The Seventh Day by Yu Hua Read Free Book Online Page B

her. With me she would only have a humdrum, uneventful life, whereas with him she could build up a whole business. In fact, six months earlier I had already had the faint awareness that she would leave me, and this sensation had only grown stronger during the intervening time. Now that premonition had become fact.
    She gave a deep sigh. “Let’s get a divorce.”
    “All right,” I said.
    After saying this, I couldn’t help shedding a few tears. Although I didn’t want us to break up, there was nothing I could do to make her stay. She raised her head and saw me crying, and she wept too. She wiped her tears away with her hand, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
    I rubbed my eyes. “Don’t say sorry,” I said.
    That morning the two of us went to the office together as usual. I requested a day’s leave and she handed in her notice, then we went to the neighborhood registry office to attend to the divorce paperwork. While she went home to pack her bags, I went to the bank and withdrew all our savings, which came to sixty thousand yuan—the money we had set aside to purchase an apartment. Once I got home, I handed her all the cash. She hesitated a moment, then took twenty thousand. I shook my head and urged her to take the full amount. Twenty thousand was enough, she insisted. That’ll make me worry, I said. She bowed her head and said I didn’t need to worry, I should know how capable she was; she could handle everything perfectly well. She put twenty thousand yuan in her bag and left the rest on the table. Then she gazed fondly at the home we had shared. “I should go now,” she said.
    I helped her collect her clothes and other belongings, which we stuffed into two large suitcases, and I carried the cases down to the street below. She was going first to his hotel and then the two of them would go to the airport, so I hailed a cab and put her cases in the trunk. The moment of parting had now arrived. I waved goodbye to her, but she came forward and hugged me tightly. “I still love you,” she said.
    “I’ll always love you,” I replied.
    She started crying. “I’ll write you and call you,” she said.
    “Don’t write and don’t call,” I said. “That will just upset me.”
    She got into the cab and as it pulled away she didn’t look at me but brushed away her tears. That’s how she left, heading off on the path of life that fate had chosen for her.
    For my father, my sudden divorce was a bolt out of the blue. He looked at me with a face of pure shock as I briefly explained the reasons for the divorce. I said that our marriage was a misunderstanding from the start, because I was simply not good enough for her. He just kept shaking his head, unable to accept what I was saying. “All along I thought she was a good girl,” he lamented. “I misjudged her.”
    My father’s coworkers Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen, a married couple, were equally shocked when they heard the news. Qiangsheng insisted categorically that the man was a confidence trickster and would dump Li Qing without batting an eye. In his view, she didn’t know what was good for her and would be sure to end up regretting her decision. Yuezhen had always been fond of Li Qing, saying she was smart and pretty and understanding. But now Yuezhen was convinced Li Qing was a gold digger, and she bemoaned the fact that there were more and more such women in this society where you get more respect if you’re a whore than if you’re poor. Yuezhen tried to comfort me, saying there was no shortage of young women better than her—she knew a good half dozen. She introduced me to several, sure enough, but none of these possibilities went anywhere. I take most of the responsibility for that: in our time together Li Qing had gradually and imperceptibly reshaped my expectations, until she achieved a peerless position in my mind. On dates with those other girls, I couldn’t help but compare them to her and always ended up disappointed.
    In the