Boy in the Twilight (6 page)

Lin Hong, a woman in her midthirties, was assailed by suspicion, disquiet, foreboding, and conjecture. Key in hand, she sat outside on the balcony, and for a long time she stayed there, unmoving; the sun above shifted its position above her stationary form. She felt lost. Only when the telephone rang did she rise and go inside to answer it. The call was from her husband, in a hotel far away. “Lin Hong, Li Hanlin here,” he said. “I got here okay and checked in. Everything’s fine. Are you okay?”

Was she okay? She didn’t know. She stood there, receiver in
hand. The voice at the other end was saying, “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

She said something at last. “I can hear you.”

“Okay, I’ll hang up now.”

The connection was broken, and all that came over the line was a long silence. Lin Hong hung up and went back to the balcony to stare at the key. Her husband’s call had been a routine formality, a simple confirmation that he was still alive.

That was one thing there was no doubt about. His clothes were drying on the balcony, his smile was mounted in a frame on the wall, cigarettes he had stubbed out were still lying in the ashtray, and his friends were calling on the phone, unaware he was away. “What?” they’d say. “Another business trip?”

She looked at the key. Her husband’s entire existence seemed to hinge on it. But just what did this grubby key signify? Someone she had thought was so close to her had kept a secret from her, just as neatly and securely as those three envelopes had guarded the key, and this secret had been concealed by time, concealed by time that she had imagined to be happy. Now that secret was about to be revealed, and—she felt sure—it was going to do her damage. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Steadily they approached her door, paused, then continued the climb.

The following morning, Lin Hong went to Li Hanlin’s office and told his office mate that she needed to pick up a few things from his desk drawer. The colleague knew her. Wives were always fetching things from their husbands’ offices. He pointed to a desk by the window.

She inserted the key into the keyhole of Li Hanlin’s desk, and the latch snapped open. And that was how she discovered
her husband’s secret, inside a large envelope. There were two photographs of the same woman, one of her in a swimsuit on a beach, the other a black-and-white portrait. She looked younger than Lin Hong, but not more attractive. Then there were five letters, all signed “Qingqing.” The name made her eyes burn. Qingqing … this was obviously a pet name. For a woman who was completely unknown to her to share a pet name with her husband … The hand that held the letters began to tremble. The letters were full of sweet sentiments and touching endearments. It seemed that this woman and Li Hanlin often met, and frequently chatted on the phone. That was the way it was. And there was no exhausting their sweet sentiments and touching endearments; letters had to be exchanged to allow more room for their expression. In one of the letters, the woman told Li Hanlin she had a new telephone number.

AFTER LIN HONG GOT HOME
, she sat down on the sofa and studied this seven-digit number. She tried to collect herself, and then she picked up the phone and dialed. She heard ringing, and then a woman answered. “Hello?”

“I’d like to speak to Qingqing,” Lin Hong said.

“Speaking. Who’s calling?”

Lin Hong detected a husky quality to the woman’s voice. “I’m the wife of Li Hanlin,” she said.

For a long time there was no reply, but Lin Hong could hear breathing, uneven breathing. “You’re shameless,” Lin Hong said. “You’re despicable, you sneaky little …” Lin Hong didn’t know what to say next; her whole body was shaking.

The other party now spoke. “Tell it to Li Hanlin.”

“You’re shameless!” Lin Hong shouted into the phone. “You’ve destroyed our marriage!”

“I haven’t destroyed your marriage,” the other woman said. “Relax, I’m not going to do that. Li Hanlin and I won’t go any further; this is our limit. I’m not interested in marrying him—not all women are like you.” She hung up.

Lin Hong stood there, quivering from head to toe, as tears of indignation poured from her eyes and the dial tone rang in her ears. After a long time she put down the receiver, but she remained standing there, and then she picked up the phone again and dialed another number.

At the other end a male voice could be heard. “Hello? Hello? Who’s calling? Why don’t you say something?”

“This is Lin Hong.”

“Oh, Lin Hong … Is Li Hanlin back now?”

“No.”

“How come he’s not back yet? It’s been a while now, hasn’t it? No, it can’t be that long. I saw him three days ago. What’s he doing this time? Is he still promoting that water filter? What a scam that is! He gave me one and I tried it out. I put filtered water in one glass and water from the faucet in another glass, and I couldn’t see any difference between the two. Then I drank a mouthful from each glass and they tasted the same, too.”

