CHAPTER XV

He dropped in on her whenever he could, usually in the mornings or early in the afternoon. She got up late because of her late working hours, so when he came she was invariably sleeping, and was usually asleep too when he left. He began to feel that he was an erotic figure that existed only in her dreams. And, it was true too that the time he spent away from her became shadowy and unreal and he only came to life between her legs.
Parts of her loomed constantly in his mind. It seemed that he could only think of her anatomically. He had never known he could be like this and was quite unnerved by the discovery of this new side to his character. Perhaps this disgust with himself had something to do with that other passionate need he felt to read something else into their relationship- And perhaps it had been there all along — the feeling that he was sleeping with a doctrine, a way of life, and was in communion at last with what had always been unattainable to him through faults in his background and character — an exacting god, a perversely tormenting destiny, whose significance eluded him-
Seeing Ko Shan in that light, sometimes he wished that her tang hsing, Party characteristic, was stronger, that she would spout Marx-Leninism even in bed. It was ridiculous to expect that of her since old Party members almost never talked "theory" on the Ma-Eng-Le-Ssu (short for Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin) level, to avoid making mistakes- She never talked about her work to him, either, when they were alone together. Not that there was ever time for anything but making love on these, occasions, or that Liu would have it otherwise at the time- But when
 he was away from her and got to brooding, he rather resented being shut off from that part of her life, as if his rightful place was only in bed.
He had no way of knowing just how much she believed, how much she retained of the first young ideals which had prompted her to join up. He wondered whether doubts and ..disillusionments were things that were beyond her, and she was just a very ordinary woman committed to a hazardous and unrewarding career by her girlish enthusiasms, using the Communist vocabulary slickly as she would any other kind of fashionable jargon.
While she told him very little about herself, she did say how she came to join the Revolution when he asked her one day. "I chucked college and went into the interior with one of those amateur theatrical companies. We circulated from village to village, doing Anti-Japanese Propaganda plays. That was during the war.  The company was flat broke half the time. The •hardships we went through just to keep things going! But it finally broke up, after two years. We were all college students, but there were one or two who had connections with the Organization. That's how some of us got absorbed into the Party-"
Liu could imagine her as she had been then, with long curls bunched into two short thick braids swinging stiffly

over her shoulders. She must have been the prettiest girl in the company, and therefore would always be playing the screaming, heaven-invoking heroines who got raped and had their families butchered by the Japanese and their houses burned down- Liu knew something about those wandering amateur theatrical groups though they had been before his time. Some were just patriotic student
 organizations. Others were secretly sponsored by Communist plants in the universities, often without the knowledge of the other members- The city-bred young people, as stagestruck as they were patriotic, faced up heroically to the hard life, though of course, in time, there were gripes and bickering, a great deal of grasping selfishness and random love-making, with the sick gray feeling of rootlessness setting in-
Liu could picture the years. Ko Shan spent touring the provinces and after that, when she had passed under the Party's direct control- A lot of men must have fought over her. As if on a dare, she would have taken pride in giving herself away with no strings attached. The Party had tolerated, if not openly encouraged, this sort of thing, perhaps on the theory that the pleasure of love greatly mitigated the hardships, which might be otherwise unendurable to, middle class recruits. And at no cost to the Party, it might be added. Those were the heydays of Cup of Water-ism. Now that the Party had gone respectable with success, the cup of water had become a glass of bootleg whiskey, outlawed but still easily obtainable, as Liu had just found out.
Ko Shan was a real product of the times, he felt, whatever else she was. He gloried in her hardness and never ceased to wonder how a figure of steel forged in the furnace of the Revolution could turn all soft and vulnerable when exposed to his potency. Because once he had got over his first awkwardness, she told him that she had never known anybody like him. She often gave him the feeling of being trapped in her own machinations and, after leading him on, ended up being brutally ravished every time. While knocking around the towns and country of the hinterland she had picked up the trick of Chian ch'uang, bed calls — lilting groans and protests and appeasing endearments in thick, creamy, nasal tones and tremulous little cries, begging to be let off or begging to be hurt more. It always drove him wild and he could never quite get rid of the feeling that here was a stray bit of the Party, cornered and at his mercy and he was getting his own back. He knew it was silly but he could not help it. Often when he was elsewhere with other people, the warm flush of his secret satisfaction would steal all over him and he would have a sense of immense wealth and power, going about incognito, a modest or overcautious millionaire wearing a plain blue cloth gown lined with rare fur-
He felt ashamed whenever he thought of Su Nan- But there were so many contradictions in his mind, so many things he would rather not think about- As people say, " Seh tau, pub yang; chai tau, pu ch' our. A lot of lice—no longer itchy; a lot of debts-no longer worried."
