Coming of Age
“We’d grown up fast, working away from home, and had had to face the world and all its temptations on our own.”
SEPTEMBER 5, 2023
“Okay, but you all keep quiet.”
“Even while we’re eating the cake?” I asked.
“You’re the worst blabbermouth,” said Xingjian. “None of you interrupt me while I’m talking.”
We nodded. We were having cake up on the rooftop, twenty candles stuck in the cream frosting.
“The first time I saw her was at the donkey burger joint. I’d gone there for my usual order: four burgers, spicy pickles, a bowl of millet porridge. I was sitting, staring at an ant crawling diagonally across the table. Then a woman’s voice: ‘What would you like to eat?’ I looked up. My first impression of her was: clean-cut, fresh-faced, would look good in a white dress. But I was still annoyed: I’d been eating there for more than a year, and after the first three times, no one had ever had to ask what I wanted. But even though I’ve got a bad temper — Miluo knows it — I never blow up at strangers, particularly women.”
“It’s true,” said Miluo. “I can confirm.”
“I told you to keep quiet … ” said Xingjian. “I told her the three things I wanted. She smiled and went back into the kitchen. She had a nice ass, round and full. Don’t laugh. Two minutes later she brought out my dinner on a tray. Then she sat down by the front counter with her knees together and looked out the window like she had something on her mind. I was the only customer in the place, no one else eats dinner that early. After I ate I was going to paste up ads — Chen Xingduo’s daily quota was five thousand.”
“She looked like an oil painting, sitting there.”
“That’s total bullshit,” said Miluo. “How the hell could you paste up five thousand ads a day?”
“I didn’t know any better; I was just starting out. He was working me into the ground. Now you’ve thrown me off — where was I?”
“Your early dinner,” said Baolai.
“Right. It was just me in there the whole time. She was looking outside, and the afternoon sunlight lit up her profile, so the fine hairs all glowed. She was very pale, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. I’m trying to remember … Her hair was really black, no bangs. She looked like an oil painting, sitting there. Though I only dared to glance at her occasionally, I knew she wasn’t looking at anything outside. Her eyes were unfocused and she had this little smile, like she was dreaming with her eyes open.”
“When she smiled she had dimples. And there was a mole on the left side of her neck,” offered Miluo.
Xingjian glared at him, then picked up his bottle and took a big swig. Miluo shut up.
We were sitting on the roof as the sun went down. There were donkey burgers, spicy pickles, and millet porridge on the table, along with duck’s neck, mala goose, pork cheeks, and beer. The cake was on a chair.
[Read: The Dial’s Summer Reading List]
“Just thinking of that afternoon makes my guts shiver, like I’m starving. She really was like an oil painting. Once I finally hit the big time, I’m going to find the best art teacher there is and I’m going to paint that afternoon.”
“Then what?”
“I finished my food and left.”
That was it? All that rhapsodizing — and he just finished his food and left?
“So, I went back again the next afternoon. Honestly, until I walked through those doors again, I hadn’t thought of her once since dinner the day before. She came over to serve me again, and I gave my usual order. Two minutes later she was out with the tray. She sat in the same seat as the day before, picked up a pen, and started drawing on a piece of paper on the counter. The sunlight hit her face, neck, and part of her shoulder. Her eyes were downcast, looking like another oil painting.”
“Can’t you find a new metaphor?” said Miluo. “I’m thinking she was sexy, like Gong Li.”
“That isn’t a metaphor,” I corrected him.
“Well … was she like Gong Li, anyway?”
“Bull! Gong Li’s flashy. This girl wouldn’t deign to wear makeup,” Xingjian said. “She looked like an oil painting to me, so what? If it bothers you, just eat your meat and drink your beer.”
“We’re not bothered,” Baolai said. “I agree with Xingjian, she doesn’t sound like the makeup type. Go on.”
“When I was done eating, I left.”
“Fuck! During dinner she’s an oil painting, then you finish eating and you’re out? Would it kill you to give us something to sink our teeth into?” Miluo was getting upset.
“We were eating our meat and drinking our beer on the low roof of our single-story building, imagining love—which, Xingjian aside, hardly seemed to be in the cards for the other three of us.”
“Kids should be quiet while their elders are speaking. I haven’t even gotten to the third time, have I?” said Xingjian. “It was this third time that I talked to her. I said, ‘Where’s Miss Ye? I haven’t seen her around.’ She said, ‘Ye went home for a few days, I’m covering.’ I responded, ‘Oh, I owe her three kuai from before, should I just give it to you?’ She said, ‘Sure, I’ll take it for her.’” Xingjian paused to take a bite of goose and pork cheek, and to drink some beer.
