I can recall vividly every detail of that evening.
It was my senior year at a university in northeastern China. One evening my roommate Gai suggested that we go see a collegiate singing contest. I went along. That this was going to change my life I had no idea. We walked to the convention center where the contest was to be held. It was fall. In the air and on the ground, there were falling leaves dancing with the wind.
Kate was in her junior year in the department of chemistry. She was one of the contestants that night; Daughters of the Nile was the song she sung. She was not tall, around 160cm, but had a very soothing, melodious and pleasant voice. Sitting in the dark with many other students, watching her singing on the stage under the limelight, I could not see her face very clearly, but I knew I was falling irrevocably in love. The emotional tidal wave was overwhelming me.
Having had my share of sexual adventures over the years, I do not readily empathize with this college student falling wholeheartedly for a girl. Maybe it was just a boy, who had not had sex with a woman, idealizing something he was ignorant of. I have met women taller, prettier than Kate since then, but the kind of uncontrollable, almost painful emotion I felt toward her never came back to me.
Kate got the third position in that contest.
The dinning hall opened at scheduled time each day. If you went to the hall late you would have to wait in line for a long time for your meal, and very likely there would not be anything good left. So right before the scheduled opening time of the dinning hall, there would be a group of students waiting outside the hall, talking, and laughing. And when the door was swung open, they would rush in like wolves, male or female; the service people, smiling and amused, behind the counters in the hall, would look on.
One time I saw Kate waiting outside the door of the dinning hall. When the door was opened, she did not run as everyone else did. Another girl, running with the pack, tripped on the ground. Instead of standing up, she buried her head between her hands and started crying.
Kate just walked with a very graceful gait and got into line. And she waited for a long time to get her dinner. I loved her for that. I got my dinner and sat in a place not far from hers and watched her. She was eating exquisitely, talking with another girl sitting by the same dinning table, unaware of my surreptitiously adoring eyes. If she became my girlfriend I would buy breakfast, lunch and dinner for her everyday. All she needed to do was sit down, have a meal with me and talk with me.
Before the winter there was a volleyball contest between Kate’s department and mine. We were all standing by the field and watching the game. She was standing one guy away from me. My heart almost stopped. My body was trembling. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a jacket. Tender and beautiful was her face. I did not dare to move. She did not know that standing near her was a guy who would be hers for asking, and would do anything for her.
Gai was in the volleyball field. So was Wang, another tall, masculine guy in my department. I was never good at physical activity. Wouldn’t it be nice if I can go in the field and make some lethal kill to catch her eyes?
At the end of the contest, a quarrel broke out between Gai and another guy. Gai hit this guy’s face with his fist, grabbed his hair, and banged his head on the wall. Blood came gushing out his nostrils. We had to pull Gai away from the fight. I was deeply averse to a fist fight-the mere thought of it made me queasy. I admired Gai that he was up to the game.
The vigor of winter set in. Winter was very brutal in northeastern China, with lots of snows. After snow, the road will be covered with ice. There was no ice cleaning salt truck. Streets were assigned to companies and schools to clean. Our school would give us spades and brooms and let us get down to work on the ice.
One day at noon I saw her walking with a guy. I felt so hurt. I knew I shouldn’t. We did not even know each other. She can walk with anyone as she pleased. But I stalked them. They were talking as they walked. They seemed to be immersed in some argument. She would raise her beautiful head and look at that guy in a way that I cannot tell was questioning, placating, or chaffing. They were both wearing very thick clothes. The guy was very tall. I went skating all afternoon until it was totally dark. There was no one else left on the ice-skating field but me. My ankles sore, my face numb, I was exhausted. I fell on the ice and just lay down there, listening to the winter wind, watching the depressing sky, thinking about Kate. So she has a boyfriend already? That's very likely. She's very beautiful. There has got to be many pursuers. Do I have any chance?
In December I wrote a letter to her. I told her I fell in love with her at that singing contest. I watched her eating in the dinning hall. I saw her walking with a guy. I stood near her when watching the volleyball contest. I told her all my feelings. Everything. Can we meet in a certain classroom at a certain time? I asked her. It was a very thick letter. I walked to the post office to mail it to her. I posted the stamps diagonally across the right-hand corner. I read it form somewhere that it meant, “do you love me?”
Something nasty about this post office came to my mind. When I was contacting US universities for admission and financial assistance, my father gave me four hundred dollars as application fee. I must have got noticed when I sent out an application with forty dollars. When I walked out the post office, I found my wallet was gone, with the remaining 360 dollars and my national ID card. I stood at the door of the post office, looking at passers-by, not knowing who did it, not knowing what to do. I talked with a police about it. He said there were several inveterate thieves active in that area, and he would check with them. But nothing came out it.
