February Flowers Read online

Another three months passed before I finally learned this girl’s name. It was a Saturday night in spring, two months after my seventeenth birthday. We met on the rooftop of West Five, the eight-story all-female dormitory where I lived. The rooftop was an empty expanse of white cement, half the size of a soccer field, with ventilation ducts and large pipes along the walls. It was known among the girls as a filthy place where the janitors went to fix water or heater problems, though it was quite clean. Few girls would visit it because of its emptiness and the possibility of running into rats on the way there.

  I had discovered the rooftop by accident not long after I moved into the dorm. On that day, a few of my classmates and I, as delegates of the Literature Department, visited a model room on the eighth floor—the winner of that year’s university-wide competition called “Year’s Cleanest.” When the other students rushed into the bright room that smelled of flower-scented air freshener, I noticed a passage a few meters away at the northern corner. At the time I was looking for a quiet place to play my violin in the evenings so I ventured there after visiting the model room and thus discovered the rooftop.

  I often went up there to play my violin—the open space made the sound travel farther and more clearly. I played the violin in the orchestra in middle school and high school, but since coming to university, I played merely to entertain myself. It seemed a good diversion from studying. I played the same études that I had been playing for years, as well as Butterfly Lovers, a Chinese violin classic

  Somehow, the rooftop reminded me of the attic in my parents’ house, which served as a storage space. I liked to go up there when I was a kid, playing with my toys or fantasizing about the fairy tales I had read. At that time my parents still lived on a farm, where they had been sent from Nanchang City for “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution—they were considered intellectuals. By the time I was born, the Cultural Revolution was ending. Later, my parents told me that they had used the attic to store their books that weren’t approved by the Party; they were hidden carefully underneath old clothes, blankets, and broken furniture. Since middle school, I had begun to read some of the books, which included Laozi’s Classic of the Way and Virtue, Ba Jin’s trilogy Family, Spring, Autumn, and Byron’s and Shelley’s poems. I couldn’t understand these books fully but found them fascinating.

  An old wooden ladder led to the attic. Though dark and stuffy, it was my favorite place in the house. When my parents weren’t watching I would take a torch and my toys up there and be perfectly happy. I read children’s picture books, played with my toys, hummed the Russian songs my mother had taught me. When I was tired I napped beside my toys and books. My parents didn’t return to Nanchang until I was eleven. The city had a revolutionary history and a long river called the Gan. I hated Nanchang, especially its gloomy houses, overcrowded streets, and querulous people. Even after I had lived there for a few years I still dreamed of the farm now and then.

  That evening, the third time I saw Miao Yan, I had taken my violin in its black leather case, climbed the stairs to the eighth floor two steps at a time, then raced through a long, narrow hallway that ended at the northern corner of the building. A flight of stairs, almost hidden, led to the roof. The handrail shook and squeaked at my every grip. After eleven steps, which I had counted many times, the stairway turned ninety degrees before continuing upward to a paint-chipped wooden door with a handle so rusted it seemed like it was coated with sand. The door was usually closed. That day, though, it was ajar, like a half-opened envelope.

  From the south corner of the roof I could see the student canteen where a party was going on. The canteen was always transformed into a dance hall on weekends, decorated with twinkling lights inside and out. The music was the Carpenters’ Rainy Days and Mondays, played often for slow dancing. The students liked their melodious and emotional songs. In front of the canteen was a long queue of people waiting to get in, shaped like a big S, all the way to the main road. The S kept changing form, sometimes lengthening, sometimes shortening, sometimes shifting into a Z.

  When I began to play Butterfly Lovers, the clock on the Bell Tower had just struck eleven. Though I had played it often, each time I felt it more touching and powerful. As soon as my bow hit the strings, the tragic love story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai filled me; I could see them turning into butterflies after they died. At the climax, I held my breath and my fingers jumped rapidly between the strings. After I put down my bow, I had to close my eyes for a moment to calm down.

