by Liu Zhenyun
After a few days of commotion, some found review materials, while others continued to search. People turned selfish as the exam drew near, and those who had gotten what they needed kept it a secret from others, hoping to eliminate competition. In our room, Mozhuo was the only who managed to get hold of a yellowed copy of World Geography, but he was adamant in his denial while furtively memorizing the contents on the hillock behind the school, a reprise of the time when he ate roasted cicadas. Unable to get a copy, Wang Quan, Li Ailian, and I were as anxious as ants in a hot wok. When my father came with more steamed buns, he noticed the distracted look on my sallow face and asked me what was going on. I told him and he clapped his hands. “Your aunt’s son teaches at Ji County Normal School. Maybe he has something.”
My spirits soared as I was reminded of the cousin. Father stood up, tightened his blue cloth belt, and volunteered to head to Ji without delay.
“Why don’t you go home and tell mother first? Or she may be worried.”
“We can’t worry about something like that at a time like this.”
“But you don’t know how to ride a bike. It’s ninety kilometers round trip.”
“When I was young, I could cover a hundred and fifteen in a day,” he replied confidently before tottering off. I ran after him and handed him the sack. He looked at me and a smile escaped from the stubble that circled his lips as he took out four buns. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”
Tear welled up in my eyes again.
I whispered the news to Li that night during study session; she was elated also.
On the following evening, she and I stole out of the school and met up at the hillock to then walk a kilometer to the main road just outside the village to meet up with my father. We started out in high spirits, talking and laughing, but soon it grew dark and my heart sank when no one but an old man collecting animal droppings came into view.
“Maybe your father’s feet hurt and he had to slow down.” She tried to make me feel better.
“What if he couldn’t find anything?”
We waited quietly, until the crescent moon was dipping west. There was no point in staying, so we walked back dejectedly. But we agreed that we’d meet up again just before dawn the next day.
I got out of bed at the first crow of a rooster, and went back to the same spot. A figure appeared in the distance so I ran up, thinking it must be my father, but it turned out to be her.
“You’re earlier than me!”
“I just got here.”
An early morning frost had turned the green fields white. Roosters were crowing here and there in a nearby village. I felt a sudden chill and looked at Ailian; she was trembling, so I took off my overcoat and draped it over her shoulders. She didn’t turn down my offer, and instead looked at me with emotion-filled eyes, while slowly pressing up against me. Feeling hot all over, with a tingling sensation coursing through my body, I had an urge to kiss her, but I didn’t.
It was getting light, the eastern sky was tinted red from the early morning sun. Suddenly we spotted a figure stumbling toward us from the distance. She squirmed out of my arms and pointed.
“Is that him?”
I perked up after taking a look. “Yes, that’s him. That’s how my father walks.”
We took off running. I waved my arms and shouted, “Father!”
“Ai!” A reply came from the end of the road.
“Did you get it?”
“I did, son!”
I was so happy I yelled like a madman as I raced ahead. I didn’t stop when Li fell. I kept running until I reached the tottering old man.
“You got it?”
“I got it.”
“Where is it?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”
He was equally excited as he sat on the ground. By then Li had caught up and watched as my father carefully undid the blue cloth around his waist and unbuttoned his padded jacket and the shirt underneath to retrieve a thin, well-worn volume. I snatched it out of his hands. It still had his body warmth, but I was concerned only about the title, World Geography. Li took it from me and one look so thrilled her that even her ears turned red.
“Yes, that’s it. It’s World Geography.”
Father laughed at our ecstatic state. Then I noticed the tip of one of his shoes had cracked open and something bright red was oozing out. I took off his shoe and saw that his wrinkled, dirt-splattered foot was covered in blisters, some of which had already burst to turn his foot bloody.
“Father!”
“It’s all right. Nothing serious.” He was still smiling as he pulled his foot out of my hand.
“Thank you so much, Uncle.” Ailian was on the verge of tears.
“You’re sixty-five years old,” I said.
“It’s all right. It’s nothing.” He was still acting tough. “This book is in high demand and hard to find. It took your cousin a whole day to get a copy, or I’d have made it back last night.”
Ailian and I exchanged a look, and I saw she was all dusty. I asked if she’d hurt herself when she fell. She pulled up her sleeve to show a bruise on her arm, but that only made us laugh.
“Your cousin said it wasn’t easy to get a copy. In fact he pretty much took it away from its owner,” Father said somberly. “We have to return it in ten days.”
We nodded solemnly.
“You do your best,” he continued, “But we won’t give it back if ten days isn’t enough for you. I’ll tell him I was careless and lost it on the way home.”
“Ten days will be enough,” we said together.
By then we’d recovered from the excitement enough for Father to size her up with a quizzical look, so I hastened to explain, “This is Li Ailian, a classmate.”
She blushed.
“A classmate. I see,” Father said with a cunning glint in his eyes. “Go ahead and start studying.” He stood up to walk home.
“Rest a while, Father. Don’t be in a hurry to go home.”
“I have to go. Your mother must be worried sick.”
