One Man Read online

  Some years later, when he went home for the summer vacation, he saw Luo in a white apron selling bean curd at a vegetable market near his home. Luo gave a wan smile when he caught sight of him, and, taking off his apron, got the plump elderly woman who sold vegetables to take care of his bean-curd stall. As they went off together, Luo told him that he had been a fisherman for two years, but when he came back he couldn't find work. Finally, the subdistrict office assigned him to the cooperative vegetable stall to sell bean curd and to look after the accounts.

  Luo would count as a genuine slum-dweller. His shanty, a structure of broken bricks and woven bamboo with a coat of mortar, was divided into an inner and an outer room. His mother slept in the inner room, and the outer room served as the main room and kitchen. On one side of the shanty, Luo had extended the roof and put together some sheets of pressed asbestos to build himself another room. In the far corner, where one couldn't stand up straight, stood a collapsible canvas bed and a small desk with a drawer; against the wall on the other side was a rattan bookcase. Everything was meticulously tidy and clean. Although Luo's mother was at work in the factory, Luo took him into this room the size of a chicken coop instead of the main room of the shanty, and got him to sit at the desk while he himself sat on the canvas bed.

  "Do you still write poetry?" he asked.

  Luo pulled out the drawer and took out a diary. It contained neatly written poems, each clearly dated.

  "Are these all love poems?" he asked, leafing through the pages. He had not thought that this big fellow who was always a loner at school wrote lyrical poetry like this. He still remembered the old literature teacher reading out lines from Luo's poems in composition classes, and he said to Luo that these love poems were totally different from those early poems, which were filled with impassioned youthful determination.

  "Those poems were like that so that they'd get published, but now even those poems wouldn't get published. These poems here were written for that little slut," Luo said, and started talking about women. "That little slut was just having a bit of fun with me. She had found herself a cadre who was more than ten years her senior and was waiting to get the marriage registered. She used to stay up all night knitting pullovers for that man. I got this book of poems back from her and I don't write anymore."

  He thought it was best to get off the topic of women and started talking to Luo about literature. He said that the new life of the new era should have a new literature, but he wasn't sure what exactly this new literature of this new life would be like. However, he didn't think it could be about the good things happening to good people, like in the new folk songs of the Great Leap Forward that filled the pages of all the newspapers and magazines. He also talked about the fiction of Gladkov and Ehrenburg, and the plays of Mayakovski and Brecht. At the time, he wasn't aware of the purges of counterrevolutionaries by Stalin, Ehrenburg's Thaw, or the execution of Meyerhold.

  "The literature you're talking about is too far away," Luo said. "I don't know where you will find any literature. I spend my time selling vegetables during the day, then, at night, after all the stalls close, I do the accounts. Sometimes I read a bit, but it's all about faraway happenings, and I just read to fritter away time, get rid of the boredom. And I don't know where this new life is. The bit of pride I had as a student vanished long ago; I just find myself some girls to have a bit of fun."

  He found Luo's decadence sadder than Luo's talk about the little slut. He said he had never touched a woman and this time it was Luo who was surprised. "You're a real bookworm!" Luo said without envy of his apparently better circumstances. Luo was, after all, a few years older and said magnanimously, "I'll get you a girl so you can have a bit of fun. You definitely won't have any problems touching Little Five." Luo said this Little Five was a very easygoing girl, a randy little cunt. He again heard Luo talking disrespectfully about women.

  "I'll get her to come. This slip of a girl can play the guitar. She's not like those girls at school, all of them with their airs," he said.

  He, of course, wanted to know such a girl, and Luo went off to fetch her. He read through Luo's love poems, some of which were quite explicit. In his view, they surpassed Guo Moruo's "Goddess" in extolling sex, and he was deeply moved. He was even more convinced that Luo was indeed a genuine poet, but, at the same time, he knew that these poems definitely could not be published, and he felt sorry for Luo.

  Before long, Luo was back. He turned to Luo and said, "Now, this is poetry!"

  "Ha, I wrote them for myself to read." Luo gave a bitter laugh.

  Little Five arrived wearing clogs. This young girl with intensely black eyes in a sleeveless round-neck floral top had big breasts. She was barely fifteen, but her body was already that of a young woman. She didn't come into the little room but leaned against the doorway. "He also writes poetry," Luo said, to introduce him to the girl.

  In fact, Luo had never read any of his poetry, but this seemed to be an ideal introduction. The girl would have read these erotic poems, and such an introduction would have had an implicit meaning. The girl smiled, and her full lips took on a sultry look; he had never seen a girl with such sexy lips. He closed the book and started talking to Luo about something else. It was he, and not the girl, who felt awkward.

  Luo took from behind the door a guitar that had lost most of its varnish and said to the girl, "Little Five, how about singing for us."

  He had been saved from his embarrassment. Little Five took the guitar and asked, "What shall I sing?"

  "Whatever you like. How about 'Kalinka'?"

  This Russian folk song used to be very popular among the youth, but had been replaced by songs extolling the new society, the Party, and the leaders.

