by Yu Hua
A few days later, when Su Hang brought the hardback to school, I was confronted with a difficult choice. Naturally I was just as excited as the other boys, but when classes had finished and Su Hang got ready to open the book I fell into a complete funk. With the sunlight blazing down, I lacked the courage to engage in an activity that seemed to me so ill-advised. So when Su Hang said that someone had to keep watch by the doorway, I gratefully undertook this commission. In my post outside the classroom door I was assailed by desire, and the gasps from inside the room—some long, some short—made my pulse race.
Having missed this opportunity, I found it difficult to get a second chance. Although Su Hang was later to bring the book to school quite regularly, it never occurred to him that he should let me have a look. I knew that I had no standing in his eyes, being just one classmate out of the many in his entourage and the most insignificant of them to boot. And besides, I was never able to overcome my shame and did not take the initiative to make any such request. It would be another six months before the color photo was revealed to me by Su Yu.
Su Hang was sometimes so daring as to take one's breath away. As time went on, he felt it was no fun just to show the photo to other boys. One day he actually went over to a female classmate, book in hand, and the next thing we saw was her fleeing in panic across the playground and bursting into tears by the perimeter wall. Su Hang returned to us, laughing heartily. We warned him anxiously that she might report him, but he was not in the least perturbed, reassuring us, “No chance ofthat. How could she possibly say anything? Can you see her saying, ‘Su Hang showed me a picture of…’? She wouldn't be able to go on. There's nothing to worry about. Relax.”
Afterward, the fact that there were no repercussions whatsoever proved Su Hang's point. His success in this adventure triggered even more bold exploits during the subsequent summer vacation. At lunchtime one day in the middle of the agricultural busy season, Su Hang walked idly along in the sunlight accompanied by a classmate named Lin Wen. I can imagine them expressing their preference for one girl or another in the crudest language possible. Lin Wen had attained his status as Su Hang's best friend during this period by using a mirror to peep at girls in the toilets. This brazen act had not enabled him to see anything of significance, but this is not to say he learned nothing from it. When Su Hang was contemplating testing the mirror's efficacy, Lin Wen, the voice of experience, counseled against it, saying, “With a mirror in the toilet, a girl can see a boy clearly enough, but there's no way that a boy can get a clear view of a girl.”
Immersed in topics such as this, they walked the countryside, and when they entered a village the only sound they heard was a whir of cicadas, for at this time of day all able-bodied people were in the fields harvesting rice. As they strolled under the trees, the topic at hand inflamed them more than the summer heat itself, and the sun-baked scene before them seemed reminiscent of a disaster zone, brought to ruin by desire run amok. When this restless pair saw smoke rising from the chimney of a cottage, Su Hang crept over and took a peep through its window, then signaled to Lin Wen to do the same. Lin Wen's pleasurable anticipation did not last long, because when he sidled up to the window the scene that met his gaze left him disappointed: all he saw was an old woman in her seventies, tending a fire beneath the stove. But he noticed that Su Hang's breath had become labored and heard Su Hang ask him tensely, “Do you want to see the real thing?”
Lin Wen now understood what Su Hang had in mind. Pointing at the old woman, he asked in astonishment, “You want to see hers?”
Su Hang smiled with some embarrassment. “Let's do it together,” he proposed eagerly.
Despite the enterprise he had shown by testing the utility of mirrors in toilets, Lin Wen was not immediately persuaded. “Such an old woman?” he queried.
Blushing, Su Hang quietly exclaimed, “I know, but it's the real thing!”
Lin Wen could not bring himself to participate directly in the proposed inspection, but Su Hang's excitement stirred a tremor within him, and he said, “You go ahead. FU keep watch for you.”
When Su Hang looked back and shot him an awkward smile just before climbing inside, Lin Wen knew that his was the more interesting vantage point.
Lin Wen did not stand right next to the window, for he was perfectly able to imagine how Su Hang would throw himself on the old woman. He concentrated instead on his mission as sentinel, taking a few steps back to assure a fuller view of any villager's approach.
