The April 3rd Incident Read online

  At that moment a mop of dark hair glided into view. Bai Xue was approaching. For Bai Xue to appear so suddenly and without preconditions came as rather a shock.

  She once had sat, dressed in a pale yellow blouse, at a desk diagonally opposite his. The sight of her had touched him deeply then, although he wasn’t sure if it was she or her blouse that was responsible. One way or the other, he was to suffer the consequences of his susceptibility to her looks, for later he would get the jitters every time he saw her.

  This time, however, when she dropped in front of him like a leaf from a tree, he was only a little flustered.

  They had been classmates in the past, but now they were no longer connected in any way. She had stopped wearing that unsettling yellow blouse. But now she was standing in front of him.

  She clearly had no intention of moving to one side and letting him pass, so it was up to him to make way. As he stepped down onto the pedestrian crossing, he suddenly realized that he was treading on her pitch-black shadow. To his astonishment, he found that the shadow was stationary. So he raised his eyes and shot her a glance.

  She happened to look at him at precisely the same moment. Her glance was most unusual. It was as though she was under great stress. And it was as if she was signaling to him, signaling that there was a trap nearby. Then she hurried away.

  He was confused, and only when she had gone some distance did he take stock of his surroundings. Not far away a middle-aged man was leaning against a plane tree, watching him. The man quickly turned his head and looked in another direction, at the same time putting his right hand inside his jacket—into a chest pocket, surely. Then the man’s hand came out again, this time with a cigarette between his fingers. The man lit it casually and began to smoke. But he felt the nonchalance was just an act.

  2

  Though safely ensconced in bed, he hardly closed his eyes the whole night. Outside, all was still and silent beneath a pale moon. Shadows of trees were faintly visible through the curtains.

  He was remembering the past. For him to be so sentimental came as a surprise, even to him.

  He saw a boy leaving him and going away. In the background was a pond ringed with willow trees. Trotting down a path as long and slender as a rope, every so often the boy would turn around and look back. But the boy showed no reluctance to leave, and he felt no regret at the boy’s departure, either. The boy seemed foreign to him, but that graceful face and disorderly hair gave him a warm feeling nonetheless—because that boy was him, that boy was his early years.

  The past had gone out the door and faded into the far distance, but future days had yet to make their move. Lying there, he felt rather at a loss. But he had already bid farewell to that winsome boy as he wandered away, and in due course he would himself head off in a different direction.

  So, in honor of his birthday, he stayed longer in bed, paying his respects to this milestone event that had just arrived and soon would depart. He had entered the station marking eighteen years of age, a station redolent of harmonica tunes.

  At the end of the afternoon he was offered neither beer nor cake. He ate dinner as usual, then went to the kitchen to wash the dishes while his parents stood chatting on the balcony. After he’d finished, he went into their bedroom and helped himself to one of his father’s cigarettes. Right now the butt was lying by his pillow and he didn’t feel like throwing it away just yet. And on the floor by his bed was a pile of cigarette ash. It was when he was smoking that he had seen the boy drifting away.

  Today was his birthday, but nobody knew that. His parents had completely forgotten. He didn’t blame them—it was his birthday, after all, not theirs.

  Now, as that boy was gradually receding into the distance, he seemed to hear his own unfamiliar footsteps approaching. It was just that he hadn’t yet knocked on the door.

  He imagined how things would be when he woke up the following morning: when he opened his eyes he would see sunlight through the curtains, or if there was no sunlight he would see a band of gray. Maybe he would also hear the sound of water dripping from the eaves. But hopefully not, hopefully there would be bright sunshine and he would hear all kinds of sounds outside, sounds just as bright as the sunshine. The neighbors’ four doves would be circling the roof delightfully, and he would get out of bed and stand by the window. But all of a sudden he sensed that tomorrow he would feel uneasy when he stood by the window, uneasy because of a new conviction that he was alone in the world.

  Alone. That was the theme for the evening of his eighteenth birthday.

  Now he had a distinct sense that something was happening to his eyes. They were rapidly becoming cold and sparkling. So he began to think about what he might see tomorrow. Even if what he saw tomorrow might well be just the same as what he’d seen before, he had a hunch things would be different.

  3

  Now he was on his way to Zhang Liang’s house.

  Bai Xue’s signal and the middle-aged man’s manner had left him baffled, but they also seemed a little droll. Later he thought perhaps he had misinterpreted. Before long, however, he felt he was absolutely right. There was no point in brooding about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was all because of Bai Xue. A yellow blouse seemed to be stirring constantly in the dark shadows of thought.

  He had entered a narrow alleyway whose high walls were decorated with moss, clumps of moss that seemed to have been pasted on like slogans. Underfoot, the alley had been laid with stone pavers that with the passage of time had grown unstable: when you stepped on them they would move up and down, and so it was as though he were walking down an alley that rocked back and forth. Above his head was a sky just as narrow as the alley, but cut into even finer lengths by electric cables.

  He must now be outside Zhang Liang’s house, he thought. There were two shiny copper rings on the pitch-black door. He felt himself grip the rings and push, and he listened as the aging door gave a creak of protest. A dank courtyard appeared before him. Zhang Liang’s home was on the right.

