White Horse Read online

  White Horse

  YAN Ge

  Translated from the Chinese by

  Nicky Harman

  To Yang Yang

  Acknowledgements

  To Qiu Huadong, editor of People’s Literature, for publishing this story in 2008.

  To Nicky Harman, my dear friend and translator.

  And to Kelsey Parks, for designing the cover.

  My cousin Zhang Qing and I may not have been the prettiest girls in our small town, but we certainly thought we were. One day, while my aunt was out, the pair of us sneaked into her room and pulled all her scarves out of the drawer. Then we stripped down to our vests, wound the scarves around our heads and shoulders, and stood gawping at ourselves in the mirror.

  ‘Hey, why are we such good-lookers?’ said Qing.

  ‘We’re the best-looking in the whole world,’ I said.

  ‘So who wins out of us two?’ Qing asked.

  I gave her a long look, then said reluctantly, ‘You’re prettier than me.’

  My cousin pulled the scarf down a bit, décolleté-style, so you could see her collarbone. She had soft budding breasts and turned sideways on to the mirror, sticking her chest out so she could admire her figure. I gazed at her breasts enviously, because I had nothing. We carried on messing around, rifling through the drawers again and finding my aunt’s lipstick. It was the kind that coloured up when it was on your lips. We smeared it on and waited and waited, then my cousin said, ‘It only goes red in the sunshine.’

  Still swathed in scarves, we went out onto the balcony to sun ourselves but it was still early in the year and chilly. (Of course, neither of us would have admitted that to the other.) We stood there like a couple of hungry nestlings, pouting our lips at the sun and waiting for them to turn bright red.

  After a bit, my cousin’s face reddened with the cold and she sneezed violently.

  Somehow, my aunt always knew what we had been up to when she left us alone. This occasion was no exception. Qing got a beating. That prettiest face in the world was soon running with tears and snot, and no longer quite so pretty. My aunt thrashed her daughter from the sitting room to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the sitting room, while my cousin cried so hard that I felt my heart breaking for her. I stood by the front door, not daring to move, bawling my eyes out.

  Then my aunt had to go and start the dinner. When I heard her tearing the spinach, I sneaked into the bedroom, where my cousin lay sprawled limp and exhausted on the bed. She had no more tears left to cry and sobbed soundlessly.

  ‘I’m so envious of you for not having a mother!’ she said fiercely.

  I did not know how to comfort her. I just sat beside her on the bed, patting the hem of her jacket and said, ‘Honestly, it’s quite nice to have a mum.’

  My aunt always enjoyed taking me to school. The nights I stayed over, she carried my school bag and we were out of the door before 7.30 in the morning. We went through the South Gate market and my aunt always had plenty of people to exchange greetings with: ‘Hello Chen, fish for dinner today, is it?’ ‘Mr Zhu, are you having water spinach again?’ ‘Doing good business today, Mrs Li?’ ‘Hello, Mrs Cai!’ they greeted her politely: ‘Taking your niece to school?’

  My aunt always puffed herself up and retorted angrily, ‘What do you mean, my niece? This is my daughter.’

  After this happened quite a few times, the market shoppers got the message. Now they called to her: ‘Good morning, Mrs Cai! You and your daughter are off to school early.’

  That made my aunt happy. She gave a loud, clear response and made me call a greeting too.

  One day, after we had gone through the old city gate, my aunt took me by the hand and said suddenly, ‘Yun Yun, I really am your mum. Don’t you ever forget that.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised.

  ‘If anything’s wrong, you just tell me. So long as I’m here, I’ll make sure no one ever pushes you around,’ she declared.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  That afternoon after school and after much searching, I found my father in the compound of the old people’s home where we lived. He was hemmed in by a bunch of old men who were watching him play chess. As I squeezed through, my dad banged the horse down on the board, taking his opponent’s chariot and shouting in elation, ‘See my “White horse bright hooves”!’

  ‘Come and cook dinner, Dad,’ I said, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘You played like a fool today, didn’t you, old Chen,’ he said.