He walked off and soon disappeared down another road. Book in hand, Ailian and I felt buoyed again as we looked at each other before turning back. We agreed to sneak out and meet up by the creek to memorize the contents together.
I left early the following morning with the book, and walked through the cornfield to reach the spot where she’d been cutting grass that day. Sure that she would be there before me, I planned to creep out of the field to scare her. But I stopped in my tracks when I parted the corn stalks and gazed at the riverbank. The picture in front of me froze me on the spot.
She was sitting serenely on the riverbank in front of a small round mirror propped up on the grass. With her eyes on the mirror, she was brushing her hair leisurely with a plastic comb with broken teeth. She worked methodically, slowly, and carefully, one side of her face painted a golden yellow by the rosy rays of an early morning sun.
It dawned on me that she was a girl, a very pretty girl.
I was distracted that day, unable to focus on the book that had taken so much trouble to secure. I kept thinking about something else, and I discovered that she was a little flustered too. We avoided each other’s eyes as if we were upset with ourselves.
That night we came to the main road, where we worked on memorizing the text with the help of a flashlight. It could have been the dark night or the tranquility, but we had exceptional concentration and made great progress. We’d memorized a third of the book by the time the lights-out bell sounded on campus. Surprised and thrilled, we put the book aside and lay down in the grass, not willing to return just yet.
The stars were bright in the dark, impossibly deep and distant sky. I’d never before noticed how lofty, vast, kind, and delightful the sky could be. I could hear her breathing beside me and I knew she too was gazing at the sky.
But she lay there silently.
A wind started to blow, a chilly gust of wind. We remained motionless.
; “Do you think we’ll pass the exam?” she whispered to break the silence.
“Of course,” I replied firmly. “We will.”
“How do you know?”
“The stars and sky tell me so.”
“That’s nonsense.” She laughed.
We fell silent again as we continued gazing at the evening sky.
She spoke up again, this time with a tremor in her voice. “What if you pass, but I fail?”
I shuddered when I gave the question some thought, but I replied firmly, “I’ll never forget you if that happens.”
She let out of long sigh and said, “I won’t forget you either if I pass and you fail.”
I could feel her hand next to mine so I took it, the rough hand of a farm girl, a warm hand on a chilly night.
“I’m getting cold,” she said.
Something stirred in my heart and I put my arms around her. Staying in my arms, she gazed up at me with a docile look in her serene, dark eyes. I bent down to kiss her damp lips, nose, and moist eyes.
It was my first kiss.
5
Exhaustion. Sheer exhaustion and nothing else.
Wang’s insomnia was getting worse; he couldn’t sleep, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was all rumpled. Looking more demon than human, he had developed a temper, and was no longer his kind old self. One night, when Mozhuo was snored loudly, Wang punched him twice. Mozhuo woke up, buried his head in his blanket, and sobbed, while Wang sucked on his lips.
“This can’t go on,” he grumbled.
Mozhou’s headaches had gotten so bad he could no longer read. He spent twenty fen on a tin of menthol balm to rub on his temples, infusing the room with a menthol smell. One night I saw him crying when I got back.
“Did Wang Quan hit you again?”
He shook his head. “This is too hard. It’s awful, banzhang. Can I just aim for a junior college instead?”
Cuckoo birds were calling in fields where wheat was ready for harvesting. Our teachers stopped tutoring us and went to work in the school’s fields, leaving us to our own devices, like horses let loose in the mountains. I went to talk about it with the principal, who said the only solution was to help bring in the wheat so the teachers could be free to resume tutoring. I was upset by how heartless that sounded; we had only a month left, and he had to exploit us. Yet when I passed this on my classmates, they were enthusiastic. Apparently, everyone’s nerves were so frayed, they weren’t making much progress in their studies. The principal’s plan gave them time to rest their brains, so with a shout, they stormed out of the classroom and headed to the wheat field, west of the creek. Taking the scythes from the teachers, we spread out horizontally, and, with the intense rhythm of “ka-cha,” cut sheaves of wheat speedily and methodically. After finishing a large section, we were soaked in sweat and our taut nerves relaxed for a while. We laughed and horsed around like typical farm boys and girls, while the teachers watched approvingly from the edge of the field.
“I don’t know how they’ll do on the exam but they’re good at harvesting wheat,” Ma Zhong said. “They’d all pass if that were on the college exam.”
As I wiped the sweat from my face and looked at the field and the people in it, I felt, for the first time in my life, that manual labor was satisfying.
It didn’t take even an afternoon to finish bringing in the wheat, which so impressed the principal that he told the kitchen to prepare a special meal for us, free of charge. It was pork stewed with turnips again, but this time there would be plenty. We washed our hands and faces before going into the dining hall, where we enjoyed a good meal.
But some unhappy events occurred over the next few days.
The first was Wang Quan dropping out. The exam was barely a month away, but he decided to give up. It was the first year after the land-lease system was implemented and villages parceled out land along with wheat seedlings to families, including Wang’s. Now the wheat was ripening and ready for harvest. Wang’s towering wife made another visit to school, but this time she didn’t rail at him. Instead, she talked to him in a serious tone.