He heard the sound of a body hitting the ground, followed by some shocked groans. At first the old lady must not have known what was happening. Once she did realize, Lin Wen heard a hoarse voice saying heatedly, “You bastard, I am old enough to be your grannie!”
This comment made Lin Wen chuckle. He knew that Su Hang was already halfway there. Then he heard her cry, almost penitently, “What a disgrace!”
She was not strong enough to withstand Su Hang's assault, and in her frail condition righteous anger could give way only to self-pity. Just at this moment—too soon for Su Hang—Lin Wen saw a man heading in their direction. Naked to the waist, sickle in hand, this apparition scared the daylights out of Lin Wen, and he rushed to the window only to see Su Hang kneeling on the floor, desperately tugging at the old woman's trousers, while she rubbed her shoulder (sprained, perhaps) and muttered something incomprehensible. At Lin Wen's warning, Su Hang rushed over and dived out the window with the furious energy of a rabid dog. Then they both raced madly toward the river. Su Hang kept throwing glances behind him, each time seeing a man with a sickle bearing down upon him. As Lin Wen fled for his life, time and again he heard Su Hang's despairing cry, “Can't! Not going to make it!”
As they dashed along the road toward town, through the midday heat, they threw up clouds of dust and their lungs protested furiously. Nauseated and caked in mud, they finally returned to safe territory.
Of my high school teachers, the music instructor, with his cultivated manners, made the deepest impression on me. He was the only teacher who spoke to the class in standard Chinese, and when he sat down in front of the organ to teach us a song I was captivated by his voice and demeanor. For a long time I would gaze at him in delight, and he became my ideal adult. What is more, he was the least snobbish of teachers, favoring all his pupils with the same smile. I still remember the first time he taught us. A songbook under his arm, dressed in a white shirt and dark blue trousers, he came into the classroom and told us solemnly, in the precise tone of a radio announcer: “Music begins where language disappears.”
My classmates, accustomed to hearing uncouth provincial teachers talking in local dialect, found this hilarious.
In the spring of my third year in high school, around the time that the color photograph was attracting so much attention, Su Hang, already regarded as a major headache by the school staff, used his crudity to make the music class an occasion for ridiculing the music teacher. He took off his gym shoes and laid them on the windowsill, then stuck both feet up on his desk. The foul smell issuing from his nylon socks permeated the entire room. In the face of this rudeness, our music teacher continued to sing lustily, his resonant voice creating a counterpoint to Su Hang's stench, exposing us to a collision between beauty and squalor. Only when the song was over did the music teacher push back from the organ, rise to his feet and say to Su Hang, “Put your shoes on, please.”
But this admonition succeeded only in reducing Su Hang to a paroxysm of mirth. Rolling about in his chair, he twisted around to us and said, “Can you believe it? He saidpleasel”
The music teacher, as courteous as ever, said, “None of that nonsense, please.”
This time Su Hang laughed even more wildly. Coughing ostentatiously, he patted his chest and said, “There he goes again with thatplease of his! This is cracking me up. Isn't he a riot?”
The music teacher was livid. Striding over to Su Hang s desk, he picked up his shoes from the windowsill and tossed them out the window. But as he turned around, Su H
ang zipped over to the organ in his stocking feet, grabbed the songbook, and chucked it out of the window too. The music teacher was so stunned that he could only watch dumbly as Su Hang clambered out the window and then climbed back in again, shoes in hand. He returned the shoes to their perch on the windowsill, rested both feet on his desk, and gazed coolly at the music teacher, braced for action.
In the face of Su Hangs boorish behavior, the music teacher, so much admired by me, was utterly defenseless. He stood by the dais, his head slightly raised, and for a long time he said nothing at all. His face wore such a desolate look, you might have thought he had just received word of a death in the family, and it was ages before he finally said, “Could somebody go and fetch the song-book?”
After class, when many other boys crowded around Su Hang to hail his triumph, I did not join them. Somehow I felt a sense of loss, having just witnessed my role model being so easily humiliated.
