Chapter 6

Chapter 7

In just a few weeks, Yang Yuanzhe and I had become inseparable buddies. Through him, I met Ge Jinqiu, a scrawny boy whose build and looks were worlds apart from Yang Yuanzhe's, with a precocious, melancholy air that no fourth grader should have had. As I remembered it, I should not have met them until 1995 or 1996. It seemed I had taken the initiative to speed up my own life, but there was nothing wrong with that. Ge Jinqiu and Yang Yuanzhe made a perfectly complementary pair. If they worked together, there would be no limit to their prospects.

Yang Yuanzhe's slightly chubby build reminded me of something: I seemed to have been studying so hard that I had forgotten to exercise. It was my poor physical condition that had let those two muggers beat the crap out of me back then. If I wanted to play the hero and rescue a damsel, or simply protect myself, I would have to train properly. Thinking of all the things ahead that I would need physical strength to get through, I immediately started an exercise program, getting up an hour earlier every morning to run and dragging Zhang Xiaotong along. She was very reluctant. "Books say too much strenuous exercise makes your legs thick."

I told her the people who wrote those books were each more out of shape than the last. They only wrote that because they were afraid other people would have better figures than they did. Don't worry, proper exercise would only make her legs prettier. If nobody wanted her, I would take her and stroke them every day.

After my words made her blush scarlet, Zhang Xiaotong began running with me. I knew I was in poor shape and could only start with running, taking things one step at a time. Sometimes Zhang Xiaotong and I would hold each other's legs down for sit-ups. Whenever I touched her delicate, smooth ankles, I could not help mentally slapping myself. What sort of thighs haven't you touched? How can you still be getting lustful?

Zhang Xiaotong did not care, though, and seemed utterly uninhibited about stretching her legs and bending over in front of me. The killer was that summer was approaching, and she was wearing a skirt...

"What have you been reading lately?" One day, after we finished our sit-ups, Zhang Xiaotong rested her hands on my shoulders from behind. "You haven't changed books in days."

"Buddhist scriptures." I handed her the book.

"Buddhist scriptures?"

"Right! Form is emptiness, emptiness is form..."

"..."

With Zhang Xiaotong's reputation as a young writer established, I began working on two things. First, I had her hurry up and ask her parents for an ID card. As long as you knew someone in the household registration office, you could get one even if you were underage. Second, I began writing another novel and considered submitting it directly to a publisher.

After several exchanges of letters, and even an in-person visit from a publishing editor, it was finally decided that Zhang Xiaotong's new work, The Day the Black Hole Came, would be serialized simultaneously in Youth Science and Technology News and Youth Literature Times. Two sets of royalties-or three, of course, if it made it into book form.

"This is called extracting the maximum surplus value," I told Zhang Xiaotong. "Actually, once you send a manuscript to one magazine, you should hope more people use it without your permission. That way, more people will know you and want to work with you. It doesn't matter if they don't pay. We can ask them for the money, and it won't even count as submitting the same piece to multiple publications."

Zhang Xiaotong was unconvinced. "You're so crafty, and everyone else is an idiot?"

"Of course not. Their goals simply don't conflict with ours. You're a young writer now, so of course they can reprint your work as they please. Once you're an established writer, they won't be able to."

I blew the dust off the manuscript paper and continued writing the novel. "Also, our handwriting needs to look a little more alike, or people will get suspicious."

"I can already imitate your handwriting," Zhang Xiaotong said as she watched me write without stopping. "Design a signature for me."

I stopped writing. That was an issue; not having a signature of her own really was inconvenient. After a moment's thought, I took a sheet of blank paper and sketched a few designs. In the end, following the rule that all signatures had to be illegible scribbles, I transformed the three characters of Zhang Xiaotong's name into a twisting, intersecting line, then added a tiny circle at the far right.

"What do you think?"

Zhang Xiaotong copied it several times, gradually getting the hang of where to begin and end the strokes. "Not bad. It doesn't look much like my name."

"If it looked too much like your name, it would just be writing your name, not a signature." I lowered my head and kept writing, cramming in every science-fiction element I knew that people of this era could accept. "I think, if we're confident we can pull it off, making you a famous young literary prodigy right away wouldn't be bad either... People don't pay that much attention to news and gossip yet. Once you get the money, we can disappear, and in a few years nobody will be paying attention to you."

