by Fan Wu
“I don’t care when and why you two broke up. If you had sex with her the baby could be yours.” I felt thankful to Pingping for what she had taught me that night. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to confront him.
To my surprise, he smiled. A helpless smile. “I forgot—I’m talking to a teenager,” he said.
I was furious. “What do you mean? Are you afraid now? If you think every girl is so naive and credulous, you’re wrong. I feel bad for Miao Yan to have mistaken you for a responsible man.”
He stopped smiling. He looked away from me and began to pace back and forth. I didn’t move; I was waiting for him to apologize.
After a few turns he stood in front of me, scratching his head. “What can I say? I am telling you the truth. First, having sex doesn’t necessarily make a woman pregnant. There are many ways to control birth—men wearing a condom or women taking pills. I guess none of the novels you’ve read has told you anything like that. Second, the last time she and I had sex was eight months ago. If she was pregnant by me, she ’d be at least eight months pregnant now and you’d be able to see it easily. Third, I can’t marry her just because I had sex with her. I loved her but our relationship didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Though I care about her and want her to stay in Guangdong, I can’t marry her just for that.”
I knew that he was telling the truth. I felt terrible about my ignorance of sex—I had just made a fool of myself. But I couldn’t stop being angry at him. After all, if he hadn’t broken up with her and if he had taken good care of her, she wouldn’t have done something stupid like going to bed with someone she didn’t love.
We caught a bus to the train station. Du Sheng wanted to call a taxi, saying he would pay for it, but I insisted on taking a bus. On the bus, we sat in separate rows. He tried to talk to me but I didn’t feel like talking.
“You won’t hate me, will you?” he said when we were waiting for the train on the platform.
“It’s between you and Miao Yan. It ’s none of my business.”
“I can tell you’re still angry at me. I ’m ten years older than you. There is something you don’t understand right now.”
“Though I haven’t experienced as much as you have, it doesn’t mean that I know less.” I raised my head, looking away from him in the direction of the approaching train.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. I take back what I said. I always wanted to have a little sister like you, who lives in a world of books and is never bothered by the outside world. I wish I could be like that.”
His hand weighed heavily on me. The heat from his palm quickened my blood.
He sensed my uneasiness and withdrew his hand awkwardly. “Oh, you know,” he said, smiling, “for a moment, I really thought you were my little sister. I remember when I was a kid I begged my ma for the longest time to give me a sister. No girls in my family. All boys. Three of us. I ’m the eldest. My younger brothers are both married and don’t need me around anymore.”
His good-natured smile touched my heart. “You’re luckier than I am. I’m by myself. When I was little I also wanted to have a brother or sister. But the one-child-per-family policy was very strict then,” I said, less angry at him.
“I can tell you’re an only child. You’re stubborn, aren’t you?” He stuck out his tongue and made a face at me. I couldn’t help laughing. If I had had an elder brother, he would have been just like him.
The whistle of the coming train reminded me of the purpose of my trip. “How can we help Miao Yan?”
“She must get an abortion or she’ll be expelled. There is no other option. An unmarried woman with a child is simply unacceptable in China. I don’t even know if she knows who the man is. She must have been drunk when it happened, otherwise she wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. I’ll talk to her and take her to the hospital.”
“An abortion? Is it dangerous?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. I’ll make sure everything goes well. I promise.”
I looked at Du Sheng and nodded. How I wished he would agree to marry her so she could keep the baby and, even without the diploma, at least stay in Guangdong. But I didn’t tell him what I was thinking—his serious expression stopped me. I still believed he should marry Miao Yan if he had made love to her but I knew he wouldn’t do that and it wasn’t even a good idea if he no longer loved her. How disappointed I felt with myself, at my failure to find a way to help Miao Yan!
The train pulled into the station. Passengers on the platform started to board. Before walking to my compartment I asked Du Sheng, “Why don’t you love her? Why did you break up with her? She was hurt when she was thirteen years old and she can’t afford to be hurt anymore.”
