"Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused - Fiction From Today`s China [редактор Говард Голдблатт]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Голдблатт Говард, Мэн Ван, Сюэ Цань, Фейю Би,...)

Su Tong – The Brothers Shu

The story of Fragrant Cedar Street is legendary among people in my hometown. In the south of China, there are lots of streets just like it: narrow, dirty, the cobblestones forming a network of potholes. When you look out your window at the street or at the river's edge, you can see dried meat and drying laundry hanging from eaves, and you can see inside houses, where people are at the dinner table or engaged in a whole range of daily activities. What I am about to give you isn't so much a story as it is a word picture of life down south, and little more.

The brothers Shu Gong and Shu Nong lived on that particular street.

So did the Lin sisters, Hanli and Hanzhen.

They shared a building: 18 Fragrant Cedar Street, a blackened two-story structure, where the Shu family lived downstairs and the Lins above them. They were neighbors. Black sheet metal covered the flat roof of number 18, and as I stood at the bridgehead, I saw a cat crouching up there. At least that's how I remember it, fifteen years later.

And I remember the river, which intersected Fragrant Cedar Street a scant three or four feet from number 18. This river will make several appearances in my narration, with dubious distinction, for as I indicated earlier, I can only give impressions.

Shu Gong was the elder son, Shu Nong his younger brother.

Hanli was the elder daughter, Hanzhen her younger sister.

The ages of the Shu brothers and Lin sisters can be likened to the fingers of your hand: if Shu Nong was fourteen, then Hanzhen was fifteen, Shu Gong sixteen, and Hanli seventeen. A hand with four fingers lined up so tightly you can't pry them apart. Four fingers on the same hand. But where is the thumb?

Shu Nong was a timid, sallow-faced little devil. In the crude and simple classroom of Fragrant Cedar Middle School, he was the boy sitting up front in the middle row, dressed in a gray school uniform, neatly patched at the elbows, over a threadbare hand-me-down shirt with a grimy blue collar. The teachers at Fragrant Cedar Middle School all disliked Shu Nong, mainly because of the way he sprawled across his desk and picked his nose as he stared up at them. Experienced teachers knew he wasn't listening, and if they smacked him over the head with a pointer, he shrieked like splintered glass and complained, "I wasn't talking!" So while he wasn't the naughtiest child in class, his teachers pretty much ignored him, having taken all the gloomy stares from his old-man's eyes they could bear. To them, he was "a little schemer." Plus he usually smelled like he had just peed his pants.

Shu Nong was still wetting the bed at fourteen. And that was one of his secrets.

At first, we weren't aware of this secret. It was Hanzhen who let the cat out of the bag. Devoted to the act of eating, Hanzhen had such a greedy little mouth she even stole from her parents to buy snacks. One day when there was nothing to steal and she was standing outside the sweetshop looking depressed, Shu Nong happened by, dragging his schoolbag behind him. She stopped him: "I need twenty fen." He tried to walk around her, but she grabbed the strap of his bag and wouldn't let him pass. "Are you going to lend it to me or not, you little miser?" she demanded.

Shu Nong replied, "All I've got on me is two fen."

Hanzhen frowned and casually slapped him with his own strap. Then, jamming her fists onto her hips, she said, "Don't you kids play with him. He wets the bed. His sheets are hung out to dry everyday!"

I watched her spin around and take off toward school, leaving Shu Nong standing motionless and gloomy, holding his face in his hands as he followed her pudgy figure with his eyes. Then he looked at me-gloom filled his eyes. I can still see that fearful look on his fourteen-year-old face, best described as that of a young criminal genius. "Let's go," I said. "I won't tell anybody."

He shook his head, jammed his finger up his nose, and dug around a bit. "You go ahead. I'm skipping school today."

Shu Nong played hooky a lot, so that was no big deal. And I assumed he was already cooking up a way to get even with Han-zhen, which also was no big deal since he had a reputation for settling scores.

On the very next day, Hanzhen came into the office to report Shu Nong for putting five dead rats, some twisted wire, and a dozen or more thumbtacks in her bed. The teachers promised to punish him, but he played hooky that day, too. On the day after that, Hanzhen's mother, Qiu Yumei, came to school with a bowl of rice and asked the principal to smell it. He asked what was going on. Qiu Yumei accused Shu Nong of peeing in her rice pot. A crowd was gathering outside the office when the gym teacher dragged in Shu Nong, who had sauntered in to school only moments earlier and flung him into the corner.

"Here he is," the principal said. "Now what do you want me to do?"

"That's easy," Qiu Yumei replied. "Make him eat the rice, and he'll think twice about doing that again."

After mulling the suggestion over for a few seconds, the principal carried the offending bowl of rice over to Shu Nong. "Eat up," he said, "and taste the fruit of your labors."

Shu Nong stood there with his head down, hands jammed into his pockets as he nonchalantly fiddled with a key ring. The sound of keys jangling in the boy's grimy pocket clearly angered the principal, who in plain view of everyone, forced Shu Nong's head down over the rice. Shu Nong licked it almost instinctively, then yelped like a puppy, and spat the stuff out. Deathly pale, he ran out of the office, a single kernel of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. The bystanders roared with laughter.

That evening, I spotted Shu Nong at the limestone quarry, wobbling across the rocky ground, dragging his schoolbag behind him. He picked an old tree limb out of a pile of rubbish and began kicking it ahead of him. He looked as gloomy and dejected as always. I thought I heard him announce, "I'll screw the shit out of Lin Hanzhen." His voice was high-pitched and shrill but as flat and emotionless as a girl saying to a clerk in a sweetshop, I'd like a candy figurine, please. "And I'll screw the shit out of Qiu Yumei!" he added.

A male figure climbed onto the roof of number 18. From a distance, it looked like a repairman. It was Shu Nong's father. Since the neighbors all called him Old Shu, that's what we'll call him here. To members of my family, Old Shu was special. I remember him as a short, stocky man who was either a construction worker or a pipe fitter. Whichever, he was good with his hands. If someone's plumbing leaked or the electric meter was broken, the lady of the house would say, "Go find Old Shu." He wasn't much to look at, but the women on Fragrant Cedar Street liked him. In retrospect, I'd have to say Old Shu was a ladies' man, of which Fragrant Cedar Street boasted several, one of whom, as I say, was Old Shu. That's how I see it, anyhow.

Let's say that some women doing their knitting see Old Shu on the roof of number 18. They start gossiping about his amorous escapades, mostly about how he and Qiu Yumei do this, that, and the other. I recall going into a condiments shop once and overhearing the soy sauce lady tell the woman who sold pickled vegetables, "Old Shu is the father of the two Lin girls! And look how that trashy Qiu Yumei struts around!" The condiments shop was often the source of shocking talk like that. Qiu Yumei was walking past just then but didn't hear them.

If you believed the women's brassy gossip, one look at Lin Hanzhen's father would strengthen your conviction. What did Old Lin do for a living? you ask. Let's say it's a summer day at sunset, and a man is playing chess in the doorway of the handkerchief maker's. That will be Old Lin, who plays there every day. Sometimes Hanzhen or Hanli brings his dinner and lays it next to the chessboard. Old Lin wears thick glasses for his nearsightedness. He has no special talents, but once after losing a chess game, he popped the cannon piece into his mouth and would have swallowed it if Hanli hadn't pried open his mouth and plucked it out. She knocked over the chessboard, earning herself a slap in the face. "You want to keep playing?" she complained tearfully with a stomp of her foot. "I should have let you swallow that piece!"

Old Lin retorted, "I'll swallow whatever I want to swallow, and you can just butt out!"

People watching the game laughed. They got a kick out of Old Lin's temper. They also got a kick out of Hanli, because she was so pretty and had such a good heart. The neighbors were unanimous in their appraisal of the sisters: they liked Hanli and disliked Hanzhen., Now all the players in our drama have made an appearance, all but Shu Gong and his mother, that is. There isn't much to be said about the woman in the Shu family. Craven and easily intimidated, she padded like a mouse around the downstairs of number 18, cooking meals and washing clothes, and I have virtually no recollection of her. Shu Gong, on the other hand, is very important, since for a time he was an object of veneration among young people on Fragrant Cedar Street.

Shu Gong had a black mustache, an upside-down V sort of like Stalin's.

Shu Gong had delicate features and always wore a pair of white Shanghai-made high-top sneakers.

Shu Gong had been in a gang fight at the limestone quarry with some kids from the west side, and he had had a love affair. Guess who he had the affair with.

Hanli.

In retrospect, I can see that the two families at number 18 had a very interesting relationship.

Shu Gong and Shu Nong shared a bed at first and fought night after night. Shu Gong would come roaring out of a sound sleep and kick Shu Nong: "You wet the bed again, you wet the goddamned bed!" Shu Nong would lie there not making a sound, eyes open as he listened for the prowling steps and night screeches of the cat on the roof. He got used to being kicked and slugged by his brother since he knew he had it coming. He always wet the bed, and Shu Gong's side was always clean as a whistle. Besides, he was no match for Shu Gong in a fight. Knowing how reckless it would be to stand up to his brother, Shu Nong let strategy be his watchword. He recalled the wise comment someone made after being beaten up one day on the stone bridge: a true gentleman gets revenge, even if it takes ten years. Shu Nong understood exactly what that meant. So one night after Shu Gong had kicked and slugged him again, he said very deliberately, "A true gentleman gets revenge, even if it takes ten years."