"I'll listen to you, anyway." Zhang Xiaotong draped her legs over my knees again. Was this girl a fox spirit reincarnated? "Whatever you say goes."

That really was the attitude of a loyal follower: support me whether I was right or wrong. After thinking it over for ages, I finally steeled myself and made a decision. "If we can, how about making you famous for a year?"

"A year?"

"One year, three books at most, then we pull out once we've earned enough," I said. "There are plenty of other things waiting for us to do."

Zhang Xiaotong noticed my use of "us," and a smile immediately bloomed on her face. "Sure. I'll listen to you."

I nodded, crumpled up the manuscript I had written, and threw it away.

"What are you doing?"

I turned to a fresh sheet of manuscript paper, blew it clean, and set my pen to it.

"I'm going to rewrite it. Put my heart into it."

Writing was a lonely and painful process, which was why most men of letters dreamed of a beautiful woman tending the incense beside them. What they did not realize was that a beautiful woman was only good for causing trouble. Whenever Zhang Xiaotong was around, she was either talking to me or getting handsy. I was on the verge of shouting that someone was molesting a little boy. Most of the novel had to be written at school, and even then I had to hide it so nobody found out. My line to my deskmate, Xu Jiajia, was, "This is my older cousin's novel." We had two periods of optional self-study every day at school, which were actually compulsory. Most classmates used that time for homework, but I used it to write the novel.

Homework? With a fine comrade like Zhang Xiaotong helping me, what did I have to fear?

Three weeks passed, and final exams were approaching. The novel I had tailored for Miss Zhang Xiaotong, the future rising star of science fiction, was also nearing its end. I paused at the ending and asked her, "What kind of ending do you think would be better? Tragic with a little hope, or happy?"

Zhang Xiaotong thought for a long time, then asked, "Is there a difference?"

"The ending itself isn't important," I said. "Whatever meaning we give it, it's only a product. What matters is that the ending will determine the direction of your image over the next year. Do you want to be the rebellious type or the orthodox type?"

"What's the difference?"

"The rebellious type gets more freedom to do what they want. The traditional type makes more money," I explained.

Zhang Xiaotong asked with a grin, "Which one do you mean?"

"The rebellious type." I looked down at the manuscript. "The price is that Auntie and Uncle might be unhappy. The advantage is that it'll make things easier later."

"Then let's go with rebellious," Zhang Xiaotong said as casually as if she were deciding what to have for dinner. "My mom and dad don't interfere with me much."

I wrote the ending that very night. Not a single main character survived; I killed them all, exploring human nature through darkness. Virtually nobody among young writers in 1991 had attempted an ending like that, and sure enough, it sparked controversy. Determined to turn Zhang Xiaotong into a famous child writer, I simply wrote an anonymous essay discussing whether it was appropriate to link a work to its author's character, fiercely criticizing some of the supposedly "highly respected" senior figures writing book reviews at the time. In the essay, I questioned the accomplishments of certain middle-aged and even elderly people who wrote specifically for the young, explicitly asking, "Can your current mindsets understand teenagers and children?" and "How long do you want their ignorance to last?" I sent three copies to three nationally famous magazines and newspapers known for defying convention. Later, all three publications printed edited versions of the essay, titled Growth Factors and Malnutrition. That was how the debate over Zhang Xiaotong's novel began.

The affair caused quite a stir. A teacher at school called Zhang Xiaotong in for a talk and told her to apologize in the newspaper. Following my coaching, she took a firm stance. "I won't apologize. I only wrote a novel. They're the ones making a fuss over nothing. It has nothing to do with me."

The teacher felt slighted and sent word for her parents to come in. Auntie and Uncle found out, and then the whole family knew.

My eldest uncle spoke to Zhang Xiaotong first, questioning her with the air of an elder. "Xiaotong, I hear you wrote a novel?"

Zhang Xiaotong smiled brightly. "I wanted to ease Mom and Dad's burden a little. Someone said they'd pay me, so I wrote it."

My eldest uncle was clearly being led off topic. "Oh? Pay you? How much?"

"At first, they paid thirty yuan per thousand characters. Later, several publications approached me, and I wrote for two of them. They each paid fifty yuan per thousand characters."