One day he went into Tsui's office with some papers for him to sign when he came back- He was surprised to find Comrade Ma there, the woman who had appropriated his desk. She had scarcely been on speaking terms with Ya-mei ever since the desk incident- But now she seemed to be visiting with Ya-mei and the two were talking and giggling like bosom friends.
"Never saw the likes," Comrade Ma was saying. "And the way she went up there to recite Pushkin, wiggling her bottom --"
"That torn shoe!" Ya-mei said with conscious superiority. In the Old Area where she came from they called

loose women "torn shoes". Liu guessed that they must be talking about some woman they met at the "evening meeting" they had attended yesterday- Everybody at the office had heard a lot about the party.
On his way out the chatter started up again and he heard Comrade Ma say, "Really, she doesn't want any face at all! You saw the way she was making a play for the Soviet specialist? Always after him to kan-pei!"
"The amount of vodka she put away!" Ya-Mei giggled.
"And you heard what Old Yuin was going around telling everybody? — What if our Comrade Ko can't speak Russian? Her eyes can speak Esperanto!"
"Ta ma ti! — sounds as if he's quite proud of it!" Ya-mei swore, laughing.
Liu realized with a shock that Old Yuin must be Yuin Yin-ch'ung, the head of the Liberation Daily News. So it was Ko Shan they were talking about.
It was not as if he did not know what Ko Shan was like, though he did have reason to believe that there had not been anybody else ever since he went with her. He was very angry with the gossiping women, and with Ko Shan too, for giving them cause to talk like this about her, even if there was nothing in it. He could not get it off his mind all day. He managed to get off earlier than usual and went to her place.
The table-light was on beside her bed in the darkening room. She was sitting propped up in bed reading the papers.
"I was afraid you'd have left for the office," Liu said. "Maybe I won't go  today." Then. she added, "Since you're here."
Ignoring her last sentence which was clearly an afterthought, he sat down on a chair near the head of the bed and said carelessly, his hands rammed deep in his pockets, "Having a hangover?" "No, but I shouldn't have had anything to drink at all,
with my cough," she answered- "Why, how did you get
..to be so well-informed all of a sudden? Who told you?" "Oh, I heard it from that what's-his-name -- can't
pronounce it — you know, that Soviet specialist."
She looked at him and started to laugh- "Don't talk
nonsense!"
"Why?" he asked- "Is it so impossible that I might also know a Soviet specialist or two? So many of them around."
Ko Shan glared at him from the corner of her eyes. "But I don't understand Esperanto, you know," Liu' said half laughing-
"What's that?" she said.
"I've never learned Esperanto. So it's no use your speaking to me with your eyes."
She leaned over to hit him, over-reaching herself and pitching sideways over his lap. "You evil thing," she giggled. "You're getting worse and worse all the time!'
"Am I? I'm learning fast, eh?" he teased.
She spluttered with laughter. "Sure- You're getting to be a real bad influence on me." Lying with her head in his lap she looked up at him, stroking his cheek- When. he took her fingers off his face she knew things were still.. worrying him, so she said pouting, "No, you've got to tell. me where you heard such rubbish."
"Didn't I tell you? That Soviet specialist has been talking to me about you."
"What Soviet specialist? I know — it must be those two women over at your place who've been making up, things! Those two are genuine, authentic mud-pies- Scared. to death when they see foreigners but jealous all the same' when somebody else gets all the attention. And they make up all sorts of awful stories behind your back; they'll stop at nothing."

gossip, absolutely groundless."
"I didn't come here to make a row," he said,.
"No?" she said. "You should have seen the way you looked when you first came. Weren't even going to look at me!"