  Maybe it was at this moment that the yellow blouse finally departed from his mind, like a cloud that is dyed yellow by sunlight and then drifts away. Zhang Liang’s image became clearer in his mind now that his home was so close.

  “So it’s you, dammit!” Zhang Liang said as he opened the door.

  He stepped inside with a smile on his face, as though entering his own home.

  They were classmates no longer, but friends. At the moment when they left school for good, he felt he had gained a friend, when before they were just classmates.

  The door and window were closed, and the white curtain was drawn. On the curtain were painted an air gun and a catapult; a gun pellet and a catapult bolt were about to collide with each other. Zhang Liang himself had painted them.

  At first he thought Zhang Liang wasn’t home, but when he went up to the door he could hear whispering inside. He put his ear against the door, but he could not hear clearly what was being said. When he knocked, the sounds within came to an abrupt stop.

  It was a good while before the door opened. Zhang Liang gave a start on seeing him, then muttered something or other and turned away. He could not help but hesitate before entering. Then he saw Zhu Qiao and Hansheng. They too gave a start on seeing him.

  He found their manner off-putting. It was as though they did not recognize him, as though he should not have come at this particular time. His appearance, at any rate, had come as a surprise to them.

  By the time he had taken a seat by the window, Zhang Liang was already lying on the bed. Zhang Liang seemed keen to say something, but all he did was smile. The smile was so unreadable, it left him spooked.

  Zhu Qiao opened his mouth. “How did you know we were here?” he asked.

  Zhu Qiao’s question was even more unnerving than Zhang Liang’s smile. He did not know how to answer. He had come to s
ee Zhang Liang, but now it was Zhu Qiao asking the questions.

  Hansheng was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed. It looked as though he had been sleeping for at least a couple of hours.

  When he shot another glance at Zhu Qiao, he had his head buried in a magazine.

  Only Zhang Liang was looking at him as before, but with a glint in his eye that made him uneasy. He felt that to Zhang Liang he was as boring as the ceiling.

  “Yesterday was my birthday,” he told them.

  Hearing this, they jumped to their feet and cursed him angrily. Why had he not let them know? They all stuck their hands in their pockets, but the money they came up with was only enough to buy a single bottle of beer.

  “I’ll go get it.” So saying, Zhang Liang went out the door.

  Zhang Liang was still looking at him, and he didn’t know what to do. His sudden appearance had put them out of sorts, and it seemed as though they had been discussing something they didn’t want to tell him. This was a sad discovery to make on such a lovely, sunny morning.

  Suddenly he thought of Bai Xue. She actually had not gone far, she had simply hidden behind a utility pole. She could appear at any moment and block his escape route. That look of hers was so hard to figure out.

  “What’s the matter?”

  It seemed that Zhang Liang had asked this question, but maybe it was Zhu Qiao or Hansheng. He wished he were somewhere else.

  4

  He stood in front of a dusty building and looked up at one particular window that lorded it over the others, gaping like the mouth of a corpse. A coal-briquette stove stood on the windowsill, issuing a plume of dense smoke: the window served as a chimney.

  Entering the building was like inching one’s way into a dark cave. With his feet he felt for the staircase; then he carefully began to climb. It puzzled him that his footsteps could be so hollow. Then he heard another set of footsteps, equally hollow, and at first he thought it was simply an echo. But the noise was slowly descending, and it faded away just as it reached him. Only then did he become aware that somebody was standing in front of him and blocking his way. He could hear the man breathing heavily—and the man must have heard the noise too. Then the man reached into a pocket and groped about. The rustling noise unsettled him, and he felt a sudden impulse to knock the man off balance and shove him down the stairs. But the man’s hand was already out, and then he heard a click and saw a flame burning. It lit up half the man’s face, leaving the other half in a sinister darkness. That single, half-closed eye made him shiver. Then the man passed him on his left and trotted down the stairs with a tip-tap rhythm, as if playing the organ. He seemed to recall at this moment who the man was, reminded of the middle-aged smoker underneath the plane tree.

  Soon after, he stood in front of a door on the fifth floor and gave it a little kick. There was no reaction inside. So he put his ear to the door, only to find to his amazement that an iron nail was poking into his ear. The nail had been driven into the door, he realized, and, groping with his fingers, he found that four other nails were embedded in the door at precisely the same height where his ear had been pressing.

  The door now suddenly swung open and a beam of light surged out like a wave, dazzling him. This was followed by a cry of delight. “Hey, it’s you!”

  Once his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he saw that Zhang Liang was standing before him. When he thought of how he had left his home shortly before, only to run into him again here, he was stunned. What’s more, Zhang Liang’s cheerful expression was in stark contrast to his manner earlier.

  “Why don’t you come in?”

  He went in, and found that Zhu Qiao and Hansheng were there. One was sitting in a chair and the other was sitting on the table; both looked at him merrily.

  A nameless anxiety surged up in his heart. He smiled awkwardly. “Where is he?” he asked.

  “Who?” the three of them asked, almost in unison.