Lin Hong interrupted him. “Do you know Qingqing?”

“Qingqing?” he said. There was a pause. Lin Hong waited, holding the receiver. “I don’t know her,” he said finally.

Lin Hong tried to stay calm. “Li Hanlin is having an affair. He’s hooked up with some woman behind my back. Her name is Qingqing. I just found out today. They meet, they talk on
the phone, they write to each other. I have the letters she sent him. They’ve known each other for more than a year now—”

This time it was the man at the other end who interrupted her. “I know Li Hanlin pretty well,” he said, “but I don’t know anything about this Qingqing person. Could you have misinterpreted? Perhaps they’re just friends … Excuse me, someone’s knocking at the door. Hold on.”

He put down the phone, and after a moment she heard two men talking and steps coming toward the telephone. The receiver was picked up and the man said, “Hello?”

She knew that he was waiting for her to go on, but she didn’t want to say more, so all she said was “If you have a guest, I’ll let you go.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about it later.”

He hung up. Lin Hong still clutched the receiver. She looked up the number of another friend of Li Hanlin. She dialed and heard someone pick up the phone. “Hello?”

“This is Lin Hong,” she said.

“Lin Hong, how are you? And how’s Li Hanlin? What’s he up to these days?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you know Qingqing?”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. She had no choice but to continue. “Li Hanlin has been carrying on with another woman behind my back.”

“Surely not.” Now, at last, he spoke. “Li Hanlin wouldn’t do that kind of thing. I know him. Is it possible that you’re being a bit … over-suspicious?”

“I’ve got evidence,” Lin Hong said. “I’ve got the letters this woman wrote, and the photos she gave him. I called her up on the phone just now, also.”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

His tone was frosty, and Lin Hong knew she would get nothing more out of him, so she hung up the phone and went to the balcony and sat down. Li Hanlin had a few other friends, but she didn’t want to call them. They would simply come to his defense and show her no sympathy. A long time ago she had had friends of her own—Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning—but she had drifted apart from them after her marriage, hanging out with Li Hanlin’s pals, chatting and joking with them, going shopping with their wives. Those wives had replaced Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning. Only now did she realize she had lost all her friends.

She had no idea how to get in touch with Zhao Ping or Zhang Lini. She had only Shen Ning’s number, scribbled down a year ago when they had run into each other in the street. She had written the number in her book and then forgotten all about it.

It was Shen Ning’s husband who answered the phone. He told Lin Hong to hang on, and then Shen Ning came on the line. “Yes, who is it?”

“It’s me, Lin Hong.”

She heard a yelp of delight at the other end, then Shen Ning unleashed a stream of comments and questions: “It’s great to hear your voice! I called you once, but nobody picked up. Are you doing well? It’s been ages since we saw each other. A year now, right? It seems like ages. Have you heard from Zhao Ping and Zhang Lini at all? It’s been years since I saw them, too. Are you doing well?”

“No, I’m not doing well,” Lin Hong said.

Shen Ning went quiet. “What did you say?”

Tears began to spill from Lin Hong’s eyes. “My husband has been cheating on me. He’s been carrying on with some woman …” She was sobbing too much to continue.

“What happened?” Shen Ning asked.

“Yesterday,” Lin Hong said, “yesterday, when I was tidying his drawer, I found a folded envelope, and when I opened it I found two more envelopes inside. He had hidden a key inside those three envelopes. I got suspicious and tried all the locks in the apartment, but it didn’t open any of them. So I thought maybe it was the key to his office desk, and this morning I went to his office, and that’s where I found the letters that this woman wrote to him, as well as a couple of photos—”

“Outrageous!” Shen Ning started cursing.

