by Yu Hua
Wen Hong reached out a hand and felt Li Qigang’s trousers. “Pants this heavy will feel hot even if they’re ninety percent wool,” she remarked. Turning to Li Ping, she said, “What do you think?”
“You can see right away those are thick pants,” Li Ping answered. “Just now, as you were coming over here, I thought you were wearing cotton pants.”
Wen Hong tittered. “I thought they were serge.”
With a smile, Li Qigang removed his foot from Li Ping’s chair, slipped it into his shoe, and bent down to tie his shoelace. “Of course, compared to them …” He pointed at several youths passing by in Western-style shorts: “Compared to them, these are warmer. Long trousers are always warmer than shorts. Some people wear shorts the whole summer long and expose their chests as well, slouching around in sandals. That’s okay for them, but it won’t do for us. We in official positions need to maintain our image. We might get away with not wearing stylish clothes, but at least we have to look neat, don’t we?”
At this point, Li Qigang took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. Wen Hong and Li Ping exchanged glances and smiled conspiratorially. “Where have you people in the Cultural Bureau moved to?” Wen Hong asked.
“Tianning Monastery.”
“You’ve moved to a temple?” cried Wen Hong.
Li Qigang nodded. “It’s wonderfully cool in the summer there.”
“What about the winter?” asked Li Ping.
“In the winter …,” Li Qigang conceded, “it’s cold.”
“Why don’t you people in the Cultural Bureau get yourselves an office building? Look how impressive the headquarters of the Finance and Business bureaus are,” Wen Hong said.
“We don’t have the money,” said Li Qigang. “No department has a smaller budget than we do.”
“So, of people in official positions, you’re the poorest.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Li Qigang smiled.
Li Ping looked at Wen Hong. “No matter how poor they are, they’re still officials, and officials are always going to have higher status than us.” She turned to Li Qigang. “Isn’t that right?”
He smiled modestly. “I wouldn’t say we have higher status than you, but compared to the average worker, having a job in a government agency is a bit more dignified.”
The two girls chortled. Li Qigang again broached the topic of their hairstyle, repeating his recommendation. “You should really think about short hair.”
Again they laughed—and all the more loudly—but he took this in stride. “Do it the way Scarlet does her hair,” he went on.
“Who?” asked Wen Hong.
“Scarlet, the singer,” replied Li Qigang.
“Oh,” the girls responded. “I can’t see what’s so great about Scarlet’s hairstyle,” said Li Ping.
“Her face is too pointy,” said Wen Hong.
Li Qigang smiled. “Next month I’m going to Shanghai to escort her here.”
Hearing this the girls were taken aback, and it was a moment before Wen Hong asked, “Scarlet’s coming?”
“That’s right.” Li Qigang gave a restrained nod.
“To give a performance?” asked Li Ping.
Li Qigang nodded. “The most expensive seats will cost fifty yuan, and even the cheapest ones will be thirty.”
The girls’ eyes gleamed. “You’ve got to get us a couple of tickets,” they said.
“No problem,” said Li Qigang. “I’m involved in setting up the whole event, so there’s no problem at all in getting you two tickets.”
“Make it complimentary tickets,” said Li Ping.
“That’s right,” said Wen Hong, “I bet you can get your hands on lots of tickets. Give us two for free.”
Li Qigang hesitated a moment. “Okay, they’re on me.”
The two girls beamed. “Give us the fifty-yuan seats,” Li Ping said.
“We don’t want the thirty-yuan ones,” said Wen Hong.
“That’s right,” said Li Ping. “Don’t make us sit in the back row, where we won’t be able to see Scarlet’s face.”
Li Qigang again hesitated. He wiped his forehead. “I’ll make every effort to get you fifty-yuan seats.”
“Don’t say ‘make every effort,’ ” said Wen Hong. “It’s a real letdown when someone of your position says ‘make every effort.’ ”
Li Ping smiled. “That’s exactly right. It must be a piece of cake for someone of your status to come up with a couple of superior seats.”
