A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Yiyun Li

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      Mr. Fong shook his head and sullenly sipped his wine. Mr. Su looked at his friend, distressed by love. He downed a cup of wine and felt he was back in his teenage years, consulting his best friend about girls, being consulted. “You know something?” he said. “My wife and I are first cousins. Everybody opposed the marriage, but we got married anyway. You just do it.”

      “That’s quite a courageous thing,” Mr. Fong said. “No wonder I’ve always had the feeling that you’re not an ordinary person. You have to introduce me to your wife. Why don’t I come to visit you tomorrow at your home? I need to pay respect to her.”

      Mr. Su felt a pang of panic. He had not invited a guest to his flat for decades. “Please don’t trouble yourself,” he said finally. “A wife is just the same old woman after a lifelong marriage, no?” It was a bad joke, and he regretted it right away.

      Mr. Fong sighed. “You’ve got it right, Old Su. But the thing is, a wife is a wife and you can’t ditch her like a worn shirt after a life.”

      It was the first time Mr. Fong mentioned a wife. Mr. Su had thought Mr. Fong a widower, the way he talked only about his children and their families. “You mean, your wife’s well and”—Mr. Su thought carefully and said—“she still lives with you?”

      “She’s in prison,” Mr. Fong said and sighed again. He went on to tell the story of his wife. She had been the Party secretary of an import-export branch for the Agriculture Department, and naturally, there had been money coming from subdivisions and companies that needed her approval on paperwork. The usual cash-for-signature transactions, Mr. Fong explained, but someone told on her. She received a within-the-Party disciplinary reprimand and was retired. “Fair enough, no? She’s never harmed a soul in her life,” Mr. Fong said. But unfortunately, right at the time of her retirement, the president issued an order that for corrupt officials who had taken more than a hundred and seventy thousand yuan, the government would seek heavy punishments. “A hundred and seventy thousand is nothing compared to what he’s taken!” Mr. Fong hit the table with a fist. In a lower voice, he said, “Believe me, Old Su, only the smaller fish pay for the government’s face-lift. The big ones—they just become bigger and fatter.”

      Mr. Su nodded. A hundred and seventy thousand yuan was more than he could imagine, but Mr. Fong must be right that it was not a horrific crime. “So she had a case with that number?”

      “Right over the limit, and she got a sentence of seven years.”

      “Seven years!” Mr. Su said. “How awful and unfair.”

      Mr. Fong shook his head. “In a word, Old Su, how can I abandon her now?”

      “No,” Mr. Su said. “That’s not right.”

      They were silent for a moment, and both drank wine as they pondered the dilemma. After a while, Mr. Fong said, “I’ve been thinking: before my wife comes home, we—the woman I love and I—maybe we can have a temporary family. No contract, no obligation. Better than those, you know what they call, one night of something?”

      “One-night stands?” Mr. Su blurted out, and then was embarrassed to have shown familiarity with such improper, modern vocabularies. He had learned the term from tabloids the women brought to the brokerage; he had even paid attention to those tales, though he would never admit it.

      “Yes. I thought ours could be better than that. A dew marriage before the sunrise.”

      “What will happen when your wife comes back?” Mr. Su asked.

      “Seven years is a long time,” Mr. Fong said. “Who knows what will become of me in seven years? I may be resting with Marx and Engels in heaven then.”

      “Don’t say that, Mr. Fong,” Mr. Su said, saddened by the eventual parting that they could not avoid.

      “You’re a good friend, Old Su. Thank you for listening to me. All the other people we were friends with—they left us right after my wife’s sentence, as if our bad luck would contaminate them. Some of them used to come to our door and beg to entertain us!” Mr. Su said, and then, out of the blue, he brought out the suggestion of loaning Mr. Su some money for investing.

      “Definitely not!” Mr. Su said. “I’m your friend not because of your money.”

      “Ah, how can you think of it that way?” Mr. Fong said. “Let’s look at it this way: it’s a good experiment for an old Marxist like me. If you make a profit, great; if not, good for my belief, no?”

      Mr. Su thought Mr. Fong was drunk, but a few days later, Mr. Fong mentioned the loan again, and Mr. Su found it hard to reject the offer.

      MRS. FONG CALLS again two hours later. “I have a great idea,” she says when Mrs. Su picks up the phone. “I’ll hire a private detective to find out whom my husband is seeing.”

      “Private detective?”

      “Why? You think I can’t find the woman? Let me be honest with you—I don’t trust that husband of yours at all. I think he lies to you about my husband’s whereabouts.”

      Mrs. Su panics. She didn’t know there were private detectives available. It sounds foreign and dangerous. She wonders if they could do some harm to her husband, his being Mr. Fong’s accomplice in the affair. “Are you sure you’ll find a reliable person?” she says.

      “People will do anything if you have the money. Wait till I get the solid evidence,” Mrs. Fong says. “The reason I’m calling you is this: if your husband, like you said, is spending every day away from home, wouldn’t you be suspicious? Don’t you think it possible that they are both having affairs, and are covering up for each other?”

      “No, it’s impossible.”

      “How can you be so sure? I’ll hire a private detective for both of us if you like.”

      “Ah, please no,” Mrs. Su says.

      “You don’t have to pay.”

      “I trust my husband,” Mrs. Su says, her legs weakened by sudden fear. Of all the people in the world, a private detective will certainly be the one to find out about Beibei.

      “Fine,” Mrs. Fong says. “If you say so, I’ll spare you the truth.”

      Mrs. Su has never met Mrs. Fong, who was recently released from prison because of health problems after serving a year of her sentence. A few days into her parole, she called Su’s number—it being the only unfamiliar number in Mr. Fong’s list of contacts—and grilled Mrs. Su about her relationship with Mr. Fong. Mrs. Su tried her best to convince Mrs. Fong that she had nothing to do with Mr. Fong, nor was there a younger suspect in her household—their only child was a son, Mrs. Su lied. Since then, Mrs. Fong has made Mrs. Su a confidante, calling her several times a day. Life must be hard for Mrs. Fong now, with a criminal record, all her old friends turning their backs on her, and a husband in love with a younger woman. Mrs. Su was not particularly sympathetic with Mrs. Fong when she first learned of the sentence—one hundred and seventy thousand yuan was an astronomical number to her—but now she does not have the heart to refuse Mrs. Fong’s friendship. Her husband is surely having a secret affair, Mrs. Fong confesses to Mrs. Su over the phone. He has developed some alarming and annoying habits—flossing his teeth after every meal, doing sit-ups at night, tucking his СКАЧАТЬ