‘He’s entered the realm of emptiness,’ ‘Old Qigong’ explained to the art director who was attempting to grow a goatee. ‘His soul has left his body. He’s as dazed as you were that night you got drunk and pulled your trousers down.’
Although the editor’s daydreams were very intense, they seldom lasted more than twenty minutes.
When it first became obvious that he was daydreaming at home, the female novelist made fun of him. ‘Have you lost your ears, you moron?’ she laughed when he failed to respond to her question. At that moment, he was staring at the crockery in the sink and the water gushing from the tap, while in his mind he was climbing a tree to pick from its branches the candyfloss he loved to eat as a child. When he failed to answer her a second time, his wife stormed into the kitchen, grabbed a carrot, and with the might of an army general, stabbed it into his back. Immediately, he leapt from the branches, crashed into the trunk, then landed in a confused heap on the kitchen floor. He woke up to find himself sprawled on a pile of potatoes, looking up at his wife with a ladle in his hands.
From then on, he was careful to dream with just one side of his brain, and use the other side to carry out his duties in the real world. Although he couldn’t always avoid some overlap between one world and the other, he usually managed to keep things under control.
Then one day, the textile worker finally found her way to his flat. She had tried to follow him home for days, but since he always took a different route, she often lost track of him. Old Hep was not in when she knocked. She considered leaving straight away, but the female novelist could sense that something was up, and that the young woman was embroiled in some way with Old Hep. When she asked her how they knew each other, the textile worker burst into tears and refused to say a word. The novelist promptly shooed her away, and decided to wait until Old Hep’s return before commencing her investigation.
‘Did you sleep with that girl or not?’ she asked her husband as he walked through the door.
He looked up at her with terror. He knew how fierce she could be, and knew that what stood behind her was even more ferocious. Her commissar father could beat the life out of him. He saw her standing before him, legs apart, as steady as a suspension bridge, and he confessed everything.
The textile worker was immediately interrogated by her leaders. They criticised her ‘petit-bourgeois liberalism’ and told her that she would be denied promotion for two years. Her supervisor took advantage of the situation and ordered her to straighten her perm and stop wearing flared trousers. The next day she turned up at the factory in plaits and baggy slacks. But her spirit was still strong, and as soon as she clocked off after lunch, she let her hair down again, put on some lipstick, and made her way to Old Hep’s office.
‘I don’t care about anything any more,’ she whined, as she chased him around his desk.
‘If my wife catches sight of you again, my life will be over.’ His leaders had passed by that morning to warn him to pay attention to his lifestyle. ‘You must leave now. I have a meeting to go to,’ he lied.
‘But there’s something I must tell you.’
She followed him out of the building. They walked through the crowd, one in front of the other, as though they were strangers.
‘What did you tell your factory leaders?’ he asked.
‘I admitted that we’ve been sleeping together for years,’ she said to the nape of his neck, desperately trying to keep up with him.
Old Hep felt as though his head were about to explode. His steps became heavy.
She followed him closely, refusing to fall behind. ‘I’m not afraid of them.’
‘Go away, will you, just go away!’ he hissed through his teeth.
She stood still for a moment, but he kept walking.
When he heard her catching up with him, he said: ‘If I see you again, I’ll kill you!’ As he was about to run away, he heard something that made him stop dead in his tracks. He had clearly heard her utter the words: ‘I’m pregnant!’
These words filled him with a mixture of grief and anger. ‘Walk in front of me,’ he said, without looking back. ‘I’ll meet you in our place behind the chemical plant.’ Then he slowed down and watched her lumpish body overtake him then waddle away through the crowd towards the sea. His heart jumped. In the editorial department today, he had sensed that something was not right. He had recently taken a shine to a young student from a provincial university who attended his literary study classes at the Municipal Cultural Department. She had a large bottom, and a big round face that smiled all the time like a clay doll. When he’d telephoned the Cultural Department that morning to ask her out for a date, the official who picked up the phone said she wasn’t there. When he asked him to tell her to bring him the manuscript of her novel, the officer slammed the phone down. At the time, he just swore at the officer for being so rude, but now he realised that someone had been spreading rumours.
When his wife had informed the textile worker’s leaders of the situation, they had promised to treat the case in confidence, but news had obviously leaked out. The bastards. Now everyone knew. As he trailed at a distance behind the textile worker’s motherly frame, his legs seemed to grow weaker and weaker.
‘So you want a baby now do you? Bitch!’ he cursed under his breath, watching the textile worker advance through the crowd. His stomach felt heavy and swollen. He followed her down an alley and saw her disappear through a hole in the wall. He continued a few paces, deliberately passing the cavity, then turned back again and jumped in.
Standing inside the crumbling carcass of the abandoned factory, he could hear the waves of the sea bash against the cement embankment below. Sometimes when he came here, he could smell the rancid effluent that poured from the chemical plant behind, especially at dusk when the stench evaporated from the damp earth or was carried over in the evening breeze. In the sweltering heat of summer, the textile worker always brought a tin of tiger balm and gently rubbed the ointment onto Old Hep’s wizened legs to keep the insects away. He could now hear her walking towards him, treading over the loose tiles that lay scattered on the ground. He liked this secret spot. Although it was infested with mosquitoes, the place was usually empty. Trucks from the suburbs would drive past on the road outside from time to time, and people occasionally jumped through the hole in the wall to have a piss in the yard, but no one ventured inside the ruined building. He and the textile worker always met in a room in the middle that had probably served as the factory’s control centre. The three walls that were still standing reached slightly above their heads, and the floor was covered with a smooth layer of cement. When the diesel engine in the chemical plant next door shut down for the day, they would sit back and breathe the salty breeze, and imagine themselves in some beautiful seaside villa. He saw that the textile worker had pulled out the plastic sheet they kept in the corner under a brick, and was now sitting on it. On the crumbling wall behind her, a faded Maoist slogan read: WE MARCH FORWARD, FIRED BY OUR COMMON REVOLUTIONARY GOAL.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said to him softly.
‘Sit down, you say!’ Old Hep knew that the chemical plant hadn’t yet closed for the day, so he was careful to keep his voice down. ‘How did you manage to get pregnant? I haven’t touched you for three months.’
‘Well I am,’ she said defiantly. ‘It happened ages ago.’
They both set out their demands. Old Hep promised to find her a backstreet clinic that provided quick abortions for unmarried women. The textile worker said she would only agree to an abortion on condition that he continue to see her afterwards.