Shanghai Baby

Author: Wei Hui

I met my love

My name is Nicole, and my friends call me CoCo (CoCo-Chanel, the famous French woman who lived to be 90 years old, is my second favorite idol, the first being Henry Miller, of course). Every morning when I open my eyes, I want to be able to do something remarkable, to attract attention, to imagine myself someday as brilliant fireworks crackling over the city, has become almost a kind of ideal of my life, a reason to live.

This has a lot to do with the fact that I live in a place like Shanghai, where there is a gray mist, dull rumors, and a sense of superiority that has been inherited from the days of the Ten Mile Ocean Court. This sense of superiority always stimulates a sensitive and proud girl like me, and I love it and hate it at the same time.

Yet anyway, I’m still only 25, I published a collection of novels a year ago that didn’t make any money but brought some sort of reputation (I had male readers writing me letters and sending me pornographic photos), I resigned from my job as a journalist from a magazine three months ago, and now I’m working as a waitress at a coffee shop called Greenie’s, wearing a leg-baring mini-skirt.

At the Greendy’s Café where I work, there is a long, handsome boy who frequents the café and sits there for half a day with a cup of coffee and a book. I liked to watch his subtle expressions, his every movement, and he seemed to know I was watching him, but he never spoke.

Until one day he handed me a piece of paper with “I love you” written on it, along with his name and address.

This rabbit boy, a year younger than me, mesmerized me with that elusive beauty that comes from his exhaustion with life and thirst for love.

Although we seem to be two very different people, I am ambitious, energetic, the world in my eyes is a fragrant fruit, ready to be bitten, while he is quiet, sentimental, life for him as if a cake sprinkled with arsenic, every bite will be more and more poisoned. But this difference can only deepen the attraction of each other, like the North Pole and South Pole of the earth as inseparable. We quickly fell in love.

Within a short time of meeting him, he told me a secret that was hidden within his family. His mother lived in a small town called Cadaqués in Spain, lived with a local man and ran a Chinese restaurant, which was said to be very profitable selling lobster and Chinese wontons.

And his dad died early, suddenly, less than a month after visiting relatives in Spain, with a death certificate that read, “Myocardial infarction.” The ashes of the deceased were shipped back by a McDonnell Douglas plane, and he remembers the sun shining that day, and his short grandmother crying old tears like a wet rag at the airport.

“My grandma decided it was a murder, that my dad never had a heart attack, that my mom killed my dad, and grandma said that my mom had another man there and conspired with that man to kill her husband.” The one named Tin-Tin stared at me with a strange look in his eyes and said, “Can you believe it, I still can’t figure out what happened, maybe that’s true. But my mom sends me a lot of money every year and I’ve always lived on that.”

He looked at me quietly, this bizarre story seized me at once, I am naturally the kind of girl who is easily impressed by tragedy and intrigue. When I was a student at the Chinese Department of Fudan University I set my ambition to be an exciting novelist, omens, intrigues, ulcers, daggers, lust, poisons, madness, moonlight were all words I carefully prepared. I looked tenderly and eagerly at his fragile, beautiful features and understood where that rare brooding came from.

“The shadow of death only deepens in layers with the incremental passage of time, and your present life will always be separated from the shattered past by only a clear glass.”

I told him what that meant, and his eyes suddenly got wet, and one hand tightened around the other. “But I found you, and I decided to trust you and stay with you.” He said, “Don’t just be curious about me, and don’t leave me right away.”

I moved into Tin-Tin’s place on the western outskirts of the city, a large three-bedroom apartment. He had furnished the room simply and comfortably, with a circle of fabric sofas from IKEA along the wall and a Strauss piano, above which hung a self-portrait of him with his head looking like he had just come out of the water. But to be honest, I didn’t like the neighborhood around the apartment.

Almost every road is potholed, and the sides of the road are covered with ugly short houses, rusty billboards, rotting piles of garbage, and pay phone booths that leak like Titanic when it rains. Looking out my window, I couldn’t see a single green tree, pretty man or woman, clean skies, or seemingly a future.

Sky often says that the future is a trap, dug right in the middle of the brain.

He suffered from aphasia for a while after his father’s death, then dropped out of high school in his freshman year, and now he has grown up a nihilist in teenage isolation. An instinctive resistance to the outside world causes him to spend half of his time in bed, where he reads, watches movies, smokes cigarettes, contemplates life and death, spirituality and flesh, makes voice calls, plays computer games, or sleeps, and spends the rest of his time drawing, walking me, eating, shopping, browsing in bookstores and video stores, sitting in cafes, going to the bank, and going to the post office to send letters to his mother in pretty blue envelopes when he needs money.

He rarely visited his grandmother, and at the time he moved away from her house, it was resembling a nightmare that constantly reeked of decay. Grandma was immersed in the endless delirium of the Spanish murders, her heart was broken, her face was blue, the gods were gone, but she never died, and to this day Grandma lives angrily in her old townhouse in the center of the city, cursing her daughter-in-law and cursing her fate.

On Saturday, the weather was sunny and the room temperature was perfect, so I woke up at exactly 8:30 a.m. and Tin-Tin opened his eyes next to me. We looked at each other for a moment and then began to kiss quietly. Early morning kisses are warm and tender, like the lubrication of a small fish swimming in water. This is a must-do for both of us at the beginning of every day, and it is the only form of sex that exists between Tin-Tin and me.

He is very sexually challenged, and I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the tragedy that is implanted in his psyche. I remember the first time I held him in bed and was so disappointed to find him helpless that I wondered if I would ever be with him again. I’ve been influenced by a “sexist” outlook on life since college, although I’ve corrected it somewhat.

He couldn’t enter me, he looked at me in silence, his whole body covered in cold sweat, his first contact with the opposite sex in over twenty years.

In the world of men, sexual normality is almost as important as their lives, and any disability in this area is an unbearable pain. He cried, and I cried. Then we spent the whole night kissing, caressing, and murmuring. I quickly fell in love with his sweet kisses and gentle touches. Kisses that melted like ice cream on the tip of my tongue. For the first time he showed me that kisses have souls and colors too.

He sucked in the wild girl’s heart with the kind and beloved nature of a little dolphin, and the rest, the screams or the outbursts, the vanity or the orgasms, seemed for a moment to be irrelevant.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera coined a classic love discourse, “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two mutually exclusive feelings; the former is lust – sensual enjoyment – and the latter is love – love. -mutual love.”

At first I didn’t realize that such a scenario could happen to me, however the sequence of events that followed and the appearance of another man confirmed it.

At nine o’clock we got up, he stepped into the big bathtub, I smoked my first Seven Star cigarette of the day and cooked polenta, eggs and milk in the tiny kitchen. The window was a patch of golden sunlight, and summer mornings are always so poetic, like a piece of melted honey. My whole body relaxes as I listen to the sound of rushing water coming from the bathroom.

“Are you coming with me to Greenie?” I walked into the steamy bathroom with a large glass of milk. His eyes were closed and he let out a long yawn like a fish, “CoCo, I have an idea,” he whispered.

“What’s the idea?” I handed him the milk and he took it without using his hands, bringing his mouth over to take a small sip. “Would you quit your job at the café?”

“So what can I do?”

“We have enough money, we don’t have to go out all the time to earn it, you could write novels.” The idea seemed to have been brewing for a long time, and he hoped that I could shake up the literary world by writing a one-hit wonder; there are hardly any novels worth reading in bookstores these days, and they’re full of disappointing, false stories.

“Okay,” I said, “but not right now, I’d like to do this for a while longer, and I get to see some interesting people at the cafe.”

“Whatever.” He grunted, a catchphrase to indicate that he was listening and didn’t want to say another word.

We had breakfast together, then I dressed and put on my makeup, chugging around the house like an early morning beauty, and finally found my beloved leopard print handbag. Before we left the house, he sat on the couch and picked up a book and glanced at me, “I’ll call you.” He said.

This is the city during rush hour. Vehicles and pedestrians of all kinds are intertwined, circulating and flowing like the rapids in the Grand Canyon, interspersed with unseen desires uncountable secrets, meandering onward, the sun shining on the streets, the high-rise buildings on both sides of the streets lined up between the sky and the earth, products of the insanity of man’s invention, and the humbleness of everyday life suspended like dust in the air, composing a thousand and one motifs of the industrial age.

II. The Modern City

At 3:30 p.m., the inside of the Green Tee was empty. A ray of sunlight shines through the sycamore leaves on the sidewalk, and there’s dark dust floating in the air around them, and there’s a strange shading to the fashion magazines on the shelves and the jazz on the jukebox, as if it were a pile of sonic wreckage left over from the ’30s to the present.

I stood behind the bar with nothing to do. It’s always boring when there’s no business.

The foreman, Lao Yang, was dozing in the small room inside, and he was stationed here day and night as the boss’s relative and confidant, managing the accounts and also us waiters.

My partner, Spider, took advantage of the opening to slip over to the computer dealership on the corner turn for some cheap gadgets.

He was a troubled teenager bent on being a super hacker, half my alumni, with an IQ of 150, but failed to finish his undergraduate program in computer science at Fudan because of his repeated attacks on the Shanghai hotline and his lunatic wit in stealing other people’s accounts to roam around the Internet.

He and I, a once promising reporter and a famous computer killer, have changed our lives and are working as waiters in a café, which can’t be said to be one of the comedic aspects of life. Wrong place, wrong roles, but intertwined into the vortex of a swirling youthful dream. The civilization of the industrial age has infected our young bodies with spots of rust; the body is rusty and the spirit is not saved.

I began fiddling with a large vase of white perfumed lilies kept in water, my fingers entwined with those white flirty petals in a tender way. My flower-loving nature turned me into a woman who could not be exempted, but believed that one day I would compare my face in the mirror to a poisonous flower and divulge as much as I could in my one-hit-wonder novels about violence, elegance, eroticism, ecstasy, riddles, machines, power, death, and the truth about humanity.

The old rotary dial telephone rang with a shrill sound, and it was Tin-Tin calling. Almost every day at this time we received a call from him, coinciding with the time when we were tired of the places we each stayed. He said urgently and fervently, “Same time, same place, I’ll be waiting for you to join me for dinner.”

At dusk, I took off the short silk jacket and miniskirt that served as my work clothes, changed into my own tight shirt and pants, and walked out of the cafe with a relaxed stride, carrying my handbag.

The lights were on and the neon of the stores shone like broken gold. I walked down the hard, wide road, blending in with the millions of people and cars passing around me like a river of stars exploding on earth. The city’s most dynamic hour had arrived.

Cotton Restaurant is located at the Fuxing intersection of Huaihai Road, a location equivalent to New York’s Fifth Avenue or Paris’ Champs Elysees. From a distance, the two-story French-style building exudes an unassuming sense of superiority, and is filled with foreigners with dirty eyes and thin, glittering Asian beauties. The fluorescent blue illuminated signage resembled what Henry Miller described as “prune sores”. It was because we liked this mean but wise metaphor (Henry wrote Tropic of Cancer, was poor and indulgent, lived to be 89, had five wives, and has always been regarded by me as my spiritual father) that Tin-Tin and I frequented this place.

Pushing the door open, I turned my head and looked around to see Tin-Tin raising his hand to me from a cozy corner. To my surprise, there was a fashionable woman sitting next to him, wearing an instantly recognizable yet stirring wig, a halter top in black glittery fabric, and a huge amount of gold and silver powder on her tiny face, as if she had just come back from a trip to the unimaginable planet of Mars, with an unbelievable impact.

“This is Madonna, my elementary school classmate,” Tien pointed to the strange girl, lest she not get enough of my attention, and added, “She’s also the only friend I’ve had in the few years I’ve been in Shanghai.” Then he introduced me to the girl, “This is Ni Ke, my girlfriend.” After saying that, he naturally took my hand and put it on his knee.

We nodded and smiled at each other, having both been friends with the little butterfly-like innocent Tin-Tin, and also having trust and goodwill for each other, and she startled me when she opened her mouth, “I’ve heard Tin-Tin talk about you on the phone several times, for hours at a time, and love you so much that it makes me feel jealous.” She laughed, her voice extremely husky and low, like an old woman’s voice in a suspense movie like Ghost of the Ancient Castle.

I glanced at Tin-Tin, who pretended it wasn’t that. “He likes to talk on the phone, and he can buy a big 31-inch color TV for a month’s phone bill.” I said in passing, and then I felt that I was in poor taste, and that everything was about money.

“I hear you’re a writer.” Madonna said.

“Oh, but I haven’t written in a long time, and the truth is …… I’m not much of a writer.” I felt a twinge of shame that an empty passion wasn’t enough, and I didn’t look much like a writer. At this point, Tin-Tin interjected, “Oh, CoCo already has a collection of novellas out, great, with a compelling observation in them. She’s going to be very successful in the future.” He said it calmly, no compliments on his face.

“Right now I’m working as a waitress at a cafe.” I said matter-of-factly, “And you? Quite the actor.”

“Didn’t Tien say that?” A speculative look swept across her face, as if wondering how I would react to her words, “I was a mommy in Guangzhou, then I married, then my husband died and left me a huge sum of money, and now I’m living happily ever after.”

I nodded my head and acted calmly, but an exclamation point rose in my heart, so in front of me was a genuine rich widow! I understood where the dusty odor came from, and the sharp, intimidating look in her eyes, which naturally reminded one of the role of a female heroine in the jungle.

We aborted the conversation for a moment; Tin-Tin had ordered the lei and brought it up in order, all of my favorite honky-tonk dishes. “You can order more if you want.” Tin-Tin said to Madonna.

She nodded, “I actually have a nice small stomach,” she arched her hands into a fist sized shape, “For me, evening is always the start of the day, someone else’s dinner is my breakfast, so I don’t eat much, and all these years of messing around with my life have turned my body into a big dumping ground. “

Tien said, “I just love that you’re a dump.” As I ate and watched her, she had a face that only a woman full of stories could have.

“Just come to my house sometime, singing, dancing, playing cards, drinking, and all sorts of strange people who can vaporize you. The house I live in was just renovated a while ago, and I spent half a million Hong Kong dollars on just the lamps and stereos, which is even better than some of the nightclubs in Shanghai,” she said, without the slightest hint of smugness on her face.

The cell phone in her purse rang and she took it out, replacing it with a sandy, meaty voice. “Where is it? Guess you’re at Old Five’s house, one day you’ll die at the mahjong table. I’m having dinner with a friend right now, so let’s talk on the phone at 12:00 p.m.” She rasped and laughed, her style twinkling between her eyebrows.

“It’s my new little boyfriend calling,” she said to us as she put the phone down, “He’s a crazy painter, I’ll introduce you guys next time. Little boys are very talkative these days, he just mouthed off about dying in my bed.” She laughed again, “True or not, it’s good to make me happy.”

Tin-Tin was unheedingly reading the handful of New People’s Evening News, the only civic-minded thing he was associated with, as a reminder that he still lived in the city. I got a little formal in the presence of Madonna’s bluntness.

“You’re quite lovely,” said Madonna, staring into my face, “not only soft and pretty, but you’ve got a lonely streak that men love, and it’s a pity I’ve washed my hands of it now, or I’d have made you the most popular young lady in that circle.”

Before I could respond, she was laughing uproariously, “Sorry, sorry oh, just kidding.”

Her eyes darted in the light, showing a kind of nervous excitement. It reminds me of the many old menstruation masters of the past and present, all of whom have this kind of eight-sided but man-crazy problem.

“Don’t talk nonsense, I’m jealous.” Tin-Tin looked up from the newspaper and gave me a look full of love, wrapping one arm around my waist. We always sat side by side, like Siamese twins, even though it was bad manners to sit like that on some fancy occasions.

I smiled slightly and looked at Madonna, “You’re beautiful too, the alternative kind, not the fake alternative, the real alternative.” We said our goodbyes at the Cotton door and as she hugged me she said, “Honey, I have some stories to tell you, if you really want to write a bestseller.”

She clung to Tien again, “My little punk,” she called him, “watch your love, love is the most powerful thing in this world, it can make you fly make you forget everything, without love a kid like you would be done for very quickly because you’re not immune to life, I’ll give you a call.”

She flew a kiss at us, got into a white Santana 2000 parked on the side of the road, and drove off in a puff of smoke. I recalled her words, those words buried in the fragments of philosophy, more than the night shimmering more than the truth is true. And those flying kisses of hers remained in the air, the fragrance still lingering.

“What a crazy woman.” Tien said happily, “But she’s great, isn’t she? She used to take me out in the middle of the night for a joyride on the elevated highway to keep me from doing something stupid if I was alone in my room for too long. We drank a lot and smoked marijuana, and that’s how we wandered around pretty HIGH until dawn. Then I met you, everything was arranged, you are not like us, two kinds of people, you have a strong enterprising spirit, full of hope for the future, you and your enterprising spirit to me means the reason to continue to live on, believe my words? I never tell a lie.”

“Fool,” I screwed his ass. He screamed in pain, “You’re a crazy woman too.” In Tin-Tin’s eyes, characters different from those in the realm of normalcy, especially those in insane asylums, are objects of esteem. Crazy people are considered insane by society only because their intelligence is not understood, and beauty is only reliably beautiful if it is associated with death, despair, or even sin. Examples include Dostoevsky with vitiligo, Van Gogh with his ears cut off, Dali with lifelong impotence, homosexual Allen Ginsberg, and Miss Farmer, a movie star who was locked up in an insane asylum during the Cold War in the U.S. in the 1950’s for being a suspected Communist spy and having her lobes cut off. Gavin Friday, the Irish male singer who wore heavy makeup all his life, Henry Miller, who wandered outside restaurants in his poorest moments just to beg for a steak, and Henry Miller, who wandered under a streetlight just to beg for a dime to ride the subway, how like a self-perpetuating, vibrant wild plant.

The night is gentle.

Tian Tian and I snuggled in the clean Huaihai Road, the lights, trees and the gothic roof of the Paris Spring Department Store, as well as the walkers in their autumn coats with a calm gait, all floating peacefully in the night, a kind of Shanghai’s unique frivolous and elegant atmosphere gently diffused.

I’ve been sucking on this unseen atmosphere like it’s jade syrup, in order to throw off the cynicism that characterizes the young and allow myself to really burrow into the heart of this city, like a moth burrowing into a great big apple. The idea was so pleasant that I pulled Tin-Tin, my love, up and danced together on the sidewalk. “Your romance is all improvised, like acute appendicitis.” Tin-Tin whispered. A few pedestrians looked our way, “It’s called dragging your lazy steps to Paris, my favorite foxtrot.” I said seriously.

We took our usual slow walk to the Bund. It became a quiet haven every late night. We climbed to the top floor of the Peace Hotel, where we knew a secret passage over the low window of the women’s restroom and up the fire escape stairs. We had climbed many times and no one had ever found it.

Standing on the top floor and watching the lights and buildings on both sides of the Huangpu River, especially the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is known as the first tower in Asia, with its long steel columns that look like penises stabbing into the sky, is a clear proof of the city’s fertility cult. Ships, water waves, pitch-black grass, blinding neon, amazing buildings, this kind of prosperity rooted in material civilization is just an aphrodisiac used by the city for self-indulgence. It has nothing to do with us as individuals living in it. A car accident or an illness can kill us, but the irresistible shadow of the city’s prosperity never stops spinning like a planet, living forever.

Thinking about it makes me feel self-conscious about being as small as an ant.

This thought did not affect our mood as we stood on the top floor of this dusty historical building. With the faintest hint of a jazz band playing in the hotel, we look out over the city and talk about our love outside of it. I like to strip down to my corset and bottoms in the humid night air from the Pu River; I must have a lingerie fetish, or a narcissistic fetish, or a public nudity fetish, or something like that, and I hope that this scene will stimulate Tian Tian’s erotic nerves. “Don’t do that,” Tin-Tin said painfully, turning her head away.

So I continued to strip, like a stripper. There were little blue flowers burning on my skin, a slight sensation that blinded me to my own beauty. My own personality, my own identity, as if only to craft a strange myth with all my might, a myth between me and the boy I love.

Dazzled, the boy sat under the railing, half in sorrow, half in gratitude, watching the girl dance in the moonlight, her body with the smoothness of velvet and the shocking strength of a panther, every imitation of a feline crouch and leap. The whirling gestures gave birth to a graceful but almost maddening compulsion.

“Try it, come inside me, like a true lover, my honey, try it.”

“No, I can’t do it.” He shrunk into a ball.

“Well, I’ll just jump downstairs,” the girl laughed, grabbing the railing in a gesture to climb out. He held her in his arms and kissed her. Fragmented lust couldn’t find a channel to flow through, the hallucinations created by love, the wonders beyond the reach of the flesh, and the ghosts of a failed but ecstatic drive by a god in the underworld. All the dust swooped down on us, sticking to me and my love’s throat.

At 3:00 a.m., I curled up in my large, cozy bed and gazed at Tien next to me, who was asleep or pretending to be asleep, and there was a different kind of peace in the room. His self-portrait hangs above the piano, a flawless face, and who could refuse to love such a face? The love of this soul keeps tearing at our flesh.

Again and again I read myself with slim fingers beside my lover, letting myself fly, flying into the quagmire of orgasm, imagining that there would always be a long light of sin and punishment.

Three. I have a dream.

I was one of those people who, to my parents, was a heartless little villain (at the age of five I learned to run away proudly with a handful of lollipops), to my teachers and former magazine leaders and colleagues, I was an implausibly intelligent person (professionally proficient, temperamental, and able to guess the end of any movie or story just by looking at the beginning), and to many men, I was a springy little beauty (with the big eyes of a Japanese cartoon girl and a long neck like Coco Chanel). (with the big eyes of a Japanese cartoon girl and the long neck of a Coco Chanel). In my own eyes, I’m a very bad girl, though I may one day become a famous woman, even if I can’t push myself out of it.

When my great-grandmother was alive, she used to say, “A man’s destiny is like a kite string, one end of which is on earth and the other in heaven. You can’t escape this destiny in heaven or on earth,” or, “Man is like three sections of grass, I don’t know which section is better.”

She was a small, elderly woman with white hair, sitting in a rocking chair like a white ball of string, and was said to have been believed by many to have psychic powers, having successfully predicted the small earthquake of magnitude 3 that struck Shanghai in 1987, and accurately informing her family of the date of her death three days before she died. Her picture still hangs on the wall of my parents’ house, and they believe she continues to bless the family. It was also my great-grandmother who predicted that I would become a talented woman of letters and ink, that the star of literature would shine above my head, that ink would fill my stomach, and that I would eventually rise to prominence, she said.

In college I used to write letters to some of my crushes, and those love letters were so beautifully articulated that they almost made me a winner. In magazines I wrote stories about people with novel-like plot twists and beautiful language, so that often the real became like the fake and the fake became like the real.

After finally realizing that all I was doing was wasting my writing genius, I quit that well-paying job, to which my parents once again despaired of me, and which my father had to ask around to get in the first place.

“Are you my child or not? Why do you always have horns on your head and thorns on your feet? What do you think you’re tossing around for?” Mom said. She’s a soft and gaunt woman who spends her life ironing her husband’s shirts and finding her daughter an avenue of happiness, who can’t accept pre-marital sex, and who will never tolerate a girl wearing a tight T-shirt with no bra intentionally revealing the shape of her nipples.

“One day you will realize that it is most important for people to live in the world in a stable and steady manner, and Eileen Chang also said that life is still based on stability.” Dad said he knew I liked Eileen Chang. My father was a chubby college professor of history who liked to smoke cigars and talk to young people, and he was so elegant that he doted on me from a young age, and trained me to appreciate operas like “La Bohème” when I was 3 years old. He was always worried that I would grow up to be cheated on by perverts, saying that I was the most important treasure in his life and that I should be careful with men and not cry over them.

“We think so differently, 100 generation gaps apart. It’s better to respect each other, don’t force it and forget about it. It’s useless to talk about it anyway. I’m 25 and I’m going to be a writer, and even though the profession is kinda outdated now, I’m going to make writing cool and hip.” I said.

After meeting Tin-Tin I decided to move out and there was another uproar in the house that could have turned the Pacific Ocean upside down.

“I can’t do anything with you, you’ll see if it’s good or bad, just pretend I didn’t raise you as a child.” Mom practically screamed, with a look on her face like she’d been punched in the face hard.

“You’re breaking your mother’s heart,” Dad said, “and I’m discouraged that a girl like you is going to end up on the losing end. I’ve heard you say that the boy has an odd family, and that his father died for no apparent reason, so is he himself sane and reliable?”

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” I said. Soon I walked away with a toothbrush, some clothes, some records and a box of books.

The floor in front of the jukebox was flooded with amber sunlight, like spilled Scotch. After the gang of well-dressed Americans had left, silence returned to the coffee shop, and old Jan fortified his office-cum-bedroom with telephone porridge. Spider leaned lazily against the window, eating a piece of chocolate muffin left over from a customer (he always did this as a sign of his animal-like survival), and outside the window was the road planted with hanging bell trees, the view of the city glowing green and bright in the summer, like a mood from a European movie.

“CoCo, what do you do when you’re bored?” He asked without thinking.

“What else is there to do when you’re bored, of course, when you can’t do anything?” I said, “Well like right now.”

“I was bored last night too, I chose to Chat online, it’s pretty cool to Chat with 10 people at the same time.” I then noticed his semi-circular dark circles under his eyes, floating on his face like two spoon marks. “I met someone named Mei’er, doesn’t look like the type to cross-dress, she says she’s pretty and a virgin.”

“It’s that time of year when virgins are crazy too, did you know that?” I laughed. Either way, that girl had quite a thick skin when she mouthed that off.

“I think it’s pretty cool that this winky talks,” he didn’t laugh, “I find our life ideals strikingly similar, we both want to make a wicked fortune and travel the whole globe.”

“Sounds like a couple of guys and gals from Natural Born Killers.” Curious, I said, “So, how does the money work?”

“Open a store, rob a bank, be a chicken or a duck.” He blurted out, half-truthfully. “That’s what I’ve got planned so far,” he bent his head over and whispered something in my ear that made me jump, “No, that’s not going to work, you’re crazy.” I shook my head back and forth.

This kid actually tried to team up with me to steal money from the store. He observed down and found that Lao Yang every night to put money into a mini safe, accumulated a month and then go to the bank to deposit on. He has a friend who specializes in prying all kinds of safes, his plan is to invite the professional thief, to a collusion between the inside and the outside, the people join forces, the money rolled up and then a foot slippery, of course, after the incident must also be caused by anonymous thieves strung into the shoplifting illusion.

The date was also set, next Tuesday was Spider’s birthday, which coincided with me and him working the night shift, he would invite Lao Yang for a drink on the pretext of celebrating his birthday, and it would be a done deal if he got Lao Yang drunk.

Spider’s words then I felt nervous and even had a slight stomach cramp. “Don’t ever dream about it, forget about that, think of something else to take your mind off of it, hey, it couldn’t be that Mei’s idea, could it?”

“Shh!” He signaled me that Old Yang had finished his call and was coming this way. I shut my mouth tightly, lest I give away a little of what I had just been plotting.

The door to the store was pushed open and I saw Tin-Tin walk in. My stomach felt a warmth, he was wearing a gray shirt black corduroy pants, a book in his hand, his hair was a little long and a little messy, his eyes were a little nearsighted and a little wet, his lips were a little smirky and a little cold, it was pretty much the standard likeness of my sweet love.

“Husband is here, happy is happy to come.” Lao Yang took the opportunity to coax, a mouthful of Shanghainese with a commentary accent. He was actually a good man with a simple, amiable personality.

Tien’s expression constricted at his comment, and I walked over with a cappuccino and gently took his hand. “There’s 45 minutes left, I’ll wait for you to get off work.” He whispered as he looked at his watch.

“Spiders must be crazy about money.” I said indignantly. My exaggeratedly waving arms were emblazoned on the opposite wall. The small round table was lit with candles, and Tin-Tin and I sat at the table, playing backgammon on a Go board. “It’s really worse than getting rabies when people with high IQs get the idea of committing crimes, stealing money from banks with computers, wiping out airplanes and ships with electronic explosives, killing people with invisible knives, and creating plagues and tragedies. l999 If there’s a doomsday, I’m sure it’s due to these top-notch weirdos.”

“You’re losing, I’m pulling 3 and punching 4,” Tin-Tin reminded me as he rushed the board responsibly.

“Being smart is a gift, being crazy is an instinct, but it’s wrong to utilize these things in a utilitarian way.” My appetite for speeches was just now being whetted, “At the end of the day, smart people can get into more embarrassing situations than dumb people. Lately I’ve been feeling a particularly quiet vibe in Greenie, blinking my eyelids and hearing voices. The reason for this lies in some sort of murderous undercurrent, and I have a bad feeling about it.”

“Then leave that place and go home to write.” Sky said simply.

Whenever he said the word “home” it always sounded natural. This three-room apartment, this place of fermented fruit, burnt cigarette butts, French perfume, alcohol, books and music and endless fantasies, had attached itself to us like a cloud from the forest of Wuxian, lingering and drifting. It is in fact a space more fatalistic and real than home, not connected with blood but with love, the soul, joy, the sixth sense, the law of seduction, flights of uncertainty, and other such things.

Go home, it’s time to cut to the chase. Start writing, the end of a journey of dreams and love affairs. Finish a beautiful novel with flawless narration, with a story that opens, suspends, climaxes, and closes with skill and sensationalism, and stands on top of the world like the best singer in the world and sings out loud.

One hand grasped the thought as it crossed my mind. Tien wanted me to promise him that I’d call and quit my job with Lao Yang tomorrow.

“Okay.” I said. The act of turning one’s back on a job, leaving someone, dropping something is almost a life instinct that comes easy to a girl like me. Drift from one goal to another, fuck around to your heart’s content, stay energized.

“From the first time I looked at you at Greenie’s, I thought you were born to be a writer.” Tien further fueled my vanity, “Your eyes were complex, your voice seemed emotional when you spoke, you were always watching the customers in the store, and at one point I heard you and Spider discussing existentialism and witchcraft.”

I held him tenderly, and his words were like a caress, able to give me pleasure that no other man could. Often, listening to his voice, looking into his eyes and lips, I would suddenly feel a wave of heat surge through my lower body, and be wet in an instant. “What else, say more, I want to hear it.” I pleaded as I kissed the base of his ear.

“And …… there’s the fact that you make it impossible to ever see through, and that maybe people who are fit to be writers have a bit of a split personality, which means they’re a bit unreliable.”

“What are you worried about?” I asked curiously, moving my lips away from his ear.

Sky shook his head, “I love you.” He said, gently wrapping his arms around me and resting his head on my shoulder, he could feel his eyelashes fluttering delicately on my neck, triggering a wave of velvety tenderness in me. One hand slowly pressed against the small of my back, and the other touched his hip, and we stood facing each other, seeing ourselves in the mirror, seeing our reflections in the water.

Colorful skin returns to dullness in the night. He fell asleep, bent in an S shape on the bed, and I held him from behind, drowsy. Yes, his obstinacy his tenderness has always trapped me like an enigma, and for no apparent reason I feel a responsibility to him, and a dreamy frustration.

In fact, by the time Spider’s birthday rolled around, nothing had happened at the Greenie Café; no professional thieves had shown up, no safes had disappeared, there was no intrigue, and not even a fly had come to the door to bother him.

Old Jan was counting money, supervising work, fort phone gruel, and taking naps, as usual, with a big heart. The new waitress did her job no better than I did, and the spider with a heart of gold left Greenie shortly thereafter, and for a while the trail was all but gone, evaporating like a little bubble.

My attention turned to writing, the long road of women writers lay at my feet and I had no time for anything else. The first order of business was to get on the hotline with my own soul and wait in the asylum-like silence for the story and characters to creep in. Tin-Tin stared at me all day like a foreman, urging me to write real magic books with the mana of a little witch. This meanwhile had become the focus of his life now.

He became a lover of shopping at the grocery store. We pushed our carts like our parents’ generation and carefully shopped for everyday items and food at the Top Fresh supermarket. Health experts say, “Don’t be tempted to buy foods like chocolate and popcorn,” but we all love those things.

At home I spread out my snow-white manuscript paper and looked in a small mirror from time to time to see if my face had the intelligence and extraordinary temperament of a writer. Tien walked around the house softly, poured me Suntory sodas, made me a fruit salad with Mom’s Choice salad cream, and Dove dark chocolate to help inspire me, and played records that were a little exciting but not distracting. I was inspired by “Mom’s Choice” salad cream for my fruit salad, “Dove” dark chocolate to help inspire me, records that were a little exciting but not distracting, adjusting the temperature of the air-conditioner, dozens of cartons of Seven Stars cigarettes stacked neatly like a wall on the huge writing desk, books and thick manuscript paper. I don’t know how to use a computer yet, and I don’t intend to learn.

There’s a long list of titles that have been thought of, and ideally they should be both deep and thoughtful, and bestselling with a sexy veneer.

My instincts tell me to write about Shanghai at the end of the century, the city of pleasure, its bubbles of joy, the new human beings it breeds, and the mundane, sentimental and mysterious mood that pervades the streets and alleys. It’s a unique oriental city, where Chinese and Western cultures have been intertwined since the 1930s, and are now entering a second wave of Westernization. Tian Tian once used the English word “PostColonial” to describe it, and the customers in the Greentie Café who spoke different languages always reminded me of the old-fashioned salons with their flamboyant style of words, shifting time and space as if they were taking a cross-country trip.

After I wrote a paragraph that I thought was good, I would read it to Tin-Tin with emotion.

“CoCo dear, I told you you could do it, you’re not like the others, you can create another real world with your pen, more real than this one around you. Here ……” he grabbed my hand and placed it on his left chest, I felt the rhythm of his heartbeat, “I promise this place will bring you endless inspiration.” He said. He would buy me unexpected gifts and seemed to spend his money on trinkets that were beautiful but useless to get by.

And I’d rather just have him. How can I wait until the day he uses his body as a gift?

The deeper you love each other, the more your flesh hurts.

One late night, I had an erotic dream. In the dream, I was naked and entangled with a blindfolded man, limbs intertwined like a pasty eight-legged octopus, hugging, dancing, the sweaty hairs on the man’s body glistening with gold and tickling me, and I woke up after one of my favorite pieces of acid jazz.

I felt a twinge of shame at that dream, and then the question occurred to me, what kind of premonition was Tin-Tin trapped in? He was more concerned with my writing than myself, bordering on paranoia, so perhaps writing could really be like a powerful aphrodisiac, nourishing our incomprehensible yet undoubtedly flawed love? It carries a mission with God’s blessing? Or maybe it will all be the opposite …… Who knows, one is faced with a variety of ideas doing single choice questions, sometimes scoring, sometimes losing points.

I thought about it and turned to hug Tian Tian, he woke up immediately, his face could feel the humidity on my face, not asking or saying anything, there was a hand gently caressing my body, no one taught him how to do it, but he did make me fly up to the sky in that breathtaking way, like a sword going out of the sky, like a soul flying away, don’t cry, don’t talk about separating, I just want to fly a little bit, to the place where the night is over, life is too short There is no reason why you can’t make me this intoxicated.

IV. Seducers

Madonna invited us to a nostalgic party called “Return to Xiafei Road” on the top floor of a building located at the intersection of Huaihai Road and Yandang, where the 1930s Xiafei Road, now Huaihai Road, has always been a symbol of the old dream of the sea, and at the end of the century, in the post-colonial mood, it became visible again, like a bow in the heart of Shanghai’s nostalgia, along with the years when the city was full of cheongsams, month signs, yellow buses, and jazz. In the post-colonial atmosphere of the end of the century, it and those years filled with cheongsams, yellow cabs and jazz music have become remarkable again, like a bow tied in the heart of Shanghai’s nostalgia.

Tien wasn’t in the best of spirits that day, but he accompanied me there anyway. As I said, there were many occasions when the two of us were like Siamese twins, shadowing each other.

We stepped into the building’s elevator in our pre-made cheongsams and tunics. A voice seemed to say, “One moment, please.” Tien wrenched his hand on the closing elevator door and I saw a tall western man stride in. With him came the smell of CK perfume.

The pale, purplish light shone dimly above us, two men stood on either side of me, left and right, and the indicator lights showed the number of floors climbed in turn, and for a moment there was a sense of weightlessness in the silence and breathlessness. Then I caught a glimpse of that distracted but sexy look on the taller man’s face, a sophisticated Playboy-esque signature.

A wave of sound mixed with tobacco and body odor greeted me as the elevator doors opened, and the tall man gestured with a smile, asking me to go first. Tian Tian and I walked through a Kasumigaseki Road sign made of Styrofoam, lifted the heavy velvet curtains, and in a flash a sea of gaudy make-up dancing to the decadent sounds of yesteryear came into view.

Madonna’s glowing face approached us like a glowing undersea creature with a thousand volts of light.

“My babies, you’re finally here, oh God, Mark, how are you?” She made a wink at the taller man behind us, “Here, let me introduce you, this is Madk from Berlin, and this is Tien and CoCo, my good friends, CoCo is also a writer.”

Mark politely extended his hand, “Hello.” His hand was heavily sweaty, warm and dry, the kind that made people feel comfortable. Tin-Tin had made himself comfortable and sat down on one of the soft sofas to smoke, one eye looking somewhere.

Madonna complimented me on my black satin cheongsam, which had an overbearingly beautiful peony embroidery on the bodice that had been ordered from a silk factory in Suzhou. She also praised the Mark body of an antique suit is cool, this is a high price from the hands of a capitalist legacy of a young man in Shanghai to buy a small lapel three-button suit, partial color has been eclipsed, but this eclipsed out of thin air in the former aristocratic gas hidden.

A few men and women approached and Madonna introduced them, “This is my boyfriend Dick, and this is Old Five and Sissy.”

The long-haired boy named Dick looked like he wasn’t even 18 yet, but was a little known avant-garde painter in Shanghai and drew good cartoon characters. Madonna had been impressed by the stack of cartoons he’d sent her. His flair for profanity mixed with his childishness was enough to inspire motherhood and passion in a woman like Madonna. Old Five was an expert go-kart player, and he and his girlfriend Sissy, who wore a suit and tie to reverse the male role, looked quite good together, a pair of odd-looking bunnies. Mark’s eyes were sweeping vaguely my way, as if he’d considered it for a moment, and then he came over to me and asked

“Want to dance?” I look over at the couch in the corner, where Tin-Tin has his head down and is rolling a small cigarette with his hands, a few ounces of hash in a plastic baggie in his hand, something he always smokes when he’s showing precursors to claustrophobia.

I sighed, “Let’s dance.” I said.

The record player’s wooden record squeaked out the golden voice of Zhou Xuan’s “Song of the Four Seasons”, in the hoarse distortion actually also sang the heart trembling. Mark seemed to be enjoying the scene, his eyes slightly closed, and I saw Tian Tian also close his eyes, curled up in the spacious sofa, drinking red wine and smoking hash always makes people sleepy, I’m sure he has fallen asleep now. Often in the noisy people, phantoms and shadows of the occasion, he is more likely to fall asleep.

“You’re walking away.” Mark suddenly said in heavily German-accented English.

“Yes?” I looked at him blankly, his eyes sparkled in the dark, like the eyes of an animal lurking in the bushes, and I was amazed at how strange they made me feel. He was all neat and tidy, and his hair was waxed enough to look like a brand-new umbrella. So those not-so-veteran eyes seemed to be the center of his whole body, and all the energy poured out from there. Yes, the white man’s eyes.

“I’m looking at my boyfriend,” I said.

“He seems to be asleep.” He smiled slightly.

My curiosity was piqued by his laugh, “Is it funny?” I asked.

“Are you a perfectionist?” He asked instead.

“I don’t know, I don’t know myself 100%, why do you ask?”

“It was the way you felt when you were dancing that told me.” He said, looking like a sensitive and confident man. I floated a slightly sarcastic smile.

The music changes to jazz and we dance the foxtrot. Surrounded by a vintage enchanted sky of velvet, silk, and calico, interwoven with nether dungarees, gradually spinning into a light and airy joy.

By the time the song was over, I realized that the couch was empty, Tien was gone, Madonna was gone, and asked Old Five, who said that Madonna had just left with Dick, and that Tien had been on the couch a while ago.

Immediately after that Mark came out of the restroom to report the not so bad news that Tin-Tin had collapsed by the urinal, there was no vomiting or bleeding, he seemed to have fallen asleep suddenly while using the restroom, and Mark helped me get Tin-Tin downstairs to the curb and hailed a cab.

Mark said, “I’ll give you a ride, you can’t do it alone.” I looked at the unconscious Tin-Tin, who was very thin, but when he was unconscious he weighed as much as a baby elephant.

The cab sped through the streets at 2:00 a.m. Outside the window were skyscrapers, windows, neon, billboards, one or two staggering pedestrians, there was always something going on in secret in the sleepless city all night long, there was always someone who would show up in secret, the scent of alcohol and the faint but firm scent of CK perfume wafted into my chest from time to time, my brain was empty, the men beside me were unconscious, one was silent, and there was no sound. Despite the lack of sound, I felt the sticky shadows of hair on the sidewalk and the flickering gaze of strange men in the dimness.

The car quickly arrived at my place and Mark and I combined our efforts to carry Tin-Tin up the stairs to the house. As Tin-Tin lay down on the bed and I covered him with a blanket, Mark pointed to the writing desk and said, “Is this the desk where you work?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I don’t know how to use a computer, in fact some people say it gives you skin diseases, others say it makes you misanthropic, a clean freak, not wanting to leave the house, whatever ……,” I suddenly realized Mark was walking towards me with that distracted but sexy-as-hell smile, “It was nice to meet you, and I’d like to see you again later.” He kissed me gently on both cheeks with a French kiss before saying goodnight and walking away.

I kept his business card in my hand with the address and phone number of his company, a German-owned multinational investment advisory firm on Huashan Road.

V. Unreliable Men

A small part of the crush I developed on tall men came from vanity (I’m not tall, and coincidentally two of my favorite Frenchwomen, Marguerite Duras and Coco Chanel, were both short women as well), and a large part of it came from the extreme ill will I felt toward a certain short man I’d had in the past.

The man was less than five and a half feet tall, average looking, with a pair of bad glasses, and a pseudo-Christian (who later proved to be even more of a cultist, Manichaean or Solar or something like that).

I’m not quite sure how he charmed me at the time, but perhaps it was the fact that he was so talented, so learned, so able to recite Shakespeare’s masterpieces in Oxford-sounding English, and that he sat with me for three days in a row behind the statue of Chairman Mao on the center lawn of Fudan University, talking to me about the true nature of the world as implied by the moment when Christ was born in the stable.

The grass tickled like a thick tongue licking my ass and thighs through my skirt. The light wind was blowing, and he couldn’t stop like he was under a spell, and I couldn’t stop listening to him like I was under a spell, and it seemed like I could sit like this for 7 days and 7 nights until splendid nirvana, so I turned a blind eye to his disappointingly short appearance and pounced directly on his erudite, eloquent mind (maybe the men I’ve been obsessed with all my life have been, first of all, men who are so knowledgeable, so talented, and who have a thousand ravines in their chests, that I can’t imagine I can’t imagine myself falling in love with a man who can’t name 10 idioms, 5 philosophical allusions, and 3 musicians), but of course, I soon realized that I had jumped into a green, stinking pond.

He was not only a religious fanatic, he was also a sexual superhero who liked to validate in me all the adult performance positions offered by pornographic videos, fantasizing about sitting on a couch in a dark corner and spying on me being raped by an uneducated carpenter or plumber. Even when we took the highway bus to visit his parents, he’d unzip it and grab my hand and put it there, his thing hidden behind a big newspaper like a running candle, aroused, all sad and disappointing, to the point of making horrible noises like in Hollywood’s most successful mini-movie, Boogie Nights. “Boogie Nights”.

When I found out that he was also a master liar (he even went to the newsstand to buy a newspaper, saying that he was going to meet a friend for tea), a clown to make money (he actually plagiarized other people’s articles into a book that was published in Shenzhen), I felt that I couldn’t bear it anymore, especially since all these evil deeds happened to a man who is less than 5 ½ ft. tall and with an honest look, I felt that I was being completely made a fool of. My eyes were blinded by the fur of my imagination, and I withdrew my humiliated feelings and quickly left him.

“You can’t just leave!” He yelled at my back as he stood in the doorway of the singles’ dorm.

“Because you make me sick.” I shot back at him, a hard ice in my heart. The men of the world can not be gullible, mothers always teach their daughters before the first date out of the house, but in the ears of the little girl into nagging ramblings, only a woman really with mature eyes to see men this other half of the world, she will be able to see clearly where they are in a position to see in front of them in the vein of life.

He called my dormitory, and Auntie Ningbo from the janitor’s room called my name over and over again over the loudspeaker, “Ni Ke, phone, phone, Ni Ke.” Every weekend I spent at my parents’ house later became another part of the nightmare, he kept calling my parents’ house, never giving up until he found me, even ringing the phone at 3 o’clock in the middle of the night in a mischievous manner until he changed the phone number. My mother was so disappointed in me that she didn’t want to look at me, not even for a second, because in her eyes it was my own fault that I had gotten myself into such a scummy situation. I was not careful in making friends, I did not distinguish between good and bad, in short, the wrong boyfriend is the biggest shame of being a woman.

My ex-boyfriend’s craziest move was stalking me at school on the road at the subway station, unexpectedly calling out my name into the crowd. He wore a pair of crappy sunglasses, had a rippling face, and would quickly duck behind a nearby tree or into a store when I jerked my head, making him perfect for a stunt double in a third-rate action movie.

During that period, I was looking forward to a man in a police uniform walking with his arm around me. The police was the most desirable male role I longed for at that moment, and my heartbeat sounded like “SOS”. Soon after I started working at the magazine, I finally used all my journalistic connections to get a friend from the city hall office to warn my ex-boyfriend, who wasn’t crazy enough to confront the state apparatus, through the district police station. It passed quickly.

Afterwards I visited a friend, David Wu, who works as a psychiatrist at a youth center. “No more short men from now on.” I said, sitting in a chair that seemed hypnotic, “I’ve had enough of them not even trying to get in my door. I’m a bad girl in every sense of the word, at least for my mom, she’s always been so easily irritated and I’ve given her nothing more than to call her sad.”

He told me that the conflict between my femininity and my writer’s temperament was destined to throw me into turmoil on a regular basis, and that artists tend to be notoriously weak, dependent, ambivalent, naïve, masochistic, narcissistic, and Oedipal. My ex-boyfriend happens to cater to many of the split temperaments in me, from dependent to masochistic to narcissistic, and the sense of redemption I harbor for my mother will be one of the emotional themes of my life.

