Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories

On Saturdays

The man they called Papa Qi was in fact still quite young. Though Meng and his wife realized that he was younger than they were, they still affectionately called him Papa. It was a habit, and like all habits it arose from particular circumstances. It might be inaccurate, but it seemed wrong to correct it. Calling him anything else would feel unnatural by now, like the time Ningzhu had suddenly asked him, ‘Mr Qi, what time is it?’ The two men in the room had acted as if a bomb had gone off, and turned abruptly to look at her as she stood by the door. Their gazes expressed shock in different degrees, and their reaction made Ningzhu feel extremely awkward.

‘Our wall clock is broken,’ she explained haltingly. ‘Papa Qi, you have a wristwatch, don’t you?’

Papa Qi laughed silently, and glanced at his wrist. ‘Nine o’clock. I should be leaving,’ he said and stood up. He seemed a bit flustered, and ended up hitting the coffee table with his knee, then almost sweeping a cup to the floor with his arm. After this momentary confusion he gave the cup to Meng, grimaced in embarrassment at the couple, and said, ‘I should go. You’ll be wanting to get to bed soon.’

‘There’s no hurry. Why don’t you stay a while longer?’ An unmistakable look of shame appeared on Ningzhu’s face and she blocked the door as she spoke. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. The wall clock really is broken; it has been for weeks. I told Meng to have it fixed, but he doesn’t want to go to the repair shop and keeps putting it off. You know how lazy he is.’

‘I should go. It’s after nine — I really should go,’ Papa Qi said. ‘I have a lot to do tomorrow anyway. We’ve been so busy at the office recently.’

‘We just don’t have any way to tell the time at home now. I left my own watch at my aunt’s,’ Ningzhu felt compelled to keep explaining, ‘and Meng can never find his. You’d really have to look hard to find someone as forgetful as he is. We’ve bought so many watches but he just keeps losing them, one after the other!’

Papa Qi had reached the door by now. All of a sudden he turned back and told Meng, ‘Go and get your wall clock and give it to me.’

‘Sorry?’ Meng hadn’t caught on right away.

‘It’s broken, isn’t it?’ said Papa Qi. ‘My brother knows how to repair clocks. That way you won’t have to take it to the shop. Besides overcharging you for the repair, they’ll probably take out the good parts and put broken ones back. Let me handle it. That way you won’t have to pay a penny, and I guarantee it’ll run for two years without breaking.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Meng glanced up to where the clock hung on the wall. He said, ‘We really shouldn’t bother you with all our little problems. Maybe it’s not broken at all. Maybe I just bought a dud battery.’

‘What’s the big deal between friends?’ Papa Qi answered. ‘Go and take it down and give it to me.’

Meng looked at Ningzhu, but she avoided his eyes and sighed ambiguously. He took a chair, walked around her and climbed up to take the clock off the wall.

That was how it came about that Papa Qi left the Mengs’ that day carrying their wall clock. Outside it was already completely dark and there were no street lights. The Mengs stood outside the door to see him off, but all they could make out was the dim glow of Papa Qi’s white shirt. Apparently, he had placed the clock in his bicycle’s wire basket as they could hear it rattling. He straddled his bike and then they heard him say in the darkness, ‘Till Saturday then. On Saturday I’ll come again. I’ll bring the clock.’

On any given day, how many trains are there in the world speeding along the railway tracks? And on every train, how many people become companionable simply because they happen to be sitting next to one another in a crowded carriage? But then again, how many of these chance acquaintances end up as actual friends? Travel acquaintances are quickly made and equally swiftly forgotten; when the train enters the station there may not be time for farewells, and once you’ve been off the train for an hour you might even have forgotten what your companion looked like. Meng had never imagined that a trip lasting a mere three hours would yield an unforgettable friendship. No, you don’t expect some guy making small talk on a train to turn into a real friend.

