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    <s id="1:1">At twenty-one, I was placed in a production team for reeducation in Yunnan.</s>
    <s id="1:2">That year Chen Qingyang was twenty-six and a doctor who happened to work where I did.</s>
    <s id="1:3">I was on the fourteenth production team down the mountain, and she was on the fifteenth team up the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:4">One day she came down the mountain to see me, to discuss the fact that she was not damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:5">I didn't know her too well at the time, barely you might say.</s>
    <s id="1:6">The issue she wanted to discuss was this:</s>
    <s id="1:7">Despite the fact that everyone believed she was damaged goods, she didn't think she was.</s>
    <s id="1:8">Because, to be damaged goods she had to have cheated on her husband, but she never did.</s>
    <s id="1:9">Although her husband had been in prison for a year, she hadn't slept with another man, nor had she ever done anything like that.</s>
    <s id="1:10">Therefore she simply couldn't understand why people kept calling her damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:11">If I'd wanted to comfort her, it wouldn't have been hard; I could prove logically that she was not damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:12">If Chen Qingyang were damaged goods, she would have had to have cheated on her husband, and therefore, there must be a man with whom she'd cheated.</s>
    <s id="1:13">Since at present no one could point out such a man, the proposition that Chen Qingyang had slept with another man was untenable.</s>
    <s id="1:14">Yet I insisted on saying that Chen Qingyang was damaged goods, and that this was beyond question.</s>
    <s id="1:15">Chen Qingyang came to me to ask me to prove she wasn't damaged goods because I had come to her for a shot.</s>
    <s id="1:16">The whole thing unfolded as follows:</s>
    <s id="1:17">During the farm's busy season our team leader would not assign me to plow fields.</s>
    <s id="1:18">Instead he made me plant rice seedlings so that I could not stand straight most of the time.</s>
    <s id="1:19">Anyone familiar with me knew about the injury to my lower back, not to mention that I was a tall man, over six feet.</s>
    <s id="1:20">Having worked like this for a month, the pain in my lower back became so intolerable that I couldn't fall asleep without steroid injections.</s>
    <s id="1:21">The clinic at our team had a bunch of needles whose coating had completely peeled off, with tips all bent like fishhooks, which often pulled flesh from my lower back.</s>
    <s id="1:22">After a while my waist looked like it had been peppered by a shotgun, and the scars didn't fade for a long time.</s>
    <s id="1:23">Under the circumstances, I recalled that the doctor at the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, had graduated from Beijing Medical School.</s>
    <s id="1:24">Maybe she would be able to tell the difference between a hypodermic and a crotchet needle.</s>
    <s id="1:25">So I went to see her.</s>
    <s id="1:26">Not half an hour after my visit, she chased after me to my room, wanting me to prove that she wasn't damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:27">Chen Qingyang said she didn't look down on damaged goods at all.</s>
    <s id="1:28">In fact, from what she observed, damaged goods seemed to have soft hearts, loved to help others and, most of all, hated to disappoint people.</s>
    <s id="1:29">Therefore, she even had a sneaking admiration for people like them.</s>
    <s id="1:30">However, the problem was not whether damaged goods were good or not good, but lay in the fact that she was not damaged goods at all, just as a cat was not a dog.</s>
    <s id="1:31">If a cat were called a dog, it wouldn't feel comfortable.</s>
    <s id="1:32">Now everyone called her damaged goods, which drove her to distraction and made her almost forget who she was.</s>
    <s id="1:33">As Chen Qingyang sat in my thatched shack and poured out her troubles, she had on a white smock that left her arms and legs exposed, the same outfit she had worn earlier in her clinic.</s>
    <s id="1:34">The only differences were that she had tied back her long, loose hair with a handkerchief and put on a pair of sandals.</s>