“In regards to a person’s height,” Davy cleared his throat, “I think height does have some sort of effect on a person’s behavior as an adult, especially a man. Smaller men tend to behave more intensely than the norm, for example they study more vigorously. They work harder to earn money, they are more eager to beat their rivals, plus they are more likely to chase pretty women for some kind of male proof. Sean-Penn was short wasn’t he? But he is one of the greatest actors in Hollywood and Madonna’s once favorite man. Even though he was always tying the world’s number one sex star to a chair like a turkey. The list could go on and on, and they are unforgettable.”

He sits in this overly softly lit room thinking, his face made to look unreal by the fact that he often acts as a God’s advocate-like character to his patients. His body swiveled around in the leather chair, letting out a muffled fart or two from time to time, and a couple of potted Brazilian irons and turtlebacks were growing lush and year-round in the bad air of the room.

“Well,” I said, “of course one’s love can’t be measured by height, but I want to forget all that anyway. One has a lot to forget in life, and for me the more unpleasant things I experience the quicker I can forget them.”

“So you’ll make good writers. Writers bury the past with words.” Davy said peacefully.

VI. Fragrant Night

The weather was getting cooler, the city was turning into a big piece of transparent glass, and the fall in the south was clean and bright, seeping a light layer of love in one’s heart. On an unscheduled afternoon, I received a call from Mark. As a German-accented greeting rang in my ears, the first thought that jumped into my head was, “A tall Western man is here!”

We said hello hello on the phone, the weather is so pleasant, Berlin is cooler than Shanghai at this moment but the summer feeling is something to be missed.

The phone call was a bit distracting for anyone, I knew Tin-Tin was listening to me in bed with his eyes closed, and I knew why the German on the other end of the line was calling. But such a delicate situation is like a cookie oozing a little marijuana; a little bit of it doesn’t matter, a little bit more doesn’t matter, and on the third bite there’s something off-putting and indulgent that comes up. I am, perhaps, one of those girls with itchy bones.

Finally Mark said, “Next Friday, there’s a German avant-garde art show at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, I can send invitations if you and your boyfriend want to come.”

“That’s great, thank you.”

“OK, see you next week.”

Tien’s eyes are closed as if he’s asleep. I turn down the volume on the TV, which is on 20 hours a day. Lately we’ve both been enjoying going to bed with the TV and the DVD player on, touching each other against the red backdrop of Quentin Tarantino’s violent films, falling asleep together to the sound of Uma Thurman moaning and John Cuervoleta’s gunshots.

I lit a cigarette and sat on the couch thinking about that phone call earlier. I think that tall, smelly, bad smile on the face of the man. Suddenly I felt annoyed that he had blatantly seduced a girl with a boyfriend, and he knew that she and her boyfriend were inseparable as water and milk. And so everything could be reduced to the simple point of a sex game.

I went to my desk and wrote the latest chapter of the novel’s plot development as I did my daily homework, writing about the serendipity of Mark’s appearance and the inevitability of certain stories in my life. All my premonitions were buried in the novel and dissolved one by one as I never could turn back.

In the evening, Madonna and Dick showed up uninvited, and you could hear Madonna’s voice through the door from several flights of stairs down. They had a little mini flashlight and almost forgot how many floors we lived on and had to call all the way up. Both wore a pair of small sunglasses in the dark and stumbled along.

“Geez, no wonder I’ve been feeling low light, I almost hit someone’s bike when I was driving just now.” Madonna laughed as she removed her sunglasses, “How could I have forgotten to wear these?”

Dick was carrying several cans of coke, beer, and looked pale and pretty in his Esprit black sweater. As soon as they came in, they broke the silence in the room, and Tin-Tin had to put down an English-language magazine he was holding, which was famous for offering countless intellectual games. Tin-Tin’s favorite games were arithmetic and crossword puzzles.

“We were going to take a random drive, and we ended up here, so we came up. I have a movie disk in my bag, but I can’t tell if it’s any good.” She rolled her eyes around the room, “Want to play mahjong? Four people just make a table.”

“We don’t have mahjong.” Tien said hurriedly.

“I’ve got it in my car,” Madonna said with a slant of her eyes and a grin at Dick, “Dick could have gotten it.”

“Never mind, let’s just chat.” Dick reached out with thin fingers and ruffled his hair, seeming mildly annoyed. “Doesn’t stop you from writing, does it?” His face was turned toward me.

“It’s okay,” I said as I put a MONO on the record player and the sad, damp, smelly female voice slowly emerged over the old French movie music-like background. The couch was comfortable, the lighting was appropriate, the kitchen was filled with wine and sausages, and gradually everyone enjoyed it, the conversation circling around in a whirlwind of true rumors and specious comments.

“It’s a really small city, and one set of people are all in this circle.” Madonna says the circle she’s talking about consists of real and fake artists, foreigners, hobos, big and small acting stars. The private owners of fashionable industries, the true and false alternative, the new youth. This circle wanders in and out of the public eye, hidden from view, but always occupying an absolute part of the fashionable life of the city. They are like pretty little bugs eating desires and secret existences that can emit blue and compelling light from their stomachs. A light that quickly senses the culture and carnival life of the city.

“I used to meet the same faces in different places three nights in a row, and I never knew their names.” I said.

“I ran into Mark last night at the Paulaner, and he said there’s an exhibition of German paintings next month,” Madonna interjected suddenly, and I looked at her with the rest of my eyes, and then at Tin-Tin, and pretended to be rambling, “He called and said he’d send us invitations then. “

“It’s the same old thing, some of the same old faces again la,” said A Dick, “Everyone is a partyanimal, a party animal.” A Dick said. He sipped his drink, his charming face getting whiter and whiter.

“I don’t like all that,” Tin-Tin began, moving to stuff hash into one of the pipes, “People in this circle are more flashy and superficial. Some of them disappear like bubbles at the end of the day.”

“No way.” Madonna said.

“Shanghai is a city of pleasure-seekers.” I said.

“Is that the theme of your novel?” Dick asked curiously.

“CoCo, read something you’ve written.” Tien said, looking at me with glowing eyes, a moment that was doubly comforting and enjoyable for him; writing entered our life together it was no longer simply writing, it had to do with untouchable love-lust, with fidelity, with the lightness of life that neither of us could bear.

Everyone shows a pleasant expression as a pipe with hash in it, a couple bottles of wine and a stack of novel manuscripts are passed around in turn in everyone’s hands.

VII. Our Day

All sun and no leaves, we stay in our room all day long, we don’t look out the window more than once, we don’t yawn, the bathroom washer is stuffed with hardened socks, unclean sheets, Tin-Tin has always been opposed to hiring a bellhop or a babysitter to do the chores because he doesn’t like strangers to walk around in his personal space and touch his underwear, his smoker, or his slippers, but we are getting so lazy it’s better to eat three meals a day No need to eat.

“Just take 2790 kilocalories, 1214 international units of vitamin A, and 1094 milligrams of calcium a day, that’s all.” Tien said, shaking several bottles of pills he was grasping in his hand; in his opinion, these green, white, and yellowish modern technological biologics were enough to provide the body with the required nutrients. “For added flavor, they can also be mixed with fruit juices, yogurt, etc.” Tien said seriously.

I’m sure everything he said is true, but that would surely lead to eating out of one’s mind and eating to the point of misanthropy. I’d rather order takeout from Szechuan every day. Even though it’s expensive and not good.

Days like a foreman urged me to write. He was in the other room, constantly painting, he painted some small leopards, deformed human faces, goldfish tanks …… gradually he bought a lot of Yizhixiang underwear from the supermarket, with acrylic paint directly on it. After dinner, we showed each other our work, and I read him a snippet of my novel, in which I deleted a paragraph that made him laugh, it was a “conversation between a female patient and a male psychiatrist”:

“I hate my husband. He’s like a pig.”

“In or out of bed?”

“He has no head, he just wants to fuck around. I believe even a ewe on the grass will not be spared, and one day I will not be able to control myself and I will castrate him, like LorenaBobbit, the heroine of the infamous castration case in Virginia, USA, seven years ago.”

“Do you really think so?”

“God, men are so self-righteous! What have women become to you? Pretty toys that go against the grain? It seems analysts can’t solve the problem either, money spent on idiots.”

“What did you say?”

“Do you have any real insight? I can’t take any more fooling around.”

“If you don’t think I can, by all means! Close the door on your way out.”

“Oh, I can’t stand it, all the pigs!” She screamed wildly and ran out.

“That’s a pretty cheesy conversation, a farce.” Tien chuckled, “But it’s funny.”

I tried on one of the white T-shirts that Tien had drawn, a cartoon cat with a big face, and it looked great, and quite a few of the panties had stylized drawings of the moon, lips, eyes, sun, and a beautiful woman. There were dozens of such handmade sets piled up on the couch. “We could find a place to sell these pieces.” I said.

“Do you think anyone will like it?”

“Try it, it’s fun anyway, and if you can’t sell it, give it to a friend.”

Tien was afraid to go peddling on the street for fear of embarrassment. We chose to go to the nearby UWM campus. The campus feels pretty good, fresh, green and clean. Always give a person a kind of isolated illusion, of course, this is just an illusion, the ivory tower also has a window to the outside world, a lot of students Pei have beepers and cell phones, working outside, especially not a teenage girl college students engaged in some kind of warm occupation, they sell their youth and wisdom in exchange for material happiness. When I was still studying in Fudan, the social situation had not developed so fast, at most, I watched the female college modeling team walk on stage in Xianghui Hall, and Fudan, like most colleges and universities, had not yet set up its own electronic network.

We picked a small grocery store-lined curb by the playground to do business. It was dinner time, and the students, carrying their lunch boxes to the cafeteria, looked at us curiously as they passed by, while others squatted down to take a closer look at our goods and ask for prices. Everything was answered by me, and Tin-Tin always remained silent.

“T-shirt 60, underwear 40.”

“Too expensive!” They say, unceremoniously slashing the price. I don’t budge, because too low a price is disrespectful to everyday artistic labor. It’s dark, students are riding to class for night study, and there’s no one left on the playground to play ball.

“I’m hungry,” Tin-Tin whispered, “it’s not going to count, so go home.”

“Wait a little longer,” I gave him a chocolate bar from my pocket and lit a cigarette myself, “Wait ten minutes and see.”

At that moment, a beautiful dark-skinned man who looked like George Michael approached me with his arm around a white girl with glasses, “Hello, art underwear, very cheap.” I greeted him in English, I had to be bold and confident around the shy Tin-Tin, even though when I was a kid my mom making me go to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread made me nervous, my little money clutching hands all sweaty.

“Did you draw them yourselves?” The white girl smiled up at our merchandise, “It’s really cute.” Her voice was round and melodious and she had something smart in her eyes, “My boyfriend painted it.” I point to Tin-Tin.

“He paints well, kind of like Moridigiani, or Matisse.” The girl said.

Sky looked at her happily, “Thank you.” He said, then whispered into my ear, “Sell her cheap. This female foreigner is quite nice.” I pretended not to hear and smiled sweetly at the black and white foreign student couple.

“Moya, what do you think? –I want to buy them all.” The girl said as she started to reach for her purse, and the man named Moya had an imposing chieftain look on his dark face, probably from some part of Africa. He thoughtfully put his arm around the girl, “I’ll do it.” He also took out a wad of hundred yuan RMB, the white girl insisted on paying herself, and before she left she smiled and said, “Thank you, I hope to see you guys again in the future.”

When nearly a thousand dollars arrived, Tin-Tin jumped up, hugged me and kissed me, and said in amazement and excitement, “I can actually make money, I didn’t know that before.”

“Yeah, you’re an amazing person, you can do a lot of things successfully if you want to.” I encouraged him.

We ate at a nearby restaurant with a fantastic appetite and even sang English love songs in a karaoke box with shitty acoustics. “Darling, if you’re lost, you’ve got me by your side, Darling, if you’re scared and hurt, you’ve got me by your side ……” an old, old Scottish ballad.

VIII. Divorced Cousin

Both my parents called, they finally surrendered to me, Chinese parents easily give in to a childish love.

On the phone they tried their best to sound gentle and unprincipled, they asked me how I was doing, if I was in any trouble, and when they heard that no one was doing the housework, mom was even willing to come over and help. I advised them, “Take more care of yourselves, go out more often, and when Dad’s school is out of session, you can go out of town to see the sights and take a break.” The most wonderful time in life is probably right after middle age, when you can see the road beneath your feet. Also can penetrate a lot of truth, I hope they can become heartless, don’t hold me like that. That way there can be a lot of joy of one’s own.

On the phone mom also told me a news, cousin Zhu Sha just got divorced and moved out from her original residence, she couldn’t find a suitable place to live for the time being, so she stayed at my house, it just so happens that my bed is also empty. Plus she’s not very happy doing her job in the company, so she’s not in a good mood lately, so if I’m free, keep her company and have a chat with her.

I was slightly surprised. Jussa got divorced?

Zhu Sha is a demure lady, four years older than me, graduated from the College of Foreign Languages, German, married to a male classmate, in a German-owned business firms to do, she has always disliked people to “white-collar beauty” the word to call her, some of the places she does not flattering quite to my liking, although we have different temperaments, different aspirations, but this does not prevent us from feeling good about each other. Although we have different temperaments and different aspirations, this does not prevent us from feeling good about each other.

I remember when I was a child, my parents always encouraged me to learn from Zhu Sha, who had already made a name for herself at a very young age, with three stripes on her arm, first place in her school exams, singing, dancing and reciting, and a photo of her smiling innocently posted on the glass window of the Shanghai Photo Studio on Nanjing Road every day, attracting many acquaintances, friends and classmates to go and look at it. At that time I was very jealous of my cousin, once on June 1 when I secretly put the pen in the blue ink drops in her white georgette dress, the results of her in the school auditorium stage performance “five little flowers” when the whole show, a stage she was angry and cried. No one knows that I did it, see her sad look at first I want to laugh, but then I also a little sad up. In fact, she is usually quite good to me, teach me to do arithmetic, points lollipop to me to eat, always pull my hand when crossing the street.

Gradually, we both grew up and saw each other less and less. I still remember when she got married, I was still studying in Fudan. That day would have been sunny, when the couple in the lilac garden on the grass to shoot a video souvenir, the sky suddenly heavy rain, Zhu Sha draped in a soaked wedding dress look especially deep in my memory, her face that dense smile, wet black curls, white by the rain sticking on a hint of decadent atmosphere of the saree, everything as if there is a kind of strange fragile unspeakable beauty.

Her husband, Li Mingwei, was a classmate of hers and president of the department’s student union. He was tall and fair, wore a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, and had worked as an interpreter at the German Consulate for some time, and by the time they were married he was already working as the editor of a financial newsletter at a German Chamber of Commerce. He was a man of few words, but courteous, and always had a quiet, cold smile at the corners of his mouth. I used to think that a man with that kind of expression was not suitable as a lover, but very suitable as a husband.

I can’t imagine that she divorced so suddenly, adding another decimal point to the city’s high divorce rate.

I spoke to my cousin Vermilion on the phone, and her voice really did carry a very distinctly somber tone, and her cell phone didn’t work very well, sounding like it was rustling with cold rain. I asked her where she was now, and she said she was in a cab and would be arriving in Windsor Castle later. It was a women’s fitness center that was very popular with white women.

“Are you coming?” She asked me, “We can do gymnastics together.”

I thought for a second, “No, I don’t do gymnastics, but I can talk to you.”

Across an aisle, in one room, a group of older women in leotards were performing amateur ballet as “Little Swans” under the direction of a Russian instructor. In another room, amidst a pile of equipment, I saw my cousin running in a sweaty sweat.

She had always been in good shape, now she was slightly thinner. Hi, she raised her hand.

“Do you come here every day?” I asked.

“Yeah, especially lately.” She said as she ran.

“Beware of over bodybuilding and getting all hard, it’s worse than divorce.” I joked.

She didn’t say a word and ran quickly, her face sweaty.

“Stop and take a break, don’t wiggle around, I’m getting dizzy just looking at it.” I said.

She handed me a bottle of water and opened one herself. We sat on one side of the steps and she looked at me closely, “You’re getting prettier and prettier, girls who don’t look good as kids look good when they get older.” She tried to be playful.

“A girl in love looks good.” I said, “What’s going on with you and Lee Ming Wei? I heard he actually abused you afterward.”

She was silent, as if she no longer wanted to mention the past. Then slowly and simply she told what had happened.

Life for a long time after marriage seemed to be harmonious and perfect. The couple participated in the social circle of other similar white-collar couples, often had salons or parties held, traveled, vacationed, chatted, dined, went to the theater, and exchanged ideas. She and her husband both enjoy fitness activities like tennis, swimming, and like the same opera like the same books. Such a life without wind and waves, leisure but not boring, rich but not so much that it is scary, yuppie life is not exciting enough but it is a reflection of life’s peace and elegance.

Underneath the smooth and pleasant appearance of life, there was still a dark disease. She and her husband had very little sex, caused by her screaming in pain on their wedding night during their first experience. Both she and her husband were virgins before marriage, the first and the last in each other’s lives, and their marriage was inevitably tinged with a bit of tedium.

They did not attach much importance to sex, and gradually they were sleeping in separate rooms. Every morning, her husband always knocked on her door with a good breakfast, he kissed her and called her his “princess”, every time she coughed he prepared syrup for her, he sweated nervously when her monthly menstrual cramps arrived, he accompanied her to see an old Chinese doctor, he accompanied her to browse in department stores, she wore black Chanel dresses, he wore Gucci suits, he listened when she talked, he listened to her. Gucci suits, and he listens when she talks. All in all, a model couple in the modern white-collar world, just leaving out the sex.

At that time there was a movie “Titanic” is all the rage, they went to see it hand in hand. I don’t know what touched Jusha, perhaps it was the final choice of the movie heroine that moved her, preferring not to have a stable and considerate boring fiancé, and choosing a passionate man a bit of love that is engraved in her heart. She cries and uses up a pack of tissues, suddenly realizing that she never seemed to love. And it is sad that a nearly 30-year-old woman has never loved.

And when her husband wanted to stay in her room that night, he asked her if she wanted a child. She shook her head, her mind was in turmoil and a lot of thoughts needed to be sorted out slowly. It sucks to add a child to a loveless marriage. Her husband was angry and she was angry and said no kids means no.

Unnamed rifts appeared. The husband began to suspect she was having an affair. One night he asked her why the stocking on her leg was reversed from left to right. It turned out that in the morning he had noticed that the stocking with a little red nail polish was on the left side and now it was on her right leg. Another time a friend called late and when she answered the phone she heard the microphone in the other room pick up and “giggle”.

The warm and fuzzy breakfast delivered to her door was long gone, and what bordered on a bummer was when she forgot her keys he let her knock for an hour without coming to open the door.

“It’s horrible to think about, it’s as if the world has completely changed, it turns out that a man you thought you knew so well actually treats you in this way, after all, after living for 5 years, ah, from heaven to earth, turning into a stranger, even more horrible than a stranger, he knows you, and he’ll torment you in the way you can’t stand it the most… …That’s men.” Vermilion said faintly, her eyes reddening as the memories made her heart palpitate.

“Scary.” I nodded, it was indeed scary to see a gentle, considerate and exceptionally nice man turn into an evil master of torturing women.

“Why do men always assume that just because a woman is leaving him, it must be because she’s having an affair? Can’t a woman just make a choice because of how she really feels? Think women can’t leave them for a moment?” Vermilion asked me seriously.

“Because they’re just a bunch of self-absorbed intellectually dishonest guys!” I affirmed, as if I were the president of the city’s feminist association.

IX. Who’s knocking?

Someone was knocking on the door, Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty was playing on the jukebox at a loud volume, but I still heard the knock. Sky looked at me, “Who is it?” “It can’t be Madonna.” I said, “We both don’t have a lot of friends, it’s our Achilles heel, but it’s also a lovely strength.

I went to the door and looked through the cat’s ear, and sure enough, it was a stranger. I opened the door a crack and asked him who he was looking for. “If you’re interested in having the time, I’d like to introduce you to our company’s newly developed vacuum cleaner.” He smiled enthusiastically and ran his hand over his tie under the knot of his throat as if I would say “yes” and he would instantly give a speech that would not disappoint me.

“This ……” I didn’t know what to do, it might take thick skin to rudely dismiss a man who wasn’t exactly ugly or dangerous, and the fact that he was able to wear a cheap suit in such a neat and clean manner spoke even more about the man’s wholesome personality. One can’t rudely strike at that self-esteem. Besides, I have nothing to do.

Tin-Tin watched in amazement as I ushered the strange man in, the man fell to pulling out a business card and giving it to him, opening the large bag he had brought with him and taking out a shiny vacuum cleaner, “What’s he up to?” Tin-Tin asked me in a low voice.

“Let him try, I’m too embarrassed to say no.” I replied in a low voice.

“It’s even more embarrassing if you try and don’t buy.”

“But he’s already trying.” I said without meaning to.

This is the first time I’ve encountered such a situation since I’ve lived in this apartment, and the wave of door-to-door direct sales in this city has gradually died down since the early 1990s when it flourished as a new phenomenon in the commodity economy. Today’s incident was purely coincidental.

The strange man bent down vigorously, holding a vacuum cleaner and sweeping over and over on the carpet, the vacuum cleaner made a not-so-light noise. Tien ducked into another room, “This machine is exceptionally adsorbent, it can even suck out mites from the carpet.” The man exclaimed.

I was startled, “Mites?”

He dumped a pile of filth onto a piece of newspaper when he was done, and I didn’t dare look closely for fear of finding worms wriggling around. “How much?” I asked.

“Thirty-five hundred dollars.” He said.

It was well above my mental price point, and I admit my ignorance of common sense about commodity prices. “But you get what you pay for, and when you add children, this machine will be even more useful. It helps to keep the household hygienic.” I sank to my knees that he had mentioned ‘children’. “I’m sorry, we don’t want to buy it.”

“You can get a 20% discount,” he insisted, “one year warranty, and we’re a regular big company.”

“Thank you, for your time.” I opened the door and he gathered his things without changing his face and steadily walked out the door before turning back once, “You have my number, so if you change your mind, you can contact me.”

“CoCo, you always get yourself in trouble when you try everything.” Tien said.

“What trouble? At least he cleaned the carpet.” I exhaled and sat down at my desk. Sky said I “try everything,” and I really didn’t know what he meant.

The knocking started again and I pulled the door open, this time it was my next door neighbor, the fat granny, and in her hand was a stack of utility and phone bills that had accumulated in the downstairs mailbox, along with two letters. I remembered that we hadn’t checked our mailbox in months, and it was unlocked anyway. I thanked the fat lady and she smiled and left.

The neighbors here have the warm heart of the old Shanghai people. They don’t seem to have much money, the laid-off housewife organizes her daily life carefully, the air-dried fish and pickled radish hang outside the kitchen window, the smoke from the coal-cake stove wafts over from time to time, and the little children in green school uniforms and red collars play the timeless game of gunfighting. The old people gathered in a corner of the small park to play chess and “big strange road”, the wind blew their snow-white beards from time to time. The alternating days and nights fly by silently over the ugly workshops and dilapidated roads, and for most older Shanghainese, this neighborhood is the most familiar with a nostalgic atmosphere, while for the younger generation, it is a rejected and ultimately replaced place, and a hopeless corner, but if you have been living here for a long time, you will be able to feel a kind of simple temperament, and a secret continuous vitality. Vitality.

One of those two letters came from Spain and I handed it to Tin-Tin, “It’s a letter from your mom.” He was lying on the bed and I dropped the letter in his hand, he opened it, read a few lines and said, “She’s getting married …… Also it mentions you.”

Curious, I leaned over, “Can I read it?” He nodded and I jumped onto the bed as he hugged me from behind and held the letterhead up to me with both hands.

“How have you been, my son? In your last letter you mentioned that you are now living with a girl, you didn’t talk about her very carefully (your letters are always so simple, to my disappointment), but I guess you love her very much, and I know you, you don’t approach someone casually. Isn’t that nice, that you finally have someone to keep you company.

…… I’m getting married on the 1st of next month, to Juan of course, we’ve lived together for a long time now and I believe we can be together for a long time by default. The Chinese restaurants over here are still so good and surprisingly, we are thinking of coming to Shanghai to open a restaurant in the near future, which will be an authentic Spanish restaurant. I look forward to the day I see you. Although I never understood why you didn’t want to come to Spain, you never seemed to trust me, some kind of bad thing has always stood in the way, but time has gone by so fast, 10 years have gone by, and you have grown up, no matter what, you are my most beloved son.”

“So you and your mother can meet.” I put the letter down, “I’m surprised she hasn’t come to Shanghai to see you in 10 years, and it’s weird that you haven’t gone to her place to see her.” I looked at him and he didn’t look too good. “So I can’t imagine what it would be like for you mother and son to meet.”

“I don’t want her to come to Shanghai.” Tien said, his body leaning back and collapsing onto the thick pillows. Her eyes widened as she stared at the ceiling, which was an empty white color that could lure one into an endless void. The name “mother” had become strange in the story that Tenten had told me, and it clearly carried the shadow of his father’s accidental death.

“My old mom looked like a fairy, had long hair, spoke softly, always smelled good, had soft white fingers, and could knit all kinds of pretty sweaters …… This is how I saw her about 10 years ago. Later, she also sent me some photos, I threw them all away.” Tien said with his eyes to the ceiling.

“What is she like now?” I was curious about the woman who was far away in Spain.

“I don’t recognize the person in the picture.” He turned around on the bed, his back to me. A sort of boredom affected him. He would rather contact her by sending a letter or a card; he could not imagine that one day she would stand before him alive. That wouldn’t do, if that happened, some kind of controlled mental defense of his would be finished; there were millions of mothers and sons in the world, not many like them, and there was a barrier between them, and instinctive blood kinship and warmth couldn’t overcome that kind of suspicion, and this war of love and hate would go on to the unpredictable end of the story.

The other letter was sent to me by Mark in an envelope containing two invitations and his brief enclosure, “I was very impressed with you at that party and hope to see you again.”

I raised the invitation to Tin-Tin, “Go to the exhibition, that German Mark really doesn’t go back on his word.”

“I’m not going, you go alone.” Tin-Tin closed his eyes and didn’t look happy.

“Gee, you’ve always been a big fan of exhibits.” I said skeptically. This is the truth, he often carries a camera to see all kinds of art exhibitions, painting exhibitions, film exhibitions, book exhibitions, sculpture exhibitions, furniture exhibitions, calligraphy exhibitions, flower exhibitions, automobile exhibitions, as well as all kinds of industrial apparatus exhibitions, lingering in a pile of surprising works, he is a complete exhibition visiting fanatic. It was his window to the outside world, and according to psychoanalyst David Wu, a claustrophobic person is often a voyeur.

“I don’t want to go.” Tin-Tin suddenly stared me in the eye with a single movement and said, with an uncontrollable sneer, “Is that German always fawning over other people’s girlfriends?”

“Oh, you think so?” I sneered back, a situation that was really rare; Tenten’s eyes became as cold and uncomfortable as a snail’s when he was suspicious, with more white than black. And I also reported the rude attitude may be due to the inner weakness, as if a certain acne on my body made the sensitive Tenten tickled at once.

Tin-Tin shut his mouth tightly and walked into the other room without a word. His back seemed to say to me, “Don’t treat me like a fool, you guys danced close to each other all night and the next thing you know he’s followed us into this room.” I closed my mouth as well and didn’t say a word.

Take me back to your home

That day, I went to the exhibition alone. The Liu Haisu Art Museum was packed with people.

Under the light all kinds of popularity luxuriantly, you can smell that there are rich and poor, sick and healthy people, artists and punks, Chinese and foreigners.

I saw Mark in front of a painting called “U-Turn”, he stood tall in front of me with his blonde hair, “Hi CoCo!” he put a hand on my back, made French kisses, Italian hugs, looked happy, “Is your boyfriend not here? “Your boyfriend didn’t come?”

I laughed and shook my head, then I pretended to concentrate on the painting.

He stood by my side the whole time, inseparable as I walked along the gallery, smelling of exotic scents. There was something in his casual demeanor that disturbed me, as if it were a kind of reserve unusual for a hunter facing his beloved prey. With most of my attention on him, the painting in front of me suddenly became a pile of disturbed paint and randomly moving lines.

The crowd was slowly creeping in, and we were squeezed together, his hands gripping my waist at some point.

Suddenly two familiar faces jumped into my eyes, and there, just in front of the third painting on the left, stood Madonna and Dick, beautifully dressed and eye-catching, wearing narrow-rimmed fashionable glasses, with their beautiful hair always in disarray, but always in an orderly fashion. I was so startled that I hurriedly dug my way through the crowd in the other direction. As usual, Mark followed me with unease, the hand on my waist as hot and dangerous as a poker.

The unintentional presence of that sexy couple steeply fueled my desire to make a mistake. Yeah, maybe I was ready to make a mistake from the start. “I saw Madonna and her boyfriend,” Mark said, a warm but charming grin floating across his face.

“I saw that too, so let’s run away.” I stated that level plainly. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, he reached out and seized me in one hand, and, almost as unceremoniously as a bank robber, carried me flying out of the art gallery and put me into his Ford as soon as he could. Then in masochistic pleasure, my mind went out the window.

At this moment if I had just one last ounce of control, I should have walked away from him, run away from this shiny and imposing Buick, then nothing would have happened later. But I wasn’t cautious at all, and I didn’t want to be cautious at all; I’d grown up to be 25 years old, and I’d never wanted the kind of security that comes from not messing with anything. “A man can do anything, both what he ought to do and what he ought not to do.” The great Daly seems to have said that.

As I watched with wide eyes as he leaned down a little toward me, I noticed that the air wafting through the huge room at the moment was diaphanous, spacious and silent, and filled with the smells of strangers and unfamiliar furniture.

He kissed my lips and suddenly looked up and smiled, “Would you like some wine?” I nodded childishly hard, my body was cold and my lips were icy, maybe some wine would do me good. Drinking turns you into a hot woman.

I watched as he got out of bed naked and walked toward a shiny liquor cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of rum and poured it into two separate glasses.

Next to the wine cooler was a jukebox, and he slipped a record into it, and the sound of the music I heard was actually Chinese commentary, an unknown female voice babbling something, and I couldn’t quite make out the warm, soft, Suzhou singing, but it felt special.

He came over to me, “You like commentary?” I had no words. He nodded and handed me my wine, “That’s the best mystical music for sex.” I sipped my wine and coughed a few times. He patted me on the back, a light, brooding, charming smile on his lips.

Another kiss, soothing and long, was the first time I’d ever felt that a kiss before lovemaking could be this comfortable, steady, unhurried, and it made the ensuing desire all the more tantalizing. The myriad of tiny golden hairs on his body nibbled at my entire body like a billion shimmering rays of light from the sun, warmly and kissingly. He teased my nipples with the tip of his tongue dipped in alcohol and then slowly worked his way down …… The cool, silky feel of the alcohol mixed with his warm tongue made me want to faint, I could feel a gush of juices coming out of my womb, and then he was in, and the intimidatingly large organ caused me to feel slightly swollen and sore, “I can’t. ” I screamed up, “No.”

He showed no mercy, not a moment too soon. The pain turned steeply to indulgence, and I looked at him with open eyes, half in love, half in hate, the white, not blinding nudity with a sunny tint stimulated me, and I imagined what he would look like in the Nazi uniforms, boots, and leather overcoat, and what coldness and bestiality should be in those Teutonic blue eyes, and this imagining effectively stimulated the excitement of my flesh. “Every woman worships fascists, with boots on their faces, savage, savage hearts, grown on beasts, like you ……” wrote Silvia Plath, who committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven. Closing my eyes and listening to his moans, a slurred German or two, these sounds that had been in my dreams hit the most sensitive part of my uterus, I thought I was going to die, he could keep fucking me, and then an orgasm of occupied and abused came along with my screams.

He lay next to me, his head resting on a few strands of my hair, and we smoked naked, wrapped in sheets, the smoke filling the void in front of us at the right time, and also taking the opportunity not to talk. There are times when people don’t have the slightest desire to make a sound. It’s just to fall into a kind of silent barrier, and that’s comforting.

“How are you?” His voice rose like it was from smoke, faint and soft, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind, and we lay on our sides on top of each other, like two silver spoons that loved each other, glistening with the light of cold metal. One of his big hands was on my breast.

“I’m going back,” I say breathlessly. He kissed me behind my ear.

“Okay, I’ll walk you.”

“No, I’ll just go back by myself.” My tone was weak but undeniable.

Sitting up and getting dressed I was gripped by a severe sense of frustration, the passion and climax had passed, the movie ended with the audience leaving the stage to hear only a flutter of chair cushions flopping and footsteps, coughing, the characters on the screen story of the music have all disappeared, Tian Tian’s face in my head left and right how can not be still.

I get dressed quickly and don’t even look at the men around me, and all men are always uglier when they’re dressed than when they’re undressed. I’m sure many women would feel the same way.

“This is the first and last time.” I told myself, deluding myself. The thought worked for the moment and I pulled myself together to stride out of the beautifully overwhelming apartment. Getting into a cab, he gestured to me through the glass that he would call me. I smiled vaguely, “Who knows?” The car fled and drove away from him.

I didn’t have a mirror with me in my bag, so I had to look into the windowpane and see myself as nothing more than a phantom-like face with unclear features. I wondered what my first words should be when I saw Tin-Tin. “Nice show, ran into quite a few acquaintances, and of course Mark was there …… “Women are born to lie, especially when they maneuver around several men, the more complicated the situation the more resourceful they are, and they’ve been telling lies since they could talk. When I was a kid I used to say, after breaking an expensive antique vase in the house, that it was broken by the family cat.

But I’m not used to lying to Tien’s black and white eyes. But how can I do that without lying?

I walked down the dimly lit hallway, which smelled of onion grease and barbecue, the neighbors were already preparing dinner, I opened the door and screwed on the light, surprisingly, Tin-Tin wasn’t in the house, and there wasn’t any note on the table with a message.

I sat on the couch for a while, looking at the black leggings wrapped around my long, skinny legs, a short blonde mane of hair stuck to my left knee, Mark’s, which shone pale in the light, and thinking about the way Mark’s head had slowly moved down along my chest …… burned that hair with a cigarette into a tiny pinch of ash, the Then an uncontrollable weariness swept over me with the ferocity of a tidal wave sweeping across the surface of the earth, and I became carefree and senseless, flattening my body on the couch, putting my hands on my chest like a praying nun or a peaceful dead man, and fell fast asleep.

XI. I want to succeed

Novelists who are rich in classical feelings always write this way: “In this life, I only wish to sleep for a long time and do not want to wake up”, and non-stop dreaming is another world that psychoanalysts have unearthed from under the pillow. When my mom got me out of bed every morning, set out my breakfast and handed me my school bag, my precocious mind was always filled with a bunch of dream bubbles, and since I was a little kid, I’ve been a dreamer. One of the most liberating things about my life now is that I can sleep as late as I like, and sometimes after being awakened by the sound of a neighbor’s argument or an overly loud television set or a suddenly ringing telephone, I can still put my head under the covers and continue that suspended dream. Sometimes you can continue the exotic travel of the dream, but of course sometimes I can’t go back to the original dream of falling in love with a strange man, and then I’ll be so upset I’ll want to cry.

My life with Tin-Tin was a bit of a dream to begin with, the kind of intuitive, loneliness-free dream in pure hues that I love.

Mark the German could be something like the sound of an argument, a phone ringing, etc. that could disturb my dreams. Of course even if I hadn’t met Mark, I probably would have met someone else who could have seduced me. My life and Tin-Tin’s life was filled with too many small gaps that couldn’t be bridged by ourselves, and there were bound to be outside forces that would take advantage of the situation. And I, for one, probably really wasn’t the good girl.

That day, I woke up in the middle of the night to find that Tin-Tin had returned, sitting on the couch to one side of me, looking intently at my face, and a cat, a black and white kitten in his arms, which was also staring at me. In those green eyes, I saw myself. I sat up with a start, and the cat fell out of Tin-Tin’s hands and quickly crossed the floor to the bedroom door.

“Where have you been?” I asked Tin-Tin. It seemed a bit preemptive; he would have wanted to ask the same question.

“Went back to my grandmother’s house and she kept me for dinner.” Tien said softly, “I hadn’t been to see her in a while, her mother cat had a new litter and she gave me a kitten, his name is Threadbare.” There was an elusive gentleness in his face as he reached out and touched my hair, my cheek, my chin, my thin neck. The hand was a little cold, but gentle.

My eyes widened and I suddenly had a premonition that he was trying to strangle me. But the thought only flickered, and besides, he didn’t have the strength. For that reason I felt an unusual sense of guilt making me open my mouth to say what had happened. Instead, Sky gagged me with a kiss. The slight bitterness of his tongue, the intoxicating, plant-like scent of the rain filled the room, and then there were those hands again, sliding avalanches over every inch of my skin, a love that exhausted me, and I felt like he already knew everything that had happened, that his fingers could check it out from my skin. It was sticky with the stranger’s bodily fluids and particles, and his senses were touch-and-go, sensitive as a madman’s.

“Maybe I should see a doctor.” He spoke after a long silence.

“What?” I looked at him sadly, everything that had happened and was about to happen was definitely not what I wanted. There was no one else in this room but us at the moment, and there was no escape for him or me in that atmosphere.

“I love you.” I hugged him and closed my eyes, and it was so much like movie dialogue that it was a little embarrassing to say, even in the midst of sadness, so I closed my eyes and there were a lot of dark shadows rattling around in my head, like shadows lit by candles. And then a bunch of sparks burst out violently, my novel, the only thing that can inspire me like a spark and perfect my physical raison d’etre.

Writing, smoking, clattering music, not too short of money (I still have enough in my bank account to last until this novel is finished; in fact, Tin-Tin and I mix our daily expenses, and he pays a little more when he has more money), and not having to say a single word, sitting in silence for hours, that’s what happiness is. After writing a dozen sides of paper in one sitting, I felt that every crack in my life was filled with the meaning of life, and every little wrinkle on my face was worth it.

I am in love with my “self” in the novel, because in the novel I am smarter and more capable of seeing through the connotation of all things in the world, love and lust, and the movement of the stars than I am in real life. And some seeds of dreams are also quietly buried in the lines, only waiting for the sun to shine that can germinate, alchemy means that the work of removing the weeds and saving the essence, smelting the negative, empty reality into the essence of meaningful art, which can also be smelted into a super-commodity, to be sold to all the willing to have fun in the garden of Shanghai, in the end of the century in the backlight of the intoxication of the young generation of the beautiful face, open body, open-bodied, avant-garde young generation. They are the ones who will applaud or throw rotten eggs at my novels, these new human beings who hide invisibly in all corners of the city, who are uninhibited and lawless, and who are the ideal allies of all young novelists who want to be new and different.

My former fiction editor Deng called me, a middle-aged lady in her early 40s with a husband studying in Japan and living alone with a daughter in junior high school. She has a concentration of the characteristics of middle-aged Shanghai women, neurotic whiteness, always wears her hair in a bun on her head, wears boat-shaped leather shoes and tube skirts mixed with cotton fibers, loves to inquire about all kinds of news, and loves to eat ice cream at all seasons of the year.

My first book of fiction, Scream of the Butterfly, which she helped me to publish, was met with peculiar encounters, with people whispering about the grotesque and daring book, with rumors that I was a violent bisexual, with college students stealing my books from bookstores, and with men forwarding erotic photographs and letters through the editor’s hands, hoping to find out what kind of connection the protagonist had to me, or to meet me for dinner at a Saigon restaurant on Hengshan Road dressed as one of my characters, or to drive a white “Superman of the Times” car. They wanted to know what kind of connection there was between the main character in the novel and me, and they hoped that they could make a date to have dinner with me at Saigon Restaurant on Hengshan Road dressed up as one of the characters in my novels, or to drive around with me in a white Time Superman, and that we could have sex inside the car when it arrived at the Yangpu Bridge. It was all a scandal, a scandalous affair, and one that I did not expect. But back to the main story, in the whole process I did not make much money, the first edition of a few thousand books sold out of the second edition of the missing out, asked Deng, she said that the publisher’s recent operation is a little bit of a problem, wait for a period of time to talk about it. I’ve been waiting until now.

My boyfriend at the time, Chien-Tse Yeh, said that what you wrote was inappropriate for children and too much, so that book was played out. My short relationship with him ended after the book was played out.

He was a hangdog delinquent young man working as a copywriter for one of the major advertising agencies, I met him when I interviewed the British owner of their company, he seemed smart, snarky and less than enthusiastic but I don’t know what it was that made him decide to pursue me after one side of the story, at a time when I was still in the throes of the male phobia that came with my short ex-boyfriends, and I’d rather be looking for friendship within a pile of women.

But he was very patient with me, and after listening to my previous failed relationship, he stood up and said, “You see I’m quite tall, my heart isn’t bad, and my thoughts are simple, I just want to get to know you better, that’s all.”

That night he managed to make a deep and comprehensive acquaintance with me, from breasts to toes, from gasps to screams, from a small droplet of water to an entire ocean of desire.

His body was long and graceful, his balls were warm and clean, and when held in his mouth one could appreciate the sense of unconditional trust that sex imparts to the other, and his penis swirled and pumped up like it was carrying the wings of a bird, and he healed my gray memories and restored me to a normal attitude toward sex with a straightforward approach to sex, even as he carefully and patiently taught me how to differentiate between clitoral orgasms and vaginal orgasms (at one point, a book cautioned that the former was bad and neurotic, the latter good and mature), and on several occasions he always allowed me to have both orgasms at the same time.

In the end he convinced me that I am a happier woman than many women. Because according to statistics, about seventy percent of Chinese women have sexual problems of one kind or another, and ten percent of them have never had an orgasm in their lives. This is an astonishing figure, and one of the intrinsic motivations that drives the women’s liberation movement of every age to flourish and endure. Sr. Freud said 100 years ago that when the libido has nowhere to go, it transforms into all kinds of socio-political behaviors, wars, conspiracies, campaigns, and so on.

The months I spent with Ye Qian coincided with the publication of my novel, and my spirit was in a state of restlessness and excitement, and the sex that Ye Qian and he brought to me was precisely the result of this state. Although such a sexual experience inevitably carries with it a certain loss and a certain emptiness, a woman’s nature always unconsciously links sex and spiritual love a little more tightly. With the first edition of the collection The Butterfly’s Scream ending, and a few coins not ringing in my pocket (I had hoped that the book would bring me a fortune), we parted in peace, without a fight, without sentimentality or exuberance, in short, very scientifically and very harmlessly.

Tin-Tin was a different type of man than any I’d ever had before, he was a fetus soaked in formalin, his resurrection depended on an unadulterated love, and his eventual death had nothing to do with love, he couldn’t give me full sex, and I couldn’t do the same for me. Everything is inscrutable, my love may come more from how much I am needed, how much he needs me, how much my love should be. Day by day as oxygen as water needed my presence, and our love was a crystallization of the most bizarre kind, all from chance, all from the atmosphere of suppressed subtlety that hung over fate.

In the early fall season, the air smells dry with a hint of tobacco or gasoline.

My editor asked me on the phone, “How’s this new book at hand coming along?”

“OK,” I said, “maybe I’ll need an agent.”

“What kind?” She asked curiously.

“One that will help me realize my dreams while preventing an unflattering ending like the last collection.” I said.

“Tell me what you have in mind.”

“My dream is the dream of a young, hip, smart and ambitious woman, and my new book is for such a woman, and there should be a book promotion party that tours the country, where I wear a black halter top and an exaggerated mask, and the floor is covered with pieces of my book, and people step on those pieces and dance wildly.”

“God,” she laughed, “you’re crazy enough.”

“It can be realized.” I said, unimpressed by her laugh; the stinking literary world was like the martial arts world in Jin Yong’s book; there was a right way and an evil way, and a lot of the right people just loved to do the moralizing and verbal abuse. “Going to realize it just takes money and intelligence.”

“Well,” she said, “there are some writers who are having a PEN meeting in Shanghai, and one of them, a girl a little older than you by a few years, who is always eager to look for inspiration from her husband’s hair that has fallen on the floor after she married a famous critic, is very interesting. You might do yourself some good to meet them.” She spoke of a restaurant on New Leaf Road, where she would also be.

I asked Tin-Tin if he wanted to go with me to meet the writers, and he pretended not to hear me. He has an ingrained bad impression of writers.

I had a hard time deciding what to wear. The clothes in my closet were divided into two distinct styles, one gender-confusing, wide, low-toned, and looked like a medieval painting, and the other was a tight, foxy little dress that made me look like a catgirl from a James Bond movie. I flipped a coin and chose the latter. With purple lipstick and purple eyeshadow, and a leopard print handbag, the hippie-retro look of the 1960s is on the rise in some places in Shanghai.

The cab takes me dizzily around the streets, the driver, a novice who’s just been on the job for a few days, driving back to the same old place without looking, and I’m basically road-blind, with no sense of direction whatsoever, and just screaming, and the two of us make each other nervous along the way. Watching the number on the meter jump upward one at a time, I threaten, “I’m going to file a complaint,” and the driver doesn’t say anything, “because you’re undermining the customer.” I aggravate my tone.

“Okay, okay, big deal, I’m not taking your money.”

“Hey, stop right here.” I called out just in time as a familiar patch of lights and large glass windows swept past, with a number of yellow hairs saving behind the glass, “Right, I’ll get off here.” I had a temporary change of heart, and since the car wouldn’t make it to the restaurant on New Leaf Road anyhow, I had to give up on the party with the writers. Let’s have some fun at Kenny’s Yin-Yang Bar (Y-Y).

Yin Yang Bar is divided into two floors, through the long staircase down, located in the basement of the dance floor is presenting a fast atmosphere, the smell of alcohol, saliva, perfume, RMB, adrenaline hormone just floating around, Broadway-style light comedy atmosphere, I saw my favorite DJ Hong Kong ChristopheLee is gripping the stage, he also saw me, made a face at me, the music was House and Trip’Hop, are cool industrial dance music, such as the dark fire wildly burning, blunt knife cut flesh, the more you dance, the more happy, the more you dance, the more cool, straight to the earth to evaporate, until the cerebral cerebellum together to shake upside down to the point is the highest state.

