The Crazed (5 page)

6

I was still gloomy after dinner. Having no desire to study, I didn’t go to Mr. Yang’s office as I had planned, and instead returned to the dormitory. Fortunately on my bed was a letter from Meimei. I brushed a winged ant off my sheet, lay down, and opened the envelope. She obviously hadn’t received my letter about her father’s condition yet. She said:

April 19, 1989

Dear Jian,

How is everything? Have you quit smoking? Each year four million people die of smoking-related diseases in our country. Please follow my advice and quit. You know I cannot stand the smell of tobacco.

It’s getting hot in Beijing, and sometimes windy and dusty. My school is kind of chaotic at this moment, because every day thousands of students take to the streets to demonstrate against official corruption. They’re especially angry at the top leaders’ children who have made fortunes by taking advantage of their offices and connections. Many students are talking about marching to Tiananmen Square. I have heard that this is a joint effort of the students from several colleges in Beijing. They demand rapid political reform and that the government take drastic measures to stop corruption and inflation. I don’t believe their demonstrations can change anything, so up to now I have avoided participating. I am going to take the exams in less than five weeks. For the time being, nothing is more important to me than getting ready for them.

How is your preparation going? If you run into any difficulty, feel free to ask my dad for help. Try to concentrate on foreign languages and politics. These are the areas where people tend to stumble. Of course you know this, and I have more confidence in you than in myself. You will definitely score high points in all the subjects. You’re one of the best rising scholars, as my dad often says.

I guess you haven’t yet figured out what I like most about you. I won’t tell you now, but I may in the future. I have enclosed my kisses and hugs. Take care.

Yours,

Meimei

I had heard of the students’ demonstrations in Beijing, but hadn’t thought they would reach such a large scale. These days I rarely listened to the Voice of America or the BBC. My roommate Mantao, who had followed the news, often mentioned the demonstrations. But every evening, after dinner, I would spend several hours in Mr. Yang’s office reviewing textbooks; when I came back, my roommates would have gone to sleep, so we seldom talked. I had to devote myself to the preparation for the Ph.D. exams. Such a degree would eventually place me among the top literary scholars in China. Currently there were only a few thousand doctoral students in the whole country, and less than ten percent of them were in the humanities.

Meimei was right to shun political activities. My parents had always urged me to steer clear of politics. My father had once been an editor in Tianjin City, in charge of a column on women’s issues. Because he publicly criticized the Party secretary at his newspaper, he had been branded a rightist and banished to Fujin, a frontier town in Heilongjiang Province, where he worked on a tree farm for over thirty years. Meimei was smart and coolheaded and would never entangle herself in politics. She planned to specialize in pediatrics after getting her bachelor’s degree, and had applied to a medical program in Beijing. She would not consider going elsewhere because she loved the capital. In fact, only by becoming a graduate student, who didn’t need a job assignment that might take her anywhere, could she be allowed to remain in Beijing legally.

I got up from my bed, dropped my cigarette butt on the concrete floor, and stamped it out. I had quit smoking for two months, but after Mr. Yang collapsed, I had started again. These days I’d smoke almost half a pack a day.

Feeling grimy all over, I picked up my basin and went out to the washroom. The long corridor was dark, reeking of mildew and urine thanks to the toilet at its east end. Mosquitoes and gnats were flickering like crazy. I had nothing on but my green boxers. These dormitory houses were inhabited only by male students except for three or four graduate students’ wives, so most of us would walk naked-backed to the washrooms and even to the bicycle shed outside.

After scrubbing myself with a towel and cold water, I felt refreshed. I sat down at the only desk in our bedroom and began a letter to Meimei. My roommates hadn’t returned yet, so I had some privacy. I wrote:

April 25, 1989

Dear Meimei,

I wasn’t happy today, but your letter came like a breath of fresh air and made this evening different. You are very wise not to join the political activities at your college. Politics is a ground too treacherous for small people like us to tread. It’s as poisonous as acid rain.

These days I have been cramming for the exams. Japanese is debilitating me; however hard I try, my mind cannot get into it. There are so many other things going on here that I can hardly concentrate. But I shall apply myself harder, to conquer Japanese. I understand that this may be the only opportunity for me to join you in Beijing, and that I must cherish it.

