Under the Hawthorn Tree (22 page)

On the other side of the river the region known as Jiangnan, literally ‘south of the Yangtze River', stretched out into the distance. Not the Jiangnan known to the Chinese from their ancient poetry, however, but rather a landscape of poor villages. A suburb of Yichang was located on the other side of the ‘Little River' but it wasn't easy to get to. The island itself had only a few factories, some fields managed by one of the farming communes, a few schools, some restaurants and a vegetable market, but no hotel.

Jingqiu worried that if Old Third hadn't managed to cross, he would have had no choice but to spend the night on Jiangxin Island. It was cold, might he have frozen to death out there? And even if he had crossed the river, would he have found a place to stay? Didn't you have to have a letter from your work unit to be able to get a room?

Her head was crammed with images of Old Third wrapped up in his coat, his neck pulled in, wandering the streets. Then she visualised him spending the night in the pavilion, his body freezing solid, and being discovered by street cleaners the next morning. If she hadn't been worried about scaring her mother sick she would have run outside to look for him, to find out if he had found somewhere to stay or whether he was spending the night by the river. If he freezes to death tonight he will have died for me, and I'll have to follow him. The thought of death didn't scare her because that would mean they would always be together, and she would never have to worry about him betraying her, or worry that he might fall in love with someone else. This way, he would always love her.

If this really happened she would ask for them to be buried together under the hawthorn tree outside West Village. But that didn't seem very possible, as they weren't anti-Japanese heroes. They didn't die for the people but only for love, one by the elements, the other by her own hand. According to Chairman Mao's words, their deaths would be lighter than a swan's feather, not as weighty as Tai Mountain.

Jingqiu was tossing to and fro in her bed, and could hear her mother doing the same in the other room. She knew her mother must be anxious about the day's events. She trusted her not to go to Old Third's unit without her permission. For her mother to do so would be cutting off her nose to spite her face, as it wouldn't just get Old Third into trouble, but would drag her into it too. She wasn't stupid, and nor was she that meddling. But Jingqiu imagined that from that day on her mother would be even more worried about her, and if she was out of her sight for only a few minutes she would instantly assume she was seeing that ‘bad boy'.

She wanted to tell her mother, you don't need to worry, he won't come to see me these next six months, he told me. He's going to wait until I've graduated. And who knows, he might have forgotten me by then. Or else have found another girl. He's such a smooth talker – he managed to convince me, so wouldn't it be easy for him to convince someone else?

She thought through the evening's events over and over again, reviewing the two key scenes; when he held her, and when he kissed her. Why am I so fixated? Was it because she was so consumed with unhealthy thoughts, or because her mother had turned white at the mere mention of these things? They must be serious crimes if they could affect her mother like that, and to make matters worse, she had actually committed them; so now what? What harm will come of me by being held and kissed? She felt muddled. Last time he had embraced her and kissed her too, and nothing seemed to have happened. But if there is no harm involved, then why is Mother so scared? Mother knows a lot of the world, so surely she must know what's worth worrying about and what's not?

Old Third had been a bit excited, so was that evidence of some ‘brutish nature'? But what exactly did that mean? To be ‘brutish' is to be like a wild animal, to eat people, right? But he didn't eat me, he only kissed me tenderly – nothing wild about it.

It was not until the next day that she got the opportunity to read Old Third's letter. That week it was her turn to lock the classroom, so she waited until everyone had left and sat in a corner of the classroom, pulled out the letter and opened it. It was beautifully written, tender and passionate. When he wrote of how much he longed for her she was moved and felt safe. But when he came to writing about her, his style wasn't quite to her taste.

If he had only written about how much he loved her and how he missed her, and not written her into his letter as his accomplice, then she would have really liked it. But he kept referring to ‘we' this and ‘we' that. He had overstepped the mark. She had received a few love letters before, mostly written by boys in her class. No matter how good they were at writing the thing she hated the most was when they assumed that she must reciprocate their feelings.

