Cries in the Drizzle (34 page)

But when it came down to it I was simply too young to carry this through: my will was indomitable only so long as I had a full stomach and a warm set of clothes. When I was later to reach the point of practically fainting from hunger, I would find I just could not resist the temptation to eat. In fact, I was not then—and am not now—the kind of person willing to die for a conviction, so
much do I value the sound of life flowing through my veins. Apart from life itself I cannot conceive of any other reason for living.

That morning my classmates noticed my bruised and swollen face, but they did not realize how much more painful was the hunger I was now experiencing. I had left home that morning on an empty stomach, and by the third period I was paying the price. First I was overcome with a vacant sensation: my insides felt as lonely as an alleyway late at night, windblown and desolate. Then the emptiness spread to all extremities, leaving my limbs powerless and my head groggy. Finally I came down with a stomachache, a pain more unbearable than the contusions on my face. Somehow I managed to make it to the end of the period, and then I dashed to the line of water faucets, put one to my mouth, and swallowed a whole bellyful of water. This gave me a shortlived respite from hunger. I leaned weakly against the water pipe and practically melted in the sunshine. The chilly winter water was so quickly absorbed into my system that I had to keep gulping it down right until the bell rang for the start of the next period.

After I left the water faucets, I found myself facing an even worse ordeal, for when hunger returned I had no resources to combat it. I collapsed on my chair like a sack of rice. Soon I was hallucinating that the blackboard was a cave and the teacher was pacing back and forth at the entrance to the cave, his voice booming as it echoed off the cave wall.

While my stomach was enduring one kind of pain, my expanding bladder inflicted a different sort of discomfort. It began to retaliate for my excessive fluid consumption. I had no choice but to raise my hand and ask Zhang Qinghai's permission to go out for a pee. We were only a few minutes into the period and he scolded me in very bad humor. “Why didn't you go during the break?”

I made my way gingerly to the toilet, not daring to run, because as soon as I tried that I could feel the water in my bladder sloshing back and forth. After finishing in the toilet, I grabbed the opportunity to drink another bellyful of cold water.

The fourth period that morning was perhaps the most trying hour of my whole life. Not long after I had been to the toilet, my bladder again became bloated and my face began to turn purple. When I really could not hold it another minute, I raised my hand a second time.

Zhang Qinghai eyed me suspiciously and asked, “You need to pee again?”

I nodded in embarrassment. Zhang Qinghai called Guoqing over and told him to go with me to the toilet to check whether I really had to pee. This time I didn't dare drink any more water afterward. On Guoqing's return, he loudly reported, “He passed more water than a cow!”

I sat down red faced amid my classmates’ titters. Despite my self-restraint during the last toilet break, it was not long before my bladder again became distended. Hunger had now become a matter of secondary importance; it was the bulging bladder that was my concern. I wanted to avoid raising my hand if at all possible and tried to endure the agonizing pressure, hoping that the bell would ring soon. I didn't dare adjust my position even slightly, feeling that the dam could burst at the least provocation. But later I just could not wait: time was passing so slowly and the bell would not ring. Timidly I raised my hand for the third time.

Zhang Qinghai was exasperated. “Are you trying to drown us?” he said.

The class erupted in laughter. Zhang Qinghai didn't let me go to the toilet again, but told me to go around by the window and
pee on the outside wall of the classroom, because he wanted to see for himself whether I really had a call of nature to answer. When I splashed the wall with a powerful jet of urine, he was forced to accept the evidence. He walked a few steps away from the window and continued to conduct the class. It must have taken me a long time to empty my bladder, because Zhang Qinghai suddenly broke off from instruction and turned to me in surprise. “What, still not finished?”

Blushing hotly, I gave him a bashful smile.

I did not go home at the end of the morning session like the rest of my classmates, but continued my hunger strike. That whole lunchtime I lay underneath the water faucets, and when hunger pains gnawed I would raise myself up and consume a bellyful of water, then go back to lying there and feeling sorry for myself. By that time my pride was just for show; I was actually looking forward to Wang Liqiang finding me. I lay in the sunshine as the grass happily grew around me.

