come to China to study Chinese. At the time he was passionate about Mao’s Cultural Revolution and we used to argue often, but he’d been a friend for some time. How is he?”
“We separated long ago. He was a representative in the China office of a German company, found a Chinese girl, married her, and took her back to Germany. I heard that he’s now the boss of a company he had started up. Back then, I’d only just arrived in Beijing to study. I didn’t speak much Chinese and it was hard to make Chinese friends.”
“I remember you, of course I remember you. As soon as you came through the door you took off your big padded coat and your scarf, and there stood a very beautiful young foreign woman!”
“With big breasts, right?”
“Of course, very big breasts. Blushing white skin and bright red lips even with no lipstick. Really sexy.”
“You couldn’t have known at the time!”
“You were so bright red, it was impossible not to notice.”
“It was because it was too hot in the room and we’d been cycling for more than an hour.”
“That night you sat quietly opposite me but didn’t say much.”
“I was struggling to understand what was being said. You and Peter were talking all the time, although I don’t recall what about. I didn’t know much Chinese at the time but I remember that night, I had a strange feeling.”
You, of course, also remember that winter night, you had candles burning, which added to the warmth, and you couldn’t tell if there was anyone downstairs watching your window. You had finally obtained a little apartment, a decent refuge, a home, and you had a fortress to protect yourself from the political storms outside. She sat on the carpet with her back against the bookcase. It was a clipped woollen carpet made for export, that had gone on the domestic market. Sold at a reduced price as a second-grade product, it was still expensive, exactly the amount of advance royalty you had received for your book. However, that book, which did not so much as touch on politics, stirred up a great deal of trouble for you. Her shirt collar was open and her skin was very white, and those long legs in sleek black stockings were enticing.
“Don’t forget, you had a girl in your apartment. She was wearing very little and, unless I’ve remembered wrongly, she was barefoot.”
“She was usually naked, and she was when the two of you came in the door.”
“That’s right, we had been sitting and drinking for some time before the girl quietly came out of the bedroom.”
“You two were obviously not going to leave right away. I asked her to join us, so she put on a dress.”
“She shook hands with us but didn’t say a thing all night.”
“Like you.”
“That night was very special, I had never seen a Chinese home with that sort of atmosphere. …”
“It was special because a white German girl with bright red lips had suddenly arrived. …”
“And there was also a barefoot little Beijing girl who was lovely and slender. …”
“Flickering candlelight. …”
“We sat drinking in your warm, cozy apartment as we listened to the howling wind outside.”
“It was unreal, just like it is now, and probably there are also people watching. …”
You again think that the room is probably being videotaped.
“Is it still unreal?”
She clamps you with her legs and you close your eyes to experience her, hugging the fullness of her body and mumbling, “There was no need to go before morning. …”
“Of course, there wasn’t. …” she says. “At the time, I didn’t want to leave. It was a bitterly cold winter night and we had to cycle for an hour. Peter wanted to go, and you didn’t try to get us to stay.”
“Yes, that’s right.” You say that it was the same with you. You had to cycle back with her to the barracks.
“What barracks?”
You say that she was a nurse in the army hospital and she couldn’t stay out overnight.
She lets go of you and asks, “Who are you talking about?”
You’re talking about her army hospital being in the barracks in the outer suburbs of Beijing. She used to come every Sunday morning, and on the Monday morning before three o’clock you had to set off and cycle for more than two hours to get her back to the barracks before dawn.
Shrinking back, she pushes you away, sits up and asks, “Are you talking about that Chinese girl?”
You open your eyes and see her glaring at you. You apologize and explain that it was she who started talking about the little lover you had at the time.
“Do you long for her a lot?”
After pondering, you say, “That’s in the remote past. We lost contact long ago.”
“And you’ve had no news about her?” She sits on her haunches.
“No.” You also move away from her and sit on the edge of the bed.
“Don’t you want to look for her?”
You say that China is already very distant from you. She says she understands. You say you have no homeland. She says her father is German but her mother is a Jew, so she has no homeland either. But she can’t get away from her memories. You ask her why not? She says she isn’t like you, she’s a woman. You say oh, and stop talking.
He needed a nest, a refuge, he needed a home where he could be away from people, where he could have privacy as an individual and not be observed. He needed a soundproof room where he could shut the door and talk loudly without being heard so that he could say whatever he wanted to say, a domain where he as an individual could voice his thoughts. He could no longer be wrapped in a cocoon like a silent larva. He had to live and to experience, be able to groan or howl as he made wild love with a woman. He had to get a space to exist, he could no longer endure those years of repression, and he needed somewhere to discharge his reawakened lust.
At the time his small partitioned room could only hold a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf, and in winter, when he put in a coal stove with a metal pipe for warmth, it was hard to move around with another person in the room. The worker and his wife having intercourse, or their baby having a pee, on the other side of the very basic partition, could be heard clearly. Two other families lived in the building and they all shared the tap and drain in the courtyard, so whenever the girl visited his small room, she was observed by the neighbors. He had to leave the door partly open as they chatted and drank tea. His wife—a woman he’d married ten years earlier and from whom he’d been separated for almost as long—had gone to the Party committee of the Writers’ Association, which had in turn arranged for the street committee to report on him. The Party interfered in everything, from his thinking and his writing to his private life.
When the girl first came looking for him, she was dressed in an oversized, padded army uniform with a red collar-badge. Her face flushed, she said she’d read his fiction and had been deeply moved by it. He was on guard with this girl in an army uniform. Looking at her childlike face, he asked how old she was. She said she was studying at the army medical college and was an intern at the army barracks. She said she was seventeen that year. An age, he thought, when girls easily fall in love.
He closed the door to his room. When he kissed the girl, he had not yet received legal approval for a divorce from his wife and, fondling the girl, he held his breath. He could hear the neighbors walking in the courtyard, turning on the tap,