But Pang Fenghua’s meal coupons and cash were not missing at all. She’d been in such a hurry Saturday morning, thanks to the 3,000-meter race, that she’d taken them out and put them in a small pocket sewn into her underwear; then, once she’d started running around the track, she had forgotten about them. She found them Monday while doing her laundry. They still carried the warmth from her body.
But she had sounded the alarm and alerted the police, and thus could not bring herself to reveal the truth. Crouching in the bathroom, she cried a second time, her face the picture of genuine sorrow and grief. No one could bring her out of her crying fit; in fact, the more people tried, the harder she cried. In the end, even the other girls began to cry with her. Who could blame her? Something so terrible would make anyone cry.
Fenghua went to see the young homeroom teacher that night. He lived in the teachers’ dorm, but all the other teachers were out playing ball while he stayed behind to correct homework. She stopped and held on to the door frame with both hands until he turned and gestured for her to sit down in the only available seat, the single bed beside his desk. Still looking grief-stricken, she lowered herself slowly, wriggling her hips to locate the edge before finally settling onto the bed. The teacher found the graceful way she sat enchanting. Fenghua was not especially pretty, but her hips had an alluring quality that was not lost on the teacher, whose sympathy for her redoubled. He swallowed hard. “Any new clues?” he asked.
With her eyes fixed on him, she shook her head silently, looking wan and obviously distressed. He sighed, realizing how difficult it must be for her now that her money was gone, so he took out his wallet and offered her ten yuan.
“This should tide you over for a few days.”
Deeply moved by his gesture, she stared at the money as tears welled up in her eyes. Her gaze slowly moved up until their eyes met, hers now brimming with tears.
“Teacher,” she said, but she was unable to go on and began to weep.
She threw herself down on his pillow and sobbed, her shoulders heaving. He got up and sat beside her, cautiously reaching out to pat her on the back. She twisted her shoulders, sending a signaclass="underline" “Leave me alone.” But how could her own homeroom teacher leave her alone? So he patted her some more, touching the bottom of her heart and bringing forth even more tears. This time she did not twist her shoulders, but she increased her crying to the point that her whole body seemed to be choking on tears. His heart was breaking.
This went on for two or three minutes until Fenghua recovered, quietly got up, and wordlessly took the money before she sat down in his chair. She slipped the money under the glass tabletop of his desk and picked up his handkerchief to dry her eyes. Then she turned and, looking right at him, smiled briefly; but she hurriedly shut her mouth and hid the smile behind her hand. Without warning, she stood up and walked to the door. There she spun around to see him still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at his handkerchief.
The case remained open because the police had found no clues of any value after taking Fenghua’s testimony, which made it impossible to proceed. On Monday afternoon, the students in Section Three noticed that the police car that had been parked outside the administrative building was gone. With more important things to do, the police could not possibly waste any more time on a trivial matter like this. But Director Qian said that they must solve the case, and that meant increased responsibility for everyone at the school if they were to get to the bottom of this. So the teachers in the security and student affairs sections divided up the labor and produced an organizational plan. They formed a special-case unit that was in operation day and night, and spread the net far and wide—a dragnet that would snare even the most cunning fish.
At an administrators’ meeting, Director Qian said that seizing the thief was not as important as making this incident an example—using it as a negative teaching model in the service of thoroughly rectifying the students’ thoughts and behavior. According to him, the school had taken a downward turn. Some of the boys were letting their hair grow long, and a few of the girls had begun wearing bell-bottomed pants. “You call that a hairstyle? And what about those pants? I’m forty-three years old,” he said, “and I’ve never seen the likes of this.” They also had to be on guard against the actions of the off-campus juvenile delinquents who wore froglike shades and hung around the school gate with a Sanyo cassette player blasting decadent music by Teresa Teng—“Sweet Wine in Coffee” and “When Will the Gentleman Return?” What kind of crazy music was that? These were all signs of danger that had to be dealt with early and decisively.
“What are we running here?” Director Qian asked. “It’s a teacher-training school. All signs prove that unhealthy societal influences have already seeped onto our campus. We must eliminate them now. Don’t expect them to die on their own. We must be vigilant, we cannot let down our guard.”
So Director Qian devised a policy he called “outside loose and inside tight.” “Outside loose” meant that they must continue the normal operation of school affairs and give that particular student a false sense of security to draw her out, like enticing a snake from its den. “Inside tight” required everyone to keep their eyes open and “not let go of that thread, even for a second.”
“Outside loose” proved hard to maintain with everyone so tense. Yuyang was a case in point. What exactly had she done after finishing the race? Danger lurked in her inability to explain why she had returned to the dorm alone. After two days of indecision, she went to see her psychology teacher, Ms. Huang Cuiyun, who was also the assistant director of student affairs. It was a wise move, for if she hadn’t, it would have been virtually impossible to prove her innocence after her period was over. She explained the situation to Ms. Huang, telling her that she’d gone back to the dorm because of her “special condition.” After hearing her out, Ms. Huang took her into the girls’ toilet, where she told her to drop her pants and show her the pad. Obviously, she was telling the truth—that was something no one could fake.
Ms. Huang, a woman in her forties who had been mistakenly condemned as a rightist,[11] had been sent from the county level to teach at the school after her rehabilitation. Unlike Director Qian, she was friendly and approachable, always ready with an easy smile, like a mother, or, perhaps, a big sister. Though she was an assistant director, she told the girls to call her Teacher Huang, not Director Huang, and for that she earned respect and credibility from the teachers and students alike. After checking Yuyang out, she smiled and asked, “So what does this prove, Wang Yuyang?”
Yuyang pondered the question and had to agree that it really didn’t prove much. The special condition only confirmed that she had returned to the dorm alone, which conversely proved that she had been at the scene of the theft. Sweat beaded the tip of her nose as she stood there dumbfounded before blurting out, “I didn’t do it.”
“Before the thief is found,” Teacher Huang softly replied, “everyone is a suspect, even me. That’s a possibility, isn’t it?” What more could Yuyang say since even the teacher included herself among the suspects? Aggressively defending herself at this point would reflect badly on her attitude.
The scope of the investigation kept changing, sometimes it expanded, sometimes it contracted, but nothing came of it. Four days quickly passed without a breakthrough. During those four days, the girls in Section Three gained a keen and personal understanding of the terms “steely discipline” and “steely character.” Steel was a metal they came to know well. It was expressionless, wordless, silent—but heavy and hard, with an oppressive power. They developed a fear of steel because its absence of motion was always temporary. Once it began to move, no one knew what might happen. They also learned that at a certain temperature anything could turn to steel—an event, time, or a mood. Once any of these became steel, they turned heavy and hard and lodged in the hearts of all the Section Three students. Gloom lay heavily over their classes, where everyone walked softly, afraid of bumping into the steel— clang. Another possibility was that steel would silently take a large chunk of their flesh.
11
A label forced on individuals who were critical of Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1950s.