by Can Xue
As it happened, one Sunday I was buying stationery in the vicinity of Gaoling. After doing that, I took a small, narrow alley to Gaoling itself. The sun was strong that day, and people were all taking cover in their houses. I saw no one on the narrow asphalt road. I was perspiring. I walked straight to the end of the road and still didn’t see anyone. After I climbed the hill, the road turned and became a downgrade. I hesitated a little and then decided to turn into the area of small, narrow dilapidated houses. It was next to an adobe house that I walked in, and then I immediately saw a filthy public toilet. After passing the toilet, I came to a home where a mourning hall had just been erected. Hanging in the hall were photos of the deceased: it was a sweet-looking girl wearing a red scarf. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. The coffin hadn’t been carried in yet. I was confused: I’d never seen a funeral for a child. I wanted to stand there and watch, but someone drove me off. Someone’s heavy palm struck me on the back. Enduring the pain, I ran off, almost crying.
“She died of meningitis,” a girl about my age told me.
She looked like an old hand. She had pigtails, and her hands were rough. You could tell by looking at her that she was used to doing housework.
“I don’t dare stay at the mourning hall,” she added, haughtily curling her lips.
I lacked the courage to accost the girl. The atmosphere all around was too secretive, and I wanted to get away. Between two adobe houses there was a narrow path that could accommodate only one person. As I was about to take the path, the girl pulled me back. She was strong: she pulled at me until I nearly fell down.
“It’s a dead end, you fool.”
She wanted me to go with her, and so we circled back to the mourning hall and went past it. Some people were already sitting in the hall: they had begun beating the gongs, and a woman was sobbing. I didn’t know if it was her mother or a relative. We hurriedly put the hall behind us. I asked the girl where we were going. She answered, “The hospital.” I said I wasn’t interested in going to the hospital. She insisted, saying, “The hospital is a lot of fun.”
We scrambled up the hill and finally went through a cobweb-like and densely settled residential area, and reached a level place made of concrete. On one side of it was a high wall. The girl said the hospital was inside the wall. I thought the entrance to the hospital was nearby, but we walked a long time. We walked past the level concrete area and then once more came to the street. We were still at the wall, and we hadn’t seen even a trace of the entrance.
“Let’s rest for a while.” With that, the girl sat down on the ground with her back against the wall. Her head drooped.
I saw her massaging the tiny cracks in her palms. As for me, I was hot and thirsty and wanted to go home.
“The hospital is a lot of fun,” she said again, as if she’d guessed what I was thinking.
At last, we saw an old woman selling popsicles. I wanted to buy one, but she waved us away and said she had sold them all. Noticing my disappointment, the girl giggled. She told me there was a gap in the wall just ahead and we could get into the hospital that way.
After walking a little farther, we saw the gap in the wall and made our way through it. Ahead of us was an old five-story structure. It was a mess in front of the building. Piles of glass test tubes, syringes, and rubber tubes were everywhere. Mixed in with them were numerous glass jars filled with dubious objects that looked a little like human organs.
“There are little children, some living and some dead. Don’t look! Let’s run!” the girl shouted.
She and I ran off together. We ran past several black brick buildings. People were looking out from the windows of each building. These were probably hospital wards. Finally, we reached a garden. The girl threw herself down on the lawn and didn’t move. And I sat down beside her. A profusion of roses formed the border. I had never seen such beautiful large roses. Their strong fragrance immediately dispelled my fatigue and thirst. It was very quiet in the garden: even the buzzing of bees was audible. I thought, this must be the place that the girl had said was so much fun. And actually it was great here; I didn’t want to leave. I shoved the girl. I wanted her to get up and go with me to enjoy the roses, but she didn’t move. And so I circled around the large border several times by myself. It was wondrous—and oh, so pleasant—below the blue sky. The more I looked, the more impatient I was to share this with the girl, so I shoved her again. Finally, she sat up, yawning. Like an adult, she said gravely:
“You fool. Under the flowers are little babies, some living and some dead. You mustn’t poke at the flowers as you look at them. Last week, a girl in the hospital was frightened here and . . .”
