The Bridegroom (11 page)

My heart was full of pity for Baowen. He was such a fine young man that he ought to be able to love a woman, have a family, and enjoy a normal life.

Twenty minutes later I rejoined him in his room. He looked tired, still shivering a little. He told me that as the electric currents increased, his skin had begun prickling as though stung by hundreds of mosquitoes. That was why he couldn’t stay in the tub for longer than half an hour.

I felt for him and said, “I’ll tell our leaders how sincere your attitude is and how cooperative you are.”

“Oh, fine.” He tilted his damp head. “Thanks for bringing the books.”

“Do you need something else?”

“No.” He sounded sad.

“Baowen, I hope you can come home before the New Year. Beina needs you.”

“I know. I don’t want to be locked up here forever.”

I told him that Beina had written to his mother, saying he’d been away on a business trip. Then the bell for lunch rang in the building, and outside the loudspeaker began broadcasting the fiery music of “March of the Volunteers.” Nurse Long walked in with a pair of chopsticks and a plate containing two corn buns. He said cheerily to Baowen, “I’ll bring you the dish in a minute. We have tofu stewed with sauerkraut today, also bean sprout soup.”

I stood up and took my leave.

When I reported Baowen’s condition to the factory leaders, they seemed impressed. The term “electric bath” must have given their imagination free rein. Secretary Zhu kept shaking his head and said, “I’m sorry Baowen has to go through such a thing.”

I didn’t explain that the electric bath was a treatment less severe than the other kinds, nor did I describe what the bath was like. I just said, “They steep him in electrified water every day.” Let the terror seize their brains, I thought, so that they might be more sympathetic toward Baowen when he is discharged from the hospital.

It was mid-December, and Baowen had been in the hospital for a month already. For days Beina went on saying that she wanted to see how her husband was doing; she was eager to bring him home before the New Year. Among her fellow workers rumors persisted. One said the electric bath had blistered Baowen; another claimed that his genitals had been shriveled up by the treatment; another added that he had become a vegetarian, nauseated at the mere sight of meat. The young woman who had once declared she’d leave her door open for him had just married and proudly told everybody she was pregnant. People began to be kind and considerate to Beina, treating her like an abused wife. The leaders of the assembly shop assigned her only the daytime shift. I was pleased that Finance still paid Baowen his wages as though he were on sick leave. Perhaps they did this because they didn’t want to upset me.

On Saturday, Beina and I went to the mental hospital. She couldn’t pedal, and it was too far for me to carry her on my bicycle, so we took the bus. She had been there by herself two weeks ago to deliver some socks and a pair of woolen pajamas she’d knitted for Baowen.

We arrived at the hospital early in the afternoon. Baowen looked healthy and in good spirits. It seemed the bath had helped him. He was happy to see Beina and even cuddled her in my presence. He gave her two toffees; knowing I disliked candies, he didn’t offer any to me. He poured a large mug of malted milk for both of us, since there was only one mug in the room. I didn’t touch the milk, unsure whether homosexuality was communicable. I was glad to see that he treated his wife well. He took a genuine interest in what she said about their comrades in our factory, and now and then laughed heartily. What a wonderful husband he could have been if he were not sick.

Having sat with the couple for a few minutes, I left so that they could be alone. I went to the nurses’ office upstairs and found Long Fuhai writing at a desk. The door was open, and I knocked on its frame. Startled, he closed his brown notebook and stood up.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.

“No, Uncle, only because I didn’t expect anyone to come up here.”

I took a carton of Peony cigarettes out of my bag and put it on the desk, saying, “I won’t take too much of your time, young man. Please keep this as a token of my regards.” I didn’t mean to bribe him; I was sincerely grateful to him for treating Baowen well.

“Oh, don’t give me this, please.”

“You don’t smoke?”

“I do. Tell you what, give it to Dr. Mai. He’ll help Baowen more.”

I was puzzled. Why didn’t he want these top-quality cigarettes if he smoked? Seeing that I was confused, he went on, “I’ll be nice to Baowen without any gift from you. He’s a good man. It’s the doctor’s wheels that you should grease.”

