Chapter 29
Meng Zixian saw Xiao Jun off. Chen Huan, utterly sleepy, leaned against the sofa. Meng Zixian arrived at Beverly at eleven o'clock that evening. He knocked on her bedroom door, but Chen Huan said it wasn't locked. He walked in, soaked by the rain. Seeing her standing by the window, he walked over and pressed her face down against the bay window. Behind her, he unbuckled his belt and removed the condom.
His palms were big, pressing on her lower back, she couldn't struggle. No caressing, no kissing, no saying I miss you, no asking if you want it. This made Shen Huan very uncomfortable, she couldn't remember when going to bed with Meng Zixuan became like this. He was deployed to the war zone, for one month, two months or four months, and after he came back, sex seemed to be a way to test whether she remained loyal. He didn't speak, and she was not allowed to speak. He didn't take the initiative to kiss her, and she couldn't either. She couldn't even hum, the only thing she could do was silently kick him, hit him, and bite his shoulder. Meng Zixuan would let her do whatever she wanted when he was in the mood, and would control her so that she couldn't move when he felt annoyed. Her only use was to endure.
During their last year at Fort Benning, they maintained this kind of relationship in their bedroom, but Chen Huan never mentioned breaking up. Although the first time was long and suffocating, he was overly gentle the second and third time. He would kiss her for a long time, perceiving her subtle desires, helping her release them first, and then gasping for breath and saying to her, "I love you, Huanhuan, I really do. I love you so much." After that, there was no more sex like this between them. Chen Huan became increasingly afraid of him. When they met face to face, she could see the anger in his eyes that bordered on hatred. She didn't understand the reason for his anger. So she would take the initiative to ask him to get behind her so that she wouldn't see his face. This always angered Meng Zixuan, but she didn't care anymore.
After two and a half years, he became irritable, paranoid, and his sleep schedule was disrupted. He used to change out of his going-out clothes when he got home, organize his wardrobe into categories, and keep his desk tidy. Now he no longer mops the floor or cleans, and after meals he piles the dishes in the sink and on the countertop. He doesn't wash the dishes, so when Chen Huan goes to wash them, he tells her to leave them there. He doesn't cook, so when Chen Huan does, he asks her if she's hiding from him. The house is piled with takeout boxes, half-empty water cups, and plastic cutlery. He doesn't sleep much and will be woken up by the slightest noise. During the day, as soon as he leaves for the military camp, she immediately hides in the school library. This home quickly became a garbage dump.
Life with him felt stripped of all meaning, reduced to the most basic, bare instincts: food, water, sleep, sex. His addiction to sex affected their normal lives. They no longer went for morning runs together, stopped going out to meet friends, and rarely had long conversations. He cursed why they had to use condoms and stuffed used condoms into empty mineral water bottles for storage. When Chen Huan was willing, he would have sex with her in bed. When she was menstruating or unwilling, he would hold her from behind, bury his face in the hair at the back of her neck, reach out to touch her breasts and take care of himself. He no longer cared about the quality of sex; it was his way of releasing cortisol.
Chen Huan asked him, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" She didn't really think so. Even in her darkest days and nights, he was someone she admired greatly. But this was the most infuriating thing Chen Huan could think of, her way of trying to resist his cruelty.
Meng Zixian leaned on the pillow, closed his eyes, and put his arms in front of his eyes to block the sunlight. His voice was hoarse, and he asked: Why should I feel ashamed of masturbating?
He was so good at cutting off the topic of things he didn't want to discuss. Shen Huan sat on the floor with bare legs and cried. She said, "You know I'm not talking about this, you know it," she kept repeating, "You hate me, you just want to torture me."
Meng Zixian finally removed his arm from his face. He opened his eyes, stood up, and buckled his belt without looking at her. He said, "I don't know, Chen Huan, I don't know what you're talking about." He took the gun from under his pillow, tucked it into his waistband, walked into the living room, pulled on a T-shirt, and put on his tactical uniform. "If you have a problem with me masturbating," he smiled silently. "Then I have to confess to you. For the past three months in Dawashi, I've been doing this every morning after my night patrol ends at six o'clock and before going to bed."
He walked back to the bedroom door, carrying several kilograms of 550 parachute cord, which he had brought back to tie the backyard drainpipe. He said, "I imagined this scene, you sitting on the floor at my feet, crying, saying I was torturing you."
Shen Huan stopped crying. She curled up her legs, stepped back a little, and leaned her back against the edge of the bed.
