Seeing those words, Lin almost laughed. Obviously Mai Dong had been a simple, gushy fellow, hardly able to express himself coherently.

Yet having read all the letters, he felt a doubt rising in his mind. What troubled him was that the desperation Mai Dong had described was entirely alien to him. Never had he experienced that kind of intense emotion for a woman; never had he written a sentence charged with that kind of love. Whenever he wrote to Manna, he would address her as "Comrade Manna," or jokingly as "My Old Lady." Maybe I've read too much, he reasoned, or maybe I'm too rational, better educated. I'm a scientist by training – knowledge chills your blood.

At dinner that evening, he said to Manna, "I went through the letters. I can see that Mai Dong was really fond of you."

"No, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"He jilted me. I hate him."

"But he loved you once, didn't he?"

"It was just a crush. Most men are liars. Well, except you." She grinned and went on wiping up the remaining pork broth on the plate with a piece of steamed bun.

Her words surprised him. If what she said about Mai Dong was true, then why had she kept his letters in the treasure box? Did she really hate him? He was puzzled.

Manna found herself pregnant in February. After that, she insisted Lin get another bed so they could sleep separately. "I don't want to hurt the baby," she explained, meaning they should stop having sex until the baby was born. He agreed. He borrowed a camp bed from the Section of General Affairs and set it up in a corner of the room.

Her pregnancy came as a surprise to Lin, who had thought that Manna, already forty-four, must be too old to be fertile. Now he was worried, because she had a weak heart. Since they had been married, once in a while she had suffered from arrhythmia, and her blood pressure had been high, though her cardiogram didn't indicate any serious problem. His worry was compounded by the fear that at her age she might not be able to give birth to a baby smoothly. He tried to persuade her to have an abortion, but she wanted the baby adamantly, saying that that was the purpose of their marriage, that she would not be a childless woman, and that this might be her last opportunity. She even told him, "I hope our baby is a boy. I want a little Lin."

"I don't believe in that feudal stuff. What's the difference between a boy and a girl?"

"A girl will have a harder life. "

"Come on, I'm not interested in having another child. "

"I want my own baby."

Unable to dissuade her, he dropped the subject and let her follow her wish.

Her reaction to pregnancy was severe. She vomited a great deal, sometimes even in the small hours. She didn't seem to care about her looks anymore. Her face became bloated, and the skin around her eyes grew dark and flabby as though she had just stopped crying. In addition, she ate a lot; she drank pork-chop soup with shredded kelp in it, saying the baby needed nutrition and tapping her belly, which hadn't bulged yet. What's more, her appetite was capricious. One day she craved sweet potatoes and the next day almond cookies. Then she remembered jellyfish and begged Lin to get some for her. Muji is far from the sea, and even dried jellyfish was a rarity after the Spring Festival. He bicycled about in the evening to look for jellyfish, but couldn't find any. He asked a few nurses, whose families lived in the city, to help, but none of them could do anything. Finally, through a relation of the mess officer, Lin bought two pounds of salted jellyfish at a seafood store.

Manna washed the sand and salt off the jellyfish, sliced them, and seasoned them with vinegar, mashed garlic, and sesame oil. For three days, at every meal she chewed the jellyfish with crunchy relish. She wanted Lin to try a piece, but he couldn't stand the smell.

Then from the fourth day on, she stopped putting the jellyfish on the dining table, as though the dish were unknown to her, despite half a bowl of the leftovers still sitting in the cupboard.

Aunt Cheng, Doctor Ning's mother, stopped by one evening. She told Manna, "You're a lucky woman and can eat whatever you want. In the old days when I gave birth to my first son, I ate only ten eggs. That was all for two months. When I was big with my second child, I was dying to have a roast chicken. Every morning I went to the market to look at the golden chickens at a cooked-meat stand. I had no money even for a wing, just went there to smell some."

The old woman's words reminded Manna of what was good for her, and she began craving roast chicken. So every other day Lin bought her a chicken from a luncheonette nearby, though he was worried about the cost – on his monthly salary he could afford no more than fifteen roast chickens. Fortunately her appetite for chicken lasted less than two weeks. Then she remembered pomegranates, which were impossible to find here in wintertime. How she longed for those pink pearls, sour, pungent, and juicy! One night she even dreamed of a robust tree laden with pomegranates. She told Lin about the dream, saying the auspicious fruit portended that they would have a big boy. Somehow the impossibility of coming by a pomegranate corrected her freak appetite, and she began eating normally again.

Since they'd been married, Lin had read little. His bookcase standing by the door still held his books, but it was also loaded with cups, medicine bottles, eyeglass cases, flashlights, a tumbler doll, and knickknacks. Dust had gathered on the tops of the volumes, but neither he nor his wife bothered to wipe it away. By comparison, Manna was reading a lot, mainly about pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. She checked out all the books the hospital's small library had on the subjects; she was amazed to discover how ignorant she was about parenting. At dinner she would brief her husband on what she had read that day. Most of the time he would listen to her absently; her words entered his head at one ear and left by the other. His lack of interest sometimes annoyed her.

In addition to reading, she was busy preparing clothing and dia pers for the baby. She asked some nurses for their threadbare shirts and pajamas, because diapers should be made of soft, used cloth that wouldn't chafe the baby's skin. In the evening she often went to their neighbors' homes to learn how to make baby quilts and pillows and how to knit socks and booties. She bought three pounds of knitting wool, which cost her over seventy yuan and made Lin wonder why she had become so openhanded, even wasteful – the baby would hardly need so much woolen clothing. But he didn't complain, because she had spent her own money.

Hua sometimes came on Sundays. If Manna was at home, she would stay only for a short while. She told her father that Shuyu was very pleased to hear about Manna's pregnancy, because this meant their family would be larger. Lin was puzzled by Shuyu's response, which seemed to indicate that she thought she was still his wife. He wondered whether it was the alimony he paid that made her feel this way. What a simpleminded woman. At times Hua brought along scallion pancakes, which Shuyu had made for him, but she wouldn't take the food out of her bag if Manna was around. She talked more and smiled more now, telling her father that she liked her job and that the fellow workers treated her well. She looked cheerful, the corners of her mouth going upward a little when she smiled, and a gleam appeared in her eyes. Without Manna's knowledge, Lin bought Hua a Phoenix bicycle and a Shanghai wristwatch. Though Manna knew Hua couldn't afford them by herself, she said nothing. She never greeted the girl wholeheartedly.

Sometimes Lin thought about the twenty years before this marriage. The peaceful time seemed as remote as if it had belonged to another man's life. He couldn't help imagining what this home would have been like if Manna and he had gotten married fifteen years earlier. At that time she had been such a pleasant woman that he had always believed he would be a happy man once he married her. But now she was so different and rather boring. He realized how suffering had changed her.