Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

Because of Su Yu, a bond was formed between Su Hang and me, if only fleetingly Su Hang sported a little switchblade, and he and I would roam the school with ferocious looks on our faces. He vowed to me: The next person who dares to say anything bad about Su Yu is going to have a taste of this.

As time went on maybe attitudes changed. At any rate, nobody seemed to think about Su Yu for very long and we were never provoked again, so we had no further opportunity to develop our friendship. Just when we viewed the world with unrelieved hostility, the world suddenly grew more civil. Hatred united Su Hang and me, and as hatred dissipated our friendship withered on the vine.

Not long after this, Cao Li's affair with the music teacher became public knowledge. Cao Li's weakness for mature men had led her straight into his arms. When I first heard the news, I was dumbfounded. Although my own sense of inferiority had forced me to accept that I could never be the right match for Cao Li, she was, after all, a girl whom I had fancied and of whom I was still fond.

Urged to make a clean breast of it, Cao Li wrote a long confession. The math teacher was among the first to read it, and when he ran into the Chinese teacher on the staircase, he handed it on to him with a leer. The Chinese teacher, who was having a smoke, seemed unwilling to endure even a moment's delay, for he took the document out of its envelope and started reading right there on the stairs. His eyes bulged, and he forgot all about the cigarette in his hand; when it burned down to his fingers he simply gave a shiver and dropped it on the floor. But when Su Hang quietly slipped behind him, he somehow sensed his intrusion and emitted a series of disapproving grunts and snorts designed to drive the boy away.

Su Hang had managed to read only a single sentence, but it was enough to keep him in ecstasies the whole afternoon. He glibly reported the fruits of his spying to every single person he met, including me.

“I couldn't sit down afterward.'” He went on exultantly to explain. “That's what Cao Li wrote. Do you know what that means? Cao Li has had that thing of hers well and truly unsealed.”

For a full two days, “I couldn't sit down afterward” was constantly on the lips of the boys in school, and the girls greeted this incantation with hearty laughter. At the same time, in the staff room, the chemistry teacher — a woman — voiced strenuous disapproval of Cao Li's graphic confession. Shaking the hefty manuscript till it rustled and flapped, she cried indignantly, “Isn't this just going to give people ideas?”

Her male colleagues, who by now all knew stem to stern the details of Cao Li's trysts with the music teacher, sat very properly in their chairs, gazed poker-faced at the chemistry teacher, and said nothing.

At the end of the school day, Cao Li had finished answering the teachers’ questions, and she looked calm and composed as she went out the school gate. I noticed that she was wearing a black scarf around her neck that fluttered in the breeze along with her hair. Her face, slightly upturned, took on a rosy, diaphanous quality in the cold air.

A mob of schoolboys led by Su Hang had gathered at the gate to await her appearance, and as she approached they shouted in unison, “I couldn't sit down afterward!”

I was standing not too far away. I watched as she was swallowed up by their laughter, and then I observed the sharp edge of her personality. She came to a halt among them and turned her head ever so slightly as she said with loathing, “A bunch of hooligans, that's what you are!”

My classmates were reduced to a shocked silence, never having expected that Cao Li would have the spirit to fire back. She was quite far off in the distance before Su Hang finally pulled himself together, directing a string of insults at her receding back: “Fuck! You're the hooligan. A hooligan and a harpy too.”

Then I saw Su Hang turn to his pals, amazement all over his face. “And she says that we are hooligans!”

The music teacher went to prison, and when he regained his freedom five years later was banished to a school out in the countryside. Cao Li, like the other girls, went on to marry and have a child. But the music teacher has remained single. He lives in a tumbledown cottage and walks a muddy path to teach the local youngsters how to sing and dance.

I went home a few years ago and caught a glimpse of him when my bus pulled over at a little village stop. The elegant music teacher of yesteryear had aged, and his gray hair blew about every which way in the cold wind. He wore an old black padded overcoat streaked with mud, and as he stood next to a crowd of country folk only his scarf gave a hint of the poise he once possessed and made him look different from the other people. He was standing outside a steaming-hot shop that sold stuffed buns, waiting politely in line. Actually, he was the only one standing in line, for everyone else was trying to push their way to the front as he stood stiffly in his place. I could hear him saying in his mellow voice, “Stand in line, please.”

After Su Yu came back from reeducation, I was not able to see him as much. Zheng Liang had already graduated by that time and the two of them were often together. I could see Su Yu only if I went into town in the evening. As before, we did not say much when we were together, but I felt that Su Yu had gradually become more distant toward me. He still had that rather shy manner of speaking, but he was no longer so discreet in his choice of conversational topics. He told me quite bluntly what his sensation was when he put his arms around the young woman. A shadow of disappointment passed across his face as he told me that in that instant he realized that a real female body was quite different from what he had imagined. He said, “It felt pretty much the same as when I put my arm on Zheng Liang's shoulder.”

As he said this, Su Yu gave me a piercing look and I turned away in shame. I was stung by his remark, which sparked in me a jealousy toward Zheng Liang.

Later I realized that I was really at fault. When Su Yu came back from the camp, I never once asked him about his experience there, fearful that this would upset him. But it was precisely my caution that aroused his distrust. More than once he guided the conversation in that direction, but I would hastily change the subject. One evening when we had been walking along the riverbank for some time, Su Yu suddenly came to a halt and asked me, “Why do you never ask me about my time in the camp?”

In the moonlight Su Yu looked stern, and with him staring at me so intensely I was too taken aback to respond immediately.Then he smiled desolately and said, “As soon as I got back, Zheng Liang asked me about it, but you never have.”

“It didn't occur to me to ask,” I said awkwardly.

“In your heart you look down on me,” Su Yu said in a sharp tone of voice.

Although I denied this, Su Yu turned around resolutely, saying, “Good-bye.”

As Su Yu walked away along the bank, his back stooped, I was grief stricken at the thought that he was terminating our friendship. To me this was unbearable. I rushed to catch up and shared with him the story of how I pinched the girl at the film show. “I always meant to tell you about it,” I said, “but I didn't dare.”

Su Yu's hand rested on my shoulder as I so much hoped it would, and I heard him say gently, “In the camp, I was always so worried that I had lost your respect.”

Later we sat on the stone steps leading down to the river, and the water lapped around our feet. We sat there in silence for a long time before Su Yu said, “There's something I want to tell you.”

I glanced at him in the moonlight. He paused, and looked up at the sky. I too tilted my head back and gazed at the starry night. The moon was gliding toward a cloud, and we watched quietly as it drifted across the void. The moon drew nearer to the cloud, illuminating its dark borders, and disappeared inside. Su Yu went on, “You remember what I told you a few days ago — the feeling I had when I put my arms around that woman?”