Free Zero and Other Fictions by Huang Fan

30, 1960.
    But as detective fiction author Lin Deng said, “Before the tale actually took place, it had been developing in secret for a long time.”
    For this reason, I must begin on the morning of that day so as to let everyone know the motive for measuring the width of the ditch.
    The weather on the morning of May 30 ought to have been clear.
    â€œGive me fifty cents!”
    â€œFor what?” my dad asked. “Didn’t I just give you fifty cents yesterday?”
    â€œTo buy a notebook.” It was an old ploy. I already had one in which I had written on only two pages. All I had to do was tear out the two pages.
    My dad was a nice person who liked a drink and to play the huqin , but never at the same time. He passed away a long time ago. I still have his photos, in each of which he is seen smiling as if he knew that one day his son would describe his smile in a work of fiction. I don’t know why I have always felt that I owe him something.
    (If any of my readers are interested in him, you can write to the following address: Literary Supplement of the United Daily News , 555 Section 4 Zhongxiao East Road, Taipei. [I’m preparing to submit this piece to them.])
    In high spirits, I then took the money to school.
    By the end of the third period class, I had already used thirty cents. My last dime I gave to a girl student by the name of Goldfish, who was perhaps the poorest student on campus. I gave her a dime and she let me stick my hand up her skirt, which was made from old flour sacks.
    Many years later, I told this to my girlfriend, with whom I was living at the time (of course I was not the protagonist of my tale). She was furious and said I had made up the story purely influenced by the gossip pages.
    â€œYou’ve read too many salacious and violent stories.”
    â€œI’m not kidding,” I said. “The girl is now a television newscaster.”
    â€œNonsense!”
    (We had a huge fight over this. Three months later, she left me. Before she left, she said, “Megalomaniac!” At first I was never going to forgive her for as long as I lived, but the moment I wrote this, I suddenly forgave her. From this one can see the cathartic power of fiction, especially for authors.)
    Anyway, my pockets were as empty as ever. Lu Fang proposed going to the edge of the big ditch after school, so I joined them.
    The five of us set off from the side gate of the school. The shortest of the bunch, I walked in the middle while Zeng Yiping brought up the rear. Lai Xiaosheng was at the head—he always saw himself as our leader.
    â€œHeads up, everyone!” Lai Xiaosheng shouted. “Up ahead is the virgin forest.”
    The so-called virgin forest was nothing but a bunch of bushes. Lai Xiaosheng brandished a stick symbolically.
    â€œWe don’t want to go there,” said Zeng Yiping behind me.
    â€œIf we don’t go there, we can go home and do our homework,” I said.
    At this point, Chen Jinde chimed in with some bad words about our teachers.
    However, strange at it may seem, twenty-one years later in the KFC restaurant, Chen Jinde spoke in an entirely different fashion.
    â€œI remember teacher Wang Wuxiong. He showed a great deal of concern for me and hoped that I would test into a decent junior high, but my family’s financial situation wasn’t so good.…”
    â€œThe day we founded the Ditch Gang, you told me that teacher Wang despised you more than anyone because he often threw chalk at your head.”
    â€œThat’s impossible—teacher Wang liked me more than anyone else.”
    â€œOkay! Then you should at least remember that other event.”
    â€œI have no recollection of it,” said Chen Jinde. “I don’t recall that we ever organized a gang with such a strange name.”
    (Chen Jinde, no doubt, is a troublemaker, whether in real life or fiction.)
    Let me go back and talk about the circumstances when we left