I always remember the evening we met. It was a Friday evening. It was snowing. I went to the classroom where I asked her to meet me, thirty minutes before the scheduled time. There were not many students there.
Right on time, walked in the girl, the most beautiful girl in the world, who had been in my mind, in my heart, and in my dreams since I first saw her. She was wearing a long white overcoat, with a neatly combed ponytail. When I stood up she walked toward me, “I am Kate,” she said.
Kate, Kate, Kate, what a beautiful name; a name that I have called thousands of times in my dream and in my consciousness. I told her my name was Harry. I felt very thirsty and nervous. Words were not readily coming out of my mouth.
She said, “Both of my parents are professors at this university. They took me to campus when I was very young. I grew up on this campus. I started studying English when I was five years old.”
I said, “You are from a family of intelligentsia.”
She asked me, “What do your parents do?”
I said, “My mother is a pediatrician; my father is a mechanical engineer.”
She said, “That’s good too.”
It was natural that we talked about family background, to be sure; recalling the conversation now, I feel she was kind of patronizing. She must be very proud of her parents being professors; she boasted that she had been studying English since five; my parents were ok, but not as good as hers.
"Do you have any siblings?" I asked her.
"I have one little brother." She said.
"So do I." I said.
She said, “I want to go to the states after graduation. My family is very poor; my parents don’t make much money from their teaching jobs. What do you plan to do after graduation?”
I hesitated to furnish an answer, smiling.
She said, “Is it a secret? Engineering?”
“No”
“Business?”
“No.”
“Teaching?”
“No.”
“Oh, you want to be a writer?” She smiled at me, in some uncertainty. Her teeth were very white, very straight. Her eyes were crescent-shaped. There were some freckles on her face. This was the first time I got to be this close to her. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
‘Yes.” I said. I did want to be a writer.
I walked her back to her dorm. From the crystal sky snows were waltzing down. My heart was dancing too. There was a thick layer of snow on the ground. We walked on the snow, leaving our footsteps on it, the snow snapping under our feet. This was something I loved to do when I was a little boy. It was just so nice to do it again-with the most beautiful girl on Earth, no less.
It is a wonderful pastime-Go is, if you have a lot of time to pass. You can easily kill a day with Go. I had a Go buddy, Zhang, in Kate’s department. I went to his room frequently. I wanted to be close to the guys in her department, to listen to their talks. Maybe they would talk about Kate sometimes. I would love to hear something about her-anything. Anything about her would make my day. I was so jealous of these guys. They were in the same department with her, taking courses with her. They met her everyday and talked to her everyday. That was something I was dying for. And they did not seem to feel lucky about it.
Zhang and I were playing Go.
I said, “I heard that two professors in your department are couples.”
He said, “Yes. I am taking a course with the guy. They live in that red residence building right next to the department of chemistry building.”
I felt excited. So now I knew where she lived.
“Their daughter is also in our department. Do you know?” Zhang said.
“Oh Really?” I acted nonchalant.
But I was excited. My heart was swelling. Was more information coming? But he talked about an awesome Hong Kong movie, “It is by Chow Yun-Fat, tall and handsome. It is a must see. Action packed. It is going to blow you off your seat.”
I went to her home building. It was a very dry, cold, and windless winter night.
I stood in a corner, smoking. When I breathed it in, I can see the luminous tobacco end. Knowing that she was so close to me made me happy, excited, comfortable and warm. I knew she was somewhere up there in one of lighted rooms. She was my sun, sustaining me through the cold winter night. I recalled our first meeting: every sentence she said, her face, her words, and her refulgent smile. What is she doing now? Having dinner? Studying? Watching TV? Talking to her parents, her brother, or her friends?
I took the bus to a shopping street to buy her some present. It was cold, and one window was missing on the bus. The wind was blowing into the bus; I was wearing an overcoat.
Oh a bus. Something happened on a bus. I did not like it. I was ashamed of it. I hated it.
This bus broke down a few stops after I got on. The driver was working to fix it. Some passengers got off the bus and left. I attempted to do the same. But this ticket-selling lady got hold of my lapel and said, “Pay before you get off.” Pay before you get off. These words are reverberating in my mind.
In a gift shop, I researched several music boxes, listening to the music, and set my heart on one with the music Fur Elise. When you opened the music box, there was this little doll dancing on a mirror to the tune. If it stopped, you can rewind the spring with a handle on the bottom of the box, and the doll would dance for you again. I asked the sales lady to do a gift-wrap for me.
“What color would you like for the gift wrap?” she asked me.
What color would Kate like? Purple? Yellow? Let’s pick blue. I loved blue. I bought her a box of chocolate in the store next to the gift shop.
When I went to her dorm room, she was not there. Her roommates, a pie faced girl, seemed to understand my mission, told me which bed was hers and asked me to put my bag on her bed.