She couldn't understand why such an intelligent person as Old Third couldn't see that she didn't want him to put her passionate side into writing. He should portray her as cold, should imply that he loved her bitterly, and that only at the endﾠ– and notice, not until the very end, even if she didn't know when exactly that wasﾠ– had she given him the smallest sign of her affection. She believed real love was like this; that he starts to chase her in the first chapter and only in the last does she relent.

After finishing the letter she thought of tearing it up and throwing it down the toilet but then she realised it might be the last letter he ever wrote to her, and so she couldn't bear to destroy it. She waited instead until her mother had gone out to visit the parents of her pupils, and sewed it into her padded jacket.

She could tell that her mother was keeping a close eye on her, asking her repeatedly where she was going every time she left the house. She didn't even trust Jingqiu when she said she was going to visit Wei Hong, in case this was a pretext to go running off with the boy from the geological unit.

It wasn't fair; her brother Xin had had a girlfriend from a young age, and her mother had never been so overprotective of him. In fact, she had welcomed his girlfriend Wang Yamin most enthusiastically. Whenever she came to visit, their mother would do everything she could to get hold of meat to feed them. She would gather up the bed mats and sheets to wash them. In fact, she wore herself out with these preparations to the point that once or twice she made herself sick.

Her mother always said, ‘People like us, with no money, no power, and with bad class status as well, what can we hope for other than a bit of affection?'

Jingqiu knew that her mother was grateful to Yamin, almost to the point of tears, because it wasn't easy for her brother to find someone so tolerant of the family's poverty and low status. Xin was three years older than Jingqiu. His girlfriend had been Jingqiu's classmate in junior high school, and the prettiest girl in the whole year. Her eyes were round, her nose was pronounced and she also had long black, slightly curly hair; in other words, she didn't look Chinese. When she was small photographs of her used to hang in the photo shop window as adverts.

Yamin's family were not badly off, her mother was a nurse and her father a manager at a tyre factory. After she graduated from middle school her father helped her get a certificate saying that she had problems with her legs, so she didn't get sent to the countryside and went instead to work in a clothing factory in Yichang. From the beginning she kept the relationship a secret from her family.

One day, Yamin came to Jingqiu's house, her eyes bright red and a quiver in her voice. ‘Mrs Zhang, can I speak to Xin? I know he's here, he's hiding from me. I told him that my parents don't approve, they're afraid that once he's sent to the countryside he won't come back. He said we should break up to avoid trouble. He said my parents want the best for me, but this is only what my parents think, not what I think.'

‘He also wants the best for you,' Jingqiu's mother said, her eyes reddening too.

Yamin started to sob. ‘First my parents do this to me, and now so does he. What's the point of living?'

Jingqiu's mother started in surprise then told Jingqiu to fetch her brother from a friend's place where he was hiding.

‘I'll go with you,' Yamin said.

When Xin opened the door and saw Yamin, his eyes filled with tears. Jingqiu turned quickly to leave, knowing that her brother would no longer hide from Yamin and that he really liked her. In the time he had been avoiding her, he had lost a lot of weight.

That evening, Yamin and Xin came over to eat. ‘I don't care what my parents say,' Yamin said. ‘I just want to be with Xin. If they tell me off again, I'll move in here with your family, and sleep in the same bed as Jingqiu.'

During Spring Festival she came over nearly every day, spending time with Xin in Jingqiu's room, often returning home after eleven o'clock at night. Who knows how she managed her parents' disapproval.

One evening, when it was nearing eleven, some teachers who were in charge of patrolling the school came to find Jingqiu's mother. ‘Your son has had an accident.' Jingqiu and her mother went immediately with the teachers to the office only to find Xin locked in one room and Yamin in another.

The teachers wanted to speak to her mother alone so Jingqiu waited outside, her chest burning with anxiety. Finally one of the guards brought Yamin outside and told her to go. But Yamin refused to leave saying, ‘We didn't do anything. If you won't release him, I'm not going either.'

