Looking at her now, Mengliu realised he was still naked. He was already flaccid, and now he was ashamed. He dressed slowly, his actions full of the sadness and helplessness of a mourner. In an attempt to hide his cowardice, he finally spoke as if offering his condolences. ‘May I ask, has Swan Valley conducted a public opinion survey on this matter? Is this something the public agrees to? Is it the result of a democratic consensus?’
‘Let’s not talk about this in my bedroom,’ Juli said faintly, using the tone of someone resigned to the death of a loved one, and talking respectfully to those offering their condolences. ‘You can express your views freely at the weekly salon.’
‘Juli, I’m just a foreigner.’ Mengliu looked at her, using a dark tone and expression, tuned to a funeral environment, as he once again expressed his grief.
‘Don’t worry. Before long, you’ll have citizenship here in Swan Valley.’ The light caught her eye, making it glow.
‘What?’ Mengliu yelped. ‘Citizenship? I can’t live here. I want to go home.’
‘You mean that place where there’s no democracy, no freedom? What is worth remembering about that authoritarian place?’
‘It’s my homeland.’
‘Once you set foot in Swan Valley, you belong here. It’s just like you were born here.’
‘I don’t even know where I am, or how I got here. Or whether I’m just dreaming.’
‘Swan Valley’s citizenship is not issued indiscriminately. You have exceptionally good genes. Your wisdom and potential will be developed here.’
‘No mater what I am, no matter what happens, I won’t stay in a place where sexual intercourse is forbidden.’
Juli smiled, and her legs writhed sinuously, like a snake spirit.
‘Actually, it’s not absolutely prohibited…If you’re willing to explore the policy and find the loopholes, you’ll see that if you write a good poem and recite the poem loudly for it to hear,’ she put one hand on her private parts and pointed the other at the alarm in the corner of the room, ‘it will be quiet.’
She sat up slowly and hugged her legs to her, breasts squeezed between her knees. She spoke in a tone that struck Mengliu as a confusion between begging and seduction. ‘At least…write one for me, won’t you?’
Mengliu kept staring at her wheat-coloured flesh. As if struck by its lustre, he squinted involuntarily. He issued a string of bizarre laughter. ‘Ah…so it’s sex for poetry? You want to enlist me in the sex trade? Why would you want to treat lovemaking as a commodity? You’re as crazy as they are!’
When he finished saying this, he turned away and rushed back to his own room. He slumped onto the bed in a mess. His body had cooled down, but his heart was still hot, like boiling water stored in the cold steel shell of a thermos. The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. He had been blown by a foul wind to this strange place and to a woman who, at the height of his passion, had told him that, in order to ensure the quality of the population, they didn’t allow sexual intercourse. As soon as he drew near her, an alarm went off, but then she said that if he wrote poetry he could sleep with her. He suddenly sat up in bed, laughing. The Dayang Poetry Society had dispersed years ago. He did not write poetry anymore. He could not write poetry, and did not take life so seriously. Now he despised himself. His body had denied the fact that he could do anything for the love of women. He dared not risk his head to have sex with a woman, and he was even more loathe to use poetry in exchange for a woman’s body. That would be to blaspheme poetry. It was an insult to his history with Bai Qiu and Hei Chun.
The candle had burnt down and went off with a whiff. As he was feeling drowsy with sleep, he heard the sound of a wooden latch sliding. The sound was hesitant. It paused a few times. The latch seemed to be thousands of miles long, never reaching the end, like a carriage bearing a great load up a steep slope, where the slightest interference would spook the horses and stop them in their tracks. Mengliu’s ears were alert. He hardly breathed. Darkness enveloped him. He could see Juli coming out from her bedroom, and hear the swishing of her gown. The wind blew from the forest, rattled the coconuts on the palm trees, filling the air with their fragrance. In the garden insects struck up a chorus. She came in, sinking onto the edge of his bed. She was holding a sharp knife. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes bloodshot. He could feel her breath on his face. The tip of the knife reached his chest, but it was warm, more like a fingertip than a blade. Ah, Juli’s fingertip pressing, two fingertips, three…all of them on him, like a flock of tame creatures. They stroked the grassland of his face, nibbling at the stubble there. Slowly, the fingers straightened and her palms pressed on his face, like a little beast sprawling on top of him, its warm belly pressed against him. All of a sudden, the liquids beneath the earth became torrential, his body tightened like a taut string. When he reached for her there was a crashing sound, and he fell from the bed, waking himself from his dream. He got up, and walked out of the house into the darkness. Laughter echoed in the blankness of his mind.
As dawn broke, he returned in a cloak of mist, extremely weary, and went back to sleep. When he awoke, his emotions were still in a tangle, making his chest feel bloated and hot. Everywhere he looked he saw images of Juli. With the precise observations of a surgeon he concluded that he was in love with her. This woman turned the glue-like substance secreted in his heart into something stickier than any chemical. What he was feeling went beyond science.
It was said that Juli’s husband was a diplomat, an ambassador, young and personable. Only a few people had seen him. It was also rumoured that he had disappeared during his travels at sea. In Mengliu’s imagination he was himself a criminal, thinking of ways to get away with a crime. After he had slept with Juli, how could he act normal, clean up the scene of the crime, clear all signs, erase all suspicious clues…the feeling of success a criminal had did not come from the crime itself, but from the ability to escape being caught. His mind wandered, and he began to taste the excitement of committing adultery. He wanted to have his way with Su Juli. At the same time, he was thinking of how he would escape from Swan Valley.
21
In Round Square there were no songs and no slogans, no bustle, just a mass of bobbing heads. Black flags waved against the bleak sky. People were losing consciousness from hunger, and many had to be carted away in ambulances. The shrill sound of their sirens, like the buzz of a chainsaw cutting through oppression, solidified time and space, like a hand squeezing the light in a tight grasp. The weak light escaping between its fingers brushed past the faces which had suddenly lost their joy. The bodies reeling left and right were wilting like flowers. The number of supporters had increased. People had come from all over Beiping just to sit in Round Square without eating or drinking. The original plan for a rolling schedule of fasting had been jeopardised. There was chaos, disorder, a loss of control. Someone took a loudspeaker and requested that the crowds follow all the organisational arrangements, so as to avoid injury. A headquarters was established and a commander-in-chief installed. Qizi was dressed for the part, wearing a white headband and white mandarin jacket. She hopped up onto the scaffolding of the small broadcasting station and related the developments of the past few days. When she got emotional, she became teary-eyed and her voice filled with a generous grief.
At night, the street lamps cast their glow over Round Square, creating a dreamy warmth there. The temperatures were much lower after dark than in the daytime, and many of the protestors were turning blue with the cold, their lips grey. They were like baggage unloaded from a long-distance bus, thrown untidily together, covered in dust and mud. Early in the morning the square resembled a battlefield that had fallen silent once the fighting was over, with bodies all over the field and the dilapidated flags shrouded in a smoky mist. The clouds were stained, first grey, then pale orange, golden yellow, then a mix of yellow and red as the sun rose to expose its own grey face, blanketed by the fog.