I assume that by now you have received my previous letter. Your father is doing poorly, though his condition has stabilized. Don’t worry. There is no need for you to rush back; I am here with him. Good luck with your preparation. I miss you, a lot.

Your hubby-to-be,

Jian

Having sealed the letter, I turned on my Panda transistor radio and listened to the Voice of America. To my astonishment, there came the sound of people singing songs and shouting slogans. The woman reporter announced in slow, simple English that a throng of students from the People’s University were on their way to Tiananmen Square, to join those already there. Through the sputtering static I could hear hundreds of voices shouting in unison, “We shall not return without a full victory!” “Down with corruption!” “It’s everyone’s duty to save the country!” “Give us freedom and democracy!”

7

To my surprise, Meimei came back the next afternoon, but she could stay only a day because she wouldn’t disrupt her study. For a whole evening she was in the hospital with her father. Her presence pacified him and he stopped talking nonsense. All the sulkiness and the idiot grin had vanished from his face. When she fed him dinner, he didn’t make any noise, but instead opened his mouth compliantly and chewed the steamed apple with relish. The thought occurred to me that if she had been with him all along, his condition might have improved much more.

Although animated, Meimei was tired, her eyes clouded and her hair a bit straggly. The previous night she hadn’t slept, taking the eleven-hour train ride back to Shanning. After dinner, I urged her to go home and have a good sleep, but she wouldn’t leave.

Soon Mr. Yang began to have the fidgets, apparently bothered by something on his back. Meimei inserted her hand underneath his shirt and scratched him a little; still he wouldn’t stop squirming. She unbuttoned his shirt and found a festering boil below his left shoulder blade, about the size of an adzuki bean. She was unhappy about the discovery and said I should have rubbed him with a clean towel at least once every other day. True, I hadn’t done enough to help him with his personal hygiene, not because I was lazy or careless but because I didn’t know what to do. By nature I was an absentminded man and often neglected small things. That might be why people called me “the Poet,” though I had never written a poem. I had wiped Mr. Yang’s face with a warm towel every day and had bathed his varicosed feet once, but had done nothing else. I was sure that Banping didn’t even bother about our teacher’s face. Usually he would just sit in the room reading a book or stand in the corridor chatting with a nurse or a patient. Now I felt ashamed that I hadn’t cared for my teacher the way I should have.

Meimei removed a tiny safety pin from the waist of her pants and pierced the head of her father’s boil to drain the pus. She then wiped the abscessed area for a good while with a cotton ball soaked with alcohol. After that, she went on to squeeze a few pimples on his back. Following her orders, I fetched two thermoses of hot water. Together we took off Mr. Yang’s pajamas and set about scrubbing him with warm towels. Lying facedown, he moaned with pleasure while steam rose from his pinkish flesh.

Done with his back, we turned him over to rub his front. His eyes narrowed as a contented smile emerged on his face.

After we helped him into clean clothes, Meimei began brushing his teeth. He opened his mouth, displaying his diseased gums, which were ulcerated in places and bleeding a little. His tongue was heavily furred. “Good heavens,” Meimei said to me, “what have you been doing these days? You could at least have kept him clean.”

“I’m sorry, nobody told me what to do.”

“This is common sense.”

“Sorry, if only I had known.”

“Every three or four hours we should turn him over, let him lie on his stomach for a while, otherwise he’ll grow bedsores.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“The nurses should be fired.”

“Yes, they haven’t done much to help him either.”

“What do they do when they’re here?”

“They just sit around knitting or thumbing through magazines.”

She brushed his teeth twice, saying his gingivitis was severe. If only there were a way to treat his gum condition. Most dentists in town merely pulled or filled teeth, and few were good at dealing with periodontal disease. As Meimei was busy working on her father, I fetched more water. Together we began washing Mr. Yang’s head over a basin. With both hands I held the nape of his neck, which felt squishy, while Meimei soaped his gray hair. A whiff of decay escaped from his insides, and I turned my face with bated breath. Meimei scooped up water with her palms cupped together and let it fall on his head to rinse the suds away. In no time hundreds of hairs floated in the bluish foam, and the inside of the white basin became ringed with greasy dirt. If only I had washed his hair before Meimei had returned.

