The Incarnations

21. The Sixth Letter

WHERE WERE YOU when it happened, Driver Wang? I was in my room, feeding words into the whirring machine. My blood sang with the force of it, and equilibrium wavered in my inner ears. Thinking the disturbance was physiological, I spread my hands on the table and took a breath. Then I saw the water swaying in the glass on the window ledge, and realized it was not coming from within. When everything became still again, I put on my coat and went out. I walked to a nearby electronics shop, where the sales assistants were crowded around a TV, watching the breaking news.

Though we now live in rational, scientific times, the earthquake has revived my old superstitious beliefs in the seismic condemnation of the Gods. But who has invoked their wrath this time? The Great, Glorious and Correct Communist Party? Or the citizens of the People’s Republic themselves? The darkness and corruption is everywhere, at every level of society. Greed is the beating heart of our people, and morality is overruled by the worship of money. Anyone can be bought and sold, Driver Wang. Even your own wife.

How well do you know her, Driver Wang? How well do you know the woman you sleep beside every night? What I am about to relate to you is no exaggeration of events. The findings of my investigation into who she really is, an exposé of her disturbed mind.

I requested her by number at the reception of the Dragonfly Massage. The receptionist informed me that she was with a customer. The session would be over in forty-five minutes. Would I mind waiting? Driver Wang, I did not mind.

Poverty. Ill health. Someone on society’s lowest rung. I know what Yida saw through her judgemental eyes. She saw no reason to be polite as she led me down the hall. But, inside the private room, I withdrew the pile of banknotes from my pocket and put it on the massage table, and her opinion of me changed. Yida stared at the money. Sixty portraits of the late dictator Chairman Mao, each worth one hundred yuan. Her nose twitched at the scent of ink and the mechanical processing of ATMs. Her eyes were no longer so dismissive.

‘Six thousand yuan,’ I said.

‘What do you want?’

‘For you to strip,’ I said. ‘I only want to look. Not to touch.’

‘I’m going to call my boss,’ Yida threatened.

We waited. She didn’t call her boss. Yida is no stranger to propositions. Half of her income comes from arrangements such as these. She peeled her eyes from the six thousand yuan and narrowed them in scrutiny of me. I didn’t have the appearance of someone with money to throw about.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘No one of any importance,’ I said. ‘Do you want the money or not?’

She stared at it. ‘You only want to look?’ she asked.

I nodded. Her mind was whirring. Calculating risk.

‘I want the money in advance.’

Stud buttons popped open. White uniform dropped to the floor. She reached back and unclasped her bra. Her thumbs hooked the elastic of her knickers and slid them down her legs. Cuffing her ankles before she kicked them off.

‘On the table,’ I said.

She obeyed. Bare buttocks on white sheets. Yida didn’t round her shoulders and hug her knees to her chest as any modest woman would. She arched her back as though posing for a pornographic shoot. She parted her lips and slit her eyes like a cat basking in the sun. She opened her legs, exhibiting the hole into which you plunge at night; stabbing blindly, sinking your hopelessness and despair.

Turned on by her own exhibitionism, your wife’s posing became more and more explicit. She crouched on her hands and knees so her breasts hung like udders. Then she crawled to me, licking her lips with her pink, obscene tongue. She performed in this way, writhing and exposing her private parts, for several minutes. I watched her degrading herself until I could stand no more.

‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Get dressed.’

Cold water thrown on her arousal, Yida was disappointed. But she had earned six thousand kuai for less than ten minutes’ work. She’d nothing to complain about. Your wife reached for her bra, and I turned from the pathetic sight of her pulling the straps over her arms and covering her breasts. Six thousand yuan poorer, I turned and left without a word. I had proven what I had set out to prove. That Yida is disloyal. That Yida will betray you for a few thousand yuan. That your marriage is a sham.

You long for transcendence, Driver Wang. You long to escape the meaninglessness of your life. But first you must break free of the human bondage holding you down. For as the findings of my investigation have shown, these bonds are worthless.