She broke off, keeping me guessing. I shoved her hard and asked, “And what? What happened to her? Hurry up and tell me!!”
“She died.” She curled her lips.
“You’re talking nonsense! You’re the one who told me this place was a lot of fun.” All at once, my heart felt empty.
“It is a lot of fun. I didn’t lie. Come on, let’s go look at the flowers together!”
But I didn’t want to go with her. I was afraid she would suddenly part the clump of flowers and make me look at that ghost-like thing. I suggested that we admire the flowers from a distance. Staring at me, she nodded in agreement. Ah, the roses! The roses! In the strong floral fragrance and under the gentle blue sky, I felt that I was in a fairyland! The wards next to the slums were so squalid, and yet a wonderland was hidden here. How could anyone imagine this? It was unusual, too, to have the chance to see such a beautiful lawn—so lush, so green, so clean!
I lay on the lawn, pillowing the back of my head with my hands. It was so pleasant to lie down like this. The girl was standing over me. When she bent down to talk with me, her head looked huge—just like a dustpan.
“Hey, you’re resting your head on three little babies. Two of them are dead. One is still alive. You’ve pinned her legs down.”
I jumped up with a rush. I wanted with all my heart to dash out of this garden that was possessed by evil spirits. From behind, she held onto me by my clothes and wouldn’t let me go. She even tripped me, wanting to make me fall.
“Look at the flowers, look at the flowers! You aren’t looking at the flowers.”
I felt wronged, and tears welled up in my eyes and spilled out. Through teary eyes, I saw large roses swirling all over the sky, and so I gradually calmed down. I stood there foolishly and gazed at the roses. The girl surreptitiously placed a soft, cold thing in my hand; she wanted me to hang onto it. Flustered, I threw the thing off and swung my arms for all I was worth. I felt something moist on my hand.
“Why are you so jumpy? It’s just a twig!” she said.
The wind stopped blowing, and the roses fell slowly to the lawn—one rose here, another there, trembling as if they were alive. I looked closely at my palm and finally saw that it was clean; nothing dirty was there. So I relaxed and took careful steps to avoid trampling the beautiful roses. The girl’s voice echoed in my ears—tender, yet stiff; fervent, yet frosty. Such an unearthly voice—
“In the slums of Gaoling, a girl died next to the hospital, and in the hospital there are borders of roses . . . Shhh. Quiet, quiet! We’ve come out. Look, here’s the gap in the wall.”
As the girl and I walked on the blazing asphalt road, it was almost twilight. The old woman selling popsicles had gone home.
We parted at the intersection, each of us surprised by the other’s presence.
COTTON
CANDY
=
The thing I love watching most is the swirling cotton candy. The contraption for making it is like a flat-bottomed pan. One puts sugar in it, turns the crank, and after a while, a large shimmering ball emerges; it’s like cotton—and like silk, too. Indeed, there’s nothing lovelier.
The old woman with bulging eyelids who was selling cotton candy was so absorbed in the operation that she never looked up at us. We crowded around the contraption, staring at it with o
ur mouths watering. We secretly hoped that more and more people would show up to buy cotton candy, so that we could watch longer. Still, this didn’t mean that we could eat the cotton candy: the old woman had never been that generous. We stood there to feast our eyes. None of the balls of cotton candy was the same; each one had a special beauty of its own. Only our eyes—kids’ eyes—could tell them apart. After the cotton candy was shaken out, the old woman spoke in a sharp, crisp voice to the child who had paid for it: “Here you go!” And then our gazes turned toward the thing in the child’s hand. We weren’t jealous of him. We shared his enjoyment of the delectable food—with our eyes.