But that was just the kind of friend Papa Qi was. Meng could no longer remember clearly what topics they had touched on while chatting on the train — the conversation had ranged from UFOs to share prices to AIDS. It had been a congenial chat precisely because it had been so wide-ranging. Both of them had wanted to kill time on the train in the most natural way, and the three hours were easily disposed of. Soon they were standing on the platform and nodding to one another as they went their separate ways.

Later, Meng could not be sure exactly why Papa Qi had checked his rapid steps — more than likely it was because of Meng’s luggage. He had three pieces with him: two travel bags and a large cardboard box. He would carry one of the travel bags on his shoulders, and the other bag and the box in his hands. For Meng a little luggage like that presented no difficulty at all. He picked up his travel bags but was beaten to the cardboard box by someone else, who lifted it up. Glancing up, Meng saw that it was his neighbour from the train, an amicable smile on his face.

‘Why don’t I take this for you?’ he said. ‘You live in the new housing estate at the station, right? That’s only a few steps away. I’ll help you take it all home.’

Meng thanked him and declined repeatedly, but finally he reluctantly acquiesced. It was because of Papa Qi’s eyes; they seemed so clear and pure somehow, as if charged with some kind of expectation. That was how Meng first hesitantly led Papa Qi to his home. He recalled later that Papa Qi did not come in on this occasion.

Meng had invited him in for a sip of tea, but Papa Qi had replied, ‘No thanks. I still have to get to the office. We’ve been very busy recently.’

Meng said, ‘Well, look in some time when you’re free.’ Of course, he just made this offer to be polite but he always remembered Papa Qi’s earnest reaction. He had thought seriously about it for a moment, shaking his tired wrists, and then he’d said, ‘On Saturday. I’ll come on Saturday then.’

And afterwards Saturdays became Papa Qi’s visiting day.

The Mengs were not the kind of people who enjoyed a wide circle of friends. On the first day that Papa Qi came to visit, neither of them really knew how to act, although as cultured people, they treated him amiably enough. Ningzhu had not yet met Papa Qi, and assumed he must be a friend of Meng’s from university. She sat to one side, lamenting the fickleness of human nature and remarking that Meng’s photograph albums were filled with pictures of his former classmates, faces shining with happiness, arms slung around one another’s shoulders. How close they seemed to have been, yet now they had scattered to the four winds and Meng was in contact with no one: only Papa Qi had taken the time to visit his old friend.

Meng felt it would be awkward to correct his wife’s error, so he just chuckled instead. It was Papa Qi who took the initiative and explained who he was: ‘I never actually went to university. I missed the minimum score by a single point. I think I was born unlucky. After that, I didn’t bother to retake the exams.’

Ningzhu, reacting quickly to this information, immediately switched the topic of conversation to the worthlessness of university graduates. ‘What good are they? Look at Meng — comes out of a prestigious college and can’t even install a ceiling light.’

Papa Qi laughed knowingly as she spoke. Then he nodded and remarked, ‘You’re right. But it’s not just him. None of the college graduates I know can. And anyone who can put in a ceiling light didn’t go to college. It’s a social problem.’

‘Well, I bet you can do all kinds of electrical work,’ said Ningzhu encouragingly. ‘Maybe we can give you a shout next time we need something done.’

‘No problem. Just give me a call and I’ll be there.’

In fact, they never actually asked Papa Qi for help with anything electrical, nor did they ever intend to ask for help with anything else. But later Papa Qi did do them an enormous favour; something it would have been hard to imagine before it occurred.

For a few years Meng had been wanting to leave the research institute where he worked to find a job in the hi-tech development zone⁴, but this hope had remained unfulfilled. One day he mentioned it in passing to Papa Qi. He really had meant nothing by it, he was just adding one more possible topic to their increasingly meagre supply of conversation. Papa Qi merely smiled enigmatically and asked, ‘You want to work in the zone, eh? We might be able to work something out. As long as the research institute will let you go, there shouldn’t be any problem.’

