The Crazed

31

The memorial service for Mr. Yang was held the following day at New Wind Crematorium, which was at the foot of One Thousand Buddhas Mountain, two miles south of the city. Meimei had come back the night before and attended the service. Most of the faculty of our department were present; so were several school officials. Mrs. Yang, Meimei, and I wore black armbands and white roses made of gauze on our chests. People came to us and gave their condolences. Meimei wiped her eyes with a foulard handkerchief the whole time and kept saying if only she had been with her father when he was dying. I stood beside her as though I already belonged to her family. And most people shook my hand too.

Mr. Yang lay in a massive coffin, which most of the dead shipped here would occupy for a few hours or a day before being pushed into the furnace at the back of the house. On either side of the coffin stood a thick white candle, shedding bronze light on the long strips of paper attached to the wreaths that stretched away toward the side walls. The strips carried elegiac words, such as In life you were a man of distinction; in death, an immortal spirit! Boundless glory to you! Your noble soul will never perish! You will live in our memory forever! Mr. Yang looked awful, his face shiny with a thick layer of rouge and his bloodless lips slightly apart. A fat fly crept into his mouth and a moment later came out, zigzagging on his chin. All his wrinkles had disappeared, but his features didn’t seem to have relaxed; he looked as though still thinking hard about something. His hair seemed wet, combed back neatly and parted in the middle, and it exuded an odor like ammonia water.

Professor Song, as the departmental chair, delivered the memorial speech. He praised Mr. Yang as a diligent, erudite scholar and a model teacher, who had loved the people and the Party with “a pure heart like a newborn baby’s,” and whose death was a great loss to the university and to our country. He wanted all the mourners to transform our grief into energy and strength so as to carry on my teacher’s cause, which was to build a first-rate literature department that would eventually offer a Ph.D. program. He concluded with a small sob, “Comrade Shenmin Yang, may you sleep in peace. Your heroic spirit will always remain with us.”

Then the pair of black loudspeakers hung up in the corners of the hall bellowed out the mourning music as loudly as though some monsters had broken loose and were haunting this place. People lined up to pay their last respects to Mr. Yang. Among them were Weiya and Kailing. When it was Kailing’s turn, she burst into tears at the foot end of the coffin, crying, “Professor Yang, we still have many books to translate together. Why did you leave so soon?” She wailed with abandon, hands holding her sides. No one seemed surprised, probably because she had a reputation for being visceral. I stole a glance at Mrs. Yang, whose face remained unchanged, sad but dignified.

A few women teachers of the Literature Department shed tears, too; even some men had wet eyes. Weiya stood by a half-moon window, motionless as if lost in thought. She didn’t show much emotion, though she seemed ill, colorless, her cheeks more prominent. I couldn’t help but look askance at her. She was unaware of my observation and absently held something in her hand, perhaps a key or a tiny pen. However, as she went to the coffin and bowed deeply to Mr. Yang, I noticed a solitary tear hanging on her right lower lid. The tear didn’t move, as though congealed. She turned and hurried away, her face rather haggard, bonier than before. Approaching the door, she covered her mouth with her palm, and her shoulders trembled. With lurching steps she left alone before the others.

Secretary Peng was also at the memorial service. I talked with her briefly and found out that she had seen my application for the position at the Policy Office, but the crematorium wasn’t a proper place to talk about such a matter, since I was obligated to keep Meimei and her mother company throughout the memorial service.

The day after the funeral, Meimei and I had a talk. We met in her father’s office, whose single window faced a huge weeping willow. I left the door ajar so that nobody could accuse me of using Mr. Yang’s office for smooching. Already there were grumbles in the department about my access to this office. In fact I seldom entered it these days. Some faculty members must have coveted this room, which was more spacious than theirs, and they were afraid I might occupy it permanently.

