Cries in the Drizzle (30 page)

Guoqing made fun of him just like the rest of us, never imagining that he himself would wind up in the same line of work. Guoqing's entry into the trade knocked a big hole in the man's rice bowl, and he became less busy than before. This unfortunate fellow began to spend more time carrying empty baskets—still hurrying down the street, but looking more lonesome now that he was less in demand. He seemed not to be the slightest bit jealous of Guoqing, and I suspect he simply lacked the capacity to be so. Devoted to his job, he seldom let a smile appear on his face. After dumping coal into his customer's basket, he would take their broom and dustpan and scrupulously sweep up any coal slack that had fallen on the floor. Then he would lift up his empty pole and walk off, looking very solemn. But once when he saw Guoqing in the street, shouldering a pole identical to his own, he did break into a smile.

Nobody knew how these two became friends, but people began to notice how they would sit, still caked in coal dust, on the opposite sides of a table in the teahouse, drinking tea with smiles on their faces. The man of a million names—or of no name at all— sat like a servant, with both hands resting on his thighs, raising a hand only to lift his teacup to his lips. Guoqing cut a very different figure: he laid a handkerchief next to his cup, and would wipe his lips after every sip. In his tattered and dirty clothes Guoqing looked every inch the young gentleman down on his luck. Although they appeared to all the world like bosom pals, nobody had ever heard them have a conversation.

Not long after finding a career Guoqing found love as well. The girl that he fancied may have grown into quite a beauty later, but in those days it was too early to tell. I used to see the girl— Huilan, her name was—before I moved back to Southgate, and at the time Guoqing seemed to think her beneath his notice. Her house was down the same lane where Guoqing lived. Her hair tied into two perky pigtails, she liked to stand in the doorway, calling sweetly, “Brother Guoqing!”

The grapes that grew in her courtyard excited us to no end. One summer Guoqing, Liu Xiaoqing, and I developed an intricate scheme for stripping all the fruit from the vines under cover of darkness. Unfortunately their wall was too high for us to scale. That, however, was not the real reason we could not follow through; instead, it was the fact that none of us could leave our homes at night without the grown-ups knowing (this was before Guoqing's father had left him). When we thought of the fearful punishments lying in store for us, our plan, however sophisticated, remained only a fantasy.

As a result, when Guoqing ended up falling for this chit of a girl, Liu Xiaoqing, now in junior high, thought that he still had his eye on the grapes. He was so tactless as to ask Guoqing, “Shall we bring a few more people into it?” He told Guoqing that he could rope in some classmates from junior high and get hold of a ladder too.

Guoqing was furious. He said to Liu Xiaoqing, “How can you think of stealing my fiancee's grapes?”

Actually the seeds of their romance were sown before my return to Southgate. Now that there was nobody to oversee his activities, Guoqing liked to roam around at will during summer lunchtimes, barefooted, just wearing a pair of underpants. Huilan, two years his junior, joined Guoqing, and together they sneaked out to the countryside, where the two of them practiced skinny-dipping in a pond. Young though she was, Huilan already had an impulse to watch out for Guoqing's well-being. As they headed down the road out of town that day, the flagstones had been baking in the sun till they were scorching hot, and Guoqing could only hop desperately from foot to foot, like a frog. Huilan couldn't bear to see Guoqing suffering this way and took off her own little plastic sandals to offer to him. Guoqing was not yet aware of the importance of being nice to girls. He waved his hand in dismissal and said scornfully, “Who wants to wear girl's shoes?”

When at thirteen he came to court Huilan, Guoqing possessed the style of a more mature young man. Every afternoon Guoqing changed into a clean set of clothes and combed his hair so that it shone; then he waited outside the school gate at the hour that Huilan got out of class. This was the best possible reward he could give himself after a day of exhausting labor. The next thing
one saw was Guoqing walking confidently in front with his hands in his pockets, while Huilan, her satchel on her back, trotted along behind.

At such times Huilan would pour out her woes, such as they were, telling him how such and such a boy had put a pinch of dirt in her textbook.

“Dirt? That's nothing.” Guoqing waved his hand airily, like an adult, and told his little sweetheart with pride, “I once put a toad in a girl's satchel.”

