On the way home, Xiao Yanqiu was struck by a feeling that it had been a bizarre day. The streets felt strange, so did the colors of the streetlights, and the way people walked. She felt like crying, but had no idea what there was to cry about. It is hard to cry when you don’t know what for and that thought brought a lump to her throat; that lump, inexplicably, sent pangs of intense hunger through her body. It was an insane yearning, as if a dozen hands had risen inside her stomach and pulled at it in all directions. When she reached a small roadside eatery, she decided to stop. With an unfathomable sense of hostility, she walked in. Then, menu in hand, she chose only greasy, oily dishes, and when they came, she wolfed down three huge meatballs with a vengeance. And she didn’t stop there, but kept at it, chewing and swallowing until she could hardly breathe.
6
Chunlai continued to rehearse as before, giving away nothing in front of Xiao Yanqiu, except that she wouldn’t look her in the eye. She listened to what Yanqiu said and did what she told her to do, but she refused to make eye contact. There was a tacit understanding between them, not the sort that exists between a mother and daughter, but the fatal, unspeakable kind that can exist between women.
Xiao Yanqiu had never imagined that such awkwardness could develop in their relationship, could become an issue between them. It was difficult to resolve because it was so elusive. She was eating again, but was tired all the time. Spreading through her body, fatigue was now everywhere, although she could not identity the source. The thought of quitting occurred to her several times, but she could not bring herself to do it. Twenty years earlier, something similar had happened, and she had considered suicide, but was unable to go through with it. Now she reproached herself for that weakness, for not having died back then. The abrupt end of one’s golden years cuts more deeply than death. She had neither lived up to her desires, nor carried out her wish to quit; and now there was nothing she could do—wanting to cry, she had no tears to shed.
Chunlai acted as if nothing had happened, was always composed and relaxed; no wind blew, no grass swayed. She merely kept a proper distance from Xiao Yanqiu, who had come to fear her student, although she would never admit it. If the girl kept up this aloofness, Yanqiu felt, her own life would end; there could be no middle ground. What had been the point of standing at the rostrum, teaching for two decades, if Chang’e could not be reborn through Chunlai?
In the end, Xiao Yanqiu slept with the factory manager, a decision that finally put her mind at ease. It had always been a matter of when, not if. She didn’t feel one way or the other about it; it wasn’t a good thing, it wasn’t a bad thing, just something people have done since time immemorial. What sort of man was the factory boss, anyway? Someone who had enjoyed power and become wealthy, and she would not have been upset if he’d been a disgusting man or if he’d forced her to do it. As it turned out, neither was the case. She wasn’t shy about such things; better to be straightforward and frank than to act coy. If the show was to go on, then the audience had to feel it was worth their while; otherwise, why bother?
On the other hand, she didn’t feel especially good about what she did, and that gnawed at her. From the hours of the banquet up to the moment she put her clothes back on, the factory boss had played the role of a great man, a savior even. But when she was standing there naked, it seemed to her that he had no interest at all in her body. What exactly is a boss? At the time, pretty girls were like goods on a shelf; if something struck a boss’s fancy, he had only to signal with a nod and the clerk would take it down for him. So she stripped, and at that moment, the look in his eyes changed. The effects of her diet were plain to see and, as she could sense, plainly displeasing. He didn’t even try to hide his disapproval. At that instant, she’d have preferred a greedy, lecherous man, a sex fiend even, for then she’d simply have been selling her body. But he wasn’t. He was even more a man of stature and power as he climbed into bed—he leisurely lay down on the Simmons mattress and gestured for her to get on top. Once there, she did all the work. At one point, he seemed pleased with her efforts, for he moaned a couple of times, and muttered, “Oh yeah … oh, yeah.” What does that mean? she wondered. A few days later, he put on a foreign porn flick before she serviced him, and it dawned on her that he was parroting the sound the porn stars made. Where sex was concerned, he had gone global.
What they did could hardly be called making love; it wasn’t even sex. She was just trying to please a man, servicing a man, and she felt so debased that she thought about stopping. But sex is so toxic it doesn’t let you quit just because you want to. She had never felt that way when making love with Miangua, so she just went through the motions, reproaching herself the whole time: this woman is a slut, pure and simple, she chided herself.
It was drizzling as she made her way home. The wet streets glistened, filling her eyes with reflections and refractions from the taillights of passing cars. The glittery reds seemed overheated and unreal, creating a deep sense of desolation. Surrounded by kaleidoscopic lights dancing on the surface of the street, she felt she’d been defiled that evening. Though she couldn’t say how, exactly, she knew it wasn’t physical. At the head of the lane she bent over and tried to throw up, but succeeded only in producing dry heaves, terrible-sounding and foul-smelling noises.
By the time she arrived home, her daughter was already in bed. Miangua was sunk down in the sofa with the TV on, waiting for her. She avoided his eyes, unable to bring herself to look at him. Instead, she went straight to the bathroom, head down, to shower. But the thought of how such unusual behavior might make him suspicious led her instead to the toilet, where she sat down, but with no results from either end. She examined her body, front and back, to make sure there were no telltale signs before she felt confident enough to leave the bathroom. Despite her fatigue, she put on an energetic show so her husband would not detect anything. But he did. Wondering why she was in such high spirits, he asked, “Have you been drinking? Your face is red.”
Xiao Yanqiu’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re seeing things,” she said as lightly as she could manage.
“No, it is red,” he insisted.
The conversation was heading somewhere she didn’t like, so she changed the subject: “Where’s the girl?”
“Went to bed a while ago.”
She still couldn’t face him, for his gaze would have been her undoing. “Go on to bed. I’m going to take a shower.” She avoided the word, “sleep” but “go to bed” said the same thing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that he was rubbing his hands gleefully. For no apparent reason, she felt a stabbing pain in her chest.
Once in the shower, Xiao Yanqiu turned up the water until it nearly scalded her. That was what she wanted, to hurt herself. The pain, tangible and real, was mixed with a subtle pleasure, bordering on self-abuse. She let the water run as she rubbed herself vigorously, digging deep into her body with her fingers, as if wanting to extract something from it. Afterwards, she went into the living room to sit on the sofa, her skin bright red and tender. At around eleven o’clock Miangua walked in, wrapped in a towel. Obviously he hadn’t gone to bed. “You look preoccupied. Did you find a purse on the street?” he said, wearing a hopeful smile. No response. “Hey,” he said, incongruously, “it’s the weekend.”