He stroked my hair gently and said, "You talk like an adult." He emphasized the word
like
, implying that I was really only a little girl.
"There's no contradiction." I ignored his implication.
"Contradictions are beautiful. You're a contradictory girl."
His silver-gray raincoat softly flapped against my body, and I felt a sort of moist tenderness. He leaned toward me slightly, but that's as far as it went.
The moon was full, and the pale yellow streetlamps shimmered at the tips of our shadows. Feeling his breath caressing my cheek, I lowered my head, not knowing what to do.
I freed myself from the embrace of his flapping raincoat and said, "Don't."
"Don't be nervous. I just want to hear your story."
I looked into his face; I felt safe and relaxed.
The Reappearing Shadow
Miss Dai Er is sitting in the dental chair of Dr. Kong Sen, her head tilted slightly backward, her left leg stretched out straight, her right knee bent inward and tucked under her left calf. Her hands lie stiffly on her flat abdomen. A slight tremble causes her shapely breasts to jiggle like a pair of startled little heads. The young dentist is gazing absorbedly at the nervous body of the young woman, who seems solitary and helpless under the strong light of the lamp.
Watching the approaching Dr. Kong Sen, who is holding a full hypodermic, Miss Dai Er is in a great panic. She opens her mouth wide, and the brutal syringe, which is about to stab her upper jaw, makes her pale and sends her out of control.
"No! No!" she screams.
The young dentist puts down the syringe and says indifferently, seemingly devoid of sympathy, "If you don't feel comfortable, we don't have to do it now."
Dai Er's face is cold; the corners of her mouth and the tip of her nose twitch uncontrollably, making it impossible for her to open her eyes. Her mind is a blank; her body, enfolded in leaden clouds, is spinning upward and upward…
One dense, heavy cloud followed another, as though the sky were covered by the dark-gray wings of a multitude of birds. The air was damp. The huge birds, hovering in the universe like fine steeds, swooned earthward. Their feathers were shot down one by one by peals of thunder and thudding raindrops, and the dark-grayness fell at a leisurely pace to stick on the window. On that rainy day in that damp and gloomy room, what the seven-and-a-half-year-old little Dai Er saw was as tangled as matted hair. In the dim light, little Dai Er was shocked to see a huge hypodermic, growing in the body of a man, pointing right at her face. The scene has remained in a secret place of her memory; on all rainy days, a dark mass of birds always swoons…
There is a commotion in the dentist's office. Beyond the window, it sounds like rain, and a dark-green mildewy smell rises into the sky. She feels her chair being tipped backward by someone, forcing her head down.
"It's all right. Nothing serious. Just a case of nerves." She hears the young Dr. Kong Sen's voice.
Following the brief commotion, she senses that the blurred white shadows around her have dispersed and that the office has resumed its normal order.
Miss Dai Er feels the pressure of the young dentist's fingers on her cheek, and her twitching facial muscles gradually relax. It is raining outside, the watery threads flowing softly down the win-dowpanes, as if stroking her cheek. With a white towel, the young dentist is wiping away the cold sweat on her face. Vaguely, she sees a patch of white like a junk sailing into view from the far edge of the sky. The junk now hangs at the window, peering inside and questioning the dim light. She breathes hard, feeling her lungs being tinted a dirty yellow, bit by bit, by the fouled air in the room. She gazes at the white junk as a thousand thoughts swirl through her mind. Making an effort with her arms and both eyes, she strains to grasp the fleeting white.
Miss Dai Er opens her eyes and takes a deep breath, recovering gradually.
"Feeling better?" asks the dentist.
Dai Er sits up with difficulty, "I… I'm fine."
The young dentist smiles. (Dai Er can only imagine his smile since all his expressions are hidden by the gauze mask.) "Did you faint because of the needle?" he asks.
"No. Not exactly. The hypodermic… makes me think of something else."
"This is not a good day for you. Why don't you come back in a couple of days, when you feel better?"
Ashamed and remorseful, Miss Dai Er steps down from the dentist's chair on rubbery legs. She knows she will never come back here. She looks at the young dentist, who has touched her cheek and whose limpid eyes have already been carved in her mind; the feeling of profound loss is so dominant that she doesn't even say good-bye to this young dentist who has fired her imagination and made her want to stay longer with him. She leaves amid the gloom of disappointment.
