Shu Gong clapped his hand over his brother's mouth. "Shut that stinky mouth of yours, and go to sleep," he said, then found a dry spot in bed and lay back down.
Shu Nong was still mumbling. He was saying, "Shu Gong, I'm going to kill you."
Shu Gong had another chuckle over that. "Want me to go get the cleaver?"
"Not now," Shu Nong replied. "Some other day. Just don't turn your back."
Years later, Shu Gong could still see Shu Nong's pale lips flashing in the dark like a couple of squirming maggots. But back then, he could no longer endure sharing a bed with Shu Nong, so he told his parents, "Buy me a bed of my own, or I'll stay with a friend and forget about coming home."
Old Shu was momentarily speechless. "I see you've grown up," he said as he lifted his son's arm to look at his armpit. "OK, it's starting to grow. I'll buy you a real spring bed tomorrow."
After that, Shu Nong slept alone. He was still fourteen.
At the age of fourteen, Shu Nong began sleeping alone. He vowed on his first night away from his brother never to wet the bed again. Let's say that it's an autumn night forgotten by all concerned and that Shu Nong's dejection is like a floating leaf somewhere down south. He lies wide awake in the darkness, listening to the surpassing stillness outside his window on Fragrant Cedar Street, broken occasionally by a truck rumbling down the street, which makes his bed shake slightly. It's a boring street, Shu Nong thinks, and growing up on it is even more so. His thoughts fly all over the place until he gets sleepy, but as he curls up for the night, Shu Gong's bed begins to creak and keeps on creaking for a long time. "What are you doing?"
"None of your business. Go to sleep, so you can wet your bed," Shu Gong snaps back spitefully.
"I'm not wetting my bed anymore." Shu Nong sits up straight. "I can't wet it if I don't sleep!"
No response from Shu Gong, who is by now snoring loudly. The sound disgusts Shu Nong, who thinks Shu Gong is more boring than anything, an SOB just begging to get his lumps. Shu Nong looks out the window and hears a cat spring from the windowsill up to the roof. He sees the cat's dark-green eyes, flashing like a pair of tiny lamps. No one pays any attention to the cat, which is free to prance off anywhere in the world it likes. To Shu Nong, being feline seems more interesting than being human.
That is how Shu Nong viewed the world at fourteen: being feline is more interesting than being human.
If the moon is out that night, Shu Nong is likely to see his father climbing up the rainspout. Suddenly, he sees someone climbing expertly up the rainspout next to the window like a gigantic house lizard. Shu Nong experiences a moment of fear before sticking his head out the window and grabbing a leg.
"What do you think you're doing?" That is exactly how long it takes him to discover it is his father, Old Shu, who thumps his son on the head with the sandal in his hand. "Be a good boy, and shut up. I'm going up to fix the gutter."
"Is it leaking?"
"Like a sieve. But I'll take care of it."
Shu Nong says, "I'll go with you."
With a sigh of exasperation, Old Shu shins down to the win-dowsill, squats in his bare feet, and wraps his hands around Shu Nong's neck. "Get back to bed, and go to sleep," Old Shu says. "You saw nothing, unless you want me to throttle you. And don't think I won't do it, you understand?"
His father's hands around his neck feel like knives cutting into his flesh. He closes his eyes, and the hands fall loose. He sees his father grab hold of something, spring off the sill, and climb to the top floor.
After that, Shu Nong goes back and sits on his bed, but he isn't sleepy. He hears a thud upstairs in Qiu Yumei's room, then silence. What's going on? Shu Nong thinks of the cat. If the cat's on the roof, can it see what Father and Qiu Yumei are up to? Shu Nong thought a lot about things like that when he was fourteen. His thoughts, too, are like leaves floating aimlessly somewhere down south. Just before dawn, a rooster crows somewhere, and Shu Nong realizes he had fallen asleep-and had wet the bed. Mentally he wrings out his dripping-wet underpants, and the rank smell of urine nearly makes him gag. How could I have fallen asleep? How come I wet the bed again? His nighttime discovery floats up like a dream. Who made me go to sleep? Who made me wet the bed? A sense of desolation wraps itself around Shu Nong's heart. He slips off his wet pants and begins to sob. Shu Nong did a lot of sobbing at the age of fourteen, just like a little girl.
Shu Nong asked me a really weird question once, but then he was always asking weird questions. And if you didn't supply a satisfying answer, he'd give you a reasoned reply of his own.