"What did you say?" Shu Gong, who thought he was hearing things, crawled over and patted Shu Nong's face. "Did you say something about revenge?" He smirked. "You little shit, what do you know about revenge?"

His brother's lips flashed in the darkness like two squirming maggots. He repeated the comment.

Shu Gong clapped his hand over his brother's mouth. "Shut that stinky mouth of yours, and go to sleep," he said, then found a dry spot in bed and lay back down.

Shu Nong was still mumbling. He was saying, "Shu Gong, I'm going to kill you."

Shu Gong had another chuckle over that. "Want me to go get the cleaver?"

"Not now," Shu Nong replied. "Some other day. Just don't turn your back."

Years later, Shu Gong could still see Shu Nong's pale lips flashing in the dark like a couple of squirming maggots. But back then, he could no longer endure sharing a bed with Shu Nong, so he told his parents, "Buy me a bed of my own, or I'll stay with a friend and forget about coming home."

Old Shu was momentarily speechless. "I see you've grown up," he said as he lifted his son's arm to look at his armpit. "OK, it's starting to grow. I'll buy you a real spring bed tomorrow."

After that, Shu Nong slept alone. He was still fourteen.

At the age of fourteen, Shu Nong began sleeping alone. He vowed on his first night away from his brother never to wet the bed again. Let's say that it's an autumn night forgotten by all concerned and that Shu Nong's dejection is like a floating leaf somewhere down south. He lies wide awake in the darkness, listening to the surpassing stillness outside his window on Fragrant Cedar Street, broken occasionally by a truck rumbling down the street, which makes his bed shake slightly. It's a boring street, Shu Nong thinks, and growing up on it is even more so. His thoughts fly all over the place until he gets sleepy, but as he curls up for the night, Shu Gong's bed begins to creak and keeps on creaking for a long time. "What are you doing?"

"None of your business. Go to sleep, so you can wet your bed," Shu Gong snaps back spitefully.

"I'm not wetting my bed anymore." Shu Nong sits up straight. "I can't wet it if I don't sleep!"

No response from Shu Gong, who is by now snoring loudly. The sound disgusts Shu Nong, who thinks Shu Gong is more boring than anything, an SOB just begging to get his lumps. Shu Nong looks out the window and hears a cat spring from the windowsill up to the roof. He sees the cat's dark-green eyes, flashing like a pair of tiny lamps. No one pays any attention to the cat, which is free to prance off anywhere in the world it likes. To Shu Nong, being feline seems more interesting than being human.

That is how Shu Nong viewed the world at fourteen: being feline is more interesting than being human.

If the moon is out that night, Shu Nong is likely to see his father climbing up the rainspout. Suddenly, he sees someone climbing expertly up the rainspout next to the window like a gigantic house lizard. Shu Nong experiences a moment of fear before sticking his head out the window and grabbing a leg.

"What do you think you're doing?" That is exactly how long it takes him to discover it is his father, Old Shu, who thumps his son on the head with the sandal in his hand. "Be a good boy, and shut up. I'm going up to fix the gutter."

"Is it leaking?"

"Like a sieve. But I'll take care of it."

Shu Nong says, "I'll go with you."

With a sigh of exasperation, Old Shu shins down to the win-dowsill, squats in his bare feet, and wraps his hands around Shu Nong's neck. "Get back to bed, and go to sleep," Old Shu says. "You saw nothing, unless you want me to throttle you. And don't think I won't do it, you understand?"

His father's hands around his neck feel like knives cutting into his flesh. He closes his eyes, and the hands fall loose. He sees his father grab hold of something, spring off the sill, and climb to the top floor.

After that, Shu Nong goes back and sits on his bed, but he isn't sleepy. He hears a thud upstairs in Qiu Yumei's room, then silence. What's going on? Shu Nong thinks of the cat. If the cat's on the roof, can it see what Father and Qiu Yumei are up to? Shu Nong thought a lot about things like that when he was fourteen. His thoughts, too, are like leaves floating aimlessly somewhere down south. Just before dawn, a rooster crows somewhere, and Shu Nong realizes he had fallen asleep-and had wet the bed. Mentally he wrings out his dripping-wet underpants, and the rank smell of urine nearly makes him gag. How could I have fallen asleep? How come I wet the bed again? His nighttime discovery floats up like a dream. Who made me go to sleep? Who made me wet the bed? A sense of desolation wraps itself around Shu Nong's heart. He slips off his wet pants and begins to sob. Shu Nong did a lot of sobbing at the age of fourteen, just like a little girl.

Shu Nong asked me a really weird question once, but then he was always asking weird questions. And if you didn't supply a satisfying answer, he'd give you a reasoned reply of his own.

"What's better, being human or being a cat?"

I said human, naturally.

"Wrong. Cats are free, and nobody pays them any attention. Cats can prowl the eaves of a house."

So I said, "Go be a cat, then."

"Do you think people can turn into cats?"

"No. Cats have cats, people have people. Don't tell me you don't even know that!"

"I know that. What I mean is, Can someone turn himself into a cat?"

"Try it, and see."

"Maybe I will. But I have lots to do before that. I'm going to make you all sit up and take notice." Shu Nong began chewing his grubby fingernails, making a light clipping noise: chuk chuk.

As for Hanli, she was one of Fragrant Cedar Street 's best-known lovely young things. And she had a heart as fragile and tender as a spring snowflake. Hanli couldn't watch a chicken being killed, and she never ate one. The sight of a bloody, dying creature terrified her, and that trait became the keystone of her character. As youngsters, Shu Gong and Shu Nong often sprinkled chicken blood on the stairs to menace the sisters. It had no effect on Han-zhen but drained the blood from poor Hanli's face. Her terror evoked cruel fantasies in the minds of the Shu brothers. "So?" you say. Well, years later, mixed feelings would characterize Shu Gong's recollections of the girl Hanli, since he was always brutally punished by Old Shu for his cruel pranks: first Old Shu would pin him to the floor and gag him with a wet rag to keep him from screaming; then he would smack him across the face with his shoe until his arm tired. Old Shu would then drag himself off to bed and leave Shu Gong lying half-dead on the floor, his battered face looking like an exploded red windowpane. By then, the wet rag would be chewed into a tight little wad. "How had that come about?" you ask. Well, Shu Gong had considered Hanli his private plaything from a very early age. She was like a katydid he held in his hand as it screeched helplessly; he had her in his grip and wouldn't let go. What I find strange is that the people in my hometown never figured out the relationship between Shu Gong and Hanli, simply writing it off as bad karma.

Let's say spring is giving way to summer, and Shu Gong is washing his face at the tap when he hears someone walk down the stairs behind him. He turns to see Hanli standing at the foot of the stairs with a patterned skirt in a washbasin, her just-washed, shoulder-length hair a shiny black. Discovering Hanli's beauty for the first time, he looks at his reflection in his own basin. The whiskers on his upper lip are like a dark patch of weeds floating on the water. But just as he realizes that he, too, has a certain charm, he detects an indescribable stink and knows it is rising from his underpants, which he had put on that morning without washing them first. He looks up at Hanli, who averts her eyes. Can she smell it, too? A tangle of fantasies whirls around Shu Gong's head and tickles his sex like grassy filaments, invigorating it. He dumps the water from his basin and puts the basin back under the tap, stalling to give his brain time to sort out his feelings and desires. He hears water spill over the rim of the basin and splash on the ground; the basin is full again, but he still doesn't know what to do. Obviously, he wants to do something to Hanli but doesn't know how to go about it. What do I do? An idea forms. Draping the towel over his shoulder, he walks over to the little storeroom beneath the stairs, where he closes the door, takes off his underpants, and examines the whitish stains in the crotch; then he puts his trousers back on. Outside again, he carries his soiled underpants over to the tap and crams them into Hanli's basin; water-soaked, they quickly sink to the bottom. A shocked Hanli stops washing her face and hops away.

"Wha??" she shrieks, a curtain of hair covering her face.

"Don't have a fit. Just wash them for me," Shu Gong says as he picks them out of the water.

"Why should I? I'm going to wash my skirt."

"Do as I say if you know what's good for you."

"You don't scare me, never did. Wash your own stuff."

"Really? I don't scare you?" A grin forms on Shu Gong's lips as his eyes bore into Hanli's face, in which an uneasy anger resides. He sees spurts of pink blood rise from the recesses of her body to just beneath the skin; he is always seeing Hanli's pink blood. That's why everyone says she is so pretty. With that thought on his mind, he picks up the washbasin and flings the water in Hanli's face. Whoosh! The strange thing is she doesn't scream. She stands there, soaked to the skin, and looks straight into Shu Gong's face. Pretty soon she wraps her arms around her shivering shoulders. Crystalline beads of water drip from her hair.

"Pick them up!" Shu Gong kicks the pair of blue underpants that have landed on the ground.

Hugging herself tightly, Hanli glances over at the stairs, but she doesn't move.

"No need to look. There's no one there. Even if there were, so what? I dare anybody to get me mad," Shu Gong says.

Hanli bends over and picks up Shu Gong's blue underpants, then tosses them into the basin.

"Wash them!" Shu Gong demands.

Hanli turns on the tap, closes her eyes, and scrubs them tentatively. Then she opens her eyes. "Soap. I need soap." Shu Gong hands Hanli a bar of soap. He grabs her wrist as she takes the soap from him and squeezes it hard. Not fondles, squeezes. On Fragrant Cedar Street, they say that was when the love between Shu Gong and Hanli was kindled. That may sound far-fetched, but to this day no other explanation has risen to challenge it. So let's keep the faith with Fragrant Cedar Street and move on.

