Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Sauce Shop on People’s Avenue.’ What does that mean?”
    I didn’t explain it to him. “Son, I can’t tell you, not now.” I hung up and looked around the office. The ox bone lay on my desk, and I had the vague notion that I ought to take something with me, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what that was. I rushed downstairs. The area around the gate was chaotic, with the people crowding together to get away from the nose-pricking, eye-burning smoke. Coughing, cursing, screaming, the sounds all merged in the air. The clamor seemed to be coming to an end near the building, but only beginning out by the gate. Holding my nose, I ran around the building and slipped out through the rear gate, immediately heading east. I ran past the movie theater into Leatherwork Lane, then turned south and headed for People’s Avenue. The distracted shoe repairmen in shops lining both sides of the lane obviously linked the fleeing deputy county chief to the commotion at the county office building. County residents might not recognize Pang Kangmei if they saw her out on the street, but every one of them recognized me.
    I spotted her on People’s Avenue, her and the dog beside her, the son of a bitch. Crowds were running all over the place, disregarding traffic laws, as cars and people came together; horns blared. I crossed the street like a kid playing hopscotch. Some people noticed me, most didn’t. I ran up to her, breathless; she just stared at the tree. But you, you son of a bitch, you stared at me, a look of desolation in your eyes.
    “What have you done with her?” I demanded.
    Her cheeks twitched, and her mouth twisted into something close to a sneer. But her gaze stayed fixed on the tree.
    At first all I saw were some black, oily smudges on the trunk, but a closer look revealed clusters of disgusting bluebottle flies. So I looked even harder, and now I saw the two words and three exclamation signs. I smelled blood. My eyes glazed over and I nearly blacked out. What I’d feared more than anything, it seemed, had occurred. She’d killed her and written on the tree with her blood. Still, I forced myself to ask:
    “What did you do to her?”
    “I didn’t do anything to her.” She kicked the tree, which sent the flies flitting away with a gut-wrenching buzz. She showed me her plaster-wrapped finger. “It’s my blood. I wrote those words with my blood to get her to leave you.”
    Like a man who has been relieved of a crushing burden, I was overcome by exhaustion. I sank into a crouch, and though my fingers were cramped, twisted like claws, I managed to fish a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, lit one, and took a deep drag. The smoke seemed to snake its way up into my brain, where it swirled amid all the valleys and canals to create a sense of well-being. When the flies were flitting away from the tree, the filthy words had leaped tragically into my eyes. But the flies quickly swarmed back and covered them up, making them virtually invisible.
    “I told her,” my wife said in a monotone, without looking at me, “that if she leaves you, I won’t say a word. She can go fall in love, get married, have a child, and enjoy a decent life. But if she won’t leave you, then she and I will go down together!” She turned abruptly and pointed her injured, wrapped index finger at me. Her eyes were blazing as, in a shrill voice that reminded me of a cornered dog, she said, “I’ll bite this finger again and expose this scandal of yours by writing it in blood on the gates of the county office building, the Party Committee building, the Political Consultative Conference building, the local People’s Congress building, the police station, the courthouse, the procurator office, the theater, the movie house, the hospital, and every tree and wall I can . . . until I run out of blood!”

47

Posing as a Hero, a Spoiled Son
Smashes a Famous Watch
Saving the Situation, a Jilted Wife Returns
to Her Hometown
    Your wife, in a floor-length magenta dress, was sitting in the passenger seat of a VW Santana, smelling of mothballs. The neckline, front and back, were decorated with shiny sequins. My thoughts at that moment? If tossed into a river, she’d turn into a scaly fish. She had mousse in her hair and makeup that turned her face so white it looked like limestone and contrasted starkly with her dark neck; it was as if she was wearing a mask. She had on a gold necklace and a pair of gold rings, intended to give her a regal