‘I went to the zone once when they were recruiting. They seemed to be really satisfied with me, but nothing came of it in the end,’ said Meng gloomily.

‘Nothing strange about that, you don’t have the connections, that’s all. People get high salaries and good treatment in the zone. Everybody’s been racking their brains for a way to get in. It all depends on your connections.’

Meng replied, not without scorn, ‘I know that, but I can’t be bothered to go around making connections. If they don’t want me there, then I don’t want to be there.’

Papa Qi looked at him closely and after a second was unable to stifle his laughter.

‘What are you laughing about?’

‘You. That really says it all about you intellectuals.’ Meng understood what was meant, but said nothing. Then he heard Papa Qi give his knee a resounding slap and say, ‘No problem. I’ll take care of this.’

Meng thought his behaviour baffling, but didn’t pursue it since he’d only mentioned the matter in passing. It was true he wanted to go to the zone, but it wouldn’t kill him to have to stay at the research institute, either — that was how he looked at the matter. So he was almost scoffing at Papa Qi when he asked, ‘What? You don’t mean to tell me that your father’s the general director of the zone?’

No, Papa Qi’s father was not a high-placed official in the zone, but he had another relative who was, and Meng was about to find that out. After only three days he was called to an interview in the zone, and what surprised him even more was the comment the official made as he was showing him out: ‘We’ll make the transfer order out tomorrow.’ As Meng sped down in the lift he felt like he was dreaming. He left the building and spotted Papa Qi right away. He was sitting on the flower terrace, waving at him. Meng immediately woke from his trance, feeling now that there had been no particularly dreamlike element to what had just occurred. Of Papa Qi he enquired, ‘So what’s your connection with Vice Director Wang?’

‘What do you want to know that for?’

‘No reason. I was just curious.’

At this Papa Qi laughed and said, ‘You intellectuals, curious about everything. But can you eat curiosity?’ Meng felt a little awkward, but Papa Qi gave him a hearty pat on the back and said, ‘He’s a relative, I suppose, but that doesn’t count for much. We’re mostly friends; we gradually got to know each other.’

The Mengs were duly grateful for Papa Qi’s help, and the day before Meng reported for duty in the zone, the two of them went to buy gifts for him. Obeying the conventions, they purchased high-quality cigarettes and alcohol. Then Ningzhu, anxious to do right, said, ‘Papa Qi’s chin is always so stubbly. Why don’t we get him an electric razor?’

‘If we get one, then it should be top-grade,’ Meng replied, so in the end they shelled out a thousand yuan for a Philips razor.

Just as the couple had expected, Papa Qi refused this windfall of gifts, remarking, ‘If I’d known you intellectuals believed in bribes like everyone else, I wouldn’t have helped you out in the first place.’

Fortunately, Ningzhu knew how to be persuasive: ‘We know how things work. You must have spent quite a lot of money running around to get this done for us. If you won’t accept even these poor tokens of our gratitude then Meng simply won’t report for work in the zone.’

Only when she had put it so boldly did Papa Qi finally agree to take the cigarettes and the alcohol; but when it came to the razor he exhibited his unconventional side, saying, ‘I’ll accept the razor too, but I won’t take it home with me. If I take it home, I’ll just end up giving it away to someone else, so it’ll be best if you take care of it for me. I come here all the time anyway. This way it’ll be mine just the same, right?’

From then on, the buzzing sound of an electric razor was often to be heard in the Meng’s home, generally on Saturday afternoons but sometimes also early on a Friday or Sunday evening. And that was how Papa Qi’s visits became part of Meng family life. He made them when the working week was done, so naturally those were the days when Ningzhu was particularly busy with her housekeeping. While she was cooking or washing up, she could always hear Papa Qi shaving in the sitting room. Their flat was far too small, and even from the kitchen she could clearly hear the three revolving blades rasping against the bristle of his beard. Not only that: since Papa Qi’s beard was very tough, even two rooms away Ningzhu could make out the sound of the stubble rattling around inside the razor. One day, she grew very agitated at the noise and cried out loud, ‘That racket is driving me crazy!’

