In the summer of 1988, A Dong was released from prison. All he had was a ragged T-shirt and a photograph of his mother.
She had died of lung disease in the second year of his sentence. She couldn’t afford treatment. He knelt before her memorial all night. At dawn, he stood, tucked her photograph under his arm, and walked without looking back into a living hell. He hauled bricks, carried loads, and watched night-market stalls, living like a stray dog. Then he met Shen Xue at a hair salon.
Her hands were icy, like a block of ice that would never melt. She said they had been that way since she was a child. A Dong rasped, “I’ll warm them for you.” She laughed that he couldn’t even keep himself warm, but secretly fell for him. In the spring of 1990, A Dong made her a promise: “Wait for me three years. I’ll come back and marry you.”
Shen Xue didn’t cry. She took off the red scarf she had spent all winter knitting by hand and wrapped it around his neck. The stitches were full of little bloodstains from pricked fingers. “If you don’t come back in three years, I’ll marry someone else.” He went to Shenzhen, made his way to Guangzhou, and worked himself to the bone to earn money.
He was beaten, cheated, and tossed through one rise and fall after another. He made money, lost it, then made it again. He missed her so much he couldn’t sleep at night. He sent letter after letter, but none ever got through. He thought she had stopped waiting, thought she had married someone else. In the winter of 1993, he came roaring back to marry her, carrying thirty thousand yuan, a gold necklace, and a bright red wool coat.
But when he stood outside her home, the only words he heard were: “Shen Xue is dead.” The winter before, a factory machine had malfunctioned, and she had died. A Dong gripped the gold necklace until his palm bled, but not a single tear fell. He sat outside her door all night. At dawn, he set down the necklace and never returned to that little town. Every winter after that, he bought a red scarf and hung it on the wall. An entire wall, all of them for her...
