Boxing Days Part 1: The Well-Frog
Boxing Days, radishface Watchmen → Dan/Ror ("Deng"/"Red"); R; angst/historical fiction/China!AU. The swell of student protests floods the streets of Beijing in 1989; one man needs another to understand the condition of his country.
we are all brothers
Day in and day out, the factory abuzz with the whine of so many machines whirring, so many gears spinning and twirling. The more adventurous comrades in his unit venture over to talk to him, to invite him out for potlucks and games of mahjong, but he doesn't say much in reply. The danwei leader doesn't say much about this new hire, this light-haired, light-eyed city boy. Not that there is much to say-- everybody is looking for jobs, and Red should count himself lucky to work in a garment factory in Western Beijing, right in the heart of the country, the brotherly movement.
He doesn't like handling clothing, the repetitive, rough whisper of cotton against his hands. But if he doesn't want to work, there will always be somebody to replace him.
*
Deng joins the university's boxing club the first week that classes start, determined to maintain a healthy balance between his engineering classes and his outside activities. His first partner gives in too easily, and leaves the gymnasium with his confidence bashed in and embarrassment written over his face. Deng supposes that he should held his punches; he is bigger and stronger than most of his fellow classmates, never starved for milk or meat or rice in his youth.
He bests most of his partners save for one. A small, wiry, and sullen-looking young man approaches him one week, shoulders hunched and lips twisted in challenge. His eyes and hair are uncharacteristically light, freckles dust his nose, and Deng doesn't know what to think, for a minute. Instead, he dips his head in a half-bow and they spar. The other man's punches are short and choppy, to the point, flying quickly without much force behind them, but Deng finds himself becoming quickly tired in maintaining a constant defense, and in the end he is somehow sprawled out on the floor, limbs aplomb and chest heaving up and down. It's a good round, and leaves Deng with a pleasant ache in his muscles and a freshness in his mind, as if a strong wind had blown through it.
The other man leaves right after they spar, before Deng can invite him to dinner with the rest of the club. Deng asks around, and it seems as if rumors abound: the boy's mother kept company with capitalist, colonial pigs, that she sold herself to the white devil and lives in the most decadent, Western parts of Shanghai, that Deng should be careful not to touch him or else he'll be similarly afflicted. Apparently this is supposed to explains his light coloration, the reddish tint to his hair and his skin, and his nickname.
A less gossip-prone classmate tells Deng that all he's heard is that Red is a member of the local sports federation and during the day, works at the local garment factory a few miles west. Deng finds that he is unsurprised, and reminds himself that workers and students have always had a shared camraderie, and that there is no reason to wonder more than necessary.
the well-frog
The next week Red is there again, and Deng finds himself rubbing his hands together for a beat too long, chalk already swift on his palms, gratuitous now. Red doesn't meet his eyes, though, and stays at the opposite end of the gymnasium, as if he can tell that Deng is unapologetically middle-class.
Deng finds himself throwing punches harder than ever that day, bloodying a nose or two and making too much noise when he returns to his dorm room that evening, sinking into his bunk bed a little too loudly and earning him the sullen grumblings of his roommates. The room, his bed, feel too small for him. Deng pushes his feet out past the edge of the mattress for the first time instead of curling around himself like he usually does, and as he drifts off in an angry sleep, his toes clench and unclench in the air.
When Hu Yaobang passes away, the students on his floor, in the building, and all across campus seethe with the humming, jumping restlessness. A few decide to pay their respects, and this visiting party expands and more and more students jump on the bandwagon until there are truckloads of them heading to the square where they chant their new slogans, their cries for market reforms and democracy and the war on government corruption drown out the sound of sirens and officials blaring propaganda-speak into megaphones. Deng finally decides to go for the hell of it, not because he is permitted (the presence of the guards makes this obvious enough), but because he feels compelled.
