JASMINE

THIS POT of jasmine tea that I've brewed for you may be somewhat bitter; this Hong Kong tale that I'm about to tell you may be, I'm afraid, just as bitter. Hong Kong is a splendid city, but a sad one too.
First, pour yourself a cup of tea, but be careful - it's hot! Blow on it gently. In the tea's curling steam you can see ... a Hong Kong public bus on a paved road, slowly driving down a hill. A passenger stands behind the driver, a big bunch of azal­eas in his arms. The passenger leans against an open window, the azaleas stream out in a twiggy thicket, and the windowpane behind becomes a flat sheet of red.
Sitting by that window was Nie Chuanqing, a young man of something like twenty. Twenty, perhaps, though he looked much older around the eyes and mouth. Then again, his skinny neck and thin shoulders could have been those of an adolescent. Wearing a blue gown of lined silk, he leaned sideways in the seat, with his head propped against the window and a stack of books in his lap. There, in the rosy sateen gleam of the flowers, his oval-shaped Mongolian face, with its faint eyebrows and with the downturned corners of the eyes, had a feminine kind of beauty. But the nose was too sharp; it clashed with the deli­cate softness of his face. A peach-colored bus ticket was stuck between his teeth, and he seemed to have dozed off.
The bus came to a sudden stop. Forcing his eyes open, Chuanqing saw one of his classmates boarding: it was Professor Yan's daughter, Yan Danzhu. He frowned. He hated bumping into people he knew on the bus, he couldn't hear what they said over the engine roar. He was a bit deaf, his hearing damaged by the blows to the ear he'd taken from his father.
Yan Danzhu's hair looked freshly shampooed, with the cen­ter part drawn straight while the hair was still wet and the ends touched up with a curling iron. Her hair fell vertically to her shoulders, like an Indian girl's in an American cartoon. She had a smooth, round face, tanned to a coppery color, with jet-black brows and shining eyes; she wasn't very tall, but she had a nicely curvy figure. Once on the bus, she smiled and nodded at Chuanqing, then came over to sit beside him.
"Going home?" she asked.
Chuanqing leaned over so he could hear. "Yeah."
The conductor came to collect the fare. Chuanqing reached for his wallet, but Danzhu said, "Oh-I've got a monthly pass."
"What classes will you be taking this semester?" she con­tinued.
"Same as before, no big change."
"Are you still going to be in my father's History of Chinese Literature?"
Chuanqing nodded.
"Did you know I'm taking it too?" she laughed.
"You're going to be your father's student?" Chuanqing was surprised.
"That's right!" Danzhu giggled. At first he wouldn't let me! He's never had a daughter sitting with the other students while he lectures, and he was afraid he'd be embarrassed.. And then, since we're used to joking around at home, he thought maybe I'd be too casual in class, pester him with questions the way I usually do, maybe even argue back-and then how could he keep a stern face? So I gave my solemn promise never to open my mouth in his class, no matter how little I understood, and finally he agreed."
"Professor Yan he's a nice man!" Chuanqing lightly sighed.
"What? So he's not a good teacher?" Danzhu laughed. "You don't like his class?"
"Take a look at my grades and you'll see that he doesn't like me."
"What do you mean? He's harder on you because you're from. Shanghai, and your Chinese is better than the Hong Kong students' Chinese. He often praises you. He says you're a bit lazy, that's all."
Chuanqing made no reply, turning away instead, and press­ing his face against the glass. He couldn't keep leaning toward her, listening so intently when she spoke. Anyone who saw them would draw the wrong conclusion. Already lots of people were spreading rumors, all because Danzhu kept coming up to him. At school, people gave him the cold shoulder, and since he knew he wasn't liked, he stayed away from the others. But he couldn't escape Danzhu.
