Bailian was asking me, Are you coming?
He still wasn’t looking at me.
Where? I said.
Dancing.
OK, I said, sure. But first let me go to the bathroom and wipe this blood off my arm.
I came back and stood in front of him, and when he raised his head to look at me, the knife in my hand went straight into his gut. After the blade went in, I didn’t pull it out. My father had given me this knife. It was from Xinjiang. I don’t know why my father had given it to me; it seemed just as strange to me as when he agreed to let me quit school. After all, he was an “intellectual.”
Bailian stood in front of me without moving. We both just stood there, looking at each other. His expression puzzled me, but before that feeling could sink in, I realized that I could barely stand. Everything became silent and still, and I broke out in a sweat and felt myself drifting, drifting away.
The authorities showed up. Two knives, two people bleeding. Bug came in as well and stood with Bailian. They stared at me. I didn’t know who had called the police, but they locked me up. The cops in the Northwest are mean, and I figured that since Bailian was a local, I was finished.
Every morning I had to go out to the courtyard with the other prisoners and squat for a while with my hands behind my back in front of a gigantic slogan: “Leniency to those who confess and severity to those who refuse.” The jail was full of weird inspirational slogans, all carved into the walls with something very sharp. I didn’t talk to anyone. I was afraid to talk to anyone. The die had been cast; my fate was no longer in my own hands. I got into the habit of stretching out my black-stockinged legs and looking them over. The black silk stockings that were popular then were all wrong for my age, but the constant self-scrutiny convinced me that I had a great pair of legs.
Bug came to see me. He asked me, What did it feel like when the knife went in?
I thought about it but didn’t say anything. Actually, I thought it felt like stabbing a padded-cotton quilt.
He asked me, Do you have any regrets?
I said, I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t know why I stabbed him—I just had to do it. It never occurred to me that I’d nearly killed a man. I deserve to be punished. But this place is filthy! There’s piss and shit everywhere ’cause people piss and shit anywhere they please. I feel like my whole body is being overrun with germs, and the food is totally disgusting. Life on the outside is so good, even if you have to live hand-to-mouth.
Bug said, Don’t cry; nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re not even eighteen years old; it’s not right for you to be locked up like this. I’ve been to see Bailian—he’s out of the hospital already, and he wants to help you. You’ll be out of here soon.
On the train back to Shanghai, for the first time in my life I experienced the feeling of freedom that birds must have, and it was as if I was finally coming to understand and appreciate the true meaning of freedom. I had this sense that my life was about to become very interesting and exciting. For a long time I gazed out the train window, and the limitless expanses of the plains were like my heart, and the leafless branches on the bare trees traced my mood. The world was so vast! And in the night, as the train bore through the darkness, I loved its sound, and I wrote these lines of poetry in my notebook:
Taking flight
I show the world
my extended wings.
Suddenly I found myself filled with affection for Bailian, and as I thought about how much I liked him, his bright face was shining there beside me, and a curious state of mind came over me. Maybe I was attracted to Bailian because he had in him something that I completely lacked. Being around him had given me a rush, as if I were soaring. I felt completely taken out of myself, so that thinking of him made me tremble all over. I wrote him many letters, but I never sent any of them. And after Saining and I got together, I didn’t think about Bailian anymore.
Sometime later I heard from Bug that Bailian had been sentenced to more than ten years in prison for robbing ancient tombs. But his sentence was commuted, and when he got out he opened up a small business somewhere in the Northwest.
On that afternoon ten years later when I was burning my letters, I rediscovered these pieces of my past. And touching that lucky little scar on the back of my right arm, I savored once again the feeling of the knife going into him, like the experience of a limitless void. It didn’t feel like something that I had actually done myself. And when I caught the scent of those letters, it was just like the scent of youth.
1.
His full lips were on my breasts. He was the first man to kiss my breasts; he had made me this picture, given me this picture I loved. When I touched his hair, he quickly undid my clothes, and his tongue made my heart skip. He moved me, and I stroked his hair. His hair was so beautiful!