The two men hadn’t heard Ningzhu’s complaint, but when Papa Qi took his leave that day she didn’t see him to the door as usual, but instead vanished into the bathroom. She came out only once he had left, and her expression showed she was annoyed. She said to Meng, ‘You two talked together the whole evening. What did you talk about? You talk to him almost every other day. What on earth do you find to talk about? How can there be that much to say?’

Meng, aware of his wife’s mood, said, ‘I don’t really know what we talk about. He wants to sit there and talk, so I just talk back. When there’s something to say, we talk, and when there isn’t, we sip tea. And while we’re sipping, we come up with another topic.’

Ningzhu frowned and said, ‘It’s very odd. He’s always saying he’s so busy, but if he is, why is he always sitting around our home all evening or afternoon?’

‘Are you annoyed with him?’ replied Meng. ‘He’s not just some run-of-the-mill acquaintance, you know, he did us a huge favour.’

‘You’re right, I shouldn’t be irritated. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but as soon as I hear that razor it just gets to me. It’s like a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing in my ears. If I’d known it would be like this, I’d have made him take it home when we first gave it to him.’

They were greatly in Qi’s debt. Except for their parents, their brothers and sisters, was there anyone as interested in their affairs? When the toilet flush broke, it was Papa Qi who fixed it. They felt the deepest gratitude towards him, realizing you could scour the earth and never find another friend like him. On the other hand, they developed an ever-deepening dread of Saturdays. On Friday evenings, when Meng went to bed, he would laugh hollowly and say, ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday. Papa Qi will be coming again.’

They had once supposed that Papa Qi had an ulterior motive, but the two of them quickly came to realize that to think that way was to do him an injustice. Meng was an automation programmer, Ningzhu an accountant; what use could they possibly be to him? They realized that Papa Qi was someone whose word was his deed; a person utterly devoid of ulterior motives, who paid them visits purely out of friendship. Neither Meng nor Ningzhu was odd or eccentric, and in their opinion making friends was a nice, harmless thing to do, but they didn’t understand why Papa Qi had to come every Saturday, and why, when he did, he had to stay quite so long.

Ningzhu hatched a variety of schemes to curtail the length of Papa Qi’s visits. Once, when Papa Qi and Meng were chatting in the living room, she carried out a pile of accounts books and explained that she was helping a coworker make a little cash by doing extra bookkeeping, so she had to have them ready for the next morning. Then she sat down right under their noses, thinking it would be seen as an obvious hint. But Papa Qi seemed totally undisturbed, and concentrated on the political joke he was telling. The joke was in fact very funny, but Ningzhu couldn’t bring herself to laugh. Instead she enquired of Meng, ‘Can’t you hear that the water on the stove is boiling? Go and pour it into the Thermos!’

Before he could get up, Papa Qi was already on his feet, saying, ‘I’ll do it.’ Then he rushed into the kitchen as if he was in his own house while Meng, caught between sitting and standing, said to his wife, ‘You’re going too far.’

Ningzhu rolled her eyes at him, picked up the things from the table and flounced into the bedroom. Once there, she had a private temper tantrum, throwing Meng’s pillow viciously to the floor and stamping wildly all over it. That was the day Papa Qi brought back the repaired wall clock. When he had gone Meng wanted to hang it on the wall, but Ningzhu wouldn’t allow it. Meng realized then that she was very angry with Papa Qi.

What could account for his behaviour? Did he really not see how they felt or was he merely pretending not to? Ningzhu sighed, ‘I practically ordered him out. How come he didn’t react?’

‘He’s the straightforward sort, that’s all. He’s not used to people beating about the bush,’ Meng replied. ‘Besides, it probably hasn’t occurred to him that he annoys you. He’s helped us with so many things without the slightest hope of getting anything in return. Why would it even cross his mind that he annoys you?’