He was content to let her have the last word, busy savoring the experience which all this painfully disturbing talk had only succeeded in localizing instead of spoiling.
Triumphantly shy: flicked her cigarette ashes over the edge of the bed without looking, right into one of his shoes. That night, back in his hostel, when he took off his shoes before going to bed he saw the ashes smeared on the sole of his sock. He smiled, a mixture of tenderness and annoyance flooding over him.
Now how on earth did she find out about Su Nan? He thought of all the possibilities. He had never told a single soul about Su Nan. Although Chang had been with them during the Land Reform, he did not suspect anything. And there was nothing in their letters, even if they did correspond regularly. Had Tsui or Ya-mei been opening his letters and gossiping about him? His mind leaped to the old envelopes he used to carry about on him to keep small change in. Nowadays everybody was told to economize, to turn a used envelope inside out and use it again. So when Su Nan wrote to him she always made use of the 'envelopes of his letters to her. Her full name and address were plainly visible on the inside. And of course Ko Shan had had plenty of chances to search his pockets. That must be it. Probably her only clue too. But he knew that if he were to ask her next time he saw her, she would never admit it.
He had felt guilty every time he took money out of the envelope when he had first started going with Ko Shan. But somehow he had not stopped using it until some time later, shrinking from making the change because, he told himself, there was something theatrical in the gesture.
Her letters kept coming. It pained him to see each one. He was writing less often, always telling her he was busy, and She seemed to take him at his word. Anyhow, theirs were the most ordinary kind of friendly letters, so that he felt it involved no deception on his part to keep certain things from her. Besides, how did he know she hadn't anything to hide from him? He would not be surprised if she had formed similar attachments, now that he knew that sex was not such a taboo as it was made out to be and need only be managed with discretion. Maybe with girls it was even more inevitable, whether they liked it or not. How long could an attractive girl hold out under the pressures from outside? He had noticed that she had spoken of her superior' several times and then stopped mentioning him- It could be that something had happened. There might be others too. But he could not stand the thought and preferred to feel guilty himself.
He really ought to write and tell her the truth, tell her not to wait for him any more. This was no time for waiting and thinking and planning. He was through with all that. A girl is light and a woman is warmth- He was grateful to Ko Shan just for being close by and being a woman, though he had never thought of it like that. But he was grateful and he had come to think that she was good at heart and would be still better if she had someone who really cared for her.
He went to see her one steaming rainy afternoon. It was miserable weather. He knocked and tried her door but it was locked. She must have gone out. He took his pen and notebook out of his pocket, tore off a page and wrote her a note. "You were not in when I called. I might be able to come again tomorrow afternoon." He did not sign his name because she would know. He folded the sheet of paper over and bending down, slid it under

the door into the room.
It was pouring when he came downstairs. He stood on the stoop and waited in the hope that the worst would soon be over, and that if he waited a little longer she might come back. The stinging, idle slap-slap of slippers ran up and down the dim old corridor behind him. There was a, forbidden game of mahjong going on; he could hear the stealthy pit-a-pat of the tiles through an open window.
A baby was bawling and a voice was teaching Russian loudly over the radio.
He had to go now. Opening his umbrella on his way down the steps, he turned to look up at her window. The
light green curtains had flown out and were waving at him when they were suddenly sucked back into the room, fleeing from big, hard raindrops pelting the half open window pane like dry beans. Liu wondered if the proofs of the pamphlet were still on the table by the window where she had left them yesterday. They were the latest in the series they had been working on. He remembered that she had brought back the proofs the other day. The
thin flimsy paper would melt into paste if it got wet and they'd have to start on another set.
He had returned to the bottom step when a bang overhead made him look up again. The window was closed, with sheets of water running over it. The green
curtain hung straight and narrow and still, imprisoned behind the glass-
Liu stood in the downpour staring up, then he walked away quickly in great anger.
There never was anybody up there but she. The servant or caretaker of the house did her room for her, but
if it had been the servant he would have answered the door.