Ah, this lovely thing has run through my entire life! That treasure sparkling in the sunlight, that magic-like spinning, brought me so much joy. At the time, I secretly planned to become a cotton candy vendor when I grew up. This old woman’s absorption and calmness while she worked were mystifying. Even with my enthusiasm running so high, I was sometimes distracted—for example, when an old crow flew past, or when my parents yelled at us to go home for dinner. But this old woman: after she set up her “black pot” and her customers lined up in front of this contraption, she lowered her eyes and never looked up. I thought that each ball of cotton candy was so marvelous because it was inseparable from her frame of mind. What kind of person was this old woman with hands like bark?
I’ve eaten cotton candy just twice. It was the most mystifying experience on earth. When I put that soft, transparent, fluttering white thing in my mouth, it vanished like air. It had no taste. I knew I’d seen that cotton candy was made of sugar, so why didn’t it taste sweet? I asked Amei and Aming, but they both laughed at me and said I was “miserable.” In my anger, I started ranting and raving, and they ran off.
But the cotton candy that those children ate certainly was flavorful. If they were eating only air, they wouldn’t make such a scene in front of their parents, demanding a few pennies to enjoy this kind of thing. I understood them. Maybe something was wrong with my taste buds. Later on, I brazenly asked my parents for a few cents, and this time I bought a small pear-shaped one. I tasted it gingerly. I saw this thing melt little by little on my tongue, and still I tasted nothing. It was so unfair: Had the old woman played a trick on me? It didn’t seem so. She treated me the same as everyone else. And, after all, she didn’t know me: she had never laid eyes on any of us.
My extreme dismay touched off endless daydreams. If I amassed some capital someday and became a vendor, maybe I could shake cotton candy out of the air. I was excited about my brainchild: at midnight, I smiled happily. I would shake out the most beautiful cotton candy, and it wouldn’t be white, either. It would be a color I couldn’t even imagine. It would be many times more beautiful than the rainbows in the sky or the coral in the sea. And the flavor certainly would not be a sugary taste, but would be a sweetness that had never existed before. It would be better . . . No, I couldn’t imagine what it would be better than.
=
The old woman finally went bankrupt. She had made so much money every day, how could she have gone bankrupt? I didn’t get it. She still came to our street to make cotton candy. Children lined up in an orderly fashion. When the first one in line paid his money, she bent her head and started shaking her contraption. She no longer had any white sugar. She was shaking air. Everyone started guffawing. Distracted for a moment, she brought her other hand—the one that was gripping the money—up to her face and stared at it carefully. The child who had given her the money quickly grabbed it from her and took off. She wasn’t angry: she just clutched the crank again and shook the air. She didn’t even look at us.
Feeling sorry for her, I rushed home and pilfered a small jar of sugar. I shoved my way through the crowd and placed the jar of sugar on the old woman’s chopping board. I had barely turned around when I heard a sound: the old woman had swept the jar to the ground. In a frenzy, the children grabbed the sugar that had fallen on the ground. The old woman was still shaking her contraption, her wooden face expressionless. The children whispered that she’d gone “crazy.”
As the days passed, fewer and fewer children crowded around. Finally, no one came any longer to watch her crazy activity. I was the only one who was reluctant to leave, and I observed from one side. Sure, I also ran off sometimes, because I had to help out at home and because of other temptations. But for some reason, I kept thinking about this. I felt vaguely that if the old woman would just go on shaking her contraption, a shiny white treasure would surely emerge from it. Perhaps she hadn’t really gone so bankrupt that she couldn’t even buy sugar. Maybe she had deliberately chosen not to use sugar. Otherwise, why would she have knocked the sugar jar I gave her to the ground?
=
One day, after I had helped my family fetch water, I came here. She looked like a fossil sitting motionless on a wooden stool. This was a rare sight. It was drizzling, and she was drenched. In the past, she would move her contraption under the tea shop’s awning as soon as it began raining. I felt nervous. What on earth had happened? Could she have died? I moved closer to get a better look at her face.
