"Looking for some wire. Nothing to do with you."
Shu Gong removed a piece of wire from the trunk and waved it in front of Shu Nong. "This it?" Shu Nong reached for it, but Shu Gong pushed his hand away and said, "I'll hold on to it for now. If you breathe a word of this, I'll seal your mouth with it, and you can spend the rest of your life as a mute."
Shu Gong was buck naked. Shu Nong noticed that his pecker was as stiff and big around as a carrot, with threads of purplish blood on the tip. As he stared at the bloodstains, his curiosity turned to fear. He looked over at the trunk. Hanli was sitting up, her face bloodless, her arms crossed over her breasts. Still, he detected the radiance of her body, the familiar bluish glare that characterized the bodies of Lin women. It stung his eyes. Shu Nong was feeling bad, real bad. He walked to the door again. By now, the cat was crouched on the first step. As soon as he was outside the room, Shu Nong threw up, the contents of his stomach spilling out in oceanic quantities. He had never thrown up like that before and had no idea why he was doing it now or why he couldn't stop. In the ensuing dizziness, he saw the cat hop up the stairs, one step at a time, until it disappeared from view.
One morning, Shu Nong instinctively knew that he had become Shu Gong's mortal enemy. At home, in the neighborhood, in school-wherever they were, Shu Gong gave him a glacial look out of the corner of his eye; Shu Nong had begun to cast a dark shadow over Shu Gong's secret happiness. Knowing that he was an obstacle in his brother's way, Shu Nong consciously avoided Shu Gong's stony gaze. It's not my fault, he reasoned. I'm a cat, and cats see everything. You can't blame a cat.
"Did you tell anybody?" Shu Gong grabbed Shu Nong's ear.
"No."
"How about Papa, did you tell him?"
"No."
"Watch out. Keep that mouth of yours shut." Shu Gong held up the piece of wire to show Shu Nong.
Shu Nong sat at the table, shoveling food into his mouth with his hand, a reprehensible habit with a long history. Old Shu could not get him to change, not even with his fists. No one knew he was just being catlike. That behavior symbolized Shu Nong's increasing inscrutability, but no one in the family realized it.
"If you tell anybody, I'll seal your mouth with this wire, understand? That's a promise, not a threat," Shu Gong said in measured tones before slicking down his hair with vegetable oil, putting on his white sneakers, and heading outside.
Shu Nong knew where he was going, and his thoughts turned to his father, who threatened him the same way when he was caught climbing the downspout. Who said I can't tell? If I feel like telling somebody, I will, and if I don't, I won't. They can't do a thing about it. They weren't fated to really shake people up, he reasoned; that was left to him. He followed people, seeing everything, and seeing it first. Is there a soul alive who can hide from the eyes of a cat?
They say Shu Nong followed lots of people, not just his brother and mortal enemy, Shu Gong.
As the sound of whistling faded away, Shu Nong calculated that his brother had passed the storage room and jumped to the street from the windowsill. Pinching his nose closed, he hugged the wall and followed Shu Gong to the limestone quarry, where Hanli waited. It was always the same: Shu Gong and Hanli hid between a wall and a waist-high stack of bricks, the space between stuffed with a battered bamboo basket, like a sentry.
Without a sound, Shu Nong flattened out on the ground and watched them through the gaps in the woven basket. Sometimes he saw their feet float and bob like paper boats. Shu Nong didn't think he could control the urge to screech like a cat, but somehow he managed. Afraid of being discovered, he lay on his belly and held his breath until his face turned purple.
* * *
Fragrant cedars are long gone from Fragrant Cedar Street, replaced by acacias and parasol trees. Let's say the acacias are in bloom. When the first winds blow, we see a light-purple haze shimmer above the eaves of the dark building, illusory somehow; the air is heavy with the redolence of fauna. It's the outdoor season, so we all troop outside. Nineteen seventy-four, if memory serves, early autumn, late afternoon.
The boys gather in the courtyard of Soybean's yard, around a pile of stone dumbbells. Most boys on Fragrant Cedar Street can lift a hundred-pound dumbbell. We see Shu Nong push open the gate and stand on the threshold, wondering if he should go in or back out. He seems to be in a trance, standing there, picking his nose with the pinky of his left hand.
"Get the hell out of here, bed wetter." One of the boys runs up and shoves him.
