Read Online Katherine by Anchee Min - Free Book Online

Katherine and the mountains.
    *   *   *
    I worked three night shifts in the factory in order to receive permission to take a long leave. I was too excited to sleep the night before the trip. Lion Head called for me outside my window at four-thirty in the morning. He said that he wasn’t able to sleep and had already packed his stuff. I told him that I had finished my packing too. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go,” he said.
    *   *   *
    L ion Head and I sat by the pond near the school. It was five o’clock in the morning. The day began to break. We wore rubber boots to protect our legs from mosquito bites. Wild geese sang their morning song in the dark. Lion Head picked up a stone and threw it into the pond. The sound echoed deep in the forest. We began to talk about the concubines. Lion Head said that he imagined them to be very beautiful. “Look at those skinless trunks—the surfaces seem so smooth,” he said.
    Lion Head asked me if I were afraid of ghosts. I said I didn’t believe in them. “Well, what would you do if they came to get you?” he joked.
    “I would shoot them,” I said. “I would shoot them the way I was taught to shoot American imperialists.”
    Lion Head sighed. He said that he too thought often about the way he was taught to shoot American imperialists. “Were you good at target practice?” I asked.
    “I’m a crack shot,” he replied. “I had six years of training.” A smile began to play around his mouth.
    I said, “I bet I know what’s on your mind.”
    “Take a guess,” he said. “Let’s write down the first letter of what we’re thinking, in English. We’ll see if we’re thinking about the same thing.”
    We pressed our fingers into the mud. I made a
K
. I leaned over to see what he had written. It was a
K
too.
    *   *   *
    T he dew wet our clothes. The sun began to rise. The clouds were turning red. I suddenly thought that it would be bad for someone to see me and Lion Head sitting here together so early. We could be charged with a crime—an unmarried man and woman spending the night together. “What if someone sees us here?” I asked.
    “Don’t worry. We’re not doing anything. Jasmine will be our witness,” said Lion Head.
    “Jasmine?” I looked around. “Is she here?”
    “Somewhere. Hiding, I believe. I called her before I called you,” replied Lion Head. “I asked her to come down here and told her where we’d be.”
    I turned to look at Lion Head. I could not see his eyes quite clearly. I asked what he thought of Jasmine. He said he didn’t like to discuss one woman in front of another. I said I respected him for that.
    He said he could not play games with me, because I knew he was full of shit.
    *   *   *
    L ion Head began his confession. He said that he thought Jasmine was nice but not attractive. This shocked me. He believed she was boring because she didn’t know how to carry herself. “She is a soulless body,” he concluded.
    Do I have a soul? I asked myself. Images of life at Elephant Fields began to emerge—the dynamite, the smoke, the sound of an explosion, the rain of stones, the heavy breath of a man . . . I shut off my thoughts.
    Lion Head turned to look at me. Slowly he got up and began to wander around the pond.
    I forced my thoughts back to Jasmine. She was an interesting character to me though not to Lion Head. She had no self-confidence in front of Lion Head because he had destroyed it. Unfair as it was, she actually believed that she was worthless. Not being able to please Lion Head frustrated her. She embraced the torture. She was addicted to it. When they were together, I saw pity on Lion Head’s face. He wore an expression that said, How can I kick a dog that has already drowned? He let her know that he would give her no happiness. He expressed this through boredom. He would say, “Jasmine, what’s wrong with you? You’re not my slave.” He would say things like that in public. And Jasmine