Boy in the Twilight (7 page)

Whenever she appeared, he would put down the book he was reading and look at her, partly to get some sense of her state of mind, partly to make his own position clear: he had not lost himself in the pleasures of reading; he was still fidgeting uneasily in the real world.

His silence infuriated her. Did he think that by eliminating all sound from their home, he could muddle his way through the crisis? It wouldn’t work, because she wouldn’t stand for it—she wouldn’t allow him to have a quiet life. He had betrayed her, and now he thought he could make up for it by pussyfooting around?

She began to provoke him. Seeing him sitting on the sofa, with his feet on the floor, she walked toward the balcony, giving his feet a kick as she passed, as though they were blocking her way. She went out onto the balcony and waited for him to react, but he didn’t. Not even pain could force him to make a sound. There was nothing for it but to return to the bedroom. This time she noticed that he had now withdrawn his feet and put them on the sofa.

She persisted with her provocations. In the early evening she walked over to the sofa and dumped his bedding, clothes, and books on the floor, then sat down and turned on the television.

He just sat there on the sofa as she cleared away his things, but once the TV was on he stood up and went out to the balcony. He sat on the floor of the balcony and read his book. He did this to demonstrate his modesty, his belief that he didn’t deserve to sit next to her, didn’t deserve to watch television with her. He continued to sit on the hard balcony floor, getting up from time to time to stretch, then sitting back down. Only after she had returned to the bedroom did he go back to the sofa, reclaim the items she had flung on the floor, and lie down to sleep.

His boundless silence left her at a loss. All her provocations were like stones cast into the ocean.

The next night, she abandoned the bed and lay down on the sofa to watch television. She fell asleep there with the TV on and didn’t wake up until morning. This was part of her scheme, but it seemed natural as well. She had occupied his sleeping area, and at the same time conceded her bed to him, expecting the soft bed to entice him and lull him into unwary slumber, thus giving her an opportunity to engage in further hostilities.
But when she woke up on the sofa, she found him sitting on a chair, his head cushioned on the dining table, fast asleep.

He was going around the house with his tail tucked between his legs, as though he were punishing himself. The problem was that this kind of punishment punished her as well. She couldn’t shed the tears she wanted to shed, couldn’t yell the things she wanted to yell. A fiery rage consumed her, but it could only smolder in her heart. By now she was no longer waiting for him to fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness: she had given up hope of getting the reaction that Shen Ning had predicted. What she wanted now was a huge row. Even if they came to blows, it would be better than this.

But he refused to provide her with this opportunity: that is, he rejected the punishment she had selected for him. He passed judgment on himself and punctiliously submitted to this judgment, making her feel, in the end, that he was now quite comfortably reconciled to his life of deprivation. Each morning he would leave before she did, and in the evening return from work after her. There was really no bone to pick here. He had a much longer commute than she did, and he had always left early and come home late. He ate lunch at his office, she knew, but where he was eating dinner in the evening she had no clue. When he came home at the end of the day, he didn’t go into the kitchen, didn’t even glance in that direction, so she knew he must already have eaten. He sat on the sofa and picked up a book. He had disrupted her life, thrown her into turmoil, but he had adjusted perfectly.

One evening, she was standing on the balcony when she caught sight of him coming out of a restaurant below, and it suddenly became clear where he had been eating his dinners.
She was so angry she began to shake. For her, every day seemed like a year, but there he was, in and out of restaurants, treating himself to a life of luxury. She marched downstairs. She had already eaten, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from stuffing herself again. When they passed each other on the landing, she marched straight by him without looking his way and continued down the stairs and into the restaurant he had just left. She ordered several dishes and some wine, but could not stomach more than a couple of mouthfuls.

After three meals in the restaurant, she began to feel distressed about all the money she was spending. She was making inroads into their savings. They didn’t have a lot of money in the first place, and there were plenty of basic things they still needed. Indignation, however, impelled her back to the restaurant, until the day that they happened to be there at the same time. She saw him as soon as she walked in, huddled over a bowl of noodles. She sat down at a distant table and watched the other people enjoying their extravagant meals, while he ate his wretched noodles. Suddenly she felt heartsick.

