"Who is it?" he asked loudly, as he opened the door a crack to look.
"Teacher." It was a woman's hushed voice, and the person was standing in the dark by the door.
"Is that you, Sun Huirong?" he had recognized her voice and opened the door.
This girl had graduated after two years of schooling and was now working in the fields in one of the villages. Official documents said that all town children, even if they were not from peasant families, had to settle in the villages, and it was up to the school to implement this. He was Sun's class teacher, so he chose a production brigade only a couple of kilometers or so from town, and where he knew Hunchback Zhao, the Party secretary. He also found her lodgings with a family where there was an old woman to keep an eye on her.
"How is it? Is everything all right?" he asked.
"Everything is fine, Teacher."
"You have become quite dark from being in the sun!"
In the dim light, the girl's face seemed black. Just sixteen, her chest protruded, and she looked healthy and strong. Unlike most city girls, she had been doing manual labor from the time she was a child, and was used to hard work. Sun Huirong came into the room, but he left the door wide open to avoid arousing suspicions.
"Is there a problem?"
"I've just come to see my teacher."
"Fine, sit down."
He had never let her come into his room on her own but she had now left school. She stood there looking behind her, looking at the door.
"Sit down, sit down, I'll leave it open."
"No one saw me come." Her voice was still very hushed.
He was in an awkward situation. He recalled being moved by a touch of sadness in her voice when she had told him that her home was a women's domain. She was the best-known girl in town. After the student propaganda team visited the nearby coal mine to stage a performance, a group of young miners came and hung around outside the classroom window, craning their necks and looking in. They started clamoring and shouting that they had come to see Sun Huirong! The principal came out of the office and chastised them, "Why do you want to see her? What's there to see?" The young hooligans mumbled, "So what if we take a look at her? She's not going to disappear if we look at her, is she?" They all jeered as they slunk off. "This is where Sun Huirong had her tits felt" had been scrawled in chalk on the stone embankment by the river, and the boys in the class were summoned one by one into the principal's office and interrogated. All of them said they didn't know anything about it, but, out of the office and in the corridor, they were sneakily guffawing. The village girls mature early, and a lot of silly talk went on among the girl students. Often there was fighting and crying, but whenever he questioned them, they would blush and say nothing. The propaganda team had to put on makeup for the performance, and Sun Huirong turned this way and that, looking in a little round mirror. She knew how to use her feminine charm. "Teacher, does my hair look good like this?" "Teacher, could you help me with this lipstick?" "Teacher, come and have a look!" He corrected a corner of her lips and said, "You look great, it's fine!" and sent her on her way.
The girl was sitting in front of him right now in the dim light of the lamp. He went to turn up the lamp, and the girl said, "It's fine like this."
She was trying to seduce him, he thought, so he started to talk about something else. "Tell me about the family." He was asking about the peasant family with the old woman, which he had chosen for her.
"I left that place a long time ago."
"Why did you leave?"
At the time, he had arranged for her to share the room with the old woman in the family.
"I'm looking after the storehouse."
"What storehouse?"
"The production team's."
"Where is it?"
"Near the road, by the bridge."
He knew the lone building by the little bridge at the edge of the village, and asked, "Are you living there on your own?"
"Yes."
"What are you looking after?"
"Some heaps of paddy-rice hay and a few plows."
"Why do they need looking after?"
"The Party secretary said that later on he wanted me to do the accounts and that I would need a room."
"Aren't you afraid?"
She was silent for a while, then said, "I'm used to it now, it's all right."
"Isn't your mother worried about you?"
"She can't keep looking after me, I've got two younger sisters at home. When people grow up, they have to fend for themselves."
She was silent again. There was moisture in the kerosene, and the lamp suddenly spluttered.
"Do you have time to read?" As a teacher, he felt he had to ask this.
"How can I do any reading? It's not like working in the little vegetable garden at home. I have to earn work points. It's not like when I was at school; it used to be so good here!"
Indeed, school for her had been a paradise.
"Then come by and visit the school from time to time. You're not far away, and when you come home, you can stop by." He could only console her like this.
The girl bent her head over his desk and ran a finger along a join in the wood. He suddenly stopped talking, he could smell the aroma from her hair, and he blurted out, "If nothing is the problem, then you had best be going back."
The girl looked up and said, "Go back where?"
"Home!" he said.
"I didn't come from home," the girl said.
"Then go back to the brigade," he said.
"I don't want to…" Sun Huirong's head bent low again, and her finger went on running over the join in the wood.
"Are you frightened of staying on your own in the storehouse?" he asked. The girl's head bent lower.
"Didn't you say you were used to it? Do you want to go back to that old woman's family? Do you want me to talk to them so that you can go back?" What else could he do but ask her again.
"No____________________This____________________"
The girl's voice was even more hushed, and her head was almost on the table. He moved closer, but, smelling the warm, sour sweat of her body, sprung to his feet and, almost angrily, shouted, "Do you or don't you want me to go and talk to that family?"
The girl gave a start and stood up. He saw the bewilderment in her eyes, and tears glistening. She was on the verge of crying, so he quickly said, "Sun Huirong, come now, you must go home!"
The girl slowly bowed her head and stood there, motionless. He recalled that he had virtually pushed the girl out of his room. He took her by her sturdy arms and turned her around. She still wouldn't move, so he said softly into her ear, "If you've got something to tell me, come during the day! All right?"
Sun Huirong did not come again, and he never saw her again. No, he did see her once, at the beginning of winter. The night she came to the school was at the start of the autumn chill, so it was probably three months later that he passed by the Sun family house and the girl was in the main hall. She had clearly seen him, but, unlike in the past, when, without fail, she would shout out for him to come into the house for a rest and a cup of tea, she turned around straight away and went to the back of the hall.