  Since my roommates were playing poker in our room, I decided to stay on the roof a little longer. I strolled to the other side and looked down. Facing the dorm was a brick wall and a row of sparsely leafed palm trees; a little farther away stood the white, five-story building of the History Department and a big unpaved area bordered by a few brightly lit dorms for graduate students. Behind those dorms I could vaguely make out the main entrance of the university—grand, solemn, ancient-looking—with the name of the university inscribed on a plaque on top of it.

  I didn’t see her until I turned back. There she was, sitting in a corner, her knees drawn together tightly. That night a thin layer of clouds, black and dark green, gathered low in the sky. The moonlight shone on her plump face. She seemed to be asleep. Her head was tilted against the wall, her long black hair streaming over her left shoulder and settling on her chest. She wore dark flared pants, hiked to reveal her long, slim calves. Her blouse was near-transparent silk, with palm-sized red flowers set against a black background. When a breeze came, the blouse fluttered on her body and those flowers bobbed up and down like fire on a black sea.

  I didn’t recognize her right away but as I approached I knew who she was. A few steps away I stopped. I wondered why she was here. A girl like her should have been dancing at the canteen. I had met other visitors on the roof only once before: three girls. When they saw me, they smiled, a surprised look on their faces. They walked around the roof with curiosity but soon got bored and left. I heard one of the girls complaining about the roof being too empty and cold. “There are no benches, no plants or flowers, or any other decoration,” she said.

  I was going to walk past this girl. I was sure she would have left by the time I had circled the rooftop. But just then she woke up; or somehow I felt she hadn’t been sleeping but perhaps had been observing me through her narrowed eyes.

  “Bravo,” she said, clapping slowly and rhythmically. “What a performance! Do you live in this dorm?”

  I nodded, then said, “I’ve seen you before.”

  “I’m not surprised. Everybody knows me.” She squinted her eyes to get a better look at me, then laughed. “Now I remember you. You bought ten bags of instant noodles from me. My biggest sale that day. I bet they tasted pretty good. It was a good business, but I don’t sell them anymore. Too many people did the arithmetic.” She didn’t look guilty at all.

  “Are you here by yourself?” I looked around to see if someone else was hiding in the darkness.

  “I was, but I have you here with me now.” She winked. “It’s boring here, isn’t it? It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  “This place suits me. I only come here to play my violin.”

  “I heard your playing. It was pretty good. It’s something, you know, knowing how to play a musical instrument. I always admire people who can do that. It must take forever to reach your level. I’ve never had that kind of patience. By the way, you don’t play for money, do you? If you do I can hook you up with some fine bars. I know them all in the city. A good way to pay your tuition. But of course, you wouldn’t play classical stuff at a bar. Listen.” She obviously detected impatience in my silence and stared at me. “I want to help you because I liked your playing and you bought noodles from me. I usually don’t play the role of fairy godmother.”

  “Thanks, but I get scholarships to pay my tuition,” I said. I was pleased with her praise but annoyed by her suggestion of playing in a bar.

  “A scholarship girl.” She n
odded mockingly. She tilted her head back, stroking her chin with her left hand. “Do you mind chatting for a while?” she asked.

  It didn’t sound like a bad idea, and in any case I wouldn’t have been able to read in my noisy room right then. “What do you want to chat about?” I asked.

  “Sit down first, would you? You’re standing like a soldier. Aren’t you tired? My legs would get sore in no time if I was in that position.” She moved her body away from the wall, gesturing that I sit in the gap between her and the corner.

  I frowned at the smallness of the space and the heap of cigarette butts beside her feet.

  “How about now?” She moved a little farther away from the corner and laughed. “What are you afraid of? I won’t eat you. You’re a girl. I’m a girl, too. I just thought you wouldn’t mind keeping me warm. You know, you’re wearing jeans and a sweater. I only have—Aachoo!” She couldn’t hold her sneeze anymore. “It’s goddamn cold.”

  I was amused by her loud sneeze and cursing, and laughed.

