A Private Life Read online

  Spring festival was just around the corner and the crowded, noisy streets and brilliantly lit shops put me in a carefree, relaxed mood.

  For a long time, scenes of city life have always generated in me a feeling of isolation. I have never felt that they belonged to me, and as time passes, my attachment to them becomes weaker and weaker. For some reason I can't fathom, although I am physically still very young, I frequently lose myself in quiet reflection like an old person. I feel like my life no longer has any real purpose.

  But on that day I had a change of mood. I no longer felt that life was cold and hopeless, and an unbroken feeling of joy welled up from the soles of my feet, jarring me out of my moroseness. Once again I pretended that the streets beneath my feet were streets I did not know. I wanted to leave behind the world I knew, to submerge my mind in an exciting new experience. To live through loneliness and inner torment for so long, and surprisingly come out of it alive and still able to encounter such wonders, seemed inconceivable. So at that moment, without being aware of it, I had expanded by a hundredfold the importance of my knowing Yin Nan.

  At the side of the road, I saw an old lady sitting on a straw mat, staring blankly as she begged. A male child with an enormous head was suckling at her wizened breast. He had no hands, and the two stumps of his arms had been rubbed so smooth that they shone. An icy shaft shot through my heart, and my beautiful dream was abruptly broken.

  Averting my eyes, I dug a coin out of my pocket, dropped it at the old lady's feet, and left.

  When I got home, I went to see my mother.

  The moment I opened her door, I could hear her labored breathing. It sounded like the hiss of the impure liquified natural gas when we lit the burner to boil water every day.

  I was astonished to see that the window was wide open so that it was as cold in the room as it was outside. She was at the window, leaning against the radiator, in a thick, padded cotton coat, struggling to breathe.

  I said, "Mama, it's so cold today. How come you've got the window wide open?" As I was speaking, I closed it.

  Mother said that she had been feeling uncomfortable for the past several days, as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the room, no air circulation.

  I looked closely at her face for a while, and sure enough, her color wasn't very good – pale with a greenish tinge. There was a look of distraction in her eyes, and dark circles of exhaustion around them.

  I suggested she lie down and get more rest and sleep.

  Mother said that sitting was better than lying down, standing was better than sitting, and she didn't know why, but the room seemed to be so terribly stuffy that she found it difficult to breathe.

  While she was talking, I quickly ran over any unusual things she had done or said recently.

  She had said to me on several occasions that she didn't know what the problem was, but she often woke up unable to breathe and had to sit up straight for a while to get her breathing back to normal, and that she always slept badly because of her wheezing. Lately, it had been especially serious. Often in the middle of the night she had to prop up the upper half of her body or she wouldn't be able to breathe properly or get a decent sleep. And in the daytime she was always worn out and listless, and would often break out in a sweat for no reason at all. She wondered in frustration if her menopause would ever pause.

  All this led me to think of the female leads in the Bergman films Cries and Whispers and Silence. They were always lying face up on their beds with their heads canted back, a tremendous wheezing noise like the sound of a pipe organ threatening to split their bosoms asunder. Their emaciated, gnarled hands stretching upward in supplication as they struggled to breathe, it seemed as if their empty, ruined internal organs were about to collapse, as if they were about to be swallowed up by the dark, suffocating air… They were locked forever in a cage, where they saw their isolation and individuality as something sacred. They were gathered together to lament their personal isolation, but not only did they not listen to each other, they were suffocating each other without knowing it. They stared into each other's eyes but denied each other's existence…

  Like the approaching darkness of night, these scenes enveloped me completely, filling me with a fear and confusion that shot through my entire body.

  But, stuffing my hands in my pockets, I forced myself to remain calm, and said with strained casualness, "I'll take you to the hospital tomorrow. I think maybe you're sick."

  Mother said, "Let's wait a bit. Maybe it's something to do with my menopause, something that comes and goes, like the trouble I had with fever and perspiring a while ago."