Their childish conversation made their romance seem innocent and artless. It was often only when they parted that Guoqing would take a piece of candy from his pocket—placed there carefully earlier in the day—and stuff it into Huilan's happy satchel.

From the look of it, Guoqing really did intend to marry Huilan and start a family; otherwise he would not have treated their relationship as seriously as he did. He was always trying to compensate for his still tender years, with the result that his gravity and earnestness took on comical proportions. Once these two children started going around together in the streets in such a public fashion, they gradually became famous in our little town. Guoqing misjudged grown-ups’ perspective on their relationship. Believing the bond between them to be entirely natural, he thought that other people likewise would take it in their stride.

Huilan's parents were both pharmacists at the hospital. Although they had been aware from early on that their daughter and Guoqing were playmates, they felt that there was nothing untoward about children being close. When other people said that the two children looked as if they were in love, they found this suggestion preposterous. Later it was Guoqing's behavior which made them realize that such reports were well founded.

One Sunday morning, when Guoqing was still thirteen, he bought a bottle of spirits and a carton of cigarettes, inspired by a strange fancy to pay a call on his father-in-law. I have to take my hat off to him for the nonchalance with which he entered the house. When he set the gifts down on the table, he beamed deferentially. Huilan's father, of course, was taken aback and asked Guoqing what this was all about.

“These are for you,” Guoqing said.

The pharmacist waved his hand in polite decline. “You have such a hard life. How could I possibly accept gifts?”

Guoqing had already sat down in a chair. He crossed his legs, but they were too short for his feet to touch the floor and dangled in the air instead. He said to Huilan's parents, “Please don't be so formal. These things are just a little token of respect from your son-in-law.”

This last sentence came as a great shock. It took a few moments before Huilan's mother recovered enough to ask, “What did you say?”

“Mother-in-law.” Guoqing addressed her in a dulcet tone and went on, “What I mean is—”

She did not wait for him to finish and was already screaming, “Who are you calling mother-in-law?”

Guoqing had no time to explain; the girl's father was now bellowing at him to leave their house immediately. Guoqing stood up, flustered, and tried to defend himself, using the formula so commonly recited by progressive couples: “We made this choice for ourselves.”

Huilan's father was so furious his face went completely pale. Seizing Guoqing by his collar, he dragged him out and cursed him roundly. “You little hoodlum!”

Guoqing struggled desperately, repeating another mantra, “This is the new society, not the old one!”

Huilan s father shoved Guoqing out the door and a second later her mother tossed the gifts out after him. The bottle of spirits hit the ground with a crash and spilled everywhere. By this time quite a crowd had gathered outside, but Guoqing did not seem to feel that he had been at all disgraced. Pointing at Huilan's house, he told the onlookers with feeling, “Gosh, her folks have a really bad case of feudal thinking!”

Huilans parents saw their innocent love as simply ridiculous. How could a thirteen-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl be engaged in a serious romance? Their daughter's conduct was an offense to public decency, and now they too had become a laughingstock. They could not tolerate this absurd liaison. They began to beat and scold their only daughter, and when Guoqing passed by their window and heard his sweetheart wailing, it is easy to imagine how upset he was. Huilan wilted under all the chastisement, but could not suppress her longing for those joyful moments with Guoqing, though I wonder if what she most hankered after was the candy in his pockets. They still had opportunities to meet, but all the pleasure was gone. Guoqing, moved now more by hate than by concern for Huilan, described to her, in a voice dripping with menace, the vengeance he was planning to exact from her parents. She listened with an expression of terror and tears tumbled from her eyes even before he had finished.

One afternoon Guoqing was passing by Huilan's house. He saw her leaning up against the window, her face dripping with blood, though actually it was just a nosebleed. Sobbing, she called to him, “Brother Guoqing!”

Guoqing was so angry he started shaking. At that moment he truly wanted to kill Huilan's parents. He ran home and then set off again for Huilan's house, this time with a kitchen cleaver in hand. A neighbor just happened to be coming out his door, and seeing Guoqing so strangely accoutered he asked him what he was doing. Seething with rage, Guoqing answered, “I've got some killing to do.”

