Though we now live in rational, scientific times, the earthquake has revived my old superstitious beliefs in the seismic condemnation of the Gods. But who has invoked their wrath this time? The Great, Glorious and Correct Communist Party? Or the citizens of the People’s Republic themselves? The darkness and corruption is everywhere, at every level of society. Greed is the beating heart of our people, and morality is overruled by the worship of money. Anyone can be bought and sold, Driver Wang. Even your own wife.
How well do you know her, Driver Wang? How well do you know the woman you sleep beside every night? What I am about to relate to you is no exaggeration of events. The findings of my investigation into who she really is, an exposé of her disturbed mind.
I requested her by number at the reception of the Dragonfly Massage. The receptionist informed me that she was with a customer. The session would be over in forty-five minutes. Would I mind waiting? Driver Wang, I did not mind.
Poverty. Ill health. Someone on society’s lowest rung. I know what Yida saw through her judgemental eyes. She saw no reason to be polite as she led me down the hall. But, inside the private room, I withdrew the pile of banknotes from my pocket and put it on the massage table, and her opinion of me changed. Yida stared at the money. Sixty portraits of the late dictator Chairman Mao, each worth one hundred yuan. Her nose twitched at the scent of ink and the mechanical processing of ATMs. Her eyes were no longer so dismissive.
‘Six thousand yuan,’ I said.
‘What do you want?’
‘For you to strip,’ I said. ‘I only want to look. Not to touch.’
‘I’m going to call my boss,’ Yida threatened.
We waited. She didn’t call her boss. Yida is no stranger to propositions. Half of her income comes from arrangements such as these. She peeled her eyes from the six thousand yuan and narrowed them in scrutiny of me. I didn’t have the appearance of someone with money to throw about.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘No one of any importance,’ I said. ‘Do you want the money or not?’
She stared at it. ‘You only want to look?’ she asked.
I nodded. Her mind was whirring. Calculating risk.
‘I want the money in advance.’
Stud buttons popped open. White uniform dropped to the floor. She reached back and unclasped her bra. Her thumbs hooked the elastic of her knickers and slid them down her legs. Cuffing her ankles before she kicked them off.
‘On the table,’ I said.
She obeyed. Bare buttocks on white sheets. Yida didn’t round her shoulders and hug her knees to her chest as any modest woman would. She arched her back as though posing for a pornographic shoot. She parted her lips and slit her eyes like a cat basking in the sun. She opened her legs, exhibiting the hole into which you plunge at night; stabbing blindly, sinking your hopelessness and despair.
Turned on by her own exhibitionism, your wife’s posing became more and more explicit. She crouched on her hands and knees so her breasts hung like udders. Then she crawled to me, licking her lips with her pink, obscene tongue. She performed in this way, writhing and exposing her private parts, for several minutes. I watched her degrading herself until I could stand no more.
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Get dressed.’
Cold water thrown on her arousal, Yida was disappointed. But she had earned six thousand kuai for less than ten minutes’ work. She’d nothing to complain about. Your wife reached for her bra, and I turned from the pathetic sight of her pulling the straps over her arms and covering her breasts. Six thousand yuan poorer, I turned and left without a word. I had proven what I had set out to prove. That Yida is disloyal. That Yida will betray you for a few thousand yuan. That your marriage is a sham.
You long for transcendence, Driver Wang. You long to escape the meaninglessness of your life. But first you must break free of the human bondage holding you down. For as the findings of my investigation have shown, these bonds are worthless.
22. Sirens
THE PASSENGERS ARE from Henan. A man and wife, and a baby wrapped in a shawl. Recent arrivals at Beijing railway station, smelling of long train journeys in cheap, hard seats, sour milk and baby vomit. The woman cradles the squalling baby as her husband anxiously watches the fare on the meter rise, and Wang knows that, limited by poverty, they usually avoid taxis and struggle on to crowded buses, rousing the antipathy of Beijingers as they block the aisle with heavy bags. The baby is sickly and grizzles all the way to their destination, a run-down block in the south, where the man counts out the fare in one-yuan notes and coins, warm and sticky from being squeezed in his fist. He looks so wretched and pained to part with the money that Wang hands it back, telling him to buy medicine for the baby instead. He accepts the husband and wife’s thanks, then watches them struggle away with their bags, relieved their stifling human misery is out of his cab.
Urgent. Come home now. The message comes as he is driving away. Wang calls her in confusion. Listens as her phone rings and rings. Yida should be home. She has every other Monday off from Dragonfly Massage and spends the day lazing about, watching Korean soaps. Wang hangs up and steers his taxi in the direction of Maizidian, worrying that Echo has had an accident. He wonders if Yida’s parents are ill or dying in Anhui. Yida has been estranged from her parents for years, and Wang has never met his mother- or father-in-law, nor Echo her grandparents. What impact their death would have on his wife, Wang has no idea.
The TV flickers in the shadows of the living room. Coffee cups and bowls, peeled eggshells and the walnuts Yida feeds Echo to improve her grades (persuaded by the superstition that they nourish the brain, because they are the same wrinkled, hemispherical shape) clutter the table from that morning’s breakfast. There’s earthquake coverage on TV. A child’s limp hand in the rubble of a collapsed building. People’s Liberation Army rescue workers heaving at the concrete slab trapping the child to a soundtrack of pulse beats that reminds Wang of the clock ticking on a game show. Then an orchestral swell as the child is freed. Dusty and semi-conscious, his legs bloody and mangled, a stretcher bearing him away. The clip is a week old and Wang has seen it before. He wants to know what has become of the boy. Has he recovered? Can he use his legs? But the story ends here.
‘Yida?’ he calls.
Silence. He goes into the bedroom to look for her. Disorder is the natural state of the room, and a second or two passes before Wang sees the chaos is worse than usual. The mattress has been flipped up, the wardrobe doors are open, and Wang’s shirts dragged from the wire hangers like guilty suspects and dumped in a heap. The underwear drawer has been capsized, and Wang’s boxers, machine-washed to a shade of grey, cast out. Even his trouser pockets have been turned inside out, receipts and coins scattered on the rug.
‘Yida!’ he shouts.
Wang goes back to the living room. The laptop is still there, and Yida’s handbag and wallet are on the chair. Nothing seems to have been stolen. He calls her phone again. Listens to it ring and ring. Celebrities on TV are asking for donations for an earthquake relief fund. The men are grave as they request that viewers call the hotline. The female performers are quivering and emotional. A songstress wipes her tears with pink acrylic fingernails. Wang hangs up.
He is debating whether to call the police when the sirens start wailing outside. The sirens rend the skies with a loudness that can only signal disaster — a fire, or flood or air-raid attack. Wang rushes to the window. Then he remembers the national mourning for Sichuan, and the three-minute ‘silence’ scheduled one week to the minute after the earthquake struck.