Meng had always felt that Xi was extremely talented, surely able to beat any of the newly fashionable women writers hands down. That is, until he gave Drowning a careful read and realized with alarm that this Yang Tianyi, whom he’d never heard of, posed a real threat to his lover. Of course, he could tell from her photograph that she was not a patch on Xi to look at, but in her style and depth of knowledge, she was far superior. There was scarcely anything in her writing that you could find fault with.
Over breakfast one day, Meng warned Xi: ‘You better watch out for that Tianyi!’ Xi was sceptical at first. After all, that silly woman hadn’t written a word for years, why would she be a threat? But age and experience count for a lot and before long, Meng had convinced Xi that Tianyi was having a very bad effect on Meng’s entire strategy for Xi. So Xi sat down in their bedroom and wrote that anonymous letter on Meng’s instructions. Meng photocopied Drowning for her himself, tracked down all the bits that referred to the body, cut them out and pasted them into the letter.
Tianyi never in her wildest dreams suspected Xi. After all, the girl had always been so smilingly unstinting in her admiration. Around then, Tianyi was delighted to receive an invitation, together with another woman writer, to a literary get-together on ‘Writing in the new age’, to be held in a well-known hotel on the outskirts of Beijing. It was Xi who sent the invitation letter and called her to reassure her cheerfully that she did not need to prepare anything. They would just enjoy themselves.
Xi had appeared on the literary scene at a quiet time. Not to put too fine a point on it, she was not a very good writer yet; her writing was limited mainly to impassioned outbursts which expressed ‘her reality’. Her language was full of the sort of malice endemic in an age of intellectual sterility. It just so happened that the Foreign Languages Institute was holding a get-together, and she took the opportunity to invite Tianyi and her fellow writer to go and ‘enjoy themselves’.
And when evening came, Tianyi did enjoy herself. She may have been a good bit older than the others, but she was young at heart. She seized the mike and sang karaoke with gusto. In fact, she would have gone on all night if the karaoke hall had not shut its doors. But the instant she got home, the phone rang. It was the other woman writer, sounding gloomy: ‘Tianyi, you’re such a fool. Why are you letting yourself be Xi’s doormat?’ Tianyi was taken aback. Then the woman went on: ‘Can’t you see she’s just using us as a prop for her literary career? She just wants someone to hold up her smelly feet for her! Didn’t you see how she told us not to prepare anything, but she prepared very well and that certainly made her look good!’ Tianyi could not believe her ears. This woman was just being bitchy, surely! She fobbed her off with a few words, then hung up. A few days later, Xi called: a well-reputed magazine from somewhere in China had asked for an article about her, and Xi would like Tianyi to write it. Tianyi did not raise any objections.
It was only when she came to write it that she began to worry: this was a really difficult article to write. They had just had a good time together. Good feelings could not be put into words. She was in a quandary.
As she racked her brains, she took a look at what one critic had written about Xi’s writing. Normally, he did not pull his punches, but for some reason, he had treated Xi with kid gloves, in fact had heaped praise on her. As the months went by, she realized that all the critics, even the ones who savaged writers’ work, behaved like pussycats where Xi was concerned. She certainly was a superb manipulator — she did not use money or sex, it was just that every time she opened her mouth, out came a barbed comment. And just one comment would do it, no matter how astute and savvy the intended victim was. Not a few seasoned authors, no matter how much of life they had seen and lived, fell right into the palm of Xi’s little hand in this way. It all goes to show that sometimes it is someone quite mediocre who most easily makes people drop their guard.
Tianyi was a conscientious woman. In those days, there was no internet so she went to the library to look things up. She spent a whole three or four days there, even skipping meals, and finally found something to write for Xi’s article. She mailed it to her. Xi was delighted with the article, and called simply to say: ‘Tianyi, you’re a darling!’ To herself, she thought, but did not say: ‘Tianyi, you’re a fool!’
The literary world adores newcomers, and of course that included Xi. Once Tianyi’s article was published, and some laudatory reviews, Xi ascended to the pinnacle of the pyramid that was the world of letters. But Xi, however brilliant, was comparatively new to all this and was forever calling on Tianyi to help her sort out this or that. Xi was child-like in her ability to enjoy herself and forget her worries. Once, Xi got very drunk at a meeting of the Writers’ Association in some enterprise. On their way home, the boss of the corporation made a pass at her. Tianyi, sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, happened to turn around and was aghast: she could see quite clearly the man’s hand kneading Xi’s breast and Xi’s hand had a firm grip on his prick. Tianyi instantly felt she wanted to stop playing this game.
Then a letter arrived from Tianyue in America. She needed her sister’s help, she wrote, for an old college friend, Ke. Tianyue had met him again just before she left, he was now the CEO of a big company. And he was in trouble. Could she do a horoscope reading for him?
Ke turned up that very day in his Ford car, an impressively tall figure who greeted Lian enthusiastically and shook him by the hand. The pair began to talk of the old days, when they were in the Red Guards together, in the rebels’ faction, all the people who ranked above and below them. Lian, of course, had ranked below Ke.
There were few top-class places to eat back then, but without further ado, Ke put Tianyi, Lian and Niuniu in his car and drove them off to the Hong Hong Gourmet Emporium, the most famous restaurant in town and virtually inaccessible to ordinary folk. He ordered platefuls of delicacies like braised shark’s fin with rice and puffer fish. Tianyi was mortified when Niuniu demolished the lot, and then asked for more but Ke ordered another portion without hesitation. Tianyi secretly wondered whether she would have to pay the bill for her greedy son.
Ke did not beat about the bush: he needed Tianyi do a reading for him from the I Ching. Tianyi felt she was nowhere near good enough but the more she demurred, the more the other two told her to stop being modest. They had every confidence in her, they insisted. And so she agreed. She was always anxious not to let people down and put her best efforts into readings although she really was only a beginner. Nevertheless, the results sometimes astonished her. Take Ke for instance, she knew almost nothing about him but as soon as she cast the trigrams, everything became clear: Ke was currently facing a crisis and needed to get as far away as possible. When she told him, he fixed her with an intense stare, and was silent for a long time.
Soon after, Ke decided to quit and go to America. ‘Do you want to come?’ he asked Tianyi. He made it sound it sound as if they were popping off to somewhere in Beijing. She nodded. And a month later, she bought her air ticket. It was all extraordinarily simple. She thought of all the rushing around she had had to do a few years before, to get her passport. It dawned on her that everything had its time. No matter how hard you tried, if it was not the right time for something to happen, then it would not. And when the time was right, then things went through quite naturally.