Together in Silence: Selected Novels from Mengyuan (2000-2005)

Author: Han Han, Zhang Yuoran / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: Lei Zi was my very close friend. The kind of closeness meant that if you wanted my good things, I wanted yours. I didn’t think this was the mark of a drinking buddy; otherwise, once you became close friends, it was like stepping into a monastery—you weren’t allowed to drink or eat meat. Lei Zi looked quite handsome, but he felt he had nothing left to talk about with others and spent his days glued to the computer. Back then, there were only a few search engines, and not many people were online. The adult websites that came up in searches were very rare. Once Lei Zi logged in, he would call out to everyone in the dorm to come and watch. This was the only time he spoke to the group. When he called, including me, we would immediately drop whatever we were doing—like studying Zhou Zuoren or Cao Juren—and crowd around the computer. Then, Lei Zi would yell, “Get out, the CPU is overheating!” and we’d know he was about to go online to play games. We called that spectacular scene “The Hero’s True Color,” which showed that heroes were naturally lecherous. Whenever we hadn’t seen those pictures for a long time, we would strongly demand that Lei Zi hand over his laptop. Naturally, we called that “The Hundred-Color Uprising.”
The rest of the time, Lei Zi didn’t talk to anyone except me. I was a very ordinary person, but Lei Zi trusted me completely. However, to be fair, the world is full of people who aren’t worth trusting—especially the outstanding ones. Usually, three men talk about football, two men talk about women, and one man talks about politics. Lei Zi and I were the kind of people who spent our days thinking about Marx in bed but would immediately talk about Yanni the moment we met.
Lei Zi said he didn’t want to date anymore because he’d been hurt. The story of his injury went like this: Lei Zi had been very close friends with a girl—this kind of closeness wasn’t the same as the one mentioned earlier. The girl was involved in the underworld, but Lei Zi had worked hard to reform her and turn her into a good student. As a result, he was beaten up by a dozen thugs. Fortunately, Lei Zi was tough and only suffered a few bruises and lost a few teeth, but being trampled on the street by a dozen people was still unforgettable. This was physical trauma. Meanwhile, our Lei Zi was completely infatuated with the girl, and she betrayed him and left him for the sports captain of the next class. No matter how much Lei Zi pleaded, it was useless. This led to him “drinking ten bottles of beer that night and getting drunk on the street,” as he put it in quotation marks. Those were his words, just like his “CPU is about to overheat,” both exaggerated. I’m guessing he drank some beer and got drunk in his own bed. But his use of this rhetorical device fully showed the depth of his emotional trauma.
After a year of college, only Lei Zi in our dorm was single. He called us “losing our humanity because of the opposite sex.” I also found a girlfriend, but I still retained my human charm. I noticed that it was very difficult to find a girlfriend in freshman year. Girls thought men had to be older to look good and to be considerate. So we had to look for girls in the same grade. The pool was very small, unlike seniors, who had a much wider range of options, basically covering the entire university except for those pursuing graduate or doctoral studies. But according to them, dating a female PhD was no better than dating a guy with a PhD hat. All the guys in our dorm had found girlfriends in freshman year, but those women weren’t very good quality because the best ones had already been picked by seniors.
My girlfriend was studying life sciences and had a very clear understanding of age. She said she loved me as much as she loved her field. But she didn’t love her field—this is what I learned later. Life’s great tragedy is hearing a bad remark as a compliment.
Lei Zi had met my girlfriend. That day, he scrutinized her from top to bottom, making her shiver and me feel uneasy. I thought he was going to snatch her away from me, but instead, he said coldly, “You won’t last more than a year.” This pessimistic remark made me realize that Lei Zi hadn’t moved on from his breakup with his girlfriend. After thanking him for his wise words, we fled, unable to face his tone and gaze. Though we hadn’t experienced a breakup ourselves, we knew it was just as painful as giving birth. I just didn’t understand why Lei Zi was still so hurt after so long.
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