Love in Winter
Winter is a serene old man walking calmly out of an ardent summer, out of the bigoted, romantic, and dangerous air of the tropics, then gradually quieting down. I like summer, but my love sprouts in a winter setting. Of course, this may be seen as the nature I have bestowed upon this love.
Before I ran into him again, my winter had been long and desolate; the icy north wind whizzing past my window was like a shad-owless, invisible man panting as he runs. A bald-pated, commodious sky greeted my window. I sat facing the window in my warm room with a book of some sort in my hands and the sunshine more trustworthy than any of my imagined lovers. Creeping languidly all over my body, the sunshine alone stayed to embrace me during the chilled months and years, soothingly melting the pent-up sorrow and despair in my heart and restoring a sense of composure.
During this winter, my trust in him gradually increased until it was second only to my trust in the sunshine.
After he burst into my life, I felt as if I were living in a world of unreality. My body was but a stationary launching pad for thoughts. Most of the time, I was unable to keep my gushing thoughts from wandering all over the place like a cloud, like a mist. I frequently pinched my cheeks in the hope that the real sense of touching would somehow make me more real.
We started dating regularly. I believed I liked and trusted this man. He steadfastly avoided mentioning the incident at our first meeting, when my loss of control had impressed us both so deeply.
We went out every night. During those years, my sole amusement had been walking. So we walked along Jianguomen Avenue for hours, taking in the sights, a refreshing breeze kissing our faces and colored lights glittering all around. This man, born in the year of the male horse (he always added the male gender to the animal representing his birth year), had the tall, powerful physique of a stallion. I hung on to his left arm as we walked leisurely. Actually, only he was walking, propelling both of us forward. Like the earth itself, he bore my all.
Finally one day, he asked me, "Why didn't you come back after you left that day?" I knew he meant our first meeting. "If I hadn't bumped into you at the theater, I'm afraid you might have disappeared forever. I hate to even think about it-I might have lost a whole world."
I was suddenly quite moved.
There in the middle of the brightly lit street, we kissed. My heart emptied, my limbs turned weak. For a timid young girl tasting a man for the first time, this act was indeed soul shattering. I found myself longing desperately for his body; the strange fear hidden within me gradually dispersed.
He drew me into the shadow of some roadside trees. And there in the leafy mosaic of moonlight, we kissed and fondled each other for a long time. Making an effort to contain his excitement, he unbuttoned a young woman's blouse for the first time in his life, as nervous as a boy who has just learned how to unbutton his clothes being told by his teacher to take his shirt off. Also for the first time he roamed a woman's body with his eyes. We held each other tightly; a young man and a young woman new to the clouds and rains of sex were sent into ecstasy. I felt drained, nothing but a hollow container. The top of my head felt cold and numb, my body became a vast wasteland; a sort of void, the likes of which I had never experienced before, spread unhindered, as if the surrounding area were full of stony peaks and swimming fish.
I do not intend to describe our love here because I simply don't know whether or not it can be called love. Today, five years later, I'm still unable to judge accurately my feelings at that time, since I have never known all the implications of love.
I remember how, when I was burning to take his body into mine, I stopped suddenly, clung to his waist without moving, and sobbed softly, tears glistening in my eyes. I said, "I don't want to see it, don't want to-"
"What's the matter?"
"I just don't want to see it."
"What's wrong? Why?"
I could answer only with low sobs and tears like pearls.
He stopped and caressed my face. The repression concealed in my body for years was like a fish bone lodged in my throat. At last, I plucked up the courage to remove whatever it was from the bottom of my heart and hand it timidly to this man. In a low voice, I implored him to share my burden, for only he could shoulder my fears.
I gave myself over to the protection of his arms and his profession. I had never felt so relaxed because I had never lost control in anyone's arms before. One by one, my sobs transported me to a joyful realm I'd never known existed. But I had never felt so burdened either: I had to face the blurred past of my childhood again in order to share it with him.
A Clinical Conversation
Finally, Miss Dai Er called the young dentist one rainy afternoon. She said she had to see him.