“Kate often stayed at home. She only came to the dorm room occasionally.” She said.
I looked at her bed. This was Kate’s bed. It was amazing that I was looking at it. It was very plain and very clean. There was one shelf by the wall with some books and some pictures on it. I put my bag at a corner of her bed.
In the evening, I went to her room again and she was there-very upset.
She said, “You seem to be a very timid guy. I did not know you could do this. I could not take your present.”
My head was empty; my limbs were numb. I was not prepared at all for a reaction like this.
What did I say to her? I am not sure now. It was so painful for me. It was excruciating.
Probably I stammered something like this, “What do you want me to do with them?”
She said, “I couldn’t take your present.”
She handed the thing back to me.
I took the bag back. I scampered out of the dorm. If someone familiar saw me with this rejected gift bag I would die. Tearing off the gift-wrap of the music box, I threw both the music box and the chocolate into the trash bin, and felt much relieved.
I started walking in the night. Where was I going to go? I didn’t know. But I did know where not to go. Do not go back to the dorm! I couldn’t face anyone right then.
I just kept walking, thinking about our second encounter. Why was she so vexed? She was nice in our first meeting. Maybe her roommates teased her? She felt it an insult to accept my present? I was being too rash? I should wait a little bit, until she knows me better. Then she might accept my gift. Why wasn’t I more patient? Maybe she does not like me at all, and there is no future for us.
I walked out of campus to a crossroad. I saw the cars running, the traffic lights changing. I walked to a street with lots of shops. There was this restaurant called Californian Noodles. Rumor had it that it was a fake, that there were no chain noodle restaurants in California. There was this shop selling Korean appetizers. I loved them. There was this small hotel, with just three to four rooms and two-layered beds. It was very cheap. There was this video store. It was very smoky inside. I walked in and stayed there all night. I saw that Chow Yun-Fat movie that Zhang effusively recommended. It was action packed, but did not blow me off my seat. I sat tight in the seat and dozed the night away.
The trees were budding when the spring came. The snow and ice on the ground were melting.
One day I saw Kate walking toward the chemistry building on campus. I took a short cut to the building and walked back, pretending I ran into her accidentally. She did not seem to be happy seeing me. She did not seem to be angry either.
I said, “what a coincidence. I just finished my class. There is this very good movie tonight. Do you want to go see it with me?”
She said, “No. I have an exam. I am very busy. How about another time?”
How about another time? This was one of her favorite phrases. We have plenty of chances later, was another one. When I asked her to go see a movie with me, or have dinner with me, she always said that.
I wrote her forlorn love letters.
Dear Kate: Without you I don’t know how to live my life. When I get out of bed in the morning, I think about you. I wish I’d see you that day, in the dinning hall, in the library, in the classroom building. When I get into bed at night, I think about you. I want to dream of you. I want to picture your face in the night, the most beautiful face in the world. I listen to the song you sung-I bought a cassette of that song. I went to your department and looked at the pictures of all the professors. I found your parents’ pictures. Your father published so many papers!
Would you like to visit my family sometime? It is about 30 minutes from campus. My parents will be very happy to see you. My brother will be happy to see you too. It would mean the world to me.
Kate replied my letter:
I appreciate your feelings for me. But I really have no time to consider these things now.
I am very busy studying. I want to go to USA right after graduation. I need to get a good transcript on the one hand, and prepare for TOEFL and GRE on the other.
Thanks very much for the presents you bought for me. I actually like them.
She actually liked the presents? Did she mean it? Was it an apology for the slight she meted out to me? Was it a mollifier for the pain she knew I felt? Was it a hint that, if I send those presents to her again, she would accept them? In that case I should have held onto my presents. They were rotting away somewhere.
Kate set a clear objective for herself, and she worked hard at it. I had one for myself too: I wanted to be a writer. Looking back now, I know I was just having my head in the clouds. To be a writer, you need to be financially secure, not only because you cannot concentrate on writing when worrying about the mundane business of everyday life, but also because you need the detachment and privilege that financial security offers you, in order to become an objective observer of people and life. You also need certain maturity, because what you can share with the readers is ultimately your life experience, and what you think about it. What did I have? I read many some American and French writers. I worshipped Marcel Proust. But reading is one thing; writing is another. You can read ten books without being able to write one decent story. I did try to write a decent story about the college lives of my roommates’ and mine. What else? I fell in love with a girl and got snubbed. And I would need to find a job soon. That was about it.
Summer. It was graduation time. There were so many obstreperous parties. Now I often had the smell of liquor on my breath. So did my roommates.
