She felt the tiger tuck into the area below her waist. Since she was unable to move, she hoped the tiger would first pull out her guts so as to cover up the parts that most attracted men’s attention. She shook the animal’s blood from her face, then lifted her head, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sky outside the window. The trembling horns on her head made her seem quite animated. Instead of the sky however, her eyes fell on the words of the red banner hanging from the chairman’s podium: UPHOLD THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES, CONSTRUCT SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS. Then, seated below the slogans, she saw the painter, utterly motionless, staring blankly at the stage.
‘I love you,’ she said to the tiger, without a hint of sarcasm. A second later, the remains of her dismembered body went stiff.
‘May God have mercy on us,’ the writer says. Every sin has its retribution.’
‘We all receive our just deserts,’ the blood donor adds. ‘But I hope we get ours in this lifetime.’
‘Were you in the audience when she committed suicide?’ the writer asks, straightening his back.
‘When who committed suicide?’
‘That woman.’ The writer can’t bring himself to say her name. His square living room looks like a junk shop, with his belongings heaped along the walls. The furniture includes two chests, the revolving chair, plastic stool, a fold-up table donated by the Writers’ Association, and a pair of armchairs. To give the room a neater appearance, he has pasted sheets of blank manuscript paper over the tears in the wallpaper left by the previous occupants. The only picture on the wall is a pencil sketch of a young girl that an ex-girlfriend of his gave him. Looking at it now, it strikes him that the picture is not as good as it once seemed. He thinks that if there were a woman in the room now, and a few more pieces of furniture, it might feel a little more comfortable. He leans over and puts a new tape into his cassette player. Verdi’s Requiem fills the room, the soprano’s voice soars to the ceiling. He slumps feebly back into his chair. ‘That woman,’ he repeats, turning the volume up a little.
The blood donor gets up and paces the room. Perhaps he has eaten too much. When he straightens his back he looks a little taller. ‘Do you think you and I really understand each other?’ he asks.
The writer glances at the blood donor and says: ‘We understand each other better than we could ever understand a woman.’ He leans over, turns the volume down again and sighs: ‘A man whose heart has been wounded should take care in his relations with women.’
‘It was stupid of me to propose to her.’ The blood donor sucks on his cigarette then flicks the ash into a cup.
‘I still don’t understand why she went off with you,’ the writer says. ‘She and I were far more compatible. We shared the same interests and tastes. We even looked alike. But look at you - you’re short and bald, you have no education, no manners …’
‘It’s history now. Put it behind you. We’re friends aren’t we? What do women matter? They just want a man to lean on, they don’t mind who he is. Only friends care about a man’s quality. Women are products of their environment. They want to pity the unfortunate and sponge off the rich. Together, we satisfied both these needs for her.’
‘You mean to say you fulfilled her material needs and I fulfilled her spiritual ones,’ the writer replies.
The blood donor crushes his cigarette out and lowers his head. ‘What do you think drove her to it?’ he asks.
‘It amazes me that she managed to live so long. How did she survive all those years?’ The writer then wipes the grease from his hands, and says to himself: We grew up in a spiritual vacuum, cut off from the rest of the world. A wasted generation. When the country started to open up, we were the first to fall. Foreign culture is the only religion now, but we have no means to understand it, or appreciate its worth. Half a century has gone by, and suddenly we find ourselves in the forest of modern life without a map or a compass. How can a society numbed by dictatorship ever find its way in the modern world? We are unable to think things through for ourselves, we have no reference points, we feel lost and out of our depth. We put on a show of superficial arrogance to hide our low self-esteem.
The two friends stare at the empty egg shells and discarded bones on the table. Every time this moment arrives, they realise they will both have to retreat to the corner of the room and take their places in the two old armchairs.
‘Why do you insist on writing about a real-life woman?’ the blood donor asks. ‘It would be much easier to just make one up.’ He rises to his feet, picks up the bottle of wine and takes it with him to one of the armchairs. There are still a few drops left in the bottle. The writer sinks into the other armchair, and they both lean their heads back against the wall. When two men are alone together, they often adopt this casual position to try to overcome their fear of intimacy. Without waiting for his friend to reply, the donor adds: ‘I know you can’t get her out of your mind. That slut. She deserved to die.’