Passing Through Your World Chapter 6: The Teenager Beneath The River

I knew I loved you, but I didn't know where my future was, because I knew wherever you went, you wouldn't take me with you. My memory brightened your smile, and you tried so hard to be happy.

In my memory, Zhang Ping was like an oil painting: clad in a T-s.h.i.+rt filled with seven or eight holes, he squatted against the sunset, deeply smoked one sip of cigarette before spitting it out, and said, "I want to be a great man, but my mom asks me to be back home and be a farmer."

This story had nothing to do with youth.

Youth was a jungle, a wilderness, a running under the scorching sunlight, and a standing still in the middle of heavy rain.

Zhang Ping, a teenager beneath the river, was entangled by waterweeds and surrounded by duckweeds. He stuck his head out of the water to breathe with a satisfying smile, his face full of water droplets. He lay flat in the water and looked up at the sky where the clouds flowed from the morning to the evening, and the reflections of them baptized his young face.

He was my cla.s.smate in junior middle school. When I was dragged by my mother to her school, I started to know the 26 English letters. I dreamed of being a football player at that time, or at least a countryside scoundrel. However, I still partic.i.p.ated in the last year of the nine-year compulsory education under the strong demand of my elders.

The cla.s.s adviser a.s.signed me one student with the highest score as my deskmate, and that was Zhang Ping. I felt astounded at him solving a binary quadratic equation quickly, but he yearned for the life where I directly rushed at a billiard room after school to bully the junior students. Thus, we learned from each other. My scores rose sharply while he acted more and more like a scoundrel.

We liked Dragon Ball and Tsukasa Hojo. We were fond of that sea after Cat's eye lost her memory and Maradona. We were also fans of Chen Baiqiang and This Precious Night. We loved Qiao Feng and Yang Guo who became more aloof day by day during his tramp. We preferred Chen Huaixiu to leave Fourth Master. We liked watching Instinct Part: we burst into tears when Zheng Yijian held Chen Songling's hand, crying. We enjoyed the nights and loved our own youth.

However, we didn't know who we would have a crush on.

The graduating cla.s.ses would go to school collectively for self-study at weekends. Several scoundrels showed up in the afternoon and smashed their wine bottles in the pa.s.sage. They unashamedly call a girl's name while standing on the doorway of our cla.s.sroom, asking her to go skating with them in town instead of studying here.

The girl was Lin Qiao who was an ordinarily-looking girl, so I immediately lost my interest in intervening in. However, with his eyebrows wrinkled, Zhang Ping pounded his desk, stood up, and walked toward the doorway under the eyes of our whole cla.s.s with a pen in each hand.

The scoundrels whistled and said, "Get out my way, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Zhang Ping whistled, too, but in a cracking voice. He said coldly, "Are you crazy?"

Afterward, they grappled with each other. They kicked his belly and slapped him on his face, but he used all his force to shake the ink out, instantly dying their faces black.

When I came forward with a penknife in my hand, the scoundrels sweated with ink and furiously called their companions to wash their faces.

Zhang Ping spat out one mouthful of b.l.o.o.d.y spittle and said, "Scholars should kill enemies with their pens in this way."

Thereafter, Lin Qiao often borrowed his items, asked a question, and invited him to go skating in town. He said yes to all those things but the skating, for he said he wouldn't do the things the scoundrels did.

As graduation was approaching, cla.s.smates would go on their own ways soon, most of whom would go back to make a living. This was just an unknown town in the northern area of Jiangsu Province, so it would be great if they could attend a special secondary school. Girls took out notebooks to ask their cla.s.smates to sign their signatures and write down wishes. Lin Qiao first went for the others and then carefully looked for Zhang Ping with a brand-new notebook.

Zhang Ping exhaled one mouthful of smoke and said without looking at her, "Are you crazy?"

Her face blushed, but she stubbornly held the notebook. Zhang Ping whispered into her ears after throwing the cigarette end away, "I'm actually a gay."

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she silently withdrew the notebook and walked away.

Three or four days later, the scoundrels ambushed him on his way home, knocked him off his bicycle with a brick, and beat him for five minutes.

When I once got back hometown after graduating from university, I by coincidence learned this from a junior middle cla.s.smate that Lin Qiao hooked up with those scoundrels every day after graduation. She married one of the scoundrels at the age of 18, gave birth to a child at 19, got a divorce at 21, and remarried another scoundrel.

