WHEN I LATER SAW CHEN QINGYANG again and we had booked the hotel room, we went into the room together and I reached out to help with her coat. She said, Wang Er has become a gentleman. It showed that I had changed a lot. In the past, not only had I looked mean, I had also acted it.
At the hotel, Chen Qingyang and I were partners in crime once more. The room was warm with tea-tinted windows. I sat on the sofa. She sat on the bed. We chatted a bit as we eased into a cheekier mood. I said, weren’t you going to show me how saggy? Let me see. She stood up and took off her coat, revealing a floral shirt underneath. She sat down and said, not yet, an attendant will come to deliver hot water in a minute. They have keys and come in without knocking. I asked, what happens if they walk in on something? She said, she hadn’t experienced it herself but apparently they slam the door and mutter: fucking assholes!
Once, before Chen Qingyang and had I escaped to the mountain, I was blanching pig feed at the farm. I had to stoke the fire, chop up all the pig veggies (such as sweet potato vines, water hyacinth, etc.), and add bran and water to the pot. As I juggled the various tasks, the army cadre stood next to me and carped on and on about all the things that were wrong with me. He told me to tell my little whore Chen Qingyang that she was no good either. I exploded with anger. With the long metal ladle in my hand, I smashed a gourd that was hanging from a wooden beam in which we used to save pumpkin seeds. The gourd cracked in half. The army cadre ran for his life. Had he barked one more insult, I would have chopped his head off. I had remained so silent that now I just had to be mean.
Later, at the people’s police station, I didn’t talk much either, even when they were tying me up. That was why my hands were always getting bruised. Chen Qingyang talked a lot. She said, auntie, you’re hurting me; or, auntie, can you pad my wrists with my handkerchief, I have a handkerchief tied to my hair. She always tried to cooperate and as a result, suffered less. We were different in so many ways.
Chen Qingyang said I wasn’t enough of a gentleman back then. When they untied us at the people’s police station, the rope left streaks of dirt on her shirt. This was because when the rope wasn’t used to tie us up, it sat in the kitchen shed collecting ash and grease. With stiff fingers, she patted away the ash on her front side but couldn’t reach her back. By the time she looked up to ask me for help, I was already gone. She tried to follow, but I was already far off in the distance. I walked quickly and never looked back. Moments like those reminded her of how much she didn’t love or even like me.
According to the leadership, nothing we did in the mountain, except the koala thing, was considered a crime. The nap in the field episode, for example, was no more than a digression. I didn’t write any more about it, but there was more to tell. The air was hot, Chen Qingyang was sound asleep with her hands under her head like a pillow. I pulled her shirt all the way open so that it looked like she was sunbathing topless. The sky was so blue and so bright that even the shadows had a blue tint. Suddenly, I felt an urge. I leaned in over her pinkish body. I can hardly remember what I did at the time. When I mentioned it, I assumed Chen Qingyang had no memory of it either but she said, “I totally remember! I was awake by then. Didn’t you kiss me on my belly button? How dangerous, I almost fell in love with you.”
Chen Qingyang said, when she woke up, she saw my messy hair hovering over her stomach, followed by a light touch on her skin. She wasn’t trying to be coy, but she pretended to be asleep to see what I would do next. I didn’t do anything. I looked around and walked away.
I WROTE IN my confessions, that at night we left the back mountain toward the scene of the crime. With a back-basket full of knickknacks, we were planning to settle down in the mountains farther south. The land was fertile there. Even the roadside weeds were as tall as a person, unlike the land behind Team 15 where the weeds only grew six inches tall. The moon was bright that night as we walked swiftly over a stretch of paved road. By the time the morning fog materialized, we had already walked twenty kilometers, well on our way to the southern range. To be precise, we were in the meadows south of the Zhangfeng Outpost, beyond which was the rainforest. We settled under a big ficus tree and gathered some manure to start a fire. We laid a plastic tarp down next to the fire and piled our soggy clothes near it. We huddled into a ball under three layers of blankets and quickly fell asleep. We woke up an hour later from the cold. All three blankets were soaked and the manure fire had gone out. Condensation on the tree leaves poured down like rain with droplets the size of mung beans. It was January, the coldest time of the dry season. The shady side of mountains is always this humid.
Chen Qingyang said, when she woke, she could hear a rattling by her ear. My teeth were rattling like crazy. Even worse, I had a fever. Whenever I got sick, it was hard to recover without getting an injection. She stood up and said, this won’t do, at this rate, we’ll both get sick. Hurry, let’s do the thing. I refused and said: just wait it out. The sun will be up soon. Later, I added: can’t you see what shape I’m in? This was how we were before our crime.
The crime scene went like this: Chen Qingyang rode on top of me, bouncing up and down against a backdrop of foggy white nothingness. It wasn’t cold anymore. We were surrounded by the sound of cowbells. The local Dai people let their water buffaloes graze freely. At sunrise, they came trotting out on their own. The buffaloes wore wooden cowbells that thudded as they moved. An enormous creature suddenly appeared next to us. Dewdrops hung on the steely hairs by its ears. The white water buffalo tilted its head and watched us through one eye.
