Big Breasts and Wide Hips (67 page)

Shangguan Jintong felt his heart race and the blood rush to his head; the hand holding the photo trembled uncontrollably. Natasha's full lips turned up slightly to reveal almost blindingly white teeth, and the warm, gentle fragrance of orchids seemed to rise up into his eyes, as a sweet sensation made his nose ache. He gazed at the flaxen hair that spread out over her silky shoulders. A low-cut scoop-collared dress that belonged either to her mother or to an elder sister hung loosely from her pert little breasts. Her long neck and décolletage left nothing to the imagination. For some mysterious reason, tears glistened in his eyes, producing a glazed effect. As he took in the nearly unobstructed view of her breasts, the sweet smell of milk permeated his soul, and he imagined he heard a call from the distant north — grassy steppes as far as the eye could see, a dense forest of melancholy birch, a little cabin deep in the woods, fir trees blanketed with snow and ice … lovely scenes moved past his eyes like a sequence of still images. And in the middle of each image stood the young Natasha, a bouquet of purple flowers cradled in her arms. Jintong covered his eyes with his hands and wept with joy, the tears coursing down through his fingers.

All that night, Jintong hovered between sleep and wakefulness, as Natasha paced back and forth before him, the hem of her dress sweeping across the floor. In fluent Russian, he poured out his heart to her, but her expression went from happiness to anger, which took him from the heights of arousal to the depths of despair. And yet a single tantalizing smile pulled him right back up again.

At daybreak, the boy in the lower bunk, a fellow by the name of Zhao Fengnian, who was the father of two boys, complained, “Shangguan Jintong, I know you speak wonderful Russian, but you've got to let others get some sleep.”

Suffering from a splitting headache, after letting go of Natasha's captivating image, Jintong apologized caustically to Zhao Fengnian, who noticed his ashen face and blistered lips. “Are you sick?”

In agony, he shook his head, suddenly feeling as if his thoughts were like a car negotiating a slippery mountain slope, when it suddenly loses control and tumbles down the mountainside. At the grassy base of the mountain, where purple blossoms bloom all around, the beautiful Natasha scoops up the hem of her dress and runs silently toward him …

He grabbed the bunk bed post and banged his head against it over and over.

Zhao Fengnian summoned the political instructor, Xiao Jingang, the onetime member of an armed working brigade, a man with a true proletarian background. He'd once sworn that he'd put Teacher Huo before a firing squad for wearing short skirts, which he considered morally degenerate. His shadowy eyes, set in a face like hardened steel, threw an instant chill into Jintong's roiling brain, and he felt as if he was being pulled up out of quicksand.

“What's going on with you, Shangguan Jintong?” Xiao Jingang asked sternly.

“Xiao Jingang, you flat-faced oaf, mind your own business!” In order to allow the man's sternness help him break free from Natasha's grip, all he could think of was to make the man good and angry.

Xiao smacked him on the side of the head. “You little fuckhead!” he swore. “Who the hell are you to talk to me like that? I won't let some snot-nose darling of Huo Lina get away with that!”

At breakfast, as he sat looking down at his bowl of corn porridge, Jintong's stomach lurched, and he knew that his frightful aversion to all food except mother's milk had taken hold again. So he picked up the bowl and, calling up the remnants of clear thought in his murky brain, forced himself to start drinking the porridge; but the moment the liquid came into view, a pair of living breasts seemed to rise out of the bowl, which fell from his hands and shattered on the floor, the hot porridge splashing on his legs. He didn't feel a thing.

His frightened classmates immediately dragged him over to the clinic, where the school nurse cleaned his legs and rubbed ointment on the burns, then told his classmates to take him back to the dormitory.

There he ripped up Natasha's photograph and tossed the pieces into the river behind the school; he watched as Natasha, now in shreds, flowed downstream into a swirling eddy, where she came together again and, like a naked mermaid, floated on the surface, the wet locks of her hair draping over her hips.

His classmates, who had followed him down to the river, watched as he spread his arms and dove into the water, after shouting something. Some of them ran down to the river's edge, while others ran back to school for help. As he sank below the surface, Jintong saw Natasha swimming like a fish amid the waterweeds. He tried to call to her, but water rushed into his mouth and stifled his shout.