The rain had stopped by the time they strolled through the hospital district, with its verdant trees and rain-soaked leaves. The sun was out, and the sky appeared a fresh, tender pink that dripped down onto the steamy lawn. Old people talked to themselves as they sat idly on park benches, nodding off from time to time. The young Dr. Kong Sen smelled of disinfectant, which made Miss Dai Er feel like a patient.
"So, you've come…" he said. "Are your gums inflamed again?"
At first, Miss Dai Er held her tongue, but then she started talking about something totally unrelated. She talked on and on, delighted to be able to unburden herself of her past.
Miss Dai Er said that in her childhood she had a friend, an architect, a gaunt, weary, middle-aged man who was her only friend. He lived next door to her. At that time, children's toys consisted of sand, cobblestones, and water. Things like building blocks and simple rubber, nonelectric toys were luxuries. Day in and day out, little Dai Er was immersed in the joy of playing in the sand. She dug countless small holes around herself and put a blown-up paper ball into each of the holes (she called the balls mines), then crisscrossed two or three twigs over the holes, covered them with paper, and buried the whole thing with sand. When that was done, Dai Er stood there surveying the area like a general devising strategies in a command tent, while arrayed around her were hidden accomplishments. Closing her eyes, she spun around several times, then walked out of the minefield in the grip of excitement. This was a game she had learned and adapted from the movie
Mine Warfare
, and she was absorbed in it for a long time.
The grown-up Miss Dai Er recalled her childhood game whether at the office or out among the crowds, and only now realized how her present life resembled that game.
Little Dai Er spent a great deal of time with her architect friend, a reticent man who grew lively only when he played symbolic games (the term
symbolic
was a modifier the grown-up Dai Er bestowed upon the word
game
). He taught little Dai Er some games she'd never dreamed of; for example, he taught her how to build high towers by mixing crushed stones with mud. He built them high enough for the child Dai Er to think them truly lofty. They were always in danger of collapsing with a loud crash: a strong wind could blow them down. And as they stood there, lofty and tottering, the architect would lead Dai Er in squeals of delight.
They also played faucet. At the southwest corner of the yard was a long trough with three faucets. The architect often turned them all on at the same time, releasing three powerful streams of water, which nearly drove him wild. He would howl excitedly; the sounds reverberating through the deserted yard sounded especially horrible, both thrilling and frightening little Dai Er.
He was an excellent architect, whose certificates of merit covered a wall in his home. But his wife was never proud of that. In Dai Er's memory, these neighbors, her only neighbors, quarreled constantly. When little Dai Er asked her parents why that was, they became evasive, avoiding the important and dwelling on the trivial; or they equivocated, saying that Uncle was busy with his work in architecture and didn't have time to take care of the family and so Auntie was unhappy with him. Children wouldn't understand and shouldn't ask so many questions. Dai Er was never satisfied with this answer. She constantly sought an opportunity to ask her architect friend-until one rainy day, when the event that Dai Er would remember all her life happened. After telling her mother tearfully that the architect had exposed himself in front of her, they were not friends anymore.
Now that she is grown up, little by little Miss Dai Er has come to understand the connection between his frenzied need to work and play and the loss of his manhood-a compensation for failure.
Finally one day, a white ambulance, its siren blaring, took the architect away from the yard where little Dai Er played her games. They said he was taken to the asylum in the northern part of the city. They also said that after pacing up and down a gloomy, re-mote, and shaded pathway for a long time, he did to a young female passerby what he had done to little Dai Er on that rainy day.
When Dai Er was in elementary school, she experienced a fire. At first, people were driven out of their homes by a strong, scorching odor and the acrid, choking smell of smoke; then they saw the architect's windows being lapped by countless bright-red dog tongues. Bit by bit, those hissing dog tongues merged into a wall of hot flames. On that afternoon, after being suspended from his duties, the architect had locked himself in his room, where he set a fire amid the suffocating smell of gasoline that brought an end to his vexations, regrets, and powerless desires. The billowing smoke and crackling flames enveloped the quiet yard, the twisting alley, and Miss Dai Er's serpentine childhood, which was lost in the hidden recesses of that alley.