"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.
The first order of business for Old Shu, whose methods of punishment were unique on Fragrant Cedar Street, was to tie Shu Gong to his bed. Then he removed a cigarette from his son's pack, lit it, and puffed it vigorously. He asked the hogtied Shu Gong, "Want a puff?" Shu Gong shook his head. "Here, try it. Don't you want to be a smoker?" Before waiting for an answer, he shoved the lit end of the cigarette into Shu Gong's mouth, and Shu Gong screamed bloody murder. Old Shu clamped his hand over his son's mouth. "Stop that crazy screaming. It won't hurt long. The cigarette will burn out in no time. You can have another one tomorrow if you want."
Shu Nong's punishment was a touchier matter since Old Shu wasn't sure how to handle the situation. When he called his younger son into the little storeroom, he could barely keep from laughing as he held the three condoms in his hand and asked, "Do you know what these are?"
"No."
"Where did you get them?"
"The river. I fished them out."
"What did you have in mind? You're not making balloons out of them, are you?"
Shu Nong didn't answer. Then Old Shu saw flashes of deep green light in his son's eyes as he answered in a raspy voice: "They're yours."
"What did you say?" Suddenly, Old Shu knew he had a problem. He wrapped his hands around Shu Nong's neck and shook his puny skull for all he was worth. "How do you know they're mine?"
Shu Nong's face was turning purple, but rather than answer, he just stared into the strangler's face, then let his gaze slide down past the brawny chest and come to rest on his father's fly.
"What are you looking at?" Old Shu slapped Shu Nong, who flinched although his gaze stuck stubbornly to his father's fly. He was given another glimpse of the blue glare, which made him lightheaded. Old Shu grabbed his son's hair and banged his head against the wall. "Who were you spying on? Who in the hell have you been spying on?" Shu Nong's head banged into the wall once, twice, but he felt no pain. He was watching blue specks dance before his eyes like a swarm of wasps. He heard the screech of a cat on the roof; he and the sound merged into a single entity.
"Cat," Shu Nong said weakly as he licked his torn gums.
Old Shu wasn't sure what his son was talking about. "Are you saying the cat was spying?"
"Right, the cat was spying."
Some Fragrant Cedar Street neighbors passing beneath the window at number 18 stopped to gawk as Old Shu beat his son mercilessly. People living on Fragrant Cedar Street considered boys well raised if they were beaten often, so there was nothing unusual here. But the victim's behavior perplexed them. Instead of screaming and carrying on, Shu Nong appeared determined to bear up under the punishment, which was a big change from before.
"What did Shu Nong do?" one of the window gawkers asked.
"Wet the bed!" Old Shu replied from inside.