She was frightened and immediately stopped crying, staring alertly at the one who had asked her the question. Although much taller than she was, he was not an adult, but three or four years older than she was, or four or five at the most. He was one of those high school students who, of course, were adults in Tiao’s eyes because they normally treated elementary school students with arrogance, and liked to appear older than they actually were. That was why this boy addressed her as a child.
But there was nothing arrogant about him. His voice was soft and there was real concern in it. He stooped towards Tiao, who was still leaning on the postbox, looked at her, and gently asked again, “Child, what’s the matter?”
Tiao shook her head, saying nothing. Somehow the word “child” calmed her and brought back her tears; a vague feeling of having been wronged filled her heart, as if this “Child, what’s the matter?” were something she had looked forward to hearing for a long time. She was entitled to be addressed that way and asked that question about many, many things. Now a stranger had done it, which made her want to trust him even though she shook her head and didn’t say anything. She said nothing and just wanted to hurry home because she remembered the adults’ warning: Don’t talk to strangers.
He followed her to the gate of the Design Academy and asked, “Do you live in the Design Academy? Then we are in the same complex. I live here, too. I can take you home.” He wanted to walk beside her, but she picked up her pace to get rid of him, as if he were a stalker. Finally, she ran into the building and up the stairs. She heard him calling outside, “I want to tell you my name is Chen Zai and I live in Building Number Two.”
6
Why do I always run into you when I’m at my lowest? Why do I run into you when I don’t want to run into anyone? When I am basking in glory, all decked out, and pleased with myself, you’re never there. That night, when I stood on the pavement hopelessly beating the postbox, I was oblivious to the possibility that someone could see me and I might get arrested. Something like that happened in Fuan later; two bored young men lit a firework, threw it into a postbox, and burned all the letters. They were sent to prison. I heard about it a year later. Luckily, throwing fireworks into a postbox never would have occurred to me; luckily, that incident happened after I tortured the postbox, otherwise I probably would have done the same thing out of frustration. I know it’s a crime, and I must have looked like a criminal at the time; at least I showed criminal passion. It was you who observed the darker side of me, and how long had you been watching? Did you start to spy on me as soon as I walked to the postbox, or did you approach as soon as you saw me? If it’s the former, that would make me very unhappy, because if you’d been watching that long you would have figured out that I wanted to steal letters. That’s the kind of thing others shouldn’t know, that battle I had with myself. Maybe you just accidentally saw me, and that “Child, what’s the matter?” really came out of concern, like that of a close family member. Maybe I should have just howled in front of you and begged you to smash the postbox along with me. But you’re not family. Besides, what’s the use of pounding a postbox? I didn’t realize until later when I was calm that my letter was long gone from the postbox. Ai! You said you lived in the same complex as I did, Building Number 2, three buildings away from us, which made me feel both trusting and uneasy. Trusting because living in the same complex felt like being “comrades in the same trench”—the catchphrase at the time—uneasy because you might see me again, point me out to your classmates or neighbours, and gossip about me, telling them about the show I’d put on that night. Who knows? One day, an afternoon in summer, I was playing rubber-band jump rope in front of the building with the rope of rubber bands strung between two trees and slipped higher and higher; I always liked the game, from primary school right through to middle school—I had just started sixth grade. I’d been easily able to jump to the “middle reach” long before; I hoped I could kick my leg up to the “big reach,” the highest height in the game. How high was the rubber-band rope then? It would have been the distance from my feet to the tips of my middle fingers when I stretched my arms upward over my head. My feet couldn’t reach that high at the time, which I simply couldn’t accept. One classmate of mine who was shorter than I was could jump to the “big reach.” That could only mean that I was awkward, my legs were not sufficiently flexible, and maybe my waist was not supple enough. So, my rubber-band jumping on this summer afternoon was not just self-amusement but a strict training regimen. I hoped to jump to the “big reach” so that I could get back at those who humiliated me by making me the rubber-band-rope holder. I tied the two ends of the rope to a pair of poplar trees and raised the height gradually, one try after another. I jumped very smoothly and finally raised the rope to the “big reach.” I gathered all my strength and kicked my right leg up toward the band, but unfortunately, I did it too violently, lost my balance, and fell to the ground. Maybe because the afternoon was so quiet, I heard the thump of my own fall.
Half of my face scraped on the ground and I skinned a knee. My vanity must have been considerable, because even when the pain made me grimace I remembered to look around, to check if anyone had witnessed my embarrassment. At first glance I caught sight of you, recognizing you as the person who said, “Child, what’s the matter?” to me that night. You happened to be passing by on your bike and saw this tumble of mine. It made me very angry, at you and at myself as well. I was still angry as I hurried to get up from the ground, hiding the sharp pain and pretending to walk home calmly as if no one were around. I hummed a song as I entered the building. I had to show you that even though I fell down it hadn’t hurt at all, that I didn’t mind falling, that everyone fell while learning to do the “big reach” … I was so nervous that I forgot to untie the rubber-band rope from the trees. When I remembered it late in the afternoon and ran back to the poplars, someone had stolen it. The ten-foot-long rubber-band rope, which I’d put together by saving the rubber bands one by one!
Many years later, when I was an adult, during the winter Fang Jing left me, I wrote a letter to force him to come see me at Fuan. He agreed to come, but said he was very busy and could only talk to me at the train station. He bought a return ticket to Beijing as soon as he got off the train. We sat in the noisy, smoky waiting room—sometimes the noisiest public location can be the best place to have a private conversation. I asked why he had promised to get a divorce but kept putting it off. Why would he stay married while he forbade me to have a boyfriend? I said a lot and he said very little; he spoke one sentence after I said ten. He said, finally, “Falling in love with me was a mistake, and you should calm down and think about starting a new life on your own.” Full of himself and absentminded, he stood up and got ready to leave while he was still talking. I seized his sleeve then, the sleeve of his ostrich-grey Brazilian leather jacket. This was what I’d most feared hearing; I would rather have had him say, “You can’t have a boyfriend. I won’t allow it.” That would have at least shown that he cared about me. I held on to his sleeve, bowed my head, and started to cry, quietly but in surging waves. I didn’t know when he disappeared from view, but I still held on to a bag of Fuan’s local delicacy: honey twisted dough sticks. How would Fang Jing in his Brazilian leather jacket appreciate this sort of local delicacy? But I sincerely wanted to please him with the dough sticks, even when I