by Justin Hill
She sat at the front of the crowd on a tight square of newspaper, her chin resting in her cupped hands. She hummed along to the opening song, sung by a band of marching peasants and workers with broad Communist smiles. There was a round of comments and chatter, people suddenly remembered how the film ended, who got punished and who went off with who; and after reminding their friends they all began to settle down and watch.
Five minutes into the film Peach whispered to the person next to her, ‘What time is it?’
‘Seven thirty.’
‘Thanks.’
She sat for a little longer, then got up, picking up her newspaper behind her and hurried away.
Sun An was waiting for Peach by the factory gates. He had a nervous look on his face which was replaced by something approaching a smile when he saw her coming.
‘I was worried you’d change your mind,’ he said. Although she smiled her estimation of him dropped a little because he’d admitted something so silly.
‘Why would I do that?’ she asked.
Sun An shrugged. Then he said brightly, ‘I’ve got the tickets!’ pulling them out of his pocket to show her.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
They started walking down the street along the river. Peach lagged behind. ‘Which cinema are we going to?’
‘The one on Dongfeng Street.’
‘And we’re walking?!’
‘Yes’, he blushed because she made him feel so stupid. ‘Unless you want to get a taxi,’ he said, and started worrying in case he didn’t have enough money on him.
‘It’s such a long way to walk.’
Sun An checked his money, and Peach watched him count his scruffy wad of notes. He looked up and smiled when he saw that he had enough. ‘Yeah, let’s get a taxi,’ he said. ‘Good idea.’
The film was a Hong Kong kung fu epic, with protracted fight scenes interspersed with rapid-fire dialogue and the incessant babble of the audience. Peach and Sun An were holding hands, hearts pounding as the light off the silver screen reflected in their eyes.
After ten minutes Sun An cleared his throat and leant over to whisper in Peach’s ear, ‘This isn’t very interesting, is it?’
He was going to suggest that they go for something to eat, but Peach turned to him, her eyes bright crescents–half reflecting the light of the screen, half in shade like the dark side of the moon.
Sun An’s breathing stopped while a man on screen was getting beaten up and spitting blood. In the bedlam of shouting and punching he closed his eyes and leant in so close he could feel the heat of her skin. Peach barely moved her head or lips in response. He pressed his lips against hers. Her lips were slightly parted. He tried to put his tongue into her mouth but came up hard against the ridged wall of her teeth.
Sun An opened his eyes and sat back, and bristled. The fighting on screen was almost frenetic. Sun An sat and watched and bristled. Felt even more angry and guilty because he was bristling.
Peach squeezed his hand encouragingly. ‘Not here!’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Let’s go outside.’
‘You want to go outside?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’
Sun An and Peach walked back through the dark streets, bursting full of kisses they had for each other. His hand was damp and hot, her heart was disco dancing. They walked slowly, took a half step and slowed and he bent to kiss her again. She leant her head back and he looked down into her face for a moment, her lips half parted and this time she opened her mouth, and their tongues met.
Sun An pulled her into a doorway. Hands wrapped her waist. He bent his head down to hers, concentrated all his effort; felt the warm inside of her mouth and the rough surface of her tongue which filled the whole world. His hands explored the contours of her body through her clothes. She rested her arms around his neck so that he couldn’t escape.
At last Sun An pulled his mouth away gasping for breath, pressed his face into the dark tangles of her hair, whispered into her ear, ‘I love you, you are so beautiful, I’ve always loved you, I think about you all day every day. I love you so much, I can’t even begin to say how much I love you.’
He whispered into the dark, hardly knowing himself, and Peach held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her head against his heart. She felt tears of wonder fill her eyes as again he said, ‘Peach, I love you, I love you, I love you I love you I love you.’ She rested her head on his chest and squeezed him close, wanting him to say more.
