Over everything hung the heavy smell of onions and garlic, which even the ample ventilation in the apartment was unable to dispel. Although it was already October, mosquito nets were still hanging around the beds. The sparse furniture made the place feel like a public dormitory. Jiang Lili employed a wet nurse as well as a maidservant. Previously stationed outside the back door, the two, who obviously did not get along, followed the visitor inside, where, standing in opposite corners, they eyeballed Wang Qiyao. A strange expression came over the faces of Jiang Lili’s two older boys when they saw Wang Qiyao. They were around seven or eight years old and couldn’t stop whispering and giggling as they found excuses to scurry in and out of the room. Old Zhang, Jiang Lili’s husband, was not home. There weren’t even any pictures of him hanging up, so Wang Qiyao had no idea what he looked like.
Jiang Lili did not own a tape measure and had to ask the maids to borrow one from one of the neighbors. The maids argued back and forth about which of them should go out to try to borrow one; eventually they agreed that none of the neighbors could possibly have such an item. In the end they decided that a ball of yarn would have to suffice as a makeshift replacement. Wang Qiyao cut two pieces of string, one for the waist and one for the pants length; placing them carefully in the folded fabric, she announced that she had better be going. Jiang Lili saw Wang Qiyao to the door, her maids following close behind. Wang Qiyao didn’t feel quite herself the whole time she was there and completely lost her sense of direction as soon as she left. When she reached the first intersection down the lane, she heard a child shrieking from behind, “Hustler!”
She turned around to see Jiang Lili’s sons racing away, which left her feeling even more lost and confused.
As they had agreed, Jiang Lili arrived two days later to pick up her pants. Wang Qiyao had her try them on; they were a perfect fit and Jiang Lili was quite satisfied. The one thing that Wang Qiyao was confused about was why Jiang Lili would want a pair of polyester pants just as the weather was turning cold. Jiang Lili said she liked to wear polyester pants over her heavy cotton pants, which Wang Qiyao found inconceivable—how could she wear polyester over cotton? After they folded up the pants, they sat down for a leisurely chat. It was well after dinner time and Wang Qiyao’s daughter was in bed playing with a doll. Wang Qiyao made some tea and brought out a plate of watermelon seeds, but Jiang Lili reached into her pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. Only then did Wang Qiyao realize the cause of the yellow stains on her fingers. When she asked her friend when she had started smoking, Jiang Lili responded by offering her a cigarette. Wang Qiyao declined but Jiang Lili insisted. They kept pushing each other until they collapsed in laughter; it felt like they were schoolgirls again. Watching the way she gestured as she smoked, Wang Qiyao couldn’t help but be reminded of Jiang Lili’s mother and asked about her.
“You know her . . . she’ll never change,” sighed Jiang Lili, “...always stubbornly hanging on to the habits of the old society. All she’s doing is making things difficult for herself.”
Wang Qiyao inquired after her brother, who as a teenager always shut himself up in his room. From all that time with Jiang Lili, she couldn’t remember ever really getting a good look at her brother. Jiang Lili said he had not changed either; but at least he was now earning a living for himself as a high school teacher. But she spoke disapprovingly of his riding a motorcycle to work. According to Jiang Lili, her entire family reeked of mothballs; in this new era they were all remnants at the bottom of an old chest. Wang Qiyao had the uncomfortable feeling that she too was included in the description, and asked, somewhat testily, if an affidavit from someone like her would really be taken seriously when Jiang Lili applied for membership in the Communist Party. Jiang Lili laughed at the question and gave her a lecture on the charter of the Communist Party that Wang Qiyao found incomprehensible.
After Jiang Lili finished her lecture, Wang Qiyao asked if her application had been approved. Any trace of gaiety immediately drained from Jiang Lili’s face. After a minute, however, she smiled indulgently at Wang Qiyao’s ignorance and explained that the application was a long process, requiring unbending determination and unconditional faith. She told Wang Qiyao that joining the Communist Party is like being reborn, remade into a new person. The decision does not rest on consent from any one person. The Communist Party does not offer salvation—that is something everyone must find for themselves; loyalty and diligence are the only means to salvation. Listening to her, Wang Qiyao could almost see the old Jiang Lili, that romantic poet she had known in her youth, reappear before her eyes. Times had changed, however, and Jiang Lili’s odes to the wind and moon had been replaced by devoted words about steely determination and selfless sacrifice. Now, as then, however, the style smacked of theatrical exaggeration and was not entirely persuasive. Nonetheless, Jiang Lili’s sincerity and dedication were not to be doubted. After listening to her lecture, Wang Qiyao was at an utter loss as to what else she could say.