"I just want to watch," he says as he leans against a gatepost. "Can't I even watch?"
"Come tell us what the young lovers Shu Gong and Hanli do."
"I don't know."
"Don't know or won't say? If you won't tell us, then get the hell out of here."
Shu Nong stays put, his free hand sliding up and down the post. After a moment, he says, "They hide in a slatted trunk."
"A slatted trunk?" the boys hoot. "Doing what?"
"Fucking," Shu Nong says maliciously. He bites his lip as he jerks open the gate and is gone like a puff of smoke.
Hanli realized it had been a long time since her last period, two months by her reckoning, and she didn't know why. She was nauseated and felt tired, limp, and sluggish all the time. Frequently downcast, she suspected it was a result of what she and Shu Gong were doing. But she couldn't be sure. When she tried to ask her mother, the words rose to the tip of her tongue and no farther. Deciding to ask a doctor instead, she slipped off to the clinic. When the doctor uttered that fateful word, his voice dripping with disgust Hanli reacted as if struck by lightning; she was virtually paralyzed.
"Lin Hanli, you're pregnant. What school do you go to?" The doctor glared at Hanli, who snatched her sweater off the chair and dashed out of the clinic, covering her face with her sweater so people sitting in the corridor would not recognize her. She emerged into the blinding sunlight of a warm, breezy afternoon. The city and the streets closed in on her as always, but this time she was caught in the fetters of disaster and could hardly breathe. "You're pregnant!" Like a steel band cinched around her neck. How did this happen? What'll I do? Nervously, Hanli walked up to the post office and stopped to let her eyes wander up and down Fragrant Cedar Street. Few people were out and about on that peaceful afternoon; the cobblestones shimmered beneath the sun's rays. Hanli didn't dare walk down Fragrant Cedar Street since now it was an enormous pit waiting to claim her.
Hanli sat on the post office steps, her thoughts chaotic. She considered going to Shu Gong, who would be home asleep, but was afraid to enter Fragrant Cedar Street. Maybe she could wait till nightfall, when no one would see her. Where is all this sunlight coming from? How come the afternoon is so long? As hope faded, she felt like crying. But no tears came, for some strange reason. Maybe she needed to escape the eyes of Fragrant Cedar Street residents. Sometime after four o'clock, she spotted Hanzhen walking home with her schoolbag over her shoulder. She was eating candy. "Hey, what are you doing here?" Hanli grabbed her sister's bag and wouldn't let go. There was madness in her eyes as she looked into Hanzhen's round, ruddy face.
"Say something! What's wrong?" Hanzhen was nearly shouting.
"Not so loud." Like a girl snapping out of a daydream, Hanli clamped her hand over her sister's mouth. "Tell Shu Gong I need to see him."
"What for?"
"Just say I have to talk to him about something."
"No. You shouldn't have anything to do with boys like him."
"That's my business." Hanli pulled a handful of peanuts out of her pocket and stuffed them into Hanzhen's hand. "Hurry, and don't tell anybody."
Hanzhen finally agreed, and as Hanli watched her run toward the dark building at number 18, she breathed deeply to calm herself. This wasn't her problem alone-it was Shu Gong's, too. Would he know what to do? She'd wait for him there. The afternoon seemed endless. Later that day, Hanli and Shu Gong walked single file to their love nest, the limestone quarry, where Hanli sat down and hugged herself tightly as Shu Gong rested on his elbow. This was one of Fragrant Cedar Street 's better-known love scenes a decade or so ago.
"What'll we do?" Hanli asked him.
"How should I know?" Shu Gong replied.
"Can we get rid of it?"
"How?"
"Don't you have any idea?"
"Who knows things like that? I can barely keep my eyes open. Let me get some sleep."
"No sleeping. You're the original sleeping dog."
"Who do you think you're talking to? I could beat the shit out of you."
"I'm talking to you. Why can't you figure a way out of this mess instead of always thinking about sleeping?"
"How should I know what the hell's wrong with you? Other guys play around with girls without getting into trouble."
"I don't know what happened either. What if we try to beat it out?"
"Beat it out? With what?"
"I don't care. Try one of those bricks."
"Where should I hit?"
"Here, and pretty hard."
"OK, here goes. It's going to hurt."
Hanli closed her eyes as Shu Gong swung the brick, really putting some arm into it and drawing shrieks of pain from Hanli "Not so hard, you coldhearted bastard!"
