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“Not really,” I lied.

“I had to get rid of those guys who follow me,” Little Xi said with a marked change in tone.

On the way, she told me all the many things she had done in order to see me. A few days ago she’d been all around looking at houses as though she were intending to move. Finally she found a small furnished room in one of those old dilapidated 1970s Soviet-style block buildings. This morning she’d met with the landlord, moved a trunk full of things in, and paid the rent. Then she took a canvas bag and said she was going shopping.

She figured that one of the two men following her would remain behind to talk to the landlord about installing a bugging device while she was out. It was because her previous landlord suddenly changed his attitude toward her that she learned she was being followed and listened in on. The second guy might not follow her either, because she had just paid the rent and would be coming back from the supermarket soon. Even if he did follow her, there were two entrances and exits to the Jingkelong supermarket, so she could still give him the slip. But she had always pretended that she didn’t know they were watching her, and so they were not especially vigilant.

The more she talked, the more alarmed I became. I thought perhaps she was being oversensitive or overimaginative, but then, she really could be under surveillance. Didn’t I see those smokers that day in the National Art Museum garden?

“Are you certain no one is following you?”

She stopped, turned to look behind her, and to the left and right. “You see, nobody there.”

We were standing on the wide-open Xindong Road and saw there was no one in sight. I felt quite ashamed. Little Xi had gone to so much effort to see me, but I was worried only about her getting me into trouble.

“What’s wrong? Relax, there’s no problem,” she said.

“Little Xi, what are you going to do?” I asked as we stood there on the pavement.

“I’ll certainly do something,” she quipped. “Let’s see, maybe I’ll leave Beijing this afternoon.”

I stopped for a moment, expressionless and a little stunned.

“You want to eat, or what?” she said with a grin.

We started walking again toward Happiness Village Number Two.

It was a warm spring day and the air was filled with the scent of locust-tree blossoms. They gave off a powerful, sensual aroma that made me feel an intense love. All I wanted to say was “Little Xi, let’s be together, let’s stop tormenting ourselves, and let’s just have a good life together.”

But I didn’t dare say it. I didn’t have the guts.

Little Xi worked quickly and skillfully in the kitchen while I stood beside her, clumsily assisting. She’d taken off her jacket and I could see the uneven scar tissue on her shoulder where she had been hit by the army jeep. She really is a good person, despite her drawbacks, I thought to myself.

“Lao Chen, our old friends have all changed now,” she said suddenly while she was chopping the bok choy.

I remembered that she had said something similar that day in the park. So I asked her, “How have they changed? Tell me how.”

“They’ve become … they’ve all become very satisfied,” she said after a short pause. “Lao Chen, are you satisfied?”

I felt she was testing me, so I asked her, “Little Xi, why are you so dissatisfied?”

This really was our conversation.

Little Xi paused, expressionless for a moment, and then challenged me in turn. “Lao Chen, do you remember how it felt back then? When you were here, in 1989, when I had the old restaurant in Wudaokou with my mother? And later in the 1990s, when we opened up the new restaurant—do you remember what we talked about? Do you remember why we were angry, why we struggled, what our ideals were? Do you remember, Lao Chen?”

And I asked her back tenderly, “Little Xi, why can’t you forget? This is a different age.”

She looked at me with an expression of vague disappointment, and after a while she said, “I’ve already forgotten too much. When I was locked up in that mental hospital for so long, I forgot so many things. I