Su Tong - Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories

The smile on Cui’s face appeared even more mysterious; and his eyes were luminous in the night. After a spell of silence, Cui said in an exceptionally tender voice, ‘No. I’d stab anyone who told me to first.’

The darkness of night obstructed Miaoyue’s face, which suddenly flushed. She had lost the courage to look straight at Cui. ‘You don’t have to go on,’ she said, almost faltering. ‘I get it now.’

Whenever Miaoyue found herself in a bewildering situation, she would slowly count her fingers. But on that night, when Cui’s eyes were so bright, Miaoyue couldn’t even see her own fingers; all she could see was his hand, a large hand which stretched leisurely out to her, and gathered up all her fingers. Miaoyue did not resist him, and the only thing that made her uncomfortable was that it all happened too fast.

Miaoyue let him hold her fingers. She could not speak.

‘We get to Wuhan tomorrow,’ Cui said. ‘There’s no Goddess Peak in Wuhan, but there is a Crane Tower. It’s not as exciting as Beijing or Shanghai, but it can be a pretty fun city. Why don’t you come along for the ride?’

Miaoyue could not speak and gazed fixedly at Cui’s hand. After rather a long time, she said, ‘My aunt’s in Wuhan. She keeps writing for me to visit.’

When Miaoyue had finished this sentence, she saw the moon swaying in the sky. Then it seemed to go behind a thick cloud, for the deck seemed vaster and darker and all the banners on the mast were flapping in the breeze, making clear, splintering noises.

It was near evening of the second day that the boat reached Wuhan. Many passengers got off the boat there, taking a great deal of luggage with them, so the pier was unusually chaotic. It took quite some time for the boat and the docks to quieten down. The crew on the pier closed up the exit’s iron door, took down the plank that had been used as a gangway and the steamboat pilot pulled the departure whistle. Just at that point, we saw a strange young man running madly from the second-class cabins, his clothes dishevelled and looking like he’d just woken up with a hangover. We watched him bumping around in the corridor, and as he ran he shouted a girl’s name, ‘Miaoyue! Miaoyue! Where are you? Miaoyue! Miaoyue! Where have you got to?’

Anyone could see that the young man was mad with worry, which was only natural; if someone else’s girlfriend had disappeared, he too would have been driven to distraction. But the spectator is always more clearheaded than the person affected. Someone said, ‘If you were in the second-class cabins, why don’t you go and ask the steward there?’

The young man was in a dream-like state and asked, stupefied, ‘Where is the steward?’

A large group of people led him towards the steward. Luckily, he was extremely competent and thoroughly familiar with the particulars regarding every traveller in the second-class cabins. ‘You mean the girl who was dressed like a crow? She got off in Wuhan, didn’t she? She left with her boyfriend.’ At this point, he realized something and scrutinized Li Yong with questioning eyes. He said, ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you. There were three of you in the cabin, right? Two guys and a girl. Now, the girl, just whose girlfriend is she exactly?’

We all interrogated him with fervent eyes. His face was ghostly pale and he gave off a series of snorts, then he slowly squatted down and clutched his head in both hands. He turned first to the right, then to the left, and refused to answer any questions. His behaviour confused everybody. We vaguely remembered the young man travelling with him, dressed in a brand-name tie with a brand-name collar. Somebody had seen him with the girl on the deck the night before. Who would have thought that a simple matter could become so strange? And whose girlfriend was the girl called Miaoyue exactly?

After the boat left Wuhan, the trip towards the Three Gorges began. That was the destination of most remaining passengers. We all remember that Li Yong was in low spirits for the rest of the trip, but when the boat passed the famous Goddess Peak, an unusual, peculiar smile appeared on his face. He fixed his stare on Goddess Peak for some time and said, ‘Fuck, man. Is that thing Goddess Peak 10?’

The inspector looked at the suspect who had been brought in for the incident at the city wall. He was an adolescent of fourteen or fifteen, poking his head out and peering at them, with his hand clutching the door frame. He had been picked up at a swimming pool and brought to the station immediately, so his hair wasn’t yet entirely dry. Some tufts of it had congealed into two spikes that resembled a pair of scissors poking up from his forehead. His swimsuit, which was dripping water on the floor, consisted of two Young Pioneers’ red neckerchiefs knotted together. The inspector saw that his eyes were full of fear and that his long thin arms and both his legs were trembling. It looked like he knew he had caused a disaster.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Snot.’

‘I didn’t ask for your nickname. Don’t you even know your own name?’

‘Li Dasheng, but no one calls me that. They all call me Snot. Even my mum and dad call me Snot.’

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘Red Flag Middle School. But we’re on holiday, no one’s at school.’

‘I know you’re on holiday. Don’t get smart with me, just answer the questions, OK?’

‘Yeah, OK. I won’t get smart.’

‘Good. Then, scoot forward a little. Not on your ass — move the chair. Are you really that stupid? You little thugs, every last one stupid as a pig.’

‘Little thug,’ the teenager mumbled. ‘I’m not a little thug.’

‘If you’re not a thug, I don’t know who is. What are you, then? A model student, I suppose?’

‘No.’ The teenager squirmed in his seat, his eyes avoiding the mocking gaze of the inspector.

He looked at a water stain on the floor, cleared his throat and said quietly, ‘I almost made model student last year, but I thought they’d laugh at me, so then I did badly in my exams on purpose. Wang Lianju even had a talk with me because of it. That’s the truth, cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘Who’s Wang Lianju?’

‘The class teacher. But that’s just a nickname, too. You know, Wang Lianju, the traitor from The Red Lantern . All the teachers at our school have nicknames.’

‘All right, that’s enough of your wittering. Let me ask you this instead: were you the one who threw that stone from the city wall?’

The teenager stole a glance at the inspector, then hung his head and said nothing. With his finger, he traced some words on his knee.

‘So you’re not going to admit it now, huh? Just goes to show you little thugs are all cowards at heart. You have the guts to do this kind of crap, but you don’t have the guts to own up to it.’

‘I was just tossing it. I didn’t think it would hit anybody.’

‘And why did you toss it?’

‘I dunno. Cat Head and the others dared me to. They cheated, you know; they made me throw it and then they chickened out and didn’t throw any themselves.’

‘Are you totally brainless? They dared you to throw it so you threw it? Don’t you know you can crush someone if you throw a stone from that height?’

‘I didn’t think about anything like that. They were below the wall and I was thinking, We can see them, but they can’t see us. I didn’t think it could kill anyone. If I had thought it could kill someone, I wouldn’t have thrown it.’

‘Did you know either of them?’

‘The couple? No, I didn’t know them. But we saw them a whole bunch of times when we went to the wall to hang out. They always went there to meet up and hide in the bushes, and we just, we just—’