  But my instinct told me that this time Mother was really sick.

  From the day that Mother moved into her apartment, I had had a vague premonition that something was not right. Just after we had moved into this building, I heard that construction had been started on an inauspicious day, offending Tai Sui, one of the figures from traditional Chinese folklore. Tai Sui holds a rather special position in our folk mythology. He has something to do with the worship of celestial bodies but doesn't represent any particular one of them. Nor is he a symbol for some heavenly phenomenon. Some people say that Tai Sui is associated with the "Year Star," or Jupiter, one of God's year deities. He resides underground and is the counterforce to the Year Star in heaven. If you disturb the soil over Tai Sui's head, you may dig into some moving flesh, which is one of Tai Sui's transformations. Afterward, as long as the people who move into the building are vigorous and thriving, nothing much will happen, but if they are in ill health and their star is on the wane, they may encounter some fatal misfortune. I had long before heard the expression "to dare to disturb the soil over Tai Sui's head," but I had always believed it was nonsense, that Tai Sui was imaginary, invented by people to fulfill a need, nothing more than an esoteric term used in geomancy but sneered at by modern science. So I had never given it any credence.

  But now, when I saw how my mother looked, it did seem as if she had been touched by some intangible thing.

  I walked everywhere in her apartment, searching for whatever it was that was amiss. Then I said without much conviction, "Mama, I think the orientation of your apartment is bad."

  Mother said, "Don't be stupid."

  I continued to think about it but said no more.

  I pulled her over to the bed and made her sit down. It seemed like the worst was over. Her breathing was back to normal and the color was returning to her face. Moving her hands over the bedstead and the mattress, she sighed. "It was such a struggle to change our lives, and now – such a nice apartment, such a nice bed – and now only the two of us, and we don't have to put up with anybody's angry outbursts. But… ai…" The way she spoke, it sounded as if all of this was going to be lost forever.

  An unaccountable sadness flooded over me.

  To take her mind off her difficulty with breathing, I told her about Yin Nan, the boy I had met in the cafeteria.

  Mother was an educated woman with a lifetime of reading behind her and had certainly had her share of hardships as well, but she had never lost her romantic, innocent nature. Her mind could be diverted as easily as a little girl's. Now, when for the first time from my lips she heard news of a handsome young boy, there was an abrupt about turn in her focus of attention. At the same time she was asking me questions about his circumstances, she was blindly immersing herself in fantasies of the future.

  I didn't tell Mother about my fears over her physical condition, because I had realized that it would be unfortunate if she had the same fears. My mind was a blank, without a single trace of the noon-hour events in the school cafeteria. I stood motionless in the center of the room, staring at the shadow cast on the bare wall by the white hanging lamp.

  Eventually I left her apartment, to have my feet carry me directly to Widow Ho's.

  She was reading, the smoke from her pipe twining upward like embryonic galaxies.

  There was something wrong with her refrigerator, and as soon as I entered t
he room I heard its noisy whir. This sound and the swirling wisps of smoke made the room look like a laboratory scene from a science fiction movie, or an obscure, miniaturized universe.

  Once inside, I stood there rooted to the floor. As if in a dream, one after another, all the things that had happened that day swept past my eyes, filling my head, but I stood there blankly, not knowing what to say.

  "What's wrong?" Ho asked.

  I didn't respond. There was so much packed into my head that even the whirring of her refrigerator bothered my ears and my nerves. It was as if it too wanted to invade my brain. Trying to resist the sound, I said, "Your refrigerator's broken."

  "I know." She asked me again, "What's wrong?"

  Again I said, "Your refrigerator's broken."

  "I know. Surely you didn't come over just to tell me about my refrigerator."

  Again, I didn't respond.

  I tried to ignore the whirring noise and spill out, like garbage, all the things that were on my mind. But, strangely, the noise curled around my ears like smoke and dominated my thoughts, even clinging to the skin of my entire body, trying insistently to bore into my brain. Standing there rigidly, I felt dizzy for a moment, and helplessly alone and unable to utter a word.