Surrounded by many blonde foreigners, there are also a lot of exposed small waist with a head of Oriental treasure like black hair as a selling point of Chinese women, they have a kind of bitchy self-promotional expression on their faces, and in fact, a considerable part of them are all kinds of multinational white-collar workers, most of them are highly educated women of good families, and some of them have studied in the foreign countries, with a private car, as a foreign company’s chief representative (referred to as the “first generation”), but the dancing face is all warm and fuzzy look. Some of them have studied abroad, have private cars, and work as the chief representative of a foreign company (referred to as the “first generation”), which is the best among the 8 million women in Shanghai, but their faces are all warm and fuzzy when they dance, so I really don’t know what’s going on in their heads.

Of course, there are also the transnational prostitutes who specialize in transnational prostitution, who generally have amazingly long hair (for the foreigners to marvel at the wonders of Oriental women’s hair when they’re pressed up against their bodies), who generally speak basic English (e.g., “onehundredforhandjob, twohundredsforblowjob, threehundredsforquickie, fivehundredsforonenight.”), and who like to lick their lips in sexy slow-motion at their targets (which could be made into a popular movie called “China.”). threehundredsforquickie,fivehundredsforonenight.”), like to lick lips at the target in sexy slow-motion (can be made into a popular movie called “Chinese Lips”, dedicated to the description of the foreigners in Shanghai thousands of bars in the erotic encounters, erotic encounters start from the licking of lips, a variety of lips, fat, thin, thin, plump, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thick and thin). of lips, plump, fat, thin, black lips, silver lips, red lips, purple lips, those wearing bad lipstick, those wearing Rancourt, CD lipstick …… starring all the ladies of Shanghai’s moonshine, “Chinese Lips” will surpass the Hollywood blockbuster “The China Box” starring Gong Li and Jemily Ahrens).

When I dance, I hallucinate and feel inspired, a result of my over-emancipated body. I feel like I should have a personal secretary with a laptop following me around at all times, especially when dancing to industrial dance music, and she should be writing down all my hallucinations, which are a thousand times better than sitting at my desk and writing a thousand times more, twenty million times more.

I couldn’t remember where I was, there was a smell of marijuana smoke (or cigar smoke) in the air which found its way to the sensory reflex zone somewhere in the lower right part of my cerebral cortex, and I think I had attracted quite a few men’s attention with my dancing, which made me look like one of the most favored concubines in an Islamic harem, and like the snake-haired siren Medusa. Men always yearn for a split second to have sex with a siren and then be eaten by her, and there is a male scorpion in the world that is forever being destroyed by their sexual partners post coitus.

I saw the silver ring on my navel flashing rapidly in the phantom of the light like a small poisonous flower blooming on my body, and a hand wrapped around my bare waist from behind, and I didn’t know who it was, but I didn’t really care, and when I smiled and turned my head, I saw Mark’s contoured, moving face. He was actually here too.

He leaned down to my face and breathed hot air into me over the music, he must have had a martini called a “James’ Bon”, his voice was low but I could hear him saying he wanted me right here and now. I looked at him dizzily, “Here? …… now …… here?”

We were huddled together in the not-so-clean women’s restroom on the second floor, the music was far away, my body temperature was dropping, I still couldn’t open my eyes very well, but I blocked Mark’s hand, “What are we doing here?” I asked him in a sleepwalking voice.

“Making love.” He used the right word, and there was nothing flirtatious in his face; on the contrary, I didn’t think his blue eyes were cold at all, and there were soft waves there like in Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan,” even though in such an odoriferous restroom you’d never have understood how sheer lust could stir up such intimacy as this!

“I feel like this sucks, like a crime, more like …… being tortured ……” I mumbled.

“The cops won’t find it here, trust me, it’s all perfect.” He phrased it like an eager liar, pinning me against the purple wall, lifting my skirt, slipping off my CK panties in a sharp, balled-up mass, and stuffing them in a handful of pockets behind his ass before he lifted me with such force that without saying a word he poked in with such precision that I didn’t feel anything else, just felt like I was sitting on a hot and dangerous fire hydrant.

“Youbastard!” I couldn’t control my foul language, “Put me down, this isn’t working, I look like a female monkey specimen on the wall.”

He gazed at me in rapture and silence as we switched positions, him sitting on the flush toilet and me sitting on him, taking the female position and coming to grips with the direction of sexual sensitivity myself. There was a knock on the door, and a perverted man and woman in the restroom weren’t done yet.

The orgasm came in fear and discomfort, another perfect orgasm, albeit in an awkward position, albeit in such a somewhat smelly restroom. He pushed me away and pulled the water valve, and with the swirling water a bunch of filth quickly disappeared.

I burst into tears, it was all inexplicable, I was losing confidence in myself, and I suddenly felt worse than the professional whores downstairs. At least they had a sense of dedication and a sense of calm, while I was a twisted, horribly split personality, and what was even worse was that I couldn’t stop thinking and writing. I couldn’t face my face in the darkened mirror in the restroom, something had drained out of me again, a hole.

Mark hugged me, “Forgive me,” and he kept saying “Sorry, Sorry,” and holding me in his arms like a dead baby, which was even worse.

I pushed him away from me as I pulled my panties out of his hip pocket and put them on, straightening my skirt, “You didn’t rape me, no one can rape me, and don’t you keep saying Sorry, Sorry, that’s rude.” I gave him a low growl, “I’m crying because I feel like I’m ugly as hell and a little cry would make me feel better, do you realize that?”

“No, you’re not ugly at all.” Mark’s face was full of the serious expression that characterized the Germans.

I laughed, “No, I mean one day I’m going to die a horrible death. Because, I’m the bad girl, and God doesn’t like bad girls, even though I like myself a lot.”

I said, crying again.

“No, no, my honey, you don’t know how much I like you, really, CoCo, I like you more and more.” There was infinite tenderness in his eyes, infinite tenderness that turned back into infinite sadness in the restroom light, and we hugged each other tightly as lust surfaced again.

Someone started knocking on the door and it looked like one of the ladies couldn’t stand it anymore. I freaked out, he made a silent gesture and kissed me calmly, the footsteps at the door went away and I pushed him away gently, “Let’s not see each other again.”

“We’ll still bump into each other by accident. Shanghai is small, you know.”

We walked out of the restroom quickly, “I’m leaving.” I said, heading for the door, he insisted on driving me back, which I stubbornly refused to do.

“Okay,” he waved at a cab and took a piece of money out of his wallet and put it in the driver’s hand. I didn’t stop him from doing this as I got in the car and said softly to him through the window, “I’m still not very comfortable with the guilt.” “That’s because we made love in the wrong place and it came to haunt you afterward.” He reached his face over and kissed me, and neither of us mentioned Tin-Tin, fooling ourselves not to.

On the cab’s radio, a housewife poured her heart out to the host of the “Together Until Dawn” hotline, saying that her husband was having an affair but she didn’t want a divorce, that she hoped that the other woman would disappear of her own accord, and that she didn’t know how to win back her husband’s heart. The driver and I were silent, city dwellers used to absentmindedly listening to other people’s private stories without sympathy or help. As the car drove onto the viaduct I saw a sea of lights, so brilliant, so amazing. I imagined how many stories were going on in the lights all over the corners of Shanghai at this moment, how much noise, turmoil and killing, how much unimaginable emptiness, indulgence and lovemaking.

Tin-Tin was still awake, snuggled up on the couch with his kitten, Threads, a padded paperback in his hand, writing a long letter to his mother, who was far away in Spain. I sat down beside him, and Threadball ran away, and he jerked his head up to look at me, and I was so alarmed that I suspected he’d caught another whiff of a strange man’s scent. Mind you Mark still had a faint fox odor on him, and I had always enjoyed the faint animal smell.

But Tien’s eyes, as cold as cold water, overwhelmed me, and I stood up nervously and walked toward the bathroom. He lowered his head and continued writing his letter.

The hot water clattered and let go, the steam slowly condensing on the only large mirror in the bathroom, unable to see my own face. I exhaled, no one was there, a vat of smoking hot water, relaxing, hiding myself in a vat of hot water when there was any trouble coming, the water so hot, a large handful of hair floating like a black water lily, and all that I could recall were things that were happy, things that were beautiful.

I recall when I was a child, I always sneak up to the attic of my grandmother’s house, there is a broken old leather swivel chair in the attic, a four corners of the brass mahogany box, the box is full of dust, open the box, there are a few blue porcelain vase burned out “Salt”, some of the leftover trimmings of the cheongsam, as well as some weird and useless knickknacks. I always sat on a broken leather chair and made my own. I always sat in a broken leather chair and played with those knick-knacks by myself, as the sky dimmed a little outside the tiny slotted window. “Nico,” Grandma was calling me, and I pretended not to hear, and then another, “Nico, I know where you are,” and then I saw Grandma’s chubby figure rising up the stairs. I closed the box quickly, but my hands were dirty and so were my clothes. Grandma said angrily, “Stop climbing around and playing, if you like these things I’ll give them to you as dowry.” But then, because the city government was building a subway, the old building built by the French in 1931 was moved, and everyone moved in a chaotic manner, so all the treasures I played with as a child were gone.

I stretched my feet, remembering my childhood past was always like looking at a past life from a distance. Everything seemed fake except for the tenderness. At that moment, the bathroom door was pushed open and Tien walked in, his eyes red as he walked over to the tub and squatted down.

“Is the letter finished?” I asked softly.

“Finished writing,” said Tien, gazing into my eyes in silence, “I told her to put off the idea of coming to Shanghai to open a restaurant, and when I went to Grandma’s house I told her about it, and Grandma said that she had come just in time to settle a score with her …… I don’t want her to come either, would rather just hang around alone until the day I die ……” His voice was extremely somber, and when he said the last sentence his eyes were streaming down with tears.

“CoCo, whatever you do, don’t lie to me.” He stared into my eyes, an invisible chisel chiseling away at a pink film over his heart, a thick fearful silence permeating the surroundings like blood, and yet the more hopelessly you love each other, the more you are hidden away in a deep lie, a deep, heavy dream.

“I love you.” I wrapped my arms around him and closed my eyes as our tears fell bursting into the bathtub, which grew hotter and darker in color before finally swallowing the choking and throbbing like boiling plasma. From that night on, I swore I would never let him know that Mark his person and his business existed. Not one iota, I didn’t want him to die at my hands, at the hands of my lasciviousness.

XII. Grassland Party

In the afternoon, the autumn sun shone on the streets and the crowds, leaving a light and pale shadow, and the trees were already budding with fall, with a single leaf hanging like a yellowing insect specimen. The wind blew a cool breeze on one’s face.

Some events happen iteratively in your daily life, making you not notice how quickly the seasons become and how easily time passes.

Tien actually went to a reproductive health medical center and I accompanied him on the first day.

It didn’t feel good to walk into that building, there seemed to be something in the air that was depressing one’s body, the hallways, the posters, the doctor’s face were all overly clean. The doctor who saw the patient wore large glasses and was expressionless as he asked questions about Tien while writing something heavily on his chart card.

“When is the first time you lose semen? Do you get a natural erection in the morning? Do you usually react to reading that kind of book or watching that kind of movie? Successful intercourse not even once? –I mean being able to penetrate smoothly and last more than three minutes, and what other unusual body reactions do you normally have?”

Tien’s face was getting paler and paler, his forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat and he was having a hard time speaking in full, I think at the moment if I reached out and pulled him up he’d be running out of the room as fast as he could. I sat in a chair in the hallway and saw Tin-Tin being led into the treatment room next to him, he looked terrible, as if he was going to pass out at any moment. As he walked through the door he suddenly gave me a look filled with fear.

I covered half my face with my hand, it was too cruel for him.

After a long wait, the door to the treatment room opened and the doctor walked out first, followed by Tien, who kept his head down and didn’t look at me. The doctor brushed over the diagnosis, and he told Tien, “Your reproductive system is normal, and adjusting your psychology is the key.” He recommended that Tin-Tin attend a hospital psychiatric group, plus some medication to assist in his treatment.

Sky’s daily routine suddenly includes a weekly visit to a reproductive health medical center, where he spends a few hours at a time. Perhaps it wasn’t the treatment itself that fascinated him, but the fact that there was a group of victims there with similar problems to his own. They sit in a circle and take turns speaking, exchanging their pains and life stresses in a kind of tacit understanding, and according to my friend, psychiatrist David Wu, the atmosphere of collective suffering helps to relieve individual anxieties.

But soon Tien grew tired of the medical center and the group. He developed a friendship with one of the members of the group, a young man named Leroy, and from time to time he would invite him to join our circle.

Fall lends itself to outdoor gatherings, and we had a lawn party at the Xingguo Hotel. The sun was shining lazily on a weekend afternoon, the wind brought the smell of lysol from a small hospital nearby and tickled the nose a bit, and the surrounding scenery was beautiful, with plants and buildings juxtaposed against the warm fall colors.

Plaid spread out on the grass, some tempting-looking food on top, friends scattered around like chess pieces, lying or sitting, like Manet’s famous painting “Lunch on the Grass,” those scenes of life overflowing with the mood of the middle class in the Middle Ages have always been my curiosity and desire. Then again, too much indoor life is too stuffy; thinking, writing, silence, dreaming, imagining can bring a person to the brink of insanity, and scientists’ inhumane experiments have proved that four days of solitary confinement in a closed room is enough to cause a person to pop out of the window sill like an out-of-control projectile. It is easy for a man to go mad. My father wrote on a recent postcard to me (he was traveling with my mother in Hangzhou), “Daughter, go outdoors more often; grass and fresh air are life’s most precious gifts to a person.” He now uses something like aphorisms and aphorisms to communicate with me.

Leroy came too, in dirty, trendy clothes, a skinny boy with big eyes and a bald head, whose first impression was of foul language such as “Fuck, Shit,” and who always pinched the tip of his nose in a neurotic way, making it red and pointy. I didn’t like him. It is said that he has been chasing women older than him since he was 10 years old, and was seduced by the mother of a classmate in elementary school at 11, losing his virginity prematurely, and since then he has had sex with more than fifty women of his mother’s, aunt’s or sister’s generation, and a year ago, he was caught in bed with someone else’s wife and was beaten up by her husband and his proud head of long hair was cut off, and he became impotent after the shock.

He is a child of intellectuals, his parents are not in Shanghai, no one cares and no one cares. He now works as a salesman at an Adidas store on Nanjing Road, and usually practices drumming in a basement. He has a loose rock band that he formed himself, and rock temporarily replaces sex to soothe his young body and mind. What makes Tiantian feel good about him is not only his strange attitude towards life (indulgent, soft, naive, I do what I want), but also the fact that he loves to read books and think about the ultimate questions of life.

Zhu Sha should also be my invitation to participate in this lawn party, but also brought me a gift, a bottle of Shiseido toner, she said is just back from a business trip to Hong Kong to bring, this bottle of things there than Shanghai cheaper l00m dollars. Has not seen her for some time, but she has that kind of demure and considerate womanhood has not changed at all, looks to have recovered from the shadow of divorce.

“I heard from my aunt that you’ve started writing a novel again?” She sucked on a carton of juice and looked at me with a smile. The sunlight shone faintly on her, and she had a natural fragrance like spring grass. “Oh yeah,” she pulled out a business card and gave it to me, “This is the new company I work for now.”

I picked it up and froze, wasn’t this the same investment advisory firm that Mark worked for?

“Yeah, I’m writing a novel again, hopefully a bestseller, so I’ll have money to travel to Europe.” I said.

“Where’s your boyfriend? Do you still share a room every day? I can’t imagine living like that, doesn’t one of you want to go out and work? That’s not very nice, makes one less healthy.” Jusha said in a soft tone.

“We go out for walks a lot, sometimes to the bar for drinks and dancing.” I said, still thinking in the back of my mind that if I traveled to Europe, surely Tin-Tin would be willing to go with me, and that traveling out of the house was not only a temporal and spatial migration, but would also affect one’s psycho-physiology to some degree. I fantasized that in a small town in France in an inn can make love with every day (in those places he can), and then the motel in Germany, Vienna abandoned chapel, the 15th century gladiator arena in Rome, the Mediterranean Sea, a speedboat on the …… story will continue a little bit, as long as there is love and desire, in the forests, lakes and the sky! What reverberates is the dance of freedom and love.

I walked over to Tin-Tin, sat down, and kissed him as he interrupted his conversation with Lile to smile back at me. “Play frisbee.” I said. “Okay.” He stood up, looking especially young in the sunlight, like a middle-schooler, with his short, shaved black hair, black cotton shirt with stripes, and his eyes clear and moving.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, a fresh passion re-stimulating my whole body, I felt my heart thumping, he laughed again, and the saucer flew around like a tiny UFO, it flew to Jusha’s feet. Jusha smiled and handed it to Tien, who was sitting with Dick and looking like they were having a good conversation.

Madonna came over after talking to her friends at the hotel and played Frisbee with us, and karting expert Lao Wu and his girlfriend Cissy were sunbathing on their bare backs and playing flying chess, both wearing sunglasses, their white backs exposed to the light of day, and in any case, they were a good-looking couple.

The group was hotly amusing themselves on the grass when suddenly an old foreign woman appeared in front of us with a dignified look on her face. Madonna and I walked over to her while the others played as usual. “Excuse me, I’d like to ask you to leave.” She said in a mouthful of American English, her tongue curled up.

“Why?” I asked in English.

“Oh,” she shrugged, “my husband and I live in the building across the street,” she gestured with her hand, and I could see on the other side of the meadow a beautiful French three-story building separated by a low fence, towering with beautiful but useless chimneys and stained glass windows, and Two balconies surrounded by carved railings crawling with vines, “We always look at this meadow from the balcony.”

“So what?” My English was rude. I wasn’t trying to be polite either, what did this old American woman want?

“But you’re ruining the peace of this meadow, you’re too rowdy and messy.” She said without frowning, a cold and defiant look in her blue eyes, she had silver hair similar to my grandmother’s, the same wrinkles, but I really didn’t find her kind and relatable. I whispered to Madonna in Chinese what the old woman meant.

“What?” She’s actually trying to kick us out? Madonna perked up at the sound of that, obviously this unreasonable request excited her, she was exactly the kind of person who was not weak when it came to strength and loved a challenge and a fight.

“Tell her that the meadow does not belong to her, so she has no right to make that claim.” I told the old lady what I meant.

The old lady laughed and looked as if she was saying “Rude Chinese woman”. Madonna lit a cigarette, “We won’t leave, you old man go back and rest.”

The old woman seemed to understand her words, still speaking in unenthusiastic English, “My husband is the president of the Meiling Bank, we rented that whole house just because of the grass, we’re both old, we need good air and a clean environment, and it’s not easy to find a decent piece of grass in a city like Shanghai.”

I nodded, “It’s not easy, so we came here to relax too.” The old lady smiles and asks me, “Did you rent a room too?” I nod. “How much is the rent?” She asks and I smile, “That’s my personal business, not yours.”

“Our rent is 25,000 dollars a month,” she said, word for word, “and that price is related to this meadow, and you Chinese understand that a good environment can fetch a big price, so I ask you to be able to get out of here as soon as possible.” She smiled, but her tone was strong. Indeed this price scared us a bit, I don’t know how big she and her old man president are, and whether she has any personal friendship with the owner of this hotel, Madonna is worthy of being a veteran of the jungle, she smiled faintly, “OK,” she said, “we’ll leave, seeyoulater. “

Along the way, we told the story of a sign on the former French Concession that read “No Chinese or dogs allowed”, and now that the major multinational financial giants and plutocrats were back, and no doubt that strong economic impulse would bring about psychological superiority and cultural hegemony, these newcomers realized for the first time that National pride, in this afternoon seriously think about something else in life.

In the evening, Tin-Tin was in the bathroom when Mark called me. I whispered, “Don’t call again, it’s not nice.”

He agreed, “But how do I contact you?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll call you.”

“You could put in an e-mail address.” He suggested to me seriously.

“Okay.” I said, and then couldn’t resist telling him about what had happened that afternoon, “If you lived in that building, would you kick us out?” I asked seriously, it was almost a diplomatic test about national pride.

“Of course not,” he said, “that way I can keep staring at you.”

XIII. Departure, December

December, the season of cruelty, no lilacs blooming in centuries-old courtyards, no beautiful women dancing naked across the stone steps and painted corridors of Takashi’s “Legarconchimis” gardens on Hengshan Road, no pigeons, no ecstasy, no shades of blue in the jazz.

The winter rain is drifting in a gloomy way, there is a slightly bitter taste on the tip of the tongue, the humidity in the air will make people rotten, rotten to the heart, the winter in Shanghai is like a woman to come to the menstrual period and wet and disgusting.

Tian Tian decided to go out for a trip, he always had to leave Shanghai for a while at this time of the year, he couldn’t stand the cold and wet weather, even the occasional sun rays were gray and hairy on his body, “I’m going to run away for a while,” he said, “where to? ” The south, where the sun is a little more powerful and the sky is a little bluer. Haikou, for example. “Want to go alone?” He nods.

“Well, take care of yourself, you have an IC card so you can call back anytime. I’ll stay in the house and keep working on my novel.”

The idea of never finishing the novel terrified me, and after Tien left I was able to enjoy a more private space, a sense of physical space. I wonder if Tin-Tin realizes this as well, and if he chooses to go on a trip to escape for a while from some kind of danger brought about by our day-to-day life together; he has a sensitivity that is a hundred times greater than that of ordinary people, and sometimes, when that unexplainable emotion entangles two people too tightly to the point of preventing them from breathing freely and losing their creativity, it may be the right time to go on a trip as well.

What’s more, the Mark grows like a superfluous organism from the weakest link of our emotional life, which cannot be easily removed, and whose raison d’être is that I have a virus somewhere in my body, and this virus is called “lust”.

In the eyes of many, lust and love do not mix, in the eyes of many emancipated women, finding someone to love and a man who can give her an orgasm is the perfect pattern for a private life. They will say: love and desire separate does not contradict the attitude of the pursuit of a pure life, day by day consumes your life of daily life guides the intuition and will of women who look for any kind of life style that can give them a sense of security. They keep the key to unlock the secrets of life under their pillows, they have more freedom than women 50 years ago, more beauty than women 30 years ago, more orgasms in different categories than women 10 years ago.

The Volkswagen cab I’d booked over the phone was parked downstairs, and I made a final check of Tian Tian’s suitcase, which contained a pair of Tedlapidus cigarettes (which seemed to be available only at certain counters in Shanghai), a Gillette razor, mouthwash, seven pairs of white underpants, seven pairs of black socks, a Discman, a selection of Dylan Thomas’ poems, Dali’s journals, a copy of The Collected Stories of Hitchcock, a picture frame of our photo together, and another bag containing the cat ball of yarn he’d insisted on taking. The photo frame, the other bag also contains a cat ball of yarn that he insisted on bringing, and then we took the car with an umbrella, because with the cat he gave up flying and had to sleep on the train sleeper to go to Haikou.

The rain hit the windshield of the cab, the street was gray, the stores and pedestrians looked like dried and scattered piles of paint in the rain, a kind of distorted line. Tin-Tin kept running his fingers through the vapor on the windowpane, scratching out strange symbols. The radio in the cab was blaring sweet pop tunes, and thirty-something Ren Xianqi was still pretending to be naughty and singing “The Girl Across the Road is Looking Over,” and the car was getting closer and closer to the train station, and there was an indescribable wave of apprehension in me, and Tin-Tin grasped my hand and put it in his lap, and we were going to be apart for almost two months, and we were going to find out out out of nowhere that the other wasn’t in the pillows, and that there wasn’t going to be someone banging on the bathroom door yelling about how we had to take a shower together, and that there was no need to prepare two meals, to wash two baths together. No more preparing two meals, washing two people’s clothes, or worrying about suspicion and tears at any given moment, or hearing each other’s sleep talk.

There are still a lot of migrant workers wandering in the rain on the square of the train station. I remind Tian Tian to put away his ID card, Peony card, IC card and ticket. Taking the elevator to the second floor waiting hall, has begun to check the tickets, Tian Tian waved at me, right shoulder carrying a bag bag containing thread dough, left shoulder carrying suitcases with the flow of people surging towards a door.

The rain had stopped outside, and I hopped off the bus when it arrived at the Meimei department store. This section of Huaihai Road has a plebeian foreignness to it, and you can see hordes of trendy little kids. Huating Road has always been a street for young kids to get a sense of where the fashion is going and to receive the most up-to-date information on what’s trending. It’s such a small street, but Shanghainese people’s nature of utilizing every inch of the street to their advantage shows, with glamorous and inexpensive clothes and handbags, shoes, hats, handicrafts, toys, and so forth, and it’s a street that’s been included in the guidebook for foreign travelers to Shanghai, keeping up with foreign fashions, and at a much cheaper price. I once saw a beaded silk handbag at the Hong Kong Expo in the Shanghai Exhibition Center for 250 yuan, and then saw the same bag on Huating Road in the afternoon for 150 yuan. Whenever I am in a bad mood, like other girls, I come to this road to shop around and buy a gas, buy a lot of beautiful light things back, most of the clothes only worn once or twice, because these are in a violent mood to buy, the style is not exaggerated, erotic, only suitable for alone in the house looking in the mirror as Marilyn Monroe to themselves, self-indulgence.

On Hua Ting Road, there are many Chinese and foreign teenagers dressed as fly girls and boys, and a group of Japanese boys on skates, showing off their skating skills like butterfly specimens and their hair dyed like a chicken feather duster. A Shanghai girl with dark lips walks beside her silver-lipped companions, who are eating “Jumbo Fruit” lollipops (small and large children holding a lollipop in their hands was once part of Shanghai’s fashionable image), and there is always the fear that they will die of poisoning from too much cheap fluorescent lipstick, but of course there has not been a single official report on this yet! Of course, there has yet to be an official report of a schoolgirl in the city who ate herself to death from eating lipstick.

Out of the crowd came a group of well-dressed office men, one of whom waved at me enthusiastically, and I figured he must be waving at the people behind me, and continued to ignore the walk. He was still waving and calling my name, and I stared at him in surprise.

“I’m Spider.” I wondered if it was April Fool’s Day today, this spider in my impression is a criminal impulse with a terribly high IQ of the social youth, these days do not see him either do computer hacking robbed the bank or continue to half-dead during the day to work a small job, to the night to guard the computer in the Internet delirious.

But the young man in front of him had a pair of rimless glasses favored by white-collar males, white teeth, and a healthy smile, “Dying, I can’t believe you don’t recognize me.” Spider’s catchphrase is “dying.”

So I smiled, “Looks like you’re pretty.” I said.

“You’re pretty, too.” He said, not a hint of teasing on his face, every move measured.

The real pot coffee shop on the side of the road. We sat across from each other, and the aroma of coffee can be a chronic intoxication. So many people are addicted to coming to a coffee shop to sit around for an afternoon, even if a fifth of their life is lost in a coffee shop, as long as there’s a false sense of detachment from the weight of work. And with the non-disturbing music and waiters with dancer-type faces, we chatted about the Greenie Café. “That’s a really nice place,” Spider said, “but it’s a shame that being there didn’t feel like enjoyment at the time, all I could think about was working for money.”

“And how to break into a safe.” I teased him.

“Dying, this can’t be brought up again, I’m a good man now.” He laughed, the business card he handed me read Golden Apple Computer Company, a small company he and a few college friends had put money into together, specializing in software development, network installation and selling computers, and it was just now taking off. “It’s estimated that by the end of the year there will be a sizable profit,” he said, his desire to make money still swelled, just with more composure.

“By the way, how is that Mei’er doing? Still in touch?” I remembered his old online girlfriend.

“We spend a lot of time together drinking coffee, watching movies, and playing tennis.”

“Thank goodness my previous hunch was wrong, this Mei’er seems to be quite compatible with you. Will you marry her?”

“Oh no, Mei is a girl online and a guy in life.” He corrected me in a heartbeat. With a surprised look on my face, I added, “Of course we’re just friends, nothing else blah blah blah!” He laughed and didn’t care if I believed him or not.

“He must be mentally weird for pretending to be a girl online to attract boys.”

“Yeah, he’s always wanted to have a sex change operation, but of course I only dated him because I thought he was kind and welcoming. Thoughtful, he knows I’m not gay but can still be friends, can’t he?”

“I’d love to meet this Meier, sounds unusual.”

XIV. The Eyes of a Lover

In the evening I could not write a single word, my brain was a pallor, a hawk flying in the air, waiting for an opportunity to swoop down and hunt for food, but foraging for any worthwhile inspiration.

I developed a certain hidden concern about the novel, I didn’t know how to hide myself from the reader to the greatest extent possible, in other words, I didn’t want to confuse the novel with my real life, when in fact I was more concerned that as the plot of the novel developed it would somehow affect me later in my life in some inexplicable way.

I’ve always thought of writing as an act of unexpected suspense similar to witchcraft. The heroine is a girl who, like me, doesn’t want to seek out the usual life; she has ambitions and two men and never has inner peace. She believes in the saying: sucking up the essence of life like a leech, including secret pleasures, unseen hurts, improvised passions, and permanent yearnings. She’s afraid, as I am, of going to hell when she dies, of not seeing a movie, of not wearing comfy pajamas, of not hearing the heavenly sounds of MoNo, of being breathlessly bored.

I smoked cigarettes, walked across the floor, turned up the volume on the jukebox, and even rummaged through Tin-Tin’s drawers to see if he’d left any bits of paper that would surprise me. Finally I flipped through my address book and found Mark’s number, and I debated whether I should call him; Tin-Tin had just left, and here I was trying to call another man, and I frowned at the thought.

But then I thought of two reasons on my own, first, I don’t love that man, he can’t replace Tin-Tin’s place in my heart, he has nothing but lust written on his face. Second, he doesn’t always get my calls, if he turns off his cell phone.

So I dialed a string of numbers and there was a long dial tone on the other end of the line. I exhaled my cigarette and absentmindedly surveyed the nails on my left hand, neatly and softly manicured, ten pointed fingers, and for a moment saw my own hands crawling over Mark’s toned back, writhing like two spiders, picking, flicking fingers, sizzling air, the smell of roiling sex hormones swirling around.

A woman’s voice on the other end of the line suddenly disturbed my hallucinations, “Hello!” she said.

I was startled and instinctively answered “Hello,” and then I asked, “IsMarkthere?”

“He’s in the bathroom. Should I leave a message?” She spoke English with a heavy German accent.

I politely said no, I would contact him again. Hanging up the phone, a feeling of frustration affected me that this Kraut actually had a lover, and of course it could have been his wife. He never talked about his private life and I never asked. So far it seems to be a “fuck to fuck” relationship between us.

I lay dispiritedly in the bathtub, the scented bubbles of rose bath gel piled up around me, a bottle of red wine within reach of my right hand, my weakest moment and the one that made me the most narcissistic. I fantasize about the ecstasy of a man who pushes open the bathroom door at this moment, comes over, lifts the bubbles and petals from the water, and digs into the most secret places of my body like a treasure. To see me quiver like a petal in his rough palm, to be rubbed to pieces, to see my eyes grow wet with shame in the light, my lips open and close as the tide washes over me, my legs squirming open and closed in the direction of joy.

I suddenly missed Tin-Tin, who with his unique fingers had countless times done this poetic sexual hypnosis on me that floated above ordinary carnal desires, yes, like the hypnosis of peeling away the layers of fog straight to the center of love. The ordeal of sipping red wine with my eyes closed while stroking between my legs made me understand why Alexander in The Poisoned Sun chose to die in the bathtub.

The phone rang suddenly, “Tin-Tin,” I mentally screamed, my eyes widening as I owed it to myself to grab the microphone embedded in the wall to my right.

“Hello, I’m Mark.”

I took a breath, “Hi!”

“You called me earlier, didn’t you?” He asked.

“No!” I said, “I didn’t call you anything FUCKING, I’ve been lonely and happy in the shower ……” I burped and laughed cheekily.

“My wife told me that a girl called while I was in the shower, and by the sound of her accent she was Chinese – I’m guessing it was you.” He acted as if he was winning, as if he was sure I would miss him.

“So you have a wife.”

“She just came from Berlin, to Shanghai for Christmas, and she’ll be back in a month.” He strangely used a comforting tone, as if I would be very upset about it.

“She’s pretty busy, isn’t she? Hey, by the way, I remembered something, did you change the sheets? …… guess you must have changed them,–or she would have smelled like a Chinese woman.” I laughed softly, I know I’m a little drunk, a little drunk feeling is really good, what all think very open, the cloud disperses in front of the eyes only light.

Growing up to be 25 years old makes you very resilient to unforeseen events, and even if he said right now that he’s breaking up with me or that he’s going to Mars it wouldn’t make me too desperate. Be sober about my relationship with him, one way or the other, and don’t lose your way.

He smiled back, Christmas is coming, the company will take a long vacation, he hoped to have a chance to meet me, he spoke to me on the phone in Chinese, I guess his wife could not understand a word next to him. Men are always doing something daring under the eyes of women, they will say “love you and be faithful to you or not are two different things”, most men do not adapt to monogamy, they reminisce about the ancient harem to hide the three thousand powder in the history of sex.

He said he had a journalist friend coming from Germany in a few days and he wanted to introduce us, and that friend had plans to interview young women with personality in Shanghai.

After all, dinner with a lover and a journalist is not a bad thing. Before I left the house that day, I dressed up. I love the feeling of narcissism that comes from looking in the mirror with eyebrows and lips painted and blush shadow applied, and for that reason I would like to be a woman in my next life. I would like to be a woman in my next life for this reason. Being well-dressed without showing chisel marks, being reserved, and being able to wow people at a moment’s notice are the qualities that Shanghai women are born with, which can be seen in the smallest of details.

The photo book said that black was the lucky color of my sign, and I wore a black turtleneck and tights, a pair of boots with a frighteningly high heel, my hair in a simple bun with an ivory pipe, and the silver chain that Tin-Tin gave me on my hand. This outfit gave me the security of knowing I was beautiful.

Monthebund restaurant on the Bund, which is known for expensive and not delicious food, a pair of Australian sisters opened a restaurant, business is good, working in Pudong foreigners are grouped together across the river to eat here, two-meter-high lampposts, carved iron railings, the restaurant is set up in a large and inappropriate, but also in line with the aesthetic interests of Mark their people’s rigor, simplicity. The only charming thing is the big balcony outside the restaurant, where you can enjoy the view of both sides of the river.

Mark’s journalist friend’s name is Luande, black hair and eyes, his grandfather’s generation is an immigrant from Turkey to Germany, at first we talked about soccer and philosophy, with the Germans talk about soccer although a little inferior, but in terms of philosophy my country is not inferior, Luande worship Confucius, Laozi, the former encourages him to travel around the world in search of the unchanging truth of mankind, the latter in his pain and loneliness to comfort him, a little like Morphine.

At Luander’s suggestion, I began to recount my previous experiences, including the collection of novels that had caused a strange reaction, as well as my understanding of my relationship with my parents’ generation and my successive boyfriends, and when I got to Tin-Tin I glanced at Mark, who was slicing up a piece of leg of lamb seared in vegetable gravy, and pretended not to hear me.

I speak frankly, every day is my only love, God’s gift to me, although I have always foreseen that this is a hopeless love, but I do not want to and can not change anything, to death will not regret. When it comes to death, I don’t think I’m afraid of it, I’m only afraid of living a boring life, so I write. My English is not particularly good, individual words and phrases need to be translated by Mark, who has always been serious about helping me.

Mark always pretended to be just a friend, but he couldn’t help staring at me and telling some jokes. For example, when he first learned Chinese, he used to say “briefcase” instead of “wrapping”, and one day when he was about to invite his Chinese colleagues to have dinner, he was halfway to the door, felt his pocket, and awkwardly said to his colleague, “Sorry, I don’t have my foreskin with me. One day when he was about to invite his Chinese colleagues to dinner, he touched his pockets halfway and awkwardly said to his colleague, “Sorry, I don’t have my purse with me.”

I laughed out loud as he made three jokes with color. His hand searched for my leg under the table, a risky move, I’ve written novels with scenes of touching the wrong person under the table. But he found my knee with such precision that it tickled me, and I couldn’t help but laugh, and Luander looked at me as I laughed and said, “Just laugh, and I’ll take some pictures of you.”

I asked Mark in Chinese: “Isn’t it not a good idea to do an interview like this, just to satisfy a little German curiosity, mysterious big country in the East, young rebellious female writer and so on?”

“No, no, I love your novels, and I’m sure many people will respect you, and one day your novels will be translated into German.”

After dinner, we went to Goya on Xinhua Road, a bistro known for its forty-plus martinis and sofas all over the place, branching candelabras, voluptuous floor-to-ceiling drapes, and absolutely hypnotic music. I liked the owners, a beautiful young couple back from the U.S. The hostess, Song Jie, could paint well, and the pallor of her face was the most mysterious kind of whiteness I’ve ever seen on a woman, one that no one else could imitate with any amount of white powder.

We ordered our drinks separately and I asked the bartender to change the disk, I knew they had portishead’s “Numy”, such music with such a drink is the right feeling. For a while Tin-Tin and I used to come here for a drink, the place was like an ancient ship sunk at the bottom of the sea, at times there was a kind of heavy sleepiness pressing down from the ceiling and onto the head, intoxicating, the wine would get more and more drunk, the couch sank in more and more and you could often smell the anesthesia. From time to time people would drink and fall asleep with their heads lolling against the couch, then wake up, drink again, and sleep a little longer until they woke up with the sound of a pretty woman’s laughter from somewhere; all in all, it was actually a very dangerous and gentle place to take a ride in when one wanted to lose some of one’s self for a while.

I always run into some famous showbiz insiders, painters, musicians, media guys from the Shanghai Bund, and even if they all know each other here, they just nod and say how are you? Mark was sitting next to me, talking to Andrew Lu about something in German, a language that isolated me from their world. I drank to myself, it was nice to drink with my neck craned back, I would think of a swan in my dreams and I sank in a sad and elegant mood of self indulgence.

Mark’s hands came to greet my hips and waist again without moving, and I suddenly saw my cousin Jusha and a familiar man’s face walk into my field of vision. My eyes widened as she and Dick walked in intimately holding hands, and in almost a second they saw me as well. They didn’t have any perverse expressions but quickly walked towards us.

Mark recognized Judy and called her by her English name, “Hi Judy.”

After Zhu Sha newly jumped to that German company, Mark was her boss. Hearing me introduce Jusha as my cousin, Mark gave me a surprised look, “You don’t look alike at all,” he said, “but you’re both smart and charming girls.” He was revealingly complimentary, probably unprepared for the sudden encounter here with a subordinate of the company and a cousin of his secret lover. I can imagine him at work in a different way, strict, serious, meticulous, telling his staff what to do, following the rules and regulations, like a fully oiled, high-precision machine, such as the German clock on the wall of my apartment, which is as reliable as the seconds are.

As if Vermilion had guessed my relationship with Mark, she smiled at me and winked. I noticed that she was wearing a G2000 cut-waisted jacket, standing out like a model stepping out of a Parisian spring advertising poster.

Yet there was something else that caught my attention, Dick, the pale, handsome painter, was with my cousin, holding hands, obviously not just any friends, they looked like hot lovers, but where was Madonna?

The music and the alcohol made me drowsy and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Jusha and Dick had already left and Andrew Lu wanted to go back to the Galaxy Hotel where he was staying. Mark said to him, “First I’ll take you back to the hotel,” and he turned back to me and said, “And then I’ll take you back.”

I was probably really drunk and leaned my head on Mark’s shoulder, sniffing the floral scent from the Scandinavian earth and the faint odor of fox, an exotic and sensual body odor that probably impressed me the most about him. The car passed the Galaxy Hotel to drop off Luander and drove toward my place. I obediently crouched in his arms, he was silent, the window into the neighborhoods and streetlights swept past, I think I’m still not clear in his eyes what kind of role I am, but it does not matter, he will not be for my divorce will not be for my bankruptcy, and I did not offer him all the light all the heat, life is like this, in the Libido release and the transfer of power between men and women to spend away the days and years.

The car pulled up to my place, and I admit I was a little sad, as I always am when I’ve been drinking. He got out of the car with me and went upstairs. I didn’t say “no”. I didn’t say “no”. As he started to undress me, the phone rang and I picked it up, Tin Tin’s voice.

His voice was distant and clear, the microphone had the occasional nuisance sound of static and the sound of a cat purring, he said he was staying in a hostel near the beach, affected by the economic crisis in Southeast Asia, the price of the room and the food were cheap, the cost of a day would not be more than 200 bucks, and he was the only one who went to the medicinal baths and saunas, and he sounded pleasant, he said the kitten thread ball was also very good, and he was planning on going to the seaside for a swim tomorrow.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to him as Mark picked me up and set me down by the phone on the table, me holding the microphone in one hand and gripping his shoulder with the other, his head arching over my stomach, his tongue licking my pussy through my panties, making me all tingly and weak. I tried to sound as natural as possible, asking Tin-Tin how warm it was there, what kind of dresses the girls wore, if he’d ever been to Coconut Grove, and that there weren’t any bad ideas about him, right, and just because people looked as if they had nothing to do with it didn’t mean they didn’t have bad intentions – keep an eye on the money and stuff, oh.

Tien laughed and said I was a worse skeptic than he was, believing in nothing, thinking the worst of everything, and holding a negative attitude toward life in my bones. Tian Tian’s words floated gently into my ears like a feather and then melted away, I didn’t listen to anything, his laughter made me think that his ability to adapt to unfamiliar environments was better than I had imagined, and his voice turned into moonlight music under Beethoven’s keys to stop my inner turmoil, and I only felt a kind of happiness coming up from the soles of my feet and heart, this kind of joy of stretching my bones was white, and it was the mellow smell of milk with a purity of one hundred percent, and I felt a kind of happiness coming up from the bottom of my feet, and this kind of happiness was white and mellow smell of milk. Tin-Tin bid me good night, and on the phone he kissed me very loudly a few times.

I put the phone down and Mark shot that thing all over my skirt, so white and so much like one hundred percent milk.

There is a saying that “love always needs to be taboo”, taboo is like the best aphrodisiac in the world, when one day at Tien’s funeral I recalled a lot of things from the past, I remembered this telephone experience, as if it carried some kind of symbolic meaning, as if it wasn’t someone else but Tien who was in my body, Tien came to me through a telephone line that went across the world, his whispers were in my ears, the sound of his breath and laughter were in the most sensitive part of my mind. His whispers were in my ears, his breath and laughter were in the most sensitive part of my mind. I closed my eyes and experienced for the first time the clear and weird physical sensations that Tien had given me, the light, decaying, hissing and hissing currents of air, a psychic baptism that I could not talk to ordinary people about, and I had always had a strong feeling about the word “psychic”. I had always been interested in the word “psychic,” and I had experienced for the first time the peculiar sensation of the fusion of mind and body, and I was determined to have faith in the world’s religions, and above all I was vaguely seized by the maddening thought that, sooner or later, I would have a child. A light wind lifted golden flowers in the foggy darkness, and a baby with wings suddenly flew up out of the darkness, this man’s or that man’s, this time or that time.

When Mark left I found the bag on the floor, he first came to China has been misinterpreted as “foreskin” that thing, I was weak, but still interested in looking through, there are a few VISA, MASTER card, four sides of the club’s VIP card, there is also a family photo, I realized he not only has a temperament is not bad, I realized that not only did he have an attractive wife who smiled charmingly, but he also had a three- or four-year-old son with blond curls and blue eyes, like him.

I opened my eyes wide, shaking my head, they all look very happy, some let bystanders jealous, I kissed Mark’s handsome face, and then did not think about it, hand from the purse in the thick stack of yuan in the pull out a few, casually clip into a book, anyway, he will not find less than this area of a few banknotes, with foreigners to deal with a long time, you will know that most of the time they are like children and teenagers like a simple and bright, like is like like, no interest will tell you immediately, but also lack of heart, unlike some Chinese men who are always careful. Like is like, not interested in immediately tell you, but also lack of heart eyes, unlike some Chinese men like when the heart as fine as hair.

I pondered afterwards the psychological state behind my act of thievery, I thought it might be out of jealousy for the happy atmosphere in that family photo, and a subtle punishment for my German lover to lose some yuan in an unaware state, and then yearn for me again with a passionate desire, I had no expectation to speak of or responsibility for our relationship, lust was lust, and the only way to combat the danger of turning from carnal desire to love at any time was with Money and betrayal can only combat the danger of turning from carnal desire to love at any time, it turns out that I have always been afraid that I will be truly obsessed with Mark, and never leave this hot, exciting, and refreshing underground love again.

Half an hour later, Mark came knocking on my door, panting, and I handed him the St. Laurent wallet, which he kissed me, stuffed in his pocket, and then smiled as he turned and scurried down the stairs.

From my balcony I saw him get back into the Buick. The car quickly disappeared in a puff of smoke into the deserted streets late at night.

xv. cold christmas

Wu Dawei sat in a leather swivel chair and kept fucking snot, the evening paper said a type A3 viral flu affected the city, citizens should pay attention to hygiene to prevent disease, ensure sleep and food nutrition, air circulation. I opened the window and sat in the fresh air window and tried to sit as comfortably as possible.

“I always dream of a room with a pot of sunflowers, the flowers wilted and then the seeds floated away and grew more sunflowers that made people afraid, and a cat that tried to eat the flowers and jumped out of the window when it jumped up and crashed and disappeared, and all at once I stood outside the door of the room and witnessed this and my heart raced, and then there was another dream that told of a box that was in, and I opened the box and inside there was a smaller smaller box, and then I opened it again and there was an even smaller box, until finally the boxes all disappeared and I was holding a book in my hand and it was heavy, and then I was going to send the book away but forgot the address forgot who to send it to.”

Wu Dawei looked at me kindly, “You’ve always had fears within you about some kind of change that would happen to your body and your writing getting into trouble, such as pregnancy such as the prospect of a book being published self-expression anxiety, you long for your heart to want to do what you want to do, but there’s always something that’s jamming you up, do you see what I mean? These come right out of your own imaginary prison, and Von Maas Merton said, ‘The only real pleasure in the world is to escape from the prison set up by the self,’ tell me about your love life.”

“It’s not too bad, but it’s not complete either.”

“What are you worried about?”

“The emptiness that can never be eliminated and at the same time there is a love juice bulging in my chest that I can’t release, the boy I love can’t give me complete sex once, can’t even give me a sense of security, he smokes narcotics, is out of touch with the world, carries his kittens and goes to the south as if he will leave me at any moment, and by that I mean probably for goodbye. A man who is married but gives me physical fulfillment over and over again, but it does not work for the feelings against the inner emptiness, we communicate with our bodies, we exist by our bodies for each other, but our bodies are precisely the barrier between us, preventing us from further spiritual communication.”

