Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

  “You and I are birds of a feather.” He shot me the same strange smile as he did when we first met at Tamkang University. “The thing is, you’re more strongly inclined toward realism than I am, so it’s easier for you to escape yourself. I completely envy you. That’s a commendable strength.” He seemed on the verge of kissing my feet, which struck me as funny.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, unable to restrain the loud guffaw that slipped out. My laugh set him off, and his laugh was even more outrageous. We were both cracking up so hard our stomachs hurt. I began slapping him on the cheek, harder and harder, and he started stroking my hair, faster and faster. In a burst of silliness, we released the tension that had built up from all the heaviness and arrived at an understanding.

  “Tell me about yourself.” I was curious about him.

  “Perfect, flawless human being. My family has loads of money. I’m also so smart that it’s easy for me to be the best at everything I do. I’m so bored that I wish I were dead. Whatever I want to do, I can do, and no one’s going to stop me. When I was twelve and still in grade school, I pulled the pants off the girl next door and practiced putting my pee-pee inside of her body. Later on, I started feeling like there was a special kind of boredom awaiting me. When I was fourteen, I joined a gang. I left home for two whole years. I hunted to kill and was hunted myself. Those were exciting times. But I realized I’d meet a gruesome, senseless death before I’d even figured out what the hell was going on.

  “I went home because I experienced a huge shock. One day I was in a hotel room getting liquored up with this underage prostitute, and I spotted a big black birthmark on the inside of her thigh. It was the same girl from when I was twelve. I cried out her name just as I was about to enter her, and suddenly I broke down sobbing. Pain was shooting through my heart and lungs. She started to cry too and ran out of the room naked. I’d done a bad thing, and I was being punished. I felt like I had it coming. And that’s when I went home. I forced myself to live a normal life. I’d lost whatever right I had to object, so the best punishment for me was to have my hands bound and tied, to let myself be arrested by boredom.

  “Later on, my story became one of a man in search of his destiny with a certain goddess. By the time I was a junior, I’d already skipped two grades to make up for the two years I spent on the streets. My life story is way too long. I’m tired. We’ll talk more next time, okay?”

  His final words sounded weak, though I sensed an inkling of goodwill within that weakness. I gave him my most gracious and sincere nod, and thanked him for everything he’d shared with me. It was a moving experience, one that I certainly wanted to repay in kind. The stream of headlights on Fuhe Bridge illuminated its arches to form what from a distance looked like a golden pavilion.

  “Where did the fingertip come from?” I asked, my eyes widening.

  “I told one of my old gang brothers to get it for me.” He seemed slightly remorseful.

  3

  The moment I said to Shui Ling Can we start over?, the flood-gates of desire were thrown open.

  We didn’t see each other the entire winter break. It was a buffer between us, and the suspense built up—as if for an even bigger clash. “If I come out of hiding and treat you however I want, you’ll wish you could hide from me, but you won’t be able to—I’ll be cast deep down into the inferno,” I wrote to her. “Even if you were in the inferno, I’d follow you down just to see you. I’m capable of things you can’t imagine.” That was her response. Nice. She wasn’t one to downplay her abilities. That last bit about being “capable of things” hinted at a strong feminine will.

  “The other day. . . Saturday, I think . . .yeah . . . I was in Hsinchu visiting Zi Ming. I took the Zhongxing Line there by myself. . . .” The way she spoke, it was as if she were teasing out a delicate thread. I didn’t dare interrupt her. It was the first time we’d run into each other that semester. The two of us stood under the portico of the Literature Department building. It felt like our past had been a lifetime ago. Zi Ming was her best friend from high school.

