Author: Anni Baobei Translated by Keiko Wong
Endless August
Call me Wei Yang.
I’m a daughter of the south. Before I was 17, I lived in a southern ocean city. After that I moved to Shanghai, that metropolis of surging crowds, where the miasmic sky between the buildings looks so clean and blue, so lonely. At night a small of decay seeps across the Bund; the sad scent of materialism. Times and broken dreams are buried together and ferment, endlessly.
And the typhoon comes every year. In August.
When I was twenty-five, I told myself that I should move to the north. I didn’t think they had typhoons there.
The squeal of the typhoon brings death’s suffocation. It rages unpredictable and unrestrained, alive with visions. I enjoyed it, when the wind would come up, and used to play a game on the bridge near Shaanxi road: I’d stand there, lean back over the railings, hang my arms behind myself and stretch down and down. My hair would fly in the wind, I’d begin to feel dizzy, and would see the clouds flying gracefully, swiftly over the city. But I began to realize that when a girl is looking at the sky, she’s not looking for anything.
She’s just lonely.
I’d quit my job in a web company. And I was single.
I’d told Qiao that I know very clearly what kind of man I want. Within ten minutes of meeting someone, -- ten minuets tops -- I can tell whether or not he’ll have anything to do with me. If he can bring me love, he might relieve my suffering.
Life unfolds in ten-minute segments, and I live in dread of the unforeseen. I believe that those with true intuition can’t escape this fear.
Qiao was a girl I’d met in my evening English class. She was wearing a lime-green cotton jacket the color of damp moss that survives in a cool, dark corner where the sun will never reach. A corner is somewhere that makes people feel safe, so I chose to sit beside her. Behind our books, we studied each other’s palms, as if we were teenagers back in school. I liked the feeling of her hair brushing against my face when we leaned closed together.
‘Your palm is so smooth, there are hardly any lines at all,’ Qiao said. ‘It’s scary.’
'It means you will die young.'
'Is that so scary?"
'Maybe.' Her face seemed slightly afraid.
I smiled and massaged her fingers. A woman's skin is soft with a slight fragrance. Like petals.
After class Qiao and I would go to a bar, or just sit outside a convenience store with a plastic cup of iced Coke. She works in a design company and has a programmer boyfriend she calls Zhao Yan 'face of the morning'.
'We've known each other for ten years,' she said. 'I can only fall asleep now if I'm holding his hand.'
'Will you marry him?'
'Sure. I want to anyway. We will have ten kids.' Laughing, she rested her face innocently on my shoulder.
Smoking, silent, I smiled to myself, and watched her.
I like flowers, I like to break off the petals one by one, to mark them with my fingernails, or squeeze out their juice. I don't know why they don't have blood. Theirs is a life without pain; it's enough to make me jealous.
I was often silent, especially when I was a child. Silent children make others feel uneasy. If there are no signs of happiness when she's supposed to be happy, no tears when she ought to cry, no assurances when those are required... if there are none of these things, then she is probably one sick girl.
My mother used to sit a little apart from me and smoked as she looked at me apathetically. She was a woman with pale blue eyes and a wan, languid smile. She treated me as an adult, because she wasn't like other mothers.
First, she was desperately lonely. Second, she was a single mother. Third, she died when I was twelve.
That night was the first time I'd set eyes on Zhao Yan. He had short hair and liked to wear black shirts. He used an Ericsson mobile.
He told me why he favoured Ericsson phones: 'Because of the radiation,' he said, 'I want to get brain cancer, then the way I think about everything will be turned upside down. '
His teeth were very white, and when he smiled the corners of his lips lifted with a gentle quirk. The expression in his eyes was clear and sharp.
I laughed at what he said, and Qiao laughed, too.
The three of us would walk together around campus after class. Qiao would be in the middle of us, with her left hand cupped on my shoulder and her right hand caressing Zhao Yan's neck. Sometimes her happiness seemed fey, and I realized this concealed her lack of intuition. There was a tear-drop shaped mole at the corner of her eye. I know these dreamy indigo-eyed women; they are moss. Darkness keeps them moist, preserves in them the fragile illusion of life's sweetness.
That first night we went to a bar named 'Life' An illusion. The patron brought over whiskey on the rocks and a pack of 555 cigarettes. Zhao Yan and I sat at the bar and watched Qiao weave like a fish through the dancing crowd.