"You're the one who said to hit hard. Do it yourself then."
Shu Gong jammed the brick up against Hanli's belly. He was mad, and it was her fault. He brushed the dirt off the seat of his pants as he turned to leave.
But Hanli wrapped her arms around his leg and wouldn't let go. She dug into his pant leg and held on for dear life. "You can't leave just like that." She looked up at him.
"Then what should we do?" Shu Gong asked.
"Kill ourselves," she blurted out after a thoughtful pause.
"That isn't funny."
"I mean it, we die together."
"You're crazy."
"Neither of us lives. We'll jump into the river."
"I can swim, so I won't die."
"No. We tie ourselves to a rock. That'll do it."
"Screw you. I'm not ready to die."
"I'll report you. That's a death sentence. You choose how you want to go."
"I'm not afraid, I'm just not ready to die."
"One way or the other, you're going to. Don't think I won't say you raped me."
Shu Gong sat down and scratched his mussed hair, giving Hanli a look of malignant hostility. On that afternoon, Hanli was cold and detached, like a woman rich in the ways of the world and familiar with the tricks necessary to get by. Shu Gong broke into a sweat on his back and felt nearly paralyzed. When he looked into the weakened sun's rays over the limestone quarry, he saw millions of dust particles spiraling lazily downward. Shu Gong snapped off a wolfberry twig and broke it into pieces, which he crammed down the sides of his high-topped sneakers. Then he rubbed the sneakers. "Whatever," he said. "If you want me to die, that's OK with me. So I die, so what?"
"So what?" Hanli sneered. "What does that mean? I didn't get into this mess alone."
"Don't be stupid. When are we supposed to go out and die?"
"Tomorrow. No, tonight."
Hanli took Shu Gong's hand. He shook her off. She threw her arms around his neck. He pushed her away. Shu Gong looked at the patch of skin revealed beneath the collar of Hanli's sweater, a piece of floating white ice. He pounced on her, pushing her to the ground and tearing the buttons off her coat, which he held in his hand to see clearly before throwing them behind the pile of bricks and pawing at Hanli's purple sweater. He heard the subtle sound of snapping threads.
Hanli was staring wide-eyed, her eyes taking on the subdued purple of her sweater, not a trace of fear in them. "Yes, it'll be dark soon." She appeared to smile when she said that, then obediently let Shu Gong have his way with her.
Shu Gong gasped as he ripped off her chemise: Hanli's small, firm breasts were covered with purple blotches, her nipples dark and enlarged. Shu Gong sensed that her body had undergone subtle changes. He had done what he had set out to do the past few months: he had fixed Hanli real good. "It doesn't matter to me," he said. "If you want me dead, then that's what you'll get."
Not far from the limestone quarry, a cat screeched mournfully, but they didn't notice.
The cat was Shu Nong.
After the curtain of night fell, Shu Nong followed Shu Gong and Hanli to Stone Pier, which is at the southern end of Fragrant Cedar Street but hasn't been used for years. It was Shu Nong's favorite spot from which to watch people swim. But this was not the swimming season, and he wondered what they were doing there. He climbed onto a broken-down derrick to observe them through the cracked windshield. From that vantage point, he could look down on the river that flowed through town, although when there was no wind, the water lay heavily, like molten bronze. A motley assortment of lamps were lit in homes along the banks; a new moon reflected in the surface of the water was a luminous oval of goose-down yellow. The two people sitting on the river's edge looked like disconnected marionettes. Not sure what they were doing, Shu Nong observed their movements. First they tied themselves together with a rope, then rolled a large rock up to the river very, very slowly, waddling like geese. Shu Nong assumed it was some sort of game. They stopped at the river's edge. A cat on the opposite bank screeched. Shu Nong heard Shu Gong announce to the river, "So we die, what's the big deal?" Then they wrapped their arms around each other and jumped in with a thud and a splash that sent silvery spray in all directions. The moon splintered.
Die? Finally, Shu Nong reacted. Shu Gong and Hanli are drowning themselves in the river! He jumped down off the derrick and made a mad dash back to number 18. His flat was quiet, deserted, so he ran upstairs and banged on Qiu Yumei's door. "In the river! Drowned themselves!" Shu Nong screamed at the dark-red door. He heard rustling noises inside.