and came with you. She is perverse, and you don't know if you love her, but she fascinates you. She has had several boyfriends who, according to her, were companions. 'Sexual companions?' you asked. She didn't disagree, and, maybe because of this, she excited you. She said she opposed marriage, she had lived with a man for some years, but then they separated. She couldn't belong to just one man. You said that you approved. She said that it was not that she didn't want a stable relationship, but, for a relationship to be stable, it had to be stable on both sides, and that was difficult. You said you felt the same, and that the two of you had some things in common. She had to live transparently, she told you this the first time she went to bed with you and stayed overnight. She also told you of her past and ongoing sexual relationships. She said that male-female relationships were important, and you agreed. She was quite frank, and this was why she excited you.
In the distance, the surface of the sea is no longer visible, and you frantically look around on the shore to see if there are any lifeguards on duty. She comes around from the side and, seeing that you have seen her, she stops. She is pale with cold.
'What are you looking at?' she asks.
'I'm looking for a lifeguard.'
'Aren't you looking for a beautiful woman?' she asks, giggling. She is shivering and covered in goose pimples.
'There was a blond here just now, sunbathing on the sand.'
'Do you like blonds?'
'I also like brunettes.'
'You rascal!' she softly berates you, but this pleases you.
You have dinner in a little Italian restaurant, where a white Santa Claus is chalked onto the glass window of the kitchen. Above the tables hang paper streamers in the form of dark-green pine needles. It will soon be Christmas, yet it is almost summer here in the southern hemisphere.
'Your heart's not in it. Coming with you for a vacation is really no fun,' she says.
'But isn't a vacation just having a rest? There doesn't have to be a specific goal,' you say.
'Then there wasn't any need to bring a specific woman, any woman would have done.' She stares at you from behind her glass of wine.
'On the beach, I was frantic and about to call the police!' you say.
'It would have been too late.' She puts down her glass and, stroking your hand, says, 'I deliberately gave you a fright. You're really very silly. Let me show you what living is all about!'
'All right,' you say.
That whole night, you and she make wild, passionate love.
50
In this small town, the electricity was often cut, so he had lit a kerosene lamp. Writing in the light of the lamp made him relaxed, less inhibited, and so it was easier to pour out his feelings. There was a quiet knocking on the door. No one in the village knocked like that. They called out first, or called out while pounding on the door. He thought it must be a dog. The headmaster's sandy-colored dog sometimes sniffed the meat he had stewing, and would lie by his door to beg for bones, but, for days, he had not lit his stove and had been eating in the school dining room. He gave a start, quickly stuffed what he was writing into the basket of wood and charcoal by the wall, then stood behind the door to listen, but the knocking had stopped. As he turned to go back to his chair, he again heard the knocking.
'Who is it?' he asked loudly, as he opened the door a crack to look.
'Teacher.' It was a woman's hushed voice, and the person was standing in the dark by the door.
'Is that you, Sun Huirong?' he had recognized her voice and opened the door.
This girl had graduated after two years of schooling and was now working in the fields in one of the villages. Official documents said that all town children, even if they were not from peasant families, had to settle in the villages, and it was up to the school to implement this. He was Sun's class teacher, so he chose a production brigade only a couple of kilometers or so from town, and where he knew Hunchback Zhao, the Party secretary. He also found her lodgings with a family where there was an old woman to keep an eye on her.
'How is it? Is everything all right?' he asked.
'Everything is fine, Teacher.'
'You have become quite dark from being in the sun!'
In the dim light, the girl's face seemed black. Just sixteen, her chest protruded, and she looked healthy and strong. Unlike most city girls, she had been doing manual labor from the time she was a child, and was used to hard work. Sun Huirong came into the room, but he left the door wide open to avoid arousing suspicions.
'Is there a problem?'
'I've just come to see my teacher.'
'Fine, sit down.'
He had never let her come into his room on her own but she had now left school. She stood there looking behind her, looking at the door.
'Sit down, sit down, I'll leave it open.'
'No one saw me come.' Her voice was still very hushed.
He was in an awkward situation. He recalled being moved by a touch of sadness in her voice when she had told him that her home was a women's domain. She was the best-known girl in town. After the student propaganda team visited the nearby coal mine to stage a performance, a group of young miners came and hung around outside the classroom window, craning their necks and looking in. They started clamoring and shouting that they had come to see Sun Huirong! The principal came out of the office and chastised them, 'Why do you want to see her? What's there to see?' The young hooligans mumbled, 'So what if we take a look at her? She's not going to disappear if we look at her, is she?' They all jeered as they slunk off. 'This is where Sun Huirong had her tits felt' had been scrawled in chalk on the stone embankment by the river, and the boys in the class were summoned one by one into the principal's office and interrogated. All of them said they didn't know anything about it, but, out of the office and in the corridor, they were sneakily guffawing. The village girls mature early, and a lot of silly talk went on among the girl students. Often there was fighting and crying, but whenever he questioned them, they would blush and say nothing. The propaganda team had to put on makeup for the performance, and Sun Huirong turned this way and that, looking in a little round mirror. She knew how to use her feminine charm. 'Teacher, does my hair look good like this?' 'Teacher, could you help me with this lipstick?' 'Teacher, come and have a look!' He corrected a corner of her lips and said, 'You look great, it's fine!' and sent her on her way.
The girl was sitting in front of him right now in the dim light of the lamp. He went to turn up the lamp, and the girl said, 'It's fine like this.'
She was trying to seduce him, he thought, so he started to talk about something else. 'Tell me about the family.' He was asking about the peasant family with the old woman, which he had chosen for her.
'I left that place a long time ago.'
'Why did you leave?'
At the time, he had arranged for her to share the room with the old woman in the family.
'I'm looking after the storehouse.'
'What storehouse?'
'The production team's.'
'Where is it?'
'Near the road, by the bridge.'
He knew the lone building by the little bridge at the edge of the village, and asked, 'Are you living there on your own?'
'Yes.'
'What are you looking after?'
'Some heaps of paddy-rice hay and a few plows.'
'Why do they need looking after?'