Zhang Ping attended the Entrance Examination for Senior Middle School (EESMS for short) with his head bandaged. At the dusk after the EESMS, we sat together on the playground. The sunset dyed his face gold. He told me with a cigarette in his mouth after a long silence that his family had too much farm work to do, so he was asked to stop studying.

I didn't know how to reply to him.

He said with his voice down, "I want to be a great man, but my mom asks me to go back home to be a farmer."

He continued after I clapped on his shoulder, "I must continue studying and go to a big city, because I feel my fate is summoning me who will have an extraordinary fate."

He added after throwing the cigarette end away, "After pondering about it over and over again, I think my extraordinary fate is to marry a prost.i.tute. My instincts tell me this is my fate."

When the results came out, we were admitted to different high schools. I couldn't recall what his family sold, but he still continued his study as he wished.

It was three years later that when we met each other again after the EESMS. I was in Nanjing University, and he was in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA for short).

His whole college career was far beyond my imagination. He dropped out of university in the second year, because he was prophetic that he should be admitted to Peking University. Thus, he repeated his senior three. I hadn't heard from him for two years but got his call suddenly in my dormitory at midnight. At that time SARS broke out, I was ordered to be back at the university and took his call by coincidence.

He said, "I failed to attend Peking University."

I asked, "How many scores did you still need?"

He replied, "Not many."

I asked again, "How many?"

He said, "About 200 scores."

I asked, "...which university do you attend?"

He said, "A special secondary school of Lianyungang."

I then asked, "Where is Strawberry?"

He remained silent.

Strawberry was his girlfriend when he was in NUAA. I was in the Pukou campus of Nanjing University, so I had to across the entire city if I wanted to meet him, thereby only meeting him twice in our freshman year.

He hooked up with the salesperson of the small shop attached to the university, who was short with a blus.h.i.+ng face and was nicknamed Strawberry. From Sichuan Province, she was three years elder than us and came to Nanjing to work. Having pulled some strings, she worked in the small shop as a salesperson.

Next to the shop was a canteen. When we drank here, he always went to the shop and conveniently picked some melon seeds and peanuts up. Strawberry always smiled at him. Each time he pretended to pay the bill, she waved her hand. He was then done pretending, thereby directly walking away.

Later, he directly took a carton of Hongta cigarettes worth of almost 100 RMB, which made her face anxiously pale, for she couldn't make the accounts in order.

Regardless of other students' attention, he held her in his arms and said somberly, "I can't afford to buy cigarettes, but I know you can help me out."

I didn't know how Strawberry dealt with it, but I guessed she could only pay it herself.

We met the second time at a night food stall in the middle of the city. I told him that Strawberry was nice. He said after inhaling a mouthful of smoke, "Are you crazy?"

I said nothing.

He continued, "She is rustic a little bit and doesn't get a higher education. Besides, her home is far far away. I have this feeling that we don't have much common language in the future."

From 11 pm to 2 am the next morning, his beeper rang at least 30 times. He didn't even look at it later, but its vibration sounded very piercing late at night, so he picked up one bottle of beer and poured it down on it. It then went silent completely.

He hiccuped and said, "I spent a month of living expense buying it. d.a.m.n it."

His beeper, which had rung 30 times, was in dead silence.

It was the one in the disadvantaged position who would always patiently call the other one in a relations.h.i.+p.

Almost four am, he was so drunk that he couldn't walk. I then borrowed the owner's fixed phone to dial Strawberry's beeper while holding him who was barely able to walk.

When her beeper was got through, he only said a few words, "I'm drunk at x.x.x Road."

Strawberry appeared in front of us at 5 am, panting. She only knew the road name but didn't know which stall, so she looked for each one. It took her 20 minutes from NUAA to here. In other words, she finally found us after searching for 40 minutes.

Zhang Ping leaned prostrate on the table and slipped off the stool from time to time. She drank water while holding him.

I ordered one more bottle of Xiao'er Liquor and thought to myself that I would drink one more.

She suddenly said in a calm voice, "He's nice to me."

"Oh," replied I.

She said, "Generally speaking, the small shop attached to a university is always run by the relatives of the university's leaders. The shop I'm working in signed a lease contract, but its relation isn't solid enough. Thus, one relative of a leader often causes us trouble and wants to force my boss away. "

I drank half a bottle of the liquor.

She continued, "Once there were several bad students causing a disturbance there. They said there were worms in the potato chips and asked us to return their money. Since the boss's beeper wasn't put through, they asked me to pay them. I said no to them, and they tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the money."

