‘There are no words to express the greatness of Chairman Mao’s thoughts on literature and art,’ he summed up at the end of his speech. ‘They are simply amazing!’
He returned home a different person. He was now a man of courage, a man who could possess other women.
Before the summer was over, he asked a girl from the local textile factory who was drawing some illustrations for his magazine whether she would like to go out on a date with him, and she accepted. So he took her to the woods behind Red Scarf Park. They sat on a bench and she sketched the golden sunset reflected on the surface of the lake. The water was calm and the air was filled with buzzing insects. The editor, who was now in his late forties, stood behind the girl and breathlessly stared at her delicate ear, and the small hand that was continually hooking a lock of hair behind it. He knew that every young woman in town dreamed of finding a permanent job in his editorial department, and that they regarded him as a successful and influential man. The textile worker had looked deeply flattered when he asked her out on this date. Indeed, he was everything she was looking for in a man. Fired with confidence, he rested his hand on the girl’s shoulder and commented on the branches she was drawing. A blush rose to the girl’s cheeks. Noticing the pencil start to shake in her hand, he moved in closer and wrapped his other arm around her. His balance was not good though, and as he leaned forward, his foot slipped, and he toppled awkwardly to the ground, bringing the girl down with him. He edged over, and without a word, climbed on top of her. She kept her eyes closed throughout, except at the moment of deepest pain, when she opened them briefly and looked into the sky, and saw the clouds turn from red to purple.
Following that successful tryst, he invited her to his office after work on several occasions, hoping to have his way with her again. She accepted every time, and before long became his first official mistress. The joy of possessing a woman, of possessing a virgin, gave him a new lease of life.
‘Before you, I had only ever made love to my wife,’ he told her, as he lay flat across her body.
‘And before I met you, I was a virgin,’ she replied, looking up with a smile.
‘You have turned my life around,’ the editor said, stroking her smooth forehead. ‘I don’t think of myself as middle-aged in the least. I’m only thirty-one years older than you, after all.’
The textile worker boosted the editor’s confidence, and when this confidence spread to his professional life, women began to land on his desk like the manuscripts he received every day. As long as he agreed to publish their works, these women were ready to lay themselves down below his wrinkled body. All he had to do was choose his prey and drop a few subtle hints. He seldom had time to daydream, he was too busy dealing with the growing list of women with whom he was conducting illicit affairs. His secret happiness lent his expression an air of maturity. Nobody knew that when he was chairing the political education meetings at work, or doing the washing-up at home, he was, in his mind, climbing onto a woman, thrusting her legs in the air and subjugating her to his will.
He began to notice the differing ways women behaved during their moments of greatest pleasure. The textile worker paled in comparison with the women who succeeded her. At the peak of her excitement, all she did was let out a soft croak. She never groaned or moaned, or moved her legs about like the more mature women. One woman who stuck most in his mind was a short-story writer from Sichuan. He could never forget the sight of her long dancer’s legs coiled around his elderly body. Unfortunately, once he had published her work, she dropped him like a brick. She proved to be, however, the most memorable woman of all the twenty-one he slept with. In his treasured pink notebook he labelled ‘Compendium of Beauties’, he made a careful record of her birthday, her shoe size and address.
At home, Old Hep became more relaxed, and started to pay more attention to his wife, who had recently brought out her sixth book. (When the professional writer remembers the story of ‘Marx’ and ‘Jenny’ in the novel that made her famous, he is overcome with nausea. Her thinly-veiled autobiographies reek of the fetid regurgitations of her past.) The pockets of Old Hep’s suit were filled with name cards emblazoned with his professional titles of ‘editor-in-chief and ‘Director of the Writers’ Association’. Whenever he met someone for the first time, he would ceremoniously present a card to them with a serious, yet approachable, look on his face. His small stocky build gave people the impression that he was a reliable, hardworking man. After all these years of waiting, he had at last boarded the express train of the Open Door Policy.