“I have another carton for him.”

“One carton’s nothing here. You should give him at least two.”

I was moved by his thoughtfulness, thanked him, and said goodbye.

Dr. Mai happened to be in his office. When I walked in, he was reading the current issue of
Women’s Life,
whose back cover carried a large photo of Madame Mao on trial—she wore black and stood, handcuffed, between two young policewomen. Dr. Mai put the magazine aside and asked me to sit down. In the room, tall shelves loaded with books and files lined the walls. A smell of rotten fruit hung in there. He seemed pleased to see me.

After we exchanged a few words, I took out both cartons of cigarettes and handed them to him. “This is just a small token of my gratitude, for the New Year,” I said.

He took the cigarettes and put them away under his desk. “Thanks a lot,” he whispered.

“Dr. Mai, do you think Baowen will be cured before the holiday?” I asked.

“What did you say? Cured?” He looked surprised.

“Yes.”

He shook his head slowly, then turned to check that the door was shut. It was. He motioned me to move closer. I pulled the chair forward a little and rested my forearms on the edge of his Bakelite desktop.

“To be honest, there’s no cure,” he said.

“What?”

“Homosexuality isn’t an illness, so how can it have a cure? Don’t tell anyone I said this.”

“Then why torture Baowen like that?”

“The police sent him here and we couldn’t refuse. Besides, we ought to make him feel better and hopeful.”

“So it isn’t a disease?”

“Unfortunately, no. Let me say this again: there’s no cure for your son-in-law, Old Cheng. It’s not a disease. It’s just a sexual preference; it may be congenital, like being left-handed. Got it?”

“Then why give him the electric bath?” Still I wasn’t convinced.

“Electrotherapy is prescribed by the book—a standard treatment required by the Department of Public Health. I have no choice but to follow the regulations. That’s why I didn’t give him any of those harsher treatments. The bath is very mild by comparison. You see, I’ve done everything in my power to help him. Let me tell you another fact: according to the statistics, so far electrotherapy has cured only one out of a thousand homosexuals. I bet cod liver oil, or chocolate, or fried pork, anything, could produce a better result. All right, enough of this. I’ve said too much.”

At last his words sank in. For a good while I sat there motionless with a numb mind. A flock of sparrows were flitting about in the naked branches outside the window, chasing the one that held a tiny ear of millet in its bill. Another of them dragged a yellow string tied around its leg, unable to fly as nimbly as the others. I rose to my feet and thanked the doctor for his candid words. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the windowsill and said, “I’ll take special care of your son-in-law. Don’t worry.”

I rejoined Beina downstairs. Baowen looked quite cheerful, and it seemed they’d had a good time. He said to me, “If I can’t come home soon, don’t push too hard to get me out. They won’t keep me here forever.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

In my heart I was exasperated, because if Dr. Mai’s words were true, there’d be little I could do for Baowen. If homosexuality wasn’t a disease, why had he felt sick and tried to have himself cured? Had he been shamming? It was unlikely.

Beina had been busy cleaning their home since her last visit to the hospital. She bought two young drakes and planned to make drunk duck, the dish she said Baowen liked best. My heart was heavy. On the one hand, I’d have loved to have him back for the holiday; on the other hand, I was unsure what would happen if his condition hadn’t improved. I dared not reveal my thoughts to anybody, not even to my wife, who had a big mouth. Because of her, the whole factory knew that Beina was still a virgin, and some people called her Virgin Bride.

For days I pondered what to do. I was confused. Everybody said that homosexuality was a disease except for Dr. Mai, whose opinion I dared not mention to others. The factory leaders would be mad at me if they knew there was no cure for homosexuality. We had already spent over three thousand yuan on Baowen. I kept questioning in my mind, If homosexuality is a natural thing, then why are there men and women? Why can’t two men get married and make a baby? Why didn’t nature give men another hole? I was beset by doubts. If only I could have seen a trustworthy doctor for a second opinion. If only I had a knowledgeable, honest friend to talk with.

