It was New Year’s Eve 1989. 5 February. The Year of the Snake. And the first year we had spent without my grandmother. It was evening time. The festivities on our floor, in full swing, were as fun, raffish and colourful as ever – the children buzzing around, hyped up on sweets and presents, the adults chatting warmly or leaning back with amusement, surveying the scene and sipping wine. None of us mentioned my grandmother, but she was in our thoughts, I think.
I caught a glimpse of my mother in the kitchen, a pot of rice on the boil. She was lost in her thoughts and wore an expression of gentle bemusement at odds with her sad, exhausted eyes. It struck me then that she had the aspect of a little girl, but the steam from the pan had strafed her hair, and I could see the developing streaks of grey, and the lines around her eyes, and the thinness of ageing skin. She seemed so much older now, and quite alone. I slipped away, back into the throng of people drifting in and out of our apartment.
I glimpsed my brother and his friends playing with their new packs of Garbage Pail Kids cards, each cartoon kid exhibiting grotesque and colourful deformities. I thought the cards horrid, but my brother and his friends were obsessed by them.
At the far end of the hall, I saw a figure I didn’t recognise. She was around my age, but dressed formally in demure blacks and greys, with elegant high-heeled boots. I knew right away she wasn’t someone who lived in the building. She looked a little uncomfortable; there was a tension in her bearing, as though she was late for a meeting. She was young and professional-looking, and I was curious to know how she had found herself in the traditional environs of our old and out-of-the-way apartment block. I moved closer. She had dark eyes and a small pretty nose which wrinkled involuntarily every so often, like a deer sniffing danger in the air. And then I felt a glimmer of recognition. She glanced up and saw me. At that moment I realised. I went to her.
‘Al Lam?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘Is it really you?’
She smiled slightly and her face lit up with relief.
‘Lai! I didn’t know if you would still be here! It’s been such a long time.’
I looked at her in wonder. A couple of kids screeched past.
‘It’s so noisy here, do you want to go somewhere quiet?’ I said.
She nodded.
We went to a nearby bar, pushing our way through the queues. The place was predictably packed and there was nowhere to sit, so we took our drinks and stood outside. The warm, fetid atmosphere of the bar gave way to currents of icy air and the forlorn blackness of the night above. Al Lam shivered, set down her wine, and opened an elegant cigarette case. She took out a cigarette, lit up and exhaled, breathing out a fine plume of smoke. She seemed so delicate and refined. I was impressed.
‘I can’t believe it’s you. The years have really passed. How long has it been?’
‘I’m not sure. It seems like forever.’
‘It really does,’ I said.
She retrieved her wine and sipped at it tentatively.
‘Time is funny like that.’
I frowned, concentrating.
‘The last time we saw each other … I remember, they were sending you away. To Hong Kong. You weren’t very happy. None of us were. But what was it like?’
She smiled.
‘At first I hated it. I missed you all terribly. I told myself I would never talk to my mother or father again. But that lasted all of a week. I really did miss my life back here and my friends. When you are a child, those things, the familiarity of them, are your whole world and you cling to them fiercely – it is painful to be torn away. But at the same time, things change so quickly. Within a few weeks you are immersed in your new existence. The school I went to was a good one. There were Chinese like us, but also English and French children, and the atmosphere was liberal and open. We put on theatre performances, listened to music on our Walkmans and sometimes we watched cartoons, especially Transformers!’
She giggled as though this were the height of wickedness, and I felt a sense of recognition – I saw in her the child she had been, both serious and kind. I felt a rush of fondness.
I spoke quietly with a touch of regret.
‘We had always planned to go to Hong Kong to rescue you. We swore an oath, do you remember? But we didn’t even manage to stay in touch!’
She laughed now, openly and spontaneously.
‘We were just kids! Kids say stuff like that.’
The laughter died. She grew thoughtful.
‘And … that last summer. It was kinda weird, don’t you think? More than just me leaving. Like something was coming to a close. Remember the curfew? For Brzezinski and his entourage? And how we broke it and got chased by the police?’
My skin tingled in the cold air.
‘Yes.’
Her expression lightened once again.
‘I’m hogging the conversation, Lai. What about you? What are you doing these days?’
‘Well,’ I said evenly, ‘I’m studying Literature at Peking University.’