She lifted the winegla.s.s that Zhang Ping knocked down and said, "He came forward and fought with them, fracturing his right little finger."

She added with a smile, "He often took things in the shop since then, but he never picked up the potato chips, saying he wouldn't do things the scoundrels did."

I replied to him, "This is what he is."

She said, "Yes. He said his hunch told him that he would marry a prost.i.tute. But, I'm a working girl who didn't attend college, not a prost.i.tute."

She squatted down beside Zhang Ping with her head gently on his knees and sweats on her nose. Zhang Ping unconscionably stroked her hair. She smiled with her lip corners full of happiness.

I drank up the liquor.

She attached her head to him closely while still squatting and said gently, "My boss has decided to move."

I asked, "How about you?"

She still smiled, but tears trickled down her cheeks, and she said, "I don't know."

I knew I liked you.

But, I didn't know where my future was,

because I knew wherever you went, you wouldn't take me with you.

A short girl with a high-school diploma squatted down beside a drunk boy, her head on his knees.

The streetlight brightened her smile and her face full of tears. She tried so hard to be happy.

I remembered this scene forever with my drunken eyes.

This was the last time I met Zhang Ping at university. He just called me several times during the four years, saying that he would drop out of the university to attend the College Entrance Examination again. However, he ended up in a special secondary school of Lianyungang. We only communicated to each other for less than three times and met again five years later.

I met him as promised in a shabby small restaurant in China Gate five years later. I asked, "Where did you go after graduation? We lost in touch for a whole year."

He said after exhaling a mouthful of smoke, "I was in jail for smuggling."

I asked with a rather surprising face, "What?"

He said, "My family pulled some strings, so I worked as a jailer after graduation. I helped prisoners smuggle during the interns.h.i.+p and wound up in jail for a year."

I kept silent instead of asking him the details and then asked, "What do you want to do next?"

He got drunk again and said, "I rented a garage near China Gate. Since it'll due soon, I'm planning to take my girlfriend back to get married."

I immediately thought of Strawberry's face and asked subconsciously, "Who is your wife?"

He lit up a cigarette and said, "Do you still remember what I said to you the day when we graduated from junior middle school?"

I shook my head.

He said, "I guessed that I would marry a prost.i.tute, which is prophetic."

It was late at night, so the entire world was enveloped by darkness. He empties his winegla.s.s and said, "I fall in love with the girl who rents the garage next to mine. She's a shampoo girl and really good at her job, but I love her."

I got drunk this time and became unconscious earlier than him. I woke up in my rented house, with ten p.o.r.nographic DVD he left on the table as a present.

He called me one year later and said, "I'm divorced."

I didn't know what to say.

He said, "When we were back my hometown, she hooked up with many men, and my mom caught her several times. I couldn't live with her anymore, so I divorced her. Unexpectedly, she opened a shampoo store beside my house. f.u.c.k it!"

I asked inexplicably, "Can you still solve binary quadratic equations?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Can we go back the junior middle school together to look at the new-built teaching buildings?"

He replied, "OK."

Three years later when I went back to my hometown for the Spring Festival, I suddenly recalled this appointment and thereby called his house. His mother told me that he dated a woman engaged in the cellphone business, went to Kunshan to open a facade store, and didn't come back for the festival.

I hung up the phone and went to school alone.

I then went to a teacher's for dinner. He was originally a subst.i.tute teacher without an establishment and became full-time one in these two years.

I recognized his wife who just went back from shopping. She was Lin Qiao.

She said with a smile, "I heard you would come, so I bought some meat, fish, and shrimp. We'll have a big meal."

After a few drinks, the teacher became a little drunk and said with his body shaking, "Thanks to Lin Qiao, I can be a full-time teacher. Her ex-husband is the son of our town leader and wanted to divorce her. She put forward this condition that I became a full-time teacher."

I couldn't ask why Lin Qiao got a divorce under such a condition.

Lin Qiao never drank. She drank a gla.s.s of Yanghe liquor this time and said with her face blushed, "To be honest, it's me who asked the scoundrels to beat Zhang Ping on the day of EESMS, the son of a b.i.t.c.h. Never mind, but if you see him, please apologize for me."

When I stared at Lin Qiao with my drunk eyes, a scene suddenly conjured up in my mind: a short girl with a high school diploma squatted beside a drunk boy, her head on his knees. The streetlight brightened her forced smile and face full of tears.

I knew you liked me,

But I didn't know where my future was,

Because I knew wherever I went, I couldn't take you with me.