by Lu Min
Si Jia rushed back into her stepfather's room to his bedside, tripping over the clothes he'd strewn across the floor, falling on the floor but holding her head up high enough to see. At the edge of her stepfather's pillow was a pile of vomit, but it was already practically dried out. Si Jia wanted to nudge him, but her hand knocked into a stiff body instead.
Si Jia's father figure and childhood crush, this sufferer of two-fold rejection had, in the heavy, difficult breathing of obesity, suddenly passed away in the deep of the night two days before.
[3]
Si Jia got up slowly and left her stepfather's room, drifting out as if striding on the moon…She looked all around in the bright and motionless noontime scene as the cramped, familiar apartment started resembling a night streetscape, void and gloomy. Furthermore a huge, howling draft rumbled up, and it was strong enough to pull people up by their roots. The frenetic wind was mottled with numerous, chaotic, sundry items, but they weren't leaves, sand or stones, but scene after scene of times past: her stepfather helping her braid her hair, them playing the "find the muscle" game, her stepfather trying to catch her through the night streets, her stepfather mopping up vomit all over the floor, the unfinished sketch her stepfather had placed by her pillow the night before the wedding, her stepfather sitting alone eating at a small dining table…It was all a dazzling maze. Si Jia had to prop herself up on something nearby, fumbling for the couch in which she'd fall into again, watching sand, rocks and times past rumble by. She knew that when this flurry, this train of wheels, had passed by that the family would be stripped clean, leaving nothing behind but its name…Take another look-have a good look. Oh, the scenery…stop for a while. Don't walk in such a hurry, and let me go back to my childhood, my youth, my life with my stepfather, and the time before I was eighteen…Si Jia sat up straight and focused her eyes, taking it all in. Truly, if she could have, she would have been willing to sit there forever, set apart from society, feeding on times past and savoring their sweet taste.
Time dragged along as Si Jia was planted in the couch. The rays of light outside the window turned dark, and the odor of her stepfather's body rose up like the fragrant aroma of durian. Vague noises of human beings slowly emerged in the courtyard, and they were like a cauldron boiling in the sea…Si Jia, like a woman possessed, did not make a move-like someone taking a nap. Her limbs were weak and powerless as she was powerless to stand up and break out of this gridlock. The long night was practically catching up to her. She was willing to drown in its darkness and finish this life of hers…
The phone suddenly rang and Si Jia went to grab the phone-only then did she suddenly realize that this very intimate telephone number was very soon to be canceled and completely disappeared from her life. Something was hissing in Si Jia's throat. The top and bottom rows of her teeth made a grinding noise, and she was trying but unable to utter one comprehensible word.
An angry-sounding Spanish matador dance song blared out the phone, and the mother loudly and excitedly exclaimed:…Oh! Si Jia-where are you today? That's great. What did you say? Speak louder, I can't hear a thing; it's too loud in here. We'll talk about it when I get back…I have to tell you there are still two contesting couples before us. You know we have an excellent strategy for success. Your stepfather-the second one-the head judge of the seniors' dance competition was his classmate in the school of politics. I'm calling to ask you guys to help film it. Tell your stepfather to get ready to film, and then they'll broadcast it on the city cable station. There's still two couples before our turn is up-tell him to turn on the TV quick…
With that Si Jia was somehow woken up. She bucked up and rubbed her eyes like having been soaked in the rain for most of the night. She'd quickly become cold and hungry, fearful and weak. The room was quickly getting dark, and the odor and gloom checkered together as it thickened…The whole of Si Jia's heart started shivering-who could she beg for help? She automatically picked up her phone to call "Violent Aesthetics'" cell phone, suddenly realizing her aloneness in this great big world and complete lack of a confidant, save for "Violent Aesthetics".
Only when "Violent Aesthetics" held Si Jia in her arms did she start to cry out in a raspy voice. The sound was small and muffled as it was tightly covered with her two hands. Thirty-four year-old Si Jia couldn't shriek like a young woman anymore. It was the highest decibel level she could muster.
Dead! He's dead!
