The Bridegroom Read Free Page A

me?”
    “Of course, we’ll do that.” The chief was drumming his fingers on the blue folder—their file on him.
    Mr. Chiu signed his name and put his thumbprint under his signature.
    “Now you are free to go,” the chief said with a smile, and handed him a piece of paper to wipe his thumb with.
    Mr. Chiu was so sick that he couldn’t stand up from the chair at first try. Then he doubled his effort and rose to his feet. He staggered out of the building to meet his lawyer in the backyard, having forgotten to ask for his belt back. In his chest he felt as though there were a bomb. If he were able to, he would have razed the entire police station and eliminated all their families. Though he knew he could do nothing like that, he made up his mind to do something.
    “I’m sorry about this torture, Fenjin,” Mr. Chiu said when they met.
    “It doesn’t matter. They are savages.” The lawyer brushed a patch of dirt off his jacket with trembling fingers. Water was still dribbling from the bottoms of his trouser legs.
    “Let’s go now,” the teacher said.
    The moment they came out of the police station, Mr. Chiu caught sight of a tea stand. He grabbed Fenjin’s arm and walked over to the old woman at the table. “Two bowls of black tea,” he said and handed her a one-yuan note.
    After the first bowl, they each had another one. Then they set out for the train station. But before they walked fifty yards, Mr. Chiu insisted on eating a bowl of tree-ear soup at a food stand. Fenjin agreed. He told his teacher, “You mustn’t treat me like a guest.”
    “No, I want to eat something myself.”
    As if dying of hunger, Mr. Chiu dragged his lawyer from restaurant to restaurant near the police station, but at each place he ordered no more than two bowls of food. Fenjin wondered why his teacher wouldn’t stay at one place and eat his fill.
    Mr. Chiu bought noodles, wonton, eight-grain porridge, and chicken soup, respectively, at four restaurants. While eating, he kept saying through his teeth, “If only I could kill all the bastards!” At the last place he merely took a few sips of the soup without tasting the chicken cubes and mushrooms.
    Fenjin was baffled by his teacher, who looked ferocious and muttered to himself mysteriously, and whose jaundiced face was covered with dark puckers. For the first time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man.
    Within a month over eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji. Six died of the disease, including two children. Nobody knew how the epidemic had started.

Alive
    Liya’s letter threw her parents into a quandary. She informed them that she had been admitted by Sunrise Agricultural School in Antu County, to specialize in veterinary medicine. They didn’t mind her pursuing that profession. What worried them was that with a diploma from such a school she might remain in the countryside for good, as an educated peasant.
    For three days her father, Tong Guhan, didn’t know what to write back to her. He wished she could have returned to Muji City. If he could have found her a job here, he would tell her to forget about the agricultural school. On the other hand, the admission promised better employment and could take her away from the chicken farm where she had worked for three years. Should he tell her to go to the school? Or should he let her wait for an opportunity to come back home? He was torn by the dilemma.
    “Dad, why don’t you apply for a new apartment?” his son, Yaning, asked at lunch.
    “It’s not the right time yet,” said Guhan. “Don’t worry about that. If everything works out all right, we should have another apartment soon.”
    “I can wait, but I don’t know how long Meili can wait.” Yaning dropped his bowl on the table with a thump, his face twitching. He and Meili couldn’t marry because there was no housing available, though they had been engaged for four years.
    His mother, Jian, put in, “Yaning, be patient. Tell her to just wait a