Danzhu-he didn't know what she had in mind, since she certainly had plenty of friends. Even though she'd been at South China University for only half a year, she was one of the most popular girls on campus. Why on earth did she want to befriend him? He stole a sideways glance at her. Her full breasts and tiny waist were sculpted by a white wool-knit vest, as if she were a plaster statue. He turned away again, rubbing his forehead on the glass. He didn't like looking at girls, especially pretty girls with good figures: they made him feel especially dis­satisfied with himself.
Danzhu was talking again. He frowned, forcing a smile. "Sorry, I didn't hear that."
Raising her voice, she repeated her words, but again, halfway through, he could not follow her. Fortunately, since he was so often silent, she wasn't at all disturbed by his failure to answer. But then he happened to catch one part of what she'd said, the very last part. She had lowered her head and was tugging at her wool-knit vest; she pulled it down, but it crept back up again.
"What I told you the other day-about the letter Dequan sent me—please forget about it," she said. "Just pretend I never said anything."
"Why?" asked Chuanqing.
"Why? ... It's quite obvious. I shouldn't have told anyone. I'm such a child-I can't keep anything back!"
Chuanqing leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and smiled. Danzhu leaned forward at his side. "Chuanqing," she said quite seriously, "you aren't taking this the wrong way, are you? When I told you about that, I wasn't showing off. I can't just ... not talk to people. The words build up inside and I have to let them out. And then, when I refused him, I lost Dequan as a friend. I want to be friends with him, I want to be friends with lots of people. As for anything more than that, we're too young, we can't even talk about such things yet. But they... they all get so serious."
A few moments passed. "Chuanqing, are you upset?" He shook his head. "I don't know why, but there are some things I can't tell anyone except you."
"I don't know why either."
"I think it's because... well, to me, you're like a girl."
A bitter smile swept across his face. "Really? You have a lot of girlfriends, so why choose me?"
"Because you're the only one who can keep a secret."
But Chuanqing replied coldly, "Of course—I don't have any friends, so there's no one I could tell."
Quickly she replied, "You're taking it all wrong again!" They both fell silent. Then Danzhu sighed. "I didn't say it the right way, but... Chuanqing, why don't you try to make some friends? Then you'd have someone to study with or have fun with. Why don't you invite us to your house to play tennis? I know you have a tennis court."
Chuanqing laughed. "There isn't much chance of playing tennis on our court. It's usually full of laundry hung out to dry, and when the weather's warm, they cook opium there." Danzhu stopped, unable to say anything more.
Chuanqing turned back and looked out the window. The bus took a fast, hard turn, and the azaleas in the standing passenger's arms were sent flying about. When Chuanqing looked at Danzhu again, he gasped a little in surprise. "You're crying!"
"How could be crying? I never cry!" But then, with a sad, hard sob, she confronted him: "You ... you always make me feel as though I've done something wrong ... as if I have no right to be happy! But my happiness doesn't do you any harm!"
Taking her books from her, Chuanqing wiped the cover of the top one dry. "Is this the new edition of Professor Yan's lecture notes? I haven't bought it yet. You might think it funny, but I've been in his class for half a year now, and I still don't know his given name."
"I like his name. I'm always telling him his name looks sharp-sharper than he does, by a long shot!"
Chuanqing had found the name on the book cover. He read it out loud: "Yan Ziye." Putting the book aside, he tilted his head in thought. Then he picked the book back up and read the name again: "Yan Ziye." He felt somehow doubtful the second time, as if he couldn't quite make out the characters.
"Not a good name?" Danzhu asked.
"Yes, of course it's good!" Chuanqing laughed. "We all know that you've got a good father! Good in every way, except that now you're way too spoiled!"
Danzhu hissed back at him through pursed lips. She stood up. "This is my stop. See you later!"
When she had gone, Chuanqing leaned his head against the windowpane. Once again he seemed to doze off. The passenger with the azaleas got off too-and with the azaleas gone from the window, there was only the gray street behind. When the backdrop changed, his face grew dark and yellow.
