Candy (6 page)

I thought he was mine and I was his, and that there was no one else in our lives. I thought that was love.

Maybe the kind of love that I’d believed in was something you could never have in real life. I felt a sense of bitter disappointment.

Later, when I got home, Saining was sitting in my doorway.

The moment he entered me, I knew once again that I couldn’t be without him, and that nothing else in the world made sense to me except this, and that nothing else mattered to me.

I began to cry, and I said, Don’t leave me; you’re all I have!

My body shuddered with his, and my eyelids fluttered. It had been a long time since we had made love—I’d thought he was putting all of his energy into his music. Saining could put me into a dreamlike state when we made love. He became another person when we made love, someone absent, and he went somewhere else, somewhere outside of life, to a place that only he knew. He never spoke to me about what would make me happy, and he certainly wasn’t an expert lover. He just wanted what he wanted. But I felt driven to make him happy. I didn’t know how else to make him need me. When he was sick, I loved his sickness like my own. I wanted to be controlled by him because I didn’t know it could be otherwise, and there was something absolute and pure about our need to obey our emotions, and this gave me a certainty. I reveled in the shameful feelings our couplings gave me, as if this was what I was living for.

We were drinking, and it had been a long time since we’d drunk together. Between sips I said, Saining, we have problems. He said, You’re right. We do have problems. I said, Like what? He said, I can’t really explain it.

At first light I got up and started to gather my things. And then I realized that Saining was behind me, like a shadow, sitting on the floor at my back. In the early-morning light his skin looked even paler and his eyes even brighter than usual.

Do you really have to go?

Three years ago you slept with one of our neighbors, and you left me feeling like I had no place in the world to call my own, but I stayed with you anyway. I didn’t even blame you—I just held on to you tighter. That was a mistake. I should have left you and waited for you to ask me to come back. I won’t make the same mistake twice.

Saining picked up an ashtray and struck himself on the head with it. I saw blood.

Grow up! Even if you were dying right in front of me, I’d still leave. You make me feel unclean, as if I’d had sex with millions of people, and I can’t stand that.

Saining lunged at me and pulled me to him. He leaned against the door and said, OK, how about you wait until my head stops bleeding? Then you can go.

You’re even more careless with your life than I am. I can give you a few more minutes of my time, but you’re not going to convince me to stay with you. You don’t understand love; neither of us does. Why else do these things keep happening?

How can you say that?

Saining, you became a father at eighteen. You said the mother was a prostitute ten years older than you, you left the child with your father for a year, and then you gave him back because you did some investigating and found out you weren’t the father after all. Now you’re twenty-four, your mother is in Japan, your father is in England, and you’re on your own in China. You’re not family, and I can choose whether or not to be with you. Nobody is responsible for you but yourself. You have to learn to accept the consequences of what you do. My father taught me this.

7.

I moved in with Sanmao. This time I couldn’t tell myself that Saining wasn’t to blame.

I was like a bird perching on a rooftop; I was stuck. My self-confidence had reached a low point. Sanmao said that my problem was that in loving Saining I had forgotten myself, and that a person who doesn’t love herself is unlovable in turn. He told me, Love is something that has to be learned.

I went out every day to buy liquor, but I always threw up before I’d drunk very much. Sanmao said I was a sad and stupid girl.

Saining came to see me every Sunday night. He always brought presents, and sometimes he brought me songs he’d written while thinking about me. Saining’s response to the world around him was mystical and highly original, but he hadn’t had a decent Chinese education. There was no schooling for him at the work farm, and after he’d gone to England he wasn’t able to study Chinese, so the songs he wrote were full of wrong characters, and I was usually the only person who could decipher them and make any sense out of what he wrote. He worked hard to express his feelings in the songs he wrote about me, saying that he couldn’t bear to be parted from me. Soon he was even calling me “a woman as sweet as milk,” but then the next thing I knew he was also calling me “a cookie laced with poison.”

