The meeting lasted just fifty minutes, uncharacteristically short. After it, Weiya and I went behind the classroom building, where a footpath stretched along the back wall and led to the swimming pool, whose water shimmered faintly beyond the high, pointed paling. Two female undergraduates were strolling back and forth along the path, chatting in low voices and giggling intermittently. So Weiya and I chose to stand under a streetlamp whose lightbulb had burned out. A dog yapped from the yard of the school’s guesthouse, about two hundred feet away in the north. The roof of that ranch-style house was partly obscured by young sycamores and a bamboo grove, and some rows of the ceramic tiles, still wet with rainwater, glistened in the moonlight.
“What’s happened?” I asked Weiya.
“What do you think of Yuman Tan?” Her voice was slightly hesitant.
“As a colleague?”
“No, as a man.”
I frowned. To me that dapper fellow was merely a truckler, “an anus-licker,” as some people called him behind his back. “Well,” I said, “I don’t think he’s impotent, though he never impregnated his ex-wife.”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“Why are you so interested in him?”
“Secretary Peng has introduced him to me.”
“She wants you to date him?”
The angry edge in my voice must have startled her; she lifted her face, her eyes flickering. She answered, “More than that, she asked me to be his fiancée.”
“What? Do you like him?”
“I don’t dislike him, to be honest.”
“Can you imagine yourself loving him?”
“That’s an irrelevant question. It doesn’t matter if I can love him or not. Most marriages aren’t based on love anyway. As long as a couple are compatible, their marriage may work.”
I was nonplussed. Never had I thought she could be so practical.
“To be honest,” she said after a feeble sigh, “I’ve already outgrown love. When I was a teenager, I believed I was born to love and would die for love. Romantic, wasn’t I? Some years later, on the rubber farm, I fell in love with a man who taught me how to paint propaganda posters on billboards. But after he went to college, he stopped writing to me. He was a clever fellow, too clever to be serious about a girl’s heart. He thought I got stuck in the wilderness forever.”
“All right, but do you think you’re compatible with Yuman Tan?” I asked. She had told me before about her life on a rubber plantation in Yunnan Province, where she had worked for several years, so there was no need for me to hear the story again.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know him well enough to say that. Probably nobody really knows who he is. He seems to have different faces. But he’s talented and writes well.”
“So are some other men.”
“He’s a decent essayist, don’t you think?”
“All right, he is. But we’re talking about the man, not his pen. I can’t comprehend why you’re so interested in him. Believe me, Weiya, he’s not worthy of your attention.” I wanted to say, To me he’s just an unbearable horsefly that can’t bite but is always annoying. You mustn’t demean yourself this way. But I checked myself.
She said with a drawn smile, “I’m already thirty-one, tired of being an old maid. If I don’t get married soon, I’ll become a childless woman all my life.”
“So you want a home?”
“Yes. It’s a shame to hear this from me, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Pity rose in my chest as I realized that like me, she too must be a lonely creature in spite of her confident appearance. She too must have been starving for companionship, longing to rest in a pair of reliable arms. Nevertheless, I pleaded, “Don’t do this to yourself, Weiya. I’m sure you’ll find a better man.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Secretary Peng can hurt me. If I don’t obey her, there’ll be disastrous consequences.”
“In what way can she hurt you?” It felt odd to hear her say that; never had I seen her so apprehensive.
“Hmm, let me just say this: she can kick me out of the department easily.”
“So?” I wasn’t convinced. Why should she barter herself for a teaching position? This would ruin her life.
“I’m not like you,” she said. “If I were a man, I wouldn’t be afraid of her, and I’d go anywhere after graduation. I wouldn’t even think of marriage at all.”
I felt all at sea about what she was driving at. She was a well-educated woman, not only independent but also thoughtful. Why did she sound so timid? She went on, “Tell me, Yuman is just a scoundrel to you, isn’t he?”
“Not only that. If you marry him, he may not be able to give you a child.”
“You mean he may have physical problems?”
I nodded, unsure how to explain, though I knew for a fact that his ex-wife had never gotten pregnant.
“Well,” she said, “I’m quite sure that physically he’s fine.”
“Did you check him out?”
Ignoring my mockery, she replied, “He entered college in 1977, after the entrance exams were reinstated. This means he had to pass the thorough physical screening in order to get admitted to college. Let me tell you a secret: one reason that most young women want to marry college students is that the men are healthy and unlikely to have major physical problems. For us it’s a safer bet.”
I was amazed by such a shrewd answer, yet I told her, “Whether Yuman Tan is physically all right or not, you deserve a better man.”
“That’s not a reasonable thing to say. We all deserve a good marriage, a happy family, and a great career, but those blessings are not for everyone. I used to dream of having a bunch of kids and a white bungalow like the one my grandparents once had, but that was just a fantasy. Besides, where could I find a better man?”
“There must be one if you look hard.”
“Tell me where to find such a man.” She gave a sly smile and went on, “To tell you the truth, recently I’ve begun to believe the feminist argument that most Chinese men have degenerated.”
Without much thinking, I patted my chest and said almost flippantly, “Well, have you ever thought of someone like me? Of course I can’t give you a bungalow.” Although I kept my tone of voice nonchalant, my heart began pounding. My impromptu offer shocked me. Yes, I was attracted to her, but I had never intended to go this far.
Surprised, she looked me in the face, then turned away laughing as if in hysterics. “You’re crazy,” she said. “This isn’t a novel or a movie, and I’m not a young heroine who needs a prince or a knight riding a white horse to her rescue. You’re already engaged, so you can’t be serious about what you just said. You probably mentioned yourself only out of pity, but I don’t need your compassion in this situation. Even if you meant to help me, what made you think I’d do Meimei such a nasty turn? Besides, you’re five years younger than me.”
I was abashed but managed to counter, “Well, Karl Marx was four years younger than his wife Jenny, but they had a great marriage.”
She laughed again, this time ringingly. “You’re so funny. We’re in China, and we’re average people.”
I realized what a fool I had made of myself, yet I said in self-defense, “Then why did you bother to ask me about Yuman Tan?”
“If Mr. Yang were not ill, I’d ask him. Other than him, you’re the only man here I can trust. You’re like a younger brother to me.”
That shut me up. I was somewhat irritated by the word “trust,” of which I had had an earful. When I was an undergraduate at Jilin University, quite a few young women had said the same thing to me: they found me honest and trustworthy. But none of them had ever thought me loveworthy. That was why they often talked to me and even confided in me. I felt like a wastebasket into which they dumped whatever they had no place for. This made me think that a harmless man must be more unfortunate than a charmless woman.