“All right then,” Li Qigang said, after a moment’s reflection, “I’ll get you two fifty-yuan tickets.”
The two girls gave whoops of delight. Li Qigang smiled, looked at his watch, and announced that he had to attend to some business. The girls got up to see him off and, as soon as he had walked away, they murmured in almost the same breath, “What a dummy.”
They giggled. “He’s a real blockhead,” Wen Hong said.
“Sometimes even dummies have their uses,” Li Ping remarked.
The two girls giggled once again. “When was it he asked you out?” Wen Hong quietly asked.
“Last year. What about you?”
“Last year, too.” They had another giggle. “How did he go about it?” Wen Hong inquired.
“He called me up,” Li Ping said. “He called and asked me to meet him at the entrance to the Cultural Bureau. He said there was going to be an event. An instructor in ballroom dancing was coming from Shanghai and would teach us how to dance. So I went …”
“You never saw the ballroom dancing instructor.”
“How did you know?”
“He made just the same kind of date with me.”
“And then he asked you to go out for a stroll?”
“That’s right,” said Wen Hong. “Did you go for a walk with him?”
“We walked a little way, and I asked him if it was time to go for the dance lesson. He said no, what he wanted to do was go out for a walk together. I asked him what he had in mind.”
“Did he say it was so you could get to know each other better?”
Li Ping nodded. “He said the same thing to you?”
“That’s right,” Wen Hong replied. “I asked him why he wanted us to get to know each other better.”
“I asked him the same question.”
“He said he wanted us to be friends, and I asked him why.”
Li Ping picked this up: “He was slow to answer.”
“Right,” Wen Hong said. “He rubbed his chin for ages and finally said …”
Li Ping imitated Li Qigang’s tone of voice: “To see if we fall in love.”
The two girls roared with laughter. They laughed so much they couldn’t stand up straight, and it was a full five minutes before they recovered. Then Li Ping said: “When I heard him say ‘fall in love,’ my hair stood on end.”
“I was as petrified as a mouse in a cat’s jaws,” said Wen Hong.
Again they burst out laughing. “How did you respond?” Wen Hong asked.
“I said I wanted to go home.”
“That was very civil of you,” Wen Hong said. “I told him: You’ve got as much chance as the toad that fancied the swan.”
ONE EVENING SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, Wen Hong arrived at Li Ping’s apartment. Li Ping was doing herself up in front of the mirror. She had just finished combing her hair and had begun to paint her eyebrows. She had an eyebrow pencil in her hand as she opened the door, and seeing this Wen Hong asked: “Are you going out?”
Li Ping nodded and returned to her seat in front of the mirror. “I’m going to a movie.”
“Who with?” Wen Hong pricked up her ears.
Li Ping smiled, but did not answer.
“You’ve got a boyfriend!” Wen Hong exclaimed. “Who is he?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“So that’s the way you want it.” Wen Hong gave Li Ping a jab. “You have a boyfriend, and you don’t even tell me.”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t
I?”
“Then I’ll stay and meet him.” Wen Hong sat down on the sofa and watched Li Ping putting on her makeup. As Li Ping painted her lips, she said, “This imported lipstick is really good.”
Wen Hong thought of something. “I ran into Li Qigang this morning. He was wearing an imported tie. It looked really nice.”
“That singer Scarlet gave it to him,” Li Ping said.
“That’s right, that’s what he told me,” Wen Hong said. Then, with a trace of suspicion, she said, “How did you know?”
Li Ping massaged her face with both hands. “He told me.”
Wen Hong smiled. “Do you know something? Scarlet likes Li Qigang.”
Seeing Li Ping nodding in the mirror, Wen Hong asked: “Did you know that too?”
“Yeah,” Li Ping answered.
“Did he tell you himself?”
“That’s right.”
“This Li Qigang …” Wen Hong seemed displeased. “He told me not to tell anyone, but the guy goes around himself telling lots of people.”
“He hasn’t told a lot of people. Just you and me, right?”
“Who knows?” said Wen Hong.
Li Ping stood up, and tried on the dress she had laid out on the bed. “How do I look?” she asked.