It was not long after this that Su Hang and I went our separate ways. In actual fact, only I was aware of the rupture in our relations. All along he had regarded me as completely dispensable, and when I no longer joined the crowd clustered around him in the middle of the playground I alone was conscious of this change. Su Hang seemed unaware that I was now absent from his throng of adherents. He was in as high spirits as ever, whereas I now found myself alone. But I realized with surprise that the feelings I had experienced when I stood next to Su Hang were identical to my current sense of isolation. The only reason I had attached myself to Su Hang was to put on a show and try to look cool. Later, when I mentally reproached my brother Sun Guang-ping for sucking up to classmates from town, I sometimes would reflect ruefully that I had done much the same thing myself.
Now that I think about it, I am actually rather grateful for the beating that Su Hang administered that afternoon with the willow branch. But how shocked I was at the time—I had no idea that Su Hang would suddenly grab a branch and lay into me. A bunch of girls happened to be walking nearby, among them three whom Su Hang had fancied in the past. I could understand Su Hang's motive but I found it difficult to accept the way he chose to show off. At first I thought he was joking: he flogged me the way a carter might flog a recalcitrant mule, and I forced a smile and tried to get out of his way. But he persisted, and lashed me so fiercely across the face that my cheeks were stinging. When I saw that the girls had stopped and were looking on in wonder, my heart burned with shame. Intoxicated by his power, Su Hang kept turning his head and whistling at them, at the same time shouting at me to lie down. I knewwhy he wanted to hit me, but I neither lay on the ground nor seized hold of the willow branch, and instead headed off in the direction of the classroom. My classmates stood cheering as Su Hang pursued me and landed further blows on my back. I made no effort to resist but just kept on going. That afternoon my eyes blurred with tears of chagrin.
But in fact this humiliation made it possible for me to establish relations with Su Yu several months later. No longer did I claim to have lots of friends; I returned instead to solitude and began an independent life as the true me. Sometimes I found the experience so lonely that it was hard to overcome the emptiness inside, but I thought it better to maintain my self-respect than to gain superficial friends at the expense of shame. It was then I began to notice Su Yu, whose solitary manner as he walked down the side of the street made me sense a bond between us. Though still a teenager, Su Yu already projected an adult air of having lots of things on his mind, for he had yet to dispel the specter of his father's liaison with the widow back in Southgate. As I furtively took note of Su Yu, he likewise was quietly paying attention to me. I found out later that my utter indifference to my classmates had engaged his sympathy.
It did not take me long to realize that Su Yu found me intriguing. Often he would raise his head and look at me as I walked, silent and alone, along the other side of the street, while our classmates marched up the middle in groups of four or five, talking at the top of their voices. But Su Yu's carefree life in South-gate had left a deep impression, discouraging me from trying to forge any ties with him. Besides, the fact that I had no friends made it difficult for me to imagine that a boy two grades above me would come forward and greet me so cordially.
It was not until the term was about to end that Su Yu suddenly spoke up. We were walking down either side of the street, and when I looked over at Su Yu he surprised me by coming to a stop and smiling at me. Then—a moment I will never forget—he blushed with embarrassment. This self-conscious boy so soon to become my friend, called out “Sun Guanglin.”
I just stood there. I can no longer retrieve my precise emotions at that moment, but I know that I looked at him intently. Bunches of schoolchildren were walking along between us, and only when a gap appeared did Su Yu walk across and ask, “Do you remember me?”
When I first approached Su Hang, what I had been hoping was precisely that he would say something like this, but in the end I heard these words from his brother instead. Tears nearly came to my eyes as I nodded and said, “You're Su Yu.”
After this exchange, if we happened to run into each other at the end of the school day it seemed natural to stay together. Often I would see Su Hang not too far away, watching us with a bemused expression. After a while we did not feel ready to head off in different directions when we reached the school gate, and Su Yu began to walk me partway home, as far as the wooden bridge that led to Southgate. He would stand there and wave to me after I crossed to the other side, then turn around and disappear into the distance.
A few years ago, when I made a return visit to Southgate, the old wooden bridge had been replaced by a new concrete structure. I stood in the winter twilight, recalling things that happened that summer. My nostalgic gaze gradually obliterated the factory, the now-bricked-over riverbank, and the concrete bridge I stood upon. I saw once again Southgate s fields and the muddy bank covered with green. The concrete slabs beneath my feet turned back into the wooden boards of earlier days, and through the slits between the boards I watched the river flow.