Liu Bei’s mother was sitting on her front steps, peeling garlic. Aunty Tang was sitting with her, basking in the heat like a cold lizard warming its blood. She squinted at the sparkling sunlight, a clear stream of mucus was welling up from her tear-ducts and dribbling down the wrinkled fissures of her cheeks. She occasionally picked up a clove of garlic and sniffed it, then positioned it between the few molars she still had and took a bite, gave it a gummy chew.
‘She’ll have to know,’ Aunty Tang said at last as Liu Bei’s mother continued picking up the cloves of garlic and stripping them, and putting them in the bowl at her feet.
Aunty Tang burped a garlic belch. Her gums worked rhythmically, slowly reducing the garlic to a pulp that she could swallow. ‘She’ll have to know.’
Liu Bei’s mother glanced at her and took another bulb of garlic.
‘What are you going to tell her when you give her the money? She’ll think you’ve been out working again!’ Aunty Tang said, and let out a slow croak that was laughter. ‘Out working again!’ and more laughter.
Liu Bei’s mother wiped back a greying lock of hair and crushed the bulb in her fingers, unconsciously seeking out the fattest cloves to start work on.
‘Money doesn’t just come from nowhere,’ Aunty Tang sighed, almost to herself. ‘You have to work for it. Whatever you do…’ she trailed off, the silence making her world feel empty suddenly. ‘Unless of course you’re a beggar,’ she added.
‘My family are not beggars,’ Liu Bei’s mother stated. ‘I worked and my daughter works too. The money is for her son.’
‘Bastard,’ Aunty Tang corrected, ‘bastard.’ She bit another clove and began to masticate it round her mouth. ‘No one in this world loves a bastard. Nor a whore.’
‘Nor old bags,’ Liu Bei’s mother told her.
Aunty Tang’s didn’t hear the retort; her hearing was like her manners, she could turn them on or off at will. In ignorant bliss she smacked her gums and her tongue roamed around the rim of her mouth. Liu Bei’s mother watched her: Aunty Tang’s tongue was the only thing about her that hadn’t wrinkled and withered with the years. It was stubby and pointed, and the absence of teeth made it look big and slug-like. It slithered from one side of her lips to the other, wetting her gums, and then Aunty Tang sighed again.
‘Poor child,’ she said and Liu Bei’s mother looked away. ‘Poor child.’
Liu Bei’s mother picked up the bowl of garlic and took it inside and set it down next to the stove. There were some fragrant chives that needed washing, she brought them back out with her and set them down on the floor and sat and rubbed her hands in the sunlight as if it were a fire to warm her bones.
Aunty Tang was still sighing and murmuring ‘Poor child.’
‘No father,’ she exhaled after a while. ‘Poor bastard.’ She turned her half-blind eyes to Liu Bei’s mother. ‘How can a boy survive in the world without a father? It’s unnatural.’
Liu Bei’s mother ignored her and took in a deep breath that reached down to the pit of her stomach, it stretched her ribcage, and then she let it slide back out of her body.
‘A child could do worse than have Liu Bei as a mother,’ she stated.
‘But no father.’
‘She might find someone. I did.’
‘But that was under the Communists,’ Aunty Tang said.
‘And anyway,’ she scolded, ‘it wasn’t our fault. We were all abused by the Old Society. But now …’ she said and left the sentence hanging open. Liu Bei�
��s mother picked up the fragrant chives and began to pick through them, discarding the wrinkled leaves. ‘But how can a bastard do well now?’ Aunty Tang asked. ‘Just look at your family. Your ancestors must have done something terrible. You a whore,’ she said with almost wistful melancholy, feeling her way back along a friendly and familiar list. ‘Your daughter a whore.’
Liu Bei’s mother scowled because she knew what was coming next.
‘And your grandson’s a bastard.’
Liu Bei’s mother took a deep breath and wondered why on earth she put up with this. Aunty Tang rubbed away a dribble of mucus as if it was a tear, wiped her nose and her tongue crept out for a quick lick. She was relishing the new ending she had found for her daily diatribe, which she built up with theatrical slowness.