After the washing, I shaved him and with a pair of scissors trimmed his mustache and clipped his nose hair. He looked normal now, his face glowing with a reddish sheen.

I took Meimei home after ten o’clock, when the streets were full of people who had just come out of night schools. She sat sideways at the rear of my bicycle, her face pressed against my back and her arm hooked around my waist. The warmth of her body excited me so much that I continually cranked the bell on the handlebar and even ran a red light.

Afraid she might find out that I had started smoking again, I had brushed my teeth and tongue after dinner, using her father’s toothbrush with its flattened bristles, since I didn’t have mine with me. Still, when we were alone in her parents’ apartment and in each other’s arms, she detected tobacco on my breath. “You stink,” she said and sprang to her feet. She moved away and sat down on a chair, leaving me alone on the sofa. Abashed, I looked at her, my face burning.

She began lecturing me, and I listened without talking back. She said, “Your breath makes me sick. How many times did I tell you to quit smoking? Why did you take my words as just a puff of meaningless breath? Look, even your fingers are yellow now. Why can’t you keep your promise? You know tobacco will blacken your lungs and give you tracheitis, but you just smoke to show how cool you are.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t help it,” I mumbled.

“If you continue to be a smoker, how can we live together in the future? Besides, this is playing ducks and drakes with money . . .”

I felt ashamed and remained tongue-tied, just letting her fume at me. After she was done, I promised her that I would quit smoking this time and wouldn’t use her father’s illness as an excuse again. I had planned to take her to bed, but now intimacy was out of the question because her temper hadn’t subsided yet. Also, she was utterly exhausted, unable to keep her eyes open. So I urged her to go to bed. She washed her face and bathed her feet, then padded into the bedroom and closed the door. I slept on the sofa in their living room, not daring to disturb her during the night.

The next morning she and I went to the hospital again. Banping was happy when we relieved him. After combing Mr. Yang’s hair and brushing his teeth, we both sat down, she seated on my lap as there wasn’t another chair in the room. The night’s sleep had refreshed her thoroughly; her features were vivacious again, mischievously mocking at times. Her checkered dress was rather homely, washed out, hanging on her loosely, so I didn’t have to worry about rumpling it. She was visibly excited, her eyes radiating a soft light and her full lips slightly curled. I couldn’t help nuzzling her hair to inhale its hazelnutlike scent. Now and again I’d kiss her neck or gently twist her small silken ear despite fearing that her father might notice what I was doing.

We chatted about the students’ demonstrations in Beijing while Mr. Yang listened quietly. Gradually our topic shifted to preparations for the exams. For one of the six slots in a graduate program in pediatrics, Meimei would have to compete with over a hundred applicants.

“We’ve formed a group to study political economy and the Party’s history,” she told me.

“Does it help?”

“Of course, a lot. We test each other with the questions that may appear in the exam. This method can make us remember the answers better, and also gives us some fun when we’re working on the questions together. Besides memorizing all the answers, there’s no other way to prepare for the political exam.” She smiled and her chin jutted.

“That’s true,” I agreed. “But what a waste of time. Each year some of the answers differ from the previous year, especially in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. All depends on who is in power now—the winners always revise the history to make the losers look like a bunch of criminals.”

“Don’t be so cynical,” she said. “We’ve no choice but to give the expected answers.”

“I can’t spend too much time on politics. The other subjects make more sense to me.”

“You ought to take the political exam seriously. Last year a student in my school scored the highest in all subjects except politics. He flunked it miserably, only got forty-six points. That gave him a terrible time, although he was really smart, fluent in both English and Russian.”

“Did he get into a graduate program eventually?”

“Yes, but only after a lot of trouble. The Shanghai Military Medical University was determined to have him and sent a team of three people to our school. They held meetings and asked the other students about his political attitude and activities. Everybody said something in his favor, so he was admitted as a special case two months later, approved by the Ministry of Education.”

“Lucky for him.”

“Yes, only because he was absolutely phenomenal. We may never have that kind of luck, so work hard on the Party’s history and dialectical materialism.” Somehow she left out political economy and current events, each of which would constitute a quarter of the exam as well.

“I will, don’t worry,” I said. “To tell the truth, I fear Japanese most. In the political exam, even if you don’t have a definite answer to a question, you can bring your imagination into play, especially when writing the short essays—just make up some sentences. But in a foreign language test, every answer is fixed and there’s no room to waffle.”