The next day when Liu came to see her, there was a dark ruddy-faced young man there named Chou, who worked in the Vigilance Section of the Cultural Bureau. Ko Shan introduced them and did most of the talking. The two men were polite but had very little to say to each other. Liu could see that Chou was grimly determined. to out-stay him. He finally had to look at his watch- It was earlier than what he imagined it to be, but he had slipped out of the office on a fake errand and really ought to be getting back.
"Have patience," Ko Shan said. "You know what those people are like — can't expect them to be punctual, they're so rushed-"
"Who's coming? You waiting for somebody?" the' young man asked.
She seemed reluctant to talk, but she tilted her chin slightly toward Liu and murmured vacantly, looking at neither of them, "Comrade Liu here wants to see Old Pai on some business, so I asked them to meet here. We're' going out to tea-"
"Which Old Pai?" the young man said, visibly startled.. "You mean our Old Pai?"
She smiled at him. "Now don't go and tell everybody in your office, though it's nothing special-"
"Old Pai is coming here? I thought he's having a meeting.,"
"Did he say that?" she said smiling- "Well, maybe I shouldn't have ,told you-"
The young man laughed. He still seemed a little dubious but he soon remembered an appointment and excused himself hastily-
Ko. Shan stretched and yawned as soon as he was gone- "Isn't it sickening? If I didn't scare him off with his boss, the bench would rot under him before he got up!"
Liu smiled. "You can't blame him, Maybe he thought you want him to stay. How' was a man to know?"
She gave him a withering look- "None of your lip!

If you're so smart, why couldn't you have thought of some way to get rid of him? — Left everything to me."
He didn't answer.
She flopped into his lap and gave a little jerk that set her swinging slightly on his legs. "Now you've got to make it up to me."
"Make up for what — the loss of his company?" Liu joked.
"Now if you're going to get nasty on top of all this—" She dropped her head wearily on his shoulder. "Here I was waiting for you; I knew you were coming today. And that little grub popped up and just sat and sat and sat. Might have wasted the whole afternoon." She rubbed her cheek against his. "Were you caught in the rain yesterday?"
"Oh, it was raining all afternoon."
"I got soaking wet downtown."
"I thought you were home," he said. "Saw you close the window."
She opened her eyes wide. "You're seeing things! If I was home, why didn't I let you in?"
"How should I know?"
She hit him on the back with a playful fist. "What do you mean?" she asked incredulously. "You saw me here closing the window?"
"What difference does it make," Liu said listlessly, "whether it's you or whoever you have with you."
So he had not seen distinctly who it was and did not even know whether it was a man or a woman. She immediately became aggressively indignant, slid, off his knees onto the sofa and tried to drive him off it with wild pushes and pummeling. "All right, you go! Go away! I'm fed up! Picking on me, spying on me all the time! Let me tell you: Yes, there was somebody here yesterday! Old Li. You haven't met him. He's married and his wife works in the News Publication Department. He lives in a men's hostel and she lives in a women's hostel, so what can they do? He talked me into lending them the room. Just for the afternoon. That's very common nowadays, with everybody living in hostels."
"Sure, there's nothing wrong in that," Liu said smiling. "Perfectly legal too, since they are married. I don't see why you had to keep it secret for them."
"I wasn't keeping it secret! Only I didn't feel like telling you because I didn't like the idea too much myself — sort of turning my place into a cheap hotel. Besides, I didn't know you were going to be so silly."
He knew she was lying, though it was a good smooth lie, something he could pretend to accept without losing face.
Then it was bedtime. It always was, with her. Feeling bitter and greedy for compensation, Liu submitted himself to the influence of Ch'uan Kung, Gh'uan Mu, Old Father and Mother Bed, the traditional peacemakers in conjugal quarrels. The bed too has its pair of guardian gods like the door and the kitchen stove. And these domesticated gods are usually married couples, like cook-and-butler teams-
Liu looked down on the face he knew so well from this angle, framed on the straw pillow mat with its chalky red-and-green border of woven patterns. He looked searchingly into her curved, smiling eyes. All he saw was 'his own face reflected in her pupils, mildly distorted, convex and chinless, the nose magnified and elongated, the small eyes anxious and peering. He was furious at the sight of it. If only he could bruise her some way she did not like.
