Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

  “What’s wrong with skunks?” he quipped. “At least they can make annoying people disappear!”

  “So why don’t you make yourself disappear, then? What are you doing here?” I said, letting my irritation show.

  “What am I doing here?” he repeated. “Good question.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “It’s just that—I don’t even know what I’m doing out here.” He pouted innocently.

  “How about if we have a talk, old pal?” I said, softening. I gestured for him to sit beside me.

  “We’re not old pals,” he protested politely, putting his arm around my shoulder. I pushed it off.

  “All right . . . big brother. Stop following me around. You’re ruining my chance at happiness.”

  “You’re the one with seniority here. What a joke—people like you have no clue what happiness is. That word has been erased from your mind,” he said contemptuously. Then he did a gleeful somersault, right there on the ground.

  Instantly, I recognized that he and I were of the same ilk, each embracing our own singular way of seeing things. Yet he seemed pure and whole compared to me, and in that respect, he was more precocious and more exceptional. Were it possible to love him, it would also mean loving his brand of exceptionalism. By winter of that year, he’d actually grown quite attractive. He was a tall, handsome youth.

  12

  Just another day, right? The last day of Intro to Chinese Lit. Exactly as planned, I went to class. In order to get there early, I sped down the road, pedaling at full speed. My heart was pounding. A million different thoughts had been swirling in my mind and now they were lodged there, unexpressed. She’d chosen a seat in the very back. Her purple backpack was on top of her desk. She’d put her head down, and her long locks hung over the edge of the desk. By that point, she wasn’t talking to anyone at school. I knew she was lonely. Separated from her friends who’d looked after her, she had to try to be her own person. She just sat there, not moving. I paused at her side, contemplating her isolation. She looked miserable. I knew she didn’t want to live this way. I was upset, and so I’d treated her badly.

  “I’m here.” It was almost time for class to start. I called to her lightly.

  “Mmm,” she answered indifferently, without lifting her head.

  “You don’t want to talk to me?” My guilt, and tenderness, were starting to spill over.

  “Oh, I’m really tired. I want to go to sleep,” she said softly. She still hadn’t given me so much as a glance. She was pushing me away.

  “Fine. You should rest for a while.” Unwanted by her, I felt like my heart was being dragged around on a chain. I plodded over to the desk in front of her and sat down.

  After class, I stood up front to observe her from a distance, but she wouldn’t look at me. Moving slowly, she quietly packed up her things. I glanced over while chatting with an acquaintance. She was already gone. Wait. There are so many things I want to tell you. I barreled out of the building toward the bikes, searching frantically for a familiar one. Nothing. I sprinted toward the place where we’d always met before leaving together. No sight of purple anywhere. I made a mad dash in the opposite direction. I knew it was too late. I’d already gone down the wrong road too many times. I’d never catch up to her. After checking the bus stop by the rear entrance, I turned around and started walking home. Please, no. I just wanted to tell you: It doesn’t have to be this way.

  A dark night’s rain. The storm was intensifying. With my clothes clinging to my skin, I was racing as fast as I could. But the faster I ran, the harder the rain and wind seemed to fight me. My socks were encrusted with a layer of mud. I could feel it. After wading through pools of standing water, my legs soon felt like wet logs. I checked every bus stop before turning onto the next street. I’d already run a long way. I sat down weakly inside a bus shelter. I’d never find her. I waited wearily for the next half hour. . . .

  Basically, what I wanted to tell you today was that we shouldn’t stop seeing each other. I couldn’t find you, and so we still can’t see each other. I also brought you that book you wanted to borrow.

  The rain turned to drizzle. My eyes stung as I finished writing the note and tucked it into the rear rack of her bike, which I’d found parked across from the Literature Department building. Whatever. Really. It’ll fall out by itself, which will save a lot of trouble. With the slackening of a rope, I’d been sent tumbling to the ground, and now that I was on my own again I was at a loss. I missed her. I had gotten what I deserved.

