When I got drunk, a scene conjured up in my mind where I stood on the balcony holding a bowl of instant noodles, watched the heavy snow filling the campus, and saw Pighead hold an umbrella with Cui Min leaning close to him. They snuggled up to each other and walked through their youth.
I had four roommates in the university, one of whom sleeping on my upper berth was called Pighead.
In the summertime, it was so hot that n.o.body could sleep.
The handbasin of the dormitory was quite wide and long. He was so hot that he ran over and laid in it with only his shorts on. After getting cool, he fell into sleep satisfied.
As a result, when a cla.s.smate came over to do the laundry and felt embarra.s.sed to wake him up, he did the laundry sneakily. When he poured down the dirty water, it almost drowned Pighead.
When Pighead woke up, he stood before a mirror and said, “d.a.m.n it, why am I so clean?”
Pighead wanted to buy a good electric fan, but he didn’t have enough money, so he wrote a story which was then contributed to Story King in an attempt to get some contribution fee.
He showed me his ma.n.u.script excitedly, but I was overwhelmed by terror after reading it. The story was that the boys’ dormitory was so dirty that a mouse was mutated and bit all the students to death.
He asked my idea about it. After being silent for a while, I said with a nod, “Not bad. It’s worth a shot.”
However, it ended up the ma.n.u.script being withdrawn.
He revised it into another version that the boys’ dormitory was so dirty that a mouse was mutated and killed the sanitation-checking instructor.
He story was re-withdrawn, which made him totally furious. He was up all night to revise his story with the length of it redoubled.
This time, it was that the boys’ dormitory was so dirty that a mouse was mutated and bit a student who later became the editor of Story King after graduation. Although he was a virgin, he died of syphilis.
His story wasn’t returned this time, but the editor wrote to him in a sincere tone, saying, “Student, I’m gonna kill you.”
Pighead gave up his dream of making money and started playing games. He spent 30 RMB buying a second-hand Little Overlord game player from a flea market and played Warriors of Fate 2.
He kept playing the game without caring the time until the game card was out of order. Unexpectedly, he got six Guan Yus and eight Cao Caos.
One month before the vacation, we had no more than 10 RMB altogether. Thus, we had been hungry for three days. Each day we rushed to the bathroom to drink running water after waking up and then laid on the bed to sustain our physical strength by trying to fall asleep as soon as possible.
We cried on the fourth day when we were starving.
Under the mobilization of our monitor, the girls’ dormitory sent us a sack of snacks, hoping us to live well. At the moment we saw the sack, we put fried dough twists into our mouths with trembling hands, tears trickling down our faces.
After three days when we ate up the snacks, we were stuck in starvation again. I recalled vividly that Pighead jumped out of bed late at night.
We three asked him in shock, “Where are you going?”
He said, “I have to eat.”
I asked, “Do you have money to eat?”
He firmly walked toward the doorway while wiping his tears. He twisted his body and shouted, “I don’t have money, but I have to eat.”
Immediately, we three rebuked him with different vicious words, which caused him to turn back before approaching the door. He said with tears, “Why do you scold me when I want to eat? Then, I don’t eat.”
Pighead disappeared the next morning. I was so hungry that my head turned dizzy. Suddenly, someone pa.s.sed me a bowl of hot soup. When I looked up, I saw Pighead. He said while cracking a big smile, “We’re so stupid. The soup of the canteen is free.”
We all immediately burst into tears.
Pighead murmured, “If only there were baked oysters for us! With more minced garlic, they are kept baked until there is water coming out.”
Later, Pighead fell in love.
He had a crush on a uppercla.s.swoman of the other major.
He would wait at the Boiled Water House for her to fetch the hot drinking water.
However, he didn’t dare to express his feelings to her. When she put her water kettle aside and walked away, he would steal it and take it back to the dormitory. He had stolen 19 water kettles of her within a month.
As his roommates, we hardly understood him, but in the meantime, we felt excited a little bit, for we could sell those water kettles.
He said late at night one day, “Actually, I’m euphemistically showing my love to her.”
I felt astounded and asked, “What do you mean?”
He replied, “I’m planning to steal 520 water kettles of her before graduation. Then, she’ll know I love her.”
We fell into silence in unison, but we thought to ourselves, “f.u.c.k you.”
Some students always stood outside the door on a marathon phone while only wearing underwear after the lights were off at the boys’ dormitory at that time. They twisted their bodies, giggling and whispering.