  He finally realized I was there: ‘Yun Yun! You home from school?’ Affectionately, he sat me on his knee, holding me firm with one arm, while with the other he carried on playing chess.

  I’d been watching chess for so long that every move my dad made I could name: ‘Gunfire blasts the mountain’ or ‘Horse walks into the slanting sun’ or simply ‘Checkmate!’ When it was checkmate, we could go home for dinner.

  Mostly, it was noodles for dinner. My dad threw a handful of noodles into the water, and when they were cooked he took a ladleful for himself, gave me a bowlful, and added soy sauce or lard. Then he took a bowl of cooked, minced meat from the cupboard and put a big spoonful on top and we sat there together and gulped down our dinner.

  My dad slurped his noodles down, breathing heavily and had finished in less than a minute. He threw the ladle into the sink, wiped his mouth and said to me, ‘Yun Yun, wash the dishes, right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  And before I knew it, he was out of the house and I could hear him next door: ‘Mr Zhong, come and have a game of chess!’

  I did the dishes and then my homework, or the other way round, or maybe I just did the dishes and, instead of my homework, I stole one of my dad’s martial arts novels. Or I shut the house up and dropped in on the neighbours. The old folks always made me welcome. As soon as they saw me coming, they looked out titbits for me: a couple of slices of boiled pork in garlic sauce, or a White Rabbit milk candy left over at the bottom of a tin.

  Mrs Yu, who lived at the opposite end of the compound, had the most spending money – ten yuan a month – and sometimes she even gave me a bit of chewing gum, a rarity in those days. On the other hand, Mr Zhong, who lived in our row of houses, was very poor. He habitually went around in a khaki military greatcoat, a hand-me-down from my dad.

  Wherever I was, I was free to please myself until nine o’clock at night, by which time all the old folks were asleep, except Mr Zhong and my dad, who were still locked in combat at the chess board. I could go to bed, or not, as I chose, either in dad’s bed or in my own small bunk bed, and so long as I slept, no one cared whether I lay on my back or my side or my stomach. Except for my cousin who warned, ‘You should never sleep on your stomach.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll squash your chest and your breasts will never grow.’

  I was alarmed. I took a look at the small swellings on her chest, and back at my own chest, flat and skinny as pork ribs, and swore to myself that I’d never sleep on my tummy again. It’s not too late, I thought. They’re sure to grow sometime.

  It was summer by then, and when I slept at my cousin’s we shared her sleeping mat of bamboo slats and just wore our knickers. We played at being a pair of lovers. My cousin, with those small breasts of hers, was the woman, so that left me being the man. We cuddled up affectionately, and she rested her head in a womanly way in the crook of my neck. I, like a man, put my arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Kiss me,’ Qing said. So I did. She pointed to her breasts. ‘Kiss me there.’

  I was startled. ‘How can I kiss you there?’

  ‘But couples always do that,’ she said confidently.

  So I kissed her delicate nipples. They were tiny, and slid from between my lips, like two cold, boiled peas left over from my din
ner.

  After I’d kissed them for a while, Qing felt she owed me something in return. ‘Shall I kiss you?’ she offered.

  ‘Sure.’

  So, always fair, Qing kissed my nipples just the way I’d kissed hers. Her lips were wet.

  ‘What do couples kiss like this for?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re too young to understand,’ she said between kisses.

  We were growing up quickly and, after the summer holidays, Qing started sixth grade and I went into third grade. ‘You shouldn’t spend so much time over at her house, now she’s working for her middle school entrance exams,’ Dad said to me. But I went over there anyway, in any spare time I had, because they had a 21-inch colour TV. Once we’d watched the Flower Fairy cartoons, Qing would start to dress me up: she tied my hair up in a red scarf, and wound a long yellow scarf around my neck. Finally, she put rouge on my lips and cheeks. Then I helped fix her up and we sat on the balcony where we could see the sports field of the middle school next door. Every evening, it was full of young people taking a stroll, some of them in couples.

  ‘This time next year, when I’m in middle school, I’ll have a boyfriend, too.’

  ‘You’ll be too young to be in love,’ I objected.

