Colors of the Mountain (13 page)

We were soon in front of the lush garden overgrown with leeks and delicate scallions and some other vegetables I couldn’t make out in the darkness. We waited to make sure there was no one around, then jumped in. I lagged behind, fearful and nervous.

“What’s the matter with you? He’s made your life hell in school. Don’t you remember?” Sen whispered in my ear. It worked. I felt the blood rush to my head and the old anger clawed inside me like a wild animal. I jumped in and danced wildly as if each plant I stepped on was Han’s head. Soon the whole garden looked flat, as if a typhoon had just blown through it. We fled, went straight back to Yi’s place, and looked for food in his grandpa’s kitchen. Grandpa gave us some dried peanuts.

It was Sen’s idea that we be seen by Grandpa, who then could stand in front of others tomorrow and say without guilt that the gang had been at his house, not at the Hans’ plot.

In the morning, when Han’s mother screamed like a hurt pig in the middle of the street, accusing the gang of the atrocity, Yi’s grandpa was right there to defend us. He was a hospital worker, old and respected. He swore to heaven that it was just another false accusation, she was attacking the wrong kids. This time, the ardent defense of Yi’s grandpa worked. People believed him. We stayed very quiet, peacefully smoking our cigarettes.

The next day, the principal met me at the entrance to the class. Behind him stood Han and his cronies.

“Da, my office, right now,” the Frog said angrily. He hadn’t scared me before; he didn’t scare me now. I stared at my enemies angrily until they silently looked away. I followed the Frog to his office.

“Where were we?” he asked, his usual opening line while he cleaned his desk.

“I forgot.”

He looked up, a little lost as usual. “I heard you are hanging around with those hooligans nowadays.”

“They are friends from my neighborhood,” I said firmly.

“They aren’t good people to be with.”

“At least they don’t beat me up and curse at me all the time, like my classmates Han, Quei, and Wang.”

He paused. Then he seemed to want to say something but didn’t because he had forgotten what it was.

“If I catch you with them in our school again, you will be expelled for good this time. Hear me?”

I nodded. “But if they come by themselves, I can’t be blamed.”

“You are nit-picking. Be careful. You are forgetting who you are. You think a few good grades can make you better? Think again.” It was an unexpected outburst.

On my way back to class, I thought about the spokes on his bike that Sen and Mo Gong wanted to do away with. I really wanted to see him plunge on his flat face.

I was expecting insults and curses from Han and company when I entered the class late. They knew I had been questioned. In the old days, they would do a war dance around me, laughing like hyenas to embarrass me in front of the whole class. But today they avoided my gaze and sat quietly. I walked in with a straight back, head high. In my mind’s eye, my friends at home were smiling at me.

ONE WEEKEND WE
heard that there was a new movie being shown twenty miles away from Yellow Stone in the capital city of Putien. That was a whopping distance of hills and valleys, especially if you had to wheel yourself around. The young tractor driver of our commune had seen it on one of his trips carrying fuel to the big city. A small crowd gathered around as he told everyone about how good it was. When he came to the description of the leading lady, he stopped, looked into our faces as if to prepare us for a shocker, then slowly made a few curves in the air with his hands and whistled.

“Is she that beautiful?” someone whispered.

The driver nodded. “Simply beyond words. Go see it.” We were sold.

Sen took out his old bike, splashed it down with water, and sent a little boy to call me at home, respectfully keeping a distance from my strict mom.

“Your friends sent the messenger to call you,” Mom said. He had apparently spilled our plans. “Be careful when you are in Putien. There is a lot of traffic there.” To my surprise and delight, Mom gave me half a yuan for the trip.

Sen’s bike was a museum piece. It rattled in places where it shouldn’t have and was mute where it should have made noise. It was, nonetheless, mounted with a long backseat. There were five of us; we rode that bike the acrobatic way. One pedaled, two straddled the backseat, and one sat sideways on the handlebars, barely giving the pedaler room to see. The fifth passenger ran behind and helped push the heavy load uphill. Every two miles we changed seating arrangements, so that both runner and pedaler would get a rest. It was pathetic to see the old bike groaning under all that weight, slogging through the rough, muddy road with almost flat tires.

