Boy in the Twilight by Yu Hua Read Free Book Online Page B

woman wrote, and the photos she gave him. I called her up on the phone just now, also.”
    “I don’t know anything about this.”
    His tone was frosty, and Lin Hong knew she would get nothing more out of him, so she hung up the phone and went to the balcony and sat down. Li Hanlin had a few other friends, but she didn’t want to call them. They would simply come to his defense and show her no sympathy. A long time ago she had had friends of her own—Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning—but she had drifted apart from them after her marriage, hanging out with Li Hanlin’s pals, chatting and joking with them, going shopping with their wives. Those wives had replaced Zhao Ping, Zhang Lini, and Shen Ning. Only now did she realize she had lost all her friends.
    She had no idea how to get in touch with Zhao Ping or Zhang Lini. She had only Shen Ning’s number, scribbled down a year ago when they had run into each other in the street. She had written the number in her book and then forgotten all about it.
    It was Shen Ning’s husband who answered the phone. He told Lin Hong to hang on, and then Shen Ning came on the line. “Yes, who is it?”
    “It’s me, Lin Hong.”
    She heard a yelp of delight at the other end, then Shen Ning unleashed a stream of comments and questions: “It’s great to hear your voice! I called you once, but nobody picked up. Are you doing well? It’s been ages since we saw each other. A year now, right? It seems like ages. Have you heard from Zhao Ping and Zhang Lini at all? It’s been years since I saw them, too. Are you doing well?”
    “No, I’m not doing well,” Lin Hong said.
    Shen Ning went quiet. “What did you say?”
    Tears began to spill from Lin Hong’s eyes. “My husband has been cheating on me. He’s been carrying on with some woman …” She was sobbing too much to continue.
    “What happened?” Shen Ning asked.
    “Yesterday,” Lin Hong said, “yesterday, when I was tidying his drawer, I found a folded envelope, and when I opened it I found two more envelopes inside. He had hidden a key inside those three envelopes. I got suspicious and tried all the locks in the apartment, but it didn’t open any of them. So I thought maybe it was the key to his office desk, and this morning I went to his office, and that’s where I found the letters that this woman wrote to him, as well as a couple of photos—”
    “Outrageous!” Shen Ning started cursing.
    Now that Lin Hong had an ally at last, her grief and resentment could find release. “I did everything for him,” she said. “I never gave a moment’s thought to whether there were things I should have. All the time I was thinking of what I could do for him, what he’d like to eat, what clothes he should wear. After we got married, I completely forgot about myself. All that mattered to me was catering to his needs, and now look what he gets up to …”
    “What’s your plan?” Shen Ning asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ll tell you,” Shen Ning said. “You can’t afford to be weak at this point, and you can’t be softhearted, either. You have to punish him. No more crying from now on—whatever you do, don’t let him see you cry. You need to look furious and ignore him. Don’t cook his meals; don’t do his laundry; don’t do anything for him. Don’t let him sleep in your bed—make him sleep on the sofa. At the very least, make him sleep onthe sofa for a year or so. He’ll beg you, he’ll get down on his knees, he’ll even slap himself on the face, but stick to your guns. He’ll make all kinds of promises—men are good at that, but their promises are worth no more than a dog’s bark. Don’t believe a word of it. In short, you need to make him understand the costs incurred when he has a romantic adventure, you have to give him a taste of hell on earth, you have to make him feel that life’s not worth living, that he’d be better off dead.”
    A FEW DAYS LATER , Li Hanlin came back from his trip.