  Little Five put down her head to pluck the strings. Muted soft notes arose, but she didn't seem to be listening, and looked listless. When she looked at him, he felt utterly confused. Somewhere in the room a cricket quietly chirped, and outside the small window the hot sun glared fiercely. The girl played a tune, stopped, and told Luo she didn't feel like singing. When she turned to him, she seemed to be looking somewhere above his head.

  "If you don't want to sing, then don't," Luo said. "But come to see a movie tonight."

  The girl smiled without answering, and put the guitar by die door. When she got as far as the main room, she turned and said, "I've got things to do at home!" Then she went off.

  "The hell she has. As if I'd believe that crap," Luo said. "You really don't know how to flirt with girls. Don't you want to date her?"

  He fell silent. Luo said there wasn't much of a future, so his group of losers often found girls to have a bit of fun, to play the guitar, and to sing together. Sometimes they went to the lake outside the city. They would have a swim or steal a small boat, row out to where the lotus grew in thick clumps, and steal some of the pods. Little Five went with them, and, at night in the middle of the lake, anyone could roam her body and she wouldn't complain. She was a very worldly wench. It was obvious Luo was in love with her, but he said he had a woman. The two of them had grown up together, but she had joined a song-and-dance troupe in a military zone and couldn't marry a vegetable seller like him. Anyway, she got pregnant. That was last winter. Getting an abortion in a hospital required a marriage certificate and a work card, but where could he get hold of these? On top of that, the woman was military personnel, and she had to obtain permission from her superiors to get married. If her workplace found out, she would, of course, be expelled from the army, lose that good job, and end up hating him for the rest of her life! Furthermore, the tiny income from the cooperative vegetable stall was barely enough to feed himself, how would he be able to support a wife and a child? Luckily, one of his maternal uncles was a doctor in a county town, and, thanks to his uncle persuading his associates at the county hospital, Luo was able to take her there, say they were married, and have the abortion performed.

  "I went with her early on Sunday morning, and she had to get back to the song-and-dance trou
pe by ten o'clock that night for roll call. It was army regulation. We had to change buses on the way and were waiting by the bus-stop sign. It had been dark for some time, it was raining, and there wasn't anyone else around. She said she was still bleeding down there, and as I put my arms around her the two of us wept miserably. Afterward, we separated, just like that. Can this be expressed in writing?" Luo asked. "Where is this new life?"

  Luo said he couldn't help being decadent. He had womanized in the two years he spent fishing. When the men on the island went out to fish on the high seas, there was no way of knowing if they would be back. He was a young boy just out of school, there was an abundance of sex-crazed women in the fishing village, and that was how it all started. There was nothing romantic to it, and, after he had had his fling, he knew that it was really fucking boring. There was no one he could have a conversation with, so he chose to come back and sell vegetables.

  "What gave you the idea of being a fisherman?" he asked Luo.

  "I had no choice, I had to find something to do. At the time, like you, I wanted to go to a prestigious university to study literature. Don't you know why I failed?" Luo asked.

  "You were the most outstanding in the whole class and acknowledged as a poet by your fellow students. It didn't occur to me that you would fail," he said.

  "It was all because of that fuckin' poetry," Luo said. "The year of the university entrance examination was just before the antirightist campaign. Hadn't they called upon people to speak out? The provincial publications got some young writers to take part in a meeting where they were encouraged to speak their minds. I joined with some other young writers and said that there were too many restrictions on topics. Poetry was poetry, why did it have to be divided into industrial themes, agricultural themes, and lives of young people? I also said that they had published my worst poems with the best lines deleted. Because of those comments, they sent in a report to the school. The principal had me in for a talk, and it was only then that I found out I was in trouble. I don't know what happened to the others. I was the youngest, and I had spoken less than the others. At least, I was able to come back to sell vegetables."

  Afterward, he bought three tickets to the movies. He waited at the door of the theater until the show was due to start, when Little Five turned up running and out of breath. She said Luo had to go on night duty at the vegetable stall and couldn't come. He wasn't sure if it was Luo's intention to push Little Five onto him, but as soon as they went inside the darkened theater, he took Little Five's hand and they sat down in a couple of seats on the side. He had no idea what the movie was about and only recalled that he was holding the girl's soft hand all the time and that his hot palm was sweating.

  He thought that as all the boys had felt the girl, why shouldn't he? Before that, he had never touched a girl. Love for him was something totally different.

  At senior middle school, he fell in love with a girl from a lower grade and got to speak with her at the New Year school dance. Right through the night, whether they were playing at solving riddles written on lanterns or some other game, he kept close to that girl in a red pinafore with black flowers. In the hazy light of dawn, or maybe in the reflected light of the streetlights on the snow, he followed the girl as she walked home with some other girls. They were laughing and looking back at him from time to time, and he knew they were talking about him.