White water buffalo horns can be used to make beautiful knife handles. But they are brittle, easy to crack. I had a knife with a buffalo horn handle that fortunately had no cracks. The blade was made of high-quality material as well, but the people’s police had confiscated it. After our troubles ended, I tried to get it back but they said it was gone. And my hunting rifle, they wouldn’t give that back either. Old Guo from the people’s police had begged to buy the gun from me, but he was only willing to pay fifty yuan. In the end, I didn’t get the knife or the gun back.
CHEN QINGYANG AND I talked for a long time before committing our crime at the hotel. Eventually, she took off her shirt, leaving on only her skirt and her boots. I sat down next to her and ran my fingers through her hair. There was quite a bit of white.
Chen Qingyang had gotten a perm. She said that when she was young her hair used to be so fine that she hadn’t wanted to damage it. Now it didn’t matter. She had become the vice president of her hospital. She was too busy to wash her hair every day. Better yet, the perm hid the wrinkles around her eyes and neck. She said, my daughter recommended plastic surgery. But she didn’t have the time for it.
Then she said I could look, and she began to take off her bra. I tried to help but I wasn’t of any use. I reached for her back while the clasp was in the front. She said, it seemed like I had been a good boy so she turned around. I examined her closely and offered some feedback. For some reason, she blushed and said, all right, you’ve seen it, what more do you want? She put her bra back on. I said, hold your horses. She said, what, did I still want to study her anatomy? I said, of course, in time, but let’s talk first. Her face turned red in anger. She said: Wang Er, you will never learn, you will always be an asshole.
All those years ago when I was at the people’s police station, Luo Xiaosi came to visit me. He climbed up to a window and saw me bound up like a zongzi.1 He thought I was in big trouble, like bullet-to-the-head kind of big. He offered a pack of cigarettes through the window and said: bro, a little something from the guys, and proceeded to sob. Luo Xiaosi was full of emotions, he cried easily. I told him to light one and bring it in through the window. He nearly dislocated his shoulder trying to place the cigarette in my mouth. He asked if I had any unfinished business that needed to be taken care of. I said I didn’t. I told him not to bring a big group of people here and he nodded. After he left, a bunch of kids climbed up to the window to peek at us. They saw me dangling a cigarette in my mouth, blinking one eye after the other trying to avoid the smoke. I must have looked like a freak. Their leader blurted out: hooligan! I said, your mom and dad are hooligans, how else did they end up with you!? The kids started to throw mud at me. After we were untied, I tracked down the kid’s father and said: today I was tied up like a hog at the people’s police station. Your precious offspring took the opportunity to fling mud at me. The man instantly grabbed his son and beat him. I watched until he was finished before leaving. When Chen Qingyang heard the story, her only comment was: Wang Er, what an asshole you are.
I wasn’t entirely incorrigible in the end. Later in my life I went on to have a home and a family, and I learned to be good. After finishing a cigarette, I pulled her toward me and caressed her breasts in that familiar way we had. When I moved on to her skirt, she said: in time, let’s talk some more, give me a drag. I lit a new cigarette and puffed on it before handing it to her.
Chen Qingyang said, when she was bouncing up and down on me on Mount Zhangfeng, she scoured the wilderness around her only to see the gloomy gray mist. All of a sudden, she had felt incredibly alone. Even though a part of my body was inside her, she had still felt alone, and extremely lonely. As I was finally getting warmed up, I said: let’s switch, check out my moves, before flipping over on top of her. She said, that time, you really were the biggest asshole.
When Chen Qingyang said that I had been at the apogee of being an asshole, she was referring to the fact that I had noticed how pretty her feet were. That was why I said, my friend Chen, I think I’m going to have a foot fetish. I lifted up her legs and kissed the bottoms of her feet. Chen Qingyang lay on her back with her arms outspread grasping for grass. She tossed her head. Her hair covered her face. Hidden under it, she moaned.
I wrote in my confession: I put her legs down and cleared the hair from her face. Chen Qingyang wanted to hit me. With tears in her eyes and bright red cheeks, she restrained herself. She relaxed a little and said, asshole, what are you trying to do to me. I said, what. She smiled and said, nothing, keep going. Once again, I lifted her legs. She lay there silent and motionless, arms outspread, biting her lower lip. Whenever I looked at her, she would smile. I can remember how pale her face was and how black her hair was. That was us.
Chen Qingyang said, as she lay there in the freezing rain, she had felt as if icy droplets were seeping into her every pore. She felt a sadness well up from deep inside, an unending sadness that was suddenly interrupted by a surge of bliss. The cold mist and rain soaked her body. She had felt like dying. She couldn’t hold it in anymore, she needed to scream. But she had looked at me and swallowed her scream. There wasn’t a man in this world who could have made her scream in front of him. She kept that distance with everyone.
Chen Qingyang later told me, every time we made love, she felt torn. Deep down, she wanted to scream and hold me and kiss me but she wasn’t letting herself. She didn’t want to love anybody, no one; even so, when I kissed the sole of her foot, a spicy sting had managed to seep into her heart.
When Chen Qingyang and I made love on Mount Zhangfeng, an old water buffalo stood near us. When it mooed and ran off, we were alone. A long time passed before the sky slowly began to glow. The fog dissipated, leaving Chen Qingyang’s body covered in glimmering dewdrops. I loosened my arms around her and stood up. I could see that the outpost wasn’t very far so I said, let’s go. That’s when we left that place and never returned.
1 Zongzi is a rice cake wrapped in banana leaves.