When Wang Liqiang did find me, it was afternoon, and classmates were arriving for classes. He discovered me sprawled next to the water faucets. I learned later from Li Xiuying that he had been anxiously waiting for me to come home ever since finishing his lunch. He helped me up, and when his hand grazed the bruises on my face I burst into tears.

He set me on his back, holding my thighs firmly with both hands, and set off for the school gate. My body swayed from side to side, and my feelings of pride, so dominant earlier that morning, gave way to dependency. Now I did not hate Wang Liqiang in the least, and when I rested my face on his shoulders I was thrilled to have a protector.

We entered a restaurant, and he set me down on the
counter. Pointing at a blackboard that listed all kinds of noodle dishes, he asked me which I wanted. I scanned the menu but said nothing, for the remnants of pride were still circulating through my system. Wang Liqiang ordered a large bowl of noodles with three toppings—the most expensive option—and we sat down.

I will never forget the look in his eyes. Even now, so many years after his death, I feel a pang whenever I recall this moment. He gazed at me with such shame and affection that I say to myself: yes, I did have a father like that. But that was not how I responded at the time: it was only after he died, when I was back in South-gate, that I gradually became aware that Wang Liqiang was much more of a father to me than Sun Kwangtsai. Now, when it is all so far away, I realize that Wang Liqiang's death for me has been a lasting sorrow.

When the dish arrived, I did not start eating right away, but just looked at the steaming noodles—greedily, to be sure, but also with some reserve. Wang Liqiang read my mind: he stood up, saying that he had to get back to work, and walked out. As soon as he left I laid into the noodles with gusto. But my small belly was satisfied all too soon, and then I could only dejectedly pick up pieces of chicken and fish with my chopsticks, stare at them, and drop them back in the bowl, then dredge them up again; sad to say, I just could not eat any more.

By now I had recovered my normal energy and my unhappi-ness had vanished. I noticed an old man in tattered clothes across the table from me, who was eating a small bowl of the cheapest noodles. He watched attentively as I played around with my chicken and fish, and I could sense that he was looking forward to my leaving, so that he could help himself to the tasty morsels that I couldn't finish. This brought out my mean streak: I made a point
of lingering over my meal and poked at the food in my bowl time and again. The old man, for his part, seemed to be making a point of eating very slowly. A silent struggle had developed between us. Soon I grew tired of this game and an entertaining new variation occurred to me. I chucked my chopsticks to one side, stood up, and swaggered out. As soon as I was out the door, I crouched down next to the window so I could observe his next move. He glanced toward the exit, and then speedily dumped his noodles into my bowl and placed his bowl where mine had been, after which he immediately resumed eating as though nothing had happened. I abandoned my place at the window and strode cockily back into the restaurant and over to the table where I had been sitting. I stared at the empty dish with feigned astonishment and was tickled to see the look of shame that spread over his face. Then I left in the best of spirits.

Once I reached third grade, I spent more and more of the day playing outside. By this time I was more familiar and comfortable with Wang Liqiang and Li Xiuying, and the trepidation that I felt early on had waned. Often I would be having so much fun that I would lose all sense of time, until suddenly it would occur to me that I needed to be home and I would race back to the house as fast as I could. I would be scolded, of course, but it was not so severe a reproof as to really scare me, and if I applied myself to chores and made a point of working up a good sweat, the reprimands died on their lips.

For a time I was especially fond of fishing for shrimp in ponds, and with this activity in mind practically every afternoon after school Guoqing, Liu Xiaoqing, and I would run off into the country. One day we had just put the town behind us when to my alarm I saw Wang Liqiang walking slowly along a path between
the fields, a young woman just behind him. I quickly turned around and started running in the other direction, but Wang Liqiang had already spotted me, and when he called out, I had to stop and watch uneasily as he came walking up with his long strides. I should have been home by this point. Guoqing and Liu Xiaoqing hurriedly explained that we were out to catch shrimp, not to steal melons. He smiled and to my surprise did not rake me over the coals, but put his big hand on my head and simply said that he and I would go home together. All the way he asked solicitously about things going on at school and showed no sign of trying to find fault with me, so I gradually relaxed.

