A second high school classmate – whose identity remains a mystery to this day – once scrawled on the blackboard the words ‘In love,’ an expression we understood intuitively, although we had never once used it. As the news spread, students in the other three first-year classes rushed over to view the inflammatory graffiti, although they were careful to wear sternly censorious expressions and shout ‘Let’s catch the hooligan!’ as they approached the classroom. Once in front of the blackboard, they gawked in awestruck silence, unable to tear themselves away. I myself had never seen these two words together, for the phrase had long disappeared from popular usage, and to be suddenly confronted by it made the blood flow hot in my veins.

The two crudely written characters were allowed to remain on the blackboard for a good ten days, as incriminating evidence, because the school’s Revolutionary Committee needed to track down the hooligan who had written them. […] In the end nothing came of it, and the Revolutionary Committee chairman had personally to purge the crime scene of the offensive language. For me this came as a big blow, since I had got into the habit of stopping to admire ‘In love’ every time I went past, thereby slaking my thirst for romance. With its disappearance, even this vicarious satisfaction was impossible.