by Xu, Lei
Ordinarily one shouldn't smoke in forests, but right now I didn't care. I took two deep puffs of a cigarette. Immediately I felt a newfound energy rising from my lungs and filling my body. I sighed. No matter what worries I might have, standing beneath the blue sky was incredibly refreshing. I stared at the vastness of it, understanding why Wang Sichuan believed the sky was king of the gods. I truly felt as if I'd escaped hell and returned to the human world.
We set up camping on the mountainside. That first night we had only a soup of wild herbs to eat, the food just enough to allay our hunger. Then we crowded round the fire and, with our eyes on the starry sky overhead, gradually fell asleep. The next morning Wang Sichuan whittled several tree limbs into makeshift bulus and went hunting. He returned that night with several pheasants. We roasted the birds and ate well. After the third day, we began looking for the way out. To avoid getting lost, we had Old Tian stay behind and keep the campfire smoking. Each day we'd tromp through the forest and each night we'd follow the smoke back. After two days of searching, we found the old Japanese military outpost.
Waist-high weeds covered the ground. Long vines climbed the chain-link fences. The barrack roofs were so piled with leaves that they seemed about to collapse. There was not a soul in sight. Incredulous, I waded through the tall weeds and looked around. When our troops were stationed there the grass had been cut and the leaves swept from the rooftops. How had it gotten to this state? The camp could never have become this overgrown in only a few months' time. In fact, from the looks of things, no one had been here for 20 or so years. For an instant I wondered whether we'd arrived at the wrong camp.
"Why does it seem as if every sign of our presence has disappeared?" asked Wang Sichuan.
Unable to reply, I walked into one of the cabins. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Insects filled the cracks in the walls. This level of disuse was impossible to fake. It was like a dream. Or rather, it was like the moment after a dream, the moment you awake and discover that none of it was real. Had I been alone, I really would have believed I was dreaming. But Wang Sichuan and Old Tian were there and seeing the very same things. What the hell was going on? Had we truly all gone mad?
No one said a word. Quietly, Old Tian began to sob. Refusing to give up, Wang Sichuan dragged us along to inspect the rest of camp.
"The grass here probably just grows quicker than normal," he said.
But the more we looked, the stranger it all seemed. Not only was the camp in complete disrepair, even the plank road the engineering corps had built was gone. The trees they'd cut down all seemed to have grown back. At last we returned to the barracks. Wang Sichuan and I attempted to rest.
Old Tian just huddled in the corner, muttering to himself. "We've gone crazy, we've all gone crazy." Suddenly he laughed. "You two don't realize you've gone mad. You're incurable. But I know I have, so I can still be saved."
I sighed. Old Tian was a rigid thinker with a one-track mind. It was difficult for him to adapt. I wasn't sure what to do with him. He continued to laugh wildly and the atmosphere in the cabin grew even more uncomfortable. If things keep going like this, I said to myself, he won't be the only one losing his mind.
That was it. I wasn't thinking about this strangeness anymore. What we should really worry about was what we were supposed to do next. If we just couldn't find the rest of the troops, we'd still be able to locate their tire tracks and make our way out of the forest. But now, without any hint of where to go, we were stuck there, forced to figure everything out for ourselves. The route leading there had been kept secret from us. We had no idea where we were. If we were somewhere outside of China's borders, straying too far in the wrong direction could be dangerous.
No doubt about it. The situation was beginning to look grim.
CHAPTER
49
Strange Happenings
No matter what, our first order of business was to figure out where we were.
"Supposing we're somewhere in Mongolia," said Wang Sichuan, "then we need to be extremely careful not to wander into Soviet territory. But no matter what direction we walk in, it's going to be a very long way to any kind of civilization. And given how easy it is to get lost out here, I'd say our best bet is to hole up and think of a plan."
"We've all spent months in the wilderness," I said, thinking a long walk beneath the blue sky hardly seemed so bad. "If we keep walking south we're bound to get out of here. Time's not an issue."
"The issue," he replied, "is that you've been shot. We have no medication and the wound isn't going to get better on its own. Before long, the skin around the bullet will start to rot. We could dig it out, but if we're not careful the wound will become inflamed and things will only get worse. We also have nothing to eat. We're not going to get very far on empty stomachs."
