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flannel bear on top of the bed. But as for Horsie’s things, you won’t see so much as a pen of his on the table. It’s only when his clothes are drying on the balcony that you have a chance of finding some trace of his property in the apartment.” Guo Bin gave a smirk at the thought of the stuffed bear. “Could it be that even as a married woman,” he asked us—and himself too—“Lü Yuan still hugs her bear when she goes to sleep?”
    As time went on, Guo Bin’s familiarity with Horsie’s apartment grew steadily more complete, and he would brag that even if he were to walk around the apartment for half an hour with his eyes closed he could still manage to avoid knockinginto a single chair. What’s more, he said he knew how items were distributed and what things could be found in what cabinet, and if anyone was curious he could provide a detailed inventory.
    “There’s a drawer in their bedside table,” he said, “which holds all their identity papers and their bankbooks. It’s locked. Under the drawer is a pile of Lü Yuan’s panties and bras. There are stockings and scarves there too.”
    As for Horsie’s underwear, socks, and scarves, there was no special place reserved for them, for they were crammed into a wardrobe with the rest of his stuff—winter clothes, summer clothes, spring and autumn clothes—all in a single drawer, no less. One time, Guo Bin saw for himself the immense effort involved if Horsie wanted to put his hands on a simple undershirt. It was as though he were searching through a garbage heap for discarded clothes, first sticking his head into the wardrobe, then his shoulders too, eventually emerging with just a pair of underpants in his hand. He tossed them aside, then took his entire collection of clothes in his arms and dumped everything on the floor. He knelt in front of this little mountain of clothing and spent another half hour rummaging around before at last he managed to find his undershirt.
    Guo Bin gave us to understand that only he could grasp the subtle relations between Horsie and Lü Yuan. “You people just can’t imagine what goes on between them.” He gave an example to back up his claim.
    Guo Bin was sitting in a chair when he began to tell us his story. He stood up, walked around in a little circle, and then looked at his three friends. Two days earlier, he said, he was about to knock on the door of Horsie’s apartment when he heard the sound of sobbing inside—low but prolonged sobsthat he felt could only have been triggered by some heartrending sorrow. So he let his hand drop to his side and stood outside Horsie’s door until the sobs subsided, until he could not hear them anymore. All this time he wondered why Lü Yuan was crying. What could have made her so sad? Had Horsie been mistreating her? But he hadn’t heard Horsie yelling at her—in fact, he hadn’t heard any talking at all.
    After the sobbing had ceased, Guo Bin reckoned that Lü Yuan must now have dried her tears, so he raised his hand once again and knocked on the door. It was Horsie who opened up, and what astonished Guo Bin was that Horsie’s eyes were wet, while Lü Yuan was sitting comfortably on the sofa with the TV remote in her hand. It was only then he realized the person who had just been crying was not Lü Yuan, but Horsie.
    “Do you get it?” Guo Bin asked his friends, a smile on his lips. Then he went back to his chair and sat down, very much at ease.
    ON THIS PARTICULAR DAY , that’s to say the afternoon of June 30, 1996, Horsie stopped by Guo Bin’s apartment. His wife, Lü Yuan, had left for Shanghai the previous day and wouldn’t be back for a week, so Horsie, being all alone, thought of Guo Bin, because Guo Bin had an extensive collection of videos and Horsie wanted to borrow a few to watch at home and enliven this period of enforced bachelorhood.
    Guo Bin had been having a nap. Wearing only a pair of jockey shorts, he opened the door and gave a long yawn. “Did Lü