The people's nostalgia for the river that flows through our southern city can last a hundred years. Our homes were built along the river until the banks were black with dense rows of them. It was a narrow riverbed, and the rocks on the sloping banks were covered with green moss and all sorts of creepers. As I recall, once the water got polluted, it never turned clear again: it was black and stank horribly. The river might as well have been the city's natural spillway, the way it carried rotten vegetable leaves, dead cats and rats, industrial oils and grease plus a steady supply of condoms.

Typical southern scenery. So why were there people who sang on the banks of the river? Why did people see tall-masted ships sailing at night? Fragrant Cedar Street didn't know; Fragrant Cedar Street, which ran along the banks of the river, had no idea.

Late that night, Shu Nong climbed onto the roof for the very first time. He prowled the dusty roof catlike in his bare feet, not making a sound. The world, having lost its voice, allowed Shu Nong to hear the wild beating of his heart. He walked to the edge and squatted down, holding a clothespole to keep from falling. He could see into Qiu Yumei's second-story room through the transom.

Simply stated, Old Shu and Qiu Yumei were in bed, making love.

In the weak light of the bedside lamp, Qiu Yumei's naked, voluptuous body gave off a blue glare; that was what puzzled Shu Nong. Why is she blue? Shu Nong watched his father ram his squat, powerful body against Qiu Yumei over and over, shattering then congealing the blue glare with lightning speed, until his eyes seemed bombarded with an eternal light. They're killing each other! What are they doing? Shu Nong saw his father's face twist into a grimace and watched Qiu Yumei squirm like a crazed snake. They really are killing each other! Darkness quickly swallowed up their faces and abdomens. The heavy, murky smell of river water seeped out from the room, and when it reached Shu Nong's nostrils, he was reminded of the filthy river flotsam. With the river flowing beneath their window, the one nearly merging with the other, the smells from the window polluted the river, and both created a barrier against Shu Nong's thought processes. He felt as if the world around him had changed, that he really and truly had become feline after falling under the spell of darkness and rank, puckery odors. He mewed and sought out something to eat.

That was the night Shu Nong began spying on his father and Qiu Yumei while they were carrying on.

Shu Nong the voyeur screeched like a tomcat.

Thinking of himself as a tomcat, Shu Nong screeched as he watched.

After each time, a little white object came flying out the second-story window and landed in the river. Shu Nong knew the things belonged to his father but couldn't tell what they were. So once he climbed down and headed for the river, where he saw the thing floating on the surface like a deflated balloon. He plucked it out of the river and onto the bank with a dead branch. It shone glittery white in the moonlight and lay in his hand like a little critter: soft and slippery. Shu Nong slipped it into his pocket and went home to bed. But soon after he lay down, a brilliant idea popped into his head. He took the sheath out, wiped it clean, and, holding his breath, stretched it over his little pecker; he was struck by a sensation of vitality that seized his consciousness. Shu Nong slept like a baby that night, and when he awoke the next morning, he was overjoyed to discover that for some reason, he hadn't wet the bed. Why was that?

The story goes that the sheaths Shu Nong fished out of the river solved his problem, but you needn't buy into that argument if it seems too far-fetched.

Shu Nong's night prowls atop number 18 went undetected for the longest time. Then one day, Old Shu found two yuan missing from his dresser drawer, so he searched his sons' pockets. In Shu Gong's pockets, he found one yuan and some change and a pack of cigarettes; in Shu Nong's pockets, he found three condoms. Needless to say, the unexpected discovery of condoms shocked and enraged Old Shu.

The first order of business for Old Shu, whose methods of punishment were unique on Fragrant Cedar Street, was to tie Shu Gong to his bed. Then he removed a cigarette from his son's pack, lit it, and puffed it vigorously. He asked the hogtied Shu Gong, "Want a puff?" Shu Gong shook his head. "Here, try it. Don't you want to be a smoker?" Before waiting for an answer, he shoved the lit end of the cigarette into Shu Gong's mouth, and Shu Gong screamed bloody murder. Old Shu clamped his hand over his son's mouth. "Stop that crazy screaming. It won't hurt long. The cigarette will burn out in no time. You can have another one tomorrow if you want."

Shu Nong's punishment was a touchier matter since Old Shu wasn't sure how to handle the situation. When he called his younger son into the little storeroom, he could barely keep from laughing as he held the three condoms in his hand and asked, "Do you know what these are?"

"No."

"Where did you get them?"

"The river. I fished them out."

"What did you have in mind? You're not making balloons out of them, are you?"

Shu Nong didn't answer. Then Old Shu saw flashes of deep green light in his son's eyes as he answered in a raspy voice: "They're yours."

"What did you say?" Suddenly, Old Shu knew he had a problem. He wrapped his hands around Shu Nong's neck and shook his puny skull for all he was worth. "How do you know they're mine?"

Shu Nong's face was turning purple, but rather than answer, he just stared into the strangler's face, then let his gaze slide down past the brawny chest and come to rest on his father's fly.

"What are you looking at?" Old Shu slapped Shu Nong, who flinched although his gaze stuck stubbornly to his father's fly. He was given another glimpse of the blue glare, which made him lightheaded. Old Shu grabbed his son's hair and banged his head against the wall. "Who were you spying on? Who in the hell have you been spying on?" Shu Nong's head banged into the wall once, twice, but he felt no pain. He was watching blue specks dance before his eyes like a swarm of wasps. He heard the screech of a cat on the roof; he and the sound merged into a single entity.

"Cat," Shu Nong said weakly as he licked his torn gums.

Old Shu wasn't sure what his son was talking about. "Are you saying the cat was spying?"

"Right, the cat was spying."

Some Fragrant Cedar Street neighbors passing beneath the window at number 18 stopped to gawk as Old Shu beat his son mercilessly. People living on Fragrant Cedar Street considered boys well raised if they were beaten often, so there was nothing unusual here. But the victim's behavior perplexed them. Instead of screaming and carrying on, Shu Nong appeared determined to bear up under the punishment, which was a big change from before.

"What did Shu Nong do?" one of the window gawkers asked.

"Wet the bed!" Old Shu replied from inside.

No one had any reason to suspect any different, since Shu Nong's bed-wetting was well-known up and down Fragrant Cedar Street. The neighbors were sensitive, alert people but not particularly adept at digging beneath the surface to get to the heart of a matter. When Shu Nong's destructive tendencies first began to manifest themselves, the people were too tied up in their belief that he was still fourteen and still wet the bed to spot the differences.

Shu Nong had stopped wetting the bed at the age of fourteen, but no one would believe it. Or better put, people found Shu Nong's bed-wetting interesting, but not the cessation of his bed-wetting. Take Shu Nong's mortal enemy, Hanzhen, for instance: she chanted the following when she jumped rope:

One four seven, two five eight,

Shu Nong bed-wets at a nightly rate.

Hanli, who rarely spoke to her mother, told a schoolmate, "My mother's a slut, and I despise her."

Folks assumed that Hanli was aware of her bloodline. Since half the women on Fragrant Cedar Street feuded with Qiu Yumei, any one of them would have happily let her in on the secret. But more to the point was Hanli's precociousness. She didn't need to be told what was what. You can't wrap a fire in paper, after all.

Hanli had not spoken to Old Shu for years. He bought her a scarf for her seventeenth birthday, but deaf to his entreaties, she cut him dead at the foot of the stairs. So he gave the scarf to Qiu Yumei, who tried to drape it around Hanli's shoulders. Hanli tore it out of her hands and flung it to the ground, then spit on it. "Who needs it? Who knows what you're up to?"

"Old Shu gave it to you only because he likes you. Don't be an ingrate."

"Who asked him to like me? Who knows what you're up to?"

"What do you mean by 'what we're up to'?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"No, I don't. You tell me."

"I'm ashamed to." Suddenly burying her face in her hands, Hanli burst out crying. Then, with tears still streaming down her face, she began combing her hair before the mirror. In the reflection, she saw her mother bend over to pick up the scarf, her face frightfully pale. Hanli wished her mother would rush up and pull her hair so they could have a real fight and get some of that hatred out of their systems. But Qiu Yumei just stood there, wordlessly twisting the scarf around her fingers. Threads of pity settled over Hanli, who said through her sobs, "I don't want it. Give it to Hanzhen."

So Qiu Yumei took back the scarf, and the next day she wore it outside. Eventually it was Hanzhen who went to school with Old Shu's scarf draped around her shoulders. When asked, she said her mother had ordered it from Shanghai and that her mother loved her and not Hanli.

It was a different matter with Old Lin, whom Hanli treated with fatherly respect. In fact, this alone was the source of at least half the praise Hanli received on Fragrant Cedar Street. Whenever Old Lin was in the middle of a neighborhood chess game, she brought him food and tea, and back home she drew his bathwater. She even trimmed his nails for him. Qiu Yumei told people Hanli was trying to be an elder sister to Old Lin, treating him like a little boy.

"And what about you?" they would ask. "How does that make you feel?"

"It's fine with me," Qiu Yumei would say. "It makes my life easier."

Let's say it's a blustery day and that the rain is pounding the sheet-metal roof of number 18, turning everything wet and forsaken at dusk. A frustrated Old Lin is searching for an umbrella beneath the stairs. He never knows where the family umbrella is kept. He opens Hanli's door. "Where's the umbrella?" Hanli looks at him but says nothing, so he tosses things around until he finds an umbrella with broken ribs and torn oil paper, which he can't open, no matter how hard he tries.