“You look great,” said Wen Hong. “How much did he tell you?”
“About what?”
“About Scarlet chasing him.”
“Not much.”
Wen Hong watched as Li Ping swiveled from side to side in the mirror. “Did you know that he and Scarlet spent the night in her hotel room?”
Li Ping spun around and stared at Wen Hong. “He told you that too!”
“That’s right.” Wen Hong was rather pleased. Then she noticed something. “He told you too?”
Li Ping could see there was something odd about Wen Hong’s expression. She turned around and said offhandedly, “I asked him about it.”
Wen Hong smiled. “I didn’t ask him. It was he who told me.”
A fleeting smile appeared on Li Ping’s face. Wen Hong laid her arms on the back of the sofa and gazed at her friend’s figure. “This Li Qigang is actually quite classy, don’t you think?”
“That’s right,” said Li Ping. “Otherwise, why would a woman as pretty and popular as Scarlet take a fancy to him?”
Wen Hong nodded. She put her hands in her lap. “Actually Scarlet is no beauty. From a distance she looks good, but when you get close up she’s not so pretty.”
“When did you get to look at her close up?”
“I haven’t,” Wen Hong said. “It was Li Qigang who told me that.”
Li Ping looked unhappy. “What did he say exactly?”
Wen Hong seemed pleased. “He said Scarlet isn’t as pretty as me.”
“Not as pretty as you?”
“Not as pretty as us.”
“Us?”
“You and me.”
“He mentioned my name?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not what you said in the beginning.”
Wen Hong looked at Li Ping in surprise. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all.” Li Ping gave a quick laugh, then turned around and looked at herself in the mirror. She wiped the corner of her eye with her left hand.
“If the two of them spent the night in a hotel,” Wen Hong said, “what do you think they did?”
“I don’t know,” Li Ping said. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No, he didn’t,” Wen Hong said, inquiringly.
“Probably nothing happened,” Li Ping said.
“No,” Wen Hong said. “They put their arms around each other.”
“It was Scarlet who put her arms around him,” Li Ping blurted out.
The girls looked at each other, stunned. Li Ping was the first to laugh, and then Wen Hong. Just as Li Ping sat down, there was a knock at the door, and as she was about to get up again, Wen Hong said, “I’ll get it for you.”
She walked over and opened the door, to find a neatly dressed Li Qigang standing smiling on the doorstep. He gave a start, clearly not expecting to be greeted by Wen Hong. After a moment he tilted his head round the door and said to Li Ping, as she walked toward him, “You look terrific.”
Wen Hong heard a chortle from her friend, who walked past her and out the door, then reached back to grasp the doorknob. Wen Hong suddenly realized what was what, and hurried out as Li Ping closed the door behind her.
On the sidewalk, Li Ping took Li Qigang’s arm. “Do you have a ticket?” he asked Wen Hong.
She shook her head. “No.”
Li Ping, her hand on Li Qigang’s arm, turned away. After a couple of steps, she looked over her shoulder. “Wen Hong, we’ve got to go. Drop by some time.”
Wen Hong, nodding, watched them stroll off. When they had gone twenty yards or so, she headed off in the other direction, giving a “Humph!” as she went.
TIMID AS A MOUSE
1
There’s an expression that fits me to a T: timid as a mouse. That’s what my teacher said, back when I was in primary school. This was one autumn, I remember, in Chinese class. The teacher stood on the dais; he was wearing a dark blue cotton jacket over a clean white shirt. I was sitting in the middle of the front row, looking up at him. He held a textbook in his hand and his fingers were coated with red, white, and yellow chalk dust. As he read the lesson aloud, his face and his hands and his book towered above me and his spittle was constantly spraying my face, so that I had repeatedly to raise my hand and wipe it off. He noticed that his spittle was sprinkling my face and that I would blink my eyes fearfully when it came flying my way, so he stopped reciting and put down his book, then stepped down from the dais and walked over to me, stretched out his chalk-stained hand and patted my face, as though giving it a wash. Then he went back to the desk to retrieve his book and began to walk around the classroom as he recited the lesson. He had wiped dry the spittle on my face, but in so doing had left my face blotched with red, white, and yellow chalk dust. My classmates began to titter, because my face now looked as gaudy as a butterfly.