It took us a good three hours to reach Putien. We were covered with sweat and a layer of sand when we dismounted at the bridge, which looked like the entrance to the ancient city, and walked the rest of the way. Had a cop seen us riding so precariously, he would have thrown us off the bike for riding so dangerously in heavy traffic. He might even have taken the bike away, since Sen had never gotten a license for it.

As we walked single file along the crowded street, I told them about the time my brother had lost me here when I was five. I had had to hitchhike home. When my brother got back later, crying, he almost peed in his pants when he saw me. My friends hit my head and kicked my butt for being so naughty at such a young age, and we laughed loudly and happily.

Siang whipped out a new pack of cigarettes. Here, in this big city where nobody knew us, we each smoked a cigarette and walked around with the butts hanging from the corners of our mouths like grown-ups.

“Hurry,” I urged, “it’ll be hard to find tickets for such a hot movie.”

“Don’t worry, we could always go to our old friend Three Foot Six, if we can’t buy them at the ticket booth,” Siang said.

“We love the guy. He has everything we want,” Mo Gong said.

“Hey, how come I don’t know him?” I said.

“We might have to go to him anyway,” Sen complained.

“I heard the lines yesterday were incredibly long for today’s show and that they had even sold out all the standing-room tickets,” Siang said.

Soon we were in front of the county’s largest movie theater, pride and excitement gripping our hearts. We stared at the tall iron fences, the thick columns, and the fashionably dressed young people wearing their long, greasy hair ducktail style and skintight, bell-bottom trousers. The girls wore colorful nylon skirts that flew above their creamy white knees as the sea wind whirled over the dusty ground. Since most women in China usually wore standard blue pants just like their men, this was a rare sight.

“Mo Gong is a little lost for words here. I bet he likes those white thighs,” said Siang, the known cosmopolitan who had traveled far and often. He hit Mo Gong’s head with the side of his hand.

“You’re absolutely right, Siang. I’d love to lick every inch of those white legs for the rest of my long and boring life,” he said with his eyes glued to a particularly tall and leggy girl. “Tell us who these angels are, Siang.”

Siang took a long draw on his cigarette, narrowed his eyes like an old sailor, and said, “Those are the children of Chinese families who came back after they were kicked out from places like the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia when those places turned against the Chinese. Those foreign countries were all anti-China. Can you imagine?

“Now they live on a farm especially set aside for them by the government with a special supply store. They’re rich people, with rich relatives back in their home countries who send them money monthly. A postman covering that area said that at the New Year he had to carry money to the farm in large canvas sacks.”

The five of us stood there admiring the youthful crowd as they rode around on fancy scooters, their girlfriends holding on to their waists. It didn’t seem too bad a fate.

“And there’s a lot of free sex going on on the farm,” Siang commented casually.

“Free sex?” Mo Gong exclaimed.

“What’s free sex?” I asked.

“You’re too young to know that sort of stuff.” Siang hit my head with his hand. “I don’t think your mom entrusted us to teach you things like free sex.” They all laughed.

“Free sex means you don’t have to pay,” Mo Gong said rather thoughtfully.

“Nah. Free sex is fucking your fiancée before a wedding without a marriage license issued by the commune,” Sen said.

“Free sex is screwing someone without the danger of being called a pervert and being put in jail,” Yi said after a long silence.

“No, you’re all wrong,” Siang said. “Free sex means you can have sex with both people and farm animals.”

It was a terrible joke. The four of us flipped Siang to the ground and kicked him some before helping him back on his feet. Even after that, he still chuckled over his joke.

“I’m sure some of them are screwing the animals on the farm. Just think, there are more men than women. What are they going to do?” Mo Gong said.

“That’s why they do it with different people, with no fixed partner. That’s the real spirit of sharing.” Yi summed it up so well, we all applauded.

“Shit! Tickets,” Siang reminded us. We were at the deserted ticket booth. A large sign read,
TICKETS SOLD OUT FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS OF
The Sea Lady.

