The Noodle Maker(29)

In that golden year of his, the female novelist – his future wife - sent a love letter to him in hospital. She called him ‘China’s Pavel‘

, after Pavel Gorrchagin, the hero of a Soviet propaganda film. She said he was the sun around which she revolved, the shore on which she longed to moor her boat. It was the first time Old Hep had received a piece of paper inscribed with the petit-bourgeois phrase ‘I love you’. He immediately passed the letter to the head of the Municipal Propaganda Department who had come to visit him in hospital. After a thorough investigation by the Party organs, he was informed that she was the daughter of the political commissar of the local army regiment. In under a week, the Party organs gave Old Hep their permission to embark on a relationship with her. They were also kind enough to return the letter to him, having made sure, of course, to draw a black line through every unhealthy, petit-bourgeois word it contained.

So she started to pay him visits. Had he not been suffering from a fever at the time, Old Hep might have noticed that the skirt she was wearing was identical to the one the actress Zhao Xiaohong had worn on her last visit to the town.

She sat down opposite him, her bare white legs dotted with goosebumps. ‘All the nurses and female visitors seem to be wearing those skirts,’ he remarked.

His future wife replied, ‘These skirts have been around for ages. These days, everyone in the streets is wearing Zhao Dashan’s jacket.’

‘Who’s Zhao Dashan?’ he asked.

‘An actor. You know, the big stocky one.’

‘I can never remember their names,’ Old Hep admitted guiltily.

‘Even my little brother has heard of him!’ She couldn’t forgive Old Hep his ignorance.

Before she left his hospital room, she would always leave a few things behind to ensure that she remained in his thoughts. She left books inscribed with affectionate messages to him, discarded pear cores, the lingering fragrance of her talcum powder, a strand of her hair. He knew she was the daughter of a high-ranking Party cadre, and was overwhelmed by his unexpected stroke of good luck. The great disparity in their social standing inevitably caused him to review his own attributes: he was thirty-six years old, a Party member, earned a monthly salary of forty-seven and a half yuan, and had once been awarded the title of ‘advanced worker’ by his leaders at the paper factory. These details probably meant little to her. He knew that his professional success, however, would impress her more. He was the original screenwriter of the film Feelings for Home; he had managed to get nearly 200,000 words of material published by the China Youth Daily and Guangming Daily; on the strength of years of private study, he had been transferred from his menial job in the paper factory to a cadre’s post in the People’s Cultural Centre; he had driven in the municipal leader’s red-flagged car, and had represented his paper factory on a visit to Beijing to meet the famous model worker, the ‘Iron Man’, Li Guocai. Everyone in town knew about these achievements. Although the female novelist had grown up in a home with five rooms and two toilets, her salary was no higher than his, and besides, she had only visited Beijing once, and that was as a child. Thinking this over in his mind, Old Hep felt a little more at ease. When he inhaled her fragrance in the air after her next visit, he felt a sudden surge of passion, and lying down on his hospital bed, he made up his mind to marry her.

A few months later, Old Hep took her as his wife, and soon after was appointed editor-in-chief of the Cultural Centre’s new bi-monthly literary magazine. He had reached the peak of his career. But his luck was not to last, and in less than two years, his wife quickly caught up with him. Two of her novels were published by the most respected national journals, and she was suddenly proclaimed a ‘regional and municipal talent’. She made visits to Beijing and Huangshan for two separate literary festivals. The month she and Old Hep were invited to join the newly established Literary union  , she alone was chosen by the authorities to be the town’s first ‘professional writer’. The government paid her a monthly salary so that she could stay at home all day writing novels. This turn of events didn’t suit Old Hep at all. His wife stopped referring to him as ‘China’s Pavel’, and started calling him Old Hep like everyone else. She made contact with other professional writers around the country, and became an authority on the latest cultural developments. She knew the name of the girlfriend of the Beijing writer Tan Fucheng, and was aware that the novelist Li Tiesheng had a paralysed leg. When the Open Door Policy was launched, she proved to be a fearless trailblazer of reform. She was the first woman in town to wear a padded bra, dye her hair and perm it like a foreigner. She read the daringly realist novel Form Teacher by Liu Xinwu, and the literary journal Today that was sent down to her from Beijing. She also took to composing romantic, melancholy verse. By the time Old Hep had finally managed to write the word ‘love’ down on a piece of paper, she was already using phrases like ‘sexually aroused’. She corresponded with various young Beijing poets, sent them affectionate cards, and in return received letters in which they addressed her as ‘my little lamb’, ‘my far-away treasure’, and ‘the angel wafting through my dreams’. She was completely in step with the fast pace of reform.