The bus turned another corner. Palm-tree leaves swished against the window. Chuanqing jumped up, pulled the bell cord, and descended at the next stop.
He lived in a big mansion. Within a few years of their mov­ing here from. Shanghai, all the flowers and trees that had once filled the yard had wilted, died, or been cut down, and now the sun beat down on a desolate scene. The housemaid had turned over a rattan chair on the grass. She was sluicing it out with a kettle of boiling water, killing bedbugs.
Inside, the hallway was heavy with darkness. The only gleam of light came from the dark red banister that twisted up, around, and away. Chuanqing crept up the stairs cautiously; then, seeing no one there, he slipped toward his room like a thin cloud of smoke. But the tired old floorboards squeaked loudly. Amah Liu heard, came out, and stopped him in his tracks.
"Young Master is home! Have you gone to see Master and Mistress?"
"I'll see them later, when we eat. What's the rush?"
Amah Liu grabbed him by the sleeve. "Here we go again! What have you done this time? Sneaking around, trying to avoid seeing anyone! Better go in right away, see them now and get it over with. If you don't, there'll be another angry scene!"
Chuanqing suddenly started acting like a boy of twelve or thirteen: he grit his teeth, he absolutely refused to go. The harder Amah Liu tugged at him, the harder he pulled away. Amah Liu was his mother's personal maid, the one who'd been sent along with her when she got married. The hatred he felt toward Amah Liu at home was the same hatred he felt toward Yan Danzhu at school. On a bitter-cold day, a person can be frozen numb and it won't bother him, but a little warmth will make him feel so cold that his heart hurts and his bones ache.
In the end, his loathing for Amah Liu made him give in; just to get rid of her, he agreed to see his father and stepmother. Nie Jiechen, his father, was wearing a grease-spotted vest of light green satin over his undershirt. Chuanqing's stepmother-all in black, her hair disheveled-was reclining on the two-person opium couch, facing her husband. Chuanqing stepped forward and greeted them. "Father, Mother!" They both gave barely attentive grunts. Then, at long last, the stone in his heart fell away: it looked as though they hadn't got wind of any offense of his today.
"Did you hand in the tuition fee?" his father asked. Chuanqing sat down on an upholstered chair next to the smoking couch. "Yes."
"What courses are you taking?"
"History of the English Language, Nineteenth-Century English Prose
"All that English you're doing___ why bother? A donkey can
jounce along after the horses, jounce till his legs break, and still it won't amount to anything!"
His stepmother smiled. "He wants to put on the airs of a Young Master. No big deal-just get him a tutor, and the tutor can do his homework for him."
"I don't keep extra money lying around just so he can have a tutor," said his father. "What else are you taking?"
"History of Chinese Literature."
"That's too easy for you! Tang Dynasty poems, Song Dynasty lyrics-you've done all that before."
"Can't do anything new, but he sure can laze around!" said his stepmother.
Chuanqing's head dropped forward almost to the ground. He hunched his back, picked up the little metal end of his shoe­lace and scraped it lightly on his shoe. His father shifted around on the smoking couch, grabbed a rolled-up newspaper, and hit Chuanqing hard on the neck. "Idle hands, with nothing to do, will only find something to break!" he barked. "Go on! Go on! Get over there! Cook some opium pellets!"
Chuanqing sat on a little stool in the corner and cooked the opium on a low table. His stepmother was in excellent spirits today. She picked up a small gold-decorated teapot, drank a mouthful of tea, then pinched her lips together and smiled. "Chuanqing," she said, "do you have a girlfriend at school?"
"Him?" said his father. "He doesn't have any male friends, how could he get a girlfriend?"
"Chuanqing," his stepmother smiled, "I want to know. People are saying there's a girl from the Yan family-they're from Shanghai too-and that she's been chasing after you. Is there anything to it?"
Chuanqing's face reddened. "Yan Danzhu-she has a lot of friends, doesn't she? Why would she be interested in me?"