  The next day, around noon, I walked into class late, not even conscious of where I was. Someone passed me a note.

  Your book is missing. I had to go to gym class in the morning. As I was walking over I noticed a whole bunch of bikes were missing. In my heart, I prayed that my beloved bike wasn’t one of them and got really worried. But sure enough, it was lying there, on top of one bike and under another, covered in mud. I hurried to stand it back up, wondering if I should wipe off its frame with my handkerchief. I was crying inside. How could anyone have knocked it over so carelessly? Then I saw that the rear rack had a pink flyer stuck in it. I just hate those tacky flyers, and when I tossed it aside, I saw your note. There was no book. Someone must have stolen it. So I had to tell you: Your book is missing.

  I don’t understand your complicated reasoning, and I don’t want to. You said it was for my own good that you stopped having anything to do with me, and that we should stop seeing each other so there’ll be less grieving. I don’t understand it at all, and I refuse to ever understand. Maybe you have it in your head that things are better this way, but it doesn’t address my situation. Did you even consider me at all? Because my answer is: It’s not good for me. I used to think that I could seek refuge in you. Those two words—seek refuge—were what I really wanted to do. You’re the only person at this school I’m close to. It’s happened three times now that I’ve gotten depressed and needed to escape. Each time I ran from campus, clutching my backpack and hoping I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew, and I found my way to your apartment. As I rang the buzzer, all I knew was that I needed to see you. But you were never there. The first time I was tired, so I sat down on the steps and stayed there. I was already a little closer to you. I could feel you there. Then I found the energy to go home. After that, I stopped ringing your buzzer. I just had to hang out on the steps for a while, and that was enough.

  Did you know these things? If you don’t want me to seek refuge in you, sorry my skin’s not thick enough to handle it. What’s wrong with that?

  —Shui Ling

  I still recall it. When I received that messily scrawled letter—messily scrawled and yet elegant—my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I read it several times and still couldn’t comprehend it, but I couldn’t read it again. My eyes were fixed on her name. I jumped to my feet and got on my bike and pedaled to the lecture hall where she had her afternoon class. With the wind in my hair, words flooded my mind. My heart swooned. That day I was wearing green jeans, and the color sparkled in the light of the afternoon sun. I stood out on the lawn, waiting for her to pass by. As any fool would tell you, there was never any book left on the rear rack. She walked past me and asked what I was doing there. I said, Can we start over? She turned around. The ocean wept. I knew it was mutual love.

  13

  The singer Zhao Chuan has a new song out that goes: “A boy sees a rose in a field. . . .” Working on this notebook, I stayed up from the wee hours of midnight until nine a.m. listening to this song on repeat. Didn’t listen to any other song on the whole tape. And now for this section’s tangent:

  I cannot resist your wildness swaying in the wind. I cannot imagine you would so much as shed a tear in the rain. In the early-morning wind, you are a rose beyond compare—ever dangerous, ever alluring. You are the rose of autumn’s final reverie, so distant and absolute. A boy sees a rose in a field, this rose that grows in a wasteland. How full it is in bloom, this rose that grows in a wasteland.

  This notebook c
onstitutes part one. It recounts the period from October 1987 to January 1988. Each eighty-page notebook is quickly fading, having been filled out in pencil. Based on ten massive journals’ worth of material, I wrote eight manuals that can be read as admonitions for young people. A clean transcription was made using a ballpoint pen before each notebook was stuffed into the bottom of a drawer. Whenever my memory failed me, I would take out a notebook and look at it, and go over the events that made me who I am. They illustrate a process.

  The first two notebooks, though, are meager compared to the rest. They didn’t have journals to serve as a reference, so I had to rely on dwindling impressions, which meant tinkering around until it sounded right. During my four years of college, I left a lot of things behind. Sometimes writing was like finding a parking spot: Just as I was about to give up, I managed to achieve a perfect fit, thanks to a bit of skillful maneuvering. Other times it was like examining food that had been left sitting out for so long that ants and cockroaches had gotten to it. On other occasions it was like a major year-end cleaning where I was forced to throw something away because I couldn’t find anywhere to put it. And still other times, it was like trading in a used car for a new one: I didn’t give it a second thought.