"Chess," Hanli says. "That's all you think about even when it's pouring rain. Don't come running to me if you catch your death of cold."

Old Lin flings the broken umbrella to the floor. "Don't tell me there isn't a working umbrella anywhere in the house!"

"There is," Hanli says, "but she took it when she went out. Would it kill you to stick around and pass up one chess match?"

Old Lin sighs. "Shit, what's there to do on a day like this except play chess?" He sits down and arranges the pieces just to keep busy, and Hanli surprises him by sitting down across the table.

"I'll play a game," Hanli says.

"Don't be silly, you don't know how to play."

"Sure I do. I learned by watching you."

"All right." Old Lin reflects for a moment. "I'll hand over one of my pieces. What do you want, cart, horse, or cannon?"

Hanli looks down at Old Lin's hands without answering. She's acting strange today.

"You can have two carts and a cannon. What do you say?"

"Up to you."

Old Lin removes two carts and a cannon and lets Hanli open. But she just moves her vanguard cannon and stops. Obviously, her mind isn't on chess.

"Papa, why don't you two sleep in the same room?"

"Just play, and no foolish questions."

"No. I want some answers."

"She doesn't like me, and I don't like her, so why should we sleep in the same room?"

"But I hear noises in her room at night."

"She walks in her sleep. She's never been a sound sleeper."

"No, I heard Old Shu from downstairs-"

"Keep playing, and stop with all that nonsense."

"Everyone says she and Old Shu-"

"You're getting on my nerves!" He picks up a chess piece and bangs the board with it. "What you people do is your business."

"What do you mean our business? It's your business, too. Do you know what people call you?"

"Shut up! Now you're really getting on my nerves!" He stands up, grabs the chessboard, and dumps everything on Hanli. "You bastards won't let me live in peace!"

Old Lin scoops up the broken umbrella and runs downstairs. Rain beating down on the sheet-metal roof has turned the dusk wet and forsaken. Hanli is on her knees, picking up the chess pieces, biting her lip to keep from crying out loud. She tries to figure out what's up with her father. What's up with this family? She can tell by the sound that the rain is picking up, and before long she fantasizes that it is about to innundate Fragrant Cedar Street. From where she sits on the floor, she feels as if the whole building were sinking. With darkness settling around her, she gets up to turn on the lights. Nothing happens, which scares her. Rushing over to the window to look downstairs, she sees Shu Gong poke his head out his window to pull in the line on which his blue underpants had been drying. Darkness claims Fragrant Cedar Street, all but a single bright spot on the crown of Shu Gong's head. Hanli runs downstairs, her flying feet making the stairway shake and creak. In the grip of a vaguely despairing thought, she hears her heart murmur, People should leave one another alone. I'll leave you alone, and you do the same for me.

Hanli bursts into the little room in the Shu flat and plops breathlessly into a wicker chair. Shu Gong eyes her suspiciously. "Who's after you?"

"Ghosts," Hanli says.

"The electricity is out, probably a clowned wire."

"It's not the dark I'm afraid of."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm not sure."

"You don't have to be afraid of anything while I'm around." Unable to see Hanli's face in the darkness, Shu Gong grabs hold of the wicker chair and leans down to look more closely; but she turns away from him, the tip of her braid brushing his face.

"People should leave one another alone," Hanli says. "I'm not going to get involved in their affairs anymore, and they'd better not get involved in mine."

"Who's involved in whose affairs?" Shu Gong stops to ponder. "People should try to take care of themselves."

"I'm not talking to you," Hanli says.

"Then who are you talking to?" Shu Gong lifts a strand of her hair and tugs it.

"To myself." She slaps at his hand but misses, which he finds exciting.

"You're something, sure as hell." He yanks the hair out by its root. "It sure is long," he says, mesmerized by the strand of hair. "And really dark." A pulsating desire wraps itself around him; suddenly materializing, it emanates from Hanli, her natural scent making him limp all over. It is more than he can stand. He can hardly breathe. The time has come to inject life into the fantasy that visits him at night. Without warnings he throws his arms around Hanli, sticks out his tongue, and licks her lips. She screams and struggles to get out of the wicker chair, but the frantically licking Shu Gong covers her mouth with his hand. "Don't scream! Keep it up, and I'll kill you!"

Hanli recoils like a little bunny and lets him lick her face as much as he likes, calming herself by staring at the curtain of rain outside the window. "This isn't so bad," she says, sensing the time has come to see what it's like to be with a boy. She can show Qiu Yumei that she knows a thing or two about being shameless, too.

This isn't so bad. People should leave one another alone. Hanli smiles and gently pushes Shu Gong away. "We need a real date," she says in the darkness, emphasizing the word date.

"How do we do that?" Shu Gong asks, holding her hand and not letting go. He is breathing hard.

"Leave it to me, I'll teach you," she says. "Now let go."

"If you're playing games with me, I'll kill you." Shu Gong shoves her away. He is already very, very wet.

"I'm not." Hanli gets to her feet, puckers up, and gives Shu Gong a peck on the cheek. "I have to go upstairs. We'll do it. Just be patient."

In his search for some wire to make a toy gun, Shu Nong went into the storage room beneath the stairs. The latch was broken, so all it took was a good shove to open the door. Shu Nong found it strange that the room was deserted except for the cat sitting on an old slatted trunk, its eyes flashing. He wondered if the cat was up to no good, since cats are such inscrutable animals. When he walked over to pick it up, the cat sprang out of the way, leaving a pair of plum-blossom paw prints on the trunk. Shu Nong recalled this trunk as a place where his father stored all kinds of odds and ends. Maybe he'd find the wire he needed inside. He raised the lid and nearly jumped out of his skin. Two people were coiled up inside, and they were as frightened as he was.

Shu Gong and Hanli tried to make themselves invisible inside the trunk. He was naked, so was she. His face was scarlet, hers was ghostly white.

"What do you think you're doing?" Shu Nong nearly shouted.

"Playing hide-and-seek." Hanli covered her face with her hands.

"Liar," Shu Nong said scornfully. "I know what you're up to."

"Don't tell anybody, Shu Nong." Hanli grabbed his arm. "I'll give you anything you want."

"We'll see how I feel."

Shu Nong slammed the lid down and turned to leave. By then, the cat was outside, so he walked toward it. Shu Gong jumped out of the trunk, grabbed him from behind, and dragged him back into the storage room. He easily knocked Shu Nong to the floor, then walked over and shut the door. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for some wire. Nothing to do with you."

Shu Gong removed a piece of wire from the trunk and waved it in front of Shu Nong. "This it?" Shu Nong reached for it, but Shu Gong pushed his hand away and said, "I'll hold on to it for now. If you breathe a word of this, I'll seal your mouth with it, and you can spend the rest of your life as a mute."

Shu Gong was buck naked. Shu Nong noticed that his pecker was as stiff and big around as a carrot, with threads of purplish blood on the tip. As he stared at the bloodstains, his curiosity turned to fear. He looked over at the trunk. Hanli was sitting up, her face bloodless, her arms crossed over her breasts. Still, he detected the radiance of her body, the familiar bluish glare that characterized the bodies of Lin women. It stung his eyes. Shu Nong was feeling bad, real bad. He walked to the door again. By now, the cat was crouched on the first step. As soon as he was outside the room, Shu Nong threw up, the contents of his stomach spilling out in oceanic quantities. He had never thrown up like that before and had no idea why he was doing it now or why he couldn't stop. In the ensuing dizziness, he saw the cat hop up the stairs, one step at a time, until it disappeared from view.

One morning, Shu Nong instinctively knew that he had become Shu Gong's mortal enemy. At home, in the neighborhood, in school-wherever they were, Shu Gong gave him a glacial look out of the corner of his eye; Shu Nong had begun to cast a dark shadow over Shu Gong's secret happiness. Knowing that he was an obstacle in his brother's way, Shu Nong consciously avoided Shu Gong's stony gaze. It's not my fault, he reasoned. I'm a cat, and cats see everything. You can't blame a cat.

"Did you tell anybody?" Shu Gong grabbed Shu Nong's ear.

"No."

"How about Papa, did you tell him?"

"No."

"Watch out. Keep that mouth of yours shut." Shu Gong held up the piece of wire to show Shu Nong.

Shu Nong sat at the table, shoveling food into his mouth with his hand, a reprehensible habit with a long history. Old Shu could not get him to change, not even with his fists. No one knew he was just being catlike. That behavior symbolized Shu Nong's increasing inscrutability, but no one in the family realized it.

"If you tell anybody, I'll seal your mouth with this wire, understand? That's a promise, not a threat," Shu Gong said in measured tones before slicking down his hair with vegetable oil, putting on his white sneakers, and heading outside.

Shu Nong knew where he was going, and his thoughts turned to his father, who threatened him the same way when he was caught climbing the downspout. Who said I can't tell? If I feel like telling somebody, I will, and if I don't, I won't. They can't do a thing about it. They weren't fated to really shake people up, he reasoned; that was left to him. He followed people, seeing everything, and seeing it first. Is there a soul alive who can hide from the eyes of a cat?

They say Shu Nong followed lots of people, not just his brother and mortal enemy, Shu Gong.

As the sound of whistling faded away, Shu Nong calculated that his brother had passed the storage room and jumped to the street from the windowsill. Pinching his nose closed, he hugged the wall and followed Shu Gong to the limestone quarry, where Hanli waited. It was always the same: Shu Gong and Hanli hid between a wall and a waist-high stack of bricks, the space between stuffed with a battered bamboo basket, like a sentry.