Don't worry, you still have me. I'll always be here for you…"Violent Aesthetics" gingerly and lightly patted Si Jia's back. "Violent Aesthetics" had rushed over at top speed from far away as if responding to bugles that beckoned an attack.
Si Jia had finally rushed into the only arms that would take her. With death as its background and "Violent Aesthetics" coming to her aid at her beck and call, it was a scene brimming with camaraderie. Such scene was nothing but a coincidentally natural and perfect moment. Destiny was veritably a river formed of many creeks-the Internet was one creek, loneliness was another, her stepfather's death was another, "Violent Aesthetics'" infatuation was another…The rivers had congregated into one, gushing and roaring, and behold Si Jia stepping in at the bank. Without needing to raise her sails, her little boat was to coast smoothly along, covering three hundred miles in a day.
Was she destined to start with men and finish with women? Aye, Si Jia. You were a rocky path riddled with obstacles, a river somehow completely unlike any painting.
Chapter Five: 2006
"Then the lone listener's reaction somehow intensified-Xiaoqing followed with wide eyes. Oh, that's what happened! It's too cool! That was twenty-two whole years ago. My big brother Danqing was a fantastic guy. He had a dance, made a date with a girl, and died for love…Dad, don't put it in such negative terms. Hooligan? that's absurd. It was his individuality-he dared to love and dared to hate; he dared to act and dared to be…Aye. I have to make him my idol now. Gee, if I only knew sooner how my big brother was so awesome and such a vivid character. I should really chat about him more with my classmates…Xiaoqing was on the verge of losing control, but her qualms about Lu Zhongsheng's complexion kept her from jumping up and dancing."
Covering and Desensitizing
[1]
The interests and focus of that generation of youth were as rivers springing from mountains, flowing south at the start, then westward, then suddenly and surprisingly eastward. They repeatedly changed course along the way, switching through different ruts and even drying up and disappearing later. They remained shrouded in mystery as they hugged the contour of mountains and changed with geography.
By the time she was sixteen, if anyone still asked Xiaoqing: Who's Danqing? Who's Si Jia? She'd probably have rolled her eyes. You're asking me? I'm the one who should be asking.
It's not to say she'd lost her conscience or memory, it's just that her interests had changed. For the six years that brought her from childhood to being a young lady, the gloomy plot convolutions and upheavals were, unfortunately, truly a screenplay of divinely cryptic proportions. It could be an inexhaustible fount of writing material, but one could read it to the end of time and never really understand it. Six years ago when she was a ten year-old child, she was in the throes of "id" consciousness when self-confidence was crucial-those were the initial, narrow, winding paths. Doubting one hundred percent of everything concerning her birth and identity, trying her hardest and at any cost to investigate "Big Brother Danqing", exuberantly interested in following Si Jia-she dug in with dedication and effort, fully confident that her little mind and tiny body could uncover an earth-shaking secret…
But such short trains of thought were nothing but small winding paths. No matter how narrow they were, the length was still the same, and her two out-stretched palms could reach out and touch its terminal point. Not to mention that Xiaoqing, being a child, could only hold interest in something for one or two years before getting bored with it and turning to something else. Further, she was a child of the nineties, a flourishing, scintillating dec
ade. Surely that wasn't the time to be hiking narrow paths. All she had to do was let her eyes deviate a bit off to the periphery, and her whole body would fly off to places that were further and further away.
Xiaoqing was a student, a junior in high school. However, with Lu Zhongsheng and his wife spoiling her and being physically unable to parent as they wished, she wasn't turning out to be a good, traditional girl. She secretly got her ears pierced, dyed two selected locks from the top of her head (one blond, the other blue), looking like a supergirl from a distance (and still looking like a supergirl at up close) 34. [1] She was passionate about karaoke and street dancing, and she was pretty good at them to boot. She was dressing up with American and Japanese fashion in mind, but then she went Korean. All kinds of tiny trinkets jingled around on her book bag. Her long-sleeve T-shirt was longer in the sleeves than her jacket-past her hands-and her eyelashes exceeded her eyebrow hairs. She did the latter after gathering up with a small group of young ladies after school. Together they put on sun tan makeup, butterfly eyes…they did it just for kicks, and they washed it off before getting home anyways.
