"I'll sing 'Thirty Li Inn,' that old folk song!" Qian said.

As the sound of her singing spread, Qian's eyes shone. Outside the window a crowd of children appeared, and, afterward, a few women. The singing stopped and there was an exclamation outside the window, "What wonderful singing!"

Maomei had said this; she was there among them. The women started chattering.

"Where does the bride come from?"

"She'll be staying for a while, won't she?"

"She should just stay!"

"Where was she born?"

He opened the door and, inviting everyone inside, introduced her, "This is my wife!"

However, they all stayed crowded outside the door, and wouldn't come in. He took out a big bag of hard fruit-candies that he had bought in town and handed them out, saying, "Everything's been revolutionized. Marriage is now done in a new way, I'm married!"

At this point, he took Qian to visit in turn the homes of the Party secretary, then the head and the accountant of the production team. They were followed all the way by a troupe of children with sweets in their mouths. One woman said, "Quick, go and catch an old hen for them!"

People wanted to give them eggs, and a few old folks said, "If you want vegetables, come and get some from my garden!"

"It all sounds great, but when you offer to pay, they say no, no. After they refuse and you offer several times, they then accept. I can't owe them anything for their friendship, but I do have their friendship, I'm not an outsider here!" he said to Qian, feeling quite pleased. He added, "With your wonderful voice, all the schools in the village will want you. When you come here, you won't need to stand soaking in the mud of the paddy fields in rain or scorching sun all year long. And, of course, you will sing your songs for me."

With such a life they should be happy and contented. That night was sheer pleasure for him. Qian was not as passionate, as engaging, as lustful, or as beautiful as Lin, but he was embracing his own lawful wife. Indulging in this basic human pleasure, he no longer needed to be anxious or worried that the walls had ears, or be afraid of being spied on through the window. Listening to the sound of the wind and rain on the roof, he thought, in the morning when the rain stopped, he would take Qian into the mountains for an outing.

43

"You're just using me, this isn't love." Qian lay on the bed, expressionless, but she had said this quite clearly.

He was sitting at his desk by the window and put down his pen to turn to her. For years, he had written nothing, apart from copying Mao's Sayings for the investigation, but that was before he had fled the cadre school. They had spent most of the day walking in the mountains, but on the way back got completely soaked when it started raining. The charcoal fire was burning, and steam was coming from their wet clothes that were drying on a bamboo basket.

He got up and went over to sit on the edge of the bed. Qian was lying under the bedcovers, her eyes staring.

"What are you saying?" he said without touching her.

"You've killed me," Qian said. She remained lying on her back, not looking at him.

What she said hurt him. He didn't know how to respond and just sat there.

In the gully by the mountain, Qian was fine, she was in good spirits and started singing. They went up the slope to where the bushes were withered and no one was in sight, so he got Qian to sing as loudly as she wanted. Her clear voice swept through the gully and faint echoes were borne on the wind. The lower part of the slope was a tangled growth of grass and shrubs, and the clumps of rice stalks in the terraced paddies, still to be plowed in after harvest, made it look even more desolate. In spring, the slope would be covered in bright red azaleas, and the flowering rape in the fields would have turned into an expanse of golden yellow. But he preferred this early autumn scene of decay and desolation.

On the way back, it had started raining. By a creek, she picked some daisies that were still flowering and some dark-red branches of little-leaf box, and these were now in a bamboo penholder on the desk.

Qian was weeping wretchedly, but he couldn't work out why. When he tried to put his arms around her, she resolutely pushed him away.

In the rain, Qian's hair got wet, and rain was running down her face, but she had just put down her head and kept walking. He now wondered if she had been crying then. He had simply said don't worry, I'll light the fire when we get home, and you can warm up. He had never lived with a woman before and couldn't work out why she was throwing a tantrum like this just because she had got wet in the rain. He didn't know what to do. He thought he loved her and had done everything he possibly could for her, but maybe that was the extent of human happiness in the world.

He went out and headed for Maomei's home. Why had he gone to her house and not anywhere else? Because it was the second house into the town, it was still raining, and also because Maomei's mother said if he wanted to eat chicken she would catch one for him. Maomei's mother was in front of the house, getting some vegetables, and said she would get him an old hen right away, kill it, and have it sent over. He said there was no hurry, and that tomorrow would be fine.

When he returned home and pushed open the door, he got a shock. The wet clothes that had been drying on the basket were strewn all over the floor, and the basket had been trampled and flattened. Qian was lying in the bed, her face to the wall. He held back his anger and forced himself to sit at the desk. The rain outside the window kept falling.

With nowhere to dissipate his frustration, he immersed himself in writing and kept writing until he could no longer see and put down his pen. Maomei was at the door, calling out to him. He got to his feet and opened the door. She was holding a plucked chicken and a bowl of innards. Not wanting her to see the clothes strewn on the floor, he took the chicken and quickly went to shut the door. But Maomei had seen it and looked at him in surprise. He avoided Maomei's startled eyes, closed the door and latched it, then sat quietly by the overturned stove, looking at the glowing charcoals on the floor.

"You don't believe in God, don't believe in Buddha, don't believe in Solomon, don't believe in Allah. The totems of precivilization peoples, the religions of civilized peoples, and the even larger number of contemporary creations, like all the idols put up everywhere and the fabulous Utopias in heaven, all mysteriously make people go crazy…" This filled several pages, all written on thin letter paper purchased in the little town. Qian had read this after she had started throwing her tantrum, and it was too late to burn it.

"You are the enemy!" The woman who had slept with him in the same bed angrily spat out this sentence. The woman in front of him, hair disheveled, clad only in her underpants, stood there in her bare feet, petrified with fear.

"What are you shouting for? People will hear, have you gone mad?" He went up to her.

The woman retreated step by step. Huddled close to the wall and brushing so hard against it that bits of sand started falling off, she yelled, "You're a counterrevolutionary, a stinking counterrevolutionary!"

He felt that her last sentence was less rabid, so he said, "I'm a counterrevolutionary, a genuine counterrevolutionary! So what!" He had to keep on the attack in order to control the woman's madness.

"You deceived me, took advantage of my momentary weakness, I've fallen into your trap!"

"What trap? Talk sense. That night by the Yangtze? Or this marriage?"

He had to turn the topic to their sexual relationship to hide his inner terror, and, trying hard to sound calm, he forced himself to say, "Qian, you're talking nonsense!"