英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise (36) 天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 36




After spending the fourth and also the last Spring Festival of their four-years’ university life, the students all at once sudden seemed to become more mature, more tolerant, and more agreeable to each other. The friendship was enhanced and consolidated day by day, as the time of graduation was fast approaching.

A number of students had been contriving to seek scholarships in universities in countries like the US and UK. Bing heard that Vivian had made such an effort, as requested by her father, but personally he didn’t believe in her ability of achieving that end. She had never been good enough at her studies, and she had been too active on non-study activities to focus on TOEFL.

In the aspect of study, Bing was more or less at a similar score of performance with Vivian. But the fact he would certainly go back to Sichuan after graduation lessened any concern he might have.  

Within one month prior to the graduation, Bing was informed he would be assigned as an English teacher to the English department of South-Western Jiaotong University (Jiaoda), located at the foot of Emei Mountain. In general, most students would go back to their original provinces, where they would probably spend the rest of their life. As for Vivian, somebody said she would go abroad for further study, while others speculated she would go to other universities in Shanghai. Bing didn’t ask her; he thought it might be possible she didn’t know herself. Her father might have some good connections with various institutions that could secure her a better position.

Her future was still unknown when the class was holding its farewell banquet in a restaurant, which was the last gathering for the whole class, where all classmates and a number of invited teachers would eat and drink together. The dinner was typically spent in a highly emotional atmosphere. Students, especially the girls, may feel sad and cry for at parting after four years of life-sharing experience. Speeches expressing gratitude, thankfulness, best wishes, or sorrow or apologies may be given by even the most shy of students who had obviously failed to do so until the very last moments in their university life.
Bing, as always in these similar events of getting together, was expected to play one or two songs to cheer up the atmosphere; and quite a number of groups had already invited him to give a performance. To cope with the demand, apart from what he already knew, he had tried and practised three more pop songs, ‘Sister, You Go Bravely’, ‘Around the Winter’, and ‘The World Outside,’ which were then very popular, and more suitable as he found to his singing or shouting performing style.

In the restaurant, there were four eight-person tables, hosting twenty-eight classmates and three teachers. They had invited many other teachers as well but most of them were unable to attend due to their busy schedule for other events. So only Ms. Tang, and Mr. Fang, the English writing teacher, and Ms. Tian, the English Reading teacher, joined them.

Seven male students were seated at one table. Therefore, from the point of view of gender, as much as in their classroom, the setting was particularly feminine, but in terms of laughing, gesturing, toasting, and displaying a character that might have been well preserved during the last four years, each person was rendered free and unmasked in the night, as if they had suddenly found themselves mixed among a group of intimate friends and relatives from whom they were soon to part, and whom they might never see again in their respective life journey.   

They had barely touched the food before the fervent toasting began, first within the table and then quickly spreading to neighbours like a bushfire losing control. The more they toasted, the more they talked; and the more they talked, the more they toasted.

Each table had one or two good drinker as well as good toaster. Bing was not too bad at drinking, but he had never been very talkative; he was simply too self-conscious, always trying to be perfect in his oral expression as if in writing. But the alcohol would always alter him dramatically; it was not exaggerating to say he would appear as an entirely different person after his alcohol intake had reached 80% or 90% of his capacity, when he could lose much of himself and turn outrageously wild under the influence.  

Almost all his male classmates knew of this particular aspect of his personality. So, in less than one hour of the eating-together, he was already fairly intoxicated.  

Some girls then started to hold each other, weeping along, as if they were too sad not to cry; while others sitting very next to them were laughing joyfully. The contrast was extreme; the swinging of one’s mood was made without a transition. But in the typical eating-together assembly that millions of Chinese graduating university students experienced each year, every bit of emotional outburst, be it sadness, happiness, tears or laughter, or even reproach and remorse, was blended perfectly.

Now, amidst the great tumult, a boy from Beijing shouted to another, Bao from Hunan, asking him to kiss his girl friend who was in also their class. Courting at the university was considered unacceptable, so in the presence of three teachers, the behaviour requested was very crazy. But the boy didn’t care, nor did the teachers seem to mind.   

However, Bao, with silly smiles on his flushed face, remained fast in his seat, resisting the calls from boys around him, until he was pushed up by a number of hands beside him. He looked around, surveying the room with his reddish, birdlike eyes, as if he didn’t know where his girlfriend sat, or he couldn’t imagine such a thing should happen in his life.