    <s id="1:35">As I looked at her, I began to wonder what was under her white smock, whether she had something on—or nothing at all, which would show what a beautiful woman Chen Qingyang was because she believed that it didn't really matter whether or not she wore underwear.</s>
    <s id="1:36">That kind of confidence needs to have been built up from childhood.</s>
    <s id="1:37">I told her that she was definitely damaged goods, and even enumerated several reasons to convince her.</s>
    <s id="1:38">I said that so-called damaged goods was just a denotation.</s>
    <s id="1:39">If people say you're damaged goods, then you must be damaged goods—there isn't much logic to it; if people say you slept with another man, you must have done it—there is not much logic to that either.</s>
    <s id="1:40">As for why they say you're damaged goods, in my opinion it's because of this:</s>
    <s id="1:41">People generally agree that if a married woman hasn't cheated on her husband, her face must be leathery, and her breasts must sag.</s>
    <s id="1:42">Now your face is not dark but fair, your breasts are not hanging down but jutting out, so you must be damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:43">If you don't want to be damaged goods, you should try to darken your face and make your breasts sag so people won't accuse you of being damaged goods, which, of course, is a raw deal for you.</s>
    <s id="1:44">If you don't want a raw deal, sleep with another man so you can think of yourself as damaged goods, too.</s>
    <s id="1:45">Other people are not obliged to find out if you are damaged goods before calling you that, but you are obliged to stop them from calling you damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:46">As Chen Qingyang listened to my words, her face flushed and her eyes widened with anger.</s>
    <s id="1:47">She looked like she was about to slap me.</s>
    <s id="1:48">This woman was famous for her slapping; many men had felt her slaps.</s>
    <s id="1:49">However, suddenly disheartened, she said, "All right, let me be damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:50">As far as drooping or not drooping, dark or not dark, that's none of your business."</s>
    <s id="1:51">She also said that if I spent too much time pondering these matters, I would very likely get slapped.</s>
    <s id="1:52">Imagine the scene twenty years ago, when Chen Qingyang and I discussed the damaged goods issue.</s>
    <s id="1:53">Back then, my face was baked brown, my lips were dry and chapped, with bits of paper and tobacco stuck to them, my hair was matted like a coconut husk, the many holes in the ragged army greatcoat I wore were patched with bandages, as I sat, legs crossed, on the wooden bed, looking like a total hooligan.</s>
    <s id="1:54">You can imagine when Chen Qingyang heard such a person talking about whether her breasts drooped or not, how the palm of her hand itched.</s>
    <s id="1:55">She was a little oversensitive, but that was because many strong men went to see her who weren't sick at all.</s>
    <s id="1:56">What they wanted to see was damaged goods, not a doctor.</s>
    <s id="1:57">I was the only exception.</s>
    <s id="1:58">My lower back looked like it had been struck by Pigsy's rake.</s>
    <s id="1:59">Whether my back really hurt or not, those holes alone would justify my visit to the doctor.</s>
    <s id="1:60">Those holes also made her hope she might be able to convince me she was not damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:61">Even if there were just one person who believed she wasn't damaged goods, it would be very different than no one believing her.</s>
    <s id="1:62">But I intentionally disappointed her.</s>
    <s id="1:63">This is what I thought: if I wanted to prove she was not damaged goods and I could, then things would be too easy.</s>
    <s id="1:64">The truth was I couldn't prove anything, except things that didn't need proving.</s>
    <s id="1:65">In spring, our team leader claimed I was the one who had shot out the left eye of his dog, which was why the dog always looked at people with its head tilted, as if she were dancing ballet.</s>
    <s id="1:66">From then on, he always gave me a hard time.</s>