“It’s the fear of being alone that makes a person learn to love.”

“I think too much, and ninety-nine point nine percent of men wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with a woman who thinks too much, would they, and I can still remember my dreams and record them.”

“That’s why life is not simple, not everyone can pay attention to their thoughts and every move, you know how to do it yourself, use psychoanalysis to overcome despair, you’re not willing to be ordinary, you’re naturally charismatic.” His words were so gentle that I wondered if he often soothed his female patients in this way. Since I had found him as an analyst, I was less likely to ask him out for dinner, a game of ball, or a dance in the usual way, for fear that my every move would be analyzed at all times under his watchful eye.

The sun shines in, some of the floating dust tiptoes around like particles of thought, and I prop my head on the couch in a daze, reflecting on whether I’m really awakening to the growth of my feminine consciousness. Am I an attractive woman, am I a bit of a hypocrite, a snob, a nerd, a cascade of problems in my life that I’m going to spend my life’s energy on just so I can overcome this incoming force.

Christmas Day. No one called me all day. The sky was gray at dusk, but it wasn’t going to snow, and Shanghai hadn’t had snow when it was supposed to for a long time. I watched movies all day, smoked a pack and a half of Seven Star cigarettes, and was bored out of my mind. I called Tiantian, but no one answered. Called Mark number dialed halfway I gave up, tonight I did want to talk to a what man, stay together ah.

I walked around the house in annoyance and finally decided that I had to get out of the house, where to I didn’t know, but I had enough money in my handbag and my face was made up that I figured something was going to happen tonight that was supposed to happen.

I hailed a cab and the driver asked, “Where to, miss?” I said, “Let’s just take a drive.” The streets outside the car were full of festive atmosphere, and although Christmas is not part of Chinese culture, it gives the young and trendy crowd a reason to revel in it. Couples were seen going in and out of restaurants and department stores with shopping bags in hand, and stores were offering discounts. It’s going to be another night of bubbly fun.

The driver kept striking up a conversation with me, and I didn’t bother to pay attention to him. The cab’s radio was playing a guitar solo at the moment, and then the host’s voice buzzed about a band that had stood out from the so-called Beijing New Sound, and then strangely enough, I heard a name I knew well, Park Yong.

A few years ago when I was still at the magazine I went to Beijing to interview him and the rest of the band, we were walking hand in hand across Tiananmen Square at 12 o’clock at night, he stood on an overpass and said he wanted to perform performance art on me, he unzipped his zipper and peed into the sky, then he held my head and kissed me on the lips. This crude form of romance intrigued me, but I was worried that during sex with him he would ask to pee on me or some other weird trick, and we stayed simply friends and had very little contact.

Park Yong’s voice came over the airwaves as he answered a question from the host about the mediocrity of music-making, and then he started talking to some listeners. One of the girls asks him if “China has a rock ‘n’ roll that is truly its own,” and another boy asks him how the women around him inspire him musically. He coughed a few times and babbled to the kids in a low, sexy voice. I called to the driver, “Wait here for me for a few minutes.”

I said getting out of the car and walking to a roadside phone booth, inserting my IC card, and luckily, I dialed the radio hotline without any effort.

“Hello, Park Yong.” I said happily, “I’m Nico.” Then I heard an exaggerated and moving greeting, “Hi, Merry Christmas!” He was too shy to call me “baby” on his radio program. “Come to Beijing tonight,” he said flippantly and happily, “we’ve got a Show at the Busy Bee and then an all-night party.”

“Okay, on Christmas Eve I’ll fly in to hear your music.”

Hanging up the phone, I took a few steps back and forth outside the phone booth, then decisively got into the cab and told the driver, “Drive to the airport, as fast as you can.”

There was a flight to Beijing just after five o’clock, and I got my ticket at the airport and sat down for coffee in the cafe next to the terminal. I didn’t feel particularly happy, I just felt that I was no longer unhappy and disoriented, at least at this moment I had a goal to act on, I had something to do, and that was to go to Beijing to listen to a lively rock and roll in order to spend the Christmas without a lover and inspiration.

The airplane took off on time and landed on time. Although I’m afraid of airplanes falling out of the sky every time I go on an airplane, because these big, stupid iron guys always fall out easily in thin air, I still love going on airplanes.

I went straight to Park Yong’s house, knocked on the door, and was told by a neighbor that he was not in. I stood in that courtyard in vain for a while and decided to have a nice dinner alone. I hadn’t eaten a bite of the snacks from the airplane, and the restaurants in Beijing were slightly more expensive than the ones in Shanghai, but the taste of the food was fortunately less disappointing. From time to time I was ogled by the northern men at the neighboring table, whose characteristic northern look would have comforted a Shanghai woman alone here for Christmas, or at least proved that she was still an attractive woman.

The Busy Bee, a bar traditionally known for its rockers, is home to a myriad of long-haired or short-haired, sickly-faced but tight-assed musicians who compete in the speed of their guitars as well as the means of wooing beautiful women. The women here (Groupie or Boneskin) all have round breasts like Hollywood actresses and are at least in some way attractive to the badasses who hang out in the music scene (rich, powerful, talented, physical, etc.).

The music was loud, the smell of cigarettes, booze and perfume was quite heavy, and through the aisle, which was so dark that it looked like there was a light control, I saw Park Yong. He was smoking a cigarette and stringing a string of silver beads.

I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder, and he looked up, mouth wide open, before dropping his hand into the hand of the girl next to him and jerking me into a big hug. “You’re really here? –Crazy Shanghai woman. How are you?” He took a serious look at my face, “Seems to have lost a lot of weight, who’s torturing you? Speak up and I’ll take care of it for you. Torturing a beautiful woman is a mistake and a sin.” It is said that Beijing men can say whole truckloads of passionate words, and after that, they will pull down and no one will mention it again, but I still enjoy this kind of verbal soothing like flames and ice cream.

We kissed each other very loudly on the mouth and he pointed to the girl next to him and introduced me, “My friend, Rosie, the photographer.” To Rosie, “CoCo from Shanghai, Fudan graduate writing novels.” We shook hands. She’s already strung the string of silver beads, and Park Yong takes it and puts it on his wrist, “I just accidentally broke it during dinner.” He grunted, ruffled his hair and gestured to the waiter, “How about a beer?” I nodded, “Thanks.”

Someone on the stage was organizing a few wires, it looked like the show was about to start, “I’ve been to your house, you’re not there, – by the way, can I sleep at your place tonight?” I asked Park Yong. “Hey, don’t sleep, just play all night. I’ll introduce you to some cool guys.” “I don’t want to.” I bristled as his girlfriend pretended she didn’t hear what we were saying, her gaze hidden from the low hanging hair on either side of her face as she stared expressionlessly at something. She had a pretty nose and long, sleek hair, with ample breasts, and wore a long plush dress in green and yellow like the exotic colors of the Nile.

A very beautiful man approached him, so beautiful that one was afraid of falling in love with him, but also afraid of being rejected. He was smooth-skinned, tall, with shiny hair that stood up like grass, charming, smoky, poetic eyes that made a fox-like look when he looked at people, called “foxgaze,” and features that were bohemian and soul-stirring. What is striking is that he has a beard on his chin, adding a rough, otherworldly look to his clean-cut sweetness.

He was obviously familiar with Park Yong and Rosie and came over to say hello. Park Yong introduced us to each other, his name is Flying Apple, he is a famous stylist in Beijing and even in the whole country, with a green card, traveling all over the world to capture the inspiration of beauty and the latest trends, and all the actresses in China consider it a blessing to find him to do their styling.

We chatted, he kept smiling, his eye’s like peach blossoms, I couldn’t help but feel bad, I didn’t dare to look at him much for fear that my eyes would glaze over. I do not intend to have any sexual encounters on this night, everywhere women are very abusive, after 30 years of age their faces will reveal all the indulgence and revelry they have experienced, I hope that sometimes men will be like to the writer rather than to the woman to me. I deluded myself and admonished myself.

The band took the stage and the electric guitar roared like a jungle beast and the crowd was instantly energized, they were all shaking their bodies like they were electrified and tossing their heads like they were about to snap off at any moment. I squeezed into the crowd and swayed along, I was really happy now because I had no thoughts, because I was giving up my power and giving it all up to the music of hellfire.

Find the scene of carnal revelry at the scene of music.

Faces bluing, ankles hardening, strangers flirting with each other in the burning air. Not a fly could fly in and escape this dubious havoc of high decibels and agitated particles.

I’m happy as hell, a man sings hysterically from the stage.

Flying Apple had been standing next to me, he touched my hip and smiled at me, I couldn’t stand this beautiful man, this bisexual who kept smiling at me with traces of makeup on his face. His eyebrows his sideburns his cheeks were powdered, he chased men as well as women, he said his girlfriends were uniformly jealous of his boyfriends, and he was always stuck in love trouble not knowing where to go. I said that 800 million farmers in the country are still worried about how to run a well-off it, you are already a particularly happy person.

He thinks I’m very smart and interesting, see my face is quiet, sweater buttons tightly like a lady, but I often say “fuck”. I don’t say anything, but in my heart I think who told you to be so beautiful, make me become so nervous. I did not like to say foul language.

“You have a lovely ass.” He yelled in my ear. The music was too loud.

It was 2:30 a.m., the sky was moonless, and there was cold frost on the roofs. The cab drove through the city of Beijing, which on a winter’s night looked as big as a medieval village.

At 3:00 a.m. we arrive at the apartment of another rock and roll brother. The house is huge, and the lady of the house is an old American who used to be a famous bonehead in the rock and roll world, and is now married to this big-nosed drummer. The drummer has enclosed a small greenhouse in the quadrangle, in which marijuana is supposedly being cultivated. A group of people drink, listen to songs, play mahjong, play computer games, dance and talk about love.

At 4:00 a.m., some people start making love in the warm bathtub of their host’s house, others have fallen asleep, others are touching each other on the couch, and the rest of us leave to eat ramen at a Xinjiang restaurant. I tugged at Park Yong’s shirt for fear of somehow getting lost in Night Beijing, where being alone is not fun and scary because there’s a knife-like chill in the air at this hour.

Flying Apple disappeared, he wasn’t in the group of people eating ramen together. I guessed five possibilities, one of which was that he was already dominated by someone else, or he dominated someone else, who knows. He’s always the pretty hunter or hunted. It’s a good thing I didn’t leave him a phone number or I would have been psychologically unbalanced, as if I had been abandoned. I was the most boring and miserable me of the year on Christmas Eve.

At 5:30 a.m., I took some pills and fell asleep on the couch at Park Yong’s house, the jukebox was playing extremely quiet Schubert lyric miniatures, it was quiet all around me, and occasionally you could hear trucks on the main road outside, I couldn’t sleep, sleep was like shadows with little wings far away from my body, what was left was awake consciousness and a powerless shell. The deep gray darkness soaked me like water and I felt swollen, light and heavy. This hallucination of feeling that I had traveled to another world wasn’t particularly unpleasant, it wasn’t clear between what seemed like a dream and what seemed like reality whether I was dead or alive, except that my eyes were still wide open looking at the ceiling looking at the darkness around me.

I finally held the phone and leaned over the couch to call Tin-Tin. He hadn’t quite woken up yet, “Who am I?” I asked him, “It’s CoCo …… I called you and you weren’t home.” He said softly, not in a scolding tone, as if he was relieved that I would be well organized.

“I’m in Beijing.” I said, my heart was seized by a sour and tired tenderness, I don’t know how I can be in Beijing at this moment, I am so restless, a restless heart is always floating around, not resting for a moment, so tired, so useless, sometimes even writing can’t give me a sense of security and fulfillment, there is nothing but flying around in airplanes, only insomnia night after night, and music, alcohol, and sex can’t save me either, and I can’t sleep when I lie in the the center of darkness like a living dead man just couldn’t sleep, I thought God would let me marry a kind blind man because all I could see was darkness. I cried on the phone.

“Don’t cry CoCo, I’ll feel bad if you cry, what happened?” Tien said confused, still not out of the deep sleep he was in under the hypnosis of his medication. He basically takes his meds every night, and I’m pretty much the same.

“It’s nothing, the concert of my friends was quite nice, I thought it was hilarious …… but I couldn’t sleep. I think I will die with my eyes open …… I don’t have the strength to go back to Shanghai, and you are not in Shanghai, I miss you …… When will I see you?”

“You come south, it’s nice here …… How’s your novel coming along?”

I was silent when he mentioned the novel, and I knew for sure I would return to Shanghai to continue writing. Tien liked me that way, and I knew I could only be that way, or I would lose the love of many people, including my own. Only writing can set me apart from other mediocre and annoying people, make me different, bring me back from the ashes of the bohemian rose.

Sixteen. The Frustrated Horse ……

Back in Shanghai. Everything went on according to a certain track that was both disorganized and predetermined.

I felt myself thinning out. Body juices turned into ink gurgling into the tip of the pen and flowing into the words of the novel.

Xiao Sichuan’s takeout was delivered on time by a boy named Xiaoding. When I was in a good mood, I would lend him some books to read, and once he took a small article published in the “Voices” section of Xinmin Evening News, I read it over and was surprised to find that his writing was good and he had a lot of ideas. He coyly told me that his ideal is to write a book. Kundera predicted that by the 21st century everyone could be a writer, just by picking up a pen and speaking their words. The desire to speak out is a spiritual need for everyone to exist as a living human being.

I write all night in my pajamas, then wake up early in the morning from my desk with purple ink marks on my forehead, look around, it’s empty, Tin-Tin isn’t there, and the phone never rings (I always unplug the phone line and forget to plug it back in), and I walk over to my bed, lay down, and go back to sleep.

It was about ten o’clock in the evening one day when I was suddenly awakened by a knock at the door. I patted my chest, thankful that the knocking had saved me in time from the nightmare I had just had, and dreamed that I was getting on an old steam train made of tin, with strangers filling the benches on either side of the car, and that I was watching the train move along right in front of my face, and that a man in a uniform with a helmet had jumped on board, and that I had hesitated for a second, and the train had whizzed on by. I cried with despair and hated myself just because I misread my watch or mistook the time of another train for this one and I didn’t rush on at the last minute maybe I chickened out, the dream seemed to imply that Tin-Tin and I were two trains that crossed paths.

I opened the door wearily to a black Madonna with a cigarette in her mouth, wearing black made her look especially slim and trim.

My mind was still stuck on the dream I had just had, and I didn’t notice that unusual expression on her face. She seemed to have been drinking, wearing overly strong opium perfume, her hair was tied high on top of her head like an ancient woman’s, and her eyes sparkled like shards of broken glass. There was an air of discomfort.

“God, have you been in this house all this time? Still writing all the time?” She took a few steps around the house.

“I just woke up from a nightmare. By the way, did you eat dinner?” I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t eaten three times a day.

“Well, let’s go out and have a nice dinner, my treat,” she said as she twirled out the butt of her cigarette and tossed me my jacket before sitting down on the couch and waiting for me to get up and down and pack up and go out.

Her white Santana 2000 was parked downstairs by the road. She opened the door, started the engine, I sat next to her, put on the seat belt, the car is very fast and furious drive up. Windows are wide open, smoking in the wind is a pleasing thing, there is a kind of all the sorrow with the wind sweep away the illusion.

Madonna drove her car onto the viaduct, since more and more elevated highways appeared in the city, a batch of biker maniacs also appeared on the elevated highway immediately. A love song by Zhang Xinzhe was playing on the cassette, “Do you have another him, tell me, don’t be afraid of my heartbreak.” It was only then that I realized she looked different, and then I thought back to the time I ran into Dick and Vermilion in Goya, and I reacted.

Madonna has always had an elusive quality about her, there is so much improvisation, randomness and complexity in her life that I’ve always lacked some sort of clear speculative ability about her past, present and future, and I’m not sure if she’s playing it real with Dick, because from what she sounds like she’s had quite a few little boyfriends like Dick. By that reasoning, Dick shouldn’t have been the last gentle little dessert in her life’s journey either.

“What do you want to eat? Chinese, Western, or Japanese?”

“Whatever.” I said.

“What an irresponsible thing to say. I hate it when people keep saying ‘whatever, whatever’, so you might as well think about it and pick one.”

“Japanese food.” I said. The culture of this city has a serious pro-Japanese streak; songs by Naomi Amuro, books by Haruki Murakami, TVs by Takuya Kimura, and countless Japanese cartoon comics and Nissan appliances are heartily loved. I, on the other hand, do not hate the refreshingly elegant Japanese food and Japanese cosmetics. Parked on East Lake Road, Oedo Japanese Cuisine.

Lights poured like amber liquid on the tiles, and waiters dressed like puppets marched through the hall in a neat and orderly fashion. Egg custard, tuna sushi, cold cucumber, and seaweed and shrimp soup were served one by one.

“You know what? I broke up with Dick.” She said to me.

“Yes?” I look at her, and she blushes furtively. “Why?” It’s true that I’m not quite sure of the reason. But I don’t want to say that I’ve seen Jusha and Dick together at the goya, Jusha is my cousin and Madonna is my friend, I can only try to be as objective as I can about it.

“Are you still in the dark? –It was your cousin, your Jusha cousin who took my man.” She grunted and drained the sake in one gulp.

“Oh, could it be possible that Dick initiated the love affair with my cousin?” I said calmly. Because Zhu Sha in my mind is a true lady, in the morning put on neither thick nor light makeup to take the air-conditioned bus or taxi to the office, at noon in the decoration of the fashionable cafes and restaurants to eat “white-collar set meal”, in the evening at the beginning of the lights when the cat walk through the Huai Hai Road Meimei department store does not move the world’s top designer brands on display in the window, in the Changshu Road exit elevator to take the subway, the face has been made up once a faintly faintly. Among the women who get off the elevator at the Changshu Road exit and take the subway, there is a faint weariness and a faint satisfaction on their faces after applying makeup, including Zhu Sha. And this city is also because there are many women like Zhu Sha, and become a colorful, flamboyant in the still have elegant, introverted temperament of the city, Zhang Eileen penned the bewitching girlhood grudges, Chen Danyan penned the exquisite sadness happened here, some people call Shanghai “the city of the women,” which may be relative to those who have the masculinity of the northern city. This is perhaps in contrast to the northern cities with a masculine style.

“I thought I had Dick pegged, that I could guess what he was thinking, but I still didn’t expect him to lose interest in me so soon. I’ve got a lot of money, but isn’t it hard on my face?” She smiled and grabbed my hand, tilting her face up slightly in the light.

What I saw was a face that could not be described as beautiful but was unforgettable, a pointed face, slanting tipped flying eyebrows, pale and slightly enlarged pores skin, expensive lipstick so thick that it dripped down, once beautiful, but now the willow is dark, the clouds are crippled, the falling flowers colorful gusts come into the dream, affected by some corrosive joys, fanaticism, dreaming, and these corrosive things knit the obsession in the soft face, making the five senses become sharp, weary, capable of wounding others and easily wounded by them.

She smiled, her eyes red and wet, and she was herself like a history of a woman’s life, a specimen bearing the peculiarly feminine positions, values, and instincts. “Do you really care for Dick?” I asked.

“I don’t know …… always have a bad heart I guess, he’s the one who dumped me …… I felt tired off and never wanted a man again. Probably no little boys are really interested in me either.” She drank sake like water, her face gradually reddened, like a sunflower that had been painted before the return of Van Gogh’s life. When I wasn’t prepared, she suddenly raised her hand and threw a wine glass to the floor in a shower of alabaster shards.

The waiter rushed over, “Sorry, accidental.” I said in a rush.

“Honestly, you’re really quite happy, aren’t you, that you have Tin-Tin and Mark. Isn’t that right? That’s pretty complete, and that’s what makes a woman happy.” She continued to grab my hand and a cold sweat broke out on my palm.

“What Mark?” I forced myself to calm down. At that moment a middle-school-looking waiter was eyeballing us, and two young women talking about their private lives always stood out.

“Don’t you pretend, what can escape my eyes, I have very poisonous eyes. I also have intuition, I wasn’t a mommy in the south for years for nothing.” She smiled, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Tien, that would kill him. He’s too innocent and fragile …… and there’s nothing wrong with you, I can understand you.” I held my head in my hands, the seemingly mild sake was working on me, my head was starting to spin and I was going to fly. “I’m drunk.” I said.

“Go get your face done. It’s right next door.” She paid the bill, took my hand, walked out the door of the restaurant, and pushed open the door to the beauty parlor next door.

Beauty salon is not big, hanging around the wall with some real paintings, it is said that the owner of the beauty salon himself is very artistic, from time to time there will be a man pushed the door, not to see the beauty bed of the woman, but to buy the wall of a Lin Fengmian’s real paintings.

Light music, light fruity scent, light lady’s face.

Madonna and I lay in separate adjoining cots, two slices of cucumber coolly placed over our upper eyes, and we could see nothing. The gentle woman’s fingers traced my face like a fish. The music was hypnotic, and Madonna said she often slept in the beauty parlor while having her face done; that kind of atmosphere belonged to a certain sympathetic tacit understanding between women. The feeling of having a pair of jade hands caressing your face is probably several times better than the thoughtfulness of a man. There was something like the culture of the recondite concubines that pervaded the sophisticated beauty parlor. Someone in one of the beds was tattooing their eyes, and you could hear the slight sizzle of metal scratching into flesh. It was kind of creepy. Then I relaxed and drifted off to sleep with the lovely feeling that I would wake up looking like Elizabeth Taylor.

The white Santana continued to wind its way across the lonely viaduct at night as we listened to the radio and smoked cigarettes, there was a quiet-as-water atmosphere. “I don’t want to go back to my house, it’s too big and quiet, it’s like a grave without a man with me, can I go to your house?” She asked.

I nodded and said yes.

She stayed in the bathroom for a long time, and I dialed the number of the hotel where Tenten was staying, and Tenten’s voice, which seemed sleepy (he’s always sleepy on the phone), reached me like a familiar draught through a long phone line, “Are you asleep already? I’ll call you later then.” I said.

“Oh, no, it’s all right …… I feel very comfortable, as if I had a dream about you, and the sound of birds chirping, ugh, I want to eat your borscht …… Is Shanghai cold?” He inhaled his nose Yu, as if he had some cold.

“It’s okay, Madonna’s staying with me tonight, she’s in a bad mood, Dick and Vermilion have become a couple …… Are you and Threadbare all right?”

“The thread ball was having diarrhea, I carried it to the hospital and had a shot and some medicine, I had a bit of a cold, I came back from swimming in the sea like this, but it’s okay, right, I finished reading Hitchcock’s Countdown, I think the style is like some of Gu Long’s wuxia books, by the way, I want to tell you about something I saw with my own eyes, just yesterday when I was sitting on a bus, I ran into a young hooligan, who looked like he was only fourteen or fifteen years old, he snatched the gold necklace from the neck of a middle-aged woman next to me in public, and no one tried to stop him, so he ran off the bus and ran away without a trace.”

“That’s horrible, be careful oh I miss you.”

“Me too, it’s nice to miss someone, isn’t it?”

“When will you be back?”

“After you read these books and do some sketches later, the people here are different from Shanghai, it feels like somewhere in Southeast Asia.”

“Okay, kiss.” So there was a lot of smacking on the phone, and finally on the count of 1, 2, and 3 both sides hung up at the same time.

Madonna called to me from the bathroom, “Give me a bathrobe, honey.” I opened the closet and pulled out one of Tin-Tin’s cotton robes; she had left the bathroom door open and was drying herself off in the smoke.

I threw my robe over and she made a Monroe-esque teasing gesture, “What do you think of my body? Is it still seductive?” I clasped my hands to my chest and looked up and down, then told her to turn her back around, which she did obediently, then turned around again.

“Well?” She stared at me warmly.

“Honestly?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“There are a lot of men branded, at least, a hundred of them.”

“What do you mean?” She still hadn’t put on her robe.

“The breasts are nice, though not large enough to flow delicately into the palms of your hands, the legs are graceful, and the neck is the most beautiful part of your body, the kind of neck that only a noblewoman of the upper class in the West would have, but this body is tired and retains too many memories of the opposite sex.”

She had been squeezing her breasts, full of pity and as if they were precious, and with my words stroking downward to her long legs and upward to her long, slender neck. “I love myself, the more tired and old I get the more I love …… you don’t like it?”

I stepped away from her, the way she touched herself was overwhelming, and both men and women would react. “It’s more comfortable here than at my house!” She yells after me.

She wanted to talk to me, and we slept in the same bed, under a duck down comforter, legs touching legs. The light was screwed in dimly, and you could see over her nose to the closet and the window. When I was a student at Fudan University, the girls in the same room had this habit of sharing the same bed, and the best place for women to share each other’s secrets, joys, desires, humiliations, and dreams was probably in the same bed. It involves a strange friendship, a trust that comes from intuition, and a subconscious anxiety that men can’t understand. She talks about her past, and in exchange I contribute my own, though not as colorfully as she does, of course.

Her life was more like a line of drunken, wild cursive calligraphy, while mine, was a line of rounded script; the pain, the angst, the joy, the stress didn’t make me seem any more weird or out of place, I was still the rounded, cute girl, at least in the eyes of some men.

Born in a shantytown in Zhabei District, Shanghai, Madonna grew up with aspirations to be an artist (which resulted in a number of artist lovers), but skipped school at 16. Her father and an older brother, both heavy drinkers, used her as a target to beat her up when they got drunk, and gradually this violence took on a sexually aggressive character as they kicked her ass and threw cigarette butts at her chest. Her mother was too weak to protect her.

One day she boarded a train alone and came to Guangzhou. She had no choice, in a lounge as an escort, when the southern city is in the wave of unprecedented development, there are a lot of rich people, rich people have a lot of money to the point of staggering. She has the Shanghai girl’s unique smarts, a hand and a throw of the temperament is also superior to other women from other provinces, the guests like her, holding her, willing to do things for her. Her status in the circle has risen sharply, and she has started to recruit some girls under her, and started her own business.

At the time, she was nicknamed “Nui Nui”, a Shanghainese term for a pretty, white girl. She wore a long black dress with thin straps, a diamond ring given by her admirer, and black hair draped over her pale face, like a queen who lived behind the curtains of a deep palace and wielded supreme power woven through an intricate web of relationships.

“The scenes of that period of my life look back really like a lifetime ago, and can be summarized by a simple title, Beauty and the Beast, and I am the one who has mastered the rules of taming men, and maybe later, when I am old, I will also write a book specifically for women to teach them how to correctly master the psychology of men, and what their inferiority is, just like hitting the snake to hit seven inches. Men also have the weakest points. Little girls nowadays are precocious and a little more powerful and brave than we were then, but women still have to suffer in many places.” She shifted the position of her pillow to be more comfortable and looked at me, “Isn’t that right?”

I said, “Ultimately, society’s current cultural system devalues the need for women to be conscious of their own value; girls who are powerful are ridiculed as ‘rude,’ and those who are softer are viewed as ‘mindless hollow vases ‘.”

“In short, girls must perfect their minds, and there’s never anything wrong with being smart.” She paused and asked me if I agreed, and I said yes, and while I didn’t want to label myself a feminist warrior, her words were really true. It made me discover that place in her mind where deep thought lurks.

“And how did you marry …… marry your deceased husband?”

“There was an incident that educated me and made me realize that I was just a fading redhead in that circle no matter how much I could call the shots. …… I was particularly fond of a new girl from Chengdu who was a college student from the Sichuan University of Fine Arts, had read a lot of books, and was able to talk to me about art and other topics (I’m sorry if I’m vulgar, but I always have a childish crush on the word art). I’m sorry, I’m very vulgar, but the word “art” always have a childish good feeling, at that time my boyfriend there is also a graduate of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts painters, with Dick as the same as the surrealist paintings), the girl has no place to live, I asked her to live with me. One evening, three men came to the door looking for her. It turned out that she and they are from the same hometown, when they raised money to give the girl to Guangzhou futures speculation, the results of the overnight 100,000 yuan on the speculation is gone, was chopped off the position, the girl was penniless and had to work as a young lady, but she has been hiding from the hometown, and did not notify the news, and finally these men came to the door with a knife. I was taking a bath in the bathroom when they found me and took me away. It was a horrible situation. My room was turned upside down and my jewelry and 30,000 in cash were taken. When I said I had nothing to do with it and to let go of me, they gagged me with a cloth. I think trying to sell me and the girl to transnational traffickers would ship us to Thailand, Malaysia or something like that.”

“We were locked up inside a dark room, my mind was dead and desperate, there was an ominous atmosphere around me of what could happen at any moment, and to think that a few hours ago I was living a life of fine clothes and now I was reduced to a piece of meat to be butchered, what kind of a life I had. They came and beat the girl severely, saying that she was really material for a whore, and then took the cloth out of my mouth as well, and I was determined to seize this opportunity to save my own life against all odds, and I named a long list of black and white characters, from the head of the Public Security Bureau to the mob bosses on every street. They hesitated, and went together to the door to discuss the matter for a long time, as if there was still an argument, and then a taller man came in and said, ‘So you’re the famous foreign inamorata; it’s a misunderstanding; we’ll send you back at once.'”

Her hand was cold as she held mine, her fingers trembling slightly as the narrative unfolded. “So you chose to marry?”

“Yeah, quit the jungle.” She said, “At that time there is a do real estate became a multi-millionaire old man bent on marrying me, and finally overcome with a wrinkled mummy sleep nausea, I still married him, I guess he also can not live long, the results proved that my intuition is right …… now I have the money and freedom, more than most of the woman Happy, and bored out of my mind, but still better than a laid-off woman in a textile factory, I guess.”

“Our neighbor housewife was also laid off, but do not see how miserable, as usual, made hot dishes and hot meals waiting for the husband, the child back, a family of three around the table to eat a happy dinner night, God is fair, give you this will take away your other things, so I sometimes quite understand the meaning of happiness in the lives of our neighbors.”

“Well, even if you have a point, go to sleep.” Hugging my shoulder, his nostrils grew thick and he drifted off to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep very well, she and her story were like a source of light that kept releasing stimulating light into my brain, twelve colors flickering alternately, and this body in particular was still next to me, and I could feel her warmth, her breath, her sadness and her dreams. She existed on the edge of believable and unbelievable, on the edge of fire and ice, with a regal sensuality (which I felt more clearly as a woman) and a lurid sense of death (she had experiences and neuroses that few people have, and could lose control at any moment and hurt someone like a knife).

I tried to break her hands away, the only way to fall asleep was to get away from her. But she held me tighter, and with a dreamy moan, she began to kiss my face passionately, her lips as wet and dangerous as a hungry clam’s. But I wasn’t Dick, or any other man in her life. I pushed her away from me with a deadly push, and she still wasn’t awake. In the haze of the night, she clung to my body like ivy, and I was hot and panicked.

Then she suddenly woke up and opened her eyes, her eyelashes wet, “Why are you holding me?” She chided me in a low voice, but you could still tell she was quite happy.

“You hugged me first.” I whimpered in defense, “Oh,” she sighed, “I was dreaming about Dick …… It could be that I genuinely like the boy, I’m so lonely.” She said, getting up and out of bed, fixing her hair and Tin-Tin’s bathrobe, “Better go sleep next door,” she suddenly laughed as she walked out the door, her face full of a wry expression as she turned to ask me, “Do you like it when I hold you like I just did?”

“GOD!” I made a face at the big flower board. “I think I kind of like you, really, we could do with a better understanding, and that’s probably because our signs are compatible.” She made a gesture to stop me from opening my mouth, “I mean, I could probably be an agent for your beautiful novels, I guess.”

xvii. between mothers and daughters

I sat on the top floor of a double-decker bus and rocked my way through the streets, skyscrapers, and trees that I knew so well, getting off at Hongkou. The 22-story home stood out in the sunlight, the pale yellow color of the building’s facade already slightly dirty from chemicals. My parents lived on the top floor of the building, and from my window the streets, people, and buildings became smaller, a microscopic and colorful bird’s eye view of the city. But the elevation of my house is so high that some of my parents’ friends who are afraid of heights don’t visit often.

Instead, I enjoyed the feeling that the whole building would collapse and crumble at any moment. Unlike many cities in Japan, which are located in earthquake zones, Shanghai has only a few memories of gentle shaking. One of the times I remember is when I had dinner with my former magazine colleagues on Xinle Road. It was an autumn evening, and I threw down the hairy crabs in my hand when the first tremor hit, and jumped down the stairs first, waiting for my colleagues to come down, and then we chatted softly for a while in front of the restaurant. The tremor passed, and we went back upstairs again, and I was filled with the feeling of cherishing life, and I quickly ate up the remaining fat crabs in the plate. fat, big, fat crab.

The elevator is always wrapped in an old uniform of the old man in charge of pressing the button, I will always think of the elevator every floor, the city’s fragile surface breaks a thin seam, elevator up and down, Shanghai will be 0.0001 millimeters per second speed to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean sinking.

The door opened and there was a look of delight on mom’s face, but she restrained herself and remained bland, “I said I’d be here at 10:30, and I’m late again.” Her hair was still carefully baked and oiled and styled, I think it was done right downstairs at the little barber store.

My dad came out at the sound of his voice, chubby, wearing a brand new Crocodile T-shirt and holding a Crown cigar, and I realized almost instantly that after all these years my dad was still quite a delightful, beautiful old man.

I gave him a big hug, “Happy birthday, Professor Ni.” He smiles, his wrinkles spreading, today is his day, a double celebration, both his 53rd birthday and the day he has survived until his hair turns gray and he becomes a full professor. Prof. Ni sounded a lot more appropriate than “Associate Prof. Ni.”

Vermilion came out of my bedroom, where she was still living on loan for the time being, in a newly purchased three-bedroom apartment that was still being renovated. Interestingly enough, my parents were adamant about not charging her rent, and several times they scolded her for sneaking it into their bags or drawers. They had only one reason, “What’s it like to value money so much when you’re a relative? In a commodity society, there are certain principles that must be adhered to as well as family ties, aren’t there?” My father said.

Zhu Sha often send them fruits and other small gifts, this birthday and bought a large box of cigars, Dad only smoked domestic “Crown”, so that he is proud of the Department of some European visiting scholars in his recommendation are also smoked on this Chinese cigars.

I bought a pair of socks for my dad, partly because in my eyes the best gift for a male is socks (I’ve given birthday gift after birthday gift to all my boyfriends), and partly because I’m running out of savings and with a long time to go before I can count on a new book to make me money, I have to economize a bit.

Also visiting were some of Dad’s graduate student disciples, and Mom was chugging away in the kitchen as usual, with the family’s newly hired bellhop helping out. Dad’s study was full of talk, men were talking about some difficult to understand and have no specific meaning. Dad had wanted to introduce one of his disciples to me as a boyfriend, but I didn’t say yes because the bookishness of the boy turned me off. A man, while being knowledgeable, should be able to understand the flavor of the world, know the beauty of a woman, the goodness of a woman, the sorrow of a woman, or at least speak some words of love. You should know that a woman’s love first passes through her ears and then reaches her heart.

I was sitting in a small room talking with Jusha, her hair cut short, according to the style in the latest issue of EllE magazine, it is true that love makes the old look new. She looked radiant (I’d rather believe the light came from love than the Shiseido cream she was using), her eyes were wet and bright, and she sat reclining in a carved wooden chair like an ancient portrait of a lady. “You always wear black.” Vermilion said.

I look at the sweater and skinny pants I’m wearing, “What’s wrong with that?” I said, “Black is my lucky color, and it also makes me look pretty and classy.” She smiled, “But there are other pretty colors too – I was thinking of giving you some clothes.” She stood up and just rummaged through a closet.

I looked at her back and thought to myself that she was always so generous and kind, but this time was she trying to bribe me because I had something to do with her and Dick, I was the one who gave them the chance to meet and Madonna was my friend.

She literally took several fashions that didn’t look old at all and shook them out in front of me one by one so I could look at them. “You keep them, I don’t get to wear fashions a lot, I always stay home in my pajamas and write novels.”

“But you’ll have to meet with booksellers or journalists or something, and sign books, and believe me, you’ll become a very famous public figure.” She smiled and complimented me.

“Tell me about you and Dick.” I said out of the blue, perhaps my words lacked the necessary padding, she froze for a moment and smiled, “It’s nice, we get along quite well.”

They had exchanged address and phone numbers after that lawn party, which Dick had initiated. It had also been Dick who had called her to ask her out in the first place, and before that first date she had thoughtfully hesitated to go on a date with a man eight years her junior, not to mention the fact that he was in a warm relationship with another awesome woman who had been a mommy. But she ends up going anyway.

I can’t tell you why, but perhaps she was tired of her own prudishness, she didn’t want to be always seen as a clean but empty lady, and even a good woman can have a sudden desire to step into another world. As the saying goes, “Nuns are crazy”.

They sat opposite each other in the light of a very unassuming restaurant, her purposely unadorned and her clothes casual. But she still saw a small flame burning in his eyes, like the heart-stopping light Ruth saw in Jack’s eyes in Titanic.

That night she went to Dick’s place, and they made love to Ella Fitzgerald’s jazz arias, and the lovemaking felt like a pattering spring rain. She had never felt anything so marvelous and tender, as if she could love someone to the bone, could melt into water and flow like water over his flesh, following the shape and the sound. She was dizzy.

“Am I a bad woman?” She whispered to her young and crazy lover. He was leaning naked on the bed staring at her and smiling.

“Yes, because you made me fall in love with you.” The young lover replied, “Good woman in life, bad woman in bed, where can I find a woman like you?” He buried his head in her arms, “I guess I’m a Luckyguy.”

She didn’t know how much credibility he had, but she had thought and thought through it, and didn’t worry too much about the future, so she did what she had to do. She doesn’t want to depend on anyone, she has a good career and a smart mind, and she represents a new generation of mentally and materially independent, highly educated women in this city.

“Are you guys, like, going to get married?” I asked curiously, “I’m just concerned about you ……,” I added. I feel like my occupational disease always seems to be built on prying into other people’s privacy. Zhu Sha had just been divorced not long ago and hadn’t known Dick for long, but I felt that Zhu Sha was a woman who was naturally suited to get married and start a family. She’s motherly and responsible.

“I don’t know, but we do have a great understanding between us,” I thought to myself that this understanding should be in every aspect, including in bed, “like to eat the same dishes, listen to the same music, watch the same movies, and when we were kids, we were both left-handed, and were forced by the adults to use our right hands. “She looked at me and smiled, “I don’t think he’s 8 years younger than me at all.”

“The Go beauty Chang Hao is also happily married to a woman eight years his senior.” I smiled back, “Love affairs are one of the most indefinable things out there. …… I’ve never really gotten to know Dick, he’s actually quite introverted, can you grasp him? –Younger artists tend to stir up the maternal side of older women, while the artists themselves are indeterminate and wandering, they look southeast and northwest for just art, not a woman.” I said. In the Dou Wang divorce that was all over the papers a few months later, the hero Dou Wei’s reasoning was that he loved himself and his music more, and that his wife was useless even as a diva in the Asian singing scene.

“You’re an artist, too.” She smiled faintly, with a dignified face, like a jade statue dripping with dew in the park in the early morning, and she stood up, walked to the window, and looked out into the distance. “Well,” she quirked a smile, “talk about your novel, talk about your every day.” Her smile made me suddenly feel that I was in danger of underestimating her power of interpretation of life and that peculiarly feminine intelligence. She was definitely a model of the opinionated middle-class woman in Shanghai.

“How’s Mark these days?” I asked. We hadn’t spoken in a while and I guessed he was busy enjoying time with his family.

“The Christmas break just passed and the company was busy all of a sudden, there was quite a bit of business to rush out – Mark’s an impossible boss to pick on, judgmental and organized and cerebral, except for being too serious at times.” She touched my knee and smiled wickedly, “You two together, but I didn’t expect that.”

“I was attracted to his shapely ass and Nazi-like bones, and as for him, he was probably attracted to my Oriental body, smooth, not as hairy as a foreign woman’s, golden in color, with the mystery of quassia, and the fact that – well, I have a boyfriend who can’t have sex, and the fact that I’m a woman who writes novels. That’s all that attracted us to each other.”

“He has a wife.”

“Don’t worry, I can control myself and won’t get in trouble if I don’t fall in love with him.”

“Are you sure, you won’t fall in love with him?”

“–I don’t want to talk about it. It seems like women are forever talking about men amongst themselves …… It’s time for lunch.”

We walked out of the room together, and Vermilion remembered something and whispered to me that there was a friendly soccer match organized by the German Chamber of Commerce on the playground of the American School of Pudong next Saturday afternoon, and that Mark would be attending, and that he was the front-line scorer for their company team. “I’d like to go to that,” I whispered. “Most likely you’ll get to meet his wife and kids.” She said.

“Well, could be a good show.” I shrugged. Movies depicting a husband, wife, and lover meeting at the same time are always dramatic. I think the director is about to pan the camera on me.

“Eat more,” my mom said as she sat down next to me, “I just learned how to make this peanut and pork knuckle soup.” Her eyes were full of motherly love, and it was this that warmed and pressured me, made me want to jump in and iron out all the anxieties and sorrows of growing up in the womb of motherhood, and also made me want to pull my feet up and run away from the daily square that motherly love had built. Leave me alone, dead or alive, and leave me alone.

“Still ordering takeout food? People have lost a lot of weight …… That boy – how’s Everyday, what are your plans?” Mom continued to ask in a low voice. I kept my head down as I ate, purposely clattering my soup (we weren’t allowed to drink soup out loud in our house). Dad and the students were still talking about international current events as if they had personally been to the White House or the Balkans and knew all about developments in Iraq or Kosovo, and could even name some of the details, such as the fact that one of the students knew that when Clinton made his speech affirming his innocence in the face of the first congressional investigation into his scandal, he wore a ZOI brand tie from Lewinsky around his neck, a very eerily suggestive detail by which he pleaded with Lewinsky to stand with him, remain loyal, and not betray him.

“Mom,” I looked seriously at the sassy but always worried middle-aged lady beside me, “you don’t have to worry about me, if I ever get into trouble that I can’t solve, I’ll just hide out in the house and take refuge – just It’s a deal, okay?” I hugged her shoulders.

The cake was brought up to the table, a joint gift from the students, with six candles. Dad was in a good mood, blowing out the candles in one gulp, grinning like an old child, and cutting the cake to share. “There’s a grant coming in soon, and the research on the project will take off,” he said. So his students talked about that topic, “A Study of the Vacation System for Civilian Officials in the Tang Dynasty” (a topic that sounded as strange as squeezing a red ball in your hand and a green ball in your hand and trying to ask which one has a yellow ball in your hand).

In my eyes, many of the disciples under the professors are simply a group of respondents, or slaves, they first have to agree with the mentor’s ideas, hide their own questions, and then after obtaining the mentor’s favor to follow the mentor around to hold seminars, under the mentor’s recommendation to publish papers in magazines, and even in the care of the mentor to get married, have children, and earn a career, until the day when he is in a position of solidity and can make their own voices heard.

One of the students asked about my novel, and I think it must have been my dad who told his students that I was writing again, and even though he wasn’t proud to have a novelist daughter, he was still enthusiastically promoting it for me. The group chatted for a while longer, and I wanted to go back.

“Can’t you stay even one night? I have so much more to tell you.” Mom stared at me, sad eyes, drifting through time like star shards floating in an endless void, “Ugh, I just want to walk up the street, I’ll stay over for the night and sleep with Jusha.” I smiled, making the jingling sound of the keys in my pocket and the sound of learning to lie.

The Two Faces of Love

I remember two years ago I was sent to Hong Kong by a magazine to do a special interview on the “Reunification”. Whenever I finished my day’s work in the middle of the night, I would sit on the stone steps of the Victoria Harbor, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the stars, and tilted my neck so much that I almost broke it. Every once in a while, I would be in such a state of oblivion, forgetting for a moment the existence of everything around me, even myself. The only thing left in my head is probably a few sparse protein cells breathing quietly, like a wisp of blue smoke rising silently.

Writing puts me in this state from time to time, except that I am gazing down at some stars that twinkle in some improvised words. I feel like I’m in nirvana at that moment, that is to say, I’m no longer afraid of illness, accidents, loneliness, or even death, I’m immune to them all.

And real life is always contrary to wishes. I look through a window and I see shadows of people, like dark branches crossing over, and I see the longing, distant and suffering faces of those who love me and those I love.

I met Mark’s family at the playground of the American School of Pudong. Mark is looking very handsome today, probably because of the bright sunshine and the natural surroundings. This aristocratic school for expatriate children seems to be built on a cloud, isolated from the dust of mundane life, and the whole campus has a washed-out freshness, as if the air has been decontaminated. It’s a hell of an upper class mood.

Mark chewed his gum and greeted us with equanimity. Introducing his wife to Jusha and me. “This is Eva,” Eva’s hand pulled at him, more beautiful and voluptuous than I’d ever seen her in a photograph, with pale yellow hair tied back in a simple bundle at the back of her head, rows of silver studs in her ears, and a black sweater that accentuated her white skin, the kind of whiteness that had a honeyed fragrance in the sunlight and made for a dreamy look.

The beauty of a white woman can sink a thousand sails of war (such as Helen of Troy), while the beauty of a yellow woman, by contrast, is tight-browed and playful, always looking like she’s stepped off the monthly sign from a bygone era of fragrance (such as Yvonne Lim or Gong Li).

“This is Judy, a coworker in my company, and this is Judy’s cousin CoCo, an amazing Writer,” Mark said. Eva squinted in the sunlight and smiled, shaking our hands, “And this is my son B-B,” he picked the kid up from the stroller and kissed him, teasing him for a moment before handing him to Eva, “Time for me to get on.” He kicked his legs, smiled and glanced at me obliquely as he grabbed a bag of clothes and headed to the locker room.

Vermilion Sand has been chatting with Eva, I have nothing to do sitting on the side of the grass, think back for a while, think from the first moment I met Mark’s wife, I was not as jealous as originally expected, on the contrary, I also like Eva, who asked her to be so beautiful, people always like beautiful things. Or maybe I’m just a really nice girl, and it’s comforting to see that people have beautiful families? Oh God.

The game started soon after. My eyes were glued to Mark as he ran back and forth across the soccer field, his blonde hair blowing in the wind and my exotic dreams. His speed, muscle and power were on public display in front of over a hundred spectators, and I believe that many sports are essentially a large-scale sexual orgy with collective participation, where the fans in the stands and the players on the field are so excited that it is hard to contain their adrenaline, and the smells are wafting through the air.

