Colors of the Mountain

by Da Chen

  But boredom and the need to make friends got the better of me. The next day I took some cigarettes from Dad’s drawer and sneaked back to the sugarcane fields.

  Mo Gong and Sen treated me coolly, as if they had forgotten our united work such a short time ago. But they smoked my cigarettes and let me try some of theirs. It was the first time I’d smoked with the big league. Mo Gong showed me how to inhale without it hurting too much. Smaller puffs at first, he said. I felt the rush to my head, numb and soothing at the same time. I washed my mouth with handfuls of water by the river before heading home. Once I got home, I didn’t speak until I had had some garlic, onions, and a lot of soup to mask the foul scent.

  The second day, Sen let me sit next to him for good luck, and showed me the way he handled cards. I was so flattered by his trust I kept on nodding, feigning my ignorance of the game.

  The third day, Mo Gong wanted me to sit with him and even let me pick the amount to bet. For the rest of the sessions, they coached me on their sign language. They had me standing at another table, opposite their other two friends, Yi and Siang, where I scratched my head and picked my nose to give away their competitors’ cards. They kept winning.

  The fourth day, I was late in coming to the field.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Sen asked. “Come sit here by me. I’ve been losing too much money without you being here.” He ruffled my hair, threw me a whole pack of unopened cigarettes, and let me cut the cards for good luck. As I lit my first cigarette of the day, I smiled. It was very satisfying to be missed by these hooligans.

  That evening, after the four of them split their money, I went home, wrapped up some of Mom’s sweet rice cakes, and shared them with my new friends. They fought like hungry dogs and ate with dirty hands. After they were done, they wiped their mouths with the corners of their jackets and ran their greasy hands through their unruly hair so that it would look shiny.

  “No matter how shiny your hair is, you still look like shit, Sen,” Mo Gong joked.

  “You look even more like shit,” Sen retorted, touching his hair.

  “Okay, okay, you both look like shit.” Siang laughed.

  They started hitting each other for fun. Yi grabbed my hair with his greasy hands and we started wrestling. Later, we took a stroll to the marketplace near the theater and used some of the gambling money to buy candies and more cigarettes. We laughed, talked, and joked until midnight. Then, reluctantly, I told them I had to go home. In my household, it was way beyond bedtime even though it was still the New Year holiday period. They pushed me around jokingly and Siang lifted me up to his shoulders. Then they said good-bye.

  I lay in bed and couldn’t go to sleep for a long time. Their laughter, their faces, their way of saying things, and the way they had included me like a real friend replayed in my mind like a colorful film. They had never once mentioned that I was from a landlord’s family. They called me “little shit” because I was three or four years younger, weighed twenty pounds less, and measured a head shorter. Then again, they called everyone “shit,” including themselves. With them, I felt a freedom to say and do whatever I wanted without worrying that they might report me to the school authorities. My enemies at school looked conniving and petty in comparison. If they thought they were bad, wait till they saw these guys. I drifted off into a sound sleep, hoping tomorrow would come quickly.

  As the holiday came to an end, the seasonal gambling activities also died away, once all the New Year’s money had been won, lost, and spent. The five of us began to hang out at their usual spots. Their favorite was the stone bridge where the Dong Jing River crossed our narrow street. The thoughtful architect had built a row of stone seats along the bridge, where we would sit in the evenings, chatting and watching townspeople come and go. Mo Gong and Sen would make rude comments to passing females, then laugh like a bunch of monkeys when the girls scolded them and called them ruffians who belonged in jail. My friends seemed to take pleasure from anything that stimulated them, and in making fools of themselves.

  Soon I came to know their personalities and the hierarchy that existed within the group. Sen, fifteen, was the lead dog. He had the brains and audacity. He was born the middle brother of five, who fought one another at home every day. His dad worked for a bank in a faraway town near the salt factory along the coast, sent money home once a month, and visited every third month. His mom raised the five boys like a single parent. Each day she could be found chasing one of her unruly sons with a long wooden stick, cursing her ancestors for giving her these demons to torture her in this life. She was often busy in the fields doing farmwork, so Sen’s elder brother would be in charge of cooking for the family. The cook often ate up most of the food, and whoever came home late got nothing.

