Cocoon, page 7
Neither of us got drunk that night. We only drank enough that I could spend the night without feeling embarrassed.
Yachen and I made love like we were searching for something in each other’s bodies. Traces of those ideals that burst like bubbles, the sincerity and generosity people used to treat each other with, vestiges of a bygone age. We wanted to use each other to return to the time and space of our last encounter. I wanted to go back so I could finally understand all those things I’d never been able to grasp; he wanted to remember everything he’d forgotten.
“Professor’s daughter,” he murmured, body pressed to mine, reminding me there would always be someone between us.
“Dad,” I said indistinctly to the man solidly occupying the empty air.
We stayed awake all night, lying in bed, remembering that evening in 1990. My memory was much clearer than his. I could repeat everything they’d said.
“And then you asked who remembered how many magnolia-blossom lamps are on every streetlight on Chang’an Road? Twelve, you said. Because that long night in the Square, you’d counted them over and over,” I heard myself say, though that husky voice didn’t seem to belong to me, but to a tape recorded many years ago. The sharp memory abruptly became a strong beam of light, shining on Yachen and making him look feeble. He said he could see his former self. “See,” not remember, because that self was still back there in the long ago.
“Part of me died along with that time,” he said.
I shut my eyes, but I knew it was almost dawn because the darkness pressing down on my eyelids was beginning to lighten.
As the sun rose, he pulled on his clothes, becoming once again a complete person. He gave me a tour of the house, showing off the rosewood furniture and newly built wine cellar. He even opened a locked door on the second floor so I could appreciate all the art he’d acquired at various auctions. The large room’s thick curtains were drawn to protect the valuable photographs from light damage. A sunless room reeking of imprisonment. The oil paintings covering the wall were cages containing young women, early summer landscapes, overripe fruit. Statues of all heights like stone figures in an ancient tomb. He hadn’t bothered removing all of them from their protective plastic packaging. In the farthest corner of the room was his most recent purchase, the little girl named “Dream.” She hadn’t been unwrapped either, and duct tape covered her smile.
Yachen seemed extremely satisfied with his current life. Like many successful individuals, he believed all the setbacks he’d suffered had been in the service of his subsequent accomplishments.
“Luckily I was sanctioned, and couldn’t join the Party,” he said. “With my personality, I’d definitely have wound up becoming a minister. Imagine being on edge all day long, for that little bit of money. Completely meaningless.”
Completely meaningless. My father had said this too. But it was possible these two men had different ideas of “meaning.” Still, it had been eighteen years since my father had spoken these words. If he were still alive, if his business had been successful, he’d be a wealthy entrepreneur now as well. And looking over everything he owned, would he be similarly grateful for the punishment he’d suffered back then? Would he have long forgotten the emotional farewell with his students? Perhaps that evening was destined to slip from the memory of everyone involved.
I had one more question, but the moment had passed. I wanted to ask, if my father were still alive, would part of him have died anyway, along with that vanished era? Or would it have died even before that, making this a second death?
After so many years, Yachen still worshiped my father, but the focus of his reverence had changed. Now he respected Dad’s “wise, far-sighted choice” to resign and join the first generation of businessmen in the People’s Republic. I thought Dad had merely been exiling himself. According to Yachen, most of Dad’s colleagues didn’t get on with him. Not content with sanctioning him for defending his students, they thought of other ways to get at him, even preventing him from teaching. Dad must have been utterly disheartened. When he talked about “seeing through everything” and it being “meaningless,” he must have been thinking not just of the political situation, but also his strife with the department. That’s why he resigned without much thought for what came next.