    <s id="1:67">Three things could have proved my innocence:</s>
    <s id="1:68">1. The team leader had no dog;</s>
    <s id="1:69">2. The dog was born blind in the left eye;</s>
    <s id="1:70">3. I'm a man with no hands who can't aim a gun.</s>
    <s id="1:71">Finally, none of the three requirements could be established: the team leader did have a brown dog; her left eye was indeed blinded by a shot; I could not only aim a gun but was also was an excellent marksman.</s>
    <s id="1:72">To make matters worse, I'd borrowed an air rifle from Luo Xiaosi not long before the incident, and using a bowl of mung beans as bullets, killed a couple of pounds of mice in an empty granary.</s>
    <s id="1:73">Of course, there were other crack shots on our production team, and one of them was Luo Xiaosi.</s>
    <s id="1:74">When he fired at the team leader's dog, I stood right beside him watching.</s>
    <s id="1:75">But I couldn't inform on other people, and my relationship with Luo Xiaosi was not bad.</s>
    <s id="1:76">Besides, if the team leader could have handled Luo Xiaosi, he wouldn't have accused me.</s>
    <s id="1:77">So I kept quiet.</s>
    <s id="1:78">To keep silent meant to acquiesce.</s>
    <s id="1:79">That was why in the spring I had to plant rice seedlings, stooped over in the field like a broken electricity pole; in the autumn I had to herd cattle, so I couldn't get a hot meal.</s>
    <s id="1:80">Of course, I could not take this lying down.</s>
    <s id="1:81">One day as I walked on the mountain, the team leader's dog came into view.</s>
    <s id="1:82">I happened to have Luo Xiaosi's air rifle with me, so I fired a bullet and blinded her right eye.</s>
    <s id="1:83">With neither left eye nor right eye, the dog couldn't get back to the team leader's house—God knows where she went.</s>
    <s id="1:84">I remember in those days, besides herding cattle on the mountain and lying in bed, I didn't have anything to do and nothing seemed to matter.</s>
    <s id="1:85">But Chen Qingyang came down the mountain again to see me.</s>
    <s id="1:86">There was another rumor in the air that she was having an affair with me and this time she wanted me to prove our innocence.</s>
    <s id="1:87">I told her that we would have to prove two things first before our innocence could be established:</s>
    <s id="1:88">1. Chen Qingyang was a virgin;</s>
    <s id="1:89">2. Castrated at birth, I was unable to have sex.</s>
    <s id="1:90">These two things would be hard to prove, so we couldn't prove our innocence.</s>
    <s id="1:91">I preferred to prove our guilt.</s>
    <s id="1:92">On hearing my words, Chen Qingyang's face first turned pale and then blushed all over.</s>
    <s id="1:93">Finally she stood up and left without saying a word.</s>
    <s id="1:94">Chen Qingyang told me later that I had always been a scoundrel.</s>
    <s id="1:95">The first time she wanted me to prove her innocence, I looked up at the ceiling and began to talk nonsense; the next time she wanted me to prove our innocence, I earnestly suggested having intercourse with her.</s>
    <s id="1:96">So she decided she was going to slap me sooner or later.</s>
    <s id="1:97">If I had guessed her plan at the time, the things that happened later might never have happened.</s>
    <s id="1:98">On my twenty-first birthday, I was herding buffalo at the riverside.</s>
    <s id="1:99">In the afternoon I fell asleep on the grass.</s>
    <s id="1:100">I remembered covering myself with a few banana leaves before I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up I found nothing on my body. (Perhaps the buffalo had eaten the leaves.)</s>
    <s id="1:101">The sunshine in the subtropical dry season had burned my entire body red, leaving me in an agony of burning and itching.</s>
    <s id="1:102">My little Buddha pointed to the sky like an arrow, bigger than ever.</s>
    <s id="1:103">That was how I spent my birthday.</s>
    <s id="1:104">When I woke up, the sun glared down on me from a frighteningly blue sky.</s>
    <s id="1:105">A layer of fine dust, like a coating of talcum powder, covered my whole body.</s>
    <s id="1:106">I'd experienced numerous erections in my life, but none as vigorous and magnificent as that time.</s>
