Cries in the Drizzle (11 page)

It did not take me long to realize that Su Yu found me intriguing. Often he would raise his head and look at me as I walked, silent and alone, along the other side of the street, while our classmates marched up the middle in groups of four or five, talking at the top of their voices. But Su Yu's carefree life in South-gate had left a deep impression, discouraging me from trying to forge any ties with him. Besides, the fact that I had no friends made it difficult for me to imagine that a boy two grades above me would come forward and greet me so cordially.

It was not until the term was about to end that Su Yu suddenly spoke up. We were walking down either side of the street, and when I looked over at Su Yu he surprised me by coming to a stop and smiling at me. Then—a moment I will never forget—he blushed with embarrassment. This self-conscious boy so soon to become my friend, called out “Sun Guanglin.”

I just stood there. I can no longer retrieve my precise emotions at that moment, but I know that I looked at him intently. Bunches of schoolchildren were walking along between us, and only when a gap appeared did Su Yu walk across and ask, “Do you remember me?”

When I first approached Su Hang, what I had been hoping was precisely that he would say something like this, but in the end I heard these words from his brother instead. Tears nearly came to my eyes as I nodded and said, “You're Su Yu.”

After this exchange, if we happened to run into each other at the end of the school day it seemed natural to stay together. Often I would see Su Hang not too far away, watching us with a bemused expression. After a while we did not feel ready to head off in different directions when we reached the school gate, and Su Yu began to walk me partway home, as far as the wooden bridge that led to Southgate. He would stand there and wave to me after I crossed to the other side, then turn around and disappear into the distance.

A few years ago, when I made a return visit to Southgate, the old wooden bridge had been replaced by a new concrete structure. I stood in the winter twilight, recalling things that happened that summer. My nostalgic gaze gradually obliterated the factory, the now-bricked-over riverbank, and the concrete bridge I stood upon. I saw once again Southgate s fields and the muddy bank covered
with green. The concrete slabs beneath my feet turned back into the wooden boards of earlier days, and through the slits between the boards I watched the river flow.

In the chill winter wind I remembered the following scene. Late one summer afternoon Su Yu and I stood on the bridge together for a long time, and as he gazed sheepishly toward South-gate his eyes reddened in the sunset. In a tone as serene as the dusk itself, he spoke of a tranquil moment during his time there. It had been so hot one night that he couldn't bear to let down his mosquito net, so his mother sat by his bedside, fanning him and driving away mosquitoes; only after he had fallen asleep did she close the net around him.

When Su Yu first told me about this incident, I felt a pang, for by then it was almost unthinkable that I would receive any affection from my family.

Su Yu had had a nightmare later. “I seemed to have killed someone. The police were looking for me everywhere, so I ran back to the house to hide. But when my parents came home from work and found me, they took a rope and tied me to the tree in front of the house so that the police could come and take me away. I cried and cried, begging them not to do that. But they just kept cursing and cursing.”

Su Yu's wails woke up his mother. When she roused him from his dream, he was in a cold sweat and his heart was pounding. “What on earth are you crying about?” she scolded. “Are you out of your mind?”

The contempt in his mother's voice plunged Su Yu into despondency.

When the young Su Yu told this story to the younger me, probably neither of us could make much sense of it. More than
ten years after Su Yu's death, as I stood alone with my memories on the bridge to Southgate, it dawned on me that Su Yu, such a sensitive soul, must always have oscillated between happiness and despair.

SHIVERS

When I was fourteen, under cover of darkness I discovered a mysterious activity that gave me a wonderful sensation. At the moment of climax, rapture arrived on the coattails of apprehension. After this, when I encountered the word
shiver
, I understood it in a sense different from the purely negative connotation ascribed to it by my peers, and perhaps more akin to what Goethe intended when he wrote, “To shiver is mankind's finest lot.”

