By the time dusk fell, they were still locked in argument. Old Hep’s eyes glowered with rage. He leaned over and snarled, ‘If you don’t stop clinging to me, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.’
The textile worker looked up at him calmly from the plastic sheet. Her body was scarred with the wounds he’d inflicted on her in the past. A few months before, he had kicked her abdomen so hard she lost control of her bowels. She was still having to take medicine for it. Her stomach was also affected, and whenever she ate anything cold she suffered terrible cramps.
‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’ Her eyes looked sore. Today was her nineteenth birthday. She calculated that she had been with him for two years and seven months. Their love story had reached its 940th day. ‘I wanted you to take me out to a restaurant tonight.’ She stroked Old Hep’s shoe and, sensing no resistance, proceeded to move her hands up his calf. She knew how to win him over. When he was in a bad mood, she only had to touch his flies and he would calm down and apologise to her. Because she was taller than him, she always made sure she was sitting down before she touched him, to give him a sense of superiority. Today, she crouched at his feet, then slowly climbed onto her knees. She looked up at him, offering her lips to his, but he pushed her head down to his opened flies, then grabbed her hair and thrust her head back and forth over his groin. Her stomach clenched, her throat was so filled with his engorged flesh she could barely breathe. At last his hands loosened their grip. She slumped to the ground, curled herself up on the plastic sheet and choked on the fluid in her mouth.
‘Don’t cough so loudly!’ the editor yelled, pulling his trousers up.
Night had fallen by now. The white plastic sheet reflected the pale moonlight and scattered it softly over the girl’s body. She tried hard not to vomit. Her puffed eyelids became even more swollen.
‘You bitch!’ the editor swore from the back of his throat. He seemed as though he were about to collapse. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ Ever since he had first slapped her on the face, he’d stopped whispering sweet words in her ear, or buying her collections of poetry. Instead, he’d taken to biting and pinching her, and when he saw her mouth contort with pain, he felt pleased and light-headed. She put up with his tortures, as though she were enduring some trial of love. Sometimes, if she was lucky, Old Hep would give her a quick cuddle afterwards to cheer her up. Tonight she was still waiting for this longed-for embrace.
The editor crouched down beside her and said: ‘So you’re getting an abortion. Is that settled then?’
‘No,’ she said, wiping the sperm from her face. ‘I want you to take me out to a restaurant. It’s my birthday today.’
‘To hell with your birthday! Are you having that abortion?’ He leaped to his feet and kicked her shins. ‘Tell met — are you getting that abortion, or not?’
The textile worker remained silent and refused to surrender.
‘Open your legs!’ he shouted. The textile worker turned round and looked up at him. Her face was even paler than the moonlight. The editor kicked her in the stomach. She shuddered with pain, and pressed her hands over her abdomen. A howl roared from the pit of her stomach, but emerged from her throat as a timid hiss. Gasping for air, she retreated to the wall that bore Chairman Mao’s slogan. The editor walked over to her and pinched her tear-drenched face.
‘I’ll stay with you until the day I die,’ she moaned from somewhere deep inside her.
‘Get an abortion first, then I’ll listen to your crap.’ The editor tried to adopt the authoritative tone he used when answering his subordinates’ questions in the office. This tone of voice commanded obedience. It was used by his leader, his leader’s leader, and every leader above him. Unfortunately, his throat was too narrow to replicate the husky and mellifluous tones produced by the secretary of the municipal Party committee.
‘I’ll give you a hundred yuan,’ he promised, hoping that this would persuade her.
The textile worker was still trembling, her head bowed low. But when she heard those words, she broke into tears again and sobbed, ‘Now that I’ve slept with you, I must stay with you for ever.
‘That’s just what your mother’s taught you,’ he sneered.
‘You said yourself that you didn’t want me to go with any other man.’
‘That was two years ago! I’ve been telling you for months that it’s time you found another man and got married.’
‘I can’t! You’re the only intellectual I know.’
‘Some workers have a bit of culture too, if you look hard.’
‘I only want a writer. If I’m not with a writer, my life will be over. I could never fall in love with an ordinary man. And as for your troubled past and unfortunate family background — they make me love you all the more.’
‘I made all that up,’ the editor confessed, kicking his skinny legs about nervously.
‘I don’t believe you. Why would anyone make up a story about being sent to prison?’
‘I didn’t really go to prison. I was arrested once by the Young Pioneers during the Cultural Revolution, but nothing serious happened. They just locked me up in an office for a couple of hours.’
‘Does that mean that your promotion to editor on the back of private study was invented as well?’
‘All of it,’ the editor laughed, gloating over her misfortune. ‘I’m a nobody. A talentless fool!’ he chirped, his legs now perfectly still. ‘Just hurry up and tell me,’ he added in a harsher tone, ‘are you having that abortion or not?’
She paused for a moment, and said: ‘I’m not really pregnant — I just wanted to see you, I wanted you to spend some time with me. Nobody pays me any attention at work, they all swear at me behind my back. Besides, it’s my birthday today.’ She lifted her face towards the moonlight. As the tears sparkled down her cheeks you could see hidden, behind her tangled fringe, two dark eyes filled with terror and love.
‘You lied to me!’ he spluttered. He imagined pounding her to death. The ground was littered with loose bricks and tiles. He considered drowning her — the sea was just a few minutes’ walk away. He stared at her face. This steadfast, stubborn girl had drained him of all his energy. Nothing could shake her resolve. He grabbed a bunch of her hair and shouted, ‘Open your mouth! Open it!’
As he unzipped his flies again, the textile worker opened her mouth, and staring blankly into the sky, she said, ‘When you’ve had your piss, take me to a restaurant and buy me some birthday noodles. I beg you, just this once …’
At night, after he had massaged his wife to sleep, he would stare at the traces of lipstick around her gaping mouth, and think things through in his mind. It was a precious moment for him. Of course, it was impossible to write novels or poetry during this time, but at least he could relax and enjoy the rare minutes of freedom afforded by his wife’s sleep. She was more talented than him, and came from a better family. The day he first met her his pulse had quickened a beat, and had only slowed down since then when he was asleep.
There was a reason for his fear. He had once witnessed his father-in-law, the political commissar, slap the female novelist on her face. The noise of this slap had reverberated through his head, almost causing him to lose his mind. After that, he was always petrified that his wife might decide to slap him in the same way. Before he first hit the textile worker, violence had terrified him. He had grown up in a quiet household that smelled of soap and Chinese medicine. His father was about the same size as him, maybe a little shorter, and had white, delicate hands which, when he moved them, looked as elegant as a lady’s. He would never have dreamed of using them to hurt anyone. When his father was targeted during the Cultural Revolution, his family cut themselves off from others. Only his mother dared raise her voice at home. When she was happy, she would sing her favourite song — ‘The Tibetan Serfs Sing with Joy at their Peaceful Liberation’. When his father returned from work, he would play cards and Chinese chess with him. Had it not been for the Cultural Revolution, Old Hep would have finished his university course, and would probably have been a university professor by now.