"Who says she's interested in you?" said his father. "It's your money she's interested in! You? What's there to see in you? Three parts human, seven parts ghost-"
But Chuanqing was thinking, "My money? My money?"
One day, the money would be his, and then he could sign his name on checks whenever he liked. He'd been waiting for this for years, since his early teens. Once, filled with urgency, he'd even practiced on a discarded check, signing his name at a slant: "Nie Chuanqing, Nie Chuanqing." Bravely, handsomely, on the left and on the right: "Nie Chuanqing, Nie Chuanqing." But his father had slapped him across the jaw, ripped the check away, and shoved the crumpled wad into his face. Why? Be­cause Chuanqing had touched a raw nerve, one of his father's buried fears. When the money came into Chuanqing's hands, wouldn't he just go crazy and waste it, throw it all away? Such a timid, gloomy, idiotic boy. His father had certainly never intended him to turn out like this. Now, whenever he looked at his son, he felt helpless and full of rage. Underneath, there was an edge of fear. Nie Jiechen had once said, "Hit him, and he doesn't cry, he just stares at you with those big wide eyes. I can't stand to see him staring like that. It makes me furious!"
Chuanqing was cooking the opium. He couldn't keep his eyes-those big wide fearful staring eyes-off his father. Sooner or later... yes, his day would come. But by then, he'd have been trampled on for so long that nothing human would be left. What a bizarre victory it would be!
The opium paste dripped down the cooking wand and dropped into the lamp. Chuanqing started, afraid his parents would notice. Fortunately, a maid came in to announce the arrival of Second Aunt Xu. This distraction gave him the cover he needed.
"Go on, get out of here!" his father said to him. "A creepy sneak like you, not an ounce of manliness in you, a laughing­stock to everyone! Maybe you're not embarrassed, but I am!"
"The boy isn't suffering from a disease," his stepmother said, "and yet he's thin as a rail. If people see they'll think we mistreat him! And yet I've never known him to hold back when it comes to food and drink!"
His head hanging, Chuanqing left the room, only to glimpse the approaching female visitor. He ducked into a dark corner till the coast was clear, then went on to his bedroom and started flipping the pages of his schoolbooks. Thinking back to all the times Yan. Danzhu had urged him to work harder, he felt a burst of energy; bracing himself, he decided to do some home­work.
His bedroom was clouded with smoke; opium fumes had drifted in from the other room. He lived in this air, had grown up in this air, but today for some reason the smell made him dizzy, nauseous. He'd go to the living room, where it was a bit cleaner. He ran down the stairs with his books under his arm, his mind surging with irritation. In the living room he found only dust motes and pale sunbeams. A translucent red flower vase held a feather duster. He took a seat at the square rosewood table that stood in the middle of the room, then leaned forward and lay half prone on the marble tabletop. The tabletop was cool, like the window on the bus.
Azaleas outside the window; inside, Yan Danzhu ... and Danzhu's father was Yan Ziye. He'd seen that name when he was little, before he'd really learned to read. On the blank inside cover of a ragged old Early Tide magazine he'd deciphered, one by one, these words:
To Miss Biluo,
A trifle for your amusement. Best regards, Yan Ziye
His mother's name was Feng Biluo.
He reached for a textbook, pulled it over, and read a few pages, his head pillowed on his sleeve. It was as if he'd gone back to the age when he couldn't read very well; each word was a struggle, and he didn't know what any of it meant.
Suddenly he saw Amah Liu entering the room. "Move aside, Young Master." She tugged at the tablecloth draped across her shoulder, spread it out, and tied it to the legs of the table.
"What? Are they going to play mah-jongg?" Chuanqing asked.
"They need a fourth, so they telephoned Old Uncle and asked him to come."
Just then, the housemaid came in with a hundred-watt lightbulb. Chuanqing picked up his books to head back up­stairs.
