In the meantime, Manna began to insinuate that he should seriously consider divorcing his wife. He tried evading the topic whenever she was about to bring it up.

One night in early June, a section chief in the Military Department of the City Administration died of a heart attack. He had been a stalwart man, in his mid-forties. At nightfall he had heartburn and took some medicine, but the symptom persisted. He told his wife that he was going to the hospital to see the doctor. He set out with a flashlight and an umbrella, since it looked like rain. Before he reached the hospital, the heart attack felled him. He lay in a ditch and couldn't climb out to get on the road. When people found him before daybreak, he was dead, his lower lip bitten through and his face smeared with mud and husks of grass seeds. He left a widow and three small children. His death disturbed Manna profoundly, as she had known him by sight.

The next evening when they were walking on the fringe of the sports ground, she sighed and said to Lin, "Life is such a precarious thing. Today we're alive, tomorrow we may be gone. What's the point in trying so hard to live like a human being every day?"

"Don't be so pessimistic. If we think that way all the time, we can't live. "

She stopped and leaned against the flaky trunk of a birch. Her right hand held her left wrist, twisting it back and forth, and her eyes dimmed staring at him. She said in a choked voice, "I can't bear this anymore, Lin. This is stifling me. Why don't you do something?"

"What are you talking about?" He looked puzzled.

"We can't continue to be like this. Who am I? Your fiancee or your concubine? You must do something to change this situation."

" What could I do?"

"Ask Shuyu for a divorce." She looked close into his eyes, her lips pursed up.

His head turned away. "I can't rush. I have to figure out a good way. This is not an easy thing to do."

"Why is it so complicated? Tell her you want a divorce and see how she takes it. "

"No, you don't understand."

"I don't understand what?"

"I can't just dump her like a pair of outworn shoes. I have to give a good reason, or else everybody will condemn me and I won't be able to get a divorce."

"What's a better reason than that you don't love her?"

"No, no." He gasped.

"Listen, Lin, it's time for you to decide. I'm tired of waiting like this. Who am I to you? I'm not even your mistress." She broke out sobbing and turned around, about to walk away.

"Listen to me, Manna. Wait a moment, please!"

"I've heard enough."

"Please be reasonable!"

"I 'm sick of being reasonable. If you do nothing, it's over between us," she said loudly, hurrying away with her palm over her mouth. Her head bent forward and her legs looked shaky while her body kept convulsing a little. A scrap of birch bark was clinging to her hair. She crossed a pile of dried grass and passed the holly hedge.

With a numb heart he watched her disappear at the corner of the lab building. Around his head a few midges were flitting. A pair of magpies clamored in a tall elm, tossing their mottled tails. In the distant sky a squadron of jet fighters were banking away noiselessly like silver swallows.

From that day on, an emotional tug-of-war was waged between them. Lin was accustomed to being alone, so he didn't go and look for Manna. He wanted peace of mind. Yet whenever she came into sight, he couldn't help looking at her. She seemed aware of his attention and always kept her face away from him. She laughed more than before, especially in the presence of other men, and her neck grew straighter. She wore shirts of bright colors and a pair of new leather shoes. Like some other young nurses, she began using Lily Lotion, the most expensive kind of vanishing cream. In the evening she often played badminton with others in front of the bathhouse, as though all of a sudden she had become a young girl again, full of energy and life.

Never had Lin thought she could be so headstrong. He felt miserable and often breathed with difficulty, as though a weight of lead were jammed into his chest.

He was at a loss, wondering if she really loved him. When his colleagues asked him what had happened between him and Manna, he would say, "I shouldn't keep her waiting. She has to make her choice. I'm a married man."

"So you two broke up?"

"I think so."

For all his calm appearance, Lin felt feverish. Whenever he was reading a book, his mind would wander. He couldn't sleep well at night, sighing and thinking of his life and the women he knew. Some of them were better-looking and tenderer than Manna, but they all seemed beyond the grasp of his mind, which would roam through them one after another and gradually return to Manna. How sorry he felt for her. She had been waiting, waiting, only for a beginning or an ending between them. But his life seemed to have been caught in a circle that he could not escape so as to establish a starting point again. Love did not help. The possibility of love only filled him with despondency and languor, as though he was sick in the soul. If only he had never known Manna; if only he could get back into his old rut again; if only he could return to an undisturbed, contented life.

During the day he tried working harder and even undertook the project of recataloguing all the medical records in his office, just as a way to wear himself out, so that he wouldn't think too much when going to sleep at night. As long as he kept himself busy, he felt in control and self-sufficient. He needed no woman.

10

National Day came. The hospital gave its staff a dinner. In the mess hall, Commissar Zhang, a short paunchy man, spoke before the banquet started. He thanked the nurses who had helped the cooks in the kitchen that morning and talked briefly about the significance of this anniversary to the Chinese nation and to the revolution. Then he spoke about the principle that the Party always commands the gun. After that, with a wave of his hand, he announced, "Now enjoy the meal."

He went to a corner and sat down at the table reserved for the leaders, which had an unlimited supply of dishes and wine.

People began to propose toasts and raise chopsticks to eat. At once the room echoed with laughter, chattering, and the clatter of bowls, plates, ladles, mugs. Eight courses were served. There were smoked flounder, sweet-and-sour ribs, sauteed pork with bamboo shoots, scrambled eggs with tree ears. Each table was given two bottles of red wine, a jar of wheat liquor, and a basin of draft beer.

Lin and Manna didn't sit at the same table, but she was within his view and earshot. Unlike the other men at his table, who were feasting heartily, Lin felt as if his stomach were full, although like most people he too had skipped lunch that day to save his appetite for this banquet. He turned his head and saw Manna's right arm resting on the broad windowsill behind her while her left hand was holding a green enamel mug.

"The wine's divine," she said loudly to Lin's roommate Jin Tian sitting next to her, then she giggled. She removed her arm from the windowsill and touched her nose with her fingertips.

Her words made Lin's cheek muscle twitch. A middle-aged woman doctor at his table said kindly, "Try a meatball, Lin. They're delicious."

He held out his chopsticks absently and picked up a meatball, which, though made of ground pork, tasted like tofu to him. He didn't like the insipid beer either, but he drank some from his white blue-rimmed bowl. Instead of attacking the meaty dishes and the fish like the others, he ate radish salad seasoned with sugar and vinegar. Now and then he let out a small burp.

Meanwhile, at the other table, Manna was laughing jovially, the tops of her cheeks red as if rouged. She lifted her mug and clinked it with others, and with her head tilted back she drained the remaining wine in one gulp.