Free Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li Page B

Ping mumbled, eyeing the basins of food on the ground that would soon have a layer of fat congealing on their surfaces.
    A free night was announced after dinner, and we were told that bedtime would be called an hour later. That generosity, along with the beer from dinner, created a festive mood. Girls walked in twos and threes in the schoolyard, which was a sizable plot that went uphill until it reached a fence. Locust trees, decades old, surroundedit, with clusters of cream-colored blossoms hanging heavily between branches, their sweet fragrance growing more intense as the night progressed. Under one of the oldest trees a group of girls sang a love song from an old movie.
    I walked to the school gate and was disappointed to discover that it was padlocked. Before I turned around, someone stepped from the dark shadow of the high wall and called to me.
    It was a boy in uniform, and he asked me if I knew Nan. I thought of denying it, but he said he had seen me at drills and knew that I was in Nan’s squad. He told me his name and which company he was from, and then asked me if I could pass a letter to Nan.
    “Where are you staying?” I asked, and the boy said that his company was stationed for the night in the middle school across the street.
    “And you can leave the schoolyard freely?” I said.
    The boy smiled and said he had jumped the wall. I thought about him outside the school gate, waiting to catch a glimpse of Nan. When he asked me again if I could pass on his letter, I said that Nan had too many admirers to care about a letter from a stranger. The boy appeared crestfallen, and I refrained from asking him why he had never imagined other people falling in love with the girl of his dreams. “Here,” he said, passing a green bottle through the gap in the metal gate. “You can have this if you help me.”
    He had put a bottle of local yam liquor in my hand. Under the crudely drawn trademark of a phoenix was a line that proclaimed it the fiercest drink west of the Huai River, with a 65 percent alcohol concentration.
    “I only drank a little,” said the boy eagerly. “It’s almost full to the top.”
    “What do I do with it? Pour it on my blisters?”
    He seemed perplexed at my joke, and I wondered if his courage had come from the drink, which had made him as much a fool as his love had. I did not know why I had accepted his present. I had given my ration of beer to a conscript in the cooking squad—I had never touched alcohol in my life, nor had I ever seen it around our flat. I took a stroll around the schoolyard, and when I couldn’t locate Nan, I sat down in the farthest corner of the yard, under an old locust tree, its bulging root the perfect seat.
What dissolves one’s sorrow but a good drink?
It was one of my mother’s favorite quotations from an ancient poem, even though she had never touched a drop. I uncapped the bottle, wiped its mouth carefully, took a gulp, and was immediately choked to tears.
    After the burning sensation in my chest became less of a torture, I took another mouthful, all the while aware of my intention to pour the liquid out and discard the bottle, though I never did gather the resolution. When Lieutenant Wei approached me, much later it seemed, I recognized her footsteps. I hesitated, and did not stand up to salute her.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked. “You missed the bedtime whistle.”
    It occurred to me that I had heard some muffled steps, and later that the schoolyard had become quiet, but I had not once thought of my obligation to report to the classroom for bedtime. I did not hear the whistle, I replied. I wondered if the officers were conducting a search for me; and perhaps in my daring confusion I even asked the question aloud, since Lieutenant Wei snatched the bottle from my hand and said I should be grateful that she did not report me missing. “What would happen if youreported me?” I asked. I stood up, trying to steady myself by leaning onto the tree