He knows almost nothing about Hu Yaobang, but apparently this man is their representative, a man of the students and progressive ideals, their spokesperson. And Deng has doesn't want to go to engineering lab, so he accepts the slogan-writ headband his roommate offers him, ties it across his forehead, and hops on the truck headed to the center of the city with the rest of the school. The spirit of protest is in the air (skeptics would say it's never left, really), and his classmates are all talking excitedly, chittering to one another about democracy. Deng decides that democracy is as good an ideal of any to uphold, if it can make people laugh and swell the way they do.
He feels good in this crowd, powerful and strong. The culmination of their ringing voices is something he can wear on his skin: new, shining, courageous clothing, their exuberant, boisterous energy shaping itself around his head, filling his eyes and ears and his mouth with every sensation and rapture, the face of everything that is good and just in the world. One that he wears now, too, this mask on his face and shaping his mouth to form the words on the tips of everybody else's tongues.
He sees Red at the demonstration, at the front of the funeral monument, small frame trembling with emotion and his hair red in the sun, his eyes almost blue, tricks of the light. It begins to drizzle, cold April showers, the clouds and mist scattering the light in inky, disparate patterns across his face. His lips do not move with the others, but the words are written all across his face, clear and bright and louder, fiercer than all the rest. He turns around and their eyes meet, and the next slogan stops in Deng's throat, and he is suddenly laid bare.
But the crowd is shifting constantly, rain-steaming bodies pressing up against each other and undulating, the movement of one organism, swallowing Red. Deng loses sight of the other man, something he hadn't thought possible.
*
He dreams that night of red on red, of a body stretched out across a surface as if there weren't enough space to contain him, a body shiny with sweat and flushed from boxing, chest sill heaving unnaturally, quicker than normal. Deng, a light, spreading himself thinly over Red to absorb it, their bodies transmuting spacetime and somewhere in there, warm, beating points of contact, as broad as a fist colliding with a face, as sharp as a fingertip, skimming.
*
Red doesn't come to club for a month and Deng begins to feel restless. April fades into May and one evening he decides not to go, because it's raining outside and he tells himself he doesn't want to get his pants legs wet, his shoes soaked. Actually, his heart reminds him, it's because he's sullen, like the low-hanging clouds, these leftovers of spring's soggy start. He taps his pencil against paper in symmetrical rhythms, trudging through his linear algebra homework. Numbers and symbols arrange themselves in an unrecognizable mess of lines and curves to his own eyes, his brain on autopilot.
He skips class the next day and heads straight for the square.
*
Days go by, and red is everywhere, in his mouth and his ears and his eyes, but Deng cannot see him.
reciprocal rain
Deng's dream was prophetic, it seemed. Gunfire on the crowd, for the first time, glancing and inarticulate, but threatening all the same. Deng is searching for his classmates, people sprawled out on the ground who need his strength to help them stand. The gunshots sail by his ears and he feels quite fearless, quite invincible, headband snug against his brow and adrenaline like all the revolutionary fervor amassed from past ages.
Somebody, wounded, trapped under an upturned vehicle, and Deng is there as quickly as his feet can fly. His hand snags on the other, pale and freckled, Deng can see even in this glancing mix of flamelight and moonlight and his breath catches in his throat. Red's face is a mask of agony, twin rivulets of blood streaming down his face and smudged across his face, and Deng wrestles himself into the tight, winding space, extracts Red from the wreckage. The other man is weightless on his back and Deng's legs take them both easily across the city until they reach campus, the grey haze of the early morning solemn and dutiful on their faces.
*
Red doesn't say much to him at first, all grunts and half-mumbled thanks, only out of courtesy. One of his ribs seems to be cracked, but Red insists that it is only heavily bruised and refuses to go to the infirmary, so Deng bandages him as best as he can, enduring the other man's squirming and fidgeting, as if he had never been touched before.
