My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead (65 page)

Jiaorui’s bed was too fancy for Zhenbao; he didn’t sleep well on the thick bedding. Even though he rose early, he still felt as if he’d overslept. Combing his hair he found a sliver of clipped fingernail, a tiny red crescent moon. She’d scratched him with her long nails; as he was drifting off to sleep, he’d seen her sitting on the bed clipping them. Had there been a moon that night? He hadn’t checked, but it must have been a red crescent moon.

After that, he came straight home after work, sitting on the top of a double-decker bus and facing the setting sun, the windowpane a sheet of light as the bus roared toward the sun, toward his happiness, his shameful happiness. How could it not be shameful? His woman ate another man’s rice, lived in another man’s house, went by another man’s name. But feeling that he shouldn’t be doing this only made his happiness more perfect.

It was if he’d fallen from a great height. An object that falls from high above is many times heavier than its original weight. Jiaorui, struck by that startlingly great weight, was knocked dizzy.

“I really love you,” she said. But she was mocking him still, just a little. “Want to know something? Every day, when I sit here waiting for you to come back, I hear the elevator slowly clanking its way up. When it goes past our floor without stopping, it feels like my own heart’s gone up, that it’s just hanging in midair. But when the elevator stops before it reaches our floor, it seems like my breath’s been cut off.”

“So—there’s an elevator in your heart. It looks as though your heart is still an apartment.”

Jiaorui smiled gently, then walked over to the window and looked out, hands clasped behind her back. After a moment, she said, “The house that you wanted has been built.”

At first Zhenbao didn’t understand; when he did, he was staggered. He’d never been one to fool around with words, but now he tried something new. Taking a pen from the desk, he wrote “Happy heartwarming! Many congratulations on your new home!” And yet he couldn’t really say that he was pleased. The thrill of pleasure had made his whole body sing, but all at once it was quiet. Now there was only a desolate calm; he felt sated and empty at the same time.

When they embraced again, Jiaorui wrapped herself around him, she held him so tightly that she blushed. “It’s the same, isn’t it, even if there’s no love? If I could be like this with you, without any real feeling of love, you’d certainly lose all respect for me.” She gripped him still more tightly. “Don’t you feel the difference? Don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” But actually he couldn’t tell. The old Jiaorui had been too good at feigning love.

Never before had she been in love like this. Even she didn’t know why she loved Zhenbao so much. She’d watch him closely, her gaze both tender and mocking, mocking him and mocking herself.

He was a man with a future, of course, a top-notch textile engineer. His working style was special: nose to the grindstone, too busy to lift his head. The foreign boss was constantly calling for him: “Tong! Tong! Where’s Tong?” Zhenbao pushed a lock of hair from his forehead, eyes gleaming behind his glasses, the frames flashing. He liked summer, but even when it wasn’t summer he’d be so busy that he’d work up a sweat. The elbows and knees of his Western-style suit were full of creases like laugh lines. Chinese colleagues would complain about the shabby way he looked.

He told Jiaorui how competent he was and how efficient. She praised him, rubbing his hair. “Oh yes. My little one is really talented. But you know that. If you didn’t, where would we be? It’s in other ways that you’re not so clever. I love you—did you know that? I love you.”

He showed off in front of her, and she showed off in front of him. The only thing she was really good at was leading men on. Like the tumbler who excelled at turning somersaults and turned somersaults for the Virgin Mary, Jiaorui was sincerely pious: she offered up her art to her beloved. She’d provoke a man, and when he responded accordingly, she’d glance over at Zhenbao with a humble smile, as if to say, “This is what I know—and if I didn’t, where would we be?” That Timmy Sun of hers was still in a sulk, and yet she found ways to tease him. Zhenbao understood what she was doing; it was tiresome, he thought, but he put up with it because it was just her childishness. Being with Jiaorui was like living with a swarm of teenagers—enough to make you old in no time.