He didn’t answer. He shook his head, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.
The train pulled out of the station and a few moments later entered a long, dark tunnel. I stared at my reflection in the window and wondered why I was on this train.
With only ten days to the finals, students were busy, shuttling on bikes between the libraries, classrooms, and dorms.
It rained heavily the afternoon I came back from Shenzhen. I went to see Miao Yan as soon as I got into the dorm but nobody was in her room though the door was wide open. I went up to try my luck again after dinner but this time the door was locked. On the fourth morning after my return I saw a note on my door: “I’ll be in Shenzhen these days. Don’t contact me. Don’t try to find me. Good luck with your finals. Good luck with everything. Miao Yan.”
It was the first time I had seen her handwriting. It was surprisingly coarse and childish, each character as big as a five-fen coin, each stroke stiff as if carved. While some characters went up, others went down. There was no pattern in her handwriting.
It had been a while since I had visited the rooftop. I hadn’t felt like going up there. Whenever I walked into my room I would glance at my violin case, once so beloved and dear to me, now as dark and cold as the weather. One day I took it from under the desk and put it beneath my bunk instead, so I wouldn’t see it right away when I walked in.
The evening Miao Yan left for Shenzhen, I went to the library without eating dinner. Around nine o’clock I felt nauseous and distracted, so I returned to the dorm. Nobody else was in the room. On Pingping’s desk was a bunch of red roses, eleven of them, in a black heart-shaped ceramic vase—eleven was a lucky number among college lovers because it represented loyalty. The roses must have been there for at least a few days since the petals were drooping and ready to fall. It surprised me that I hadn’t noticed them until now.
Donghua’s bed, as always, was messy, covered with yarn and half-finished knitting. I was often afraid that one day she would be stabbed by her own sharp knitting needles. She had also gotten herself a boyfriend recently. They had met the day I went to Shenzhen. Later, she told me that she was bored that day so she bicycled for an hour to visit a friend at another university. They went to see a movie, along with a group of her friend’s classmates. Among them was a fair-skinned, bespectacled thin guy. He kept trying to speak to Donghua. He was majoring in computer science and was also in his second year. Donghua liked the way he spoke—soft-voiced and slow-paced—and was attracted to his broad knowledge of world affairs. After returning, she compared their horoscopes and birth dates and was convinced that they would be a good match. Later that day the guy showed up in the duty room and asked her if she’d like to be his girlfriend. She agreed. Since then he had come to see her three times. After telling me how they met, Donghua quickly added, “I told him that I wouldn’t have sex with him until we get married.”
I took the violin case from under the bunk—it felt heavier than I remembered. Then I realized that it was raining. I put the violin away and grabbed my raincoat.
The rain was heavier than I thought. Though I was wearing a raincoat with a cap, I hesitated for a few minutes before stepping onto the rooftop.
The sky was unusually white, shining like pebbles in a creek.
The wind was soundless. Threads of rain, tilting and dense, fleeted past my eyes. I had always thought a rainy sky would be dismal and dark. It was the first time that I had seen such a brightly white rainy sky. This brightness cheered me up. Like a kid I started to run and jump, despite the rain that hit my face and trickled down my neck.
When the rain stopped I leaned against a wall. I put my hands on the top of the wall and bent over to look down. Seen from the rooftop, the duty room looked like a toy house and the grand iron door like a rusty knife. The few bicycle parking lots inside West Five were covered with puddles. Many of the bikes had fallen on top of each other.
Miao Yan always liked to look down from the rooftop. Sometimes, to scare me, she would sit on the wall with her legs dangling on each side and even swing her body left and right, making horrible falling sounds. Whenever she did this I would beg her to come down. She wouldn’t stop until I screamed at her, then she would tease me for being such a coward before jumping back onto the cement rooftop. She often said there was crazy blood in her body.
