Saining and I had a lot in common. For one thing, we each had our own worlds, our own mute worlds, and because of this, we respected each other’s silences. We both had asthma, both of us used to be picked on, neither of us had any grand ideals. We weren’t interested in other people’s lives, we were sensitive and self-doubting, we didn’t believe what we read in the newspaper, we were afraid of failure, and yet the thought of resisting some temptation made us anxious. We wanted to be onstage, to be artists. We kept on spending other people’s money, dreading the day when all of this would change. We didn’t want to become good little members of society, nor did we know how. Anyway, we would tell ourselves, we’re still young.
We knew that there were lots of people just like us, but we still felt especially lucky to have found each other. The two of us shared joy and gloom, vulnerability, humor, and shame. Every day we watched each other fall asleep.
Sometimes I thought that the love that Saining and I had was a kind of poison, for as we lay together in the soft depths of the night, the quiet and tranquillity left us speechless, left us never wanting to awaken.
9.
The street outside our apartment windows was the most famous street in town. On either side it was packed with unbroken rows of shops and big all-night restaurants. Every evening, as night fell, the street filled with throngs of women. They came from every corner of China, some around my age, some much younger, some much older. Their eyes followed the slow-moving stream of vehicles that drove by, tracking each car, while the men in the cars stared back, because some of those cars might stop for these women. The make and model of a car (they were afraid of military or police cars), the way the driver spoke, these were the keys to whether they would stay or go. People around there called them “chickens” or “roving orioles.” The streetwalkers were the cheapest and most miserable of the prostitutes, but they also had the most freedom. Most of them also used heroin. They didn’t have to worry about losing their looks and being cast aside, since anyone could work this street, no matter how ugly she was. Of course, they had a higher chance of being hauled in by the police here, and a higher chance of running into hassles like customers who wouldn’t pay. The town’s highest concentration of beggars gathered around these women, as did a crowd of pimps, drug dealers, young flower-selling girls, and shish kebab vendors. For years the Public Security Bureau had been trying to control this avenue, and they’d even held rallies there where they’d meted out justice. Occasionally a police vehicle covered in wire mesh would drive by, and you could see little clumps of people scattering in every direction, accompanied by the sound of the girls’ screeching. Diagonally across the street from our building was a big movie theater, a theater that doubled as a place of business for the sex trade, mostly blow jobs or what they called “airplane rides”—hand jobs. Each contingent of cops had its own jurisdiction, so whenever the police showed up on the street, everybody ran into the movie theater, and whenever police appeared at the doors of the theater, everybody ran out into the street. Sometimes it didn’t take anything more than for a van carrying frozen pork to drive by, but if even one person appeared to break into a run, all the others would take to their heels.
Everyone on the street spent their hours scurrying back and forth. Every night things got lively. And when the darkness fell away and the sun came up and penetrated the shadowy recesses of the endlessly cruising cars, you could always see a few girls still standing around, junkies who hadn’t done enough business. This was the street where Saining and I lived, in a big apartment building, and I often stood on the balcony watching it all, until, over the course of a few years, it became a nightly ritual.
10.
Rock groups started cropping up in Beijing, and from time to time some of the embassies hosted underground rock concerts.
Saining and his band went to Beijing. While he was away, I went back to Shanghai. From there I planned to travel up to Beijing so that Saining and I could celebrate my twenty-second birthday together.
On the phone, Saining told me that he was going to be out at the Great Wall doing performance art on the afternoon when I was to arrive. I said, I’m coming just to see you, but you couldn’t care less. Since when are you so interested in performance art? And what is performance art, anyway? He said that he had to go, that he was already committed, but that looking at the times, he was absolutely certain he would be able to meet me at the airport. I said, At five or six in the evening the roads in Beijing are bound to be jammed. He said he could guarantee that he’d be there for me on time. Lastly, he said he missed me.
The next day I waited at the airport for four hours. By the time Saining showed up, I was a wreck.
