THEY TALK ABOUT the seven-year itch. I've always thought, "So what about the sixth year?"
Now I know: in the sixth year, we were both wondering if we'd itch by the seventh.
If the itch was light, we could just scratch. If it was strong, we could rub each other. If it was unbearable, we'd just slip off our shoes. Who was it that said spouses are like shoes?
I never thought that six years would go by this quickly. I ought to write something as a record of our ordinary married life.
It's because of its ordinariness that it deserves to be recorded.
Neither of us like sturm und drang. Neither of us like crucibles, or gauntlets.
Time makes us grow into each other like tumors. Separation means mutilation. Halves of lives are lost.
And so we've chosen to stay together; we both love life.
If we stay together till our hair goes white, this writing will become a milestone. If not, it will become the epitaph for our graves.
On a wet and clammy night, there was not a sound other than the music from inside the car.
"What if we don't make it to the seventh year?" I asked my pig of a husband.
"I can definitely make it," Pig said, glancing over at me.
"Whatever it takes?" I shot back.
"Whatever it takes!" replied Pig.
I'm apt to neither overlook nor spare. "What if we are both weak and fatigued, and just could not make it?" I asked.
Pig responded in the same way every time I became unreasonable. He would turn the highly praised profile of his face toward me, lightly tug on my ears and say, "You're so cute, thinking up silly things all day. Why don't you think up some ways to make money?"
This is my husband. I call him "Pig."
Everything on earth, once it entered his brain, became simplified into a single, plain reason: money.
He firmly believed that the base determined the superstructure.
I really admired him for this. When it comes to money, I spend it like it's water. As for earning money, I cherish each cent as if it's gold.
I think Pig admired me, too. He would often wonder how strange it was that the total of my bank account would go unchanged for a whole year, unable to accumulate a single, additional penny.
I said to him, "Pig, sometimes I am really thankful to you, sometimes I really adore you, sometimes I really despise you, sometimes I really hate you, sometimes I really trust you, sometimes I really want to know how my life would be different if I hadn't met you. Sometimes I am really panic-stricken, thinking of enduring a life without you."
"That's a lot of 'really' in a row," he said. "You're going to be this bipolar till you get old."
I sighed. I have no choice. If I can't change my husband, and my husband won't change himself, then I have to change.
This is how disagreeable of a woman I am — a fortune telling website once gave me the prediction, "Your body is at rest, but your mind is unsettled." To put it more academically, "Life fills you with dissatisfaction and the future fills you with dread." What's more, I am so emotional and sentimental that I am on the brink of a mental schism.
I often assisted Pig in lamenting his bad luck. He married me like a chivalrous knight in a moment of blind devotion, and from that moment he has had to face my tortuous inquisitions, full of extreme questions regarding life, death, love and hate.
Men I've known have often asked, sympathetically, "Is your husband getting along all right?"
Every time I stood up for him like a revolutionary, "What suffering he bears makes all men happier. At least this way, I don't have to engage some other random man in painful dialogue."
Recently I've felt anxious. Life has become too tranquil.
There is no more quarrelling like a violent storm.
I'm a woman who fears peace on earth. Still water fills me with a deeper dread than does a raging tempest.
I'm afraid of affection going out like a receding tide, like color slowly fading from an old painting that becomes more diluted until one day, all that remains is not its original whiteness, but a permanent yellow stain. If life was really like this, I wouldn't bother waiting until that day. I'd just take the painting and rip it to shreds. Even in pieces, it will still be a painting.
One Saturday, we went to a restaurant nearby to get a bite to eat. We were wearing black T-shirts, eating porridge to our heart's content. The potatoes there were like huge, fragrant stones.
"I don't like irregularly shaped swimming pools," I said. "Whenever I do backstroke, I'm afraid of hitting my head."
"Yeah, me too," said Pig.
"I don't like long, narrow pools either," I continued. "They make me feel like I'm going to drown in an ocean tunnel."
"Yeah, me too," said Pig.
"I like big, square, open-air pools under the sun. The kind with a slanted bottom that goes from 1.5 meters to 2 meters at each end."
"Yeah, me too," said Pig.
We looked in each other's eyes, seeing ourselves reflected, laughing like a pair of pigs, holding our round bellies as we giggled.
Like all prosperous marriages, ours is like a ragged piece of old clothing. It breathes, fits well, and is soft. Most of the time, you can't even tell you're wearing it.
But if you ever change and put on a brand new one, you will feel stiff, like you're wearing a shelf. I have no patience to spend the time to make it feel old.
In the evening, Pig was stuffing his lunchbox with rations for the next day's lunch at work. He was packing it like it was the last food he would ever see.
I yelled at him, "You Pig! You've stolen all of my beautiful potatoes!"
Two dimples appeared on his face as he spoke, "I've also stolen your heart."
Unable to escape his grasp, I was trapped in a happy gloom.
