Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories (4 page)

The madwoman said, ‘This isn’t a dress at all; it’s a
cheongsam. Everybody used to wear them, before.’

The girl seemed only partly to understand this.
Finally, her curious gaze rested on the madwoman’s
collar. She pointed at the safety pin and said, ‘You’re so
lazy! Why don’t you sew on a new button if the old one
fell off? Why did you use a safety pin?’

The madwoman lifted her hand to her collar and let
out the first sharp cry. By the time Wenqin came out
with the silk scarf, the little girl who had provoked
the disaster had vanished without trace, leaving only
the madwoman. Her face was pale as snow, she had
thrown the sandalwood fan to the ground, and her
left hand gripped her collar tightly. Her right hand was
pressed against her chest and she sent forth one sharp
scream after another. Wenqin knew that there was no
sense in denying the truth; the game was up. She was
flustered now, too, and the neighbours were converging
on the door to her home. But there was something that
frightened Wenqin even more: as well as the missing
frog, according to the madwoman’s choked cries, a gemencrusted
brooch had also disappeared!

In her desperation, Wenqin forgot the madwoman’s
precarious state of mind. She poked her in the face
with one finger. ‘What brooch? What precious stones?
That’s a malicious lie! I’ve never seen you wear any
brooch.’ How could Wenqin be anything but flustered?
The frog was a small affair – and it was true she bore
responsibility for that, but it was only a frog, it didn’t
really distress her – the brooch, on the other hand,
was a catastrophe that had materialized out of thin
air. How could Wenqin fail to be confused? And in
her confusion, she began to abuse the victim: ‘What
butterfly brooch? What precious stones? You loony!
Be mad if you want to, but you needn’t try and con me
while you’re at it.’

The incident that became known as ‘the time the
madwoman raised Cain’ consisted of the events of that
early evening. In fact, the madwoman did not raise Cain;
she merely gave sharp cries and wept. Everybody there
learned from her cries that she had lost two articles: a
frog fastening and a brooch. Although exquisite, the frog
was only a dress fastening; but the brooch sounded rare
and valuable, and its loss accounted for the gravity of
the situation. Everyone looked at Wenqin with eyes that
demanded an explanation. Then the madwoman seized
a part of her dress, as if that would make her produce the
missing belongings, and refused to let go; meanwhile,
Wenqin refused to explain. She held a black scarf in her
hands which she tried to wrap around the madwoman’s
neck; but the madwoman wouldn’t accept it, and the impression
given was that she was refusing some kind of
bribe. Soon the women were fighting, madly entwined,
accompanied by sharp screams from them both.

Wenqin’s pretty face flushed red as a pig’s liver with
fury. ‘She’s mad! Mad! You all know that!’ She tried to
shake off the madwoman and raised one hand to make
an oath to her neighbours: ‘She’s sick in the head, but
you aren’t. I’ll tell you what really happened. I borrowed
the frog to make a pattern from it. But this brooch or
whatever, that’s her madness talking. If I’ve ever seen this
brooch of hers, may lightning strike me down!’

At one point, Wenqin’s husband Luo came out and
tried to part the two women, but to no avail. He took
no further steps, apparently thinking of the undignified
impression it would make, and instead stood by with
a sombre expression on his face and his hands on his
hips. That was all he could do as the women flew at one
another; for whenever women fight, no man can feasibly
intervene, much less if one woman is the Mahogany
Street madwoman and the man a cadre in the Ministry
of Health. Luo heard the madwoman crying. His wife
was crying too, and as she cried she turned around
to reproach him, ‘Luo, you wimp! Why don’t you do
something to make this loony go away? Hurry up and
make her go away!’