When I saw who he was with, the situation quickly spun out of control. The guy he’d brought along was someone who had stolen money from Saining in the past. He went around telling people he was a Buddhist, and while he clearly knew a lot about Buddhist teachings, he still struck me as a very immoral person. On top of this, I thought he treated Saining badly. Saining appeared to be well aware of this person’s faults, but he nonetheless treated him better than he treated me. I was certain that he was the one who had dragged Saining into the performance art piece. Beijing was full of slackers like him.
I wanted to go to the most expensive place in Beijing for dinner, and Saining took me to Wangfu, where I ordered the priciest champagne on the menu. I was drinking on an empty stomach, and the alcohol hit me fast. That person I despised just sat off to the side, eating and going on and on about his lack of interest in me. After I’d had a bit to drink, I started berating Saining. He argued back. A lot of people were looking at us, and a waiter came over to intervene. The waiter said, He didn’t do it on purpose; he didn’t mean to. Saining said, You see? Even he can tell I didn’t do it on purpose. When I heard this, I picked up my bottle of birthday champagne and broke it over Saining’s head. Shattered glass went flying, and champagne sprayed everywhere.
The police showed up, and Saining dragged me into the elevator, where I started hitting him. We got out of the elevator, and Saining carted me outside and pushed me into a car. The door closed behind me. I felt like killing him.
I have never genuinely wanted to kill someone. Except for that night.
I pictured him sitting beside me, pictured him breathing his last breath right before my eyes, and my entire being was focused on this fantasy. I wanted to kill him. I thought of all the times he’d hurt me, and I started shaking. I took a penknife out of my makeup bag, imagining that this small but very sharp knife could kill someone. Just then, that son of a bitch got into the car. If I was going to kill Saining, I had to do it now.
The car started moving. I didn’t dare try to kill Saining. I realized that if I killed him, his goddamned friends would know it was me, and I wouldn’t be able to get away.
I took the knife and started gouging holes in the car. Saining said, This isn’t my car. He glanced at the driver and added, And it’s not his car either! I made a cut in Saining’s arm. It was then that I realized there was blood on his face, and in his hair. I was crying, and then I was screaming and shouting. Saining yelled, Stop the car! He jumped out, pulled out my luggage, and then dragged me out of the car. He got back into the car, and as he was shutting the door, I said, Please don’t go! I’m still mad at you! But the car kept going.
I finally calmed down. I thought that if I waited there long enough, he would come back, but I hailed a cab. I told the driver to take me to the airport. When we got there, the airport was completely dark. I said, Take me to the airport hotel.
After checking into my hotel room, I drank every bottle of liquor in the minibar before going off to sleep in the bathroom.
The next day I called up Sanmao’s girlfriend and asked her for Sanmao and Saining’s address in Beijing. I said, I want to kill Saining. Sanmao’s girlfriend asked me why I didn’t just call them up and ask for their address myself. I said, Because Saining knows I want to kill him, so I can’t let them know I’m coming. Sanmao’s girlfriend said that she didn’t know their address either, since she was just like me and never wrote letters but always phoned.
I called Saining’s place. A stranger answered the phone. Nobody else was home. He said they’d all gone to do performance art. I asked, Where is it happening? He said, There’s one somewhere in Zhongguancun, one near Jianguo Gate, one in the Old City, and another one out near the airport. I said, Isn’t there another one at the Great Wall? That was yesterday, he said. Then he hung up.
I set out from the airport, frantically searching for the performance. The immensity of Beijing made me reel, and as a woman, I wasn’t being treated with the respect I was used to.
At nine-thirty that night I flew back south. The moment the plane became airborne, I stopped hating Saining and I remembered all the good things he’d done for me. His attraction for me was too strong to resist; loving him was a compulsion. I was just a pathetic and insecure little girl. The color of the nearing skies always blurred the colors that were right in front of me. I had nothing, I didn’t understand myself at all, and I was so pathetic. But how could I fight the desire I felt for this man? No matter how he treated me, I would stick by him; I would even die for him if it came to that.
But where did that deranged woman I was the night before come from? What had happened? I really didn’t understand myself anymore.
