Tianyi knew what her son was thinking: Why has he come back so quickly? Her cherubic little boy, plump as a doll, had been jealous of his father from when he was tiny. It was not just that he used start crying if he touched his father’s moustache in bed at night. It went much further. ‘Wait till I’m grown up and I’ll mince Dad up into meat pancakes and take a chunk out of him.’ That was the kind of thing that came out of this sweet kid’s mouth.
Tianyi found it funny. She really had no idea when this animosity between father and son had started. Lian was strict with Niuniu, that was true, but he adored his son. Tianyi tried to redress the balance by telling the boy: ‘Daddy loves you. Daddy’s put much more time and effort into looking after you …’ But Niuniu turned a deaf ear.
It was the early hours, past three o’clock, before Lian walked through the Nothing to Declare channel and Niuniu had been sound asleep for some time. Tianyi, leaning on the barrier, stared as he emerged clad in denim jacket and jeans. The outfit really did not suit him, he just looked awkward. As he wove his way through the crowd towards her, she saw that the sun had burned his round face much darker than usual. Is this really my husband? She wondered. So much picking and choosing and this is who I ended up with.
Yet he still felt like family, even though he was ugly, awkward, dull, wrong in all sorts of ways, compared to all the handsome guys she used to go out with. For years to come, she would have conflicting feelings about Lian: she felt close to him but uncomfortable with him at the same time. It was an odd feeling. If they were apart, she quickly forgot even what he looked like. Then she saw him again, and there was no one but him.
He really was her family. Jetlag had not yet caught up with him, and when they arrived home they sat up talking until daybreak. He had brought her a complete set of Italian gold jewellery, had spent several hundred dollars on his purchase. He told her about his colleagues’ astonished reaction. She could believe it. This was the early 1990s, and very few people like them, educated but not wealthy, could afford stuff like this. Suddenly her spirits lifted a little. No matter what, I still come first for Lian, she thought. Even his beloved son is only getting a Gameboy. But a few days later, something happened that astonished her.
Peng brought a guest over, and not just any old guest either. Tianyi recognized him instantly; he was one of Zheng’s closest friends, Tong. A short man with a broad forehead, he bore a striking resemblance to Bukharin in the film, Lenin in 1918. She had nicknamed him Bukharin and he had laughed and acknowledged it. He seemed a good-tempered sort — only a very few friends knew he was prone to terrifying explosions of rage. He had been convicted of assaulting his ex-wife and scarring her face for life, but he did not serve a sentence because his wife refused to press charges. The wife told her parents from her hospital bed: ‘Don’t cause trouble for him. He’s a good man.’
Tong was as spontaneous by nature as Zheng. He had met his wife when he was sent to a commune in Inner Mongolia in the Cultural Revolution. He fell madly in love and they courted on horseback. It was most romantic. But the problems started in Beijing.
When they came back to the city, his wife, Ying, suddenly discovered that Tong was shorter than she was, by a good head. Other discoveries followed: the attractions of city life for instance, and the fact that her husband was not god’s gift to women, after all. She could not find a job and that bothered her too. She started arguing with Tong, until the latter, who still loved her deeply, began to feel that there must be another man coming between them. The anxiety caused by his suspicions had the effect of making him impotent. In despair, he began to tail her. Finally, his patience snapped. One freezing winter night after he had been following her for a whole day, he caught up with her and slashed her face with a knife. ‘You want to be another Carmen? Let me help you be her!’ he shouted. (Carmen featured a lot in popular culture back then.)
However, what added to the drama was that the wife with the slashed face refused to bring charges against him. It was as if her husband had proved his love with this action. Men would never understand the twists and turns of women’s logic.
Like Peng, Tong had fled south, returning to testify for Zheng at his trial. However in Tianyi’s house, he did not get the kind of welcome Peng received. When Tong began spouting to Tianyi the kind of fiery rhetoric popular in the protests of a few months previously, Lian launched into an attack on him. Lian had had enough and, face to face with yet another ‘revolutionary’ whom he did not know particularly well, his antipathy boiled over. Only Tianyi knew Lian’s rages. Peng and Tong had never seen anything like it. Subdued by his violent outburst, they made an ignominious exit.
But Tong was nothing if not devious. A few days later, he came to Tianyi’s house again and put a photocopied document on the table. ‘Have a look at that,’ he said. Tianyi took one look and realized what it was: Lian’s ‘personal report’, written for his bosses on his return from America. He wrote that when he left China he realized how great his homeland and its Communist Party were. ‘This has spread like wildfire,’ said Tong with a sneer. ‘For the authorities, he’s become their knight in shining armour. They’ve distributed the document to every departmental Party Committee.’
Tianyi flushed scarlet with humiliation. For a whole day, she did not eat a bite of food or say a single word and, that evening, she put the Italian jewellery back in Lian’s drawer. She lay awake all night, staring at the ceiling. A feeling of utter desolation took hold of her.
17
Less than a month after Tianyi transferred to work at the film production company, the head of the literature department stepped down. A new man was sent to take over, one was said to have studied overseas and had a doctorate in popular communications. He was clearly not interested in being a new broom, contenting himself with calling a meeting of all the staff. He was younger than she imagined, just a year older than her. His name was Wei Qiang, and he was very tall, at nearly six foot, slim but solidly-built, with broad, level shoulders. His hair was neatly combed, he wore a baggy shirt in unbleached cotton, and he was fine-featured but with a determined look … he was just the kind of man Tianyi found most attractive.
Six months went by and Qiang, now settled in the job, set Tianyi a task: ‘Yang Tianyi, you can write a screenplay for us. Didn’t you write The Tree of Knowledge in the mid-eighties? Write a love story even better than The Tree of Knowledge, right?’ Tianyi looked at him. ‘OK,’ she said.
When Tianyi agreed to something, she threw herself into the task. From then on, she worked long hours on the project. It was exhausting, but she thought, I’m doing this for Qiang. She surprised even herself: she would never have been so passionate about it if she was doing it for herself, but because it was for someone else, even an imaginary person, she would put herself under immense pressure, working until she was physically and mentally exhausted. But she avoided close contact with Qiang, keeping her distance in just the same way as she had nurtured a silent crush on boyfriends in her youth. He’s an intelligent man, she thought, he doesn’t need things explaining to him.
Throughout her life, Tianyi had misunderstood men. She had always tried to conquer them through the beauty of her mind. She overlooked the fact that what almost all men wanted was a physical relationship.