by Geling Yan
Xiao Shi had been crushed by steel from his crane – had that been premeditated too? It was the day of the big snowfall, after Xiao Peng had left, and Xiaohuan had run after him. He and Xiao Shi had drunk until they were both red in the face. He had looked at Xiao Shi through half-open eyes. Xiao Shi had looked right back at him, then he had hurriedly shifted his gaze away, and smiled.
It was the smile of a stranger. Xiao Shi’s smile was not like this: melancholy, dark and slightly shifty. Xiao Shi’s smile had always been incorrigibly mischievous, the kind of smile that could never be provoked into anger. A stranger had taken over Xiao Shi’s body. Whether this stranger would have brought Duohe good or bad luck in the future, it was hard to predict. But Zhang Jian thought that there would have been a great deal of bad luck and precious little good.
It was that stranger who had cornered Duohe in the stairwell, threatened her, and left black pawprints on her body.
It was that same stranger who in future would demand that Duohe submit to him, and pack her off to a labour camp if she did not give in.
That night Xiao Shi had picked up a piece of pork, with both the fat meat and the lean, calling to him, ‘Brother Er, eat, eat!’ He had not called Zhang Jian Brother Er for a very long time. He had used that name when they were at Anshan, but when they were transferred to the south, the Shanghainese and the North-easterners had all carved out their own independent fiefdoms, so Zhang Jian had forbidden him and Xiao Peng to call him this, in case it was seen as forming a clique of their own. ‘Brother Er, it’s been so many years, but it’s Sister Xiaohuan who’s suffered most.’
Calling him ‘Brother Er’ was a sign. And it was unlikely to be a sign of anything good. Zhang Jian had returned the meat Xiao Shi had picked out for him to the dish.
‘And then there’s that Xiao Peng, who studied for a few years at technical school, and now he’s making himself out to be some sort of scholar. I dare say he’s even written poems to my sister, all brave, fine, big words, better even than that great big book he gave Girlie. Look at him, all out of his mind with it –’
‘And you’re not?’ Zhang Jian had said suddenly, with a faint smile.
Xiao Shi was startled, Zhang Jian very seldom adopted this tone.
‘I … I heard Xiao Peng say she’s Japanese. All those years we spent fighting the Japs – when did I ever get close to one of them?’
‘So you want to try something fresh.’ He had smiled again.
He had seen Xiao Shi’s round eyes catch fire, as if he was waiting for the next sentence: Then go ahead and try it. He raised his wine cup, and drained the last mouthful, then looked at Xiao Shi, but the fire in those round eyes had gone out.
‘Don’t you worry, Brother Er, eh?’
Zhang Jian had seen that smiling expression that did not belong to Xiao Shi float up again. This time the smile awoke in him an urge that he had to force back down again. He did not consider the matter carefully until after Xiao Shi had left: how could he have had such an impulse to wring his neck? Because he had made those words ‘Don’t you worry, Brother Er’ sound like a sinister warning? ‘Don’t you worry, here’s the note I’ve made in my black books.’ ‘Don’t you worry, any time you displease me, I can report this account upwards.’ ‘Don’t you worry, Brother Er, there’s plenty of bitterness in store for you yet!’
Now Zhang Jian was standing dumbly facing the dirty bowls and dishes in the sink. Duohe was scrubbing the floor outside, scrubbing away with her brush until even his heart got scratches. She had taken the accident to mean that he had struck the first blow and destroyed Xiao Shi, in order to protect her. To protect their secret love, to protect this unsatisfactory family, that could never hope to be at peace. He wanted to tell her that this was not the way it was, Xiao Shi’s death had been preordained in the book of his life and death, and Zhang Jian was innocent of it. But he knew he would struggle to explain himself. In just the same way, if the security office, the Public Security Bureau and the law courts produced all kinds of reasons to maintain that he had had an ulterior motive with regard to Xiao Shi, he would find it hard to vindicate himself there too. He could not remember the last time he had engaged in a passionate argument over anything.
And of course it had happened on the night shift when there were few people about. Where had everyone got to? Were they on their meal break? And Xiao Shi just had to choose that moment to suddenly appear, just as he had suddenly appeared in the stairwell to block Duohe’s way, his sooty hands crawling all over her body. Xiao Shi and the rolled steel Zhang Jian was carrying on the crane came into perfect alignment, matching positions like the cross hairs on the sights of a gun. Was he looking for death? Throwing himself on the barrel of a gun? And it had to be just that moment that Zhang Jian had let his mind wander, so that he was not paying attention to what was underneath the crane. The cross hairs and the target came together, flawlessly superimposed. And then the bullet was fired. The recoil had shaken him awake in an instant.
People gathered around a pool of blood, eyes averted from the body, speculating. He had cradled Xiao Shi in his arms. The bubbles of blood were so lively, emerging from that mouth that had used to bubble over with wisecracks like a pot on the boil. His round eyes, which had never once been serious, were closed, satisfied and content, and Zhang Jian felt a prickling feeling of grief in his nose. When all was said and done, he had spent over ten years looking into those eyes, and now they were closed, unable to accuse him with their white whites and black pupils.
