Old Third’s whispers had brought her out in goose-pimples. They were soft and lovely to listen to. She raised her eyes and looked at him, besotted, while he told her how he felt the first time they met, of his misery when he hadn’t been able to see her, how he watched her playing volleyball on top of some scaffolding near the school, how he had walked all the way to Yumin’s home town to pick walnuts, and how he had ‘bribed’ the kid by the taps with five cents to get him to fetch her. It had happened, she was addicted to his words, the more she listened the more she wanted to listen. When he came to a pause she asked, ‘And then what? Tell me more.’
He laughed, and just as he had been telling her stories on the mountain he said, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you more.’ He carried on until suddenly he stopped and asked, ‘What about you? It’s your turn.’
She dodged the question. She couldn’t help feeling that it would be as good as telling him she liked him outright, and that was the perfect definition of what her mother would call ‘a slip’. If he liked her, it would only be because she said she liked him back, nothing unusual in that. But he could only be said to truly like her if he liked her without knowing if she liked him.
‘Since when do I have so much spare time to be thinking about all that? I have to go to class, play volleyball and ping-pong.’
He hung his head, engrossed in looking at her. Her heart skipped a beat. He must be able to tell I’m lying. She turned to look the other way to avoid meeting his gaze.
‘It’s not immoral to miss someone, or to fall in love,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to feel ashamed, everyone falls in love sooner or later.’ He was persuasive and she was almost drawn into making her confession. But suddenly she thought of a scene from Journey to the West , when Sun Yukong challenges a monster to a fight. The monster has a small bottle, and if the monster calls your name and you answer you get sucked into it and turned to water. It felt like Old Third was carrying a similar such bottle, and all it would take for her to be sucked in, and never come out, would be to say that she liked him.
‘I don’t think it’s shameful, but I’m still young, I’m still at school. I can’t make these sorts of plans.’
‘Sometimes it’s not about planning. You just can’t stop yourself from feeling it. I don’t want to disrupt your studies, and neither do I want to lose sleep over this every night, but I can’t seem to control it.’ He looked at her, and pained, appeared to come to a decision. ‘You study in peace, I’ll wait until you’ve graduated, and then I’ll come see you, how about that?’
It occurred to her suddenly that her graduation was very far away. Did he mean that they wouldn’t meet for all those months? She wanted to explain that that wasn’t what she had meant, that ‘as long as no one found out, he could still come to see her’. But she thought his expression showed that he had already read her thoughts and he was just making her nervous on purpose so that she would reveal her true feelings.
‘Graduation?’ she said. ‘That’s ages away. Let’s talk about it then, who knows how things will look then.’
‘No matter how it looks, I’ll come see you. But, if you need anything before then, you must tell me, okay?’
He had decided, she could see that, and she was hurt. It was as if it was of no matter whether he saw her or not, nothing like the yearning day and night he had just described. ‘What would I need from you?’ she asked angrily. ‘What I really need from you is that you don’t come to see me.’
Confused, he smiled. It took him a while before he replied. ‘Jingqiu, Jingqiu, does it make you happy to torture me like this? If yes, then I have nothing to say, as long as you are happy. But if you . . . are also upset, why do you have to torture me?’
He can read exactly what’s on my mind. She started shaking uncontrollably, and continued firmly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He pulled her closer, and comforted her. ‘Don’t be angry, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just talking rubbish. If you don’t like me . . . well, that’s fine. But I like you.’ He rubbed his face against the top of her head.
As he stroked her like that she felt the top of her head grow hotter, and the heat shot down into her face and neck until she felt feverish. She didn’t know what was wrong, and taking it out on him said, ‘What are you doing? Rubbing someone’s head like that makes a mess of their hair. What happens when they have to go home?’
He laughed, and mimicking her strange way of putting it said, ‘I’ll help them neaten their hair.’
‘What do you know about neatening hair? Don’t make my hair look like a bird’s nest.’ She threw him off, undid her braids, and brushed it out roughly.
He cocked his head and watched. ‘You look really good with your hair out.’
‘Eugh, stop it!’
‘I’m only seeking truth from facts. Hasn’t anyone ever told you you’re beautiful before? Lots of people must have said it.’
‘Stop talking nonsense. I’m not listening. If you say any more I’ll go.’
‘Okay, I’ve stopped. But it’s not a bad thing to be beautiful, and if someone says that it doesn’t mean they have bad intentions. Don’t be so modest, and definitely don’t get angry.’
Seeing that she was about to start braiding her hair again he said, ‘Don’t, wear it down and let me see.’
His expression was pleading and, moved, she unconsciously hesitated to let him take a look. He looked and looked and, breathless, suddenly said, ‘Can I kiss your face? I promise not to kiss you anywhere else.’
She thought his face looked pained, as if he hadn’t enough air to breathe. It scared her a little, that if she didn’t say yes he might die. She carefully reached her cheek across to him. ‘If you promise.’
