A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories (10 page)

It did not occur to Sansan that she should have had sex with Tu before he took off. In fact, he asked for it, but she refused. She remembered reading, in her college course,
Women in Love,
and one detail had stuck with her ever since. One of the sisters, before her lover went to war, refused to have sex with him, afraid that it would make him crave women at a time when only death was available. But Tu was not going to a war but a married life with another woman. How could a man resist falling in love with a beautiful woman whose body ate, slept, peed, and menstruated in the same apartment, a thin door away from him?

Sansan started to imagine the lovemaking between Tu and Min when, after the short letter informing her of their intention to stay in the marriage, neither would write to her again. She stripped them, put them in bed, and studied their sex as if it would give her an answer. Min’s silky long hair brushed against the celery stalk of Tu’s body, teasing him, calling out to him; Tu pushed his large cauliflower head against Min’s heavy breasts, a hungry, ugly piglet looking for his nourishment. The more she imagined, the more absurd they became. It was unfair of her, Sansan knew, to make Tu into a comic image, but Min’s beauty, like a diamond, was impenetrable. Sansan had never worried about the slightest possibility of their falling in love—Min was too glamorous a girl for Tu, the boy with a big head, a thin body, and a humble smile. She had put her faith in the love between Tu and herself, and she had believed in the sacrifice they had to go through to save a friend. But inexplicable as life was, Min and Tu fell in love, and had mismatched sex in Sansan’s mind. Sometimes she replaced Min with herself, and masturbated. Tu and she looked more harmonious—they had been playmates when Sansan had been a toddler sitting by her mother’s stove, where Tu had been a small boy from the next stall, the fruit vendor’s son; the sex, heartbreakingly beautiful, made her cry afterward.

Sansan took up the habit of eating sunflower seeds when she could no longer stand her imagination. Every night, she sits for hours cracking sunflower seeds; she reaches for the bag the first thing when she wakes up, before she gets out of bed. She calms down when the shells pop in her brain, and is able to imagine Tu and Min in their clothes. The fact that they both broke their promises to her, hurtful as it is and it will always be, no longer matters. What remains meaningful is Tu and Min’s marriage vows to each other. She was the one to make them husband and wife, and even if they would be too ashamed to admit it to each other, she would always hover above their marriage bed, a guardian angel that blesses and curses them with her forgiveness.

What, then, has led them to end their marriage, ten years too late? Once they broke their promises to her; twice they did. With a divorce, what will become of her, when neither of them will be obliged to think about her nobleness?

WHEN THE BAG of sunflower seeds runs out, Sansan decides to go find her mother and ask about Tu’s divorce. The marketplace, the only one in town, is next to the railway station. The trains running between Beijing and the southern cities stop several times a day at the station for ten-minute breaks, and many vendors rely on these trains for their businesses.

The one-fifteen train has just pulled into the station when Sansan arrives. A few passengers show up stretching their legs and arms, and soon more flood into the marketplace. Sansan stands a few steps away and watches her mother hitting the side of the pot with a steel ladle and chanting, “Come and try—come and buy—the eight-treasure eggs—the best you’ll ever taste.”

A woman stops and lifts the lid, and her kid points to the biggest egg in the pot. More people slow down at the good smell of tea leaves, spices, and soy sauce. Some take out their wallets to pay; others, seeing more egg sellers, walk on without knowing they’ve missed the best hard-boiled eggs in the world. When Sansan was young, she was infuriated by the people who did not choose her mother’s eggs—the other vendors were all stingy, never adding as many spices and tea leaves to their pots as her mother did. But when Sansan became older, she grew angry, instead, at her mother’s stubbornness. All those people who buy her eggs—strangers that come and go and will not remember this place or her mother’s face even if they remember the taste of the eggs— they will never know that her mother spends more money on the best spices and tea leaves.

When the train leaves, Sansan finds a brick and puts it next to her mother’s stool. She sits down and watches her mother add eggs and more spices to the pot. “Isn’t it a waste of money to put in so much of the expensive spices?” Sansan says.