The next day, while cooking her dinner, she prepared a serving for him, too. She placed an empty bowl on the most conspicuous spot on the dining table, and a pair of chopsticks on top of the bowl, and the food she’d made beside it. She hoped he would notice as soon as he came in, and in this he did not disappoint her. His eyes lit up right away, and then he looked at her quizzically to confirm that the dinner was intended for him. Even though he’d already had his noodles, he sat down at the table and consumed the entire meal she had cooked.

By the time he had finished, she had gone into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She lay on the bed and
listened as he opened the door and walked over to her. After standing there for a while, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Can we talk?” he asked.

She did not say anything. After a moment, he asked again, “Can we talk?”

Still she said nothing, hoping that a torrent of words would flood from his lips. In her view, he needed to take himself to task. Even if he didn’t burst into tears, he should at least beat his breast and stamp his feet; he should get down on his knees the way Shen Ning had said he would; he should pledge solemn vows, he should say everything she wanted to hear. She would ignore him just the same, but these were things he had to do. Instead, all he could say was “Can we talk?”

He sat on her bed for a long time, but when she made no reply he stood up and left. After he had gently closed the door behind him, she began to weep. How could he just slip out like that, so nonchalantly?

He went back to the sofa, and after he lay down the progress that had been made was nullified; they were back where they had started.

AFTER TWENTY-SIX DAYS OF THIS
, Li Hanlin finally couldn’t take it anymore. He told Lin Hong that he had a constant ache in every joint, an agonizing crick in his neck, and a chronic stomachache as well. “We can’t go on like this,” he said.

Now, at last, he was speaking assertively. He was circumspect no more. He stood gesticulating before Lin Hong, the image of self-assurance. “I have already punished myself,” he said, “and still you won’t forgive me. If we carry on like this, I won’t be the only one to suffer—you’ll find it equally unbearable.
I really have had more than I can take. I just can’t go on like this anymore. The only thing to do is …” He paused for a moment. “The only thing to do is get divorced.”

As he spoke, Lin Hong had her back to him, but when he said this she spun around. “Forget about divorcing me! You hurt me, and you still haven’t paid the price. You want to hightail it out of here. You want to run off to your Qingqing, but I won’t have it. I am going to pin you down, pin you down till you’re old, pin you down till you’re dead.”

When a smile appeared on Li Hanlin’s face, she suddenly understood. He wasn’t at all opposed to being pinned down, being pinned down until his hair had gone white, until he was dead. He wouldn’t raise the slightest objection. So she broke off and stood there, unsure what to do. She felt tears falling, and this simply added to her humiliation. So many days of misery, and a smile was all she got. For weeks she had been waiting for his repentance, his self-indictment. At the very least, he should shed some heartfelt tears, demonstrate true remorse, but he wasn’t doing anything like that; instead, he was standing in front of her, declaring boldly, “The only thing to do is get divorced.”

She raised her hand and wiped her tears away. “All right, forget it,” she said. “Better to get divorced.”

At this, his smile vanished. She went into the bedroom, locked the door, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep with her clothes on.

THEY WERE WALKING TOWARD
the registry office. That was where they had gone to formalize their marriage, and now they were going to dissolve it. A wall ran along one side of
the street and Li Hanlin walked in front, Lin Hong a few steps behind. From time to time he would stop and wait for her to catch up, then walk on. Neither of them said a word. Li Hanlin bowed his head and knitted his brows, as though weighed down by worry. Lin Hong walked with her head up, letting the autumn breeze toss her hair about. Now and again, a wisp of a smile could be seen on her otherwise expressionless face. It was a smile like a falling leaf, desolate, lifeless.

They passed shops they used to frequent and bus stops where they had waited together. As they walked on and on, it seemed as though time were running backward. When Li Hanlin reached a coffee shop called Sundown, he came to a halt and waited for Lin Hong. He stopped because he’d remembered that they had come here right after registering their marriage: they had sat by a window overlooking the street, and he had ordered a cup of coffee and she a Sprite. “Shall we go in and have a drink?” he called.