  Another reason for the fighting at home was that the five brothers shared one huge bed. Every morning, one or two of them would roll off the edge and end up on the cold floor. Sen got sick of home life, left school, and hit the road, where he had met Mo Gong, at whose home he sometimes stayed. Occasionally Sen would go home and steal things, and his mother would chase him around with the wooden stick. He started swiping other things like chickens and ducks, and sold them in the market, using the money to buy an ancient bicycle that he parked at Mo Gong’s home.

  Occasionally he used the bike to carry passengers around in exchange for a fen, since there was no public transportation in our area. If you wanted to travel, you used your legs. But more often, he would ride to other villages late at night with Mo Gong, and steal rice from a grinding mill, or poultry. When the fruit season was in, they rode to the orchards. One would wait at the road while the other climbed the tree and shook the fruit off. They never looked upon this as stealing, but rather as acts of necessity and as tests of courage. Mo Gong would challenge Sen over something, then they would make a bet and jump in. It was always about betting and about who was braver.

  Once Sen was detained by the commune’s police because someone had accused him of setting fire to a fruit watcher’s little hut. When the police came to notify his mother and ask her to take him home, she said, “He’s not my son. Do whatever you want with him,” and shut the door in the cop’s face. The poor officer, who was prepared to give a long lecture to the mother, left confused and disappointed. They let Sen out without a scratch.

  Mo Gong, fifteen, distinguished himself by almost killing someone with a big knife when he was thirteen. Years later, the sheer size of the weapon still shocked people. He grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. His mom and dad secretly made shoes behind closed doors and sold them in the black market. Mo Gong was born a rough kid, and couldn’t stay out of trouble. His mouth said the wrong things and his hands were always out of control. He had an endless need to touch and hit things. No matter how hard his parents tried to discipline him, it never worked. They had hung him up by the wrists, locked him up, and whipped him till his butt was red and swollen. He always went back to the old ways. He stole money from home to buy cigarettes, liquor, and food.

  Once, when he couldn’t find cash, he took the black-market shoes and sold them at a discount by the roadside. His dad got so mad when he found out that he swore he was going to chop off Mo Gong’s hands. His uncles with the bushy eyebrows came to his rescue and saved him.

  Another time, he almost killed a boy who had been picking on Mo Gong’s small brother, and had tied his little penis to a frog. Mo Gong had picked up a knife and run after the offender. When he caught the kid, he sliced his shoulder open, filleting the flesh all the way down to the bone. Mo Gong said later that it was an insult to the manhood of all the Mo men, that his little brother could have died, and that the boy had to taste his own blood to know the pain.

  When his parents were gone for days selling shoes in another county, his home became his friends’ home. They drank up the last drop of cooking wine and gambled on the dining table. Each time, when his parents came home, they would throw him out and swear he wasn’t their son anymore.

  The re
putations of Sen and Mo Gong were so bad that whenever there was a theft or fire they were always the first suspects. Their alibis usually lacked credibility and they often ended up being blamed for what they didn’t do. When that was the case, they got very angry with the people who had framed them, and added their names to their long revenge list. Pretty soon half the town was on that list. They took their time getting their revenge—little things here and there, like a chicken missing or a plot of vegetables ruined. They never left any evidence behind. It was their way of saying, “Fuck you,” and venting their feelings of being constantly maligned.

  Siang became their friend by default. He was a good-looking fourteen-year-old from a wealthy family. His grandfather was an old revolutionary who had helped the Communist army occupy Putien. He now received a big salary for doing nothing. He had used some of that money to build a huge, three-storied home. His mother was a nurse in a nearby hospital, and his father was a cadre in charge of a shoe factory.

