It didn’t work like that, because Huang Yiyi used it as a weapon against me. One evening when she came to find me, the first thing she spotted was Xiaoyu’s altar, and after a moment’s surprise she lit an incense stick and with tears pouring down her face she started to tell her deepest feelings to Xiaoyu’s picture. She addressed Xiaoyu as if she were a member of the family, and said that she hoped that in paradise she would look with sympathy on the fact that she loved me and help her, make me accept her love.

‘I really love him,’ she said. ‘Heaven, and your soul in paradise, can testify to that. I gave up the job that I loved for him, and came to this rural backwater from Beijing. I love every hair on his head, every hair in his beard, even the most delicate of hairs on his body …’

I simply couldn’t listen to it any more and dragged her away, shouting, ‘That’s enough!’

She collapsed against my chest, biting my lower lip, searching for my mouth. I had to leave her, like a murderer who has committed a crime in someone else’s house and then runs away. Like a stray dog, I hung around outside not daring to go home, waiting unhappily for her to leave. In the darkness I once again had the horrible suspicion that what I had brought back with me was not an angel, but a devil.

After that I ignored her for a couple of days, until Comrade Chen came to see me, to report crossly that Huang Yiyi was banging about in her office so that he couldn’t possibly concentrate on his work. ‘If you want to play around then go ahead – go to the forest and feed the squirrels, go to the barracks and play chess with the soldiers – just don’t make a racket in your cryptography room. Bang, bang, bang – some people want to work!’ Comrade Chen’s face showed that he had absolutely had enough.

To begin with I didn’t believe Huang Yiyi had taken her tiresomeness to that point. But when I went with Comrade Chen to his cryptography room, I could hear the occasional sound of banging from Huang Yiyi’s room next door, as though there was a carpenter at work. I was angry with her, and went over to hammer on her door, but no matter how hard I knocked she didn’t open it. I banged again and shouted, ‘Huang Yiyi, open the door: I want to talk to you!’