The late August weather was just right, and birds were flying overhead. Not far from us, the skyscrapers of Beijing were spreading, quick as a tropical jungle. We were eating our meat and drinking our beer on the low roof of our single-story building, imagining love — which, Xingjian aside, hardly seemed to be in the cards for the other three of us. And even Xingjian’s “her” seemed suspect. Shouldn’t love be hotter and heavier?
“I didn’t know if I liked her. I don’t really know how to tell if I like someone. One time I was standing here on the roof, looking south, and I saw that Miss Ye’s courtyard was totally empty. She lived in one of the rooms, the landlord had the other two. The landlord did some business over by Baishiqiao and came back a couple times a week at most, so Ye pretty much had the place to herself. I came down from the roof and went tottering off southward. As I passed Miss Ye’s courtyard I pushed at the gate, but it was locked, so I stood against it and looked through a crack. Then I heard footsteps, but the gate opened before I could back away. It was her — she was startled too. I blushed red right down to my heels and started stuttering. ‘Uh … I-I was just p-passing by and th-thought I’d see if Miss Ye was b-back.’ She said, ‘She’s not back yet, I’m staying here now.’ It didn’t even occur to me to apologize, I just spun around and took off, wishing I could have simply vanished.
“It was days before I dared to go back to the donkey burger place. She didn’t ask what I wanted, just brought me my four burgers, spicy pickles, and millet porridge. When I was paying she asked, ‘Where’ve you been?’ I put my head down and said, ‘Nowhere.’ She handed over my change and said, ‘Take care on the road.’ She thought I’d been traveling. I was nearly crying on my way out — since coming to Beijing, no one but my own parents has ever said anything like that to me. I turned back and saw her looking through the window, smiling at me. She’s older than me; that smile just hit me. Her mouth is small, but she’s got a nice broad smile, you could fit all the good things in the world into that smile. My guts suddenly twisted. She had me hooked.”
“Have a smoke, then tell us more.” Miluo lit it for him. “How’d you get it, exactly?”
Miluo made that “get” sound really suggestive; he wanted to get to the good part.
“Shut up, Miluo! You can talk shit about other girls, but watch it with her. I talk shit, too,” Xingjian said. “I can be a bastard, but I’d never talk shit about her. You know what it means to ‘profane’ something, right? You read books. I need to keep something pure. I started going to the donkey burger joint twice a day, until I was practically sick from it. After three days she said, ‘They may be good but you can’t pig out on them, you need some variety in your diet.’ I nodded in response, ‘Sure, you’re right.’ When she wasn’t at work, I’d climb up on the roof so I could see her coming home, walking around the courtyard, doing laundry, going in and out of her room. Occasionally I’d see her dumping the wash water out, not wearing much.”
“I remember now,” said Baolai. “For a while there you’d come back from pasting ads and no matter how late it was you’d go up on the roof and wander around, is that what you were doing? I’d wonder: Is he up there in the middle of the night composing poetry or what?”
[Read: “Notes on the International Lightning Strike Survivor Conference,” by Chloe Aridjis]
“Yeah, I remember too,” said Miluo. “Tell us the truth now, Xingjian: how little was she wearing?”
“Sometimes just her underwear, other times not even that. Pale all over. What? Get hard? Of course it got hard, I’m a goddamn man not a block of wood. Seeing her body made me want it. My empty days finally had something to them. That’s when I realized that I was eighteen and I’d started desiring women.”
“So, when was it that you, you know … ” I slowly tapped my forefingers together; they got it.
“Where’d you learn about that, little guy?” Miluo laughed at me.
I clinked my beer bottle against his and took a gulp. We’d grown up fast, working away from home, and had had to face the world and all its temptations on our own. We had no one to rely on, no one to share our burdens; we knew we had to take care of ourselves. I’d only been in Beijing a few months, but it had felt like a crash course in how to face all that life required.
“It wasn’t until my birthday.”
“So, a year ago today. What about before that?”
“Life as usual.”
“Boooriiiing. The goods! Give us the goods!”
