Colors of the Mountain (15 page)

“They’re hot!” He sampled the beans with relish.

“He saw his girl today,” Yi said, giving me a wicked wink, which I returned.

“And now he can’t keep his mouth shut,” Siang said, also grabbing a handful of beans.

“What’s the story, Sen? Details, details.” I was happy for him.

Sen turned, still wearing a silly grin. “Well, I was riding on my old bike to the market this afternoon, right?”

“On the street?” I asked.

“No, on the narrow dirt road near Dong Jing River.”

“And?”

He kept beaming. “And there was no one else around.”

“It sounds better each time,” Mo Gong said, chewing the beans. “Keep going, Sen.”

“Outta nowhere, there she is.” Sen narrowed his eyes as if he could still see her figure, and lowered his voice. “Hair down to the waist, loose and fluttering in the wind. Still wearing that dress with the little flowers, real tight up here.” He grabbed his own breasts. We all smiled and he waved at us, annoyed.

“I was getting nervous as I came closer to her because the narrow road wouldn’t let the two of us pass without touching each other.” His grin got wider.

“Touching each other!” I exclaimed. “Did you touch her?”

“Wait. I was afraid of losing my balance and falling off the bike into the ditch, so I got off and stood on the edge of the road to let her through.”

“There was you and her with the bike in between?” I asked.

“No, I was between the bike and her,” he corrected me.

“You old dog,” I said, slapping his shoulder.

“Of course, my heart was pounding and my face musta been like a real red lychee. I felt like I needed air…”

“Normal feelings during sexual encounters.” Yi threw in a few goodies from his old days at the master’s house.

“Do this part slowly, Sen,” Siang urged. Mo Gong and I stopped chewing the beans and our jaws hung slack as we waited.

“She turned to face me and our chests brushed lightly. It was…oh, how should I say it…a lively moment. I can still smell her faint fragrance and feel the touch of her chest. Feel this, my heart still pounds at the thought of her sinful body.” Sen grabbed my hand and let me feel his heart. It was kicking like a baby’s foot.

“That moment seemed so long and sweet. I thought I was dying and I felt completely happy with this shitty life I’ve lived.” He closed his eyes and shook his head earnestly. “Then, as I was admiring her from behind, she turned her head and gave me the sexiest smile. I felt my head explode. It was a heat wave. Those eyes pierced my heart. She knew I was looking at her and she didn’t dislike it. No, no, not at all. Her smile told me she really liked it, or she woulda started yelling and calling me a hooligan.”

“She shoulda done so, anyway,” Mo Gong joked. Sen hit him with a fava bean.

“Real poetry!” I said dreamily, “I can’t believe you touched her chest. Anyone else would have fainted and dropped into the ditch.”

“I almost did,” Sen said.

“I think she was flirting with you. That’s a good sign. She likes you,” Yi said.

“I think I should do something about it or I’ll go crazy,” Sen said, all pumped. Then he paused, suddenly deflated. “But I have no money, no brains, no job, no future. Someday I’ll probably end up marrying a virgin from the mountains who walks like a duck and sounds like a man.”

“You’re definitely not much to look at,” Siang joked. “Your chance of getting her is like a frog in a deep well, hungry for a passing swan in the sky.”

Sen didn’t think it was funny this time. His face turned pale as he said to the good-looking Siang, “Fuck off. You think you’re pretty? Just check that garlic nose in the mirror, and those swollen lips.”

“Okay, okay. Let our friends be the judge,” Siang challenged. “Loser buys cigarettes for the next three days, deal?” It was always about betting and winning.

“I’m ashamed of you guys. What’s this? You want us to judge your Ugly Contest?” Mo Gong said, disgusted. “Forget it.”

“That ain’t very nice of you, Siang, to say all that,” Yi said. “He has his dream and he’s happy when he dreams. It doesn’t matter who he ends up with, he still can dream about Ms. Huang, even lying next to another woman in bed. A man always dreams.” Yi sounded like an old man again.

“Right, the same way you dream about marrying your ‘Miss Yellow Stone,’ Siang,” Sen said. “You think your chance is that good? I saw her brother bring those tall, muscular basketball players to their house. You don’t think they have a better chance at getting her than you?” Siang’s girl happened to be his next-door neighbor, a dentist’s daughter by the name of Ping, meaning
lotus blossom.
Ping’s whole family was beautiful. She recently inherited the title “Miss Yellow Stone” from her sister, who had married a college graduate, an engineer.

“Okay, leave my Ping out of it,” Siang said. “I wish to say no more on the subject.”

“You shoulda stopped a long time ago,” Mo Gong said.

“Why don’t you write to her?” I asked Sen, remembering what my elder sister had told me about her high school life. “Everyone in the school has a locker, where they get letters and postcards sent to them.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Right, me writing a letter.” Sen laughed sarcastically at himself. “I couldn’t even remember the last time I touched a pen. I can’t write a love letter. I don’t know all those beautiful words and sayings.”

“I think our little intellectual could help,” Siang said, grabbing my neck and shaking it fondly.

“No, I wouldn’t know how either,” I protested. “Besides, this is your girlfriend. I have no personal feelings for her.”

“Hey, that sounds like a great idea, Siang,” Sen said, warming to the idea. “Have Da jot down something sweet. What an idea!”

Sen turned to me smiling. “C’mon, don’t play hard to get. I know you’re well-read and can write a mean piece of prose. Just think of the love stories you used to tell us.”

“You gotta help your elder brother here, Da,” Yi said. “The same way I’d repair your chair if it were broken, ’cause I’m a carpenter.”

“Okay, I’d love to help,” I said. “Tell me what you want to say.”