Sometimes they discussed her husband’s return. Zhenbao would wear a dark, defeated smile. His eyes and his eyebrows drooped; his whole face hung down in a mess like a mop. The entire relationship was illicit, but he kept using this sinfulness as a spur, pushing himself to love her even more fiercely. Jiaorui didn’t understand the full nature of his feeling, but it made her happy to see him suffer. Back when she was a student in England—jumping out of bed, putting on lipstick without even bothering to wash her face, and running out to see her boyfriends—men had of course threatened to kill themselves for her sake. “I spent the whole night pacing under your window,” they’d say. “I couldn’t sleep.” That meant nothing. But making a man suffer for real—that was something else again.

One day she said, “I’ve been thinking about how to tell him when he comes back,” just as if it had already been decided that she would inform Shihong about everything, divorce him, and marry Zhenbao. Zhenbao wasn’t brave enough to say anything then. But his dark, defeated smile was not having the desired effect, so later on he said, “Let’s not rush into this blindly. Let me talk to a lawyer friend of mine first—get things clear. You know, if this isn’t handled properly, there could be quite a price to pay.” As a businessman, he felt that merely by uttering the word “lawyer” he’d gotten seriously involved in something—much too seriously. But Jiaorui didn’t notice his qualms. She was full of confidence, sure that once the problem on her side was solved, it would all be clear sailing.

Jiaorui often called him at his office. She had no restraint, and it upset him. One day she phoned to say, “Why don’t we go out later and have some fun?”

Zhenbao wanted to know why she was so happy.

“You like me to wear those prim and proper Chinese fashions, don’t you? I had a new outfit made, and it came today. I want to wear it someplace.”

“How about a movie?”

He and some colleagues had chipped in together to buy a small car, and Jiaorui liked to go out for a ride. She had a plan that Zhenbao was going to teach her to drive. “After I’ve learned I’ll buy a car too,” she announced. So Shihong would buy it for her? Her words stuck in Zhenbao’s craw; he couldn’t quite digest it.

Jiaorui didn’t seem all that excited about seeing a movie. “Okay,” she said, “if we can take the car.”

“So what are your feet for?” he laughed.

“Chasing you!” And she laughed too. After that, things got busy at the office. Zhenbao had to get off the phone.

But that day another colleague happened to need the car, and Zhenbao was always self-sacrificing, especially when it came to pleasures. He was dropped off at the street corner—from the apartment window Jiaorui saw him stop to buy the evening paper, though she couldn’t tell if he was looking at ads for the movies. She rushed out to meet him at the street door. “If we don’t have the car, we can’t make it to the 5:15 movie. Let’s forget about it.”

Zhenbao looked at her and smiled. “So do you want to go someplace else? You look great.”

Jiaorui hooked her arm in his. “Won’t it be fun just to walk along the avenue?”

But Zhenbao kept fretting, wanting to know how she felt about this place, then that one. They passed a Western-style restaurant with music. She turned it down. “The truth is, I’m pretty broke these days!” he said.

“Oh, dear,” she laughed. “If I’d known that, I’d never have gotten mixed up with you!”

Just then, Zhenbao recognized an old foreign lady that he knew—somebody through whom his family had sent money and packages when he was studying abroad. Mrs. Ashe was British but she’d married a Eurasian, which made her self-conscious and as British as British can be. She was tall and stooped and wore an elaborate dress, a foreign-style print that sagged around her frame and made her look like an old beggar. Her hat was a robin’s egg blue, mottled with black, and she’d stuck a pearlheaded hatpin and a swallow feather in it. Under the hat was a circle of gray hair, pressed flat like a wig, and her eyes looked as if they were made of pale blue porcelain. Her English came out very softly, her voice breathy and conspiratorial. Zhenbao shook hands with her. “Are you still living in the same place?” he asked.

“At first we were going to go home this summer, but my husband just can’t get away!” Going to England was “going home” even though her husband’s family had lived in China for three generations, and she herself had no living relatives in England.

Zhenbao introduced Jiaorui. “This is Mrs. Shihong Wang. Wang was in Edinburgh also, and Mrs. Wang spent many years in London. I’m living at their place now.”

