Colors of the Mountain (33 page)

“No, thank you. My family is waiting for me.”

“I know what you are thinking. But it isn’t a shameful thing to do.
In our faith, it’s called sharing. I entertain my church friends all the time, thank God.” She dipped her head and showed deference to her god even as we spoke.

Judging from the weather, I would be here for a long time. It would be even more inappropriate to sit here and watch her eat. “Thank you, I’ll have a bite then.”

The little lady clapped her hands joyfully and said, “Thank you.”

Soon the helper in the household came by to tell her that dinner was ready; we walked to the dining room. It faced the flower garden, and some blossoms were still doggedly smiling at us in the rain. The glass dimmed the sound of the raindrops and water poured off the roof in a cascade. It was a simple room with elegant wicker furniture. On the wall hung a picture of a white man with kind eyes, long hair, and a white robe. He must be Jesus Christ. Hanging opposite was a much smaller picture of Chairman Mao, with his Buddha’s face. It was clear who was the boss and who was the altar boy.

“New religious freedom,” she explained as I studied the room. “As long as I have Mao’s picture, we can have God’s picture on the wall as well, they say.” The days of no religion were over. Professor Wei was very much the leader in the fight for more freedom.

Dinner consisted of simple sautéed vegetables from the garden and well-simmered chicken with a lot of rice. The maid had already set the food out on the table and it smelled heavenly. My stomach growled loudly. I had to clench my stomach muscles to make it stop.

“A young man like you should have three bowls of rice.” She pointed at the monster of a bowl. She wasn’t too far off the mark. On a good day, I wouldn’t disappoint her.

She took the ladle and scooped the steaming rice into my bowl. Professor Wei, the hostess, beamed at me. She piled up my bowl to the height of the Ching Mountain, while her portion was only two dainty spoonfuls. I felt like a mountaineer, saddled with bags and tents, ready to climb to the top.

“Now, shall we pray?” She closed her eyes and her head hunkered over the table. I ducked my head a little and left my eyes half open. I saw her lips move fast and she swallowed her words. I couldn’t understand any of it. I caught her god staring at me and shut my eyes instantly.

“Now we have thanked God for what we have today. Dig in. I can’t wait to see how you young people eat so much.” There was mischief in her face. I felt like a rooster before a chicken fight.

Dig in I did. Soon the mountain began to lower. She ate her rice grain by grain and spent more time shoveling food into my bowl. She told me about the gatherings she had here for her church friends and about the joy of having young people around. She always cooked tons of food on Sunday; her house was a sanctuary.

When I was down to the third bowl, the setting sun dangled under a thick cloud. She scooped the dishes’ last spoonfuls onto my plate. I had never seen anyone have more fun than she while watching someone else eat.

“You are a healthy, hungry young man. I am so glad you finished it all. No leftovers tomorrow.”

I thanked her many times for her delicious dinner. Professor Wei leaned against her door like a loving grandma and waved good-bye. Only after I turned the corner did I let out a gigantic burp. If the breeze hadn’t been making the leaves sing, she might have heard it.

The news about the college examinations worried my parents a great deal. It meant that I would give up my science courses. Was it premature? The government was changeable on policies like that. You were talking about a country that had changed the constitution more often than its meals. There was intense conversation between them. I felt it necessary to drop in the key words.

“With this policy, I might be able to apply to study English in a college in Beijing.”

It was a showstopper. They were silenced. They looked at me with doubt. But Dad thought about it for a second, then nodded with approval. “I like the sound of it.” He was the man who had made me the first violin player in the history of Yellow Stone, however bad I was, and he was ready for me to major in English and send me off to Beijing. He would share every bit of my progress over tea with his many friends for the rest of his life.

Dad was the dreamer. Mom was the practical enforcer who knocked on the door at five every morning to wake me and shake the mosquito net, making sure I didn’t take too long a nap in between studies, or waste time daydreaming.

“Wouldn’t that be a little too fancy and exotic for us?” Mom asked. You bet it would. Think mud, think manure, think digging the hills, that would be more appropriate for us, but I wanted to be special.

Dad shook his head, always a step ahead of me, now more sure than I was.

“Why not?” he said. “Maybe someday he will be an English-speaking diplomat or our country’s representative to the UN.”

Dad was always somewhat too ambitious and loved his young son for being like him. There was such certainty and conviction in his voice that it scared me.

“Are you sure you want to study English somewhere in Beijing?” Dad turned around, asking the question to which he already knew the answer.

Nothing sounded better than that to a farm boy, crippled by political mumbo jumbo, a kid who was facing the prospect of shoveling mud for life and living way below the international poverty line. Are you kidding? It would be my dream, something to die for.

I managed a nervous nod, unsure of the honor the question had bestowed upon me. It was like being asked, “Would you like to be ruler of an empire?”

The answer was a definite, nervous, “Yes. Please show me the throne.”

COUSIN TAN LOCKED
himself up again in the attic on the day the results of the examinations came out. The pressure was so great that he hadn’t eaten for days, and he had been suffering a mild depression since taking the test. He had tried alcohol. It didn’t help. Then he had slept and slept, with the team leader laughing outside his window, calling him crazy. We were all worried. Then one day Tan had emerged suddenly, throwing himself into farm work. He kept silent about the test, and shut his mouth whenever anyone talked about college. He was an angry mute, immersed in his own world. He had lost weight and looked forty, even though he was only in his early thirties.

