The two men hadn’t heard Ningzhu’s complaint, but when Papa Qi took his leave that day she didn’t see him to the door as usual, but instead vanished into the bathroom. She came out only once he had left, and her expression showed she was annoyed. She said to Meng, ‘You two talked together the whole evening. What did you talk about? You talk to him almost every other day. What on earth do you find to talk about? How can there be that much to say?’
Meng, aware of his wife’s mood, said, ‘I don’t really know what we talk about. He wants to sit there and talk, so I just talk back. When there’s something to say, we talk, and when there isn’t, we sip tea. And while we’re sipping, we come up with another topic.’
Ningzhu frowned and said, ‘It’s very odd. He’s always saying he’s so busy, but if he is, why is he always sitting around our home all evening or afternoon?’
‘Are you annoyed with him?’ replied Meng. ‘He’s not just some run-of-the-mill acquaintance, you know, he did us a huge favour.’
‘You’re right, I shouldn’t be irritated. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but as soon as I hear that razor it just gets to me. It’s like a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing in my ears. If I’d known it would be like this, I’d have made him take it home when we first gave it to him.’
They were greatly in Qi’s debt. Except for their parents, their brothers and sisters, was there anyone as interested in their affairs? When the toilet flush broke, it was Papa Qi who fixed it. They felt the deepest gratitude towards him, realizing you could scour the earth and never find another friend like him. On the other hand, they developed an ever-deepening dread of Saturdays. On Friday evenings, when Meng went to bed, he would laugh hollowly and say, ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday. Papa Qi will be coming again.’
They had once supposed that Papa Qi had an ulterior motive, but the two of them quickly came to realize that to think that way was to do him an injustice. Meng was an automation programmer, Ningzhu an accountant; what use could they possibly be to him? They realized that Papa Qi was someone whose word was his deed; a person utterly devoid of ulterior motives, who paid them visits purely out of friendship. Neither Meng nor Ningzhu was odd or eccentric, and in their opinion making friends was a nice, harmless thing to do, but they didn’t understand why Papa Qi had to come every Saturday, and why, when he did, he had to stay quite so long.
Ningzhu hatched a variety of schemes to curtail the length of Papa Qi’s visits. Once, when Papa Qi and Meng were chatting in the living room, she carried out a pile of accounts books and explained that she was helping a coworker make a little cash by doing extra bookkeeping, so she had to have them ready for the next morning. Then she sat down right under their noses, thinking it would be seen as an obvious hint. But Papa Qi seemed totally undisturbed, and concentrated on the political joke he was telling. The joke was in fact very funny, but Ningzhu couldn’t bring herself to laugh. Instead she enquired of Meng, ‘Can’t you hear that the water on the stove is boiling? Go and pour it into the Thermos!’
Before he could get up, Papa Qi was already on his feet, saying, ‘I’ll do it.’ Then he rushed into the kitchen as if he was in his own house while Meng, caught between sitting and standing, said to his wife, ‘You’re going too far.’
Ningzhu rolled her eyes at him, picked up the things from the table and flounced into the bedroom. Once there, she had a private temper tantrum, throwing Meng’s pillow viciously to the floor and stamping wildly all over it. That was the day Papa Qi brought back the repaired wall clock. When he had gone Meng wanted to hang it on the wall, but Ningzhu wouldn’t allow it. Meng realized then that she was very angry with Papa Qi.
What could account for his behaviour? Did he really not see how they felt or was he merely pretending not to? Ningzhu sighed, ‘I practically ordered him out. How come he didn’t react?’
‘He’s the straightforward sort, that’s all. He’s not used to people beating about the bush,’ Meng replied. ‘Besides, it probably hasn’t occurred to him that he annoys you. He’s helped us with so many things without the slightest hope of getting anything in return. Why would it even cross his mind that he annoys you?’
‘Nothing in return?’ Ningzhu shouted. ‘He takes our time away, he takes our Saturdays away. Other people have seven days in a week, but we only have six. Isn’t that compensation enough?’
Meng could think of no immediate response. As a bookkeeper, Ningzhu had a way of presenting facts so clearly that others always saw her point. He chuckled for a moment, and then said to his wife, ‘If he’s really getting on your nerves, why don’t you just go home to your mother’s on Saturdays? I’ll stay here and keep him company. He’ll only be stealing my Saturday that way, so we’ll be cutting our losses by fifty per cent, right?’
The next Saturday closed in on them with quick steps. In the morning, Meng was shaken awake very early by Ningzhu and took fright when he saw her haggard face and bloodshot eyes. His first thought was that she must be ill, but Ningzhu said, ‘I’m not ill, I just haven’t slept. I’ve been thinking the whole time of what will happen when Papa Qi comes. I try to force myself not to think about it, but as soon as I close my eyes, I hear the sound of that damned razor.’ Then she said, ‘I can’t take it any more, really I can’t.’
Meng felt the issue had become a major concern and tried to console his wife, saying, ‘It’s not as bad as all that. Think of his good points. If you remember all the things he’s done for us, you won’t feel that way.’
‘I did think about them. I’ve thought all I can about his good points, but if he hadn’t helped us at all, wouldn’t we still have been fine? We could picnic on the mountain, we could go to the movies, or we could not go out at all and stay in reading, just the two of us. Wouldn’t that be nice? Why did he have to force himself between us?’
‘What do you mean, "force"? He’s our friend, after all.’
But Ningzhu was no longer interested in the topic of friendship, being steeped too far in resentment. ‘No,’ she said suddenly in a tone that brooked no argument, ‘you can’t stay at home today. You’re coming with me.’
Meng was the kind of man who cherished his wife, and though he was extremely reluctant to agree, in the end he was unable to dissuade her. Before leaving home at noon, he wrote a note informing Papa Qi that they had gone out. Ningzhu was against even this, and said, ‘If you say you’re busy today, what about tomorrow? He’ll come back tomorrow for sure.’
‘But won’t he notice we’re avoiding him on purpose?’
‘We want him to notice! Didn’t you say he was straight-forward? This time we won’t beat around the bush, we’ll let him find out. Maybe he is straightforward, but not to the point of idiocy!’
That night, when they returned home they discovered several cigarette butts outside the door. Meng counted them; there were six altogether. He picked them up one by one and threw them in the rubbish. A strange sensation accompanied the action, as if, bit by bit, he was picking up his friendship with Papa Qi and throwing that in the rubbish too. He felt empty inside, but strangely enough his movements seemed filled with exaggerated glee. Meng himself could not have explained his frame of mind that evening. All he could remember later was the first thing Ningzhu said after they got home: ‘Now he gets it! He won’t come back next week.’ And he also remembered how full of joy and hope her voice was.