"Then what are you thinking?" To me, he didn't appear all that worried.
"This camp is a long way from everywhere," said Wang Sichuan. "Look how tall and dense the trees are here. It's the same as far as the eye can see. That means it's been decades since any have been chopped down. We both know how long it took us to drive out here. Now, with you injured and Old Tian acting the way he is, we'd better just stay and recuperate for a while; no reason to rush things. We can burn damp logs while we wait. If any hunters or rangers are nearby, they'll see the smoke, assume there's a forest fire, and come running. At the same time we can hunt, dry fruit and stock up enough supplies for the journey."
I could see his point. Even though we'd all trekked through the wilderness for months at a time, we'd never been more than a three or four day's walk from the nearest supply point. We'd also had donkeys and mules to help carry our supplies. This time was completely different. Without a gun, we'd be forced to rely on Wang Sichuan to catch enough pheasants, rabbits and other game to keep us going. Hunting and walking was out of the question. We'd have to stop and wait for at least a half day whenever we needed food. And if Wang Sichuan got sick or injured, we'd be done for. When I first arrived at the 723 Project Headquarters, it had already been late fall. We'd waited at the lower camp for more than a month, by which time the weather had already turned cold. We then endured another couple of months in the depths of the cave. I figured it was now the spring of 1963. We still had time before it got cold again.
So we moved all our things from the mountainside into one of the cabins. That night Wang Sichuan burnt some plants and coated my wound with the ash. He attempted to swiftly extract the bullet from my chest. It didn't work. He spent almost half an hour digging it out with his belt prong. This hurt far worse than getting shot. It was a pain impossible to put into words.
The next day Wang Sichuan went hunting alone, but once my wound healed he started taking me along. Hunting with Wang Sichuan proved very interesting. While I didn't have a prayer of learning how to throw the bulu—a skill that required both natural talent and years of practice beginning at a young age—I was able to learn how to set a variety of traps. When we returned each night, we'd select some of our catch for dinner and smoked the rest. At that time of year, the northern woods were full of wild animals. Nearly every day we managed to come home with something. Before long our cabin rafters were packed with dried meat.
Old Tian remained at camp, pondering our predicament as he wandered the premises in search of clues. No matter how much he thought or how long he searched, he could make neither hide nor hair of what was going on. Frequently he would leap to his feet in the middle of the night, desperate to relate to us the most absurd theories. As time passed, he became more jumpy, more upset, and before long was spending his days drifting between confusion and relative sanity. Since he was unsuited to any job that required real thought, keeping watch over camp was the only productive thing he could do.
On several of our hunts, we passed an area that looked a lot like the place where we'd first dropped into the cave. Leaves covered the ground, far more than seemed possible in such a short time. We'd been told the entrance to the
cave had been discovered under a pile of leaves, but we were unable to find the mouth of that so-called Pit of Heaven. Even stranger was the marked change in temperature. It was beginning to grow very hot. Based on my calculations, we should still be in the midst of spring, but the blazing sun that rose each morning told me this was not the case. Wang Sichuan was just as confused.
The northern regions were not normally visited by four distinct seasons. Winter and spring are more or less the same and summer is often pleasantly cool. Then fall quickly turns chilly. By October the snow is already coming down. With the temperatures we were experiencing it seemed obvious that it was already the heart of summer; either that or the north was being visited by an unusually warm spring. Wang Sichuan started to believe we were somewhere near the Pacific and warm sea breezes were influencing the weather. And he was sure we'd miscalculated how much time had passed. A spring this warm was very rare in the north, he said. According to him it was already summer. Once the weather really turned hot, the vegetation would flourish and, given where we were, wolves would arrive. As we had no weapons, this would mean trouble.
After taking stock, we concluded our dried meat would last us more than a month on the road. Initially we'd hoped to save enough for two months, but we figured it was better to depart ahead of schedule, while the wolves were still in the grasslands. Then, two days before we planned to leave, a cold rain began to fall.
Once it started, the rain wouldn't stop. Day in and day out we could do nothing but sit in the cabin, waiting for the sky to clear while the ground outside turned to mud. Before long the cold, damp weather made me ill. Several times in my feverish state I imagined I was still trapped within the cave.