  “Yazhou,” he replied. After saying this, he was puzzled: Why did they need to ask? It was Yazhou’s apartment, after all.

  “Didn’t you see him?” Zhang Liang seemed surprised. “Didn’t you meet on the stairs?”

  How would Zhang Liang know that he would meet someone on the stairs? Could that person have been Yazhou? He saw how the three of them looked at one another and chuckled. So he concluded that the man had just left and was not Yazhou.

  He sat down on a chair by the window, the window where a briquette stove had been burning, but now was no longer there. There was sunlight, though, and it shone on his hair. So then he imagined the color of his hair at this moment, and he thought it would surely look weird.

  Zhang Liang and the others were still smiling, and it seemed they had been doing so for a long time—they had been smiling even before he entered. So now the amused expressions on their faces were fading away.

  Suddenly he was racked with worry. As he came in, to mask his surprise he had forced himself to smile, and now the smile was glued onto his face. It peeved him that he couldn’t get rid of it.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He heard Zhu Qiao or Hansheng ask this question, and then saw Zhang Liang looking at him quizzically.

  “He’s changed a bit.” Again it was Zhu Qiao or Hansheng. But the voice seemed unfamiliar.

  “Is it me you’re talking about?” He looked at Zhang Liang. His own voice also sounded strange.

  Zhang Liang seemed to nod.

  Now they appeared to be rubbing their faces with their hands, until their frozen smiles were rubbed away. They began to look at him soberly, the same way that the math teacher with the glasses looked at him. But he felt there was something unreal about it.

  He was rather upset, because he didn’t know what they had been saying before he came in and he wanted very much to know.

  “When did you get here?”

  What sounded like Yazhou’s voice drifted toward him, as though from outside the window. But then he saw Yazhou for real standing right in front of him, and he couldn’t help but give a start. He had not registered at all the fact that Yazhou had come in, and it was as though he had never left. Yazhou was now looking at him with a grin, the very same grin he had seen on Zhang Liang and the others’ faces.

  “What’s up with you?” It was Yazhou who asked. They were all asking this. Then Yazhou turned around, and he saw that perplexing smile reappear on the faces of Zhang Liang and the others. Yazhou, he thought, must be smiling in just the same way.

  He didn’t want to look at them anymore, and so he looked out the window. He saw a briquette stove on the windowsill opposite, but no smoke was issuing from it. Then the stove suddenly disappeared and he saw a girl with her back to him, and then she too vanished. So then he felt there was nothing more to see, but he didn’t feel like turning around right away.

  He heard one of them stand up and move about, and soon a burst of whispers and stifled laughter issued from the balcony. Only then did he turn his head, to find Zhang Liang and Co. gone. Yazhou, still seated as before, was idly toying with a cigarette lighter.

  5

  When he came out of Zhang Liang’s house, a white-haired old lady was standing in the gloomy alleyway shouting someone’s name. He didn’t know whether or not that person was her grandson, but it seemed she was calling, “Yazhou.”

  So he decided to go to Yazhou’s place. Although Yazhou was his friend, he seldom got together with Zhang Liang and the others. The antagonism between Yazhou and Zhang Liang and Co. often put him in an awkward position and made things difficult on both sides.

  He didn’t head directly for Yazhou’s apartment, but ambled slowly down some street or other. Piles of bricks and heaps of sand lined the street at regular intervals, and a steamroller drove back and forth in a seemingly offhand manner. Walking down the street felt like threading one’s way
through a construction site.

  For a while he leaned against a pile of bricks and watched the steamroller, which was just as bored as he was. Its huge wheels thumped dully as they leveled the surface.

  But this just irritated him: he found the noise unbearable. So he let his legs start moving. The movement felt comical, all the more so when his arms started moving back and forth as though they were walking too.

  Later—he didn’t know exactly what time, but he knew it was later—he seemed to be standing in the doorway of a shop that sold tobacco and candy, or possibly it sold silk. Precisely what kind of place it was did not matter; the main thing was that he saw a lot of different colors. Most likely he was standing in between two shops, but in fact the two shops were not adjacent to each other, so maybe it was that he had stood outside first one shop and then the other. In any case he saw a lot of colors, a riot of different hues.

  At this moment a comfortable feeling surged up in his heart, so suddenly as to take him by surprise. Then he caught sight of Bai Xue.

  He saw her walk along the street, trailing a black shadow. He thought that when she got next to the plane tree she might come to a stop and maybe throw him a glance, a meaningful look that he would find perplexing. That was what happened when he saw her the last time, and he didn’t know why he was repeating it all.

  But she really did go over to the plane tree and come to a stop, and she did throw him a glance, and her glance did hint at the same thing it had earlier. And then she hurried away, just as before.

  He was staggered to find that his supposition would prove so true. And then he tensed up, for he felt as though a middle-aged man was leaning against the plane tree. He quickly looked all around, but did not see him. But he did spot a suspicious silhouette disappearing into an alleyway. The entry to the alleyway looked as dark as the mouth of a well, and it filled him with dread. But he took off in pursuit nonetheless. He seemed to hope—and at the same time fear—that the silhouette belonged to the middle-aged man.