The next time Jintong opened his eyes, he was lying on Mother's
kang.
He tried to sit up, but Mother held him down and stuffed the nipple of a bottle of goat's milk into his mouth. Dimly, he recalled that the old goat was long dead, so where had the milk come from? Since he couldn't get his stubborn brain working, he wearily closed his eyes. Mother and First Sister were talking about exorcism, but the thin sound of their voices seemed to come from a bottle far away. “He must be possessed,” Mother said. “Possessed?” First Sister asked. “By what?” “I think it's an evil fox spirit.” “Could it be that widow?” First

Sister asked. “She worshipped a fox fairy when she was alive.” “You're right,” Mother replied. “She shouldn't be coming for Jintong… we barely had a chance to enjoy a few good days …” “Mother,” First Sister said, “these so-called good days have been torture for me. That half-man of mine is crushing me to death … he's like a dog, but a useless one. Mother, don't blame me if I do something.” “Why would I blame you?” Mother said.

Jintong lay in bed for two days, as his mind slowly cleared. Natasha's image kept floating before his eyes. When he washed up, her weeping face appeared in the basin. When he looked in the mirror, she smiled back at him. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the sound of her breathing; he could even feel her soft hair brush up against his face and her warm fingers move over his body. His mother, frightened by her son's erratic behavior, followed him everywhere, wringing her hands and whimpering like a little girl. His gaunt face stared back at him from the water in their vat. “She's in there!” “Who is?” his mother asked. “She is?” “Who is she?” “Natasha! And she's unhappy.” She watched as her son thrust his hand into the vat. Nothing there except water, but her excited son muttered words she couldn't understand. So she dragged him away and covered the vat. But Jintong fell to his knees in front of a basin and began speaking in tongues to the spirit of the water inside. As soon as his mother dumped the water out of the basin, Jintong pressed his lips up against the window, as if to kiss his own reflection.

Tears glistened on his mother's face. Jintong saw Natasha dancing in those tears, jumping from one to the next. “There she is!” he said, a moronic look on his face, pointing at his mother's face. “Don't go, Natasha.”

“Where is she?”

“In your tears.”

Mother hurriedly dried her tears. “Now she's jumped into your eyes!” Jintong shouted.

Finally, his mother understood. Natasha appeared anywhere there was a reflection. So she covered everything that held water, buried the mirrors, covered the windows with black paper, and would not let her son look into her eyes.

But Jintong saw Natasha take shape in the darkness. He had moved from the stage of trying everything possible to avoid Natasha to a frenzied pursuit of her; she, meanwhile, had moved from the stage of being everywhere to hiding from place to place. Calling out, “Listen to me, Natasha,” he ran headlong into a dark corner. She crawled into a mouse hole under a cabinet; he stuck his face up to the hole and tried to crawl in after her. In his mind, he actually made it, and followed her down a winding path, calling out, “Don't run away from me, Natasha. Why are you doing this?” Natasha crawled out through another hole and disappeared. He looked everywhere for her, finally spotting her stuck to the wall, after stretching herself out thin as a sheet of paper. He ran up and began stroking the wall with both hands, as if he were caressing her face. Bending at the waist, Natasha slipped under his arms and crawled up the stove chimney, her face quickly covered with soot. Kneeling at the foot of the stove, he reached out to wipe the soot from her face, but it wouldn't come off. Instead, his own face was streaked with soot.

Not knowing what else to do, Mother fell to her knees, kowtowed, and summoned the great exorcist Fairy Ma, who had not practiced his craft for many years.

The man of spirits came in a long black robe, his hair hanging loose around his shoulders. He was barefoot, both feet stained bright red. Holding a peachwood sword in one hand, he murmured things no one could understand. The moment he saw him, Jintong was reminded of all the strange tales he'd heard about the man and, as if he'd swallowed a mouthful of vinegar, felt his head shudder; a crack opened up in his confused mind, and Natasha's image vanished, for the moment at least. The fairy had a dark purplish face with bulging eyes that gave him a feral look. He coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it out like the wet stool of a chicken. Waving his wooden sword in the air, he performed a strange dance. Soon tiring, he stood beside the water basin and, uttering a spell, spat into the basin; then, holding the sword in both hands, he began stirring the water, which slowly turned red. That was followed by another dance. Growing tired again, he went back to stirring the water, until it was the color of fresh blood. Throwing down his sword, he sat on the floor, breathing heavily. He dragged Jintong up beside him and said, “Look into the basin and tell me what you see.” Jintong detected a sweet-smelling herbal odor as he stared at the mirrorlike surface of the water, stunned by the face that looked back at him. How had Jintong, so full of life, turned into a haggard, wrinkled, and very ugly young man? “What do you see?” the fairy pressed him. Natasha's bloody face rose slowly out of the basin and merged with his. She slipped out of her dress and pointed to the bloody wound on her breast. “Shangguan Jintong,” she cursed, “how could you be so heartless?” “Natasha!” Jintong shrieked as he buried his face in the water. He heard the fairy say to Mother and Laidi, “He's fine now. You can carry him back to his room.”