Some of the campus students were yelling over coke, Eva continued to chat with Jusha (as if that was more fun than watching her husband play), and my panties were already wet. I’ve never been so hungry for Mark as I am at this moment. Let me fall into his arms like an apple bobbed down by a gale.

“CoCo, you put out a collection of novels a few years ago, right?” Vermilion suddenly disturbed my concentration.

“Oh yeah.” I said and I saw Eva smile at me.

“I’m interested, I wonder if it’s still available?” She said in English.

“I’m afraid I can’t buy it, but I have a copy of my own I can give you, only, it’s all in Chinese.” I said.

“Oh thanks, I’m planning on learning Chinese, Chinese culture is interesting and Shanghai is the most desirable city I’ve ever seen.” Her face was white and red, a juicy white young woman. “How about coming to my house for dinner next weekend if you’re free?” She extended an invitation.

I hid my nervousness and looked at Jusha, it wasn’t going to be a Hongmen Banquet, was it?

“Judy will be here too, and some of our German friends.” Eva said, “I’m going back to Germany next week, and as you know, I can’t take long vacations when I work for the government environmental department. The Germans love the environment to the point of paranoia.” She smiled, “In my country, there are none of those smoking three-wheelers or people hanging their clothes out to dry on the sidewalk.”

“Oh.” I nodded, thinking that Germany might be the closest place to heaven, “Okay then, I’ll come.”

I think she may not have been a very smart kind of woman, but maybe generous and sweet.

Little B-B in the stroller shouted, “PAPA, PAPA,” and I whipped my head around to see Mark swinging his fist in a leap, he had just scored a goal. He threw us a flying kiss from a distance, Eva looked at me and we both laughed.

On the way to the school building to find a restroom, Jusha asked me if I thought Eva was cute.

“Perhaps that makes one even more pessimistic about marriage.”

“Yeah? –looks like Mark loves her.”

“Marriage experts say that just because a person genuinely loves his partner doesn’t mean he will remain faithful to him for the rest of his life.”

In the restroom I found a funny posted cartoon of a green jungle with a giant question mark:

“What is the scariest animal in the world?” Coming out of the restroom, Vermilion and I said the answer in unison, “People.”

At halftime, everyone was drinking sodas and joking around. I had a chance to say a few words to Mark: “You have a lovely family.”

“Yeah.” The expression on his face was objective.

“Do you love your wife?” I asked softly. I didn’t want to beat around the bush with him, the one-liner sometimes gave pleasure, and I looked at him less wistfully.

“Would you be jealous?” He asked rhetorically.

“Joke’s on me, I’m not an idiot.”

“Of course.” He shrugged and cast his eyes to the side, saying hello to an acquaintance before turning his face to smile at me. “You are the banshee who sings in the night. In the legends of our country, this banshee haunts the Rhine River, where she will climb the rocks and with her song tempt the boatman to touch the rocks and die.”

“It’s so unfair, you’re the one who seduced me first in this whole thing to begin with.”

Eva came over and wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders, stretching her face to give him a kiss. “What’s the talk?” She smiled with a puzzled look on her face.

“Oh, CoCo is telling a newly conceived story.” Mark said smoothly.

Dick came to Vermilion before the end of the ball game, dressed simply but stylishly, his hair slicked back with hairspray, a piece of his forehead slightly raised. But there was a strange scar on his left cheek that looked like it had just been injured and scraped with a sharp object. He exchanged pleasantries with me and thankfully didn’t ask me about the progress of my novel. I can’t stand people asking about the novel as soon as they see me anymore lately, that puts me on edge.

“What happened to your face?” I asked, pointing to the scar on his face.

“Beaten.” He said simply. I opened my mouth, thinking it was really strange, who could he have gotten into trouble with? I looked at Jusha, and she made a gesture as if to indicate that the matter was in the past, so there was no need to bring it up again.

A sudden flash of electricity went through my head, could it be that crazy woman, Madonna? She claimed to be upset, could she be looking for someone to teach her ex-boyfriend a lesson in this way? If so, that truly is a very violent complex.

These days, Madonna is not in Shanghai, she went to Hong Kong with her credit card for a shopping spree and will stay there for a while. A few nights ago she called me and told me a bunch of dreamy stories about how she had been to the most famous magician in Hong Kong, Half-Sun Wong, and had been told that she was indeed having bad luck in the near future, and that it would be better to travel southeast, so she had gone to Hong Kong in the right place.

Zhu Sha and Dick are going to the acting store together to buy wall paints, Zhu Sha’s house bought in Ruixin Garden was designed with the help of Dick. It was said that the intention was to paint the walls with a kind of vintage mood paint, an elegant ochre color with a smooth and thick texture, which could make one feel as if one was on the banks of the Seine River, as it was only produced in France, with a taste of the salon in the 1930s.

There aren’t many stores that sell this kind of paint, and they’ve heard that it’s available at a costume show general store in Pudong.

They left together before the ball game was over, and I was left alone on the sidelines until the game was over. It turned out that Mark’s team won.

Mark came out of the locker room with wet hair, he changed out of his jersey and walked over to this side. Eva and I have been exchanging views on the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western women’s consciousness and culture. She thinks that in the West a woman with a little bit of feminist consciousness would be admired by men. I said, “Really?” Then our conversation ended and Eva turned her face over to kiss her husband. “How about going shopping together for a while?” She asked me.

At the Yaohan department store in Pudong, Eva took the elevator alone to the third-floor gift counter to look at ceramics and silk fabrics, while Mark and I sat in a corner of the downstairs café seating, sipping coffee and teasing B-B from time to time.

“Do you love her? …… I’m sorry for asking, it’s not very polite, it’s just the two of you.” I played with a square of candy, my eyes on the pillar across the street, painted a creamy yellow color with decorative designs painted on it, just enough to block the view of the crowds going in and out of the store.

“A kind woman.” Mark replied, one hand holding his son’s small hand.

“Yeah, almost all of them are kind. Including you, and including me.” I said with slight sarcasm. Even though this slight jealousy didn’t fit the rules of this erotic game between us. One of the most important of those rules was to keep a normal mind at all times, no tendency towards hurt feelings or jealousy.

There’s a saying, “If you decide, do it, and if you do it, take it all.”

“What are you thinking?” He asked.

“Wondering what’s going on in my life. And wondering if …… you’re going to make me miserable?” I stared at him and

“Will that day ever come?”

He doesn’t say anything, and I’m suddenly gripped by a feeling akin to melancholy. “Kiss me.” I whispered, leaning my body towards the table. He hesitates less obviously, then moves closer to the table as well, bringing his face up to leave a wet, warm kiss on my lips.

Almost as soon as we dodged out of the way at the same time, I saw Eva’s silhouette flash out from behind the pillar, smiling and carrying a full shopping bag in her hand. Mark’s demeanor also adjusted appropriately almost within a second as he took the items from his wife’s hands and joked easily with her in a German I didn’t understand, (I guess it was a joke because she laughed quickly), and I watched the couple’s loving demeanor like an outsider before I bid them farewell. “See you at the dinner table next weekend.” Eva said.

As I boarded the river ferry at the pier, the sky turned awful, with leaden gray clouds piling up overhead like a big ball of flotsam. The river was murky yellow, with bits of plastic bottles, rotten fruit, cigarette butts and other trash floating about. The water was slightly wrinkled, like a soiled chocolate milkshake. The ripples made my eyes slightly uncomfortable. Behind us was the high-rise financial district of Lujiazui, and in front of us was the majestic and unrivaled Bund complex. An old black cargo ship came from the right, with a red cloth floating on its tail, looking oddly familiar.

I breathed in the cool, fermented-smelling air and saw the Puxi Pier getting closer and closer, and I had a dawning feeling as if I had experienced this scene in a dream long ago, the yellowing water, the sad air, the rusty bow of the boat tilting slightly, slowly leaning over toward the pier, which was feet away. It was like being close to a man, like touching a heart from another world.

Closer, closer, but perhaps not for a lifetime. Or maybe the proximity is just for the eventual separation.

I wore sunglasses and walked down the iron pedal, into the crowd in the middle of Shandong all the way. I suddenly wanted to cry a little, yes, everyone has the sudden urge to cry a little, God will not be an exception.

It suddenly started to rain, but the sun was still shining on the buildings, and gradually the sun hid its rays and the wind picked up.

I ducked into a roadside post office, packed with people like me sheltering from the rain, and a moistened, luxuriant odor emanated from my hair, clothes, and boots. I consoled myself with the thought that the smell, bad as it was, was better than the refugee tents on the Kosovo-Albanian border, that war was horrible, and that I could think better of it just by thinking of the countless catastrophes on earth. How lucky and blessed a young, good-looking girl like me who has written a book should be.

I sighed and flipped through the newspaper in front of the newspaper cabinet for a while, and saw a news from Hainan that the police had destroyed one of the largest smuggling cases of foreign luxury cars since the founding of the country, involving the main leadership of the Leizhou Peninsula.

I quickly took my address book out of my bag, I had to call Tin-Tin. I remembered that I hadn’t talked to him in a week, time flies, he should be back by now.

Pay the deposit at the counter then get the license to go to the DDD phone booth on 4th. I dialed the number and there was no answer for a long time. Just as I was about to hang up the receiver, Tin-Tin’s voice came through very faintly, “Hi, this is CoCo …… How are you?” I said to him.

He didn’t seem to wake up, and it was half a second before he answered, “Hi, CoCo.”

“Are you sick?” I was alerted, his voice was just not right, as if it came from the distant Jurassic era, without heat or even a conscious connection. He grunted vaguely and lowly.

“Can you hear me? …… I want to know what’s wrong with you?” I get anxious and raise my voice. He doesn’t speak, breathing slowly and delicately.

“Tin-Tin, please talk, don’t make me anxious.” A long silence, as long as half a century, held down the restless agitation.

“I love you.” Sky sounded like a dream demon.

“I love you too.” I said, “Are you really sick?”

“I …… pretty good.”

I bit my lip and stared in puzzlement at the plexiglass, which was covered in a fair amount of gray dirt, and the crowd outside the glass was gradually dispersing, so it looked like the rain had stopped.

“So, when are you coming back?” My voice was loud, lest I couldn’t get his attention without it, and he’d fall asleep at any moment and disappear to the other end of the microphone.

“Can you do me a favor? …… send some money.” He whispered.

“What, the money on the credit card, you used it all up?” I was surprised. The credit card has more than 30,000 dollars on it, even if Hainan’s prices are so high, and he does not like to store, he will not take the money to hook a woman, he is like a fading clothes in the child without desire, it is impossible to spend money like water, it must be something happened. A shadow fell over my instincts.

“There’s a bankbook in the right drawer of the closet, it’s easy to find.” He reminded me and I suddenly became very angry, “What’s wrong with you? You have to tell me what all that money was spent on? No need to hide it, just tell me the truth if you believe me.”

Silence ……

“Tell me or don’t send the money.” I intimidated him with a brutal tone.

“CoCo, I missed you.” He muttered. General black gentleness squeezed me. “Me too.” I whispered.

“You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

“No.”

“Even if you have another man, don’t leave.” He pleaded, looking weak-willed at the moment, ominous breath flowing in a steady stream from the phone line in his hand by the minute.

“What’s wrong, Tin-Tin?” I whimpered and gasped.

His voice was weak, but he nonetheless said a terrible thing, and I’m sure I didn’t hear him wrong at all; he was on heroin.

The story goes like this, he was sitting in a fast-food restaurant on the street one afternoon when he suddenly bumped into an acquaintance, a man named Li Le, whom he had met at the Shanghai Reproductive Health Medical Center. He also came to Hainan, living here in a relative’s home, usually in the relative’s home to open a private dental clinic to do small work.

They chatted quite a bit, and Tiantian had probably been holding it in for a while, happy to suddenly have someone to talk to. Li Le took him to a lot of places that he didn’t know about before and didn’t dare to go alone. Underground casinos, dark hair salons, abandoned warehouses with frequent gang fights, Tien wasn’t fascinated by such places, but he was attracted by such a knowledgeable, witty and witty friend.

He seemed friendly, with an invisible indifference floating beneath the surface of his warmth, and that was exactly the type of personality Tenten was comfortable with. They both had dark eyes that were cold and hot, did everything quietly, spoke or listened or laughed, and their eyes were always somber.

In the soothing winds of the South, they walked side by side, talking about Henry Miller and the Beat Generation, sitting on a tiny terrace watching the sunset, holding fresh coconuts and sucking the white juice. Not far down the road, pale, heavily made-up girls began to appear, searching with unromantic, bitchy hearts, with false smiles on their faces, their noses twitching pitifully, their breasts looking hard, like heavy, desperate prehistoric fossils, and there was an ineffable riot, opulence, and phantasmagoria in the Southern air.

At Lile’s relative’s clinic, Tien tried injecting morphine for the first time, with Lile demonstrating and then asking Tien if she wanted to try it too. There was no one else in the room, it was late at night, and from time to time there were people on the street speaking in a local language that they didn’t understand, and there was the roar of large trucks running heavily over the ground, and the whistles of ships in the distance.

It was all like being in another part of the world, with unknown gullies and hills undulating and rolling, forming huge three-dimensional shadows, a sweet, silky wind blowing through the large, sharp, arrow-like branches and leaves, and nameless pink flowers blossoming in the lowest valleys of the gullies, one after the other, spreading continuously into a sea of pink, light and warm as a mother’s womb, with a noxious intoxication affecting every inch of the land and seeping directly into the the red book-membrane of the heart.

The moon is full and full, and consciousness is intermittent.

Things became uncontrollable. Tien went to sleep every night with pink dreams. The pink sap naturally clung to his skin, and the poison rushed him forward like some kind of savage-age flood. His torso went limp and his nerves seemed to snap at the touch of a button.

I still don’t want to look squarely at this scene, which takes place at the turning point where the whole story takes a sharp turn for the worse. Perhaps, again, it was predestined from the beginning, inescapable, from the moment young Tin-Tin greeted his father’s ashes at the airport, from the moment he dropped out of school with aphasia, from the moment he met me at the Greendy’s, from the first night he bent over me sweating and weak, from the moment I went to bed with another man, from the moments when he couldn’t get out of his mind the despair and the dream of the unchanging. Yes, he was inseparable from these things, unable to distinguish the boundaries, just living and dying for the rest of his life in the shadow of the unnameable softness of his organs. That’s all.

The very thought of it made me want to scream, the fear, the ecstasy, was beyond my understanding, beyond my power. In all the days since then, the slightest flicker of the angelic face of Tin-Tin is going to cause me to stumble behind the door, and the heartache is something that can hurt until it dies.

All the errands were done by Lile, and the daily money was exchanged for handfuls and handfuls of white powder. The two stayed in their hotel room, the cat sleeping by the television set, which was on all day long, that had daily reports of robberies and municipal projects. Barely eating, the body’s metabolism dropping to almost zero, the door left open for the waiter to bring food, too lazy to even take a step, the room giving off a strange sort of unreal odor, a fresh and putrid mix like that of Jell-O put into a corpse’s stomach.

Gradually, in order to save money, or sometimes when they couldn’t find an acquaintance to do business with, they went to the drugstore and bought a lot of cough syrup, which they stocked up in their room for emergencies. Lile would boil the syrup down in a small coffee cup in a rustic way to make some sort of narcotic substitute, but it tasted really bad, but it was still better than nothing.

One day, the kitten Threadbare ran away from this room. He had no food to eat for days at a time, and he was no longer being cared for by his master, so one day he decided to run away, and when he left he had a deflated stomach, dull fur, and jagged bones, and didn’t seem to live very long.

He never came back after he left; he either died or became a feral cat that specialized in foraging in the garbage late at night and purring somewhere around the corner.

The situation became such that I was momentarily stunned and my mind confused. And the insomnia was so hot and dry that all the shadows drifted around, registering a million shapes and desperations, and in the dry and hopeless night I lay in bed, tossing and turning all night, replaying the days when Tin-Tin and I met in no order, my brain like a dusty screen, and my baby and I as the lamest hero and heroine in the world.

But we love each other so deeply that we can’t get away from each other, and especially now, when the fear that at any moment Tin-Tin will float away at a weightless rate like dust out of the sky makes my heart ache into a ball, I feel that I love him even more. I’m looking forward to the day getting brighter soon, or I’m going to go crazy.

XIX. To the South

The next day I took a little travel bag and went straight to the airport by car. At the airport I bought my plane ticket to Haikou from work. After doing that, I remembered that I had some phone calls to make. No one answered the phone in Tiantian’s room, and he didn’t seem to be at the hotel, so I left a message with the hotel receptionist about the time I would be in Haikou. Flipping through the communication book, I was a bit gloomy, at this point in time when I was facing a problem of uncertainty, it seems that I still can’t find the right person to make a phone call and share my panic and anxiety.

Madonna’s cell phone was off, the phone in Zhu Sha’s office was constantly on hold, as was her cell phone, and I wondered how many people she was talking to at the same time; Spider was out of Shanghai on a business trip on official business, and his colleague asked me if I had anything to say to him that he could leave behind, to which I said thank you and no, I didn’t need to. The rest were calls from my editor Deng, my psychiatrist – Davy, my lover Mark, my parents, and a few males I had previously met.

I plugged the magnetic card in and out of the phone, moody, and turned my face so I could see through the big glass window a McDonnell Douglas airplane taxiing down the runway, and then after accelerating, it jerked its head up and dashed out of my sight. That instantaneous soaring gesture was beautiful, like a big silver bird. John Denver’s song “Away in an Airplane” has touched the hearts of many a lonely traveler.

I walked into the smoking room and sat across from a man. He was slightly turned on his side, and I could see that he had a beautiful Agassiz-style moustache and wore a long, flared leather skirt. I didn’t know that a Chinese man could look so stylish with such a mustache, and he was the only man I’d ever met who wore a leather skirt on an airplane. The brand he smoked was “Sanwu”, and I could smell the distinctive rough odor of the smoke, like the feeling of rough flour sticking to the tip of my tongue. Hot cigarettes between cold fingers.

Then he turned his face to face me head on, his eyes were slightly darkened, but they were exceptionally bright, and he looked mighty and soft, an image of yin and yang inverted positive and negative.

We both stared at each other for a moment before he stood up, smiled and opened his arms to me, “CoCo, is that you?” This man was none other than Flying Apple, the stylist I had met in Beijing.

We hugged and then sat down side by side for a smoke. After a few conversations, it turned out we were on the same flight to the same place. My head had been aching and the light in the smoking room was uncomfortable.

“You don’t look so good, is something wrong?” He looked down and scrutinized my face, embracing me with one arm.

“It wasn’t very good. …… But it’s a long story, I was there to pick up my boyfriend, who was about to break down there. …… And I, well, I don’t have much energy.” I mumbled, throwing away my cigarette butt and standing up, “The air sucks here.” I said, walking towards the door.

He followed. “Wait, hey, what’s on this floor?” I was dizzy and just headed out the door, “CoCo, did you lose your earring?”

I touched my ear, sighed, and took this diamond earring plug as big as a rice from Flying Apple, which would have different luster and shape in different light, and was the only bright spot in my current black puffy color. I thanked him and thought to myself as I walked away, “It’s so true that when people hit a bad patch, everything acts up, even smoking a cigarette in a good way can cause an earring to fall out.”

I called Mark anyway before the people gate, and he sounded busy. “Hello,” he said, his voice distracted. My voice went cold with it, and it was only fair to put a cold face on a cold face as a means of self-protection.

“I’m at the airport,” I said, “I won’t be able to make it to the weekend dinner, so please tell your too big to apologize.”

“Where are you going?” His attention was finally drawn.

“My boyfriend’s place.”

“Will it be long?” His voice began to seep with serious unease, perhaps the pen in his hand dropped and the folder closed.

“Would you be sad if that happened?” My voice was still cold. I really couldn’t be happy right now, I looked pale and self-hardened, like a disgruntled girl from the late 20th century. I’m not happy with anything, it’s so problematic.

“CoCo!” he groaned, “You know how I’ll be, oh don’t kid yourself, you’ll be back soon, won’t you?”

I was silent for a while, sure, he was right, I’d bring Tin-Tin back and everything should be okay. But can it ever go back to the way it was? Will I ever be able to write a novel with the peace of mind that comes from having two men (and one of them on drugs out of bitterness)?

I burst into tears and Mark’s anxious voice, “What’s wrong baby talk to me.”

“Nothing, I’ll talk to you when I get back.” I said and hung up. I think I contaminated the others with my bad mood, Mark would be distracted around the office, poor man, and poor me.

Wu Dawei once told me that pitying oneself is a behavior that should be most despised, and when he said this he had a God-like expression of majesty on his face, and his face shone brightly. And I never listened to his words, I have never been more prone to pity myself, narcissism is precisely the most beautiful temperament in me.

The plane was traversing through the clouds and Flying Apple was sitting in the seat next to mine. He kept rambling on while I read a magazine, took off my jacket, got my jacket, read the magazine again, closed my eyes, braced my left hand on my lower has, clutched my right hand to my chest, coughed my eyes open, and adjusted the position of my seat back.

The in-flight lady brought drinks and snacks, and when I was putting down the small shelf, the Coke in my hand accidentally spilled on Flying Apple’s knee, and I quickly said, “I’m sorry”. So I started talking to him, a beautiful man with eyes like a dark fire, an invisible net, a generator that can electrocute a lot of women, except for the sad ones like me.

He says he now draws on Japanese fashions and advocates pink, powder blue, and silver for his clients’ images. Just a few rows back are his fellow travelers, which include a movie starlet, two photographers, three styling assistants, and three able-bodied male attendants. They are going to Hainan for the actress to shoot a set of portraits. That actress I seem to have seen in a play, general looks, neither jade nor queen, in addition to the rest of the wonderful breasts lack of good.

Flying Apple sat next to me and kept talking to chase away the random thoughts in my head. I kept listening to him, I guess men in leather skirts are either abominable or adorable, and he talked about how his parents were always fighting his girlfriend was always jealous of his boyfriend from a bad tooth he had pulled out last month.

I fell asleep and when I woke up, Flying Apple had his eyes closed and then he woke up too. “Are we almost there?” He asked me, then pulled back the window pane to see what was underneath some of the airplanes.

“Still en route.” He said, smiling at me, “Do you never smile?”

“What? …… No, I don’t want to laugh right now.”

“Because of me?”

“No, because of my boyfriend.”

He touched my hand and shook it. “Don’t be afraid of trouble, everyone has trouble big and small at any given time. Me, for instance, I jump from one trouble to another, and I don’t know whether I love women or men more.”

“It’s always good to love and be loved.” I smiled at him, this smile may not be inevitably sad, talk about always this topic, even if I and my story at the same time disappeared, other people’s stories are still playing, filled with the word is a “love”, around which the development of the heart, the bones, a variety of scenes, a variety of scenes.

When the plane was approaching Hainan Airport, it encountered a sudden air current, and the plane shook so badly that the flight attendant fell on the carpet while patrolling the passengers’ seat belts.

Everyone on board panicked, and I heard the actress scream, pointing at a man who looked like an agent, “I just don’t want to take this plane, and now I’m going to die trying to make time.” Her scream made the atmosphere on the plane seem strange, like a movie was being filmed, rather than something sinister actually happening.

Flying Apple clutched my hand and paled, “The thought of taking your hand and falling wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”

“It won’t,” I said, fighting back the violent fluttering sensation in my stomach, “The fortune teller never said I’d have an accident, so the plane won’t fall. Expert statistics say airplanes are the safest form of transportation in the world.”

“I got insurance, airline crash insurance plus life insurance is a lot of money, I wonder if my parents will be happy or sad.” Flying Apple muttered.

As he was saying this, the plane suddenly returned to normal and once again entered a four-flat as if it were standing still.

At the airport, Flying Apple and I kissed each other hastily goodbye, a constant wetness on our lips, and many gay or bisexual men have a different kind of warmth, a small, furry animal-like warmth, even though they are prone to AIDS. “Little Broken Pills” AlanisMorissette has a song that goes, “I’m sick, but I’m pretty baby.”

The cab drove along with a blue sky outside the window and a number of glowing houses under the blue sky, and I had no idea where I was. The driver drove without a clue for a while, and finally drove me to the hotel where Tin-Tin was staying, which didn’t look very big.

I asked the receptionist if B405 had come to see my message and the service lady said no. Her lips were painted very red and there was slightly lipstick left on her teeth. I tried to call up and was not there every day. I had to sit on the couch in the corner of the hall and wait.

The 3:00 p.m. sun shone on the street outside the glass wall, a strange crowd of people and cars bustling, but not as crowded as in Shanghai, and not as sophisticated and foreign as the kind I was familiar with, which was attached to the city’s atmosphere. People all looked alike. Occasionally, a particularly beautiful tall woman walks by, obviously an immigrant from the north. They have a dominant beauty that Shanghai women lack, and their eyes are more powerful, but Shanghai women still pride themselves on being refined, restrained, and calculating.

I was starving and lifted my bag to the street. There was a fast food restaurant right across the street, and I picked a seat right on the street so I could see the people coming in and out of the hotel entrance.

There were some hipster kids in the fast-food restaurant, chattering away in words I didn’t understand, and the radio was playing Cantonese songs one minute and English the next. Two policemen walked in, and strangely enough, they both looked at me in unison.

They bought the coke and looked at me again before returning and walking out the glass door. I touched my face and there didn’t seem to be anything on my face, my black corset didn’t have any chipped or slipped straps, the zipper on my pants was fine, and my belly was tight and smooth with no sign of pregnancy. It seemed I either looked pretty or pretty suspicious.

I’m not hungry again, I don’t have any appetite, I can’t eat anything, I just take little sips of coffee. The coffee had a chemical flavor, like I was drinking furniture polish.

Walking into the restroom, I saw a pale version of myself in the mirror. I straddle the top of the flush toilet and urinate like a man, the way I always solve my problems in public restrooms. The toilet rim pad has been used by untold numbers of people with untold amounts of bodily fluids, bacteria, breath, memories, testimonies and history. The toilet looked like a giant, clean white fly, perched mournfully and uncomplainingly on the crotches of women of all colors.

There was a sudden dull ache in my belly and I saw a flash of red on my handkerchief. It was so unlucky that almost as soon as I left Shanghai for any other place, my period came without fail. Especially now, I was here to face a problem that was a matter of life and death for me and the love of my life, but my own body was in another predicament.

The nervous tension intensified the contractions in the lining of the uterus and a wave of pain came over me. I had thought that the last intercourse with Mark had implanted a fetus, I had even thought of confessing everything to Tin-Tin and then letting the fetus be born, it didn’t matter who gave me this child, as long as she/he had the blood of love in her/his veins, as long as her/his smile could make the skies shine, the birds chirp, and the gloom and melancholy dissipate, as long as… …

I was so chilled from the pain that I pulled all the paper off the rolls to make a thick stack and stuffed them in my underwear, which I hoped had all been sterilized. Now all I needed was a big glass of hot boiled water and a hot water bag over my stomach.

My mom once told me that most women don’t have this once-a-month ordeal when they have children because the cervix loosens up. That means if I don’t have kids for the rest of my life, I’ll have to suffer for the rest of my life, and if menopause is at 55, that’s another 30 years to the day, 12 times a year. My mind races and I’m more jumpy than a sick cat when it comes to this. Vermilion has this problem too, but it’s not awesome, in contrast to Madonna who is much more exaggerated. The men around her left her one by one, for many reasons, sure, but one of them was that she couldn’t stand her moodiness for those out-of-control seven days in a month. Violence and debility afflicted her and them, like when she sent her boyfriends to the supermarket to buy painkillers and tampons, but when they came back she was either furious that they hadn’t bought them fast enough or that they hadn’t bought the brand she had preferred, and the floor was littered with clothes and splinters. Her memory deteriorates out of the blue, canceling all appointments, parties, plans, not being able to have someone throw their head back and laugh in front of her, or walk quietly. If she jerked her head around and realized her boyfriend was behind her, she had to scream. She also has nightmares at night about some yakuza men she used to know when she was working in Guangzhou, who put their hands into her uterus and removed a strange, priceless machine, and she screams in despair, only to wake up to find blood moistening the tampon and seeping onto the sheets and mattress, and some of it on her boyfriend’s underwear. So she goes to the bathroom to flush and sits on the toilet to change the tampon while her boyfriend can’t take it anymore, which is par for the course.

The impact of the monthly menstrual period on women is physiological and psychological. Movies, movies and books have made a big deal out of it, with the heroine’s fortunes taking a turn for the worse when she doesn’t get her period. It’s a bit silly to read too much about it, but it gives feminists some sort of leverage to keep asking men: is it fair? When will there be true female liberation?

Stuffed with a thick roll of paper, walking in a somewhat outward-facing position, and as helpless as a baby wrapped in a diaper. At this point I had lost my grip on what was going to happen next. I wanted to see my baby right away, and I thought about the bone-deep warmth I felt when I melted into his embrace. This warmth arrived from one heart to another, not in the least related to lust, but with another kind of madness produced by the chemical reaction of affection and love, and the spell of an unanalyzable God.

I sipped cup after cup of piping hot coffee, my left hand clutching the small of my back, and then I saw a familiar figure through the glass window.

I stood up and strutted through the glass doors. As I crossed the street, I called out his name, and he stopped, turned, and we gazed at each other with smiles. Because there was no longer a choice, we could only absorb each other again with the compassion and sorrow born of intense love. We embraced and kissed each other on the lips, kissing for blood. Love was there from the beginning, just as death was opposite from the beginning. I heard the clicking in his throat. My womb warmed, the pain eased, and I realized we were destined to covet the last drops of joy as in a flower.

Because there is no choice.

In the evening I accompanied him to the dental clinic where Lile works part-time.

It was a scary place in my eyes, dirty, sweet and fishy, with a cold metallic shell-like light, and Lile was still so skinny and small, like his development had been arrested by some kind of accident. I kept my mouth tightly shut, and I admit I was a little scared, but I had promised to accompany Tin-Tin to an elementary school playground. There would be an immoral transaction in one of the corners there. And as a condition, Tien would have to come back to Shanghai with me tomorrow. He would go to a drug rehabilitation center run by the Public Security Bureau, and I told him that was the only way. I needed him to be good, and we had to stay together for a long time.

I was holding hands with Tin-Tin, my other hand in my pants pocket, where the money was, and my abdomen was beginning to ache again, though ob tampon was being tucked tightly inside me, like a gate, as if providing some kind of vain security.

Walking through a small, unguarded door, I saw an everyday playground with a string-shaped track, low climbing frames for the kids to play on, and ball nets and basketball hoops. We hunkered down in a patch of shadows beneath the fence.

Tenten hugged me gently and wiped the beads of sweat from the top of my forehead with a dirty handkerchief. No matter how bad the situation was, no matter where he was, Tenten always had a handkerchief handy, and in this he was like a good child, or an aristocrat.

“Does it hurt?” He looked at me tenderly and I shook my head, leaning my head against his shoulder as the moonlight left deep shadows on the upper part of his eyes. He’s much thinner, and there’s a ring of blue and purple around his eyes. I can’t scrutinize this face or I’ll get teary-eyed and feel helpless as hell.

The figures of two men in jeans and sunglasses appeared, and the hands that Tin-Tin and I held together suddenly turned cold.

Lile welcomed them and whispered something to them. The men came toward us. I crouched in the corner of the big wall, holding my breath and not moving. Tien stood up and wiped the money I’d given him in his hand.

The man stared at me for a second, then asked, “Where’s the money?”

Tien reached over. The man counted it then smiled, “Okay, after deducting what you owe from last time, there’s only so much I can give you.” He said and quickly shoved a small packet of something into Tien’s hand. Tiantian stuffed the item into the upper of his left shoe.

“Thanks.” He whispered before pulling me up, “Come on.”

We walked quickly, Lile was still talking to them about something, and Tin-Tin and I flew across the street. The street was still busy with people coming and going. We stood silently on the side of the road, waiting for an empty cab to show up. A group of seedy-looking young men darted their eyes over me as they walked past us, and one spoke something I didn’t understand, definitely foul language, as his companions laughed gleefully and kicked their empty Coke cups into Tien’s lap.

Tin-Tin’s hand that was held in my palm sweated and became hot, and I looked at him and whispered reassuringly, “Don’t pay any attention to them. It’s nothing.” At that moment an empty cab pulled up at the right time, I waved and it stopped. We got in.

In the car we hugged each other tightly. He kissed me and I couldn’t say anything. I was silent against his face, his hand warm on my stomach, the heat from his hand melting the tension in my womb melting the bruises.

“I love you.” Tien said softly, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone, you’re the most beautiful and best girl in the world. All I love is you.”

In the middle of the night I was disoriented and heard a few catcalls, thin as a thread. I turned on the light and sure enough I saw the threads. I got out of bed in a hurry and put half a plate of leftover pretzel roast from the night on the floor, and he walked over to it, put his head down and ate it, eating quickly, obviously really hungry.

It looked very ugly, with fur so dirty that you couldn’t tell the color, and a skinny cat face that showed the ferocity of a wildcat.

I smoked a cigarette and sat on the bed to watch it eat. I don’t know how it came back, maybe it saw me somewhere on the street, as if it had seen a savior, and knew that it could come back to that home of ours in Shanghai. I thought, suddenly moved myself.

I jumped out of bed, picked up the threadball and walked into the bathroom, bathing it with body wash and warm water. It meekly moved under the rubbing of my fingers and behaved like a child, then I dried it off and picked it up and walked towards the bed, where Tin-Tin was still passed out and the threadball slept at the feet of Tin-Tin and me.

A night of peace and quiet.

The second big sunny day, we woke up to the licking and kissing of the threads, the soles of our feet tickled with its slobber.

Tin-Tin and I stared at each other for a few moments, and then he began to move to remove my nightgown, my eyes widening in the bright morning light. The warm heady air lifted my naked body and I could see my pink nipples rising up lightly like buoys on a tidal wave, while my lover’s lips frolicked gently and lovingly in the water like a little fish. I close my eyes and take it all in. His fingers soothed my bleeding wound, and I erupted under the lubrication of the blood, and I could faintly hear the purring of the threads in my ears, while still feeling its wet tongue licking at the soles of my feet.

The early morning of my lover and I having sex with a cat just stayed in my mind. There was a little bit of madness. The white, sweet, fishy, horrible odor of drugs was forever stuck in my nose. Yes, I’ve never been able to get rid of it since. Whether I was dating man after man, shopping with women, writing alone, or walking down Berlin’s Gierkezeile, I never managed to forget the sweet, horrible smell of that morning of death and love.

After a complicated check-in procedure at the airport, the “threads” were finally allowed to be taken on the plane and we flew back to Shanghai.

XX. Boys in Bubbles

It’s cloudy turning to rain outside the window, and the TV is playing an endless stream of Aaron Kwok’s Pepsi commercials. It’s Wednesday, I’ve read Mickey Mouse stories, and from those stories I know that Wednesday is the day when anything can happen.

When he got up early in the morning, Tin-Tin suddenly changed his mind; he didn’t want to go to rehab today. “Why?” I asked, staring at him.

“I want to spend more time with you.”

“But it’s not a life and death situation, well …… don’t worry about it, I know how you feel, but what if you have a hard time?”

He removed a small bag from the top of his shoe and shook it.

“Tien!” I groaned, “I can’t believe you came back with that.”

He busted into the kitchen to make me breakfast, and I lay in the bathtub for a while, fuming, and heard the fried eggs sizzling in the pan and the lid bamming on the floor, and it was a real handful, but a breakfast bribe wouldn’t do it for me, and I couldn’t forgive him for reverting to his old ways.

I didn’t eat the breakfast he’d made, and he hunkered down on the couch without a word to feed the threads a plate of cat food. I sat dryly facing the manuscript paper for a while, and gradually a kind of panic set in, like a magician suddenly realizing that his own magic was gone. But I couldn’t plunge into the world of words beyond the distance now, with living change happening all around me all the time, like ripples on the surface of the water. I always want success to come out of nowhere, like Alibaba opening the door to treasure by simply reciting an incantation, or Bill Gates becoming a billionaire overnight, or Gong Li conquering the astonished eyes of millions of white men at my age without speaking English.

And I seem to be physically incapable of ever realizing my dreams in this city now. Other than pulling my hair out and escaping the planet (until the Noacha Dammas prophecy is confirmed), or leaving the crowd with Tin-Tin and spending the rest of my life growing marijuana in the forests of the African continent or on some island in the South Pacific, raising chicks and dancing earthy dances around a fire.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Sky threw a paper airplane onto my desk. The paper airplanes he folded were only beautiful, and they had graphic patterns on them, filled with life’s aphorisms and famous quotes. For example: “Other people are hell”, “People are always alone”, “Life is elsewhere”, “Live poetically” etc.

We took a car to the city center. As we passed Yan’an Road, we realized that the elevated section of the road was still unfinished, and then there was a long row of old houses with small gardens and fences. Shanghainese have always prided themselves on having both the old and the new at the same time, with the city’s sprawling body held up by steel and iron girders from the rising and falling municipal projects, while the scattered remains of history embellish the city’s conscience with the gentleness of misty rain and moss. Every time I sit in a cab and travel through half of the city, which is a mixture of old and new, it is like listening to the city’s incessant sound.

I may have to remember this sound for the rest of my life, or I may not be able to understand it for the rest of my life. Mark told me that every different city in the world has a different sound, and that he found something at the center of the resonance bands in the sounds of Paris, London, Berlin, Venice, Vienna, and Shanghai, a kind of pneumatic thing that has to do with the feelings in the human heart. They inspire each other, they exist in each other.

It sounds pretty mystical, doesn’t it? The men I like must have a few magical nerves in their brains. Because sex and love make a man genius, sensitive, with a spark of thought.

A well-deserved lunch at Bennie’s might just make the day. Bennie’s is a restaurant that has been fashioned by an eccentric Belgian designer to look like some giant lobster. With long silver windows and a ring of mirrors along the wall, diners can tilt their heads back and peer around them while enjoying their food if they want to, and the most gossipy thing is that you can see all kinds of cleavage from the mirrors without risking seeing women in low-cut dresses of varying shades. It is said that this place has made several couples, men first from the mirror to marvel and then fall in love.

Tin-Tin and I began a rarely arduous discussion over hot and sour soup and branded clams:

“Do you like me now?” Tien’s pale face with white and blue eyes looked like a question mark, he seemed to have built up a surge of strength for this conversation, “Of course there’s no need to lie.”

“- How long have we known each other? …… Almost a year, it feels like longer, and then it’ll go on for a hundred years, ten thousand, because I like you, but if you don’t get better soon …… right now my mind is empty.”

“What would you think of me if one day …… I died – no, don’t you interrupt me, I mean I died, at the moment I closed my eyes and never woke up? “

I didn’t want to eat anything else, my tongue momentarily losing sensation and my stomach going numb. Our gazes stuck together for long moments across plates, cups, and forks, the whites of his eyes growing bluer and bluer until, as the American Hawks said, “until they could ooze a foggy liquid.”

“I’m going to hate you.” I said word for word.

“Death is an indication of boredom, a reasonably developed answer after boredom has gone through, and I have thought about it for a long time, perhaps all my life, and when I have thought it through I feel that I am not ashamed of a death. –It is impossible for a man like me to go on indefinitely desecrating himself and annihilating his soul.” He put his finger against his left breast; he might have been a little more subdued if, instead of a finger, a dagger had been pressed against his chest.

“I can foresee a certain impulse in the shadowy inner layers of my life, and psychiatrists always say that impulses are dangerous, they don’t advocate them, but it still comes unannounced.” His voice was clear and cold, his lips pale and unfeeling, and he definitely wasn’t discussing someone else’s topic with me, he was talking about himself.

“The weaker my will, the brighter my eyes became, for I saw the great black hole in the belly of the sun, and the great planets of the universe arranged in a cross in the air.” He said.

I was angry out of desperation, “No need to beat around the bush, in a word, I think you’re depraved.”

“Possibly. The dead never get a chance to plead their case to the living; in fact, many are more depraved alive.”

I grabbed his hand in an icy grip.

“What are we talking about? –God, don’t say any more, why have such a horrible conversation here and now, don’t tell me such maddening words as life and death, love and hate, ego and self. We live together, don’t we? …… If you have a problem with our current life, you can say specific things, I don’t do laundry hard enough, I talk in my sleep at night, the novel I’m working on is disappointing you, the novel isn’t deep enough, it’s solid as extreme garbage, blah, blah, blah, blah, OK! I’ll change it, I’ll try to do it perfectly, but don’t ever say horrible things like that again! …… I think those words are so irresponsible. Let’s say, I’ve always wanted to find timely wings to fly to the sky with you, while you always want to dump my hand and jump to hell alone. –Why?”

A lot of people were looking my way, and I looked up to see myself in the mirror, disoriented, with a menacing expression and a little tear in my eye. I thought how stupid I had been. We were obviously so in love.

“CoCo,” Tin-Tin’s expression remained very calm, “From the beginning we knew our differences, I said we were two kinds of people, although that didn’t stop us from falling in love, you’re the energetic girl who’s bent on making something of herself while I’m the one who has no aspirations and just goes with the flow, the philosophers said ‘Everything comes from nothing’, and nothingness emphasizes what we have.”

“To hell with whoever said that, from this day forward you’re going to stop reading those books, you’re going to be with living, breathing people, and you’re going to do more physical labor. My dad used to say, ‘Labor makes you healthy,’ and you want sunshine and grass and all the fantasies of pleasure-seeking.” I said quickly, like a sewing machine struggling to roar in the dark night.

“Like tomorrow you’re supposed to go to that damn rehab and participate in some light labor of pulling weeds and singing with everyone in there, and when you get through that horrible time, I’ll encourage you to interact more with other women, but never fall in love with them, and I’ll find prostitutes if I have to, as long as you’re back to your normal human health in full force.” I cried as I spoke, and the mirrors above the walls around me were a blur.

Sky hugged me, “You’re crazy.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my tears.

I looked at him tearfully, “I’m crazy because you’re crazy too.”

A tightly focused line of sight was mapped from one side of the restaurant to the mirror across from me, and in the moment my attention was slightly distracted, I saw Mark. He was sitting with a middle-aged foreign woman who looked like a friend. He had been staring at me for what must have been a long time.

I pretended I didn’t see him and called the waiter for the check. It’s Wednesday, a day when anything can happen.

Mark was looking toward me, a puzzled and anxious look on his face. Sure enough he stood up and I turned my head away. The waiter sauntered over and showed me the bill, and I pulled out my wallet, unable to draw my yuan the more I tried to hurry things up.

Mark finally walked up to us. He made a surprised face, “Oh, what a coincidence, what a surprise to run into you guys.” He held out his hand to Tien first.

I suddenly hated him for this scene before me, for this German who had no business extending these hypocritical hands to Tien. These hands had touched every detail of this woman’s entire body. In this moment of deception, these hands are particularly harsh. Couldn’t he see how weak and helpless Tiantian was at this moment. God, we’ve just had a brutal conversation torn apart by love. This young boy is going to rehab tomorrow, and we’re all covered in despair, while the man who showed me the secret scenes of my own shameful indulgence comes up to me and politely and hypocritically says, “How are you?” to Tin-Tin.

Even if he had l00 reasons to like me, he should have held back and just stayed there, away from us, leaving us in peace.

My nerves crashed as I took Tin-Tin’s hand and hurried toward the door. Mark followed and handed me a book we’d forgotten on the table. I thanked him softly, then more softly told him, “Go away.”

We barely closed our eyes during the night, we kissed all night and the bitterness of our saliva filled the room. Our bed was like a precarious island floating on a vast ocean. We take refuge in each other’s love. There is a crackling sound when the heart breaks, extremely light and thin, like the essential fibers cracking on furniture, and I promise him I will visit him often, that I will take care of the threads and myself, that I will write a good novel, furiously, that I will never sink in any nightmare of my own, that I will believe that I am the most beautiful and the happiest of all, that miracles will happen. There is nothing else I can do, and I swear I will watch him reappear with eyes that blossom with the blue of purple daylight.

I love you. That’s how I love you.

Early the next morning, I groggily dropped him off at rehab. They looked up Tin-Tin’s name in a book that I had pre-registered. Some of the luggage that seemed unnecessary to them was returned, and the steel door slowly closed, and between shakes we looked at each other one last time.

21. Cocktail Wine

I stayed in the house cloaked in writing for a week. During this time not a single phone call came to disturb me, no one knocked on the door (except the waiter who delivered food from Little Sichuan and an old neighborhood lady who collected street sweeping fees). I was in a trance, like sliding on a patch of mud, from this door to that door, from this reality to that fiction, and I hardly put in too much effort; it was my novel itself that was propelling my sliding.

I gave up my grooming and lying skills, I wanted to push my life in front of the public eye with 100% of its original appearance. It doesn’t take too much courage, just obedience to that dark stalking force, as long as there’s pleasure to be had. Don’t play naive or cool. This is how I discovered my true being, overcoming fears of loneliness, poverty, death and other bad things that might come my way.

I often fell asleep on my manuscript paper, swelling my cheeks with a lump of sleep, and sometimes late at night after the silver hands of the clock on the wall pointed to twelve o’clock, a hallucinatory sound would appear. That sound repeated itself, like the snoring of the middle-aged mechanic at my next-door neighbor’s house, or the sound of a crane roaring all night long on a distant construction site, or the sound of a static appliance in the kitchen refrigerator.

There were times when I couldn’t stand it any longer, put down my pen and tiptoed to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and hoped that there was a tiger hiding in there, that it would pounce on me, cover my mouth and nose with its golden fur, suffocate me, and then rape me without hesitation.

In fact, I was immortalized in this unspeakable claustrophobia. I guess heaven is just like that, free and unconcerned. No man notices your hair or clothes, no one picks on your breasts or your eyes, no dinner party after dinner party to catch up on, no police to stop you from behaving wildly, no bosses to monitor your work process, no night and day, and no one to milk you for all the affection you deserve anymore.

I was hypnotized by my own novel. In order to depict an intense scene with subtlety and evocativeness, I tried to write in the nude, and many people believe that there is a necessary relationship between the body and the mind, as when the American poet, Roethke, lived in his centuries-old ancestral home, dressing and undressing in the mirror, and continually feeling the revelations of his own nude dances. Whether this story is credible or not is unknown, but I have always thought that writing has a hidden relationship with the body. When I was relatively plump, the sentences I wrote would be short and concise, while when I was thin, my novels were full of long, long sentences, as soft and dense as deep-sea water plants. Pushing my own limits, moving as far as I can into the sky, even into the cosmos, to write about the ethereal and the vast.

