The Noodle Maker(28)

Mornings were an important time for him, and he devoted himself to his tasks with complete attention. By four in the afternoon though, his mind would drift into a series of fragmented and inconsequential dreams. (The professional writer considers that the editor’s dreams were similar to the flights of fancy his own mind takes when the blood donor’s conversation begins to tire him, or when his leader is chairing a meeting at the Writers’ Association.) When he felt himself falling into a daydream, the editor would pretend to be reading the manuscript in his hand, his eyes skimming from one line to the next, or fixing on a particular sentence. His dreams were like a passer-by who just stays long enough to smoke a cigarette, then gets up and walks away.

One afternoon, he dreamed he was trudging through a river of faeces. (The professional writer smiles to himself in his darkened room.) This image was no doubt a subconscious reaction to his excessive indulgence in romantic fantasies. He liked to weave into his dream a few flattering phrases from the love letters he received, bathing himself in a stream of compliments. ‘You are the only man in the world,’ he would hear the women whisper. ‘A man of strength. The most important person in my life. I can’t live without you.’ ‘You are a genius of unbridled talent, the great helmsman of the literary world.’ He gained spiritual strength from these adulatory words, and for the first time in years, enjoyed a sense of self-respect.

He had once hoped to achieve this self-respect through his literary works. His wife, though, a professional novelist, succeeded in confining him to his role as husband, and he quietly entered his fortieth year at his post in the kitchen, surrounded by pots and pans. At first, this ‘househusband’, who was just 1.6 metres tall, tried to leave his daydreams during the brief intervals between washing the dishes and sweeping the floor, and conjure up an elegant phrase or two to jot down onto paper. But he soon gave up on that. Ten years later, he had to accept that all he was capable of was taking a few lines from one of his admirers’ letters and sending them off to another. He knew he was merely the husband of the female novelist, and that any literary talent he’d had in the past was gone for ever.

He came from a family of intellectuals, his father was a doctor, his mother an actress in the local drama troupe. As a young man he had shown some talent. Three of his early poems were published in the China Youth Daily. He wrote an article about the achievements of Zhao Xianjin, a local hero who, like Lei Feng, gave money to the poor and helped old women across the road. It was published in the Guangming Daily, and made him as famous in this town as Zhao Xianjin himself He was transferred from his menial job in a paper factory and placed in charge of propaganda at the People’s Cultural Centre. His good fortune continued to grow. After seeing the Japanese film Peach Blossom about the reunion   of a man and wife separated by war, he wrote a story called ‘A Feeling for Home’ about the reunion   of a Taiwanese man with his relations in China, and set it in this coastal town.

The story was immediately singled out for praise by the Central Committee’s War Office, as it was very much in tune with their aspirations for national reunification. A film was commissioned, and the Central Committee sent to the town a team of production assistants and advisers, as well as ten actors, two of whom came from abroad. During the few days of filming, he became the most sought-after man in town, and when the municipal leaders bumped into him on the street, their speech took on a deferential tone. Everyone was talking about his script and the ‘visitors from beyond the sky’ that would soon flock to the town. When he walked through the streets, crowds would form behind him, strangers stopped him to say hello as though he were a visiting dignitary. In the evening, his home was surrounded by the same hordes of curious onlookers who loiter outside the big hotels where movie stars stay.

The proof of those glorious days was still in his home: a photograph of himself and the group of visiting actors that included the two foreigners. At the time, it was the only colour photograph in town. Unfortunately the photograph was taken in hospital – he had the misfortune to contract hepatitis just as the film was going into production. He was very flattered that the foreigners paid him a visit. After his meeting with them, he became the town’s authority on all things foreign. When people who had only seen the foreigners from the front or behind, or who had only caught a glimpse of their hair or trousers, started arguing among themselves, someone would always end the dispute by saying, ‘If you don’t believe me, go and ask Old Hep.’ (It was they who coined his nickname.) When the hospital’s director was suspended for claiming that not all foreigners with black hair are mixed race, Old Hep’s photograph saved him, because it clearly showed that one of the foreign actors had jet black hair. Although the authorities demoted him to the less important position of chairman of the operating theatre, they at least allowed him to retain his Party membership.