"How did you make this company profitable within a year?"
"By strengthening discipline and order, by rewarding and punishing the workers fairly and strictly. Everyone here must do his job efficiently, or else we'll dock a certain amount from his wages. Now the company is organized like an army unit – a battalion, I should say. Each team must carry out its task on time, and I hold its leaders responsible for any delay and sloppy work."
"How about this year? How much profit do you expect to get personally?"
"Probably twenty-three thousand."
"So you're having another banner year?"
"Yes. "
"Thank you, Manager Geng."
As the camera panned away from Geng Yang to a roaring bulldozer on the construction site, Manna burst out sobbing, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. Meanwhile Lin was flabbergasted at Geng Yang's appearance on TV. How could that devil be doing so well? So full of vitality? Enjoying so much fortune and publicity? No wonder Honggan had called him a lucky dog at their wedding last winter.
Lin got to his feet and went over to Manna as she was screaming, " It's unfair, unfair!"
"Shh, don't wake up the babies." He sat down beside her, removed the half-grated turnip from her hand and put it into the basin. He held her hand, lifted it up, and pressed it against his cheek. Her fingers were still wet and flecked with bits of turnip, giving off a pungent smell.
"How come an evil man like him can get rich and famous so easily?" she asked. "The Lord of Heaven has no eyes!"
Lin sighed, shaking his head. "Life's always like this, ridiculous – a monster thrives for a thousand years, while the good suffer and die before their time."
"How I'm scared of him!" she moaned in tears.
He turned and embraced her, whispering, "Don't be scared. He's not here. I won't let him hurt you."
Gently he twisted the tip of her ear to calm her down, as though she were a little girl who had just come in from a pitch-black night. He went on murmuring, "Don't be scared." She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.
His words and the warmth of his body invoked in her the old overpowering pain that had arisen from the absence of consolation during the first days after the rape eleven years before, so now she simply couldn't stop crying, holding him tight and whimpering incoherently. Something in her chest snapped as tears flowed out of her eyes. It was so good to have a trustworthy friend in whose arms she could cry without feeling embarrassed, without being afraid of the kind of ridicule unleashed by the hostile world, without worrying about becoming the target of endless gossip and mockery, and without having to say, "Forgive me." For the first time she was weeping with abandon, like a child. Her tears soaked the front of his woolen vest. Her thick hair kept touching his chin. He grew tearful too and stroked the nape of her neck.
From that night on, they slept in the same bed again. Many days in a row Manna had nightmares, which were bizarre and indecipherable. In one of them, she was on her way to a nunnery atop a mountain, carrying the twins on her back. It was a sunny day, the breeze sweet-scented, full of scattered blossoms. As she approached a reservoir, which she had to cross to reach the mountain, an old man in a conical bamboo hat was coming along the rocky dam from the opposite direction. From the distance she couldn't see his face clearly, but his gait was so tottery that he didn't look dangerous. The babies on her back were sleeping, exhausted by the heat, saliva dribbling from the corners of their opened mouths.
As the man was coming closer, suddenly a gust of wind blew his hat off, revealing his face. It was Geng Yang! Manna was too shocked to shout or escape. He rushed over, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, snatched the twins off her back, and ran away along the dam. She shouted while chasing him, "Give them back to me! Geng Yang, you can do anything to me if you give my babies back! I promise I'll come to you if you let them go." The babies were screaming and kicking their legs.
Without turning his head, Geng Yang swerved and ran down the dam toward a sandy bar, his boots throwing up a thin mist of dust. She was gasping for breath, but went on pursuing him. Then she saw him put the twins each into a giant wooden shoe, which he pushed into the water. A wind came and blew the shoes away toward the center of the vast reservoir. He burst out laughing. "Now you lost your sons. See if you dare to report me again!"
She collapsed on the ground, shouting, "I've never reported you. Please, please, I beg of you, have a heart, bring them back for me!"
"No, they're on their way to see the Dragon Emperor in the Water Palace, ha-ha-ha. "
"Lin! Come and help me!" she called out.
"That chicken can't do a thing," Geng Yang said.
"Lin – come and save our children!" she yelled again. Still Lin was nowhere to be seen.
At this moment Mai Dong, her first love, came out of the osier bushes on the bank and began capering about on the beach. He waved his hands and then clapped them above his head, chanting to her merrily, "You can't have them back! You can't have them back!" He was still in his mid-twenties, wearing the army uniform and a crew cut.
She became murderous and picked up a few large cobblestones and threw them at Geng Yang and Mai Dong with all her might.
"Ouch!" Lin yelled as Manna's fist landed on his forehead. He pulled the lamp cord, and the blinding light woke her up. She kept rubbing her eyes.
"Why hit me like that? Oh, my eyes – " Lin stopped, seeing his wife in tears, her face horror-stricken.
"Sorry, sorry, I was having a terrible dream," she said and turned aside. "I dreamed that we lost our children and couldn't get them back." She began sobbing while her arm covered the sleeping babies.
Lin sighed. "Don't think too much, darling."
"I won't," she said. "You go back to sleep now."
He turned off the light and soon resumed snoring softly. Meanwhile Manna's eyes were wide open, watching the clouds being torn to strips by the bare branches waving outside the window. She was wondering why Lin hadn't appeared in her dream, whereas Mai Dong had turned up and ridiculed her so maliciously. What does this mean? she asked herself. Why didn't Lin come to our rescue? Where was he? Is he really too timid to fight to protect us? Why was Mai Dong as mean as that bastard Geng Yang?
Question after question rose to her mind, but she couldn't answer any of them. Her thoughts were in disorder.
Outside, the moon was pale, wavering beyond the dark treetops. The wind was howling and reminded her of the wolves she had often heard at night when she was a child in the orphanage.
11
Manna's heart grew weaker, her pulse more irregular and sometimes thready. Severe pains occurred in her chest and left arm, and at nightfall she would feel dizzy and short of breath. Her heart murmur often turned into a gallop rhythm. The results of a new examination shocked Doctor Yao, an expert in cardiopathy. One afternoon, holding Manna's X-ray against a desk lamp in his office, Doctor Yao told Lin, "Medication may not help her anymore. I'm afraid she doesn't have many years left. Heaven knows why her condition has deteriorated so rapidly."
Hearing the prognosis, Lin almost broke into tears. He said in a choked voice, "Why – why did I let this happen? I'm a doctor, why didn't I detect the real condition of her heart?" He covered his face with both hands.
"Lin, don't blame yourself. We all knew she had a heart problem, but we didn't expect infarction would develop so soon. Some of her coronary vessels must have been blocked long ago."
"Oh, I should have known this. I told her not to eat too many eggs, but she wouldn't listen." Lin struck his knee with his fist.
Doctor Yao sighed. "I wish we had diagnosed it."
"So there's no cure?"
"I've heard some experts in Europe can dilate the coronary arteries, but the technology is not available in our country."