Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [21]
When I returned home from my visit, I still couldn’t get to sleep. I had only one question on my mind: should I send an e-mail to Little Xi?
Big Sister Song had said Little Xi often changed her e-mail address. So there was no point writing one—her address had probably already changed. And if I did write, I might be inviting trouble. She’d always been the type of woman I like. When she was running the restaurant, I was strongly attracted to her, but there were always too many customers after her. Although we’d known each other for twenty years and could be considered old friends, there’d never been anything sexual between us, not even flirting. She was always surrounded by a circle of men—some of them were her friends and some were suitors; there were also some unsuccessful suitors who then joined her gang of friends. She was one of those women who had only male friends and, at the same time, seemed quite unaware of the fascination she held for men. She actually believed that all her male friends were just mates. I never pursued her romantically, and she never showed any interest in me, either. Later on I thought she had married a foreigner and moved to England, but now it looked like that had fallen through. Anyway, it had been seven or eight years since I’d had any real contact with her.
I’d been worried about her being a troublemaker. She wasn’t one of those intellectual-style dissidents, but political trouble had been dogging her for decades, all because she was too outspoken and too stubborn. She hated injustice and thus easily offended people. In the past, many people had been willing to help her, including some foreigners. But today foreigners like that have disappeared—none of them want to upset the Chinese Communist Party. Foreigners willing to risk offending the CCP don’t get a visa. Everybody around her was living the good life and couldn’t be bothered with her. They were all avoiding her, and that’s why she’d told me last time that everyone around her had changed.
After talking to Big Sister Song and Little Xi, I’d felt that Little Xi must be in trouble again. Now I was convinced that she’d been under surveillance there in the park next to the National Art Museum.
If I hooked up with her, wouldn’t she bring me trouble? My life was so good now; everything was going along smoothly and I felt extremely happy. Why should I risk it? If I saw her and she expressed the least bit of interest in me, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I found her sexually very attractive, which scared me. I hadn’t felt like this about someone for a long time. If I took an emotional leap and we really got together, I could guarantee that we would not be able to get along. She still imagined me the way I’d been ten years ago, when I’d agreed with her on everything. But I’d become one of those people she said had changed. Our present frames of mind were as different as our understandings of China’s current situation. I was certain that we would never be able to agree on anything. I remembered when Chen Shuibian had run for reelection in Taiwan—many of my male friends supported the Nationalist Party while their wives supported the Democratic Progressive Party, and they split up over this.
I sat there in front of my computer staring blankly at the piece of paper Big Sister Song had given me. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had not been able to write a really good novel. Perhaps my life was too peaceful, I just felt too happy. I felt no pressure. Who was it that could tear me away