The east wind blows, the war drums boom. Spring passed very quickly.
The day I feared most finally arrived: the day of the performance. The venue was the school’s large assembly hall. On the day our school had a kind of orioles-singing-swallows-darting-one-hundred-flowers-contending-bunting-flattering-firecracker-popping atmosphere. The children, ignorant of worldly affairs, were scampering and scurrying all over the place, making so much merry noise that the heavens threatened to fall. I was the only heavy-hearted one, sitting straight-backed like an old man in the last row of the classroom, playing with a box of matches. I piled the matchsticks on top of one another and then took out a little mirror to reflect the light onto them. Slowly, the pile of matchsticks spluttered and caught fire. The smell of burning saltpetre surrounded me and drifted through the deserted classroom.
Would you have played such heartbroken games when you were twelve years old?
Carrying my stool, I fell into the back of the line of my team as we trooped into the assembly hall. Enchanting spring. No one wanted to know what was troubling me. Who ever wants to know what’s troubling you? Suddenly our group began to make a great hullabaloo as the six boys and girls — the twelve red children with their makeup on — processed past with their props. Xiaoguo, that nincompoop, was of course among them. His face was made up redder than any of them. I turned round in order to avoid looking at them, and then I heard the principal jog up to Wenyan and say, ‘Don’t be nervous, and whatever happens, you must hold it.’ I knew what the principal meant, but I reflected that if I were Wenyan I certainly would not hold it, I’d definitely pee, since they were blind enough to choose Xiaoguo and not me.
As you know, in the early seventies, the great masters of dance were, by default, children, and anyway, watching kids bounce around was better than watching nothing at all. So for the performance that day, all the old men and women in the street had brought along their stools and chairs and sat glowing happily at the back. I saw Xiaoguo’s grandma and Wenyan’s grandpa, both looking as joyous as if they were on the stage themselves. I felt like there was something pernicious about the merriness of the world that day.
Then it was the turn of the red children to begin their piece. The six boys and six girls danced in two rows, holding brooms, mops and rags, and started to clean. I saw how Wenyan’s eyebrows were knitted like an old woman’s; she made only a few dance moves and then squatted down. The principal, standing offstage, immediately covered his head and rolled his eyes at the sky.
Wenyan couldn’t hold it after all. She had peed again.
I bolted up, clapped and laughed out loud. The sound of my laugh was keen and resounding. The class teacher rushed at me from the front row and pushed me down onto my stool, but still I couldn’t stop myself, and I opened my mouth wide and carried on laughing. Then the class teacher slapped me in the face.
Would you have laughed like that when you were twelve?
And I guess that was the story I wanted to tell you about dancing.
I’ll need to tell you about what happened to the other two kids to round off the story. Before Wenyan even got to high school, she was selected for a dance school in Shanghai. From what I heard the selection committee took one look at her face and those two long legs and refused to part with her. She really was a born dance genius. Later, I was lucky enough to see her do the lotus dance, and let me tell you, it was a far cry from The Red Children. She moved you to tears with her beauty when she danced.
Once I was watching TV with a friend and I said, ‘She used to pee as soon as she got on stage.’ My friend laughed; he thought I was just talking rubbish.
‘I’m not kidding. I danced with her once. Why would I lie to you?’ And that’s all there was to it. In the first year that Wenyan danced in Shanghai, her mother hanged herself; now that Wenyan wasn’t at home, her suicide attempt had finally succeeded. I don’t know what it was she died for. In the end, it was as if Wenyan’s mum had a furrow in her neck. It was the mark left by a noose.
That leaves the nincompoop Xiaoguo. If I tell you what happened to Xiaoguo, you’ll really think I’m making things up. Xiaoguo’s the handicapped guy on our street who goes around in a wheelchair. One day, while he was working on a construction site putting up scaffolding, he fell ten metres through the air and broke both legs.
I think that’s called a tragic fate. A tragic fate is when you’ve only danced once in your life but you break your legs. And that’s all there was to it.
I often discuss dance with my wife. As it happens, my wife was one of the twelve red children back then. Remember? She was the one dancing with the broom. Now she hates it when I talk about dance with her. She says, ‘Men who like dancing disgust me.’ And when I think about it, she’s right. It’s not quite normal for men to like dancing.
Can you tell me what dance is all about? My wife asked me once, ‘When did you first fall in love with me?’ and I said, ‘When you were a kid in that Tibetan dance — you used to throw your sleeves back and forth; it was incredibly beautiful.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Did I do a Tibetan dance?’
I watched her expression carefully. It was totally blank and not at all like she was pretending. I could only conclude that she really had forgotten about her own dance.
And that’s all there was to it.
Can you tell me what dance is really all about?
The Water Demon
The river flows east. The boat, filled with oil drums, floated wearily on the water’s surface. The rhythmic sweeping of the oars seemed hesitant, even shy. The oil boat passed under the arch of the bridge and emerged, leaving behind an oil trail of irregular width, its colour changing depending on the reflected light. The oil boat moved along on the open expanse of the river’s main current, and the girl on the bridge could see the seven colours of the rainbow glistening in its wake.
The girl stood on the bridge, and gradually saw off the oil boat with her gaze. She could just make out another bridge, and a bend in the river where the boat disappeared. By the bridge was a factory, which stood out because of its chimney stacks and a cylindrical tower. The girl didn’t know what the tower was for. Though it was far away, its discharge culvert was clearly visible where it met the water, and the girl used her glass prism to shine light on it. Just as she had expected, it was too far away and she failed to make a glare, so the tower was completely unaffected. The clouds in the western sky, floating across the water surface, began to redden, and the sky around the tower began to dim.
Yes, the sky began to dim. The girl saw her aunt walk past the bridgehead and quickly turned away, but she had already been spotted.
‘Look at you! Why don’t you stay at home instead of running around on a scorcher like this? What are you doing here, anyway?’
The girl said, ‘Nothing. My mum said I could go out.’
Her aunt said nothing more and turned to leave, but when she had walked off the bridge she turned back and yelled, ‘Don’t be home too late. If you’re going to stand there like a lemon, they’re bound to come and bully you again.’