Luo rubbed his hands, took a step forward and
grabbed the madwoman with one hand. But then,
realizing he couldn’t bear the loss of face, he retracted
it again. The next moment the neighbours saw him
clap himself on the forehead – evidently he had found
a solution to the problem. They watched him run down
the alley, a few children at his heels. They all ran down to
the public phone outside the general store – apparently
Luo’s solution was going to be found at the end of the
phone line – and the children listened as he made the
call, instructing someone to dispatch an ambulance right
away. Who was the patient? Luo bawled into the receiver,
‘What do you mean, is it high blood pressure? Is it heart
disease? What do you mean, is it serious? If it weren’t
serious, would I be calling you? Since you have the nerve
to ask, it’s a loony, a wild loony on the loose, making a
scene in front of my house.’

Eventually a white ambulance drove down Sunflower
Alley. By that time the sky was almost pitch black and
the ambulance lights worked like searchlights, lighting
up Sunflower Alley so it seemed as bright as day. The
lights dazzled Wenqin, and on her despairing face arose
the dawn of triumph. The light shone on the neighbours
gathered for the spectacle and they looked stunned; one
by one they blinked and began whispering to one another.
When the lights hit the madwoman’s face she lifted one
hand. It looked like surrender, but at the same time as if
she was struggling against the light. It was then that the
people in Sunflower Alley heard the madwoman emit the
most forlorn of all her cries; it came like a thunderclap
from a clear sky. The people couldn’t help but cover their
ears; cover their ears and watch the madwoman as she
tried to escape. She ran a few steps forward – but the
ambulance was in front of her; so she ran a few steps back
– but the people were behind her. The madwoman, lost
to any sense of shame by now, sat down on the ground,
covered her face with her hands and cried. She kicked her
feet; she even kicked off her T-bar leather shoes, and said,
‘I’m not going to cry. You can have my frog, you can have
my brooch, just don’t come over here. I beg you, don’t
come over here. Don’t come over here.’

But those who had to come over came over. Three
men jumped out of the ambulance; they were wearing
white suits and surgical masks, and one of them even
had a length of rope in his hands. They seemed prepared
for the patient to resist, but now that it was actually
happening, the madwoman had lost all her strength. She
just curled up into a ball and her whole body shuddered
violently. She said, ‘I beg you, don’t come over here.’ She
raised one hand, meaning initially to ward them off,
but in effect meekly presenting them with it. She said,
‘Susu’s out of school. I should go home.’ With this, she
raised another hand, and thereby gave that up, too. In
the end, the madwoman ended up cooperating with the
ambulancemen. The people on Sunflower Alley watched
as two of them lifted her into the ambulance. The third
looked to be very strong, but he wasn’t going to be needed
today. He was the one who took the T-bar shoes from
Wenqin’s hands and put them inside the ambulance.

Most intelligent people know where an ambulance
would carry a madwoman, but some people are born
stupid, and they ran after the ambulance asking, ‘Hey!
Where you going to take her?’ And the people in the
ambulance answered, ‘Where do you think? Sanli Bridge,
of course.’

Sanli Bridge was about twenty kilometres from Mahogany
Street. To get from here to Sanli means changing buses
three times, and in the end you have to take the suburban
line from the South Gate. People younger than me all
know that Sanli Bridge is ancient and seven-arched.
Under the bridge is a white building with a red-tiled
roof; that’s the activity centre for retired cadres. What
they don’t know is that under Sanli Bridge there used to
be a shady patch of willows, and that there among the
willows there used to be a mental hospital. So ‘going
to Sanli Bridge’ didn’t mean going to the actual bridge,
it meant
under
it. Just a simple rhetorical technique; I
expect you know that.

Even when he had long since passed the scene of the
accident, near the village of Siqian, the driver remained
badly shaken.

The highway in the rain was a lonely stretch of road.
Outside the lorry’s windows the sky was the colour of
lead and the rain drummed down without interruption.
The wipers swung feebly to and fro and there was a
constant but irregular flow of water on the windscreen.
In the rear-view mirror the road seemed like a black tide
pursuing his lorry, which was buffeted by the wind and
rain like a solitary boat. Also reflected in the rear-view
mirror was his face, wan and fatigued, with traces of
sweat faintly visible on his forehead, and an expression,
a look in the eyes, that showed he had not yet recovered
from the shock. He had a feeling like carsickness, or more
precisely seasickness. He felt as if the road was tossing
him up on sky-high waves. In his long career as a driver,
this was the first time the highway had provoked such
feelings of profound dread.