“You know English better than most applicants, so even if you don’t do well in the Japanese exam, you’ll still have an edge over others. Don’t lose heart.”

Suddenly Mr. Yang chimed in, “She’s right. Also bear in mind that you have a strong recommendation from me. The professors at Beijing University will take my words seriously. So don’t waste your time looking after me here. Concentrate on your study. I want to see you two get married and settle down in Beijing. That will make me happy.”

I was amazed that he spoke so rationally. Meimei stuck out her tongue, which was red, thin, and narrow. Her face grew naughty, rather boyish. She was so charming that I couldn’t help touching her forearm and stroking her legs, though we dared not neck too much in her father’s presence. She had a little leg hair, which was brownish and would turn lucent in sunlight. If only we could have stayed outside in the open air.

She had to catch the 12:30 train back to Beijing. She wouldn’t let me buy her lunch, saying she could eat in the dining car, which would be a good way to pass the time on the train. Before leaving, she asked me to forgive her for blowing her top the night before. I was not really bothered by that, I told her. I promised to do a better job in taking care of her father—I would sponge him, brush his teeth, and rub his sore with cotton balls soaked with alcohol or peroxide. I would do those every day. Also, I’d bathe his feet and clip his nails regularly, and make sure he didn’t get bedsores.

I couldn’t go to the train station to see her off, so she left alone.

In the spring of 1987, three months before I met Meimei, a Hong Kong trade company had come to Shanning University to recruit employees. They wanted only graduate students who knew both English and Chinese well, and they gave the applicants written tests in both languages. Dozens of people applied for the jobs, which paid at least ten times more than a regular college graduate could earn in mainland China. I took the tests and somehow came out second, probably because my English was better than the others’. So the company was eager to hire me. The head of the recruiting group talked to me twice, promising me subsidies for housing and even for my future children’s education; he also mentioned I’d receive a generous bonus at the end of every year. Most people here coveted this opportunity. After hearing of my test results, Banping congratulated me, saying he wished he had studied English devotedly. He hadn’t even attempted the tests. Yet I was unsure whether I should go to Hong Kong. I asked Weiya, who couldn’t say for certain either; she too thought this was a rare opportunity, though she believed I was not cut out to be a businessman. Numerous faculty members said to me in private that I shouldn’t hesitate to grab the offer. One of them whispered to me, “Don’t just have a one-track mind, Jian. Whatever we do, teaching or writing, in essence we all struggle to make a living. That job pays so well that you’ll become a millionaire eventually.”

Yet the more I heard from others, the more uncertain I became. I dared not seek Mr. Yang’s advice, fearing he might scold me. I knew he disliked the idea of my going into business.

One late afternoon, as I was leaving the classroom building, my teacher caught sight of me and called to me. I froze in my tracks at the side door.

Coming up to me, he said, “Going home?”

“Yes,” I answered, then together we resumed walking. Silently we strolled toward the street outside the campus. On the dusty playing field some undergraduates were chasing a soccer ball and two stout women were practicing the shot put. A group of students in sweat suits were drawing lines for a sports meet, dribbling liquid whitewash from kettles to the ground on the outskirts of the field.

Mr. Yang said to me, “I’ve heard you want to go to Hong Kong to become a businessman.” His tone was rather sardonic.

Disconcerted, I replied, “They are interested in me, but I haven’t decided yet.”

“Do you think you’re good at handling imports and exports?” His voice turned serious.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you dispense with the study of poetry? Maybe you can, and I have been wrong about you.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Honestly I don’t feel like going into business. I love poetry, you know that, but everybody wants to get rich nowadays.”

“Well, you are not everybody.” He slowed down his pace and pointed at a thirtyish man pulling a cart loaded with cinders and garbage, the man’s naked back dripping sweat. “Look at that fellow over there,” Mr. Yang went on. “No matter how much money he has, I bet he will sleep on the street tonight. Even if he makes tens of thousands of yuan someday, he will never become a man who is really rich. He won’t want to stay at a hotel or fly to Shanghai. He was born poor and will remain so.”

“What do you mean?” I muttered, uneasy about the superiority he felt over the trash collector.