Candy by Mian Mian Read Free Book Online Page B

child with your father for a year, and then you gave him back because you did some investigating and found out you weren’t the father after all. Now you’re twenty-four, your mother is in Japan, your father is in England, and you’re on your own in China. You’re not family, and I can choose whether or not to be with you. Nobody is responsible for you but yourself. You have to learn to accept the consequences of what you do. My father taught me this.
    7.
    I moved in with Sanmao. This time I couldn’t tell myself that Saining wasn’t to blame.
    I was like a bird perching on a rooftop; I was stuck. My self-confidence had reached a low point. Sanmao said that my problem was that in loving Saining I had forgotten myself, and that a person who doesn’t love herself is unlovable in turn. He told me, Love is something that has to be learned.
    I went out every day to buy liquor, but I always threw up before I’d drunk very much. Sanmao said I was a sad and stupid girl.
    Saining came to see me every Sunday night. He always brought presents, and sometimes he brought me songs he’d written while thinking about me. Saining’s response to the world around him was mystical and highly original, but he hadn’t had a decent Chinese education. There was no schooling for him at the work farm, and after he’d gone to England he wasn’t able to study Chinese, so the songs he wrote were full of wrong characters, and I was usually the only person who could decipher them and make any sense out of what he wrote. He worked hard to express his feelings in the songs he wrote about me, saying that he couldn’t bear to be parted from me. Soon he was even calling me “a woman as sweet as milk,” but then the next thing I knew he was also calling me “a cookie laced with poison.”
    I asked Saining, Do you love Qi? He said, Yes. I said, What do you love about her? He said, I love her vulnerability and her selfishness, her beauty and her sadness. I love her stubbornness, I love her body, I love the way she doesn’t love people. I said, Saining, don’t I have a good body? Don’t I satisfy you? Saining said, Her body expresses so much disappointment. I’m addicted to that feeling of hopelessness. I said, Well, you always say exactly what you mean. So, do you feel the same kind of love for her and me? He said, I feel the same kind of love for everyone; I only have one kind of love. I said, I only have one kind of love too, but you’re the only person I love. There’s no one else; I love only you. But you, if you love me and everyone else the same way, then why do you feel like you have to be with me? He said, Because I need to have some connection with you in this life. And he started to cry.
    He couldn’t do anything without crying. When we made love, he performed badly, often quitting halfway through. He played with my breasts until they got sore, and I was afraid that the good times we’d had in the past would never come back. This thought made me shudder. I really didn’t know what love was; I only knew that if he were to be cut out of my life, I wouldn’t be able to go on.
    I tracked Qi down. I told her I could never forgive her for the pain she’d caused me and said I hoped that she would disappear from our lives forever. I said, Saining loves you, but he’ll never be able to leave me. Do you want to be in love with a man like that? Qi said, You and Saining, you’re both pathetic little good-for-nothings, just sponging off of other people. You’re useless; you don’t even understand each other! You’re a pair of idiots, and you bore me to death!
    She left, and I never saw her again.
    I chose a blustery and moonless night to slash my wrists. Sanmao was at work at the nightclub, and I knew what time Saining would be leaving the house where he tutored, knew that he would be coming to see me that night. So I went into the bathroom a little before I expected him to show up. And when the knife in my hand pressed against my vein