Waiting

Ha Jin

Once alone in a toilet stall, he tried to sort out his thoughts. Manna must have hoped he would spend two thousand yuan to buy off Bensheng at that time, though she had never made her wish explicit to him. He remembered clearly that she refused to share such a cost. Then why did she call him 'miser'? He felt something clutching his lungs, and a pain gnawed him in the chest. Had he had that much money, he would certainly have brought about the divorce sooner. He had told her that he only had six hundred yuan in the bank, and she wouldn't even reveal to him how much she had saved. She must have thought he was a rich man and could easily afford two thousand yuan. After so many years, how come she still didn't believe him? Why on earth had she always kept her secrets from him, never allowing him to see her bankbook?
In his mind a voice replied, Because money's more precious and more effective than love. If you had spent the money, everything would have worked out all right and you could have enjoyed a happy marriage.
No, it wasn't that simple, Lin retorted.
It was simple and clear like a bug on a bald head, the voice went on. Say you had owned ten thousand yuan and spent one-fifth of it on your brother-in-law, counting that as a loss. Then you could have married Manna a decade ago. If so, she wouldn't have harbored a grievance against you. You see, isn't money more powerful than love?
That's not true, Lin countered. We needed no money to help us fall in love, just as we need no money to consummate our marriage.
Really? Then why did you spend eleven hundred yuan for the wedding? Why have you kept separate bank accounts?
Lin was at a loss for an answer, but he suppressed that cold voice. For a long while he remained in the bathroom, which was the only quiet place where he could be unobserved. Now he was sitting on the windowsill with his back against the wall, absentmindedly watching the backyard. It was already dark; beyond the screen mosquitoes were humming and fireflies were drawing little arcs. From a dormitory house a harmonica was shrieking out "The Internationale" disjointedly. A truck driver was burning oily rags at the corner of the garage, a bucket of water standing by him. Far away on the hill a cluster of gas lamps were flickering in a temporary apiary. Some beekeepers were still busy collecting honey over there despite nightfall.

Ha Jin's story of a man waiting to get married stumps you. What are you to do with this? A man waits to be with the woman he loves because he's already married by an arranged marriage to a woman who, let's face it, isn't all that bad, although she does have bound feet and is a bit of a peasant, but all the same she takes care of his aging parents and serves him and is faithful and raises their daughter and works really hard and at the end of the story she seems like a pretty wonderful woman all-round, yet still this man is determined to marry this other woman, the one he loves, only he doesn't feel forceful enough about it to be harsh and compel his wife to divorce him, nor does he feel passionate enough to break the rules and have an affair with this woman he loves, so instead he waits twenty years or so and then divorces his first wife and marries this woman who becomes his second wife. What do you do with this guy?

Lin (this wishy-washy guy) comes across as a repugnant wimp, yet you can't really be angry with him because he has good motives. He doesn't want to hurt his first wife, because while he doesn't necessarily love her, he does care about her. He doesn't want to hurt his second wife by having an affair with her because he's conscious of the laws of culture enforced in China during the Cultural Revolution and doesn't want either of them to lose their jobs. Really, he just can't make a decision. The story is one that vividly characterizes indecision.

But Ha Jin, like every good writer, knows the importance of a bathroom. I am convinced that there is no more thoughtful place than a bathroom. Lin's strongest moments occur in the bathroom. I would like to point to the cliche: shit or get off the pot, which is what one wishes someone had yelled at Lin earlier on in the story, but he manages to figure something out in the bathroom.