He said, 'We've been together for ten years.'
'I know.'
'I always wonder if I can really make her happy. '
Don't try to predict how things will turn out. Predicting the future brings doubt, and then you will be afraid.'
'You don't seem afraid.' He was studying me in the dim light.
"That's because I know some things are fated.'
'Fated?'
'Right. For example, you met Qiao; Qiao met me; then I met you.'
I smiled and raised my glass. 'Cheers, Zhao Yan.'
He tilted his head, laughed and then knocked back the remains of his drink.
The first time I went to Zhao Yan's apartment in the western district it was typhoon weather.
I wasn't really after him - I just knew there wasn't much time left. In October Qiao would very likely become his bride. But I couldn't let her leave me.
He lived in a decrepit old French-style building, a walk-up that erupted in a cacophony of creaks and cracks as we ascended the wooden stairs. In order not to alert the landlord I removed my shoes and carried them in my hand.
We sat in the dark and listened to the wind and clouds brushing against the dark sky of the city. The sound reminded me of my childhood, of the hallway to mum's room. She never hugged me or kissed me; she brought strange men home and never told me why. When I couldn't sleep I would creep barefoot along the dusty corridor to her room and listen to the groans, or else her hysterical sobbing. I would hesitate, and pace around, but finally all I could do was crouch in the corner and cover my ears. I longed for the touch of her skin against mine.
I turned and looked at Yan, and fixed my gaze on him.
He seemed nervous. 'Wei Yang, I never thought of falling in love with you.'
I smiled. 'Me, neither,' I said. 'But I know what is fated.'
He sighed. Gently he pressed his lips on my eyelids. His warm, sweet breath whispered over my face; his embrace sucked me in. From afar, I heard the unexpected noise of my shoes falling on the floor.
A pair of cotton shoes with white-ribbon laces.
I never wear high-heeled shoes.
Mother had dozens of high-heeled shoes. She arranged them in her closet, lined up rows of velvet shoes, silk ones, soft leather shoes, embroidered-cotton shoes, one pair of slim and pointy pearl. encrusted shoes that seemed to emanate coldness, and fragility. She never wore socks. Sometimes she wore the shoes inside the flat and would pace alone in the room, echoing with a lonely staccato. She was a beautiful woman, but at the time when she was most lovely the man she loved wasn't there.
She never told me what he looked like. But I know he liked her to wear high-heeled shoes. He had given her memories she couldn't forget. But no promises.
'I wanted to grab hold of something,' she laughed, 'so I had you. Then I found that I'd made a big mistake. Because you shouldn't give anything to those who don't love you back. Once you do you'll pay a heavy price.
"You are the crime I can't escape.' She would suddenly scream, lose control, and hurl her shoes at me, one after another. She would run after me, tears streaming down her face. She would be shaking with anger.
Her fury returned in cycles. She had nothing but solitude, and me. I was her only lover, enemy, rival, friend.
Finally she went mad.
Zhao Yan was sleeping like a child. When I left at midnight, I didn't kiss him.
On the street, the typhoon winds were up. Leaves were swirling around and the air seemed unusually fresh. Big white clouds flew overhead. I lit a cigarette in a sheltered niche and then let myself be swept along the empty street.
Showers of huge ice-cold rain drops assailed me, beating and stinging my face.
I sheltered in a public phonebox and rang Qiao. Her blurred voice told me she had been sleeping.
'Qiao,' I said, 'will you get married in October? The weather is really very good then.
'Don't discuss this with me on such a windy night.' She wasn't cross that I'd woken her. She sounded amused, and pleasantly lazy.
'Men don't love women. They just need women. For example, if he's ill, then he'll demand that you see him first thing in the morning.'
'He called you then?'
'Yes, because he couldn't find you.' I exhaled a mouthful of smoke. 'I'm taking you to Beijing in September. We're going to the north, Qiao. Remember these words. '
I hung up.
It was certain that people would be looking for me the next afternoon. Zhao Yan rang first; his voice sounded tired: 'Qiao saw the bracelet on my bed. I didn't dare to tell her it was yours.'
'It's not mine,' I said. 'I never wear bracelets, she knows that.'
'She's leaving me.'
'T can't do anything, Yan.'