I hadn’t yet made up my mind about what to do when, five days before the holiday, Chief Miao called from the Public Security Bureau. He informed me that Baowen had repeated his crime, so the police had taken him out of the hospital and sent him to the prison in Tangyuan County. “This time he did it,” said the chief.

“Impossible!” I cried.

“We have evidence and witnesses. He doesn’t deny it himself.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know how to continue.

“He has to be incarcerated now.”

“Are you sure he’s not a hermaphrodite?” I mentioned that as a last resort.

Miao chuckled drily. “No, he’s not. We had him checked. Physically he’s a man, healthy and normal. Obviously it’s a mental, moral disease, like an addiction to opium.”

Putting down the phone, I felt dizzy, cursing Baowen for having totally ruined himself. What had happened was that he and Long Fuhai had developed a relationship secretly. The nurse often gave him a double amount of meat or fish at dinner. Baowen, in return, unraveled his woolen pajamas and knitted Long a pullover with the wool. One evening when they were lying in each other’s arms in the nurses’ office, an old cleaner passed by in the corridor and coughed. Long Fuhai was terrified, convinced that the man saw what they had been doing. For days, however hard Baowen tried to talk him out of his conviction, Long wouldn’t change his mind, blaming Baowen for having misled him. He said that the old cleaner often smiled at him meaningfully and was sure to turn them in. Finally Long Fuhai went to the hospital leaders and confessed everything. So unlike Baowen, who got three and a half years in jail, Nurse Long was merely put on probation; if he worked harder and criticized himself well, he might keep his current job.

That evening I went to tell Beina about the new development. As I spoke, she sobbed continually. Although she’d been cleaning the apartment for several days, her home was a shambles, most of the flowers half dead, and dishes and pots piled in the sink. Mopping her face with a pink towel, she asked me, “What should I tell my mother-in-law?”

“Tell her the truth.”

She made no response. I said again, “You should consider a divorce.”

“No!” Her sobbing turned into wailing. “He—he’s my husband and I’m his wife. If I die my soul belongs to him. We’ve sworn never to leave each other. Let others say whatever they want, I know he’s a good man.”

“Then why did he go to bed with Long Fuhai?”

“He just wanted to have a good time. That was all. It’s nothing like adultery or bigamy, is it?”

“But it’s a crime that got him put in jail,” I said. Although in my heart I admitted that Baowen in every way was a good fellow except for his fondness for men, I had to be adamant about my position. I was in charge of security for our factory; if I had a criminal son-in-law, who would listen to me? Wouldn’t I be removed from my office soon? If I lost my job, who would protect Beina? Sooner or later she would be laid off, since a criminal’s wife was not supposed to have the same employment opportunities as others. Beina remained silent; I asked again, “What are you going to do?”

“Wait for him.”

I took a few spiced pumpkin seeds from a bowl, stood up, and went over to the window. Under the sill the radiator was hissing softly with a tiny steam leak. Outside, in the distance, firecrackers, one after another, scattered clusters of sparks in the indigo dusk. I turned around and said, “He’s not worth waiting for. You must divorce him.”

“No, I won’t,” she moaned.

“Well, it’s impossible for me to have a criminal as my son-in-law. I’ve been humiliated enough. If you want to wait for him, don’t come to see me again.” I put the pumpkin seeds back into the bowl, picked up my fur hat, and dragged myself out the door.

An Entrepreneur’s Story

I never thought money could make so much difference. The same children who were often told to avoid me will call me Uncle now whenever they see me. Their parents won’t stop asking how things are or whether I have eaten breakfast or lunch or dinner. Many young men in our neighborhood greet me as Lord Liu, and some girls keep throwing glances into my office when they pass by. But at heart I’m disgusted with most of them. They used to treat me like a homeless dog.

