Chapter 4

I went to meet Professor Chen’s family in a small red building in the faculty housing complex.

The professor had a gentle manner. He brewed a cup of bright green tea and set it on the coffee table beside me.

After a brief conversation, he smiled and nodded. “You seem very attentive. We’ll be leaving Chen Wei in your care.”

His wife was there too. I recognized her as the woman who worked in the library, sitting behind the counter all day without a smile.

That day she sat in another corner of the living room. She gave me a cool glance and said nothing.

Chen Wei opened her door, took a look, nodded, and shut it again.

The work wasn’t difficult, and the pay was generous for what it involved.

Chen Wei was distant. She never met my eyes or said a word more than necessary, but she tried not to trouble me and was always very polite when she did. She seemed to live in a world of her own, with a strong sense of personal boundaries.

Only later did I discover another unusual member of the household.

One day I saw two elderly women arguing by the roadside over an empty bottle.

One, with a Beijing accent, was shrill with abuse. The other woman was a country bumpkin with no manners, she said, and ought to go back where she came from.

The woman being berated answered with her hands, not her mouth. She pulled the bottle away and deftly tucked it into her sack.

To my surprise, I saw that same silent old woman from out of town at Chen Wei’s home later that day.

The door of a small bedroom was open. She crouched in the doorway sorting things, with cardboard, bottles, and scrap metal almost spilling out behind her. Good thing this was Beijing; anywhere else, there would have been cockroaches.

I began to notice that the old woman, who appeared and disappeared without warning, sometimes stared straight at me. I stared back, refusing to be intimidated, and she’d lower her eyes as though nothing had happened.

It felt as if I was being watched. I didn’t like it.

Oddly, Chen Wei mostly ignored her elegant parents, yet often spoke softly to the old woman in their hometown dialect. She even asked me to buy her egg cakes from the campus bakery.

People’s relationships could be such curious things.

One day, in a light rain, I held an umbrella over Chen Wei as I took her home after class. We heard an argument at the door.

“I told you prices have dropped. Dropped! Don’t you understand?

“I’m not buying them! Find someone else! You’d think I was robbing you blind!”

The man flung a sack to the floor. Cans and plastic bottles clattered everywhere.

The old woman stubbornly gripped his clothes. Unable to leave, he struggled and stamped, his face bright red.

Chen Wei, usually so calm, looked deeply unsettled.

I couldn’t bear watching. I went over to reason with him. “You’ve already weighed it all. You can’t just refuse to take it now.” As I spoke, I started picking things up.

The young man sighed and took out a few more small notes for the old woman. Then he lugged two big sacks downstairs in a huff, muttering all the way. “Not coming back. Never again. Three or five yuan, and she goes on till my head hurts.”

Seeing that everything was settled, I was about to leave when Chen Wei suddenly said, “Zhou Zhenzhu, have something to drink before you go.”

That was rare: she was speaking to me of her own accord. She even brought me lemon tea.

As I sat down, I noticed that some leftover drink had splashed onto my jacket while I was picking up the bottles. The room was warm too, so I took it off and draped it beside the sofa. Then I forgot to take it home.

The next few days were sunny. Without needing it, I never thought of it.

Until the old woman stopped me by the road and thrust a plastic bag into my arms. Before I could react, she’d gone, dragging an enormous woven sack behind her.

Inside was my jacket, washed so clean that even an old stain on the sleeve had disappeared.

I’d grown up without a mother. Touching that clean sleeve, I felt strangely dazed by the old woman’s motherly tenderness.

I remembered some gossip Qiu Ting had passed on from retired teachers. The distinguished Professor Chen was a brilliant boy from a remote, poor village who’d earned his way out through examinations. Outstanding research had brought him from a small city to Beijing. More than ten years earlier, a car accident had crushed his daughter’s leg. His mother had made the long journey from the countryside, saying she wanted to see her granddaughter, and then refused to leave. Often, at dusk, she’d wheel the girl through quiet corners of campus.

Apparently, back then the girl would accept only her grandmother. At the sight of her parents, she’d scream and cry as if they were her enemies.