'Do you love me?'
"I can't agree to answer that, sorry?'
'I want you to marry me.'
I didn't say anything.
He sighed, then said, 'I know you're a loner.' The phone gave out the sound of a broken connection. He had gone.
Qiao came to me that night. She said nothing, just curled up on my bed. She was shaking slightly. I went over to her and stroked her hair.
'Qiao, is it that painful to break up? Everything passes: people we've loved, pain, the times we live in. What's the difference? '
She had her back to me, and said coldly, 'I hate cheating. '
When I was twelve I prayed that I might grow up as soon as possible so that I could control my mother, control this woman with the pale-blue eyes and wan, languid smile. I loved her. But she was insane. Her fits of throwing high-heeled shoes at me often left marks on my face. I wanted to go to school, I wanted love, I wanted someone to kiss me and caress me, I wanted to go to university, to have a job and eventually have my own family. I wanted to see the ocean, far away. I heard these unvoiced prayers shatter in my heart.
Alone in the dark I would hold a handful of petals and squeeze them with such force that the liquid came out.
Mum took one week to die. She had been walking around in her high heels and at the top of the stairs the heel broke. I saw her extend her hands, screaming, hoping to grab something to stop her fall, but she grasped out at nothing. When she reached the bottom, her head smashed against the baluster. Her blood spurted out and stained the wall, the carpet, the floorboards. In the five years after that, that blotched wall sometimes smelled of sour raw meat or fish, even after I'd spent night after night washing the wall, and crying. I kept that up until I was seventeen.
I had grown up.
I left that small southern city for Shanghai; since then, I have never once shed a tear.
Who would have believed that Yan was my first man?
I hid my blood from him. I was scared it might be blue - dark blue, the colour that reeks of solitary crimes.
No longer a little girl, I have already begun to age and wither. But in my golden period, the person I love is not with me.
Yan. I miss his body and his breath, the heat of his palm against my cool skin. No one else had ever hugged me, or kissed me. He's my only man.
September finally arrived. He rang: 'I have to go to Japan for two years, for work. If you would marry me, I would stay.'
'You've got it wrong,' I said. 'The one I love is Qiao.'
'If you want me to go, I will. If you are still single two years later, I will marry you.'
I hung up.
The typhoons passed. The autumn sky was pale and clean, the sunlight was faintly and pleasantly warm. I still wanted to go north.
Qiao looked hollow-eyed and sallow. She spent her nights getting drunk in bars and clubs and wouldn't stagger home until morning. I love these girls with indigo eyes and wan smiles; they are like my mum. Even the scent of their fingers is the same: the fragrance of petals I crushed in my palms.
I removed the high-heeled shoes from her feet and threw them out.
'My mom died from wearing these shoes,' I said. 'Because she was in love with a man, and that man loved her wearing high-heeled shoes. She became depressed because of him, and she went crazy.'
'She died?' Qiao's face was buried in her pillow.
'Yes. She had to. Life was already meaningless for her.'
'You wanted her dead?'
'I just wanted her to get rid of those shoes.' Those shoes that left marks on my face. Those shoes with no love.
Qiao embraced me. Her long hair covered my face as she sobbed. 'I know,' she said. 'I know you killed her.'
I screamed: 'I didn't! I didn't. I just wanted her to be free of her pain. Why, why, why did she have to wear those shoes?!!'
Qiao gripped my head, and pressed me against her shoulder. 'Don't be scared,' she said. 'Don't be scared, darling, I am here.' She pressed her lips to my hair.
I pushed her away. 'I don't trust you!' I pulled her hair and dragged her body to the balcony, pushed her towards the rail. When she felt her long hair flying in the wind, she cried out from fear.
'You must tell yourself that men are not reliable. You must be with me!'
Qiao sobbed. 'But I love Yan, I miss him, everyday. I want to marry him'. Her tears flew away.
I released her. She knelt down, her hands covering her face.
'He loves me,' I said. 'Not you. He's going to Japan; you'll never see him again.'
It was late autumn when Zhao Yan left Shanghai. I was there to see him off.
He was standing in the crowded airport with a big rucksack and a look of abandonment on his face. He handed me his mobile. 'Keep this.'
I opened the lid of the clamshell phone to find an already yellowish photo of a sweet, smiling Qiao and Yan, hugging her from behind, his chin pressed against her ear. I closed the lid.