‘Nothing in return?’ Ningzhu shouted. ‘He takes our time away, he takes our Saturdays away. Other people have seven days in a week, but we only have six. Isn’t that compensation enough?’

Meng could think of no immediate response. As a bookkeeper, Ningzhu had a way of presenting facts so clearly that others always saw her point. He chuckled for a moment, and then said to his wife, ‘If he’s really getting on your nerves, why don’t you just go home to your mother’s on Saturdays? I’ll stay here and keep him company. He’ll only be stealing my Saturday that way, so we’ll be cutting our losses by fifty per cent, right?’

The next Saturday closed in on them with quick steps. In the morning, Meng was shaken awake very early by Ningzhu and took fright when he saw her haggard face and bloodshot eyes. His first thought was that she must be ill, but Ningzhu said, ‘I’m not ill, I just haven’t slept. I’ve been thinking the whole time of what will happen when Papa Qi comes. I try to force myself not to think about it, but as soon as I close my eyes, I hear the sound of that damned razor.’ Then she said, ‘I can’t take it any more, really I can’t.’

Meng felt the issue had become a major concern and tried to console his wife, saying, ‘It’s not as bad as all that. Think of his good points. If you remember all the things he’s done for us, you won’t feel that way.’

‘I did think about them. I’ve thought all I can about his good points, but if he hadn’t helped us at all, wouldn’t we still have been fine? We could picnic on the mountain, we could go to the movies, or we could not go out at all and stay in reading, just the two of us. Wouldn’t that be nice? Why did he have to force himself between us?’

‘What do you mean, "force"? He’s our friend, after all.’

But Ningzhu was no longer interested in the topic of friendship, being steeped too far in resentment. ‘No,’ she said suddenly in a tone that brooked no argument, ‘you can’t stay at home today. You’re coming with me.’

Meng was the kind of man who cherished his wife, and though he was extremely reluctant to agree, in the end he was unable to dissuade her. Before leaving home at noon, he wrote a note informing Papa Qi that they had gone out. Ningzhu was against even this, and said, ‘If you say you’re busy today, what about tomorrow? He’ll come back tomorrow for sure.’

‘But won’t he notice we’re avoiding him on purpose?’

‘We want him to notice! Didn’t you say he was straight-forward? This time we won’t beat around the bush, we’ll let him find out. Maybe he is straightforward, but not to the point of idiocy!’

That night, when they returned home they discovered several cigarette butts outside the door. Meng counted them; there were six altogether. He picked them up one by one and threw them in the rubbish. A strange sensation accompanied the action, as if, bit by bit, he was picking up his friendship with Papa Qi and throwing that in the rubbish too. He felt empty inside, but strangely enough his movements seemed filled with exaggerated glee. Meng himself could not have explained his frame of mind that evening. All he could remember later was the first thing Ningzhu said after they got home: ‘Now he gets it! He won’t come back next week.’ And he also remembered how full of joy and hope her voice was.

* * *

Indeed he did not come. Having waited until two in the afternoon, the Mengs felt certain that he would not; they had become familiar with the pattern of Papa Qi’s visits. When the clock struck two, they looked at one another and smiled. Ningzhu said, ‘Like I said, he won’t come today.’

Meng replied, ‘He didn’t come today; he’s given us our Saturdays back.’ He’d meant to say it in a humorous tone, but could tell that somehow he’d sounded nervous, serious, anything but humorous.

Papa Qi did not come, and Saturday afternoon seemed very tranquil and empty. For a time, Meng didn’t know what to do with himself; it felt as if this interlude had been stolen from Papa Qi. Somehow, he couldn’t bear to fritter it away. He wandered around at home, and in the end asked Ningzhu, ‘Tell me what I should be doing.’

She said, not without satisfaction, ‘Anything you like. Why don’t you read? You haven’t read in six months.’

So Meng took a specialist book out, read a little and then raised his head, saying, ‘What’s that sound? I keep hearing something.’

