Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

understand you work in the New China Bookstore.”
    “County Chief Lan, always the bureaucrat,” Mo Yan said as he put the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and took a cigarette out of the box on my desk. “Miss Pang is a clerk in the children’s section of the bookstore, but in her spare time she’s an artist. She plays the accordion, she performs the peacock dance beautifully, she can sing sentimental songs, and her essays have been published in the county newspaper literary supplement.”
    “Is that so!” I remarked. “I’d say your talents are wasted in that bookstore.”
    “You said it!” Mo Yan remarked. “‘Let’s go see County Chief Lan,’ I said to her. ‘He can get you a job in a TV station.’”
    Her face was redder than ever now. “That’s not what I meant, Mr. Mo.”
    “By my calculation, you’re twenty,” I said. “So why don’t you take the college entrance exam? You could be an art major.”
    “I don’t have that kind of talent. . . .” She hung her head. “I just do those things for fun. Besides, I wouldn’t pass the entrance exam. I get flustered the minute I enter an exam hall. I actually faint. . . .”
    “Who needs college?” Mo Yan said. “True artists don’t come out of higher education. Take me, for example.”
    “You’re shameless, and getting worse,” I said. “Braggarts like you never amount to anything.”
    “All right, enough about me,” Mo Yan said. “And since there are no outsiders here, I’ll call you Big Brother Lan and urge you to do what you can for our young sister here.”
    “Of course,” I said. “But what can I do that Party Secretary Pang can’t do better?”
    “That’s what makes young Chunmiao so special,” Mo Yan said. “She’s never asked a favor of her sister.”
    “Okay, tell us, writer of the future, what have you been working on lately?”
    At that point Mo Yan began telling us about the novel he was writing, and though I tried to look as though I was listening, I was actually recalling all my dealings with the Pang family. I swear I didn’t think of her as a woman that day or for a long time afterward. It felt good just looking at her.
    But two months later, everything changed. Also on a Sunday afternoon.
    I’d spoken to her about working in television. I could have made it happen if that’s what she’d wanted. One well-placed comment was all it would have taken. Not because my word carried much weight, but because she was Pang Kangmei’s sister. She rushed to defend herself. “Don’t listen to Mo Yan. That really isn’t what I had in mind.” She said she didn’t want to go anywhere, that she was content selling children’s books.
    She’d come to see me six times over those two months. This was her seventh visit. The first few times she’d sat in the same place on the sofa as on the day we’d met. She’d also worn the same red dress and sat as demurely as ever, all very proper. At first, Mo Yan had accompanied her, but then she’d started coming alone. When Mo Yan was present, he never shut up. Now he wasn’t, and an awkward silence hung in the air. To break the ice on one of the previous occasions, I’d taken a book from my bookcase and said she could borrow it. After flipping through it she said she’d already read it. I handed her another. She’d read that one too. So I told her she could look for one she hadn’t read. She pulled out a book entitled How to Treat a Sick Domestic Animal. It was one she hadn’t read. I couldn’t keep from laughing. “Girl,” I said, “you’re a riot! Okay, if that’s the one you want, read on.” I picked up a stack of documents and started reading, occasionally glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. She sat back in the sofa, legs together, resting the book on her knees, absorbed in what she was reading, softly mouthing the words.
    But the seventh time she came, her face was ghostly white; she sat with a bewildered look. “What’s the matter?” I asked. She looked at me, her lips quivered, and — Wah! —she burst out crying. Since someone was working overtime in the building that day, I ran over and opened the door. The sounds of her crying soared up and down the corridor like birds on the wing. I ran back over and shut the door. For me, this was a new, and extremely troubling, experience. Wringing my hands nervously, I paced the room, like a monkey that’s been thrown into a cage, and said over and over, “Chunmiao Chunmiao Chunmiao, don’t