Читать книгу The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories - Shouhua Qi - Страница 9

Yuan Bingfa

“You are something!” My wife muttered angrily when I came back home after a day’s work. “Jazzing up your life with a little romance . . . an affair with this Yan woman from Tangshan!”

I was puzzled and said with a smile on my face: “Thank you for trying to flatter me, but I would never have such guts. When you and I were dating, it was you who made the first move, remember?”

My wife wasn’t pacified by my lame joke: “Don’t pretend to be an innocent lamb. When men are bad, they have more guts than a stag in heat!”

I knew it was more serious and asked: “What on earth has happened?”

She tossed me a slip of paper, which I opened right away. It read:

My Dear:

Perhaps it was destiny that you and I met during that long, lonesome trip. You gave me not only company but also so much precious comfort which I can never forget. If you desire to keep in touch with me, please write me at the address below:

Four-Horse Street

Building 2, Apartment 201

Nankai District

City of Tangshan, Hebei Province

Love,

Yan

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry when I finished reading the note. “From what trash can did you find this?” I asked my wife.

“Trash can? I wouldn’t have bothered you if I had picked it up from a trash can. It’s from inside one of your books, of all the places in the world!”

“Inside a book? Which book?”

“That novel, Extramarital Affairs, by a Taiwan author, Li.”

“How can that be?”

“I was puzzled, too. How could my honest, beloved husband have done something like this? Yet how can I argue with this solid evidence in front of my eyes? Do you have a good explanation, Mister?”

“No, I don’t.”

After a pause I said: “Although I can’t explain, I am willing to swear to Heaven that if I am having an affair I would be a dog, a chicken, a duck, a buffalo, a horse, a poop, a pee, a nothing, or an anything but a human being!”

At this my wife laughed, bitterly: “I don’t care what you are. All I care is to find out about that Yan woman in Tangshan!”

I was speechless.

She then said: “I’ll go to Tangshan tomorrow to look for the Yan woman at the address in the letter.” I thought she was being carried away by her anger at the moment and didn’t take her seriously. So I went to work as usual the next day. When I came back from work in the afternoon, I saw a note from my wife on the writing desk saying that she was indeed on her way to Tangshan.

At this I was furious. Woman! Impossible woman!

Then, I thought, this trip might do her some good. If she could really find that Yan woman in Tangshan, the cloud of suspicion would be cleared.

Unfortunately, the next morning, I was dumbfounded to hear this news from the radio: “At 3:40 this morning, a severe earthquake occurred in the eastern part of Hebei Province. According to the National Earthquake Information Center, the magnitude of this earthquake was 7.8 on the Richter Scale, as powerful as 400 nuclear bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima, all exploding at the same time about 16 kilometers deep inside the earth.”

I was drenched in sweat. I knew that the worst might have happened to my beautiful and beloved wife. Based on time nd distance, my wife must have arrived at Tangshan the very night right before the earthquake happened.

That day, with a heavy heart, I went to ask for leave so I could go to Tangshan. There I saw the eyes of one of my colleagues, Young Zhang, red and tear-streaked, too.

I asked: “So, you’ve heard about Tangshan?”

Young Zhang nodded: “A woman I love lives in the city that has been leveled by the earthquake.”

I blurted out: “Is her name Yan?”

Young Zhang’s eyes brightened up at the mention of the name: “Yes! You. . . . ”

“Did she write you a letter?”

“Yes!”

“Goddamn it! How did that note get into one of my books?” I asked angrily.

“Oh!” Young Zhang slapped himself on the thigh. “I borrowed books from you.”

Now everything was clear. I gripped Young Zhang’s collar and hollered: “You turtle’s son, give me back my wife!”

My wife never returned. It was later officially confirmed that she became one of the 242,419 that perished in the Tangshan earthquake.

The date of my wife’s death is July 28, 1976.

(1996)