Читать книгу The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories - Shouhua Qi - Страница 19

Yu Dafu[2]

Have to tell her to go back first; with a promise to join her in half an hour.

Have had more than enough to drink. The neighboring rooms are completely dark now, their guests long gone, the servants having turned off their yellowish lights. Coal in the stove, once glowing red, has crumbled into a smoldering mess, and the small door below the vent, once so red hot, almost translucent, has turned pale, too.

Feeling woozy all the time, what with sleepless nights and then drinking all day long. Have really gotten into talking to Yusheng, but with her hanging at my side all the time, I can’t even stand up and to go take a pee.

Took me a while to talk her into leaving, on her condition of me joining her in half an hour. Shivered badly when, escorting her to the door, a gust of cold wind blew right in my face. With the door open, the reddish light from inside shone into the misty night, revealing snowflakes drifting down.

“Snowing again! Snow may prevent me from coming, you know!”

Half joking; half out of a genuine desire to go home and see if any important mail had arrived the past week.

“How come! No deal then, and I won’t leave!”

She opened her shawl, wrapped it around my body, and brushed her face, cool, smooth, and fragrant, and her soft, light breath and thin lips, against mine.

“Alcohol! Smells disgusting!”

She pretended to be angry and flashed me another stare. When she was about to brush her face against mine again, Yusheng cried out from inside the house:

“Stop it, Liuqing. Stop it! Having the audacity to do this in the courtyard! Ten dollars, fine!”

“I don’t care, I don’t. . . .”

She brought her face close to mine again, a laugh escaping her lips.

Wrapped in the same shawl with her, I cautiously treaded through the dark, slippery courtyard toward the gate, where the shopkeeper hollered “Cab!” Startled, I jumped out of the shawl and shivered again when another gust of cold wind blew into my face.

She turned her head and reminded:

“In half an hour. Don’t forget!”

And left without looking back.

Through shivering cold I took a few steps along the wall to a dark corner and peed. Then, as I walked back to the house, my face was once again greeted with icy snowflakes. I looked up into the sky and couldn’t make out anything except for a nebulous gloom; lowering my head somewhat, though, I saw a row of shingles on the rooftop: chilly, blurry, vaporous like beer.

Once inside the house, I noticed that Yusheng was already laying on the kang. A door behind me opened, and the shop clerk handed me a warm towel and a bill.

“Why the hurry? Want to go to bed, too? Go get me another pack o’ cigarettes!”

The clerk was unhappy with the request, but since I was a regular, there was nothing he could do but go and run the errand with a big smile on his face.

I lay on the kang across from Yusheng’s for who knows how long until the clerk shook me and woke me up, mumbling: “It’s snowing real hard outside. Shall I call Flying Dragon and get you a cab, so you won’t catch cold?”

“Fine!”

I woke Yusheng, wiped my face and hands with a towel, and had a smoke. We sat and waited for the cab, still very drowsy, neither in a mood to talk.

Upon hearing a sudden sputtering sound in the quiet air, I put on the coat and hurried outside with Yusheng. The courtyard was already too wet and slippery. More snowflakes hit my face.

“Snowing like this, I won’t be able to leave again tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

My voice sounded a bit odd to my own ears, like beating a drum wrapped with a layer of cloth.

The shops along both sides of the street had closed. All quiet, except for the cab’s wheels grumbling through wet mud. It bumped along; the street looked all but deserted. Inside the cab was complete darkness, the dome light broken, it seemed. The snowflakes caught in the beams of the headlights looked so gossamer, so faraway, like in a dream.

The cab squeaked as it turned, its lights shining on a white wall. When it neared Yusheng’s home, I became excited, suddenly, as if a pot of water was boiling inside me, something welling up in my eyes.

“Yusheng! Don’t go home! Let’s go back to Han’s Lake. Let’s go to Liuqing’s place and chat all night!”

I broke the silence and thus begged Yusheng as I half stood up from the seat, pounded hard on the glass window, and ordered the cabbie to take us to Han’s Lake.

(1926)