It was at this point that the teacher came to the place in the text where the expression “timid as a mouse” was introduced. He laid the upturned book against his thigh. “What is meant by ‘timid as a mouse’?” he said. “It’s an expression, used to describe somebody who has no more courage than a mouse …”
His mouth stayed open, for he had something more he wanted to say. “For example …”
His eyes scanned the room. He wanted to find an analogy. The teacher loved analogies. If he was trying to explain the word “irrepressible,” he would have Lü Qianjin stand up and he’d say, “For example, Lü Qianjin—he’s irrepressible. It’s as though he’s got a straw stuck up his ass all the time—he’ll just never sit still.” Or when he came to the expression “if the lips are gone, the teeth are cold,” he would ask Zhao Qing to stand up: “For example, Zhao Qing. Why does he look so miserable? That’s because his father died. His father is the lips, and if the lips are gone the teeth will chatter.” That’s the way our teacher made his analogies: “For example, Song Hai … For example, Fang Dawei … For example, Lin Lili … For example, Hu Qiang … For example, Liu Jisheng … For example, Xu Hao … For example, Sun Hongmei …”
Now he spotted me. “Yang Gao,” he said.
I got to my feet. The teacher looked at me a moment, then waved his hand. “Sit down.”
I sat down. The teacher tapped his fingers on the desk. “All those afraid of tigers, raise your hands.”
Everybody in the class raised their hands. The teacher surveyed the room. “Put your hands down.”
We put our hands down. “All those afraid of dogs, raise your hands,” the teacher said.
When I raised my hand, I heard a lot of giggles. I found that the girls had raised their hands, but none of the other boys had. “Put your hands down,” the teacher said.
The girls and I put our hands down. “All those af
raid of geese, raise your hands,” the teacher now said.
Once more I raised my hand. The whole classroom erupted in laughter. This time I was the only person to raise a hand—none of the girls had. My classmates were in hysterics. The teacher did not laugh; he had to tap sharply on the desk to restore order. He looked out into the room, not at me. “Put your hand down,” he said.
I was the only person who had to do that. Then he directed his gaze at me. “Yang Gao.”
I stood up. He pointed at me. “For example, Yang Gao, he’s even afraid of geese …”
He paused for a moment, then went on, in a loud voice, “ ‘Timid as a mouse’—that’s Yang Gao.”
2
It’s true I’m timid as a mouse. I don’t dare go near the river and I don’t dare climb trees, and that’s because, before my father died, he would often say: “Yang Gao, you can go play in the school playground or along the sidewalk or at a classmate’s house. Any place is fine—just don’t go near the river and don’t go climbing trees. If you fall into the river, you might drown. If you fall out of a tree, you might break your neck.”
That’s why I was standing there in the summer sun, watching from a distance, as Lü Qianjin, Zhao Qing, Song Hai, and Fang Dawei, along with Hu Qiang, Liu Jisheng, and Xu Hao, played about in the river, watching as they splashed water, watching their glossy black heads and shiny white behinds. One after another they dived into the water and stuck their behinds into the air. They called this game “Selling Pumpkins.” “Yang Gao, come on in!” they shouted. “Yang Gao, hurry up and sell a pumpkin!”
I shook my head. “I would drown!” I said.
“Yang Gao, do you see Lin Lili and Sun Hongmei?” they asked. “See—they’re in the water. Girls get in the water, see? You’re a boy—how come you won’t join us?”
Sure enough, I could see Lin Lili and Sun Hongmei wading about in the river in their bright underpants and cheerful tank tops, but still I shook my head and repeated, “I would drown!”
Knowing I wouldn’t go in the river, they told me to climb a tree instead. “Yang Gao,” they said, “if you won’t come in, then go climb a tree.”
“I can’t climb trees,” I said.