The discarded IP phone cards were piled up in each drawer over time and finally exceeded the height of cigarette boxes.
Pighead felt outrageous, for he had no one to call. He decided to call the uppercla.s.swoman named Cui Min.
It was Cui’s roommate who took the call and said that Cui had changed her room.
He felt down and lost all night along.
The next day, in front of Poster Column of the canteen was crowded with students. When I pa.s.sed by, I saw Pighead among them. Out of curiosity, I elbowed my way inside.
There was a warning posted there: Cui Min stole her cla.s.smate’s money totaled 2,000 RMB. Thereby, she was criticized publicly and would be handled by the Public Security Bureau.
The crowd fell into a discussion, saying that men can’t be judged by their appearances.
I pulled Pighead and found him clench his fists with his eye full of tears.
Although I didn’t understand why he cried, I felt somewhat sad. He turned his head around and said while staring at me, “Cui Min must be wronged. Do you believe it or not?”
He went to the playground for a rare run that night. I stood aside and watched him running with all his strength. The first circle, second circle, and third circle, he was exhausted and fell onto the ground.
After lying on the ground for a long while, he struggled to get his feet on before hurtling toward the girls’ dormitory, and I couldn’t catch up with him.
Then, he skipped cla.s.ses at the daytime holding a paper-made banner on the roadside and tried to find himself a part-time job as a family tutor.
Later, in the weird eyes of us, he attended the nightly self-study together with Cui Min.
In winter when the heavy snow enveloped the campus, he held an umbrella with Cui Min snuggling up to him.
Back in my alma mater several years ago when I walked into the dormitory building and stood on the hallway, I always felt that there were four people sitting together after I opened the door of 308 Room. In the center of them was a washbasin soaked with several bags of instant noodles, and each one was murmuring.
We stayed up all night at an Internet Cafe, sleeping and laughing. We drank Erguotou (a sorghum liquor) with our red eyes, saying that “Bro, take care of yourself”. We were light-footed in the library and on the gra.s.sland, drank beer by the water, and borrowed each other’s IP cards to make long distance calls. When one of us kept silent and cried, we would always come up with an interesting topic to divert his attention.
All of a sudden, I remembered the figure of Pighead running wildly on the playground. He was so exhausted, and the night stars shone on his young face. It felt like that he could get the girl he loved so much in this way.
We read the love letters we just finished and weighed its word more carefully than when we attended meetings after getting a job. We felt like we could never wither by standing under the spring flowers. We didn’t have secrets or scruples. Just like the talented poems and songs, we grew freely without meditation, had rhythm in each line, engraved those people in our memories.
Pighead came to Nanjing before getting married, and we met again. Needless to think about how much the meal cost, we talked about the past but said nothing about the status quo, because we still lived in that poem that had been buried in the mud for ten years and remained visible to us only.
When we talked about the starvation period at the dormitory, we burst into laughing.
He clapped the table asking the waiter to serve another dozen baked oysters with minced garlic.
He happily raised his gla.s.s and said, “I’m getting married. Cheers!”
His wife was Cui Min.
He became drunken soon, laid p.r.o.ne to the table, and said with his voice down, “Zhang Jiajia, Cui Min didn’t steal that money.”
I nodded. I believed him.
He said, “n.o.body believed her at that time except for me, so she trusted me, too.”
Tears suddenly welled up in my eyes, and I nodded strongly.
He said, “At that time, I earned some money as a family tutor, wanted to return it to the girl whose money was stolen, and asked her to clear Cui Min’s name. However, when I got the due money, the girl had transferred to another university.”
He continued, “Cui Min burst into tears that day, for she would be considered as the one who stole other people’s money for good.”
I was in a daze.
He said with a smile while raising his gla.s.s, “Once it rains, the roads turn dirty and muddy, but we have to step on them. I have one life, would like to work hard, and make as much money as I can so that the hardships and sufferings of the world can do no harm to her since then.”
He said, “That was what I thought at that time, and I’ll honor my promise in the future.”
When I got drunk, a scene conjured up in my mind where I stood on the balcony holding a bowl of instant noodles, watched the heavy snow filling the campus, and saw Pighead hold an umbrella with Cui Min leaning close to him. They snuggled up to each other and walked through their youth.
During the ten years, I got drunk many times; the people around me were different; the dishes on the table was changed; much beer was spilled from my gla.s.s.
During the period, we were the proudest, the most romantic, and the most carefree.
That was our brilliant youth.
If possible, wherever we went, please let me pack up the rest of the baked oysters.