During those long evenings when I first scaled the thrilling heights, only to enter a world of utter emptiness and discover a wet patch on my underpants, I could not help but feel anxious and bewildered. My initial sense of alarm did not trigger guilt as much as a fear that I had fallen prey to some physiological disorder. At first I assumed the moisture was caused by an escape of urine, and what embarrassed me, in my ignorance, was not the shamefulness of my action but rather the idea that at my age I might still wet my bed. At the same time I was in a panic because I wondered if I might be ill. Nonetheless, such was my craving for this momentary wave of pleasure that I couldn't stop myself from repeatedly
undertaking the maneuvers that would culminate in that ecstatic shudder.

When I left the house after lunch one day, the summer I was fourteen, and walked toward the school in town, my face went pale under the dazzling sun, for at this very hour I was intending to perform the disgraceful deed in order to solve the mystery of my nocturnal emissions. Given my age at the time, I was no longer able to let everything happen in accordance with what were held to be correct principles, and my inner desires began silently to control some of my words and actions. For days now, I had been dying to know exactly what had been discharged. At home, I couldn't carry out my scheme, and my only recourse was to pay a visit to the school toilets at lunchtime, when nobody else would be there. Later on the memory of those ramshackle toilets made me cringe, and for a long time I couldn't help but despise myself for choosing the most sordid venue in which to engage in the most sordid activity. Now I refuse to indulge in that kind of self-reproach, because my opting for the toilets simply reflected the fact that in my youth I had no place to hide. My choice was forced on me by circumstances.

I prefer not to describe the grim ambience of the school toilets; just to recall the buzzing of flies and the din of cicadas in the trees outside is enough to make me tense. I remember that after leaving the toilets I felt completely drained as I walked across the sun-bleached playground. With my most recent discovery confusion had given way to bafflement. When I walked into the classroom opposite I was thinking I might lie down in the empty room, but to my alarm I saw a girl doing her homework there, and her serene expression instantly drove home to me the weight of my sin. I dared not enter the classroom, but stood miserably next to a
window in the hallway. I had no idea what I should do next and felt as though the day of judgment was nigh. When an old cleaning woman went into the toilet I had just vacated, bucket in hand, I began to tremble.

Later I grew more accustomed to the sensation, and when darkness fell I was no longer so fearful of sinning. It had become apparent to me that self-reproach was ineffectual in the face of temptation, and night always accorded leniency and consolation. As I wearily drifted off to sleep, the sight that often met my eyes was a brightly colored jacket fluttering gently in a light gray sky, and the austere soul that had been wont to put me on trial disappeared in the distance.

But in the morning, when I started my walk toward the school, heavy chains dragged me down. As I approached the school and saw female classmates, so neat and tidy, I could not help but blush. The healthy life embodied in the sunlight by their gay laughter seemed to me the most wonderful thing in the world, and my tainted condition stirred in me a disgust with myself. What I found hardest to bear was the way their glowing eyes skimmed over me from time to time, because now all I felt was anxiety, and I was no longer able to enjoy the happiness and excitement of being warmed by a girl's glance. At moments like that I always vowed to reform, but with night I would return to my old ways. My self-contempt expressed itself through weak avoidance, and I would slip out to some empty spot at the intervals between classes and stand there blankly. I kept away from Su Yu, on whom I had become increasingly dependent, for I felt I didn't deserve such a good friend, and when I saw Su Yu (who was completely in the dark about my ordeal) approaching me in a friendly way, I was so distressed I scuttled off in the other direction.

My life organized itself into two parts, day and night. During the day I felt upright and fearless, but once night arrived my resolve quickly collapsed. The speed with which I fell into desire's embrace never ceased to astonish me. In those days my heart was in turmoil. I often felt that I was being torn in two, my dual identities glaring at each other like archenemies.

At night, as desire ran rampant, I increasingly felt a need of a female image for inspiration. I didn't really want to sully anybody's honor, but the urge was just too compelling. I chose a pretty girl in my class named Cao Li. She wore shorts to school that summer and other boys more physically advanced than me quite lost their heads over her, hot in their praise of her exposed thighs. I, on the other hand, still lacked a true awareness of the female body and was quite taken aback when I heard their muttered comments. It was incomprehensible to me that they did not single out her face for accolades, for at the time I felt she possessed a peerless beauty and was completely infatuated with her captivating smile. At night she became my fantasy companion. Although my attention to her physical assets was not nearly as down-to-earth as the other boys’, I noticed her thighs too, and their sleek luster made me quiver. But it was her face inspired my most fervent admiration. The sound of her voice, from wherever it came, was always tantalizing.

