Miao chuckled drily. “No, he’s not. We had him checked. Physically he’s a man, healthy and normal. Obviously it’s a mental, moral disease, like an addiction to opium.”
Putting down the phone, I felt dizzy, cursing Baowen for having totally ruined himself. What had happened was that he and Long Fuhai had developed a relationship secretly. The nurse often gave him a double amount of meat or fish at dinner. Baowen, in return, unraveled his woolen pajamas and knitted Long a pullover with the wool. One evening when they were lying in each other’s arms in the nurses’ office, an old cleaner passed by in the corridor and coughed. Long Fuhai was terrified, convinced that the man saw what they had been doing. For days, however hard Baowen tried to talk him out of his conviction, Long wouldn’t change his mind, blaming Baowen for having misled him. He said that the old cleaner often smiled at him meaningfully and was sure to turn them in. Finally Long Fuhai went to the hospital leaders and confessed everything. So unlike Baowen, who got three and a half years in jail, Nurse Long was merely put on probation; if he worked harder and criticized himself well, he might keep his current job.
That evening I went to tell Beina about the new development. As I spoke, she sobbed continually. Although she’d been cleaning the apartment for several days, her home was a shambles, most of the flowers half dead, and dishes and pots piled in the sink. Mopping her face with a pink towel, she asked me, “What should I tell my mother-in-law?”
“Tell her the truth.”
She made no response. I said again, “You should consider a divorce.”
“No!” Her sobbing turned into wailing. “He — he’s my husband and I’m his wife. If I die my soul belongs to him. We’ve sworn never to leave each other. Let others say whatever they want, I know he’s a good man.”
“Then why did he go to bed with Long Fuhai?”
“He just wanted to have a good time. That was all. It’s nothing like adultery or bigamy, is it?”
“But it’s a crime that got him put in jail,” I said. Although in my heart I admitted that Baowen in every way was a good fellow except for his fondness for men, I had to be adamant about my position. I was in charge of security for our factory; if I had a criminal son-in-law, who would listen to me? Wouldn’t I be removed from my office soon? If I lost my job, who would protect Beina? Sooner or later she would be laid off, since a criminal’s wife was not supposed to have the same employment opportunities as others. Beina remained silent; I asked again, “What are you going to do?”
“Wait for him.”
I took a few spiced pumpkin seeds from a bowl, stood up, and went over to the window. Under the sill the radiator was hissing softly with a tiny steam leak. Outside, in the distance, firecrackers, one after another, scattered clusters of sparks in the indigo dusk. I turned around and said, “He’s not worth waiting for. You must divorce him.”
“No, I won’t,” she moaned.
“Well, it’s impossible for me to have a criminal as my son-in-law. I’ve been humiliated enough. If you want to wait for him, don’t come to see me again.” I put the pumpkin seeds back into the bowl, picked up my fur hat, and dragged myself out the door.
An Entrepreneur’s Story
I never thought money could make so much difference. The same children who were often told to avoid me will call me Uncle now whenever they see me. Their parents won’t stop asking how things are or whether I have eaten breakfast or lunch or dinner. Many young men in our neighborhood greet me as Lord Liu, and some girls keep throwing glances into my office when they pass by. But at heart I’m disgusted with most of them. They used to treat me like a homeless dog.
The most unexpected changes came from my wife, Manshan, and her mother. Three years ago, when I was a temporary bricklayer in a construction company, I proposed to Manshan through a matchmaker. Her mother, Mrs. Pan, didn’t like me, saying she’d rather throw her daughter into a sewer than let me marry her. Her words hurt me. For a whole weekend I didn’t go out, sitting on a taboret, drinking black tea and chain-smoking. A friend of mine told me that perhaps Mrs. Pan wouldn’t give me her daughter because I didn’t have a secure job.
“Look,” he said, “that girl works on the train. As long as the iron wheels move in our country, she’ll have her rice bowl.”
“So I’m a bad match, eh?” I asked.
He nodded and we said no more. It was true my job was temporary and I had no stable income, but I guessed there could be another reason for the Pans to turn down my proposal. In their eyes I must’ve been a criminal.
What had happened was that two years earlier a fellow worker named Dongping said to me, “Brother Liu, do you want to make money?”
“Of course I do,” I answered.
“Well, if you work with me, I guarantee you’ll make five hundred yuan a month.”
“Tell me how.”
He described his plan, which was to buy fancy cigarettes in the South and sell them in our city at a higher price. As his partner, I’d get forty percent of the profit if I provided labor and a tenth of the capital. I agreed to take part in the business, although I knew it was illegal. A month before the Spring Festival, I went to Shanghai and shipped back a thousand cartons of Amber cigarettes, but we didn’t sell all the goods before the police arrested us for profiteering. We lost everything — the police confiscated the money we’d made and the remainder of the cigarettes. I was imprisoned for three months, while Dongping got two years because he’d been in the business for a long time and had other partners. I didn’t know he was a “professional.” Our names appeared in newspapers; our pictures were posted on the streets. So, to the Pans I must’ve seemed a hoodlum. At times I couldn’t help feeling ashamed of myself.
I loved Manshan, but I hated her mother. There was no way to erase my past; what I should do was improve my future. At the time — after the Cultural Revolution — colleges were being reopened, but I dared not take the entrance exams because I hadn’t even finished middle school. I was hopeless. To tell you the truth, my only ambition was to become a decent mason, someone Mrs. Pan wouldn’t bother to think of as a potential son-in-law.
The next summer I heard that Manshan had enrolled in the night college, studying modern history in her free time. So I went to the class too, though I couldn’t register officially, unable to pass the exams. The class was large, about eighty people gathering in a lecture room; the teacher never knew my name, since I didn’t do homework or take tests or ask any questions. I told my classmates that I was a clerk in a power plant. It looked like they believed me; even Manshan must’ve taken me for a regular student.
Half a semester passed, and I began to like the textbooks we were reading, especially those chapters on the Opium War. I thought that Manshan might’ve changed her opinion about me, because she didn’t show much dislike of me in the night class. I begged the same old matchmaker to propose to her again, but the hag refused to help me. Only after I bought her a pig’s head through the back door, which weighed forty-two pounds and cost me thirty yuan, did she agree to try again.
This time Mrs. Pan said, “Tell Liu Feng to stop thinking of my daughter. He isn’t worthy. He’s the rooster that dreams of nesting with a swan.”
Those words drove me mad, and I swore I’d take revenge on the old bitch. A friend advised me, “Why bother with the mother? Why not go to the girl directly?”
That was a good idea, so I began trying to approach Manshan. She always shunned me at the night college; I’d follow her whenever I could. Heaven knew how many times I dogged her until she reached home in the small alley. She never bicycled alone, usually together with three or four girls from the railroad company. I had no chance to get close to her.