Rumors began to fly; people were talking about which construction company would be the first to fall. They talked glibly with jealous overtones about Lin Xigeng, who they believed would easily ride the storm due to the money he’d made from a large quantity of construction projects that Masao had sold.
Yet, for a few billions that he had thought were lost, Lin had gotten rid of someone with foresight who had made him rich. People in the business criticized Lin with contempt.
Yinghong knew, even before it happened, that the incident with Masao would cause irreparable damage to her relationship with Lin, but she was powerless to do anything about it.
Following the government’s measures to rein in the real estate market, housing prices began to drop, even with the immediate worries that the train-engine industry would no longer stimulate and create new prospects, which would result in a general economic downturn. However, the island nation, in the way it has always weathered the assault of typhoons and earthquakes, was equally resilient in terms of its economy, similarly adaptable to the soaring trend and the spiral downturn.
Some experts began to argue that no other country could go through such drastic fluctuations in housing prices without suffering major damage to its economy. In other words, the island that had seen overnight wealth from exports not only created an economic miracle but also extended the miracle into its ability to withstand a recession.
While the real estate business alternated between sudden highs and lows, the newly planted roadside golden shower trees steadfastly followed seasonable changes and burst into bloom with clusters of golden flowers. The new heights gained over the previous year sent the flowers higher into the sky, above and around the space below them. When the rains came, the assault of water and wind showered the ground with a blanket of golden flower petals.
True to his expansive nature, Lin suddenly stopped calling or coming to see her.
She waited in despair.
Winter arrived, bringing nonstop rain to Taipei again; gloomy rain clouds hung around northern Taiwan seemingly for an eternity. It rained for nearly three weeks with no sign of letting up. The sky appeared to have a hole in it, as rain continued to fall, never a downpour, but a lingering, unending drizzle that wove into a tight net that enshrouded the city in a basin that tended to retain moisture. The leaden sky pressed down on city streets submerged in grayish rain.
Yinghong was sitting on the second floor, looking through the French door at vivacious wild grass that bowed under the weight of the never-ending rain and collapsed into the water, where it began to rot. The long, thin blades were yellow with mud, emitting a faint, putrid odor. It had been nearly a week since she last left the house, but this time she did not stay inside waiting for the phone to ring. Instead, she spent most of her days sitting there, facing the yard, where the vegetation rotted in the rain.
In a state where everything seemed to have stopped, I waited, day and night, for something that was unknown even to me.
I felt no acute pain or sorrow; gone was the piercing heartache I’d experienced when Lin Xigeng broke up with me after we’d just met. I’d thought I’d have the same nightmare again, that I’d have the strange bodily pain, but that did not happen; I did not feel the unbearable ache from his departure that I’d felt upon wakening back then.
In the daytime I busied myself with minor household chores, emptying out a closet and discovering, to my surprise, many items I didn’t recall buying. Then I lost interest; I lacked the will to put them back and merely left them strewn around the room, waiting for a grumbling Mudan to tidy up.
Most of the time I sat alone, with no thought of listening to music. Occasionally, I’d open a book, but I got nothing out of it even though I understood every single line of text. My gaze flitted over page after page, until I realized that I had no idea what I’d been reading. My shock and fear would then prompt me to fling the book down.
I was in a stagnant state of nonaction, feeling no pain but strangely devoid of thought. When night fell, I’d turn on the TV as usual, and it took me several nights to see how TV news programs seemed to leave the least impression on me. There were no connections between the ever-changing, fast-paced segments, making it hard for me to follow, and then I’d be completely lost. I’d look but not really see the images, be they continuing battles in faraway places or pile-ups on local highways; when the sound was muted, what was left before my eyes was a series of flickering shadows rolling over one another, mystifying and unreal.
It turned out that TV drama was easier to follow, particularly the prime-time serials at eight, which tended to drag on forever; I could make the connections in the story line even if I caught only a few minutes of the plot development.
And so I became a couch potato. I’d watch every night till there was nothing on, when I’d be so exhausted I could not only finally get the sleep I so badly needed, but I could sleep through the night. I devoted a lot of time to sleeping. In addition to nine or more hours each night, I took afternoon naps, not because I was tired but because I needed it. I simply longed to sleep, to enter oblivion.
After sleeping away more days than I could count, I began to feel a hint of dizziness and nausea. It could have been a result of too much sleep, but it could also have been a terrifying sign that a life really was growing inside me. I didn’t bother to find out. I was constantly reminded, though in a dizzying, delayed fashion, that keeping the life inside meant that I’d naturally have an unbroken connection with Lin. He was not irresponsible; put differently, he would consider taking care of a child a simple enough task that he could not possibly refuse.
So what I needed was to wait, to wait for the child to be born. In fact I didn’t even have to wait that long. It would only take a while before the growth of the baby became visible and he’d come forward to claim responsibility. A set amount of child support was without question; he might even lend his last name to the child.
In my hazy state, in which everything seemed to progress with dull slowness, I was actually thinking that I finally understood why women desire or believe that a child can keep a relationship together. Maybe that is the last assurance we women can have. But even when I was most addled and confused, I could sense hidden somewhere in a secret corner a different, clearheaded self declaring unequivocally in a determined voice that:
This is absolutely not what I have in mind.
A week passed before Zhu Yinghong picked up the phone; through the operator and a personal assistant, she reached a clearly apprehensive Teddy Chang and told him succinctly that she wanted to see him.
They met at their usual place around noon, a small coffee shop in an alley, which was not a trendy place for fashionable Taipei residents. Devoid of taste and special character, it was more a community haunt selling simple set meals and sandwiches. She had spotted the place when Teddy took her to a nearby hotel in the past, and had been in the habit of arriving early and sitting down for a cup of coffee. The shop hence became a midway station on her way to a tryst with Teddy, a node between her office and the hotel, like a turning point, where she switched from one need to another.
Teddy was slightly late when he saw her smoking in a corner. She looked visibly thinner and her deep-set eyes seemed gloomier, darker and more shadowy, as if her unease could send her fleeing at any moment. He asked her how she was doing and why she wanted to see him. Her eyes turned misty, but he wasn’t sure whether that was caused by the smoke from the infrequent cigarette in her hands or from tears.