Now that Lin Hong had an ally at last, her grief and resentment could find release. “I did everything for him,” she said. “I never gave a moment’s thought to whether there were things I should have. All the time I was thinking of what I could do for him, what he’d like to eat, what clothes he should wear. After we got married, I completely forgot about myself. All that mattered to me was catering to his needs, and now look what he gets up to …”

“What’s your plan?” Shen Ning asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you,” Shen Ning said. “You can’t afford to be weak at this point, and you can’t be softhearted, either. You have to punish him. No more crying from now on—whatever you do, don’t let him see you cry. You need to look furious and ignore him. Don’t cook his meals; don’t do his laundry; don’t do anything for him. Don’t let him sleep in your bed—make him sleep on the sofa. At the very least, make him sleep on
the sofa for a year or so. He’ll beg you, he’ll get down on his knees, he’ll even slap himself on the face, but stick to your guns. He’ll make all kinds of promises—men are good at that, but their promises are worth no more than a dog’s bark. Don’t believe a word of it. In short, you need to make him understand the costs incurred when he has a romantic adventure, you have to give him a taste of hell on earth, you have to make him feel that life’s not worth living, that he’d be better off dead.”

A FEW DAYS LATER
, Li Hanlin came back from his trip. He found Lin Hong sitting on the balcony, indifferent to his homecoming. He laid his bag on the sofa, went over to Lin Hong, and looked at her. She seemed to have been struck dumb. “What’s wrong?” he said.

Lin Hong’s eyes were fixed on the floor. Li Hanlin waited by her side, and when she still said nothing he went over to the sofa, opened his bag, and dumped out the dirty clothes, then looked at her. He was displeased to find her still staring at the floor. “What’s the meaning of this?” he said.

Lin Hong turned away from him and surveyed the view from the balcony. Li Hanlin went back to rummaging around in his bag. He took out his other belongings and laid them on the sofa. Then he began to lose his temper. He walked over to Lin Hong and started to shout. “What the hell is this about? I come home and you put on a sourpuss face. What have I done to offend you now? You—”

He could see that Li Hanlin stopped abruptly. A key was clasped between Lin Hong’s finger and thumb. There was a buzzing noise in his head. He stood there a moment, then
went to his study and opened a drawer. Some magazines were stacked inside. He groped around underneath the magazines, but failed to find the neatly folded envelope in the right-hand corner. He realized he was breathing heavily.

Li Hanlin stood by the window for a long time. Then he left the room and walked quietly over to Lin Hong. He bent down. “You’ve been to my office?”

Lin Hong sat there motionless. Li Hanlin looked at her. “You’ve read Qingqing’s letters?”

Lin Hong began to tremble. Li Hanlin hesitated, then put his hand on her shoulder. Lin Hong jerked violently, knocking his hand away. It returned to its original position and hung there for a moment before he put it in his trouser pocket. “This is the situation,” he said. “I met Qingqing two years ago, at a friend’s house. She’s a cousin of his, so she often stops by. One day I ran into her in the street and we began seeing each other. She lives with her parents and I live with you, so we’re not in a position … What I mean to say is, she and I are not in a position to have sex. When we meet, it’s in a cinema or a park or just walking in the street. She and I, all we’ve done is … all we’ve done is kiss.”

Lin Hong was weeping now. The hand came out of the pocket and reached for her shoulder, but it retreated when her shoulder shrank back. Li Hanlin rubbed his forehead. “That’s the sum total of my interaction with her. Even if you hadn’t found out, she and I wouldn’t have gone any further. Our marriage is very precious to me. I would never break up this home of ours.”

Lin Hong sprang to her feet, strode into the bedroom, and slammed the door. Li Hanlin didn’t move. After several minutes,
he walked over to the bedroom and tapped lightly on the door. “I won’t see Qingqing anymore,” he said.

LIN HONG THOUGHT
, he didn’t beg me to forgive him, he didn’t fall on his knees, he didn’t slap himself in the face, he didn’t pledge oaths, and he didn’t even apologize.

He did sleep on the sofa, however. Shen Ning was right on that score, at least. He had lingered by her bedside, standing there like a businessman weighing the pros and cons, and finally he had opted for the sofa.

By opting for the sofa, he had opted for silence, opted for a life where he and she lived separately.

Now that his life and hers had parted ways, he said nothing further on the topic of Qingqing, and naturally he no longer acted as a husband would. He was careful and circumspect. As he moved about the apartment he did his best to make no noise, and he did not turn on the television. He limited his activities to the sofa, where he either sat or lay, reading. He never used to read at all, but now he always had a book in his hand.