He did everything but penetrate her, or, rather, he kept his promise. Although he didn’t penetrate her, he did everything else he could possibly do. Soon the girl was dispatched on a mission to accompany a senior officer on an inspection of the Chinese-Vietnamese border. After that he didn’t hear from her for a while.

Almost a year later, also in winter, the girl suddenly reappeared. He had just come home late at night after drinking at a friend’s home when he heard a quiet knocking on his door. The girl was wretched, crying, and said she had been waiting for a whole six hours outside and was frozen stiff. She couldn’t wait in the hallway because she was afraid people would see her and ask who she was looking for. She had hidden in the workers’ hut outside and it was awful waiting until she saw the light come on in the apartment. He quickly shut the door and had just drawn the curtains when the girl, still wrapped in her outrageously huge military overcoat and still not warm, said, “Elder Brother, take me!”

He took her on the carpet, rolling backward and forward, no, crossing rivers and seas. They were like two sleek fish, or, rather, two animals tearing at one another in battle. She began to sob, and he said cry as loudly as you want, you can’t be heard outside. She wept and wailed, and then shouted. He said he was a wolf. She said no, you are my Elder Brother. He said he wanted to be a wolf, a savage, lustful, bloodsucking, wild animal. She said she understood her Elder Brother, she belonged to her Elder Brother, she wasn’t afraid of anything. From now on she belonged only to her Elder Brother, what she regretted was that she had not given herself to him earlier. … He said, don’t talk about it. …

Afterward, she said she wanted her parents to somehow think of a way of getting her out of the army. At the time, he had an invitation to travel overseas but wasn’t able to leave. She said she would wait for him, she was her Elder Brother’s little woman. He finally got a passport and visa, and it was she who urged him to leave quickly in case they changed their minds. He did not realize it would be a permanent separation. Maybe he was unwilling or refused to think about it so that the pain would not strike him right to the core of his heart.

He would not let her come to the airport to see him off, and she said she would not be able to get leave. Even if she got the first bus from the barracks into the city, then changed several buses to get to the airport, it was unlikely that she would get there before his plane took off.

Before that, it had not occurred to him that he might leave this country. On the runway, taking off at Beijing airport, there was an intense whirring as the plane shuddered and was then instantly airborne. He suddenly felt that maybe—at the time he felt only maybe—he would never return to the land below the window. This expanse of gray-brown earth that people called homeland was where he was born and had grown up, it was where he had been educated, had matured and had suffered, and where he never thought he would leave. But did he have a homeland? Could the gray-brown land and ice-clad rivers in motion under the wings of the plane count as his homeland? It was later that this question arose and the answer gradually became quite clear.

At the time he simply wanted to free himself, to leave the black shadow enveloping him, to be able to breathe happily for a while. To get his passport, he had waited almost a year and had made the rounds of all the relevant departments. He was a citizen of this country, not a criminal, and there was no reason to deprive him of the right to leave the country. Of course, this reason was different for different people, and it was always possible to find a reason.

As he went through the customs barrier, they asked what he had in his suitcase. He said he had no prohibited goods, just his everyday clothes. They asked him to open his suitcase. He unlocked it.

“What’s in there?”

“An ink stone for grinding ink, I bought it not so long ago.” What he meant was that it was not antique, that it was not a prohibited item. However, they could still use any excuse to detain him, so he couldn’t help being tense. A thought flashed through his mind: this was not his country.

In the same instant, he seemed to hear, “Elder Brother—” He quickly held his breath to calm himself.

Finally he was allowed through. He fixed his suitcase and put it on the conveyor belt, zipped up his hand luggage, and headed toward the boarding gate. He heard shouting again, someone seemed to be shouting his name. He pretended not to hear and kept going, but still he looked back. The official who had just searched his luggage had been checking a few foreigners in the sectioned-off corridor and was in the process of letting them through.

At that moment, he heard a drawn-out shout, a woman was calling his name, it was coming from far away and floated above the din of the people in the departure hall. His gaze went above the partition at the entrance to customs, searching for where the sound was coming from. He saw someone in a big army overcoat and an army hat, hunched over the marble railing of the second floor, but he couldn’t see the face clearly.

The night he said good-bye to her, as she gave herself to him, she said over and over into his ear, “Elder Brother, don’t come back, don’t come back. …” Was this a premonition? Or was she thinking of him? Could she see things more clearly? Or could she guess what was in his heart? At the time he said nothing, he still hadn’t the courage to make this decision. But she had awakened him, awakened him to this thought. He didn’t dare to confront it, was still unable to cut the bonds of love and hope, unable to abandon her.

He hoped the person in the green army uniform hunched over the railing wasn’t her, turned and continued toward the boarding gate. The red light on the flight indicator was flashing. He heard behind him a forlorn scream, a drawn-out “Elder Brother—” It must be her. However, without looking back again, he went through the boarding gate.

4

Warm and moist, writhing flesh. Memories start returning but you know it’s not her, that sensitive delicate body that had let you do anything you wanted. The big, robust body pressing hard on you with unrestrained lust and abandonment totally exhausts you. “Keep talking! That Chinese girl, how did you enjoy yourself with her and how did you abandon her just like that?” You say she was a perfect woman, the girl wanted only to be a little woman, and wasn’t wanton and lustful like her. “Are you saying you don’t like it?” she asks. You say of course you like it, it’s what you dream about, this sheer, total abandonment. “You also wanted to make her, that girl of yours, become like this?”—“Yes!”—“Also turn into a spring?”—“Just like this,” you convulse, breathless. “Are all women the same for you?”—“No.”—“How are they different?”—“With her there was another sort of tension.”—“How was it different?”—“There was a sort of love.”—“So you didn’t enjoy yourself with her?”—“I enjoyed her but it was different.”—“Here it is just carnal lust.”—“Yes.”—“Who is sucking you?”—“A German girl.”—“A one-night prostitute?”—“No,” you call out her name, “Margarethe!”

At this she smiles, takes your head in her hands and kisses you. She is straddling you, kneeling, but her legs relax as she turns to brush aside a loose tangle of hair hanging over her eyes.

“Didn’t you call out the wrong name?” There is an odd ring in her voice.

“Aren’t you Margarethe?” you ask back, not comprehending.

“It was I who said it first.”

“Don’t you remember? When you asked, your name had already come to my lips.”