  I sat down where she had suggested. Though I was careful when I sat, my left arm still brushed against her. Her body radiated warmth, and a pleasant light perfume that seemed to blend into her own smell. I never used perfume and didn’t have a nose for it, but hers suggested a mix of honey and rose petals. Sometimes girls in my class would put on perfume before going dancing but theirs was often too heavy and stifling.

  She looked pleased with my obedience. “My mood’s always good on weekends. No school, fewer people bothering me. Really, no one should feel sad on weekends.”

  “Do you come here often?” I asked, trying to find something to talk about.

  “Yes, quite a bit. But it’s the first time I’ve come in the evening. It ’s not a bad place to sunbathe.”

  “Sunbathe?” I noticed her face was glowing with a healthy tan.

  “I sometimes come here to take a nap after lunch. I just put a mat on the ground and sleep on it. Once I scared a janitor. She thought I had sunstroke. She pushed me and even slapped my face, trying to wake me up. You should have seen her expression when I sat up and told her what I was doing. She must have thought I was crazy. It was…hmm…last summer. How about you? Do you come here often?”

  “I only come here to play my violin in the evenings.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re quite a character. Don’t you hang out with your girlfriends on weekend nights?”

  “I don’t have many girlfriends. I like being by myself.” I regretted saying this instantly. It seemed silly to reveal so much about myself to a stranger. But at the same time I felt obliged to answer her questions and keep the conversation going. After all, we were the only ones on the roof and we were sitting close to each other.

  “Is that so? I don’t like girls much, either. They’re too nosy, you know? They always want to get into your business. And they’re tricky. God knows what’s on their minds. I don’t like having to figure them out,” she said, as if she wasn’t a girl herself. She then switched the subject. “Where are you from?”

  “Nanchang City.”

  “Never heard of it.” She frowned, lines forming between her eyebrows.

  “Really?” Now it was my turn to frown. “But it’s the capital of Jiangxi Province.”

  “Aha, now I know, it’s an old revolutionary district. Aren’t people there called Jiangxi Lao Biao?” She laughed.

  “Don’t call me ‘Lao Biao.’ No one uses that term anymore.” I stared at her sternly, not appreciating her joke. She must have known that was how Chairman Mao referred to the people from the countryside during the revolutionary era.

  She was still laughing. “Anyway, that ’s what I know about Jiangxi. I don’t remember who told me that. I always remember useless stuff. So what’s interesting about Nanchang?”

  “There’s Teng Wang Pavilion Tower there. It’s one of the most famous—” I saw her shaking her head, so I said, “Wang Bo, the Tang Dynasty Poet, wrote about it in his most renowned poem. ‘Essence of the earth, precious gift given by the gods, inspired scholars, enchanting—’”

  “I don’t read poems.”

  “But we learned that poem in high school.”

  “Not me,” she said with coldness both in her eyes and in her voice. “No one taught me anything.” She picked up a cigarette butt and began to tear the paper wrap to pieces.

  “Did you grow up in Nanchang?” she asked after a brief silence.

  “Not really.”

  “Where, then?”

  “A small farm. My parents were exiled there during the Cultural Revolution.”

  “A farm?” She raised her eyebrows and sized me up with new interest. “What do your parents do nowadays?”

  “They’re teachers.”

  “No wonder.”

  “No wonder what?”

  “Nothing. You look like a good kid. That ’s all. I bet you write letters to them every week.” She smirked, then asked suddenly, “Why didn’t you go to the party?”

  “I don’t know how to dance. Why didn’t you go yourself?”

  “Nice try. Guess you don’t have a boyfriend.” She nodded at me meaningfully, as if saying, “You can’t fool me. Admit the fact.”

  “None of your business!” I said. Her half-joking remark annoyed me more than I expected.

  “You’ve got a bit of a temper, haven’t you? Really, I don’t care if you have a boyfriend or not. Knowing that doesn’t do me any good. Sooner or later you’ll have one anyway.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I can totally see through girls like you. You always dream about a handsome prince. Well, there aren’t many princes in this world, you know. Even if there were, you don’t want to trust them. If you ask me, a woman’s fatal weakness is to trust a man.” She looked straight into my eyes, wearing a serious expression, like a professor lecturing her student.