  He did not think that he, too, could casually touch a girl. When he came out of the theater with Little Five, he deliberately avoided the main street and went into an alley, all the time holding her hand. The girl went along with him, looking at her shoes as she walked, and, now and then, kicking stones on the road. At a corner unlit by the streetlights, he took Little Five's arm and tried to draw her to him. She shook her head and looked at him wide-eyed.

  "You men are all bad."

  He said he wasn't like that and only wanted to kiss her.

  "Why?" she asked with a frown, as the whites of her eyes showed.

  He let go of her and said he had never kissed a girl before. Little Five said she'd have to think about it.

  His hands fell to his sides, and he hung his head. He did not expect to hear Little Five say, "Then go ahead and kiss me."

  He touched her tightly closed lips and immediately withdrew. Little Five closed her eyes, her lips relaxed, and he kissed her again. This time, her lips were thick and soft. He touched her firm breasts through her loose-fitting clothes, and the girl murmured, "Don't hurt me…"

  His hand found its way inside her clothes and roamed over her swelling breasts. But he did not dare and had not considered having sex with a girl he did not love. He did not yet know about lust, but he could tell that the girl was really passionate. Afterward, at the university, he received a letter from Little Five. It was a simple letter asking whether he would be back for the summer vacation.

  That summer he didn't return. It was the great famine that followed in the wake of the Great Leap Forward. During the summer vacation, university students were required to do voluntary labor, digging holes to plant trees in the Western Hills of Beijing. Everyone was swollen from hunger but nevertheless obliged to donate the whole vacation to carrying out these futile "good deeds." He regretted that he had not been able to sink into total depravity when he was fooling around with Little Five that summer vacation, and he secretly wanted to be totally decadent.

  16

  In the taxi on the way to the airport, you and Margarethe hardly speak. It seems that everything has already been said, and the taxi is not the place for anything left unsaid.

  At the entrance to the immigration barrier, she gives you a gentle hug-as she says you are just friends-her lips touch your cheek, then, without looking back, she goes in.

  You had noticed the dark rings around her eyes, and even though she was wearing makeup, you guessed that her face must have been much paler. The two of you had not slept for three days and three nights, no, four days and three nights. From the first night after the play, you were up all night until the next morning, and then from night until the next day, and after that another night. Right now it should be the morning of the fourth day. It had been three days and nights of making love over and over again, striving to dig and suck in the other party, and you, too, were exhausted. It was a bout of sudden frenzied passion, then the temperate farewell of ordinary friends who did not know when they would meet again.

  Outside the airport, you come into the brilliant sunshine and steaming heat. There is a long queue at the taxi ramp, and you are extremely tired. When you get into the taxi and the driver asks where you want to go, you hesitate, then simply say "Central," the hub of the bustling city. You do not want to go straight to the hotel, to that empty bed. Her bare body is already linked to the room, the bed, and your thoughts. You have grown used to talking with her, and the words of your inner mind, when you are talking to yourself, always address her, what you say is for her to hear. She has deeply penetrated your feelings and thoughts. When you took possession of her body, she took possession of both your body and mind.

  "Where do you want to go in Central?" The driver can tell that you are from the Mainland and he asks you in hesitant Mandarin.

  You have dozed off in the taxi, and, opening your eyes, ask, "Is this Central?"

  "Yes. What street do you want?"

  The taxi pulls over to the curb. In the rearview mirror, you see the driver scowling, he doesn't want to drive around in circles looking for a destination you can't name. You pay the fare and get out. High buildings soar up on both sides of the road, and for a while you can't get your bearings. You follow the road, but, oddly, there aren't many pedestrians, yet Central is usually thronging with crowds and very noisy. Also, there is not the usual traffic congestion, there aren't many cars, and the traffic is moving briskly. Afterward, you find that the shops are all shut, although the windows still have their displays on show. The tall buildings block out most of the sunlight, so it is only the middle of the road that is bright. You can'
t help feeling that you are daydreaming.

  You recall her saying she had to get back to Frankfurt by Monday, that the company she was working for had a business meeting with its Chinese counterpart, and at this you realize that it is Sunday. On the morning of this day of rest, the usual thing is for families or friends to arrange to get together for breakfast in one of the many restaurants. For the nonstop-busy people of Hong Kong, this is a form of entertainment.

  For a whole month, there have been rehearsals, performances, dinner receptions, appointments, meetings, and you have never relaxed like this, strolling around on your own in the heart of this lonely town. You are just getting to know the city, but you don't know if you will come back, just like you don't know if you will ever see her again, ever be so close to her again, pouring out your frustrations and abandoning yourself to lust.

  On the last night, she got you to rape her. It was not sex play, she really had you tie her up, got you to tie up her hands, got you to beat her with a leather belt, got you to beat the body that she hated. What she wanted to convey to you was the feeling that after rape, the betrayed and alienated physical body no longer belonged to her.

  You tied her wrists with her panty hose, and, holding the metal buckle of the belt, lightly struck her with the end. You laughed in the dark to let her know it was a game to give her the sadomasochistic sexual pleasure she wanted, and she also laughed.