The Invisibility Cloak Read online

  •

  Now’s as good a time as any as any to say something about my wife, Yufen. We met before I got started in the audio industry. I was selling shoes at Tong Sheng He, the famous shoe shop over on the main boulevard by the Wangfujing shopping street. I noticed her the moment she walked into the store. There was no way you couldn’t notice her. She had that pure, perfectly formed face that gives you a feeling like a razor slash across the heart. How can I put it? You feel as if you’d risk your life just to be with her. She tried on three or four pairs of dress shoes without finding anything that fit her. She didn’t buy anything, though she didn’t leave either. She just sat all alone on the little leather stool and sighed to herself.

  I had been watching her out of the corner of my eye for a while. It started getting dark outside, the flow of pedestrians on the street thinned, and the crows started to cackle in the trees lining the sidewalk. Closing time approached. I was worried about getting to the pharmacy in time to buy medicine for my mother, so I went over to her and asked in an authoritative tone: “Mind if I look at your feet?”

  When your average person is faced with a tough problem, she naturally becomes open to suggestion and easy to influence. Yufen obediently raised her head and looked up at me, not at all taken aback by my abruptness. She pouted her lips and asked, “Which one do you want to see?”

  “Either one’s fine,” I said.

  She immediately took off her Puma sneakers and peeled off her nylon socks, which wasn’t necessary. I took a look at her right foot, then turned around and grabbed two pairs of shoes off the rack behind me. She tried them on, and immediately decided to buy both pairs.

  Before leaving, she asked me a question. She had been shoe shopping in Xidan and Wangfujing the whole day, and had tried on hundreds of pairs of shoes without finding anything she liked. Yet it only took me an instant to pick out two pairs for her that fit so well, it was as if they had been custom-made. How had I done it?

  Maybe it was because I was in a good mood and feeling satisfied with myself that I waxed a little aphoristic in my response: “Oh, that’s not surprising. People are always choosing things that don’t fit them.”

  Looking back at the way things panned out, that innocent remark was more like an omen. The next time Yufen came in to buy shoes, I asked her out to dinner at the duck restaurant across from the Children’s Theater. She accepted. A week later, I took her to a movie. She was very easygoing, so much so it almost made me nervous. I could never figure this out about her. Like I was observing her through a fog. We didn’t fight once in the first two years of our relationship, nor did she ever get sharp with me about anything. It was as if she had been put on this earth solely to please other people, or at least me.

  My best friend, Jiang Songping, once lamented that Beijing girls all possessed a bit of the tough bitch in them, ready to slap a man with a shoe at the slightest tremor of displeasure. Seems he was wrong about that one. I took Yufen over to his place once; he was bewildered, even a little annoyed at my “good luck.” Whenever he talked to her, even in my presence, his body would unconsciously tilt forward.

  I guess “falling for someone” isn’t just an expression after all.

  •

  By the end of the nineties, I had saved up some money from making amplifiers. With this small measure of financial security, I immediately quit my job at Tong Sheng He, rented a stall in the Superwave Audio Mall (still a one-floor courtyard back then), and worked for a Hong Kong franchise that sold Tannoy speakers made in Britain. You’d have had a hard time not making money at the audio market in Beijing back then. It wasn’t long before I bought a two-bedroom apartment north of the city center in Shangdi. Finally figuring I was ready to propose, I took Yufen back home to meet my mother. Honestly, what I wanted most was for my mother to be proud of me.

  By that time Ma already knew what she was sick with, but she still retained her sense of humor during conversation. I brought Yufen into my mother’s room to show her off real quick before asking if she could go help my sister with dinner. Alone, I sat down at Ma’s bedside and, feeling sure of myself, asked if she was happy with the daughter-in-law I had brought home.

  The old lady considered it for a long time, then took my hand and squeezed it, saying, “Well, this little one has the right lines to her.”

  Definitely not what I wanted or expected to hear. What did she mean by “the right lines”? It sounded odd, like something you’d say when appraising a litter of piglets fresh from the pen. Another pause, then my mother wheezed and continued: “This one has a good temper. And she has kindness and compassion in her character.”