    <s id="1:107">Perhaps it was because of the location, so isolated from the villages that not even a soul could be seen.</s>
    <s id="1:108">I got up to check on my buffalo, only to find them all crouching at the far fork of the rivers, chewing grass quietly.</s>
    <s id="1:109">It was a surpassingly still moment, and the white wind was gently blowing across the field.</s>
    <s id="1:110">On the bank, several pairs of bulls from the mountain village were fighting each other.</s>
    <s id="1:111">Their eyes had turned red, and saliva drooled from the corner of their mouths.</s>
    <s id="1:112">This sort of bull had tightly packed balls and protruding penises.</s>
    <s id="1:113">Our bulls were not like that.</s>
    <s id="1:114">They would lie on the ground and stay put no matter how hard the other bulls tried to provoke them.</s>
    <s id="1:115">To prevent our bulls from hurting each other and slowing down the spring plowing, we castrated all of them.</s>
    <s id="1:116">I was present every time they castrated the bulls.</s>
    <s id="1:117">Ordinary bulls could just be cut with a knife.</s>
    <s id="1:118">But for extremely wild ones, you have to employ the art of hammer-smashing, which is to cut open their scrotums, take out the balls, and then use a wooden hammer to pulverize them.</s>
    <s id="1:119">From then on these altered bulls knew nothing but grazing and working.</s>
    <s id="1:120">No need to tie them down if you wanted to kill them.</s>
    <s id="1:121">Our team leader, the one who always wielded the hammer, had no doubts that surgery of this kind would also work on humans.</s>
    <s id="1:122">He would shout at us all the time: You young bulls!</s>
    <s id="1:123">You need a good hammering to make you behave.</s>
    <s id="1:124">In his way of thinking, this red, stiff, foot-long thing on my body was the incarnation of evil.</s>
    <s id="1:125">Of course, I had a different opinion.</s>
    <s id="1:126">To me, the thing was extremely important, as important as my existence itself.</s>
    <s id="1:127">The darkness began to settle in, and a cloud drifted idly across the sky.</s>
    <s id="1:128">The lower half of the cloud was immersed in darkness and the upper half still floated in sunshine.</s>
    <s id="1:129">That day I was twentyone, and in the golden age of my life.</s>
    <s id="1:130">I had so many desires;</s>
    <s id="1:131">I wanted to love, to eat, and to be turned in a flash into the halfbright and half-dark cloud in the sky.</s>
    <s id="1:132">Only much later did I realize that life is a slow process of being hammered.</s>
    <s id="1:133">People grow old day after day, their desire disappears little by little, and finally they become like those hammered bulls.</s>
    <s id="1:134">However, that idea never crossed my mind on my twenty-first birthday.</s>
    <s id="1:135">I thought I would always be lively and strong, and that nothing could beat me.</s>
    <s id="1:136">I had invited Chen Qingyang over to eat fish with me that night, so I was supposed to catch fish in the afternoon.</s>
    <s id="1:137">But not until five o'clock did I remember I needed to go to where the fish were supposed to have been trapped to take a look.</s>
    <s id="1:138">Before I reached the small fork of the rivers, two Jingpo boys ran up, hurling mud at one another all the way.</s>
    <s id="1:139">Some landed on me.</s>
    <s id="1:140">They stopped fighting only after I picked them up by their ears.</s>
    <s id="1:141">I shouted at them, "You pricks, where're the fish?"</s>
    <s id="1:142">The older one said, "It was all that prick Le Long's fault!</s>
    <s id="1:143">He sat on the dam all the time, so the dam fucking collapsed."</s>
    <s id="1:144">Le Long roared back, "Wang Er, the fucking dam you built wasn't strong enough!"</s>
    <s id="1:145">I said, "That's bullshit!</s>
    <s id="1:146">I built the dam with sod.</s>
    <s id="1:147">What prick has the nerve to say it wasn't strong enough?"</s>
    <s id="1:148">I went down to see for myself.</s>
    <s id="1:149">Whether Le Long's fault or mine, the dam was gone anyway.</s>
    <s id="1:150">The water we bailed out all flowed back, any hope of catching fish went down the drain, and the whole day went to waste.</s>
    <s id="1:151">Of course, I wouldn't admit it was my fault.</s>