“It’s hardly enough to call it ‘goods’,” Xingjian said. “You’ve all been alive seventeen, eighteen years — how much ‘goods’ have you gotten? Back then it wasn’t like now, when we all know what the goal is and we’re just in a rush to get there. Back then I was in the middle of a frustrating but beautiful quest, like I was being drawn on by some distant scent. Something delicate and faint. Once I caught that scent I couldn’t let it go, but I couldn’t just snatch hold of it, either. Everything went on as usual: I’d go to the donkey burger place and see her; my brain and body were filled with her; I’d pass by her home again and again, melancholy and even tragic. Every time I saw her or walked by her gate my heart would pound in my chest … What do you say, maybe I should read a few more books and become a fucking poet?”
“You should write fiction,” I said. “You’re as long-winded as a novelist.”
Miluo and Baolai grinned, Xingjian laughed too.
“What can I say? Do you really want to hear that I was going to write her love letters? I wrote them, and then I tore them up. I wrote down all the things I didn’t dare say to her face, ‘I want you’, ‘I love you’, I even cried. Still I tore them up. Didn’t dare show anyone. In love everyone is a poet, but everyone’s also a thief. What’s more, it was secret and unrequited, she barely knew I existed; she never thought of me. I couldn’t blame her, I was just a regular who liked donkey burgers, a stupid kid. But I was almost nineteen! I was timid as a mouse — and then came my birthday.”
“Me and Baolai threw you a party,” said Miluo. “You insisted on blowing out your birthday candles at the donkey burger joint.”
“You’re the first person in the world to celebrate your birthday with donkey burgers,” Baolai said.
“We brought the cake over to the burger joint, but it turned out she wasn’t working that day,” Xingjian said. “I was pretty disappointed at first, but then my sorrow seemed to give me a kind of strength, and I ate a whole lot of meat and drank a whole lot of booze. You two have never seen me drink so much, right? You thought I was drunk? You think that little bit could put me down? Sure, after the cake I put my head down on the table for a while, but I was just trying to get you two to leave so I could be alone with my sorrow. I was nineteen. I used to think nineteen was a long way off, but there it was, right in front of me, in that Beijing burger joint a million miles from home and family, thinking about a girl I didn’t even know. I put my head down and cried until my sleeve was wet. Then I stood up, picked up the rest of the cake … Hang on, I need a drink.” Xingjian opened another bottle of Yanjing beer and drained half of it in one go.
“Then what?”
“I went to her courtyard and started knocking on the gate.”
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“I brought you something to eat,” said Xingjian. He kept his eyes wide; that was the only way to maintain his courage. The seven bottles of beer he’d drunk were weighing down his eyelids, but if he let them drift shut he worried he might start crying.
She led him inside. The alcohol had left him with a stuffed-up nose, but Xingjian could still smell a wonderful scent, something unlike regular face powder. Her long hair was spread across her shoulders; she was wearing slippers, her pale bare heels turned out slightly. The flourescent lights elongated her shadow; he was in fact a half head taller than her. There was only one chair, and Xingjian sat in it, still holding the cake. She sat on the bed, legs together, slippers dangling casually from her toes. The sheets were sky-blue. An open book was face down on the bedside table. She looked at him the same way she had looked out the shop window, with a half-smile. Xingjian avoided her gaze, struggling to keep his eyes open. He stood and brought the cake to her, saying:
“I’m nineteen now.”
“It was like drowning—difficult, drawn out yet somehow brief, a kind of suffocating beauty.”
She took the cake from him, scooped a bit of frosting from the top and dipped her finger in her mouth. “Fluffy and sweet,” she said. “So, you’re nineteen.” She put another bit of frosting in her mouth, looking at his hands where they hung at his sides, trembling. She stared for a full two minutes. That was how it felt to Xingjian, anyway — the minutes were stretching into hours, and he didn’t know if he should stay there or sit back down. “I’ll give you a present,” she said. “Shut the door.”
He did as she asked. She motioned him over, and Xingjian came back to the bedside. She wiped her fingers with a tissue and started to undo his shirt.
It still seems like a dream to Xingjian. He’d poured seven bottles of beer into his head, leaving it heavy and wobbling. He’d rehearsed that moment countless times in dreams and his imagination, oftentimes with her starring in his fantasies, when he could analyze the various steps like a pro. Now, faced with reality, the only certainty was that he was drunk. The alcohol had filled his head with paste; his whole body was trembling. All he could remember later was that she’d laid down, naked, and said to him:
“Get on top of me. Breathe deeply. Do what I say.”
It was like drowning — difficult, drawn out yet somehow brief, a kind of suffocating beauty. When he ejaculated he seemed entirely suffused with electricity, glowing fire-red, an explosion that started in his scalp and swept through his entire body. He lay atop her, tears running from his eyes. It was the first time since coming to Beijing that he’d felt such overwhelming homesickness.
