Three Sisters (29 page)

"How can steel be so durable? Because it has been refined and is unalloyed. If there are impurities, it will fail and the building will collapse." Then another question: "So what must we do? Very simply, we must identify the impurity and expunge it." The classroom was so quiet that the girls could hear their own labored breathing. Some girls' faces turned red from trying too hard to regulate their breathing. In conclusion, Director Qian said, "Now I'm giving you a word of caution: Honesty begets leniency; resistance begets harshness. Dismissed."

But Pang Fenghua's meal coupons and cash were not missing at all. She'd been in such a hurry Saturday morning, thanks to the 3,000-meter race, that she'd taken them out and put them in a small pocket sewn into her underwear; then, once she'd started running around the track, she had forgotten about them. She found them Monday while doing her laundry. They still carried the warmth from her body.

But she had sounded the alarm and alerted the police, and thus could not bring herself to reveal the truth. Crouching in the bathroom, she cried a second time, her face the picture of genuine sorrow and grief. No one could bring her out of her crying fit; in fact, the more people tried, the harder she cried. In the end, even the other girls began to cry with her. Who could blame her? Something so terrible would make anyone cry.

Fenghua went to see the young homeroom teacher that night. He lived in the teachers' dorm, but all the other teachers were out playing ball while he stayed behind to correct homework. She stopped and held on to the door frame with both hands until he turned and gestured for her to sit down in the only available seat, the single bed beside his desk. Still looking grief-stricken, she lowered herself slowly, wriggling her hips to locate the edge before finally settling onto the bed. The teacher found the graceful way she sat enchanting. Fenghua was not especially pretty, but her hips had an alluring quality that was not lost on the teacher, whose sympathy for her redoubled. He swallowed hard. "Any new clues?" he asked.

With her eyes fixed on him, she shook her head silently, looking wan and obviously distressed. He sighed, realizing how difficult it must be for her now that her money was gone, so he took out his wallet and offered her ten yuan.

"This should tide you over for a few days."

Deeply moved by his gesture, she stared at the money as tears welled up in her eyes. Her gaze slowly moved up until their eyes met, hers now brimming with tears.

"Teacher," she said, but she was unable to go on and began to weep.

She threw herself down on his pillow and sobbed, her shoulders heaving. He got up and sat beside her, cautiously reaching out to pat her on the back. She twisted her shoulders, sending a signal: "Leave me alone." But how could her own homeroom teacher leave her alone? So he patted her some more, touching the bottom of her heart and bringing forth even more tears. This time she did not twist her shoulders, but she increased her crying to the point that her whole body seemed to be choking on tears. His heart was breaking.

This went on for two or three minutes until Fenghua recovered, quietly got up, and wordlessly took the money before she sat down in his chair. She slipped the money under the glass tabletop of his desk and picked up his handkerchief to dry her eyes. Then she turned and, looking right at him, smiled briefly; but she hurriedly shut her mouth and hid the smile behind her hand. Without warning, she stood up and walked to the door. There she spun around to see him still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at his handkerchief.

The case remained open because the police had found no clues of any value after taking Fenghua's testimony, which made it impossible to proceed. On Monday afternoon, the students in Section Three noticed that the police car that had been parked outside the administrative building was gone. With more important things to do, the police could not possibly waste any more time on a trivial matter like this. But Director Qian said that they must solve the case, and that meant increased responsibility for everyone at the school if they were to get to the bottom of this. So the teachers in the security and student affairs sections divided up the labor and produced an organizational plan. They formed a special-case unit that was in operation day and night, and spread the net far and wide—a dragnet that would snare even the most cunning fish.