Yet, in another second, he moved and went swaggering like a soldier to his girlfriend’s table.

She was leaning closely to her best ‘sister’ for protection from an upcoming public display of their love. And, though receiving a wave of hand-clapping encouragement, Bao was merely planting his feet awkwardly beside her stool. The boldness he had assumed a little while ago was gone, his face full of a babyish flush. Yet his girl, still shielded by her ‘sister’, didn’t budge, exercising her utmost obstinacy. All eyes were waiting; patience was on the brink of collapse. In the end, the protector, under the tremendous pressure, betrayed her best friend, extricating herself away from her. The poor girl, suddenly left alone and placed under a blazing stage-like spotlight, looked exceedingly vulnerable, her timid eyes roving about for a safe harbour. But in another second or two, her fright seemed to have changed into a bursting courage, as she arose like a spring and turned directly to him.

The boy moved closer, and with his shy hands and faces, he held her, and pressed his lips straight onto hers, and stayed.

There was a perceptible moment of silence, when all present must be kissing some lips of one form or another in their minds.

Then, her eyes started unleashing her tears, her hands more naturally placing and pressing his back. Now she was not alone, she had a genuine protector; but, in just a few more days, he was going to part from her! She would have to stand on her own feet, to face alone all the wilderness of society, to combat alone whatever fate was to weigh upon her.

A quick emotion touched Bing’s heart, and rendered him defenceless for a sort of release. A stream of his innermost fire seemed to flare up through him. Arising, he strode to the corner, where he picked up his guitar and swiftly adjusted it over his shoulder, then coming to the centre of the room, he began the song: ‘Around the Winter.’

‘My dear, I am going to leave you quietly, would you please wipe your tears gently; in the lone nights and days in our future, please, don’t cry for me, my dear…’

Now he moved between the tables, looking at each face like that of a lover; now they were all singing together with him, his chest heaving with sun and breeze and raindrops; now his eyes were in tears, reflecting upon the wet faces of his brothers and sisters; now Kang’s square face is emerging, smiling and chuckling, drinking and tossing the peanuts into his mouth; now he felt he was in a deluge, being drowned and pushed and controlled by a force from paradise…

Yet he sang well and on. ‘You ask me when I will come back here, that is what I wish to enquire; oh, no, not now, I think it is around the winter…’

After this song, the tables were seen doing another round of toasting.

In the air, the noises of glass and bottle clattering were mixed with words like ‘I will miss you,’ ‘We are not far away, you should visit me at least every year’ ‘In ten years’ time, let’s get together’ ‘Thank you, teacher, for all the care you have given us.’

Then Vivian stood up and suggested all students say something. Xiu, the girl who on the first day in the class introduced herself as ‘This year I am eighteen years old’, was making herself a good impression again.

‘In the first year, one of you gave me a nickname, Rabbit, because I was so shy. Since then, you often called me that name. At the beginning, frankly, I didn’t like it, resented it, thinking the name was more like your disrespectful attitude towards me, towards a girl who had come from a poor, remote village.’ She paused to arrange her expression, then continued, ‘but now, I like it, I hope in ten years’ time, when we get together here again, you will still call me Rabbit...’

After making her mighty confession, she sat down to settle her poise and emotions on the chair.   

Most of the little speeches were conventional, saying the same thing again and again, with the mouthful of beer. Bing didn’t venture to do his share of speech, nor even Vivian, who had originated the idea herself. But actually the words, on such occasions, were less important, less powerful than the gestures being lavished so freely by the energetic youths.  

Among the three teachers, only Ms Tian was affected as emotionally as the students. She came to the university at the same year as the class, and it was the first time she had joined in the final dinner of a group. She was still young, and had a large reserve of tears.  

Bing didn’t approach Vivian until the party entered its later stages. Saying something to her during the party had been in his mind for some time, but, looking at her charming and flashing figure, and fascinated with her face which was more than ever tinted rich with the beautiful colour because of the drinks and her high spirits, his usual pathetic hopelessness had somehow overcome his careless impulses to single her out from the group. After all, even if his classmates had known of their secret courtship, Bing feared his talking to her alone would draw their acute attention, especially from the three ignorant teachers, and in any case, their story had ended a long time ago.  

But the chance was rare, and would pass away forever; so at last, he gathered his courage and made a move.  

