“Yes.”
“I met someone who lives nearby the other day. Why don’t we see if we can all go for some hulutou?”
“Are you talking about the nun Huiming?”
“No, not her. She’s a Buddhist, so she can’t eat that.”
“My mistake,” Zhao apologized. “But since you have a new friend, I’d like to meet him.”
“I’ll go now and be right back.” He rode off.
The sound of the scooter at the gate brought a full head of hair poking above the ivy-covered wall. “Zhuang Laoshi!” came the cry. He saw that it was a smiling Tang Wan’er and wondered how she had discovered his presence so quickly. Her powdered face disappeared amid the greenery. “Wait a moment,” she said. “I’ll open the gate for you.”
He had arrived just as she was squatting in the toilet, looking at the watery smudges on the wall and imagining the people’s faces they formed; for some reason, the image of Zhuang Zhidie floated into her mind, and she blushed. It was then she heard the motor scooter at the gate. She stood up, flustered. It was Zhuang Zhidie, of all people. She rushed toward the gate, nervously fastening the belt of her baggy trousers.
Zhuang watched her through a narrow opening. But instead of opening the gate, she ran back inside the house. The sight of her ample behind sluing from side to side sent a tingle through him.
Tang Wan’er hurriedly touched up her hair, added some rouge to her cheeks, and put on lipstick before rushing out to open the gate. Then she stood in the gateway, bestowing upon Zhuang the most fetching gaze she could manage. He looked into her eyes, in which a tiny human figure appeared. It was his reflection. “Is Zhou Min not home?”
“He left early this morning, saying he needed to go to the printers. Won’t you come in, Zhuang Laoshi? You shouldn’t be out in the hot sun without a hat.” Zhuang experienced a moment of confusion. Should Zhou’s absence be a disappointment or a cause for hope? Bag in hand, he walked in. Once inside, he sat down. She brought him tea and cigarettes and turned on the fan. “Zhuang Laoshi,” she said, “we can’t thank you enough. Most people never have a chance to actually meet you, while we’ve been the recipients of your favors.”
“What favors might those be?”
“You gave us all this tableware, not only more than we can use now, but more than we’ll be able to use once we get settled.”
He had forgotten about having the things delivered. He smiled. “That was nothing. What I get for a short essay was enough to pay for everything.”
She moved a stool up, sat down, and crossed her legs. “One short essay for all this? Zhou Min says that publishers pay by the word, punctuation included. Just think how much you could get for the punctuation alone in one of your books.”
“No one would pay for a book with only periods and commas,” he said with a laugh.
She laughed, too, as she raised the collar of her blouse, which had slid down, revealing a bit of cleavage. Zhuang’s heart raced, and he made a conscious effort not to look there.
“I’d like to ask you something, Zhuang Laoshi. Do you fashion the characters in your books after real people?”
“That’s a hard question to answer. I simply make up many of them.”
“How can you create them in such detail? I’ve said to Zhou Min that Zhuang Laoshi is a man of rich and acute emotions, and his wife is lucky to have such a husband.”
“She has said that if she comes back in another life, she does not want to be a writer’s wife.”
Surprised to hear that, Tang Wan’er paused, then lowered her eyes and said, “Then she doesn’t know how lucky she is or how unpleasant it is to be to be the wife of a coarse, unrefined man.” A tear fell from her eye, making Zhuang wonder about the woman’s background. He had never seen her husband, but he could imagine what he must be like.
“You’re a lucky woman,” Zhuang consoled her. “I can tell that from your appearance. Believe me, you are not ill-fated. The past is the past. Things are fine now, aren’t they?”
“What kind of life is this? Xijing is nice, but we need to settle down. You can tell fortunes, what do you see in mine?” She laid a fair hand on his knee. He took the hand and experienced strange feelings as he revealed signs of a woman’s status based upon what he had read in a physiognomy text: a round, smooth forehead foretold high status, a wrinkled one low; a high nose high, a sunken one low; lustrous hair high, dull hair low; an arched foot high, a flat one low. The woman examined each of these on herself, and what she saw pleased her. What puzzled her, however, was what counted as an arched foot. Zhuang reached out but stopped before touching her and simply pointed to a spot below the ankle. She took off her shoe and raised her foot until it nearly touched his face. He was surprised by how lithe she was and noticed what a dainty foot she had. The transition from calf to foot was flawless, her instep so high it could accommodate an apricot. Her toes were as delicate as bamboo tips, starting from the long big toe and progressing down to the short little one, which was wiggling at that moment. Zhuang had never seen such a lovely foot, and he nearly let out a shout. After she put her shoe and stocking back on, he asked what size shoe she wore.
“A thirty-five,” she said. “Too small for someone as big as me, all out of proportion.”
With a laugh, he stood up. “Then these belong to you.” He took the shoebox from his bag and handed it to her.
“They’re beautiful. But they must cost a fortune.”
“You expect to pay for them? No, they’re yours, try them on.”
Without stopping to thank him, she put them on and flung her old shoes under the bed.
Zhuang was in a wonderful mood when he returned to the restaurant, where Zhao and Huang greeted him not with open arms, but with a complaint for being gone so long and not bringing his new friend with him. He did not share their desperate hunger. He wanted a drink.
During the meal that followed, the three men drank a great deal. The top half of the bottle was accompanied by cordial, even affectionate, talk, while the bottom half brought out a more muscular dialogue. They ordered a second bottle and halfway through were ranting and raving. When they finished off the final half, marked by silence, it was late afternoon. Zhuang got up to leave.
“I’ll see you home,” Zhao Jingwu said.
Zhuang waved him off and stumbled out to the Magnolia. He climbed on and rode off, still sober enough to spot misspellings on shop signs along the way. He made it back to the house on Shuangren fu Avenue, walked inside, and immediately fell asleep, not waking till night had fallen and Niu Yueqing called him to dinner. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Not interested in eating, he said he would spend the night at the Literary Federation compound.
“You don’t have to do that, you can spend the night here,” his wife said.
Zhuang hemmed and hawed, saying he had an article to write.
“You can go if you want,” Niu Yueqing said, “but I’m staying here tonight.”
Zhuang understood what she was telling him, but he needed a quiet place to write. With a pained look on his face, he sighed and walked out the door.
The fading sunlight created a haze. Birds on the drum tower set up a din as wonton and kebab peddlers turned on lanterns and fired up stoves in front of the gate. Children crowded around an old man selling cotton candy. Curious as to how it was made, Zhuang walked over and watched the man spoon sugar into the spinning head and saw it emerge as fine, cottony threads. When he looked up, he spied Aunty Liu and her milk cow walking up to the gateway. After supplying milk to her regular customers, she and her cow usually rested until the night cooled enough for them to walk home. When the cow saw him, she mooed loudly, sending children scrambling away in fright. “You haven’t bought any milk in days, Mr. Zhuang,” Aunty Liu said. “Aren’t you staying in the compound?”