In the chill winter wind I remembered the following scene. Late one summer afternoon Su Yu and I stood on the bridge together for a long time, and as he gazed sheepishly toward South-gate his eyes reddened in the sunset. In a tone as serene as the dusk itself, he spoke of a tranquil moment during his time there. It had been so hot one night that he couldn't bear to let down his mosquito net, so his mother sat by his bedside, fanning him and driving away mosquitoes; only after he had fallen asleep did she close the net around him.
When Su Yu first told me about this incident, I felt a pang, for by then it was almost unthinkable that I would receive any affection from my family.
Su Yu had had a nightmare later. “I seemed to have killed someone. The police were looking for me everywhere, so I ran back to the house to hide. But when my parents came home from work and found me, they took a rope and tied me to the tree in front of the house so that the police could come and take me away. I cried and cried, begging them not to do that. But they just kept cursing and cursing.”
Su Yu's wails woke up his mother. When she roused him from his dream, he was in a cold sweat and his heart was pounding. “What on earth are you crying about?” she scolded. “Are you out of your mind?”
The contempt in his mother's voice plunged Su Yu into despondency.
When the young Su Yu told this story to the younger me, probably neither of us could make much sense of it. More than ten years after Su Yu's death, as I stood alone with my memories on the bridge to Southgate, it dawned on me that Su Yu, such a sensitive soul, must always have oscillated between happiness and despair.
SHIVERS
When I was fourteen, under cover of darkness I discovered a mysterious activity that gave me a wonderful sensation. At the moment of climax, rapture arrived on the coattails of apprehension. After this, when I encountered the word shiver, I understood it in a sense different from the purely negative connotation ascribed to it by my peers, and perhaps mor
e akin to what Goethe intended when he wrote, “To shiver is mankind's finest lot.”
During those long evenings when I first scaled the thrilling heights, only to enter a world of utter emptiness and discover a wet patch on my underpants, I could not help but feel anxious and bewildered. My initial sense of alarm did not trigger guilt as much as a fear that I had fallen prey to some physiological disorder. At first I assumed the moisture was caused by an escape of urine, and what embarrassed me, in my ignorance, was not the shamefulness of my action but rather the idea that at my age I might still wet my bed. At the same time I was in a panic because I wondered if I might be ill. Nonetheless, such was my craving for this momentary wave of pleasure that I couldn't stop myself from repeatedly undertaking the maneuvers that would culminate in that ecstatic shudder.
When I left the house after lunch one day, the summer I was fourteen, and walked toward the school in town, my face went pale under the dazzling sun, for at this very hour I was intending to perform the disgraceful deed in order to solve the mystery of my nocturnal emissions. Given my age at the time, I was no longer able to let everything happen in accordance with what were held to be correct principles, and my inner desires began silently to control some of my words and actions. For days now, I had been dying to know exactly what had been discharged. At home, I couldn't carry out my scheme, and my only recourse was to pay a visit to the school toilets at lunchtime, when nobody else would be there. Later on the memory of those ramshackle toilets made me cringe, and for a long time I couldn't help but despise myself for choosing the most sordid venue in which to engage in the most sordid activity. Now I refuse to indulge in that kind of self-reproach, because my opting for the toilets simply reflected the fact that in my youth I had no place to hide. My choice was forced on me by circumstances.
I prefer not to describe the grim ambience of the school toilets; just to recall the buzzing of flies and the din of cicadas in the trees outside is enough to make me tense. I remember that after leaving the toilets I felt completely drained as I walked across the sun-bleached playground. With my most recent discovery confusion had given way to bafflement. When I walked into the classroom opposite I was thinking I might lie down in the empty room, but to my alarm I saw a girl doing her homework there, and her serene expression instantly drove home to me the weight of my sin. I dared not enter the classroom, but stood miserably next to a window in the hallway. I had no idea what I should do next and felt as though the day of judgment was nigh. When an old cleaning woman went into the toilet I had just vacated, bucket in hand, I began to tremble.