And so after nightfall, in my imagination, lovely Cao Li would appear by my side. In these moments I never had any improper designs on her body, for we would simply walk along a riverbank which we had all to ourselves. I made up the words she said and imagined the looks she gave me, and at my most daring I could even fashion a scent that emanated from her flesh, the smell of a meadow at daybreak. My only unseemly fantasy was that of stroking her hair as it stirred in the breeze. Later, when I prepared
to caress her cheek, my nerve failed and I cautioned myself: No, you're not to do that.

Although I successfully prevented myself from stroking Cao Li's adorable face, with the arrival of daylight I still felt I had behaved indecently toward her, and as soon as I stepped inside the school I grew uneasy. I chose not to let my eyes rest on her, but I had no way of imposing similar control over my hearing, and the sound of her voice might wing its way toward me at any moment, making me happy and miserable all at the same time. Once she was tossing a paper ball toward one of her girlfriends, and it accidentally hit me instead. She just stood there, not knowing what to do, and then sat down amid the laughter of our classmates. Her face turned crimson as she bent her head to organize things in her satchel, and that flustered look stirred me to the core: if a trivial paper ball could embarrass her so acutely, then my nocturnal fantasies about her had to count as really filthy. But it was not so long afterward that I was to see a dramatic change in her.

Over and over again I vowed to cease my secret injuries to Cao Li, and on a trial basis I would fantasize about dating another girl, but it never took long before Cao Li's image took her place. Despite my best efforts I could never break free from her grip, and my only comfort was that no matter how often I molested her in my imagination she remained as beautiful as always, and when she ran across the playground her figure was just as vital and touching.

As I sank deeper and deeper into this quagmire of self-indulgence and self-laceration, Su Yu, who was after all two years my senior, noticed my haggard face and my strange insistence on avoiding him. Not only was seeing Cao Li a source of distress, encounters with Su Yu also left me acutely embarrassed. His cultured manner as he walked across the sunny playground evoked
purity and an unruffled calm, and my dirty secrets had deprived me of the right to enjoy his company. After class I did not venture over to the older boys’ classroom to look for him as I had earlier done but made my way to the pond next to the school, enduring in silence and solitude all these problems I had created for myself.

Su Yu came over to the pond on several occasions. The first time he asked me what was wrong with such obvious concern that it brought me to the verge of tears. I said nothing and just went on watching the ripples on the surface of the pond. After that, if Su Yu came over he would not say a word, and together we would stand there quietly waiting for the bell to ring, when we'd head back to school.

Su Yu had no way of knowing what torments I was having to endure, and my manner made him suspect that perhaps I had begun to get tired of him. So he became more cautious in his approach and no longer came over to the pond to check on me. Close friends for so long, we found a barrier now lay between us and estrangement quickly ensued. Sometimes if we ran into each other on the road to or from school we both appeared nervous and ill at ease. I noticed that Zheng Liang, the tallest boy in the whole school, was now beginning to appear by Su Yu's side. The two would stand at the edge of the playground, and Zheng Liang would chat amiably with the more refined Su Yu, punctuating their conversation with his loud laugh. I watched in misery as Zheng Liang occupied the place that was rightfully mine.

I tasted to the full the bitterness of losing a friend, resentful that Su Yu had bonded so quickly with Zheng Liang. At the same time, when we ran into each other I was stirred by the expression of perplexity and hurt in Su Yu's eyes, and there was sparked in me a fervent desire to reestablish my old friendship with him. But as
long as I was bogged down in my nightly sinning I felt it impossible to set about restoring our relationship. Daylight plunged me into a mood of unspeakable dread; under the blazing sun I always hated myself and Su Yu's remoteness simply intensified my self-contempt. So one morning I made up my mind to confess to him how low I had sunk. I wanted to do this partly to impose a real punishment on myself and partly to demonstrate my loyalty to him. I could perfectly well imagine Su Yu's shocked reaction to my revelations, for he could not possibly anticipate the extent of my wickedness.