ONE SHORT STORY

Translated from Chinese by Cheryl Schmitz

Quietly

Chu Hsueh-Chang beat Wu Pei-Hua every day.

He beat her with his hands. Blow by blow, as the flesh bounced back into his palm, it was as if his mind were splitting—he didn’t know whether he felt rage or ecstasy. He struck her body, her head, her face. When he’d tired himself out, he stopped. He gazed vacantly at his hands, palms reddened, the fingers as if pricked by needles.

Wu Pei-Hua was just that way: she didn’t make a sound. He hated when she was like that. Her silence was a stinging taunt, a mute resistance. So he had to hit her again, hit her until every part of her had been beaten. She fell limply to the floor. He watched, listening to the sound of his shortened breath. Annoyed and fed-up, he kicked sideways at her body as he walked out of the room. He took some cash from her bag and left.

His hair was a mess, his eyes red and teary like someone who’d just vomited. It was hard not to attract attention. The convenience store clerk shot him a curious look. He glared back, but he didn’t feel like hitting anyone. That burst of energy had already passed. Now, he was the calmest person in the world. Serenely, he sat down with his drink, wiped the table, then went to discard his crumpled ball of tissue paper.

He raised his can and took a sip, then another. It was both refreshing and cooling. Thoughts began to enter his mind. He wished they could get along, just like other people do, take some happy little vacations to places like Tainan or Yilan. He would be good to her, he would.

He didn’t like those little moods of hers. He wished she could let them go. They really didn’t do her any good. He didn’t like her being unhappy. Every time she started to frown or get irritated, he could see her unhappiness amassing like black clouds. It pulled him into a state of unbearable tension. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t comprehend any of this. She was like a child. So he had to teach her: a bad mood will only provoke another bad mood; iron must be tempered by fire to make steel.

He was hungry. He got some biscuits, then took a plastic bag. With tongs, he extracted a tea egg from the broth—one, then another. Silent and scalding, they sank to the bottom of the bag, like anger with no outlet. Head held high, he strode over to the counter. It was the same clerk from before, who didn’t especially notice him anymore. He was of sound body and mind, and the world was full of possibilities.

Good thing he hadn’t said anything nasty just now—he was glad. That could be really harmful to a relationship. Harsh words were like acid; they corroded the bond. As for his physical actions, they felt to him like an afternoon thunderstorm on a summer’s day: that kind of release left one soaked, but it was unavoidable. It was something he couldn’t control. After the rain, the sun shone brightly again. The dusty-gray roads were transformed into spotless surfaces. That kind of thorough wringing-out left him feeling clean, as if the world had been destroyed, and everything could start over again.

He ate one of the eggs. Before leaving, he thought, he’d buy her noodles at the entrance to the alley. The shop owner strained the noodles, forcefully flinging them a few times. The soup should be packed separately, don’t add chives. He remembered these little quirks of hers; they were annoying, but he remembered. Wasn’t that good enough? He got irritated again thinking of it, his chest felt tight, as if crammed with padding. Why couldn’t she remember any of the good parts? She was always provoking him.

He walked quietly up the stairs, noticed the metal gate had been left open. He went in. She wasn’t there. The house was messy. He could tell which parts of the mess were new—in the closet and the bathroom, there was the mess of things being grabbed in a hurry. He paced around a few times, called her phone. No answer. The next time he called, her phone had been turned off.

He calmly sat down. In silence, he looked at the floor. It had originally been tile, which she’d disliked because it was cold and hard. Change it to wood then, he’d said. They’d fought again—he remembered that time he’d been especially brutal. He’d grabbed her head and shoved it at the floor. The sound of the impact rang in his ears, such that it didn’t even seem like something that could come from a human. It was like a mallet, or maybe a jackhammer. After that, she didn’t come home for a long time. For a while, whenever she looked at him, her face was that of a stranger, her body shrunken in fear. He hated that.

He kept waiting. In his pocket, he felt for the bag with the tea egg. He knocked the plastic-encased egg on the table. Its shell cracked. He continued to knock until it shattered into clumps of tiny shards. He felt his fingers pierce through the bag, penetrating the eggshell and the cold, hardened egg white, pinching the egg yolk into a powder. He pinched until the whole bag had been squeezed into a lump, the bag and the egg melded into a single mass, no longer recognizable.

He hoped she’d come back soon. She’d better come back soon. He sat there, like steaming water.