There is no point in going to class these days; their professors are all at the square, too. Deng tries to engage Red in conversation, the same kind that he's been engaged in with his classmates these past few weeks, tries to bring up Red's station in life, as if that's a legitimate argument against the Maoist legacy.
"This new revolution isn't kind to the workers," he says. "You would lose so much, if these reforms came to pass."
Red gives him an unsmilingly look tinged with disdain and says, "Not about me, Deng," as if he hasn't given a thought to his future beyond the next few weeks, this movement.
*
Deng leaves the dorm room only to buy supplies and scope out the square. The city swirls around them with the flowering hum of gradual change, the possibility of things. Crowds of people, burgeoning summer sweat and the endless cadences of pentatonic scales filling the air, the relentless beat of slogans. Red is anxious, feeling as if the peak of something is near, but he is still in too much pain to move about freely. So he begins to talk at Deng, treatises and monologues and sometimes Deng finds it a little too much to bear but he laughs it off for the both of them, nervous and joyful and ironic all at once, the vigilant brotherhood of his laughter a defense against this impeding tide of democracy and chaos, for now.
*
They are entangled in a heated argument one day, Red's staunch position on free markets in direct contrast with Deng's more relaxed attitude about the command economy, and when he's about to compare the markets to a bird in a birdcage Red seizes his hand and squeezes too tight, like he wants to shatter it.
Deng finds himself wrapping his other hand around Red's, stilling them both their trembling. It's just a simple discussion; he shouldn't be so affected. "It's not that simple," he finally says, a concession. Red exhales sharply, a deep, solid rumble in his chest.
But Red is calmer after that, body still like a wire but the thrum lessened now. When Deng unwraps the bandages and skirts gentle fingers over his bruises, he doesn't tense away.
*
Their first night out after Red's convalescence, their boxing experience comes into play. There are guards stationed outside the campus now, ready to intimidate, but a quick feint here and a left hook there and Red has broken free, teeth baring themselves in something like a grin, eyes bright and fierce and locked with Deng's before he darts forward, a blur of arms and legs in confluence.
Their footfalls echo like a stampede behind them and Deng, running behind, finds himself not sorry at all, that he isn't looking back.
>> water, receding
we are all brothers
Day in and day out, the factory abuzz with the whine of so many machines whirring, so many gears spinning and twirling. The more adventurous comrades in his unit venture over to talk to him, to invite him out for potlucks and games of mahjong, but he doesn't say much in reply. The danwei leader doesn't say much about this new hire, this light-haired, light-eyed city boy. Not that there is much to say-- everybody is looking for jobs, and Red should count himself lucky to work in a garment factory in Western Beijing, right in the heart of the country, the brotherly movement.
He doesn't like handling clothing, the repetitive, rough whisper of cotton against his hands. But if he doesn't want to work, there will always be somebody to replace him.
*
Deng joins the university's boxing club the first week that classes start, determined to maintain a healthy balance between his engineering classes and his outside activities. His first partner gives in too easily, and leaves the gymnasium with his confidence bashed in and embarrassment written over his face. Deng supposes that he should held his punches; he is bigger and stronger than most of his fellow classmates, never starved for milk or meat or rice in his youth.
He bests most of his partners save for one. A small, wiry, and sullen-looking young man approaches him one week, shoulders hunched and lips twisted in challenge. His eyes and hair are uncharacteristically light, freckles dust his nose, and Deng doesn't know what to think, for a minute. Instead, he dips his head in a half-bow and they spar. The other man's punches are short and choppy, to the point, flying quickly without much force behind them, but Deng finds himself becoming quickly tired in maintaining a constant defense, and in the end he is somehow sprawled out on the floor, limbs aplomb and chest heaving up and down. It's a good round, and leaves Deng with a pleasant ache in his muscles and a freshness in his mind, as if a strong wind had blown through it.