She nodded as though I had confirmed something she had always known.
‘You always were smart and imaginative.’
‘I don’t know about that. But I find it interesting for sure,’ I demurred. I was not used to compliments. And while I loved books, I had never considered myself particularly imaginative.
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘Well, as I say, the school I went to was liberal. Lots of music and performance. For a while I wanted to be a musician, I studied the flute. But I realised I didn’t have the talent.’
She spoke matter-of-factly, without any sense of disappointment.
‘Even though I have quite a logical mind, I was still very much into the music scene. So I shifted my focus from the practical side to the organisational one. That’s one of the reasons why I am back here in Beijing. I am studying event planning and music culture at the National Academy of Theatre Arts.’
‘Wow,’ I said, genuinely impressed. ‘That sounds very cool.’
She smiled.
‘And what about the old gang? Are you still in touch with any of them?’
I took a long sip of my wine. In the cold air it made me feel momentarily dizzy.
‘Not really. After that summer, it wasn’t just you. We all kind of lost contact. Became teenagers. Went to different schools. Except for Gen. We ended up at the same high school. Became close. He’s at my university now. I still see him from time to time.’
I looked away.
‘Gen,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I do remember him … but not as clearly as the others. He always seemed distant and … a little unkind, to me.’
She must have seen something in my face, for she at once held up her hands in supplication.
‘Hey, I am sure he is not like that really. As I said, I don’t remember him that well at all.’
I smiled wanly. Even though my relationship to Gen was painful, hearing him criticised still made me flinch, almost as if I was the one being attacked.
Delicately, diplomatically, Al Lam changed the subject.
We lingered for a while outside, sipping the last of our wine in the cold. We laughed about the times we had shared, the local haunts we had frequented. A childhood neatly folded into a few lines of conversation, for the memories were dimmer now, as dim as the outline of clouds in the darkness above. Soon our wine glasses were empty. We stood facing each other, smiling awkwardly, for we had come to a point where there was nothing left to say. Gently Al Lam extracted herself. We clasped hands with genuine affection, we swapped numbers and we promised to meet up in the near future in order to touch base – both of us, I think, knowing such a meeting would never come to pass. Her cheek felt slight against mine in the coldness of the night, and it was suddenly clear to me how much I had missed her without ever fully realising. I watched her walk away, a small, elegant figure bobbing into the middle distance, before melting into the darkness beyond.
. . .
It was quite poetic really. Everyone in Beijing called them ‘winter haze days’. The bucolic beauty of the phrase belied a somewhat more prosaic and depressing reality, however. The ‘haze’ in question would settle on the city for days on end. It wasn’t the product of some sea-struck mist rolling in from the ocean to the east, but rather the result of the landlocked Beijing traffic belching out steam and smoke, and the air from the thermals above sealing in the smoke so that it felt as though one was moving through a thick pea soup. It was beautiful at times, though. The afternoon sun appeared as a burnished blemish of gold high in the sky, a faraway patch of bright with mist swirling around it, while at the level of the city the buildings seemed to materialise out of nothing, vast, elegant shadows taking shape from within the miasma of pale fog. Such beauty was deceptive; if you were outside for too long breathing in the fog, by the time late evening came your throat would be raw and your nose streaming – so those in the streets often wore masks, or sometimes simply pulled their shirts or jumpers up over their mouths and noses, all of which added to the sense of an apocalyptic landscape frequented by shadows, a population of people without faces.
When I reached the campus and entered the main cafeteria where I was to meet Madam Macaw, the place was buzzing with expectant energy. Plates clattered, students laughed and shrieked, people at tables huddled and pressed together – the warmth of body heat contrasting with the cold mist clawing at the windows. It felt a bit like being at school on a day of a great storm, when the teachers would summon you inside during the lunch hour to watch a film while the rain pounded on the roof and windows, and you felt an excitement that came from the strange interruption to your routine, and a sense that great events were at hand. I felt the same that day in the canteen, and it reminded me that, as much as we tried to deny it, we students were at times still close to the excitable and credulous children we had been.
