‘Has Chengdu changed much in the last two years? I read that after Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Chengdu has the largest number of private businesses in the country.’
My eyes sweep over the room and fall on a life-size photograph of Yang Ming’s face that is staring at me from the wall. Smells of fried chilli blow in from the corridor and mingle with the steam and cigarette smoke in the room. Sweat pours down my face. The fleas soaking in my hair burrow into my scalp. I am terrified they might start falling onto the clean bed I am sitting on.
‘The country is starting to shake, like a kettle coming to the boil. People are buying televisions, cassette players, electric fans. Wang Qi has a foreign cassette player, cost him three hundred yuan, it has four speakers and stereophonic sound. I went over the other day to listen. You’re staying with him tonight, it’s all arranged.’ She leans back and puts her wet handkerchief on top of the television.
‘Sorry, which way is the bathroom?’ I push the table towards Wu Jian and squeeze out. The elderly neighbours are chatting in the cool of the dark corridor. I find a relatively clean corner of the latrines, pull down my trousers and scratch my thighs. A lump of someone’s fresh turd steams by my feet. I look at the city through the cracked window pane, and know that every room is crammed with bodies and each body is dripping with sweat. I feel a longing for the empty grasslands and the cruel deserts. At least the air was clean there. Now that I have sunk into this steaming city, everything seems familiar and ordinary.
‘This city is a furnace,’ I say, walking back into the room. ‘The bed is too hot. I’ll sit on the stool.’
‘So tell us about your adventures. Everyone wants to travel now that things are loosening up. I’ve always longed to go to Tibet, just never had the time.’ Wu Jian has a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He works in the propaganda department of a heavy machinery plant. He joined five years ago, straight from university.
‘Beijing felt like a prison. When I escaped I wanted to go as far away as possible, scatter myself across the wilds, spend all my new-found freedom. I didn’t care where I went, as long as I hadn’t been there before. I needed to empty my mind.’ My words embarrass me. I turn to Yang Ming and say, ‘How is your poetry going? Are there many writers in Chengdu? I hear there’s an English Corner now in the People’s Park.’
‘Yes, hundreds of students visit to practise their English. They all want to go abroad.’
‘There will be private English schools opening next.’
‘Well, there is a private ballroom already. It’s open for three hours every Saturday evening. Costs five mao to get in.’
‘Really? We must go. The cities have changed so much in the last six months. When I left Beijing we weren’t even allowed to dance in our own homes. They said things would change, but I didn’t realise it would happen this fast.’
After supper, Wu Jian walks me to Wang Qi’s flat in the staff compound of Sichuan University. Wang Qi edits the university newspaper, his wife is a nurse in the hospital’s orthopaedic department. They look like brother and sister — even their expressions are the same. Their flat has two bedrooms and space enough in the sitting room for a table and four chairs. It is much cooler than Yang Ming’s room.
Wang Qi and I talk late into the night. We keep popping to the bathroom. I go not to use the toilet, but to splash my face with water to keep myself awake. I am used to sleeping at dusk and waking at dawn. It is hard to readjust to the rhythm of the city. He reads me his poem (’My stranger’s teeth/ Chewing at my soft tongue. .’) and talks about Chengdu poets and the underground journal they publish. He asks me about life on the road. I tell him about my trek to Sugan Lake. I must have romanticised it, because the story seems to excite him. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, ‘you have to reach despair before you can see any hope. Life should be dangerous and full of constant challenge.’ Then he leans over and whispers, ‘I can’t stand this life any longer. I must leave. .’
There is no need to whisper. Our voices are drowned by the whirr of the fan and his wife is sound asleep in the bedroom next door. She could not have heard his treacherous words. Each time I pass on the way to the bathroom, I glimpse the curve of her bare legs.
‘Travelling is hard work,’ I tell him. ‘Danger is not exciting, it’s just proof of your incompetence. Besides, the biggest danger anyone can face is a life behind the Iron Curtain. You have a nice home, a pretty wife. I had nothing. That’s why I left. It was an admission of failure. But now I know that nature is as cruel and heartless as the cities I ran away from. It can eat you up from inside. .’
I want to dissuade this man from leaving home, but I am drowsy with drink and can barely hear my words, and my body is sinking deeper and deeper into the sofa.
‘No, I need to change my life. Always the same three men in the editorial department. We’re proof-readers, not editors. The university vice-president makes all the decisions beforehand. I spend the mornings longing for lunch break, and the afternoons longing to go home. When I do get home I have supper and wonder what exactly I have done with the day, and realise the only thing I have done is fill my stomach with green tea. I wish I could do what you did — leave it all behind. That takes real courage.’
I watch his pale hands twirl the glass of beer and, thinking how those same hands can stroke the woman in the bedroom next door, I slowly drift into sleep.
When I wake it is morning already. I can hear the wife in the bathroom telling her son to lift his feet, and a spoon scraping against the wok in the kitchen. Smells of warm tofu milk waft into the stale air of the sitting room. I am not in the mood for polite conversation, so I keep my eyes shut and pretend to be asleep.
As soon as they close the front door, I crawl off the sofa, change into the trousers Wu Jian has lent me, dunk my dirty clothes into a bowl of boiling water, then return to the sofa to open my post.
The first letter has a Beijing postmark. It is dated 1 July. I recognise Li Tao’s handwriting.
Had to wait four months for a letter from you, you bastard. I took out my map to try and get a sense of your journey but all I saw were some unfamiliar place names. It disturbs me to hear that children run away and cry at the sight of your haggard figure. But I am sure that your mind is calm and detached, and I envy you.
Life in Beijing is dull and uneventful. I’ve finished the novella I told you about. Harvest will run it in December. They rejected your poem — said it was too abstruse — so I passed it on to Northern Literature. . Mimi has closed the restaurant and decided to go and try her luck in Shenzhen. She doesn’t seem to need me any more. I have applied for a job at Shenzhen University, and am still waiting to hear back from them. . Sometimes I want to give everything up — women included, but I know I can’t of course. . Why don’t we meet up over Spring Festival? I need to get away.
I’ve been keeping an eye on Nanxiao Lane for you. I’ve paid your water and electricity bills. Sometimes when I sit by your easel and look at your paintings, strange thoughts come to mind, frightening even, but as soon as I pick up a pen my mind goes blank. . It’s your birthday again soon. I’ve enclosed 20 yuan. Go to a restaurant and have a good meal. This letter came for you. Take care of yourself, dear friend.