"What's better, being human or being a cat?"
I said human, naturally.
"Wrong. Cats are free, and nobody pays them any attention. Cats can prowl the eaves of a house."
So I said, "Go be a cat, then."
"Do you think people can turn into cats?"
"No. Cats have cats, people have people. Don't tell me you don't even know that!"
"I know that. What I mean is, Can someone turn himself into a cat?"
"Try it, and see."
"Maybe I will. But I have lots to do before that. I'm going to make you all sit up and take notice." Shu Nong began chewing his grubby fingernails, making a light clipping noise:
chuk chuk
.
As for Hanli, she was one of Fragrant Cedar Street 's best-known lovely young things. And she had a heart as fragile and tender as a spring snowflake. Hanli couldn't watch a chicken being killed, and she never ate one. The sight of a bloody, dying creature terrified her, and that trait became the keystone of her character. As youngsters, Shu Gong and Shu Nong often sprinkled chicken blood on the stairs to menace the sisters. It had no effect on Han-zhen but drained the blood from poor Hanli's face. Her terror evoked cruel fantasies in the minds of the Shu brothers. "So?" you say. Well, years later, mixed feelings would characterize Shu Gong's recollections of the girl Hanli, since he was always brutally punished by Old Shu for his cruel pranks: first Old Shu would pin him to the floor and gag him with a wet rag to keep him from screaming; then he would smack him across the face with his shoe until his arm tired. Old Shu would then drag himself off to bed and leave Shu Gong lying half-dead on the floor, his battered face looking like an exploded red windowpane. By then, the wet rag would be chewed into a tight little wad. "How had that come about?" you ask. Well, Shu Gong had considered Hanli his private plaything from a very early age. She was like a katydid he held in his hand as it screeched helplessly; he had her in his grip and wouldn't let go. What I find strange is that the people in my hometown never figured out the relationship between Shu Gong and Hanli, simply writing it off as bad karma.
Let's say spring is giving way to summer, and Shu Gong is washing his face at the tap when he hears someone walk down the stairs behind him. He turns to see Hanli standing at the foot of the stairs with a patterned skirt in a washbasin, her just-washed, shoulder-length hair a shiny black. Discovering Hanli's beauty for the first time, he looks at his reflection in his own basin. The whiskers on his upper lip are like a dark patch of weeds floating on the water. But just as he realizes that he, too, has a certain charm, he detects an indescribable stink and knows it is rising from his underpants, which he had put on that morning without washing them first. He looks up at Hanli, who averts her eyes. Can she smell it, too? A tangle of fantasies whirls around Shu Gong's head and tickles his sex like grassy filaments, invigorating it. He dumps the water from his basin and puts the basin back under the tap, stalling to give his brain time to sort out his feelings and desires. He hears water spill over the rim of the basin and splash on the ground; the basin is full again, but he still doesn't know what to do. Obviously, he wants to do something to Hanli but doesn't know how to go about it. What do I do? An idea forms. Draping the towel over his shoulder, he walks over to the little storeroom beneath the stairs, where he closes the door, takes off his underpants, and examines the whitish stains in the crotch; then he puts his trousers back on. Outside again, he carries his soiled underpants over to the tap and crams them into Hanli's basin; water-soaked, they quickly sink to the bottom. A shocked Hanli stops washing her face and hops away.
"Wha??" she shrieks, a curtain of hair covering her face.
"Don't have a fit. Just wash them for me," Shu Gong says as he picks them out of the water.
"Why should I? I'm going to wash my skirt."
"Do as I say if you know what's good for you."
"You don't scare me, never did. Wash your own stuff."
"Really? I don't scare you?" A grin forms on Shu Gong's lips as his eyes bore into Hanli's face, in which an uneasy anger resides. He sees spurts of pink blood rise from the recesses of her body to just beneath the skin; he is always seeing Hanli's pink blood. That's why everyone says she is so pretty. With that thought on his mind, he picks up the washbasin and flings the water in Hanli's face.
Whoosh!
The strange thing is she doesn't scream. She stands there, soaked to the skin, and looks straight into Shu Gong's face. Pretty soon she wraps her arms around her shivering shoulders. Crystalline beads of water drip from her hair.
"Pick them up!" Shu Gong kicks the pair of blue underpants that have landed on the ground.