Even before I saw her, I felt her gaze on me. I turned. Macaw had her hair pulled back, cropped. She was wearing the same black trousers and white shirt. In her hands she had a couple of bags, and by this point I knew they held the ingredients which enabled her transformation into a man. They contained the makeup she used to shade her skin, making her jawline seem firmer; the gel that allowed her to lacquer her hair into a short, masculine crop; the liner that emphasised her eyebrows, making them appear fuller and less feminine. But these tricks would hardly have paid off were it not for her bearing, her expression. There was no doubt it was her – I could see her looking out at me – and yet it was from within the guise of a well-kempt, baby-faced young man. To see her like that was not uncomfortable exactly. But it was discombobulating, like when you look at one of those pictures where there is just the one image but you can interpret it in two different ways – see it this way and it’s a duck, see it another and it’s a rabbit.
If you looked closely, of course, you could see the components of the illusion that she had crafted; if you were in the know you would see the mechanics behind the deception. But when she asked a guy on the table next to us to pass the sugar for her coffee, he barely gave her a second look, saying, ‘Here you go, pal!’ and Macaw responded in her lower, more gravelly voice, ‘Thanks, fella!’ She turned back to me and gave a very male wink – knowing, confident and lascivious. I looked at her in astonishment; I leaned in close and breathed one word:
‘Why?’
I really didn’t understand why she had chosen to dress up like that, on that day. As far as I knew, Madam Macaw’s Marvellous Marauders – her rather odd and wonderful theatre troupe – were not due to stage any performances. But more than that, it was beyond me how she could act like this. In a normal situation in front of other people. What if someone realised? Wouldn’t she die of embarrassment?
She looked at me and those eyes changed again, softening and shimmering, becoming vulnerable.
‘I’ve got an interview. It’s related to performance art. I’m a little nervous. I was hoping you might come with me!’
To tell the truth, I felt proud and excited – touched, even. She was so confident and charismatic, and yet clearly there was another side to her, this aspect of doubt or hesitation, and I took it as a token of our closeness. I touched her hand.
‘Of course.’
She ‘became’ the young man again, her voice gruff, her movements heavier and more deliberate. We left the cafeteria and walked to one of the university’s central buildings, before taking an elevator to a higher floor. We got out and walked to the door of an office whose sign read ‘Vice Chancellor’.
I looked at Macaw the moment before she knocked.
‘Why,’ I whispered, ‘would a vice chancellor of the university be interested in performance art? Why would he want to interview you about this?’
Macaw looked at me seriously.
‘Vice chancellors are strange creatures, you never know what one is going to think or feel!’
I went to say something, but she pushed through the door and I followed her in. From behind a desk, a bald-headed, elderly man with a white moustache directed us to sit.
We sat down.
He glanced at us. I remember being awed by a computer terminal sitting at his desk, for so few people had computers in those days.
‘You are here for the 5.15. And you have something urgent to tell me?’
Macaw looked him straight in the eye.
‘Correct. Your information is correct.’
I looked at her in astonishment. In bewilderment.
Her eyes never left his face.
‘My name is Yu Yulong. And this …’ she motioned towards me, ‘is my girlfriend. We are due to be married in April!’
My jaw dropped. The capacity for speech had left me.
The vice chancellor looked at her impassively.
‘I offer you my congratulations, Mr Yu, but that doesn’t explain why you have requested this meeting.’
Macaw’s expression was inscrutable. With the same gravelly, masculine voice, she said:
‘For the past year I have been attending the seminars and lectures of Professor Yu Zhanwei. He was very inspiring to me. Unfortunately, he began to ask me to stay behind after class. And what happened there, I have come to believe, was completely inappropriate.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying he behaved in a sexual way that was unwarranted.’
‘You are saying he touched you?’
Macaw looked at the vice chancellor, then down at her feet. She spoke in a choked whisper, full of emotion.
‘No, not exactly.’
The vice chancellor’s voice was soft, but held a hint of impatience.
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I am saying he made me blow up balloons!’
‘Balloons?’
‘Yes, the very same.’
‘What … I mean I’m sorry, but you are not making much sense.’
Macaw looked at the vice chancellor. She looked him dead in the eye.
‘For men like you and me, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. At the time, it seemed ridiculous to me. But after everyone else had gone, he would make me blow up balloons and then pop them!’
‘But that’s absurd!’
‘I don’t disagree. But he has been doing this kind of thing for a while. I’ve got a list of other students he has abused in this fashion …’
‘With the blowing up of balloons?’