It may seem like a God-sent phrase to me, but I’m trying to do it anyway. In the novel a man and a woman cuddle up in a house where a fire is spreading, knowing that there is no way out of the place, that the fire is blocking all the doors, windows and hallways, and so they can only do one thing, have wild sex in the center of the fire. This is a story told to me by one of my many ex-boyfriends that took place in his neighborhood.

Stretcher lifted out of that pair of lovers, they are naked embrace very tight, burnt charcoal body embedded in each other’s body, can not be separated. Boys and girls are less than 20 years old, is the city’s key university students, it happens to be a weekend night, the girl’s parents routinely go to the day support theater. The boy came to the girl’s home, they are always together to watch TV, listen to music, chat, of course, they will be like all young people to do some tender lingering things, and then the fire from the downstairs of the communal kitchen spread, the fire in the wooden construction of the house is very easy to spread, the night of the wind is particularly strong, they have not been aware of the danger, until the air in the house suddenly burned up. They knew there was no way out of the place, the fire blocked all the doors, windows and hallways, so there was only one thing for them to do, have wild sex in the center of the blaze. And then I really got that burnt smell in my nose, and the dry, hot scent of desperation.

I put down my pen and wondered what would happen if my love and I were inside this house. Undoubtedly, we would have done the same, because there was no other choice. This is the only way to ward off the extreme fear of death, which will come in a few seconds, and I am deeply convinced by the mysterious connection between the instinct of life and the instinct of death, which Freud mentions in the system of theories that he built up as garbage.

I remember the lawn party where Madonna asked the question in public, “If the 1999 Nostradamus prophecy of the end of the world were to be confirmed, what would you choose to do at the end of the day?” Then she asked herself out loud, “Fuck, of course!”

With my right hand still holding the pen, my left hand crept underneath, where it was already wet, where I could feel it as slimy and swollen as a jellyfish. I put one finger in, then another, and if my fingers had eyes or some other scientific instrument, my fingers would have found a beautiful, carnal world of pink. The swollen veins throbbed delicately against the inner walls of the vagina, and for thousands of years the mysterious garden of a woman had waited like this for the invasion of the opposite sex, for the most primitive pleasures, for the countless sperms sent in by a war, and then in the pink fertile palace there was the little life that went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

I satisfy myself with a slightly disgusting passion, yes, always with a hint of disgust. Whereas others have used the loss of their homes and their lives to motivate themselves to write a heirloom classic, I have spent seven days and seven nights claustrophobically wearing a fine “opium” perfume, amusing myself with the destructive voice of Marilyn Manson and rushing to my triumph.

Maybe this is my last novel, because I always feel like I can’t play around with anything, that I’m about to be done, yes, to shame my parents who gave birth to me and disappoint my love who is as pure and helpless as a little butterfly.

Seven days later, a phone call came just in time to lift me out of the water. It was a beautiful sunny day outside the curtains, and the wind was blowing the fresh scent of pansies and orchids from the nearby Changfeng Park. My editor, Deng, told me the unexpected news that my original collection of novels was going to be reprinted, and this time it was going to be put together with others’ novels under the name of “City Monsoon” series.

“So, how many prints?” I spoke slowly, word for word, for seven days and seven nights was without a word somewhat tongue-tied.

“Settled on 10,000, of course, it is not too good, but you know the market is not good now, by the Southeast Asian economic crisis. To be honest, 10,000 is quite good, the publisher was hesitant at first, but I told them that the first edition of your book was sold out in a short time. ……” she smiled modestly, making me have to immediately interface to thank her.

“Royalties or payment?” I asked, and I realized that my mind was gradually becoming more flexible, as if a window had opened, and the outside world’s hustle, bustle, and chaos, including tuberculosis, E. coli, and so on in the air, all came in with a crash. This messy vigor activated my mind, and I was temporarily released from the prison of fiction for a while again.

“Tell you what, make an appointment for you to come out once, there are a few bookseller friends who want to meet you.” Deng said in a kind tone, “They heard from me that you’re working on a new full-length novel at hand, and they’d like to exchange ideas with you to see if there’s any possibility of cooperation, I think more opportunities like this would be better, don’t you think so?” She seemed to have thought of everything for me, she could make a meticulous and attentive arrangement that logically followed the laws of circulation in a commodity society, and all I needed was to accept this gift that came anytime and anywhere, I didn’t know if she genuinely liked my writing talent or something else, and I still didn’t see the need to raise my guard, so I thanked her, promising to call her later to arrange a specific time and place for the meeting. .

The next thing I did was call Madonna, who was still in bed, her voice sounding slurred and pale, and when she heard it was me calling, she made to clear her throat and whispered to the person next to her (obviously a man), “Honey, thanks for the glass of water, okay?” She asked.

Then she asked me what I was doing a while ago, I originally went to Haikou to find every day, every day into rehab, I told her blindfolded writing. She was obviously shocked, “What the hell? Oh, my God.” She took a deep breath of smoke, a long hush.

“Things are looking up and I’m sure he’ll recover.” I said, “How are you doing?”

She grunted, “What else? My life will always be surrounded by alcohol and men, always an illusion, only to be gone with the wind one day in a funk,-and if that day does come, I’ll thank God for it. By the way, let’s meet once this afternoon if you’re free. I guess you’re not feeling well, and I haven’t seen you for a long time. How about going for a swim? Open-air swimming at the East Lake Hotel. I have a gold card there. You know, the good thing about open-air swimming is that you can entertain others and yourself at the same time, and if a woman wants to attract a man succinctly and quickly, apart from a big hot body dance, she can also swim in the open-air!” She laughed “hahaha” like a heroine in a Hollywood thriller.

“Baby, I’m sorry, I’m like a snarling bitch right now, that little bastard Dick has screwed me over, my metabolism is broken, well, enough about that, I’ll drive up and pick you up, and I’ll have a present for you.”

At the edge of a blue expanse of water, Madonna and I reclined in canvas chairs with a clear sky overhead, a light breeze, and the sun like a slice of honey kissing bare skin with just the right amount of viscosity. Skin that had been covered all season looked pale and unconvincing at first glance. I covered my body with a towel and gazed at the man in the water. His name was Ma Jianjun, and he had been befriended by Madonna on a very dramatic occasion.

One late night Madonna was speeding down the street, a safe time to go crazy when the roads were deserted with cars. As she reversed her car into a one-way street filled with beautiful sycamores, she was unexpectedly blocked by a police car slanting out of the shadows. Two policemen came out of the car. One of them was broad-shouldered and long-legged, with eyebrows like those of Pierce Brosnan, the new James Bond protagonist. When he said to Madonna solemnly, “Miss, you made a mistake,” he sounded exactly like James Bond, except that he didn’t have a gun in his hand, and he didn’t have that little evil streak.

Madonna gave him a confused look in the streetlight, and three seconds later she had her eye on the pretty cop. She dutifully paid the fine and gave him her cell phone number in the process. What prompted the handsome cop to resolve to have a little sex with a lonely woman who was driving recklessly late at night is unknown.

“He said he thought I had nice hands, and when I passed the money through the car window he noticed that I had charming hands, long, long, and self-pale, with fingers that looked like they had been enchanted by the glow of a diamond ring, like a pair of fake hands on a plaster model.” Madonna whispered and laughed. I realized that those hands were a great contrast to her face, surprisingly youthful, as if they were eudaimonia possessed by a bean-counter girl.

“Whatever he says, he’s willing to fuck me anyway, and does it so well that every time he knocks on my door in his uniform, I can get wet in three seconds.” She looked over at me, I was out of my mind.

“Hey, cheer up, let’s get in the water and swim.” She said, walking towards the pool and jumping in with a splash. By now, the number of people swimming in the water was growing, and a pair of Japanese men with black sweaty hair and ropy legs dipped in the water and looked my way.

I took off my sunglasses and lifted the towel to reveal my red bikini, the red color against my pale skin was like a strawberry salad dripping with cream in the sun. I eagerly jumped into the water, a gentle transparent force lifted my body, I still have nowhere to hide in the sun, even if I closed my eyes, other people’s eyes can still penetrate the water, see this strawberry salad.

I don’t know why my mental senses get weird, the way strangers look at me half-naked still gives me instinctive satisfaction, but the thought of being as stupidly exposed in broad daylight as a dessert makes my subconscious become enraged again, feminist thoughts raise their heads, what gives me the right to look like a futile, clueless Barbie doll? The men probably wouldn’t have guessed that I was a novelist who had been secluded in a room for seven days and seven nights, and they probably wouldn’t have cared that all they had to do to notice a strange woman in public was to measure her circumference, and what was going on in her head was as little to be concerned with as the steps leading up to the White House.

My mood didn’t improve completely after this swim, especially after seeing Madonna and her cop boyfriend eyeballing each other, I was so depressed that I sneezed while in the locker room.

“Poor little thing, your inner anxiety is reducing endorphin bark production, you should take care of your health!” Madonna wrapped a large towel around me and said softly in my ear, “Look at me, I’ve never gotten a cold since I’ve had a boyfriend, do you know why? The expert’s answer is that amicable sexual relationship can improve the body’s immunity, so I don’t sneeze or have a runny nose.”

She gave me a kiss on the cheek and then she suddenly remembered that she had a present in her handbag that she hadn’t taken out, “Wait, there’s a surprise for you.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes.” She laughed out loud and I closed my eyes, thinking no big deal, she always likes to play gags.

“Okay, open your eyes.” She jerked something to the tip of my nose, and I stepped back, only to realize that it was a female sex object, a real plastic oscillator, and that wasn’t all, she opened the package and took out the pink phallus, holding it in the palm of her hand to show it to me in detail.

“Oh thanks, I don’t need that.” I said in a huff.

“I didn’t use it, it’s new, after that little bastard Dick left me, I had thought I would have use for it, but I ended up not using it, it wouldn’t satisfy the hole that opens in my heart.” She floated a strange smile, as if in pain and lust, “–I mean mental solace. But now that I have a man again, and you are now doubly depressed, and surely lonely and sympathetic, this stuff works.”

“No, no thanks.” My face was going red because the thing looked terribly erect and intimidatingly large. I thought to myself I’d rather use my own fingers, they were softer and more reliable.

“Take it, please.” She was still smiling.

“No.” I smiled back.

“Okay, you’re such a lady, but really, we’re connected at the core.” She looked like she saw right through me and grinned an ugly grimace, “Seriously, make a date to go see Tin-Tin together. …… It’s like he’s been having nightmares for as long as I’ve known him, and of course, it’s a stroke of luck that he ran into you, I know exactly how much someone like him craves love.”

“…… But I’ve always felt guilty about him, always felt like I was another one of his nightmares, and we held hands like two traveling companions in the night.”

“Honey, don’t think too much, I know you’re upset, this is not the kind of thing that other women can deal with, the fact that you’re different, call me if you feel lonely, I can lend you my boyfriend, or all three of you can fuck together.” She burst out laughing again. It was her characteristic way of expressing her contempt for normal life. I’m sure she can talk the talk, even though it’s unbelievable and sounds a little sweetly fishy and disgusting.

We had dinner together at the Taiwanese-owned Yang’s Kitchen. During the meal her cop boyfriend seemed to take quite a liking to me, I could feel him take a sip of his red wine and then take a knee to my knee. I didn’t move, my mouth stuffed with the fresh juices of the bugs, my mind wondering what makes a cop different in bed? Maybe suppress every woman under him as if she were an undesirable citizen, hard and long?

I thought, a wonderful rush of saliva flooding my tongue and a special warmth in my stomach, like it was being squeezed by a large hand.

Madonna yelled, “What the fuck is going on?”

She was on fire and threw down her chopsticks heavily. The opposite knee suddenly stops moving, and I can’t help but laugh.

The waiter tended to step over in a hurry. “Why is that disgusting? I bet your chef will end up bald, and I curse him for not having a single hair left.” She gestured rudely at a pot of soup.

The manager of the restaurant came over, apologizing profusely and asking the waiter to take away the pot of wolfberry and chicken soup with the hairs floating in front of her. A moment later a new pot of soup was brought out plus a complimentary dessert.

I arrived home in the evening to find a gift from Madonna still tucked in my bag, which she must have snuck in. “What a crazy woman.” I thought, shaking my head and putting the thing in a drawer. Took a shower and got into bed.

Sleep swept over me like the tide at the halfway point of the moon, and it was the easiest sleep I’d had in days. My day-to-day, my novel, my anxiety, and the difficulties of fucking life were all thrown into a bottomless pit to get a good night’s sleep first.

Dear CoCo, there’s no need to be sad, when you wake up it’s just another day after another.

Early the next morning, the fat granny next door found a letter and a postcard in my mailbox, which she enthusiastically brought up for me as usual.

I thanked her and walked over to the couch and sat down, the letter was from Tin-Tin and the postcard was from Mark from Mexico. I hesitated and decided to look at the postcard first, the picture was of a huge pagoda-like cactus standing in the middle of a desert, and on the back was scribbled illegible English.

“Honey, I traveled to Mexico on business, a somewhat dirty but very charged place where marijuana, tricycles and sad women with black hair and blue eyes are everywhere. I ate a lot of the world’s hottest non-booze chili peppers at the restaurant, and you’re going to be hot the next time I kiss you, I bet.

PS: Our client, a multinational producer of pressure-resistant glass is very difficult to deal with, and I’ll also be traveling to Europe to investigate the glass market and a competitor named by the client, together with our colleagues from the company’s headquarters in Germany. See you in half a month.

PPS: I can’t get through to you on the phone, consider going on the Internet, I can get you a Hotmail free mailbox.

Kiss you! Mark.”

I kissed the postcard, and for a while my phone stayed off the hook; I think he could have guessed I was writing a novel. I didn’t have to worry about him at all; he was a mainstay of this mainstream society, handsome and smart, with an enviable job, good at handling all kinds of complicated and spicy social relationships, good at balancing himself (he was a typical Libra), and a fish out of water when it came to relationships with women.

As long as he is willing, he can think of a way to contact me even if I run to the Antarctic Island.

The power in him seemed to have been bestowed by Zeus, while Tien, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of him; they were like people from two worlds who crossed each other with the reflections projected on my body.

I found a silver letter interceptor on the table, usually I don’t use this fussy way of opening letters, at this point it would give me a bit of relief to use it.

Tien only wrote a thin sheet of paper.

xxii. meeting with booksellers

My editor, Deng, called again, asking me how I was eating, sleeping, and how my writing was progressing, and then asked if I could meet her and a few of her bookseller friends at a coffee shop on Shaoxing Road called China Pass.

I said yes.

The car arrives at Shaoxing Road, a small road with a cultural atmosphere, several publishing houses and bookstores on both sides of the road, and a coffee shop named “Old China Hand”, famous for its wide selection of books on all four walls and antique furnishings with a 1930’s flavor. Owned by Er Dongqiang, a photographer with a reputation in Shanghai, the café is frequented by cultural celebrities, including journalists, publishers, writers, film and television producers, opera stars, and Western scholars, all of whom twinkle like stars in the night sky against an elegant backdrop. The books, jazz, coffee and antique furnishings are in line with the city’s erotic memories and modern consumer guidelines.

I pushed open the door to the store and saw Deng and a couple of men sitting around a table in the corner, sat down and realized that one of the booksellers looked quite familiar. He smiled and took out his business card and handed it to me, and I remembered who he was. When I was studying in the Chinese Department of Fudan University, he was the Minister of Literature and Art of the Departmental Student Union, two years higher than me, and was one of the objects of my original crush. Because he often wears a pair of Italian mafia-style hat and sunglasses, his nickname is Godfather.

I remember when Fudan had a play called “Trap”, the first salon play in Shanghai colleges and universities, the godfather served as the director of the play, I removed all the difficulties, and overcame the crowd, and got to do the female lead. On the pretext of talking about the play, I often went to the godfather’s dormitory in Building 3, sat next to a “heart-to-heart table” (which was named “heart-to-heart table” because it was often surrounded by people who talked about their hearts), stared at a pair of foggy eyes due to myopia, and gazed at the director’s handsome and eloquent face, imagining that he would suddenly stop talking. I fantasized that he would suddenly stop talking and then stretch his face across the table, sticking to my lips like a magnet.

The scene was far more exciting and difficult than any saloon play, but it never happened, and I was too young and very much afraid of embarrassment, and he, as I heard afterward, was in love with the girl in charge of the stage design of our troupe. The girl often hangs a string of silver keys, long legs walk like a waltz, smiling face left and right two dimples, often fussing with the boys with hammers, nails all over the scene, props with paper seems to be very good at it, often to the “HSBC paper company” call, I privately call her! I called her “HSBC” in private.

The Godfather was so mesmerized by “HSBC” that the night before the show at the Salon I saw the two of them walking hand in hand down a shady avenue to bask in the moonlight. I felt like a “sad moonlight song”.

On the second day of the performance, my godfather asked HSBC to do my make-up because the make-up artist had something to do at the last minute. She came over to me with a big brush in her hand, smiling, and applied eye shadow and blush on me as if she were painting, which hurt and made me feel awkward.

Afterward, I brought in a mirror, and I could hardly stand up, my face was painted like a circus clown, and my godfather helped me by saying, “It’s very nice.” So, with old grudges and new, I burst into tears and called it quits, until my godfather coaxed me softly for half an hour.

The cologne he wore smoked me sweetly and sadly like a tone of reparation, and then a new makeup artist applied my makeup. The night was a great success, and I played it with style, tears falling like rain at the emotional moments, and applause rising wildly.

Two months later I met the Christian-plus-Shakespeare-worshipper-plus-sexual-superhero ex-boyfriend on the grass behind the statue of Chairman Mao, and as I wrote earlier we ended up tearing up and even using the relevant security services.

Inevitably, the memory of this past is a bit silly, but it is also very wonderful and useful. I think if I had not fallen in love with that Christian fanatic but with the Godfather, I wonder if history would have been rewritten, if I would have encountered so many things, if I would have been as crazy as I am now, writing novels, dreamy, warm and uncertain, mingling in this city? Who knows?

“Hi, Godfather.” I happily shook his outstretched hand.

“You’re getting prettier.” He complimented me, which is a cliché but always works with girls. Deng also introduced me to several other men, who were friends with each other and had set up a studio under the publishing house where Deng was working, called “Left Bank”, which was probably a name that someone who had graduated from Fudan University would have come up with as a literal reference to the French New Romantic movement.

Deng has told us that the Left Bank has produced a series of books called “Thousand Paper Cranes”, which has set a new sales record in the national book market. According to the relevant audit department estimates, “thousand paper cranes” brand intangible assets are now worth more than ten million, sounds encouraging.

My mood became steeply lighter, and it always made me happy to meet Fudan children from time to time in this city or in that city. Yanyuan, Xianghui Hall and the rows of sycamores on Handan Road, the air of youthful frivolity, freedom, wit and fallen aristocrats floating around in the sky are the part of the Fudan children’s lyrical naivety on the long road of life, and also the secret markers on which they rely to recognize their own kind.

“Since you know each other, that’s great.CoCo, talk about the long story you have at hand.” Dang was eager to cut to the chase.

“I read your first collection, The Scream of the Butterfly, and it was marvelous to read it, as if I had walked into a room with four walls and a ceiling. The floor was fitted with mirrors, and the reflections kept going from this mirror into that one, surrounded by light that swam back and forth like a trapped snake. There’s an uncanny clarity of moving truth in the kernel of mental chaos, and that noirish, sultry quality to the language, and reading your novels is like experiencing a ……” Here, the Godfather lowered his voice, “like experiencing a wonderful fuck. “

He gave me a rather thoughtful stare, “That kind of textual reading is seductive, especially for readers at that level of education.”

“The writing is as it should be.” Deng interjected.

“The market position of your work can be defined among college students and white-collar workers, and female readers in particular will have a sensitive response.” The Godfather’s friend said.

“But I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, I haven’t finished writing ……”

“I’ve heard that a number of readers have written to you before?” Godfather asked. “And sent pictures.” Deng pursed her lips and smiled, the occasional petulance of a middle-aged woman like flowers opening abruptly after a rain. “Enthusiasm in all its forms is the very source of inspiration.” “Thank you,” the other man says, and I take a sip of my coffee, my eyes retracting from an antique telephone across the room. Something makes me smile, and I say softly, “I’ve finally discovered what it means to be a writer, or at least being a writer is a lot more godly than being a $100 denomination.”

Outside the glass window, it was getting late, a few orange wall sconces were lit in sequence, and the godfather offered to go somewhere for dinner. Deng excused herself, her junior high school daughter was still at home waiting for her to make dinner, “She’s going to high school and it’s a tight schedule, I have to keep an eye on her all the time.” She explained to us.

At this time outside the door and came in a few men and women, the woman I often see on the TV talk show, 365 days a year, she has 364 days as Zhang Eileen-style elegance of the talented girl dress, high cheekbones rubbed into brown red, thin bones, hanging shadow, in many other parties can often run into her. Madonna told me that this woman has had more than three dozen foreign lovers, nicknamed “little cheongsam”. Godfather and these people are familiar with the circle of greetings down, and then we took the car to eat dinner.

After the meal my godfather asked me where I was staying so he could take me home. I’m not a stupid woman, I could see what he was thinking, but no, things had changed and tonight I especially wanted to be alone. Even though he still looked so attractive.

We hugged each other goodbye and promised to let him know as soon as the novel was finished by then. “I’m glad I met you again, and I regret not chasing after you back in Fudan.” He whispered half-truthfully as he attached himself to my ear.

I walked slowly along Huaihai Road at night, I haven’t walked like this for a long time, slowly my whole body began to heat up, I thought I was only 25 years old after all, how young, like a high-value credit card, everything can be used first, and then settle the bill when the time comes. The neon lights on the street are not as bright as I am, and the ATMs at the bank by the side of the road are not as rich as I am.

I walked to the subway entrance of Parkson Mall, under which there was a large private Monsoon Bookstore, known for its wide variety of books, never discounted die-hard style, I wandered around without any purpose, and stopped for a while in front of the horoscope divination book counter, which said that people born on January 3 have extraordinary personal charisma, and are known as the “Sister of the Legs”, and have a strong ability to repair both body and mind, and predicted that 2000 would be a happy harvest year for me. The book said that people born on January 3 have great personal charisma, are known as “leggy sisters,” have great physical and mental restorative powers, and predicted that the year 2000 would be a happy and productive year for me. That didn’t sound too bad.

I walked back over to the Photome machine at the subway station, an unattended kiosk. In Mark’s apartment is hung with a long row of beautiful and avant-garde photographs he took from the Photome, four of which are self-portraits of him standing, crouching, crouching, and sideways in four poses of his naked body, each of which shows a part of his body, his head, his chest, his abdomen, his legs, and when viewed together they have a particularly stimulating visual effect, resembling robots, or a human body dismembered by knives, and a series of what Mark calls “gibbons”. A set of Mark’s self-proclaimed “gibbon” series, he repeated a dozen arm images, and then with the upper body together with large open arms, looks like a modern “Tarzan Apes” replica, NBA star Michael Jordan is to look at the arm of the sigh of relief, very grotesque and very sexy. Very grotesque, very sexy, I remember the first time I made love to Mark in his apartment, these pictures hanging on the wall really gave me a lot of impulse.

I threw enough money into the small hole, and after four flashes of the flash, about five minutes of light, I got the washed and dried four photographs in a row, on which the faces showed expressions of sadness, anger, happiness, and indifference, and for a moment I couldn’t be sure who the girl in front of me really was, why she was so happy and sad, what corner of the globe she lived in, and what kind of people had various kinds of relationships with her, and what she did for a living. have all kinds of relationships with her, and what does she do for a living?

Then five seconds later my sanity returned to normal, which was like reclaiming the back of my cerebral cortex from an invisible spirit that had been let loose into the air. I glanced at the selfie in my hand and carefully placed it in my bag.

Look at the round electronic clock in the subway station, 10:30, but I still do not have a little sleep, the last subway from the train station still has half an hour to go, I bought a one-way ticket from the automatic ticket machine, stuffed it into the mouth of the automatic ticket checker, “pop”, the green ticket from the center of the small hole popped out, the turnstile loosened, I walked to the bottom of the stairs and picked a cleaner seat in a row of red plastic seats. the bottom of the stairs and picked the cleaner of the rows of red plastic seats and sat down.

You can doze off for a while, or look around at strangers for a while. I have written a short story called “subway lover”, to the effect that a slightly haggard beautiful woman is always in the people’s square on the last subway to meet a clean and tidy body has a tobacco flavor, fragrance, air-conditioning smell of white-collar men, they never talk, but invariably there has been some kind of tacit understanding of the feelings of the existence of the other person sometimes encountered a person did not appear, another person will be inexplicably melancholy and lost. Until one day, because of the cold snow, the carriage ground slippery, a shake so that the woman naturally slipped into the arms of the man, they snuggled together, around the people did not notice their abnormalities, everything happened naturally, the man did not get off the platform he should go down. He got off at the terminal at the same time as the woman. After kissing her on the platform in the dead of night, and then bidding her goodnight like a true white-collar gentleman, he walked away. I struggled with this ending, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be appropriate to have the man and the woman never be physically intimate throughout, or whether the reader’s aesthetic inclinations would be better served by having them go to bed and become intimate lovers.

As a result, the story was published in a fashion magazine and triggered a lot of reactions from white-collar women. My cousin, Zhu Sha, on behalf of a few of her colleagues, expressed her dissatisfaction with my middle-of-the-road eclectic ending, “You should have let them have no contact at all or just indulged in their heartfelt passions completely, but he kissed her once and then courteously said goodbye to her and left her alone, so what’s the point of that? It felt like scratching an itch, unclear and unpleasant, worse than a moldy rainy day. We can all imagine the two of them tossing and turning in their beds at their respective homes after their separation and staying up all night. Love stories are so disappointing these days.” At that time, Jusha was not yet divorced from her ex-husband, who was her college classmate, but was already in the awkward position of being half-hanging in the air with no place to go around. In the past few years they knew each other so well that there was nothing new about them, as well known as the left hand and the right hand.

Like almost all white-collar women, Zhu Sha hides a sensitive and rich heart under her dignified and quiet appearance. They often abide by their duties and responsibilities in their career, and they also have high demands on their private life, and they try their best to get closer to the image of a modern independent woman in their mind, i.e., self-confident, rich, and charismatic. They have more room for choosing their own life. They like Andy Lau’s line “Everything is under control” in Ericsson’s advertisement, and they also appreciate the image of a professional woman wearing a diamond ring and exuding a confident smile in DeBeers’ advertisement, with a lyrical baritone voice, “It’s the confidence that shines, and it’s the charm that glitters. The voice over is a lyrical baritone, “It’s the confidence that shines, it’s the glamor that shines.”

The last train slowly pulled into the platform, and the moment I stepped into the carriage, I caught a nice whiff of male body odor, exactly as I described in Subway Lover, “From him wafted a mixture of tobacco, incense, air conditioning and body odor, a fascinating scent that made her feel slightly lightheaded.” I couldn’t help but craning my head to look around, and I thought to myself, are fictional characters really going to show up automatically in front of fictional authors? But I couldn’t be sure which of the males around me that scent had just emanated from, and I gave up on the romantic thought, but did feel the subtle wavering of faint beauty and faint mystery that is so ubiquitous in city life (especially at night).

XXIII. From Spain ……

“As the day heats up, cicadas squeak through the poplar trees of the old tenement district, and dusty, automobile-stained stone steps lead down to the city’s secret gardens, old mansions, and claustrophobic day-and-night hipster crowds. The stiletto heels walk through mossy alleys, through streets where modern buildings stand, through dreams of southeast, northwest and north, and the staccato tapping is the perfect material echo to the ears of this city. ……”

On the afternoon without warning, I had just written the above poetic paragraph when the clear sound of heels hitting the ground came from outside my door, followed by a low, measured knock. A strange middle-aged woman knocked on my door.

Her overly refined dress and curled tongue with a strong exotic accent made me realize in a flash who the uninvited guest in front of me was. “Biten he’s not here?” She looked at me with a complicated expression for a few seconds and broke into a smile, “You must be CoCo.”

I subconsciously smoothed my hair over my shoulders, there were one or two black stains of ink on the backs of my hands, and to top it all off I was wearing a thin, short nightgown, so that anyone with 0.5 or better eyesight could see that I was wearing nothing underneath it, through the white, delicate fabric. I folded my arms over my stomach and tried my best to act like everything was normal as I invited her in, then burst into the bathroom and pulled the panties I’d just changed into from last night’s washer as fast as I could, and put them on, so I had to make do. Tying up my hair in the mirror and checking my face for anything strange, I never thought that Tin-Tin’s mother would suddenly appear in this room like this.

Things were awkwardly tense from the start, I still haven’t gotten over the novel I’m working on, I’m sure any girl would have this kind of panic when her boyfriend’s mother suddenly arrives at the house they’re living in together, especially when the boy is locked up in a horrible, isolated place because he’s addicted to drugs, what am I going to tell her about her son, what will be her drastic reaction, is she going to pass out? Will she scream at me and ask me why I didn’t watch out for her son, why I’m so irresponsible and still living in this house writing my novel? Maybe pinch me with her fingernails.

I went into the kitchen and searched for half a day, the refrigerator was almost empty, there was only a little bit of ground coffee left in the carafe, I scanned around distractedly, I got my hands on the cups, the mixing spoons, the sugar cubes, scraped off all that brown powder, brewed a cup of coffee, with a white foam floating on the surface, it looked like a bad coffee sold in the dark stores, I tasted it, luckily there was no acidity in it.

She sat down on the sofa, still surveying the arrangements around the room, and her gaze lingered for a long time on Tien’s self-portrait hanging on the wall, the finest work of art Tien had ever painted; he had drawn the coldness of his own eyes as transparent as an ice-valley, and there was a certain inscrutable emotion simmering in his brush, and it seemed that he was enjoying the unspeakable pleasure of loneliness as he traced his features in the mirror, and that he had forsaken the the boy in the mirror, and then injected the boy with enchanted blood, which revived him and caused him to rise like a mass of mist to the highest part of the heavens in a moment.

I handed her the coffee and she thanked me, staring at me unabashedly, “You’re better looking than I expected, I had thought you were a big guy.” I smiled, my insides in a state of flux. “Ugh, I’m sorry, I haven’t formally introduced myself I guess. I’m Tin-Tin’s mom, you can call me Connie.”

She took a box of fine Cuban cigars out of her handbag, I handed over a lighter, she carefully lit the fire, and a blue-gray smoke filled the room, the smell a little pungent but pleasantly exotic, and we both relaxed a little.

“I didn’t tell you guys in advance when I was coming back, but I thought it would be better this way, and my son said in his letter that he didn’t want me to come back.” She floated a sad smile. There were hardly any wrinkles on her well-maintained face, her oiled hair was dark and shiny, and she wore a child’s flower hair cut like Jin Yuxi’s, which middle-aged Chinese women who had lived overseas for many years seemed to be fond of, as well as that coffee-colored eye shadow, that burgundy lipstick, and that exquisitely tailored bright-colored dresses, probably because the culture of overseas life encouraged them to groom themselves in such a grand manner to make up for the marginal status of the Chinese race, which had been despised by the mainstream society. It may be that the culture of overseas life encourages them to groom themselves in such a grand manner to compensate for the marginalized status of the Chinese race, which has always been despised by the mainstream society.

She gazed at Tien’s self-portrait for a long time, with a particularly somber expression like she had just been fished out of deep water, and then her gaze moved to the large bed that was never made up, and I sat down on the edge of her hand and foot, ready to be interrogated by all the harshness that comes from motherly love. Sure enough, she spoke, “When will Tian Tian come back? …… It’s my fault for not calling or writing in advance.”

Connie finally asked the right question, her eyes full of anticipation and unease, like a young girl waiting for an important moment to come. I opened my mouth, my mouth dry, “He ……”

“Right.” She took out a photo from her bag, “This is a photo of my son from 10 years ago, he was still baby-faced and small then, I’m afraid I won’t recognize him when I see him later.”

She handed me the picture, and what I saw was a thin, quiet-eyed teenager wearing a coffee-colored jacket, corduroy pants, and white sneakers, standing in front of a clump of fiery red plantains, with the sun’s rays shining down on him, his hair soft and shiny like dandelions ready to be blown away by the wind, this was every day in the fall of 1989, like a hazy certain scene I used to see in my dreams, and I had the a sense of déjà vu, recognizing traces from some of the colors and scents.

“As a matter of fact, Tin-Tin hasn’t lived here for a long time ……” As hard as these words were to utter, I confided in her the whole story truthfully. My brain flashed one glowing, shimmering floating line after another, a sad, steaming thing distilled from memory.

The coffee cup in Connie’s hand fell to the floor; it didn’t break, but her reddish-red skirt and her knees were all wet, and she was pale, and didn’t say anything for a long time, nor did she scream at me, or make any other dangerous move.

I had an inexplicable sense of solace, having another significant woman to share this deeply hurtful feeling with, and she looked like she was doing her best to control herself from losing her cool. I jumped up and went to the bathroom to get a dry towel to wipe the coffee stains from her dress, and she waved her hand, indicating that it was okay or that she wasn’t in the mood.

“I have clean dresses in my closet, so you can pick out a suitable one to change into.”

“I want to go see him, is that okay?” She tilted her head toward me, powerless eyes.

“That won’t work as a rule, but in a few days he’ll be out.” I said softly, again suggesting she dry or change out of her dress.

“No,” she murmured, “it’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have let him get that way, I hate myself for giving him nothing for so many years, I should have picked him up a long time ago and kept him with me, and even if he wouldn’t I should have forced him to do that,… …” she cried, covering the tissue over her nose as she cried.

“Why did you never want to come over and see him until now?” I asked her bluntly, even though her cries infected me and something in my throat twitched, but I never considered her a good mother, no matter how many difficult things this strange woman from Spain had to say, how many unspoken past events she had to tell, I had no right to judge her life, her person, but I always thought the life that floated every day with ecstasy and dark shadows was fatally related to this woman, and that the relationship between him The relationship between her and him is the rotting umbilical cord between the baby and the womb, since she left her family for Spain, since her husband’s ashes were brought back by a McDonnell Douglas plane, the trajectory of some chaotic destiny that lies ahead of her young son, the slow loss of a certain conviction, a certain talent, a certain fervor, a certain joy, the slow loss of immunity, of a certain cold, of a certain corruption, of a certain cell inside a body, of a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother, a mother. The mother, the son, the smoke, the death, the horror, the coldness, the gripping pain, everything was completely glued together, cause and effect, as the wheel of nature always turns.

“He must be so sick of me that he’s turned his back on me and tried to run away as far as he could.” She muttered, “If I come back, he might hate me even more, he always thought I killed his father ……” A steely light flashed in her eyes, like a drop of winter rain hitting glass.

“It’s all because of that old woman’s rumor, my son would rather believe her words than say a word more to me, we hardly have any communication, I send him money is the only way I feel comforted, and I’ve been so busy running the restaurant, that mess, I think one day I’ll give my son all the money I earn, and that’s the day he’ll really understand that the person who loves him the most in the world is his mother. is his mother.” She burst into tears, and in an instant her haggard state was revealed.

I kept handing her tissues, I couldn’t watch a woman cry in pain in front of me like that, a woman’s tears are like a drizzle made up of silvery drums, they can be contagious with a special rhythm that puts a certain area of the bystander’s mind on the verge of collapse.

I stood up and walked over to my closet, taking out a black one-step dress that I hadn’t worn since I’d bought it a year ago, and I handed it to her, the only way to stop her endless tears and her sad imaginings that were falling deeper and deeper. “Now that I’m back though, he doesn’t always want to see me, does he?” She whispered.

“Would you like to wash your face? There’s hot water in the bathroom, and this dress looks like it fits you quite well, so please change into it,” I looked at her with concern; there were powder marks on her face from the tears, and the coffee-colored stains on her reddish-red dress were quite visible.

“Thanks!” She gave down her nose, “You’re a good and understanding girl.” She reached up and straightened a set of bangs on her forehead, a certain feminine, refined elegance returning to her cast. “I’d like another cup of coffee, is that okay?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I smiled awkwardly, “that was the last cup, there’s nothing left in the kitchen.”

Before she left she changed into my clean dress, looking back and forth, the sizes were a perfect match, I got a brown shopping paper bag and helped her put her dirty dress in it. She gave me a hug and said well she would wait for the moment she would meet her son, in the meantime she and her Spanish husband needed to work with a real estate agency to check out a few downtown houses to see where would be best suited for a restaurant, she handed me a slip of paper with the room number and phone number of the Peace Hotel copied on it.

“We’ll see you again soon, I have another gift I forgot to bring, I’ll be sure to give it to you next time, along with Tien’s share.” Her voice was soft, and there was a hint of grateful light in her gaze. A certain sympathetic and tacit atmosphere existed between us. Everywhere there were mistakes made, consciously or unconsciously, everywhere there were deficiencies and torments that existed in the first fibers of my body, in every nerve, even if this woman named Connie who had fallen from the sky really did have the wronged soul of her dead husband glued to her hand, even if it was true that her mind had been tainted by the demons of evil of one kind or another, even if there were thousands of truths that would remain unrevealed for a lifetime, even if all of the things that you despised, loathed, resisted, condemned, and wished to be converted into punishment flowed out of the heart in a source …… There is always a moment when something soft and innocent takes hold of the hearts of all men, as if one of God’s hands had reached out in a trance and made a gesture to the world that was empty and unmistakable.

XXIV. Dinner after 10 years

On this dry and hot day, one hour after receiving a phone call from Mark (who said he was back in Shanghai and hoped to see me right away, and asked if I wanted to see a little German avant-garde movie), Tiantian came home. Like the yin and yang sides of the moon attached to each other, echoing each other, the two important men in my life came back to me in turn.

I froze for a moment as soon as Tin-Tin pushed his way in, and then without saying a word, we hugged each other tightly, each other’s bodies extraordinarily sensitive, unseen tentacles reaching out to feel each other intently for the mesmerizingly strong kind of physical impulse that comes from the mind’s eye, but which the love curtails in the blink of an eye.

Then he suddenly remembered that the cab was still parked downstairs, waiting for him to go down and pay the fare.

“I’ll do it.” I said, grabbing my wallet and walking down the stairs, I gave the driver 40 bucks, he said, “I can’t find any change”, I said, “Forget it”, I turned around and walked into the porch of the building, the driver’s thank yous came from far away, and the melting white sunlight behind me was soothing for a moment. The melting white sunlight behind me was also soothed in a flash, my eyes readjusted to the dark floor, and as I walked into my room, I heard the sound of water clinking in the bathroom.

I walked over and leaned against the door winder, smoking a cigarette as I watched Tin Tin take a bath. The hot water turned his body pink, like a strawberry milkshake also like a newborn baby. “I’m going to fall asleep.” He said, closing his eyes as I walked over to the tub and picked up a sponge wipe to gently bathe him, Watson’s Bath Bomb smelling faintly of forest grasses, a small bee snickering against the glass window of the bathroom tinted the color of wine by the sunlight, such a serenity touched, seen, and occasionally splashed out like juice.

I smoked a cigarette and watched his sleeping, slender, handsome face and body as if serenaded by Kreisler’s “Sweetness of Love. He seemed to have recovered his health.

Tien suddenly opened his eyes, “What’s for dinner tonight?”

I smiled, “What do you want to eat?”

“Sugar tomatoes, celery lilies, garlic coconut cauliflower, potato salad, quail in sauce, and a big cup of chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream, strawberry ice cream ……” His eyes were full of longing, his pink tongue spitting out and in.

I kissed him, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

“Because I just came out of the ground ……”

“Where would be a good place to eat?”

He grabbed my arm and bit it, like a tiny carnivore.

“Have dinner with your mother.”

He froze, let go of my arm, and stood up from the water in a flash, “What?”

“She’s back, and her Spanish husband.”

He stepped out of the tub in his bare feet and headed straight for the bedroom without drying himself.

“Are you upset?” I chased after ……

“You think?” His voice was loud as he plopped down on the bed, arms resting behind his head.

“But she’s already here.” I sat down beside him and looked fixedly at him, while he looked fixedly at the large flowery panel. “I know what you’re thinking, there’s no need to be afraid of this complicated scene, or to loathe anything, or avoid anything, just face her now, and face up to all that’s happened. That’s all you need.”

“She never loved me, I didn’t know who she was, she was just a woman who sent me money on time, and sending me money was just a way for her to delude herself and relieve her guilt. In any case, she always cared only about her own feelings, her own life.”

“The question of whether you like her or not is of no concern or interest to me; I care for one thing only: and that is that you are unhappy, and that has nothing to do with your mother. If I can straighten out your relationship with her one day sooner, I can see you happy from the bottom of your heart one day sooner.” I said leaning down and hugging him, “Please, get rid of all the bonds on you, just like a chrysalis bites through its cocoon and becomes a beautiful butterfly. Love yourself and help yourself.”

Silence. There was a strange depth to the room, like a criss-crossing a wilderness, and we embraced, hugging tighter and tighter, our bodies getting lighter and smaller and lighter, until visions of tight, tiny flower bones covered the mind in all directions.

Then we made love in silence, doing it in a way that couldn’t tend to perfection but could never be replaced either, his belly pale and smooth enough to reflect my lips almost like glass, the pubic hairs that looked like soft swallowweed and smelled like little animals (like bunnies, his genus’s zodiac sign) of hot, sweet adenosine. I stroked myself with my other hand, feeling it grow fat and burning there. Wherever my fingers and lips slid, they could ignite little sparks of ghostly blue, drifting past with wet saliva with warmth, and the confusion, emptiness, regret, and fear receded into the distance, and maybe I’d never kissed someone in such a frenzy that I didn’t even bother to think about how I’d come to be like this.

All I know is that he is the happiness I have lost and found, the ardor of the flame of my life, the unspeakable sweetness and pain of my efforts to express myself, the never-to-be-attained stunning rose reborn by alchemy in the gardens of ancient Persia.

I had an orgasm as he crashed. I pulled my wet juicy finger out and brought it to my mouth, I smelled myself as he bit and sucked on my finger, “It’s sweet, with a little musky flavor, like boiled fennel and cinnamon duck broth,” he sighed, rolled over, and in a short while drifted off to sleep. One hand still clutched my fingers tightly.

At 7:30 p.m., Tin-Tin and I took a bus to the Peace Hotel on the Bund, and in the brightly lit lobby we met Connie and her husband, who were anxiously waiting.

Connie was dressed in full costume, gold red cheongsam, very high heels, face meticulously painted with thick ink landscapes, graceful spirit of strength, there are 50s and 60s Hollywood Chinese actress Lu Yan’s faction. As soon as she saw Tiantian, she burst into tears, stretching out two hands towards Tiantian, but was evaded by Tiantian, the Spanish man took a step closer to her, and she followed the trend of her husband’s chest and kept wiping her tears with a handkerchief.

She instantly regained her normalcy, a smile on her face, and said to Tiantian, “I really didn’t expect you to be so skinny and good looking, I’m just,…… so happy, oh, let me introduce, as she took her husband’s hand and took a step closer to us, “This is my Mr. Juan,” she turned her head to Juan again, “This is Tien and CoCo.”

We shook each other’s hands, “I’m sure we’re all hungry, let’s go have dinner,” Juan said in a Spanish-accented English. He was the quintessential Spanish bullfighter, in his mid-forties, tall, fit and handsome, with curly chestnut-colored hair, light brown eyes, a high nose, and a distinctive Western indentation below his thick lips that seemed to have been carved out with a knife, giving his chin an extraordinarily powerful and sexy look. He and Connie looked well matched, a middle-aged version of the Beauty and the Hero story, and it seemed that Connie was still about three or four years older.

We took a car to Hengshan Road, and all the way there no one spoke, and Tien sat in the back row among Connie and me, his body stiff as a big piece of lead.

Juan sighed in Spanish from time to time, probably saying that the night view of the city out of the car window is very beautiful, right, he first came to China, in the small town of Dax, only in Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige’s movie, I have only seen the mournful Chinese women, Chinese men in coats. The Chinese woman he married seldom talked about her hometown, so the modern and colorful Shanghai in front of him was a million miles away from what he expected.

After a few minutes of walking through a small alleyway with streetlights and ivy-covered walls on both sides, I saw a few old European-style houses placed next to each other. Inside the lighted courtyard was a Chinese restaurant called “Yang’s Kitchen”, the interior was not overly decorated, and the food was fresh and simple home cooking. I’m not quite sure how Connie, who had only been in Shanghai for a short time, found this little restaurant in a deep alley, but it was certainly a nice quiet place to have a meal and talk.

Connie asked me to order, and the restaurant owner, a Taiwanese, came over to exchange pleasantries with Connie, as if he knew her well. Juan reported two hard Chinese words, “phoenix claw” and “pork belly”, explaining that he did not want to eat these two dishes, he had tried them when he first arrived in Shanghai, and he had diarrhea that night. Connie added: “also sent to Huashan Hospital to get a hangnail, maybe it’s just a newcomer’s discomfort, and not necessarily related to the phoenix claw and pork belly.”

Tian Tian has been sitting quietly next to me, just smoke and daze, seemingly indifferent to our conversation. It was hard enough for him to agree to make the trip out tonight to see his real mother, so he couldn’t be forced to smile or weep all at once.

The meal was eaten very slowly, Connie has been recalling the time when she was pregnant until she gave birth to Tian Tian until Tian Tian was 13 years old, all the details she still remembered, as if she was counting her family’s treasures, “During the time when I was pregnant, I often sat at the bedside and stared at a calendar with a picture of a foreign little girl playing with a balloon on the grass, and I felt that little girl was so good-looking that I always thought I would also give birth to a little child that was so good-looking. I thought that little girl looked so good that I always thought I would give birth to such a good-looking little child, and sure enough, I got a very beautiful little baby in the hospital, although it was a boy, his features were very delicate and beautiful.”

As she spoke and gazed at Tin-Tin, who was expressionlessly shelling a bamboo shrimp, she explained to her husband in short Spanish what she had just said, and Juan, showing a look of approval, said to me, “He’s really pretty, a little bit like a girl.” I sipped my red wine slowly without comment.

“When Tin-Tin was five or six years old, he could draw, and he drew a picture called ‘Mommy knitting on the couch,’ and it was so funny, with the wool on the floor growing the kitten’s eyes, and mommy knitting a sweater with four hands. He always asks me how I can watch TV and knit at the same time, and my hands move so fast ……” Connie’s voice was low, but her laughter was loud, as if someone was ordering her to have to laugh out so loud.