He didn’t answer but held her tightly and pressed his lips against her cheek, covering it with small kisses, never straying beyond the agreed area. His beard was scratchy and his breath hot, exciting and frightening at the same time. His lips moved towards the edge of her lips a few times. Fearing a repeat of last time she became flustered, and prepared to bite her mouth shut, but he moved his lips away.
He continued to kiss her like that and she started to worry that his beard would scratch her face until it was red-raw. How can I go home with one cheek red, and one white? She carefully pushed him away, and while brushing her hair grumbled coyly, ‘Why didn’t you stop?’
‘I won’t see you again for a long time.’
She started to laugh. ‘What, so you thought you’d save them for later?’
‘If only I could save them.’ He seemed out of sorts, fumbling with his hands, his chest rising and falling. He stared at her.
‘What’s up? Are my plaits a mess?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘they’re nice. It’s getting late, I’ll take you back, who knows, your mother might be looking for you.’
At this she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t said anything to her mother as she had left. Flustered, she asked, ‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly half past nine.’
‘Quickly, I can’t get back after the ferry stops.’ They ran towards the jetty and she asked anxiously, ‘Where are you going to spend the night?’
‘Wherever, a hotel, at some organisation’s guesthouse.’
There were no hotels or guesthouses near the jetty so she said, ‘Then don’t come with me across the river or else you won’t be able to get back, and there are no places to stay on my side.’
‘No problem.’
‘Don’t follow too close, I don’t want anyone to see when we get to the other side of the river.’
‘I k
now, I’ll follow far behind. I just want to see you get to the campus.’ He reached into his bag and brought out a book and gave it to her. ‘Careful, there’s a letter in it. I was afraid I wouldn’t get to speak to you, so I wrote it all down.’
She took the book and pulled out the letter and stuffed it into her pocket.
*
‘Where did you go?’ her sister grumbled when she got home. ‘Mother’s been looking everywhere for you. She fell into a sewer on the way back from Wei Hong’s house.’
Jingqiu saw that her mother’s leg was covered in a large red gash down the shin. Stained by the antiseptic she had dabbed on it, it looked truly horrific.
‘Back so late. Where have you been?’ her mother asked in a loud voice.
‘I went . . . to Zhong Ping’s house.’
‘Mother asked me to go look for you at Zhong Ping’s, but he said you didn’t go round,’ her sister said.
Jingqiu was irritated. ‘What were you doing looking for me all over? A friend from West Village came to see me so I went out. What were you doing dragging other people into this, everyone will think I’ve been—’
‘I didn’t go around dragging people into this. I heard when Zhong came round looking for you. Then when it started to get late and you hadn’t come back I asked your sister to go to his place. I only told Wei Hong that I was wanting to borrow something – your mother is not that stupid. I wouldn’t go telling people my daughter hadn’t come back.’ Her mother sighed. ‘But going out and not telling me, and not a word about what time you’d be back . . . It’s dangerous these days, if a girl like you should come across some . . . villain your life would be ruined.’
Jingqiu hung her head and didn’t respond. She knew she was in the wrong. Luckily her mother had only hurt her leg – had she had a more serious accident then Jingqiu would have been eaten up with guilt.
‘This friend from West Village, was it a he or a she?’
‘A she.’
‘Where did you girls go so late?’
‘Hung around the riverbank.’
‘Mother and I went to the river, you weren’t there.’
Jingqiu didn’t dare say anything more.
‘I always thought you were a clever, sensible girl. How could you do something this stupid? Some men go for young girls like you, a few kind words, some nice-looking clothes, and they’ve got you. If someone like that fools you, that’s it, it’s over. You’re still at school. The school will expel you if you get mixed up with any bad types. If you behave like this . . .’ Jingqiu’s mother saw her daughter hang her head, and asked, ‘Was it that Lin boy?’
‘No.’
‘Who was it then?’
‘It was someone from the geological unit. There’s nothing going on between us. He was sent here on a work trip, that’s all. He had a few rice ration tickets that he didn’t need so he asked me to come get them.’ She pulled out the ration tickets in the hope that they would get her off the hook.
Her mother was even angrier. ‘This is exactly the kind of trick I was talking about, they use little gifts to suck you in.’
‘He’s not like that, he just wants to help.’
‘He’s not like that? But he knows you’re still at school, so why did he have you out until the middle of the night? If he really wants to help you why didn’t he come to our house, in an upright and honest way? Would a decent person be so sneaky?’ Jingqiu’s mother let out a pained sigh. ‘I’ve always worried that you’d be taken in. One slip leads down a road of hardship. I’ve told you so many times, and still you don’t listen?’ She turned to Jingqiu’s little sister and said, ‘Go to the other room for a bit, I want to talk to your sister.’ The girl left, and her mother whispered, ‘Did he . . . do anything to you?’
‘Do what?’
Her mother hesitated, and then said, ‘Did he hug you? Kiss you? Did he . . .’
