“Professor Yang, stop, please!” I stepped over and shook his shoulder gently.
He said between gasps, “Damn it, the poem states clearly there are ten thousand mansions, but where are they? I wrote it and have studied it all my life, but I don’t even have a decent apartment. What’s the good of poetry? It just gets your hopes up.” He was trembling all over and still wouldn’t stop ranting. “People who don’t care a damn about poetry live well and wallow in bliss and comfort. One of my former classmates, who is a nincompoop specializing only in licking his superiors’ assholes, was appointed a minister in the State Council two years ago. He has so much power that he had a swimming pool constructed for himself, as easy as ordering a dish. But we, wretched scholars and fainthearted bookworms, have lain in word-hoards, feeding on paper and ink, believing in poetry, and dreaming of miracles. We are all fools! We— we—” He was panting so hard that words failed him.
I patted his back for a while to relieve his gasping. Then I began laying him down slowly. The muscles on his face twitched and twitched as though something were biting him in his mouth.
I too was sick at heart.
14
When Meimei and I became engaged, my parents came to Shanning to see the Yangs. They brought products from our hometown, such as hazelnuts, dried tree ears, and daylilies. They presented Meimei with a woolen coat and her parents each with a marten hat, which embarrassed me a little because the climate here wasn’t cold enough for anyone to wear such a hat. Among their gifts was a small bag of dried hedgehog mushrooms, which my townsfolk call “monkey’s heads.” These were a delicacy that could rarely be found in the forest nowadays. The Yangs were very impressed by the mushrooms, which they had heard of but never seen before. Although my mother explained to Mrs. Yang in detail how to prepare and cook them — soak them in warm water for a day, tear them into slivers, and stew them with pork or chicken— Mrs. Yang kept shaking her head and said she couldn’t make such a fancy dish by herself, afraid of spoiling the mushrooms. So my mother cooked some for the engagement dinner. The Yangs were amazed that the mushrooms tasted almost exactly like the pork shoulder they were stewed with.
At the end of the dinner, my mother took out a folded envelope and said to my fiancée, “Meimei, here’s five hundred yuan my old man and I would like to give you as a token for having you as our daughter.”
The Yangs and I were all surprised. I hadn’t anticipated that she’d follow the customs back home, which required the parents-in-law to present a sum of money to the prospective daughter-in-law, who in return must call them Father and Mother in front of everyone.
My mother remained silent, her broad face wearing an expectant smile. Meimei seemed puzzled, looking at me inquiringly. I told the Yangs, “By the customs in the Northeast, Meimei should call my parents Father and Mother when she accepts the money.”
“I’m not selling myself,” said Meimei in an undertone, but everybody heard her.
A prolonged hush fell on the table. I was disconcerted, not knowing whether I should take the money for my fiancée. Five hundred yuan was a large sum, equal to seven or eight months’ salary for a common worker. It must have taken my mother two or three years to save such an amount. My father broke in, “Well Meimei, if you’re against the old custom, we can understand. One of these days you will call us Dad and Mom anyway, so we can wait. Just take the money, okay? That will make my old wife happy.”
“I can’t do that,” said Meimei.
My mother looked upset, puffing her lips out. Luckily no other people were at the dinner, or she’d have felt she had lost face. My father told her, “Meimei is a college student, and we shouldn’t treat her like a regular bride in our small town. We should’ve thought of this beforehand.”
Then I hit upon an idea. “Mother, please keep the money for Meimei for the time being, all right? She’s wonderful with the harmonica. Can we ask her to play a tune for us instead of calling you Mom?”
To my relief, my mother agreed. “Sure, fine with me. I won’t have her do anything she doesn’t want to.”
I turned to Meimei. “Please play a piece.”
Mr. Yang chimed in, “That’s the minimum you should do for your future parents-in-law.”
Pouting, Meimei went into the bedroom and returned with her large harmonica. Without asking us what to play, she began blaring the music of “March Forward, March Forward!” the theme song of the revolutionary ballet The Red Women Detachment. The militant tune was metallic and fierce; it sounded like a pack of cats whining and growling at one another. At times one or two notes snapped out of place. The music made my temples smart. For some reason, my mother enjoyed it and even hummed along with the tune. I saw resentment in Meimei’s eyes and her red cheeks bulging. When she was done, I dared not comment, but my parents clapped their hands.
Mrs. Yang muttered, “She’s totally spoiled.”
“You could have chosen a sweeter piece,” added her father.
Meimei sat down without a word, panting a little. My mother picked up the envelope and put it back into the inner pocket of her jacket. She said, “Meimei, I’ll keep this money for you. Whenever you need it, it’s yours.”
I was unhappy with Meimei. If she had accepted the woolen coat from my parents, why couldn’t she take the money? What made her so particular? But I didn’t say anything to reopen the topic.
The Yangs’ apartment had just one bedroom, so my parents stayed with me in the dormitory. Huran and Mantao had gone home for the winter break, and there were enough beds, though my parents had to sleep separately. That they didn’t mind. But they were accustomed to the heated brick-bed back home, the beds here were too cold for them, and they complained that there was no stove in the room.
The day before my parents returned home, Meimei, Mrs. Yang, and my mother went shopping downtown. My parents wanted to take back some fashionable clothes for friends and neighbors and also some fancy candies for children, which were not available at our local grocery stores. My mother was fond of Meimei despite my fiancée’s unsteady temper, often saying it was fortunate to have a doctor in our family. At those words, Meimei would smile complacently and declare she’d handle me like a doctor treating a patient. She even warned me to expect a fishwife.
My father and Mr. Yang stayed home, smoking pipes while chatting away over black tea. They liked each other very much. My father had been a college graduate and was well read, so they had a lot to talk about. I sat in the bedroom, listening to them through the door ajar.
“Old Wan, you must have gone through a great deal of hardship all these years,” said Mr. Yang.
“That’s true,” my father admitted. “Look at my hands, they’re coarser than a peasant’s. I used to write articles for a major newspaper in Tianjin. Just because of a few words of criticism about an overbearing leader, they sent me to Heilongjiang Province to be reformed.”
“Did you often starve at the labor camp?”
“I didn’t go to a camp actually. What happened was that before the revolution my father had been a landowner, a small one who had only five acres of land. But he helped the Communists during the war against the Japanese invaders and often gave them food and shelter, so during the Land Reform the Communists put him into a different category from a regular landowner. He was classified in ‘the open-minded gentry.’ ”
“Does this mean you’re from a revolutionary family?” Mr. Yang asked in earnest.
“No, we were treated as a lesser kind of reactionary. Some of the Communists still remembered my father when I was in trouble, so they intervened on my behalf. That’s how I wasn’t sent to a camp. Else God knows where my bones would’ve been scattered.”