The most unexpected changes came from my wife, Manshan, and her mother. Three years ago, when I was a temporary bricklayer in a construction company, I proposed to Manshan through a matchmaker. Her mother, Mrs. Pan, didn’t like me, saying she’d rather throw her daughter into a sewer than let me marry her. Her words hurt me. For a whole weekend I didn’t go out, sitting on a taboret, drinking black tea and chain-smoking. A friend of mine told me that perhaps Mrs. Pan wouldn’t give me her daughter because I didn’t have a secure job.

“Look,” he said, “that girl works on the train. As long as the iron wheels move in our country, she’ll have her rice bowl.”

“So I’m a bad match, eh?” I asked.

He nodded and we said no more. It was true my job was temporary and I had no stable income, but I guessed there could be another reason for the Pans to turn down my proposal. In their eyes I must’ve been a criminal.

What had happened was that two years earlier a fellow worker named Dongping said to me, “Brother Liu, do you want to make money?”

“Of course I do,” I answered.

“Well, if you work with me, I guarantee you’ll make five hundred yuan a month.”

“Tell me how.”

He described his plan, which was to buy fancy cigarettes in the South and sell them in our city at a higher price. As his partner, I’d get forty percent of the profit if I provided labor and a tenth of the capital. I agreed to take part in the business, although I knew it was illegal. A month before the Spring Festival, I went to Shanghai and shipped back a thousand cartons of Amber cigarettes, but we didn’t sell all the goods before the police arrested us for profiteering. We lost everything—the police confiscated the money we’d made and the remainder of the cigarettes. I was imprisoned for three months, while Dongping got two years because he’d been in the business for a long time and had other partners. I didn’t know he was a “professional.” Our names appeared in newspapers; our pictures were posted on the streets. So, to the Pans I must’ve seemed a hoodlum. At times I couldn’t help feeling ashamed of myself.

I loved Manshan, but I hated her mother. There was no way to erase my past; what I should do was improve my future. At the time—after the Cultural Revolution—colleges were being reopened, but I dared not take the entrance exams because I hadn’t even finished middle school. I was hopeless. To tell you the truth, my only ambition was to become a decent mason, someone Mrs. Pan wouldn’t bother to think of as a potential son-in-law.

The next summer I heard that Manshan had enrolled in the night college, studying modern history in her free time. So I went to the class too, though I couldn’t register officially, unable to pass the exams. The class was large, about eighty people gathering in a lecture room; the teacher never knew my name, since I didn’t do homework or take tests or ask any questions. I told my classmates that I was a clerk in a power plant. It looked like they believed me; even Manshan must’ve taken me for a regular student.

Half a semester passed, and I began to like the textbooks we were reading, especially those chapters on the Opium War. I thought that Manshan might’ve changed her opinion about me, because she didn’t show much dislike of me in the night class. I begged the same old matchmaker to propose to her again, but the hag refused to help me. Only after I bought her a pig’s head through the back door, which weighed forty-two pounds and cost me thirty yuan, did she agree to try again.

This time Mrs. Pan said, “Tell Liu Feng to stop thinking of my daughter. He isn’t worthy. He’s the rooster that dreams of nesting with a swan.”

Those words drove me mad, and I swore I’d take revenge on the old bitch. A friend advised me, “Why bother with the mother? Why not go to the girl directly?”

That was a good idea, so I began trying to approach Manshan. She always shunned me at the night college; I’d follow her whenever I could. Heaven knew how many times I dogged her until she reached home in the small alley. She never bicycled alone, usually together with three or four girls from the railroad company. I had no chance to get close to her.

One evening I stopped her before she entered the classroom building. I asked her to go out with me on Sunday. As I was talking, my legs were shaking. She looked scared, fat snowflakes landing on her pink woolen shawl. She said, “I’m too—too busy this Sunday. How about next week?” Her cheeks reddened. She was panting a little.

“On what day?” I asked.

“I’m not sure yet. I may have to fill in for a comrade on the train.”

“Okay, I’ll speak with you again.”