‘Vivian,’ he said to her, still very much aware of the eyes around the table, in spite of his intoxication. ‘Bottoms up.’

Vivian stood up, smiling. ‘Okay, Wang Bing, thank you for your guitar, sensational. You must play more to us.’ Then she turned to her sisters, ‘Everyone agreed?’

One girl, from Inner Mongolia, replied, ‘Yeah, Wang Bing, more please, after leaving here, there won’t be any more chance to enjoy your performance.’

Bing returned agreeably, ‘Well, if you invite me to Mongolia, I will go and play for you.’

‘Oh, really? I will then definitely invite you to Mongolia, and…’ she rose from her chair, took her drink and set to meet his glass with hers, ‘and let’s drink to the promise.’

‘Haha, I’m looking forward to your invitation, imagine I will drink goat’s milk on the vast Inner Mongolia prairie, haha...’ he indulged himself with several moments of free laughter, and then, noticing the girl had already begun her drinking, he emptied his glass in one go.

His toast with Vivian undone, he filled the glass from the bottle on the table, and was about to finish it with her, as she was still standing there waiting for her turn. But then he thought it was not good manners to drink only with Vivian, so he said to the rest, ‘Are there any other sisters here who will invite me to your places in the future?’

Immediately he regretted his flippant words, for this meant he was actually challenging all of them. But it was too late for him to correct his mistake, because by this time all of them except Ms Tang, Vivian and the girl from Inner Mongolia had already arisen, each with a glass full of beer, ready to toast with a promise.

‘Haha, my… I am playing hard ball,’ he said, embarrassedly.

Ms. Tang and Vivian looked at him with evident pity, wondering how he could cope with five more glasses of beer.

‘Can I just take half of a glass?’ he begged.

‘No, the promise must be full and complete,’ one girl, Isabel, said slyly like she had just caught a big fish.

Scratching his head, Bing, by his non-arguing nature, attempted no more words but to drink with each of them one after another, running a course like a drinking contest.

When he finally turned to Vivian, who by this time had already sat down on her seat, he felt his tummy had the shape of a banana, but his spirits had never been so high.

‘Now come on, Vivian, stand up,’ he boasted, unusually for him, ‘you should visit Sichuan, and I will serve you the hottest and reddest chilli.’

Laughter broke out from the table, but he knew only Vivian would understand what he was really talking about; it could allude to her coughing incident in Beijing, or to the many love-makings in their history.

But Vivian, as always, had good control of her composure in public. She stood up, tossed at his glass, and laughing, she said, ‘I will, and I promise I will also call upon all the sisters here to visit you one day in Sichuan, to taste how hot the Sichuan chillies shall be… now…bottoms up...’

Bing was about to say more, but wary of the word of ‘promise’, he decided to be more modest, lest the girls seek him for another round of drinking. It was barely possible for his masculinity to survive the abundant femininity flourishing at the moment in the circle.   

Their glasses clanged; he looked into her eyes which, thoughtful, seemed also penetrating. He absorbed the liquid in the glass, slowly and pig-headedly, as if instead of the beer, he was drinking the bits and parts of his romantic history with her, a girl who, by some peculiar call of nature, had found her chance to make him helplessly happy, and unhappy.

Coming back to his table, he almost felt defeated by his adventure. He picked a fat piece of pork from a dish barely touched by the chopsticks, and ate it to stack it on top of his bloated stomach. Half of the boys were around the table laughing, boasting, and demonstrating their robust potency in the presence of their female companions.  

It was such an irony to think that the boys and girls, and himself, were so much alive, with so much vigour bubbling over their faces and chests, with so much hope and future promise glinting in their eyes, while Kang, his dear friend whose body must have now turned into a number of black, cancer-bitten bones, should have been deprived of an opportunity of appearing here to stuff his stomach as they did, and to sing the songs with all the more pretentious sentiments.

He went to toilet for a couple of times, to relieve his kidney from its labour of filtering so much food and drink, and to shed some tears from his young but heavily stained memories.   

Approaching the end of the party, he beckoned all the boys who had a penis dangling between their legs, to join him in his singing Red Sorghum.

‘Sister, you go bravely ahead, don’t turn back your head! The broad way to the heaven, has nine thousands nine hundreds and nine threads given…’

At one particular roaring moment, he had a genuine desire in his heart, to make genuine love with the world.



--End of Chapter 36--


End of Part 3

Gone

历历在目的毕业前夕。。