It was the last indulgence the villagers would see in a long time. A black Mercury taxi with fenders and white streak on both sides started pulling out of the dirt road that would have been impassable in the rainy season, as the villagers did their best to look nonchalant but really you could tell they were impressed and jealous. Inside the black Mercury were two of theirs, though they never really accepted them as theirs, and that added more to their jealousy. And only when the black Mercury disappeared in the distant heat did the villagers disperse. They would see the woman again the next day; some even knew they would as rumors and suppositions have already settled itself as fact that she was being left behind, this time for good; that would make them slightly more satisfied. Some tragedy needed to come to this family that could afford to show off its complicated wealth in the form of a black Mercury in front of all these poverty-stricken eyes.
The ride wasn't too long, especially in the dry season. The faces of the man and woman behind the driver were sullen. They weren't used to looking at each other, and in this trip they didn't look at each other at all, even when they spoke to each other. His heart was tight; he could barely hear it beat, or feel it. His body was stiff, as if it were a coffin for that unbeating amulet from which all his blood had poured. He touched his wife the first day he had returned. He was most confused when he made love to her because he wasn't sure if it was love. It was a little bit of obligation, a little bit of lust, a little bit of claiming his right as a husband, all with this stranger he had married more than year ago but had only seen three months then. Now this trip he had stayed four months, and he was leaving again, and every day of those four months he felt more and more alienated from her and the village he had spent his childhood in. There's a mirror, small one, affixed between the front two seats of the car, and there he could steal a glimpse of this woman. She had the most ordinary face you could imagine from a Chinese village. There was nothing special, nothing fiery, nothing sexy, nothing crazy. But simple people whose daily task is to evade starvation had none of these worldly features. She didn't have have the diffidence that could be construed as flirtation. She was a nondescript woman whose destiny somehow intertwined with his a year ago and ended up being in his household without really his own volition. He has mostly dealt with his anger about how this old society had worked against him. His fury had mostly subsided over how he was propelled by ancient forces to return to a village he no longer felt like home, a place full of simpletons like her who still believed in superstitious healers and rituals and were totally oblivious of the revolutions that were sweeping across the world that he had witnessed. These people didn't even know what love was, what falling in love was, because, according to his theory, love was just another obstruction towards survival. His arranged marriage was not as frustrating as the inner force that drew him back the first time.
Then there was this second time. It drew him back again only to show him how even greater was the gap between him and the simpletons that he left behind fifteen years before his first return. He looked at her face and sorrow drew a big flame in his heart. He knew that to remain with them, even from a distant, would mean a lifetime of unhappiness for everyone. That was his theory. He understood that he was copping out of something he himself had forged a year ago. Not only did he agree to marry this woman, he also made her make an extra vow. That night after they made their love the first time, by the oil lamp that so feebly shown their naked bodies, he took her hand and held it tight and asked to make a vow. She at first didn't understand why it was necessary when they had already married, which to her was the greatest vow between a man and a woman. He nodded and explained in the simplest ways, "Love requires a simpler promise. It doesn't need banquets and extravagantly large quantities of food and showing off to all the relatives and neighbors. Love is simple. Love is more powerful. Love is personal, between just you and me. And it is love that can master all our troubles and overcome all our obstacles. And marriage being just a societal invention can't be as powerful. So I hold both your hands and I tell you that my heart will be with you forever and I will never abandon you. So now you tell me the same thing." She did. And he was overcome with joy that night. Whatever dread he had for returning and marrying a girl from the village of his birth, they were well worth it with this vow. All the trouble of returning, and all the horrors of his life in the country he had left his native land for, all seemed worth it now that he had true love, not a constructed one for the sake of survival.
That was then. That was before he realized village life wasn't for him. He, the worldly traveler who spent more than a decade in cities and then fighting in a war that for the most part saw no victories, he, the antithesis of tradition and village life, quickly felt crushed by the mundane and intellectually retarded stagnation of the village. His indignation and consequent condescension were not appreciated at all by the villagers, not that first time and certainly not this second visit of his where he disrupted a prayer for medical advice when he felt he could no longer tolerate such deep superstition in a world of medical and scientific advances.
But the vow he had made and made her make pierced his soul like a javelin and he could do nothing much about it. But he could just accept it. He finally said to her, "The next time I return may not be as soon as this time." He didn't dare to even steal a glimpse of her from the mirror, but he could imagine her stoic face that would betray no changes in emotion. She said in the most frank manner, "You go for as long as you want. It doesn't matter." A part of him felt a little relieved that the simple woman next to her understood that between the lines it was implied that he would never return again. He was relieved that perhaps she was allowing him to give up their vow, their romantic one as much as the societal one. The same part felt there was really no romance; you couldn't have romance between two strangers. That night, after all, was the first time she had even seen him.
"You take care of little Su. And of course," he said with a prickly rock in his throat, " take care of the young one yet to come. I hope he's a boy." He tried to smile, but not knowing what her expression was, exactly, he dared not to. She said, "You know I will." Yes, she would. Like many village women, she was tough. she wouldn't be the first to lose a husband in a foreign land and wouldn't be the last. And they were tough creatures who had simple goals. "I will send whatever money I can spare, of course," he said. That was the always the supposed reason for men to stay abroad: to make money for the family in a hostile environment where starvation and famine had been a reality for millennia. "I am sure you will," she said without showing any degree of credulousness.
In his last show of being a gentleman, he opened the door for her when the taxi arrived at the White Clouds airport. He wasn't sure if she understood the gesture. Women were always so invisible in that culture, showing any appreciation might be lost to her. She climbed out of the taxi without looking at her, in deference to her husband still bound to her in name if not in soul. He didn't know if she looked at him at all. The taxi driver gave him his two pieces of luggage and received instructions to drive the lady back. They stood there in front of the black Mercury with the distant White Clouds mountains as the backdrop of their farewell. It would be the last time they stood together, spoke to each other, and if they had wanted to, looked at each other. But he looked at the cloth buttons of her thin, silk shirt, the best she had, with simple patterns. He had bought that for her. He wasn't sure where she was looking at. They exchanged casual farewell remarks. He felt his heart suddenly beating fast. Was it excitement that he was now free? Was it suddenly emotions he had never felt before? Was it just guilt and anger busting at the seams again? Women he had seen overseas were full of emotions all the time, making noise all the time, but when he couldn't imagine what was plastered on her face was more than the same survivalist stoicism. He looked at her flat belly once more. Just like last time, it was a flat belly incubating his blood, a part of his life. But this time, he wouldn't see what would come to fruition. At best he would give it the financial resources to make it happy. He realized at that point that he was thinking the same way he was brought up to: make lots of money for the sole objective in life of survival, and you pray everything would go well.
He turned around without daring to look back. In the movies he had seen there would be some drama; but drama would evade him this time. Maybe back in his real home, abroad, life would indeed be more interesting, but he couldn't help but feel a poetically heavy weight in his heart as he entered the terminal he would never see again.