'She's with me now,' I said. 'You don't need to worry.'
'I'll try. You know that, Wei Yang.' 'I know.'
'Meeting you was my misfortune. You are a damaged woman - you never have time for love.'
I smiled. 'But you want to marry me.'
'Yes. I want to marry you.'
'Will you still want that two years from now?' He lowered his head, and when he lifted his face again, his eyes glistened with tears.
'Even if 200 years passed, I would still remember that night of the typhoon, the way you turned back to look at me on the stairs. You were barefoot.'
Again, I just smiled. Whether or not I am sad or happy, all I can do is smile. He hugged me. It had been a long time since I was hugged. My face was buried deep into his chest, and I heard his heart beat with renewed urgency. His breath was warm and fresh. My only man. Gone.
But I already had his baby.
I was determined to go north. With Qiao. 1 feared I might lose her if we stayed in Shanghai; she was wasting away day by day.
She continued to go out every night, and had even been arrested for making a drunken scene in a bar. On my lone mission to the jail to bail her out, 1 had to change buses several times and brave the heavy rain. I found her squatting silently in a corner. Her thick make-up was smudged, her hair disheveled, her skirt torn, and her face had cuts made by fragments of glass.
'Qiao, come home with me.'
She slowly lifted her head. 'Why do you have to be with me?'
'Because you're like my mum.'
'Your mum is dead.'
'Yes, she is. She died of loneliness, which is why I want us to be together. I want to take you away.
"You and she are one and the same. I loved her, Qiao, do you understand? She was my only friend. My only lover.'
'But why do you have to choose me?' She pushed me; her face was full of tears.
'Because this is fate, Qiao. It's fate which can't be avoided.'
'Do you think you can control me?' She laughed coldly.
She riled me, and I replied. 'I can control you, Qiao, let's be clear about that. I can control everything about you.'
Her face to the wall, she broke down into hysterical sobs.
I had booked us on an evening flight. Shanghai to Beijing.
Qiao and I were in the departure lounge. My bump was visible now, and I'd had to foresake my jeans. For our flight, I had chosen a light-pink, thick cloth skirt. I had already found a place to live and a job. I would also continue to write. And there was Qiao. The person I loved.
That day she had on that same lime-green jacket she had worn the first time we met.
She was wearing lipstick. It seemed a long time since she had taken this much care with her appearance. I actually preferred the natural look on her, but for her this was a new beginning. She knew that now that Zhao Yan had gone, that I was the only one she could rely on.
'Wei Yang, look how many people there are!'
'Yes. Lots of people who don't know each other.'
'So what if they know each other? They will still have to part.'
'But the people we have known leave an imprint in our lives, especially those we know well. We won't forget them.
Qiao didn't react. She said she wanted to go to the washroom, and transferred her earphones to my ears. Before she got up, she looked at me.
'Wei Yang, Why did we sit together that day in class?'
'Because you wore this pale green jacket. I liked it.' I patted her cheek.
'Wei Yang, do you love me?'
'Yes, I love you.'
'Zhao Yan said he loved me, too, but he stopped loving me.'
'That's because love changes as time passes.
That's the way things are, unless time stops.' She nodded, and then smiled widely and brightly. "Good. It won't take long,' she said, and then sprang up and away from me.
She was the girl I liked, moist and cool like moss. Free. I rested my hand on my belly; it had become a favourite posture. I still hadn't told her I was pregnant but I thought when I did that she'd be pleased. This would be our child.
The music coming from the earphones was from Tanya Chua, the singer she liked, singing in a subdued tone: He has already changed, you can sense his new lover, then you finally know, that person you loved has gone, before you have even said goodbye. Our heart's longing is only for a memory, of who once was.
The song was on a loop, and Tanya Chua's voice kept singing to me for ages. I lost track of time. Suddenly though I saw chaos unfold; many people were running, and there were cops. I pulled out the earphones, and dragged our heavy duffel bag along behind me to see what was going on. Qiao really should come back and help me, I thought. It was getting close to departure time - and if she didn't come back soon we might miss the plane.