But accuse him of what?
If that old fake of a Party secretary who brought sour plum juice to the workshop were to die in a sudden accident, should Zhang Jian find himself accused because he had killed him in his heart?
At this moment, Zhang Jian, who was standing by the sink scrubbing dishes, could sense that Duohe had entered the kitchen and walked over to the window, to rub the oil and smoke from the glass. The Zhangs were the only family in the whole building with a gleaming kitchen window; the other families’ windows were begrimed with more than a decade’s worth of accumulated grease and filth, which combined with dust to form a thick felt. Others had long since been covered with plywood or pages from colour magazines, which were replaced when the hygiene inspectors came round. But the Zhang family’s kitchen window sparkled like crystal, one of the increasing number of eccentricities that people could discern in them.
‘Give over polishing,’ Zhang Jian said to Duohe.
Duohe’s hands paused, and she looked at him. Then she raised the polishing cloth again.
‘Stop polishing.’
He could not say for sure that he had not eliminated Xiao Shi for her sake. He pulled her away from the window and into his arms. How many years had it been since he last held her like this? The damp cloth in her hands was touching his back. He reached round, snatched the cloth away and threw it to the ground. What are you polishing? What are you polishing? That mouth of Xiao Shi’s, gurgling as the bubbles of blood welled up, bubbles that were so supple, so warm, how could they have come floating up from the innards of a dead man? How could a lively man like Xiao Shi have got himself killed? Xiao Shi, who had had such a thick skin, such a brazen, cheeky grin, who had never been provoked to anger, nor blushed when he brought snubs down on himself – would such a man abandon his pursuit of Duohe of his own free will? Could such a man be killed by a malicious thought in Zhang Jian’s mind? How many times had he brought beans or bean cakes for the children? Poor Xiao Shi’s hopeless courtship of Duohe had been carried out with neatly tied bundles of pig’s trotters. He had a naturally low and vulgar disposition, but he couldn’t help that.
Duohe could feel he was shaking violently, and raised her head to look at him.
He had become a mass of truths and reasoning that he was not able to articulate. What he could do was clasp this beloved enemy in his arms, this woman who had come to him through wrongdoing and sin – how did she keep on looking like a young girl who never grew up into a woman? He had n
ot kissed her so savagely for a very long time. Had they really become a pair of star-crossed lovers, close in spirit though far away in body, who had plotted to murder an eyewitness to their forbidden love? It seemed that was what they had become, for this was precisely the story he could see on Duohe’s face, which was flowing with grateful tears. They fell into each other’s arms: they had managed to avoid being struck down by lightning for their sins.
Their embrace was also because Girlie was going to fly. Thanks to her moral character, eyes and physical condition, all the best in the city. They hugged tightly, wanting each other to understand that Girlie had got half of all these ‘bests’ from each of them. He kissed her forcefully, almost suffocating Duohe. Finally he stopped. She looked at him through her tears. The first time she had seen him, it had been through pale brown fog.
She had been set down on the stage, and he walked towards her through the light brown fog. It was true that he was tall, but he did not have a tall man’s clumsiness, and his head and face had none of that lack of proportion that one finds in big men. He was picking up the sack, her curled, numb legs and frozen body were dangling, swaying along with his footsteps, and from time to time she would bump into his calf. The total numbness had been broken, and as he strode along, pain started to revive with every step, and to move through her blood and flesh. The pain became countless fine burrs, creeping from the soles of her feet, the tips of her toes and fingers and the cracks of her fingernails into her arms and legs. He seemed to have noticed that the reviving pain was actually worse than numbness, so he made his steps steadier. He was carrying her, carving out a lane between a pitch-black crowd of dirty feet, and she suddenly was no longer afraid of those feet, nor of the braying laughter that issued from their owners. That was when she heard an older woman’s voice begin to speak. An older man’s voice replied. The smell of farm animals came in from the seams of the sack. After that she was put on the flatbed of a cart. Urged on by the whip, the animal pulling the cart broke into a run, faster and faster; a hand kept coming up, lightly patting her body to flick the snowflakes away. This was an old hand, it could not hold itself straight, and the palm was very soft. The hand of an old lady of fifty? Of sixty, even? … The cart entered a courtyard; again from within the pale brown fog, she saw it was a very good courtyard. The buildings seemed to be very good as well. She was carried through a door, straight from a snowy day to summer. It was a toasty, crackling warmth, she was thawing out, and the pain erupted all over her body … When she came round, a pair of hands were untying the knot of the sack, at the crown of her head. The sack was slipped off from around her, and she saw him. It was also just a fleeting glimpse. It was only afterwards that she slowly looked over that brief glimpse in her mind: He was not too bad-looking, no, he was good-looking. Not just that, his half-closed eyes were very good-looking, and half closed with pained embarrassment because of his own warmth and tenderness.