    <s id="1:152">Instead I yelled at Le Long.</s>
    <s id="1:153">Le Du (the other boy) also chimed in.</s>
    <s id="1:154">Le Long began to get angry.</s>
    <s id="1:155">He jumped up a couple of feet and roared, "Wang Er!</s>
    <s id="1:156">Le Du!</s>
    <s id="1:157">You pricks!</s>
    <s id="1:158">You are ganging up on me!</s>
    <s id="1:159">I'm going to tell my father.</s>
    <s id="1:160">He'll shoot the two of you with his bronze-barreled shotgun!"</s>
    <s id="1:161">After saying this, the little bastard tried to leap onto the bank to escape.</s>
    <s id="1:162">I caught his ankle and pulled him back.</s>
    <s id="1:163">"You want to run off and leave us to herd your buffalo?</s>
    <s id="1:164">You're fucking dreaming!"</s>
    <s id="1:165">The little bastard wailed wa-wa and tried to bite me.</s>
    <s id="1:166">But I grabbed him, pinned him to the ground, and held him hard.</s>
    <s id="1:167">He frothed at the mouth, cursing me in a mix of Mandarin, Jingpo, and Thai.</s>
    <s id="1:168">I talked back in standard Beijing dialect.</s>
    <s id="1:169">All of a sudden, he stopped cursing, eyeing the lower part of my body with envy.</s>
    <s id="1:170">I looked down and found my little Buddha standing up again.</s>
    <s id="1:171">I heard Le Long click his tongue admiringly, "Wow!</s>
    <s id="1:172">Want to fuck Le Du's sister?"</s>
    <s id="1:173">I immediately dropped him to put on my pants.</s>
    <s id="1:174">When I lit the gas lamp at the pump house, Chen Qingyang would often arrive unexpectedly and complain that life was meaningless.</s>
    <s id="1:175">She also said that she believed she was innocent in every respect.</s>
    <s id="1:176">I said that the way she dared claim innocence was itself the biggest sin.</s>
    <s id="1:177">In my opinion, craving good food and aversion to hard work, together with lust for beauty and sex, make up a human being's basic nature.</s>
    <s id="1:178">If you were a hard worker who lived a frugal and chaste life, you would commit the sin of hypocrisy, which was more disgusting than greed, sensuality, or laziness.</s>
    <s id="1:179">Words like this seemed to please her, although she never agreed with what I said out loud.</s>
    <s id="1:180">However, when I lit the gas lamp that night, she didn't show up for a long time.</s>
    <s id="1:181">It was not until nine that she appeared at my door and called my name, "Wang Er, you stinker!</s>
    <s id="1:182">Come out!"</s>
    <s id="1:183">I went out to see what was going on.</s>
    <s id="1:184">Dressed all in white, she looked especially smart, although her expression seemed tense.</s>
    <s id="1:185">She said, You invited me over to eat fish and have a heart-to-heart, but where is the fish?</s>
    <s id="1:186">I had to admit that the fish were still in the river.</s>
    <s id="1:187">All right, she said, at least we can still have a heart-to-heart.</s>
    <s id="1:188">Then let's talk.</s>
    <s id="1:189">I said, How about we go inside first?</s>
    <s id="1:190">She said that's fine, too.</s>
    <s id="1:191">So she went in and found herself a place to sit.</s>
    <s id="1:192">She looked angry.</s>
    <s id="1:193">I had planned to seduce Chen Qingyang on my twenty-first birthday, because she was my friend; and she had a full bosom, a slender waist, and shapely buttocks; besides, her neck was long and graceful and her face was pretty, too.</s>
    <s id="1:194">I wanted to have sex with her and thought she shouldn't refuse.</s>
    <s id="1:195">Because if she'd needed my body to practice vivisection, I would have lent it to her without giving it a second thought; likewise, if I needed to use her body for pleasure, it shouldn't be a problem either.</s>
    <s id="1:196">But she was a woman, and women in general were more or less small-minded.</s>
    <s id="1:197">For that reason, I needed to expand her mind, so I began to explain what "brotherhood" was.</s>
    <s id="1:198">In my opinion, brotherhood was the kind of great friendship that only existed among the outlaws of the forest.</s>
    <s id="1:199">Take the heroes in The Legend of the Water Margins for example.</s>
    <s id="1:200">Those guys would kill and set fires as soon as eat.</s>
