Dialogue

Chapter 3

3 The ringing telephone woke me from a deep dream. I grabbed the receiver by my bedside and asked in thick voice: “Who is it?” “It’s twelve noon, how come you’re still not up?” It was the voice of my best childhood friend Yan Jie. “I’m getting up now. Lately my natural clock has been confused about night and day.” “OK then! I’ll let your brain wake up first.” The dishcloth gourd vine outside the window had put forth some more tender green shoots during the night. In the noon-day light, they were languidly raising their tendrils towards the sun, and the rays of light dazzled my eyes: “Auntie, brew me a cup of strong coffee.” I stretched my body lazily, rose and went to the toilet. I washed and dressed and went upstairs, then suddenly remembered Yan Jie’s phone call. I dialled her number: “Hello! Hello! Hello! I’m wide awake now.” “Were you up all night again?” “I wasn’t up all night, I was sleeping normally. Look, I get to sleep at three or four in the morning and get up around noon, that’s eight hours’ sleep, which is quite normal, isn’t it?” “You’re living the life of a ghost, sleeping during the day and springing into action at night.” “All right, all right, I won’t argue with you. What’s up, are you missing me again?” “Your beauty; I dreamed about you last night.” “Really? What about me?” “The year that we copied out the hand-written novel Shaking Hands the Second Time4 all night. Do you still remember?” 4. Zhang Yang, Di’er Ci Woshou. Beijing: Zhongguo Qingnian Chubanshe, 1979. 25 Chapter 3 “Of course I remember. We copied all through the night. That was when my dad and mum were down in the country painting nature studies, and they temporarily lodged me in Uncle Han’s house.” “We had such a good time in those days.” She and I talked about a lot of things from the past, then hung up. I tumbled over into the bed giggling madly. Faint clouds drifted past the window. My childhood companion brought me back pure and beautiful memories. This happened in the mid-seventies. There were very few books about love available in the bookshops, but some hand-written love stories were secretly copied out by hand and circulated. People discussed them in private, and if you had a copy in your possession, it was somehow simply glorious. One day at school, a female schoolmate gave me a furtive hug: “I’ve got a hand-written copy of Shaking Hands the Second Time — do you want to read it?” “God! I’d love to!” This story had become a kind of legend by word of mouth, and I dared not believe what I was seeing with my own eyes: a handwritten copy of the phantom novel Shaking Hands the Second Time. “Is it real?” “Of course it’s real, but I can only lend it to you for one day. You have to give it back to me tomorrow.” “Guaranteed by Chairman Mao.” Like thieves we went to a corner of the school campus. She pulled a thick sheaf of paper out of her school bag. On the first page (it was made of kraft paper) I could clearly read the characters “Di’er ci wo shou” written with a brush. They were like a magnet and tightly held my eyes. After school I went home and read all of it in one go. The same evening I ran over to Yan Jie’s place and told her breathlessly: “I have a hand-written copy of Shaking Hands the Second Time. I’d like to copy it. I want the thrill of having a hand-copied book.” She looked at me: “All right, let’s copy it then.” She and I went to Uncle Han’s place and copied it out word by word. We stayed up all night until there was light in the east. Anyone who lived through that time could have experienced this. The hand-copied book, passed from hand to hand, is a memory peculiar to that period. In fact the content of the hand-copied novel was nothing special when you look at it today, but according to the notions of those who grew up during the “Great Cultural Revolution” and were brainwashed for ten years, love and romance were considered the...