“You go write something, then I’ll see if it fits me.”

“Make sure you tell her that Sen would jump into the Dong Jing if his love goes unnoticed,” Mo Gong said.

We all laughed.

The following afternoon, everyone lay on Mo Gong’s bed and listened quietly as I read aloud the letter I had spent the night composing.

Nobody stirred. It was as if they had all fallen asleep.

After several minutes, Mo Gong sat up and said earnestly, “Da, can I give you a kiss? I’ve never heard something so moving. It gave me chills.”

He leaned over to grab me, but I dodged and he almost fell off the bed.

“Well, I wish it was longer,” Siang said. “You’ve gotta write one like that for me one of these days.”

“I think Sen is getting a hard-on,” Yi joked. “He’s quiet.”

Sen lay undisturbed by the statement.

“What do you think, Sen?” I asked.

“It’s so good that she wouldn’t ever believe it was from me,” Sen said finally.

“That’s easy,” I said, relieved. “What you need to do is to copy it in your own writing and she’ll believe it’s from you.”

“Da’s right. Naturally you’re gonna be missing a letter here and there. What’d be more convincing than that?” Mo Gong said, knowing what his buddy was capable of doing with a pen.

The same night, after everyone had left, I sat alone with Sen at Yi’s. Sen copied the letter with difficulty in the dim candlelight. I could see the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. There were a lot of words that he misspelled unintentionally, but the letter still read smoothly and was strangely touching for the misspellings.

“How’d you learn to write such a mean letter at this young age? You have to have a pretty corrupt mind,” Sen said, putting his pen down and stretching.

“It was taken from a few love letters that I read in novels. I just changed the name of the river and the mountain and that’s it.”

“Thanks, Da. Out it goes in tomorrow’s mail,” Sen said.

“Best of luck.”

“You know, Da?”

“What?”

“Someday she’ll find out and will probably fall in love with you and marry you.”

“If that happens, she won’t marry me,” I answered. “She’ll kill me.”

For the next few days, Sen was especially interested in the old mailman who rode his bicycle around town every morning. But nothing came back. He began to suspect that the letter had gotten lost or that the return address to Yi’s workshop was such an obscure alley that the mailman didn’t know it existed. We all were getting anxious. It seemed like a united effort by all of us. When Siang joked that Teacher Huang might have wiped his butt with the letter, we threw him to the floor and kicked him until he was reduced to tears.

One Sunday we finally took to the road in search of Sen’s girl again. We smoked all the way to the high school, where we thought she might possibly be practicing basketball with the rest of the school team. What a sight! As we leaned over the low wall, we saw a dozen tall, slender girls running around the dirt basketball court, stretching their arms and kicking their legs to the rhythm of a coach’s whistle. Ms. Huang was somewhere in the middle. Her gestures were especially supple, and her long hair was bound into a huge bun. For the first time we could see her long, elegant neck.

“Sen, I think you came at the right time. Check her legs out.” Mo Gong was drooling.

“What do you plan to do with her? Just stare?”

“Isn’t that good enough?”

“I guess so, for the time being.”

Now she was bending forward stretching her back, her bottom to us. We couldn’t conceal our excitement. What a lucky man that coach must have been. The back-stretching exercise lasted for a long time. Our five heads moved in unison to the movements of the warm-up.

“She looks really beautiful today,” Sen said absentmindedly. “Think she got my letter?”

“Maybe,” I replied.

“There’s no way of finding out,” Sen said.

“Perhaps we could try smoking, to give her a signal. She saw the smoke last time, that’s why she stopped and gazed lovingly at you,” Mo Gong said.

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea at all.”

I fished out a pack of Flying Horse, distributed it among us, and lit them all with a single match without burning my fingers.

Smoke rose up above our heads, thick and blue.

The girls were busy with their workout. Ms. Huang didn’t turn her head our way, not once. We puffed harder and spat the smoke out at the same time.

No response.

“What are you boys doing here?” a deep male voice boomed from behind our backs, startling us all. As we turned, I saw the handsome head of the famous PE Teacher Huang, who, with a stroke of luck, could be our best friend’s father-in-law. He stood there tall and trim, wearing a white sweatsuit, and eyed us reproachfully. Silently, we bunched together like a litter of frightened mice who had forgotten where their nests had been, then ran off for cover in all directions.

“Stop there. You, the tall one,” Teacher Huang shouted, pointing at Sen. “Come back here.”

Sen kept running like the rest of us.

“I’m not going to bite you. Stop.”

We stopped, believing the authoritative voice of the man who had once held the gold cup for the proud province of Fujiang.

“Come over here, you, the tall one. I recognize you,” he said again.

Sen bravely walked back to face the man like a prisoner about to receive the death penalty.

When they were facing each other, Sen stood a head shorter. I saw Teacher Huang put his hand in his pocket and take out an envelope, then bend over, and whisper in Sen’s ear.

Sen nodded a few times, then took the envelope from him. They shook hands. He walked back, paler than I’d ever seen him.

Teacher Huang smiled briefly at us, frowned into the setting sun, and left.

We circled Sen like a hero surviving a bloodbath, itching for a detailed report on the whispered message.

“What was all that about?”

“A gentleman’s handshake on giving you money to go away?”

“He wants you to marry his daughter?”

“What did he say, something nice?”

We all speculated.

Sen kept walking and lit a cigarette. “The letter was returned unopened,” he said. “He said he would beat the crap outta me if I ever tried it again.”

“Aren’t you mad?”

“Nah, at least he didn’t treat me like shit. He was a gentleman.” And that was all Sen said for the rest of the day.