Feeling himself like an emperor in his robes, Mengliu involuntarily fixed a more dignified expression on his face. As he chewed the delicious rabbit meat, his face remained ridiculously stiff.
‘In another forty minutes, the couple will enter the bridal chamber.’ Esteban ate a few cakes then got up and left his seat. ‘Someone will bring you to the hospital. Everything has been set up.’
‘Hospital?’ Mengliu swallowed the last slice of meat. ‘But why should we go to the hospital?’
‘Artificial insemination,’ Esteban said, without looking back.
Mengliu felt like the chair had been kicked out from under him. His face fell.
‘You really don’t know much,’ Rania added. ‘That’s the regulation.’
9
The light of the sun rising in the east fell diagonally across the fence and into the garden. With the fresh seed growing in her body, Rania had the look of a new wife. She was like a pregnant cat, and seemed even more elegant when she walked. The old rebellious, naughty, mean edginess had disappeared. She had begun to tend the plants in the garden as she waited for the seed in her body to germinate in the sun, to flower and bear fruit. Mengliu felt it was a dream. His feelings for her had grown even stranger to him. He had no idea what she was thinking, and feared he would never figure it out. He felt the people of Swan Valley were like robots running on a program. In the face of instruction they offered unconditional obedience. And yet it was as if everyone here was a philosopher, denying personal desire with their lofty spirits and the depth of their insights about life.
The wound on Mengliu’s leg had still not healed. In fact, it was just as they had said, regressing again after it had begun to improve.
Now that she was Mengliu’s wife under the law, Rania used a mysterious potion every day to clean his wound, murmuring as she did so, as if she was saying a prayer before a meal. Since the absurdity of their wedding night, Mengliu had continued to struggle. All the way to the hospital he vowed not to submit to their arrangements, even to die fighting them. Upon reaching the hospital, he and Rania had been separated, and he was brought to a secret chamber with warm lighting and mural-covered walls. The elaborate frescoes with their quasi-religious symbolism moved him greatly. He skirted around green and red mountains, meandering rivers, plains, hills and forests, and a barefoot flying god. Above the giant lotus blossoms men and women engaged in intercourse, employing all kinds of positions. As the light shifted, they seemed to move in a very lifelike way. Meanwhile members of the hospital staff stood in a corner playing sensual tunes on reed flutes, while a woman chanted passages from a book, as if calling him enticingly to bed. Obscene sounds seemed to come from the people in the pictures. Under such stimulation, poor Mengliu’s resolve and dignity crumbled together. A young nurse, smiling with admiration, brought a glass bottle over, and he was happy to pay his debt in pent-up seed. They planned to use an instrument to inject the fresh sperm into Rania. Now he saw that the figures on the lotus were the Hindu god Shiva and his wife. They weren’t moving after all. Perhaps the obscene images had been the product of his own imagination. The last image he saw was of a woman, upside down and with legs spread apart, a plant growing out of her womb.
Rania was a woman who was easily managed now. After marriage, she was idle and dull, brightening her days by sipping fermented tea, cleansing her organs along with her libido. All distractions had been washed away. She had become as pure and innocent as a baby, her mind a vast empty space. Touched by the orange of the sun, Rania’s sunflower-like face looked eastward, filling her fertile body with the sun’s warmth. Mengliu saw the germinating sprout pushing her belly outward. A strange tenderness filled him, brief but sweet. In a way, this unexpected family life had struck a chord in his instincts, as if a candle had been lit in a dark chamber, allowing him to study himself. He was still unable to find clarity — without poetry, his former life had collapsed. It was past. He had often thought about how, in this morass, he could rebuild his world, but it was all in vain. The whole world had caved in.
Mengliu felt a little fondness for the serenity before him. A woman he had never touched, pregnant with his child. He hardly knew her. Her civility towards him gave him a sense of dignity and self-worth. He could appreciate the simplicity and perfection of this kind of relationship, like prescribing the right medicine for a specific illness. Sometimes he missed Juli acutely, and the distant Suitang, and Qizi, though he did not know whether she was still alive. Rania did not mind his moodiness at such times. She gave all his belongings a good cleaning, even destroying his wallet — credit cards and all — without his permission. She said it was all rubbish, not needed by the Swanese, and therefore cumbersome. The spirit could not be measured in Arabic numerals. People could not live by figures alone. It was a waste of time to fight for worldly possessions. She said the spring has flowers while the autumn has the moon, summer has breezes and winter snow. Having nothing to do is the best season. You could write poetry, study or meditate, with nothing confusing or surprising happening, no improper thoughts, you needed only to feel cheerful, because the family and the nation were prospering. She related everything to the politics of the nation, turning a flea into an elephant with her descriptions, or a crocodile into a gecko. It was her responsibility to assist Mengliu fully in his role as Head of a Hundred Households, and possibly even as the future Head of a Thousand Households. A dutiful wife should naturally push her husband forward in this way.
Rania was bathed in sun, her hair pulled back into a bun, her forehead white and shiny, idealism crystallising in her features. Her arms lay on the armrests of her chair, as white as porcelain in the sunlight. She looked like she could break. Her fingers were plump as maggots, their nails rosy. Mengliu had never known their texture or their warmth, their desire or even their curiosity.
They had never known the plains of his body, and yet they belonged to him.
His eyes narrowed as he looked at Rania’s dazzling white face. It was a leering expression, as if he was calculating how he might seduce her. Since he could not do anything with his own legal wife, except perhaps one day escape with her to the forest for an illicit liaison, he now understood how seriously wrong the situation was.
‘Where did you put my bag of marbles?’ he asked, thinking of his diamonds.
‘I threw them away,’ she answered.
‘You tampered with my stuff again? That was a souvenir Shanlai gave me.’ He was angry, and distressed about the diamonds.
‘Are you still talking about “mine” and “yours”? Yours is mine. You forgot that this authority was conferred on me by Swan Valley,’ Rania said casually. ‘I was assigned to be your wife according to the document.’
Having nothing to say to that, Mengliu turned to the rubbish bin, but he could not find the bag of marbles. ‘You should marry your Swan Valley. It is more suitable than any man to be your husband. I want to annul the marriage right now.’
‘I know. If you had married Su Juli, you wouldn’t say this. But I should remind you that only genes can be a basis for annulment.’
‘You don’t need to bother about who I might have married… Swan Valley’s ban on sexual intercourse, its reliance on artificial insemination — creating geniuses — don’t you find these things contrary to human nature?’ Mengliu turned his back to the sun. His body was covered by a soft layer of dust motes. ‘Rania, as a human, as a woman, do you really not have an opinion about this?’
‘No. They’re the rules.’