by Qiu Miaojin
I shut my eyes and imagined Zhi Rou, ferocious and agile, scaling a fence. I draped my jacket over her shoulders. Swallowing her breath, she seemed to be weighing things over for a moment. In her two years at college, she’d already been with three guys. Zhi Rou was a complex woman and a gifted artist. Within music circles, she’d developed a reputation as the best female guitarist on campus, while the theater crowd was enthralled by her acting. For her, performing onstage was the opiate of university life. During her time in the spotlight, she’d grown more sophisticated and womanly, and yet she seemed to be eternally changing. No matter your sex, it was hard to resist those bewitching eyes. I couldn’t help recalling what Tun Tun had said:
Lazi, Zhi Rou is such a mystery. She’ll get tripped up over the stupidest little problem, but she’s in her own league in every other way. The depths of her soul are unfathomable to me. She’s like fire and ice at once. Back in high school, I never would’ve imagined that I’d ever be in a relationship with her.
Neither of us seduced the other. It just happened at the time, and we fell in love. Deep down, we both knew where things stood, that this was different from a friendship. We didn’t care what it was or see anything wrong with it. Every day I’d get so excited about our next meeting. We were just kids, curious. In the beginning, there was no chemistry. I was a mediocre student. People thought I liked to have fun. She came across as quiet and hardworking, always at the top of the class. I was intimidated. I wanted to enter a biology contest, and I knew she was good at experiments. Out of nowhere, I found the courage to ask her to enter the national competition together. It was crazy of me. With the deadline fast approaching, she said yes.
Then, one day, during our experiment, the two of us were reading the scale together, and I said to her, “You have beautiful eyes. The instant I looked into them, I knew I’d been saved.” I always wondered if I would ever fall in love, but after I looked into those eyes, I couldn’t wait to see her again. I practically skipped the whole way to school. I’m so grateful to her for opening me up.
On the eve of the big competition, we stayed in the dorms at National Cheng Kung University, down south. We squeezed into the same bed, and both of us were really nervous at first. I was scrunched on my side. We didn’t dare to brush up against each other. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I asked her, “So . . . exactly how far away are you?” We both burst out laughing and slept peacefully after that.
The next day, sure enough, our experiment won first place. After this long struggle, we were victorious. We jumped up and down, screaming, and celebrated by uncorking a bottle of champagne that we drenched ourselves with. . . .
Zhi Rou took a gulp of beer and puffed on her cigarette. She looked so tough that I had to chuckle. Then she grew solemn. “Lazi, there’s something you once said that I’ve always remembered: ‘Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.’ I realize that’s exactly what I did: I used love to fight illness, and it ruined me. I have to change my ways. I can’t be like that anymore.
“It happens all the time. I don’t think you know what I’m talking about. Guys, girls—everyone wants something from me. I don’t even have to try. No matter who it is, sooner or later, I start wondering how long we’ll be together. By the time things get serious, it’s already over in my mind. I made up and acted out the whole thing from start to finish. It was actually my decision.
“I keep making myself fall in love so that I have someone to worry about—someone who’s mine, who’s real. I don’t know how to live without it. I’d have no will to go on. . . .
“Do you know what I mean? These past few years, I’ve been sleeping late and rushing off to class. I’m stuck in a daze all day, so then I leave, taking a stroll across Fuhe Bridge on my way home. But whenever I cross the bridge, my mind is trapped in a fog, where I never meet a single soul.
“It scares me, and I don’t know where this is heading. Sometimes I imagine myself walking over the edge of the bridge and into the river. Then I snap out of it and hurry to the other end of the bridge so I can be with the special person in my life at the moment.
“If no one fills that role, I’ll keep drifting in that fog. “What problems have I ever faced in my life? There’s a void I can’t get away from no matter how I try: The void is inside me. Love has actually made me richer through the experience of pain. But it’s not even the kind of problem that takes center stage—it’s more on the sidelines.
