Sophronia Liu

Task 3

SO TSI-FAI

Sophronia Liu

1 Voices, images, scenes from the past —
twenty-three years ago, when I was in sixth grade:

2 "Let us bow our heads in silent prayer for the soul of So Tsi-fai. Let us pray
for God's forgiveness for this boy's rash taking of his own life..." Sister Marie
(Mung Gu-liang). My sixth-grade English teacher. Missionary nun from Paris.
Principal of The Little Flower's School. Disciplinarian, perfectionist, authority
figure: awesome and awful in my ten-year-old eyes.

3 "I don't need any supper. I have drunk enough insecticide." So Tsi-fai. My
fourteen-year-old classmate. Daredevil; good-for-nothing lazybones (according
to Mung Gu-liang). Bright black eyes, disheveled hair, defiant sneer, creased and
greasy uniform, dirty hands, careless walk, shuffling feet. Standing in the corner
for being late, for forgetting his homework, for talking in class, for using foul
language. ("Shame on you! Go wash your mouth with soap!" Mung Gu-liang's
sharp command. He did, and came back with a grin.) So Tsi-fai: Sticking his
tongue out behind Mung Gu-liang's back, passing secret notes to his friends,
kept behind after school, sent to the Principal's office for repeated offense. So
Tsi-fai: incorrigible, hopeless, and without hope.

4 It was a Monday, in late November when we heard of his death, returning
to school after the weekend with our parents' signatures on our midterm
reports. So Tsi-fai also showed his report to his father, we were told later. He
flunked three out of the fourteen subjects: English Grammar, Arithmetic, and
Chinese Dictation. He missed each one by one to three marks. That wasn't so
bad. But he was a hopeless case. Overaged, stubborn, and uncooperative; a
repeated offender of school rules, scourge of all teachers; who was going to give
him a lenient passing grade? Besides, being a few months over the maximum
age— fourteen — for sixth graders, he wasn't even allowed to sit for the Second­
ary School Entrance Exam.

5 All sixth graders in Hong Kong had to pass the SSE before they could obtain a seat in secondary school. In 1964 when I took the exam, there were more than twenty thousand candidates. About seven thousand of us passed: four thousand were sent to government and subsidized schools, the other three thousand to private and grant-in-aid schools. I came in around no. 2000; I was

lucky. Without the public exam, there would be no secondary school for So Tsi-fai. His future was sealed.

6 Looking at the report card with three red marks on it, his father was
furious. So Tsi-fai was the oldest son. There were three younger children. His
father was a vegetable farmer with a few plots of land in Wong Jukhang, by the
sea. His mother worked in a local factory. So Tsi-fai helped in the fields, cooked
for the family and washed his own clothes. ("Filthy, dirty boy!" gasped Mung Gu-
liang. "Grime behind the ears, black rims on the fingernails, dirty collar,
crumpled shirt. Why doesn't your mother iron your shirt?") Both his parents
were illiterate. So Tsi-fai was their biggest hope: He made it to the sixth grade.

7 Who woke him up for school every morning and had breakfast waiting for
him? Nobody. ("Time for school! Get up! Eat your rice!" Ma nagged and
screamed. The aroma of steamed rice and Chinese sausages spread all over the
house. "Drink your tea! Eat your oranges! Wash your face! And remember to
wash behind your ears!") And who helped So Tsi-fai do his homework? Nobody.
Did he have older brothers like mine who knew all about the arithmetic of
rowing a boat against the currents or with the currents, how to count the feet of
chickens and rabbits in the same cage, the present perfect continuous tense of
"to live" and the future perfect tense of "to succeed"? None. Nil. So Tsi-fai was a
lost cause.

8 I came first in both terms that year, the star pupil. So Tsi-fai was one of the
last in the class: he was lazy; he didn't care. Or did he?

9 When his father scolded him, So Tsi-fai left the house. When he showed up
again, late for supper, he announced, "I don't need any supper. I have drunk
enough insecticide." Just like another one of his practical jokes. The insecticide
was stored in the field for his father's vegetables. He was rushed to the hospital;
dead upon arrival.

10 "He gulped for a last breath and was gone," an uncle told us at the funeral.
"But his eyes wouldn't shut. So I said in his ear, 'You go now and rest in peace.'
And I smoothed my hand over his eyelids. His face was all purple."

11 His face was still purple when we saw him in his coffin. Eyes shut tight,
nostrils dilated and white as if fire and anger might shoot out, any minute.

12 In class that Monday morning, Sister Marie led us in prayer. "Let us pray
that God will forgive him for his sins." We said the Lord's Prayer and the Hail
Mary. We bowed our heads. I sat in my chair, frozen and dazed, thinking of the
deadly chill in the morgue, the smell of disinfectant, ether, and dead flesh.

13 "Bang!" went a gust of wind, forcing open a leaf of the double door leading
to the back balcony. "Flap, flap, flap." The door swung in the wind. We could see
the treetops by the hillside rustling to and fro against a pale blue sky. An
imperceptible presence had drifted in with the wind. The same careless walk
and shuffling feet, the same daredevil air—except that the eyes were lusterless,
dripping blood; the tongue hanging out, gasping for air. As usual, he was late.
But he had come back to claim his place.

14 "I died a tragic death," his voice said. "I have as much right as you to be
here. This is my seat." We heard him; we knew he was back.

15... So Tsi-fai: Standing in the corner for being late, for forgetting his
homework, for talking in class, for using foul language. So Tsi-fai; palm out­
stretched, chest sticking out, holding his breath: "Tat. Tat. Tat." Down came the
teacher's wooden ruler, twenty times on each hand. Never batting an eyelash:
then back to facing the wall in the corner by the door. So Tsi-fai: grimy shirt,
disheveled hair, defiant sneer. So Tsi-fai. Incorrigible, hopeless, and without
hope.

16 The girls in front gasped and shrank back in their chairs. Mung Gu-liang
went to the door, held the doorknob in one hand, poked her head out, and
peered into the empty balcony. Then, with a determined jerk, she pulled the
door shut. Quickly crossing herself, she returned to the teacher's desk. Her
black cross swung upon the front of her gray habit as she hurried across the
room. "Don't be' silly!" she scolded the frightened girls in the front row.

17 What really happened? After all these years, my mind is still haunted by this
scene. What happened to So Tsi-fai? What happened to me? What happened to all
of us that year in sixth grade, when we were green and young and ready to fling
our arms out for the world? All of a sudden, death claimed one of us and he was
gone.

18 Who arbitrates between life and death? Who decides which life is worth preserving and prospering, and which to nip in its bud? How did it happen that I, at ten, turned out to be the star pupil, the lucky one, while my friend, a peasant's son, was shoveled under the heap and lost forever? How could it happen that this world would close off a young boy's life at fourteen just because he was poor, undisciplined, and lacked the training and support to pass his exams? What really happened?

19 Today, twenty-three years later, So Tsi-fai's ghost still haunts me. "I died a tragic death. I have as much right as you to be here. This is my seat." The voice I heard twenty-three years ago in my sixth-grade classroom follows me in my dreams. Is there anything I can do to lay it to rest?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-21