Pale shell book one part.., p.4
Sunbirth, page 4
‘And you call yourself a socialite?’ I teased.
‘Please, nobody calls themselves that.’
She fell silent for a moment, and though it was a natural pause, I thought I sensed an anxiety. Like a photograph that was out of focus, I saw a vague image of her, blurring into a colour, losing her edges.
‘I think it’s really brave,’ I said. ‘To have a child.’
‘Someone’s got to keep us going, right?’
‘I can come with you,’ I said, rather impulsively. ‘I’ll just finish things here a little earlier today.’
Her pregnancy had always felt close to me. I’d been seeing her regularly – every week she came by to pick up bird’s nests – but that wasn’t the only reason. It was because she reminded me of Ba. Maybe it was the secret other half. That her child only had one parent. I’d often wondered whether Miss Pan planned on telling her baby who the father was, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
‘That would be so lovely,’ she said.
Miss Pan took her time articulating those words, so that they seemed to hold more weight than usual.
‘I have to go get my things,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come pick you up in two hours. Does that give you enough time?’
‘Tell me which hospital and I can meet you there,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to pick me up.’
‘Nonsense.’
Not long after she walked out the door with her longans, Driver Hua entered with a beer bottle dangling from his hand. A few days a week, he’d go drinking with his friends at The Old Sister, a small dumpling restaurant in our neighbourhood. Sometimes, he’d stop by my shop on his way home. I suspected it was because he wanted to see Miss Pan, but never once had he been fortunate enough to catch her. Today was the closest he’d ever been.
‘You just missed her,’ I told him. ‘You’re not driving your truck like this, are you?’
‘I didn’t miss her,’ he said, burping loudly. ‘I saw her leave.’
He was struggling to keep his eyes open. With each extended blink, he looked like he was going to fall asleep standing up.
‘What was she here for?’ he asked.
‘Why shouldn’t she be here? She’s due soon. I’m going to the hospital with her.’
‘Why does she bother coming all the way here when she could just send somebody?’
‘Maybe she likes talking to me.’
‘You think people like her enjoy talking to people like us?’
‘I’m not like you. Look at yourself. Where’s your truck?’
‘Truck, truck, truck. Is that all I am to all of you? A truck driver? I’m not allowed to just come and chat? You think you’re better than me too?’ He tried to burp again, but nothing came out.
‘Go home, Driver Hua. You’re drunk.’
‘My name is Hua Ge,’ he said. ‘Remember that. Which hospital is she going to?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘You think I can’t figure it out myself? People like her only ever go to New Hope.’
‘So?’ I asked. ‘What are you going to do with this information?’
He finished his beer in one gulp.
‘You shouldn’t have let me deliver that stuff to her,’ he mumbled.
He turned around and hauled himself out of the shop, his bottle swinging like a pendulum.
‘Don’t throw that in front of my shop!’ I shouted after him.
Most of the time when he stopped by, he’d only be slightly tipsy. The only other instance he came in this drunk had been a week ago. He’d spent an entire hour foul-mouthing his wife. She had to be cheating on him, he told me, because he had called home while he was at work and she was breathing heavily. She must’ve been naked in bed with another man, going at it, while speaking on the phone with her husband. He was disgusted at how shameless she’d become. He called her a whore, among other things.
I didn’t think any of his suspicions were reasonable, but I didn’t know the entire story and frankly, it had nothing to do with me, so I didn’t say anything. It felt wrong to meddle in other people’s private affairs. Driver Hua used these accusations to justify his infatuation with Miss Pan. I couldn’t quite understand how he could let his emotions get the better of him, and then dump them on another woman. I wondered whether it really made him feel any relief.
Despite all that, like I said, it wasn’t up to me to judge whether he was a good or bad man. All I could say was that he was a good truck driver. Punctual and careful. Never drunk on the job. That was all that mattered to me, anyway. The day after he complained about his wife to me, he even came all the way here to apologise. It seemed he really did feel sorry, but within a few sentences of his apology I could tell that he didn’t have a clue what he was sorry for. Watching him, all that stirred inside me was a feeling of pity.
New Hope Hospital was located in the Southern District. It sat on a small bit of land that jutted out onto the lake. Of the two hospitals, New Hope was the better one, although the exterior was dispiriting, painted in black and grey stripes, with each shade representing a different floor. The paint was flaking off the walls and there were large water stains on the bricks. Even the hospital couldn’t avoid falling to pieces.
Five Poems Lake was a rather monochromatic place. If you stood on the tallest building and gazed down at the town, you would’ve wondered why it was all so grey, like everything had been drawn in pencil. Of course, I am not claiming that there were no colours in the town – there were plenty, in fact – but when viewed from afar, all those colours would somehow blend into the same leaden hue. I couldn’t remember if it’d always been this way, or if the town had gradually forgotten its colours in the past twelve years, as trees darkened to black and grass turned to dust.
The maternity ward was on the top floor and, unsurprisingly, it was mostly empty. Looking out from the windows, the location of the building made the rooms feel like they were floating. Good for the emotional wellbeing of new mothers, I imagined, so long as they stayed inside. Miss Pan had a room to herself. Beige walls. White duvet. Pink curtains. Everything in the room was in one of those three colours. Miss Pan fitted right in with her cream-coloured coat. It was as though she was in a painting. Things in real life never usually matched up quite so nicely.