“I have a huge existential void, and no one can make me happy. When I’m with a man, I see the beauty of a woman’s soul, and I wish I were free all over again. But I can’t be with a woman, either, because then I fantasize to death about men’s bodies. Argh, this guy and I deserve each other—we’re both demeaning ourselves!”
Zhi Rou couldn’t hold her liquor very well. Her face had turned red and her breathing was heavy. One moment her face conveyed such horror that my heart ached and I was rendered speechless, and the next moment, it was lit with innocence and joy. Her eyes were tantalizing. I wasn’t put off, nor could I judge her. My only fear was that she might strip off her clothes and try to seduce me. I could imagine Tun Tun whispering in my ear:
Within a few months, she’d switched over to the humanities track. We’d try to sit next to each other. Every day when I went home, I’d get some jokes ready. I learned that she was into music, and I realized that she was probably the only one in the whole class who knew much about it. In high school, she didn’t listen to pop. I started listening to U2 so I could talk to her. I’d go home and translate the lyrics so I could learn them. Our breaks together were the most magical times. I’d make her laugh, then sing the songs she’d shown me. I spent afternoons staring endlessly into her eyes. . . .
Once, when everyone had gone home and we were the only ones left in the classroom, she told me she wanted to give me a haircut. The sun had just gone down, and it was only a sliver of bright orange on the horizon. So I sat there obediently and let her cut it, feeling the touch of her fingers. I can still remember how it felt. We realized at once that we both wanted the same thing. So I said, “Hold on a second.” I shut the door and the windows and turned off the lights, and then after that . . .we shared our first kiss.
I glanced over and lifted a strand of hair from Zhi Rou’s rain-soaked head. Her face was so beautiful when her hair was wet. Somberly, I told her, “Zhi Rou, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. It’s something I told Tun Tun not very long ago, but I’ve been hiding it from you this whole time. Back when I told you I had my heart broken, that was actually about a girl. I lied to you. I’m so sorry!”
She froze for a moment, then turned to face me, regaining her sobriety. The absolute tenderness in those eyes still melts my heart whenever I think back on it. With hardly a second thought, she stroked my hair and said, “It must’ve been tough for you, huh? Do you feel better now that you’ve said it?” Unable to lift my chin, I nodded. “What is there to be sorry about? It’s like leaving out the single stroke of a pen. All you have to do is change he to she, and it’s the same. Besides, after all the crazy shit that Tun Tun and I have done together, it’s hard for me to go around telling you what to do.”
Crouching in front of me, she gazed straight into my hurt-filled eyes with a sincerity that burned into my memory. “After I switched over to humanities, Tun Tun and I fell head over heels in love and became inseparable. She was basically living at my place, a big house in Taipei I shared with two of my siblings. We were family, but with everybody doing their own thing, we acted like strangers. Tun Tun and I would sleep, play guitar, listen to music, procrastinate, bathe together. . . . She was with me before and after class, helping me with homework. Ten minutes after class ended, we’d huddle on the stairs. Back then, she spent all her money on me. She was talented at illustration and gave me cards she’d made herself. She was good at handicrafts and gave me a million little knickknacks she’d made. And alm
ost every day, she gave me a rose.
“Things were still going strong between us before the entrance exams. I really loved her, but with her clinging to me, I was afraid of going insane. How do you slow things down? Then I started to realize, we were two women! I couldn’t think clearly anymore. I was suffocating and needed to get away, so I didn’t tell her when I ran off to the temple in Hualien. I didn’t even care about the entrance exams anymore. When I closed my eyes every night in Hualien, I saw her eyes burning with passion for me, and I’d try with all my might to extinguish them.
“By the time I returned, we were already done for. I found out that Tun Tun couldn’t handle being without me, and she’d already found a guy to console her. When I ran into them together, I was devastated. But we’d still talk. Every so often, we’d call each other and she’d complain to me about how two different guys were into her, and how stressful it was to have to decide between them. Then I’d tell her about my current boyfriend’s big, long—”
“That’s bullshit!” That ironic jab was directed at the last part. It was my way of affectionately teasing her. My eyes welled over as I listened.