“I’ve only ever drawn Dad fixing bicycles.” Tin-Tin interjected coldly, I glanced at him with wide eyes and reached over and gently took his hand, it was a little cold, a sudden silence fell over the table, even Juan seemed to understand what Tin-Tin had meant by what he said, Tin-Tin’s words invariably broke a taboo that none of the crowd wanted to get into, anything about his dead biological father was subtle and ominous.

“I remember when Tien was nine years old he fell in love with a six year old girl in the neighborhood, and like is like comes ……” Connie went on in Shanghainese to relate the past, her face assuming a look of self however rancor, the look that any mother should have when recalling the anecdotal wild tales of her son as a child should have had, yet her eyes were filled with a shadowy gloom, but she went on as if she were facing a test concerning the safety and security of the general situation, and she had to gather her strength to fight against something.

“He gave that little girl next door all the pretty knick-knacks in the house, the alarm clock, the vase, the glass balls, the cartoons, the chocolate pots and even stole my lipstick and necklace in one fell swoop… it was so good, it almost emptied the house.” She gestured exaggeratedly and laughed loudly again, like playing a piano with broken drum reeds causing vibrations and panic in the air.

“My son will do anything for the one he likes,” she whispered, looking at me with a slight smile, the light wasn’t too bright but I could still feel a hint of complexity in her eyes, a mixture of jealousy and love.

“Can we go home now?” Tin-Tin yawned and turned his face to ask me. Connie looked a touch nervous, “Since you’re tired, go home early and get some rest.” She said to Tin-Tin, then beckoned for the check, and signaled for her husband to get something out of his bag, two gifts carefully wrapped in floral paper, thank you, Tin-Tin thanked her lightly, over the years, Connie had given him money and gifts that he just took as they came, he couldn’t talk about loving or hating them, it was just like having to sleep and eat every day, his instincts were in need of them, that’s all. I thanked him too.

“Juan and I will take you guys home and then we’ll go around somewhere else.” Juan said in English, “I read an English-language magazine, ShangHaiNow, and heard that a luxury Oriana cruise ship has been moored on the Bund and is open to tourists, don’t you guys want to come along and check it out?”

“Honey, there are plenty of opportunities anyway, next time, Tin-Tin is tired.” Connie took her husband’s hand in hers and said, “Oh,” she seemed to snap to attention, “while you’re out there later, you can stop by and see the house we’ve settled on for a restaurant, it’s in the yard next door.”

The moon is hanging in the sky, everything under the moonlight is faintly mysterious, faintly cold. Into the eyes of this lighted a round lamp, surrounded by a circle of carved iron fence, paved with light red tiles of the courtyard, facing a three-story old house, seems to have been repaired and organized, the whole building still appears to be vibrant, and the kind of history through the 70’s precipitation of the elegance. Gorgeous and from the building of the house through the house, is through the dust can not hide, but also the new house can not be copied. There are stone steps winding up on the east and south sides of the house, occupying such a wide and open space, which seems to be a luxury in the old rented area of Shanghai where every inch of land is worth a thousand dollars.

Several hundred-year-old camphor trees and sycamores stretch out the dense, thick green shade, embellishing the yard and the three-story house like lace on a dress.

The second level of the townhouse also has a huge terrace that can be designed as a romantic, al fresco café during the spring and summer. Juan said that Spanish women in red dresses could be invited to dance flamenco on the terrace. You can imagine the exotic atmosphere.

We only stood on the steps for a while, not going into the various rooms, which hadn’t yet begun to be renovated, and there wasn’t much to see.

Lights and moonlight intertwined and fell on the ground, on our bodies, and for a moment there was a trance-like feeling. The cab dropped us off at our residence, Connie and Juan waved, and then the car started up again. Holding hands, Tin-Tin and I slowly walked up the stairs and into our room, sitting on the couch to open our presents.

One was a gift for me, a jewel-encrusted bracelet, and the other was a book of paintings by the Spanish painter Dali and a CD of Ravel, that was Tin-Tin’s favorite painter and classical music master, respectively.

Is it love or is it desire?

Tin Tin is back and an important space in my life is once again filled, every night we fall asleep breathing in each other’s breath, every morning we open our eyes as our stomachs rumble and kiss with hunger. The more we kissed, the hungrier we got, and I think it must have been love that made us so hungry.

The freezer is stuffed with fruit, various brands of ice cream, ingredients suitable for vegetable salads. We aspire to live a vegan life, as simple and plain as possible, like the forest-dwelling apes did tens of thousands of years ago, even though they didn’t have refrigerators, ice cream, Simmons, or flush toilets.

The “thread ball” is still wild, maintaining the habit of living in both the garbage can on the street corner and our house, coming and going regularly between the two points, snoring at the end of our bed on Fridays and Saturdays, exuding the aroma of shower gel (every day, it is responsible for giving it a bath to disinfect), and leaving the apartment with its tail tucked between its legs on Monday, just like a worker, to roam freely in the street when night falls. On Monday, he leaves the apartment like a working man with his tail between his legs, roams the streets at will, and when night falls, he calls out to his friends and meows, and even though he is wandering around on the garbage and dirt everywhere, he still has the feeling of enjoying himself and enjoying himself.

There was a time when we could hear the cries of the cats downstairs late at night, and the neighborhood committee organized manpower to clean up all the places where cats could hide, especially the garbage cans, and the number of feral cats really dropped, but the Threads continued to move around the neighborhood unharmed. As if they had the unusual ability to escape any predicament, they had a great life and occasionally brought a male cat back to spend the night. We guessed that if there was a “cat gang”, Threadball might be the female gang leader, who could pamper any of the male cats in the gang.

I, on the other hand, began to fall into a writing paralysis, there are still about 50,000 words to go before the novel is wrapped up, but my brain was empty, as if all the imagination, talent, and fire had leaked out of both ear holes overnight. The words under my pen were smelly and astringent, I wrote and tore them up, and simply threw my ballpoint pen into the waste basket, and I even stuttered a bit when I spoke. Whether on the phone or chatting with Tin Tin I try to avoid adjectives, subject + predicate + object, or imperative sentences such as “Don’t comfort me, please torture me”.

Tien was holed up in another room, absorbed in illustrating the novel I was working on, which had temporarily collapsed. He spent most of his time in that room behind closed doors, and when I suddenly pushed the door in, worried by some suspicion, I didn’t smell that unusual odor in the air, nor did I see any unusual behavior on his part.

Since he’d returned from rehab, I’d carefully cleaned the house, spent the morning checking every corner for any more marijuana or other suspicious items, and after confirming that there were no more remnants of the past in the house, I’d built a sense of security around us.

He was inside a pile of paint, searching for the true nature of things from the chaos of the world like Leonardo da Vinci. Like Adam in the apple orchard, he used his ribs to create the miracle of love.

“There’s nothing I can do about it, I think I’m going to be screwed, there’s no passion or inspiration whatsoever, I’m probably just an average to normal girl suffering from delusions that I’m going to write a book and become famous.” I said doubly weakly, while looking at the beautiful pictures spread all over the table, feeling really sad to fail his love and my own dreams.

“You won’t.” He said without looking up, “You just want to take a break and whine and pout while you can.”

“You think so?” I looked at him in surprise, his words sounded different and quite interesting.

“Whine to yourself and pout to your favorite people.” He said wisely, “It’s one of the ways to release inner stress.”

“Sounds like the logic of my therapist, David Wu, but I’m kind of glad you think so.”

“Would a publisher agree to use these illustrations?” He asked as he put down his pen, and I approached the table, going through the pieces one by one, some just drafts, others delicately finished, the colors of the gouache thin and soft, the lines of the figures clean and slightly exaggerated, the necks uniformly long in the Monterey Diogenesque style, and the eyes narrow and singular, characteristic of the Orient, conveying a hint of sadness, as well as wryness and naiveté.

And this is one of the qualities that I share between my words and his paintings.

“I love these illustrations, and even if I don’t finish my novel, they’ll stand on their own and be displayed in public. People will love them.” I reached my face over and kissed him on the lips, “Promise me you’ll keep drawing, I’m sure you’ll be an amazing painter.”

“I haven’t thought about that.” He said calmly, “And I don’t necessarily want to be famous and established.” It’s the honest truth that he’s never been ambitious and never will be. There is an old Chinese saying, “At the age of 3, you can see 80,” which means that even if a person grows from 3 to 80, he will never change something in his bones, in which case many people can foresee the picture of their life when they grow old.

“It’s not a matter of being famous or not famous, it’s a matter of giving yourself a solid support for your psyche, a reason to go through life joyfully.” I insisted, and there was one more thing I didn’t say, “It’s also a push to get you permanently off drugs and claustrophobic living.” If he had the desire to be a great painter, the vast majority of his attention would be focused on that.

I’ve written before that life is like a chronic illness, and finding something meaningful for yourself to do becomes the means to a lengthy cure.

“The crux of all problems is simply this: never lie to yourself.” He said simply, eyeing me sharply (he rarely looked like that, certain subtle changes in him had revealed themselves one after another since he got out of rehab), as if I were creating a fragrant, sweet trap by deceiving myself with righteous life lessons.

“Well, you’re right,” I said as I walked out the door, “that’s why I love you.”

“CoCo,” he called behind me, wiping the wet paint from his hands with a tissue, looking nervous and pleasant, “you know what I mean, – every morning when I open my eyes I see you by my pillow and I feel one hundred percent happy.”

Before I met Mark, I was hesitant to find an excuse to go out, but it turned out I didn’t need one. Tien was playing Empire Strikes Back at Madonna’s house and said he was going to play an all-night game of Strike Force, so I hung up the phone, threw on a sheer blouse with a pinched waist and low-slung black pants, put silver powder on my cheekbones, and headed out the door.

I saw long-handed Mark at the intersection of Yongfu Road Fuxing Road, dressed neatly and fragrantly, standing under a streetlight like he’d just stepped off a movie and drifted in from the Pacific Ocean. My exotic lover with wickedly beautiful blue eyes, an unmistakable curvaceous ass, and that plaything that’s so big it’s scary. Every time I see him, I think I’d die for him, die under him, and every time I leave him, I think again that he’s the one who should die.

When he fell off me and picked me up shakily and walked into the bathroom, when he reached between my legs with his sticky hands of bath gel and delicately washed the semen he had left behind and the love juices that had been secreted from his cunt, when he sprang to erection again and picked me up as soon as he could and placed me on the small of his back, when we made love again, lubricated by the bath gel, when I watched him gasp for breath under my parted thighs and call my name, when all the the sweat all the water all the orgasms coming at our bodies at the same time, I thought this German should die.

Close your eyes, and there will always be only a thin line between the instinct to have sex and the instinct to die, as I once arranged for the heroine’s father to die when his daughter climaxed during her first and last lovemaking session with her officer lover in my novel Pistols of Desire, which brought me vicious vilification from male admirers and the media.

We hugged and kissed and walked hand in hand through an iron gate, through a garden, and into the tiny video screening room amidst the bewitching scent of purple hydrangeas. I stood far back in the corner behind my seat, watching Mark greet and talk in German with his blonde friends. One of them, a woman with short hair, glanced my way from time to time. Foreign women always look at their Chinese mistresses brought by their compatriots in a very subtle way, a bit like looking at an intruder; foreign women in China choose their lovers or husbands in a much smaller way than foreign men; they generally don’t like Chinese men, and yet countless Chinese women compete with them for foreign men.

In some moments with Mark, I would feel a deep sense of shame, I was afraid of being treated like other Chinese women who were fishing for foreign turtles, because those women were cheap and would do anything to get out of the country. For this reason, I always stood in the corner with a stern face, giving Mark angry and cold glances as he drifted over to me with his pulsing, affectionate eyes. It was funny.

Mark came up to me and said, “Let’s have a cup of coffee with the female director after the movie.

There were so many people that we stood and watched the whole time, and I admit that I didn’t understand any of those sleepwalking images of glaciers and trains. But I think this female director is trying to express a common human sense of existential fear, helplessness, she chose to use a powerful form of expression, and the colors of the film images are very fascinating, in the strong contrast between white and black, but also has a wonderful harmony of purple and blue, shopping Shanghai fashion stores will not find this kind of pure art and yet appealing color collage. I love directors who can make movies like this.

At the end of the movie I met the director, Shamir, a woman of the Aryan race with hair shaved short like a man’s and wearing a short black dress, with wild emanating turquoise eyes and long, straight legs. Mark introduced me to her and she looked at me with that very special look in her eyes and extended her hand in a formal way, but I reached out my arm and gave her a hug, which she seemed a little surprised by, but pleased with.

As Mark had told me beforehand, Shamir was a true concubine. There was something in the way she looked at me that set her apart from the usual female-to-female exchanges.

We sat by the carved parapet on the 97th floor of Park, drinking amidst the scent of crushed gold flickering lights and smoky murals and music. Tony, one of the owners of Park, a Chinese American, was downstairs going back and forth to socialize, when he looked up and saw us, and hastily made a gesture of “hello”.

Samir coughs, takes my red satin embroidered handbag over to me, looks at it closely for a moment, gives me a small smile, and says, “It’s lovely.” I nodded and smiled at her. “I must admit, I didn’t quite get your movie.” Mark begins to say to Shamir.

“Me too.” I said, “But I was mesmerized by the colors on the screen, the rays of light that fought against each other but seduced each other, it’s hard to see that combination of colors in any other movie or street fashion store.”

She laughed, “I hadn’t thought about the fashion house in relation to my movie.”

“After reading it I felt like a dream I’d had before, or a story someone had told me, or maybe a fleeting emotion I used to get when reading CoCo novels, all in all I loved the feeling. …… like first breaking something and then putting it back together again is sentimental.”

Samir made a show of covering his chest with his hands, “Really?” There’s a strange childlike quality to her voice as she speaks, lifting her hands in a way that’s suddenly quiet as water and then bursting into flames, and when she agrees with you she reaches out and grabs you by the wrist, emphasizing in a convincing tone of voice, “Yes, that’s what it looks like.”

This is a woman who makes a lasting impression. She has been to the Arctic, climbed a frozen waterfall called the “Wall of Weeping”, like a wall of frozen tears, and is now working for DAAD, the largest cultural exchange organization in Germany. Currently she works for DAAD, Germany’s largest cultural exchange organization, where she is responsible for the field of video images and knows all the underground and avant-garde filmmakers in Beijing and Shanghai. Every year this organization organizes exchange events and invites artists from all over the world, including China, to Germany. There are a lot of people who like her, but my liking for her comes directly from the movie “Flight of Passage” that I just saw.

She asked about my novels, and I told her that they tell confusing but true stories that take place in Shanghai, a garden of post-colonial moods. “There’s a novel translated into German that I can give you if you’re interested.” I said with affection. It was translated for me by a German-reading boy who fell in love with me when I was studying at Fudan, an honor student who went to Berlin to study before he graduated.

She smiled at me, a smile like an unnamed flower blooming in the spring breeze. She handed me a business card with an e-mail address, phone number, fax number, and mail address, “Don’t lose it, we’ll meet again later.” She said.

“Oh, you’re in love with CoCo.” Mark said jokingly. “Sowhat?” laughed Sharmell, “This is a different girl, not only is she smart, but she’s beautiful and an awesome babe …… I’m sure she’ll say and do anything. ” The words struck me at once, and for a moment I was frozen with an electric sensation. I still don’t understand why it is invariably a woman who knows the most about women without exception. One woman always reveals the most subtle and secret traits of another woman with unerring precision.

For these knowing words, before we parted we stood in the shadow of the trees in front of Park and kissed intimately. The dampness and warmth of her lips drew me in like strange stamens, the joy of the flesh was sudden, and our tongues folded together as silky and dangerous as precious silk. I couldn’t tell how this ambiguous line with a strange woman was crossed, from conversation to kiss, from farewell kiss to erotic kiss.

A streetlight suddenly went out, and something heavy as a pounding but transcendent descended as one of her hands reached my breasts, gently twisting the nipples that protruded like buds through the corset, and the other slid down to my thighs.

The street lights suddenly came back to life, and as if in a dream, I broke away from the inexplicable attraction, and Mark stood to one side quietly enjoying the scene as if he were enjoying it.

“You’re too cute – too bad I have to go back home tomorrow.” Samir said softly before she hugged Mark, “See you soon.”

I was still in a bit of a trance as I sat in Mark’s Buick. “I don’t know why it’s …… like that.” I said as I stroked my hair lightly.

“You were mesmerized by her movie first,” Mark grabbed my hand and kissed it, “It’s thrilling to see one intelligent woman kissing another intelligent woman, and intelligent is sexy.” That didn’t sound masculine at all, on the contrary compassionate and forgiving touched the woman.

For that statement, I flew wet all the way to his apartment, which was so big I could have gone crazy all over the place. Turned on the jukebox, put on a disk of Xu Lixian’s commentary sing-alongs, and headed for the kitchen as I undressed.

He suddenly remembered that there was blueberry parfait in the fridge that I particularly loved, and gestured for me to wait a moment, then walked into the kitchen to hear a clinking of plates, then he walked over to the bed naked with a plate of parfait and a silver spoon. “Honey, take a bite,” he said as he fed the silver spoon to my mouth.

We shared the plate of delicious jelly one bite at a time, looking at each other and suddenly laughing. As soon as he pushed me down, he arched his head like a cave-dwelling barbarian on the Adriatic and kissed my belly with his cold, sweet tongue. “You have a fabulous, fabulous private part, and there will never be another one like it found in the distance from Berlin to Shanghai.” I stared blankly at the large floral panel with open eyes, the pleasure of the flesh paralyzing my brain’s perceptions and robbing me of all intelligence. The “Most Beautiful Private Parts Award” sounded good, perhaps even more appealing to a woman than the “Best Novel of the Year Award”.

He took a bite of jelly and then a bite of me, like a cannibalistic chief. I quickly curbed my outburst when he pushed up. “Want a baby?” He grunted irresponsibly, poking hard. For a moment, the sexual sensations were so overwhelming that it was like I’d made love to every man under the sun.

XXVI. A Sample of Early Summer

On May 8, U.S. warplanes bombed the Chinese Consulate in Yugoslavia, with three bombs crossing the five-story building from the roof to the basement, killing three journalists from the Reference News and Guangming Daily on duty and injuring more than 20 others. At 5:30 p.m. on the same day, in front of the U.S. Consulate on Urumqi Road in Shanghai, college students from various universities in Shanghai gathered, holding up banners and shouting, “Oppose Powerful Violence, Support Sovereignty and Peace”, and a number of eggs and bottles of mineral water flew into the wall of the U.S. Consulate as if they had wings, and more and more students, and protests lasted until the next day.

Madonna with a group of European and American foreign friends to visit, took photos back to us, the photo impressed me is a couple of theater choreography major, each holding up their hands to raise a piece of cardboard, which reads “sovereignty ah”, “peace”, and they stood motionless for more than an hour, like statues. Madonna said they stood there for more than an hour without moving, like statues. The girl has big eyes, like a youth in the 50s and 60s, and the two were wearing couple’s clothes.

One of Madonna’s friends, Johnson, also pulled a wad of one-dollar-denomination dollars out of his wallet and gave them to the students to light on fire.

“There won’t be a war.” Sky said worriedly. His mother, Connie, was now Spanish, my secret lover, Mark, was German, and they all belonged to the crusaded NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and Madonna was surrounded by even more of a gang of fun-loving, big-headed Yanks.

On May 9, stock prices in Shenzhen and Shanghai plummeted, and a KFC store in Wujiaochang closed its doors. Starting in the evening, a large number of hackers attacked hundreds of sites in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and others were hacked, with the Department of Energy’s home page having several photos of the victims and the Chinese flag added, and the NATO site shut down.

On May 10, I accidentally saw Mark’s face in a special report on the evening news of IBS, the English channel of Shanghai Television, where he expressed deep regret on behalf of their company for the bombing and apologized profusely to the families of the victims, as well as other large foreign companies in Shanghai, such as Motorola, Volkswagen, and IBM.

After watching TV, Tin-Tin was in the shower and I called Mark and he told me he loved me, kissed me and to sleep well at night.

My writing continues to be on the verge of collapse, the feeling is like trying to talk to someone about business in a coffee shop, but your eyes can never gather, you always get lost in the conversation and can’t help but look at the pedestrians and the scenery outside the glass window of the coffee shop. Of course it seems inappropriate to compare the writing of one’s life to talking business with a stranger in a coffee shop, how could it be? I think I’d rather just give up writing if it ever gets to the point where it’s forced and sad.

Deng and Godfather called separately, the second edition of the novel collection “Scream of the Butterfly” is coming out soon, and the post-publication operation process is already being arranged. Fudan, Huashi University and Shangshi University have all been contacted to hold seminars and book signings with university students. Newspapers and magazines will also have news releases. Deng also put a string of fashion magazine editors list open to me, saying that they are people come to me, hoping that I provide some fashionable and beautiful essays small articles, high fees, but also decent.

Unconsciously, Deng has assumed the role of my agent, but she has not stated it yet, and I have not paid her, I do not know why she is so enthusiastic about me, the only explanation is that she is kind, and bullish on my novels (you can compare the novelist to a stock, according to the development of each person will rise and fall).

I can’t get my novel down, but Daily’s illustrations are coming along fast. Next he’ll have to wait for me to write further down the page.

Spider sold me a Pentium II computer with a free MODEM and quite a bit of computer game software so that when I had nothing else to do I played games with Tin-Tin, who had become addicted to playing Empire Strikes Back, and I wrote poems on the computer and then sent e-letters to my friends, including the English versions to Shamir and Mark.

“Find a reason to get together, I miss my baby Tin-Tin so much.” Madonna said in a muffled voice over the phone.

“Read you a poem …… The days go by fucking slow, a heart dipped in lukewarm water suffering from beautiful times, the compassionate eyes of a lover surveying every new wrinkle in the mirror, waking up no longer able to drive 180 mph in a fast car to the beach, I’m alive and I’m dead. “

She amused herself as soon as she finished reading, “Here’s a little poem I did after I woke up today, not bad, huh? True poets aren’t in the literary world. Rather, they are in the bed of madness.”

“I’m screwed, I can’t write a word these days.” I confessed to her, “That’s why you should have a party, to wash away the bad luck, to get rid of the bad luck, is there any other solution than good wine, music, friends, and revelry?”

I made a split phone call, “Nothing miraculous happens in August, so for the sake of a new series of gouache paintings every day, for the sake of the novel I can’t write, for the sake of friendship, health, and happiness, please come to our 1 + 1 + 1 party.” I repeat this over and over again.

The day before the party, I received an unexpected phone call from Beijing from the bisexual makeup artist who claimed to often break the hearts of men and women, Pretty Baby Flying Apples. He said he was flying to Shanghai the following day to style the models in a promotional campaign for a line of Vidal Sassoon cosmetics, “Come on,” I said happily, “I’ve got a much more interesting party.”

That night at 8:30pm, the “1+1+1” party was held at our apartment.

The so-called “1 + l + 1” is “l person + l rose + l poem”, I carefully planned all the details of the party, the guest list carefully considered, men and women to have a basically appropriate ratio, and too serious, no sense of humor is definitely not invited! I planned all the details of the party with great care and attention to the guest list, with a basic ratio of men to women, too serious, no sense of humor, never invite people, so as not to spoil the atmosphere of the whole night. The room was tidied up a bit, not too clean, but I would wake up in a mess at the end of the following morning.

Tin-Tin looked happy, dressed in a white taffeta Chinese shirt and pants that made him look like a beautiful boy from an ancient Greek moonlit island.

The door opens and one by one, our friends arrive in turn, they hug Tin-Tin, and then I check to see if they have brought all the cute little gifts we asked for. Jusha and Dick were the first to arrive. Jusha looked radiant, wearing a pale red spaghetti strap dress, a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, the best actress at this year’s Oscars, and younger than the last time I saw her, with her new house renovated, and Dick moved in with her.

“Dick’s paintings are selling well at the Qing Yi Gallery, and he’s going to Venice next month, and Lisbon for an international art exhibition.” Zhu Sha smiled.

“How long is it going to be?” I asked Dick.

“About three months,” Dick said. His dreadlocks had been cut off, and except for a skull ring on the finger of his right hand, his body already appeared as smooth and neat as an office man’s, which would have had the subliminal effect of vermillion. I had thought they wouldn’t be together for more than three months, but now the two seemed to be proving to be a good match.

“I’d like to see your painting,” said Tin-Tin to Dick.

“Let me see your painting first,” Dick reached out and pointed to the row of gouaches on the wall, “It’s a bit of a shame not to put it on public display in a gallery,” he said.

“Later.” I smiled at Tin-Tin.

Madonna appeared with a young American boy, it seems that the police officer Ma Jianjun has become a period in her long history of love, stayed in the turn over the page, her love affair is always built on a breakup.

As usual, Madonna is pale, with a cigarette in her finger, wearing a tight black shirt, navy blue brocade pants, plastic thick-soled shoes of the GUCCI brand, and sunglasses that make her an unusual, if somewhat dainty, woman of the night (wearing sunglasses at night is really dainty, isn’t it?). She introduces us to an American boy with blonde hair who looks like the Hollywood bad boy Leonardo: “Johnson,” she says, gesturing with her hand, “CoCo, Tin-Tin.”

Johnson didn’t have a poem with him, Madonna said, “I’ll have him write one right away,” she gave me a badass You know how we met? We met on East TV’s “Meet Me Saturday” TV dating program. He was the head of the support group for male guest #6, and I was the head of the support group for female guest #3. Hey, that’s just a flirting game for bored white-collar workers, except that it’s more exciting to flirt openly in front of millions of viewers. Anyway, she said she knew me and asked me to be her support group, so we taped the show all day, and I got to know Johnson, who speaks very good Chinese, and could write a short, little Chinese poem like Li Bai later.” She laughed.

Johnson had a bit of a shy (shyness), like that quirky, cute look he had before Leonardo had his big break. “No falling for my baby oh I’ll be so jealous,” Madonna said with a smile. There was no awkwardness about them bumping into Jusha, Dick, Madonna hugged Jusha graciously and made small talk with Dick, probably give any woman a new loveable person and she’ll naturally have a wide open mind and move past it. Women are no match for men in their love of the new, and this is a great way to help restore your confidence as a woman.

Then came Spider with a foreign student from Fudan, a male foreigner, and Spider embraced Tiantian and then me in a wild kissing gesture, “This is Issa,” he introduced, “the Serbian.” Once I heard that, I paid extra attention up, he had a look of never being too happy, but he politely kissed my hand and said that you were famous in Fudan, that a lot of little girls who read your stuff wanted to be novelists like you, and that I’d read your collection of novels, The Scream of the Butterfly.

I was so moved by his words and the vicissitudes of his face, which had suffered so much from the destruction of his family, that I couldn’t help worrying about whether he would get angry if he knew that there was another Yankee in the house. Think of the thousands of tons of explosives dropped by the Americans over the Confederacy, and the countless women and children who were blown up beyond recognition. In my place, I would have jumped up and knocked down the nearest American.

“Please feel free to pick a place to sit,” Tin-Tin gestured, “there’s plenty of food. Wine, be careful not to break the plates and bottles so quickly.” Spider whistled, “As long as you use plastic, they don’t break easily.”

Then the publisher, former Fudan senior and crush, Godfather, and a few of his friends came with roses and old poems published in Fudan’s “Poetry Cultivation Ground” four years ago. I introduced them to Tian Tian, a job I always did well, like mixing cocktails or rushing from one movie theater to another.

The last to arrive was Flying Apple, who brought along several glittering models, all of whom were his workmates. These beautiful women were always on the runway, on TV, at cocktail parties, and other venues that were far from being sexy in the eyes of the general public, and were out of reach, just like beautiful goldfish in a glass tank.

Flying Apple had hair as colorful as peacock feathers, looked more like a cubist painting from a distance, had a nice pair of black-framed glasses (though he wasn’t nearsighted), and was wearing a D&G t-shirt and black and white plaid skinny-legged pants, which were outsourced with a thin, dark-red Thai calico that resembled a skirt but seemed sexier than a dress. His skin was white but not cold, sweet but not greasy, and we hugged and kissed, smacking our mouths together already.

Sky watched from a distance with his drink and didn’t come over, he had an inexplicable fear of bisexuality or Gay (male homosexuality) and could only accept heterosexuality and Lesbian (female homosexuality).

A room full of people were buzzing around in soft lighting and phantasmagoric electronic music, and every now and then someone with a drink stood in front of Tin-Tin’s paintings and gestured, and Flying Apple made exaggerated expressions from time to time, as if looking at those gouache paintings gave him physical orgasms, too. “I’m going to love your boyfriend,” he murmured to me.

I tapped the glass with a silver spoon and announced that the 1 + 1 + l program had officially begun, and that you could offer a rose to the person you thought was the most beautiful (regardless of whether the other person was of the same or opposite sex) and a poem to the person you thought was the smartest (regardless of whether the person was of the same or opposite sex), and that based on the numerical counts the beauty and the smartest person would be chosen. If you wish, dedicate yourself as a person to the person you would most like to dedicate yourself to (whether same or opposite sex). Of course the third item can be left to happen after the party, and while my room is big enough, I can’t predict what trend this group gathering will take.

As soon as I announced the rules of the party in a clear and articulate manner, a horrifying chorus of screams, whistles, stomps, and broken glasses suddenly erupted from the room, nearly toppling the ceiling and causing the snoring Threads to nearly die of a myocardial infarction. The Threads flashed out like an arrow and jumped off the balcony, “It’s killed itself!” The girls from the Flying Apples screamed.

“No,” I stared at them, I have no love for girls who like to scream, who abuse the vocal cords of wonderful females, “it climbed down the downspout and went for a walk up the street.”

“Your cat is so cool,” grunted Flying Apple, grinning like a mouse that had fallen into a tank of oil; such an exciting occasion was right up his alley, a genuine new human who would never stop seeking excitement in his life. “How did you come up with such a play?” Spider giggled, two snow-white cigarettes clipped to each side of his ear like a small carpenter on a remodeling crew, “What if it was you I was trying to offer up?” Madonna narrowed her eyes jokingly, “Try it then,” I narrowed my eyes as well, drinking wine and smoking cigars and listening to electronic music was a real turn on.

“What if it’s your boyfriend I’m trying to dedicate myself to?” Flying Apple bit her lip in a flirtatious manner. “I have the right to refuse,” Tin-Tin said quietly. “Yes, everything has to be consensual, but roses and poems are two things I’m sure no one will refuse,” I smiled, “It’s safe here, it’s like paradise, so just relax everyone and try to make yourself as happy as you can, and who to start with? Madonna, you start dear.”

She still wore sunglasses, took off her shoes and bare feet, and pulled out one of the roses that were all stuck in a large water bottle, “The rose is dedicated to the most beautiful Tiantian, and this poem is dedicated to the most intelligent CoCo, and as for dedicating myself, to whom to dedicate myself to wait and see the mood to decide, and the wine is not yet finished, so how do I know with whom to spend this night?” She giggled, tossed the rose to Tien, who was sitting on the floor, gathered a piece of paper from her handbag, temporarily pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, got down on one knee, and read the poem with exaggerated dramatic gestures, “That’s not yours, don’t kiss it, put it down, ……,” and as soon as she was done everyone all together I thanked him with a flying kiss. Next was Johnson, who dedicated the rose to the most beautiful woman in his eyes, my cousin Miss Vermilion, and the poem to Madonna, who he thought was the smartest, and it was really a short poem: “Beautiful girls, traveling together, the penguins at the North Pole ask us to drink the water at the North Pole, wouldn’t it be a joy?” As for the third program, which he also said he would talk about later, Madonna asked him, “Are you in love with Miss Zhu? The Chinese say, ‘A lover’s eye brings out the beauty of the West’ Since you think she is the most beautiful, you must like her,.” Johnson blushes all of a sudden.

During this period of time Zhu Sha has been sitting quietly with Dick embracing each other in a corner of the sofa, end of the glass of wine any other people how to wildly shouting and screaming are idle, if the idle garden closed flowers, elegant and charming, and Madonna’s character and temperament is very different, the contrast is as one is water and one is fire. Madonna said in a strange tone, “Don’t worry, you are a free American citizen, have the freedom to like a person.” Dick couldn’t help but laugh out loud as he listened to them talk and hugged Jusha harder into his arms, “Honey, it’s always nice to have someone like you because you’re truly charming.” “Bennies put an end to any jealousy or hostility, and it’s only right to have fun playing the game,” I said, “Right.” The Flying Apple agreed, smoothly wrapping his arms around my waist from behind and resting his head on my shoulder, Tin-Tin was oblivious, concentrating on cutting the head of the extinguished cigar with the silver pre-snow clippers, and I knocked him on the head, “Your turn, sweetheart.” “I dedicate roses to my most beautiful self, poems to my smartest CoCo, and myself to whomever inspires my passion, whether you’re male or female.” He said as he straightened the flower wrap around the outside of his pants in the closet mirror, “I really do think I’m rather beautiful.” “We think so too.” A few of the models chimed in smoothly as they clustered around the flying apple like a group of beautiful snakes wrapped around a large apple. “Other people don’t offer roses to me, wouldn’t it be a loss of face, why don’t I give one to myself first,” Flying Apple held the rose in his mouth, and made a gesture of stretching out his arms and flying to the sky in the music, extremely demure and soft, even the moustache he had stored on his chin increased the beauty of this kind of human and demon not being differentiated from each other.

“I dedicate the rose to you because I also think you’re the most beautiful.” The Serbian suddenly said in fluent Chinese, “The poem is dedicated to my friend Spider, who is a first-class computer player and has the highest IQ I’ve ever seen.” “As for the dedication, of course it’s to the person I think is the most beautiful.” The crowd turned their eyes to Issa in unison, as if they were looking at an alien from the sky.

There was a chuckle, from Johnson, an American, and Issa rose from the floor in a flash, patting the ashes of his cigarette on his body, “Is that funny?” He stared straight at Johnson.

“I’m sorry,” Jonson was still laughing, “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help it.”

“Just like your airplanes couldn’t resist flying into our country and dropping bombs? Just like your military can’t help but kill so many innocent people?whatalie!Americans! …… are a group of people I have to vomit when I think of them, you want to be in charge of everything, you’re brazen and greedy and insatiable, you’re crass and stupid and uneducated and just arrogant and cocky and deserve nothing more than a mouthful of spit on your face, Youmotherfuck!”

Johnson was on his feet in a flash, “Whatthehellareyoutalking?What do I have to do with those damn planes dropping explosives? Why are you humiliating me?”

“Because you’re Motherfuck’s American.”

“Never mind, never mind, too much drinking, don’t get excited.” Spider scurried up to separate the two men, the godfather was sitting next to a bunch of models, unobtrusively continued to use a hand of card playing skills developed over the years to attract the attention of the beautiful women, but they all from time to time to glance at the pair of quarrelsome red-faced foreigners. Morally, they support the Kosovars, but from an aesthetic point of view, they sympathize with Johnson, who looks like “Leonardo”.

“If you’ve got the guts, let’s have a fight to split the difference,” Madonna pontificated with a smirk, the only thing she could do. Flying Apple also stepped forward and took Issa’s hand, quite touched that it was Issa’s comment about liking him that had caused this fight.

“Do you guys want a cold shower?” Tien asked Issa and Johnson, not in a sarcastic way, but out of the goodness and simplicity of his nature. In his opinion, a bath was the preferred solution to all troubles, the bathtub was a blessed place as warm and safe as a mother’s womb, and washing his body and mind with fresh water could make him feel far away from the dust, far away from the noisy rock and roll, far away from the gangsters, far away from all the problems, the pain and the sufferings that tormented him.

The internationals argument subsided and the program continued, Tin-Tin dedicated the flowers, the poem and himself to me, and I dedicated it all to him, Madonna sneered, “You guys are pretending to be a married couple in public, mushy or not?” “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you jealous,” Tin-Tin spreads a smile while I harbor a secret twinge of guilt, both Madonna and Vermilion know about me and Mark, but how can I confess this to Tin-Tin? Besides, the way he made me feel physically was different from Mark, the two were not comparable. Tin-Tin had penetrated a part of my body with his extraordinary persistence and love that Mark could never reach, and I didn’t admit that I was greedy and selfish about it, but I also admitted that I couldn’t help it and had been making all sorts of excuses to forgive myself.

“I can’t forgive myself,” I once said to Vermilion, and Vermilion’s response was, “The truth is, you’ve been forgiving yourself.” Yes, that’s true.

Vermilion and Dick also gave each other only three things, while Spider, Godfather, and two of Godfather’s friends gave me poems. (Luckily, I was rightfully the smartest woman of the night, and I received a long list of poems that either smelled good or smelled bad, such as, “Your smile brings the dead back to life, and you’re a triple threat.”) This was a compliment, or “She’s like a piece of curled steel, not like a creature ……” was a put-down, or “She laughs, she cries, she’s real, she’s dreamy.” is just right. (aptly). Offering the roses and their bodies willingly to a couple of Mods brought in by Flying Apples, it was interesting to note that three and a half of the four men were sons of Fudan. This half is naturally Spider, who was ordered to drop out of Fudan halfway through the program. The Fudan kids and the gorgeous models were eyeballing each other, and the guest room next door had a sofa and a bed and a carpet, so it should be able to accommodate them.

Dick was looking at the paintings that were hanging on the wall every day, and Vermilion and I were sitting in front of a plate of strawberries talking, “Have you seen Mark lately?” She didn’t keep her eyes on me, she just asked in a low voice.

“There is,” I said, swaying my legs gently, Tin-Tin having just switched up an acid jazz record, the room a mess, everyone’s eyes glowing away like scattered yolked eggs. No one was idle, each playing his own.

“What’s wrong?” I turned my head to look at her.

“There’s a rumor going around the company that Mark is leaving China for the head office in Berlin right away.”

“Yes?” I tried to act as if nothing had happened, and a wave of extremely sour strawberry juice filled my tongue in a revolting way.

“He may be promoted for his outstanding performance in China and return to the Berlin headquarters in a key position.”

“…… Who knows? It could be true.” I stood up, kicked away a magazine, a red satin embroidered cushion at my feet, and walked out onto the balcony. Vermilion followed, “Don’t think about it too much.” She said softly.

“It’s quite beautiful with so many stars.” I looked up at the sky, the stars looked like little wounds blown out in the deep cold sky, bleeding silver, and if I had wings I would have flown up there and kissed every little wound. And every skin-to-skin encounter with Mark gave me this slightly aching and soaring sensation. I used to let myself believe that a woman’s body could be separated from her mind, that a man could do that, so why shouldn’t a woman? But the truth was, I found myself spending more and more time thinking about Mark, about that lustful moment.

Jusha and Dick say goodbye and leave, and before leaving, Jusha makes a point of walking over to shake JohnsOn’s hand and thank him for the rose.Johnson doesn’t look happy, and after a fight with the Serbian, the beautiful Jusha is leaving again. Madonna puts her arm around him and suggests going out on the balcony to look at the stars for a while.

The night was unanticipatedly chaotic, tumultuous, and uncontrolled. At 3:00 a.m., Flying Apple brought the Serbians to the New Jin Jiang Hotel where he was staying. Godfather, Spider, and the four of them tossed around in the guest room next door with the four models Flying Apple had brought with him. Tien, Madonna, and I slept on the big bed in the bedroom, and Johnson slept on the couch.

I was awakened again at 5am by the sound of many people tossing and turning at the same time. Next door there was the hysterical screaming of a woman like an owl on a roof at night. Madonna had slithered out of bed onto the couch, her snow-white naked body thin and lean, wrapped around Johnson’s body like a big white snake, a cigarette still in her right hand as she smoked and tangled with Johnson.

I watched her steadily for a while, thinking she was really cool and special. She changed body positions, and once she turned her eyes, she saw me too, and made a flying kiss at me, signaling that I could join in if I wanted to. Sky suddenly hugged me, and it turned out he was awake too. The smell of adrenaline was wafting around in the air, along with the smell of cigarettes, alcohol and sweat, enough to choke my cat.

The same song, “GreenLight,” kept playing over and over on the jukebox, and no one could really fall asleep, as Tin-Tin and I kissed quietly and deeply, and we kissed endlessly, and then, after a loud moan from Madonna and Johnoson, we fell asleep in each other’s arms again.

When I woke up the following afternoon, everyone had disappeared without a trace, not even a note was left, and the floor, table, and couch were covered with food scraps, cigarette ashes, empty paper pill boxes, soiled tissues, and a smelly sock and a pair of black lace women’s panties. A truly ghastly sight.

Since the pale emotion of dead gulping and living has rotted to the core at this 1 + l + 1 party, as they say, what goes around comes around, I throw out the trash, organize my room, and make a fresh start.

And then I was not surprised to find that I could write again, and that invisible magic that can manipulate language came back to me, thank God!

All my attention was focused on the end of the long story, and Tiantian stayed in the other room as usual to amuse himself, occasionally passing the time by going to Madonna’s house to play video games or go biking, with the kitchen becoming disappointingly empty and dirty again, and no longer doing his own cooking in different ways. Little Sichuan’s takeout came on time again, and the original boy, Ding, had quit his job, and I wondered if he had ended up writing the way he wanted to. But when I asked the new boy, he had no idea.

XXVII. Chaos

There was a sudden phone call from home, my mother had broken her left leg, she had fallen while walking up the stairs one day when the elevator didn’t work during a power outage, I was frozen for a while, then I quickly packed up and got in the car and went back to the house, my father was at school, there was a nanny walking around the house, other than that, there was a silence in the house that was so light that it made my ears ring.

Mom lay in bed, eyes closed, her thin, pale face glowing with an old, unreal light, a light like the furniture arranged around her. Her left leg was in a thick cast where the ankle bone had been, and I went gingerly and sat down in a chair beside the bed.

She opened her eyes, “You’re here.” She said simply.

“Does it hurt?” I echoed the simple greeting. She reached out and touched my fingers, the colorful nail polish on top of my nails was half faded and looked strange.

She sighed, “How’s the novel coming along?”

“Not great. …… write a little bit every day and I don’t know how many people will end up enjoying reading it.”

“If you’re going to be a writer, don’t be afraid of questions like that. …… “For the first time, she talked to me about my novel in such a tone. I looked at her speechlessly, wanting to lean over and hug her tightly, wanting to say that I actually loved her so much, so much that I needed even a word of encouragement from her, that it would give me calmness and strength. “Would you like something to eat?” I asked quietly as I sat finally not moving not reaching out to hug her.

She shook her head, “How’s your boyfriend?” She never knew about Tin-Tin having been to rehab.

“He did a lot of drawings, very good ones. Might use them in my book.”

“Can’t you, uh, move back towards some time? …… A week is fine.” I smiled at her, “Yeah, my bed is still in its usual place I guess.”

The babysitter helped me along in organizing my small bedroom, which had been empty since Jusha moved out. There was a thin layer of dust on the bookshelves, and the plush gorilla still sat on the top shelf. The afterglow of the setting sun filtered through the window, casting a warm sliver of light across the room.

I lay in bed for a while and I had a dream that I was riding an old bicycle from high school from one end of the road to the other, meeting a lot of people I knew along the way. Then at an intersection a black truck suddenly rushed towards me and a group of masked men jumped out of it. The leader waved a pink cell phone and commanded his men to throw me and my car together into the truck’s compartment, where they shined a flashlight in my eyes and told me to tell them where an important person was hiding, “Where’s the general?” They stared at me urgently and asked me loudly. “Come on, where is the General?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie, it’s futile, look at the ring on your hand, damn a woman who doesn’t even know where her husband is hiding.” I looked blankly at my left hand, and there was indeed a luxurious and dazzling diamond ring on my ring finger.

I waved my hands in despair, “I really don’t know, kill me for that.”

When I woke up, my father had returned from school, and the house was still quiet for fear of disturbing me, but the smell of cigar smoke wafting from the balcony let me know that my father was back and that it was almost dinner time.

I got up and out of bed and walked out onto the balcony to say hello to my dad. He had changed into civilian clothes and was holding his slightly chubby stomach in the twilight, his fading gray hair dancing lightly in the wind. He watched me in silence for a moment, “Are you asleep?” I nodded and floated a smile, “Now I’m in good spirits, I can go up to the mountains and hunt tigers.”

“Well, it’s time for dinner.” He held me by the shoulders and walked into the house.

Mom had been helped to sit in a velvet-cushioned chair, and the table was set with a noseful of the warm scent of food.

In the evening, I played chess with my father for a while, and my mother reclined on the bed, glancing at us from time to time, as we talked about daily trivia, and finally the topic came back to my life’s events. I didn’t want to talk about it, so I hurriedly put away the game, took a shower in the bathroom, and returned to my room.

I told Tin-Tin on the phone that I was going to stay here for a week, then told him about the dream I had this afternoon and asked him what it meant. He said I had a premonition of success in my writing, but was caught up in an insurmountable sense of existential angst. “Really?” I half-questioned. “You can confirm it with David Wu.” He said.

The week quickly passed with me watching TV with my mom, playing cards, eating messy desserts like green bean and lily soup, taro and sesame cake, and shredded radish cake, and the night before I left, I was called by my father into his study for a knee-to-knee talk until late.

“I remember when you were little you loved to go out alone and you always ended up getting lost, you were always a lost girl.” He said.

I sat across from him in a rocking chair smoking, “Yes.” I said, “Now I still get lost a lot.”

“In the end, you like to take risks too much and like miracles to happen, which is not even a fatal flaw. …… But a lot of things are not as simple as you think, you will always be a naive little child in the eyes of our parents ……”

“But ……” I tried to argue. He waved his hand, “We won’t stop you from doing whatever you want to do, because we can’t …… but one important point is that whatever you do, you should be responsible for all possible consequences. The freedom of Sartre that you’re so often hung up on is just ‘freedom of choice’, a freedom that comes with a caveat.”

“I agree.” I exhaled a puff of smoke, the window was open and the study had the faint scent of perfumed lilies in a vase, “Parents always know their children, don’t demean your elders by using words like ‘old fashioned’.”

“I didn’t.” I said under my breath.

“You’re too emotional, double-minded when you’re desperate and overjoyed when you’re happy.”

“But honestly, I like myself this way.”

“The prerequisite for being a truly great writer is to eschew unnecessary vanity and learn to keep your mind independent in a frenetic environment. Don’t be complacent about the identity of a writer; you are a human being first, a woman, and a writer second.”