“I told you they would be sold out. There’s a lot of corruption going on inside the ticket booths, you know,” Siang said. ’80 percent of the tickets were sent to the cadres, the county administration and other interest groups such as the electric companies, and meat or fruit stores, and department stores. It’s a hot movie with limited showings. They’re only showing it for a few days, then it moves to another town. They take care of one another.

“As for us, we better get our fat asses out of here quickly, before the cops bother us. Right now, we’re just a bunch of ticketless hoods from another town.”

We saw a blue uniform moving our way and rushed out.

“Good thing you know all this stuff, Siang,” I said gratefully.

“This ain’t nothing. You should go to Fuzhou. That’s a big city,” Siang said.

We all nodded in agreement, since none of us had ever been there.

“Let’s go to Three Foot Six now, before it’s too late for the three o’clock show,” I said.

Sen rode his bike by himself and we all ran after him, obeying the city’s “No Riding Double” law.

Breathless, we stood in front of a tiny store in a dead-end lane so narrow two fat guys would have stuck if they’d walked abreast along it. Chickens ran around noisily, scratching at the cobbles.

And so I met the infamous Three Foot Six, the biggest city trader in the history of Putien. To say he didn’t measure up to his larger-than-life reputation would have been an understatement. Only three feet, six inches tall, he was a dwarf with a huge watermelon head. It took me three long minutes to finally close my mouth, which had dropped open at his incredibly comic appearance. Yi stepped on my right foot to make me stop the stupid stare.

“So, what can I do for you young fellows?” a high-pitched voice came from behind the counter. The dwarf smiled professionally, knowing that no one visited his crummy store for nothing. People said that he could persuade even curious onlookers into becoming willing buyers.

“We want some tickets to
The Sea Lady
,” Siang said smoothly.

“Uh-huh, I just knew it. What a beautiful lady she is. I have seen the movie three times, and she would be worth seeing a fourth time, ha, ha, ha, maybe even a fifth time. Tell you the truth, I’d love to have her as my wife if I wasn’t married to three women already, ha, ha, ha.” The little man rocked in his seat, laughing his pants off.

“My son swam in the same pool with her when they were making the movie near his training camp. You know, Sonny is a swimming champion of our country.” He pointed at a framed picture behind the counter of a little fellow in a dripping swimsuit holding a gold cup.

“Not your son again, mister,” Siang protested. “I’ve heard of him each time I’ve been here. Last time you said he shook hands with our Premier Chow, and now you say he swam in the same pool with the most beautiful star.”

“It’s true, it’s true. He was in there, I swear.”

“Okay, okay. What’s the price of the three o’clock show?”

“Shhh…you’re talking too loud. You know the last time they did that here I had to call up my son at his training camp and have him call the party secretary of Putien, who in turn called the bureau of commerce to release me from detention. It’s tough out here. I swear I won’t be in this business in my next life, that is if I am a little taller and have some muscles like you fellows. I could be a violinist or even a professor—”

“We really gotta have the tickets,” Siang interrupted again.

“I’m not quite sure I got any.”

“We’re going if you don’t,” Sen said curtly.

“Wait a second, wait a second, young man. What’s the hurry? Show me you have money,” the dwarf said.

Siang pulled out three ten-yuan bills and laid them on the counter with a flourish.

“Young man with money, very admirable, very admirable. I happen to have just five tickets for you, and come in here, I’ll show you other things that you might fancy, tapes of love songs from Hong Kong and a lot more. Real sexy stuff.”

“How much are the tickets?” Sen said.

“For you, two yuan each,” he said seriously, shrinking all the smiles out of his face.

My heart sank like a sack of wet sand. It was robbery. The original price was only ten fen.

“I hear silence? These are the only tickets left for the show in town. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Whadda beautiful face. I still dream of her every night when I’m in bed with one of my wives. You young men should go see what real beauty is before you marry someone ugly. Then you’ll have the same problem I do, and have to keep marrying until you find a better one. And guess what? It never gets better, only worse. They all live under the same roof now and, boy, is it noisy there. I don’t mind staying here in the shop all day long.” He paused. “Yes or no?”