I asked Saining, Do you love Qi? He said, Yes. I said, What do you love about her? He said, I love her vulnerability and her selfishness, her beauty and her sadness. I love her stubbornness, I love her body, I love the way she doesn’t love people. I said, Saining, don’t I have a good body? Don’t I satisfy you? Saining said, Her body expresses so much disappointment. I’m addicted to that feeling of hopelessness. I said, Well, you always say exactly what you mean. So, do you feel the same kind of love for her and me? He said, I feel the same kind of love for everyone; I only have one kind of love. I said, I only have one kind of love too, but you’re the only person I love. There’s no one else; I love only you. But you, if you love me and everyone else the same way, then why do you feel like you have to be with me? He said, Because I need to have some connection with you in this life. And he started to cry.

He couldn’t do anything without crying. When we made love, he performed badly, often quitting halfway through. He played with my breasts until they got sore, and I was afraid that the good times we’d had in the past would never come back. This thought made me shudder. I really didn’t know what love was; I only knew that if he were to be cut out of my life, I wouldn’t be able to go on.

I tracked Qi down. I told her I could never forgive her for the pain she’d caused me and said I hoped that she would disappear from our lives forever. I said, Saining loves you, but he’ll never be able to leave me. Do you want to be in love with a man like that? Qi said, You and Saining, you’re both pathetic little good-for-nothings, just sponging off of other people. You’re useless; you don’t even understand each other! You’re a pair of idiots, and you bore me to death!

She left, and I never saw her again.

I chose a blustery and moonless night to slash my wrists. Sanmao was at work at the nightclub, and I knew what time Saining would be leaving the house where he tutored, knew that he would be coming to see me that night. So I went into the bathroom a little before I expected him to show up. And when the knife in my hand pressed against my vein and finally cut through, I felt as though this was real, and I shook and felt my body approaching a state of bliss, and I was crying. I turned on the faucet, letting the cold water course over my hot veins. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, feeling dizzy and repeating to myself over and over, If he really loves me, he’ll sense that something is wrong; he won’t be late if I’m not meant to die.

Suicide isn’t something you perform for an audience. You weren’t trying to kill yourself, and you weren’t proving how much you love me. You just wanted to be one of those stupid, crazy little whores. You’re such a bore.

These were the first words Saining said to me after I woke up.

We were both crying. Saining never cried in front of anyone but me, and I found his tears seductive.

While I was in the hospital, Saining never left my side. He got me moved to a private room, and we listened to music together, sharing the headset, one earpiece for each of us. With him beside me, I was able to sleep, even though it was very hard for us to be intimate there, even though I didn’t think that it was over yet. Sometimes I would tell myself, You’re only twenty-two years old; you should get a job. You shouldn’t depend on a man like this. You need to find your own future; this life you’re leading is keeping you from growing up.

But I couldn’t help myself; I couldn’t fight it.

The day I got out of the hospital, I invited all of the band members out to a restaurant that specialized in snake. In the middle of the meal, I said abruptly, Saining, I’ve made a decision. I want to split up with you. I want to go back to Shanghai.

No! he said.

I said, Fine, we don’t have to break up. So, you and Sanmao are always talking about how men in the Northwest like to beat their wives, right? I want you to sit right there and let me slap you on the face.

I was pointing to the center of the room, which was also the most crowded part of the restaurant, as I spoke. I’d rehearsed these words earlier.

Saining looked down without responding.

Stop it, you two! Sanmao tried to intercede.

If he loves me, he’ll do it. He asked for it.

With a whoosh, Saining stood up while everyone looked on. Moving a stool over to the middle of the room, he sat down facing me, and before anyone had a chance to react, I had already gone over and given him a loud slap on the face.

I started to cry, and all of the shame came pouring out of me.

Many people were getting to their feet, but Saining held me tight, saying, Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing, really, it’s nothing. She’s my girlfriend, and I’m sorry if we disturbed anyone. This is between her and me.

We came back to the table and just looked at each other for a long while, and I couldn’t hear anything going on around us, because I just wanted to look at him, and to look at him looking at me.

Let’s stretch our legs, I said.