    <s id="1:201">But as long as they heard the great name of Timely Rain, they would fall to their knees and kowtow.</s>
    <s id="1:202">Like them, I believed in nothing but brotherhood.</s>
    <s id="1:203">If you were my friend, even if you committed a crime beyond Heaven's forgiveness, I would still stand by you.</s>
    <s id="1:204">That night, I offered my great friendship to Chen Qingyang and she was immediately moved to tears.</s>
    <s id="1:205">She accepted my friendship right away, and, what was more, even expressed her wish to reward me with a greater friendship, saying that she would never betray me even if I turned out to be a low-down, shifty little scoundrel.</s>
    <s id="1:206">Relieved by her words, naturally I told her what was really on my mind:</s>
    <s id="1:207">I'm twenty-one, but I've never experienced what happens between a man and a woman.</s>
    <s id="1:208">I really can't resign myself to that.</s>
    <s id="1:209">She stared at me blankly after hearing my words—maybe she was not prepared for this.</s>
    <s id="1:210">I kept persuading her, which didn't seem to work, so I put my hand on her shoulder and felt the tension in her muscles.</s>
    <s id="1:211">The woman could change her mind any minute and slap me—if that occurred, it would only prove that women didn't understand what great friendship meant.</s>
    <s id="1:212">But to my surprise, she didn't slap me.</s>
    <s id="1:213">Instead she snorted and then started laughing.</s>
    <s id="1:214">How stupid I am!</s>
    <s id="1:215">To be tricked so easily!</s>
    <s id="1:216">What trick?</s>
    <s id="1:217">What are you talking about?</s>
    <s id="1:218">I played dumb.</s>
    <s id="1:219">She said, I didn't say anything.</s>
    <s id="1:220">I asked her will you do it or not?</s>
    <s id="1:221">She said "Pah!" and she blushed.</s>
    <s id="1:222">It looked like she was a little shy, so I decided to take the initiative and began to get fresh with her.</s>
    <s id="1:223">She tried to push me away a few times, and then said, No, not here.</s>
    <s id="1:224">Let's go up to the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:225">So I followed her all the way up to the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:226">Later on, Chen Qingyang told me that she had never been able to figure out whether my great friendship was true or just a lie that I had made up then to trick her.</s>
    <s id="1:227">But she said that those words enchanted her like a spell, and that even if she lost everything because of it she'd have no regrets.</s>
    <s id="1:228">Actually, the great friendship was neither true nor false, like everything else in the world.</s>
    <s id="1:229">It was true if you believed it, and false if you didn't; my words were also neither true nor false, but I was prepared to stand by my words anytime and wouldn't back off even if the sky collapsed and the earth cracked open.</s>
    <s id="1:230">Because of this attitude of mine, no one really believed me, which explained why I made no more than a couple of friends, including Chen Qingyang, even though I took it on as a lifelong cause.</s>
    <s id="1:231">That night, halfway up the mountain, Chen Qingyang told me that she needed to go back to her place to get something, telling me to wait for her on the other side of the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:232">I suspected that she might want to stand me up, but I didn't say anything.</s>
    <s id="1:233">I went straight to the other side of the mountain and smoked.</s>
    <s id="1:234">After a while, she arrived.</s>
    <s id="1:235">Chen Qingyang said that the first time I went to her for a shot, she was dozing at her desk.</s>
    <s id="1:236">In Yunnan everyone had plenty of time to nap, so they always seemed half asleep and half awake.</s>
    <s id="1:237">When I walked into her clinic, the room dimmed for a moment because it was a thatched mud hut where most of the sunshine came in through the door.</s>
    <s id="1:238">She awakened right then, raised her head, and asked what I was doing there.</s>
    <s id="1:239">I said my lower back hurt and she told me to lie down so that she could take a look at it.</s>
    <s id="1:240">I threw myself headlong onto the bamboo bed and nearly crushed it—my lower back hurt so much that I simply could not bend.</s>