“The wheat is drying up in the field. Are you coming back to harvest? If you are, I’ll get started, and if not, well, the damned wheat will just have to die out there.”
She turned and walked off, without waiting for a reply, leaving Wang to his own thoughts.
That night he got me out of the classroom. He took out a pack of cigarettes, the first time for that, and offered me one. We lit up and smoked.
“We were classmates back then and now we’ve shared a dorm room for more than six months. Are we good friends?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
He took another puff. “Then I’m going to ask you a question and you have to be honest with me.”
“Sure.”
“With what I’ve got, do you think I can pass the exam?”
That caught me by surprise, and I didn’t know what to say. To be frank, Wang wasn’t all that smart. It didn’t matter how hard he tried to memorize something, nothing stayed with him after two days; he might even say that the Yellow River was thirty-three kilometers long. Worse yet, he hadn’t been sleeping well since he got here, which affected his ability to remember what he learned. But everyone could see that he worked hard.
“You’ve made it this far, and you only have to keep at it for one more month.”
He nodded and took another drag, before blurting out emotionally, “But it’s been hard on her and the kids. I never told you this, but I took our oldest out of school so I could prepare for the exam. What will I say to him if I don’t pass?”
“What if you do? No one can tell how it will turn out.”
He nodded again and continued, “And then there’s the wheat. We won’t have anything to eat if the wheat goes to ruin.”
“I’ll get some classmates to help you.”
“I can’t ask for anyone’s help at a moment like this.” He shook his head.
“Don’t worry so much. It would only be this season if the wheat went to waste, but the exam could mean a lifetime of difference.”
He nodded.
But we woke up in the morning to find his spot empty; only the yellow wheat stalks remained. Obviously he’d made up his mind to leave without saying good-bye. Then we noticed how he had stuffed his tattered summer mat under Mozhuo’s pillow. We were saddened by the sight. Mozhuo lost control and began to cry.
“Would you look at that? Wang Quan didn’t say a word. He just up and left like that.”
I was emotional myself, but I tried to console him. I never expected him to cry openly.
“I feel terrible. I had a copy of World Geography, but wouldn’t share it with him.”
Another unpleasant incident took place a few days later. Yueyue broke up with Haozi. He wouldn’t tell us why, except to complain that she was “heartless.” Apparently, he wasn’t good enough for her, so she decided to cut off all ties with him, even threatening to tell the teachers if he didn’t leave her alone. Throwing his copy of A Complete Collection of Love Letters to the floor, he spread out his hands and wept, a first for him.
“That’s so vile!”
I tried to make him feel better by telling him that with his family background and his looks, he’d have no trouble finding another girlfriend. He was somewhat consoled as he uttered a somber vow, “She thinks I’m not good enough for her. I’m going to start over, and I’ll see the look on her face when I get into a college in Beijing.”
He put on his shoes and went to the classroom to go over his notes and textbooks. But it was clear to us that, no matter how smart he was, it was too late to start over two weeks before the exam.
The third piece of bad news was Ailian’s father falling ill again. I went to the classroom one night and saw a note she’d stuck in one of my books.
“Ge,
My father is ill again, so I have to go home. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry.
Ailian.”
But sh
e was still not back in two days, which worried me so much I borrowed Haozi’s bike and rode out to her village again. Neither she nor her father was home. Her mother, who was sowing wheat seedlings in the field, told me that her father was so ill this time that he was taken to Xinxiang. Ailian had gone with him.
I pushed the bike and turned around dejectedly. When I reached the village entrance, I stopped to look at the paved road to Xinxiang and the tall poplar trees on both sides. I wonder how serious his illness is this time, I said to myself. We only have two weeks left; I hope she won’t miss the exam.
6
Finally it was time for the college entrance exam.
It was held in our classroom, but the place felt completely different. The walls were covered in warnings in different colors: “Observe the rules of the exam site,” “No talking,” “Violators till be banned from the exam,” etc. On the door was “Rules for the exam”: we needed admission cards, our photos would be checked before the exam papers were distributed, anyone more than half an hour late would be barred from entering, etc. Five teachers were assigned to the small room to proctor the exam, one of whom was Ma Zhong, who stood at the rostrum and announced with a swagger, “I’ll be watching all of you. It will be a loss of face if you fail, but it will be scandalous if you violate the rules and get thrown out.”
The warning was followed by the appearance of policemen with insignias on their caps and collars, nearly taking our breath away and making our hearts race. Outside were several three-wheeled motorcycles from the public security office to deliver and collect our exam papers. A white warning line was drawn thirty meters away and guarded by a policeman.
Students’ families gathered beyond the line, waiting anxiously for us to finish. My father was among them; he had brought along a sack of hard-boiled eggs. Mother had cooked them for me, all thirty-six of them: six times six makes thirty-six and two sixes brings good luck, he said. He added that eggs were easier to eat, so I wouldn’t waste any time. He was oblivious to the dense layers of beady sweat on his forehead, nor did he realize that he was covered from head to toe in dust kicked up by people around him. It made me sad to look at the exam site, the families beyond the line, and my father sitting on a broken brick.