tried to hush her, but halfway through her sentence, she was choked by tears, too. I leaned on the handle of the pickax and watched a few of my squad mates join in the crying, their world complicated only by the most superficial dilemmas.
Lieutenant Wei came toward our squad, and without a word grabbed the pickax from my hands and lifted it over her head. The ground shook when the pickax hit the hard snow, and more girls stopped shoveling. Lieutenant Wei looked possessed, her jaws tight, her arms brandishing the pickax with mad force. Ping stopped crying and, shivering, hid behind another girl. Nan shook her head before picking up the shovel again, trying to pry loose the snow that Lieutenant Wei’s pickax had cracked.
It was after midnight when we returned to the barracks. Nan said that she had changed her mind, and she wanted a bedmate too. “I won’t do it,” I said when my squad mates looked at me, and I said it again to Lieutenant Wei. The lights-out bugle blew, the drawn-out tune seeming to take forever to reach the end. She had no great desire to live , I remembered from one of Lawrence’s stories, underlined twice with red pen by Professor Shan. I wondered if she had thought that she, too, lacked a great desire to live, but that must not be the case: People who do not cling to life perish, one way or another. As far as I could see, Professor Shan would live forever in her flat, watching with all-seeing eyes those who peopled her books; perhaps she was thinking of me at this very moment, shaking her head at my follies.
I climbed into bed before Lieutenant Wei left the barracks, and turned my back to my squad.
EIGHT
IN LATE JANUARY , three days after the Lunar New Year, I left home to return to the army. I did not tell my parents that there was still another week until the holiday leave ended, nor did I inform anyone at the camp of my decision to return early.
“Would you like me to see you off at the train station?” my mother asked when I came into her bedroom to say goodbye. She was leaning against a stack of pillows on her bed, an old novel, its pages yellow and fragile, resting on her chest as if her hands were no longer strong enough to lift the book. She had become less careful with her looks, strands of hair going astray, pajamas worn all day long where before she had always dressed herself at dawn; she looked frailer, too. On the day I returned from the army, she had seemed happy to see me.
There was no need, I replied. My father, standing in the doorway with a duffel bag in his hand, waited for us to finish our farewell. In the duffel bag he had packed, heads to ends, two dozen pickled eggs, wrapped up neatly in four columns of newspaper. I had told him not to bother with the eggs, but he had insisted that I looked ill-fed.
“So, you are doing well in the army?” my mother asked.
I said that all was well. I had noticed, upon returning, that my mother would sometimes make an effort to chat with me, but her interest was fleeting, and she was easily tired or bored by me; so eventually we settled into the old mode, conversations between us polite and formal. My father, too, seemed to cling to my presence more than before: In the mornings when he returned home from the night shift, he would pick up two pieces of fried bread from the street peddler and watch me eat them before they turned cold. The previous day he insisted on accompanying me when I went to the stores to buy a few things for the camp, looking away when I asked the clerk for sanitary napkins.
Had they missed me while I was gone? I could not tell. My parents had always been quiet around each other, simple household communications transmitted not by words: My father, upon returning from work in the morning, would brew the tea and then hand a cup to my mother, who would by then have groomed and dressed herself; when breakfast was ready, he’d place her plate first on the table, and she would join us without having to be reminded,
Lieutenant Wei came toward our squad, and without a word grabbed the pickax from my hands and lifted it over her head. The ground shook when the pickax hit the hard snow, and more girls stopped shoveling. Lieutenant Wei looked possessed, her jaws tight, her arms brandishing the pickax with mad force. Ping stopped crying and, shivering, hid behind another girl. Nan shook her head before picking up the shovel again, trying to pry loose the snow that Lieutenant Wei’s pickax had cracked.
It was after midnight when we returned to the barracks. Nan said that she had changed her mind, and she wanted a bedmate too. “I won’t do it,” I said when my squad mates looked at me, and I said it again to Lieutenant Wei. The lights-out bugle blew, the drawn-out tune seeming to take forever to reach the end. She had no great desire to live , I remembered from one of Lawrence’s stories, underlined twice with red pen by Professor Shan. I wondered if she had thought that she, too, lacked a great desire to live, but that must not be the case: People who do not cling to life perish, one way or another. As far as I could see, Professor Shan would live forever in her flat, watching with all-seeing eyes those who peopled her books; perhaps she was thinking of me at this very moment, shaking her head at my follies.
I climbed into bed before Lieutenant Wei left the barracks, and turned my back to my squad.
EIGHT
IN LATE JANUARY , three days after the Lunar New Year, I left home to return to the army. I did not tell my parents that there was still another week until the holiday leave ended, nor did I inform anyone at the camp of my decision to return early.
“Would you like me to see you off at the train station?” my mother asked when I came into her bedroom to say goodbye. She was leaning against a stack of pillows on her bed, an old novel, its pages yellow and fragile, resting on her chest as if her hands were no longer strong enough to lift the book. She had become less careful with her looks, strands of hair going astray, pajamas worn all day long where before she had always dressed herself at dawn; she looked frailer, too. On the day I returned from the army, she had seemed happy to see me.
There was no need, I replied. My father, standing in the doorway with a duffel bag in his hand, waited for us to finish our farewell. In the duffel bag he had packed, heads to ends, two dozen pickled eggs, wrapped up neatly in four columns of newspaper. I had told him not to bother with the eggs, but he had insisted that I looked ill-fed.
“So, you are doing well in the army?” my mother asked.
I said that all was well. I had noticed, upon returning, that my mother would sometimes make an effort to chat with me, but her interest was fleeting, and she was easily tired or bored by me; so eventually we settled into the old mode, conversations between us polite and formal. My father, too, seemed to cling to my presence more than before: In the mornings when he returned home from the night shift, he would pick up two pieces of fried bread from the street peddler and watch me eat them before they turned cold. The previous day he insisted on accompanying me when I went to the stores to buy a few things for the camp, looking away when I asked the clerk for sanitary napkins.
Had they missed me while I was gone? I could not tell. My parents had always been quiet around each other, simple household communications transmitted not by words: My father, upon returning from work in the morning, would brew the tea and then hand a cup to my mother, who would by then have groomed and dressed herself; when breakfast was ready, he’d place her plate first on the table, and she would join us without having to be reminded,
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