Surely this wasn't to say she was a troubled youth. Honestly, she could probably be considered the first beneficiary of newly-implemented "cultural-quality education". Concerning her studies, Lu Zhongsheng had an old school attitude. Every time he said that Xiaoqing should be the "cream of the crop" and place in one of the top three of her class, she'd patiently pull out a newspaper that she'd kept for good keeping, turning the tables and teaching Lu Zhongsheng a lesson. You see, studies show that the children with the strongest adaptability when going into society are not the valedictorians, nor the kids who placed in the top five, but the ones who placed at about number ten. Most of them turn into "successful people", and this is called the "number ten phenomenon". Alright then, this newspaper had turned into Xiaoqing's "shield" and "talisman", and had turned into a handy study reference. It was especially apparent after middle school that she was fixed to the top edge of the middle range, quietly waiting, entertaining herself and enjoying herself without a care, maintaining her position between the fifteenth and tenth places. She refused both progress and stagnation. It was nifty trick which necessarily caused suspicion that her energy and intelligence were being intentionally stowed away in reserve.
Where did she store it? It was difficult to say. She had an ice-skating phase, a crosshatching phase, a spoken English phase, and a cosplay phase. In any case, everything was an expression of her own volition, playing out an interest "to death", then quitting, and finding something else to toy with. For example, in her current phase, she'd actually taken an interest in personal blogging. She'd work away at it intently with no worries of more pressing obligations, updating the contents, checking visitor stats, answering comments, posting pictures, changing the main page's style, etc…She found it really addictive, and she lost interest in other things. Thus if she were ever asked, "Who is Danqing? Who is Si Jia?", rolling her eyes was verily her only reasonable response.
She had no regrets. Xiaoqing was a chip off the Internet generation, a child of the 90's with a mind stuffed full of cyber media. She and other girls her age were experts with way they played with everything in their hatred of sentimentality and refusal of history. They refused the dusty old relics passed down through the ages by their towering ancestors, preferring instead to chase after a proverbial Internet celebrity already seven days' famous…
[2]
Continuing with the metaphor of rivers, Lu Zhongsheng was a 69 year-old professor whose attention and interests were in an estuary downstream, flowing copiously in a focused direction, unable to veer. His abilities to correct and adjust himself were in weak showing, too.
It was six years since he got the little note from Officer He with Si Jia's address written on it. Lu Zhongsheng's interest in Si Jia didn't fade away, but had actually become yet more unyielding. He took the bus four stations every day at dusk-straight to Sitiao Alley's Dayang Village Gated Community. He'd stand for a while on the street on the opposite side of the entrance, sometimes buying a newspaper to read while waiting to see her come out. It became an important part of his life and daily sustenance for his soul, as if pulled in by a great magnetic field-yet it was the same magnetic field that resisted him. As the days elapsed, his vanity and avarice faded, and his interest in Si Jia seemed ever more blind. All he knew was that he needed to see Si Jia and keep tabs on her, and then when the propitious and apt day comes, he'd walk across the street. He'd be at ease with himself as he went to meet her, striking up a tangential conversation-it wouldn't matter what it was-it could be the weather or commodity prices…That was the sum total of his ambition, and as for everything else, he told himself to just drop it. Lu Zhongsheng lapsed deeply into desolation. Ah these days before me…ultimately they'll erase everything…
There was one time in this process that Si Jia had a change of address, and it was a greatly surprising and dangerous change for Lu Zhongsheng. He almost lost track of her, and he ended up resorting to asking Officer He for help. Officer He had become more resourceful by then and there was nothing beyond a former policeman's grasp. It was just that Si Jia's new location was further away from Lu Zhongsheng's home. He had to change buses to get there, and thus Lu Zhongsheng was forced to reduce the frequency of his visits to once a week. But he was determined to never let the rate of his visits drop further, because otherwise he'd start to feel a loss and inability to go on living.