  Siang hated school and loved gambling. One year he lost so much money to Sen and Mo Gong that they were going to make him pay them back by stripping off his expensive clothes. He had begged for mercy, and agreed to pay back the debt by buying them cigarettes for the next year. They became really good friends when Siang got kicked out by his parents and Mo Gong took him in. They slept in the same bed for a week before Siang got enough money to buy a ticket to go to Fuzhou to his grandaunt, who was the president of the women’s federation in the province of Fujian.

  That left Yi, a short fifteen-year-old, who had become a carpenter at the age of twelve. He had goldfish eyes and bow legs. His parents had died young, and his grandpa had sent him away to be an apprentice at the age of ten. Yi said the first thing he learned from his carpenter master was how to slice his tobacco leaves and roll them into perfect rolls. His master urged him to smoke, saying it would give him the only excuse besides peeing to relax when working long hours.

  Another early carpentry lesson taught him how to chat nonstop while working, because it made one forget about the boredom and entertained others at the same time. Among his many tedious monologues was the story of how one day he had been chopping at newly felled lumber but was doing it very unevenly. His master had looked him up and down, then asked, “Do you feel those things swing down there when you chop?”

  “What things?”

  “Your balls.”

  Yi said that it was as if he’d been struck by lightning; everything suddenly made sense. His balls. From then on whenever he chopped things he was always aware of his balls. If they swung evenly with each movement, good results were guaranteed. However unbelievable, this was an interesting story. He said his master’s daughter started hanging around, and the master began dropping hints about him staying on after his apprenticeship ended. He hadn’t objected to the idea. The rigid master was like the father he had never had, and the girl was blooming like a flower before his eager eyes. Day in and day out, he made sure his balls swung in good rhythm, and looked forward to seeing the swing of the girl’s shapely behind.

  Then Yi’s master died suddenly, and Yi was forced to leave his apprenticeship two years ahead of time. His grandpa brought him home, set up a shop for him at the back of the street; he had been in business ever since.

  He smoked bitter tobacco, drank strong tea constantly, and could go on chatting for hours without boring himself. He made all sorts of furniture for neighbors. But he was, after all, still a young boy, and his heart was out there on the street. Sen and Mo Gong often went there to swipe tobacco leaves when cash was low and the urge to smoke was clawing at them. In return, they had to accompany the lonely carpenter while he worked, and endure listening to the same topics Yi had covered a hundred times before. But it wasn’t a bad deal, really. When they were on the run from their parents or the law, Yi’s humble workshop offered all they needed. It was out of the way, in a back alley, tobacco leaves hung drying from the ceiling, liquor was kept nearby in Yi’s toolbox, and food came from Grandpa’s kitchen. They could even sleep on a worn blanket on the soft sawdust. On occasion, the shop was used as a gambling den. Yi spent more and more time being with the gang and became a part-time carpenter and a full-time street kid. Friendship endured.

  Before I went back to school, I became an inseparable part of the now five-member gang. When school began, the group hung around the marketplace, harassed a few merchants, and bought candy and cigarettes. Then they climbed over the low wall at the back of my school and whistled to signal their arrival. As soon as the bell rang, I ran to the designated spot, where they lifted me up and threatened to toss me in the pond. Jumping back over the low wall, we lit cigarettes and made our plans for the day.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, after sucking hard on my cigarette.

  “To the middle school,” Siang said.

  “What’s the deal?”

  They all smiled mysteriously at Sen. For the first time, I saw Sen’s face turn red, and he giggled nervously.

  “He likes a girl there. We gotta check it out,” Mo Gong said eagerly.

  “Who is she?” I said.

  “She’s the daughter of Mr. Huang, the PE teacher. She’s got a pair of real roving eyes,” Sen said, still giggling.

  “She looks at you?” I asked.

  “The thing is, she always looks at our house when she passes by. The other day, she smiled a little at me,” Sen said.

  “And he almost fainted.” Mo Gong laughed.

  “Women. They can’t make up their minds. I know a real lady from my days at my master’s home…” It was Yi again, starting in on one of his old stories. We already knew what he was talking about; he had told us many times. The amazing thing about him was that he could tell the same story over and over and tell it exactly the same as the first time. The phrasing, pauses, and expression never changed.