‘Indeed. It is a fetish. I have spoken to the authorities. The technical name for this type of behaviour is “loonerism”, and the individual who partakes in it is called a “looner”. Sometimes, when he would make me blow a balloon, I would see him …’
Macaw’s voice grew faint and horrified; she couldn’t go on.
‘You would see him what?’ gasped the vice chancellor.
‘I would see him … fiddling about with himself! Down there. And when the balloon popped – I mean, you are a man of the world, I am sure you can imagine!’
The vice chancellor of my university had a look on his face of utter astonishment, and I realised it was mirrored by my own.
Macaw regarded the elderly man seriously.
‘I’ve escaped Yu Zhanwei’s balloon depravity. But there is a whole generation of students who may not. You need to act now. Because this guy is a desperate, sick balloon pervert!’
Having said her piece, Macaw then leapt out of her seat, striding from the room. For a few moments, I sat face to face with the vice chancellor, one of the most powerful figures in our whole university.
I blinked at him a couple of times. And then stuttered:
‘I am so sorry …’
I had to try and put into words what it was I was sorry for.
‘I am just so very, very sorry!’
I bolted from his office.
I slipped through the doors of the elevator just as they were closing.
She stood watching me, lips twitching in the beginnings of a smile.
‘Him again, Anna? The same teacher? I get that this Yu Zhanwei must have really hurt you, but is it worth risking your position here for? Is it worth risking mine?’
Her face fell, her features narrowed, that feline sharpness both cold and cruel.
‘Let’s get one thing straight: he never hurt me. He doesn’t have that power.’
I went to say something more, but something in her tone cut me off. But I still felt annoyed. I stood there smouldering, as the elevator descended. Finally she broke the silence.
‘Hey, look, nothing bad will come of it. You didn’t give your name. And I gave a fake one. The smarmy bastard won’t even lose his job!’
‘So why do it?’ I asked, throwing my hands up in a gesture of helplessness.
She smiled an impish smile.
‘To add a touch of Marauder Mischief, of course.’
I blinked at her.
‘Can you imagine? The good professor won’t get fired, because I used a fake name, so, ultimately, nothing will come of the complaint. But the vice chancellor will still have to talk to him. Will still have to ask him about the student I was claiming to be. And that means he will have to talk about the nature of the complaint. I would love to be a fly on the wall when that happens. That bastard Yu Zhanwei will be mortified. When his boss asks him if he gets off to the feel of rubber and popping balloons? Can you imagine his face?’
I kept my own as straight as I could but there was indeed something humorous about it. Macaw asked in a quieter voice:
‘Are we still on for Friday?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
We were outside by this point.
She gave a dazzling smile, and turned away. I watched her go, and despite everything I found myself smiling. I didn’t know this Professor Yu Zhanwei, but he sounded pompous and, despite her protestations to the contrary, I did believe my friend had been hurt by him. As she walked away, I noticed something fall from her side. I ran after her and bent down to pick up a wallet. When I stood up, her figure had already disappeared through the heavy curtain of mist.
I was in something of a bind. Nowadays, of course, it wouldn’t be a problem. You’d just message the person on your mobile phone to come and get their wallet. But in those days, I had never even met someone who owned a mobile phone, and although they did exist, you couldn’t send a text on one. As for Macaw and me – I don’t think I even had her home phone number. We would make arrangements for future meetings when we were together, that was the way our friendship worked. Later it occurred to me that she was abnormally protective of her privacy and personal details, but at the time it seemed perfectly normal.
I wandered back into the main building. I opened the wallet; despite myself I was intrigued and prepared to snoop. She had a little cash, a few of those cards reading ‘Madam Macaw’s Marvellous Marauders’, and a snippet of a quotation that read:
A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings.
Last but not least, she had a student card. On the front was printed her name (Tang Anna) and department (Arts and Drama) and on the back in smaller writing was printed her home address: No. 4 Jiamenwai Avenue, Binhe Sub-district, Pinggu District 700003. I glanced at my watch. The Pinggu District was some distance away in south Beijing, but it was still early afternoon. I felt responsible for returning Macaw’s wallet as soon as I could, but in truth my motives weren’t completely high-minded. Everything about her intrigued me and I wanted to see where she lived.