‘You a whore,’ she sighed again. ‘Your daughter’s a whore, and your grandson is a bastard. Whore, bastard, whore. There’s nothing you can do about it,’ she reiterated slowly with melancholic glee, smacking her lips and licking them one more time, ‘Heaven hates you all!’
Peach was up before her parents and went down to the river, found the letter under the stone Sun An had shown her. It was intricately folded into the shape of a heart and her name was written on the outside, not in the usual biro but in the black brush strokes of calligraphy. She wiped off the few bits of grit that had stuck to it; wrinkled her nose up because the writing wasn’t very good, then slipped it under the edge of her bra, next to her heart. She started walking and the sharp folded corners stabbed into her flesh, so she took it out again and held it tightly in her hand; walked down to the factory, that was washed in sunlight and rectangles of shade.
She sat down under a tree and opened out the petals of paper, till the heart was a ridged square of paper in her lap.
‘Dearest Peach,’ it began, ‘last night I could not sleep because I was thinking of you. I watched the moon rise and set, and shivered with cold. Just because you are from the city and my family are peasants doesn’t mean we can’t get together. Chairman Mao once wrote we should “dare to struggle and dare to win”–you and I–we dare to love each other. Other people may try and stop us, but I know we will win because we love each other. I was telling myself this in the shop today, and I felt very sad. You haven’t come to see me for three days. I miss you so much. I took a brush and wrote a poem. It is not very good.’
Peach flattened out the paper:
Life is like a winding path
surrounded with flowers
butterflies and delicious fruit,
but I was only looking at my feet
Until I met you.
She giggled at the silliness of his poem, but her heart began to dance again.
‘Please do not look down on me because my handwriting is so bad,’ the words read, ‘my family are peasants and my education level is poor. I hope that when we are married you can teach me how to write better! I love you, Sun An.’
Peach turned the page over, the characters continued, ‘I love you, I love you’ over and over, all the way down the page. She folded it back up and put it in her purse with his other letters; went back to the house, enjoying the dry smell of spring.
Old Zhu saw her go and thought to himself: what a beautiful young girl. Just seeing her walk past swinging her arms and smiling to herself made him feel young again, if only for half a minute.
After singing and breakfast Madam Fan took the hundred yuan that her brother’s wife had given her and called out, ‘Peach, come on, it’s time to go!’
There was the sound of footsteps from her bedroom, and then Peach came out and smiled softly. Her cheeks had a blush to them this morning, the pink looked good against her pale skin and black hair. Madam Fan wondered that her husband could have given her such a beautiful child. But it’s me she looks like, Madam Fan thought as she opened the front door. She’s mine, not his.
‘Come on, you take so long to get ready!’ Madam Fan repeated as Peach followed her out the door, then Madam Fan closed it behind them, and the lock clicked shut.
Madam Fan and Peach spent the morning in the street market searching for clothes, but found nothing nice, and ended up in a new salon on Liberation Street which played loud disco music and where the assistants all wore matching red T-shirts. There was an initial problem on what style of clothes they were looking for.
‘How about this?’ Peach asked.
‘Too modern,’ Madam Fan said, ‘why not try this one?’
‘Mother, you’re so old fashioned!’
‘What about this?’
‘It’s ugly.’
‘Well, that’s much too short.’
‘Times are changing,’ Peach insisted, ‘everyone’s wearing these now.’
‘OK,’ Madam Fan relented, ‘try it on.’
When they’d decided on a pair of jeans and a cut-off T-shirt a shop assistant came over and Madam Fan said, ‘We want these. How much?’
‘Forty-five yuan.’
‘They’re not worth any more than twenty-five.’
The assistant sighed. ‘We don’t bargain here,’ he said, ‘if you can’t afford the clothes then get out.’
Madam Fan stared at the boy. ‘Where are you from?’ she demanded imperiously, but despite her haughty tone he replied simply ‘Changsha.’