Without a sound, Shu Nong flattened out on the ground and watched them through the gaps in the woven basket. Sometimes he saw their feet float and bob like paper boats. Shu Nong didn't think he could control the urge to screech like a cat, but somehow he managed. Afraid of being discovered, he lay on his belly and held his breath until his face turned purple.

Fragrant cedars are long gone from Fragrant Cedar Street, replaced by acacias and parasol trees. Let's say the acacias are in bloom. When the first winds blow, we see a light-purple haze shimmer above the eaves of the dark building, illusory somehow; the air is heavy with the redolence of fauna. It's the outdoor season, so we all troop outside. Nineteen seventy-four, if memory serves, early autumn, late afternoon.

The boys gather in the courtyard of Soybean's yard, around a pile of stone dumbbells. Most boys on Fragrant Cedar Street can lift a hundred-pound dumbbell. We see Shu Nong push open the gate and stand on the threshold, wondering if he should go in or back out. He seems to be in a trance, standing there, picking his nose with the pinky of his left hand.

"Get the hell out of here, bed wetter." One of the boys runs up and shoves him.

"I just want to watch," he says as he leans against a gatepost. "Can't I even watch?"

"Come tell us what the young lovers Shu Gong and Hanli do."

"I don't know."

"Don't know or won't say? If you won't tell us, then get the hell out of here."

Shu Nong stays put, his free hand sliding up and down the post. After a moment, he says, "They hide in a slatted trunk."

"A slatted trunk?" the boys hoot. "Doing what?"

"Fucking," Shu Nong says maliciously. He bites his lip as he jerks open the gate and is gone like a puff of smoke.

Hanli realized it had been a long time since her last period, two months by her reckoning, and she didn't know why. She was nauseated and felt tired, limp, and sluggish all the time. Frequently downcast, she suspected it was a result of what she and Shu Gong were doing. But she couldn't be sure. When she tried to ask her mother, the words rose to the tip of her tongue and no farther. Deciding to ask a doctor instead, she slipped off to the clinic. When the doctor uttered that fateful word, his voice dripping with disgust Hanli reacted as if struck by lightning; she was virtually paralyzed.

"Lin Hanli, you're pregnant. What school do you go to?" The doctor glared at Hanli, who snatched her sweater off the chair and dashed out of the clinic, covering her face with her sweater so people sitting in the corridor would not recognize her. She emerged into the blinding sunlight of a warm, breezy afternoon. The city and the streets closed in on her as always, but this time she was caught in the fetters of disaster and could hardly breathe. "You're pregnant!" Like a steel band cinched around her neck. How did this happen? What'll I do? Nervously, Hanli walked up to the post office and stopped to let her eyes wander up and down Fragrant Cedar Street. Few people were out and about on that peaceful afternoon; the cobblestones shimmered beneath the sun's rays. Hanli didn't dare walk down Fragrant Cedar Street since now it was an enormous pit waiting to claim her.

Hanli sat on the post office steps, her thoughts chaotic. She considered going to Shu Gong, who would be home asleep, but was afraid to enter Fragrant Cedar Street. Maybe she could wait till nightfall, when no one would see her. Where is all this sunlight coming from? How come the afternoon is so long? As hope faded, she felt like crying. But no tears came, for some strange reason. Maybe she needed to escape the eyes of Fragrant Cedar Street residents. Sometime after four o'clock, she spotted Hanzhen walking home with her schoolbag over her shoulder. She was eating candy. "Hey, what are you doing here?" Hanli grabbed her sister's bag and wouldn't let go. There was madness in her eyes as she looked into Hanzhen's round, ruddy face.

"Say something! What's wrong?" Hanzhen was nearly shouting.

"Not so loud." Like a girl snapping out of a daydream, Hanli clamped her hand over her sister's mouth. "Tell Shu Gong I need to see him."

"What for?"

"Just say I have to talk to him about something."

"No. You shouldn't have anything to do with boys like him."

"That's my business." Hanli pulled a handful of peanuts out of her pocket and stuffed them into Hanzhen's hand. "Hurry, and don't tell anybody."

Hanzhen finally agreed, and as Hanli watched her run toward the dark building at number 18, she breathed deeply to calm herself. This wasn't her problem alone-it was Shu Gong's, too. Would he know what to do? She'd wait for him there. The afternoon seemed endless. Later that day, Hanli and Shu Gong walked single file to their love nest, the limestone quarry, where Hanli sat down and hugged herself tightly as Shu Gong rested on his elbow. This was one of Fragrant Cedar Street 's better-known love scenes a decade or so ago.

"What'll we do?" Hanli asked him.

"How should I know?" Shu Gong replied.

"Can we get rid of it?"

"How?"

"Don't you have any idea?"

"Who knows things like that? I can barely keep my eyes open. Let me get some sleep."

"No sleeping. You're the original sleeping dog."

"Who do you think you're talking to? I could beat the shit out of you."

"I'm talking to you. Why can't you figure a way out of this mess instead of always thinking about sleeping?"

"How should I know what the hell's wrong with you? Other guys play around with girls without getting into trouble."

"I don't know what happened either. What if we try to beat it out?"

"Beat it out? With what?"

"I don't care. Try one of those bricks."

"Where should I hit?"

"Here, and pretty hard."

"OK, here goes. It's going to hurt."

Hanli closed her eyes as Shu Gong swung the brick, really putting some arm into it and drawing shrieks of pain from Hanli "Not so hard, you coldhearted bastard!"

"You're the one who said to hit hard. Do it yourself then."

Shu Gong jammed the brick up against Hanli's belly. He was mad, and it was her fault. He brushed the dirt off the seat of his pants as he turned to leave.

But Hanli wrapped her arms around his leg and wouldn't let go. She dug into his pant leg and held on for dear life. "You can't leave just like that." She looked up at him.

"Then what should we do?" Shu Gong asked.

"Kill ourselves," she blurted out after a thoughtful pause.

"That isn't funny."

"I mean it, we die together."

"You're crazy."

"Neither of us lives. We'll jump into the river."

"I can swim, so I won't die."

"No. We tie ourselves to a rock. That'll do it."

"Screw you. I'm not ready to die."

"I'll report you. That's a death sentence. You choose how you want to go."

"I'm not afraid, I'm just not ready to die."

"One way or the other, you're going to. Don't think I won't say you raped me."

Shu Gong sat down and scratched his mussed hair, giving Hanli a look of malignant hostility. On that afternoon, Hanli was cold and detached, like a woman rich in the ways of the world and familiar with the tricks necessary to get by. Shu Gong broke into a sweat on his back and felt nearly paralyzed. When he looked into the weakened sun's rays over the limestone quarry, he saw millions of dust particles spiraling lazily downward. Shu Gong snapped off a wolfberry twig and broke it into pieces, which he crammed down the sides of his high-topped sneakers. Then he rubbed the sneakers. "Whatever," he said. "If you want me to die, that's OK with me. So I die, so what?"

"So what?" Hanli sneered. "What does that mean? I didn't get into this mess alone."

"Don't be stupid. When are we supposed to go out and die?"

"Tomorrow. No, tonight."

Hanli took Shu Gong's hand. He shook her off. She threw her arms around his neck. He pushed her away. Shu Gong looked at the patch of skin revealed beneath the collar of Hanli's sweater, a piece of floating white ice. He pounced on her, pushing her to the ground and tearing the buttons off her coat, which he held in his hand to see clearly before throwing them behind the pile of bricks and pawing at Hanli's purple sweater. He heard the subtle sound of snapping threads.

Hanli was staring wide-eyed, her eyes taking on the subdued purple of her sweater, not a trace of fear in them. "Yes, it'll be dark soon." She appeared to smile when she said that, then obediently let Shu Gong have his way with her.

Shu Gong gasped as he ripped off her chemise: Hanli's small, firm breasts were covered with purple blotches, her nipples dark and enlarged. Shu Gong sensed that her body had undergone subtle changes. He had done what he had set out to do the past few months: he had fixed Hanli real good. "It doesn't matter to me," he said. "If you want me dead, then that's what you'll get."

Not far from the limestone quarry, a cat screeched mournfully, but they didn't notice.

The cat was Shu Nong.

After the curtain of night fell, Shu Nong followed Shu Gong and Hanli to Stone Pier, which is at the southern end of Fragrant Cedar Street but hasn't been used for years. It was Shu Nong's favorite spot from which to watch people swim. But this was not the swimming season, and he wondered what they were doing there. He climbed onto a broken-down derrick to observe them through the cracked windshield. From that vantage point, he could look down on the river that flowed through town, although when there was no wind, the water lay heavily, like molten bronze. A motley assortment of lamps were lit in homes along the banks; a new moon reflected in the surface of the water was a luminous oval of goose-down yellow. The two people sitting on the river's edge looked like disconnected marionettes. Not sure what they were doing, Shu Nong observed their movements. First they tied themselves together with a rope, then rolled a large rock up to the river very, very slowly, waddling like geese. Shu Nong assumed it was some sort of game. They stopped at the river's edge. A cat on the opposite bank screeched. Shu Nong heard Shu Gong announce to the river, "So we die, what's the big deal?" Then they wrapped their arms around each other and jumped in with a thud and a splash that sent silvery spray in all directions. The moon splintered.

