Ha Jin: Waiting

Vintage

$24.95

Review: Helene Wong*

Of all the differences that exist between East and West, one that never fails to fascinate is the arranged marriage. Though not unknown in the West - marriages of convenience, radio-station stunts - the concept seems at complete odds with notions of independent choice and romantic love.

Expatriate Chinese writer Ha Jin examines this tension, revealing its subtle complexity. Unusually, he does it from the husband's point of view.

Lin Kong, a doctor in a military hospital, has been seeing Manna Wu, a nurse, for 18 years. Before they met, however, at his father's request he had married Shuyu for purely pragmatic reasons: Lin's mother was sick, and she and the house needed looking after.

After fathering a daughter, Lin returned to his job. Aside from an obligatory annual visit he had little to do with Shuyu. For years, though, his visits bore an extra purpose - to ask for a divorce. But always, at the last minute, Shuyu refused.

Lin and Manna's sole hope lies in a hospital rule that after 18 years' separation a husband can divorce a wife without her consent. So they wait.

Although we are curious as to how this will turn out, the real meat of Jin's novel is expressed in the title. What interests him is how the would-be lovers cope with the waiting: the doubts, the stress of gossip and derision, the abstention from sex, and why they hang in there for so long.

What emerges is a picture of the painfully recognisable irrational workings of the human heart, but one seen through a cultural prism where behaviour is circumscribed by politics and tradition, and where passiveness and duty can lead to a suffocating frustration. But this is no simplistic cultural critique; Jin's conclusion is more generous to the old ways than you expect. For Shuyu has been waiting, too, and has a surprise in store for Lin.

Although set in China's turbulent 1960s to 1980s, politics is only a distant backdrop to the personal dilemmas. The tone is gentle, almost dreamlike, the conflict handled with an Eastern restraint.

Jin's writing is as deceptively simple and direct as brush painting, conjuring places and states of mind with a few evocative strokes. It touches upon many aspects of love and cultural values, but its overwhelming effect is of a lingering sadness for the frailty of human desire.

* Helene Wong is an Auckland writer and script consultant.