"Why? Did you and Mother have a fight?"
"No. And what I mean is, sometimes. Like tonight."
"That's OK with me. In my bed?"
"No, I'll sleep on the floor."
"Why do that when there's a bed?"
"Never mind. I'll strap you to the bed with a blindfold over your eyes and cotton in your ears. We'll see how you do."
"Are we going to play hide-and-seek?"
"Right, hide-and-seek."
Shu Nong took a good look at his father, holding his tongue as he rubbed the tops of his new sneakers. Then he said, "I know what you're going to do. The upstairs window has been sealed."
"All you have to worry about is getting some sleep. And don't make a sound, understand?"
"I understand. You can't climb in with the window sealed."
"If your mother knocks at the door, just say you're in bed. And not another word more. The same goes for anyone else who knocks at the door. Understand?"
"I understand. But why not do it in the slatted trunk. Isn't it big enough for you two?"
"Don't tell a soul about any of this. You know what I'm capable of, don't you?"
"I know. You'll choke the life right out of me. That's what you said."
"That's right, I'll choke the life right out of you." Old Shu's bushy eyebrows twitched. "What were you mumbling just a minute ago?"
At this point, father and son had flat, expressionless looks on their faces. Old Shu crooked his little finger, so did Shu Nong; they silently hooked their fingers, sealing this odd pact.
Thus began the process that led to the most memorable nights of Shu Nong's youth. He recalled how the black cloth was put over his eyes, how he was tied to the bed hand and foot, and how his ears were stuffed with cotton. Father and Qiu Yumei made love beside him. He was in the same room with them. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. But he sensed their location and movements in the dark; he could tell who was on top and who was doing what to whom. A powerful blue radiance pierced the leaden darkness and touched his eyes, making sleep impossible and rendering movement out of the question. He gulped down large mouthfuls of the musky sweet air, then exhaled it in large puffs. He was getting uncomfortably hot, which he attributed to the dark-blue lights baking him as he lay strapped to his bed; the desolate howl of a rat lugging flames on its back emerged from his anguished soul. "I'm hot," he said, "I'm burning up." When Old Shu finally got around to untying the ropes, Shu Nong sounded as if he were talking in his sleep.
Old Shu felt his forehead; it was cold. "Are you sick, Shu Nong?"
Shu Nong replied, "No, I was asleep." Old Shu removed the blindfold. Shu Nong said, "I saw." Then Old Shu took the cotton out of his ears, and Shu Nong said, "I heard."
Old Shu grabbed his son's ear and barked, "Who did you see?"
Shu Nong replied, "She's very blue."
"Who's very blue?" Old Shu pinched the ear hard. "What kind of damned nonsense are you spouting?"
Shu Nong was in such pain he thumped the bed with both feet. "I mean the cat," he screamed, "the cat's eyes are very blue."
Old Shu released his grip and whispered in Shu Nong's ear, "Remember, not a word to anyone."
Shu Nong curled up under his comforter and, with his head covered, said, "If you hit me again, I'll tell. I'm not afraid to die. I'll just turn into a cat. Then nobody will have anything to say about what I do from now on."
Here is the kind of girl Hanzhen was: flighty, sneaky, and headstrong. She loved to eat and was extremely vain. Plenty of girls like that lived on Fragrant Cedar Street, and there isn't much you can say about their lives outside of an occasional newsworthy episode that materialized out of the blue.
It might have been Hanzhen you saw out on the street, but it was Hanli who was on the people's minds, a girl who had died too young. When women took Hanzhen aside and asked, "Why did your big sister want to kill herself?" she replied, "Loss of face." Then when women asked, "Are you sad your sister died?" Hanzhen would pause before saying, "I inherited her clothes." If they kept pestering her, she grew impatient and, arching her willowy brows, said, "You're disgusting, the whole lot of you. All day long you do nothing but keep your eyes peeled for juicy tidbits!" The women compared her with her sister right to her face. "Hanzhen is no Hanli," they would say, "the living is no match for the dead."