“No matter how much energy you put into your work, the hungry ghosts will eat everything you make.”
She said this abruptly, but even her mouth was motionless. How had she spoken? Maybe these words were just the thoughts in her head and I could actually hear her thoughts.
The contraption was already thick with rust, and a hole had rusted out in the sheet iron. Scared stiff, I shook the rusted crank. Suddenly, that crank made a frightening vibrating sound, and my mind went blank. I fell down on the ground. I tried hard to remember, but I had no idea what that sound was. It felt as if I’d been shut up in a secret metal room and someone had hammered on a piece of armored plate. No, this sound was even worse: it could make a person lose his mind.
It took a long, long time for me to recover. When I looked up, the old woman had disappeared. Under the contraption was a large ball of multi-colored cotton candy. A dirty hand grabbed it right away and took off. The owner of the hand was the little girl Amei—that sick little kid. She ate it as she ran off. In the blink of an eye, the cotton candy dissolved in her mouth. When I caught up and seized hold of her, she opened her big mouth and started crying.
“Shake out one just like it and give it to me!” I ordered.
Whimpering, Amei nervously went back to the contraption. She was short, so it was only by standing on tiptoe that she could reach the crank. I stopped up my ears with my fingers.
The strange thing was that Amei wasn’t the least bit afraid of the sound that the contraption made. She kept shaking it as hard as she could. Perspiration beaded her face. When she stopped, however, no cotton candy appeared. Standing on the small bench and manipulating this contraption, Amei was the picture of health—as if she weren’t sick at all. She was like a little hero—arms akimbo—looking at me.
I peered under the contraption and saw that a few gears and screws had fallen off. I concluded that this contraption was ruined, so I paid no more attention to Amei. I lazily dragged myself home. Dad was at the front door scolding me, for I was supposed to be helping carry the groceries.
=
It was a long time before I could figure out what had happened. I kept seeing the old woman sitting, unmoving, in front of a pile of rags. If I approached her, a sound came out of her chest. By fits and starts, that sound sometimes spoke of her past glory, and sometimes it was only a string of curses. Once, I smelled an odor on her body. Startled, I felt her forehead. She lifted her eyelids to look at me. Her strange gaze frightened me. In the deep recesses of my dark memories a lot of little jars were being opened, and floating in the air was the fragrant scent of honey. I opened my mouth and said an irrelevant word: “Chasing.” The word interrupted my memories. Just then, the old woman’s gaze fell away, and she didn’t look at me again.
I saw Little Zheng and the others take the gears from beneath the contraption. They said they could make tops to play with. And so on
e day, in the strong sunlight, we played with the tops until perspiration ran off us like rain. But even this exciting game couldn’t satisfy me. In the evening, we grew tired of playing with the gears and threw them into the river. “This is boring! This is boring!” Little Zheng and Little Ying were wailing. I suggested that we visit the old woman. But when we arrived, she wasn’t there. Only then did I remember that every time I’d seen her, I’d been alone. When I asked Little Zheng if he had seen the old woman, he was baffled. He said they hadn’t seen her for a long time. They didn’t believe that the old woman could sit on a pile of scrap iron every day. They said something must be wrong with my eyes. Long after Little Zheng and the others had left, I stood there examining the scrap iron. I even considered appropriating it and taking it home. Naturally, I didn’t dare; if I did, Father would kill me.
The next day, the old woman was sitting there again.
“Hey, Little Qing. Hey, Little Qing. You’re out of your mind,” Amei taunted me.
I thought the children were all on to me: they must be jealous of my desire to become a vendor. Somebody might secretly sabotage my plan. But where could I raise the money? I had to force the old woman to divulge her secret recipe for shaking cotton candy out of thin air. I also had to ask her how to get rid of the strange, frightening sound that the contraption made. If it weren’t for that sound, wouldn’t I have already shaken out lots of multi-colored cotton candy?