She stroked his back and said, “Good, that’s right.”
He knew he’d screwed it up; it was over before she’d even made a sound. But as she cleaned up she still said, “That was great.”
Dressed again, she sat on the bed and he returned to the chair, as if they’d never moved at all.
“You always stand on the roof and watch me,” she said.
Xingjian said nothing.
“I asked Ye, she doesn’t remember you owing her three kuai.”
“I really did.”
“Okay,” she laughed. “How long have you been in Beijing?”
“A year.”
“You’re so young. Why aren’t you in school?”
“Couldn’t hack it. I left home with a relative.”
“You’re still young.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“I know … ” she laughed. “I mean, you don’t know why you left home?”
Xingjian hadn’t thought about it in those terms. When he’d dropped out of school his family said he couldn’t just hang around the house, he had to go out and start working, it would break him in. So, he’d come to Beijing, where his uncle Chen Xingduo happened to be. If he’d been in Shanghai, or Guangzhou, or Nanjing instead, well then at this moment Xingjian would simply be living in some little room in Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Nanjing.
“When I was eighteen I graduated from teacher’s college, and started teaching Chinese at an elementary school in the local township,” she said. “The farthest I’d gone then was to school in the city, forty-five kilometers from home. I wanted to go someplace farther. The county town had a small station with a train to Beijing every other day. I’d wanted to take that train since I was a kid, to go as far away as I could, but I didn’t know why I wanted to go so far away. All the way till graduation I still hadn’t ever taken a train … I’ve got a story, do you want to hear it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The elementary school was a red-roofed building with broken windows, and my classroom held forty students. There was a middle school next door that had just been sent a college student from Beijing — they said from Peking University — who’d committed errors: blocking traffic, giving speeches, handing out pamphlets. We heard it was pure luck that he hadn’t been thrown in jail. But he was a good teacher, always reading, he knew all kinds of characters we’d never seen before. My supervisor knew him well and often asked me to borrow books from him or ask him things, so I got to know him, too. Handsome? Ha, not as handsome as you. But he was a good guy. He didn’t smile much, going around with a wooden face. We all knew he was bitter, but who wouldn’t be, in his place? The township was too small for a smart guy like him, but there wasn’t anywhere else for him to go, and it looked like he might spend the rest of his life with us. He told me I should get out and see the world. I asked where I should go, and he said anywhere. Just don’t squat in that pigsty. That’s something we say back home: holing up in one place like a pig in its pen, going nowhere, daring nothing, until they drag you to the slaughterhouse.
“Maybe you’ve guessed that, yes, I liked him. I’m not ashamed. Of course I was awfully shy about it, I was just a young girl. The day I turned nineteen I went to see him — it was Dragon Boat Festival and his roommate had gone back home to celebrate; he was there all alone, reading. We were together that night. I cried a bit, but I was also very happy — it was what I wanted. As a birthday present, he gave me two books and the same piece of advice he’d given me many times before: Get out and see the world … Are you sleepy?”
“No,” Xingjian said, concentrating all his strength on keeping his eyes open. His eyelids were heavy, but he was clear-headed. “Go on, I’m listening.”
“A year later he left to attend a graduate program. I knew he would leave eventually. A person like that could do anything he wanted, given the opportunity. I kept teaching in town. I read the books he gave me. I’m not much of a student, and I didn’t understand a lot of what I read. But I gradually realized what he meant by getting out and seeing things. I wanted more and more to get out. Nothing too ambitious, I just wanted to go someplace far away. He and I didn’t stay in contact, and a year later I got a boyfriend, someone I worked with. We got along really well and our parents were pleased with the match, so we started talking long term. One day I went to the county seat to buy school supplies and passed the station just as the Beijing train happened to be pulling out, like a charging bull with white smoke coming from its head. All of a sudden I felt terrible, and tears started flowing. When I got back to the school, I told my boyfriend I wanted to go to Beijing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘okay, let’s go together during summer break. We can see the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, and the Great Wall.’ But I didn’t mean to go sightseeing, right? I wanted to stay there, I wanted to go right away, I couldn’t wait another day. He didn’t understand; we started fighting. He was blowing up, but I stayed quiet. In the end, he tied a backpack and a suitcase to his motorcycle and took me to the station. I sat by the window, holding my pack; he stood on the platform with the suitcase at his feet. He wouldn’t pass it through the window — he hoped I would come to get it, and then not get back on. Finally, he left the suitcase on the platform, looked at his watch, and said I’ll wait for you outside the station, if you don’t come in five minutes I’m going home. The train was leaving in three minutes. He disappeared from the platform. I got off the train, grabbed the handle of the suitcase, and just stood there. The train slowly started moving, and I walked alongside it. A conductor was about to close the door, and yelled, ‘Are you getting on or not?’ I started to run.”
