It had been a month. The paramedics had not needed to transfer Chen Hang to the hospital to pronounce him deceased. But even after extensive investigation, the hospital could not determine the cause of death. Chen Hang’s old parents came to Beijing from Fujian and, after a week, decided that it was unacceptable to delay their son’s funeral any longer, and that Chen Hang was to join their family graveyard at once (otherwise his soul would be lost for ever). Besides, they themselves had spent too much time in a hotel in Beijing, and his mother could not sleep in a bed that was not her own. So Chen Hang’s father had declared, with an authoritative slap on a table, that the cause of death on his son’s death certificate was to be left unknown. He was dead, it did not matter how. He did not want them meddling with his son’s body any more. The old couple wrapped the urn with a piece of grey cloth and carefully placed it in their bag. They refused to bring Jia Jia home with them for the funeral, calling her a curse, and demanding that she have nothing to do with the Chen family again.
It was all right. She had not wanted to go anyway.
Since then, everything else around her seemed to have moved on uncompromisingly. She learned from Chen Hang’s lawyer that her husband, with all his wealth, had left her nothing but the apartment where they lived and her allowance of sixty thousand yuan, transferred to her bank account for the winter. He had written a will when they first got married, endowing most of his assets to his own family.
At his best, Chen Hang had provided for her; but in death he had made no provision. Jia Jia had swiftly come to understand that the past years of her life, the best years of her life, had been wasted and taken by a selfish man to his death, wrapped up into that urn and transported back to a graveyard where she, according to his family, had no right to enter. She should have given him a child sooner. That way, he would have cared more for her. But she had still been young when they married, and when she turned thirty and felt as though she was ready, a certain distance had begun to grow between them. It had not been clear to her back then, but now she saw that the foundation of their marriage had been disintegrating before his death. Those nights that he had spent elsewhere, the trip he had cancelled, the holidays he had taken without her. It was all right, she had told herself, in time things will be fixed. But where did all that leave her now? She felt homeless, ridiculous for having ever imagined that Chen Hang was going to give her a home. An empty apartment was not a home.
She had considered selling the apartment, but Chen Hang had been adamant that owning property was the safest investment, so she had contacted an agent to find her a tenant. The agent told her that the apartment was too large to be desirable for white-collar professionals who were mostly single or had small families. Larger families preferred to steer away from the Central Business District. Fine, she conceded, list it for sale too. Quite quickly, the agent had found a buyer who had offered her a fair price on the property, after which she had studied the contract in detail over a drink one night, but something had gone wrong with the mortgage application and the buyer had withdrawn.
Apart from an un-rentable, un-sellable apartment, some cash, and a drawing of a fish-man, Jia Jia felt that she did not own anything; that even these things were not hers because they had all once belonged to her husband. She frantically searched the rooms for something she could truly call her own. It had given her comfort to find a few of her old paintings hanging on the wall and stacked in the extra bathroom.
Chen Hang had been supportive of her painting – until she had tried to sell her work at her friend’s gallery.
‘Jia Jia, I remember talking to you about this,’ he had said to her. ‘I don’t want you to go out in the world and struggle to make money. Let me provide for my wife. Yes, you can paint! But I don’t understand why you feel you must go out and sell your paintings. Like those struggling artists.’
She was sitting on the sofa in the living room, while he paced around looking down at her.
‘It looks bad,’ he added.
With that, her career had become a hobby.
Jia Jia took one last puff on her cigarette and returned to the bar. She thought the cold air had cleared her head a little. The barman was wiping some glasses and organising them back in place on the shelves. He had large hands with long thin fingers, joints bulging out a little, like bamboo.
‘Can I get you something else?’ he asked.
‘You’re already cleaning up. I’ve had too much to drink.’
‘Dishwashing is my way of meditating.’ He tapped his index finger on his temple twice and winked. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, lifting two glasses in one hand and an almost empty bottle of brandy in the other.
He poured and they touched glasses.
‘I heard about your husband,’ he said apologetically.
‘Are you married?’ Jia Jia said as she leaned across the counter to look at his name tag. ‘Leo?’
‘Certainly not,’ Leo said.
‘Why not?’ she asked. He appeared to be thinking and did not answer her immediately. ‘Oh, forget about it,’ she said. ‘I’m a fool to ask you, Mr Leo with an English name. There’s no rush for you men. That’s how you pronounce it, right? Lee-oh?’ She slouched on her stool. ‘But you must get married eventually. You must have a home to go back to after you close your bar. I’d hate to see you become a lonely old man, Mr Leo.’
‘Did you feel at home when you were with him?’ Leo asked, his eyes fixed on hers.
Jia Jia could not respond immediately; she was startled that he was provoking her like that, and not quite sure what he meant. Had Chen Hang told him, during one of his nights here, that he had lost interest in his wife? Or was it something that Leo had picked up from watching them while they were at his bar? Jia Jia’s hand froze for a moment, but before Leo had a chance to notice, she brought her drink up to her lips. The lights hanging above the counter abruptly went off.
‘I’m sorry.’ Leo went to the corner of the room for the fuse box.
‘Can I smoke in here?’ Jia Jia asked as she fumbled for the new pack of cigarettes in her bag.
‘When nobody else is here, you can,’ he said.
Jia Jia rested a cigarette between her fingers. ‘He gave me an apartment, you know?’ she said after a few moments, bringing the cigarette to her lips and lighting it. ‘Quite an impressive one, big and everything. It was nice of him to do that. Don’t you think?’
A feeble light came on and Leo returned to the bar.
‘This is the best I can do,’ he said, pointing to the light. ‘We’ll have to wait a bit before trying to reset the breaker again.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m about to leave anyway.’
Jia Jia had wanted to order another drink. But what on earth was she doing, squandering money at expensive bars, as if Chen Hang would refill her bank account in a few months? And where had she left her pride, still hoping that Chen Hang would provide for her? Abruptly, she put her cigarette out, asked for the bill, stuffing an extra hundred-yuan note into Leo’s hands as she paid. She swept up her belongings and left, concerned that the one hundred was not enough for the extra glass of brandy he had poured her. She would pay him back next time.
The pavements were empty and it had stopped snowing. Jia Jia slowed her footsteps, walking back across the street to her apartment, where she had a long shower and lay down. In bed, she began to weep beneath her blanket. The fan in the air purifier turned more furiously. Outside her window, buildings blurred as smog accumulated once again. And she kept crying, silently, occasionally choking while trying to catch her breath, as if, even in her desolation, she was too afraid to disturb the wintry silence.