  “I went to watch her basketball game . . .yeah, it was fun. I hadn’t had that much fun in ages.” She turned and looked at me. I was listening, mesmerized. “She took me out for some good food. That night, when we went to bed, we stayed up talking with the lights out.” She leaned back against a pillar, staring excitedly off into the distance. “The next day, she even helped me wash my hair . . . and dry it. . . .” As she recounted the details, the enraptured look on her face revealed how much she cherished every second. “Yeah, part of me really didn’t want to come back.” I asked her why, and she sighed. “I told myself to have as much fun as I could . . . because as soon as I came back and school started, things would stop being so laid-back.” With a change of topic, a dimpled smile spread across her face.

  We wheeled our bikes to Drunken Moon Lake. I said, “I used to imagine what you’d look like when you get older.” She asked what I had imagined. I said, more melancholy, and later on, tall and slender. Someday, you’ll grow into a tall and slender woman. Sitting there on that bench by the lake, she started to ramble, telling me her entire life story.

  “All of a sudden, everyone’s gone. I go to school alone, walk alone, ride the bus alone, eat alone, go home alone. . . . It’s not like before, when there was always someone who’d let me copy their homework, or in Home Ec when someone would help me knit a sweater, and I’d just stand to the side during cooking lessons. Or in gym class, when someone would walk with me after doing sprints. Not to mention Zi Ming taking me to the bus stop every day and covering for me in everything. Even helping me tie my shoes, things like that. During freshman year, sometimes I’d feel this tightness in my chest, and I’d go to the pay phone by the Literature Department and call Zi Ming in Hsinchu, but I could never get through on the dorm phone because no one would answer. . . . Then I felt even worse, and I’d start crying. . . .” Her eyes, now red, began to well over. She lay her head down on her purple backpack.

  Afternoon. The sun came out, but then rain began to pitter-patter. Little by little, it started raining with ever greater intensity and soon the sky was covered by dark clouds. I tried to shield her with my umbrella, but she pushed it away, saying she wanted to get drenched. I closed it, and the two of us sat on the white enamel bench, getting drenched. The droplets were like a flurry of arrows, foiled by the lake’s surface. The cold wind hit us, wave upon wave. I looked at her long hair, flattened by the rain. Beads of water were trickling down her neck and off the tips of the locks that were so perfectly framing her exquisite face.

  We wandered through the pouring rain, our vision blurred and our eyes aching. The two of us walked down the center of a deserted road. With all human commotion at a standstill, we heard the scattered sounds of nature, the passing cry of a bird overhead. Soaked from head to toe, we found our way to the lush greenery of Wenzhou Street. The trees that lined the street appeared to have been reborn in shades of emerald. No need to be silent. Are you sinking into some corner of your melancholy? In my heart, I called out to you.

  Didn’t eat dinner, either. Said it was a waste of time. It was her idea to hang out at my place. When I got a towel and tried to help her dry her hair, she said she wanted to do it herself. She curled up in a corner of the bed, her legs tucked against her chest. She wanted to talk. Said she didn’t want to depend on other people anymore, she didn’t think she needed to. She was already independent. She was taking care of things on her own. The corners of her mouth tightened defiantly. I could see that this was the crux of the phase she was going through. After all, in the past she had never gone to the movies by herself, never had a chance to go for a walk by herself, this rare rose of a girl. She said I didn’t have to help her with anything and to let her do it herself unless I was always going to be there. She was slower than other people in finding her own way, but I had to respect her willingness to face adversity.

  It was almost ten. What should I do, it’s almost ten, she asked, flus
tered. Don’t worry about it, just go home, I said soothingly. What should I do, I have to go home, she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard me. It was like watching a drowning man gasping for air. Her sudden panic startled me. What should I do, what should I do. She sat down at my desk and looked at me with helpless eyes. If you don’t want to go, don’t go. I wanted to make her calm down. I can’t, I have to go home, she said, crumpling onto the desk. I was at a loss. So don’t go. I can’t. I can’t. . . . She started crying softly. Impulsively, I walked over and wrapped my arms tightly around her head. She grew quiet, letting in the warmth. The panic in her heart was no match for it.

  4

  If we’d been playing it cool like a pair of thieves, it was because our grand heist was drawing near. I anticipated, I schemed, I fretted. I had to be prepared for a deadly siege.