    <s id="1:241">If it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have gone to see her.</s>
    <s id="1:242">Chen Qingyang said my mouth had lines around it even when I was very young, and dark circles always showed under my eyes.</s>
    <s id="1:243">I was a tall man of few words in worn-out clothes.</s>
    <s id="1:244">She gave me a shot and I left.</s>
    <s id="1:245">Maybe I thanked her, or maybe I didn't.</s>
    <s id="1:246">When she had the idea I could prove she wasn't damaged goods, only half a minute passed.</s>
    <s id="1:247">She ran out and found me taking a shortcut to the fourteenth team.</s>
    <s id="1:248">I strode down the slope, leaping over the ditches and mounds whenever there was one, descending rapidly along the mountain slope.</s>
    <s id="1:249">It was a morning in the dry season, and the wind blew up from the foot of the mountain, so I couldn't have heard anything even if she'd called me, not to mention that I never looked back anyway.</s>
    <s id="1:250">So that was the way I left.</s>
    <s id="1:251">Chen Qingyang said she had wanted to go after me then, but felt it would be hard to catch up, and besides I might not be able to prove her innocence.</s>
    <s id="1:252">So she walked back to the clinic.</s>
    <s id="1:253">She changed her mind later because she realized since everyone accused her of being damaged goods, they were all her enemies.</s>
    <s id="1:254">It was possible that I was not her enemy.</s>
    <s id="1:255">She didn't want to risk turning me into an enemy also.</s>
    <s id="1:256">I smoked on the back slope of the mountain that night.</s>
    <s id="1:257">Even though it was evening I could see into the distance, because the moonlight was bright, and the air was clear in that region.</s>
    <s id="1:258">Every now and then, I could hear dogs barking in the distance.</s>
    <s id="1:259">I spotted Chen Qingyang as soon as she came out of the fifteenth team—I doubted if I could see that far during the day.</s>
    <s id="1:260">But it felt different from the day.</s>
    <s id="1:261">Perhaps because there was no one around.</s>
    <s id="1:262">I couldn't tell whether there were people around or not in the evening, because it was silver-gray everywhere.</s>
    <s id="1:263">If you traveled with a torch, it meant you wanted the whole world to know where you were; if you didn't, it would be like wearing a cape of invisibility—people who knew you were there could see you, and people who didn't couldn't.</s>
    <s id="1:264">When I saw Chen Qingyang slowly coming toward me, my heart began to pound, and it occurred to me without any instruction that we should have a little foreplay before getting down to business.</s>
    <s id="1:265">Chen Qingyang reacted pretty coldly to this.</s>
    <s id="1:266">Her lips were icy, and she didn't respond to my caresses at all.</s>
    <s id="1:267">By the time I tried to unbutton her dress, all thumbs, she pushed me away and started taking off her clothes by herself, piece by piece.</s>
    <s id="1:268">She folded her clothes neatly and put them aside.</s>
    <s id="1:269">Then she lay down stiffly on the grass.</s>
    <s id="1:270">Her naked body was extremely beautiful.</s>
    <s id="1:271">I took off my clothes in a hurry and crawled over to her.</s>
    <s id="1:272">Again she pushed me off, handing me something, saying, "Know how to use this?</s>
    <s id="1:273">Want me to teach you?"</s>
    <s id="1:274">It was a condom.</s>
    <s id="1:275">I was at the height of my excitement and the tone of her voice upset me a little.</s>
    <s id="1:276">But I put on the condom anyway and crawled on top of her.</s>
    <s id="1:277">Heart racing and out of breath, I fumbled for quite a while and couldn't get it right.</s>
    <s id="1:278">Again I heard her cold voice, "Hey, do you know what you're doing?"</s>
    <s id="1:279">I said, Of course I do.</s>
    <s id="1:280">Could you please move a little closer?</s>
    <s id="1:281">I want to study your anatomy in the light.</s>
    <s id="1:282">Then with a sound as loud as a thunderclap at my ear, I realized she'd given me a big slap.</s>
    <s id="1:283">I jumped to my feet, grabbed my clothes, and ran.</s>
  </p>
</text>
