Colors of the Mountain (14 page)

“One yuan each,” Siang bargained.

I felt Sen push Siang to stop him. He pointed to the clock. It read
2:45. In ten minutes the little man would be on his knees begging for us to take the tickets off his hands.

“No, I think we’ll just wait for the next show,” Sen said.

“Listen, kids, one yuan each, for the sake of Buddha. I’d really love you to see it, how about that?”

“We could wait.” Sen started pushing us out the door as he saw the merchant soften.

“Wait, don’t go. Don’t make a poor old man get down on his knees to beg you.” As he said it, he slipped nimbly from the chair and stood, a sorry three feet six, at our feet. He held on to our legs and started weeping. “Don’t go, you can have them, just name a price.”

“Ten fen each,” Mo Gong said.

“You’re killing me. Double that, and I will call you all grandpa.” No sooner had he said that, he was on his knees calling us all grandpa to humble himself.

“Give it to him, guys.” I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little man, kneeling on the ground calling us his ancestors.

“He’s a tricky guy, Da.” Sen shot me a cool look.

“Fifteen fens.”

“Done deal, Grandpas,” he said. He got back up on his seat, having wiped his teary face on our trousers.

We all fished out change. He took the money, smiled, and said, “How about five more fens for calling you grandpas on my knees. Just let me keep the change.” Mo Gong grabbed the dwarf’s fist and forced it open, taking back his five fen change.

By the time we got to the theater, it was filled with smoke and the hallways were packed with people holding standing-room tickets. Kids hung from the windows trying to get a better view. On the platform stood a wide screen, with loudspeakers on either side. There were even children sitting behind the screen, looking up. They were going to watch the movie in reverse. We had to push and shove to get other viewers off our seats in the last row against the wall.

The place smelled like sweat and felt like an oven, but it was well worth all the trouble we’d been through to come here. The plot of the movie was run-of-the-mill Cultural Revolution stuff. The story took place in a seaside village. A landlord was plotting against the local
Communist party, whose leader was the gorgeous goddess of curvy contours. In the end, the landlord was trashed and the good guys won. Throughout the movie, I could hear Mo Gong and Sen
ooh
and
ah
with each close-up of the star. Siang was so drawn into the plot and carried away by the beautiful goddess that he forgot to smoke and almost burned his fingers.

When we finally walked out into the afternoon light and joined the rest of the crowd in the cold street, Sen said pensively, “It’s kind of sad, you know. She makes us all look ugly.”

“You’re ugly to begin with,” Mo Gong replied. “Someday, guys, I’m gonna marry someone just like that.” He shook his head and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

“In your wet dream,” Siang replied.

“You don’t have to fucking put me down each time you get the chance, Siang. I know I don’t have a revolutionary grandpa like you. You think you could marry someone like that, right?”

“Maybe.” Siang smiled naughtily, just to annoy Mo Gong.

“Go take a look at yourself in the Dong Jing River. You got an ugly nose, big mouth, and a pair of roving eyes. You look like an idiot 90 percent of the time.”

“Calm down, you guys.”

“Yeah, calm down. I thought the movie was supposed to make us feel good. Why the fuck are we fighting?”

“You started the whole thing.”

“No, you did.”

As we were riding and running home, I saw Han riding on the backseat of his skinny father’s new Phoenix bike. He tried to hide his face with a paper fan as his father overtook us on the bumpy road. I was sitting on the backseat, hugging Mo Gong’s waist, at the same time lighting a cigarette for Sen, who was pedaling. I hoped Han didn’t see me do that. It was quite dark already. I really hoped he didn’t recognize us at all, but it was hard to miss an acrobatic show like ours on the deserted road. The old fear appeared only briefly before it was replaced by the warm companionship of my friends, who by now had become more like my brothers. I wasn’t going to let that fly spoil my mood this time, not on the afternoon when I had seen the most beautiful creature in the world with my own eyes.