It was 2008 when I met Yachen again, not long after Tang Hui came back to Beijing. Tang Hui was a schoolmate, three years older than me. We’d started dating at university and had been together quite some time. After graduating, he went to Shanghai for further studies, while I chose to stay in Beijing, though I couldn’t have told you what was so good about this vast, impractical city. Maybe because of Dad, I’d always felt an unshakable bond to this place. For a number of years, Tang Hui and I spent more time apart than together, yet our feelings for each other remained remarkably strong. I only cheated because I felt so empty. He never noticed. He believed in our relationship with the same certainty he did in mathematical principles. After he finished his PhD, he finally came back to Beijing and started teaching at a university here. Before that, I’d spent years sharing with roommates, moving every now and then. Renting an apartment with him brought to an end that peripatetic phase of my existence. “Our first home.” In the empty, light-filled room, he hugged me from behind. The love he gave me was as soft as the palms of his hands, and I felt soothed to be wrapped in it.
We’d only just moved into our new apartment. The green curtains were being altered to fit our windows, the gardenias and freesias on our balcony had just started to bloom, and the wine we were brewing from Jiangshao green plums wasn’t ready to drink yet. I bought a toaster oven and a tamagoyaki omelet pan, and printed a thick stack of recipes I’d found online. Our tranquil life together had just begun. The walls still smelled faintly of fresh paint, a chemical scent that gave a sense of spaciousness. There were huge blanks that would be filled by what was to come.
The night I stayed over at Yachen’s place, Tang Hui was in Shanghai for business. I don’t know why I chose to interview Yachen while my boyfriend was out of town. Maybe I’d sensed from the start that something was going to happen between us. Even so, it needn’t have left a trace. That night was too long, and we’d said everything we had to say to each other. It should all have ended at daybreak. That’s what I decided as I left the next day, hugging Yachen with the melancholy of knowing we’d never meet again. In the taxi home, sunlight filled the back seat, and my heart filled with bottomless sorrow. Not seeing Yachen again meant I’d never be this close to my father again. As I sped away, I felt a curtain fall and cut me off from the past.
That night, I dreamed I was eight or nine, my hair in fuzzy braids—the way it was when I first met you—sitting on an empty train. In the dim light, a matryoshka doll rolled along the tattered carpet. I picked it up. Swaddled in scarlet paint, the wooden doll had an oily smile on her face. “Open it.” A woman’s shrill voice. I twisted it open to find a smaller doll, then an even smaller one. Sweat beaded on my forehead. “Open it! Open it!” Discarded doll halves rattled at my feet.
I awoke in an icy puddle of sweat, Tang Hui gently shaking my shoulder. “You were having a nightmare.”
I pressed my face to his chest. It was impossible to say what the dream meant, but I had an inkling that this couldn’t be the end. Sure enough, Yachen called a week later.
“I want to see you,” he murmured into the phone.
That very afternoon, he picked me up and we drove to a restaurant in the countryside. It was a bright summer’s day, and the air was fragrant with grass. We zoomed down a wide road, lush fields of wheat on either side. As the crimson sun sank below the horizon, Luo Dayou’s “Childhood” played on the radio. I felt alive all of a sudden, as if we’d been released early from school.
The restaurant was surrounded by trees, and cicadas chirped loudly. Little white candles stood on the open-air tables and purple lilies floated on the lake.
“We’ve known each other for eighteen years,” said Yachen. “Isn’t that hard to believe? I’ve kept thinking about you these last few days. You make me remember many things about the past. When I’m with you, I feel real.”
“To feeling real.” We clinked glasses.
My will dissolved in the wine as it disappeared, inch by inch. I forgot the promise I’d made myself and followed him home again. We made love, and fell into a drunken sleep. Luckily, I woke up thirsty in the middle of the night and saw my phone flashing on the bedside table. Jumping out of bed, I flung on my shoes, yelled goodbye and rushed out the door.
I made up a stupid lie for Tang Hui, something about going drinking with my coworkers.
“They said we should get together more often,” I said, laying the ground for future absences.
“I’d better learn to hold my liquor,” said Tang Hui. “Wouldn’t want to embarrass myself in front of your friends.”
“You wouldn’t like them,” I said. “They’re ridiculous.”