  Putting out her pipe, Ho came over and took me in her arms. At last, I relaxed against her shoulder.

  She said gently, "We'll have supper together, then we can have a nice chat."

  I knew this shoulder very well. I had been enchanted by its fragrance ever since I was a tiny girl. It seemed as if these soft but strong shoulders had always been the keepers of my body, giving me support as I grew toward maturity. I clasped my arms tightly around her neck, afraid that my inner turmoil might turn them into a pair of flapping wings to carry me away from her, out of her embrace.

  "I can't…" I said, "live without you."

  "I know, I know."

  After a pause, I added, "But I can't have dinner with you tonight. Mama's sick. I have to take care of her."

  "Well then, you'll have to go." She patted me lightly on the back. "Don't forget, whatever happens, I'll always be here to help you. There's no need to worry. Okay?"

  I felt my anxiety slipping away.

  We embraced each other again, then I left her apartment.

  16 Apple Bobbing…

  In the end, Mother went to the hospital by herself, as she wished. Even though I told her my classes were not a problem, that I could graduate with my eyes closed, she insisted that she didn't want me to go with her.

  When she came back from the hospital, she was quite casual about the whole thing. She said that the doctors had given her a general examination, x-rays and the like; that the preliminary diagnosis was heart strain; it wasn't very serious yet, but if it wasn't looked after, it could develop into a leaky aortic or mitral valve, which could lead to an increase in diastolic pressure in the left ventricle, leading to a malfunction of the left heart chamber. The doctor gave her a prescription for a cardiac stimulant and a diuretic to decrease the pressure, and urged her to come to the hospital to be put on oxygen whenever she felt it was necessary.

  After that, Mother stayed home to rest and took her medicine every day. As her condition began to visibly improve, my concern for her began to ease as well.

  After getting to know Yin Nan, I often bumped into him in the cafeteria at noon, and we would sit and have lunch together. But gradually, our relationship began to change in a rather subtle way.

  When I first met him, it was mostly his handsome face and engaging manner that captivated me. Seeing him gave me a thrill that quickly overwhelmed me, filling my heart and dominating my thoughts. But this visual stimulation gradually settled down into a stable and lasting affection. He still aroused my passion, but I would think of him in this way only when it was getting close to lunchtime.

  It was Yin Nan himself who underwent the subtle change.

  Every time I met him he was always sitting in the same place, bent over his food, ignoring me. He never looked up when I approached, until I said, "How's lunch?" or "Here I am," at which point he would suddenly lift his head, pretending he hadn't noticed me, and say, "Hi!"

  I say "pretending" because I have plenty of proof that he was adopting a stance to hide his real feelings. It was his fingers that gave him away.

  He was always reading some paper or other as he was eating. When I approached, even though his eyes would be focused on his paper, the fingers of one of his hands would be drumming anxiously on the table in a way that had nothing to do with his food or his reading. The closer I got, the faster his fingers drummed. Only when the shadow of my head fell on his paper did those fingers suddenly stop, and curl into a tense, bony half-fist, the fingers trembling nervously. But he refused to look up, waiting instead for me to say something, when he would offhandedly suddenly "discover" I was there.

  But his hand quietly and unmistakably revealed his uneasy anticipation. His tense fingers and the studied nonchalance on his face were perfect foils for each other.

  I didn't say anything to him about his behavior. These little quirks endeared him to me. I knew that he wanted to see me just as much as I wanted to see him, that he waited every day for my "How's lunch?" I knew that the sound of my voice was all that was needed to make him forget about eating.

  After meeting by chance in the cafeteria for a while, Yin Nan and I gradually became close friends, and he was able to relax a bit.

  Eventually, he asked me to go on an outing with him one weekend, and I ecstatically agreed.

  He wanted to meet me up in my apartment, then go out together, but I thought it precipitous to invite him home like that, and besides, it wouldn't be good with Mother still not feeling well. So I arranged a time to wait for him downstairs.