A week later, Girlie – Zhang Chunmei – left, carrying a yellowing grass-green bedding roll on her back, and dressed in a shiny new army uniform. She was like a cheerful green postbox in the cheerful crowd seeing her off from the building. They accompanied her as far as the bottom of the slope, where she turned off onto the main road. The people gradually thinned out, waving to this Girlie who in the future might become an Auntie Lei Feng. As they thought of what Girlie had left behind in their building – the sound of her laugh and her footsteps, her fine moral character – tears came into all their eyes.
Only the people closest to Girlie were left: the three senior Zhangs, the twins and a limping black dog, plus Girlie’s class teacher and two girls from her school. They would see Girlie off all the way to the railway station. At that point the number of people accompanying her would shrink to two: her mother Xiaohuan and her aunt Duohe.
Xiaohuan and Duohe went as far as Nanjing. From here, Girlie would cross the Yangtze River and head north, to the gliding school eight hundred kilometres away. While they were waiting for the train, the three of them searched for a quiet place to say their farewells, making their way with difficulty through the waiting room, which was full of passengers lying on the floor. Many beggars were also picking across the ground covered with slumbering bodies, as if they were sweeping for land mines. What disaster were all of these people fleeing? Xiaohuan could only recall seeing such scenes in her childhood. That was when the Japanese had occupied the North-eastern provinces, and her parents had fled with her and her brother to unoccupied central China.
This was the first time Girlie had gone any distance from home. There was sweat on her brow and chaos inside her head; Xiaohuan could see it all at a glance. In the station waiting room a dozen or so children were crying, like huge cicadas, all competing to raise their voices louder and draw the sound out longer. Girlie said that she was meeting other new gliding school students in Nanjing, and they really should be here by now; there would be a group leader with them, they wouldn’t be late. Xiaohuan plucked a plastic comb from her hair to untangle Girlie’s fringe, which was sticky with sweat. She was also not satisfied with her long plaits, so she whipped off Girlie’s new army cap, and combed her hair all over again.
Duohe and Xiaohuan took a plait each. Her head was first pulled to the left by her mother, then to the right by her aunt. At intervals she would complain that they were too heavy-handed, and making her plaits too tight. The two women ignored her, and just carried on plaiting. Tight is best, get them tight enough and Girlie would not need to comb her hair on the train, she wouldn’t even have to do her hair the day after she arrived at the school. Best of all would be if she didn’t have to do her plaits for a week, or a month, bringing her mother’s and aunt’s handiwork into her new life. (Afterwards Girlie mentioned her plaits in a letter: they had lasted right up until the fourth day, then all the students had their hair cut short in identical styles.)
They had only just got her hair nicely plaited when she let out a yell, and set off at a run, her nimble feet threading their way through the big waiting room packed solid with reclining bodies. When she had reached the ticket inspection gate, Duohe gave Xiaohuan’s sleeve a tug: a file of boys and girls in identical uniforms to Girlie’s were entering the station from a side door.
Xiaohuan and Duohe’s eyes followed that ever-shrinking patch of army green until it disappeared from view. By the time they finally made their way to that side door, it was already shut. They watched through the glass as the two or three dozen new recruits headed towards the train. Xiaohuan beat on the glass door until her hands were numb. Her pounding brought a policeman over. He asked if she had a ticket. No. Then what are you banging away like that for? Be off with you!
With some difficulty, Duohe dragged Xiaohuan away, as it looked like she was going to start pounding on the policeman at any minute.
Xiaohuan sat down on the filthy floor, weeping and bawling that that so-and-so who’d torn her from her own flesh and blood wouldn’t die a good death. She cried and shouted in just the same way as her mother and her mother-in-law. But nobody was alarmed. This station was a transfer point for trains from all over the country, from north to south, and shouting and crying of all kinds were entirely normal.
Girlie was made Propaganda Monitor for her class.
Girlie came third in the mid-term test.
Girlie finally got some leave, and took a long-distance bus to the county town, dozens of kilometres away, to have her photograph taken. For some reason, her more sensible, adult expression left the whole family feeling dejected and subdued.
Xiaohuan took the photograph and said to the two boys: ‘This sister of yours was different from you from the day she was born. If you put her down with her face to the wall, she’d sit there for three hours without any fuss or noise. You two should learn from her example, eh?’
Dahai listened, and looked at his sister’s eyes, identical to their father’s, half weariness, half laughter.
Erhai ignored Xiaohuan. His grudge against her had not yet run its cou
rse.
Only Zhang Jian was a little bit anxious and uneasy. So the family’s luck would be good from now on? And Girlie was the lucky star who had turned fortune in their favour? Was Old Man Heaven really going to let him, Zhang Jian, get away with it as easily as this?
Zhang Jian knew from his colleagues that Xiao Peng had put in a good word for him with the people in the Public Security Bureau and the security office. Xiao Peng was now the Communist Youth League Secretary for the entire factory, and one good word from him was worth a hundred from anyone else. Xiao Peng had built him up as a benign, inoffensive person, perhaps a little slow on the uptake, who loved his family and friends and nothing else, not caring even about money. He also spoke of how many times Xiao Shi had spent Spring Festival and New Year at Zhang Jian’s home, and the countless times he had shared pickled vegetable hotpot with them, nearly eating them out of house and home.
