‘Just look at him, with his slip-sliding eyes. I think it’s pretty clear he’s not a gentleman. He joined the Unity Party, and next thing you know, he may bring the whole thing crumbling down.’ Shunyu wiped vigorously at the ink on her fingers. Walking past a cluster of willow trees, she said, ‘Let’s go to Round Square. Maybe we’ll find something to do there.’
‘Let’s not. I’m worried about your father.’ Mengliu pretended to object, but actually he wanted to see Qizi.
‘My father donated two thousand kuai to the Unity Party yesterday.’
‘That doesn’t mean he allows you to participate.’
‘Let’s just go. I’m bored.’
‘I guess I could go and help construct the broadcast station.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Well, I’m not your father. I can’t stop you.’
‘Yuan Mengliu, you arsehole. Are you being cheeky with me?’
‘Sure I am! If I’m the one who has to look out for you, doesn’t that make me your father?’
‘You’re incorrigible. Hey — do you want to hear one of my father’s romantic stories?’
She told him the story as they walked towards the square. ‘It’s from when he was in the army. Of course, he hadn’t met my mother at that time. My father’s company rested in a village for a few weeks. He got a little stir crazy, so sometimes he went to the river to play the chuixun. Because he played so well, a beautiful girl was fascinated by the music. He taught her to play the xun. On the night before he was to depart, my father and the girl went into the bushes by the river and, you know…He also left the xun with the girl.’
‘What sort of xun?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘What happened next?’
‘There was no “next”. My father only knew her nickname, something like Little Liu. Maybe she was the sixth child in her family, so they called her liu.’
‘Your father really was a romantic, seducing a village girl while in military uniform.’ Mengliu pretended to be preoccupied, but he was thinking of all the rumours he had heard about his own father. He took out his xun and looked at it, noting where his adoptive father had seen the engraved words meng liu and taken that as his name. Could there be some relationship between these two ‘sixes’, these ‘lius’?
Impossible! Inwardly, he laughed at himself. It was too fantastic. How could he even entertain such a ridiculous notion?
Shunyu spoke on her father’s behalf, saying he had taken the thing he loved most and given it to Little Liu. ‘That xun was the only thing my father cherished. It was an heirloom.’
‘At least he had a heart. Go back and ask your father, what did the family heirloom look like? Was it an oval xun, a bottle-gourd xun, a grip xun, a mandarin duck xun, an attached xun, a cow’s head xun, or was it like this…a lady-charming xun?’ He thought a moment, then laughed. ‘Well, for people with low IQs like you, it’s too complicated. How about this — you take my xun back to your father and ask him what era it comes from.’
20
Dark clouds swallowed up the moon, the bird of the night let out a scream as if the sudden darkness had bitten into it, deepening the surrounding shadows until everything became indistinguishable patches of blackness. Mengliu quietly listened to his own heartbeat for a while, feeling bored. The constant sound of turning pages came from the room opposite, where Juli sat. He felt that she was summoning him. She had left the door unlatched and slightly ajar. The light in her room was soft.
To express his loneliness, Mengliu put on a show with the chuixun for a while. He sat quietly for a little longer, then stood up and walked straight across to Juli’s room. He stopped in the small strip of light in the doorway, allowing it to split his body in half. The rhythm of his fingers on the door were like a bird pecking. When he got a response, he opened the door and let the light pour onto him.
As he went into Juli’s room, he found himself insufficiently prepared. He was stunned, as if he was standing beneath the vast sky with the lake and mountains shimmering in the distance, and the foliage stirring nearby. The sun shone on her golden face and chest, the low neckline of her gown emphasising the two mysterious mounds that rose like graves there. His spirit was sucked toward the sight, but he bravely tore himself from the grip the spectre of the graves had on him and returned to the warmth of reality.
He pretended to sweep his eyes across the furnishings in the room, a pear-carved table, chairs and wardrobe in the Chinese style. There was a bronze glow over everything, and tassels hung from the edge of the purple linen covering the bed. On the wall above the bed hung a needlepoint depicting Japanese ladies in kimonos. Juli knelt there beneath it. Her long skirt covered her legs, exposing only her feet, which peeped out like the paws of a cat lying on its belly.
Seeing that Mengliu did not speak for some time, Juli straightened her legs and laid her book upon her lap. His eyes immediately fell to the book — or, rather, to her lap. Juli thought for a moment, then sat up and moved to a chair. She wore a pair of white cotton slippers, which looked very comfortable.
‘You can also have a seat,’ she said. The light fell on the side of her face, illuminating the fine hairs on her neck. Her ears looked like a fried snack, golden and crispy thin.
He felt as if he had taken a drag of marijuana. His legs were floating, and his eyes felt as if they had tendrils growing out of them, crawling like ants across the floorboards and stopping at Juli’s feet to gaze up at her.
‘I…don’t really need anything.’
He and Juli sat at a round table with a porcelain vase of white lilies on it. He stared at the flowers and added, ‘I just…wanted to talk.’
Juli smiled gently, revealing four small shell-like teeth. At night, he could see how black her eyes were, and unbelievably soft.
‘Are you still thinking of the nursing home?’
‘No…no! I feel like there’s a caged beast inside of me.’ He seemed to be describing an interesting dream. ‘This wild beast keeps roaring, and trying to crash through the cage it is shut in. Oh! It is going to rush out of my chest!’ He rubbed his chest, as if to appease the unseen beast. ‘It’s nearly crushing my heart.’
Juli frowned in confusion. ‘What? There’s an animal inside you? What should we do? That’s so strange.’ She did not understand this type of analogy at all.
Mengliu looked at her, shocked. He had deliberated on this piece of poetic expression for a long time. But perhaps the beating around the bush only served to magnify the difference in the thinking processes of their different countries. His head was buzzing. After Qizi, Mengliu had never really tried his hand at seriously falling in love. All those years ago in Dayang, in that time of economic development and obsession with liberation, it was easy to get one’s hands on a girl. Each knew she was master of her own body, and as the animals awoke inside of them, they let them loose to play and run wild. Love at that time, like poetry now in Swan Valley, overflowed. No one took it too seriously, and all the young people lived in a state of confused ecstasy.
For a moment, Mengliu felt helpless. Juli’s thin linen nightgown gave him a clear view of the body inside it, provoking the wild beast inside him.