In those days at dusk, the time of the day that most easily inspired a mixed mass of feelings, Lu Zhongsheng hustled from bus to bus to get to Si Jia's new gated community, and stood under a tree across the street complex watching Si Jia-Si Jia in summer and winter seasons…Si Jia in the spring and autumn. Even looking at her a hundred times never would have never tired Lu Zhongsheng's eyes. Even sometimes when the weather wasn't nice or his energy didn't keep him up, he'd persevere as if he were rushing off to a slowly passing and unrequited date. He went to see her every Wednesday.
Sometimes he'd ask himself, It's really strange, but why is watching her like an opium addiction for me? Being as worried and hopeful as I am…It's as if I couldn't feel at peace with myself or look at myself in the mirror unless I went to watch her on occasion. Perhaps he not only to watch Si Jia's person, but Si Jia's background. Her faded expression, her strongly-styled clothes, her coming and going alone with the rebellious posture and position…It all seemed to have a kind of pacifying, unspoken meaning and bewildering quality that could turn the clock back like ocean waters, giving him a sweet sense of success. Verily he could nobly and expertly manipulate time, running fast or in slow motion manually spinning a reel of film. For a while it'd be in fast rewind, and Si Jia would reappear as a young woman in school. For a while it'd play Si Jia and Danqing's dance in slow motion. For another while it'd be a recurring close-up, this time on the abstruse color and ubiquitous scintillation glowing from Si Jia's diamond earrings. All misery could vanish in that halo…How felicitous for him it was to reminisce like that! He could even sense that Si Jia was one of his own family-the wife of his son or a charming, unmarried daughter…Lu Zhongsheng would maintain a catatonic, stiff smile long after Si Jia had walked out of sight.
[3]
It was occasionally necessary that Lu Zhongsheng field Lan Ying's questions. Where did you go? You were out for such a long time.
Of course she didn't suspect that Lu Zhongsheng was up to anything shady, it was just that she was just worried that Lu Zhongsheng's limbs wouldn't support him, that he'd fall when the bus made a sudden stop, that he'd forget how to get home…Oh, I'm on the wrong bus. I ran into a former student of mine. I went to the park to sit down for a while. Lu Zhongsheng made it up as he went along.
He wasn't lying to her-he was mainly concerned about being tactful. Normally they would've had hated and complained about Si Jia, so how could he want to get close to her with googly eyes? Even if he'd blurted out the true answer: I found the woman that Danqing did
that to…Lan Ying probably wouldn't take it seriously, nor would she want more information. Truly, Lan Ying had allowed herself to "let go".
Lan Ying was a talented caretaker. For her nuclear family, no matter if it was for herself, Lu Zhongsheng or Xiaoqing, Lan Ying's attention was forever fixated on two aspects in those days: safety and health. She decided to never touch on the miseries or joys of the heart.
Truly at the root of Lan Ying's detachment was Xiaoqing; Xiaoqing's antics had become too much for Lan Ying.
As for Xiaoqing's material existence-her form and weight, the locations of freckles and scars – Lan Ying knew them all with her eyes closed. But when she opened her eyes, even if she'd borrowed a pair to couple an all-seeing mind, she truly had no idea who her daughter was. She seemed to be just one of the innumerable young women in the streets with earbuds and an imperceptible smile, a vague grin at the corners of their mouths. What was she thinking about? What were her passions and peeves? What were these QQ, CS, BT, PS, cosplay, blog, PPT, 7456 and TMD she was always talking about? 35…Even in her daily habits and consumer spending mode, with Xiaoqing's "broad interests", with her bookbag, clothes, shoes, and stationery-even if it was about the fast food she ate when she went out or buying a pack of crackers-everything had to be of an authentic, popular brand name. She was a child raised on advertisements, and anything sufficiently cool was all "OK". This was at complete loggerheads with Lan Ying's shopping principles. Lan Ying's modus operandi was living with self-control and well within her means…But these canards went in one ear and out the other for Xiaoqing. She and her mother had a 51-year age difference-a distance simply too vast, like the mouth of the Grand Canyon…somewhere in there were fifty Chinese years. Who really knows how many times society's style was changed in such an expanse? And how could a mother-daughter relation be processed and deconstructed in such a space?