Zhou thought over the suggestion. “All right,” he said, “that’s what I’ll do.” He bade them good-bye and left.
Niu Yueqing knew that Zhou had left when she heard the door open, so she called out from the bedroom, “In here, Zhidie.”
Zhuang opened the door to see his wife leaning against the bed as she wiped her face with facial cleanser.
“You’re amazing!” he said. “Instead of dealing with Zhou Min’s mistake when he was here, you decided to go off on something else. What will he think of me now? He’s going to say I’d sacrifice him and others in the magazine.”
“Would you have come up with that idea of yours if I hadn’t?”
“What do you know about Zhou Min? We have just met, after all. I wasn’t too happy when he used my name to get a job at the magazine, and now he’s stirred up so much trouble, and yet you’re on his side. What can I say to Jing Xueyin when I see her?”
“Oh. So you’re still thinking about seeing her?”
With a curse, Zhuang shut the bedroom door and went into the living room to smoke. He heard the faint sound of a xun. When it finally stopped, he told Liu Yue, who was dozing on the sofa, to go to bed, while he stayed in the living room and inserted the funereal tape in the player. Keeping the volume low, he turned off the light to immerse himself, body and soul, in a state that even he found hard to explain.
. . .
Over the next few days, Zhou Min left early in the morning and returned home late at night, not straying from the magazine. At home he had little time for Tang Wan’er. Always itching to go somewhere, she complained that they hadn’t been to the Sheraton Dance Club for a long time, but he kept putting her off. She told him that Zhuang Laoshi had opened a bookstore to the left of the Forest of Steles Museum and said they should go check it out, see what sort of books they stocked, and show Zhuang Laoshi that they cared about what he was doing. Zhou replied impatiently, “I don’t have time for that. You can go if you want.” He did nothing but play the xun on the city wall and sleep. Upset, she ignored him. When he left for work in the morning, instead of going out on her own, she stayed home and tended to her appearance, putting on perfumed rouge and painting her brows thin and smooth. She kept her ears pricked, thinking it was Zhuang coming to see her every time the metal ring on the door made a noise. When they had made love that first time, she was elated that the barrier between them had been removed. As she thought about how she was now his, her face burned and she got hot all over from arousal; when she saw how the people passing by the door outside looked indifferently at the pear tree, she laughed coldly as her anger rose: Just you wait, one of these days you’ll know what I mean to Zhuang Zhidie. Then I’ll watch you come fawning over me and embarrass you until you look for a place to hide. But it had been so long, and Zhuang had not shown up again, so she vented her anger on herself by mussing her hair and by pressing her lips on the mirror and the door to leave red circles. That night, the moon was as bright as water. As usual, Zhou Min went to the city wall to play his xun. Wan’er shut the gate and went in to take a bath. Then, draping her nightgown over her naked body, she went out and sat on the lounge chair under the pear tree. Utterly lonely, she thought about Zhuang Zhidie: Why don’t you come? Were you, like all the other men, just satisfying a sudden urge that day and put me out of your mind once it was over? Did you simply want the memory of another woman added to your list of conquests? Or, as a writer, did you merely use me as material for something you were writing? She thought some more, and as she savored the memory of that day, she retracted her earlier thoughts. He would not be like that. The look in his eyes when he first saw her, his timid approach, and his madly urgent behavior when they were together gave her the confidence that he was truly fond of her. Her first sexual encounter had been with a manual laborer, who had forced her down on the bed, and that had led to their marriage. After the wedding, she was his land and he was her plow; she had to submit to him whenever he felt like cultivating his land. He would climb on with no preamble and finish before she felt a thing. With Zhou Min, she naturally enjoyed what she hadn’t had with her first man, but Zhou was, after all, a small-town character who could never compare with a Xijing celebrity. Zhuang had started out shyly, but once he entered port, he was immensely loving and tender; his many tricks and techniques had finally taught her the difference between the city and the countryside, and between one who was knowledgeable and one who was not. She came to know what makes a real man and a real woman. She touched herself as she followed this line of thought, until she began to moan and groan, calling out to Zhuang. She was writhing and squirming on the chair. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 37 words.] The chair creaked and inched slowly toward the pear tree; squinting at the moon through the branches, she fantasized that it was Zhuang’s face. As she flicked her tongue, she wrapped her legs around Zhuang until she was up against the tree trunk, where she moved, rocking the tree and swaying the moon, until one final, forceful push of her body before she went limp. Three or four pear leaves circled above her and then settled onto her body. Exhausted, she remained in the chair, lost in thought, so weak it felt as if all her bones had been removed.
“You’re still up?” Zhou Min remarked when he returned from playing the xun.
“Yes.” Without getting up, she brushed the leaves off her body and adjusted her nightgown to cover her legs. Zhou cast a bored look at the moon. “The moon is pretty tonight.”
“Yes,” she said, wondering what Zhuang was doing at that moment. Was he reading in his study or was he already in bed? Zhuang-ge, she said silently, I must be away from you for now, for I have to be with another soul under these eaves. Keep your door open so the wind can blow in your direction and maybe startle you awake, possibly because of the soft noise. But don’t move, my Zhuang Zhidie. Close your eyes and let us begin our conversation.
When Zhou saw her still lying there after he had washed his face in the kitchen, he said, “Why aren’t you coming to bed?”
“Stop annoying me!” she said angrily. “You talk too much. Go to bed if you want.” She shuffled in her slippers out to the gate.
“Are you going out? It’s late,” he said.
“I can’t sleep. I’m going to buy some ice cream at the street corner.”
“In your nightgown?”
In her simple white nightgown, she disappeared through the gate and walked out to the lane.
Instead of buying ice cream, she borrowed the store’s phone and called Zhuang’s house. Liu Yue answered. When she asked who was calling, Tang Wan’er wondered why Liu could not recognize her voice. She asked after Zhuang and his wife.
“Ah, it’s you.” Liu Yue was happy to hear Wan’er’s voice. “It’s late. Are you all right?”
“Everything is fine,” Wan’er said. “I was just wondering if there’s any heavy-duty work that needs to be done at your house, like bringing charcoal home, carrying rice or noodles back, or changing the liquid gas tank. Zhou Min is strong, he can do all those things.” Then she heard Liu Yue call for Niu Yueqing, who asked who was on the phone. Liu Yue told her about Wan’er and her offer, and Niu Yueqing picked up the phone.