  ‘Humans only live to love,’ she said.

  I felt an odd tightening in my chest at her words. Sitting close together, my hand in hers, my hair tied up in a red scarf, I suddenly saw a white shadow moving to and fro on the field. I peered at it: it was a white horse.

  ‘There’s a white horse over there,’ I said to Qing.

  ‘Where?’

  I pointed. ‘There!’

  ‘I can’t see it.’

  A cold shiver ran through both of us.

  ‘You know what I heard,’ Qing said. ‘If you tie a red scarf round your head, you’ll see a ghost.’

  With shrieks of alarm, we pull the scarves off our heads and rushed back into the sitting room.

  ‘Zhang Qing!’ shouted my aunt crossly from the kitchen. ‘What’s all that noise? Are you crazy?’

  She had a shout loud enough to reach all around the house, but she quietened down when my uncle came home. He taught chemistry at the middle school next door and always brought with him a thick pile of exercise books to correct. No one dared make a noise after that. Qing and I sat in her room doing our homework like good girls, until we heard my aunt call, ‘Dinner time!’ Then we washed our hands and sat nicely at the table, waiting for my uncle to arrive before we helped ourselves to that morsel of stewed duck we’d been eyeing from the moment we came into the room.

  After dinner, my aunt went back into the kitchen to do the washing-up while my uncle tested us on our homework. Qing was no good at maths and was always getting told off by her father: ‘You’ve done that sum wrong again. And I told you last time how to do it.’

  Then he turned to me. ‘Pu Yun, you see if you can do it.’

  I came closer, looked at the problem and worked it out. ‘Is it 32?’

  ‘Did you see that?’ Uncle said to Qing. ‘Pu Yun listens to what I teach you, and she can do it. Why don’t you try a bit harder?’

  Qing glared angrily at me. Every time this happened, she must have thought that surely this time I wouldn’t show her up, but every time I did.

  When my father came to pick me up around nine o’clock, my aunt bustled out of the kitchen, her hands full of bags of food she had cooked for us to take home. But if Qing was in a bad mood, she would come rushing out and knock the soy milk buns from her mother’s hands. ‘Don’t you give them those! What makes them think they can come round all the time and eat our food?’ This enraged my aunt and brought my uncle rushing out of the sitting room. When he bundled Qing into her room, I knew she was really in trouble.

  The day after one of these rows, I went to the sixth-grade classroom when school was over. Sure enough, there was a big black bruise on Qing’s arm, I stood in the doorway and called, ‘Zhang Qing!’

  She ignored me and carried on packing her bag.

  But then she came out and, hand in hand, like the best of friends, we went off together to buy a packet of crackers and munched them all the way home.

  ‘Come and have dinner in my house,’ said Qing, ‘and we can put on make-up.’

  That was the day when we finally found some proper lipstick in my aunt’s drawer, not one that went coloured after you put it on but real lipstick in a bright scarlet. We stood together in front of the mirror, and Qing said, ‘Hey, I can’t wait to grow up!’

  She put on a pair of glasses and looked at me in the mirror, her lips red as blood.

  I responded loyally, ‘Qing, you’re really pretty.’

  Qing flicked her hair back and glanced sideways at me. ‘Just wait till I grow up.’

  And as the months went by, she did just that. She never waited for me, either.

  One day I bumped into her in the street. She was wearing a patterned skirt with a white belt. The skirt was in a gauzy material, and with the light shining through it I could see the flowers on her knickers. She was walking down Imperial Culture Alley, looking as thick as thieves with two students, a girl and a boy. My school bag on my back, I stopped and shouted, ‘Qing! Qing!’

  She ignored me.

  ‘Zhang Qing!’ I called again, so loudly the whole street must have heard.

  Finally, she turned and looked at me. ‘Have you finished school?’ she asked.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘We’re off to have some fun,’ she said. ‘Bye bye.’

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ asked the boy with her.

  ‘My little cousin. She’s still in primary.’

  And they went off, laughing, leaving me to carry on at primary school.