‘Well,’ she snorted. ‘Indeed!’
‘Do you want the clothes or not?’
‘Of course we want them!’ Madam Fan hissed. ‘What do you think we’re doing here? We’re not on a sightseeing trip you know!’
The assistant shrugged and walked to the counter, rang in the price and took the money, handing the clothes back in a blue plastic bag. When they were outside in the street Peach expected her mother to unleash a torrent of abuse, but she didn’t. ‘Come on,’ Madam Fan said. ‘Let’s go.’
They stopped off at an ice-cream bar on the way back, and sat at a table with fixed moulded chairs. ‘Ice cream,’ Madam Fan told the waiter.
‘What colour?’
‘What colour have you got?’
‘White, brown, red and blue.’
‘We certainly don’t want white,’ Madam Fan said, ‘how about red. That’s luckier. This is going to be a lucky week, I can tell.’
They sat and ate their red ice cream with plastic spoons, and Madam Fan talked and talked. ‘What a year!’ she declared. ‘It’s too much. Really!’
Peach put the ice cream into her mouth, felt the spoon’s plastic surface and the cold melting on her tongue, and thought of Sun An.
‘So many things that go against nature,’ Madam Fan continued. ‘All this business with the factory closing; Party Secretary Li, Autumn Cloud disappearing and reappearing. It’s unlucky. I don’t like it at all.’
Peach swirled the melted ice cream round in her mouth, squeezed it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, was aware of her mouth like she’d never been aware before.
‘Oh dear,’ Madam Fan said, and looked up at Peach and smiled. ‘Oh dear,’ she said and scraped up the last of her ice cream. ‘So many things.’
Peach felt Sun An’s arms crushing her ribcage and imagined his hands on her breasts.
Madam Fan peering across at Peach’s bowl. ‘Have you finished?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
Madam Fan nodded absent-mindedly as she looked for her purse, then said, ‘Oh yes–do you know what else I heard?’
Peach wished she could summon back the day-dream she’d just been enjoying, but couldn’t, and shook her head instead.
‘I heard that Old Zhu’s son, Da Shan, is divorced,’ Madam Fan whispered. ‘He’s left his wife and daughter. And with all that money he’s got too!’ Peach looked at her mother as Madam Fan sat back and let out a half smile. ‘You could do a lot worse, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you could do a lot worse than catch him.’
Peach blushed and Madam Fan smiled again. ‘Such a successful young man,’ she said. ‘Just think.’
>
Peach hardly heard, she looked down and away and felt her cheeks blushing very red. Madam Fan watched her for a moment, then ran a hand through her hair. ‘I think it’s time I had a haircut,’ Madam Fan said at last. ‘And you should come as well.’
Peach was tired of shopping, and of her mother. ‘Mother, isn’t all this too expensive?’
‘Listen,’ Madam Fan said, taking Peach’s hand, ‘remember what I told you about your father and me?’
Peach nodded. Her mother’s eyes were very wide.
‘I don’t want that to happen to you, understand? I want you to have the best you can possibly get. I want you to have what I never did. Can’t you see what’s happening here–this country’s going backwards. All the factories closing, all this corruption and all these peasants killing and stealing! You have to get out. Get married to someone strong and upright. Not just any old worker. Not a gambler like your father. Someone successful.’
Peach listened to her mother and nodded: yes, I understand.
‘You’re my only daughter,’ Madam Fan insisted, ‘my only child.’
Sun An sat and wrote another letter. It was the third one he had written that day, and he gave it to his little sister.
‘Here you go,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to go,’ she protested. ‘I’ve been twice already. Why don’t you take it?’
‘Because I have to look after the shop. And you have nothing to do.’
His sister pouted and took the note and walked off down the street towards the Space Rocket Factory. Sun An stood in the doorway and watched her go, imagining Peach looking under the stone and finding his letter there.
