I went to the People’s Barbershop, where the walls on both sides of the entrance had been opened to install display windows. Three plastic mannequin heads were arrayed in the window to the left, each adorned with a woman’s wig, and each with a sign in front that stated the wave length: long, medium and short. That threw me. This wasn’t the Golden Sparrow River, and there was no wind, so why did women want waves in their hair? I stepped over to the other window, where illustrations torn out of magazines were displayed. The print quality was poor, but good enough to see city girls from somewhere or other trying to outdo each other with their bizarre new hair-styles. One of the illustrations was both clear and familiar. It was Huixian. She did not shy from showing herself to her best advantage, letting herself be seen with the others. She was turned sideways and looking off at an angle, her eyes bright, and she wore her hair coiled weirdly on top of her head, so that it looked to me like a stack of oil fritters.
I looked at her hair-do from every angle, and didn’t like what I saw, though I wouldn’t say it was ugly. I was reminded of something my father had said: when a sunflower turns away from the sun, it droops, bringing an end to its future. I knew that Huixian, my own sunflower, had turned away from the sun. By leaving the General Affairs Building, she was, I felt, closer to me. But that didn’t mean I’d been given a chance to get closer to her. She was now a barber, yet people continued to treat her as if she were the moon and the stars aligned around her. Local girls who wanted to look as pretty as possible were allowed to get close to her, Old Cui and Little Chen ate and worked alongside her every day, and drooling, audacious boys around town never missed a chance to draw up near her. I wasn’t that brazen, nor was I that audacious, and if I didn’t need a haircut, I couldn’t force myself to go inside.
My hair, which grew slowly, still wasn’t long enough, and that was a nuisance. So I sat in the doorway of a cotton-fluffing workshop across the street from the People’s Barbershop, laying my bag next to me so people would think I was taking a rest, open and above board. The people inside were hard at work on the cotton; the clamour of the wires fluffing cotton — peng, peng, peng — echoed my heartbeat. I couldn’t pace back and forth in front of the barbershop, since that would attract the attention of the people inside, and I definitely couldn’t press my face up against one of the windows to get a good look; only an idiot would do something like that. No, I had to sit across the street and watch the people come and go, creating pangs of jealousy, whether I knew them or not.
Xiaogai from the security group went in several times, with obvious evil intentions towards Huixian. He had a special talent for looking respectable when he walked through the door, even when he was harbouring those evil intentions. He walked out again, talking and laughing.
Among the boat people, Desheng’s wife was the shop’s most frequent client. Her appearance was especially important to her, and her husband doted on her. The other boat people, more money conscious, had their hair done by street vendors. But for Desheng’s wife money wasn’t as important as having the latest hair-style, and she and Huixian were closer than ever. She’d sit in her chair and chat away while she was having her hair done, looking around at the local girls’ fashionable hair-styles. With so much to see and do, it’d be a while before she left. On those days when she came by, I went inside the workshop to watch the cotton being fluffed, not knowing what I’d say if the woman, a notorious busybody, asked me why I spent my days sitting outside doing nothing.
At times my body felt hot all over as I sat there guarding my secret, and at other times I turned cold and stiff. The barbershop was open to the public, so why couldn’t I saunter in like everybody else? I had no answer. I was sitting there because of Huixian, gentler than anyone could imagine, but also gloomier. For eleven years I’d fallen under the constant scrutiny of my father, and the shore was the only place where I could escape his radar-like vision. These were the times when I tasted true freedom, and I put this precious time to good use, keeping a supervisory eye on Huixian — no, supervisory isn’t the right word. ‘Guarding’ is more like it, or, even better, ‘watching over’. Neither job, of course, was by rights mine, but for some strange reason it had become second nature.
Men were always entering and leaving the barbershop, and I could easily spot those who had something other than a haircut in mind. But was I any different? Maybe not. Probably not. I’d started going ashore wearing two pairs of underwear as a hedge against an ill-timed erection. That proves that I did have something in mind, and it was a worrisome thought. Wearing two pairs of underwear was proof of my sinful nature, and timidity and restlessness were a by-product of impure thoughts. Sometimes I got a fortuitous glance through the display window of Huixian standing behind her barber’s chair. More frequently, all I saw was her white moving image. Near her, I yet remained far away, and that was an ideal distance to lure me into dreaming up scenarios which frightened me yet brought me great pleasure: I imagined the conversations she had with the people in the shop, what made her frown and what made her smile; I imagined why she treated X with such warmth and Y with such aloofness; when she was at rest, I imagined what she was thinking; on those occasions when she was moving, I imagined the shape of her legs and buttocks; and when she was working on a client’s hair, I imagined the swift, agile movements of her fingers on the clippers. The one thing I would not let myself imagine was her body, though that was sometimes beyond my control, and then I limited my visualizations to the areas above her neck and below her knees. When even that was impossible, I forced myself to go over and stare at a dustbin on which someone had written the word kongpi. Could that have been a warning to me? If so, it was an effective sign. I read the word aloud three times — kongpi, kongpi, kongpi — lowering the temperature of my sex organ. An embarrassing sense of excitement mysteriously evaporated.
Spring arrived in May, with warm temperatures and flowers blooming at the base of the walls that lined the streets: Chinese roses, cockscombs and evening primrose. Even the sunflowers by the entrance to the People’s Barbershop were in full bloom. As I walked past the entrance, one of the big golden flowers actually struck me in the leg — lightly, to be sure, but it got me thinking about the past; since it was a sunflower, I had to believe this was either a hint or an invitation. How could I be unmoved? Unprecedented courage dropped on to me out of the sky. I got up, picked up my bag and decisively pushed open the glass door.
Every seat in the barbershop was taken, and no one took any notice of my entrance. The men cutting hair were too busy to greet me. Huixian, whose back was to me, was washing a client’s hair. But I could see her face in the mirror, and there our eyes met. A light flashed in her eyes, but only for an instant before they darkened again; she turned slightly, as if to see me clearly, but didn’t follow through as she slowly turned back again. She might have seen it was me, but she might also have thought she was mistaken.
I spotted a newspaper rack by the door, where a days-old copy of the People’s Daily hung crumpled, dog-eared and enervated. Just what I needed to keep anyone from seeing my face. I sat in a corner, trying to arrange the angle and distance between my head and the newspaper, but failed miserably. It seemed to me that Huixian kept looking at me in the mirror, and the stronger my feelings became, the more uncomfortable they made me. To be honest, I had no idea how to go about establishing a friendship with Huixian. I hadn’t known back then, and I still didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t even know what I should call her. Back on the boat I’d never called her by her name, and I’d never used the word ‘sunflower’. It was always ‘hey’. I’d yell ‘hey’ and she’d come running, expecting to get something good to eat. But she’d changed; so had I, and I couldn’t figure out how to talk to her. I thought hard about that, finally deciding to let nature take its course. If she spoke to me first, I’d count myself lucky. If she chose not to speak to me, it was no big deal, since I wasn’t there to chat her up. I was there to keep watch over her.