  That winter was unusually mild, and the weekend was gorgeously warm and sunny. At ten o'clock sharp, wearing a cashmere cardigan and carrying a down jacket under my arm, I went downstairs.

  Before leaving the apartment I had stood in front of the mirror carefully assessing how I looked. I tried on, took off, tried on, took off a string of things, finally settling on the silver-gray cardigan.

  I noticed that my body, which was once as thin as a sheet of paper, and my arms and legs, the Misses Do and Don't of my childhood, once skinny as sticks, had filled out, and that my breasts had been swelling quietly to fullness beneath my blouse. As I looked closely at this young but very beautiful girl in the mirror, I saw her suddenly turn away, and when she turned back again she had taken off all her clothes, or, I should say, they had simply disappeared. Her naked figure was flagrantly bared in the mirror, her deep red nipples glowing as if bathed in sunlight, her smooth white breasts following my eyes like a pair of plump sunflowers following the sun.

  I was quite aware of my own narcissistic tendencies, but what followed caught me completely off guard, even shocked me.

  I saw my body, frail as a feather, floating lightly toward me from a fog-enshrouded horizon. Whimpering helplessly with tears streaming down my face, I was in the arms of someone who looked exactly like Yin Nan. He was gently caressing my cheeks and my forehead in an attempt to soothe me. The touch of his breast ignited in me an overwhelming desire to be his prisoner. I had never before been embraced by anyone so young, nor had I ever before felt the desire to lose myself like this. I nestled in the mysterious greenish-blue aura of light that seemed to issue from his arms, in the overbrimming vitality of his youth. Yet his youthfulness made me feel uneasy.

  Then I heard a voice that sounded exactly like Yin Nan's saying, "You're not at all like the others."

  I said, "You've found out?"

  The voice said, "You captivate me. You're pure and noble."

  I said, "I'm not the least bit pure. You have no idea what kind of person I am."

  The voice said, "I understand you."

  I said, "You don't understand me. You have no idea how shameless I have been in the face of desire."

  The voice said, "I like your shameless
innocence."

  I said, "You can't understand me. You're too young. And I am already old beyond my years."

  The voice said, "I understand you. I've known you for a long time, and I've never stopped watching you."

  I said, "Watching what?"

  The voice said, "Your cheeks, your eyes, your lips, your breasts…"

  Then I felt his gentle, cool fingertips lightly touching and caressing my face and my breasts…

  A feeling of faintness overcame me, and I struggled to open my eyes.

  I saw my own hands caressing the naked body of the young girl in the mirror…

  At exactly ten o'clock I went downstairs. Yin Nan was already waiting for me at the entrance to the stairwell.

  I went a few steps closer and said, "Have you been waiting long?"

  He didn't say anything, just gave a secretive little chuckle.

  He led me over to an inky black Imperial sedan and, opening the right front door, said, "Jump in."

  I was rather surprised, because I couldn't see a driver anywhere, and there was no taxi sign. Feeling a bit puzzled, I climbed into the car and sat down.

  By this time Yin Nan had already gone around to the other side, slid into the driver's seat, closed the door, and started the engine.

  Watching in total astonishment, I asked him, "The car – did you drive it here? Can you drive?"

  Cocky and secretly pleased with himself, he ignored my questions.

  Following the sun-mottled streets, the car left our neighborhood behind and moved quickly out onto the multiple-laned Third Ring Road, where it quickly accelerated. We flashed past the roadside shops, trees, and scattered residential buildings. When I saw that the speedometer had already hit 140 kilometers per hour, I began to feel a bit uneasy.

  I said, "Don't go so fast. We could have an accident."

  Saying nothing, not even turning his head, Yin Nan kept his eyes on the road as we raced along.

  I was starting to feel afraid.

  I knew that he had carefully planned everything that day to show off his driving skills and impress me with his speed.