Later, in what was for me a happy boyhood moment, we stood under the ceiling fan in the department store and ate ice pops. In those days there was no electric fan in Wang Liqiang's house, and I watched with fascination as the ceiling fan, so perfectly round, spun in a circle and glimmered like water in motion. I stood at the edge of the fan's draft and walked in and out, enjoying the contrast.

That time I ate three ice pops in a row. Wang Liqiang was seldom as generous as this. When I'd finished the third, Wang Liqiang asked me if I wanted another and I nodded. But then he hesitated and disappointed me by saying, “Better not. You might have a tummy upset.”

He compensated by buying me some candy instead. On the way home, he suddenly inquired, “Did you know that young lady?”

“Which young lady?” I didn't know who he was talking about.

“The one behind me.”

Only then did I remember the young woman on the path. I had no clear impression of when she had vanished from the scene,
so intent had I been on putting distance between Wang Liqiang and me. I shook my head, and Wang Liqiang said, “I don't know who she was either.”

He went on, “It was only after I called you that I looked around and realized there was someone there.” He opened his eyes wide in such an exaggerated expression of surprise that it made me laugh out loud.

As we got close to home, Wang Liqiang got down on his haunches and said to me quietly, “Let's not say we went to the country, but say instead that we met in the alley. Otherwise she might be annoyed.”

I thoroughly approved, for I was not keen on Li Xiuying knowing that I had gone off to play again after school.

But six months later I saw Wang Liqiang and the young woman together again, and this time I found it hard to believe that they were strangers to each other. I made my getaway before Wang Liqiang could see me, and later I sat down on a rock to puzzle things out. At eleven I could put two and two together, even if it took a bit of effort. Understanding now the improper relationship between the woman and Wang Liqiang, I thought, with a sudden shock, what a wicked man he was. But when I got home I kept quiet about it. I cannot fully recall what led me to keep quiet, but I remember that when I contemplated reporting the matter to Li Xiuying I found myself quaking with dread. Years later I would still wonder naively what would have happened if I had told Li Xiuying, and whether the sight of her pale and powerless outrage might have had just enough impact on Wang Liqiang to forestall his death.

The fact that I kept silent on this matter later enabled me to blackmail Wang Liqiang into not punishing me when I should
have been punished. Despite all my best efforts the little wine cup that rested on the wireless finally came to a bad end. As I swiveled around while mopping the floor, the handle of the mop knocked the cup from its perch, and it fell to the floor and shattered. Of the property owned by this humble household, this cup was the only decorative element, and its destruction left me a bundle of nerves. Wang Liqiang would wring my neck with the same crisp snap with which he broke that cucumber.

That had been my fear when I first moved in, and I now knew he would not really do that, but I certainly anticipated a towering rage and severe punishment. I needed to do everything in my limited power to avoid this unhappy fate, and a preemptive threat seemed the best approach. Li Xiuying was in another room, unaware of the accident, so I quietly swept the fragments into the dustpan. By the time Wang Liqiang came home from work, I was so keyed up that I began to sob. Puzzled, Wang Liqiang crouched down and asked me, “What's wrong?”

In a quaking voice I delivered my threat, “If you beat me, I am going to tell about you and that lady!”

Wang Liqiang paled. He shook me and said, “I won't beat you. Why should I?”

That's when I told him, “I broke the wine cup.”

Wang Liqiang looked blank for a moment, but then he realized what had triggered my threat and broke into a smile. “That wine cup means nothing to me,” he said.

Not sure whether to believe him, I asked him, “So you're not going to beat me?”

He promised he would not, putting me completely at ease. To reciprocate, I whispered in his ear, “I won't say anything about the lady.”

After dinner that evening Wang Liqiang took my hand and we went for a long walk. Often he would exchange greetings with people he knew. I did not know that this would be my last stroll with Wang Liqiang, and I was enchanted by the glow of the setting sun as it lingered above the eaves. Infected by my boyish enthusiasm, Wang Liqiang talked a lot about when he was small. The thing he said that most stands out in my mind was that until he was fifteen he was so poor he often had no pants to wear. As he told me that he said with a sigh, “Being poor's not so bad; its other things that make you miserable.”