After a dinner at a restaurant I could not sleep. I went out of the dorm to take a walk around the campus. It was where I had lived for four years. It was where I met Kate. Shivering in the wind were some yellow flowers at a corner of our dorm building. They gave off lavish and inebriating scents. I stood by the flowers and sampled the refreshing aroma. I thought about Kate: if we were girlfriend and boyfriend, I would take these flowers to her room. She would accept those flowers and give me a kiss to show her appreciation… In a month I would be leaving school. I found a job. It was with a company not doing so great, about an hour's ride by bicycle from our campus. I went to a dance club. The lights were very dim inside. I met a classmate. After one dance he walked out with a woman with heavy makeup; he winked naughtily and knowingly at me. I danced with a large woman to a tune, and left. The air was so fresh outside the club permeated by the smells of cigarettes, sweat, and perfume.
One evening we drank a lot of beer and we sat outside the dorm. When I saw a girl walking our way my heartbeat was accelerated. I could not see her face clearly, because it was getting dark, but the way she walked, with ease, grace and confidence, just made my heart ache. It was Kate.
One of my roommates cried out, “Hi that girl in red dress!”
She walked by, ignoring the call, and walked into the dorm. After about half an hour she walked out of the dorm. She must have wondered who called her. Why didn’t she walk up and check it out?
Some graduating girls were chanting a song vociferously in one of the rooms in the upper floors.
A guy stuck his neck out of a window and yelled, “Sisters, can you keep your voices low?”
It was another evening and another dinner in a restaurant. We were eating and drinking. It was very hot in the room. Many of us were topless.
My very good friend Wang got a job in Beijing. I was jealous. Gai got a government job. He just obtained a gorgeous girlfriend and brought his trophy along to our dinner. He proposed a toast, “Let’s have a reunion in ten years. I will be here in my helicopter. My helicopter will land on the roof of this restaurant.”
I drank my glass of wine. I was not happy since I did not get a good job. I went to this company that was barely surviving. After a while I thought about Kate. I started crying.
I said, “My emotional life is so tormented. I will do well in my work, but I don’t think I will do well in my love life.”
Then another guy cried, came over to give me a hug, and said he totally understood me.
I was so drunk. My two roommates, each grabbing one of my arms, pulled me back to the dorm. I limped along. I breathed heavily; the summer heat made me nauseating. I closed my eyes, trying to suppress the things rushing up my esophagus, and ready to burst out of my throat. Beneath my closed eyelids I saw something red and quivering, like the flames of the candles. I opened my eyes. Some passers-by were looking at us. That pie-faced girl, Kate’s roommate, was walking by. She seemed to be sneering. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about you, my pie faced lady. I only cared about Kate. And she treated me well lately. She even told me that she liked my presents. I thought about my roommates. They were the best roommates in the world. When I got drunk they took care of me.
It was my last day at school. I was in my room. The floors were littered with stuff: paper, woods, and trash, as if some army staff just evacuated after losing a battle.
All my stuff had been packed and moved to my new place, a residence building for singles in my company.
Our dorm was such a sordid place. The janitors would only come to clean the bathroom once a day, in the evening. They would be wearing boots and raincoat, holding large water hoses. For all the other time of the day the feces would be piling up in the shit pit. No water was available to flush them down. When you went to the bathroom you had to decide if the pile was too high for you to crouch over it. And oftentimes water or urine was dripping down from the ceiling so when you were stooping over the shit pit you had to hold some newspaper or an umbrella above your head, or it was going to ruin your coat, your hair and your neck. To better cope with the stench in the bathroom, you needed to smoke a cigarette. Life in hell wouldn’t be this ignominious.
And there was no place to take a shower in the dorm. In the summer times you could make do: you went to the rest room with only your shorts on, filled a container with water, gave yourself a quick scrub, and poured the water onto your body. In the winter you had to walk in the cold for twenty minutes to a bathhouse. When you walked in you took off your clothes and stored them in a locker. There were twenty to thirty guys standing in the steamy house, all of them naked, many of them silent. You walked around, clutching your towel, soap and shampoo in your hand, watching those guys cleaning themselves up, looking for a spare showerhead. If all showerheads were occupied, you had to identify a guy who seemed to be wrapping up his business, and wait near him. There was this one time when I was cleaning myself, a naked guy came up to me, a total stranger, offered to rub my back, if I rub his in return. I turned down his offer. After the shower you had to brave the cold to get back to the dorm. A hat you must have. Otherwise your hair would be hard and cold like icicles before you arrived at the dorm.
As the redemption of it all there was Kate. Oh Kate. Kate was going to stay in this building for another year. Maybe I could come back to see her sometimes. But she was busy. So I could not and should not bother her too often. We were in different courses now. She was studying hard in order to go abroad. I would be working.
Kate, Kate, Kate, I called her name, feeling the pain and helplessness in my voice. I took one last look at my room, and walked out of the dorm. I left the campus and walked into the sunny, busy, and noisy streets.