“Did you get on?”
“No. When I came out of the station more than ten minutes later, my boyfriend was gone.”
“So you went home.”
“I stayed in the county town a couple of nights, and then took another train to Beijing.”
“And you’ve been here ever since.”
“Ever since.”
“Did … did you look for the college student?”
“No. I’ve just lived, I just did what I could. Found work in the corners of Beijing, lived my life. The restaurant will be my last job here.”
“You’re planning to … ”
“Go home, yes. It’s been more than six years, it’s time.”
“Do you have to go?”
She nodded.
“What’s wrong with Beijing?”
“You don’t get it. At a certain point, you need to start listening to yourself, listening to your truest desires, no matter what they are. I want to go home.”
“Did Miss Ye go home, too?”
“Your ‘Miss Ye’ … yeah. When Ye decided to leave I thought to myself: she’s been beaten, she’s giving up, she lost. She couldn’t take it, but I can. Later, though, I understood. Staying or going isn’t a test of will, it’s beyond your control. And going home is actually the more difficult choice.” She picked up the face-down book, whose cover had been wrapped in blank paper. “This book says that France once had the best homing pigeons. They’d release them from the front lines in wartime to carry news back home. They’d have to fly over the entire battlefield, not looking down the whole way or they’d never reach home. Can you imagine? Flying over horrible, blood-soaked battlefields, only looking forward. Do you understand?”
Xingjian didn’t, and in that instant he found the courage to admit it. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“I’m talking about Ye’s courage. It’s hard to leave home, but it’s even harder to go back. Is there anything braver than crossing a battlefield with your head up, eyes straight ahead?”
“I understand,” Xingjian said.
“You’re only able to imagine it. Someday, you’ll get it.”
✺
“I’m still a little confused,” said Miluo.
“Someday, you’ll get it,” said Xingjian.
“Quit blowing smoke,” snorted Miluo. “I can’t be bothered.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I left, and she went to bed.”
“I mean, is there more to the story?”
“Nothing else. I kept getting dinner at the donkey-burger joint for the next couple of days, and she would still sit at the counter, looking out the window. Nothing unnecessary was said. Everything that shouldn’t be said is unnecessary. In the evening, I’d pass back and forth in front of her gate, but every time I pushed at it, it was bolted. A few more days passed, and I decided to stop overthinking it — all I wanted was to hear her talk. She’d said: ‘you should listen to your deepest desires.’ So I knocked on the gate. It was ages before it opened, and there was the landlord standing in front of me, yawning. I asked, ‘Where is she?’ The landlord answered, ‘She who?’ ‘Your tenant.’ ‘Oh, her. She gave up the room and went home.’”
I knew the story was pretty much over, but couldn’t help asking, “What then?”
“Then nothing. I never saw her again.”
Miluo started counting on his fingers. “You all keep quiet, I’m figuring this out. No wonder Xingjian likes older women. She was twenty-eight, wasn’t she?”
“I didn’t ask,” said Xingjian.
“Well, what was her name?” asked Baolai.
“I don’t know.”
“Shit, you slept with her and never knew a thing.”
“Shut the hell up, Miluo! Keep up that bullshit and you better believe we’re going to have a problem!”
For a moment all was quiet on the roof, with only the sound of the evening wind passing through the persimmon tree in the courtyard.
“Okay then,” Baolai said. “Xingjian’s twenty now, time for candles and cake.”
Then we were cheerful again, gathered around the cake and blocking the wind from all sides as we lit twenty candles. The little flames flickered and danced.
Miluo said, “I’m not bullshitting this time, Xingjian, what do you want to do now that you’re twenty?”
“I want to get serious,” said Xingjian. “To put down roots in Beijing.”
Then it was time to blow out the candles. Xingjian closed his eyes, but once they were closed he realized that he didn’t know what wish to make. In his mind he moved southwest, toward that other courtyard, and then he opened his eyes and blew out the candles. The sky went dark.
Excerpted from Beijing Sprawl, published by Two Lines Press.