Her eyes had dissolved into bright moonlit water and they were narrowed in her flushed smile as though to keep from running over. She suddenly bent her head forward

and drew him down to her, pressing her lips against him between his neck and shoulder and sucking hard.
"What for?" he asked-
Her movement had seemed intent but unemotional, with an animal purposefulness- The blunt softness of puckered lips pulled steadily on him. It ached a little and he began to feel queer, as if she was drawing in some spirit or air or energy him in a small quiet stream- A thrill ran through him that was almost like fear- "What are you doing?" he said, smiling-
She took her mouth away for a moment to inspect the spot under his shoulder. "Hu Sha, sucking the sunstroke out of you-"
"I'm not ill," he said.
"Just to make a mark on you, so you'll think of me whenever you see it." When she had removed her lips the second time there was a small purplish red, bruise on his skin, like the she marks that people make by pinching or scraping the flesh with a copper coin.   
He looked curiously down on his shoulder. "Won't it ever come off?"
"Not for two or three weeks."
He lowered his lips to her shoulder with sudden urgency- He would have her branded as his, if only for two or three weeks, if only that her other lovers would know that someone had left this on her and feel pained- But he didn't have the knack of it. All he did was to wet her with saliva. It was as hopeless as trying to dent or scratch the warm smooth surface of river water. A man could only drink his fill and go away-
"Hey, no biting!" she screeched, laughing, pushing his face away-
He gave up. A sadness overwhelmed him as he fingered her hair on the pillow. A curly strand had got caught in the coarse weave of the pillow mat. He disentangled it without thinking, fanning it out with a slight rustle, passing his fingers over it and looking at it. Abstractedly, he listened to the measured crunch-crunch of the bed mat-
"I know it's too much to ask — to think that you'll ever think of me when you're not here." she gave him ape of her lingering, plaintive glances-
He buried his face in her hair, which smelled slightly of oil and cigarette smoke. Then his muffled voice said,  -"Say something nice to me. For a change."
"Say what?" she said laughing.
"Something nice."
"No, you'll just go plumb crazy- Frankly I'm afraid of you when you go crazy," she said in her low musical, injured tone.
She was probably afraid that he would be through too
soon, he thought. "You'll get mat burns," he said smiling. "A lot you care," she said in that same hurt tone
which could be so fetching.
Then Liu lifted his head, listening to the knocking on the door.
"That must be Comrade Pai," he said wryly. "Who?"
"Old Pai — Small Chou's superior. Didn't you say he's coming?"
She broke out laughing. "Yes, it might be him. Talk of the devil."
The knocking became louder and the door-knob turned once or twice. Then all sounds stopped.
"Remember the first time you were here?" she said softly- But of course she knew he would not be thinking of the first time, but of, the day before, when he had come and gone away.
"What's the matter?" she said laughing, giving him o little slap on his buttocks. "It's all right, you can't hear

from outside."
"No, you can't hear a thing from outside," he assured
her with a slight smile, his head still turned toward the door.
She looked at him sharply.
He thought the man must have left already. But then a tiny white triangle had appeared on the floor just under the door, swiftly growing larger and larger. It became a
rectangle, a folded sheet of paper pushed in through the slit under the door.
It was suddenly too much for him. He sat up and reached for his clothes.
"What's the matter? Don't be crazy!" She also sat up and put her arms around his waist from behind, half laughing- He just went on tying his shoelaces.
She saw from his full, unhurried movements that he was not going after the man, but just leaving. And she got very angry. "All right, go! Nobody's going to stop you!" She said. "Really — getting crazier and crazier! Seems. I can't even have a letter sent to me without you throwing a fit! It's getting to be a disease with you, this awful dirty-minded suspicion. I've had enough of you, you Fort of Bigotry, retrograding eighteenth century brain? Now you go — roll out of here! But don't you ever come back again! From now on we don't know each other!"
Liu did not say anything. He was still dressing. She suddenly grabbed his bare arm and stubbed out her cigarette on it. He threw her off hard and she fell back across, the bed, hitting her head against the wall with a sharp,. wooden thud. Something in him whimpered with rage against himself for making it even more ridiculous, than it was,. He stalked out of the room, not wanting to slam the door. It slammed anyway.