Chinese Literature

And this obligation added to his financial burden. He was the host every time he went out with Mr. Chang. He had come to the school with some four hundred dollars in his pocket. Now over a hundred were gone. Tf he went out with Old Pan he could save some money, for Old Pan insisted on paying for both of them.

“Tet me pay,” Old Pan always said. “You are harder up than I

am.” This Saturday evening, asking nobody to go with him, Mr. Li had one catty and a half of wine in a small restaurant all by himself. When he returned to the school, he went straight to his own room and bolted the door.

The light shed by the blue bulb mixed with the lemon colour of the walls to give the room a tint of pale green. Somewhere in the distance a night-watchman was beating his bamboo. Every stroke seemed to fall on Mr. Li’s heart. He fancied he could hear the watchman’s steps echoing from the long, dark lane. . .

As usual, Mr. Li lay down and smoked. Recently a few cups of wine ‘had been making him sensitive and irritable. He no longer reached that stage of elation he used to at home after drinking. Something was now gently prickling in him all the way-from his heart to his nose. He longed +9 roll on the ground, clutch something in his arms and cry till he would feel better.

Formerly he had made friends with only a few people who shared his interests. He had never helped anybody, and there had never been an occasion that made him ask others to help him. Loneliness, something that used to be unimaginable, now stabbed at him with excruciating pain.

“xcept for Old Pan who is a warm-hearted person and willing to lend a hand, I have no friend at all,” he muttered sadly. “I don’t get along well with other people.”

He became rather remorseful when he remembered how aloof and haughty his own attitude had been when he played the part of a “pure artist? But... oh, how could he foresee then that this war would preak out? Now, he and his family did not get along well even with their nearest relatives, his in-laws.

He got up, unlocked his small leather suitcase and took out the express letter he had received from his wife that day. Always the same remarks, the same complaints! She even warned him that she might get seriously ill if she had to stay with her family any longer.

Mr. Li bit his lower lip. His bloodshot eyes fixed on the window for a while. Then he crumpled up the letter into a ball and threw it on the floor with force.

“Why complain to me like this? As though I were to blame for all her troubles!”

The cigarette in his hand dropped to the floor. When he bent down to pick it up, he picked up the paper ball at the same time. He had con-

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