By now Lin Hong had caught up with him. She turned, looked upward, and saw a neon sign above the eaves, the tubes of light forming the words “Sundown Café.” She agreed to his suggestion and together they entered. It was afternoon, and customers were few. They selected a table by the window, overlooking the street, and once again he ordered a coffee and she a Sprite. They thought about what they had drunk that earlier time.

Li Hanlin was the first to smile, followed soon by Lin Hong, but they quickly suppressed their smiles and avoided each other’s eyes. He looked out the window, and she looked at the other people in the coffee shop. She noticed a young woman dressed in red, sitting alone on their right. The woman was
watching them. It seemed to Lin Hong that she had a strange look on her face. Lin Hong put two and two together, and a name flashed into her head: Qingqing.

Lin Hong threw Li Hanlin a glance. He, too, had seen the woman. From the surprised look on his face, it was clear he had not expected to run into her here. When he turned his head, he found Lin Hong’s eyes on him, and he knew that she knew. He gave a wry smile.

“So you told her,” Lin Hong said.

“What?”

“You told her we were going to get divorced, so she came here.”

“No.”

Lin Hong felt her heart flood with pain. “You needn’t have been in such a rush.”

“No,” he said again. “She doesn’t know anything.”

She looked at him intently. He had such a firm expression on his face that she began to give some credence to what he’d said. She looked back at the young woman. This Qingqing was watching them, but as soon as Lin Hong glanced at her she turned away. “She’s staring at you,” Lin Hong said. “You’d better go over and say hello.”

“No,” he said.

“We’re about to get divorced. What are you worried about?”

“No,” he repeated.

She looked at him. His unshakeable attitude suddenly gave her a warm feeling. She took another peek at Qingqing. This time she wasn’t looking at them; she was drinking from her glass. One leg was perched on top of the other. In her posture, she seemed to lack the composure one might have expected.
Lin Hong took another look at Li Hanlin, who was staring grimly out the window. “Kiss me,” she said.

He turned around in astonishment.

“Kiss me,” she repeated. “After this, you’ll never kiss me again, so I want you to kiss me now.”

He nodded and reached across the table.

“Sit next to me when you kiss me,” she said.

So he stood up and sat down next to her and pressed his lips to her cheek.

“Put your arms around me,” she said.

He put his arms around her, and he felt her lips brushing over his face and meeting his lips. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and her arms embraced him. It seemed to him a kiss as long as night. She used her hands to hold his body in place and her tongue to keep his mouth in place. Her ardor entered his body through his mouth, spreading and expanding boundlessly.

Through it all, Lin Hong’s eyes were fixed on the other woman. She watched as Qingqing kept glancing in their direction, as she uneasily fingered her glass, and as, in the end, she stood up and hurried out. When her red silhouette slipped past them, Lin Hong’s heart filled with joy, for she had the sudden conviction that victory was hers. After twenty-seven days of grief and indignation, insomnia and emptiness, her enemy had surrendered without a fight.

Her hands slipped off Li Hanlin’s body, and her mouth disengaged from his. She turned to him with a smile.

My father used to be a surgeon. He was a strong, robust man with a resonant voice. He regularly stood at the operating table for ten hours at a time, but at the end of his shift his face would not show the slightest signs of fatigue, and as he walked back to our apartment his steps were loud and firm. Nearing home, he would often take a pee by the corner of the alley outside. His urine would splash noisily on the wall, like a sudden downpour of rain.

When my father was twenty-five years old, he married a pretty young worker from the textile mill, and in their second year of marriage she gave him a son, my older brother, and two years later she had another son, who was me.

When I was eight, the vigorous surgeon happened to get a day off from his usual hectic schedule. He enjoyed the luxury of sleeping all morning at home, and in the afternoon he went for a long walk with his sons and played with them on the beach for hours. On the way home he let one ride on his shoulders and carried the other in his arms. By the time they had finished dinner it was already dark, and he, his wife, and their two children sat underneath the parasol tree that stood outside their door. At that hour the moonlight shone down, casting the leaves’ mottled shadows over us, and a cool breeze rustled.