The airplane rose into the sky, and the more I thought, the more I worried. I realized that I had been in danger, that I had just had a very dangerous birthday.
I went away for three weeks. While I was gone, a couple of girls from Nanjing named Cat and Kitten stayed at Saining’s and my apartment. I had met Kitten first. She and Cat had been friends since childhood. They both worked at the nightclub where I used to sing. Kitten was stubborn and haughty, and she had a quick temper. But when the two of us talked together, she came across as very gentle and sincere, naive even. I liked her a lot.
Two days after I returned to the South, another friend of mine from Nanjing, Nanjing Noodles, came over to my place for dinner. She brought along her boyfriend, Luobu, who came from Chaozhou. Kitten and Cat were there too.
After dinner, as I was carrying a huge pile of dishes to the kitchen, a pair of men barged in. They asked, Is Ah Jin here?
Who’s Ah Jin? I asked.
You know, Ah Jin. Ah Jin from Nanjing, they said.
Kitten was watching the news, Cat was doing I don’t know what, and Nanjing Noodles and Luobu were in the bedroom listening to the radio.
Kitten! Come here! I said. They’re looking for a guy from Nanjing named Ah Jin.
No problem! Kitten said. I’ll take them to where he is.
There was nothing in Kitten’s face to make me suspect that anything was wrong. I carried the dishes into the kitchen, but when I came back out I saw that there were now three strange men in my apartment, and they were all sitting on my sofa. Granted, none of them was older than twenty-one or twenty-two, they were all wearing clean T-shirts and black leather shoes that had been buffed and polished to a high shine, and each of them was carrying a black backpack, the kind that high school students use to carry their books.
Ah Jin lives here, they asserted. He’s brought us over here before. We’ll just wait here until he shows up.
Kitten and Cat were standing off to the side. Neither of them said anything.
The apartment had two bedrooms and a living room. One of the bedroom doors was wide open. There were a few things stacked inside: speakers, guitars, an effects box, a violin, and a mattress. I shared the other bedroom with Saining. The door was closed. The light was on, and the radio was turned up loud, tuned to Channel
2
out of Hong Kong. Since Nanjing Noodles was also from Nanjing, I thought that she might know who this Ah Jin was. I shouted her name several times. The bedroom door opened, and Nanjing Noodles and Luobu came out grinning.
Before I could even open my mouth, three foot-long butcher knives came whistling out of the three backpacks. Those three boys with their sharp knives ordered us all into the bedroom, where a song by the Hong Kong pop star Liu Dehua was blaring. With two of the knives trained on us four women and one man, the other knife boy began turning the bedroom upside down.
They were speaking among themselves in Hunanese, and I got the impression that they were having some kind of disagreement. But I couldn’t figure out what had brought them here, what their purpose was—was it robbery, tracking down an enemy, rape, mutilation, kidnapping? Maybe it was all a mistake. As the knife tip danced in front of my face, every possible scenario flashed through my mind. The boy who was going through our stuff found the place where we kept our cash, and he found all of my jewelry, both real and fake, but none of this appeared to interest him or his cohorts in the least. He pulled out our identification papers and rifled through them. He even checked under the rug. I really couldn’t tell what they were after. Let them do whatever they want, I thought, just don’t let them cut our faces! I prayed to all of the gods and spirits, Please, please don’t let them cut us!
One of these boys with knives came across a new package of stockings. He tore open the plastic bag and came up to me, a big smirk on his tough but babyish face. He said, These are yours, right, miss? But you haven’t worn them yet, so they’re clean.
With that he pulled a pair of hose out of the bag and stuffed them into my mouth. Gesturing at the photograph of Saining and me, he asked, So that’s your longhaired boyfriend, huh? I thought, Damn him! Damn Saining! This was his fault! He’d gotten into some kind of trouble, and now these guys were here to take their revenge!
They took those clean, unworn stockings, and one by one, they stuffed them into our mouths. Then, one at a time, they stripped us of our watches and jewelry. They were rough; they shoved us around. I started to whimper when they took off the necklace that my mother had given me and a ring and watch that Saining had given me.