Hugging herself tightly, Hanli glances over at the stairs, but she doesn't move.
"No need to look. There's no one there. Even if there were, so what? I dare anybody to get me mad," Shu Gong says.
Hanli bends over and picks up Shu Gong's blue underpants, then tosses them into the basin.
"Wash them!" Shu Gong demands.
Hanli turns on the tap, closes her eyes, and scrubs them tentatively. Then she opens her eyes. "Soap. I need soap." Shu Gong hands Hanli a bar of soap. He grabs her wrist as she takes the soap from him and squeezes it hard. Not fondles, squeezes. On Fragrant Cedar Street, they say that was when the love between Shu Gong and Hanli was kindled. That may sound far-fetched, but to this day no other explanation has risen to challenge it. So let's keep the faith with Fragrant Cedar Street and move on.
The people's nostalgia for the river that flows through our southern city can last a hundred years. Our homes were built along the river until the banks were black with dense rows of them. It was a narrow riverbed, and the rocks on the sloping banks were covered with green moss and all sorts of creepers. As I recall, once the water got polluted, it never turned clear again: it was black and stank horribly. The river might as well have been the city's natural spillway, the way it carried rotten vegetable leaves, dead cats and rats, industrial oils and grease plus a steady supply of condoms.
Typical southern scenery. So why were there people who sang on the banks of the river? Why did people see tall-masted ships sailing at night? Fragrant Cedar Street didn't know; Fragrant Cedar Street, which ran along the banks of the river, had no idea.
Late that night, Shu Nong climbed onto the roof for the very first time. He prowled the dusty roof catlike in his bare feet, not making a sound. The world, having lost its voice, allowed Shu Nong to hear the wild beating of his heart. He walked to the edge and squatted down, holding a clothespole to keep from falling. He could see into Qiu Yumei's second-story room through the transom.
Simply stated, Old Shu and Qiu Yumei were in bed, making love.
In the weak light of the bedside lamp, Qiu Yumei's naked, voluptuous body gave off a blue glare; that was what puzzled Shu Nong. Why is she blue? Shu Nong watched his father ram his squat, powerful body against Qiu Yumei over and over, shattering then congealing the blue glare with lightning speed, until his eyes seemed bombarded with an eternal light. They're killing each other! What are they doing? Shu Nong saw his father's face twist into a grimace and watched Qiu Yumei squirm like a crazed snake. They really are killing each other! Darkness quickly swallowed up their faces and abdomens. The heavy, murky smell of river water seeped out from the room, and when it reached Shu Nong's nostrils, he was reminded of the filthy river flotsam. With the river flowing beneath their window, the one nearly merging with the other, the smells from the window polluted the river, and both created a barrier against Shu Nong's thought processes. He felt as if the world around him had changed, that he really and truly had become feline after falling under the spell of darkness and rank, puckery odors. He mewed and sought out something to eat.
That was the night Shu Nong began spying on his father and Qiu Yumei while they were carrying on.
Shu Nong the voyeur screeched like a tomcat.
Thinking of himself as a tomcat, Shu Nong screeched as he watched.
After each time, a little white object came flying out the second-story window and landed in the river. Shu Nong knew the things belonged to his father but couldn't tell what they were. So once he climbed down and headed for the river, where he saw the thing floating on the surface like a deflated balloon. He plucked it out of the river and onto the bank with a dead branch. It shone glittery white in the moonlight and lay in his hand like a little critter: soft and slippery. Shu Nong slipped it into his pocket and went home to bed. But soon after he lay down, a brilliant idea popped into his head. He took the sheath out, wiped it clean, and, holding his breath, stretched it over his little pecker; he was struck by a sensation of vitality that seized his consciousness. Shu Nong slept like a baby that night, and when he awoke the next morning, he was overjoyed to discover that for some reason, he hadn't wet the bed. Why was that?
The story goes that the sheaths Shu Nong fished out of the river solved his problem, but you needn't buy into that argument if it seems too far-fetched.
Shu Nong's night prowls atop number 18 went undetected for the longest time. Then one day, Old Shu found two yuan missing from his dresser drawer, so he searched his sons' pockets. In Shu Gong's pockets, he found one yuan and some change and a pack of cigarettes; in Shu Nong's pockets, he found three condoms. Needless to say, the unexpected discovery of condoms shocked and enraged Old Shu.