"Huh? That's... that's... quite a lot..." My eldest uncle was plainly a little shocked. "Then how much have you written?"

"About 380,000 characters, I think." Putting on an innocent air, Zhang Xiaotong counted on her fingers. "Thirty-eight thousand yuan. If it comes out as a separate book, there'll be a bit more."

"Goodness, that much money..." My eldest uncle was even more surprised. "Xiaotong, how long did you spend writing it?"

Zhang Xiaotong counted on her fingers again. "A little over three months... It doesn't affect my schoolwork, anyway. I want to write another one next month."

My eldest uncle said nothing, probably calculating how many books she could write in a year and how much she could earn. After working it out for a while, he decided it was not worth offending such a promising niece and began saying nice things. "Er... Xiaotong, it sounds as though your school is rather opposed to you writing novels. You should be a little mindful of that."

"I'm still first in my year this year," Zhang Xiaotong reminded her eldest maternal uncle with a smile. "My teacher said I'd have no trouble getting into a key middle school."

My eldest uncle nodded emphatically. "Yes, be careful. You mustn't slack off. Schoolwork comes first..."

With that, he left, muttering, "That's a hundred and twenty thousand a year."

Then came the joint interrogation by Auntie and Uncle, her parents.

Auntie was the daughter of a close friend my maternal grandmother had known in her youth. When schistosomiasis swept across the country, Auntie was the only survivor in her family. My grandmother brought her home and raised her as her own daughter, and Auntie took my grandfather's surname, Chen. Later, after both my maternal grandparents passed away, she moved in with my mother. Still later, restructuring improved the performance of the factory where she and Uncle worked. The couple began working in supply and sales, and only moved out after buying a new home.

Auntie treated our family extremely well and also got along harmoniously with my eldest uncle and the others, especially in recent years, after her family had come into money.

My instructions to Zhang Xiaotong were to appeal to her parents' feelings and reason with them. The little ways I had previously told her to act more mature in front of her parents would now come into play. If she could settle this matter, probably nobody would interfere with anything she did afterward, so she absolutely had to get through it.

Zhang Xiaotong was calm when she faced her parents, just as I had taught her. I had told her to state plainly that she wanted to be independent and accomplish things. No parents would stay angry after hearing their child say that. Parents were really only worried about their children's future. As long as that was not a problem, all the problems would disappear.

Following my instructions, Zhang Xiaotong handed her parents the bankbook containing all her writing income. "Since I started writing novels, I've earned sixty thousand yuan in royalties. With the pocket money you gave me, it comes to over sixty-one thousand four hundred. It's all here. I want an account of my own. I want to make a living from writing."

Auntie and Uncle were stunned by Zhang Xiaotong's declaration. They looked down at the bankbook, then at their daughter, dumbfounded.

Sixty thousand yuan-in 1991, sixty thousand yuan was enough to buy a nice house. Back then, even the so-called "ten-thousand-yuan households" were still uncommon in a small city like Beiguan City. Auntie and Uncle only earned twenty to thirty thousand yuan a year between them. Zhang Xiaotong's move really had given them a shock.

Zhang Xiaotong told her parents, who could each be considered something of an intellectual, "I like reading, and I like writing novels too. I hope that in the future I can not only earn some money but also be remembered by some people. A lot of publishers want to publish my books now. What do you think?"

Xiaotong's parents had only known that their daughter wrote novels. They had never imagined she had taken it this far. Neither said any of the things they had prepared, and they simply stared blankly at the bankbook.

After a long while, Auntie asked her daughter softly, "Have you really decided?"

Zhang Xiaotong smiled faintly, with an expression no sixth grader could have managed. "I want to try. If nothing comes of it after a year, I'll go back to concentrating on my studies. I'm still first in my grade now. You have to believe in me."

Astonished that their daughter had grown so mature without their noticing, the couple agreed to Zhang Xiaotong's request. They agreed to help her get an ID card and let her have an independent account. Zhang Xiaotong, in turn, gave her parents ten thousand yuan from her bankbook and asked them to buy the teacher something and smooth things over.

Auntie and Uncle had overlooked something: how could a sixth grader possibly understand the ways of the world?

I understood what was on their minds. I thought that day, all the relatives in the family might have been thinking about Zhang Xiaotong's royalties, even in their dreams.