Braised Pork Read online

  It was all right. She had not wanted to go anyway.

  Since then, everything else around her seemed to have moved on uncompromisingly. She learned from Chen Hang’s lawyer that her husband, with all his wealth, had left her nothing but the apartment where they lived and her allowance of sixty thousand yuan, transferred to her bank account for the winter. He had written a will when they first got married, endowing most of his assets to his own family.

  At his best, Chen Hang had provided for her; but in death he had made no provision. Jia Jia had swiftly come to understand that the past years of her life, the best years of her life, had been wasted and taken by a selfish man to his death, wrapped up into that urn and transported back to a graveyard where she, according to his family, had no right to enter. She should have given him a child sooner. That way, he would have cared more for her. But she had still been young when they married, and when she turned thirty and felt as though she was ready, a certain distance had begun to grow between them. It had not been clear to her back then, but now she saw that the foundation of their marriage had been disintegrating before his death. Those nights that he had spent elsewhere, the trip he had cancelled, the holidays he had taken without her. It was all right, she had told herself, in time things will be fixed. But where did all that leave her now? She felt homeless, ridiculous for having ever imagined that Chen Hang was going to give her a home. An empty apartment was not a home.

  She had considered selling the apartment, but Chen Hang had been adamant that owning property was the safest investment, so she had contacted an agent to find her a tenant. The agent told her that the apartment was too large to be desirable for white-collar professionals who were mostly single or had small families. Larger families preferred to steer away from the Central Business District. Fine, she conceded, list it for sale too. Quite quickly, the agent had found a buyer who had offered her a fair price on the property, after which she had studied the contract in detail over a drink one night, but something had gone wrong with the mortgage application and the buyer had withdrawn.

  Apart from an un-rentable, un-sellable apartment, some cash, and a drawing of a fish-man, Jia Jia felt that she did not own anything; that even these things were not hers because they had all once belonged to her husband. She frantically searched the rooms for something she could truly call her own. It had given her comfort to find a few of her old paintings hanging on the wall and stacked in the extra bathroom.

  Chen Hang had been supportive of her painting – until she had tried to sell her work at her friend’s gallery.

  ‘Jia Jia, I remember talking to you about this,’ he had said to her. ‘I don’t want you to go out in the world and struggle to make money. Let me provide for my wife. Yes, you can paint! But I don’t understand why you feel you must go out and sell your paintings. Like those struggling artists.’

  She was sitting on the sofa in the living room, while he paced around looking down at her.

  ‘It looks bad,’ he added.

  With that, her career had become a hobby.

  Jia Jia took one last puff on her cigarette and returned to the bar. She thought the cold air had cleared her head a little. The barman was wiping some glasses and organising them back in place on the shelves. He had large hands with long thin fingers, joints bulging out a little, like bamboo.

  ‘Can I get you something else?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re already cleaning up. I’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘Dishwashing is my way of meditating.’ He tapped his index finger on his temple twice and winked. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, lifting two glasses in one hand and an almost empty bottle of brandy in the other.

  He poured and they touched glasses.

  ‘I heard about your husband,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Are you married?’ Jia Jia said as she leaned across the counter to look at his name tag. ‘Leo?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Leo said.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. He appeared to be thinking and did not answer her immediately. ‘Oh, forget about it,’ she said. ‘I’m a fool to ask you, Mr Leo with an English name. There’s no rush for you men. That’s how you pronounce it, right? Lee-oh?’ She slouched on her stool. ‘But you must get married eventually. You must have a home to go back to after you close your bar. I’d hate to see you become a lonely old man, Mr Leo.’

  ‘Did you feel at home when you were with him?’ Leo asked, his eyes fixed on hers.

  Jia Jia could not respond immediately; she was startled that he was provoking her like that, and not quite sure what he meant. Had Chen Hang told him, during one of his nights here, that he had lost interest in his wife? Or was it something that Leo had picked up from watching them while they were at his bar? Jia Jia’s hand froze for a moment, but before Leo had a chance to notice, she brought her drink up to her lips. The lights hanging above the counter abruptly went off.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Leo went to the corner of the room for the fuse box.

  ‘Can I smoke in here?’ Jia Jia asked as she fumbled for the new pack of cigarettes in her bag.

  ‘When nobody else is here, you can,’ he said.

  Jia Jia rested a cigarette between her fingers. ‘He gave me an apartment, you know?’ she said after a few moments, bringing the cigarette to her lips and lighting it. ‘Quite an impressive one, big and everything. It was nice of him to do that. Don’t you think?’

  A feeble light came on and Leo returned to the bar.

  ‘This is the best I can do,’ he said, pointing to the light. ‘We’ll have to wait a bit before trying to reset the breaker again.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m about to leave anyway.’

  Jia Jia had wanted to order another drink. But what on earth was she doing, squandering money at expensive bars, as if Chen Hang would refill her bank account in a few months? And where had she left her pride, still hoping that Chen Hang would provide for her? Abruptly, she put her cigarette out, asked for the bill, stuffing an extra hundred-yuan note into Leo’s hands as she paid. She swept up her belongings and left, concerned that the one hundred was not enough for the extra glass of brandy he had poured her. She would pay him back next time.

