W HEN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION BEGAN, some people were happy while others were unhappy. Old Mr. Liu once told me that he had wanted to kill himself as soon as it began. He could tell by the momentum that he wasn’t going to make it through. But when he thought about the Dongpo pork belly they served at the Uh-Mei Pub, he realized death wasn’t worth it. He belonged to the unhappy category of people. Line was one of the happy ones because we were in eighth grade at the time and she was failing all her classes. Her dad said: if you don’t test into high school, you’ll be digging pits at the Nankou Tree Farm. That was how they dealt with people who couldn’t make it into high school back then. But her mom said: no one from these academic quarters will be digging pits. She told her husband to go talk to the college’s affiliate high school. But the old man replied: I’m a party secretary, how could I do such a thing? In those years, it was as if the suffering of two-thirds of humanity and Party principles were real things. Her old lady was so scared of losing face that she asked me to tutor Line. But the challenge was too great, I didn’t stand a chance of success. Wang Er wasn’t an idiot and he had a soft spot for young women, so he laid out the following plan:
1. Line was solely trying to get into our high school, not some other school; as long as she took the final exam and passed, she would get in.
2. There was no limit to the number of bathroom breaks one could take during the final exam.
3. Between the boy’s and girl’s bathrooms, I had already dug a tunnel.
Even with such careful planning, Line was still deathly afraid. One week before the final exam, she told me that she had scared her period back in. One day before the exam, she woke me up with a revolutionary battle hymn. As it turned out, out of revolutionary necessity, all high schools closed and all exams were canceled.
I would never have guessed that Line would later not only go to college but go on to get a master’s degree. Whenever a foreign professor came to lecture at our school, she was always the interpreter. At first, the foreigners thought she was just a pretty face, but once they began to talk to her, they realized that she was an expert on everything from set theory, recursion theory, to cybernetics, relativism, and the old three systems theories and the new three systems theories. Not only was she an expert, but she was published (co-authored with Mr. Li). The foreigners would shake their heads and lament: in our country, there are women as well learned as Mrs. Li too, but they don’t look much like women.
Our neighbors say: what’s so strange about that? She’s Mrs. Blood-swollen Turtlehead after all. They talk as if Mr. Li’s sperm had some sort of intellectual nutrients that fertilized Line’s budding intellect; such talk is clearly nonsense. Her conversation with Little Bicycle Bell three days ago provides ample evidence. This conversation took place in my living room:
Line: Bell, do you guys have any more of the things?
Bell: What thing?
Line: What thing, the thing the husband does the wife with, the rubber condom (in English)! Oh my mother, I’m getting aphasia! (A mental ailment afflicting only those with amazing English skills, not just anyone can get it.—Wang Er’s note)
Bell: (embarrassed) I have some, but only in extra large.
Line: That’s perfect. Our Blood-swollen Turtlehead’s is huge! Definitely no smaller than your guy’s.
Bell: His isn’t ‘my guy.’ He’s a jerk to me!
Line: You need to control him a little, use a smaller size. Do that a few times and he’ll behave.
From the above conversation, we can see that they were using condoms, and therefore, not transferring intellectual fluids. The point I want to make is that Line was an early bloomer sexually but a late bloomer intellectually. Line post-marriage to Blood-swollen Turtlehead was a completely different person from the premarital Line.
After having gotten rid of Mr. Li that time when he had come straight from the mine, Line had had her work cut out. First, she had to change the dirty sheet on her bed, then she had to wash the cup that Mr. Li drank from, and hide the towel and toothbrush that he used, because there was soot on them. Then, from some hidden place, she took out a big white towel. She took off all her clothes and stood in front of the mirror. Before the mirror stood a fair and lithe young maiden (in regard to this concept, Line and I have a disagreement. I said she was twenty-one years old at the time, no longer a young maiden; but she said, at the time she one hundred percent looked like a young maiden. She was willing to stake her life on it, so that’s what I wrote—Wang Er’s note). Said maiden had watery eyes, ivory skin, and long straight legs. Her thin waist would have made even Marilyn Monroe jealous. Below her abdomen was a small patch of pubic hair. Glistening black, it covered only a small area. It made Line proud. She said it was very important, without it, she wouldn’t look as good, but had it been too big and bushy, that wouldn’t have been pleasing either. When she later went overseas with Mr. Li, they rented a bunch of video cassettes. After some comparison, she saw that even the most famous porn stars didn’t stand up to her in this arena. There was only one Krystal who, in a film made when she was nineteen, once possessed such a beautiful lower abdomen (I have not seen the film and cannot vouch for her—Wang Er’s note).
Line added, this beautiful body was exquisitely juxtaposed against streaks of black. This beautiful maiden stood with blackened lips and fine black streaks across her breasts and lower abdomen. At a glance it might have looked dirty but upon a closer look, it revealed astonishing beauty; where did such beauty come from? It was the soot that covered Blood-swollen Turtlehead’s body. Line dipped the towel in cool water and wiped away the streaks of soot one by one. She then washed her face, brushed her teeth, put on her clothes and walked out to dump the bucket of dirty water. The hallway was pitch-black. Line wasn’t as brave as Wang Er. When she heard a rumbling sound, she was quaking in fear.
Line said, the hallway didn’t have any lights, but there wasn’t anywhere for a person to hide. The sound horrified her. She put down the bucket and crept back inside to get a big flashlight. The thing not only provided light but also protection. She held it as she moved toward the source of the sound. She noticed that under the staircase, there was a tiny nook. It was just large enough for Mr. Li to sleep curled up in a fetal position. His worker’s entitlement coat was left out in the hall because there was no more space for it. The scene made Line furious, she wanted to say: Blood-swollen Turtlehead: didn’t I tell you to go sleep at the truck stop? She wanted to wake Mr. Li up and give him an ass-kicking, followed by a get the hell out of here, and a never come back. Had she done that, she would have taught him a good lesson, and I may still have had a chance with her today.
But Line didn’t do that. She made a different decision, which is why the head of household line on her Household Registration form is now Mr. Li’s name; and on Line’s own line, it says wife of something something Li. How corny! After she made that decision, she just totally went downhill.
In the years as water flow, Line made the decision to be Blood-swollen Turtlehead’s wife and never looked back. I will never understand such a decision. But as long as Mr. Li isn’t dead, nothing will change. Time, like the moon, flows in cycles, and everything eventually passes; but still, there are moments, and once they have passed, they have passed forever.