  Freshman year was a total blackout. I burned all her letters. I gave her an exquisite beige journal as a gift. These were all things that happened later on. She was subjected to my every which way of purging things, and in the end, I was purged of her. Consequently, I discovered that I had no shortage of purging methods. By then, I was a purgeaholic. Because she was mine and illness had set in. And because purging her was the cure. What was gone was gone. There was no looking back. I wouldn’t purge anything else important, or so I vowed.

  By the time I’d invented a glue powerful enough to stop my purge-happy hand dead in its tracks, it was too late. No one was left in my inner circle. Since Meng Sheng left behind scarcely an eyelash, these days I have no choice but to become an archaeologist.

  “A girl sees a rose in a field” is how it should have gone. That’s the kind of song Meng Sheng wrote for me.

  NOTEBOOK #2

  1

  Imagine an overstuffed bag of tricks. Those who belong to the class known as college students are given a free pass. You’re handed an empty bag at the start of your education, and you’re allowed to put anything you want inside of it. Then adults give you a break for the next four years. (There are unfortunate exceptions to this rule in certain departments. Adults have been chosen to uphold societal values, after all.) They’ll turn a blind eye for the most part and let you put anything you want into that bag, as long as you hang on tight to that student ID of yours.

  College—now there’s a system. Though it’s not quite death, it’s a pretty close second. It’s the nexus of three major institutions (compulsory education, compulsory labor, and compulsory marriage), and these three institutions happen to be the greatest achievements of human civilization. Contrary to expectation, when experienced in combination, they allow for an escape into a transient, self-absorbed greatness. Like death, college serves as a kind of escape hatch. But while death takes you straight to the morgue, college is a single rope dangling loose from the inescapable net of society. While in death everyone receives equal treatment, college is a place where certain people arrive covered in a layer of muck, a nastiness that they, in turn, smear onto others.

  To sum it up, the usual bag of tricks consists of: going to class + taking tests + chasing the opposite sex + recreation + earning spending money + pretending to be interested in joining clubs + observing society + hanging out. The first seven constitute eighty percent of your waking hours. I don’t even know how to explain what goes on that eighty percent of the time. I could go on and on, and still never get to the last one: hanging out. You just have to gather all the tools you can—as if in preparation to outsmart life itself—and keep them in that overstuffed bag of tricks.

  2

  February 1988. I spent my first winter vacation alone at the place on Wenzhou Street.

  All week I holed up in my room. Ate instant noodles. Went for walks. Went to the bathroom. In between those three activities, I worked on a story a lot more disturbing than this one. Got a letter in the mail. On the white envelope was a hand-drawn sketch in red marker. It was of a naked woman with her legs spread-eagle.

  I want to see you. Reply, or else I’ll chop off a fingertip and send it to you.

  —Meng Sheng, The Bridegroom from Hell

  Meng Sheng. That annoying dude I met at arts camp. He was like a sinister shadow that made me want to run away. The next day, I’d said I was sick and left Danshui. As I was leaving, I could see him standing off in the distance with a strange, innocent smile on his face. It was as if that smile could encroach upon my mind, even if I was rid of him for the next few months and tried to console myself with the thought that we had no contact. That smile suggested the powers that he’d flaunted around me, to show that he was capable of dominating me. So when I got the letter, I was terrified. I’d never before feared being dominated in a relationship. I could practically feel his eyes probing me, using me as he pleased.

