Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

When I started thinking about girls again, I found I had lost my original innocence, for the color plate had reoriented me toward practical physiology. I started to have all kinds of fantasies. Though I had a dreadful feeling that I was rapidly becoming decadent, raw desire made my resistance crumble. As I grew older the way I looked at girls changed drastically, for I began to pay attentionto their buttocks and breasts, no longer susceptible only to winsome eyes or a cute expression.

The autumn when I was sixteen, the film projection team from town visited Southgate for the first time in six months. In those days it was a big event for country folk to watch a movie in the evening and people from adjacent villages came hurrying over before dark, clutching stools in their hands. For years now the production team leader had been accustomed to planting his seat firmly in the center of the drying ground. I will never forget how he used to make his entrance. Just as night fell he would appear, brandishing the kind of long bamboo pole normally used for hanging out laundry, and swagger across the drying ground. After he sat down, he would lean the pole against his shoulder and if anyone in front of him obstructed his line of vision he would hold out the pole and give that person a tap on the head, to preserve his unimpeded view.

Children generally sat on the other side of the screen and watched the characters fire guns or write letters with their left hands. When I was little, my place had been in this juvenile section, but I ruled out such a viewing position now that I was sixteen. On this occasion the person immediately in front of me was a young woman from a nearby village, whose name I never knew.

It was so packed that I had to squeeze in behind her and peer over her head to see the screen. At the beginning I was quite relaxed, but the smell of her hair kept wafting over me, making me more and more unsettled. As people behind us pressed forward, my hand brushed against her buttocks; this brief contact electrified me. Temptation, when it comes one's way, is hard to resist: suppressing my inhibitions, I gave her a second little pat. When she did not react, this strengthened my nerve and I pressed my palm against her buttocks, ready to take to my heels should she begin to stir. But she stood as stiff and still as if she were carved out of wood. My hand could feel her warmth, and the part of her that I was touching seemed to get hotter and hotter. When I gently adjusted my position, she still made no response. I turned my head to look around and saw that the man behind me was a good bit taller than me. Emboldened, I pinched the young woman on the bottom, making her giggle. This sound was particularly noticeable, as it was emitted during the film's most tedious sequence, and it instantly deflated my courage. I squeezed my way out of the crowd, trying to assume a pose of nonchalance. But panic took over before I had gone very far and I bolted for home, where my heart continued to thump even after I had thrown myself down on my bed. Whenever steps approached our house I trembled all over, convinced that she must be coming with a backup to apprehend her molester. After the movie was over, the random patter of feet made me more agitated still, and long after my parents and my older brother had gone to bed I worried that the young woman might yet track me down. Only sleep rescued me in the end.

I could find no outlet for my desires, and Su Yu was in the same boat. The difference was that Su Yu's sexual frustrations at least distracted him from the anxieties that beset him during his stay at Southgate. Now, when I look back, the happy childhood that I associated with Su Yu from my pond-side observation point was actually just as unreliable as the breezes that blew across the water. I was vaguely aware at the time of his father's entanglement with the widow, but I had no idea of the full extent to which Su Yu was affected. In fact, just as my family's antipathy to me was growing daily more obvious, Su Yu had begun to suffer insecurities of his own following that act of his father's.

When the Sus moved to Southgate the widow was still in full flower, and she made no effort to conceal her interest in Dr. Su. For it was at this stage, before her vigorous appetite began to wane, that she developed a tendency one associates more with men — a taste for novelty. The guests she had received previously were all peasants with mud on their legs, and the appearance on the scene of Dr. Su struck her as a refreshing change. With his glasses and the whiff of ethyl alcohol that clung to him, this man of culture was an utter revelation, making her realize that however many visitors had honored her carved bed with their presence, they had all been patterned from a single mold. The doctor's arrival in the village excited her no end, and she would say to everyone she met, “These intellectuals are so adorable!”

To be fair, one has to point out that during those days she was so infatuated with the doctor she must have observed at least two weeks of celibacy, no longer accepting every volunteer who came along. She knew that doctors are particular about hygiene and didn't want to make things difficult. Her faked illness provided the occasion for seducing him. As he walked to her house to perform the examination, he had no idea that he was headed for a trap, and even when he stood by her bed and she looked doe-eyed up at him he failed to note the warning signs. In his usual even tone he inquired about the nature of her malady, and was told she had a bellyache. He asked her to pull back a corner of the quilt so that he could take a look at the problem area. Instead she kicked the quilt to one side, offering herself for his inspection in her birthday suit. This unexpected move took him completely by surprise. He found himself gazing at a female body in impressive physical condition. His wife's figure was not at all in the same league.

“You didn't…,” he stammered, “you didn't need to take it all off.”

“Come to me,” she said in an imperious tone.

The doctor could have taken to his heels, but instead he slowly backed away and shuffled toward the door. It was hard to say no to the widow's lusty body.

She jumped to her feet, and between her strength and his lack of resistance she found it an easy matter to maneuver him onto her bed. During the act that followed she heard him muttering again and again, “I am letting my wife down. I am letting the boys down.”

The doctor's incessant self-reproaches did not hinder his participation in their activity, and everything took its normal course. Afterward the widow told people, “You have no idea how bashful he is. What a sweet man!”

Nothing else happened between them, but for a long time afterward the villagers often saw the widow made up like some girl from Xinjiang, her hair twisted into little braids, pacing back and forth near the doctor's house playing the coquette. The doctor's wife would sometimes come out and look at her, then go back inside, without any words being exchanged. A few times she managed to intercept the doctor as he came down the road, and the villagers would see the doctor flee in embarrassment before her doting smile.

One evening in my second year at junior high, Su Yu pensively related to me the events of one other evening. His father's brief lapse had not created such a big stir as to seriously disrupt family life, but something untoward did ensue. One day their parents came home unusually late. Their mother was the first to return, well after dark, but when he and his brother went to greet her she ignored them. Instead she rummaged around in a trunk for some clothes, put them in a bag, and went off carrying the bag. Their father returned soon afterward. He asked them if their mother had come home at all. Told that she had, he went out again. They waited till midnight on empty stomachs, but with no sign of their parents’ return had no choice but to go to bed. When they woke up the next morning, their parents were in the kitchen preparing breakfast, just like any other day.