“Don’t tell me how to boil eggs. I have done this for forty years, and have brought you up boiling eggs my way.”

“But even if people can taste the difference, they will never come back to look for your eggs.”

“Why not give them their one chance to eat the best eggs in the world, then?” her mother says, raising her voice. A few vendors look at them, winking at one another. The marketplace is full of eyes and ears. By dinnertime, the whole town will have known that Sansan has shown up and attacked her poor mother, and children of the town will be warned, at the dinner tables, not to follow Sansan’s example, a daughter not fulfilling her filial duty, who spends money on renting when her mother has kept a room ready for her.

“Mama, why don’t you think of retirement?” Sansan says in a lower voice.

“Who will feed me then, a poor old widow?”

“I will.”

“You don’t even know how to take care of yourself,” her mother says. “What you need is a man like Tu.”

Sansan looks at her own shadow on the ground, and the fragments of eggshells by her leather sandals. The eggshells were her only toys before she befriended Tu from the next stall, the fruit vendor’s son. Tu’s parents have retired, living in a two-bedroom flat that Tu bought for them. The next stall now sells cigarettes and lighters and palm-sized pictures of blond women whose clothes, when put close to the flame, disappear. After a moment, Sansan asks, “What happened to Tu?”

“His parents came by yesterday, and asked if you wanted to go back to him.”

“Why?”

“A man needs a woman. You need a husband, too.”

“Is that what I am, a substitute?”

“Don’t act willful. You’re not a young girl anymore.”

“Why did he get a divorce?”

“People change their minds. Sansan, if you ask me, I would say just go back to Tu without questioning.”

“Is that what Tu wants? Or is it his parents’ idea?”

“What’s the difference? He’ll marry you if you want to go back to him, that’s what his parents said.”

“That would make it an arranged marriage.”

“Nonsense. We’ve seen you two grow up together from the beginning,” Sansan’s mother says. “Even in arranged marriages, people fall in love.”

Sansan feels a sting in her heart. “Sure, people fall in love in arranged marriages, but that’s not the love I want.”

“What do you want, then, Miss Romantic?”

Sansan does not reply. A romance is more than a love story with a man. A promise is a promise, a vow remains a vow; such is the grandeur of
Casablanca,
such is the true romance that keeps every day of her life meaningful.

Neither of them speaks. Sansan watches her mother pick up the fresh eggs with the ladle, and crack the shells carefully with a spoon so that the spices will soak the eggs well. When her mother finishes, she scoops up an egg and puts it into Sansan’s hands without a word. The egg is hot but Sansan does not drop it. She looks at the cracks on the shell, darkened by the spices and soy sauce like a prophet’s fractured turtle shell. When she was younger, she had to beg her mother for a long time before she was given an egg to eat, but when Tu was around, her mother always gave them each an egg without hesitation. Sansan wonders if her mother still remembers such things, the nourishing of their relationship long before she and Tu became lovers.

A FEW MINUTES pass, and then, across the street, two jeeps stop with screeching noises. Sansan looks up and sees several cops jump out and surround Gong’s Dried Goods Shop. Soon the customers are driven out the door. “What’s going on?” the vendors ask one another. Sansan’s mother stands up and looks across the street for a minute, and hands the ladle to Sansan. “Take care of the stove for me,” her mother says, and walks across the street with a few other curious vendors.

Sansan watches her mother pushing to the front of the store, where the cops have set up red warning tapes. She wonders why, after forty years in the marketplace, her mother is still interested in other people’s business.

Ten minutes later, her mother returns and says to the vendors, “You’ll never imagine this—they’ve found opium in Gong’s goods.”

“What?”

“No wonder their business is always so good—they add opium when they make their nuts and seeds so people will always want to go back to them,” Sansan’s mother says. “What black-hearted people they are!”

“How did the police find out?” the vendor across the aisle asks.

“Someone working in the shop must have told on them.”

