'You two were obviously not going to leave right away. I asked her to join us, so she put on a dress.'
'She shook hands with us but didn't say a thing all night.'
'Like you.'
'That night was very special, I had never seen a Chinese home with that sort of atmosphere…'
'It was special because a white German girl with bright red lips had suddenly arrived…'
'And there was also a barefoot little Beijing girl who was lovely and slender…'
'Flickering candlelight…'
'We sat drinking in your warm, cozy apartment as we listened to the howling wind outside.'
'It was unreal, just like it is now, and probably there are also people watching…'
You again think that the room is probably being videotaped.
'Is it still unreal?'
She clamps you with her legs and you close your eyes to experience her, hugging the fullness of her body and mumbling, 'There was no need to go before morning…'
'Of course, there wasn't…' she says. 'At the time, I didn't want to leave. It was a bitterly cold winter night and we had to cycle for an hour. Peter wanted to go, and you didn't try to get us to stay.'
'Yes, that's right.' You say that it was the same with you. You had to cycle back with her to the barracks.
'What barracks?'
You say that she was a nurse in the army hospital and she couldn't stay out overnight.
She lets go of you and asks, 'Who are you talking about?'
You're talking about her army hospital being in the barracks in the outer suburbs of Beijing. She used to come every Sunday morning, and on the Monday morning before three o'clock you had to set off and cycle for more than two hours to get her back to the barracks before dawn.
Shrinking back, she pushes you away, sits up and asks, 'Are you talking about that Chinese girl?'
You open your eyes and see her glaring at you. You apologize and explain that it was she who started talking about the little lover you had at the time.
'Do you long for her a lot?'
After pondering, you say, 'That's in the remote past. We lost contact long ago.'
'And you've had no news about her?' She sits on her haunches.
'No.' You also move away from her and sit on the edge of the bed.
'Don't you want to look for her?'
You say that China is already very distant from you. She says she understands. You say you have no homeland. She says her father is German but her mother is a Jew, so she has no homeland either. But she can't get away from her memories. You ask her why not? She says she isn't like you, she's a woman. You say oh, and stop talking.
3
He needed a nest, a refuge, he needed a home where he could be away from people, where he could have privacy as an individual and not be observed. He needed a soundproof room where he could shut the door and talk loudly without being heard so that he could say whatever he wanted to say, a domain where he as an individual could voice his thoughts. He could no longer be wrapped in a cocoon like a silent larva. He had to live and to experience, be able to groan or howl as he made wild love with a woman. He had to get a space to exist, he could no longer endure those years of repression, and he needed somewhere to discharge his reawakened lust.
At the time his small partitioned room could only hold a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf, and in winter, when he put in a coal stove with a metal pipe for warmth, it was hard to move around with another person in the room. The worker and his wife having intercourse, or their baby having a pee, on the other side of the very basic partition, could be heard clearly. Two other families lived in the building and they all shared the tap and drain in the courtyard, so whenever the girl visited his small room, she was observed by the neighbors. He had to leave the door partly open as they chatted and drank tea. His wife-a woman he'd married ten years earlier and from whom he'd been separated for almost as long-had gone to the Party committee of the Writers' Association, which had in turn arranged for the street committee to report on him. The Party interfered in everything, from his thinking and his writing to his private life.
When the girl first came looking for him, she was dressed in an oversized, padded army uniform with a red collar-badge. Her face flushed, she said she'd read his fiction and had been deeply moved by it. He was on guard with this girl in an army uniform. Looking at her childlike face, he asked how old she was. She said she was studying at the army medical college and was an intern at the army barracks. She said she was seventeen that year. An age, he thought, when girls easily fall in love.
He closed the door to his room. When he kissed the girl, he had not yet received legal approval for a divorce from his wife and, fondling the girl, he held his breath. He could hear the neighbors walking in the courtyard, turning on the tap, washing clothes, washing vegetables, and emptying dirty water into the drain.
He was increasingly aware of his need to have a home, but not just so that he could possess a woman. What he wanted first of all was a roof that kept out the wind and rain, and four soundproof walls. But he did not want to marry again. Those ten years of futile, legally binding marriage were enough. He needed to be free for a while. Also, he was suspicious of women, especially young, pretty, seemingly promising girls with whom he could easily become besotted. He had been betrayed and reported more than once. At the university, he had fallen in love with a girl in the same class whose looks and voice were so sweet. But this lovely girl was ambitious, so she wrote a voluntary confession of her own thinking for the Party branch secretary, including in it his negative comments on the revolutionary novel Song of Youth, which the Communist Youth League was promoting as compulsory reading for young people. The girl had not deliberately set out to harm him, and in fact had feelings for him. The more passionate a woman, the more she had to confess her emotions to the Party: it was like the religiously devout needing to confess the secrets of their inner hearts to a priest. The Communist Youth League considered his thinking too gloomy, but the charge was not too serious, and, while he could not be admitted to the League, he was allowed to graduate. In the case of his wife, the matter was serious. If what she had reported had been substantiated with a fragment of what he had written in secret, he would have been labeled a counterrevolutionary. Ah, in those revolutionary years even women were revolutionized into lunatics and monsters.
He could not trust this girl in an army uniform. She had come to ask him about literature. He said he was not permitted to be a teacher, and suggested that she go to night classes at a university. There were literature courses she could enroll in for a fee, and she would be issued with a certificate after a couple of years. The girl asked what books she should read. He told her it was best not to read textbooks; most libraries had reopened and all the books that had formerly been banned were worth reading. The girl said she wanted to study creative writing, but he urged her not to, because if she messed up it would set back her future prospects. He himself was having endless troubles, whereas a simple girl like her, in an army uniform and studying medicine, had a very secure future. The girl said that she was not so simple and that she was not what he thought. She wanted to know more, she wanted to understand life, and this didn't conflict with her wearing an army uniform and studying medicine.
It wasn't that the girl failed to attract him, but he preferred casual sex with uninhibited women who had already wallowed in the mire at the bottom of society. There was no need for him to waste his energy teaching this girl about life. Moreover, what was life? Only Heaven knew.
It was impossible to explain what life was and, even more so, what literature was to this girl who had come to learn. It was as impossible as explaining to the Party secretary who managed the Writers' Association that what he considered literature didn't require the direction or approval of anyone. That was why he was running into trouble all the time.
Confronted by this refreshing and lovely girl dressed in an army uniform, he was unmoved and certainly did not have any wild thoughts. It had not occurred to him to touch her, and certainly not to go to bed with her. The girl was returning some books she had borrowed from his shelves to read. Her face was flushed and, having just come in the door, she was still slightly out of breath. As usual, he made her a cup of tea, then got her to sit on the
