‘Control your desires. If something does not belong to you wipe it from your thoughts.’ My voice is trembling.
Suddenly she puts her arms around me and kisses my lips. I hold her for a second, then she breaks free and walks away. The blades of grass in the sun still sparkle with raindrops.
Two tourists with backpacks walk past a goldfish-shaped dustbin.
She leads me back to the town centre along the banks of the Nanming River. Her jeans are identical to mine.
‘This river is disgusting,’ I say. ‘There must be half a century of rubbish buried in there.’
The men digging muck from the riverbed are covered in mud. The stench is vile. Old women scavenge on the banks for wire and umbrella frames, and pile their loot on the pavement. It is already four o’clock, but people are still sloping out in their slippers to brush their teeth by the riverside.
‘Each work unit has been assigned a section to clean. We have contracted some peasants to do our share of the work. It means no bonuses for two months though.’
The town centre is so crowded we can hardly move. An ear cleaner waves his twig and shouts, ‘One mao an ear!’ A blind masseur in dark glasses rubs his hands, waiting for his next customer. A spit-patrol officer grabs a middle-aged man and charges him a one-yuan fine. A beggar plays a three-stringed lute on the street corner and sings with his eyes shut: ‘Chairman Mao’s kindness is deeper than the sea. He comes like thunder in spring to rescue the Communist Party. .’
‘What did Old Mao do for him, for God’s sake!’ I shout over the clatter of bicycles. By the time I have bought my socks and gloves the sky is already dark.
We sit at a street stall and share a plate of tofu. ‘It’s stuffed with chilli sauce and big enough for two, so they call it lovers’ tofu,’ she says with a smile.
A bicycle mender crouched below us is removing drawing pins from a rubber tyre. I lean down and whisper, ‘Bet you sprinkled those pins on the road yourself, little devil.’ He pulls his cap round and shoots me a sideways glance.
Tian Bing kicks my foot. ‘Don’t pick a fight in Guiyang,’ she says. ‘Everyone carries knives. Someone got stabbed yesterday in the train station, and all they wanted was his watch.’ Splinters of light flash from an electric welder across the road.
‘This chilli’s hot. So who else writes poetry in Guiyang?’ I ask distractedly. The crowds of the city appear to be closing in on us.
‘Look at these wastrels! What kind of shit do you expect them to write? When you give your lecture at the university, whatever you do, don’t talk to them about poetry.’ Her voice sounds as angry as it did last night. It seems that, like me, she is not at home with herself either.
A few days later I move in with Zhou Long, a friend of my workmate, Fu Yi. He is a member of the provincial acrobatic troupe and has a large bald patch from years of balancing urns on his head. He puts his mattress on the floor for me and says he will sleep on the wooden boards of his bed. His girlfriend is a tightrope walker, and lives in the room across the corridor. In the evening Fu Yi, Zhou Long and I go out for a beer. We order a plate of ‘cloth dolls’ — small pancakes which we fill with one of thirty stuffings laid on a table before us. They swig the beer and start a drinking game, waving their fingers in the air and shouting, ‘One: bed! Two: lovers! Three: mouths! Four: feet! Five: legs! Ha ha!’ A cold wind blows up. After my lecture this morning at Guizhou Normal University the students took a collection for me, much to my embarrassment. I will buy them a dictionary with the money. I stand up and suggest we take the beers back to Zhou Long’s room.
When I am out making sofas every day, my hair and nostrils fill with fluff and sawdust. I cut timber into planks, fix springs, and help Fu Yi attach fake leather covers. For this I earn eight yuan a day. Our yard is heaped with timber, metal rods and wadding, and the ground is strewn with sawdust and string. When my hands get tired I join Fu Yi for a smoke and a cup of tea and we while away the time watching the girls walk by. In their shiny black leggings, they look like little black ponies from behind.
Fu Yi always carries a magazine, so he knows about everything from butterflies to Freud’s theory of sexuality. He knows that the new president of the Soviet Union is called Gorbachev, that the Chinese women’s netball team won the world cup again and that the American rocket Challenger exploded live on world television. He knows a lot but does very little. He attaches the springs with two nails instead of six and says, ‘Don’t worry, it will look fine once the vinyl is on. Everyone has to live, you know!’ He repeats that last phrase at least twenty times a day.
If a bird flies overhead or his saw hits a nail he shouts, ‘Typical!’ and sits down to admire his biceps.
‘Look, her arse has dropped,’ he says, lighting a cigarette and gobbing onto the floor. ‘Must have got laid last night.’ The girl who passes at this time every afternoon is wearing ankle socks with her stilettos today. The road is muddy in the rain and dusty in the sun, but the girls who walk past always look good enough to eat.
‘It was still tight yesterday. One more virgin lost forever. .’ Fu Yi stretches his legs over the half-upholstered sofa.
I walk to the corner for a piss. The pack of Marlboro Lingling sent me from Guangzhou is nearly finished. In her letter she said Shen Chao is having an affair with the Hong Kong hotel manager and Pan Jie has returned to Beijing in a huff. The printers are still nagging Wang Shu for their costs.
She said she typed up my story ‘Yin Yang’ and sent it to Flower City magazine, but the editor wouldn’t touch it. I will post it to Old Xu this afternoon and see if he wants it. It is the story of a girl who gasses herself after being raped by a gravedigger. Her family take her for dead and bury her the next day. The girl wakes inside the coffin, struggles to escape but dies slowly of suffocation. Later that night, the gravedigger opens her grave, hoping to rape the corpse, but when he sees her tormented expression and the scratches on her face he understands she was buried alive, and is overcome with pity and remorse. He climbs into her coffin, lies down beside her and slits his wrists.
I return to the sofa.
‘O virgin, thy trembling lips. .’ Fu Yi waves his head and flashes his yellow teeth.
‘Save me your poetry, please. You are lucky to have a nice girlfriend like Xiao Yu. Why are you so obsessed with virgins?’ Last night, his girlfriend walked into the communal bathroom with a washbowl and toothbrush. I could not see her face, but when the moonlight from the open window fell onto her shoulders I wanted to take her in my arms.
‘Take it from me, Old Ma, virgins are something special.’ He rolls up his sleeves and flexes his muscles.
I am tempted to tell him Wang Ping was a virgin, but decide to keep it to myself. She seems very far away now. I have felt restless these last days. I went stiff just now when I pissed in the corner. ‘I could do with a woman tonight,’ I say, sucking on my cigarette.
‘You can borrow my mistress if you like. She’s got much bigger tits than Xiao Yu.’
‘All right. Tell her it’s just the once though. No strings attached.’
‘Fine. Yanzi likes artists, she’ll be happy to help you out. Hey! I read they spike Marlboro with dope to get you hooked. What? I know they taste good. Just think though, I have to work a whole day for just one pack. What a life! In foreign countries the restaurants let you eat bread for free. It’s true, I read it in a magazine.’
‘You have to order a meal too, though. You can’t just sit down and eat bread all night.’
‘Tell me, Old Ma, why do you write stories? What? To feed yourself? Hey, do you believe in wild yetis?’ Then he tosses a cigarette stub on the ground and says, ‘You’re not happy, are you?’