But when he pulled my body underneath him, I felt myself go suddenly cold. I wasn’t even completely undressed, but in a moment he was inside me. It hurt a lot. Just like that, he had shoved his penis into my body. I lay motionless, the pain boring up into my heart, and I was mute with pain, unable to move.
His hair smelled sweet, and with half of it swaying over either side of my body, there seemed to be two of him moving on top of me, faster and faster, as if he couldn’t stop, and it went on and on for a very long time, and it hurt so much I no longer even knew where my body was.
He wasn’t using his tongue on me anymore, and I felt let down. Except for the noise of his ever-quickening breathing, he didn’t make a sound until it was over, and the whole thing seemed so ridiculous that I was overcome with sadness.
Finally he pressed his whole body against me for the first time and kissed me on the mouth. Until then, that bastard hadn’t even kissed me on the mouth. And then he smiled at me, his full lips curving up, his eyes twinkling sweetly. In that moment, his face became once again the face I’d seen at the bar, a face that was nothing like the face he’d worn when he was fucking me.
I said, You’re the first guy I’ve ever been with. You fucked me. I had my eyes open the entire time and I watched you rape me. You were in such a hurry you didn’t even bother to take all your clothes off.
He said nothing. His long hair was lying across my body, and he didn’t move. The male singer on the CD kept singing, and the sound of his voice was the caress my skin was still waiting for. The simple rhythms kept spinning forward, and the world became smooth and flat inside the music. I didn’t understand a word he sang, but the keyboard was like a vampire, sucking away my feelings.
I have to go to the bathroom, I said. I’m a mess, thanks to you.
I sat on the toilet and looked at his bath towel, and I don’t know how long I sat there, but I felt as though my sex had been seriously injured. The face I saw in the crooked mirror was an ugly face. Never in my life had I felt so disgusted with myself. And ever since, I have carried the shame of that moment in my body.
The music playing on the CD that day was the Doors, and the brutality of the music seemed somehow connected to the brutality of my crude “wedding night,” which violated the sexual fantasy I had held on to for many years. I didn’t dare look at this man’s penis, but I liked his skin, and his lips were very soft, and his tongue could put me into a trance. I didn’t understand the strange agitation in his face, and I couldn’t find anything there to fulfill the needs of my imagination. The girl that he held in his arms was like a kitten that was too miserable to cry.
I was nineteen. He buried me in pain, covered me with an unfamiliar substance, rude but authentic. Clutching my breasts, he moved in and out, in and out of the hole in me, and I couldn’t see his expression, and no one will remember the way I looked that night, the night I lost my virginity. The self that drained out of my body was a nullity. As I tried to soothe my dazed body, the hazy mirror reflected my empty features back to me. He was a stranger, we had met at a bar, and though the ocean waves in his eyes were familiar, I didn’t know who he was.
2.
That bar was painfully tacky and blazing with yellow lights that shone brightly on every sleazy detail. Sitting at the bar, I was as blank and luminous as the full moon. It was the first time I’d ever sat at a bar, and I felt a little nervous. Every now and then I’d turn and glance this way or that, making it look as if I were waiting for someone. I didn’t even know that I was in a bar. I had only just arrived in this small city in the South. It was
1989
, and in Shanghai, where I’d come from, there still weren’t any bars, just a handful of small, unofficial street-side cafés. Maybe those tiny restaurants had bars, but I’d never set foot inside one.
Outside, it was raining hard, but I don’t remember what music was playing in the bar. And I don’t remember when I first caught sight of him, a tall boy swaying back and forth and smiling at nothing in particular. He was wearing an oversize white T-shirt and printed corduroy pants. The pants were wide enough to be a skirt, but they really were pants. He was there in the bar, all alone, rocking from side to side, with a whiskey glass in his left hand and his right hand dancing in the air. I watched his legs as, step by step, he moved toward me. His light blue sneakers had very thin soles, and it looked as if he was tripping over his own feet. His hair was long and straight and glossy, the tips brushing his upper back, and his face was very pale. I couldn’t make out his features, but I was certain that he was smiling, even if I couldn’t tell whether or not he was looking at me too.
