The television screen has gone black as sirens call the nation to a halt. Workers gather outside every office and factory, hospital and bank. Teachers and students gather in the grounds of every university and school. Out in the yard, the security guards and residents stand by the gate to the Maizidian community, heads bowed, the guards with caps in hand. Out in the streets the traffic has stopped and drivers are pushing down on their horns, producing a fog of noise, like lowing herds of mechanical cows. The sirens are inescapable, and Wang stands by the window as though paralysed by the waves of sound.
When the sirens cease, the blackness of the TV screen brightens to a live broadcast of crowds in Tiananmen Square. Thousands of citizens stand facing the portrait of Chairman Mao on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, shouting, ‘Zhongguo Jiayou! Go, China! Brave and strong!’ Thousands of citizens, grim-faced with defiance and national pride, punch their clenched fists to the sky as they chant. Wang watches the crowds for a moment, then reaches for the remote and switches the TV off.
Click click. Click click. Wang’s head turns at the sound of the stove — the rings sparking to ignite the hissing gas. He goes to the kitchen, where Yida stands by the cooker, lighting one of his cigarettes from the ring of flames.
‘Yida! Why didn’t you say you were here?’
Yida stares at him from beneath the wildness of her hair. She is bare-legged, in an old, holey T-shirt, and her eyes are swollen and red. She takes a drag on the cigarette and, out of practice, coughs on the smoke. Yida quit smoking years ago and has been nagging her twenty-a-day husband to do the same.
‘I got your message,’ Wang says. ‘What’s happened? Why is the bedroom turned over like that?’
‘Who are you?’
Yida asks the question slowly, cigarette smoke casting a veil over her face, a penetrating look in her eyes. Wang is confused. Yida is not in the habit of asking strange philosophical questions. Where are the keys? Have you charged the electricity card? These are the questions Yida asks.
‘What do you mean, who am I?’ he asks.
Yida glares at her husband. She grabs her mobile phone from the counter and throws it at him, hard. Wang catches the phone, fumbling as it nearly slips through his fingers. On the screen is a digital photograph, the resolution low and grainy. Wang squints to make sense of the pixels and, when he does, his insides lurch as though in a suddenly braking car. The photo is of two men side by side on a narrow bed, smoking and gazing at the ceiling as they lie on their backs.
‘Who sent this?’ he croaks.
Yida exhales from her cigarette and watches Wang squirm through the haze.
‘I don’t know who sent it,’ she says. ‘There’s one more.’
Wang scrolls to the next message, sick with dread. This time they are sitting on the bed, with Zeng’s head inclined towards him. Wang checks the inbox. No more photos. Yet. Not that it matters. Wang looks at Yida and knows the damage has been done. She stands behind her fortress of smoke as though composed, but he knows she is fighting back tears.
‘Are you sleeping with that man?’ she asks.
‘No!’
‘Who is he?’
‘His name is Zeng Yan.’
‘Your friend from the hospital?’
‘Yes. I ran into him in the street the other day. He said he worked in a salon nearby and offered me a free haircut. So I went with him and he cut my hair. I’d slept badly the night before and was nodding off in the chair. So Zeng Yan said I could take a nap in his back room before going back to my taxi—’
‘You expect me to believe this pack of lies?’ Yida interrupts. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know it was a place men go to have sex with other men! Not even you are that stupid, Wang!’
‘Look,’ Wang says, ‘I was tired and not thinking straight. I trusted this guy, I thought he was my friend. I lay down for a nap and woke up ten minutes later to find him next to me on the bed. I pushed him away, then I got out of there as fast as I could. .’
Wang hears his desperate, wheedling tone and knows Yida is not convinced. Sure enough, her stare remains cynical and hard.
‘You don’t look in any hurry to get out of there in that photo,’ she says. ‘You look very comfortable to me.’
‘Oh, come on! I bumped into an old friend, and made a stupid mistake,’ Wang says. ‘The thought of being with a man makes me physically sick. Yida, you have to trust me on this. .’
‘Trust you?’
Yida stubs her cigarette out on the window ledge. In her agitation she has flicked ash everywhere, on her T-shirt, on her bare feet and the kitchen floor — an offence she would rebuke her husband for. Her eyes darken, and she nods at a cardboard box on the counter.
‘I’ve been reading your letters.’
Wang had been so distracted by Yida and the photos, he hadn’t noticed the box. He’d hidden it in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe — the suitcase they never use, because they never go anywhere. He thought the letters would be safe there. He’d never expected that Yida would one day turn the bedroom over. Yida grabs some loose papers, her hands trembling as she reads aloud:
‘“Yida is a woman who stirs up in men the animal instinct to fuck and procreate. Tempting men as spoiled fruit tempts flies. But sleeping with Yida must be a sad and lonely experience. . The thought of you with your wife repulses me too.’
She chokes back a sob in her throat.
‘They are from Zeng. .’ Wang stutters, thinking how odd it is to hear the letter read out in Yida’s voice. ‘I meant to tell you about them, but I didn’t know how to explain. They are harmless, I think. . just strange.’
Tears slide down Yida’s cheeks.
‘You think you are so much cleverer than me, don’t you, Wang Jun?’ she says. ‘Because you went to university and I dropped out of school at fifteen. Because you are the son of an official, and I am the daughter of peasants from the countryside.’
Wang shakes his head and mumbles weakly, ‘No.’ But what she says is true.
‘But I am not so stupid that I don’t know you wrote these letters yourself,’ Yida cries. ‘This is what you do at night, isn’t it? When you stay up late and don’t come to bed. You are writing these crazy stories on the computer. . writing nasty things about your wife!’
She crumples the letter up and throws it at Wang. The balled-up paper bounces from his chest.
‘Yida, I swear I never wrote those letters,’ Wang protests. ‘Zeng Yan wrote them. .’
Yida rubs her eyes, and for a moment looks as young and vulnerable as when he first met her during the storm, and it pierces Wang’s heart. He wants to go to her and put his arms around her — something he once did without a second thought. But now he hesitates, as he would before scaling a hazardous barbed-wire fence. He steps towards her, and Yida steps back.
‘Don’t!’ she warns. ‘Don’t come near me! Why did you marry me if you think so little of me? What does that say about you, Wang Jun?’
Wang shakes his head. He starts to tell her, No, he does respect her. Then stops as Yida snatches the cardboard box from the counter and hugs it to her chest.
‘I am throwing these away!’ she says.
‘You can’t!’ Wang says. ‘They aren’t yours!’
Wang lunges for the box as Yida spins to the window and leans over the ledge, holding the letters out over the yard below.
‘Don’t!’ he yells.
But she lets go, and Wang reaches the ledge in time to see the lid come off and the letters tumble out into the car park four floors below. He turns back to his wife and shouts, ‘What have you done?’