"I was lying in bed doing this, right next to a six-foot-high plywood board, and Schumer and Tedesco were playing cards, and Collins and Cooper were wrestling. They could have stood up and seen me. So, no, I'm not ashamed," he said.
His voice became lower and lower, and the cold anger in his eyes frightened Shen Huan. She supported herself on the ground with her hands and retched. She knew that she had successfully angered him. She regretted what she had just said, regretted marrying him, and regretted moving to this place a few years ago.
That night, Meng Zixian was going skydiving. Their battalion had parachute qualifications, and to maintain their qualifications and proficiency, they had to jump at least once every three months. He had slept less than five hours a night these past few days, and Chen Huan was worried about him. Four months ago, a sergeant from the airborne brigade had died during the parachute qualification test. So she crawled to his feet again, crying and holding his hand, asking him not to be angry and to admit that it was all her fault. Meng Zixian fell for this trick very much; as long as she gave in, things would usually be resolved.
Her fingers touched his left palm. Meng Zixuan dropped the parachute cord to the ground, half-knelt in front of her, and pinched her chin with his right hand. Shen Huan sat up a little, tilted her face up and kissed his jaw. His hand moved to the back of her neck, supporting the back of her head. His other palm pinched the inside of her thigh. This time Shen Huan did not refuse. For some reason, her body was very sensitive, and she quickly reached orgasm.
For Meng Zixuan, this sex seemed to be enough to wipe away all the previous shadows. At nine o'clock in the evening, he walked to the door of his house, opened it, walked back and hugged her tightly, burying his nose in her hair.
After a long while, he whispered something in her ear. Huanhuan, he said, "Shall we have a baby?" His breath on her neck was warm and eager, but Chen Huan's hands and feet were cold. She didn't know what Meng Zixuan was thinking; she no longer knew him. When he released her from his embrace, Chen Huan's throat was blocked and her head ached because her eyes hadn't yet subsided from crying so long.
Meng Zixian was her backbone. She had never learned to reject him, always living according to his ideas. But Meng Zixian was almost unable to hold on. She knew he was trying to save their marriage in this desperate way. It wouldn't work, and it would hurt an innocent child. But she didn't have the courage and spirit to be his support. It was over between them. This made Shen Huan so sad that she couldn't breathe.
Meng Zixuan left, and Chen Huan went to the bathroom to take a bath. She put the computer on the toilet lid, ran some hot water, took off her pajamas, stepped into the bathtub, curled up her knees, brought the computer over and placed it on top, and typed in the search engine: US military, killing, mental illness.
There's a trending thread on Reddit. An Army historian named SLA Marshall wrote a book about the psychological cost of killing in war and how military courts analyze and sentence the consequences of killing. Marshall argued that human nature resists killing. During World War II, the US military had a 15% chance of shooting an exposed enemy, rising to 25% in intense confrontations. Yet, soldiers still subconsciously missed the target, shot wide, or fired high.
The military then assigned the task of shooting to individuals within the team, leaving the moral responsibility of convincing soldiers to kill to the commander alone. They replaced the targets in shooting drills with human figures and intensified the 300-yard slow-fire test with rapid-fire drills ranging from 20 to 300 yards.
By the time of the Vietnam War, this proportion had reached 90%.
Chen Huan's fingers slid across his face, his eyes reflecting the faint blue light of the screen. Army Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman also mentioned this in his book, "On Killing." He believes the rise in post-traumatic stress disorder in the US military after World War II is related to the forced increase in shooting rates. Anyone who experiences combat will develop PTSD; the only difference is the severity of the physical and psychological damage, and the methods used to cope with it.
Everyone below the post complained about Marshall's theory being full of loopholes. But sitting in the drowsy, hot bathwater, Chen Huan believed it without hesitation. Even if Marshall's research methods weren't rigorous, even if his data was falsified, even if it was just a political weapon used by scholars to attack the Ministry of Defense, her feelings were genuine: the military had changed Meng Zixian. Like a drowning man trapped under ice, she needed to find an outlet for his brutality and his cowardice. This was the only explanation she could give herself: he was angry because a killing machine always is angry, and his transformation had nothing to do with her. That was what she told herself.
Seeing this, Shen Huan felt her cheeks burning and her vision blurry. She thought she had a fever, probably due to a urinary tract infection. She picked up the phone on the soap bar and called the doctor for some medicine.
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