More vendors come back. Sansan listens to them talking about Gong’s opium business, her palms wet and sticky. She was planning to go to Gong’s to buy more sunflower seeds before the end of the day; even the thought of the sunflower seeds makes her eager to go home and hide herself in a pile of cracked shells, letting the taste on her tongue take her over and carry her away to a safe place, where she watches over Tu and Min serenely. Is that what she is living on, a poisoned food, a drugged dream?

Sansan’s mother turns to her. “But let’s not talk about other people’s trouble. What do you think of the proposal, Sansan?”

“To marry Tu? No, I don’t want to marry him.”

“You’ve been waiting for him all these years. Don’t be silly.”

“I’ve never waited for him.”

“But that’s a lie. Everyone knows you’re waiting for him.”

“Everyone?”

“Why else do you never get married? Everyone knows he did this horrible thing to you, but men make mistakes. Even his parents apologized yesterday. It’s time to think about forgiveness.”

“What’s to forgive?”

“He
had
you, and then left you for another woman. Listen, it would not be that bad a thing if you went back to him. As the old saying goes
—what belongs to someone will belong
to him eventually.
”

“Wait a minute, Mama. What do you mean he had me?”

Sansan’s mother blushes. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know. If you mean sex, no, he’s never had me.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It was understandable, and it was nobody’s fault.”

Sansan, for the first time, understands the town’s tolerance of her, a pitiful woman used and then abandoned by a lover, a woman unmarriable because she will never be able to demonstrate her virginity on the snow-white sheet spread on the wedding bed. “Mama, I have nothing to do with Tu. We never had sex.”

“Are you sure?” Sansan’s mother asks, hopeful disbelief in her eyes.

“I’m a spinster losing my mind. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask the town to vote on my virginity?”

Sansan’s mother stares at her for a long moment, and claps her hands. “That’s even better. I didn’t know you loved him so much. I’ll go talk to his parents tonight, and tell them you’ve kept your
cleanness
for him all these years.”

“I did nothing for him.”

“But why wouldn’t you get married, if he never had you?”

Sansan does not reply. She wonders how much of the gossip about her lost virginity burdened her father before his death. She wonders why her mother has never confronted her all these years; but then, how could her mother, a proud yet humble woman of tradition, ask her daughter such a thing when they have never talked about sex in her family?

“If you can’t answer the question, it’s time to make up your mind,” Sansan’s mother says.

“My mind has been made up all along. I won’t marry Tu.”

“Are you going crazy?”

“Mama, why do you want to be the best egg seller in the world?”

Sansan’s mother shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mama, why do you put more spices in?”

“If I’m telling people I sell the best eggs in the world, I have to keep my promise.”

“But nobody cares about it. You’re keeping a promise that matters only to you.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m an illiterate. Besides, what has that to do with your marriage?”

“I have my own promise to keep.”

“Why are you so stubborn? Do you know we’ll both end up as crazy women if you don’t get married?” Sansan’s mother says, and starts to cry.

ANOTHER TRAIN PULLS into the station with a longwhistle. Sansan listens to her mother chanting in a trembling voice, and wipes a drop of tear off. Indeed she is going crazy, hurting her mother so, the only person who loves her despite who she is. But she has no other choice. People in this world can discard their promises like used napkins, but she does not want to be one of them.

A man enters the marketplace, in a dirty shirt and jeans and carrying a shapeless bag. He hugs the bag close to his body as if it were a woman. Sansan watches the man sit down at the open space between the two stalls across the aisle from her mother’s stove. He takes a flattened cardboard box and a knife out of the bag, the kind with a long and sharp blade that fruit vendors use to cut watermelons. Then he takes off his shirt, points the knife to his left arm, and with a push, carefully slices open his flesh, from the elbow to the shoulder. He seems so calm and measured in his movements that Sansan and a few other people who have noticed him all watch with quiet amazement. The man dips his index finger in the blood, checks his finger as if he is a calligrapher, and writes down the words on the cardboard box:
Give me ten yuan and I will let you slice me once wherever you like; if you finish my life with one cut, you owe me
nothing.

The man has to shout out the words twice before more people gather.

“What a crazy man,” an old woman says.