Yachen called again at the weekend. Standing before the mirror, holding my hair up, I didn’t recognize myself. The room, too, looked unfamiliar. Perhaps it was the curtains we’d just hung. The color was too bright, too insistently green. As my eyes swept across the mirror, I realized a pair of eyes was staring at me from the gloom.
“Dad!” I spun around. He was sitting there, in the coffee-colored waistcoat he’d worn all those years ago, his head gleaming with hair oil. A little patch of green-tinted sunlight wobbled on his leather shoe. He gazed at me in silence, expressionless.
“I don’t know what to do, Dad,” I said. “I just wanted to be a little closer to you.”
The patch of greenish light fractured in my tears. As it flared, he disappeared.
This visitation, even if it was just a hallucination, was meant as a pardon. A little closer to him. What could be more important than that?
After that, I saw Yachen at least once a week. It always went the same way—he’d pick me up in the evening, we’d go for dinner, then back to his place to drink, make love, and reminisce. I was only really interested in the last item, and would have liked to shorten the preceding steps, but Yachen placed a lot of importance on dinner. He chose our restaurants with great care—a balcony full of bougainvillea blossoms, a classical Chinese courtyard with stippled bamboo stalks, a Michelin-starred chef visiting from abroad, the outlandish innovations of molecular gastronomy.
“I want to take good care of you, for the professor’s sake,” he once said, in all seriousness, glancing up from his menu. Yet sitting in these extravagant places, enjoying all this expensive food, filled me with guilt. Looking at him in his dapper clothes, swirling the wine in his glass, I’d be suddenly consumed with rage. How could we be so happy and comfortable? It wasn’t right. There ought to be a bass note of tragedy. Just like that evening in 1990. We should be in a room with drawn curtains, harrowingly making love, excruciatingly revisiting the past. Only by being steeped in pain could our lust be reasonable, my betrayal noble.
I worked hard to control myself. Keeping my head down, I cleaned my plate. At last, the waiter took our plates away.
“I don’t want dessert,” I said. “Let’s go back to yours now.”
He smiled slyly. “No rush, finish your wine first.”
As soon as we stepped in the door, I began dragging him towards the stairs, and we stumbled into the bedroom. I ripped off his shirt and loosened his belt. His plump body stood exposed in the gloom, like a ruined building.
“You want it so badly?” he said softly.
“Uh huh.” Although what I wanted and what he was offering weren’t the same thing.
Rough and hysterical, I squeezed my misery dry. I wanted him hollowed out like a sacrifice.
“You’re a bandit,” he said weakly.
Desire ebbed, and our bodies were scrubbed clean. At certain moments, from certain angles, he did look a little like the undergraduate I remembered. His ruddy, angular face intoxicated me with disappointment. I wanted to hug him. If only this affection would linger a few minutes more.
“Tell me more about back then,” I said. Back then. A phrase we often used, although not quite in the same way. His “back then” meant his university days, while mine was the three years my dad had spent with him.
“What should I say?” he asked.
“Anything.”
He shut his eyes and began to remember. He had a blurry memory of a time when he’d been drinking a lot after being dumped, and had even got into a fight with the guy who’d stolen his girlfriend. Dad summoned him for a talk, but just chatted about love instead of scolding him.
“What did he say?” I wanted to know.
I waited in the darkness until I heard him snore.
He wasn’t able to wander too far into memory—that was more strenuous than running a marathon. He could only handle the past in small quantities, a little spice in his otherwise monotonous life. In fact, it might not have been recollection that he liked, but rather the instant of returning from former times to the present. Finding brightness in a baroque crystal chandelier, warmth in a fireplace bought at a Sotheby’s auction, Lady Luck’s kiss amidst 180-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and down comforters.
I knew I ought to have left long ago, but I stayed. Perhaps I was waiting for Tang Hui to find out. One stormy Friday, when the rain was at its heaviest, he phoned but I didn’t pick up. The news said many roads were severely flooded, and he got worried enough to call my coworkers.