The rain still hadn’t stopped, but once he turned off
and drove through a mountain pass the drops became
noticeably smaller; the sound of the rain hitting the corn
leaves was no longer so pronounced and the swift current
of a river could be heard above it. The sky was still dark
to the north, but towards the south it had become both
bluer and brighter. Now, a few shabby red-brick sheds
appeared ahead of him on the left, the sonorous voice
of a pop singer drifting faintly from them. It was a song
praising the highlands of Qinghai and Tibet. The driver
knew he had reached Weeping Willow. He had passed
through here a year earlier and the tape player had
played that same song all day long: ‘Oh, the highlands
of Qinghai, and the highlands of Tibet.’ Today it was still
the same song, but these were neither the highlands of
Qinghai, nor those of Tibet. Weeping Willow was a place
that survived by serving long-distance drivers and which
consisted of three roadside establishments. One was the
petrol station, one the general store for cigarettes, alcohol
and food, and the last a cross between a restaurant and
an inn. The restaurant boldly fronted the road, while the
inn was half-hidden behind it. Local people had told
him they were all one business, belonging to the same
woman.

A girl in a green miniskirt stood beneath an umbrella,
trying to stop vehicles and attract customers. She
extended one of her arms from under the umbrella in a
gesture intended to be seductive, but which looked more
like a traffic policeman ordering vehicles to proceed. The
girl stood with her legs apart and exposed below her
skirt. They were half light, half dark and extremely eyecatching.
The driver took a long look at her and realized
that it was because she was wearing black silk stockings,
onto which were sewn glimmering mock pearls, like a
patch of starlit night.

‘Hey, big boy. Have a drink and relax for a while.’ The
girl gestured to him, and after she had finished, she
covered her mouth and giggled.

The driver was used to gestures of this kind and
didn’t respond immediately, letting his eyes wander
between the girl’s face and the road, undecided. It was
his hand that took the lead and chose to stop by pulling
the brake. The driver’s mind obeyed his hand and his
tightly wound body suddenly slumped forward over the
steering wheel. ‘All right, I’ll rest here for a while.’ The
driver knew his own nature, and was quite astonished by
the way the girl’s invitation had been able to calm him
down so quickly. As he was backing in and parking the
lorry, he studied his face again in the rear-view mirror:
although it was still pale, his eyes were already more
lively, shining with obscure expectations, filled with
intense light.

The girl was rather childish, and her graceful smile
seemed both ingratiating and shy. She demonstrated
great interest in his cargo, standing on tiptoe to look
in the back of the lorry. When she saw that it was
empty, she was evidently disappointed, and exclaimed,
‘Empty! The guest who just left had a lorry jammed with
Coke!’

The driver said, ‘So what? It’s not as if he let you have
any.’

The girl didn’t yet understand how men’s flirtatious
small talk worked and concluded mistakenly that he was
making fun of her. She closed the umbrella and shook
off the water. ‘I wouldn’t drink it even if they did give
it to me. It tastes like cough syrup. Totally gross,’ she
murmured.

Weeping Willow looked the same as it had a year
before. The muddy ground in front of the restaurant
was rutted with tyre tracks, which turned into countless
puddles of differing sizes as soon as it rained. By the
garage wall was a mountainous pile of wet, discarded
tyres. A few chickens that belonged to the restaurant
wandered among the puddles, looking perhaps for something
to eat.

‘This way, big boy.’ The girl directed the driver with
her umbrella towards the restaurant, ‘This way, not over
there. It’s wet over there.’

‘You think I can’t find the way by myself?’ The driver
laughed. ‘You don’t have to be so attentive just yet.’

‘The boss tells us to be sure to make a good first impression,’
the girl explained earnestly. ‘Last month, our
boss took a trip to some other restaurants to see how it’s
done there.’

