‘You remind me of the story about the man who buried a stash of silver and left a note saying there was no silver buried there. His neighbour A-Er dug it up and left a note explaining that he couldn’t possibly be the culprit!’
‘Shhh,’ he put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t talk so loud. It’s not A-Er who’s my neighbour, it’s the head of the Romance Section of the Marriage and Home Research Institute.’
She burst out laughing. What an interesting man, she thought, he could be a friend. With this thought in mind, she took him to Peng’s. She was obviously getting her own back on Zheng. In the past, when she invited Zheng to a meal, he usually brought along another girl, a dazzling array of them, in fact. Zheng actually had no ulterior motives, except perhaps a desire to show off a little.
She had forgotten that the day of her date was her birthday. Zheng had not, however. He got to Peng’s early and was busy making dumplings, which were cooking when they arrived. Everyone was astonished that she had brought a man along. Zheng exchanged a few brief courtesies with him and soon made his excuses and left. A week later, Tianyi found out he had gone to Changsha, apparently to start up a new company. He did not say goodbye. Tianyi knew that something had changed forever in their feelings for each other. Still, she thought: Why was it OK for him but not for me? What double standards!
Of course, she split up with the man before long. He never did understand it. How had he offended this odd woman?
In reality, Tianyi never stopped loving Zheng, even while she was getting her own back on him. So when The Tree of Knowledge had its first showing in China, he was the first person she thought of. She had dedicated the story on which the film was based, to him. The assistant director gave her a dozen tickets, and she got a friend to give them to him. As a result, half of his institute turned up for the showing. Before the showing, the cast and production team met the audience. Zheng saw Tianyi, petite and beautiful, standing on the platform, and felt a rush of emotion. He had been away from Beijing for not quite three years, and in that time, Tianyi had become a mother. This was the first time he had seen her since then, and his heart ached. Tianyi, for her part, was shocked at how much he had changed. Those sparkling eyes had dimmed, and she wondered what on earth had happened to him.
The opening sequence of The Tree of Knowledge was very interesting. Brilliant red berries gleamed in dense woodland, like the Garden of Eden, from which a young woman serenely emerged. The titles rolled: first came Yang Tianyi, writer of the original work and the screenplay. The theme music was mysterious and evocative, just like Tianyi’s unfathomable inner world. Unfortunately, Zheng did not tumble to the fact that the lead male role was actually him. He had no idea that that was how Tianyi felt about him. He even found the man irritating, unappealingly pretentious.
It was Peng who got the clues. He said to Zheng: ‘The lead character is very like you.’ Zheng was scornfuclass="underline" ‘You’re pulling my leg! I’m not as argumentative as that.’ Tianyi overheard this exchange and was suddenly furious. Tears filled her eyes and it was only with a huge effort that she forced them back. She was a good actress, and her smile took everyone in.
Later that evening, however, Tianyi’s acting skills were to desert her. Lian had made them a huge dinner, including his specialities, winter melon balls, plain-fried beans, red-cooked chicken wings and so on. Tianyi tucked in happily, did the dishes and was sitting in the sitting-room, one leg crossed over the other, reading the paper, when Lian suddenly came out with: ‘So H Z is Zheng then?’
His words hit home. Tianyi looked at him, and seemed to be seeing a stranger. Her head was whirling with questions. Lian calmly carried on reading the paper. She could read nothing from his face. Finally she took a deep breath and came out with: ‘You seem to have been thinking about for quite a while.’ ‘No, it was just a gut reaction.’ Lian looked up, still impassive. ‘It’s obvious you were in love with him, and you still are. No,’ he put his finger to his lips, ‘don’t deny it. I understand. If I were a woman, I’d fall in love with a man like that. He’s very attractive. Do you believe me? I like him.’
Tianyi could think of nothing to say. It occurred to her that either Lian was the most forgiving of men, or the most terrible. She had underestimated him. But she was not to be outdone. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘if you like him so much, why not invite him over?’ Lian’s smile was genuine: ‘No sooner said than done! I’ll cook, you invite him, and that’s settled!’
It was a lively dinner party. It so happened that their friend Jin was home from the States to visit his family, Di was about to leave for the States, and her sister Xian had just got married, so it was a send-off, a welcome-back and a celebration all rolled into one. Lian bustled in and out the kitchen and in due course, more than a dozen dishes appeared on the table.
Di, who was used to plainer fare in the postgrad canteen, gazed hungrily at the food and exclaimed: ‘Tianyi, you’ve got a house-husband and he’s worth his weight in gold!’ Xian’s marriage must have been making her happy, she seemed to have grown prettier. She laughed and told her sister, that ‘house-husband’ was not a proper word. Di protested: ‘But “house-husband” is exactly what I meant! You know what Tianyi’s like. She’s just the kind of woman to get herself one!’ Everyone laughed, with the exception of Zheng, who was deep in conversation with Jin about the economic reforms. Tianyi had the feeling, however, that he was trying to conceal how despondent he felt.
Tianyi began to observe Xian’s new husband, Du. He was a whole nine years younger than Xian, only just above the legal minimum age for marriage. He was a handsome young man, nearly one metre ninety tall. According to Aunt Jie, Di and Xian’s mother, he was a friend of Xian’s from college, where he was doing management studies. He was so obsessed with going to America that he had suffered depression and ended up at Student Counselling Services. He was from the North-East, from a very poor family, so getting to university was a big deal for him. But he needed to pass his English test or he would not get to America, and would have to go back home. That put him under immense pressure so he was in and out of Counselling and, in so doing, got to know Xian.
Xian was a girl with no obvious faults, but little to distinguish her either. As a child, she had idolized Tianyi, just like her elder sister Di or perhaps even more so. But now she was grown-up and was a bit disappointed in her former idol. She found it hard to say why, except that she had felt Tianyi was destined for greater things. Some things were not worth bothering about, of course, but she realized that Tianyi was not only not too bothered, she really could not give a damn. Tianyi was just like any ordinary woman: she was an over-fussy housewife, preoccupied with the usual domestic trivialities and fell out with her mother-in-law. Xian liked Tianyi just as much as before, but she was no longer the Tianyi she had put on a pedestal in their youth.
A poor young man like Du needed someone just like Xian, to give him her complete attention. Xian was very good at listening. That was the role she used to play with Tianyi when they were growing up together so she fell into the role easily the next time it was demanded of her. By that time, Aunt Jie was at her wit’s end in her attempts to marry her girls off. Xian was a dutiful daughter, so when finally a suitor turned up whose only drawback was that he was a few years younger than her, she accepted his marriage proposal with alacrity. Aunt Jie was over the moon, and went around saying to anyone who would listen: ‘Our youngest girl just couldn’t find anyone, and now look what a handsome boy she’s found!’ Of course, doubts still nagged at her. She had a quiet word with Tianyi’s mother: ‘He’s so much younger than her, if you look at them together, does it make our girl look too old?’ Tianyi’s mother could be very nice when she wanted to be, at least to people’s faces. She was quick to reassure her: ‘Of course not. Your Xian has such a young-looking face, she looks three or four years younger than girls of her age.’ Aunt Jie was not comforted: ‘But the lad’s nine years younger than her!’ ‘So what? He’s old-looking, four or five older than his contemporaries, that makes them exactly even, doesn’t it?’ Aunt Jie beamed with delight: ‘You certainly have a good way of putting things.’