Die? Finally, Shu Nong reacted. Shu Gong and Hanli are drowning themselves in the river! He jumped down off the derrick and made a mad dash back to number 18. His flat was quiet, deserted, so he ran upstairs and banged on Qiu Yumei's door. "In the river! Drowned themselves!" Shu Nong screamed at the dark-red door. He heard rustling noises inside.

Qiu Yumei opened the door a crack. "Who drowned themselves?" she asked.

"Hanli and Shu Gong!" Shu Nong stuck his head inside to look for his father. He spotted a shaky hand resting on a shoe under the bed. He knew the hand belonged to his father. With a squeal, he tore downstairs, shouting to the steps, to the accumulated junk, to the window:

IN THE RIVER!

DROWNED THEMSELVES!

To this day, if I close my eyes, I can see them fishing the bodies out of the dark river at the end of Fragrant Cedar Street as if it were yesterday. Every man who knew how to swim dived into the black, foul-smelling water. People thronged the neglected Stone Pier, where a single streetlamp lit faces that shimmered like the surface of the water. The Shu and Lin families from number 18 were central figures in the drama, and folks took particular notice of Old Shu, who dived to the bottom, came up for air, then dived again, over and over, while Old Lin stood watching on the bank, a chess piece in his hand. Some said it was a horse. Qiu Yumei leaned against an electric pole and sobbed into her hands, hiding her face.

Shu Gong was first out of the water. Old Shu flung his son over his shoulder and ran up and down Fragrant Cedar Street. Black, foul-smelling water spewed from the boy's mouth. Then they fished out Hanli, and Old Shu did the same with her. She looked like a lamb rocking back and forth on Old Shu's shoulder, but no water emerged from her mouth, not even when he had run all the way to the upstairs flat at number 18. She didn't even twitch. Old Shu laid Hanli's body on the floor and felt her pulse. "Nothing," he announced. "She's past saving."

Shu Nong elbowed his way up through the crowd to see what the drowned Hanli looked like, oblivious to the noisy babble all around him. Instinct told him that Hanli was dead. He looked down at her water-soaked body, still dripping as it lay on the floor, each drop the same blue color as her glossy skin. Hanli's staring pupils were more captivating than cat's eyes poking through the darkness. She was really, really blue, and Shu Nong was struck by the realization that all the females he peeked at were blue, even the dead ones. He assumed there was something blue about women and death. What was going on here?

Hanli's death became the topic of conversation on Fragrant Cedar Street 's lanes and byways. People still loved her, even after she was dead, and they told anyone who would listen that like a tender flower growing in a dank cellar, she was fated to die young. This, you must realize, effectively captures the complex and veiled relationships among the people at number 18. The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street were incapable of glossing over the influence of Old Shu and Qiu Yumei on their children, so the suicide pact of Hanli and Shu Gong was overlaid by a film of tragic romanticism.

From then on, the black lacquer gate at number 18 remained shut to outsiders. Milk deliveries were placed in a small wooden box outside the gate, and if you peeked through a crack, all you saw was a dark building. It was just a feeling, but number 18 seemed off-limits in the wake of the Lin girl's premature death. By looking up, you could, if you were observant, see a change in Qiu Yumei's upstairs window: now it was sealed with sheet metal, which made it look from a distance like the door of a pigeon cage.

Sensitive folks tried to guess who had sealed the window, thereby forcing the trashy Qiu Yumei to spend her days in darkness. "Who did it?" they asked Hanzhen. She said she didn't know, adding, "Go away, and leave my family alone." So they asked Shu Nong, but he wouldn't answer, although his crafty eyes said, Oh, I saw, all right. Nothing gets past me. I see it all.

Let's say it's the night of Hanli's death, and Old Lin drags some used sheet metal and his tool pouch into Qiu Yumei's room, without knocking first. He bangs his hammer against the windowsill three times: bang bang bang.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Sealing up the kennel door."

"Damn it, you'll block out the light."

"It has to be sealed up, and you know why."

"No. Have you gone mad?"

"Keep your voice down. I'm doing it for your own good."

"I'll suffocate in here. No one seals a southern window."

"I'm worried that Hanli's spirit will come looking for you. The river is right outside that window."

"Don't try to frighten me, it won't work. I did nothing to offend Hanli."

"I'm worried you might sleepwalk your way right out that window to your death."

Qiu Yumei climbed out of bed, then sat back down. She buried her head in the quilt and sobbed. "Go ahead, seal it," she said in a muffled voice, "if that's what you want." But Old Lin was too busy nailing up the sheet metal to hear her. He was so good with his hands that in no time the window was sealed airtight. Like I said, from a distance it looked like a pigeon cage in the dark.

How does it feel to return from the dead? To Shu Gong, the attempted suicide was a bad dream from which he awoke drenched. His family stood in the doorway, gawking at him. He felt terrible. "Bring me some dry clothes," he said to his mother. "I want to change." But Old Shu pushed Mother outside. "No changing. Since you didn't drown, you can just dry out on your own. Being wet shouldn't bother someone who can defy death. Go on, dry out, you turtle-egg bastard!"

Shu Gong lay there spent, thinking back to when they were sinking to the bottom of the river, to how Hanli's fingers groped frantically for him and how he pushed her away. He didn't want to die strapped to Hanli, whose finger reached out like a slender fish to peck him on the face before slipping away. Hanli was well and truly dead. He was still alive. Loathing and contempt lay in his father's eyes and in his as well, as they were reflected in the old-fashioned wall mirror; he also saw in them a cold enmity and guardedness. "Get out of here, all of you," Shu Gong demanded. "We have no use for one another, dead or alive." He jumped up and slammed the door shut to remove them from his sight. Slowly, he took off his wet clothes and opened his dresser.

Creak. The door opened, and Shu Nong slipped into the room. He leaned against the doorframe to watch Shu Gong change clothes. "I saw the two of you," he blurted out.

"Get the hell out of here." Shu Gong modestly held up his clothing to cover his nakedness.

"I saw."

"Saw what?"

"Everything."

"So you went and told everybody?" Shu Gong walked over to the door and bolted it, then grabbed Shu Nong by the hair with one hand and clapped the other one over his mouth to keep him from shouting. He slammed his brother up against the wall and heard it give and then snap back. Shu Nong's frail little body slumped to the ground as if it were made of sand. Whoosh! The breath escaped from Shu Gong's mouth all at once. This was the way to handle things now that something lost had been restored to him. This is how to do it: flatten that disgusting Shu Nong.

I saw Shu Nong out walking one cold early-winter day. He was dragging his schoolbag behind him; with his long, spiky hair, he looked like a porcupine. He was kicking dead leaves on his way home. Whenever there was some kind of commotion, he headed toward it, stood on the perimeter for a moment to see what was going on, then walked off. Once it became clear that there was nothing much to see, he was gone. Hardly anything captured his interest.

Shu Nong was being chased down the street, cradling an air rifle. His pursuer was the man who shot sparrows. "Grab him!" he shouted. "He stole my rifle!" The weapon was nearly as tall as Shu Nong, who finally got tangled up in it and fell in a heap in front of the stone bridge, where he lay rubbing the wooden stock for a moment while he caught his breath; then he tossed the rifle aside and crossed the bridge.

"Don't chase him," someone at the bridgehead teahouse said. "That boy's not all there."

If you knew Shu Nong, you'd realize how wide of the mark this comment was. Shu Nong was all there, all right, and if you have ever been to Fragrant Cedar Street, you know that this is the story of a very clever boy.

Shu Nong noticed a pair of new white sneakers, just like Shu Gong's, on his bed next to his pillow. He picked them up and examined them from every angle.

"Try them on." His father was standing behind them.

This was another major occurrence in Shu Nong's fourteenth year: he had his own white sneakers. "Are these for me?" Shu Nong turned around.

"They're yours. Like them?" Old Shu sat on Shu Nong's bed and inspected the sheet.

"I didn't wet it."

"That's good."

Shu Nong laced up his shoes almost hesitantly, as a result of lingering doubts. He kept glancing over at his father. Shu Nong never dreamed that his father would actually buy him a pair of shoes like this. Normally he wore Shu Gong's hand-me-downs.

"Can I wear them now?" Shu Nong asked.

"You can wear them anytime you like," Old Shu said.

"New Year's is still a long way off," Shu Nong said.

"Then hold off till New Year's," Old Shu replied.

"But that means I have to wait a long time," Shu Nong said.

"Then wear them now." A note of irritation crept into Old Shu's voice. "So wear them now." He began pacing the floor.

The shoes made Shu Nong spry and light on his feet. After bounding around the room, he turned to run outside, but his father stopped him with a shout: "Don't be in such a hurry to go outside. You have to do something for me first."

Shu Nong froze, his mouth snapping open fearfully. "I didn't wet the bed!" he screamed.

Old Shu said, "This isn't about bed-wetting. Come over here." Shu Nong grabbed the doorframe, lowered his head, and stayed put as he dimly sensed that the new shoes were a sort of bait. Old Shu raised his voice: "Come over here, you little bastard!" Shu Nong walked over to his father, who grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "I'll be sleeping in your room at night," Old Shu said.

"Why? Did you and Mother have a fight?"

"No. And what I mean is, sometimes. Like tonight."

"That's OK with me. In my bed?"

"No, I'll sleep on the floor."

"Why do that when there's a bed?"

"Never mind. I'll strap you to the bed with a blindfold over your eyes and cotton in your ears. We'll see how you do."

"Are we going to play hide-and-seek?"

"Right, hide-and-seek."