The other man leaves right after they spar, before Deng can invite him to dinner with the rest of the club. Deng asks around, and it seems as if rumors abound: the boy's mother kept company with capitalist, colonial pigs, that she sold herself to the white devil and lives in the most decadent, Western parts of Shanghai, that Deng should be careful not to touch him or else he'll be similarly afflicted. Apparently this is supposed to explains his light coloration, the reddish tint to his hair and his skin, and his nickname.
A less gossip-prone classmate tells Deng that all he's heard is that Red is a member of the local sports federation and during the day, works at the local garment factory a few miles west. Deng finds that he is unsurprised, and reminds himself that workers and students have always had a shared camraderie, and that there is no reason to wonder more than necessary.
the well-frog
The next week Red is there again, and Deng finds himself rubbing his hands together for a beat too long, chalk already swift on his palms, gratuitous now. Red doesn't meet his eyes, though, and stays at the opposite end of the gymnasium, as if he can tell that Deng is unapologetically middle-class.
Deng finds himself throwing punches harder than ever that day, bloodying a nose or two and making too much noise when he returns to his dorm room that evening, sinking into his bunk bed a little too loudly and earning him the sullen grumblings of his roommates. The room, his bed, feel too small for him. Deng pushes his feet out past the edge of the mattress for the first time instead of curling around himself like he usually does, and as he drifts off in an angry sleep, his toes clench and unclench in the air.
When Hu Yaobang passes away, the students on his floor, in the building, and all across campus seethe with the humming, jumping restlessness. A few decide to pay their respects, and this visiting party expands and more and more students jump on the bandwagon until there are truckloads of them heading to the square where they chant their new slogans, their cries for market reforms and democracy and the war on government corruption drown out the sound of sirens and officials blaring propaganda-speak into megaphones. Deng finally decides to go for the hell of it, not because he is permitted (the presence of the guards makes this obvious enough), but because he feels compelled.
He knows almost nothing about Hu Yaobang, but apparently this man is their representative, a man of the students and progressive ideals, their spokesperson. And Deng has doesn't want to go to engineering lab, so he accepts the slogan-writ headband his roommate offers him, ties it across his forehead, and hops on the truck headed to the center of the city with the rest of the school. The spirit of protest is in the air (skeptics would say it's never left, really), and his classmates are all talking excitedly, chittering to one another about democracy. Deng decides that democracy is as good an ideal of any to uphold, if it can make people laugh and swell the way they do.
He feels good in this crowd, powerful and strong. The culmination of their ringing voices is something he can wear on his skin: new, shining, courageous clothing, their exuberant, boisterous energy shaping itself around his head, filling his eyes and ears and his mouth with every sensation and rapture, the face of everything that is good and just in the world. One that he wears now, too, this mask on his face and shaping his mouth to form the words on the tips of everybody else's tongues.
He sees Red at the demonstration, at the front of the funeral monument, small frame trembling with emotion and his hair red in the sun, his eyes almost blue, tricks of the light. It begins to drizzle, cold April showers, the clouds and mist scattering the light in inky, disparate patterns across his face. His lips do not move with the others, but the words are written all across his face, clear and bright and louder, fiercer than all the rest. He turns around and their eyes meet, and the next slogan stops in Deng's throat, and he is suddenly laid bare.
But the crowd is shifting constantly, rain-steaming bodies pressing up against each other and undulating, the movement of one organism, swallowing Red. Deng loses sight of the other man, something he hadn't thought possible.
*
He dreams that night of red on red, of a body stretched out across a surface as if there weren't enough space to contain him, a body shiny with sweat and flushed from boxing, chest sill heaving unnaturally, quicker than normal. Deng, a light, spreading himself thinly over Red to absorb it, their bodies transmuting spacetime and somewhere in there, warm, beating points of contact, as broad as a fist colliding with a face, as sharp as a fingertip, skimming.
