FRAGMENT 11
Teacher's Spin
Fragment: A Spiral Sound Field Edged with Gold
Time & Location: Summer 1978 · Beijing No.13 Middle School
I arrived at school early that morning.
It was the day the university admission letters were being distributed.
No.13 Middle School had once been known as Fu Jen Boys' School. Decades earlier, it had been converted from the residence of a Qing prince.
Time had preserved the aristocratic frivolity.
The gardens.
The pavilions.
The carved corridors.
All remained untouched.
Only the stone steps of the main hall had surrendered to moss, and no one dared repair the doors or windows.
I went to Teacher Su's office.
He was not there.
Outside, a kettle hissed on a coal stove.
I sat down and waited.
"Ah! There you are."
Teacher Su was breathing hard.
"I've been waiting for you at the school gate."
His back was perfectly straight.
Nothing about him revealed the years he had spent being crushed because of his family background.
I stood.
"Sit. Sit."
He handed me an envelope.
Behind those thick lenses was a smile I had never seen before.
"Department of Journalism, Renmin University."
"You've been admitted!"
He hurried outside again and returned carrying the hissing kettle.
He poured me a cup of hot water.
Then left once more.
Telling me to wait.
I carefully tore open the envelope.
The sound of kraft paper splitting apart crawled across my forehead like a hanging ghost.
"Incredible. Simply incredible."
"White Eagle, you're the top humanities student in all of Beijing."
Teacher Su came back and dropped into the chair opposite me.
His posture was still that of a teacher.
Correcting.
Instructing.
But his expression had become that of an older brother.
He was twenty-eight.
The only son of a wealthy landlord family.
My homeroom teacher.
Whenever Father was away, I often stayed at his home—a mud-brick room barely six square meters in size.
Sometimes I slept on a pallet he had built for me in the teachers' office.
I do not like describing those years as shared misery.
But I will always remember this:
A man who had been suppressed for years.
A schoolteacher forced to teach political doctrine.
Could love a student he worried about with an affection so intense it seemed impossible.
He removed his glasses.
Lowered his head.
Wiped them slowly.
The sound of tears striking the brick floor broke open my own tear ducts.
I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him.
"Thank you, Teacher Su."
"Hahaha."
"What are you thanking me for?"
"You should thank Heaven."
"Thank Earth."
"Thank your parents and your ancestors."
Teacher Su was never a man of many words.
But that bright, awkward laughter continued for a long time.
There was no calculation in it.
No flattery.
No temptation.
Only a pure, almost sacred, high-frequency resonance.
He walked me to the school gate.
Then suddenly began to spin.
One turn.
The heels of his cloth shoes brushed across the sand.
Shhh.
Two turns.
The hem of his faded Zhongshan suit lifted in the wind.
Rustle.
He looked like a child who had just discovered that gravity no longer applied to him.
Three turns.
Five.
Eight.
I crouched down and tilted my head.
Listening to that spiral sound field edged with gold.
"Teacher, be careful."
I spoke softly.
But he kept spinning.
Throwing off years of slogans and doctrines delivered from classroom podiums.
The twelfth turn.
Exactly twelve.
Matching the rotation I had heard inside Compound No. 7 when I was twelve years old.
The sound of something returning from the dead.
I could hear the faint ripples of fluid moving inside his balance organs.
His breathing became rapid.
His heartbeat approached one hundred and fifty beats per minute.
There was even a sweetness in his throat.
Suddenly he stumbled.
His body tilted backward.
I rushed forward and caught him.
At that moment, I touched his arm.
Not the cast-iron hardness of Father.
Not the soft, sticky warmth of Grandma Yang.
It felt like a willow branch in early spring.
Flexible.
Alive.
“Bai Ying..."
"You don't still blame your teacher for being too hard on you all these years, do you?"
Behind those thick lenses flashed a trace of guilt.
I said nothing.
He leaned against my shoulder.
In his breathing remained a tiny tremor.
A tremor of overwhelming relief.
FRAGMENT 12
The Roar Smelling of Blood
Fragment: An Almost Imperceptible Crack of Knuckles | A Flood Held Back for Seven Years
Time & Location: Summer 1978 · Pocket Alley, Houhai, Beijing
The Hanging Ghosts were dropping from the old pagoda tree in clusters.
I handed the admission letter to Father.
He did not take it.
His thin hand stopped in midair.
The fingers opened.
Then curled back.
A tiny crack sounded from his knuckles.
Almost inaudible.
All the strength in his body seemed to be gathering there.
"Inside."
He took the envelope.
Turned.
Bent down.
And disappeared into the matchbox-sized room whose ceiling could be touched with an outstretched hand.
I did not follow.
I leaned against the doorframe.
My dark glasses facing the rough red-brick wall.
I began to wait.
Sixty seconds.
No sound came from the room.
Yet I could hear the metal buckles of his heavy leather shoes striking the concrete floor.
One step.
Two.
One step.
Two.
He was walking in circles inside those few square meters.
Each footfall landed directly on my eardrums.
Three hundred seconds.
He sat down.
The wooden chair groaned beneath him.
Then came a silence so complete it felt unnatural.
I held my breath.
The White Crow sampled everything.
Deep inside his windpipe, I heard a rasping sound.
Like a rusted saw blade dragged back and forth.
He was forcing every breath downward.
Refusing to let it become crying.
The pressure grew.
Expanded.
Filled the tiny room.
I could even hear dust loosening from the cracks between the bricks.
Falling.
Softly.
I waited.
For the stone that had been suspended above him for seven years to finally hit the ground.
Six hundred and twenty-two seconds.
Then it happened.
First came a brief sound.
A torn piece of flesh.
A trapped syllable.
Uh.
And then the flood.
Held back for two thousand five hundred and sixty-four days and nights.
Burst through the gate.
"Ao..."
"Ao—..."
It was not human weeping.
It was an old beast.
Imprisoned for years.
Suddenly seeing open grassland again.
A roar carrying the smell of blood.
He collapsed over the table.
His forehead struck the wood.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The blows were dull.
Yet filled with a terrible pleasure of destruction.
The crying was thick.
Heavy.
It pressed against my eardrums.
Thousands of needles seemed to be pushing inward.
I fled into the courtyard.
Letting the sunlight dilute the despair.
Gradually the roaring weakened.
Became hoarse.
Then became sobbing.
The next morning Father shook me awake.
“My son."
It was the first time I could remember him calling his own flesh and blood that way.
"Wake up."
"We're moving back to Number Seven.”