From this time on Jiang Lili began coming by to visit Wang Qiyao every two weeks or so. She told herself that she was merely holding true to the promise she had made, but that was only the half of it. The other thing that kept drawing her back was nostalgia; this nostalgia was so strong that it even allowed her to overlook the fact that Wang Qiyao was actually her rival in love. At the same time, however, she fancied herself as a product of the new society, someone who had made a clean break with the past. These conflicts playing out inside Jiang Lili came to the surface as resentment whenever she saw Wang Qiyao; it was as if someone had forced her to go and she had no other choice. Sometimes she would visit but barely say a word; when Wang Qiyao asked her something, she would respond with short, contemptuous answers. Even when she was in a better mood and allowed herself to talk casually with Wang Qiyao, she would suddenly grow stern, injecting a note of unease into their conversation.
Thus Wang Qiyao was always tense whenever Jiang Lili called, always struggling for things to say and prepared for a rebuke or a chilling glare at any moment. Nonetheless, she did not view Jiang Lili’s visits with distaste, and even welcomed them. To her also Jiang Lili represented the past—Wang Qiyao had nothing against nostalgia. But even more important was the subtle feeling of satisfaction she got from those visits; standing before Jiang Lili, Wang Qiyao knew that she was the victor. She might have lost everything, but as far as Jiang Lili was concerned there was one thing that Wang Qiyao had won—Mr. Cheng. For this reason she felt she could well afford to take whatever abuse Jiang Lili might heap on her. It might look on the surface as if Wang Qiyao had gone out of her way to please Jiang Lili, but in fact it was Jiang Lili who had given in. No wonder she was annoyed. When it came down to it, Wang Qiyao had indeed claimed her paltry share of the moral high ground; but how pitifully insignificant is a plot of moral high ground when one stakes it on an abyss of emptiness? Jiang Lili very early on had accepted defeat, giving Wang Qiyao the upper hand; but what did that matter when all was said and done? Between the two of them, there was such a deep mutual understanding, even mutual consideration . . . but neither of them ever knew it existed.
But for all her icy haughtiness, Jiang Lili always showed her pleasant side when she was around Wang Qiyao’s daughter. Jiang Lili had three boys—all diminutive copies of Old Zhang. They spoke Mandarin with a thick rustic accent, reeked constantly of onions and garlic, and had smelly feet. All three were rambunctious, foul-mouthed, disorderly, and dirty; and if they weren’t quarreling or making a ruckus, they were out getting into a fight somewhere. The mere sight of them disgusted her, and the only time she opened her mouth when they were home was to yell at them. But the boys were not in the least bit intimidated, nor were they particularly fond of her—they were close only to their father. As sunset approached, the boys would walk hand-in-hand to the entrance of the
longtang,
where they would gaze at the darkening sky as they waited for their father to come home. The moment his silhouette appeared against the colors of the dusk, the boys would rush up to greet him. Home he would come, with one boy on his shoulders, the little one in his arms, and the third held by the hand. By that time, Jiang Lili would have already finished dinner alone and settled down to read the newspaper in bed; all the excitement her husband and the kids were enjoying seemed to have nothing to do with her.
Every six months or so Old Zhang’s mother would come down from Shandong province to visit; she would help out with the housework and taking care of the children. Whenever her mother-in-law visited, Jiang Lili felt like even more of an outsider. The old lady loved to entertain, and she would fill the house with relatives from her hometown as well as all the neighbors. Jiang Lili, holding her head high, would walk around the house as if no one else was there. Amid the crowd of relatives and guests, her three boys might as well have been strangers.
