I swept and I swept until I was overcome with hopeless exhaustion, feeling that I had been condemned to nothing more or less than an endless test or an unending labor detail. The test or the work would go on forever, all part of a plot or trap devised by Mr. Ti. I suddenly thought of all his rudeness, cunning, oppression, and unfairness. Not only did he hold back on my grades and criticize my morals, he also controlled my speech, my thinking, and even my feelings. All this was grossly unfair! How could I put up with this sort of humiliation? Why did I always submit to him, let him push me around as if I were a stupid melonhead?
At that moment I suddenly saw my endless sweeping of the snow as a symbol of my future life, my fate.
And only then did the despair and emptiness that I felt in the morning when I overheard that discussion of divorce come back to crush me.
At that time, naturally, I had not yet read the myth of Sisyphus. It was only after I entered university that I came to know this old western legend of how the gods punished Sisyphus by making him roll a huge stone to the top of a mountain, then letting it roll down again, only to have him push it back up again. He was forced to do this over and over, without cease. Exhausting himself at this futile and hopeless task was his life. But Sisyphus found a significance in this lonely, absurd, and hopeless existence. He discovered that something deeply moving and wonderful emerged from his struggle with the stone. In pitting his strength against it, he created a new energy with all the beauty of the dance. He was so intoxicated with this new joy that his old misery fell away forever. When the huge stone ceased to be a weight on his heart, the gods no longer rolled it back down the mountain.
Mankind possesses intelligence.
This kind of intelligent attitude toward fate was something I would only later come to understand.
Standing in the snow outside the classroom, I was completely swallowed up by the endless disaster that I had created with my excessive imagination.
Suddenly, I started to cry.
Yi Qiu looked up from where she was sitting under the eaves, watching me curiously.
I cried and cried as all my old resentments and my present hatred poured out.
It was already noon when, harboring in my breast all the hatred that I felt toward the men that Ti and my father stood for, I left Yi Qiu and burst into Ti's office to confront him.
Puzzled and concerned when he saw that I had been crying, he asked, "Ni Niuniu, what's wrong?"
As he spoke, he brushed the snow from my hair, my chest, and my back, with a blurred, dreamy look in his eyes.
Without uttering a sound, I glared at him, my eyes like sharp fangs that could slash his hypocritical face to ribbons.
Seemingly oblivious to the daggers flashing in my eyes, he continued to brush my shoulders as he asked me with great concern, "Whatever has happened?"
I jerked his huge hand free from my shoulder and shouted at him, "I've come to tell you something!"
"What is it?" he asked uncertainly.
I fixed my gaze angrily on his face, "I came here to tell you… those are your private parts! There! There!"
I "returned the compliment," jabbing him where he had earlier touched me. And I did this with all my strength!
He looked astonished and perplexed.
Only after I had gotten control of my inner tension and excitement did I realize that I was still standing in front of Mr. Ti and that I hadn't moved a hair. My hands were still rigidly by my sides. I hadn't even raised them, let alone touched him. They hung there as stiff and lifeless as stones.
The scene I described above had taken place only in my imagination.
I realized then that there were two opposing people in my head trying to control me at the same time, leaving me in a state of confusion. I stood woodenly in front of him, unable to do a thing.
When I realized that I had not hurt him, I was filled with grief and indignation. I despised myself. I was totally ineffectual, incapable of striking back.
I spun around and ran out of the office.
When I left the school, I didn't go straight home. I wandered the streets aimlessly, oblivious of the crowds passing by and the shop windows with all their expensive goods, completely caught up in my own spiritless, confused thoughts.
I wandered the streets the entire afternoon, until the soft streetlights came on, pushing the evening shadows behind the rooftops along the streets. The glittering neon lights of the great buildings and the entertainment spots splashed the scene with iridescent color.
I have always treated the streets and alleyways as a kind of second home. When you feel lost, with no place to go, they are your hotel. When the people close to you are far away and you feel lonely and helpless, they are your friends. Even when the weather was icy cold, my love for them did not diminish. And as I wandered the streets, I conversed with the voices in my heart.
My home, not so very far away, was awaiting my return, but for the first time in my life I felt totally alone.
12 A Bed Cries Out…
It is said that the sounds we hear are an illusion, that there is no absolute connection between the objects that produce sounds and the objects that receive them. Without our minds, without illusionary desire, all the ears in this world would be silent voids.
In reality it is our own skin that cries out, and the sounds we make sink into our own bodies and fade away within us.
In all my years as a student, most of the serious events took place during my final summer holiday at the end of middle school, the most intense two months of my entire school life.
In July that summer it had rained without letup, and the endless, unbroken string of examinations, like the interminable rain, had tried my patience to the limit. By forcing myself to fight to the bitter end, I was able to muddle through the exams successfully and win a place in one of Beijing 's liberal arts universities.
I remember that when the tests for each subject were finished, I took the course texts, which I knew from cover to cover, tore them up, dropped them in an examination hall toilet, and flushed them down with my feces so I would never have to carry them home again. By the time the exams were finished, I was as thin as a beggar, without an ounce of extra fat on my body.
Another thing that was still going on at this time was my parents' covert and "civilized" divorce agreement. In this major event in the history of the family, my father displayed an unusual male gallantry, like a war hero of the first order leaving the field of battle (except that this was a special battlefield where there were no winners or losers). Early one morning when it was raining torrents, he pulled on his trousers, put on his glasses, picked up his briefcase, and departed – a stirring spectacle.
Ultimately, his final departure forced me to stand up among the ruins on this civilized battlefield and take on the role of a mature woman.
I don't want to go through the story of the destruction of my family, because it is unimportant. What is important is that the belief in marriage of every person who scrambled out of the ruins had been totally destroyed. My mother and I had both become cynical about that institution, which the majority of people consider wonderously beautiful.
In China in the early '80s, it was really very difficult to find anyone who wished, as I did, that her own parents would get out of their unfortunate marriage, but I never felt awkward or guilty about feeling this way. On the contrary, I always believed that I was the staunchest supporter and advocate of their "liberation movement." At the same time, I never blamed any of my personal distrust or negative feelings toward any aspects of society, such as its outworn ways of thinking, on the mess at home.