  The pavements were empty and it had stopped snowing. Jia Jia slowed her footsteps, walking back across the street to her apartment, where she had a long shower and lay down. In bed, she began to weep beneath her blanket. The fan in the air purifier turned more furiously. Outside her window, buildings blurred as smog accumulated once again. And she kept crying, silently, occasionally choking while trying to catch her breath, as if, even in her desolation, she was too afraid to disturb the wintry silence.

  3

  When Jia Jia woke, it was still dark. She sat up and swept for her slippers with her feet. They were not there. She reached a bit further but found nothing. Looking down at the floor, she discovered that it did not exist any more, and what replaced it was the surface of a deep sea, as if she was sitting on the edge of a ship watching the reflection of the starless sky in the water. The darkness rippled like silk. She lifted herself from the bed and stepped onto what used to be the floor, falling into a sudden wet chill that was surely cold water. She immediately turned to grab for the bed, but it was no longer above her. Submerged in water, she searched for anything to hold on to. She held her breath and swam, deep, deeper.

  Time became indistinct and irrelevant. Jia Jia did not know in what direction she was swimming. She could not see her body. If she was travelling down, once she reached the bottom of her building, would she find the ground again? It was worth a try, she thought. After what felt like a long time, a white ray of light penetrated the water. The sun! It must be the sun rising in the distance. Refracted, the light seemed alien, as though it belonged in a different dimension, but Jia Jia swam towards it anyway, pulling at and ripping off her pyjamas, crying for help, her voice muffled.

  As she was nearing the light, she spotted a small silver creature beneath her, swimming around in circles. She thought s
he could make out a tiny fish with a sharp tail, shining like glitter. It swam wildly – a fry just learning how to flap its fins.

  Jia Jia shifted her focus back to the light and pushed towards it, leaving the silver fish behind. The light grew brighter. She rose out of the water, finding herself sitting on the floor of her apartment, naked, pyjamas in a heap, frozen to the core. The morning sun pierced the blind, the sky was a pale blue now, and a group of middle-aged women were already gathered outside in the park dancing to disco tunes.

  Jia Jia’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light. She was shaking. With an automatic gesture she reached for the drawing on the bedside table. Relieved to find it still dry, she leaned her head against the bed and studied the fish-man. She saw lifelessness in its eyes, like prey that was being hunted and had already given up.

  Jia Jia folded the drawing, though she was unable to erase the image from her mind. The water, what was it? She could not remember what it looked like any more, only the stinging cold that it had left on her skin. The heater must have broken during the night. A bitter chill remained. The apartment was too big. She had to move out, she decided, as soon as she could. She could not bear being alone in this place.

  Jia Jia could not remember the last time she had admitted, even to herself, that she was truly afraid of something. It was not because she never experienced fear, because of course she did, but she had learned very young that her vulnerabilities would only lead to more trouble for her family: more worry for her grandmother, more tears for her aunt, more concerned late-night whispers between the two of them.

  The day that her mother died, Jia Jia had just started middle school.

  That evening, peeping through the door to the bedroom where her grandmother wept into her pillow in silence, her legs hanging from the edge of the bed, Jia Jia had learned to do the same.

  Now she tried to get up but found herself unable to summon the energy to rise. She wrapped the duvet around her body and sat for hours on the wooden floor, wishing that the day would stop for a moment and wait for her. She closed her eyes and searched for memories of her mother. She had not done this for a long time. The memories were fragmented and faint, just as they always were. Jia Jia was sure that these memories had felt like reality once, that at a distinct moment in the past there had been an intensity and lucidity to them. But when? She could not say any more. She could not remember the details, only the existence of details.

  In the afternoon, Jia Jia decided to go to her grandmother’s. She wanted a distraction, something to occupy her mind and lift her up from the floor. She got dressed and boarded the 139 bus towards Jianguomen. It would take longer than the subway, but she felt better able to breathe above ground. Jia Jia managed to find a seat towards the back, next to a mother and a girl. The mother held the girl’s schoolbag on her lap and had a few plastic bags of groceries near her feet. The two did not speak much during the journey, only once when the mother unscrewed the top off an insulated bottle, poured some warm water into it, and held it up to her daughter’s lips.

  ‘You need to drink more water,’ she said.

  The girl, keeping her eyes fixed on a picture book in her lap, opened her mouth for her mother to feed her. When Jia Jia got off the bus, the mother and daughter rode on.

  Jia Jia had grown up in a compact three-bedroom apartment with her grandmother and her aunt. It was in an old brick building, on the second floor, overlooking a courtyard. Her grandparents’ apartment had been consigned to them by their employer, and when her grandfather passed away, her aunt had moved in to take care of her grandmother. Then, when her aunt married Li Chang, he joined them too. Through the years, the courtyard had become crowded with parked cars and there were fewer bikes lying around than there had been in Jia Jia’s childhood. A group of women walked out of the front gate just as Jia Jia entered. She did not recognise them. When she was young, she thought that the families who lived in this building would never leave; they had seemed so rooted to this piece of land, as if they had sprouted from it, like trees.