  A weight lifted from me. I was wholly convinced that she was praising Yufen, which, you know, made me happier than anything. Ma lay there, body bent to one side. After a spasmodic fit of coughing, she patted the edge of the bed, beckoning me to sit beside her. How could I have imagined that she would put a hand on my arm and say, “Son, if my opinion doesn’t matter to you, then ignore me. But if you really want to hear your mother’s advice, I’ll tell you: I think it’s best if you don’t marry her. When she entered, I read her face—everything about her seems fine, but she has no hatch marks to her.”

  I asked her what she meant by “no hatch marks.” Ma was a southerner, born in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, and her Mandarin was always mixed with her local dialect, making it very hard to understand her sometimes. She thought for a moment, then replied, still smiling, “She’s just a little too easy come, easy go. It’s not a good thing. To put it bluntly: you’re marrying this woman for somebody else. A family like ours can’t afford it.”

  She followed her advice with an old rhyme: “Look at her from head to toes, downward the easy spirit flows; look at her from toes to head, the easy rises up instead.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Still, on National Day, the day I married Yufen, Ma didn’t say anything. She didn’t object, didn’t show any sign of displeasure. When my sister led the new bride to her bedside to bow and call her “Ma,” my mother responded energetically, and even pushed herself into a sitting position to return the courtesy. Then she placed into Yufen’s hands the ceremonial red envelope that contained two hundred yuan she had been saving under her pillow for who knows how long, and gave Yufen a hug.

  Four years have passed since my mother’s prediction came true.

  One day, Yufen came home from work and asked me sweetly for a divorce. Apparently, she had “gotten together” with the new director at her office. Two packs of cigarettes out on the balcony couldn’t console me. I walked straight into the darkness of our bedroom and shook her awake, begging her in a whisper to “think about it some more.” Yufen blinked and replied, half asleep, “Think about what? Honey, we’re already doing it.”

  There was nothing I could do but walk into the kitchen and drive a fruit knife into the back of my hand.

  The period of our divorce happened around the time of my mother’s death. Everyone who knew her—neighbors, old colleagues, and friends—had pleaded with her to go to the hospital. Ma refused outright. She would only look at them and smile. She had made her own calculations. She knew that once she went into the hospital, there was no way she was coming out. That, and she didn’t want to spend the money. In the end, my uncle had to make the trip all the way up from Yancheng to argue with her before she finally allowed us to admit her.

  For the eleven days she lasted in the hospital, I visited her a few times at her bedside, not staying for more than five minutes. Yufen’s infidelity put me in a bad emotional state. My sister, Cui Lihua, knew what was going on.

  “But our mom’s going to die!” she yelled at me, stamping her foot.

  “I wouldn’t mind dying myself, you know!” I replied.

  She saw how foul my mood was and left me alone. She sat at our mother’s bedside every night, and in the mornings commuted to the sewage treatment plant in Shijingshan where she worked. Dark circles appeared around her eyes; she seemed to be constantly glaring
. Meanwhile, my bastard brother-in-law, Chang Baoguo, was already bad-mouthing me to friends and relatives. There was nothing I could do about that.

  The last time I saw my mother in the hospital, she was heavily drugged and slipping in and out of consciousness. Not wanting to disturb her rest, I shot my sister a look, stood at the bedside for a minute and turned to leave. But my mother opened her eyes and called my name.

  She insisted on sending my sister home and keeping me there.

  “Just for one night, okay?” she asked with a smile.

  Of course I couldn’t refuse.

  For me to stay awake the whole night by her bedside, however, wasn’t really necessary. She was lucid only for short moments. Each time she woke, she asked me turn her on her side so she could look at me, which, honestly, made me really uncomfortable. Ma had a small frame to begin with, and the disease had shrunk her even more. Once in a while, she would take my hand and rub the back of it gently—her expression tranquil, even a faint trace of a smile. She saved up her energy through the night, and just as the sun was about to rise, she said everything she needed to say.