But the moment Jiang Lili laid eyes on Wang Qiyao’s little girl in that little yellow wool jumpsuit and saw the soft tuft of hair peaking out from beneath her bonnet, she was charmed. She held out a finger to stroke the baby’s fat chin, and the tiny face lit up like a blossoming flower. Babies always have that innate ability to awaken the pure and gentle side in people. Life was a confused mess, and amid this chaos Jiang Lili felt like a hopeless knot, impossible to unravel. It was not exhaustion that was wearing her down, but frustration. By contrast, a baby’s world is simple, and they open up a window into that world when they smile at us. Whenever she was around that baby, Jiang Lili’s heart was set at ease, at least momentarily. But when her face betrayed some of the frustration and anger she always kept bottled up inside, the baby would inevitably grow frightened and sometimes might even cry. Jiang Lili would try to sooth her, but the harder she tried, the more violently the child would wail. Helpless, she would eventually give up in despair.
Wang Qiyao always waited until Jiang Lili was at the end of her rope before intervening. Once Wang Qiyao took over, the child would quiet down in an instant.
“Didn’t you learn anything after giving birth to those three boys of yours?” Wang Qiyao teased.
“I may have given birth to them, but this is the first time I’ve actually held a baby in my arms.”
Wang Qiyao’s heart went out to her. “Here, take her as your daughter!”
But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she started to worry that she might have offended Jiang Lili, so she quickly added, “I’m just afraid that she hasn’t the good fortune to be raised by someone who would be as good to her as you.”
But Jiang Lili wasn’t in the least bit offended. “Actually, if we were Christian I could be her godmother. . . .”
“And Mr. Cheng could be her godfather . . .” Wang Qiyao blurted out.
The blood rushed to Jiang Lili’s face. Wang Qiyao thought she had offended her at last, but to her surprise the redness gradually faded from Jiang Lili’s face and she suddenly smiled. Then, in a tone that was both sardonic and somewhat melancholy, she asked, “And what if Mr. Cheng really wants to be this baby’s father?”
Now it was Wang Qiyao’s turn to blush. It took quite a while before she said, “She’d
really
be fortunate if that were the case!”
Together they gazed at the baby in silence. Having just been fed, the child blinked her eyes with a look of contentment; her serene gaze had the power to make so many uncomfortable situations feel completely natural.
One warm, sunny spring day Jiang Lili managed to drag Mr. Cheng over to take a picture of them with the baby. They all felt as if they had gone back in time; the presence of the child was the only thing that spoilt the illusion. They took the baby for a stroll in the park; all three were in high spirits and kept commenting on how beautiful the scenery was. Under the brilliant sun, the trees, flowers, and grass seemed too weak to withstand such praises, expressing an air of helpless struggle despite the care that had been bestowed on them. Only the sight of children waddling on the grass was enough to rally the spirit, their tender footsteps making up for the dry withering grass. An array of toys spread out on the grass got the children excited. Wang Qiyao put her daughter down on the grass; under the watchful eyes of the three adults, she stumbled and picked herself up.
Kang Mingxun and Wang Qiyao continued to see each other intermittently. Now that the problem of the child was resolved, there didn’t seem to be any reason they should stay away from each other. However, the passion they once had was nothing in comparison to what it used to be. Sitting side by side, they no longer set each other aquiver, and even when they slept together it was more out of habit than anything else, a matter of routine. They were like a pair of old buddies who knew everything about the other, but at the end of the day they had their own separate lives. So, when she heard that Kang Mingxun was seeing other women, Wang Qiyao did not feel terribly hurt; she only teased him a bit. Seeing that she didn’t seem to mind, he didn’t feel it necessary to break things off. In fact, he took his time dating all kinds of different women, thoroughly enjoying his freedom. Although he was always going out, he never found a steady girlfriend and in the end wound up dating less. Finally his relationship with Wang Qiyao began to feel almost stable; it lacked the passion they had once shared, but now they could even be said to be a steady couple.
If it were not for the child, Kang Mingxun would probably have come more frequently, but she made him uncomfortable. She raised too many disturbing memories. Once she started talking, she would call him “Uncle Maomao,” which startled him. In her gaze he detected a desire to exact something out of him, and this filled him with panic and a certain disgust. Wang Qiyao sensed all of this and, to avoid those awkward encounters, would send the child outside to play or to one of the neighbors whenever Kang Mingxun came to visit.