In the restaurant toilet I grasped his penis in my hand, and I suddenly felt upset when I realized that I’d hardly ever taken the initiative with him. It was
1992
, I was twenty-two years old, and I was so useless. This made me start crying all over again.

A full moon was rising in the sky outside the window. I had to lock him up tight. I had the tools. I got down on my knees and started to pray. The rays of moonlight there were so hazy that I thought I was losing my mind. His flesh was soft in my hand, and I had to love it. Loving it would make it beautiful. I wanted to hold him, to squeeze him hard until I crushed him. I sucked him, sucking out his wet soul until the end, until that gateway to his life had closed. He was my one and only. I had learned how to give head, how to beg, how to pray. He had become my prey; I wanted to turn him inside out. God, how I wanted to turn all my caresses into curses and caress him all over, with limitless tenderness, until he would whisper to me soft and clear, I love you!

I swallowed, and with his semen inside me, I found myself again.

I moved back in. Once more, he and I were rushing, hand in hand, toward an uncertain tomorrow.

8.

Saining and I fell into a daily routine that continued, unchanged, for several years. We slept during the day, rising at dusk to go out to eat. We spent our nights at home relaxing, amusing ourselves. Occasionally we might go perform, or we might go out of town on a short vacation. We always made love in the early hours around dawn. The mornings were cold, and I liked the special sense of our place in the world that I had during these times. When the light penetrated the hazy atmosphere, I could always see Saining’s hair spread out like wings on the pillow. I loved his hair; his hair was like the threads of my thoughts. Almost every morning, while it was still very early, Saining would stand by the window and play his violin. His guitar playing was spectral, plaintive, and cutting. But his violin playing was so classically pure and refined that I felt a sense of despair whenever I listened to it.

I worked for only a short time. Saining hated my singing at the nightclub, and he was always taking the outfits I performed in and cutting them up into all sorts of strange shapes, always trying to stir up trouble, always picking fights. During my brief stint as a nightclub singer, Saining would go for days barely speaking to me at all, not even when we were making love.

Saining also worked for a bit, tutoring a “problem child,” a little boy from Hong Kong named Toby. Toby had a school phobia. He had been sent to live in Mainland China with his nanny, and he spent his days at home. Saining taught him math, English, and violin and how to play soccer. Saining and Toby had met purely by chance, but they trusted each other, and I was glad that Saining was Toby’s tutor. I never imagined that many of the times when I thought he was at Toby’s, Saining was actually sneaking around with Qi.

After the business with Qi, Saining convinced Toby to go back to Hong Kong. He said he wasn’t up to the task of shouldering Toby’s problems, and besides, Toby belonged with his parents.

Saining was skipping a lot of band rehearsals, and Sanmao was furious. Sanmao saw music as a way to change his life, but Saining simply liked playing in a band for its own sake, and he didn’t have any ambitions greater than that. Saining didn’t have the same chip on his shoulder that Sanmao did; he wasn’t as worried about the fate of the nation. I watched their friendship ebb and flow, now close, now distant, in an endless cycle. Being in a band was just like being in love. Every time you broke up or got back together again, the memory of it was carved indelibly into your mind.

Sanmao said the way we were living wasn’t healthy, with Saining depending on his mother for money, and me depending on Saining for money. Sanmao said that bit by bit we were going to rot. Sanmao thought that we needed to seek out hardship, to pay some dues. But I felt that as long as I could spend my days with Saining, I would be perfectly content to rot away. Whenever Sanmao castigated us, we just giggled like a pair of fools. There was nothing he could do to us.

Saining’s mother kept on sending him money. All those Japanese yen went a long way in China, and we lived easy lives. For my part, I kept on spending Saining’s money. I didn’t want to work, since I hadn’t been to trade school and I didn’t know what kind of job I could expect to find. Wages in this town were pitifully low unless you went into some sort of business, legal or illegal, or wanted to sing in a nightclub. Of course, there were plenty of law-abiding citizens working in offices, but I didn’t know what sort of job I could look for.