People Chosen by Cats

Zhu Jing

Shandong Pictorial Publishing House

April 2023

56.00 (CNY)

This book collects Zhu Jings 11 new short stories written in the last three years. These stories tell about the complex and destructive power in intimate relationships, as well as womens contradictions and essential loneliness in this era as they grow up.

Zhu Jing

Zhu Jing is a novelist and a doctor of Literature, an associate professor at the School of Arts, Nanjing Normal University, and a visiting scholar at Waseda University. She won the 7th Purple Mountain Literary Award of Jiangsu Province.

When Lihua told me about the stormy waves in her life, I was testing the skin on my face inch by inch with my fingers. The fine particles that could be clearly defined by the touch of my fingers suggested that I was suffering an allergic event once in a century. After about half an hour, she left. I began to cook dinner. The house suddenly fell into quietness. In the crib, Xizai had learned a new game. When the crib pulleys were not locked, she could slide the crib from the bedroom to the dining room on her own. It was enough for her to see me cooking in the kitchen. She enjoyed this game of wandering. Sometimes, I looked back at her. Her small head was covered by thin and soft hair; her plump cheeks showed pretty radians. She smiled at me, revealing only a few teeth.

The backs of prawns were opened, and the black veins were removed, leaving some shrimp tails. After the oil was hot, I poured them into the pan. In the blink of an eye, they were curved and became shrimp balls, vivid, full, and fleshy. They tasted good with green asparagus and broccoli. I steamed the perch and put onion balls on it. When dinner was ready, I would pour soy sauce over the dish. The cooking machine was working smoothly. In the mixers, the green was spinach, the yellow was sweet potatoes, and the red was carrots. I fried small pieces of salmon or cod with walnut oil in the pan. This was Xizais dinner.

Over dinner, I said to Kun, “I seem to be allergic.”

“Hum,” Kun replied vaguely. It seemed that he had answered me, or not. I was a little confused by why I suddenly became allergic, but I didnt care too much. When I was feeding Xizai, I quickly swallowed some food.

The next day, the day after the next... On the seventh day, those fine particles remained. I began to feel anxious. I watched my face in the mirror. If I looked close enough, I could see the fine particles. But they were a red piece when I looked from a distance. I touched them with my hand, and it felt sensitive. The bad feeling rested on my fingers. At the dinner table, I repeated, “I seem to be really allergic.” “Oh,” Kun raised his eyes, “It seems a bit red.”

On the third afternoon, Lihua had a days break and visited me as usual. As undergraduate schoolmates for four years, Lihua and I were originally not familiar with each other. As a native, she used to go back home on weekends, and our schedules were perfectly staggered. She was generous and keen on club activities, but I was a home girl who was haunted by the dormitory, the library, and classrooms. So, how did we become close friends? When I look back, she loved roller skating for a while. There was a popular skating rink in the city. Next to the rink was the largest book market in the city. For our own hobbies, we took a bus from the remote school to downtown. Then, she went to the rink, and I went to the book market. After that, we went back to school together on the rickety bus. I asked her, “Why did you choose that rink among so many other ones?” She told me, “That rink is near my high school. In the past, when I went back home by bike from school, seeing the fashionable boys and girls inside, I would think about when I could go there.” On the night bus back to school, we hid in the corner of the crowd as if we had been separated from the outside world. After some secret talks, we became bosom friends. After graduation, we both worked in this city. We got married almost at the same time and attended each others weddings. We had children almost at the same time, too, and they were pretty girls.

We put our children in a crib, and they could work jointly to slide the crib around the living room like a pulley. Their laughter echoed in the whole space like angels bells. Lihua boiled coffee herself and took some leftover cheesecake out of the fridge. This kind of cake used to be wildly popular, but suddenly, nobody was interested in it. Now, you could buy one and get one for free, and the cakes were delivered quickly to the door. Then, I gave up the painstaking work of making cakes. It was fine to have desserts with bitter drinks. I put down my work and poured a cup of coffee, too. I sat next to her and had the cake little by little. I only took a sip at a time to control my dependence on sugar. My responsibilities at 31 years old include keeping fit, going on a diet, and teaching Xizai numbers.

“I worked the night shift yesterday. This morning, I went back and had a check. As expected, he didnt stay at home for the night. The towel was dry, and the toothbrush was dry.”

“The night before yesterday, when he was taking a bath, I went downstairs with his car key, and found a cell phone in the trunk. But I couldnt open it without a password.”

Lihua told me about her husbands latest news as usual. It sounded like a report from a private detective agency. Recently, her statement has been more of an intellectual contest than sorrow. Lihua and her husband Xiao, my husband Kun and I, used to be a group of four connected by Lihua and me. In the beginning, we had a good time, dining and singing together. Lihua has been married for four years and they have a three-year-old child. Her husband has been unfaithful for three and a half years. In the past three and a half years, Ive seen her collapse, her despair, her complaints, and her indifference. Now she gossips the latest news of her husbands affair, which has become a regular part of our talks.