We got home at nine in the evening, hungry and tired. Mom had cooked a pot of delicious noodles with vegetables and had kept it warm for me. With her approval, I took it to Yi’s workshop and shared it with my buddies. First, there was surprise that my mom had allowed me to do this, then there was a fight among my hungry friends to scoop up portions into their bowls. We slurped those long noodles silently. When we put down our chopsticks, full and relaxed, a warm feeling of being together like a family swept over us. We celebrated the good time with loud and long burps, laughing until our stomachs hurt. Though we sat in a humble mud hut with a flickering kerosene light, it felt as if we had the whole world within our hearts.

“
OPEN YOUR SCHOOLBAG
,” Teacher Lan demanded.

“Why, Teacher? There are only books in it,” I protested, sensing the eyes of Han, Quei, Wang, and the rest of the class searing into my back like the hot summer sun.

“Someone saw you smoking outside school,” Teacher Lan said. “I think you’ve got cigarettes in your bag.”

I held on to my bag and shot a long, cold stare at Han, who sat with his feet on his desk, smiling with acknowledgment. His cronies flanked him, grinning and showing their unbrushed teeth.

Teacher Lan snatched the bag from my hand. At the bottom lay an unopened pack of Flying Horse. I’d used the half yuan Mom had given me to buy them from Liang, the cigarette merchant, on my way to school. I had planned to share them with my friends over a good story at Yi’s workshop.

“What is this?” Teacher Lan waved the pack in front of the whole class. “I helped you come back to school and make all that progress and now you want to throw away everything you have achieved. You are very stupid. You do not realize how people around think of you. Some of them still want to throw you out of school. You just gave them good reason, and to tell you the truth, I am beginning to see their point. Those hoodlums will drag you down to the bottom again, even lower. Do you realize that? To the bottom.” He threw the cigarettes on the floor, spat on them, and stomped them with his feet until they were totally crushed.

I had never seen the mellow, awkward Mr. Lan so forceful or so angry before, and I was shocked. He knew everything about my friends and me. I felt torn with pain at having our wonderful friendship trashed in front of my classmates and enemies. My head was becoming numb and my temples throbbed, but this time instead of the old fear, I felt anger, anger at my enemies, who still picked on me at every opportunity, whose mission in life seemed to be my complete destruction.

They were ignorant of the beautiful, honest friendship those “hoodlums” offered me and would never be able to fathom the depths of our devotion to each other. Nor could Teacher Lan. He did not know how hellish school had been for me for so many years. I wanted to yell back at him and make him understand, but he had gone back to his podium, opened his book. Class had begun.

As my fury receded into a trickle of dull pain, I tried to digest what Teacher Lan had tried to tell me. There were people out there who were still trying to get me. Why didn’t they leave me alone and let me just be like the rest of the kids? Who were they?

I walked home under a cloud of gloom and went directly to the gang at Yi’s workshop. They had been helping Yi slice some new lumber with huge saws that had long and ugly teeth. Sawdust covered their faces.

“We’ve gotta job for you, Mr. Student.” Sen wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Take over my saw and I’ll slice some tobacco. By the way, you look like an idiot.”

“What’s the matter?” Yi put down his saw. “You’re very quiet.”

“Where’s my Flying Horse cigarettes?” Mo Gong flapped his arms up and down like wings.

“I’m sorry, my teacher trashed them,” I said darkly.

“What?”

“And he gave me a whole shitload of crap right in front of everyone.”

“About what?”

“About me hanging around with you guys.”

“The bad-influence shit, right?”

They understood even though I didn’t nod.

“It was all my fault. I got you guys dragged into this,” I said.

“How’s it your fault?”

“Because of my family and what had happened to me in the third grade.”

“Wait a second. Are you giving us the sorry-and-good-bye-forever speech?” Sen asked.

I felt bad that they could even think so. “Not at all. I’m here, right? You’re my brothers,” I said sternly.

“So we’re not bad apples?” Mo Gong asked quietly.

“You don’t think I’m just a no-good landlord’s son?” I asked in return.