It was beginning to pour now. Zhi Rou and I joked around for a while, shielding ourselves from the rain with my leather jacket. Roaring with laughter, we sang in unison at the top of our lungs, and the sound carried into the dark, wet night. We stumbled arm in arm as we left campus. I took her home on my bike, crossing Fuhe Bridge along the way. Muttering nonsense, she lifted her face to the soaking rain.
After everything, when we got to the door, she came on to me. “Can I give you a kiss?” Her feelings seemed awfully genuine.
“The privilege is mine,” I told her.
3
There are some sorrows so great they are unspeakable, taking hold in the body and leaving a void after the fact. There are some depths that love can never again reach. The mind anoints every fossil with significance in an attempt to preserve it—but in time, they all invariably turn to dust.
Man’s greatest sorrow is the loss of what was once his greatest desire.
When Shui Ling and I saw each other again in 1989, she was histrionic. I’d become a menace that might gobble her alive, hack her to pieces, or otherwise mangle her if I came anywhere near her. Her body was apparently ready to convulse and cry out “No!” as it threw off my hands and dodged my stare. I could tell she was repulsed by the thought of me. In order to deter the risk of my encroachment, she spared no harsh words, criticizing my every word and deed, and attacking without warning, without cause. But she saved the final blow for her own feelings toward me. Beset with a disease in which I was the toxin, she turned hostile.
She was afraid that I’d leave again, that those wasted years would be like a bridge rebuilt, only to collapse a second time. Neither of us had been willing to face the fact of how little weight was required to trigger that collapse.
She had tied me up with wire and left me to die. But when all was said and done, she wanted me to die in her arms. So before entering my dreams every night, she yanked the wire tight to make sure I was still there. Vowing never to let me go again, she made me promise over and over that no matter how bad things became, I would never abandon her.
Yet I was not allowed to see her, nor was I allowed to be a part of her life. My loitering outside the lecture hall was met with reproach. Any trace of me in her everyday life was perceived as a threat. There was a murky chamber reserved for me in her soul, where I waited and waited, for all of eternity. . . .
Late at night, her hands would dial my number. She didn’t know whether I was home or not, whether she was having a conversation with me in reality or in her imagination. Her willpower had begun to wane. She claimed to be sleepwalking, and so we were back in touch.
She’d regressed. Lying in bed in her white pajamas, she lifted the receiver like a woman possessed. Alternately cheerful and petulant, she wasn’t aware of having betrayed her own neediness. To her, things were the way they used to be when it was just the two of us. She had convinced herself of this—as if no one had been hurt in our breakup, as if she hadn’t started a new life, as if she weren’t conflicted, as if she hadn’t found someone new. The calls went on into the early hours of the morning.
So I asked her why she resisted me, why she was afraid of me. I asked her to make a choice. I wanted to know whether she still loved me. I told her not to repress her desires. Choking back tears, she nearly had a breakdown. Dejected, she told me she couldn’t look at me. She couldn’t see us together. She hated that I thought she didn’t love me. She didn’t want me to know her reasons, God forbid I run off again. . . .
She’d always had a mad streak, but in her hour of weakness, it became an affliction. She was unable to sleep. She couldn’t wash her hands clean.
And I was powerless. I tried to remain level-headed about her state. But I couldn’t be near her. She was volatile. Driven by psychosis, she had come back to haunt me, and I awaited the worst. Our sadomasochistic dynamic had given rise to a host of new miseries, and I eagerly took a swig of love’s poison.
4
November. The harshest part of winter. It was our last happy memory, like a condemned man’s final shot of whiskey.
She agreed to see me just once, saying we should go to a bar and get smashed together. We were at the front entrance when she bolted. I trailed her faint silhouette down Heping East Road. Then, out of nowhere, she turned to face me. In a flash of brilliance, she proposed that we write the final chapter of our history at National Tsing Hua University.
