Whenever he returned home, he felt as frail and vulnerable as a silkworm that had just shed its cocoon. His residency permit would forever be fixed to his place of birth; he had no back-door connections to help him apply for a transfer. The only way he could survive in this coastal town was to melt into the background. He seldom entered shops, and only visited the public showers once a month, making sure to sneak in just before closing time. He only dared fetch water from his outside tap in the middle of the night. To avoid washing his clothes and then having to hang them out to dry, he just scraped the oil and dirt from shirt collars every four days with the blade of his letter knife. He took his meals at one dumpling stall whose owner he trusted. He always left his shed early in the morning, before any of his neighbours were up. He was amazed he had managed to survive all these years without raising any serious alarms.
‘Look at her make-up! She looks like a painted eggshell!’ he mumbled, staring at a woman passing by on the street. He was shocked by this comment. He buried his head in his hands, grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled: ‘I really have gone mad this time. Nothing seems real.’ As the nib of his pen scratched across the page, the image of himself as a child flashed through his mind again. He saw himself aged six, climbing out of a box, looking up with large moist eyes and crying, ‘Let go of me! I can get out by myself.’ He grabbed the child and placed him down on the ground. The boy crawled across the floor, and suddenly one of his legs fell off. Then his head fell off, and rolled towards the beam of light slanting through the window. ‘You’re not real,’ he said, walking over to the child and digging out the eyes from his face. He then saw the child’s eyes displayed in a shop window. A fat woman bought the eyes and walked off with them, and he chased after her through a maze of narrow streets. It was a dream that had recurred for thirteen years.
‘Those eyes see everything,’ he often sighed, when he woke up from this dream. ‘When I rise into the sky, I will fly like a bird.’
Walking home at night in the lamplight, he often saw the dismembered child falling to the ground like a feather. But tonight, as he approached the intersection in the centre of town, the old hag’s words still racing through his mind, his thoughts cleared, and a terrible sense of guilt descended upon him. He felt ashamed of his dishonest profession, and all the love he had helped destroy. He had wanted to lead an honest life, but there was no place for honesty in this town.
In the silent hours before dawn, he was still awake, writing at his desk.
‘Only through suffering can man gain wisdom. People who have never suffered are incapable of growing up. Happiness is a wooden cabin one finds after a long and difficult journey; people who take the easy path never get to see it. The unhappiness I’ve suffered in the past has been other people’s unhappiness. It has left no mark on me.’
When the rake-thin street writer saw the truth at last he laughed out loud. He thought about what the mother of the actress had told him, and about the hundreds of love letters he had written. Although his clients had exploited his creative skills, they had supplied him with a great deal of knowledge. The women’s intimate revelations had allowed the virginal street writer to mature gracefully. He realised that he had finally overcome his shyness and embarrassment, and that it was now time for him to seek out his own love. Stunned by this idea, he jumped onto his bed and stood still for a moment. He was elated. He would never have believed that the day might come for him to embark on a real love affair of his own.
‘But whom shall I love?’ he asked himself. Blushing, he thought of Chi Hui, the young woman from a distant province to whom he had written passionate love letters for an entire year. A fortnight ago, he had been ready to strangle his client for all the pain he had caused her. The love that had fallen from her letters like snowflakes had made him dizzy with confusion.
He pushed the cynical words of the actress’s mother to the back of his mind, sat down on the ground and leafed through all the correspondence relating to Chi Hui. A strange passion welled up in his heart. He wanted to conduct a love affair with a woman all by himself. He wanted to suffer the agonies of love. He wanted to kiss someone, conquer them, adore them. He wanted a woman of flesh and bone. A thin layer of sweat moistened his face. He laughed with delight as he looked through the drafts of the letters he had sent Chi Hui. He realised he loved her, that perhaps he had always loved her. In these letters, he had written descriptions of her beautiful hair, teeth, dimples and breasts, and between each word and every line he had left traces of his love.
He rose to his feet and walked to his desk. An immense joy seemed to fill the room. The hitherto numb nerve endings in his groin and thighs suddenly came alive. His mind clouded, his chest ached with anticipation, his pulse quickened a beat. He imagined smiling coyly as Chi Hui shook her head at him. He scooped a pile of Chi Hui’s letters into his arms and jumped back onto the bed. He ran his tongue over his upper lip, stretched one leg in front of the other and chuckled contentedly.
Hearing a soft knock at the door, he quickly swallowed his laugh. Experience had taught him that the sound of laughter always attracted the police. He fastened his belt, and like a man who has been summoned for interrogation, opened the door with his head hung low. A figure, smelling both stale and sweet, darted inside, slammed the door and stood in front of him. Through his eyelashes, the street writer recognised the face of the actress’s mother. She twisted her large mouth into a smile, and gazed at him with eyes that were as deep and narrow as the eyes of a leopard.
‘It’s you …’ he whispered, terrified and confused.
‘My daughter committed suicide last night. She never listened to my advice.’ The old woman edged closer and wrapped her arms around him.
He had no time to put up a struggle. The old woman carried the frail, tubercular street writer to the bed, and pressed her wine-stained lips over his mouth. The next image that shot through his mind was not Chi Hui and her flowing locks, or the policeman who had harassed him on the street corner — it was the old woman’s dark eyes glinting in the lamplight. Then his mind went blank and all he could see was a white plastic bag floating in the still air. Suddenly, he felt his tiny body, like a puff of breath, plunge into a dark vat of grease. He tried to free himself from the old woman’s grip, but before he could summon the energy, the lights went out, everything went black, and he could no longer see a thing.
Let the Mirror Be the Judge or Naked
The professional writer sees the girl running naked down the street, her drooping nipples as sad and lonely as the eyes of a blind man. In his mind, he still confuses this girl with the entrepreneur’s mother, whose personality seems to have seeped into many of the characters of his unwritten novel.
The girl’s breasts were large, plump, heavy, soft and pendulous. Women see these fleshy protrusions as tools for flirtation and nurture; for men, they are the inspiration for a multitude of criminal thoughts. Erudite students refer to them as bosoms; artists portray them as pink-tipped peaches; peasants merely regard them as objects that droop to the stomach and are grabbed hold of when babies need a feed. In the villages, men get to see naked breasts all the time; for them a bare breast is as unremarkable as a bare arm. But as soon as these protrusions enter the towns, they become objects of immense value. Modern women mystify them, hiding them inside tight brassieres. Photographers are always careful when they aim their cameras at a woman’s chest, because they know that too much cleavage can lay them open to accusations of ‘Bourgeois Liberalism’, and consign them to a four-year stint in prison.