  I was becoming a little tired of this conversation. Her talking about men and women didn’t interest me. The night had grown darker and no more music came from the canteen. I stretched my legs and took a deep breath, getting ready to leave. If my roommates were still playing poker I would just read in the hallway. The light there was dim but I could use a torch. I only had a few chapters to go before I finished Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I had read about it in a journal. When I got it from the library it was covered with dust. In the beginning, I had a hard time following all the flashbacks recounted by one of the main characters, an idiot, but soon I began to like that kind of stream-of-consciousness style, which I hadn’t read in Chinese literature.

  She seemed to have sensed what was on my mind. “I know you’re here to play the violin. Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” she said. Without waiting for a reply, she went on, “Well, my boyfriend and I just broke up tonight. I don’t know how I ended up here. As I said, I don’t normally come here in the evenings.” She began to play with a lock of hair hanging over her shoulder, her fingers long and thin. “He dumped me.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said after hesitating—she didn’t look upset.

  She gave me an appreciative smile. “You were the first to say that.”

  Now it was hard for me to say goodbye to her right away. I decided to stay a little longer to keep her company so I wouldn’t appear too unsympathetic.

  “Actually it’s no big deal. Men are everywhere, like dust.” She stopped playing with her hair and patted her arm instead, as if she was dusting the sleeve. “If I want I can meet another guy tomorrow. I can get you a date, too.”

  She yawned and took a pack of cigarettes from her right pocket. The white box was printed with fancy calligraphy that read “Salem.” I didn’t smoke but knew this American brand was popular among trendy girls. She popped open the lid of the pack with her thumb, shook out a cigarette, and put it in the corner of her mouth. She had sensual lips, a little dry but fleshy. She lit the cigarette with a transparent lighter. The small flame from the lighter lit up the center of her face and formed a bright ci
rcle around her nose and lips. She drew long and deep on the cigarette, then holding it between her fingers, she extracted it before slowly opening her mouth to emit a plume of smoke. As she exhaled, she closed her eyes, dropped her arms to her sides, and extended her legs forward. Her face was filled with satisfaction.

  “Why are you staring at me like that? You’ve never seen a woman smoke? You never smoked?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Then smoke with me.”

  “I don’t want to smoke tonight.” I fanned away the smoke spreading in my direction.

  “What are you afraid of, little sister? Your ma and ba aren’t around. Let me tell you, smoking isn’t bad at all. Countless artists depend on cigarettes for inspiration. So many things in the world are more harmful than smoking.”

  I didn’t like her tone—she seemed to be trying to belittle me.

  “Mind your own business. If I said I don’t want to smoke, then I don’t.” I stood up. “I really have to go now.”

  “Come on, you’re not going to leave me like that! I thought we were having a good conversation. Look at you! Just look at you! You can’t be more than a second-year student. Preoccupied, pretentious, righteous. You must major in Chinese literature.”

  “Look at yourself! Cynical, worldly, a chain smoker. You must be in your final year. How ’s job-hunting? It can’t be too much fun.”

  She burst out laughing, clapping her hands together. “How do you know so much about me? Are we connected in previous lives or what? By the way, my name is Miao Yan. Not the ‘Yan’ as in ‘colorful’ or ‘swallow,’ but the ‘Yan’ as in ‘wild goose.’ Twenty-four years old. Perhaps the oldest undergraduate in the university. I started school late, you know? How about you?”

  “Chen Ming. Chen as in ‘morning’ and Ming as in ‘bright.’ I’m seventeen.” Hesitantly, I extended my hand to meet hers.

  “Seventeen? What a lovely age! You must have started school really early then.” She laughed again. Clear and unrestrained, her laughter pealed out and echoed in the darkness. I could never imagine my laughter as hearty and bright as hers.