We decided to camp out by the pond on campus. At the dormitory, I finally met her best friend, Zi Ming, who had been at her side through the trials and tribulations of the past few years. Zi Ming was earnest and forthright. I immediately felt as if I’d known her forever and was grateful that this person existed. I could sense the strong familial affection between them, and it comforted me.
Viewed from the hillside, the water’s surface glistened. Next to the clear pond was the new physics building. There were no signs of human life anywhere. The scent of dew-kissed grass, pure and fresh, filled the mountain air.
The natural beauty cleansed our spirits, and our troubles back in the city faded away. We were open with each other. It was then that the warmer, simpler Shui Ling of the old days emerged like a dainty white bud, untouched on the mountainside—if a bit puerile and wild. Tears of longing came to our eyes, and she opened her arms to me.
I buttoned her up in a snug-fitting coat and spread out layers of clothing to serve as makeshift blankets. I tucked her in. Her arms were wrapped around my neck as she said to me, You know, we might die together like this. . . .
5
“Tonight I went to a salon near my house and had my long hair chopped off.”
“What did you do that for?”
“I just felt like it. But let me tell you a secret: I’m sick of myself. Heh heh. It’s not like you two love my long hair and I’m disappointing you . . . right? Short hair looks sharp. It makes me look capable and efficient . . . career-oriented (ha ha). I just don’t want you guys to think I’m some fragile ‘hothouse flower.’ Yeah. . . . Even my friends are mad and saying that I ruined it. None of them like you.”
“So what did she say about you chopping off all your hair?”
“She was upset. We fought for a while. She cares about little things like this. She said she’s told me a million times, but I still do this . . . or I shouldn’t do that. What about you? What do you think?”
“I’m kind of sad, but if you want to cut it, cut it. I remember when you had short hair in high school and you looked good. Like a little sailor. It’s been so long since we last saw each other. I can’t believe I’ll never see you with long hair again.”
“Ha! I was just messing with you. I still have my long hair.”
The whistling sound of the ocean air in Penghu. Waves pounded against the shore, washing everything away. I’d burned myself and then fled to Penghu, where I sat in t
otal isolation all night on the embankment, hearing all kinds of noises.
My first phone call that evening was to Shui Ling’s friends’ place. They said, She’s drunk, she’s been bawling and flipping out because of you. A crying mess. They had to stay away from her. They said it was impossible to talk to her. She was in a stupor. Shui Ling, I’m calling from the phone booth behind the seawall. I’m right by the water. . . .
“Last night I had a dream, but it was a bad dream. I don’t want to tell you. Okay, if you help me write my final paper, I’ll tell you. . . .
“I dreamed there was a black dog approaching my house. I was scared, really scared, so I hurried to lock the doors and shut the windows. I pushed a bookshelf up against the front door and I heard the dog scratching against it. I was terrified, so I ran to my bed and threw back the covers—and oh my god, there it was, the black dog, with its shiny black fur and huge eyes. I screamed. . . .
“I also wanted to tell you that I saw Hans the Hedgehog and the Princess of Sweetness and Cherry Pie on public television. After the prince and princess marry, they live in a castle in the woods. But every night as the princess sleeps, the prince leaves the castle. He doesn’t come back until dawn. He tells her that he goes hunting. So the queen tells the princess to hide the prince’s coat. The next day, waking early, the princess discovers she’s been asleep in the woods. There’s a hedgehog by her side. The castle is nowhere to be seen, and the prince has turned into the hedgehog. Because he doesn’t want the princess to find out that he becomes a hedgehog at night, he runs off into the woods and never returns.
“The princess is determined to track down the prince. Even if he never changes back into a human, she still wants to spend the rest of her life with him, so she roams the country for ten years searching for him. Then one day, in a run-down shack, she finds a hedgehog. She leans over and kisses the hedgehog, and the hedgehog changes back into the prince. Then the prince and the princess live happily ever after. . . .”