The heat coming in from the outside was palpable. Through the screen window the thrumming of cicadas could be heard, and from time to time a droning bee bumped into the iron mesh with a tiny thud. After Mr. Yang was hospitalized, I had kept everything in place here. His ink bottle, Plexiglas paperweight, tobacco box, and porcelain teacup all remained in their original places on his desk. On the wall, in the very place once occupied by Weiya’s painting of the smiley monk eating figs, now hung a large framed photo, in which Mr. Yang, wearing a huge red paper flower on his chest, was accepting an award for his scholarly accomplishment from the director of the Provincial Education Department. The prize was a bulky dictionary, Origins of Words, and a blue satin case containing a Hero fountain pen. On either side of the picture were two certificates pasted to the wall, commending his teaching. He had been elected an outstanding teacher four times.

Meimei and I sat face to face, with the desk between us. I tried to relax some, my heels resting on the crosspiece under the table. She wore a honey-colored dress with a bateau neck. A pair of sunglasses clasped the front of her thick hair. Despite her nonchalant manner, she looked exhausted, not having slept well several nights in a row. Her cheeks had lost their glow and her face was a bit sickly. She must have worked very hard lately; even her eyes looked tired, not as vivid as before. The moment she received the telegram, she had rushed to the train station and caught an express back to Shanning. By then she had finished her exams, in which she believed she had done well. Apparently she was still upset about my decision to withdraw from the exams, which would be given in two days.

“It’s not too late yet, Jian,” she said in her contralto voice. “Please take them, just for me.”

I swallowed, but managed to reply, “Forgive me, Meimei, I’ve made up my mind. Don’t try to bring me around.” I hated to say that. This was the first time I had ever refused to listen to her.

“I don’t understand why you changed your mind all of a sudden,” she said vexedly, pursing her lips.

“It’s hard to explain in a few words. I spent weeks at your father’s bedside and he made me think a lot. Let me just say I don’t want to live an intellectual’s life anymore.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she insisted, her upturned nose quivering, which usually foreshadowed a rage.

“It’s a waste of life. Every intellectual is a clerk in our country.”

“That’s malicious! How come you’ve become such a crude cynic?”

“Your father told me that.”

“He taught you many things, why have you forgotten them all except this spiteful idea? He must’ve said that when he wasn’t in his right mind.”

“But that’s the most truthful thing he ever said.”

She looked me straight in the face, her large eyes full of doubts, which gradually turned into annoyance. Her long eyelashes flickered. “So you definitely won’t come to Beijing?” she asked deliberately.

“Not as a student.”

“Can you come in another way?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I’ve written to Ying Peng and informed her that I want to work in the Policy Office at the Provincial Administration.”

“You mean to be an official?” she said in disbelief.

“Yes, a real clerk.”

“You have betrayed my father.”

Surprised, I raised my voice. “You don’t understand your father at all. You don’t know how miserably he suffered his whole life. He wanted to be an official too, but he didn’t have an—”

“Don’t blaspheme my father!”

I thought of telling her about the absurd letter of recommendation and the scholarship her father had promised Secretary Peng, but I bit my tongue. Then it dawned on me that Mr. Yang’s desire to become a scholar-official might not have originated only from empleomania. Driven to despair, he too must have thought of officialdom as the only possible way to live a life different from a futile intellectual’s. In other words, if in my place, he would have made the same choice. Though struck by this realization, I didn’t know how to explain it to Meimei. All I could say was “Believe me, you really don’t understand your father.”

“I’m his daughter. At least I know what kind of man he’d like to have had as his son-in-law.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can figure it out by yourself.”

“So I’m disqualified?” My heart twinged, but I kept calm and forced a smile.

“What else can I say?” she replied.

“Why?”

“Because you’re too greedy and don’t know your place in the world.”

“What is my place?”

“My father taught you to be a scholar in poetics so that you could go to Beijing and study there. Also, in that way we could be together. If he were alive, he would never allow you to get involved in politics.”

“But he told me not to be a scholar before he died. He told me to quit studying books. He even said I’d be better off growing millet.”