In the corner of his bedroom there was a big wicker trunk full of old, battered books and, he remembered, a stack of Early Tide magazines. A leather strap was tied lengthwise across the top of the trunk, but undoing it would have required more energy than he had. He pried the lid up with his head, thrust his hands inside, and blindly fumbled around. Suddenly it came back to him: all the Early Tide magazines, every single one, had gotten lost when they moved.
He left his hands where they were, pinched by the lid of the trunk. His head drooped, as if he'd broken his neck. His gown of lined blue silk had a stiff standing collar, and the strong, hot sun shone down inside it, warming the back of his neck. He had a strange feeling, though, that the sky would soon be dark ... that already it was dark. As he waited all alone by the window, his heart darkened along with the sky. An unspeakable, dusky anguish ... Just as in a dream, that person waiting by the window was at first himself, and then in an instant he could see, very clearly, that it was his mother. Her long bangs swept down in front of her bowed head, and the pointed lower half of her face was a vague white shadow. Her eyes and eyebrows, so clouded and dim, were like black shad­ows in moonlight. But he knew for a certainty that it was his dead mother, Feng Biluo.
He hadn't had a mother since he was four years old, but he recognized her from her photograph. There was only one photo that showed her before her marriage, and in it she wore an old-style satin jacket embroidered with the faint shapes of tiny bats. The figure in the window was growing clearer now, and he could see the bats on the autumn-colored silk of her jacket. She was waiting for someone, waiting for news. She knew that the news wouldn't come. In her heart the sky was slowly darkening—Chuanqing flinched in pain. He couldn't tell whether it really was his mother, or himself.
But the nameless anguish pressing down on him? He knew now that that was love, a hopeless love some twenty years in the past. A knife will rust after twenty years, but it's still a knife. The knife in his mother's heart now twisted in his.
With an enormous effort, Chuanqing lifted his head. The entire illusion rapidly melted away. He had felt, for a moment, like an old-time portrait photographer, his head thrust into a tunnel of black cloth: there in the lens he'd caught a glimpse of his mother. He pulled his hands out from under the lid of the trunk; pressing them to his lips, he sucked fearfully at the red marks.
Chuanqing knew very little about his mother, but he did know that she had never loved his father. And so his father hated her. After she died, he turned his fury against her child; otherwise, even with the stepmother egging him on, Chuanqing's father wouldn't have become so vicious toward him.
His mother had never loved his father-had she loved some­one else? A faint rumor to that effect had circulated among their relatives. His stepmother had been kin even before her marriage to his father, so she knew the rumors already. Of course she was unwilling to let the matter drop, and insisted on talking about Chuanqing's mother even in Chuanqing's presence. Anything that passed through her lips was sure to be grating and painful. Amah Liu, as Biluo's maid, couldn't stand hearing her deceased mistress slandered, and made sullen re­marks in her mistress's defense to the other servants. That was how Chuanqing had picked up a few facts he thought he could depend on.
Viewed from a modern perspective, those few facts were pitifully simple. Feng Biluo was married at eighteen years of age. There had been a time, before her engagement, when she'd had ardent hopes of going to school and getting an education. In a conservative family like hers, this was most unlikely. But she and some female cousins kept talking about it, secretly, furtively. The cousins were quite a bit younger than Biluo, and their parents weren't so strict; at last they got their wish. They decided to take the entrance exam for a girls' elementary school that offered both Chinese and Western subjects; Yan Ziye, a distant relative, was invited to be their tutor. Ziye was their junior, in terms of family generations, but he was actually older in years, and he had two years of university study behind him. Biluo hankered after her cousins' good fortune, she couldn't give up her dream of getting an education, so she followed every detail of their exam preparations. That was how, on sev­eral occasions, she happened to meet Yan Ziye at her cousins' house. The two of them were always in the company of others.