I waited like a patient donkey the following week, planning to ask her out again, but she didn’t show up for the next class. I thought she might’ve been ill. At the time, flu was spreading in the city and giving red eyes to thousands of people, so I was worried about her. Then my worry turned into disappointment, because three weeks in a row she didn’t come to the night college. I realized she had quit. My initial response was to go look for her on the express train. But on second thought I changed my mind, feeling miserable because I’d never meant to frighten her like that.

I quit the night college too, and soon I left the construction company. The job paid too little, only one and a half yuan a day. By that time, things had changed—it was no longer illegal to run a private business, and you could sell merchandise for a profit. The government was encouraging people to find ways to get rich. A peasant who had made a fortune by raising ermines was praised in newspapers as a model citizen and was inducted into the Communist Party. So I started selling clothes at a marketplace downtown. Every two or three weeks I’d go to the South and return with four large suitcases of fashionable clothes, mostly dresses and bell-bottomed jeans. They sold like ice cream on a hot day, even at a doubled price. Each trip would bring me a profit of at least nine hundred yuan. I’d never thought I could make so much money, and so easily. Sometimes I wondered if the banknotes were real, but whenever I took out a sheaf of them at a shop counter, the salesperson’s eyes would gleam.

Soon I had a large sum in the bank, but I didn’t know what to do with it. My father had been a senior engineer before he died, and I’d inherited from him a decent apartment. There was no way for me to spend so much money. I was worried about my savings, which were known to everybody in the neighborhood and were accumulating rapidly. Every month I’d deposit over a thousand yuan.

Clearly the state can take away my money whenever it likes, just as thirty years ago the government confiscated the wealth of the capitalists and the landowners and redistributed it to the poor. The same thing can happen at any time to us, the newly rich.

Money is a funny thing. It can change your personality. No, not that you actually change inside, but the people around you change their attitudes toward you. This can make you look on yourself differently, as though you were a high official or a celebrity. I haven’t lost my senses; inside, I’m the same small man, the same Liu Feng. In our city there’s an entrepreneur in the furniture business. Every evening he’ll ride a brand-new Yamaha motorcycle to Eight Deities Garden and sit down to a fifty-course dinner alone. He won’t speak to anybody and always eats by himself. Behind his back, people call him a spendthrift, a loner, a neocapitalist, an heirless man. To a degree I feel for him. He must have been maltreated by others. Now he’s rich; if he can’t hurt them physically, he wants to humiliate them by showing his contempt. People love money, while he doesn’t give a damn about what they love. So he squanders cash like trash, eating like an emperor.

That feeling is hard to suppress. Last summer I went to the Central Zoo to see the monkeys. It was a muggy day and I didn’t enjoy watching the animals walk lazily in their cages. Some of them looked half dead. At noon I felt hungry. A small crowd was gathering in front of a bakery kiosk, buying cookies, cakes, fruit, and drinks. I waited patiently in the beginning, but the two saleswomen seemed to avoid helping me. A few people who came later than me had already gotten what they wanted; still the women would pay no attention to the banknote I was waving under their eyes, probably because I looked poor and nondescript. I wore a boiler suit, which was clean and quite new.

Finally one of them asked me, “What do you want?”

“Let’s see—what’s the best stuff you have here?” I said.

“Just tell me what you want.”

“What’s your most expensive cake?”

The other woman muttered, “As if he could afford it.”

That inflamed my temper. I took out a bunch of ten-yuan bills and cried, “Give me all the cakes and cookies you have here!”

They turned pale. Their manager came out and tried to calm me down, saying the shop ought to save some pastry for the afternoon. I wouldn’t give in and claimed that I had twenty workers waiting to be fed, so I bought all the cakes and cookies, and hired two boys on the spot to help me carry the stuff to the pit where four bears lived. A crowd watched me dump into the pit all the cakes and cookies, which somehow none of the animals even touched.

The incident was silly. I was upset for days; to some extent I felt ashamed of what I’d done. There were beggars at the train station and at the harbor, and I myself had known hunger pangs. But the incident made me famous in our city. This was ridiculous. Why should a man’s name be based on his ability to waste money? Anybody—even a kid—can do that, if he has the money in hand.