The crowd seemed to be most swollen at the entrance to the washrooms. I dove in and a man's elbow jabbed my belly. I started to scream hysterically: 'Let me through! Let me through! Let me in!' I left the bag, and charged in. A woman was lying still on the white tiles. Her limegreen jacket was soaked with blood. The inside of her wrists slashed red and maw-like. She was barefoot, her shoes nowhere in sight. Her eyes hadn't had time to close. She was dead.
I never went to the north. I decided to pass the winter in the south because I wanted the birth of my child to go smoothly, because I was alone again: Qiao had found a way to leave me.
I kept thinking of our first meeting, our heads down behind our books, looking at our hands. Her hair was pitch black and fragrant, her eyes a dreamy blue. She had believed in love. I loved everything about her; the one I loved.
Zhao Yan wrote to me:
My life goes smoothly in Tokyo. It is only at night when I can't sleep that I hear the wind and clouds screaming, mixed with Qiao's tears. If there was no you, Wei Yang, I would probably have married Qiao, and lived a normal life with her in Shanghai. So many times I ask myself, why was it this way? But if I had to choose again, I would do the same again. How are you, Wei Yang? How is Qiao?
I didn't reply. My belly grew day by day. I have no fear of anything in life, because there is nothing I fear to lose, and nothing I terribly desire. If there had once been something, I suppose it was love, but now I felt safer without that.
I didn't want to forget anyone though. I thought of mother, how she paced the floor in her high-. heeled shoes. Like a friend she had showed me all her loneliness and despair. And there was Qiao, whose happiness was unrestrained by fear or any sense of self-protection. Once, her happiness had filled me with hope, that with her I could find peace. Then there was Zhao Yan, my only man, who gave me a child.
I wanted to see them every day, so that I could mould my child to their likeness. But all I had was the small picture of Zhao Yan and Qiao he had taped on to his Ericsson, the yellowish and blurred photo that was now starting to peel away. For ages I would stare at those faces broken and beaten by both pain and happiness.
Then one day, that small photo was somehow lost. Zhao Yan and Qiao's faces were gone, leaving their outlines only in my memory.
The Shanghai winter was very cold that year.
At night when I slept I felt dread in my bones. The people I loved, one after another had gone, one after another had left me. I had mimicked my mother's method to catch a life. But I thought that, unlike her, I wouldn't have any regrets.
In the dark I shut my eyes, thinking about Yan's soft lips, gently touching my eyes. I softly said his name out loud.
One week before I was due to give birth, I called him.
His voice was warm and clear as before. His manner was unexpectedly friendly.
'Zhao Yan,' I said, 'I think I should be honest with you about a few things: one, as a child, I killed my mother; two, I deliberately wanted to split you and Qiao up; three, Qiao killed herself in the airport washroom, she is dead. If you are still willing to talk to me, I will tell you the rest. '
There was a long pause at the other end of the line. No sound but Zhao Yan's breathing. My iPlayer was playing Tanya Chua's song, He has already changed, you can sense his new lover, then you finally know, that person you loved has gone, before you have even said goodbye. Our heart's longing is only for a memory, of who once was.
Finally I knew how deeply she had loved him, but at the time she had said little, and done nothing. She was a petal I had squeezed in my fingers, squeezing her life into my soul. When she died in an airport full of strangers, she had taken off her shoes. She had gone barefoot.
My laugh startled the connection, and then I listened carefully to the silence at the other end. I heard a soft crack. Zhao Yan had hung up.
When the child was newly born, her eyes were bright with indigo fires. She was an exceedingly beautiful girl with pitch-black hair damply clinging to her head. I wanted to take her to the overpass on Shaanxi Road. I wanted to embrace her, lean backwards from the railing, and slowly face upwards, let my hair fly in the wind.
The clouds formed themselves exquisitely in the sky, spreading across the city.
As she slowly grew up, she would understand: when a woman looks at the sky, she is not looking for anything.
She is just lonely.
I stayed on in the south. Qiao and Zhao Yan belonged to this city. And so did my child.
I sent Zhao Yan letters. I didn't know what I could write, so I sent him blank sheets of paper, sometimes stained with tears. In a tiny rented house in the north-west corner of Shanghai I began to write again, and made enough to support myself and my child. If time continued to flow, I thought fate would work itself out.
Spring arrived. I continued to study English two days a week. I took the child with me, and coaxed her into sleeping while I was there.