They looked at each other and laughed as if it was a joke. Siang picked me up, planted me on his lap, and they all started tickling me until we were covered with sawdust.

“Hey, look what he’s got here,” Siang said as he encountered something square in my coat pocket. He stuck his hand in and pulled out a pack of unopened Flying Horse.

“You snake, you lied about your teacher,” Siang said jokingly.

It didn’t matter where the cigarettes came from. My friends scrambled for them.

“Hey, where didja get this, truth?” Sen asked.

“I bought it on credit from Liang.”

“Hey, I love that, little brother!” Sen put his arm around me and then around Mo Gong. “We have to figure out how to deal with that rascal Han slowly. I’m sure it was him.”

“How?” I asked.

“We’ll give a hint that something is coming his way, then we’ll let him wait and sweat it out.”

I put down my schoolbag, picked up a saw, and got right down to business. It so happened I had a good eye for sawing real straight.

The cigarette incident didn’t ripple beyond the classroom. Even though Han and my other enemies shouted, “The smoker is here!” a few times when I entered the room, they didn’t get the whole class to respond as they usually did. One day, the shortest fellow in class actually came up to me and said nervously, “Da, I had nothing to do with the cigarette thing. I hope you and your friends understand and leave me alone.”

This took me totally by surprise. The little guy used to trail along behind my enemies. I sensed the fear in his voice as he tried to distance himself from his bosses. As he turned to run away, I grabbed him and brought his face close to mine. “Tell your boss that the hooligans still remember him and his friends.”

The kid shrank back and ran off as if fleeing a ghost.

For the next few days I was given extra space as I passed down the narrow aisles, and silent stares came from my classmates. It was a stare usually given to an older guy with a rare disease, a drinking addiction, or a wife-beater. It was an innocent, mind-speaking stare, that said, “You scare me, stay away.” I enjoyed it and was in no hurry to dispel the myth around me. Soon I started to walk with my jacket hanging open to my belly. I spoke less, and forced my eyes to move slowly from one spot to another. Occasionally I sucked in air loudly like I was suffering from a terrible yearning for some bitter tobacco. Though it wasn’t his intention, Teacher Lan’s public criticism did more for than against me. I was now the smoking buddy of the hooligans and, in comparison, my enemies looked liked trapped rabbits.

One day after school, the little guy came running to me in the hallway and said, “Look, your enemies didn’t believe me when I sent them the message. They pushed me over to you to confirm it.”

I saw my three enemies standing ten yards away, looking at us.

“What do I need to do?”

“Give them a smile, that’ll be the signal that I told the truth. Please do it, otherwise they’ll beat me up and say I was lying,” he begged.

I spun the kid around to face the three of them, and slowly and unmistakably gave them the finger. Then I smiled.

The smirks on their faces disappeared.

“See, I wasn’t lying, the hooligans really want your ass,” the little guy yelled, running in their direction. But my enemies were long gone.

They knew revenge was coming and they waited in agony. Every day they watched me come and go, and whispered to each other. I stayed in my corner and sometimes threw a quick look their way, accompanied by my middle finger. They’d look away immediately. I hated using the influence of my friends to make life better at school, but I couldn’t help enjoying the mind games I tortured them with.
And I didn’t feel one ounce of remorse, not after what they had done to me. It was their faces I saw in most of my nightmares. I told myself that the real revenge was yet to come. It was only a matter of time.

One evening I brought a bag of freshly baked fava beans and went to join my friends at Yi’s. As soon as I stepped in, I noticed Sen acting a little strange. He hummed a broken tune, grinned from ear to ear, and kept looking into a half-mirror that hung above Yi’s coal stove, fussing with his unruly hair.

“What’s with him?” I asked the rest of the gang. They were doing their usual stuff, slicing tobacco leaves, brewing tea, and getting ready for some juicy chatting. As I placed the beans on the counter, Mo Gong jumped down from his chair, grabbed a handful, and almost burned his hands.