Read Online The Crazed by Ha Jin - Free Book Online Page A

“You stink,” she said and sprang to her feet. She moved away and sat down on a chair, leaving me alone on the sofa. Abashed, I looked at her, my face burning.
    She began lecturing me, and I listened without talking back. She said, “Your breath makes me sick. How many times did I tell you to quit smoking? Why did you take my words as just a puff of meaningless breath? Look, even your fingers are yellow now. Why can’t you keep your promise? You know tobacco will blacken your lungs and give you tracheitis, but you just smoke to show how cool you are.”
    “Sorry, I couldn’t help it,” I mumbled.
    “If you continue to be a smoker, how can we live together in the future? Besides, this is playing ducks and drakes with money . . .”
    I felt ashamed and remained tongue-tied, just letting her fume at me. After she was done, I promised her that I would quit smoking this time and wouldn’t use her father’s illness as an excuse again. I had planned to take her to bed, but now intimacy was out of the question because her temper hadn’t subsided yet. Also, she was utterly exhausted, unable to keep her eyes open. So I urged her to go to bed. She washed her face and bathed her feet, then padded into the bedroom and closed the door. I slept on the sofa in their living room, not daring to disturb her during the night.
    The next morning she and I went to the hospital again. Banping was happy when we relieved him. After combing Mr. Yang’s hair and brushing his teeth, we both sat down, she seated on my lap as there wasn’t another chair in the room. The night’s sleep had refreshed her thoroughly; her features were vivacious again, mischievously mocking at times. Her checkered dress was rather homely, washed out, hanging on her loosely, so I didn’t have to worry about rumpling it. She was visibly excited, her eyes radiating a soft light and her full lips slightly curled. I couldn’t help nuzzling her hair to inhale its hazelnutlike scent. Now and again I’d kiss her neck or gently twist her small silken ear despite fearing that her father might notice what I was doing.
    We chatted about the students’ demonstrations in Beijing while Mr. Yang listened quietly. Gradually our topic shifted to preparations for the exams. For one of the six slots in a graduate program in pediatrics, Meimei would have to compete with over a hundred applicants.
    “We’ve formed a group to study political economy and the Party’s history,” she told me.
    “Does it help?”
    “Of course, a lot. We test each other with the questions that may appear in the exam. This method can make us remember the answers better, and also gives us some fun when we’re working on the questions together. Besides memorizing all the answers, there’s no other way to prepare for the political exam.” She smiled and her chin jutted.
    “That’s true,” I agreed. “But what a waste of time. Each year some of the answers differ from the previous year, especially in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. All depends on who is in power now—the winners always revise the history to make the losers look like a bunch of criminals.”
    “Don’t be so cynical,” she said. “We’ve no choice but to give the expected answers.”
    “I can’t spend too much time on politics. The other subjects make more sense to me.”
    “You ought to take the political exam seriously. Last year a student in my school scored the highest in all subjects except politics. He flunked it miserably, only got forty-six points. That gave him a terrible time, although he was really smart, fluent in both English and Russian.”
    “Did he get into a graduate program eventually?”
    “Yes, but only after a lot of trouble. The Shanghai Military Medical University was determined to have him and sent a team of three people to our school. They held meetings and asked the other students about his political attitude and activities. Everybody said something in his favor, so he was admitted