fend off hunger; then, when they wanted to shit, having to bend over with their trousers off and getting smaller children to help them dig it out with twigs. The kudzu formed shit pellets that were as hard as rocks, and it was agony to take a shit. All this has been related by the students, and, of course, couldn't be seen in the photograph, but the desolation that could be seen was beautiful. Viewed through the lens of a camera, even disasters could possess aesthetic qualities.
You also captured on camera two lovely young women, the older one eighteen years old, and the younger one fifteen. The older one's photograph was a profile of her deep in thought. Her father was a teacher in the middle school of the county town, and the father of her father, that is, her paternal grandfather, was a landlord. Before she completed middle school, she was sent to this remote mountain. The younger one had been a junior-middle- school student. Her father was a technician in an optometrist's shop in the provincial capital, and, when his daughter decided she wanted to work in the countryside, he couldn't stop her. In the photograph, this younger woman's head was tilted, and she was laughing silly, as if she were being tickled. The two had been working on the mountain for a year, when the primary school reopened and teachers were needed. They were lucky; they no longer had to do manual labor, they became teachers. The two were happy and excited when you told them you wanted to bring your students on a tea-picking excursion. They said to stay at their school, it would be perfect, they had two classrooms so the boys could sleep in one and the girls in the other. The room in the middle was partitioned. The front part was for preparing class work and grading papers. Behind the partition, there was a plank bed-their bedroom; they said you could stay there and they would stay in the village. Before they came to the countryside, while they were at school, they would certainly have denounced their teachers. Yet seeing you, a teacher from the middle school in town, was for them just like meeting a member of their family. They were extremely hospitable, treated you to a meal of steamed salted pork, sauteed eggs, and bamboo-shoot soup, and they talked and chattered nonstop. It was on that occasion that you took the photograph. They were not like the village girls who would hide as soon as you held up the camera, they were self-assured and even posed for you. It was right when the younger woman burst into silly laughter that you pressed the shutter. After you developed and printed the photo, you saw that the older woman had turned her eyes from the camera and looked very sad, and that in the silly laugh of the younger woman was wantonness seldom seen in so young a woman. It was under the thick black branches of an ancient torreya tree by a steep cliff that you took the photograph.
It was April, spring, it was green everywhere, and the tea-picking season was soon to begin. He went in by the hollow in the mountain, and, after crossing a big mountain and a log bridge over a deep river of roaring water that sparkled in the bright sun, arrived at this production brigade specializing mainly in growing tea and bamboo. Halfway up a mountain slope, he found the brigade leader digging holes and planting corn, and they came to an agreement that he would bring thirty students from town to spend ten days picking tea. The students would sleep on the floor in the primary school and would bring their own rice from home. The brigade would provide firewood, vegetables, oil, salt, and bean curd, and the cost for these would later be reimbursed by the school. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, but, as it was not advisable for him to spend the night in the mountains halfway back to town, the two teachers got him to stay the night at the school.
In the mountains, it got dark early, and, when the sun receded to the back of the cliff, the school sports field was already in darkness. The village stockade was shrouded in mist rising from the river, and the men and women on the mountain had stopped work, shouldered their hoes, and gone home. The village started to bustle with activity, dogs were barking, people were talking, and smoke started curling above the rooftops.
Outdoors, the air was heavy with moisture. The older woman got the charcoal fire going, and boiled a pot of water for him to soak his feet. After traveling a whole day on the mountain road, soaking his feet in the hot water relieved his fatigue and was very enjoyable. The other woman brought him her soap. They were grading student assignments by the kerosene lamp, when villagers started arriving after their evening meal. There were men, youths, and young girls. The men mostly sat around the fire, but the youths crowded around the lamp on the table and started playing poker. The two women stacked up the exercise books and put them away. There were a few unmarried village women, but the married women with babies were probably busy at home. Children ran in and out and made an awful racket, while the men flirted and wrangled with the village women. The village women had sharp tongues, and, by comparison, the two women from the city had softer voices and spoke less. However, the student demeanor they had adopted when talking with him earlier had changed. Dirty words occasionally came from their lips, and they would tell anyone off. At night, the primary school served as a community club, and everyone was in high spirits.
'We're putting out the lamps, we're putting out the lamps! The teacher is worn out from walking all day and has to sleep!' The older woman started herding everyone out. People grumbled, but reluctantly went off. The two women also said good night and went off with the last of the crowd.
The remaining embers in the charcoal burner died, and the room suddenly turned cold. A chilly draught was streaming in from the classroom, so he got up and shut the door. It blew open again straight away. When he shut it again, he found there was no bolt. The door and doorframe was pitted with nail holes, but the bolt had been removed. He steadied himself, then went to the classroom to shut the main door, but, in the darkness, could not find the cross bar. The metal holders on the two parts of the door were there, but the cross bar was nowhere to be found. He got a desk and rammed it against the two parts of the door, returned for the lamp, then went into the inner room behind the wooden partition. On the far side, there was a small door that opened to the classroom. The bolt to the door had also been removed, and only the metal bolt-holder remained. Fortunately, the doorframe was tight, so the door was jammed shut. He didn't go out again to see if the door of the other classroom could be bolted. Nothing here was worth stealing, apart from the two helpless young women from the city who usually slept here.
He blew out the lamp, took off his shoes, socks, and clothes, and lay down to listen to the mountain wind groaning like the deep growl of a wild animal. When the wind had passed, he again heard the sound of the water from the deep river. That night he slept badly. A nagging feeling that some wild thing was going to charge in any moment seemed to have kept him half-awake all night. In the morning, when he got up and pulled aside the blankets, he saw stains all over the gray sheet. The same stains were also all over the two pillows. He felt sick.
On the way back, his mind turned to what had happened with his student Sun Huirong, and he came to the realization that he had gradually become weak and cowardly after living these years in the countryside. He had hidden himself away securely, but, while he had peace of mind and could spend long periods of time in front of the mountain looking at the rushing river, not thinking about anything, he was, in fact, no better than a maggot.
49
She wants to look at ancient forests. You say where will you find ancient forests in Sydney, it will take days driving to some uninhabited place on this continent, Australia. Anyway, you've seen everything from the plane. It's an expanse of red-brown dry land with some jagged, fishbone-like mountain ridges poking up out of it. It was like that for hours on the plane. Where will you find primeval forests?
She unfolds a tourist map, and, pointing at a green patch, says, 'Right there!'
'That's a park,' you say.
'A national park is a nature preserve,' she insists. 'Animal and plant life there are kept in their original habitat!'
'Are there kangaroos?' you ask.
'Of course!' she replies. 'You don't have to go to a zoo to see them. This isn't France where your wolves are purchased from all parts of the world, then fenced off somewhere so they can poke out their heads for tourists to look at.'
Unable to change her mind, you mumble, 'I'll have to see friends at the Performance Studies Centre about a car.'
You also say that, although they had invited you here to put on one of your plays, you had only just met them and don't want to impose on them. She says that the trains go right there, and, pointing on the map to Central Railway Station, draws a line down to the patch of green at the Royal National Park.
'There's a station at Sutherland. See, it's easy to get there!'
