing at?’ he demanded. ‘Just tell me this: are you the slightest bit bothered about it?’ Of course, the situation was serious, and it suddenly occurred to Tianyi to ask, if Niuniu had been in an internet café for two days on the trot, where had he got the money from? Lian did not appear to have thought of that: ‘Well, I thought you’d given it to him!’ Tianyi went through her bag, and discovered she was three hundred yuan short. She had never bothered to keep tabs on how much money she carried around in her bag, but as it happened, she had received some prize money just two days ago and knew she had not spent any of it.
Her heart sank like a stone. Her ten-year-old son was a thief! That was a terrible thing to call someone, but as she had always been careless of her money, it was very possibly not the first time he had done it. And she had just let things slip and not discovered it.
Lian hauled his sleeping son out of bed, and dragged him by the ear into the hallway. Niuniu stood the way he always did before his father, feet together, head lowered, ready to receive his punishment. Lian was unmoved. He bellowed with rage at the boy, then began to pummel him with his fists. This was the umpteenth time Tianyi had seen Lian beat up his son and she felt too drained to react. Lian’s temper had been getting worse and worse. When things went badly at work, a man could bring his bad temper back home to inflict on his family, but what could a woman do in the same situation? Tianyi felt like crying but found she had no tears. Something seemed to be blocking up her insides, something that would not come up, or go down. How much more would she have to put up with?
Niuniu finally admitted that he had stolen his mother’s money, a bit at a time, more than 3,000 yuan in total. His visits to the neighbourhood internet cafes were not just occasional, he haunted them. But his mother had been the last to know. This was Tianyi’s biggest crime in Lian’s eyes. ‘What kind of mother are you?’ he accused her. ‘Have you ever taken responsibility for your son? Or for the family?’
Having finished with Niuniu, Lian gave Tianyi a vicious tongue-lashing. When he was in a rage, he was terrifying. His eyes paled to yellowish-brown, and his mouth gaped as if he was going to devour them both. Tianyi looked at him and thought how capricious the human face was: when he and she were dating, his face had been soft and gentle, and now it had turned so ugly. The most dignified and cultured of men could turn into anything, once the mask slipped. It made her suspicious of the very nature of marriage.
Tianyi did not know what to say in the face of Lian’s accusations. She stared at him vacantly until finally he ran out of energy, went back to the bedroom and slammed the door hard. Then she heated some water, had a wash, and got under the covers in her little cubbyhole of a study. An odd smell emanated from the quilt, too much oestrogen, the smell of a woman who had not been with a man for a very long time. She and Lian had not had sex for two whole years. Just the thought made her groin suddenly burn. Flushed and restless, she got up and took two sleeping pills, then went back to bed again. She thought of the screenplay she had spent three months writing, shot down in an instant by her boss. She thought of the despicable features of the firing squad, of her impotent husband and her thieving son, and wondered what on earth the next decades would bring. Finally, the tears came. Once they started, the trickle became a torrent, and she could not stop. She felt that one of these days, she would simply keel over for good. The thought, strangely, did not frighten her. It almost brought her relief.
When Lian next went away on business, Niuniu’s grandfather came to collect him, and Tianyi heaved a sigh of relief. She was relying on sleeping pills at night but they made her feel weird the next day, not just dizzy but depressed too. Utter dejection overcame her, until she almost felt life was not worth living.
She made herself cheer up, tried to be practical, tried to pull herself together but felt unable to get anything done. Listlessly, she got out her address book and went through the names one by one, trying to imagine what it would be like to talk to this or that person on the phone. But it all felt so futile. This was an age of futility, an age when everything produced was fake. When she thought of the defences she would have to put up to talk to any of them, she was filled with disgust. She was still true to herself, was a child of nature, and there was nothing ‘civilized’ values could do to change that. It was only when she got to their driver Xiaoming that she paused.
She had quietly begun to take note of this young man. He was a handsome youth with an air of mystery about him, taciturn and apt to simply disappear after ¬work, so that no one could find him. With her, however, he was different. Occasionally, when he was driving her and they were alone, he would open up and talk. One Mid-Autumn Festival, she and Lian had gone out to admire the harvest moon, but had had an argument. He had not hesitated to take her side and when she got her wish and was able to stand by the Beihai Lake to look at the moon, he suddenly made a comment: ‘Mrs Yang, you appreciate beautiful things in a very deep way.’ She had been startled. This was certainly a compliment, though not the sort of compliment you would expect from a driver. Her finger pressed his number.
He arrived less than a quarter of an hour later. ‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked with a smile. They drove around, with no particular destination in mind, until the sun was setting behind the mountains. ‘Let me treat you to dinner,’ she said. ‘You choose the place.’ He took her to Sun City Hotpot, a very popular place in the mid-nineties, but Tianyi could not summon up any interest in the food. On that early autumn evening, she was wearing a slim black wool skirt that showed off her figure nicely, although she was scarcely aware of it.
The diners served themselves to the ingredients, and she made Xiaoming sit where he was, while she went back and forth bringing tea and food to the table until Xiaoming began to be a little uneasy at such attentiveness from his boss. The pair ate slowly, and Xiaoming accompanied it with a drink or two. It was a very enjoyable evening. Tianyi felt completely relaxed. With Xiaoming, she did not need to put on a front of any kind. She had not felt so relaxed for a very long time.
There was another surprise to come. ‘There’s somewhere I’d like to take you,’ Xiaoming said, when they had finished eating. When they were alone together, he always called her ‘elder sister’. She agreed without a moment’s thought. How mysterious, she felt, what fun.
It certainly was mysterious. A thick mist was descending. He drove north, a long, long way, for perhaps two hours, until they arrived at a hotel. When they went in, Tianyi realized that Xiaoming knew the hotel staff well — two hostesses greeted him warmly, took them to the bar in the foyer and served them tea. Xiaoming’s mood was as upbeat as if he was back in his home town. After their first cup of tea, he became very talkative. He told her about his family: his father was deputy departmental head of some organization, his mother lectured in accounting at a university. He had skipped school a lot as a child and so did not get into university. He was married but he reckoned that had been a big mistake, he had slipped up just once and made a girl pregnant, and had had to make things right by marrying her.