  I still went to my aunt’s house. It was lucky to have my aunt, now that I’d lost my cousin. Qing was taking evening classes and my uncle was teaching so my aunt and I used to eat dinner together, sitting opposite each other at the table. My aunt loved twice-cooked pork. Any time she served this, she had two more bowls of rice, then added some water and the remaining oil and ate it all up.

  As she smacked her lips over the pork and rice, she asked me, ‘Yun Yun, what’s your dad been doing? Why does he never come to dinner here?’

  ‘He’s always out with Mrs Xiang the teacher,’ I answered.

  ‘Which Mrs Xiang?’

  ‘I think she’s his girlfriend.’

  My aunt put another melting morsel of fatty pork in my bowl. ‘So he’s got a girlfriend?’ she asked.

  ‘Dad says Mrs Xiang’s going to knit me a jumper,’ I informed her.

  ‘Knit you a jumper?’ my aunt looked contemptuous. ‘And what gives her the right to knit you jumpers? She’s not family. You belong to this family. I’ll knit you a jumper.’

  And she did. It was purple, and my aunt struggled over it as the wool kept breaking. She finally finished it and made me put it on. It hung loose on my skinny frame but she looked at it with satisfaction. ‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘You can wear it till you’re grown up.’

  It was high summer and too hot for jumpers but I had to keep it on, even though I was sure it was the cause of my prickly heat rash. I looked mournfully at my reflection in the mirror. The face of a young boy looked back at me.

  It didn’t take long for the news of my dad’s new girlfriend to get around town, and when it did, he didn’t show his face at my aunt’s house to collect me. My aunt was attending an evening study group now and she used to come home with my cousin. One evening, I was sitting watching their TV. ‘Yun Yun!’ cried Qing affectionately as she came into the room.

  ‘Hello, Qing,’ I greeted her. But she went straight into her room and banged the door shut.

  As I sat there, my aunt came out and asked my uncle, ‘Why don’t you take Yun Yun home if you’re not in a hurry to get to bed?’

  He gave me a ride home on the back of his huge bicycle, through the old town’s South Street and then along the second ring road in the direction of West Street until, f
ar in the distance, we could see the lights of the old people’s home compound halfway down Xin Street. My uncle left me at the top of the street.

  ‘Mind how you go now, Yun Yun,’ he said as he pedalled off.

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  As I walked the last stretch, my heart was in my mouth. The street was completely deserted and the metal gate to the compound was locked. When I let myself in, old Mr Sun, the gatekeeper, took a look through the window, then went back to his Old Folks’ Digest. He always had to wait until evening for the paper to make its rounds of the courtyard and finally end up with him.

  My dad and I lived furthest from the gate, and I made my way through the pitch darkness. Even Mr Zhong was asleep in his lonely bed. It was very quiet and the smell of the old folks’ canteen dinner hung sharp in the air: pork slices with wood ear mushrooms, Mother Ma’s beancurd, fish-fragrant aubergine. The room next door to the canteen was the Supplies Office, where my dad worked during the day, but he had been home for hours by now, sitting reading with Mrs Xiang by the light of the lamp.

  She saw me come in and stood up. ‘Yun Yun’s back.I’d better be off.’

  My dad took her back to wherever it was she lived.

  Meantime, I got into bed, cuddling my new purple jumper in my arms. Just then, I really missed my auntie.

  During a PE lesson at school, Chen Zinian, one of the kids who always got bad marks, said to me, ‘Pu Yun, you’re still wearing your dirty tracksuit.’

  ‘Mind your own damned business,’ I retorted, piling up the sand in the sand-box.

  ‘That’s rude.’

  He thought ‘Mind your own damned business’ was rude? I looked at his hair, parted into neat strands. ‘Motherfucker,’ I said.

  Chen Zinian looked appalled. He jumped up and shouted, ‘I’m telling the teacher what you said!’

  ‘Go on, you do that.’ I glared, and flung a handful of sand at his oh-so-clean white shirt.

  He took a step back and then charged and knocked me into the sand box. ‘You’re bad!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve got no mum! You’ve been badly brought up!’