There was a television mounted on the wall over a dresser. I helped her put away her belongings: clothes, bottles of skin products, make-up, a brand-new diary, baby girl clothes, massage oils, a camera. She treated me to an impressive plate of shredded pork in sweet bean sauce, completed with a stack of spring onion pancakes that she’d asked her driver to pick up for us. We ate in her room and talked about all sorts of small and pointless subjects. Neither of us mentioned the sun. I had the feeling that she only wanted to speak about hopeful things. Maybe it was because of the baby. They all say that the foetus can hear inside the womb.
I didn’t leave until around ten in the evening.
‘I won’t be able to come tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘I have to watch the shop. But that doesn’t mean you should be alone. What I’m trying to say is that you need to get someone to take care of you, Princess Pan.’
‘I’ll find someone,’ she said. ‘I’ll call the maid.’
I made her promise before I left. She accompanied me to the staircase. Watching her walk back to her room in the quiet hospital, it occurred to me that nobody can be entirely spared from solitude, not even Miss Pan.
She’d offered to have her driver take me back, but I wanted to ride the bus. Few things comforted me more than a running bus late into the night. I reckon that anyone who lives alone must experience nights when loneliness nags at them, keeps them from falling asleep. When that happened to me, I’d take the bus all the way to the Western District. The soft night lights coming in through those large glass windows always succeeded in calming me.
The bus stop was just in front of the hospital and I had to wait almost half an hour in the cold before the bus finally showed up. The driver didn’t even bother to check the time and immediately drove off after I paid the fare. At moments like these, I saw that bus drivers were in positions of power. Only they could decide when to arrive and when to leave. Everyone else’s plans had to be adjusted accordingly.
There were three other people on the bus. A couple was sitting towards the back, and a man in a long coat was standing by the door. Though it was only twenty minutes away by bus, I hardly ever had reason to venture to this southern part of the town. The University was located here. On a weekday like this one, the streets were quiet and dark at night, lit only by the fluorescent convenience store signs. The only people out were students buying their late-night snacks and drivers taking a break, smoking by their trucks. The bus motored down the road, passing all the empty stops without slowing down. The night felt brief and long, close and far, warm and cold, all at the same time.
Back in the east, there were only the faint sounds of the wind. I checked my watch. It was almost midnight. It’d been a few hours since dinner, but I could still feel the oil and sugar from the shredded pork coating my mouth and churning in my stomach. I felt greasy, which really made me want to take a bath and drink some tea. Dong Ji had told me about the baths they offered at the parlour. Dried flower petals, herbs, salts and honey masks. They would even scrub your back for you. Maybe I should save up for a treatment, I thought. I should do it before the sun disappeared, because who knew what the world would look like once it all turned to darkness.
Whenever Dong Ji visited me, which was normally every Thursday, she would tell me all about her work and the strange things she had to do, like changing the intonation of her voice to fit the music in the background or the level of light in the room. One of the most expensive treatments involved smearing honey onto naked customers. With the bees gone, honey was impossible to find at the market.
It was rather dark when I got off the bus. The convenience store next to the pharmacy usually kept its sign on throughout the night but, with the sun fading so much all of a sudden, maybe they wanted to save on electricity bills. As I walked, I imagined myself paying my visit to Dong Ji’s workplace. It was strange to think that I’d never been inside. I wanted a honey mask, I decided, like how the Su girl had wanted a haircut at that fancy salon. I was happily thinking about myself naked, silken with honey and soaking in hot water, when I turned into the alley and saw Driver Hua standing in front of my back door. They hadn’t put up any streetlights – the walls were too close to each other – but his face was clear under the blue moonlight.
We both froze. I’d always had plans for a situation like this one, where I’d find myself alone with a man on a deserted street at night. All of them involved some effort to escape, so I couldn’t be sure why I just stood there. Maybe I was afraid, but my heart wasn’t pounding and I didn’t have the slightest urge to scream. Fear didn’t manifest in the ways I’d always imagined it would.
I watched him and he stared back at me. It was just Driver Hua, a man I saw all the time. He wouldn’t do anything to me.
He took a few steps forward and stood in front of me. Was I asleep? I was sure that he had been farther away. Only in a dream would he be able to get to me so quickly from that distance.
‘I tried to give up,’ he said, breathing heavily. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of booze.
‘I tried,’ he said. ‘But I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s a swan in the sky, and I’m down here, in a pile of shit and mud. I can’t stop imagining just how pure and clean it is up there. And you brought me so close to her, and now I’m more aware than ever that her life and mine will only ever run in parallel. How could you do that to me?’
He paused and pressed his forehead against mine, his eyes glaring at me. I shoved him and he stumbled backwards, almost toppling over before regaining his balance.
‘The police station is right there,’ I warned him. ‘Don’t touch me.’
He stood in between me and the back door to my house. If he wanted to stop me, there was no way I could push past him. The alleyway was too narrow.