It was my senior year at a university in northeastern China. One evening my roommate Gai suggested that we go see a collegiate singing contest. I went along. That this was going to change my life I had no idea. We walked to the convention center where the contest was to be held. It was fall. In the air and on the ground, there were falling leaves dancing with the wind.
Kate was in her junior year in the department of chemistry. She was one of the contestants that night; Daughters of the Nile was the song she sung. She was not tall, around 160cm, but had a very soothing, melodious and pleasant voice. Sitting in the dark with many other students, watching her singing on the stage under the limelight, I could not see her face very clearly, but I knew I was falling irrevocably in love. The emotional tidal wave was overwhelming me.
Having had my share of sexual adventures over the years, I do not readily empathize with this college student falling wholeheartedly for a girl. Maybe it was just a boy, who had not had sex with a woman, idealizing something he was ignorant of. I have met women taller, prettier than Kate since then, but the kind of uncontrollable, almost painful emotion I felt toward her never came back to me.
Kate got the third position in that contest.
The dinning hall opened at scheduled time each day. If you went to the hall late you would have to wait in line for a long time for your meal, and very likely there would not be anything good left. So right before the scheduled opening time of the dinning hall, there would be a group of students waiting outside the hall, talking, and laughing. And when the door was swung open, they would rush in like wolves, male or female; the service people, smiling and amused, behind the counters in the hall, would look on.
One time I saw Kate waiting outside the door of the dinning hall. When the door was opened, she did not run as everyone else did. Another girl, running with the pack, tripped on the ground. Instead of standing up, she buried her head between her hands and started crying.
Kate just walked with a very graceful gait and got into line. And she waited for a long time to get her dinner. I loved her for that. I got my dinner and sat in a place not far from hers and watched her. She was eating exquisitely, talking with another girl sitting by the same dinning table, unaware of my surreptitiously adoring eyes. If she became my girlfriend I would buy breakfast, lunch and dinner for her everyday. All she needed to do was sit down, have a meal with me and talk with me.
Before the winter there was a volleyball contest between Kate’s department and mine. We were all standing by the field and watching the game. She was standing one guy away from me. My heart almost stopped. My body was trembling. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a jacket. Tender and beautiful was her face. I did not dare to move. She did not know that standing near her was a guy who would be hers for asking, and would do anything for her.
Gai was in the volleyball field. So was Wang, another tall, masculine guy in my department. I was never good at physical activity. Wouldn’t it be nice if I can go in the field and make some lethal kill to catch her eyes?
At the end of the contest, a quarrel broke out between Gai and another guy. Gai hit this guy’s face with his fist, grabbed his hair, and banged his head on the wall. Blood came gushing out his nostrils. We had to pull Gai away from the fight. I was deeply averse to a fist fight-the mere thought of it made me queasy. I admired Gai that he was up to the game.
The vigor of winter set in. Winter was very brutal in northeastern China, with lots of snows. After snow, the road will be covered with ice. There was no ice cleaning salt truck. Streets were assigned to companies and schools to clean. Our school would give us spades and brooms and let us get down to work on the ice.
One day at noon I saw her walking with a guy. I felt so hurt. I knew I shouldn’t. We did not even know each other. She can walk with anyone as she pleased. But I stalked them. They were talking as they walked. They seemed to be immersed in some argument. She would raise her beautiful head and look at that guy in a way that I cannot tell was questioning, placating, or chaffing. They were both wearing very thick clothes. The guy was very tall. I went skating all afternoon until it was totally dark. There was no one else left on the ice-skating field but me. My ankles sore, my face numb, I was exhausted. I fell on the ice and just lay down there, listening to the winter wind, watching the depressing sky, thinking about Kate. So she has a boyfriend already? That's very likely. She's very beautiful. There has got to be many pursuers. Do I have any chance?
In December I wrote a letter to her. I told her I fell in love with her at that singing contest. I watched her eating in the dinning hall. I saw her walking with a guy. I stood near her when watching the volleyball contest. I told her all my feelings. Everything. Can we meet in a certain classroom at a certain time? I asked her. It was a very thick letter. I walked to the post office to mail it to her. I posted the stamps diagonally across the right-hand corner. I read it form somewhere that it meant, “do you love me?”
Something nasty about this post office came to my mind. When I was contacting US universities for admission and financial assistance, my father gave me four hundred dollars as application fee. I must have got noticed when I sent out an application with forty dollars. When I walked out the post office, I found my wallet was gone, with the remaining 360 dollars and my national ID card. I stood at the door of the post office, looking at passers-by, not knowing who did it, not knowing what to do. I talked with a police about it. He said there were several inveterate thieves active in that area, and he would check with them. But nothing came out it.