I ate my ice cream. Before long, I became aware that a man’s hand holding a drink had appeared at my right side. It was a large hand with sturdy fingertips, and I knew at a glance that he chewed his nails. This was something we had in common.
A curtain of hair filled my field of vision, and I smelled the faint, delicate scent of his hair. I looked up.
And saw the face of an angel.
He smiled strangely, and the naked innocence in his eyes filled me with confusion. For the rest of the evening I wasn’t able to look away from that face, the face he wore then. And maybe it’s my belief in that face that has kept me alive until now, because I believe in that face. It’s my destiny.
He started chattering on and on about different kinds of ice cream. He said he also liked chocolate, and that his mother had told him that ill-fated children liked to eat sweets. He had a foreboding that because he liked sweets, he was going to be fat at thirty and bald at forty.
He asked me what I was doing in this town, and I said, Isn’t everyone here to make money? I didn’t graduate from high school, so I couldn’t find a job in Shanghai. What else was left except to come here? He said, But you’re so young; aren’t your parents worried about you? My dad’s pretty unusual, I said. He treats me like an adult. He wants to change his life and make a pile of money himself, so he encouraged me when I said I wanted to go off and earn some money. He asked me, Do you like money? I said, One time my dad helped a relative from overseas change some money on the black market. He thought that he could make a little commission for himself that way, but instead somebody snatched the cash from him, and he tried to chase the person down, but he couldn’t catch him, and he ended up with a sprained foot. My dad told me never ever to tell anyone about this, because he’d slipped out during working hours to change the money, and that wouldn’t look good to people. It makes me sad, what happened to him. I don’t know whether I really like money or not. My dad’s an intellectual; he’s weak. I’ll have to start now if I’m going to make any kind of money.
I had the feeling that this guy, who called himself Saining, was kind of interested in me. His clothing made him stand out, and each of the colors in his rainbow-hued pants made me feel happy. From his rambling monologue I learned that he played guitar, that playing guitar was all he wanted to do, and that he was looking for one or maybe a whole bunch of bars with stages.
Awestruck, I asked, Where in China are there places like that?
He said he didn’t know yet, but he was definitely going to find out.
These words emboldened me—to me a bar with a stage represented the road to freedom. I looked at him, adoring his black eyes, innocent, heartbreakingly innocent eyes, large and liquid. Hey, I said, you know what? I’m a singer, and I’m not bad!
And he answered, Do you want to come over to my place?
This was the first time a man had propositioned me, and heaven knows why I agreed on the spot. My expectations were vague and poetic, and dark undercurrents overtook my fantasy.
He said, I like girls from broken homes who are crazy about chocolate and who love the rain. I’ve been waiting for a girl like that for a long time.
I said, My God! A chocoholic who loves rainy days—that’s me!
3.
He’d fucked me into a state of numbness. I was off to a bad start with men. But as I saw it, everything that happened was just one more event among many, even the pain that pierced through my very heart, and those burning wounds. None of it was so different from any of the other things that would inevitably happen.
I went back to Shanghai. I listened to Cui Jian every day and lived on a diet of chocolate and Baby-Doll ice cream. Each week I made the rounds of the student dormitories at every university in town, peddling cloth dolls made by old people in the neighborhood production teams. I didn’t have any friends. The first supermarkets had opened up, and although I didn’t have any money, I could ease my loneliness by wandering the aisles. It made my life a little more interesting.
After a month or so, I’d set aside enough money to go back south.
When I caught up with Saining again, he was asleep. He came to the door in gray hooded pajamas. His lips looked very dry, and I found his aloof expression very beautiful. I believed that I had a real connection with this kind of beauty, and so I thought he was beautiful.
I’m back, I said. I’ve been looking for you.
He made himself a cup of instant coffee. In those days hardly anyone drank coffee, and drinking coffee was very hip and poetic. He said, Don’t take it personally, but I never talk much when I first get out of bed. I said, I’m not sure what kind of relationship we had, or maybe I just forgot, so I came over.