  The hospital must have been near a military barracks because I remember the clear call of reveille being played as dawn broke. Of course, it wasn’t Peer Gynt. Ma said she knew her time was near, if not today then most likely tomorrow. It hurt a lot to hear her say it. She already knew from my sister about my divorce from Yufen. She didn’t scold me for not listening to her, but simply said:

  “Back then, I told you not to marry her, didn’t I? Well, you didn’t listen, and I didn’t press it. A girl like that, pretty as a picture, I could tell that she was all you could see. If I’d stepped in and tried to stop you, who knows if you’d have been able to stand the strain. So I said to myself, it’s fine, get married and we’ll see. If it really doesn’t work, we can get a divorce, then find someone else and marry again. Heaven gives you no dead ends, as they say; sometimes, right when you think you can’t take it, you just grit your teeth and put your head down, and suddenly you’re through. And it wasn’t such a big deal in the first place. I’ll tell you one thing, and don’t you forget it: everyone has a wife waiting for him somewhere. It’s fate, the way the world works. If it’s not Yufen, it’s somebody else. Where is she? I don’t know, and there’s no use in you scouring heaven and earth looking for her. Before the time is right, you’ll never find her; when it is, she’ll be right there in front of you, ready to give you a family. It’s not that I’m superstitious, you’ll see; it will happen. Keep an open mind, and when the time comes, you’ll know. You’ll see her and you’ll think to yourself, Oh, there she is . . .”

  I interrupted her. “You know, it’s funny; that’s exactly what I thought when I first saw Yufen.”

  Ma chuckled and licked her dry lips. “That’s called infatuation!”

  “But what if I meet the woman I’m supposed to be with and don’t recognize her? What do I do?”

  Ma pondered this for a while, an unexpected tear running down each cheek. After a prolonged pause, she said, “Ridiculous child, do you want me to visit you in a dream when the time comes?”

  Outside, a steady rain pelted the windows. My mother took her deposit book out from underneath her pillow. She put it in my hand and curled my fingers into a fist. She held that fist in both hands and squeezed hard. Her entire life’s savings was in that account. She instructed me to not tell Lihua no matter what.

  I didn’t shed a single tear at my mother’s funeral. I hurt as much as the rest of them, but I just couldn’t cry. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. At the wake, while Chang Baoguo and the others howled and wailed at the top of their lungs, I still couldn’t cry. I was harboring a secret, turning a question over and over in my mind: should I tell Lihua about the deposit account? I didn’t actually care that much about twenty-seven thousand yuan. I just couldn’t gauge how Lihua and Baoguo would react if I told them. Lihua took responsibility for our mother immediately after she got sick, yet Ma sent Lihua away the night before she died and gave the account book to me. Whether or not this would make Lihua and Baoguo hysterical at the funeral, I couldn’t tell.

  After Yufen divorced me, I moved out of my place in Shangdi and into an apartment my sister owned in Shijingshan. It was a nice building, part of a new utility housing project she had applied for through her work unit. Not long after I moved in, I noticed a large crack had opened in the north wall of the living room. It kept things nice and cool in the summer, but when winter arrived, three full rolls of tape weren’t enough to keep the wind and sand out. My sister and I once paid a visit to the building offices to kick up a fuss. The representatives laughed, saying that settling soil created intolerable stress on the walls and that it was a global problem. They shooed us away. Still, it was probably the crack and the draft that had caused Chang Baoguo and my sister to move into my mother’s old place on Mahogany Street. I thought to myself: You know, that living room wall couldn’t have picked a better time to split.

  Yufen dropped by some time after that. Her new man, the director, had made a mistake while he was debugging a numerical control machine tool they had imported from Germany; he jammed it and blew out one of the components on the circuit. The machine wasn’t cheap; if the Board found out, he probably wouldn’t be director any more. I had used machine tools back in the day when I was making custom boxes for transistor amplifiers; and so Yufen suddenly appeared in the middle of the night to ask me to look at it for her.

  Naturally, I refused.

  Like I said, I’m fairly expert with anything related to sound systems, and if you asked me to fix an AC unit or a personal computer or something, I could probably figure it out. But this was a large-scale, imported numerical control machine tool—I had never even seen one before. Yufen thought I was backing down out of insecurity, and said, “Oh, please. Calling it an imported machine tool makes it sound so mysterious or whatever, but it’s not necessarily any more complicated than those computers and amplifiers you sell. Besides, you’re the patron saint of mechanics. Machines fear you. They intentionally make problems for the rest of us, but with you it’s different. Who knows, maybe it’ll hear your footsteps and get so scared that it fixes itself.”