If she cried during class I would take her outside and hold her as I walked a circuit of the dark playground. The playground had many oriental cherry trees whose powder-white flowers floated like soft raindrops in the wind. I put the petals in the child's hand, and she gripped them and smiled.
My deskmate was a thirty-year-old woman with short, spiky hair. She liked to wear clean white shirts. Once, she came over to me and offered me a smoke, for which I felt very grateful. She favoured a masculine scent from Kenzo, which suited her clean appearance, and made me happy.
She said, 'Your baby is beautiful.'
I smiled. 'Because she looks like the person I love.'
She nodded. 'You are lucky.'
'Yes. I always think so.'
'You can call me Jo.'
'Hello, Jo.'
She sat with me in the shadow of the cherry tree. We smoked, and looked at the blossoms fluttering around us. The child made indistinct murmurs in her sleep. Jo's hand reached out, and gently caressed the child's hair.
At that moment, I thought of Qiao. I though of that night we had drunk iced coke outside that convenience store. It was already a long time ago.
But the sense of happiness was endless.
The Road of Others
It was raining.
The rhythm of the rain was like another cycle of life starting. I felt that I had passed through a long dark tunnel to the exit of a dream and this was a new beginning. The dusk that entered through a slit of curtains was pale and as blurry as face powder. Bald trees, the spires of neo-classical villas. Silent streets.
The city was sinking into soundless chaos.
I was alone in a white-washed room. Lush ferns, soft sofa, floor-lamp, a white rug. This wasn’t my place.
Sam was back.
I made a random selection from a rail of cotton shirts in his closet. All white. Taking a shower in the small adjacent bathroom, hot water dampened my hair and ran down my face. Suddenly my brain was awakened.
This was the first time Sam had taken me to his home, and it was just like I'd always imagined. Everything was white. Simple and clean. Dustless. No female clutter, no flowers. Nothing fancy. Nothing lusty, just a clinical place. I was right then, there was no wife, or girlfriend in Sam’s life; he was just a middle-aged man who liked to keep a bar and wipe his wine glasses.
The only personal touch was a picture placed in a silver frame; a black and white picture, yellowed by age. It showed a young European man with a sweet smile. He was dressed in torn old jeans and a clean shirt, sitting by a fountain in a square. The bright sunlight in the picture already seemed to have faded.
Wearing Sam's neat shirt over my dirty jeans I went downstairs to the first floor and approached its owner across a white wool rug. There was a bedroom and study on the third floor, sitting-room and kitchen on the middle floor. The first floor he had made his bar. Sen was asleep on the sofa. The pulled-down white linen curtain admitted a pale light. All I could hear in the sealed box of the room was that rhythm of the rain. Sen was barefoot, his head on a cushion.
I sat on the rug near to the sofa and lit a cigarette. This room was like the bottom of the ocean. The clamour of the rain still seemed unreal. I smoked while I looked at this man. Lines were visible on his face, the track marks of passing time. He would have been handsome when he was younger. When I pressed my lips gently on his fingers I felt his blood flowing there. His eyes opened.
Why am I here?
No one answered when I called you from the airport, he said. Your keys were in the door, you phone line was unplugged, your windows open. You were lying in bed with a fever, wine bottles and cigarette ends everywhere. You’ve never known how to take care of yourself, you are putting yourself at risk.
I said, then do feel sympathy for me?
Do you need it? He looked at me calmly. Why have you been silent for so long?
Some things had to be taken care of. Some difficulties at home. I finished my book.
I've read it, he said. Was everything ok, while I was away? Have you caused any trouble, or lost anything?
I got married. And I made a trip to Xinjiang.
Married? He looked at me skeptically. But you still live alone?
My guy disappeared, with our marriage certificate and another woman.
He stroked my head. Jo, why do you keep making the same mistakes?
No idea. Never tried to figure it out.
How was Xinjiang?
Cramped, the same as everywhere.
I started to lead an itinerant life ten years ago. We all struggle senselessly, like fish in a tank.
I want to visit a small island in Taiwan. On the East coast.
Why?
I want to see the sea in winter, with you.
His eyes showed affection as he looked at me. He gave my hair another stroke.
Why did you have it cut?
I’m starting a new life.
To be continued ISBN 978-988-18419-7-1
安妮宝贝著 Keiko Wong 译
