by A. Yi
They stopped under an abandoned lime cave to smoke and saw three search-and-rescue dogs drag their handlers, dashing up the mountain.
10
At 9 a.m. on November 7, the sky was overcast, 50 people stood before Wallace. According to the previous night’s plan, they advanced toward Mount Qingshan’s major peak 1,841 meters above sea level. Once past Mount Heshang, light rain started falling to the dusty earth like dew pearls unintentionally dropping from leaves before growing denser needle upon needle. The mountain paths gradually got wet and slippery. Wallace looked at the yellow mud at the tip of his shoes, extremely anxious, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and shouted: Now all we have to do is race against time, the later it gets, the more damage the rain will do to the scene. Thinking again, he added: Be careful, be sure to use sticks and branches to look ahead.
But still there were people slipping into bushes.
At 1 p.m. a team member on his way up walked to the side of the path to pee. His front leg, brushing a bush, suddenly lost its footing, and he immediately fell backward. Not until he got up and prodded with a branch did he realize it was hollow underneath. He lifted a rock, threw it in and heard a rustle, then the sound was gone. Then from the bottom of the mountain came a clashing echo.
– I can’t climb any more, I nearly lost my life.
– Whoever wants to go down, go down now, Wallace said angrily to the walkie-talkie, then added: Brothers from outside, attention please, this year the city’s rain was significantly higher, vegetation grew very well, in addition to covering the paths, they also cover deep ditches and cliffs you can’t see, please do be careful. But panic like a virus had already spread. The peeing team member went down first, and his companions followed him down. Then those of unknown origin considered it and went down too. Those still climbing turned, saw so many people going down, thought the plan had changed, and followed them. Wallace, like a betrayed chief, went up alone for a while. Once the rain got heavier, he was forced to retreat.
Back in Qingshan Village, he watched his comrades pack, his face iron-gray, not a word was spoken. At that moment, an old woman walked up pushing a wheelchair, in the wheelchair sat an older woman, who was Ba Like’s mother. Ba Like’s mother gazed keenly at Wallace, wherever Wallace went, there her gaze fell. Wallace got flustered being watched and walked up to her. She, hand trembling, dug a plastic bag out of her bag, then from the plastic bag dug out some cash bundled by a rubber band.
– Chief, this is four hundred yuan I saved, two hundred for you, two hundred for your men.
– Grandma, please don’t.
A warm current went through Wallace’s spine. Then he said again: Grandma, please don’t.
11
At 9 a.m. on November 8, the rain, which had stopped the previous night, again started to fall constantly. The team members before Wallace again numbered 38. He turned, pointed at the main peak of Mount Qingshan shrouded in mist, said: That is the target, there will be no other target.
– He’s old, might not climb a mountain so high, a team member interrupted.
– No, you probably know someone once asked the English mountaineer Mallory, Why do you put so much effort into mountaineering?
Wallace turned again, pointed at the main peak 1,841 meters above the sea level, said: Because it’s there.
That day there were still people who slipped on the way, and there were people who discovered hidden cliffs with sticks, but there were no longer people backing down. Wallace walked and walked, several times seemed to see Ba Like run out of the curtain of rain. Upon closer inspection, it was just the white rain gleaming. He couldn’t tell if it was hope or despair. Hungry, he leaned against a tree root, gobbled down some bread. He picked up the walkie-talkie and said: One day a mosquito and a mantis secretly watched a woman take a shower. The mosquito said proudly, Look, 10 years ago I gave her two bites on the chest, now they’re swollen so big. The mantis wasn’t impressed.
– Why wasn’t mantis impressed? came a few noisy responses on the walkie-talkie.
– The mantis said, That’s nothing, 10 years ago I made a slice between her legs, it still bleeds every month.
At 3 p.m. the signal of the walkie-talkie got weak, but after intermittent clacks a piece of accurate information came: Incomplete shoeprint found.
– You’re sure it wasn’t left by one of us?
– No, this is a pair of walking shoes, the back is printed with four letters, I’ll spell it to you, A-N-T-A.
– ANTA, Wallace said.
The shoeprint they found only had a rear sole. A person on the scene took a photo with their mobile phone, walked to a slope, found service, and sent it back to the station at the bottom of the mountain. The station then contacted a netizen in the rear, the netizen then contacted Ba Like’s woman. Ba Like’s woman found the box for that pair of shoes, fed the shoe style and size back to the netizen. The netizen, based on the information, looked online for a picture of the shoe sole, and sent the picture to the station. People at the station compared the two pictures. The grain, the size, the hollows, completely matched.
– So the footprint points in the direction Ba Like went. He went toward the mountain peak, Wallace said excitedly.
But the endless rain suddenly poured down. In addition, the sky was getting dark very quickly, the visibility was very low. People could only leave sufficient marks where the shoeprint was found and hurry down the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain, many journalists had come. A villager said: There are people getting to the top of Mount Everest, but the road to the top of Mount Qingshan is rough, for years nobody got up there.