‘What do you mean, "first impression"? I’m a repeat
customer. I’ve been here quite a few times.’

‘How come I’ve never seen you before?’

The driver jumped over a puddle and suddenly recalled
the name of the girl from last year. ‘There’s a girl called
Xue. Is she still around?’

‘Xue?’ The girl’s eyes lit up for a moment. ‘I’m called
Xue. You know me?’

‘I don’t know
you
, I know the other Xue – the one
with the round face and short hair. She’s a little bigger
than you, and a little darker. Does she still work in the
restaurant?’

‘I’m the only girl called Xue here. Who knows who all
these other Xues are you’re talking about,’ the girl said.
‘What did the other Xue do?’

‘Same as you. Stand here, attract customers.’

‘No way. I’ve been here for more than a year and
that’s
my
name. How could there be another Xue?
No way!’ The girl looked as if she thought he was having
her on. She turned her head to look at the driver’s face,
and then took another glance at his shoes. ‘Oh, man,
look at your shoes. They’re disgusting,’ she cried out.
‘I told you to be careful where you stepped and you
wouldn’t listen. Now look at your feet – covered in
mud!’

The driver didn’t mind mud on his feet. He frowned,
trying to remember something. ‘Well, that’s strange.
You’re called Xue, too? I’m sure I remember right. The
other Xue had a mole on her cheek, and you don’t. Or
maybe all you girls here are called Xue.’

‘No way! How would that work? Everybody would get
mixed up. It’d be impossible to manage things. There’s
Mei, Hong and Li – they work nights – but during
the day there’s only me.’ She raised her voice and said
vehemently, ‘I’m not lying. May I drop down dead if I am.
My name is Xue.’

The driver was a little bit perplexed and wondered if
perhaps he had confused Xue in Weeping Willow with
some other roadside girl. But he had always set great store
by his memory, and the people he worked with at the
transport company agreed that he was good at remembering
two things: one of them was his route, and the
other the names of the girls he chanced to meet along
the way.

The proprietress came rushing out from the back of
the restaurant, holding sunflower seeds in her cupped
hands. Her bony face was covered in a thick layer of
powder and her mouth smeared with lipstick. Her smile
revealed jagged, blackening teeth. ‘Why, my friend. What
a long time it’s been.’ She squinted as she gave the driver
the once-over. Suddenly she extended one finger and
poked him in the shoulder. ‘You dockside drivers, you’ve
no loyalty at all. We gave you such good service last time
and you forgot us all the same.’

Despite this greeting, the driver couldn’t be certain
whether the proprietress really recognized him or not.
Perhaps she did, perhaps not. He had met a lot of people
of this type in roadside inns. The driver just smiled an
acknowledgement and sat down on the edge of a table.
He said, ‘I’ll have the same thing as before. Two fried
vegetable plates and a bowl of noodles with herbs and
shredded meat.’

Not far from the kitchen two men were sitting round a
cardboard box, playing poker. They cast sidelong glances
at the driver and then bowed their heads again. He had
never seen them before, but guessed that they were paid
by the proprietress to hang around the restaurant. All
the roadside places had men like these, sitting idly while
the women moved around them. The counter, painted
pink, was right by the entrance, and on top of it stood a
black-and-white TV set. The girl who called herself Xue
had turned it on as soon as they came in. The TV looked
like some kind of relic. It made a droning sound, but
the screen remained blank. The girl picked up a slipper
and hit the set twice, once on the left and once on the
right, and suddenly the image appeared, a TV series from
Hong Kong. There was a man and a woman, conducting
meaningless small talk in a queer kind of Mandarin.
After a moment, it turned out they were talking about
love.

The driver said, ‘That’s really getting on my nerves. No
matter where I drive, it’s always those two voices. They
can’t talk normally, they have to drawl like that: "
yala yala
yala
". As soon as I hear them, it gets on my nerves.’

Xue stood by the counter. ‘No way! It’s cool to speak
like that now, don’t you know that, big boy? If you don’t
like a programme this good, why would you even want
a TV?’