Guoqing had rolled up his sleeves and his trouser legs. With the cleaver resting snugly against his shoulder, he headed toward Huilan's house, a fierce glint in his eyes. His passage along the lane was completely unimpeded, because none of the adults who saw him took the full measure of his grim belligerence. When he told them he was off to kill people, his juvenile tone and callow manner made them chuckle.

Guoqing entered the courtyard of Huilan's house without difficulty. Huilan's father was busy lighting their coal briquette stove; her mother was squatting on the ground feeding the hens. When Guoqing suddenly appeared on the scene, cleaver in hand, they were dumbstruck. Guoqing did not immediately proceed toward his goal, but first pompously explained why he had to kill them. Then he moved forward, brandishing his cleaver. Huilan's father took to his heels, scurrying behind the house, where he yelled, “Help! Murder!”

Huilan's poor mother was frozen in her tracks and watched in horror as the cleaver approached. The chickens rescued her, for although most of these terrified creatures fled in all directions, two of them spread their wings and ran in front of Guoqing. This gave Huilan's mother time to recover her wits and flee out the courtyard gate.

Just as he was about to give chase, Guoqing noticed Huilan, who stood with her hand on the door frame, her eyes wide with alarm. Forgetting about pursuit, Guoqing hurried over to her, but it displeased him to find that she was shrinking back in fear. “What are you so afraid of? I'm not going to kill
you\”
he said.

His reassurance had no effect. She still looked at him in terror, her eyes so wide they almost looked artificial. Guoqing said heatedly, “If I knew this was how you were going to behave, I wouldn't have gone this far!”

By this time both entrances to the courtyard had been blocked by spectators, and before long police were on the scene. The news that a boy was bent on slaughter had spread through the town like wildfire; people came swarming from all directions. The first policeman to arrive stepped into the yard and said to Guoqing, “Put the cleaver down!”

It was Guoqing's turn to be petrified. He was already alarmed by all the noise outside, and the sight of the policeman made him grab Huilan and put the cleaver to her throat, yelling shrilly, “Don't you dare come in! I'll kill her if you do.”

No sooner had the policeman issued his order than he found himself forced to retreat. Huilan, silent until now, burst out crying. Guoqing said to her fretfully, “I'm not going to kill you, I'm not going to kill you! I just said that to fool them.”

But Huilan went on wailing as before. Guoqing said peevishly, “Stop crying! I'm doing this for you, you know.” His face bathed in sweat, he looked around. “Now it's too late to run away.”

Meanwhile, outside among the milling crowd, Huilan's distraught mother was reproaching her husband for being so selfish,
fleeing for his life without the slightest thought for his wife's safety. Her husband, listening to Huilan's wails on the other side of the wall, said to her with tears in his eyes, “This is no time to talk about that when your daughter's life is hanging by a thread.”

Just at this moment a policeman took a good grip on the eaves and in a single fluid movement sprang onto the roof. He planned to creep up behind Guoqing and jump down on top of him. This man enjoyed quite a reputation in Littlemarsh, for once he had succeeded in dealing single-handedly with five hoodlums, tying them up with their own shoelaces and marching them off to the Public Security Bureau like so many crabs hung from a string. The panache with which he leapt onto the roof won the appreciation of the assembled onlookers. He ducked down low and was making his way in catlike silence toward the other side of the building when he unfortunately slipped on a couple of loose tiles and tumbled off the roof, landing first on the grapevine trellis— the people outside heard a chaotic snapping of bamboo canes— before plunging down onto the concrete. Had the trellis not broken his fall, he might well have ended up a paraplegic.

The sight of someone suddenly falling from the sky scared Guoqing so much that he shouted again, “Get out, get out, or I'll kill her!”

The policeman pulled himself to his feet and said feebly, “All right, I'm going, see?”

The standoff lasted until the early evening, when a tall policeman came up with the solution. He changed into plain-clothes and went in through the back gate. When Guoqing screamed at him to get out, he put on a friendly smile and asked in a gentle voice, “What are you trying to do?”