  Hearing her say that made me feel pretty good. In the end, I couldn’t resist her flattery and insistent pleading and agreed to take a look. Of course, I met her new husband, Director Luo. He followed me around with a stack of German instruction manuals, talking incessantly. I finally got angry enough to ask him to back off and be quiet. He didn’t get offended, just stood there and giggled.

  It was my first encounter with a machine of that scale, and I spent a full four hours trying to figure out its operating principles. After that, finding and fixing the problem only took about twenty minutes. I realized that Yufen must have lied to Director Luo about our history. When they took me out to eat afterward, he asked me very politely where I lived and how old my children were. He said that if my kids ever wanted to study in Germany, just ask him.

  Yufen paid me another visit a few days later. My mother’s assessment of her character had been right. Yufen was still attracted to me. She smiled slyly and asked if all this living alone was hard to bear. She offered to help me “take a load off.” I wasn’t about to offend her good intentions with a snub. I discovered she was already pregnant; you can imagine how that burned. While we were doing it, she wouldn’t stop complimenting me, saying that I was just as good at handling women as I was machines. Her husband, a returned immigrant from Munich, apparently was better looking than he was in bed. By the time he got her hot and ready to roll, he became as soft and shriveled as a paraplegic. She hadn’t had a single orgasm in the four months they’d been married. I didn’t know if I should feel happy or hurt.

  We had one more illicit rendezvous after that. But I guess a guy like me just doesn’t have the nerve to keep up such a relationship. When we were together, the image of Luo’s boyish face kept floating in my mind. I couldn’t silence a gnawin
g feeling of guilt. So I steeled myself and said to Yufen: “We’re divorced. Since you’re now married to this Mr. Luo, you should go back and be with him like you’re supposed to, instead of coming around here. I can’t deal with it. Your Mr. Luo looks like an educated, civilized guy, better than I am in every way. Your orgasms aren’t more important than that. The two of us can’t carry on like this. Besides, now that you’re pregnant, it’s not a good idea. You shouldn’t come back here any more.”

  Yufen had a wrenched expression on her face as I walked her to the subway. She held it together for a while, but then she wrapped her arms around me and started to cry. What she told me next I thought about for at least two months afterward. She said the first time she had gotten together with someone else wasn’t with Luo but with some dirty maintenance worker. Once, during a night shift, he had cornered her in the bathroom and they had gone crazy in a toilet stall.

  Yufen never came back to Shijingshan. And I never listened to the Peer Gynt Suite she liked so much ever again. I did see her once more—in Sanlitun, on my way to Dongdaqiao to fix an LP turntable for a client. Tables with umbrellas were arranged in a line under the heavy shade of trees outside a café. She sat sipping her drink with a black guy, who had one hand on her smooth shoulder.

  I didn’t dare say hello.

  3. THE NURSERY RECORD

  AFTER finishing the job at the Brownstones that morning, I made a run to the Ping’anli Electronics Market. I picked up a roll of WBT silver solder, a couple of salvaged Dutch oil-filled capacitors, and a pair of Nordost “Red Dawn” signal cables. As I already had a pair of the cables at home, these completed the set. On my way home to Shijingshan that afternoon, I stopped by Golden Square near Seasons Bridge to see my old friend Jiang Songping.

  •

  Generally speaking, my clients can be divided into two groups. The first group, as you already know, is mainly made up of intellectuals. Most of them live in the Haidian district, near the universities. Their good qualities are courtesy, politeness, and punctual payment. They almost never pay late, and sometimes, when money is tight for me, they’ll even be willing to put up a deposit in advance. People of their sort tend to want amplifiers that bring out the feeling or color of the music—the so-called “musical flavor.” They’re very irregular customers, and their numbers have been shrinking every year. Dealing with them involves learning how to endure their pontificating. To be fair, there are times when high-minded discourse can really open your eyes; other times, it will only drive you insane. They all bear the same sanctimonious expression on their faces, as if the fate of the world lay securely in their hands. Going by my own inexpert observations, their opinions are actually pretty inconsistent.