The Yan family engaged the services of a matchmaker. Before Biluo's mother could respond to the proposal, Biluo's grandfather's concubine, who was sitting in the corner smoking a water pipe, broke out in a loud cackle. "Well," the old woman chipped in, "it's a bit early to be talking about this!"
The matchmaker smiled back. "The young lady isn't little anymore ..."
The old concubine laughed. "Her age is not the problem! The Yan family from Changshu is at best a family of traders. If their Young Master makes his way as a scholar, and they keep it up for a couple of generations, and then come to us with a mar­riage proposal-well, then we'll have something to discuss. But now? It's much too early!"
The matchmaker conveyed the rebuff to the Yan family. One way or another, Yan Ziye soon found out the exact nature of the Feng family's reply, and he was deeply angered. He wanted to let the whole matter drop.
But it seems that he and Biluo met yet one more time after this. It couldn't have been an accident, since the two of them would have gone out of their way not to encounter each other after the proposal. This last, brief meeting must have been Biluo's idea. Biluo hinted to Ziye that he should bring in another matchmaker to try to persuade her parents, since their refusal had not been absolute. But Ziye, who was young and hot tempered, didn't want to be accused of "social climbing," or to hear such terrible slurs on his own family's reputation. He told her that soon he'd be going abroad to study. If she wanted, she could take a drastic step: she could go with him. Biluo wouldn't do it.
When he thought back to this part, Chuanqing's heart rose up in resentment against his mother; still, he had to admit that she didn't have much choice. It was, after all, twenty years ago! She had to think of her family's reputation, and she had to think of Ziye's future.
Ziye went abroad by himself. By the time he returned, the Feng family had already married Biluo to Nie Jiechen, and Ziye had been through several romances. Chuanqing hadn't heard anything about how Ziye had come to marry Danzhu's mother, a southern girl, before moving his family, sometime in the past few years, to Hong Kong.
As for Biluo's life after her marriage—Chuanqing couldn't bear to imagine it. She wasn't a bird in a cage. A bird in a cage, when the cage is opened, can still fly away. She was a bird embroidered onto a screen a white bird in clouds of gold stitched onto a screen of melancholy purple satin. The years passed; the bird's feathers darkened, mildewed, and were eaten by moths, but the bird stayed on the screen even in death.
She was dead, for her it was over, but what about Chuanqing? Why did Chuanqing have to endure such punishment? When Biluo was married into the Nie family, her sacrifice had at least been a conscious one. But Chuanqing, born into that family, had never had a choice. Another bird added to the screen-no matter how much he's beaten, he can't fly away. Twenty years with his father had crippled his spirit. Even if he did receive his freedom, escape was impossible for him.
He couldn't escape, couldn't escape! And since he'd never had the slightest hope of the whole situation being any differ­ent, he'd simply given in. But now, after taking all those bits that he garnered or guessed, and constructing from them, for the first time, a coherent story, he finally saw how it was: twen­tysome years ago, before his own birth, there had been a hope of deliverance for him. His mother had had a possibility of marrying Yan Ziye, so he himself almost could have been the son of Yan Ziye. Then he'd be Yan Danzhu's elder brother—maybe Yan Danzhu herself! If it had been him, then there'd be no her.
The next day at school, in his History of Chinese Literature class, Chuanqing's mind was a mess. He saw, as from a great distance, Yan Danzhu slip quietly into the classroom, a bulky patent-leather notebook clutched to her chest. She sat in the front row, over to the left and out of the professor's line of sight: no doubt trying not to disturb her father. Then she looked around and smiled a bit at Chuanqing. There was an empty seat beside her; the boy next to Chuanqing nudged him and urged him to take it. Chuanqing shook his head. The boy laughed. "What a fool you are! What have you got to lose? If you don't go, I will!"
But as he was getting up, several other students pushed ahead of him. The race was to the swift, and the one who got there first promptly occupied the seat.
