Zhao turned over and said nonchalantly, “How could I be an oily fritter? I don’t look anything like one. Hey, everyone, do you think I look like an oily fritter? Of course I don’t.”
“Then you’re gruel,” Yuyang said.
If anything, that was even less likely, and Yuyang knew it. Who in the world could look like gruel? Zhao ignored her.
Without the anticipated echo from the other girls, Yuyang felt shamed and did not know what to say.
Kong Zhaodi came to her rescue: “Let’s get some sleep. I’m on duty tomorrow.” Since both girls were from the countryside, Kong Zhaodi and Wang Yuyang shared a private sense of a united front; they knew they had to team up because the city girls were simply too haughty. By rights, Pang Fenghua should have been the third element in the united front, but having come from a small town, she was a special case.
Admittedly, her town was considered rural, but Pang had grown up eating commodity grain, and her family possessed a city household registry. So strictly speaking, she was not a country girl. That, however, did nothing to make the five city girls in the room treat her as one of their own. To them, she was country. As a result, Pang wavered between the two fronts, one side being too lofty for her, the other too demeaning. Since Fenghua lacked a clearly defined tendency or a firm stance, Yuyang could not expect any help from her. Now, having received no positive feedback in the wake of her retort, Yuyang felt even more injured. She felt worthless, her self-hate as strong as her loathing for Zhao Shanshan.
In the end, Pang Fenghua was forced to join the rural united front after Zhao Shanshan got carried away and gave her the malicious nickname “Taken.” It began with a pair of shoes. One morning as she left the dorm, Li Dong put a pair of shoes with stretchable openings on the windowsill to air out, but when she returned that afternoon, they had been replaced by a pair of sneakers. Li Dong knew immediately that Pang had made the switch. Tossing the sneakers on the floor, Li Dong commented casually, “Whose worn shoes are these anyway?”
That was all Zhao Shanshan needed to engage her clever tongue: “Didn’t you just say it yourself, Li Dong? Worn shoes are surely taken.” Li Dong, no longer upset, was pleased. It had to be Pang Fenghua who was “taken” like worn shoes. The nickname not only appeased Li but was witty and had a negative implication, since it referred to loose women. This was how Pang Fenghua got her nickname, though its use was restricted to the small circle of their dorm room. It was clever, but not something one brought up casually. If it spread beyond the dorm, it would not only be considered thoughtless and indiscreet, but in terrible taste for girls their age.
Fenghua had returned a bit later than usual that night since she’d gone to the homeroom teacher’s office before the evening study period was over. She was increasingly drawn to what he had to say even though he tended to ramble, often incoherently, as if he were shrouded in clouds and fog. She understood every word, but not everything he said when he strung the words together, which she found endearing, since they sounded to her like Misty Poetry. And she discovered that their relationship itself was beginning to resemble Misty Poetry: filled with meaning, having no beginning and no end, and marked by an anxiety that yearned to be made clear. But the means to put this into words seemed forever beyond her reach.
In recent days the homeroom teacher had been on an emotional roller coaster, suffering mood swings from extreme happiness to intense sadness. There did not seem to be any reason for these mercurial changes, and, while Fenghua asked herself what was going on, she was smart enough to guess what was happening. Like her, he had a restless heart, and she worried about him, felt bad for him, and would have liked to share his anxieties. And yet, she experienced an indescribable sweetness, an irrepressible pleasure that was simultaneously sheer torture. In fact, nothing inappropriate had happened and nothing probably would in the end; but that was precisely why she felt such a yearning, such concern. Immersed in a welter of emotions, she felt like crying, but no tears came.
She returned to the dorm five minutes before lights-out, inattentively washed up, and climbed into bed. Experiencing similar mood swings as her teacher, she was confused and bewildered. Then Zhao Shanshan walked in, bringing with her a burst of cold air. The lights in the room went out almost immediately, so even though it was clear that something was wrong, no one could tell what it was in the pitch darkness.
Even so, Zhao managed to display how she felt by the noisy way she washed up, splashing water and banging against the enamel basin. Apparently Wei Xiangdong of the school security team had not had anything good to say to her. Shortly after Pang Fenghua had left to go to the homeroom teacher’s office, Wei had summoned Zhao Shanshan to talk about her penchant for giving her classmates nicknames. He had refrained from scolding her, but she was more terrified than if she’d actually received a reprimand, for Wei apparently knew everything she did in the dorm room. That little bitch Pang Fenghua had taken advantage of the homeroom teacher’s favoritism and ratted on her.
Trying to contain her anger, Zhao climbed into bed without a word. Even though the lights were out, her roommates could feel her blinding anger. “Don’t think I don’t know,” she said in a menacing growl, instantly altering the atmosphere in the room. “Don’t think I don’t know,” she repeated.
Pang Fenghua, whose thoughts still lingered on the homeroom teacher, emerged from her reveries and detected a threat in Zhao’s comment because Fenghua did indeed have something to hide.
“What’s the matter, Shanshan?” she asked uneasily.
“Don’t think I don’t know,” Zhao repeated as if reciting a poem. Of course everyone knew that her pointed comment was targeted at someone. “Don’t think I don’t know,” Zhao said one last time, intending to clear up an ambiguous situation, but actually making it even more ambiguous.
A strange, amorphous, dark object was thrashing around in the room. No one knew what Zhao knew exactly nor did they know what the connection was between what she knew and anyone else, especially Pang Fenghua. It was mysterious; it created suspicions. But not with Yuyang, who lay beneath her blanket, for she knew; she knew everything. And as she lay there quietly, she began to feel hot, so she stretched out her left leg and found a cool spot; her big toe rested against that spot. It was refreshing; it felt good.
Following a winter rain, the days grew increasingly cooler; actually, they became downright cold. Yellowed, withered leaves hung on the parasol trees, but there was nothing leafy about them. Even more of the leaves had fallen to the ground, where they were plastered to the road surface by the rain. What really caught people’s attention were the fuzzy acorns that still adorned the tips of the branches. From a distance, the campus looked like an orchard filled with fruit trees. But no harvest was in the offing; only winter was in the future, and indeed it was already the end of November.
On the other hand, late November actually began instilling the vitality of spring in the students; the campus turned lively despite the cold air, harsh winds, and dreary rain. A casual flip of the calendar revealed that 12-9 was barely two weeks away.[16] How could any school leave December 9—a revolutionary moment, a time when blood roiled, the day when the wind, the horses, and the Yellow River roared—off their schedule?
16
On December 9, 1935, high school and college students in Peiping (Beijing) staged anti-Japanese protests, which are commemorated by the holiday 12-9.