*
Red doesn't come to club for a month and Deng begins to feel restless. April fades into May and one evening he decides not to go, because it's raining outside and he tells himself he doesn't want to get his pants legs wet, his shoes soaked. Actually, his heart reminds him, it's because he's sullen, like the low-hanging clouds, these leftovers of spring's soggy start. He taps his pencil against paper in symmetrical rhythms, trudging through his linear algebra homework. Numbers and symbols arrange themselves in an unrecognizable mess of lines and curves to his own eyes, his brain on autopilot.
He skips class the next day and heads straight for the square.
*
Days go by, and red is everywhere, in his mouth and his ears and his eyes, but Deng cannot see him.
reciprocal rain
Deng's dream was prophetic, it seemed. Gunfire on the crowd, for the first time, glancing and inarticulate, but threatening all the same. Deng is searching for his classmates, people sprawled out on the ground who need his strength to help them stand. The gunshots sail by his ears and he feels quite fearless, quite invincible, headband snug against his brow and adrenaline like all the revolutionary fervor amassed from past ages.
Somebody, wounded, trapped under an upturned vehicle, and Deng is there as quickly as his feet can fly. His hand snags on the other, pale and freckled, Deng can see even in this glancing mix of flamelight and moonlight and his breath catches in his throat. Red's face is a mask of agony, twin rivulets of blood streaming down his face and smudged across his face, and Deng wrestles himself into the tight, winding space, extracts Red from the wreckage. The other man is weightless on his back and Deng's legs take them both easily across the city until they reach campus, the grey haze of the early morning solemn and dutiful on their faces.
*
Red doesn't say much to him at first, all grunts and half-mumbled thanks, only out of courtesy. One of his ribs seems to be cracked, but Red insists that it is only heavily bruised and refuses to go to the infirmary, so Deng bandages him as best as he can, enduring the other man's squirming and fidgeting, as if he had never been touched before.
There is no point in going to class these days; their professors are all at the square, too. Deng tries to engage Red in conversation, the same kind that he's been engaged in with his classmates these past few weeks, tries to bring up Red's station in life, as if that's a legitimate argument against the Maoist legacy.
"This new revolution isn't kind to the workers," he says. "You would lose so much, if these reforms came to pass."
Red gives him an unsmilingly look tinged with disdain and says, "Not about me, Deng," as if he hasn't given a thought to his future beyond the next few weeks, this movement.
*
Deng leaves the dorm room only to buy supplies and scope out the square. The city swirls around them with the flowering hum of gradual change, the possibility of things. Crowds of people, burgeoning summer sweat and the endless cadences of pentatonic scales filling the air, the relentless beat of slogans. Red is anxious, feeling as if the peak of something is near, but he is still in too much pain to move about freely. So he begins to talk at Deng, treatises and monologues and sometimes Deng finds it a little too much to bear but he laughs it off for the both of them, nervous and joyful and ironic all at once, the vigilant brotherhood of his laughter a defense against this impeding tide of democracy and chaos, for now.
*
They are entangled in a heated argument one day, Red's staunch position on free markets in direct contrast with Deng's more relaxed attitude about the command economy, and when he's about to compare the markets to a bird in a birdcage Red seizes his hand and squeezes too tight, like he wants to shatter it.
Deng finds himself wrapping his other hand around Red's, stilling them both their trembling. It's just a simple discussion; he shouldn't be so affected. "It's not that simple," he finally says, a concession. Red exhales sharply, a deep, solid rumble in his chest.
But Red is calmer after that, body still like a wire but the thrum lessened now. When Deng unwraps the bandages and skirts gentle fingers over his bruises, he doesn't tense away.
*
Their first night out after Red's convalescence, their boxing experience comes into play. There are guards stationed outside the campus now, ready to intimidate, but a quick feint here and a left hook there and Red has broken free, teeth baring themselves in something like a grin, eyes bright and fierce and locked with Deng's before he darts forward, a blur of arms and legs in confluence.
Their footfalls echo like a stampede behind them and Deng, running behind, finds himself not sorry at all, that he isn't looking back.
>> water, receding