Shu Nong took a good look at his father, holding his tongue as he rubbed the tops of his new sneakers. Then he said, "I know what you're going to do. The upstairs window has been sealed."

"All you have to worry about is getting some sleep. And don't make a sound, understand?"

"I understand. You can't climb in with the window sealed."

"If your mother knocks at the door, just say you're in bed. And not another word more. The same goes for anyone else who knocks at the door. Understand?"

"I understand. But why not do it in the slatted trunk. Isn't it big enough for you two?"

"Don't tell a soul about any of this. You know what I'm capable of, don't you?"

"I know. You'll choke the life right out of me. That's what you said."

"That's right, I'll choke the life right out of you." Old Shu's bushy eyebrows twitched. "What were you mumbling just a minute ago?"

At this point, father and son had flat, expressionless looks on their faces. Old Shu crooked his little finger, so did Shu Nong; they silently hooked their fingers, sealing this odd pact.

Thus began the process that led to the most memorable nights of Shu Nong's youth. He recalled how the black cloth was put over his eyes, how he was tied to the bed hand and foot, and how his ears were stuffed with cotton. Father and Qiu Yumei made love beside him. He was in the same room with them. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. But he sensed their location and movements in the dark; he could tell who was on top and who was doing what to whom. A powerful blue radiance pierced the leaden darkness and touched his eyes, making sleep impossible and rendering movement out of the question. He gulped down large mouthfuls of the musky sweet air, then exhaled it in large puffs. He was getting uncomfortably hot, which he attributed to the dark-blue lights baking him as he lay strapped to his bed; the desolate howl of a rat lugging flames on its back emerged from his anguished soul. "I'm hot," he said, "I'm burning up." When Old Shu finally got around to untying the ropes, Shu Nong sounded as if he were talking in his sleep.

Old Shu felt his forehead; it was cold. "Are you sick, Shu Nong?"

Shu Nong replied, "No, I was asleep." Old Shu removed the blindfold. Shu Nong said, "I saw." Then Old Shu took the cotton out of his ears, and Shu Nong said, "I heard."

Old Shu grabbed his son's ear and barked, "Who did you see?"

Shu Nong replied, "She's very blue."

"Who's very blue?" Old Shu pinched the ear hard. "What kind of damned nonsense are you spouting?"

Shu Nong was in such pain he thumped the bed with both feet. "I mean the cat," he screamed, "the cat's eyes are very blue."

Old Shu released his grip and whispered in Shu Nong's ear, "Remember, not a word to anyone."

Shu Nong curled up under his comforter and, with his head covered, said, "If you hit me again, I'll tell. I'm not afraid to die. I'll just turn into a cat. Then nobody will have anything to say about what I do from now on."

Here is the kind of girl Hanzhen was: flighty, sneaky, and headstrong. She loved to eat and was extremely vain. Plenty of girls like that lived on Fragrant Cedar Street, and there isn't much you can say about their lives outside of an occasional newsworthy episode that materialized out of the blue.

It might have been Hanzhen you saw out on the street, but it was Hanli who was on the people's minds, a girl who had died too young. When women took Hanzhen aside and asked, "Why did your big sister want to kill herself?" she replied, "Loss of face." Then when women asked, "Are you sad your sister died?" Hanzhen would pause before saying, "I inherited her clothes." If they kept pestering her, she grew impatient and, arching her willowy brows, said, "You're disgusting, the whole lot of you. All day long you do nothing but keep your eyes peeled for juicy tidbits!" The women compared her with her sister right to her face. "Hanzhen is no Hanli," they would say, "the living is no match for the dead."

To the surprise of all, three months after Hanli's death, Hanzhen herself became the talk of Fragrant Cedar Street. Seen in retrospect, it had nothing to do with the real-life vicissitudes of Fragrant Cedar Street. What the incident actually reflected was the tragic significance of our story. Tragedy is an enormous closed box; once it is opened, people inevitably get shut back inside. If not Hanzhen, it would have been someone else. Can you understand what I'm getting at?

It starts with the sweetshop. One day as Hanzhen was passing the sweetshop on her way home from school, she noticed a jar of preserved fruit in the window. As she entered, Old Shi was hanging out a sign that said CLOSED FOR INVENTORY. Hanzhen checked the money in her pocket-she had just enough for a bag of dried plums. She thought she could make the purchase before Old Shi began the inventory. After closing the door, he asked, "What would you like, Hanzhen?"

She tapped the jar. "Dried plums," she said. "I want some dried plums." She was unaware that he had closed the door. She watched him walk around behind the counter, sit down, and start working his abacus. "I want a bag of dried plums," Hanzhen repeated.

"Wait a minute, I'm nearly finished."

As she waited for him to finish, she stared at the jar of dried plums, oblivious to the fact that the door was closed and that she was alone in the shop with Old Shi. Finally, he laid down his abacus. "Dried plums?" he said. "Come back here. I'll give you a special weighing, more than your money's worth." Hanzhen smiled bashfully and ran behind the counter, where she handed Old Shi the money in her hand. He looked at the crumpled bill, then wrapped his hand around hers. "I don't want your money," he said. "My treat."

"Why don't you want it?" Hanzhen asked wide-eyed.

"We'll work a swap," Old Shi said. "I'll give you the dried plums, and you give me something in return."

"Tell me what you want, and I'll go home and get it."

He scooped a big handful of dried plums out of a metal box. "Open your mouth, Hanzhen," he said. She did. With a giggle, he tossed in a dried plum. "Good?"

"Yum," she said.

Altogether, Old Shi flipped five dried plums into Hanzhen's mouth. "Now it's your turn," he said. "Let me se,e your belly button, that's all I want."

Unable to speak with all those dried plums in her mouth, Hanzhen just shook her head. The strange look on Old Shi's face was one she had never seen before, but the realization came too late, for Old Shi had wrapped his arms around her and was forcing her to the floor, where he crammed the rest of the dried plums into her mouth so she couldn't make a sound. The next thing she felt was Old Shi's sweaty hand pushing her undershirt up and rubbing her exposed navel. Then the hand pulled down her underpants and slipped between her legs. Hanzhen was shocked nearly out of her mind. She wanted to scream but couldn't, with all those dried plums in her mouth.

Old Shi said breathlessly, "Don't scream, don't make any noise. I'll give you ten bags of dried plums and three packages of toffee. Don't scream, don't you scream."

Hanzhen nodded and shook her head as if her life depended on it. She didn't know what he was doing to her; all she could see was Old Shi's gray head resting against her breasts. Then she felt a sharp pain down below and thought Old Shi was trying to kill her. She grabbed his gray hair with both hands and screamed, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" But there was no sound; it seemed like a fantastic, bizarre dream.

It was nearly dark when Hanzhen walked out of the sweetshop. She hugged the wall as she walked slowly, the schoolbag dangling from her hand, chock-full of preserved fruit that Old Shi had nearly forced her to take. "If you don't tell anybody," he had said, "you can have any treats you want." Hanzhen sucked on a dried plum as she walked. The place where Old Shi had done it felt as if he had left something sharp in there. Hanzhen looked down and was horrified to see a trickle of blood running down her pant leg and onto her shoes and the ground. Whoop! The dried plum came sailing out of her mouth as she gaped at the crimson blood. She sat down, hugged her bulging bag to her chest, and started to cry. Pass-ersby ignored her. Sometime later, Old Shu walked by, pushing his bicycle home from work. He asked what was wrong. Hanzhen looked up and bawled, "Shame on Old Shi! Shame on Old Shi!"

The only resident of Fragrant Cedar Street ever thrown into prison was Old Shi from the sweetshop. They dragged him to the local school in chains to be publicly villifled. We sat beneath the stage, gazing up at Old Shi's gray head and the look of dejection on his face. Hanzhen was sitting up front, where everyone could gawk at her, though she was oblivious to their looks. She stared blankly at Old Shi, trussed up and on display above her.

Her mortal enemy, Shu Nong, walked up and slyly felt her pocket. When he returned, he said, "She hasn't stopped eating those dried plums. She's still got some in her pocket!" He said Lin Hanzhen was trash, just like her whole family; none of the other neighborhood boys gave him an argument on that score since they had written her off as a worn-out shoe-damaged goods. Under their breath, they called her "a little worn-out shoe." Someone even made up a stinging nursery rhyme for Hanzhen, whose mother, Qiu Yumei, accused Shu Nong of authorship.

If you walked down Fragrant Cedar Street, the one thing you could not escape was the smell of the river that flowed beneath our windows. As I indicated early on, it was like a piece of rusty metal eroding the life of Fragrant Cedar Street. You could not overlook the river's influence, for the street's time was also the river's time.

The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street were tired of putting up with their river. It had taken on the color of its pollutants, and boats from the countryside no longer plied it. One day, an old-timer hooked a rotting sack with his bamboo pole and dragged it up onto the bank. Inside he found a dead infant curled up like a shrimp, a newborn baby boy with a wrinkled face that made him look like a sleeping old man.

The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street had arrived at a point where they didn't know how to deal with their river. It could drown them, but they couldn't do anything to it in return.

One day, Shu Nong had a brilliant idea: he spread a layer of flour over a spot beneath the bridge, then dropped in his fishing line. The minutes lingered until there was a violent tug on his line.

He jerked it out of the water. On the end was a worn-out leather shoe-dainty, T-shaped, made for a woman. An onlooker recognized it as one of the shoes Hanli was wearing when she jumped into the river. He threw it back in and murmured, "What cursed luck."