‘How dare you stand here shouting? Don't you know the meaning of the word shame? We could send you right now to the hospital to be checked, see if you're so cocky then.'

Yamin didn't back down. ‘Sure, I'll go, only someone immoral would refuse, but if they find I haven't done anything, you'd better watch out, you dog.'

Jingqiu had never seen Yamin so plucky; usually she was cautious and measured in her speech. ‘Your brother's still inside,' she said to Jingqiu. ‘I'm not leaving 'til they let him go.'

So Jingqiu waited outside with Yamin. She ventured to ask, ‘What's going on?'

‘Those guards are busybodies. It was cold tonight so we were sitting on the bed, using a blanket to cover our legs, and they came knocking on the door. They led me off to the office to question me, then they said they'd take us to the police.'

Jingqiu didn't know how serious that was. ‘What will they do?'

‘The police are completely unreasonable. Beat you first, ask questions later.'

‘What did they mean about sending you to the hospital for a check-up?'

Yamin hesitated before answering. ‘They mean ask a doctor to check if I'm . . . still as a young girl should be. But I'm not afraid, we didn't do anything.'

Jingqiu still didn't quite understand. Yamin said herself that she and her brother had been on the bed – so hadn't they ‘shared a room'? What did she mean by saying they hadn't done anything?

Eventually the guards let Xin go, deciding that nothing could have happened if Yamin was so eager to go to the hospital for a check-up. Afterwards, Yamin continued to come round almost every evening, but the school guards didn't come knocking again. Her mother liked Yamin even more after that; she had never anticipated that such a gentle girl could turn so fierce, like a tiger, just to save her son.

Jingqiu was happy that her brother had found such a good girlfriend. But she couldn't stop herself from thinking, if it had been me and Old Third in that room, mother would probably have sent Old Third to the police herself.

As she had no way of knowing if he had found somewhere to stay or not, Jingqiu feared for Old Third's life that night. She was terrified that Fang would appear suddenly one day to tell her that Old Third had been found, frozen to death, and that she was invited to the memorial service.

Every day she found reasons to go to her mother's office so that she could flip through the newspapers in search of news of frozen bodies found around the city. But probably the newspapers would not report it anyway because Old Third had brought it on himself, he had not died trying to save someone else. Why bother reporting that?

She thought of going to West Village to see if he was still alive, but she couldn't ask her mother for the bus fare and she could think of no excuse that would let her be away for a whole day. She had no choice but to wait anxiously for news.

It occurred to her that she knew a doctor called Cheng who worked at the city's largest hospital. She went looking for him. Dr Cheng told her that he had not received any patients suffering from frostbite. ‘Could someone freeze to death outside in the kind of weather we're having?' she asked.

‘If they're wearing too little then, yes, perhaps.'

Old Third had been wearing a military jacket so he was probably okay, she thought.

Dr Cheng reassured her that nowadays people did not tend to freeze to death; if they were caught out in the cold they could go to the station waiting room or the one by the pier, or else the police would pick them up as a vagrant. His logic comforted her somewhat.

Dr Cheng's mother-in-law and Jingqiu's mother had been colleagues. As both women had the same last name, many of the families on Jiangxin Island had, for several generations, been taught by a Mrs Zhang. Dr Cheng's mother-in-law had already retired, but they lived by the school. Dr Cheng's wife was also a teacher in the city as well as a proficient accordion player and passers-by often stopped to listen as husband and wife sang and played together.

Jingqiu was entirely self-taught at the accordion. She had initially started playing the organ as her mother's school had one in the music room where she could go to practise, but the students often went travelling around singing revolutionary songs, and they needed someone to accompany them. The organ was too heavy for that so she started to learn the accordion instead. She often heard Dr Cheng's wife Mrs Jiang practising as she passed by their house, and she admired her music immensely, so she asked her mother if she could study with Mrs Jiang. Before long she had got to know the family well.