  I decided not to reply. I refused to enter the dynamic in that premonition, and I also wanted to test his strength. Three days after the first letter, a second letter arrived. On the envelope was a drawing of a knife, and in red ink like the first. But this time, there was no mailing address. Evidently, it had been placed directly in the mailbox. I opened it. Inside was a letter, along with a plastic bag riddled with staples that, sure enough, contained a crimson, blood-soaked withered fingertip. My entire body started to tremble. I got on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could to a distant canal. When the coast was clear, I tossed the plastic bag in the water and told myself I’d lost. The letter said:

  I’m not in love with you. I just want to see you. If you don’t reply, I’ll come over in the middle of the night on Sunday and beat the crap out of you.

  —Meng Sheng, Bridegroom among Bridegrooms

  Ten p.m. on Sunday. I’d been scrambling to finish the story. I was completely exhausted, but I had to wait for Meng Sheng. It was strange, to say the least, to be waiting around for some guy I’d met only once to come over and beat me up, but in fact, I felt like we were old friends. And so I started to look forward to it. I didn’t want him in my room, though. Shui Ling was the only one I’d let in. I dragged me and my throbbing, overactive mind down to the front steps of the building. The sound of passing scooters, big and small, grazed my ears. Seemingly able to distinguish their individual sounds, I felt extraordinarily sensitive. Focusing on my senses had forced my mind to stop thinking. Suddenly, out of this tranquil state came an internal directive: I was free to look him right in the eye and say whatever I wanted.

  “So you’ve surrendered, eh? How long have you been sitting here waiting?” At exactly midnight, this dude Meng Sheng pulled up on a heavyweight motorcycle with no muffler. The rumbling noise it made was downright maddening. His bike had a white fairing and was fitted with a rear seat cowl that, like the glint of a razor’s edge, signaled danger. Coupled with sensitivity, that ferociousness was echoed in his tone, which exhibited a manner that seemed all his own.

  “What do you really want?” I shot back at him. But it was obvious that I was no match for him. In spite of the tenderness flowing between us, I had to toughen up and push back.

  “What do I want?” he asked himself, as if my question were so good he had to mull it over. He took off his wraparound sunglasses, and a genuine smile flashed across his face: “I want to die.”

  I hung out with him for a while. When we were together, my masculine and feminine sides reached their highest state of dialectical tension. It was the same for him, and he knew that it was his optimal state. His words had sparked something in both of us.

  “Take me somewhere,” I said. Though his words were hard, I softened. His expression instantly changed, and he didn’t say another word. Once he ditched that tough exte
rior, his face was like a blank sheet of paper. For the first time since we’d met, I felt as if I could let my guard down. His motorcycle shot down the overpass of Keelung Road. The streetlamps along the highway formed arcs of yellow light. I was singing but the sound was broken up by the wind.

  “Do you know why I decided to talk to you, out of everyone?” He parked the bike underneath Fuhe Bridge and led me up a weed-covered path to an open area on a hill. There were no houses nearby. I looked up at the wild grass, which grew so tall that it towered over our heads.

  “I read the story that you submitted to the writing workshop. You’re the kind of person who’d die with me. You practically have horns growing out of your head. I recognized it in an instant.” A sly grin escaped from the corners of his mouth.

  “You’re wrong. I don’t want to die, or anything like that.” My high hopes were crushed. “Why would you need another person to die with you? That’s horrible.” I started to feel I’d overestimated him.

  “It’s not my choice. I’ve never gotten an ounce of sympathy from anyone. I’ve always hated being alone, and I refuse to die alone. I don’t want my life to end this way.”

  “Sounds juvenile to me. You still have to die alone, and it’s the most alone you’ll ever be. I never think about these things, but even I know that much. Where do you get these ideas from?”

  “I talk about my fantasies too openly.” His face betrayed his arrogance. “It’s like being in the clutches of death and refusing the last breath of air with my eyes wide open and a sneer on my face. To have paid such a high price to live, only to die! Don’t tell me I don’t have the right to say no thanks?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t agree with you. It doesn’t matter what you say.” I had all kinds of deep reservations that inhibited me from continuing this conversation.