People in our neighborhood began to show their respect for me. If they saw me carry something heavy, they’d help me readily. Some older women asked whether I was looking for a fiancée. I said I wasn’t interested. Then came a number of matchmakers who tried to convince me of the importance of having an heir before I reached thirty. I told them to forget it; I was in good health, unlikely to die before fifty. A few girls would eye me boldly, as if my face were a blossoming peony. I wasn’t interested in any of them, because my heart was still with the girl I loved.

My business had grown too big for me to travel to the South frequently, so I contracted with a garment factory in Dan Yang County, near Shanghai: they would make stylish clothes for me and have them shipped to my company. I stopped retailing and started wholesaling. This was much easier for me, and my profits soon tripled. Five months ago I rented my own office and warehouse and hung a lacquered sign on the front door that says:
NEW CLOTHING INC.

Then one day my former matchmaker came and asked if I was still interested in Manshan. Of course I was. This time Mrs. Pan begged the old woman to help her daughter, saying, “I always knew in my heart that Liu Feng is a very able man.” I felt overjoyed and confused at the same time. The girl used to treat me like a bedbug, why would she deliver herself this way? Just because I was rich now?

We agreed to meet on the Songhua River that Saturday. On Friday afternoon I took a hot bath in Three Springs Bathhouse and had a haircut in there. I didn’t sleep well that night, possessed by a sensation that knotted my chest and stomach, and I couldn’t help murmuring the girl’s name as if she were with me. Even the air I breathed felt like it was burning me inside.

The riverbank was full of people on Saturday morning, a whole school of children singing their school song and waiting for ferryboats there. I rented a dinghy before Manshan showed up.

She came, almost a different girl, in a black silk dress and a perm. She looked prettier. I was amazed that she didn’t seem afraid of me at all, as though we’d been dating for years. She smiled, whispering, “You look like a gentleman.”

Her words surprised me, because no one had ever called me that, and I didn’t know what to say, wondering if I’d really changed so much. I had on denim shorts, a topee, and a pair of sunglasses. How could I remind her of a gentleman?

We paddled across the main channel and moored at a small island in the middle of the river. I felt dizzy as the sun was blazing on us. Sitting on the white sand, I saw the city across the water appear smaller—the concrete buildings looked like toy houses, as smokestacks at the paper mill were spitting greenish fumes. Along the other shore, parasols were bobbing a little like clusters of mushrooms. The breeze was warm and fishy.

Manshan said timidly, “Do you still hate me?”

I didn’t know how to answer, puzzled by the question. My heart was racing. She was so pretty—elegant, I should say. A bang of hair curved on her smooth forehead, and her nose was so straight and so high that it looked like sculpture. Her buckteeth propped up her lip a little, but to me, her teeth were also beautiful. I stretched out my hand, stroking her cheek and small ear, wondering if this slender girl sitting beside me was the same person I’d followed so many times from the night college to the dark alley.

With her toes she pried her white sandals off and buried her feet in a small pile of sand. “Do you still hate me?” she asked again without raising her head.

“Stop that!” I snapped. Somehow the question troubled me. A wind passed by, throwing up waves on the river like endless tiles.

I hooked my arm around her shoulder; to my amazement, she didn’t turn away. Instead she was peering at me, her eyes moonstruck and her pointed chin so exquisite that I almost wanted to bite it. As my mouth moved to touch her lips, my heart began jumping and my hands grew bolder.

She didn’t resist me and merely said she was afraid of getting pregnant. That was what I wanted. I thought that if she got my baby, she’d never leave me. So I told her, “That will be good. I’ll take care of you and the baby. I love kids. Don’t be scared.”

So on our first date I secured our union, but I wasn’t very happy. The whole thing had been too easy, easier than swimming across the river. I was disappointed to some extent. Manshan seemed no longer like the girl who had always made me feel so humble and so unworthy.