Apart from Fortress Besieged, she once took another book from my bookshelf—a short story collection authored by college students. One piece, “A Life’s Lightness,” contained a scene of a student jumping from a high building.
After reading the story she said to me, “If you could choose how to die, what would you do?”
“I don’t want to die,” I replied. “Nobody wants to die.”
She laughed hysterically.
“Okay, now you tell me what you’d choose,” I said.
“I’d jump from a high place—a skyscraper, a bridge, a mountain, somewhere in the sky. The higher the better. I’m a wild goose. That ’s my name. That ’s my fate. I have no fear because I know how to fly.” She had shrugged and waved her arms up and down as if she indeed knew how to fly.
Remembering her words, I gripped the wall even more tightly, as though a whirlwind might come from nowhere and carry me down from the rooftop.
Suddenly, I heard a female’s piercing scream from downstairs, then the sound of a motor starting. The sound faded away rapidly.
I looked down and heard one girl shout, “Dama, what happened?”
The stocky Dama ran out of the duty room. In seconds, her hoarse voice broke the sky: “A murder! Somebody just committed a murder! Help! Call the Security Department! Call an ambulance!”
With her voice still resonating, a stream of students, including me, ran down the stairs, making a clatter like guns firing, and hurried outside.
A girl lay against the brick wall, groaning. Her long green sweater was stained with mud, her face hidden by a veil of hair. A red umbrella covered half of her body. Dama lifted the umbrella and from the girl’s stomach blood oozed between her fingers.
“Blood! Blood! Get her to hospital!” a girl screamed and began to throw up at the sight of the blood.
“She lives on our floor. She was okay a few minutes ago. I even said hello to her in the hallway,” another girl cried.
The injured girl was no longer groaning but she closed her eyes slowly. When Dama asked her what had happened, she didn’t answer. She only twisted a corner of her mouth a little and managed an almost imperceptible smile.
Ten minutes later an ambulance and two police cars arrived. Sirens screaming, they took away the girl.
At eleven thirty, Pingping and Donghua walked into the room, bringing the latest news, which they had heard in the duty room. The victim was Wang Mei, a senior who had recently found a job in Shenzhen. The man, also in his senior year, who had run away on the motorcycle was her boyfriend and they had been together for more than three years. He was from Xinjiang, the most northwestern province in China, and as required by the government he had to go back to his hometown after graduation.
The day before the incident, Wang Mei told him that their relationship had to end because she would never want to go to Xinjiang with him. The next afternoon the guy rode a borrowed motorcycle to visit her. He said he understood why she didn’t want to continue the relationship and only wished they could spend one more night together. She agreed. First he drove her along the Pearl River, then took her to one of the most expensive bars in the city, where they danced intimately. Afterward, he drove her back to the university.
Outside the duty room, he asked if she would reconsider her decision. She answered that they had to break up because she could never live in a backward province like Xinjiang. The guy nodded and let her return to her room. An hour later he walked into the duty room, pushed Dama away from the phone, and dialed Wang Mei’s room number. He said on the phone how much he loved her and that he only wished to see her one more time, after which he would leave her alone. She went down to see him and he stabbed her.
One of Wang Mei’s roommates told the story. When Wang Mei had parted with the guy earlier in the evening and returned to her dorm, she told one of her roommates what had happened. The roommate also heard the guy’s voice on the speaker and had warned Wang Mei not to go down to meet him, but she wouldn’t listen. The roommate said, “My instinct told me that he might do something bad to her but I never thought he’d stab her. His voice was so sad. I might have gone down to see him as well if I had been Wang Mei.”
After sharing the story, Pingping said if she ever had a loyal boyfriend like this guy she would go to Xinjiang with him.
“That’s a big lie,” Donghua said from her bed, putting down her knitting. “You’re practical. I don’t think you’d be so silly as to give up the opportunity of staying in a big city for a man. Didn’t you come to this university because you wanted to stay in Guangdong?”
Pingping hesitated, but soon said, “If you’re with the person you love, the rest isn’t important.”
