The Noodle Maker(48)

Little old man with a crooked back

Falls in a dung pit and picks up a cowpat …





If he was not sleeping or writing letters for his clients, the street writer’s mind would always turn to the draft love letters piled on his desk. To him, they were the most precious things in his life. They contained descriptions of his loved ones, declarations of passion sprinkled with a few obscene words that, since the Open Door Policy, no longer condemned one to a life in prison – words like ‘love’, ‘soft lips’, ‘the sun around which I revolve’ and ‘melancholy’. He felt affection for every woman he wrote to, he poured his heart out to them. He kept not only the drafts of the letters he sent them, but also the letters they sent back to his clients. He developed a deep understanding of female emotions, and treasured the insight he gained into women’s most intimate thoughts.

On summer evenings, when couples were strolling outside in the warm sea breeze, the street writer would lean over his desk, hard at work, the sweat pouring from his brow. The tasks his clients assigned him never fully satisfied his creative desires. In his bones he was a poet. When people fell in love in spring, as they invariably did, he employed all his poetic skills to fall in love on their behalf. When autumn drew in, he would write letters breaking off the affairs. If there were a thousand love letters in spring, he would have to write over nine hundred rejection letters in autumn. His life was very much tied to the seasons.

His complicated love life made him nervous, and when he returned to his shed each day, he would check every corner of the room to see whether someone was hiding there. The search took nearly half an hour to complete, because the previous owner had crammed the corners with planks of wood that he had planned to make furniture with. There were also six or seven boxes filled with burial clothes, paper lanterns and incense coils, and under the bed that took up a third of the room was another heap of odds and ends. When he lay on the bed at night, he always worried about what was hidden below, and whether someone had sneaked underneath to spy on him. Before entering the shed, he would stick his ear to the front door and listen for any noises. He kept a hammer under his pillow so that he could deal with anything that might appear at the foot of his bed at night. He made marks on the wooden boxes, and checked them regularly to ensure that nothing had been moved. In a secret drawer of his wardrobe, he hid the letters he wrote to his clients’ women in which he expressed to them his undying love. Of course, he never posted them. They were the most personal and truthful letters he ever wrote.

As time went by, he became increasingly anxious about the content of these secret letters. Sometimes he would sneak one out from the bottom drawer and cross out a few lines before returning it carefully to its place. From a letter he wrote to Chi Hui, he erased the line: ‘Oh life, you move too fast. Take my hand, and stay for a while, and tell me what you’re all about.’ A scrap of paper he tore from another letter and consigned to the bin was marked with the words: ‘This ink pen has written letters to you for seven years. It understands me, forgives me. You can ask it any question you like, if you harbour any doubts about my love for you.’ Another rejected passage read: ‘Women hold an irresistible attraction for me. With one of you by my side, I feel warm and at peace. You radiate waves that seep into every part of my body. Whether I am sitting on the corner of the street or in the back of a cinema, just one glimpse of the downy hairs on your skin sends me into a rapture.’

He stared at the long shadow on the wall above the chest in the corner of the room. ‘It really does look like a policeman tonight,’ he told himself. He had often thought of clearing the shed of all its clutter, including the planks of wood, but he was never at home during the day, and he was afraid that at night the noise would draw the attention of the neighbours and police.

One morning, however, he decided to stay in and give his room a thorough clean. He tore down the red cloth that hung along the centre of the bed and put it away in the chest. He then gave the table and walls a lick of paint, and decorated the room with new calendars printed with pictures of auspicious red crowned cranes and photographs of the film star Liu Xiaoqing. When he lay in bed that evening, the room seemed much more welcoming. That night he slept so well, he ejaculated in his dreams.





At three or four in the morning, he was woken by a soft, muffled noise. He opened his eyes and saw a long, thin shadow flitting around the room.

‘Who’s there?’ he asked, beads of sweat dripping from his furrowed brow. Now he could see the shadow was an old hag with long white hair and ingot-shaped shoes.