It was late-spring weather, and already the heat was fero­cious. On top of her cheongsam, Danzhu wore a long-sleeved jacket of thin white silk. Leaning over to laugh and chat with someone next to her, she rested her cheek in one hand. Her lively, copper-colored face and arms, complemented by that gauzy silk, looked like amber liquor shimmering in a glass. Simple appreciation of beauty was, however, just a small part of Chuanqing's response to her. He thought: she doesn't look like Yan Ziye at all, she must take after her mother, that southern girl that Yan Ziye married. Yan Ziye was pale and fairly slim. Most men don't get their looks till they're at least thirty-Yan Ziye proved the point. He had to be-what-at least forty-five? But he looked much younger.
Yan Ziye came in and walked to the podium. Chuanqing suddenly felt that he'd never really seen him before. He saw, for the first time, the debonair elegance of the long Chinese gown. Chuanqing himself wore a gown and jacket, for reasons of economy, though like most young men he would have pre­ferred a Western suit. But Yan Ziye's loose gray silk gown, with its accumulation of soft, heavy folds, showed off the fine long lines of his body. Chuanqing was surprised by a sudden fantasy: If he were Yan Ziye's child, would he look like Yan Ziye? The resemblance would certainly have been close: unlike Danzhu, he was a man.
Yan Ziye opened the roll book. "Li Mingguang, Dong De­quan, Wang Lifen, Wang Zongwei, Wang Xiaoyi, Nie Chuan­ging ..." When Chuanqing answered, he thought his voice sounded strange, and he quickly blushed. But Yan Ziye kept going: "Qin Defen, Zhang Shixian ..." One hand resting on the desktop, the other calmly bearing the roll book-a man who'd gone through hardship, but still had known some small measure of happiness.
A man whose blood could have flowed in my veins, Chuan­qing thought to himself "Suppose ... suppose ..." But how sweet a fruit the "suppose" must be, that people will sup and sup on it! A juicy fruit, like a lychee but without the pit, sparkling and light green; a fruit that hides the tart within the sweet. Suppose ... suppose his mother, at the moment of saying her final farewell to Yan Ziye, had shown a bit of will, a bit of selfishness? If only, swept away by emotion, she had changed everything by saying: "In the past, my parents made all the decisions for me. Now you-you make the decision! Whatever you say, that's what I'll do." If she hadn't been so worried about the past, so concerned about the future ... the future! Had she really shown any concern for the future? Had she given any thought to her future offspring? She'd done great harm, enor­mous harm, to her own child! Chuanqing himself knew that his accusations against his mother were unfair. For a girl of just seventeen or eighteen, as she was then, she'd held herself to an admirably high moral standard. But the most that anyone can do, when faced with a tough problem, is try to ease the heart's burden, try to take the pressure off. Could he really blame his mother?
Professor Yan turned around to write on the blackboard. The room filled with rustling sounds as the students copied after him, but Chuanqing couldn't keep his mind on his work.
He'd eaten one "suppose," and now he peeled another. If, for instance, his mother and Yan Ziye had gotten married, their life together would probably not have been perfectly blissful. Chuanqing knew from Amah Liu that Biluo was high-strung and emotional; Danzhu had once told him that Yan Ziye was suspicious and often quite rigid. Lovers love to fight.; it's the absence of ties that makes mutual forbearance possible. And, at that time, society would have frowned on Biluo's breaking with her family, and the marriage would certainly have hurt Ziye's career. People's views had changed, of course, over the past ten years-but by then Ziye would have missed his chance, and he'd have lost his enthusiasm. When a man isn't happy in his career, all sorts of squabbles and petty misunderstandings will find their way into his home life. Wouldn't that have been bad for their children?
No, it would have been good for them! Little worries and small obstacles build character. If he were Ziye and Biluo's child, his mind would be so much deeper, so much more reflective, than Danzhu's. And a child with a loving family is always full of confidence and fellow-feeling-active, vigorous, and brave, whatever the vagaries of his life. So he would have all of Dan­zhu's strengths, and all the ones she lacked, too.