At an administrators' meeting, Director Qian said that seizing the thief was not as important as making this incident an example—using it as a negative teaching model in the service of thoroughly rectifying the students' thoughts and behavior. According to him, the school had taken a downward turn. Some of the boys were letting their hair grow long, and a few of the girls had begun wearing bell-bottomed pants. "You call that a hairstyle? And what about those pants? I'm forty-three years old," he said, "and I've never seen the likes of this." They also had to be on guard against the actions of the off-campus juvenile delinquents who wore froglike shades and hung around the school gate with a Sanyo cassette player blasting decadent music by Teresa Teng—"Sweet Wine in Coffee" and "When Will the Gentleman Return?" What kind of crazy music was that? These were all signs of danger that had to be dealt with early and decisively.

"What are we running here?" Director Qian asked. "It's a teacher-training school. All signs prove that unhealthy societal influences have already seeped onto our campus. We must eliminate them now. Don't expect them to die on their own. We must be vigilant, we cannot let down our guard."

So Director Qian devised a policy he called "outside loose and inside tight." "Outside loose" meant that they must continue the normal operation of school affairs and give that particular student a false sense of security to draw her out, like enticing a snake from its den. "Inside tight" required everyone to keep their eyes open and "not let go of that thread, even for a second."

"Outside loose" proved hard to maintain with everyone so tense. Yuyang was a case in point. What exactly had she done after finishing the race? Danger lurked in her inability to explain why she had returned to the dorm alone. After two days of indecision, she went to see her psychology teacher, Ms. Huang Cuiyun, who was also the assistant director of student affairs. It was a wise move, for if she hadn't, it would have been virtually impossible to prove her innocence after her period was over. She explained the situation to Ms. Huang, telling her that she'd gone back to the dorm because of her "special condition." After hearing her out, Ms. Huang took her into the girls' toilet, where she told her to drop her pants and show her the pad. Obviously, she was telling the truth—that was something no one could fake.

Ms. Huang, a woman in her forties who had been mistakenly condemned as a rightist, had been sent from the county level to teach at the school after her rehabilitation. Unlike Director Qian, she was friendly and approachable, always ready with an easy smile, like a mother, or, perhaps, a big sister. Though she was an assistant director, she told the girls to call her Teacher Huang, not Director Huang, and for that she earned respect and credibility from the teachers and students alike. After checking Yuyang out, she smiled and asked, "So what does this prove, Wang Yuyang?"

Yuyang pondered the question and had to agree that it really didn't prove much. The special condition only confirmed that she had returned to the dorm alone, which conversely proved that she had been at the scene of the theft. Sweat beaded the tip of her nose as she stood there dumbfounded before blurting out, "I didn't do it."

"Before the thief is found," Teacher Huang softly replied, "everyone is a suspect, even me. That's a possibility, isn't it?" What more could Yuyang say since even the teacher included herself among the suspects? Aggressively defending herself at this point would reflect badly on her attitude.

The scope of the investigation kept changing, sometimes it expanded, sometimes it contracted, but nothing came of it. Four days quickly passed without a breakthrough. During those four days, the girls in Section Three gained a keen and personal understanding of the terms "steely discipline" and "steely character." Steel was a metal they came to know well. It was expressionless, wordless, silent—but heavy and hard, with an oppressive power. They developed a fear of steel because its absence of motion was always temporary. Once it began to move, no one knew what might happen. They also learned that at a certain temperature anything could turn to steel—an event, time, or a mood. Once any of these became steel, they turned heavy and hard and lodged in the hearts of all the Section Three students. Gloom lay heavily over their classes, where everyone walked softly, afraid of bumping into the steel—
clang.
Another possibility was that steel would silently take a large chunk of their flesh.

In relative terms, Wang Yuyang felt more pressure than the others, and not just from the school administration; it came largely from other students, even from herself. Not knowing what she'd done or what others might be thinking she'd done and not being particularly articulate to begin with, she decided not to say anything. But that made it difficult to hold her head up in public. She could be numb to the pressure, but she couldn't work the same magic on her fellow students, whose eyes were deeply penetrating. More significantly, their imagination was equally penetrating. A rumor was already spreading that Wang Yuyang and Director Qian had entered a stage of stalemate as they waged psychological warfare, waiting to see who would blink first; either the east wind would have the upper hand or the west wind would prevail. The other girls all knew that this was the calm before the storm; it was just a matter of when.

