Ran Chen - A Private Life

I like to go for a stroll when it is snowing. You cannot see the sky or the horizon, and your mind can freely wander along any path it chooses. The pristine white snow squeaks under your feet like fluttering sparrows. The sound makes you feel as if you are walking among the living, and when you look back at your footprints, you know that you are alive. When you feel this way, you are in touch with the spirit of all things. The heavy despair that I'd felt before leaving home was dispelled by the grandeur of heaven and earth, and the griefs and worries in my life seemed small and insignificant.

After walking in the snow for a while, I was able to push my parents' discussion of divorce that morning out of my mind for the time being, and I also managed to suppress my grief.

When I got to the main gate, I saw that our school grounds were deserted, a layer of milk-white snow covering the courtyard, the paths, and the walkways. Because it was overcast, the lights were on in all the offices. I entered Mr. Ti's office to find him smiling at me. It seemed as if he had been purposely keeping an eye out for me, waiting for my arrival.

And indeed, as I entered the office, he said, "I've been watching you through the window – every step of the way. You look like you stepped out of a fairy tale, you're so beautiful." As he spoke, he lifted his tall frame from his chair to greet me, as if I were a formal guest, not just one of his students.

His deep-set eyes revealed an uneasy urgency, as if he were suppressing all the things he had been longing to say over the entire winter holiday, and these things, clamoring for expression, were creating a tremendous pressure in his breast.

Just then, a number of my classmates arrived, including Yi Qiu, who came panting in, swinging her one bad leg.

Like everyone else, I handed in my exercise book, registered, and had my student card stamped.

When we were done and I was just about to leave with Yi Qiu, Mr. Ti suddenly said, "Ni Niuniu, don't go yet. There's still something I want to see you about."

Feeling uneasy, I asked, "What?"

He hesitated a moment, then said, "Why don't you go and sweep up the snow in front of our classroom first, then we can talk."

As he spoke, he was collecting the exercise books from the students who had come late.

I thought it was unfair that I had to stay and sweep snow while all the other students could go home, but I nonetheless obeyed his order, taking Yi Qiu along with me.

I let her wait on the classroom steps under the eaves while I started sweeping.

As I was sweeping, I looked up at the flurries of snow still drifting softly down. Without letup, the soft, fluffy down was busily covering everything. In no time at all my hair and shoulders were covered with a layer of white.

When I straightened up and turned to look back at the area I had just swept, the black pavement had already been covered with a fresh layer of white. I stood there hopelessly for a moment, then went back and started all over again.

I would sweep a bit, then look back, only to see that the place I had just swept had again been covered in snow.

I swept and I swept until I was overcome with hopeless exhaustion, feeling that I had been condemned to nothing more or less than an endless test or an unending labor detail. The test or the work would go on forever, all part of a plot or trap devised by Mr. Ti. I suddenly thought of all his rudeness, cunning, oppression, and unfairness. Not only did he hold back on my grades and criticize my morals, he also controlled my speech, my thinking, and even my feelings. All this was grossly unfair! How could I put up with this sort of humiliation? Why did I always submit to him, let him push me around as if I were a stupid melonhead?

At that moment I suddenly saw my endless sweeping of the snow as a symbol of my future life, my fate.

And only then did the despair and emptiness that I felt in the morning when I overheard that discussion of divorce come back to crush me.

At that time, naturally, I had not yet read the myth of Sisyphus. It was only after I entered university that I came to know this old western legend of how the gods punished Sisyphus by making him roll a huge stone to the top of a mountain, then letting it roll down again, only to have him push it back up again. He was forced to do this over and over, without cease. Exhausting himself at this futile and hopeless task was his life. But Sisyphus found a significance in this lonely, absurd, and hopeless existence. He discovered that something deeply moving and wonderful emerged from his struggle with the stone. In pitting his strength against it, he created a new energy with all the beauty of the dance. He was so intoxicated with this new joy that his old misery fell away forever. When the huge stone ceased to be a weight on his heart, the gods no longer rolled it back down the mountain.

Mankind possesses intelligence.

This kind of intelligent attitude toward fate was something I would only later come to understand.

Standing in the snow outside the classroom, I was completely swallowed up by the endless disaster that I had created with my excessive imagination.

Suddenly, I started to cry.

Yi Qiu looked up from where she was sitting under the eaves, watching me curiously.

I cried and cried as all my old resentments and my present hatred poured out.

It was already noon when, harboring in my breast all the hatred that I felt toward the men that Ti and my father stood for, I left Yi Qiu and burst into Ti's office to confront him.

Puzzled and concerned when he saw that I had been crying, he asked, "Ni Niuniu, what's wrong?"

As he spoke, he brushed the snow from my hair, my chest, and my back, with a blurred, dreamy look in his eyes.

Without uttering a sound, I glared at him, my eyes like sharp fangs that could slash his hypocritical face to ribbons.

Seemingly oblivious to the daggers flashing in my eyes, he continued to brush my shoulders as he asked me with great concern, "Whatever has happened?"

I jerked his huge hand free from my shoulder and shouted at him, "I've come to tell you something!"

"What is it?" he asked uncertainly.

I fixed my gaze angrily on his face, "I came here to tell you… those are your private parts! There! There!"

I "returned the compliment," jabbing him where he had earlier touched me. And I did this with all my strength!

He looked astonished and perplexed.

Only after I had gotten control of my inner tension and excitement did I realize that I was still standing in front of Mr. Ti and that I hadn't moved a hair. My hands were still rigidly by my sides. I hadn't even raised them, let alone touched him. They hung there as stiff and lifeless as stones.

The scene I described above had taken place only in my imagination.

I realized then that there were two opposing people in my head trying to control me at the same time, leaving me in a state of confusion. I stood woodenly in front of him, unable to do a thing.

When I realized that I had not hurt him, I was filled with grief and indignation. I despised myself. I was totally ineffectual, incapable of striking back.

I spun around and ran out of the office.

When I left the school, I didn't go straight home. I wandered the streets aimlessly, oblivious of the crowds passing by and the shop windows with all their expensive goods, completely caught up in my own spiritless, confused thoughts.

I wandered the streets the entire afternoon, until the soft streetlights came on, pushing the evening shadows behind the rooftops along the streets. The glittering neon lights of the great buildings and the entertainment spots splashed the scene with iridescent color.

I have always treated the streets and alleyways as a kind of second home. When you feel lost, with no place to go, they are your hotel. When the people close to you are far away and you feel lonely and helpless, they are your friends. Even when the weather was icy cold, my love for them did not diminish. And as I wandered the streets, I conversed with the voices in my heart.