When he remembered the cold expression on her face, his skin crawled. He blushed when he thought of the sentimental love letters he had written in the past. He knew that the women who had received them were now waddling contentedly down the street, clutching their pregnant bellies, while the men who had sent them were returning to him on the sly, asking him to pen letters to their new mistresses.
‘Love is a waste of time,’ the old woman told him. ‘If that writer wants to marry my daughter, he should come and take a look at me first. I’m the image of who she will be nine thousand days from now. When he sees me, his love-sickness will vanish like a puff of smoke.’
The old woman mumbled on to him about how young people today confuse heartache with suffering. She said they are two different things: real suffering courses through the body like blood, but heartache is a fleeting reaction to a petty lovers’ tiff. She said if one feels elated with the joys of love, then it means one has not delved fully enough into one’s partner’s soul. Finally, after she told him that the daughter who ignored all her letters was planning to perform a public suicide, she cried: ‘She really is my reincarnation! Nobody can stand in her way. She’s planning to hire a tiger from the zoo and feed herself to it. If she returns to this world, we’ll form an unbeatable team.’
After the old woman walked away, the street writer had to tap his head before he could think clearly again. That evening, he returned to his shed in the entrance passage of an apartment block in the centre of town, and tried to sort out the old woman’s muddled thoughts. (Apparently the shed’s previous owners — a mother and son who ran a private crematorium business — had taken a trip to the suburbs one day, and hadn’t been seen again since.) He focused his mind; the light bulb hanging above him shone on his balding head. Although he lacked the old woman’s sharp eyes that could see through the vanity of this world, the grey matter inside his skull had been taxed so hard over the years that wiry hairs jutted from his nostrils.
He had a face that indicated he was not suited to manual labour. It was heart-shaped, and as white as the moon. His lips were as moist and red as those of a young girl — although this was probably an early sign of tuberculosis. The whites of his eyes were yellow. He often smiled for no reason. When he was listening to the old woman’s story, and later writing the letter for her, the smile had never once left his face.
As he sat beneath the light bulb staring at the brick wall, his thoughts turned to Chi Hui, a girl he had been writing to for one of his clients. Although he developed strong feelings for almost every woman he wrote to, it was to Chi Hui that his mind returned most frequently. Thinking about her, he felt his spirit take flight like a plastic bag dancing in the wind. In the past, thoughts of her made him reflect on maple leaves in spring, the smell of foreign cigarettes, the similarity between urethras and the gutters on the streets, or a couple embracing casually as they emerge from the public latrines. But the old woman’s words had upset his usual pattern of thought, and his mind became confused.
(In the late dusk, the professional writer often sees the street writer stumbling across the intersection in the centre of town. It always strikes him that he has the eyes of an insecure youth, the balding head of a middle-aged man, the wrinkled brow of a sixty-year-old and the body of a child. He has no idea what’s going through his mind, but he longs to find out. Perhaps this is why he always keeps an eye out for him on the streets.)
‘The Absurd is more real than life itself,’ the street writer scribbled on the corner of his newspaper.
The letters he composed revealed nothing of his true character. In each one, he adopted a different voice. He could take on the role of a lawyer, a schoolgirl, a peasant, or a widow. He could be anyone, no matter what age or gender. If one had to fix an identity to him, one would have to say he was a composite of all the roles he assumed. Each letter was a new beginning for him, an opportunity to try out a new persona. Sometimes he felt as though he were skating on ice, in random overlapping circles. He knew where he had started from, but had no idea where he was going.
In the morning, he lodged complaints on behalf of plaintiffs, in the afternoon he wrote rebuttals for the defendants. He would write passionate professions of love, but would often have to pen the rejection notes that followed. He couldn’t help feeling sad for the people whose love he helped turn down. He lived his life through his letters. Late at night when all was quiet, the words he had written would chum inside him like grass in a cow’s stomach. Among the piles of paper on his desk was the draft of a letter he had written the week before, which started: ‘Dear Comrade Chi Hui, It’s time we put an end to our relationship (although it saddens me deeply) …’ The street writer remembered having to beg his client to allow him to add the phrase in brackets. He had written thirty-five love letters to Chi Hui for this client, and had experienced the anxiety of the first declaration of love, the steamy passion that ensued, opposition from the girl’s father and work unit, the attempted transfer of residency permits, a brief affair with a third party, a weepy reconciliation, and now the final break-up. He was tortured by the thought of the pain he had caused Chi Hui. He felt a sudden urge to betray his feckless young client, and disclose to Chi Hui all the young man’s hidden faults. What troubled him most was that the day after he wrote the final letter to Chi Hui, this fool asked him to write a letter to a new girl.
He turned the draft letter over, picked up his pen and wrote: ‘I can see your sad little face, your raven-black hair blowing in the wind. There are tears in your eyes. How could he have broken up with you so cruelly? Do you realise that I helped him write that letter to you? You should see his handwriting — it’s a disgrace! You have been in my thoughts all year. I have read every letter you sent back to him, my darling.’ (Even though he wrote love letters for a living, a blush always rose to his face when he used terms of affection like this.)
Turning the page over again, he read: ‘You mean nothing to me now. You only chose to go out with me because Yuci had dumped you. I just filled the gap. Yuci showed me the letters you wrote him. They were much more loving than the ones you sent me.’ Then, in his own note to Chi Hui he wrote: ‘I wrote that letter myself, word for word. Chi Hui, I can’t bear to think of you reading it. I’m terrified that you might get hold of some sleeping pills. If only I could fly to you twice as fast as that damn letter to stop it contaminating your hands.’
Flicking to the other side again, he read: ‘You depress me. And so does your dull family. I feel like a corpse when I’m with you. Your graceful exterior cannot hide the ugly scars left by your terrorised childhood.’
‘I love your charming gestures, Chi Hui,’ he continued on the other side (even though he had never seen this girl who lived a thousand kilometres away). ‘I love your family, I love your frailty. Your background and character happen to match mine exactly.’ He paused for a moment, overcome by a momentary sense of pride, then continued: ‘Of all the young ladies I’ve seen …’ (his clients sometimes showed him photographs of their loved ones) ‘you are the most beautiful. You have the melancholy air that is characteristic of our classical “fragile beauties”. We are both thin and weak. We should spend our lives together in sickness, tending to one another’s needs. When I look at you, I see the first snow of winter falling on my home town, the frosted windows of a wooden cabin, a cup of steaming milk tea. Oh, I can’t forgive myself for writing those cruel letters to you!’ On the other side, he had berated her gourd-shaped face and lifeless expression. ‘I have corresponded with you for a whole year. How can I just abandon you now in such a heartless way? I must be mad!’