12
At 9 a.m. on November 9, the rain continued. Before Wallace stood 197 people. He said: Now manpower is everything, we will collaborate with the fire department. But the bad environment forced the dragnet-style search to end when it was only halfway done, and there seemed no way forward. Wallace came back, got online, saw Ba Like’s former students praying. Words like ‘friendly’, ‘smiled all the time’, and ‘optimistic’ were repeatedly used. He was moved. Then he saw another say Ba Like was funny in class, and back then, to have more of his class, they talked about failing it together. Wallace thought, Is that possible? Then he wondered whether if he died he would die missed like this by others.
13
At 9 a.m. on November 10, the weather cleared up. White clouds hung over Mount Qingshan, Mount Qingshan leaned against the vast blue sky. Before Wallace stood four hundred-some team members, volunteers, and journalists. He waved his hand, called out: What is a human being’s limit? Some say seven days, some say forty-nine days, some say eighty-one days. We believe it’s seven days. Today is the last day, see him if he’s alive, see the body if he’s dead.
Team members got to the area searched the day before, used machetes to chop brambles and branches, proceeding slowly. Frustrated and desperate, Wallace saw, with the telescope, a long, narrow paper slip hanging from a branch in the other direction. He wandered over, saw the slip had been torn manually, its small, sharp side pointing in a direction. On the paper were two red, Song-style characters: affiliated primary.
– Come here, he called out. Very soon, Wallace saw the traces of a bush being chopped, then more and more traces turned up.
– Mister Ba is a smart man, he chose to clear a path through the weak point of the mountain.
Wallace ordered everyone to clear ahead, make it wide. Another paper slip appeared. Then another. More and more paper slips, like torches, blazed ahead, blazed all the way to an open grassy slope. Near the grassy slope there was a tree, under the tree was stacked hay, on the hay was a paper slip wrapped in a plastic bag. The slip read: Ba Like from the Affiliated Primary School of the Normal College climbed here on November 3, exhausted, lost. Will stay here one night, plan to go down the mountain tomorrow in the direction pointed by the slip at the crossroads, thank you helpers. Wallace read it out loud
, hot tears filled his eyes. Looking closer, by the haystack were leftover wild hawthorn berry pits, human excrement, and crumpled toilet paper. Wallace shouted: Not an average man, you can see he still knew to wipe his ass, the characters he wrote are bold and powerful. They continued looking, then around the grassy slope saw four hard-to-see paths. The one to the north had the last paper slip.
– My God, he went in that direction.
Wallace dropped to his knees facing north. There, mountain joined mountain for dozens of kilometers.
14
At 10 a.m. on November 11, Wallace stood on the police car’s running board, took the police loudspeaker. Before his eyes was one head after another, nearly two thousand heads. The two thousand heads like breaking waves came pouring in row after row, pouring in then finally landing. At the entrance to the village there were still many cars busy backing out. At the intersection there were still many cars driving slowly onto the dirt road. Because too many people came, on the usually deserted Xiangqing Road, several rear-end accidents had happened since early morning. The jam lasted for an hour. Wallace looked down at the pairs of eyes looking up, his blood boiling hot, almost unable to believe the voice in the loudspeaker was his.
– Move out, he shouted.
The huge search-and-rescue team, led by search-and-rescue dogs – mighty, dust-flying – drove through the roads, drove past Mount Heshang, drove to the main peak of Mount Qingshan, dispersed north at the grassy slope found before, and carried out a carpet search. Because the weather was sunny, some well-trained people started to use ropes and tools to go down some cliffs to search. At 2 p.m. Wallace’s mobile phone received a text: According to a technology company’s GSM positioning, Ba Like’s mobile phone briefly showed signal at 7 p.m., November 3, at the train station.
– What the hell is this?
Wallace looked at the crowd spreading all over the mountain, couldn’t believe it. He held the phone, walked around, finally got to a place with two signal bars, and called back.
– What the hell is this?
– They said that.
– Did they make a mistake, ask them again.
A few minutes later, a text was sent to his phone, with this line: They said, We are not responsible for potential tracking errors.
– What a shitty company.
Wallace seemed overwhelmed, sat on a rock to sort out his thoughts. Ba Like left a message Will stay here for one night, so the message was left around nightfall. He was at the grassy slope at the time. Only if he had wings could he fly to the train station. Even if Ba Like left the message in the afternoon, and was able to race to the train station in time, as a sensible person, he should have destroyed the call-for-help scene he’d set, so as not to mislead anyone. Besides, the paper slip clearly pointed north, but the train station was clearly in the south. Perhaps he remembered the date wrong, miswrote the fourth as the third, but that only meant that on the fourth he was on the grassy slope. He ran to the train station, then ran back up the mountain? Crazy.
He called Ba Like’s family. – Did Mister Ba come home?
– No. Something new on the mountain?
– No.
Wallace smoked a cigarette, watching one mountain touching the next mountain’s arm, the next mountain touching the next mountain’s arm, as they wound and stretched farther and farther.
