The Noodle Maker(44)

The street writer fixed his eyes on a plastic bag that was floating through the sky, and allowed all thoughts to empty from his mind. Passers-by assumed he was looking at the newly restored church, or the acacia tree beside it. No one could have guessed that he was staring at the plastic bag, or indeed that he was in fact squatting down tor that sole purpose. In this dusty, drab corner of the street, he and the plastic bag became one.

He had come to this town on the spur of the moment, without even having applied for a residency transfer. The gloom and smog of his hometown depressed him, and besides, he couldn’t afford to pay the compulsory three-hundred-yuan annual insurance fee that his metalwork factory now demanded from all employees. So he left his job and moved to this fast-developing town by the sea, which he then stuck to like a blob of chewing gum. After a while, the police got tired of arresting him for illegal residency and left him alone. He picked up a string of menial jobs. He washed dishes in a restaurant, worked as a security guard in a bar (although he wasn’t even strong enough to fend off a cripple), he delivered canisters of butane gas, collected plastic bottles, and transported leftover restaurant slops to private pig farmers in the suburbs. After two years of hard toil, he set up business as a self-employed street writer. People paid him to write letters of complaint, business letters and shop signs. His only tools were a pen, some paper and a stack of envelopes.

He became familiar with the latest documents issued by the local Party committee and the major departments of central government. He learned about marriage procedures, finance and publication laws, business taxes, private enterprise regulations, landlords’ rights, traffic laws, the latest developments in the policy of ‘Redressing Past Injustices’, and compensation for injuries at work. The complaints he wrote for his clients were coherent and well-argued, and conformed to the usual practice. He helped families condemned as rightists to gain rehabilitation, and victims of industrial injuries to secure financial compensation. Amorous young men paid him to write love letters to their girlfriends; wives of unfaithful artists paid him to write denunciations of their husbands that were to be read in the divorce courts; tenants and landlords paid him to fill out their tenancy contracts; illiterate peasants paid him to read out any letters they received. He carried out his tasks with great care, and his fees were reasonable. His speciality lay in the writing of love letters. If a client sent one of his letters to a woman, it was guaranteed that the next day she’d agree to sit next to him on a park bench.

If we pick out just one letter from the thousands he wrote, we will be able to see the fluidity of his style, his commitment to his art, and his deep insight into human nature. He dreamed of becoming a professional writer, or at least an intellectual. (Although he based the letters on what his clients asked him to write, he always refined the vocabulary and style, hitting the right note every time.) His words flowed in a continuous stream, like moonlight glittering on the surface of a river.

One day he wrote a letter for an old woman who was hoping to dissuade her daughter from pursuing a relationship with a professional writer. As the letter bore little relation to what she had asked for, she returned it to him the same afternoon and demanded a refund. The writing of this letter caused the street writer so much distress that he considered abandoning his profession. Here’s an extract from the rejected letter:



… It’s curiosity that first draws men and women together, not love. They are curious to know whether they could ever be united into one. Your father was a writer. He wrote articles for newspapers, but never managed to publish a book. I stumbled into a relationship with him without thinking things through. At first I was drawn to his unusually large face – it was the size of a plantain leaf. His gaze made me smile and blush. The day a woman’s skin first feels the touch of a man’s lips, she loses her fear of the breasts hidden beneath her clothes, and is happy for the man to touch them and squeeze them.

I was as curious about my anatomy as he was, and I let this man with the large face caress and fondle my entire body, then prise my legs apart. The act that followed was horrifically obscene. Had I known as a young girl that women must spend half their lives with their legs wide open, so that men may thrust themselves in between, I certainly would never have let myself get involved with them. When I first smiled at the plantain-leaf face, I never imagined that my blush was somehow connected to that vile organ of his. Before long, I had ‘fallen in love’, or at least that’s what my friends told me. I assumed that ‘love’ referred to all those shameful, sordid feelings one experiences when a man takes possession of one’s body. Once we had become familiar with one another’s intimate parts, we were able to move in together, and my friends told me how blissfully compatible we were.