‘What do I do with this burning desire?’ he asked, like he really expected me to have an answer. ‘You think if I just tried hard enough to win her love, she’d want to fuck me in my truck? I’m too afraid to even look at her.’
He began to laugh and cry at the same time.
‘I don’t even know what she smells like,’ he added.
‘You’ll only get yourself in trouble if you keep obsessing over her,’ I said, trying to calm him down. ‘You don’t know her. She’s just . . . an idea to you. You told me once that you like quiet women. She’s many things, but certainly not quiet.’
I tried to force a smile, but instead I felt my facial muscles twist into a stiff and dishonest expression.
‘Have sex with me,’ he said. ‘Please. You’re the closest I’ll ever get to her.’
‘You’ve lost your mind,’ I said, stunned by his suggestion. ‘I want nothing to do with this.’
‘Have sex with me,’ he repeated. ‘Just once. I need to feel her. Just this one time.’
His insistence disgusted me and I stormed towards my house. As I pushed him aside, he grabbed onto my wrist and sniffed my hair like a dog. The smell of wet tobacco and beer invaded my nose. Combined with the greasiness in my mouth, it almost made me throw up. In panic, I shook my arm with all my strength, surprised to find that his hand slid straight off.
When I turned my head to make sure he wasn’t following me, I saw him standing with his back curved like a shrimp next to a pile of garbage bags, fumbling around his crotch and unzipping his trousers. I tripped over a loose brick and almost fell. I heard his loud breathing quickly turn into a series of moans and felt a heat on my back, like I was standing near a flame. When I spun around, Driver Hua’s trousers were halfway down his legs, and for an instant, I saw the outline of his face before a bright light pushed itself out of his open mouth, flared up and engulfed his head, blinding me.
I don’t know how much time it took for all that to happen. It must’ve been a matter of seconds. Coming back to my senses, I dashed for the door, though my eyes were wincing from the light. All I could see was a white screen over everything. Or was it black? I battled with the lock and pushed my way in. I wheezed and coughed and spat out the saliva that’d been bubbling in my mouth. I climbed onto the back of the sofa and pulled the curtain aside. As the whiteness blurring my vision cleared away, I saw Driver Hua standing, straight as a pole now, hands by his sides. Up where his head should’ve been was a radiating light that illuminated the alley like it was daytime.
A few more seconds passed. Or maybe it was a few minutes. He began walking to his truck, which was in the same place he usually parked when he made his deliveries. He moved with purpose, like he knew exactly where he was going, but with no sense of urgency. His trousers had slid to his feet and almost tripped him as he tried to climb up the steps to the door of the truck. After some struggling, they fell off entirely and he pushed himself into the driver’s seat. The light shined atop his shoulders, beams bursting from where his face had been.
After he started the engine and drove away, I waited a while to make sure he really was gone and rushed into the kitchen and ran my hands under the tap. I was sweating all over. I started washing my neck with the freezing water, which sent a searing jolt through my body. The grease from the pork shot up my throat. I heaved it all out into the garbage bin. I stared at the dirt underneath my fingernails, feeling filthy.
It was like a small sun, I thought. His head was a small sun.
2
The first thing Dong Ji did when I opened the door to her was stick a cigarette in between my lips. I recognised it as one of our father’s cigarettes, the kind he would sometimes buy as a special gift for himself. They were slender cylinders assembled by machines, not the kind we rolled ourselves, and so there was more tobacco packed into each one. There weren’t many of those left when Ba was alive and the few machines that made them had all broken down since then. Ba had left behind an unopened pack of twenty in his drawer and Dong Ji had been keeping it safe with her. Before now, we’d only ever smoked two cigarettes out of the pack, on the day Dong Ji moved out and I took over the pharmacy.
‘That perverted bastard,’ Dong Ji said, rubbing my arms as though trying to warm me up. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘He was by the back door,’ I said. ‘But he drove off.’
‘I’ve been telling you to go through the shop entrance, especially at night. How many times have I said that? How come you never listen to me? That back alley is too dark. Have you gone to the police?’
With the lighter she had in her pocket, she lit the cigarette for me and then for herself.
‘I don’t want to go outside,’ I said.
I followed Dong Ji to the living area. She tossed her coat onto the dining table and led me to the sofa. She was in her boat sweater that she only ever wore at home. It was green with a white boat knitted in the front, the boat that belonged to the Su family. The sweater was so old that the green had been washed into a pale pear colour.
‘Has he lost his mind?’ she said. ‘To think that Driver Hua would dare to do something like that right next to the police station. This never would’ve happened if Ba was still alive. We have to report him tomorrow.’
Dong Ji sat leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, her hands interlocked, one of her legs bouncing up and down. I mounted the back of the sofa, pulled open the curtains, and slid the window up a little. The cold breeze, as though it’d been waiting, surged in through the gap.
Outside, only moonlight shone on the pavement. I found it strange that the moon was still so bright, given how little sun there was left.
‘Let’s tell Gao Shuang,’ Dong Ji said. ‘We should know where Driver Hua lives. Yeye should have it in his address book. He is not getting away with this. Makes me sick.’