Leaping to his feet, Jintong threw himself on the mountain fairy. It was the first time in his life he had actually attacked someone. What courage it took to attack someone who dealt with ghosts and demons! All for the sake of Natasha. With his left hand he grabbed the fairy's gray goatee and pulled with all his might, stretching the man's mouth until it was a black oval. Vile-smelling saliva slithered down his hand. Cupping her injured breast in one hand, Natasha sat on the fairy's tongue and looked admiringly at Jintong. Spurred on by the look, he tugged harder on the goatee, this time using both hands. The fairy's body bent over painfully, until he looked like the picture of the Sphinx in their geography text. Moving awkwardly, he struck Jintong on the leg with his wooden sword. But Jintong felt no pain, thanks to Natasha, and even if he had, he wouldn't have let go, because Natasha was in the man's mouth. The thought of what would happen if he let go made him shudder: The fairy would chew Natasha to pulp and swallow her into his digestive tract. The fairy's intestines were filthy things! Hurry, Natasha, get away from there! he shouted anxiously. But she remained seated on the fairy's tongue, as if she were deaf. The man's goatee was getting more slippery by the minute, for the blood from Natasha's breast had seeped into his whiskers. He kept tugging, hand over hand, her blood staining Jintong's fingers. The fairy tossed his sword away, reached out with both hands, grabbed Jintong's ears, and pulled with all his might. Jintong's lips parted and he heard shrieks from Mother and First Sister. But nothing was going to make him let loose of the fairy's goatee. The two combatants circled the yard, round and round, followed closely by Mother and First Sister. Something on the ground tripped Jintong, who stopped his hand-overhand motion just long enough for the fairy to bite down on one of them. His ears felt as if they were about to be wrenched off the sides of his head; the back of his hand had been bitten to the bone. He screamed in pain, but that was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. Everything was a blur. Frantic, he thought of Natasha. The fairy had swallowed her, and she was now in his stomach, crumbling in his digestive juices; the prickly walls of his stomach were kneading her mercilessly. The blurred vista before him darkened until it was black as the belly of a cuttlefish.

Speechless Sun, who had gone out to buy a bottle, came into the yard. With the keen eye and rich experience of a soldier, he immediately figured out what was going on. Calmly as can be, he set the bottle down at the base of the side room wall. “Jintong's in trouble!” Mother shouted. “Save him!” Speechless Sun effortlessly maneuvered himself up behind the fairy, lifted both little stools into the air, and brought them down together into the man's calves; he dropped like a stone. Speechless Sun's stools swirled in the air a second time and came down on the fallen man's arms; Jintong's ears were set free. Sun's stools came crashing into the fairy's ears; he spat out Jintong's hand and began rolling in agony on the ground. He reached out to pick up his sword and clenched his teeth. Speechless Sun roared; the man shuddered. By then, Jintong was wailing and struggling to charge the fairy again, determined to rip open the man's belly and rescue Natasha. But Mother and First Sister had their arms wrapped around him and were holding him back. The fairy took off, giving the crouching tiger, Speechless Sun, a wide berth.

Very gradually, Jintong recovered his equilibrium, but not his appetite. So Mother went to see the district chief, who immediately sent someone out to buy goat's milk. Jintong spent most of the time lying in bed, only occasionally getting up to stretch his legs. His eyes were as lifeless as ever. Every time he thought of poor Natasha and her bleeding breast, tears sluiced down his cheeks. Lacking the will to speak, he broke his silence infrequently by muttering to himself; but the minute anyone approached him, he shut up.