  We kicked the stones on the ground, broke the twigs that got in our way, and headed for the alma mater of my four friends, where they hadn’t exactly excelled.

  Sen was excited and nervous. He kept on smoking. We joked about his hair, which stood straight up. I scooped a handful of water from a nearby pond and sprinkled it on his head. He slapped my hands away, but happily finger-combed his hair, then peered at his own reflection in the pond.

  “Not a bad looking dude at all,” Sen said.

  We all burst into raucous laughter.

  When we leaned against the wall of the middle school, gazing from a distance at the dorm room of PE Teacher Huang, we saw a slender girl in her late teens come out carrying a bucket of water. She was a pretty thing, with beautiful eyes and shiny black hair that hung down to her hips. Her dress was printed with a simple design of little flowers. She reminded me of her good-looking father, who was once the champion javelin thrower in our province.

  As she bent over to dump the bucket, she glanced in our direction and hesitated upon seeing five dark heads peeping over the wall. We ducked down, embarrassed. Slowly, she swung her slender body around and walked elegantly back into the dorm. We stayed there for a long time, our hearts beating fast, then quietly headed back.

  “What do you think?” Sen asked, uncertain of our verdict.

  “I didn’t have any respect for your judgment of females until this moment,” I said.

  Sen slapped me on the shoulder. “Did you see that? I think she sensed I was there, that’s why she stopped and looked.”

  “I think she just smelled your dirty hair, that’s all,” Siang joked.

  On our way home, Sen did all the talking, excited as if he had just received a shot of adrenaline. “She’s a real pretty girl, and what a body! And that silky hair! If only I could touch it someday. Boy, I wouldn’t mind calling Teacher Huang ‘Dad’ for the rest of my life.”

  “Maybe you should go back to school to be near her,” I suggested.

  “That’s a good idea,” Siang said.

  “And attend only Teacher Huang’s class,” Yi added. “If he likes you enough, so will the daughter.�
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  Laughter again. The encounter had made us all feel good. The sunset seemed especially warm that day.

  WHEN THE WEATHER turned milder and the migrating geese honked noisily in the sky as they headed for the South China Sea to feed on young fish, we agreed to meet at the Dong Jing harbor in the evenings. The Dong Jing was a large river, along which boatmen shipped lumber downstream from the mountains. They rowed upriver carrying rice, salt, and fabric from the rich delta and plains. Each night at least ten flat-bottomed boats with woven bamboo coverings were moored there, patiently waiting to depart the next day after their owners had gone to town to get drunk and have a peaceful sleep before the week-long trip.

  One moonlit night we found ourselves standing at the quiet harbor. Yi was an expert in the art of untying boats. He did something quick with his rough, callused hands, and the thick knots easily unwound. We all jumped in and pushed the boat away from the shore with its two long bamboo poles.

  It was so quiet and serene. I sat at the head of the boat listening to the gentle parting of the waters. Frogs and insects from the surrounding wheat and fava-bean fields sang in the background. While Yi maneuvered the boat, we sat with our backs together for warmth. The moon in the clear sky seemed to be traveling with us.

  On that perfect night, I told them my favorite love story, called “Early Spring in February.”

  “A handsome college student named Shi, from the city of Shanghai, left his rich, capitalist family and joined the Communist party. He took up a teaching job at a poor village school, in the beautiful countryside filled with wildflowers, fruit orchards, rivers, and endless green fields.

  “He was modest and romantic. Every day, Shi read his own poetry to his starry-eyed pupils and taught them beautiful songs. His knowledge was boundless, and his voice was a mellow, throaty baritone. Early mornings, he could be spotted sitting before his easel in the peach garden when it was in full blossom, painting the fading spring. At night, the sound of his violin was sad and moving. Occasionally he was seen moodily taking a stroll along the river, where he would disappear for the entire day. No one knew where he went. Other teachers saw him give away his own food to poor pupils.