Jingqiu was flustered. Her heart was thumping wildly, but she braced herself and lied, ‘No.’
Her mother was relieved. ‘That’s good. Don’t have any more contact with him. He can’t be a good person, coming all this way to seduce a girl who’s still at school. If he ever comes again and bothers you, tell me. I’ll write a letter to his unit.’
Chapter Nineteen
It took a long time for Jingqiu to get to sleep that night. She didn’t know if the ferry had still been operating when Old Third had turned back.
The school was on a little island in the middle of the river so they were surrounded by water. The river split when it came to Jiangxin Island. To the south the ‘Big River’ was still quite wide, but to the north is was narrower, so they called that branch the ‘Little River’ onto which faced the campus gate. The two rivers joined up again to the east of the island. In the summer the waters rose, often nearly to the level of the bank, but the island had never flooded; the old people said that Jiangxin Island was resting on a turtle’s back, so it never would.
On the other side of the river the region known as Jiangnan, literally ‘south of the Yangtze River’, stretched out into the distance. Not the Jiangnan known to the Chinese from their ancient poetry, however, but rather a landscape of poor villages. A suburb of Yichang was located on the other side of the ‘Little River’ but it wasn’t easy to get to. The island itself had only a few factories, some fields managed by one of the farming communes, a few schools, some restaurants and a vegetable market, but no hotel.
Jingqiu worried that if Old Third hadn’t managed to cross, he would have had no choice but to spend the night on Jiangxin Island. It was cold, might he have frozen to death out there? And even if he had crossed the river, would he have found a place to stay? Didn’t you have to have a letter from your work unit to be able to get a room?
Her head was crammed with images of Old Third wrapped up in his coat, his neck pulled in, wandering the streets. Then she visualised him spending the night in the pavilion, his body freezing solid, and being discovered by street cleaners the next morning. If she hadn’t been worried about scaring her mother sick she would have run outside to look for him, to find out if he had found somewhere to stay or whether he was spending the night by the river. If he freezes to death tonight he will have died for me, and I’ll have to follow him. The thought of death didn’t scare her because that would mean they would always be together, and she would never have to worry about him betraying her, or worry that he might fall in love with someone else. This way, he would always love her.
If this really happened she would ask for them to be buried together under the hawthorn tree outside West Village. But that didn’t seem very possible, as they weren’t anti-Japanese heroes. They didn’t die for the people but only for love, one by the elements, the other by her own hand. According to Chairman Mao’s words, their deaths would be lighter than a swan’s feather, not as weighty as Tai Mountain.
Jingqiu was tossing to and fro in her bed, and could hear her mother doing the same in the other room. She knew her mother must be anxious about the day’s events. She trusted her not to go to Old Third’s unit without her permission. For her mother to do so would be cutting off her nose to spite her face, as it wouldn’t just get Old Third into trouble, but would drag her into it too. She wasn’t stupid, and nor was she that meddling. But Jingqiu imagined that from that day on her mother would be even more worried about her, and if she was out of her sight for only a few minutes she would instantly assume she was seeing that ‘bad boy’.
She wanted to tell her mother, you don’t need to worry, he won’t come to see me these next six months, he told me. He’s going to wait until I’ve graduated. And who knows, he might have forgotten me by then. Or else have found another girl.
He’s such a smooth talker – he managed to convince me, so wouldn’t it be easy for him to convince someone else?
She thought through the evening’s events over and over again, reviewing the two key scenes; when he held her, and when he kissed her. Why am I so fixated? Was it because she was so consumed with unhealthy thoughts, or because her mother had turned white at the mere mention of these things? They must be serious crimes if they could affect her mother like that, and to make matters worse, she had actually committed them; so now what? What harm will come of me by being held and kissed? She felt muddled. Last time he had embraced her and kissed her too, and nothing seemed to have happened. But if there is no harm involved, then why is Mother so scared? Mother knows a lot of the world, so surely she must know what’s worth worrying about and what’s not?
Old Third had been a bit excited, so was that evidence of some ‘brutish nature’? But what exactly did that mean? To be ‘brutish’ is to be like a wild animal, to eat people, right? But he didn’t eat me, he only kissed me tenderly – nothing wild about it.
It was not until the next day that she got the opportunity to read Old Third’s letter. That week it was her turn to lock the classroom, so she waited until everyone had left and sat in a corner of the classroom, pulled out the letter and opened it. It was beautifully written, tender and passionate. When he wrote of how much he longed for her she was moved and felt safe. But when he came to writing about her, his style wasn’t quite to her taste.
If he had only written about how much he loved her and how he missed her, and not written her into his letter as his accomplice, then she would have really liked it. But he kept referring to ‘we’ this and ‘we’ that. He had overstepped the mark. She had received a few love letters before, mostly written by boys in her class. No matter how good they were at writing the thing she hated the most was when they assumed that she must reciprocate their feelings.
Under the Hawthorn Tree Page 17