I got home just before midnight. The storm had quietened down. The living room window was open, leaving a puddle on the floor and the curtains drenched. Tang Hui was on the sofa, one arm propping up his head. He turned to look at me, watching as I took off my high-heeled shoes.
“Another gathering?” His voice was raspy.
“Yes.”
He shook his head gently. “No.”
“What?” I took off my earrings.
“There was no gathering.”
I turned to look at him.
“Looks like you have an important appointment every week,” he said. “I’d like an explanation.”
He looked at me expectantly, as if urging me to paper over the cracks in my lies. I bit my lip, unable to speak.
He chuckled sadly. “Looks like we’re in trouble.”
The rain stopped. A cool dampness seeped into the room. We sat at either end of the sofa.
“He was one of my dad’s students. I feel so warm towards him. I couldn’t help wanting to get closer to ...” I began.
“Your dad had lots of students. Are you going to get close to every one of them?”
He stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
I remained in the sitting room, staring into space. I didn’t fall asleep till three in the morning. It was a light sleep, too shallow for dreams, yet the matryoshka doll showed up again with its vermilion face. “Open it, open it!” screamed the shrill voice.
I woke up to find Tang Hui staring at me.
“There are so many things I never knew about Dad,” I whispered. “I wanted to find out ...”
“Jiaqi, he’s been gone for twenty years!” he roared.
I didn’t say anything, just hopped out of bed and walked barefoot to the living room to get my cigarettes. When I came back, Tang Hui had calmed down.
“Tell me what you plan to do,” he said.
“I’m going to find the people my dad did business with. They might know ...”
“I meant about us.” He looked into my eyes. “Are you going to stop seeing him?”
“I don’t know. I only like one tiny part of him, the part connected to Dad.”
Tang Hui pulled me towards him and cupped my face. “Would you give up these deranged ideas?” He said there were still a lot of things waiting for us. We’d never gone on vacation together. Maybe we could spend New Year on a Thai island. Then Paris next summer. Buy a house in the suburbs a couple of years from now, with a little courtyard where I could plant fig trees and we’d have summer barbecues in their shade. We’d get a Labrador ... He painstakingly outlined this picture of our future, but I just stared blankly at him. Defeated, he slumped against the headboard.
“Your father,” he said. “I’ve always known he’d be our biggest enemy.”
Two days later, I moved out of the apartment that still smelled faintly of paint. It was a gloomy morning. Bleary with sleep, Yachen opened the door, and took in the sight of me standing there with my luggage. There was a flash of surprise, then he reached out to give me a big hug. I only planned to stay with him for a little while, until I’d used up the rest of my yearning.
Yachen gave me a key and introduced me to his driver and cleaning lady. The cleaner, Xiaohui, had worked for him many years, and was now completely citified, smiling politely as she stealthily looked me up and down, trying to work out how long this new mistress would stick around. She quickly realized I was different from my predecessors: skincare products didn’t take over every surface of the bathroom, but remained in my washbag. Clean clothes didn’t go into the wardrobe, but remained in a pile in the corner. I hardly said a word about her cooking or ironing, and never asked her to do anything differently.
I began seeking out people who’d done business with Dad back in the day. Yachen helped by calling round his friends, and soon I’d got hold of a few names. I phoned and arranged to visit them, and our conversations yielded more leads. I was constantly distracted, and couldn’t focus on my work. When I didn’t show up for an interview I’d arranged with a movie star, she was so outraged her agent phoned to yell at the magazine, and my chief editor asked for my resignation in order to placate her. I didn’t look for a new job right away, deciding instead to spend my time tracing Dad’s acquaintances.
Yachen had business events almost every night. On his rare free evenings, he’d gather friends for food and drink. He liked bustle and needed lots of people around him. The rich can get companionship anytime they want. Even with all this company, he insisted I come along too.