  Jia Jia pushed open the metal door, stamped hard on the floor to switch on the lights, and climbed up the stairs. There were more advertisements on the stairway walls, posters layering over the old ones. Someone had written ‘car rental’ followed by a phone number directly onto the wall.

  She knocked on the door and her aunt greeted her.

  ‘Look at my new aquarium!’ her aunt said. She slanted her body so that Jia Jia could squeeze past the shoe cabinet and into the room.

  There was a large aquarium in the living room, standing more than a head taller than Jia Jia. Different species of fish swam inside, eyes big and round, lost and disconcerted. But even with so many fish, the tank looked oddly vacant.

  ‘Did you get any coral?’ Jia Jia asked, putting down her bag on the sofa.

  ‘It’s coming tomorrow,’ her aunt said, proudly looking at the tank as if it was her child.

  Jia Jia’s grandmother was shaking her head as she walked, with tiny steps, out of her room.

  ‘We’re just a normal family living in a normal apartment,’ her grandmother said, her voice raspy with mucus, and her face scrunched into a displeased expression. ‘Jia Jia, your aunt has a new idea every day, always trying to go with the trend. Look at how much space this thing is taking up!’

  ‘Li Chang’s at a meeting right now,’ her aunt said to Jia Jia, ignoring the old woman. ‘He and I have been working on a film project. Once I get my share of the money, I’ll try to get you a nice little apartment, and an aquarium just like this. It should be a big sum this time.’

  Jia Jia’s aunt sat down and began rinsing and sterilising teacups with boiling water.

  ‘The apartment you’re in now is too big for you. You should sell it and invest in our project,’ she continued. She picked three cups out with a pair of wooden tongs. ‘Last night your uncle and I stayed at the Four Seasons to celebrate this film deal. More than one thousand yuan a night! Li Chang and I thought the lobby was so beautiful. Too bad it’s winter, otherwise we would’ve had a drink on the terrace.’

  ‘I thought you were opening a restaurant?’ asked Jia Jia.

  ‘We figured it’s better to do something Li Chang’s good at,’ her aunt explained. ‘The restaurant idea was a little foolish.’

  Jia Jia’s aunt had never been able to earn the life she wanted with her various business ventures. Chen Hang used to criticise her approach: he would flip his hand in the air, shake his head and declare that Jia Jia’s aunt had set her sights too high, that she was too eager, that she idealised money too much. You won’t earn money by obsessing over it, he would say, while he cracked a nut. But had he not been the same?

  ‘How about you, my dear, what are your plans?’ Jia Jia’s aunt looked up from her tea set at her niece.

  ‘I’m looking for somebody to rent or buy my apartment. Auntie, I think I should start painting again,’ Jia Jia said. ‘Sell my paintings.’

  ‘Oh, get yourself a stable job,’ her grandmother said, walking slowly behind the table to sit beside her daughter and making a shuffling sound with her slippers. She had been wearing those yellow polka-dotted slippers for more than ten years at least, and when the problems began with her knee joints, she had sewn fabric to the soles so that she could move more easily by sliding her feet along the floor. ‘You should’ve listened to me,’ her grandmother added with a sigh.

  Jia Jia remembered, of course she did: she remembered her grandmother telling her to study something that would give her more job security. An ‘iron rice bowl’, her grandmother had called it. She breathed in deeply, knowing that there should not be any more debates over this matter, and that the old woman had already been through too much in her life. Anything coming out of Jia Jia’s mouth, should she allow herself to open it now, was going to be too spiteful. So she said nothing. She had to control her temper. She could not allow her aunt and grandmother to detect the faltering feeling inside her.

  ‘Let me ask if Li Chang h
as anything for you,’ her aunt suggested.

  ‘Make sure that it’s proper work and that they won’t cheat her,’ Jia Jia’s grandmother said.

  ‘Ma,’ her aunt began again. ‘I know you don’t like Li Chang, but he knows a lot of wealthy people who might like to order some art from Jia Jia.’

  ‘I won’t intervene any more,’ her grandmother said with a forlorn expression. ‘I don’t know how the world today works. But having a practical skill is the safest bet. Look at you and Li Chang, still living in my apartment. He should have his own place by now.’

  Then she rose from her seat to start cooking dinner, shaking her head as she slid away.

  ‘Stay for dinner, Jia Jia,’ her aunt said.

  *

  Just after nine p.m., Jia Jia roamed into Leo’s bar. She did not speak at first: there was too much on her mind for it all to be organised into words. It had hit her, upon walking out of her grandmother’s door, that she no longer had to abide by rules made by anybody else. She was not a child any more, and her grandmother’s opinions, no matter how strong, were confined behind that door. She could walk anywhere now, answering to nobody. She had the opportunity to pursue her art, without Chen Hang there to tell her how bad it looked to others. It made her want to get a nice glass of champagne.

  She called Leo over.