“Okay. Say I’m a man and you love me. You go to my village in Sichuan with me. There are no shopping malls there, no refrigerators, no color televisions, no washing machines, you make little money, you have to work in the field, you have to feed pigs, you have to have at least one son or you’ll be looked down on. Will you still love me?”
“That’s not realistic. We’re university students. We won’t be assigned to the countryside.”
“You see, love isn’t enough. The difference between Xinjiang and Guangzhou is just as big. Since I was little, my parents have told me that their greatest wish is that I become a city person. My ma even said I could marry a cripple, a blind man, as long as I work in the city she’d be happy for me. You’re lucky to be born in a big city. You don’t know what life is like in the country.” Donghua’s face turned red. She climbed down from her bed and poured some water from her thermos.
“How come you’re so worked up?” Pingping mumbled. “We aren’t talking about you.”
“Anyway,” Donghua said. “The guy shouldn’t have stabbed her. Now his future is ruined completely.”
I was lying on my bed listening to their conversation. I chimed in, “Do you think the girl ever considered going to Xinjiang with him?”
Donghua shook her head. “I don’t think so. There are so many men in the world. If you can’t stay with this guy, there must be another guy somewhere waiting for you.”
“My goodness, are you practical yourself, or what? No wonder you spend so much time knitting. You want to have enough sweaters for all of your potential boyfriends!” Pingping dragged a half-done sweater from Donghua’s bed and waved it like a battle flag. It turned into a chase around the room, with a lot of bumping into desks and knocking down chairs. Pingping then said she had never tried cheek-to-cheek dancing and suggested a demonstration, so Donghua put on a pair of high-heeled shoes and danced with her. They whirled with their cheeks touching, their arms around each other’s waists.
Next morning I overslept. It was eleven thirty when I got up. After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I picked up my bag, ran down the stairs, and grabbed my bike from a messy heap of them. I was perched on the saddle, about to rush to the library, when I saw an announcement posted near the window of th
e duty room. It was written in red ink and the headline blazed WARRANT FOR ARREST:
Li Zhe, male, twenty-two years old, a senior, from Sihezi City in Xinjiang Province. This student is suspected of stabbing a female student (name undisclosed) in front of the dormitory of West Five at about ten in the evening on December 24, 1992. The victim is still in a critical condition. According to witnesses the suspect escaped on a red Honda motorcycle after stabbing the victim. The City Police Department has ordered the arrest of Li Zhe. If you know where he is hiding or can provide any information regarding his whereabouts, please contact the City Police Department or the Security Department on campus immediately.
To the left of the announcement was a small photograph of Li Zhe. He had a square face and big eyes that looked slightly to the left. His lips, thick and full, were closed tightly, as though he was determined not to open them. The masculinity of his face was, however, balanced by feminine features: his eyebrows were thin and curved, his nose was small and straight. A face full of conflict.
On my way to the library, I saw an identical notice on every dorm and office building I passed.
Finals ended on a bright, sunny afternoon. Though I thought of Miao Yan even when I was taking the tests, I did well in all my subjects. By now, Miao Yan had been gone for more than a week. I often went to a pay phone and dialed Du Sheng’s cell phone, but hung up on the first ring. Though I worried about Miao Yan, I didn’t want to speak with him. I was afraid of him. The way he had looked at me, the way he’d put his hand on my shoulder, seemed to suggest he knew me—perhaps better than I knew myself.
Once I dialed his phone and waited till I heard his voice on the other end before hanging up without saying a word. I even heard him shouting, “Ming, is that you? I know it’s you. Why not speak to me? Don’t hang up…”
Whenever Dama saw me she would say, “There’s another call for you today. Same guy from Shenzhen. He ’s been calling for a few days now, but when I ask him if he wants me to take a message he always says it’s nothing important and he’ll call back.” Then she would smile and say, “Is he your boyfriend? Did you have a fight?”