“That’s all rubbish. He couldn’t have meant what he said.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You ought to look at his entire life for an answer. Didn’t he say he’d be happy if we got married and settled down in Beijing? Tell me, what kind of life is better than a scholar’s? It can be peaceful, rewarding, detached, and even nurturing. I don’t believe that my father, a disinterested man, ever regretted having lived such a life. If I were you, it would be my only choice.”

“You have no idea how awful and wretched your father’s life actually was! You don’t know how crazily he ranted during his last days!”

“Don’t disturb the dead! Let him rest in peace.”

“Believe it or not, a scholar’s life is the last thing I want.”

“You know what’s wrong with you?”

“What?”

She said, with flushed cheeks, “You’re hungry for power and greedy for material comforts. That’s why you want to become an official like Banping, to get rich by taking bribes. I never thought you had such a peasant’s narrow outlook too.”

“That’s not fair! If I craved material comforts, I would go to Beijing where living conditions are better than elsewhere. I just want to live a useful life.”

“Tell me, what is a useful life?”

“Not to be a piece of meat on the chopping board for others to cut. No, let me put it this way: I want to take my fate in my own hands, and when I die, I want to end with the feeling of content and fulfillment. In other words, I don’t want to feel that my life should have been used otherwise.”

“You’re silly if not megalomaniac. Even Hamlet, a prince, cannot control his own fate. Who ever can?”

“You don’t understand. I mean to make my own choices in life.”

“You always have your choices.”

“All right, let me just say I want to be a knife instead of a piece of meat.”

“You’re crazy, you want to hurt others?”

“No, I want to live an active life. You will understand what I mean someday.”

She gave a wry smile, her nose wrinkled. “What makes you think there’s still a future tense for us?”

My heart shrank in pain, but I managed to say, “Meimei, you know how much I love you.”

“Love alone is not enough.” She was biting the left corner of her mouth, her eyes dimmed.

“What else do you want?”

“I want to make my life in Beijing. How can you join me there if you give up this only opportunity?”

I couldn’t answer.

She got to her feet and bent down to pull up her nylon anklets. “You still have a day to decide whether you’ll take the exams,” she said without looking at me.

“That’s out of the question.”

“All right then, let’s stop here. Good luck with your official career.” She stepped toward the door and held its handle. She seemed to be hesitating whether to walk out. I noticed that she had gained some weight, probably six or seven pounds, but she was still slim with a thin waist and a straight back.

Before I could stand up, she spun around and took two steps toward me. She said almost furiously, “I know why you’ve given up.”

“Why?”

“Because there’re all kinds of talents in the capital, and you’re afraid to compete with others in your field. You’re such a coward that you don’t have the guts to go to Beijing!”

Gagging, I started to cough, hunching over the desk with my hand rubbing my chest. I wanted to yell at her to defend myself, but couldn’t get a word out. She stared at me for a few seconds, then walked out the door.

“Wait, stay a while, Meimei!” I brought out finally. No response came from the corridor.

I lurched to my feet, biting back the cry that was fighting its way through my cramped throat. The sound of her footsteps faded away, then vanished. I flopped down on the chair and buried my face in my arms on the glass desktop.

Before she returned from Beijing, I had planned to make love to her, assuming that our intimacy could help me persuade her or at least induce her to see my view. I even bought a packet of “extra-sensitive” condoms. But once she was back, the ambience of mourning prevented me from getting intimate with her. I dared not even sneak a kiss when we were with others. I only managed to squeeze her hand a few times and pat her behind twice after the memorial service. Besides fear and propriety, I simply couldn’t get hold of her — she was never home.

Finally I realized that she had just issued me an ultimatum. I felt wounded. She had changed, become colder or more rational than before, though I was unsure whether the change had stemmed from her heart or was a mere pose she had struck to deal with me. What upset me more was that she wouldn’t even consider my position at all. Whatever I said had seemed to make no sense to her. Worst of all, her word coward stung me to the heart.