All these things, of course, I became aware of only many years later.
At that time, I felt that watching her smoke was a kind of pleasure. Several years before that, in my children's books, I had seen pictures of drug addicts smoking opium. Haggard in feature with sallow complexions, those men and women had been reduced to little more than skin and bone. A breath of wind would blow them away like dried leaves. Their open mouths revealed yellowed teeth, and their breath must have been foul. It made me think that muck rather than blood must have flowed through their veins.
But watching Ho smoke was a totally different kind of experience. The delicate scent, her graceful manner, reflected an aristocratic decadence. When she exhaled, the fragrant smoke, like the soft warmth of sunlight breaking through clouds, brushed delicately across my skin, curling upward, its bluish tint set off against the room's pale walls. Still today, that delicate, resinous fragrance remains fixed in the depths of my being.
Holding her pipe, she cuddled up next to me. Whispering some comforting words, she cushioned my head on her breast. Her bosom was soft and cool, and I felt very secure with my head there. With her free hand she began caressing my back, just as I used to pet our little Sophia Loren.
"Aren't you hot?" she asked.
"No," I said.
Then she pulled my short-sleeved shirt out of my trousers, and pushing her hand up inside, she fluttered it gently. My back tickled under the repeated touch of her delicate fingertips, and when I squirmed with laughter, she stopped this and softly caressed my back.
Finishing her pipe, she slid down from the headboard until she was lying beside me, my head still cushioned on her breast. Her eyelids trembled with drowsiness. After a while she began kissing my hair, then lifting my head with her hand, she began kissing my eyes and my cheeks.
Softly she murmured, "Niuniu, your eyes are beautiful, do you know?"
I said, "I didn't know."
She said, "You're going to be very beautiful when you grow up."
I said, "I'm not beautiful like you. Nobody likes me."
"How could anyone not like you? I like you very, very much," she said.
Her words rather amazed me. Aside from my mother, no one in the world had ever said anything like that to me so openly. My heart filled with joy and love.
I said, "Mr. Ti, my father, and many of my classmates don't like me. I know."
"But I like you," she said.
"And I like you, too," I replied.
Closing her eyes, Ho smiled a moment. "What do you like about me?"
"Oh… I like to look at you."
"What else?"
"Well, I like to be close to you."
Ho opened her eyes, and putting her arm around my neck, began to kiss me feelingly.
"Do you like me to kiss you?"
"Yes," I said.
Kissing me on the forehead, cheek, and neck, she slid her hand under my shirt again and began softly caressing my back. I understood why Sophia Loren had lain so quietly, with his eyes closed, when I petted him. It is wonderful to have someone caress you.
I pressed myself quietly against her, letting her do whatever she wanted, because I trusted her totally.
We stayed like that for a while, until I saw a tear roll from under a partly closed eyelid, cross her delicate cheek, and slowly re-form on her earlobe.
I said, "What's wrong?"
She didn't answer.
After a while she said, "Niuniu, would you like to kiss me?"
Not knowing what to say, I just stared at that glinting crystal teardrop as it grew, then fell to her jade pillow. It was quiet for a moment. Then I haltingly queried, "Well… I… kiss where?"
She pulled me to her breast as she began to cry.
I said, "Don't cry. I'll kiss you."
Then I started kissing her here and there on her chest. I said, "I think your chest is a lot like my mother's, not at all like mine."
"Niuniu, when you grow up yours will be the same."
Her breath heavy, she said, "Would you like to kiss them?"
I didn't say anything. I was a little bit afraid. Mr. Ti had gotten very angry over those drawings of private parts. Maybe it was wrong to look at them.
Ho had already opened her blouse and unfastened her brassiere. Her creamy white, translucent breasts tumbled out like a pair of peaches. Cool and as swollen as spring silkworms about to spin their cocoons, they looked like they would burst if you touched them.
"Kiss them, Niuniu."
I took her nipples into my mouth and began to suck them just as I had done when I took my mother's milk as a baby.
After a while, her breathing became agitated. I looked up and saw that her eyes were tightly closed and one of her hands was pressed tremblingly between her legs.
Frightened, I said, "Are you all right?"
Silent, she drew me down to her again.
We continued as before. Every now and then it seemed like she was about to say something, or she moaned in a peculiar way. I left only when Mother called me home for supper.
My memory of past events is like a sieve that retains only those things I want to remember – those old-fashioned, melancholy songs that seemed to float from afar through the dusky evenings of the rainy season, and dim images of Ho in the fading light of her room. These things are imprinted in my mind forever.
6 A Stranger To Myself…
Time is an artist. I am a stone rubbing: the lineaments of a range of peaks, of the caves of a grotto. Before I came into this world, the picture was already complete. As I slowly proceed along the watercourse of this segment of time, I discover my place in it. I see that the picture itself is a piece of history, a depiction of the life of all women.
Summertime, with its long, long days, is my favorite season. It is not like winter, with the skies darkening so early in the day and the wind wailing outside the windows, filling your mind with all kinds of frightening tales.
Though the summer heat was scorching, it was shady and pleasant in the house. But the main thing was that for the whole summer season I didn't have to wear anything but a cotton top and a short skirt. My arms (the Misses Don't) and my legs (the Misses Do) were bare, so I had lots of chances to talk with them.
I discovered that they grew very quickly in summer, especially over the long summer holidays. When I awakened from my long afternoon nap each day, I could see that my languid, lazy misses Do and Don't, which looked like the long, slithery cold noodles we often ate in summer, had again grown a bit. I didn't like being in the sun because it made me feel dizzy, so whenever I was out, I would try to keep in the shade. As a result, my misses Do and Don't were pale as coral, with a winding tracery of blue veins under their translucent skin that made me think of the rivers marked on the big map of China on the back of our door. Every day after my afternoon nap I would have a long conversation with my misses Don't and Do.
Mother said that when summer came I grew as fast as the nettles in our courtyard.
Thus, with the passage of several summers, I was almost as tall as my mother.
The Wanjiao Primary School I attended had become an integrated ten-year primary and middle school, called the Wanjiao Key School. Entering this middle school, I remained one of Mr. Ti's students.
After the incident with the nude pictures, Mr. Ti remained hostile toward me, finding fault with me and rebuking me at every turn. As I grew taller, Mr. Ti was getting shorter, in my eyes, but his arrogance toward me was becoming more and more pronounced.
I could see that a number of my female classmates who had formed a circle around Mr. Ti were completely infatuated with him. Their eyes glued to him, they sat straight as pencils through his language and literature classes. After class they crowded around him with invented questions. They even imitated the way he tossed his hair, and would use pieces of chalk to mimic the way he flicked his cigarette butts out the window. Because I knew he didn't like me, naturally I kept as far away from him as possible.