I always remember the evening we met. It was a Friday evening. It was snowing. I went to the classroom where I asked her to meet me, thirty minutes before the scheduled time. There were not many students there.
Right on time, walked in the girl, the most beautiful girl in the world, who had been in my mind, in my heart, and in my dreams since I first saw her. She was wearing a long white overcoat, with a neatly combed ponytail. When I stood up she walked toward me, “I am Kate,” she said.
Kate, Kate, Kate, what a beautiful name; a name that I have called thousands of times in my dream and in my consciousness. I told her my name was Harry. I felt very thirsty and nervous. Words were not readily coming out of my mouth.
She said, “Both of my parents are professors at this university. They took me to campus when I was very young. I grew up on this campus. I started studying English when I was five years old.”
I said, “You are from a family of intelligentsia.”
She asked me, “What do your parents do?”
I said, “My mother is a pediatrician; my father is a mechanical engineer.”
She said, “That’s good too.”
It was natural that we talked about family background, to be sure; recalling the conversation now, I feel she was kind of patronizing. She must be very proud of her parents being professors; she boasted that she had been studying English since five; my parents were ok, but not as good as hers.
"Do you have any siblings?" I asked her.
"I have one little brother." She said.
"So do I." I said.
She said, “I want to go to the states after graduation. My family is very poor; my parents don’t make much money from their teaching jobs. What do you plan to do after graduation?”
I hesitated to furnish an answer, smiling.
She said, “Is it a secret? Engineering?”
“No”
“Business?”
“No.”
“Teaching?”
“No.”
“Oh, you want to be a writer?” She smiled at me, in some uncertainty. Her teeth were very white, very straight. Her eyes were crescent-shaped. There were some freckles on her face. This was the first time I got to be this close to her. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
‘Yes.” I said. I did want to be a writer.
I walked her back to her dorm. From the crystal sky snows were waltzing down. My heart was dancing too. There was a thick layer of snow on the ground. We walked on the snow, leaving our footsteps on it, the snow snapping under our feet. This was something I loved to do when I was a little boy. It was just so nice to do it again-with the most beautiful girl on Earth, no less.
It is a wonderful pastime-Go is, if you have a lot of time to pass. You can easily kill a day with Go. I had a Go buddy, Zhang, in Kate’s department. I went to his room frequently. I wanted to be close to the guys in her department, to listen to their talks. Maybe they would talk about Kate sometimes. I would love to hear something about her-anything. Anything about her would make my day. I was so jealous of these guys. They were in the same department with her, taking courses with her. They met her everyday and talked to her everyday. That was something I was dying for. And they did not seem to feel lucky about it.
Zhang and I were playing Go.
I said, “I heard that two professors in your department are couples.”
He said, “Yes. I am taking a course with the guy. They live in that red residence building right next to the department of chemistry building.”
I felt excited. So now I knew where she lived.
“Their daughter is also in our department. Do you know?” Zhang said.
“Oh Really?” I acted nonchalant.
But I was excited. My heart was swelling. Was more information coming? But he talked about an awesome Hong Kong movie, “It is by Chow Yun-Fat, tall and handsome. It is a must see. Action packed. It is going to blow you off your seat.”
I went to her home building. It was a very dry, cold, and windless winter night.
I stood in a corner, smoking. When I breathed it in, I can see the luminous tobacco end. Knowing that she was so close to me made me happy, excited, comfortable and warm. I knew she was somewhere up there in one of lighted rooms. She was my sun, sustaining me through the cold winter night. I recalled our first meeting: every sentence she said, her face, her words, and her refulgent smile. What is she doing now? Having dinner? Studying? Watching TV? Talking to her parents, her brother, or her friends?
I took the bus to a shopping street to buy her some present. It was cold, and one window was missing on the bus. The wind was blowing into the bus; I was wearing an overcoat.
Oh a bus. Something happened on a bus. I did not like it. I was ashamed of it. I hated it.
This bus broke down a few stops after I got on. The driver was working to fix it. Some passengers got off the bus and left. I attempted to do the same. But this ticket-selling lady got hold of my lapel and said, “Pay before you get off.” Pay before you get off. These words are reverberating in my mind.
In a gift shop, I researched several music boxes, listening to the music, and set my heart on one with the music Fur Elise. When you opened the music box, there was this little doll dancing on a mirror to the tune. If it stopped, you can rewind the spring with a handle on the bottom of the box, and the doll would dance for you again. I asked the sales lady to do a gift-wrap for me.
“What color would you like for the gift wrap?” she asked me.
What color would Kate like? Purple? Yellow? Let’s pick blue. I loved blue. I bought her a box of chocolate in the store next to the gift shop.
When I went to her dorm room, she was not there. Her roommates, a pie faced girl, seemed to understand my mission, told me which bed was hers and asked me to put my bag on her bed.