Danzhu sat in the front row: again his gaze fell on her. She was listening intently to Professor Yan's lecture, head tilted to one side, lips parted slightly as she tapped with a pencil on her small, white teeth. The line of her face, in profile, was smooth and lovely, especially that little snub nose, just like a child's. A trace of perspiration glistened on her nose; she looked like nothing so much as a shiny bronze fountain statue.
Danzhu was in the science division at the university, but still found time to study other things: literary history, for instance. Her interests were so wide-ranging that they touched on every­thing and everyone. Chuanqing suddenly thought of just the phrase to describe that undiscriminating approach that she took toward all their classmates: she was promiscuously friendly. Dan­zhu was happy to chat with anyone, but when anyone wanted more than that, she'd beg off, say they were all just students, not ready yet for love. But what did that mean? After Danzhu graduated, what was there for her to do? At the end of the day, she'd just go and get married! The more Chuanqing thought about Danzhu, the more boring and superficial she seemed. If he came from a family as wonderful as hers, he'd make the most of it, he'd be perfect. No, he did not like Danzhu.
Chuanqing's resentment against Danzhu-and his strange infatuation with Yan Ziye-grew stronger with each passing day. Under these psychological conditions, he was of course unable to study. At the end of the semester, his grades on his final exams were awful. Worst of all was History of Chinese Literature, which he hadn't even come close to passing. His fa­ther bawled him out, then sent someone to persuade the school administration to give him another chance, so he could stay with his class in the fall semester.
When Chuanqing went back to school, his misery had not lifted; instead it had grown worse. He had spent the whole summer vacation brooding endlessly on his pain and the rea­sons for it. Meanwhile the daily routine at home had brought him into closer contact with his father. He'd discovered how much he resembled Nie Jiechen, both in looks and in manners. Chuanqing loathed this Nie Jiechen who lived in his body. He had ways of avoiding his father, but he couldn't get away-not even by an inch-from this other self that was there, stuck inside of him.
Chuanqing daydreamed all day long, leaning on the wickertrunk in the corner of his bedroom. An astonished Amah Liu kept coming by and saying, "Can't you feel the blazing sun beating down? The older you are, the more muddled you get—you can't even tell hot from cold! Sit up, get out of the sun!" Too lazy to get up, he'd sit there on the floor, then let his spin­ning head fall back on the wicker trunk; he'd stay that way a long while, until the wicker pattern was imprinted across his forehead.
When school started, his father called him in and delivered a stern warning. "Do badly again, and your studies are over! It's pointless anyway-you're just bringing shame on the Nie family!"
Chuanqing didn't want to drop out, so he worked hard. Scribbling through the homework, he managed to get by in lots of different subjects. But in the subject that his father thought should be easiest for him, History of Chinese Lit­erature, he was lost, he couldn't make a showing at all. He had to keep taking the course, though, since replacing it with some­thing else would cost him too many credits.
Final exams always came after the Christmas and. New Year break. On the morning of Christmas Eve, classes were held as usual. Professor Yan wanted to see whether the students were adequately prepared for the exam, so he gave them an informal oral quiz. When he got to Chuanqing, he had to call out two or three times before Chuanqing heard him.
"Tell us about the rise of seven-character verse," Professor Yan said, already a bit annoyed.
Chuanqing stood bent over like a beggar, not daring to look at the teacher.
"The rise of seven-character verse ..." He broke off. The whole room was silent. Chuanqing felt that Danzhu was cer­tainly watching him-watching him disgrace the whole Nie family. No, it was his mother he was disgracing! The child of Yan Ziye's wife was watching the child of Feng Biluo making a fool of himself. The classroom was so quiet that he had to say something.
He licked his lips, and the words came out slowly. "The rise of seven-character verse ... the rise of seven-character verse, the ... uh seven-character rise of verse!"