To the surprise of all, three months after Hanli's death, Hanzhen herself became the talk of Fragrant Cedar Street. Seen in retrospect, it had nothing to do with the real-life vicissitudes of Fragrant Cedar Street. What the incident actually reflected was the tragic significance of our story. Tragedy is an enormous closed box; once it is opened, people inevitably get shut back inside. If not Hanzhen, it would have been someone else. Can you understand what I'm getting at?
It starts with the sweetshop. One day as Hanzhen was passing the sweetshop on her way home from school, she noticed a jar of preserved fruit in the window. As she entered, Old Shi was hanging out a sign that said CLOSED FOR INVENTORY. Hanzhen checked the money in her pocket-she had just enough for a bag of dried plums. She thought she could make the purchase before Old Shi began the inventory. After closing the door, he asked, "What would you like, Hanzhen?"
She tapped the jar. "Dried plums," she said. "I want some dried plums." She was unaware that he had closed the door. She watched him walk around behind the counter, sit down, and start working his abacus. "I want a bag of dried plums," Hanzhen repeated.
"Wait a minute, I'm nearly finished."
As she waited for him to finish, she stared at the jar of dried plums, oblivious to the fact that the door was closed and that she was alone in the shop with Old Shi. Finally, he laid down his abacus. "Dried plums?" he said. "Come back here. I'll give you a special weighing, more than your money's worth." Hanzhen smiled bashfully and ran behind the counter, where she handed Old Shi the money in her hand. He looked at the crumpled bill, then wrapped his hand around hers. "I don't want your money," he said. "My treat."
"Why don't you want it?" Hanzhen asked wide-eyed.
"We'll work a swap," Old Shi said. "I'll give you the dried plums, and you give me something in return."
"Tell me what you want, and I'll go home and get it."
He scooped a big handful of dried plums out of a metal box. "Open your mouth, Hanzhen," he said. She did. With a giggle, he tossed in a dried plum. "Good?"
"Yum," she said.
Altogether, Old Shi flipped five dried plums into Hanzhen's mouth. "Now it's your turn," he said. "Let me se,e your belly button, that's all I want."
Unable to speak with all those dried plums in her mouth, Hanzhen just shook her head. The strange look on Old Shi's face was one she had never seen before, but the realization came too late, for Old Shi had wrapped his arms around her and was forcing her to the floor, where he crammed the rest of the dried plums into her mouth so she couldn't make a sound. The next thing she felt was Old Shi's sweaty hand pushing her undershirt up and rubbing her exposed navel. Then the hand pulled down her underpants and slipped between her legs. Hanzhen was shocked nearly out of her mind. She wanted to scream but couldn't, with all those dried plums in her mouth.
Old Shi said breathlessly, "Don't scream, don't make any noise. I'll give you ten bags of dried plums and three packages of toffee. Don't scream, don't you scream."
Hanzhen nodded and shook her head as if her life depended on it. She didn't know what he was doing to her; all she could see was Old Shi's gray head resting against her breasts. Then she felt a sharp pain down below and thought Old Shi was trying to kill her. She grabbed his gray hair with both hands and screamed, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" But there was no sound; it seemed like a fantastic, bizarre dream.
It was nearly dark when Hanzhen walked out of the sweetshop. She hugged the wall as she walked slowly, the schoolbag dangling from her hand, chock-full of preserved fruit that Old Shi had nearly forced her to take. "If you don't tell anybody," he had said, "you can have any treats you want." Hanzhen sucked on a dried plum as she walked. The place where Old Shi had done it felt as if he had left something sharp in there. Hanzhen looked down and was horrified to see a trickle of blood running down her pant leg and onto her shoes and the ground. Whoop! The dried plum came sailing out of her mouth as she gaped at the crimson blood. She sat down, hugged her bulging bag to her chest, and started to cry. Pass-ersby ignored her. Sometime later, Old Shu walked by, pushing his bicycle home from work. He asked what was wrong. Hanzhen looked up and bawled, "Shame on Old Shi! Shame on Old Shi!"