Ningzhu put down her magazine, too, and said, ‘You’re right. It’s some kind of droning. I can hear it. Weird. The noise doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere.’

Both their glances came to rest simultaneously on the shelf underneath the coffee table where the Philips razor lay silent. Since no one had switched it on, it couldn’t possibly be making any noise, and both of them knew that this incident could only be attributed to their own hypersensitive nerves.

Meng couldn’t remember at what time — perhaps it was three o’clock, perhaps four, in any case later than Papa Qi usually came — they suddenly heard the sound of a bicycle bell outside. Before Papa Qi knocked on the door he always rang his bicycle bell; it was practically a rule. Meng felt stunned for a moment; he watched Ningzhu jump up from the sofa. Panic-stricken, she grabbed his hand, and before he had worked out what was going on, she had pulled him behind her into the bedroom.

‘Don’t say anything.’ Ningzhu covered his mouth and hissed at him, ‘You mustn’t say anything — you mustn’t open the door to him. He’ll knock for a little longer and then leave.’

Meng felt like a burglar, his heart beat so fast it threatened to stop altogether. He stared at Ningzhu, wanting to laugh, but couldn’t get the sound out. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ he mumbled as he put out his hand and quietly shut the bedroom door.

Outside Papa Qi knocked on the front door, and as he knocked he called out their names. Initially, the knocking was gentle and patient but gradually it became louder and more urgent, like thunderclaps they could hear all the way from the bedroom. Meng’s hand kneaded his chest while Ningzhu covered her ears. They looked at each another and saw the resolve on one another’s face. They waited for about five minutes until finally it was silent outside.

Meng sighed first and said to Ningzhu, ‘We’re going too far. He might realize we’re at home.’

She shook her head at him, and walked stealthily to the window. He understood what it was she intended to do as she carefully turned up a corner of the curtain to peer outside. Suddenly he had a premonition, but it was the kind of premonition that comes too late — already he could hear Ningzhu’s hysterical screams.

She later described to him the scene as her eyes met Papa Qi’s as he rang his bicycle bell about a metre from the window. When he saw her, his expression became vacant and confused, a sight that made Ningzhu feel so ashamed she wanted to sink to the ground. ‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ she said, choking on her sobs. ‘When I think of the way he looked, I regret everything. I went too far. oh, I’m so terribly sorry.’

Now that matters had reached this point, Meng had no way of consoling his wife, and when he imagined Papa Qi’s expression, he too felt wretched. He said, ‘There’s no point regretting it now. He gets it. He won’t come back to our home again.’

After that Papa Qi didn’t return; not on Saturdays, nor Fridays nor Sundays either, not to mention any other day of the week. Meng knew that he had lost his friend for ever. For a very long time after that he would imagine sounds every Saturday: the ringing of bicycle bells in the street always drew his attention, and between two and two-thirty in the afternoon he would dimly hear the buzzing of the razor. One day he took the head off and saw that there was a thick layer of stubble inside, looking just like black dust. He went outside his door, puffed out his cheeks and blew the head clean of stubble. If Papa Qi wasn’t going to come round any more, then the razor was Meng’s to use. Afterwards, without his even noticing, the imaginary sound disappeared.

How many people meet every day on trains, only to go their separate ways when they reach their destination? In the end, the relationship between Papa Qi and Meng confirmed the conventional wisdom. Of course it was sheer coincidence that they saw one another once more on a train platform; the difference this time was that Meng was getting on a train to go out of town on business while Papa Qi had come to the station to see off some guests. It was a group from the north-east, and Meng guessed that these were Papa Qi’s new friends.

Meng was positive that Papa Qi had seen him — his eyes skimmed past Meng several times, but his gaze deliberately blanked him out. Meng was too ashamed to greet him and kept his own head down, observing Papa Qi while he anxiously waited for the train to start. When it did, he saw Papa Qi waving from the platform but Meng knew that he was not waving at him; he was waving to those new north-eastern friends of his.