The storm struck without the usual warning signs. Tranquillity had reigned, though only among the school administrators; the turmoil among the students had never ceased. As the saying goes: "The trees want to stop moving, but the wind keeps blowing." At nine o'clock Saturday morning Beijing time, Director Qian, followed by Teacher Huang and the homeroom teacher, walked into Section Three's classroom; all the girls were present. Director Qian was all smiles, uncharacteristically relaxed, as if he'd shed a heavy load. Teacher Huang, on the other hand, seemed depressed. Her usual amity was gone, and she seemed to be under substantial strain. One look at Director Qian and the students knew that the case had been solved and that the affair had come to an end. But their anxiety was palpable as they waited to hear a name; the atmosphere was oppressive. Yuyang swallowed, so did the other students. There was plenty of reason for them to be nervous. A chunk of steel was about to drop from the sky, and before it fell, who could predict whose head it would strike?

The students were touched the moment Teacher Huang opened her mouth to speak. Her voice was low, a bit raspy, but they could tell she was trying hard to turn her grief into strength. She began by talking about her son and daughter, the former a student at Beijing University and the latter a student at Nanjing University. Saying she was proud of her children, she spoke in a soft voice, her gentle expression brimming with motherly love and concern, which, for no apparent reason, elicited sorrow from everyone in the room. The students were in a fog, confused over why she was talking about her family at this critical moment. Nonetheless, from her speech they could tell how much she cared. A meeting had been held the night before, and it had been decided to expel the "recalcitrant, unrepentant student." With a misty gaze coming from her reddening eyes, Teacher Huang said forcefully, "I did not agree."

She began to reminisce, recalling the dark days when she had been treated unfairly. There had been her son's dangerously high fever in the countryside, which, since he'd had a seizure, had required half an hour of emergency treatment; and there was the nearly fatal food poisoning her daughter had suffered at the age of four. All these sad moments in her life evoked sympathy. She began to cry as she turned to Director Qian. "Is there a child anywhere who never gets sick? Is there one who never makes a mistake?" Qian could say nothing. Like a gentle breeze and a spring shower, her words caressed and sprinkled the students' minds, drizzle by drizzle, bit by bit, and drenched their hearts. Lowering their heads, they shed tears of remorse. Teacher Huang dried her tears and continued, "I've asked the school's Party committee for one last chance, two more days. I'm convinced that the student who made the mistake will repent by admitting it; that she'll go to the post office and mail me the money and coupons, things that do not belong to her. As a mother and a Party member, I promise you that we will handle the matter internally so long as you send everything back. Please believe me, my dear children. Don't trust to luck in this matter. The police have taken fingerprints from Pang Fenghua's case. They know and we know who has touched it. Once the police come to campus to make an arrest, it will be too late." She was anxious, fervently and tearfully hoping that the guilty student would own up to what she'd done. "Please believe me, my dear children, this is your last chance. You don't want to break your mother's heart."

Her plea was so ardent, her expression so intense that she actually choked on her words several times, nearly crying out loud. Those words warmed the hearts of the students, brightened their eyes, and stoked their courage. The result was immediate. A money order arrived Monday morning after the second period. But Teacher Huang was caught in a bind, a truly serious bind. The original plan, elementary and simple, had been to find the thief by matching the handwriting on the money order. Who could have predicted that there would be not one, but four money orders? No matter how you looked at it, the pilfered twenty yuan could not possibly have returned quadrupled. By comparing the handwriting with that on student essays, Director Qian and Teacher Huang found three matches: Kong Zhaodi, Wang Yuyang, and Qiu Fenying. The fourth sample could not be immediately assigned because it had been written with the left hand. Slamming the four money orders down on Qian's desk, Teacher Huang said, "Take a good look. Can you tell who it was?"