“That’s why I always go dancing in a halter dress and sandals, I’m passionate about being friends with my therapist, I listen to good music, I read good books, I eat fruits rich in vitamins C and A and take calcium pills, and I’m a smart and brilliant woman. –I’ll come back to see you and Mom often. I promise.”

Connie invited Tin Tin and I to dinner and a tour of her restaurant, which had completed basic renovations.

Dinner was eaten at the wooden & rattan tables and chairs set up on the deck. The sun had set, but it was still light, and the branches of the poplar and acacia trees signed out diagonally and floated overhead. Waiters, already hired and in further training, wore black-and-white uniforms and meandered across the marble steps, bringing a course of food up to the terrace in turn.

With a hint of weariness on her face and still wearing her fine makeup, Connie held a Havana cigar in her hand and asked the waiter to bring up the cigar clippers to check that the boy was doing a good job of cutting the cigars for the customers. “I’m only looking for smart kids with no experience in the industry, and I want them to be free of any bad habits and ready to learn.” She said.

In Juan’s absence, he went back to Spain for the time being, and next week he will bring a group of local cooks to Shanghai, and the restaurant is expected to be officially opened at the beginning of June.

At her prior request, we brought some of the novel’s manuscript and illustrations from the book to show her. She smoked a cigar and went through Tin-Tin’s drawings, one by one, with great admiration. “Look at these distinctive colors, and these lines that surprise, since I was a little girl I knew my son was talented. –It really makes mom so happy to see these drawings.”

Tian Tian didn’t say anything, lowered his head and ate a plate of oil paper baked cod to himself. The greaseproof paper covering the plate was cut open, the snow-white flesh of the fish and the aroma of the spices were all intact inside the paper cover, baked just right and tantalizing in color and aroma. “Thanks.” Tien popped out this sentence as he ate the fish. There was no longer a fierce confrontation or struggling suspicion between mother and son, but that dark wariness, resignation, and frustration was still there as well.

“There are two walls on the second floor of the restaurant that don’t have any decorations yet, so if Tin-Tin would like to, he could help paint something on there, okay?” Connie suddenly suggested this. I looked at Tin-Tin, “You’d do a great job.” I said.

After dinner Connie showed us the interlocking halls on the second floor, beautifully lit with homemade mahogany tables and chairs in general readiness, and two of the rooms each with red brick fireplaces hewn out and a dark red sheathing of wood on the outside, with rows of bottles of wine and whisky stacked underneath the fireplaces.

The wall opposite the fireplace was still empty, and Connie said, “What style of painting do you think would fit in here?” “Matisse, no, or Moridigiani would be best.” I said. Tian Tian nodded, “His paintings have a kind of make people slightly poisoned voluptuous beauty and coldness, so that people can not help but want to get close, but never close, …… looking at Moridigiani, will be in front of the fireplace to drink wine and smoke a cigar is like a trip to heaven.”

“Do you agree?” Connie looked at her son with a smile. “I’ve been using your money and in exchange I should do what I can for you.” The son answered his mother this way.

We stayed at Connie’s restaurant listening to Latin love songs and drinking late into the night.

Tin-Tin started going to his mother’s place to work in his overalls with a large set of brushes and colors of paint to paint the walls. Because of the distance and to save him the trouble, he simply slept in the restaurant and Connie prepared a cozy room for him to stay in.

I, on the other hand, continue to write and write and write and write and throw around, looking for the perfect ending to the long story at hand. In the evening, before going to bed, I would sit in front of the computer and receive e-mails from friends from all over the world. Flying Apple is in a hot relationship with Serbian Issa, they went to Hong Kong to attend a gay film festival, he took some photos and sent them to me using the internet, I saw him doing sex cocktails on the beach with a bunch of sultry boys, people stacked on top of each other, they were all topless, a couple of the guys had silver rings pierced on their nipples, bellybuttons, and tongues, “This beautiful, crazy world.” He wrote in a thick, heavy font. Samir writes me e-letters in English, saying that I have always been imprinted in her mind like an oriental watermark, at once soft and unimaginably wild, capable of unleashing unspeakable feelings in an instant, like a fleeting rose in a late-night garden. She couldn’t forget the wonderful, dangerous breath of my lips, like a storm, like an undercurrent, like the petals of a flower.

This is by far the most defiant love letter I’ve ever received from a woman, what a strange feeling.

Spider asked me if I was still going to set up a personal web page, he’s standing by, he’s been idle lately as the company is not doing well. Madonna said sending emails is more tiring than answering the phone, this is her first and last one, just to tell me that the last Party was pretty lame and cool, she lost her cell phone afterward, I don’t know if I saw it.

I wrote back to my friends one by one, using as much pretty, playful, lurid language as I could think of. In a sense, my friends and I were a bunch of dudes creating a life-chasing, soul-crushing thrill out of more and more exaggerated and out-of-control words, a bunch of little worms eating the wings of our imaginations and interdependent on the blue and the bewitching and the pulsating warmth of not messing with the real, maggots attached to the bones of the city, but so sexy and sweetly writhing that the city’s quirky romance and true poetry were created by the very same group of us. created.

Some people call us alternative, some people call us trash, some people aspire to come into the circle and copy everything from our clothes and hair to the way we talk and have sex, and some people curse that we should just hide in the fridge with our bullshit lifestyle and disappear immediately.

When I close the computer, a line flashes across the screen, GreenLight by SonicYouth is on the jukebox, and it’s just about finished, the last line, “Her light is my night, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Dreaming of writing a poem about the night, remembering only this line, “Never know what the night is until the day is gone, what the lines on the sheets the thirsty thoughts in the lips are. Mmmmmmmmmm ……”

One unsuspecting night, with low barometric pressure and no wind to smother me, Mark rode straight to the downstairs of my place and called me upstairs from the car, “I don’t know if I’m bothering you, but right now I’m dying to see you.”

His voice was muffled and muffled in the interfering messages on his cell phone, and as soon as the words left his mouth, the call was cut off, probably because his phone was dead, and I could imagine him slamming it down in the car and saying, “Damned,” and I put my pen down and for the first time ever ran downstairs with no frills.

The lights in the car glowed yellow as he opened the door and practically grabbed me by the waist and put me in the back seat of the car.

“Look what you’re doing.” I looked at him in his suit and then at myself, barefoot in slippers and with my robe crumpled in his strange way, and couldn’t help but laugh and laugh.

He laughed too, quickly stopping it, “CoCo, I have some not so good news for you, I’m going back to Germany.”

I rubbed my suddenly frozen face muscles, “What?” I looked at him steadily for a moment and he stared at me in silence, “It doesn’t seem to be a rumor,” I murmured, “My cousin told me once that you were transferring back to the company headquarters.”

He reached over and hugged me, “I want to be with you.”

“No way!” I screamed in my mind, but I said nothing with my mouth, just met the raging torrent of him coming at me with my lips and tongue and teeth. It had to be this way, even if I pounded my fists into his chest and used tricks to steal every penny, every gold card, every ID he had on him, nothing could stop the fact that my German lover, this Western man who had given me more excitement and soul-crushing memories than all the other men put together, was going to leave me after all, and it had to be this way.

I pushed him out of the way, “Well, when will you leave?”

“By the end of next month at the latest, and I want every second of it with you.” He bent his head down against my chest, and through the thin robe, my nipples quickly hardened under the friction of his hair, like desperate flowers in the night.

We drove fast and light, the color of the dream darkened, the edges of the dream gradually wrinkled, like the back of the moon in the valley of the rock, the night in Shanghai always has too much of a moving and sad atmosphere, we flew on the smooth road, in the neon gold of the city, Iggypop’s song from the loudspeaker: “We are just passing through, hurrying through, looking at the sky full of stars , waiting to disappear with us.”

Make love to your heart’s content, be endlessly melancholic, create truths to destroy dreams, do anything, but the only thing that’s baffling is why we shed tears at any moment, just like why God also loses his voice in fear on the night of a meteor shower? For a moment, I thought that tonight there would be accidents that would come without surprise, like this car would hit something, and we would meet up with a car accident in inexplicable passion and frustration.

But there was no crash, the car drove to Central Park in Pudong, which was closed, and we made love in the shadow of a smattering of trees beyond the fence. The put-down seats smelled like leather floozy. The soles of my feet cramped, but I didn’t say a word, letting the discomfort continue to develop until the insides of my thighs were slick with dream juice.

By the time I woke up in his apartment in the wee hours of the next morning, I thought everything that had happened was just a dream, that sex was so easy to render open, like a splash of ink on a piece of Chinese painting paper, but sex was powerless to change anything, especially when the sunlight shone in and I saw my own dark circles under my eyes in the mirror.

Any story pays a price to have an ending, and the flesh reaches out its tentacles to tussle and tangle with another flesh as if only to separate after all is lost.

Mark announced to me that every day from this day to the end of next month would be a farewell vacation, and that he would no longer have to wear a tie and go to the office at 9:45 every day on the dot. He was determined to ENJOY every day. He begged me to spend a little more time around him while my boyfriend painted murals in the style of Moridigiani at his mother’s restaurant. I’m also just a few pages away from the final pages of my novel, while in a few dozen days he’ll likely never see me again.

This life this life! I just feel like my head hurts like it’s splitting open.

He turned down the jukebox, got aspirin from the medicine cabinet, gave me a back and foot massage with an amateur technique he learned with one hand from the “puremassage” store, and amused me with his broken Shanghainese. Throughout, he was masochistically serving his favorite Oriental princess, a talented young woman with waist-length black hair and sentimental eyes.

I, on the other hand, finally realized that I was caught in the love trap of this German man who was supposed to be only a sexpartner, who penetrated from my womb to my fragile heart and took over the ecstasy behind my eyes. Feminist arguments have historically failed to crack this sexual hypnotism, and I found this brokenness of being a woman in myself.

I lie to myself and say that it’s really still a game, entertaining others and myself, that life is one big playground and we can’t stop looking.

And my boyfriend should still be in a restaurant indulging in his one-man world, where he uses paint and line to wax lyrical as a way to save the world and himself from what he sees as out of order.

I stayed in Mark’s apartment, and we stayed naked in bed listening to opera and DVDs, playing chess, and when we were hungry we cooked spaghetti or Chinese ravioli in the kitchen. We rarely slept, and we no longer scrutinized each other’s eyes, which only added to the annoyance.

When semen, saliva, and sweat stick to every pore of our bodies, we take our swimsuits and goggles, our VIP cards, and go swimming in Guido’s. There are hardly any bystanders in the pool, and we swim around like two rare fish, swimming in a huge void drenched in orange light. The more weary, the more beautiful, the more depraved, the more joyful.

Returning to our beds, we examined with a vigor that only the devil can muster the extent of the sexual energy that exists between us, and we found it to be a force of utter madness, of total evil. God said this is dust and to dust we shall return, God said this is the end and we are in the end. His plaything that seemed to be made of rubber was always in a state of erection, never failing, never looking disheveled, until I was bleeding from down there, and I guessed that somewhere in my uterus the cells were necrotic and falling out.

His wife’s phone call saved the day when he staggered up from bed and went to answer the phone, where Eva was berating him about why he hadn’t been responding to all those e-mails she’d been sending.

I thought to myself, God, we don’t even have the strength to turn on the computer except to do it non-stop.

She had to call and ask her husband, and finally decided when she would return. They said something in German, which I didn’t understand, a little loud, but not in an argument.

When he put the phone down and climbed into bed, I kicked him out of the way and he rolled over and sat on the floor.

“I’m going to go crazy, this is not the right look, sooner or later something will happen.” I said, starting to get giddy and dressed.

He hugged and kissed my feet, found his cigarettes from a pile of paper towels on the floor, lit one and held it to his mouth. “We’ve been crazy, from the time I met you until now. You know why I’m so obsessed with you? You’re downright unfaithful, yet completely trustworthy. Those two things are unparalleled combined in you.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said, looking dejectedly at myself in my clothes, too ugly, like an over-raped toy doll, but as soon as I undressed again, the bewitching charms would resurface in this flesh. “I’m going back.” I whispered.

“You look terribly pale,” he said, hugging me tenderly.

“Yes.” I said, my mood was so bad it couldn’t get any worse, so much for going to hell. Wanting to cry a little, hating myself and pitying myself. He hugged me, his blonde sweaty hairs soothing me like a million tentacles reaching out.

“Sweetheart, I’m sure you’re just so tired that the more your body consumes, the more love it produces, and I love you.”

I don’t want to hear that, I’m going to run away like a gust of wind and go back to where I was, maybe anywhere that doesn’t give me a sense of security, but I’m still scurrying like a rat from here to there.

The sun’s rays on the street were as white as a knife’s edge that could cut your eyes, and I heard my blood gurgling.

The Tears of Lovers

Opening the door to the room, it was empty and silent. A happy spider quickly climbed from the wall to the large flower board. Everything in the room was the same as always, Tin-Tin was not there, maybe still in the restaurant, maybe he came back and couldn’t find me and went out again.

I had realized that my sudden disappearance might have been a fatal mistake, it was the first time I had disappeared without any disguise, Tin-Tin was sure to call me, and if he found out that I was not at home …… I did not have the strength to think about anything else, I took a shower, forced myself to take two Valium tablets, and lay down on the bed.

The dream was of a big, yellow, wide and intimidating river, with no bridges, only a leaky bamboo canoe, and a white-bearded, bad-tempered old man looking after the boat. I crossed the river in the company of a person whose face I could not see, and when I reached the center of the river, a big wave hit me, and I screamed sharply, my hips already wet from the water that leaked in, and the person whose face I could not see held me tightly from behind, “Don’t worry,” he or she whispered softly, and then physically balanced the boat with our bodies. The dream ended when the next danger was imminent. The ringing of the phone woke me up.

I don’t want to answer the phone, the dream episode that just happened mesmerized me, who is that person who is in the same boat with me, there is an old saying, “Ten years to repair the same boat, a hundred years to repair the same pillow sleep.”

My heart pounded uncomfortably, finally I picked up the phone and it was Connie’s voice, she looked disturbed and asked if I knew where Tin-Tin was. My head ached violently, “No, I don’t know.”

I hated the sound of my own false voice, if Connie knew what I was up to somewhere these days, she probably wouldn’t want to talk to me anymore, she’d even get someone to beat me to death, if she really did murder her ex-husband in Spain, if she really did have a venomous but motherly-juice-filled heart, she should know how her only son, who she’d held in her arms for so long, had been betrayed and cheated on by the girl he loved the most. cheated.

“I called a couple times and no one answered, I was really worried that you both disappeared at the same time.” There was something in her words that I assumed I couldn’t hear, “I’m at my parents’ house these days.”

She sighed, “Is your mother’s leg ready?”

“Thanks, she’s fine now.” On second thought, I asked Connie, “Isn’t Tin-Tin painting there at the restaurant?”

“There was one last part left to finish and he left, I thought he went home. Nothing’s going to happen to him, is it?” She sounded anxious.

“No, probably went to another friend’s house, I’ll call right away and ask.” Madonna was the first person I thought of and called, Madonna’s voice rang hoarsely and Tin-Tin was indeed at her place.

“He said he wants to stay here for a few more days.” What did Madonna’s voice imply, that Tin-Tin didn’t want to come back? He didn’t want to see me. Since I’d disappeared for a couple days without informing him, I guessed he’d probably called my parents’ house, so my lie didn’t stand up.

I walked around the house a few times in annoyance, smoked a few cigarettes, and finally decided to go to Madonna’s house, I had to see Tin-Tin.

Sitting in the car, my brain is empty, made up 101 excuses for themselves, one more than one can not stand, who would believe that I suddenly disappeared in order to go to the wedding of a college friend far away in Guangzhou, or by the door to the robbery of the masked men captured.

So, I’m not going to lie and tell him what I’ve been doing for the past few days, I can’t do that in front of a man with the innocent eyes of a baby. A boy with the intelligence of a genius and the love of a madman. I couldn’t humiliate his mind that way, except to tell the truth, and I was prepared for the worst, that I would lose the two most unforgettable men in my life at the same time in these few short days.

I’m always compromising, compromising, lying, and at the same time always being overly poetic about love and reality, and I don’t think there’s a highly educated girl in the whole world who’s as bad off as I am, and the principal of Fudan should take back my diploma, the

Along the way, I mumbled in my mind, “Okay, say it, okay, I can’t take it anymore, I love you every day, if you feel sick of me, spit on me.” All the way there I was exhausted waiting for the end of the road to appear, I was exhausted, and in the vanity mirror was a strange woman with dark circles under her eyes and dry lips, sick with multiple personalities and timid love.

Madonna’s white villa was situated in the countryside among a profusion of flowers and willows, and she had had a long, long, curving driveway made on purpose, according to the argument of the American book “Style,” a driveway so long that the doorway could not be seen suggested the noble social status of the owner and the upper class in which he or she lived. But the cuckoos and willows on both sides of the driveway spoil this symbolism with their tacky landscaping.

I spoke into the answering machine at the door, I’m here, ask them to open the door quickly.

The door opened automatically, a hound dog leapt out with a tiger-like grip, and I caught a glimpse of Tin-Tin, who was lying on the lawn smoking a cigarette.

I stepped around the hound and went next to Tin-Tin who opened his eyes and looked at me, “Hi!” He said sleepily. “Hi!” I greeted, standing for a moment not knowing why.

Madonna, dressed in bright red civilian clothes, came down the steps of the porch, “Can I get you something to drink?” She asked me with a lazy smile on her face as the babysitter brought in a large glass of apple juice laced with red wine.

I asked Tin-Tin how the last two days had been and he said, “Pretty good.” Madonna yawned and said, “There’s everything here, you can head down too, it’s hilarious. A few more figures appeared on the balcony of the building. That’s when I realized there was a bunch of people here, a couple of geezers including Johnson, Old Five and his girlfriend, and a couple of model-looking, skinny, tall girls, all with a kind of slouchy look from their faces like a large group of snakes wandering into a poisonous nest.

I could smell the presence of marijuana from the look in his eyes and the atmosphere. I walked over to Tin-Tin, who bent his face over the blades of grass as if he were in some kind of semi-sleepy state of communion with the land, like the Titan, the son of the earth in ancient Greek mythology, who died when he left the land. Facing him was sometimes like facing a sudden melancholy, while at the same time hiding a certain incredible fervor.

“Don’t you want to talk to me?” I take his hand.

He pulled out his hand and said to me with a confusing smile, “CoCo, you know what? If your left foot hurts, I feel pain in my right foot too.” This is the definition of Catholic love as expressed by his favorite Spanish writer, Unamuno.

I looked at him in silence, his eyes were suddenly shrouded in twenty layers of gray fog of varying depths, and at the center of the layers of fog was a diamond so hard it hurt, and that hard light made me realize that he already knew what he needed to know, that he was the only person in the world who could walk completely into my world with unpredictable intuition, that we were roped into the same nerve endings, that when my left foot hurt when my left foot hurts, he can feel the pain in my right foot immediately, there is absolutely no room for lying.

I felt a blackness before my eyes, and fell back toward the grass beside him, exhausted, and in a moment when my body was out of control I saw Madonna’s sharp, thin, little face flushed with cold white light, and suddenly swaying to one side like a tilted and broken sail, while a line of gray waves quickly lifted me up, and a huge shell uttered a daily voice: “CoCo, CoCo. “

It was quiet around me when I opened my eyes, and like a pebble washed up on the beach by the occasional tidal wave, I crept heavily onto the soft mattress, recognizing it as Madonna’s home, one of the countless bedrooms filled with brown overly lavish and meaningless decorations.

A cold washcloth rested on my forehead, and my gaze crossed to a glass of water on the nightstand to see Tin-Tin sitting on the couch. He walked over and gently touched my face, removing the towel, “Are you feeling better?”

I flinched involuntarily at his touch. The heady stuff was still smoothing over me, and I still felt extremely tired and low, as he sat on the edge of the bed, not moving, just looking at me fixedly with his eyes. “I’ve been lying to you.” I said weakly, “But one thing I’ve never lied to you about,” I stared up at the ceiling with wide eyes, “is that I love you.”

He doesn’t talk.

“Did Madonna tell you something?” Blood rushed in my ears, “She promised not to tell you anything …… Do you think I’m shameless?” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, the more deflated I became the more I wanted to speak while the more I spoke the more stupid I became, tears streamed out of my eyes and dirtied the strands of hair around my cheeks, “I don’t know why this is, I want you to give me flawless sex at least once, I want you that badly because I love you.”

“Yes, dear, love tears us apart.” Ian Cortis, who died by suicide in 1980, sang this.

Sky leaned down and hugged me, “I hate you!” He squeezed a few words through his teeth. Each word seemed like it would explode at any moment, “Because you make me hate myself.” He cried too, “I can’t make love, my existence is just a mistake. Don’t pity me, I should just disappear right now.”

If your left foot aches, my right foot aches, if you are suffocated by life, my breathing will likewise cease, if there is a black hole in your expression of love, I can’t fly in the perfection of my lyricism, and if there are daggers in my chest after you have sold your soul to the devil. We hold each other, we exist we exist and nothing else exists.

XXIX. Returning to the Nightmare

Once again, Tin-Tin began to use drugs, and once again, he turned to the devil.

I was plunged into countless nightmares, over and over again, in which I saw Tin-Tin being taken away by the police, saw him dipping his wrists in gurgling blood to write his own epitaph on a canvas, and saw earthquakes suddenly occurring and ceilings lapping down like solidified waves. I can’t stand such fear.

One night, as he dropped the syringe, loosened the rubber bands on his arms, and lay on the bathroom tile, I cut a belt from my skirt and I approached him, effortlessly tying his hands.

“No matter what you’ve done to me. …… me, I don’t blame you, I love you, CoCo, you hear me?CoCo, love you.” He grunted, his head lolling as he passed out.

I sat on my butt and cupped my face, tears leaking through my fingers, leaking like unattainable happiness. It was all I could do to cry and cry until my throat clogged up in the face of this unconscious, will-less boy, my heartbroken lover lying in a cold bathroom. Who was responsible for the situation becoming so irredeemable? I did want to find someone who was responsible for what was happening yikes, then I would have a target to hate and tear apart.

I begged him, I threatened him, I dropped things, I ran away from home, it was all to no avail, and he would always wear a sad, innocent smile and say, “CoCo, I don’t blame you for whatever you do to me, I love you, CoCo, remember that, remember that.”

Finally, one day, I broke the vow he wanted me to have made and I revealed to Connie the truth about Tin-Tin’s situation. On the phone, I said that I was scared to death that Tin-Tin was walking on a dangerous edge and that he could leave me at any moment.

Shortly after putting the phone down, Connie walked into our apartment with a pale face.

“Tin-Tin,” she tried to smile gently at him. But the wrinkles on her face piled up like she was crying, and she showed her old age all at once. “Mom please, mom knows that this life has already done a lot of wrong things, the most wrong thing that mom should not be is to leave you for 10 years, so long time is not by your side, mom is a selfish mom …… can, but now we are together again, we can start again, you give mom also give himself You can give your mom and yourself a chance, okay? Seeing you become like this, I really feel worse than death ……”

Tin-Tin turned his eyes from the TV screen and looked at his mother who was sitting on the couch in a state of panic, “Please don’t cry,” he said in a compassionate tone, “Since those 10 years were lived happily, you will still be lived happily in the future, I’m not a fatal problem for you, I’m not an obstacle or a barrier to your happy life with the shadow; I want you to be beautiful, rich, and peaceful all the time, and you can be if you wish it.”

Connie covered her nose with her hand in shock, as if she couldn’t understand what Tien had said, that a son should speak to his mother like that, and burst into tears again.

“Don’t cry, you’ll get old fast that way, besides I don’t like to hear people cry, I think I’m fine the way I am.” He stood up and turned off the television, which had been playing a scientific adventure program on which a French couple had devoted their lives to studying volcanoes around the world, and on an expedition to Japan this summer had been engulfed by rapidly tumbling lava, that lurid fiery-red lava that tumbled and roared, and a quote inserted from a previous statement by the slain scientist, “The volcano is our lover. That fiery torrent is like blood flowing from the heart of the earth, and there is life trembling and erupting in the deepest recesses of the earth, and even if one day we are buried in it, it will be an unspeakable bliss.” And at the end of the TV, they were true to their words, both dying in the blood-soaked lava magma.

Tien muttered to himself, “Guess how the French pair felt before they died? They must have been willing.” He answered himself in a dreamy voice. Until now, I don’t think Tien’s death can be compared to that pair of volcanologists, but at the same time I clearly understand that it was an irresistible and ineffable force like a volcanic eruption that took him away, and that the earth can shed angry and deadly blood in moments that are beyond the control of mankind, not to mention that mankind itself kills and destroys itself in the explosion of matter and the depravation of the mind.

Yes, uncontrollable, incomprehensible. Even after you have cried all your tears over the loss of your beloved, he or she is still gone forever with memories shattered into ashes, leaving a few wisps of a lonely soul.

See you again, cypress lover.

This unforgettable summer.

Mark was trying to find ways to extend some days before finally leaving Shanghai. Our last date was the night he returned from his Tibet trip. We had a buffet dinner at the revolving restaurant on the top floor of the New Jin Jiang Hotel, a place suspended in the air because Mark wanted to look down for the last time on the lights, the streets, the buildings, the crowds of people streaming eastward at night, and to breathe in Shanghai’s characteristic air of voluptuousness, mystery, and vulnerability before he left the city. Then early the next morning, he took the 9:35 a.m. flight from Berlin back to China.

We both had terrible appetites and felt indescribably tired.

He’s tanned, like a mixed race African. He had a high fever while traveling in Tibet and almost died. He said he’d brought me a gift from Tibet, but he didn’t have it on him, so he couldn’t give it to me now. That’s of course, I said, “I’ll come to your apartment and get it.” Because we both knew that naturally after dinner there was a final love going on.

He smiled gently, “You’ve lost so much weight in two weeks.”

“How so?” I touched my face, “Is it really skinny?”

I turned my face away from the glass wall, and the restaurant turned back from where it had begun against the Garden Hotel. In front of me stood the flat, slightly curved shape of the Garden, like a UFO flying from the Great Beyond.

“My boyfriend has started using drugs again, and it’s like he’s made up his mind that one day I’m going to lose him.” I whispered, gazing into Mark’s eyes like the blue Danube, “Did I do something wrong for God to punish me like this?”

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he affirmed.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have met you, shouldn’t have gone to your house and into your bed.” I smiled slightly sarcastically, “And this one time I found out to meet you, I still lied. Even though he could have guessed, I could never have done it to be honest with him, and breaking that layer of paper was not only tough, but it was so shameless.” I said, silent.

“But we’re so in tune, we’re obsessed with each other.”

“Well, enough about that, cheers to the wine.” We all drained our glasses in one gulp, alcohol is such a good thing, warming your stomach, chasing away the coldness in your blood, accompanying you everywhere. Flowers, beautiful women, silver cutlery, and delicious food surrounded every diner, the band played the music of the Titanic before it sank, and the great ship we were on, floating in the air, would not sink.

For this city belongs to the night when joy never sinks.

We sat in the speeding car, cruising through Shanghai at night, every street strewn with sycamore green leaves, every brightly lit, elegantly glamorous cafe and restaurant, every now building so gorgeous you couldn’t breathe. Kissing along the way, he drove the car fast and dangerously, on the verge of such excitement that indulging in lingering was like dancing on the edge of a knife, painful and pleasurable.

We were stopped by a police car at the Yongfu intersection of Wuyuan Road. “This is a one-way street, you can’t drive against the traffic. Got it?” A voice said rudely.

Then they smelled the odor of alcohol, “Ah, I can’t believe you’re drinking and driving.” Mark and I pretended we couldn’t understand a word of Chinese, and we joked with the cops in English like it was no big deal, until a flashlight came on, and then someone called out, “Ni Ke, it’s actually you!”

I drunkenly stuck my head out of the car window and fixed my eyes for half a second before I recognized it was Jianjun Ma, one of Madonna’s ex-boyfriends. I made a flying kiss at him, “Hello,” I said still in English. Then I saw Ma Jianjun and another policeman muttering on the side for a while, and I seemed to hear him say, “Forget it, those two just came from abroad, they don’t know the rules here, and that girl is still a friend of my friend’s friend ……”

The other cop muttered a few more words that I couldn’t hear, and finally Mark pulled out 100 bucks as a fine, and Ma whispered in my ear, “It can only help so far, and 100 bucks is still half off.”

The car continued on its way and we laughed for a while, and after that I said, “Nothing’s fun, go back to your place.”

I forgot how many times I made love to him in one night, until finally even using lube was painful. He was relentless like a beast, charged like a warrior, and made me sore like a thug. But we continued to saddle and masochize.

As I said, women love to meet fascists in bed with long boots on their faces. Separated from the mind, the flesh has its own memory, which preserves the memory of every contact with the opposite sex in a sophisticated physiological system, and even as the years fly by and it all becomes a thing of the past, this sexual memory will move inward with an enduring and singular splendor, in a dream, in deep meditation, while walking down the street, while reading a book, while conversing with a stranger, while making love to another man, and then suddenly the memory will jump out at me. Then the memory pops up and I can count the men I’ve had in this life ……

I told Mark this level of meaning as I said goodbye to him, and Mark hugged me tightly, wet lashes brushing my cheeks, and I didn’t want to see the dampness in the eyes of a man who was about to break up.

I was carrying a huge bag stuffed with records, clothes, books, ornaments that Mark had given me, all this lovey-dovey crap that was driving me crazy!

I calmly waved goodbye to him. The cab door slammed shut and he rushed over to me, “Are you sure you don’t want to take me to the airport?”

“No.” I shook my head.

He pulled his hair, “How am I going to pass the remaining three hours? I’m afraid I’m going to come back to you in the car.”

“You won’t,” I smiled at him, but my body was trembling like a fallout in the wind, “You can call Eva, call anyone else you can think of, remember your family’s faces, they’ll be there in ten hours or so, they’ll pick you up at the airport. “

He couldn’t stop running his hands through his hair in annoyance before reaching his face over to kiss me, “Okay, okay, you cold-blooded woman,” “Forget about me.” I whispered, closing the window and telling the driver to drive faster. It’s best to encounter such moments less often in one’s life, because it’s just too much to bear, especially for a pair of lovers who have no hope at all, who have a wife and children and are far away from Berlin, and me, who can’t go to Berlin right now, who is just an impression of a city with a greenish-gray backdrop, mechanical and sad, that I got from a movie from a novel, and it’s just too far away and too different.

I didn’t turn my head to see Mark standing on the curb, and I didn’t go back to Tin-Tin’s apartment; the car went straight to my parents’ house.

The elevator hadn’t even opened yet, and I climbed from the first floor to the twentieth with that big bag of weird stuff. My feet felt like they were hung with lead, and a human landing on the moon wouldn’t have been any more difficult than it was for me at this moment, and I thought I’d be out of it at any moment, and would pass out halfway up, but I didn’t want to rest, I didn’t want to procrastinate, I just wanted to get back to my house right away.

Knocking hard on the door, it opened and my mother looked shocked, I threw down my bag and hugged her, “Mom, I’m hungry.” I cried to my mom.

“What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong?” She rushed to the bedroom and called out to her father, “CoCo’s back, come and help.”

Together, my parents carried me to bed to sleep, a look of disbelief inside their eyes. They wouldn’t know what kind of messy things were happening to their daughter; they would never really understand the restless, noisy world and indescribable emptiness in her eyes; they didn’t know that her boyfriend was a drug addict, that her lover would be on a plane back to Germany in a couple of hours; and that the novel that she was working on at the moment was so chaotic, blunt, and explicit, full of metaphysical musings and naked sex.

They will never know the fear in their daughter’s heart, and the desire that will never be restrained in death, and that life will always be for her a pistol of desire that can go off at any time and kill her.

“I’m sorry, I just want porridge, I’m hungry.” I control towards myself, mumbling and repeating, trying hard to smile, before they disappear and I fall headlong into the black hole of sleep.

XXXI The Color of Death

Now that I’m nearing the end of my novel, after changing pen after pen in my hand, I’ve finally found that sudden relief of rushing from the top of a mountain down a ski run near the bottom, along with a strange hint of melancholy.

I don’t think I can predict the fate that lies ahead of this book, that is part of my own destiny and I don’t have the power to control it. Likewise can’t be held responsible for the characters and the story I’ve written, since everything is written, let them fend for themselves.

I’m tired and skinny, and I’m afraid to look at myself much in the mirror.

It has been two months and eight days since Tien’s death, but I have long retained a certain ethereal psychic feeling.

While making coffee in the kitchen, the sound of rushing water would suddenly come to my ears, it was coming from the bathroom next door, and for a split second I thought it was Tin-Tin taking a bath in the bathroom, and immediately rushed over to the bathtub, but it was empty.

As I turned a page of manuscript paper at my desk, I could suddenly realize again that there was someone sitting on the sofa behind me. He looked at me silently and tenderly, and I dared not turn around for fear of startling him away. I knew that Tin-Tin had been in this room with me, and that he would wait doggedly until I had finished the novel that had given him so much enthusiasm.

And the hardest of all was when, late at night, when no one was whispering, I tossed and turned in my bed, clasped his pillow, and prayed to God to send him to me in my interminable dreams: a gray fog slanted in through the window, very light and very heavy on my head, and I heard a distant voice whispering my name, and he came toward me in white, with beauty and love that endures, and we flew on glassy-silk wings, and the lawns, the houses , streets, one after another swept over us. The greenish-dark sky was ripped open a few times by the light.

Morning descends like a warning that the magic is about to fade, and the night is banished from all four corners of the earth. The dream woke up, the love of my life was gone, and all that remained was a trace of warmth in my chest and wetness in the corners of my eyes. From the moment Tenten died beside me that morning, every morning that followed was like a cold, gripping avalanche for me.

The day Mark left Shanghai, I hid at my parents’ house. The next day I left to go back to my apartment in the western suburbs, and instead of taking the big bag full of gifts from Mark, I found a platinum wedding ring with a sapphire in it, and took it out and put it on my hand. I had taken it off Mark’s ring finger while he was asleep for a few moments.

He was so terrified that he wouldn’t even notice that I had stolen the ring when he got on the plane. And I didn’t have any more intentions than that, maybe it was just a last joke with him, or maybe I was upset and kept it as a souvenir.

The ring is beautiful, but unfortunately slightly too big for me to put it on my thumb. I took it off before returning to my apartment and put it in my pocket.

When I got back to the apartment, Tin-Tin was watching TV with popcorn, chocolate, and coke piled up on the table, and he opened his arms as soon as he saw me walk in the door, “I thought you ran away and I’d never see you again.” He hugged me.

“My mother made some vegetable ravioli, would you like me to cook it for you now?” I shook a grocery bag in my hand.

“I want to go out for a drive, I want to lay in the grass for a while,” he put his head on my chest, “with you.”

We went out with sunglasses and water, and the cab drove us to my alma mater, Fudan, where the lawn is very comfortable and more casual and relaxing than in the park, and a few years after graduation, I always stayed in Fudan Park, where you can go crazy at will but the atmosphere is elegant and refreshing.

We were lying in the thick shade of a camphor tree, trying to memorize some poems every day, but couldn’t come up with a single one, “When your collection of novels comes out, we can recite them here on the grass, louder and louder, college kids love that shit, right?” He was happy he said.

We stayed in bed and ate dinner in the student cafeteria. There is a bar on Zhengtong Road next to the Fudan International Students’ Center called Handrock, frequented by a band called “Crazy People”, and Zeng Tao, the guitarist, is the owner of the bar. We went in to have a beer.

Behind the bar were familiar faces, friends who had aged, and the lead singer of Crazy, Zhou Yong, who hadn’t appeared in a long time. Everyday and I listened to Crazy’s show at agogo at UWS last summer. The post-punk music was so mesmerizing that it vaporized us and we danced until we fainted.

Spider walked in with a couple of international students and we hugged and said hello. Spider has been hanging out with the foreign students lately because the computer company is having a hard time doing business and he is thinking of going to some country to study. He now speaks good English, some French and Spanish.

The music was “Numy” by Portishead, which I loved, and there were people dancing, while the faces behind the bar remained motionless, the same motionless, cool, haggard look that everyone who hangs out at a bar day and night has. Listening to druggy music, Daily slipped into the bar restroom and staggered out a long time later.

I knew what he was doing, and I could never look him squarely in the eye, squarely in such a look as he had at the moment, dull and empty, his soul having flown nine skies away. Then I got drunk too, and his addiction only needed my drinking addiction to be relative, and in this or that addiction we rebelled against our selves, ignored the pain, and pulsed like a beam of light in space.

Dancing to the music and flying in joy, we arrived back at our apartment just after 1am. Didn’t shower, stripped down and headed to bed, air conditioner was on high and my dreams were filled with the sound of the air conditioner humming and buzzing like insects chirping. The whole dream was blank, just this confusing sound.

When I opened my eyes early the following morning, at the first beam of sunlight, I turned to kiss Tien beside me, hot kisses imprinted on his cold, glowing white body, and I pushed him hard, calling to him, kissing him, pulling out my own hair, and then inexplicably jumped out of bed naked again and ran out onto the balcony. I stared long and hard through the windowpane at the bed inside the house, the body of my lover that lay there.

I burst into tears, bit my own finger, and screamed, “You fool!” He didn’t respond for a second. He was dead, and so was I.

There were many friends and relatives at the funeral, but the only one who was missing was my grandmother, who lived alone every day. Everything was light and airy, and one’s heart was on edge. I do not know what will happen to this fear, I do not know how his body into a senseless ash, his innocent soul how to break out of the ground, from a pile of horror in the remains of death escaped, and flew up to the sky, straight to the nine heavens. At the very top of the heavens, there should be a piece of clarity and clearness painted by God, and it would be a different situation, a different mood.

Connie presided over the funeral, she was all in black, with a thin black veil attached to her forehead, like the people in the movie, dignified and decent, but by no means intimate, the sadness was as if it was not into the bone and into the heart, there is no mother in the loss of her son in the chaos of madness, only a beautiful middle-aged woman dressed in black stood in front of her son’s casket of dignified. To be a woman, truthfulness is probably more important, and modesty and decency are not enough. That’s why I suddenly didn’t want to see her face and loathed the tone of her voice when she read the eulogy.

I hurriedly read a poem for Tin-Tin, “…… At the last flash I see your face, above the blackness, above the pain, above the vapor you exhale in the glass, in the middle of the night …… from dream to dream of grief , I have thought of the mouth, I can no longer say goodbye.”

Then I hide behind the crowd, I’m at a loss, so many people, so many people who have nothing to do with me are here, but it’s not a festival, it’s just a nightmare, like a hole in the heart.

I tried my best to hide, but Tin-Tin was gone, and so were the four walls of the room.

Thirty-two. Who am I?

That’s how things happen, to make heads explode, to make people scream, to make people go crazy.

I’m not a cold-blooded woman, and I haven’t gone crazy. My last collection, The Butterfly’s Scream, was published again. Godfather and Deng arranged for me to go to colleges and universities to do publicity, answering questions from guys like “Ms. Nicole, will you run around naked someday?” and to talk to girls about “whether women are the second sex” and “what feminists really want”.

When I went to Fudan I lay on the lawn for a while, looking at the sky and thinking about the man.

The following day, Vermilion took up her wedding gown for the second time, and the groom was the ambitious young painter, Dick, eight years younger than she. the wedding took place three months and twenty days after Tin-Tin’s funeral, and probably most people didn’t realize it, except for me.

The wedding was held at a Lawrence’s gallery in Renaissance Park, which was also the day of the groom’s solo exhibition. There were many guests from China and abroad, including Madonna. Madonna gave the newlyweds a generous gift, a pair of gold Omega watches, as a gesture of her graciousness; Dick was, after all, one of the men she cared most about.

I didn’t talk to her much, I suddenly stopped liking her so much, maybe she hadn’t said anything unnecessary to Tin-Tin, maybe she wasn’t so intent on controlling the friends she knew. But I no longer wanted to get too close to her.

There were too many people and the stifling air made it uncomfortable, so I excused myself early.

Emails have been coming in from Germany, from Mark, from Shamir. I told them about Tin-Tin’s death, and I said that my heart tends to be at peace now because my novel is nearing completion, and it’s the perfect gift for Tin-Tin and that period of my life.

Shamir invited me to go to Germany after finishing the novel, “It will be good for your recovery, come and see the steepled churches, the Black Forest and the crowds here, and I’m sure Mark is looking forward to seeing you.”

And Mark’s emails are always long and drawn out, relentlessly telling me what he’s been doing again lately, where he’s been, and about the fight with his wife, and I wonder what kind of trust makes him feel the urge to confide in me, and maybe a woman who writes novels can be trusted in her understanding and intuition, even though I stole his sapphire wedding ring. I wear this ring on my thumb all the time because it’s really pretty.

Set to go to Berlin at the end of October after Ghost Day, a holiday I love, it’s romantic and imaginative, with masquerade dress-up games to drive away the putrid smell of death.

I did some organizing before I left for Germany, organizing my novel manuscript and organizing the apartment in the western suburbs. I was going to move back in with my parents, and the keys to the apartment were going to Connie. All of Tien’s things were still there. I picked out a self-portrait of Tin-Tin, a book of Dylan Thomas poems that he liked, and a white shirt that he always wore.

The shirt still had his body odor on it, and burying my face deep in it, that familiar smell reminded one of what lost happiness was.

That night happened to be a weekend, and I took a long hike through the deep sycamore trees of Hengshan Road and into a nostalgic alleyway.

Connie’s Spanish restaurant is just around the corner, brightly lit, with flowers and shadows, scantily clad figures bobbing in the windows, and as we get closer, we can hear someone singing a Latin love song, and polite applause follows.

I walked up the steps and asked the waiter at the door where Connie was, and the waiter led me, through the twisting and turning porch, where I saw Connie in full dress among a large group of standing people. She wore a strapless evening gown, her hair pulled back in a high bun, wore thick, thick lipstick, and looked proper, smart, and like an elegant crane.

In the middle of the crowd was a Latin man and woman in beaded black dance costumes dancing Latin to the song, young and beautiful, the girl’s legs held gracefully in the man’s hands, followed by a dizzying series of flying spins. Connie ended her conversation with an older, gray-haired gentleman beside her and turned her face to see me. He owed a bow to the man beside him and headed my way.

“How are you darling?” She said, hugging me. I smiled and nodded, “You’re beautiful and always will be.” I said and then I took a set of keys out of my handbag and handed them to her. On the phone I had told her my current intentions.

She looked at the key, was silent for a moment, and took it, “I still don’t understand …… how it came to this. What did I do wrong? God did this to me.OK, – forget all that, you’re a smart girl Yu, take care of yourself.” We kissed goodbye and Juan came over to hug me. “Bye.” I waved and quickly walked out the door. The music and dancing continued, but it had nothing to do with me.

Walked to the ground floor courtyard, just out of the door, but ran into an old lady, a head of white hair, wearing glasses, fair skin, looks like a professor’s wife, I said “sorry”, but she ignored, straight to the iron gate.

As soon as the concierge saw her he hurriedly closed the big carved iron door, the old lady began to push the door hard, after this did not work she began to scream and curse, “Vixen, vermin, 10 years ago you killed my son, it was not enough, you killed my grandson, your heart must be black, I curse you to be hit by a car and die as soon as you leave the house… …”

Her voice was raspy, and as I stood fixedly by her side, I already knew who this angry, out-of-control old lady was. It was the first time I had ever seen her in person.

She didn’t show up at Tin-Tin’s funeral, presumably because Connie didn’t want her to attend. Connie was always afraid of her and avoided her, but Tin-Tin’s grandmother still came to the door.

The concierge whispered to her, “Old granny, you’ve been here no less than dozens of times, why bother, you’re so old, go home and rest.”

“Bah,” the old lady glared, “no one can put me in a mental institution – she thinks she’s okay because she’s doled out over a hundred thousand dollars in alimony to me, and I’m going to get a statement. ” She started to push the door once more, and I quickly stepped forward to assist the old lady.

“Grandma.” I called out softly, “Let me take you home, it’s going to rain.”

She stared at me skeptically and then looked at the sky above, which was thick with clouds illuminated a dark red by the city lights.

“Who are you?” She asked in a low voice, and I was stunned for a moment, a gentle, raw undercurrent sweeping through my whole body, making me for a moment at a loss as to how to answer this tired, helpless old woman.

Yeah, who am I? Who am I?

Afterword

This is my first full-length piece, and I wrote it in a bit of a trance from spring to summer, during which the mood wasn’t exactly steady.

When I finished typing the last word on the computer, I received a long-distance call over the ocean, and when I heard “hello” on the other end, I didn’t react for a long time, the sunlight outside the window had dimmed, the ivy climbed on the open-worked iron windows of the old French house, and the child upstairs was practicing the piano, playing “To Alice”, and I threw the cigarette in my hand into the ashtray and said in German into the microphone, “I love you”. cigarette in my hand into the ashtray and said into the microphone in German, “I love you.”

Yes, I say this “I love you” in almost all my novels, sometimes gently and elegantly, sometimes manically and desperately, sometimes greedily and recklessly, or timidly and fearfully. Either way, I say it, and readers have told me they like it, a lot.

This is a book that can be described as semi-autobiographical, between the lines I always want to hide myself a little bit better, a little bit better, but I found that it was very difficult, I can’t betray my simple and true philosophy of life, I can’t hide the kind of trembling, pain, and passion that rise from the soles of the feet and the heart, even though many times I am always accepting very passively all that fate has given to me, I’m so fatalistic, so paradoxical, and so incomprehensible as a young I am a young woman who is so fatalistic, contradictory and incomprehensible.

So I write everything I want to say and don’t want to put up defenses.

I don’t know where this book’s ultimate fate will lead, but I do know that once it’s finished, it’ll be out of my sight, no longer under my control, and it’ll be placed in your hands, communicating with you, talking to you, in the place of its author.

I think I’m glad I was able to publish this book before the year 2000, before my 27th birthday, and it has an unusual significance for me, a remembrance, a beginning, and a great reason to continue to be curious and in love with the world.

I would like to thank all my friends, teachers, and parents who have given me encouragement, help, and beautiful memories.

I would also like to thank the editorial team of the Boogeyman series. I came to Beijing on a very hot day to hand in the manuscript, and I felt so tired that the cab drove my yawning girlfriend and me along the ring road. When I pushed open the door of the editorial office of the Buhuo series, I saw Mr. Bai Ye. Then we walked in, sat down, and my manuscript was neatly placed on the wide, clean desk.