His excellent scores sent shock waves through Yellow Stone. Tan cried as the results were slipped under the door of his hideout. He at first refused to open the envelope. When he eventually did, he let out a piercing scream and danced downstairs to meet his beaming family. He was the sort of guy born for college life. Nerdy, wearing thick glasses, he read everything, including the microscopic directions on the backs of chemical fertilizer bags. He wrote poetry and dabbled in fiction in his spare time. He was dreamy and romantic. Way beyond the marrying age, he had refused many matchmaking sessions with sorry-looking countryside girls. His vision of a wife existed only in books. Considering he came from a landlord’s family with no prospects whatsoever, he was lucky anyone would even consider him. The situation didn’t trouble him a bit. He had made peace with himself. Why bother
with marriage? Wait until you could afford it, he used to say, which frustrated the heck out of my uncle, who believed that by now he should have been surrounded by demonic grandkids.

Two days after the results came out, Tan fell into another bout of depression. He said the high scores would only worsen his disappointment in the end. The scores were nothing but a cover-up. One’s political background would take precedence. Such a drop from a staggering height would crush his soul. There were again rumors that candidates from the wrong families, despite high scores, would be placed at the end of the admission line. When all the slots were filled, they would be left holding an empty bag, just another way of finishing off the Black families. Tan retreated into his attic and stared out the window all day long.

At the end of the summer, Tan became the first college student in Yellow Stone after the Cultural Revolution. Amoy University, finance major. When the certified admission letter arrived bearing his name, the whole town was stunned. Amoy University, located on the beautiful subtropical island of Amoy, was the best in Fujiang. It trained the cadres for the province. It was an old boy’s club. Tan would fit in beautifully.

This time, the whole family was teary-eyed. Many years of suffering had suddenly come to an end. The sun had risen and that night the stars would shine. Tan was now the happiest of men, giving Flying Horses away as if he were getting married. I eyed his slightly bent back and tired eyes. It wouldn’t surprise me if some professors were younger than he. Maybe he, too, would become a professor and marry one of his female students. I was so happy for him.

From that point on, his fate changed dramatically. Tan received three wedding proposals in the next three days from the most eligible girls in town. They came from good families and had solid bodies that could plow the fields like oxen. Their families even agreed to forgo the standard marriage fees. One of the fathers promised to throw in two farming cows as part of the dowry. Not a bad deal, we joked. Cousin Tan laughed at them all and rejected their offers. He was our hope. We celebrated with him at a big banquet before he left. He encouraged my brother to take the plunge and cautioned me to concentrate on my major, make a reasonable study schedule, and persevere.

That night I sat in my room facing a tall stack of books; I assigned a time slot for each subject. In order to cram everything into a single day, every day, I had to get up at five and go to bed at ten-thirty, allowing only short breaks for lunch and dinner. No entertainment, no goofing off with friends, no daydreaming, only hard-core studying. My heart beat with the excitement of the challenge; I couldn’t close my eyes. I tried to imagine what a college classroom looked like, occupied by sharp professors and leggy city girls wearing sexy skirts. The stars blinked from a clear sky and the moon shone through my window. I made up my mind. College was the only thing for me. I’d get out of this small-town hellhole. If Tan could swing it, so could I.

Beijing. The word split into four parts that split again, winking at me like stars as I fell asleep.

SUDDENLY, SCHOOL HAD
a purpose. College was the goal, and ancient teachers like Mr. Du and the Peking Man paraded the street of Yellow Stone attracting many admiring looks and greetings. Only a few years before, shamed, they had walked the same street, wearing tall hats and with thick plaques hung around their necks on which their names were smudgily written in red ink. Their heads had been shaved and their hands tied behind their backs. Kids had thrown bricks at them and adults had spit in their faces. They were stinking intellectuals. Society had had no place for them then.

Mr. Du’s former wife, who had left him a few years before, now begged to come back to him. Du didn’t want her. He married a young teacher who fell under the magic of his mighty mathematical talents. Genius and youthful beauty: the people of Yellow Stone could live with that. There were serious debates as to whether he would live longer or die sooner, given his new, energy-consuming marriage. Different schools of thought came to different conclusions. In the end he was the superstar teacher who had guessed correctly the answers to two big questions that had been on the national mathematics exam. He deserved to enjoy his new wife.

Peking Man didn’t have any problems with his Peking woman, but luck also came his way. He was honored with Communist party membership. He called himself a fossil newly unearthed by the party. It was a
mixed blessing he had difficulty accepting or rejecting. A cynical historian, he had his doubts about the party. But he also knew enough not to refuse such an offer. The Cultural Revolution could come back anytime and then he, the Peking Man, would be the one who had rejected party membership, thereby rejecting the party itself, maybe even rejecting the country. Then he would have to change his nationality or they might lock him away in some cage like they had the real Peking man. They said he shed tears at the swearing ceremony. Many suspected they were tears of pain and suffering, not joy. Poor guy. As for my goldfish-eyed, wheezing English teacher, he retired after his wife became bedridden and incontinent. With him gone, the school didn’t lose much. I could attest to that.

The finals for the fall semester loomed before us, and hardworking students were found lurking behind closed doors, hitting the books late into the night. And the students who boarded at school clutched their books and went off to find a quiet spot in which to study.

Rotten students like my friend Dia dragged around like lost souls searching for meaning in life. Although still smoking his thick rolls, nowadays Dia was motivated enough to discuss college and the good life beyond it, but not enough to whip his skinny ass into action. He was sarcastic about my efforts and bitter at those students who weren’t his friends. He came to my house every day as usual, sitting on our back doorstep, listening to me read English or quietly smoking while I studied other subjects. I tried to involve him in studying, but it wasn’t as easy as getting him to roll a big one for me.