“Kate often stayed at home. She only came to the dorm room occasionally.” She said.
I looked at her bed. This was Kate’s bed. It was amazing that I was looking at it. It was very plain and very clean. There was one shelf by the wall with some books and some pictures on it. I put my bag at a corner of her bed.
In the evening, I went to her room again and she was there-very upset.
She said, “You seem to be a very timid guy. I did not know you could do this. I could not take your present.”
My head was empty; my limbs were numb. I was not prepared at all for a reaction like this.
What did I say to her? I am not sure now. It was so painful for me. It was excruciating.
Probably I stammered something like this, “What do you want me to do with them?”
She said, “I couldn’t take your present.”
She handed the thing back to me.
I took the bag back. I scampered out of the dorm. If someone familiar saw me with this rejected gift bag I would die. Tearing off the gift-wrap of the music box, I threw both the music box and the chocolate into the trash bin, and felt much relieved.
I started walking in the night. Where was I going to go? I didn’t know. But I did know where not to go. Do not go back to the dorm! I couldn’t face anyone right then.
I just kept walking, thinking about our second encounter. Why was she so vexed? She was nice in our first meeting. Maybe her roommates teased her? She felt it an insult to accept my present? I was being too rash? I should wait a little bit, until she knows me better. Then she might accept my gift. Why wasn’t I more patient? Maybe she does not like me at all, and there is no future for us.
I walked out of campus to a crossroad. I saw the cars running, the traffic lights changing. I walked to a street with lots of shops. There was this restaurant called Californian Noodles. Rumor had it that it was a fake, that there were no chain noodle restaurants in California. There was this shop selling Korean appetizers. I loved them. There was this small hotel, with just three to four rooms and two-layered beds. It was very cheap. There was this video store. It was very smoky inside. I walked in and stayed there all night. I saw that Chow Yun-Fat movie that Zhang effusively recommended. It was action packed, but did not blow me off my seat. I sat tight in the seat and dozed the night away.
The trees were budding when the spring came. The snow and ice on the ground were melting.
One day I saw Kate walking toward the chemistry building on campus. I took a short cut to the building and walked back, pretending I ran into her accidentally. She did not seem to be happy seeing me. She did not seem to be angry either.
I said, “what a coincidence. I just finished my class. There is this very good movie tonight. Do you want to go see it with me?”
She said, “No. I have an exam. I am very busy. How about another time?”
How about another time? This was one of her favorite phrases. We have plenty of chances later, was another one. When I asked her to go see a movie with me, or have dinner with me, she always said that.
I wrote her forlorn love letters.
Dear Kate: Without you I don’t know how to live my life. When I get out of bed in the morning, I think about you. I wish I’d see you that day, in the dinning hall, in the library, in the classroom building. When I get into bed at night, I think about you. I want to dream of you. I want to picture your face in the night, the most beautiful face in the world. I listen to the song you sung-I bought a cassette of that song. I went to your department and looked at the pictures of all the professors. I found your parents’ pictures. Your father published so many papers!
Would you like to visit my family sometime? It is about 30 minutes from campus. My parents will be very happy to see you. My brother will be happy to see you too. It would mean the world to me.
Kate replied my letter:
I appreciate your feelings for me. But I really have no time to consider these things now.
I am very busy studying. I want to go to USA right after graduation. I need to get a good transcript on the one hand, and prepare for TOEFL and GRE on the other.
Thanks very much for the presents you bought for me. I actually like them.
She actually liked the presents? Did she mean it? Was it an apology for the slight she meted out to me? Was it a mollifier for the pain she knew I felt? Was it a hint that, if I send those presents to her again, she would accept them? In that case I should have held onto my presents. They were rotting away somewhere.
Kate set a clear objective for herself, and she worked hard at it. I had one for myself too: I wanted to be a writer. Looking back now, I know I was just having my head in the clouds. To be a writer, you need to be financially secure, not only because you cannot concentrate on writing when worrying about the mundane business of everyday life, but also because you need the detachment and privilege that financial security offers you, in order to become an objective observer of people and life. You also need certain maturity, because what you can share with the readers is ultimately your life experience, and what you think about it. What did I have? I read many some American and French writers. I worshipped Marcel Proust. But reading is one thing; writing is another. You can read ten books without being able to write one decent story. I did try to write a decent story about the college lives of my roommates’ and mine. What else? I fell in love with a girl and got snubbed. And I would need to find a job soon. That was about it.
Summer. It was graduation time. There were so many obstreperous parties. Now I often had the smell of liquor on my breath. So did my roommates.