The driver said, ‘My TV at home is strictly for decoration.
Of the three hundred and sixty five days of the year, I’m
not at home for a hundred and eighty. I don’t have time to
watch. When I do, it’s sport. I don’t watch anything else; I
fall asleep if I do. The series from Hong Kong and Taiwan
are OK, so far as the stories go, it’s the dubbing that gets
me. As soon as I hear two voices like that, I want to fall
asleep right away.’

Xue said, ‘No way! If I feel sleepy, I just watch TV and
then I’m not sleepy any more. I’m watching this show
– it’s the last two episodes now, so don’t interrupt or I
can’t hear.’

The proprietress came out of the kitchen with his food.
She kicked at the cardboard box and shouted, ‘Cards! All
you do is play cards! It wouldn’t occur to you to go into
the kitchen and help with the vegetables, I suppose?’ As
she approached the driver, her expression quickly turned
into an easy smile. She remarked to him, ‘Just look how
hard it is to run a place like this. The staff are all lazy. I’m
the busy one while they’ve got it made: the card players
with their cards; the TV-watchers with their TV.’

The driver had wanted to say something, but then
yawned. ‘I can’t stand the sound of that show. I get sleepy
as soon as I hear it.’

The proprietress blinked suddenly and scrutinized
him. ‘You look awful,’ she shouted, as if she was
genuinely alarmed. ‘Your face looks terrible. You really
should take a rest. How long have you been driving? You
look exhausted.’

The driver shook his head, and leaned back on his
chair, giving the proprietress an ambiguous smile.

‘Are you all right?’ She put out her hand to feel his
forehead, saying, ‘You don’t have a fever. Well, then,
as long as you’re not ill. Hey, it’s not easy the work you
do, and it takes the best years of your life, too. Aren’t I
right? I can tell you’re tired. You’ll be fine once you’ve
had a rest.’

‘It’s not that I’m tired. To tell you the truth, I had a bit
of a shock. There was an accident out by Siqian.’

‘Who caused it?’ The proprietress suddenly seemed a
little nervous and took a step back from him. She asked
tentatively, ‘You’re all right, though, aren’t you?’

‘I’d hardly be sitting here if I weren’t, would I?’ The
driver chuckled and moved his legs restlessly under the
table. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘What are you staring at me
like that for? I didn’t do it, it was the coal truck in front
of me!’

‘Yeah, those are the worst. Their drivers are all mad.
It’s as if they’re deliberately looking for people to hit.’
The proprietress was going along with him now and
demonstrating appropriate interest in the accident itself.
‘Did you see the person get hit? Who got hit?’

‘It was an old man. All I saw was this old man going off
like a firecracker. The coal lorry was along with me the
whole way. The trucker had just passed me when I saw
him hit someone. I heard a big bang – hell, it was just like
a firecracker. In all the years I’ve been driving, I’ve never
seen anyone be hit. Just like a firecracker!’

‘Did the other driver get out and help him? There’s the
rural hospital in Siqian.’

‘Help him? He didn’t even get out of his truck, he just
took off! I was right behind him and didn’t know what to
do. It was one of those situations where you can’t really
win. I just gritted my teeth and kept driving. I hadn’t
counted on the old man still being alive, though, and
as I drove past he suddenly popped up, his whole body
covered in blood, and tried to flag me down!’

The proprietress gave a frightened shout and said,
‘That
is
scary! You mean he wasn’t dead? Is he dead
now?’

‘How do I know? I was scared half to death myself.’
The driver had started eating his food. As he chewed he
said, ‘I’m guessing he didn’t survive. He was walking
from the fields on to the road. The raindrops were big as
soya beans, you couldn’t really see for them. He was an
old man from a village and his reflexes were slow – you
know how they all walk along the road with their heads
down, as if the national highways were built for their
personal convenience. He was carrying a basket full of
chilli peppers. When he was hit, there was a bang, like a
firecracker, and the peppers flew all over the place. I’m
not kidding, the guy and the peppers both flew up, just
like a big firecracker.’