  She was used to relying on other people. I had a habit of protecting girls. If she was in class at a set time for a set time, I was there to soak it up. In class, I was a show-off. But as soon as class ended, I was out of there. Her long hair trailed over her shoulders. Her elegant clothing gave her the appearance of being around twenty-four or twenty-five. That entire year I went for a kind of misfit look, wearing out-of-fashion jeans that made me look barely fifteen or sixteen.

  She moved like a pendulum between school and home. I’d sleep until the sun disappeared below the western horizon, then cut loose from my cave like a charged particle and hit the town. I was a social butterfly. Hindered by shyness, she had refused to socialize. Cunningly, I changed all of that.

  Two very different types of people, mutual attraction. And for what reason? It’s hard to believe, this something that exists beyond the imagination of the chess game known as the human condition. It’s based on the gender binary, which stems from the duality of yin and yang, or some unspeakable evil. But humanity says it’s a biological construct: penis vs. vagina, chest hair vs. breasts, beard vs. long hair. Penis + chest hair + beard = masculine; vagina + breasts + long hair = feminine. Male plugs into female like key into lock, and as a product of that coupling, babies get punched out. This product is the only object that can fill a square on the chessboard. All that is neither masculine nor feminine becomes sexless and is cast into the freezing-cold waters outside the line of demarcation, into an even wider demarcated zone. Man’s greatest suffering is born of mistreatment by his fellow man.

  She agreed to stay over at my place. I was like a little girl finally able to buy a long-coveted doll. At ten in the evening, heading home from private tutoring on Changchun Road, I took the number 74 bus down Fuxing South Road, picking her up along the way. She waved as she stood at the bus stop, an overcoat draped across her shoulders, her spotless white rucksack by her side. A woman ready to elope, was she? She was a vine extending one slender, delicate branch toward my window, hoping I was the sky, not knowing that on the other side, there was no shade, and not much sunshine, either.

  Like two sparkling gemstones, we were shakily carried to campus by the number 74 bus. Then I gave her a ride on my bike. She quietly sat sideways on the back. I started singing a song that was popular back in high school, pedaling to the rhythm. It streamed out to the flowers and trees that lined Yelin Avenue, growing more abundant the farther we rode. I couldn’t see her face. I was dying to see if it was that of the Moon Goddess herself. “Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for You” and “The Wild Lily Has Its Spring, Too,” those were the songs that defined my high-school days. My favorite Sylvia Chang songs—“The One I Love Best,” “Flower on the Sea,” “Standing on Top of the World,” or “She Goes Walking by the Sea”—capture the mood of each of her major eras. “Love Song 1980,” “Love Proverbs,” and “Little Sister” were Lo Ta-Yu’s biggest hits. To my seventeen-year-old self, Sylvia Chang and Lo Ta-Yu were like a dab of concealer, a soundtrack applied to cover up teenage heartbreak. After high school, I forgot the names of the songs and the singers, but I still knew the words by heart—do you?

  She said that night she’d wanted to wrap her arms around my waist but didn’t dare to, and really regretted it afterward. She told me after a few days had passed. Out of all the various little moments I’d cataloged, that one easily became the core of my memories of her.

  “What are you writing?” she asked.

  “A journal,” I said.

  “What are you writing about in your journal?”

  “I’m writing about you coming over.”

  “Why? What did I inspire?”

  “Want me to read it out loud to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “ ‘Tonight’s the big night. A certain someone came over for a romp in the hay.’ ”

  “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear the rest.”

  “Scared?”

  “Uh-huh. Scared of you.”

  We were in the room on Wenzhou Street. I put away the journal. Helped her lay the bedding down. Made her sleep on the bed. I lay down on the hardwood floor next to her.

  “If we were locked up in a mental hospital together, would it be any better?” she asked.

  “Would we be locked up in the same room?”

  “I don’t want to be in the same room.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m scared of you.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  “I’m just scared.”