After a dinner at a restaurant I could not sleep. I went out of the dorm to take a walk around the campus. It was where I had lived for four years. It was where I met Kate. Shivering in the wind were some yellow flowers at a corner of our dorm building. They gave off lavish and inebriating scents. I stood by the flowers and sampled the refreshing aroma. I thought about Kate: if we were girlfriend and boyfriend, I would take these flowers to her room. She would accept those flowers and give me a kiss to show her appreciation… In a month I would be leaving school. I found a job. It was with a company not doing so great, about an hour's ride by bicycle from our campus. I went to a dance club. The lights were very dim inside. I met a classmate. After one dance he walked out with a woman with heavy makeup; he winked naughtily and knowingly at me. I danced with a large woman to a tune, and left. The air was so fresh outside the club permeated by the smells of cigarettes, sweat, and perfume.
One evening we drank a lot of beer and we sat outside the dorm. When I saw a girl walking our way my heartbeat was accelerated. I could not see her face clearly, because it was getting dark, but the way she walked, with ease, grace and confidence, just made my heart ache. It was Kate.
One of my roommates cried out, “Hi that girl in red dress!”
She walked by, ignoring the call, and walked into the dorm. After about half an hour she walked out of the dorm. She must have wondered who called her. Why didn’t she walk up and check it out?
Some graduating girls were chanting a song vociferously in one of the rooms in the upper floors.
A guy stuck his neck out of a window and yelled, “Sisters, can you keep your voices low?”
It was another evening and another dinner in a restaurant. We were eating and drinking. It was very hot in the room. Many of us were topless.
My very good friend Wang got a job in Beijing. I was jealous. Gai got a government job. He just obtained a gorgeous girlfriend and brought his trophy along to our dinner. He proposed a toast, “Let’s have a reunion in ten years. I will be here in my helicopter. My helicopter will land on the roof of this restaurant.”
I drank my glass of wine. I was not happy since I did not get a good job. I went to this company that was barely surviving. After a while I thought about Kate. I started crying.
I said, “My emotional life is so tormented. I will do well in my work, but I don’t think I will do well in my love life.”
Then another guy cried, came over to give me a hug, and said he totally understood me.
I was so drunk. My two roommates, each grabbing one of my arms, pulled me back to the dorm. I limped along. I breathed heavily; the summer heat made me nauseating. I closed my eyes, trying to suppress the things rushing up my esophagus, and ready to burst out of my throat. Beneath my closed eyelids I saw something red and quivering, like the flames of the candles. I opened my eyes. Some passers-by were looking at us. That pie-faced girl, Kate’s roommate, was walking by. She seemed to be sneering. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about you, my pie faced lady. I only cared about Kate. And she treated me well lately. She even told me that she liked my presents. I thought about my roommates. They were the best roommates in the world. When I got drunk they took care of me.
It was my last day at school. I was in my room. The floors were littered with stuff: paper, woods, and trash, as if some army staff just evacuated after losing a battle.
All my stuff had been packed and moved to my new place, a residence building for singles in my company.
Our dorm was such a sordid place. The janitors would only come to clean the bathroom once a day, in the evening. They would be wearing boots and raincoat, holding large water hoses. For all the other time of the day the feces would be piling up in the shit pit. No water was available to flush them down. When you went to the bathroom you had to decide if the pile was too high for you to crouch over it. And oftentimes water or urine was dripping down from the ceiling so when you were stooping over the shit pit you had to hold some newspaper or an umbrella above your head, or it was going to ruin your coat, your hair and your neck. To better cope with the stench in the bathroom, you needed to smoke a cigarette. Life in hell wouldn’t be this ignominious.
And there was no place to take a shower in the dorm. In the summer times you could make do: you went to the rest room with only your shorts on, filled a container with water, gave yourself a quick scrub, and poured the water onto your body. In the winter you had to walk in the cold for twenty minutes to a bathhouse. When you walked in you took off your clothes and stored them in a locker. There were twenty to thirty guys standing in the steamy house, all of them naked, many of them silent. You walked around, clutching your towel, soap and shampoo in your hand, watching those guys cleaning themselves up, looking for a spare showerhead. If all showerheads were occupied, you had to identify a guy who seemed to be wrapping up his business, and wait near him. There was this one time when I was cleaning myself, a naked guy came up to me, a total stranger, offered to rub my back, if I rub his in return. I turned down his offer. After the shower you had to brave the cold to get back to the dorm. A hat you must have. Otherwise your hair would be hard and cold like icicles before you arrived at the dorm.
As the redemption of it all there was Kate. Oh Kate. Kate was going to stay in this building for another year. Maybe I could come back to see her sometimes. But she was busy. So I could not and should not bother her too often. We were in different courses now. She was studying hard in order to go abroad. I would be working.
Kate, Kate, Kate, I called her name, feeling the pain and helplessness in my voice. I took one last look at my room, and walked out of the dorm. I left the campus and walked into the sunny, busy, and noisy streets.
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