Mrs. Ashe was accompanied by her daughter. Zhenbao, of course, had considerable experience with mixed-blood girls. Miss Ashe pursed her red lips but didn’t say much. She had dark brown eyes peering out of a pointed, white-peach face. A woman who doesn’t yet have her own household, her own portion of worry and duty and joy, will often have that watchful, waiting look. And yet Miss Ashe, young as she was, didn’t yearn for domesticity; she wasn’t a girl with a heart “launched like an arrow toward home.” Career girls in the city often have a harried look, and Miss Ashe’s eyes were puffy, her face drawn and pale. In China, as elsewhere, the constraints imposed by the traditional moral code were originally constructed for the benefit of women: they made beautiful women even harder to obtain, so their value rose, and ugly women were spared the prospect of never-ending humiliation. Women nowadays don’t have this kind of protective buffer, especially not mixed-blood girls, whose status is so entirely undefined. There was a razor edge to Miss Ashe’s exhausted peering gaze.

Jiaorui could see at a glance that in going home mother and daughter would be headed straight into the English lower middle class. But they were Zhenbao’s friends, and she was eager to make a good impression; also, for some reason, the presence of other females made her feel like a “proper woman” again. She was a full-status wife. She ought to exude an air of dignified affluence. Zhenbao rarely saw her smiling so serenely, almost like a movie star; suddenly she became a sapphire from whose depths a flickering lamp draws waves of light and shadow. Jiaorui was wearing a cheongsam of dark purple-blue georgette, and a little heart-shaped gold pendant gleamed faintly at her breast, cold and splendid—as if she had no other heart. Zhenbao looked at her, and he was both pleased and suspicious; if there’d been a man around how different things would have been!

Mrs. Ashe asked about Mrs. Tong, and Zhenbao said, “My mother’s health is fine. She still looks after the whole family.” He turned to Jiaorui. “My mother often does the cooking, and she’s a very good cook. I always say we’re very lucky to have a mother like that!” Whenever he praised his widowed mother, he was reminded of the many years of grievous hardship his family had endured, and he couldn’t help gnashing his teeth. He smiled, but as the full weight of his ambitions bore down on him, his heart was like a rock.

Mrs. Ashe asked about his younger brother and sisters. “Dubao is a good kid, he’s in technical school now, and later on our factory might send him to England to study.” Even the two sisters were praised—the whole family was ideal—until Mrs. Ashe had to exclaim, “You really are something! I’ve always said that your mother must be very proud of you!” Zhenbao was suitably modest. He asked how things were going for everyone in the Ashe family.

Seeing the newspaper rolled up in his hand, Mrs. Ashe inquired if there was any news this evening. Zhenbao handed her the paper, but her eyesight was so poor that even when she held it at arm’s length she still couldn’t make anything out. She asked her daughter to read it for her.

“I was planning to take Mrs. Wang to see a movie, but there aren’t any good ones,” Zhenbao said. In front of other people his attitude toward Jiaorui was a little stiff—he wanted to show that he was only a family friend—but Miss Ashe’s quiet, watchful eyes made him feel he was giving everything away. Zhenbao leaned close to Jiaorui. Very familiarly, he said, “I’ll make it up to you another time, okay?” He looked at her with shining eyes and laughed. Immediately after, he was sorry—as if he’d gotten too excited while talking and sprayed spit in someone’s face. He had always taken this Miss Ashe for a keen observer. She was young and she had nothing, not even a personality; she was just waiting for the approach of everything in the world. Already its huge shadow had fallen across her otherwise expressionless features. Jiaorui was young, and she had all sorts of things, but somehow they didn’t count. She seemed scatterbrained, like a child who goes out and picks dozens of violets, one by one, gathers them into a bunch and tosses them all away. Zhenbao had only his future to bank on, a future he’d prepared for all on his own. How could he bear to see it thrown to the wind? Rich young men and women are free to be careless—security is an inheritance for them—but for him it was not so easy! The four of them walked slowly down the same street, Mrs. Ashe in the safety and comfort of a room full of flowered wallpaper, while the three young people faced menace on every side—it boomed beneath them like a drum.