  “What’s so great about being locked up together?”

  “We could live next door to each other. Our beds would be separated by a wall. I’d sit on my bed and talk to you. You’d sit on your bed, too, and we could talk all day long. . . . That’d be so much fun with no one else around.”

  “What if we ran out of things to talk about?”

  “How can we run out of things to talk about? I’d pound on the wall and say I was tired. Then I’d go to sleep. When you wake up, you automatically have things to talk about again.”

  “Fine. You go to sleep, and I’ll write in my journal and wait for you to wake up.”

  “You’re not allowed. You can’t keep a journal anymore. I don’t have anything. You’re only allowed to talk to me.”

  She leaned partway over the edge of the bed to talk, her face peering at me. I wrapped the covers tightly around myself. When you sleep next to me, I suffer, I said. So come sleep here on the bed, she said. That’d be even more painful, I thought. Mischievously and teasingly, she lowered her body onto my covers. Her hair brushed against my face, and her scent filled my lungs. I pulled her head in close, wrapping my arms around her neck. My lips were pressed up against her eyelid. She was so tender. It was an awkward embrace, like black rain pelting snow-covered ground. . . .

  5

  A headline in the China Times read: TAIWAN DROPS CROCODILE PROTECTION MEASURES; EXTINCTION LOOMS. Numerous readers sent in letters asking what crocodiles were. Never before in their lives had they seen a crocodile.

  “Hey, is this the Earth edition?” asked one reader who called up the paper with an animal encyclopedia in hand.

  “Mmm, that’s right,” said the editor, taking a bite of a tuna sandwich while answering the call.

  “What does a crocodile actually look like?”

  “About this crocodile business, please—no more questions about the article.”

  “Hello. Is this the Society Page? Are you in charge of crocodile-related matters?”

  “Yes, it is. Trying on my Crocodile brand clothing right now. Each piece comes with a hefty price tag. Is it official business?”

  “Operator, could you connect me to Crocodile Affairs? Which page is handling that now?”

  “You’re not the first to ask. You’re the one hundred ninety-ninth person to call today with the exact same question. This newspaper has authorized a supplement as an official response, since you people have nothing better to worry about these days.”

  “Supplement Group. Are you also calling to ask where to go to see a crocodile?”

  “No, I still don’t even know what a crocodile is.”

  “I’m sick o
f you people who intentionally do not ask the exact same question. You make it impossible for me to provide a recorded answer. I have to sit here and have my twentieth serving of crocodile sandwich.”

  “How am I supposed to know what the exact same question is?”

  “Why don’t you just start with, ‘Can you tell me what the exact same question is?’ ”

  “That makes sense. So what are you going to say on the recording?”

  “It’s very simple. I’ll just record myself saying one hundred ninety-nine times, ‘The exact same question is where can I go see a crocodile? Beep. United Daily News Supplement Group’s phone number is 7-6-8-3-8-3-8. Beep.’ The end.”

  “Hello, is this the United Daily News Supplement Group?”

  “Beep. Due to the overwhelming volume of calls to the Supplement Group, all of our staff members are currently suffering from laryngitis. We offer you the following recorded message instead. Beep. A crocodile is a human with reptile characteristics, not a reptile with human characteristics. Beep.”

  “Boring. Beep.”

  Another article pointed out: “If crocodiles do vanish, there will be no need to protect them.” That might have been in the United Daily News.

  6

  In the scenario I’m about to describe, which emerged amid all the drama, I was consumed by guilt and fear like never before. I felt like my skin was being grated like a radish—scraped raw, into a pulp. I knew I was capable of the monstrous sin of lusting after a woman’s body. That was before she came along, back when it had been limited to a creeping feeling that I should carry my shoes and tiptoe down the street so no one would notice. But then, as I turned a corner, people started running past me, picking up stones and hurling them at a glass house. I knew I had to get out of there before someone with a stone called out my name and ordered me to freeze.