– Do you still trust Mister Ba? he asked himself. Having asked, he looked at Ba Like’s picture in the newspaper. Ba Like was smiling kindly at him.
At 3:30 p.m., Wallace, advancing in a daze, suddenly smelled a strange smell. Smelled again then it was gone. He pinched his nose, took a rest, walked seven or eight meters in each direction, and finally located it accurately. It was a putrid smell. He used a branch to poke around, couldn’t see anything right away, called others to help poke, finally found a cliff under a spot thickly covered by branches and leaves. The smell floated right up from below.
As Wallace tied a rope around his waist, his heart raced. People staying above put him down. Halfway down, he looked, but only saw the white tips of rocks. After landing, he looked around, saw only empty stone walls. No ants, no maggots, no scavenging birds, nothing, but the smell was clearly there. Wallace dragged the rope, walked around anxiously. At last, amid the fog of putrid odor, he found a hidden crevice on a rock. Using a twig to poke aside grass and leaves by the crevice, he saw something that would humiliate him all his life: a hawk’s nest.
15
November 12: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 500.
November 13: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 400.
November 14: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 300.
November 13: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 200. The city’s TV station broadcast a feature program called In Search of Mister Ba, one chapter a day. At the beginning of each chapter a hand firmly gripping a postmark would stamp the date on the TV screen, stamping until it gripped the audience’s hearts. Wallace saw his expression in front of the camera was composed. Wallace said, There are only three scenarios for Mister Ba’s death: the first is starvation, but the fruit is out now on the mountain, Ba Like wouldn’t have just sat and waited to die; the second is he was eaten by a wolf, but searching so far we still haven’t seen bloodstains, we all know a fight between man and beast leaves a lot of bloodstains; the third is he fell from a cliff, but the main cliffs, bluffs, and deep ditches have all been visited and marked. Now we can only keep searching the remaining unexplored cliffs, bluffs, and deep ditches. This is the only way. Wallace smoked, watching his strange, bragging self on the screen.
November 16: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 100. In Search of Mister Ba was replayed by the narrative shows on CCTV and 15 satellite TV stations. As Wallace pulled the rope, a comrade handed him a phone, it was a Japanese TV station making a long-distance connection. He already had some experience, and understood procedure. Deep in the conversation, he suddenly heard a scream echoing through the valley: a nylon rope suddenly broke, a volunteer fell off a cliff. Wallace said quickly: We are very busy. Threw the phone to a comrade, and hurried over. At the bottom of the cliff an overly confident volunteer was stiffening his body, moaning, his pelvis broken. Professional firemen raced three hours to the rescue, sent the injured man to the hospital. Wallace took off his sunglasses on camera, revealing the tired redness around his eyes, and said: I don’t approve of unprofessional team members continuing to climb the mountain for search and rescue.
November 17: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 50. A comrade reported the news that withered female clothes were found in a new area, and not far off a male skeleton was found. Wallace was excited for a while, but the conclusion was clear: large-bodied Ba Like could be ruled out. Wallace dragged his legs home and turned on the TV. The TV was rerunning the interview with Ba Like’s mother, who was crying in front of the camera, saying, I’m 84 years old this year, you are all good young men, I could never pay back your kindness, you’ve had accidents, I don’t know how to thank you.
November 18: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 30. Wallace read a newspaper saying Ba Like’s woman, at her lawyer’s suggestion, went to the public security bureau to file a case, proposing ‘suspected foul play’. The reasons were twofold: 1) the body and female clothes found on the mountain did not rule out that a killer was hiding on the mountain; 2) the technology company’s positioning, which showed Ba Like’s mobile phone had appeared once at the train station, did not rule out that a killer fled there with the victim’s mobile phone. The public security bureau said they were considering accepting the proposal. Wallace thought maybe the women had lost heart.
November 19: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 20.
November 20: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 15.
November 21: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 10.
November 22: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 5.
November 23: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 3.
November 24: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 2.
November 25: the number of people doing search and rescue was down to 1. Wallace walked up the mountain alone. His body felt like firewood tied by a slip of paper that could scatter all over the ground at any moment. He said to himself, Just walk as far as possible. Walking to a slope, he glanced at the mountains, saw his own smallness, and planted a red flag. After the sky was completely dark, Wallace walked down the mountain alone. He bought a packet of cigarettes at a corner shop, smoked a few, then started the Japanese-made jeep. After getting on the paved road, Wallace stared at the ground flowing like a river, while his head tried to sort out the events of the past few days, but wherever he went, he got stuck, knew he was about to sleep, and slept. He slept for a long time, then was awakened by a bang, saw the car had hit a huge tree. He felt sharp pain in the ribs near his chest like he was dying. He wearily thought there wouldn’t be three hundred, five hundred, or one thousand people looking for him. He wasn’t the foundation of things, or, he wasn’t the fundamental thing.
November 26: Mount Qingshan was empty.