Why Shu Nong got into trouble isn't all that clear. Let's say it's an ordinary winter morning and Shu Nong is searching for his schoolbag after breakfast. He can rarely find his schoolbag before departing for school. So when he spots it under Shu Gong's cot, he gets down on his hands and knees to get it. But a sleepy Shu Gong presses down on him. "Quit goofing off." "Who's goofing off? I'm getting my schoolbag." Shu Gong pins him to the floor and says, "Put a bowl of porridge on the stove for me before you go." A simple request. "That's not my job," Shu Nong replies. "Do it yourself." Shu Gong narrows his eyes. "You're really not going to do it?" he asks.

"No," Shu Nong says. "Get out of bed, and do it yourself." Shu Gong snaps into a sitting position and throws off the covers. "OK, I'm up." He gets out of bed, grumbling, and takes the bowl of porridge over to the stove; then he gives Shu Nong a long look out of the corner of his eye. He jumps up and down to keep warm, bouncing straight into Shu Nong's little room. "You're a lucky bastard I don't feel like pounding you right now," he says as he pulls back the covers on Shu Nong's bed to feel the sheet. It is dry. With a grin, he undoes his pants and relieves himself on Shu Nong's sheet. When he is finished, he snaps his fingers. "Father will come in pretty soon and see you've wet your bed again. I'll let him pound you for me."

Shu Nong stands there stunned, hugging his schoolbag to his chest, his face turning red; instinctively, he runs over to the water vat, scoops out a ladleful of water, and dumps it on Shu Gong's bed. Shu Gong doesn't move a finger. He dresses and says, "Go ahead, sprinkle away. No one will believe I wet my bed, and you'll still be the one to get pounded."

Shu Nong leaves for school after soaking his brother's bed. By lunchtime, he has forgotten the morning's incident-until he sees that Mother has hung out the sheets to dry. Old Shu glares darkly at him.

"I didn't wet the bed, Shu Gong did it."

Old Shu roars, "Liar! You're not only a bed wetter, you're a liar!"

Shu Nong defends himself: "Shu Gong pissed on my bed."

Old Shu jumps up angrily. "Stop lying! Shu Gong was never a bed wetter. Why would he want to piss on your bed?"

"Ask him yourself," Shu Nong says as he sits down at the table and picks up his rice bowl.

Old Shu rushes up and grabs the bowl out of his hand, then picks him up and flings him out the door. "Fuck you, you little bastard!" he bellows. "Nothing to eat or drink for you. Then we'll see if you still wet the bed. And if you still feel like lying!"

Shu Nong sits on the ground in front of the door, looking up at his father and tracing words in the dirt with his finger-fuck is one of them. Old Shu slams the door shut, and Shu Nong thumps it a time or two as he climbs to his feet and brushes off the seat of his pants. The cat chooses this moment to spring out through the window. It mews at Shu Nong. It seems to be chewing on a piece of cooked fish.

"Meeow," Shu Nong mews like the cat, then follows it down the street, heading east, all the way to the auto-repair shop, where he loses track of the cat. Shu Nong enters the repair shop, where some greasy mechanics are working on cars, their heads hidden under the hoods. Shu Nong squats nearby and watches them work. "What are you doing here?" one of them asks. "Get out right now."

Shu Nong says, "I'm only watching, what's wrong with that?"

A can of gasoline sits on the floor in front of some beat-up cars. Shu Nong is squatting next to it. He sniffs the air to breathe in the gasoline smell. "I know that's gasoline," he says, "and that a single match will light it off."

"You're right," the mechanic says, "so don't play with it. If it goes up, that's the end of you."

Shu Nong hangs around watching them for a long time, and vvhen they realize he is gone, they also discover the missing gas can. They don't associate the one with the other.

Shu Nong walks home with the gas can. People see him, but the problem is no one knows what he plans to do with the stuff. He walks up to the dark building at number 18 and, after hiding the can behind the door, tiptoes inside, where he notes that both his father and Shu Gong are asleep. He softly closes his father's door and jams a toothbrush into the eye of the latch hook. Then he approaches his brother's bed. Shu Gong, whose head is under the covers, is snoring away. Shu Nong curses the covers under his breath: "Watch me even the score, you bastard." He fetches the gas can. The cat has returned home, he discovers, and is perched atop the can, staring with its lustrous-green cat's eyes. Shu Nong makes a face at the cat and shoves it off the can, which he carries over to Shu Gong's bed. He pours gasoline on the floor under the bed, smelling its aromatic scent as it spreads silently throughout the room and hearing the dry floorboards soak it up. He walks, and he pours, and he watches the clear liquid seep under the door into Father's room. That should do it, he tells himself. Confident that the gasoline will ignite, he puts the can down and takes a look around; everything is napping, the old, wormy furniture included-all except for the cat, which is watching him with its shiny green eyes. Cat, Shu Nong muses, watch me even the score now. He takes a box of matches from Shu Gong's pocket. His hand shakes; he attributes that to mild fear. So he grits his teeth, lights a match, and drops it to the floor, releasing a brief red flame. The fire takes hold under Shu Gong's bed and begins to spread. He hears the cat screech in agony and watches it streak ahead of the flames.

Shu Nong rushes desperately upstairs, without knowing why. The Lins' door is closed. Qiu Yumei and Hanzhen poke their heads out the kitchen door. "What's gotten into him?" Qiu Yumei asks.

"He's going crazy," Hanzhen says.

Shu Nong ignores them in his race to the rooftop. The first chaotic sounds rise to greet him as he crawls to the roof's edge. He believes he can hear Shu Gong scream as if his soul had left his body and Father trying with all his might to yank open the toothbrush-jammed door. He can even hear bumping sounds as Hanzhen tumbles down the stairs. By then, Qiu Yumei has thrown open a window and is shouting at the top of her lungs: "Fire fire fire fire fire fire…"

Shu Nong sees no sign of fire and wonders why. From his vantage point on the roof, he notices a red glow in one of the roof vents, then sees the cat emerge amid a ball of flames. The cat screeches as it burns, giving off a strange charred smell. Its eyes turn from green to purple; it seems poised to pounce on Shu Nong, who contemplates going over to pick it up. But he has second thoughts because of the flames licking its body. How could the cat have caught fire? How could it have followed me onto the roof? Shu Nong watches the cat slink forward a few steps, then crouch down and stop moving. The flames on its body die out, leaving a ball of cinders behind. Shu Nong realizes that his cat is dead-incinerated. He reaches out to feel the corpse-it is hot to the touch. He rubs the cat's eyes. They are still alive-deep purple and shiny bright.

People from all over Fragrant Cedar Street converge on number 18. To Shu Nong, the mob on the run looks like a pack of skittish rats bearing down on his home with loud screeches. He assumes that the building is about to be engulfed in flames, so what possesses them to enter it? He pokes his head over the edge to see what is going on down there. Black smoke pours out of the windows but no flames that he can see. How come? His thoughts are interrupted by a shout from below. "Shu Nong, it's Shu Nong, he's on the roof!" It's Shu Gong down below, brandishing his fists at Shu Nong. He's in his shorts-no sign of flames. Shu Nong wonders why Shu Gong hasn't been burned. Maybe he was pretending to be asleep. Shu Nong sees someone bring up a long ladder and lean it against the building. It's Old Shu. Shu Nong is getting lightheaded. Things aren't working out as planned. Everything is going wrong. He tries to push the ladder away but can't budge it. Old Shu, his face blackened with soot, is climbing toward him. Shu Nong clings to the top of the ladder. "Don't come up here!" he screams. "Don't come up here!" Old Shu keeps coming, silently, menacingly. Again Shu Nong tries to push the ladder away, but still he can't budge it. He watches his father's smoke-blackened face draw nearer and feels something cold drip from his heart. "Don't come up here!" Shu Nong screams hysterically. "I'll jump if you take another step!" A curtain of silence falls upon the crowd below. Everyone is looking up at Shu Nong. Old Shu stops his advance and joins the others in gazing at Shu Nong for about three seconds before continuing up the ladder. When his cramped fingers touch the roof, he sees Shu Nong leap high into the air like a cat and sail over his head.

With their own eyes, the residents of Fragrant Cedar Street see Shu Nong plunge into the river. Amid shrieks of horror, Shu Nong's voice is the shrillest and loudest of all. It sounds like a cat or, in the final analysis, just like Shu Nong's own voice.

It was an autumn day in 1974 on Fragrant Cedar Street. I think it was some southern holiday but can't recall which one. At dusk, two young northerners were walking from one end of the street to the other. They had stopped off on their way from Shanghai to Nanjing. As they headed down Fragrant Cedar Street, they saw a white ambulance tearing down the narrow street and a crowd of people running toward a dark building. They joined the surging crowd. The building and the area around it were packed with men, women, and children, all seemingly talking at the same time, not a word of which the two northerners could understand. But they detected the subtle odor of gasoline coming from inside the building. "Children playing with fire!" a woman said in Mandarin.

Afterward, the northerners were on the bridge, looking down at the river, its green-tinged black water flowing silently beneath them. When debris from upriver floated under the bridge, it bumped against the stone pilings. They spotted a little white sheath floating past and smiled at each other. One kept silent, but the other said, "Well, fuck me." They were still watching the river when they spotted a charred little animal float by, lying heavily in the water as darkness settled in, making it disappear from time to time. One of the northerners pointed to it and said, "What was that?" "It looked like a cat," the other one said.

Translated By Howard Goldblatt