As the days passed our agitation gradually began to ease. The situation would have to improve, we told ourselves. Old Tian even managed to say a few wise words while in his right mind. The northern climate was generally dry, he told us. So once this rain was over (something he said would happen soon), there would be a long period of clear skies. Why brave the foul weather when we could wait it out indoors? Still, comfortable as we were, we prayed for the rain to stop. Everyday Wang Sichuan would stick his head out of the cabin to look at the color of the clouds, and every day he would say that in another week it would clear up. A week passed, and then another, while the rain kept right on falling. It seemed almost as if it were waiting for something.
Around midnight on the second day of the third week of rain, I was awoken by a strange noise. Something was knocking against the outside of the cabin. I froze, telling myself it had to be the wind, but as I listened closer I realized it was the sound of someone knocking at the door. I looked over.
Wang Sichuan and Old Tian were lying beside me. Cold sweat trickled down my back. We were deep in the forest. How could anyone be knocking at our door?
CHAPTER
50
Guests of the Forest
I waited in silence, sitting in the dark and listening to the sound. A moment later Wang Sichuan woke with a start.
"Who the hell went outside in the middle of the night?" he whispered.
"No one," I said, looking over at Old Tian. "All three of us are right here."
We both looked back at the door. At almost the same instant, three more knocks suddenly sounded. We looked at one another in disbelief.
"You think it's a black bear?" asked Wang Sichuan.
"Black bears are never so polite," I replied.
The knocks were low and gloomy and came in brief bursts, followed by short, almost hesitant, pauses. Wang Sichuan glanced over at me, then grabbed a still-burning log from the fire to use as a torch. Together we stepped to the door. Wang Sichuan cracked it open. The torchlight illuminated the darkness beyond. There was nothing. Looking closer, however, I saw two huge footprints in the mud. My heart skipped a beat. I was about to say something when Wang Sichuan stopped me. Holding his torch before him, he stepped outside. At once I saw them—mounds of mud standing in the pouring rain at the edge of the torchlight. There were over a dozen of them under a rain tarp.
I walked closer. The mounds were actually people covered head-to-toe in mud. One of the mounds suddenly called out, "Useless Wu, is that you?"
I froze. "Useless" was, unfortunately, one of my nicknames. I suspect that everyone surnamed Wu, no matter how dignified or imposing their given name, runs into this trouble sooner or later. (Translator’s note: Wu, Old Wu's surname, has many homophones. Among the most common is a wu that means "without." By adding the word for "use" (yong) to the end of Wu's name, it becomes nearly indistinguishable from the Chinese for "useless.") If only Outlaws of the Marsh had been more popular in those years... (Translator’s note: Outlaws of the Marsh is one of the four great classical Chinese novels and features a story in which a man, surnamed Wu, defeats a tiger with his bare hands.)
Since my most recent promotion very few people had called me this nickname. I didn't know anyone in my new unit very well and my superiors were so busy they probably didn't even remember my real name. At once, all the rest of the mounds began to move, stepping out from beneath their rain tarp and quickly taking it apart. Their faces were caked with mud and nearly unrecognizable. Then I turned to the person who'd called my name. As I looked at her face, I felt all my thoughts come tumbling from my mind. It was Yuan Xile.
Although her face was covered with mud, I immediately noticed her bright eyes shining through. She wasn't crazy anymore, not at all. Smiling happily, she walked towards me. I was dumbfounded. Wang Sichuan's eyes went wide as he mouthed, "What the hell is going on?"
The rest of her troop approached as well, several of them leveling assault rifles at us. "It's okay," said Yuan Xile, "they're on our side."
Seeing the cabin behind us, her men were overjoyed. "Thank God," said one of them. "Finally someplace dry."
In a daze, I led the mud-caked soldiers inside, my eyes fixed on Yuan Xile the whole time. I could tell from the soldiers' equipment they were all part of the geological division. Although none of them looked familiar to me, when they saw Old Tian they were shocked. It was obvious he recognized them as well. This was all too much to handle.
After removing their outer garments, the soldiers huddled around the fire. Wang Sichuan gave me a quick glance while he fetched dried meat for our guests. He was obviously just as confused as I.
"What exactly are you three doing here?" asked one of the men.
My eyes went wide. It was Su Zhenhua, the special emissary we'd found raving mad, scurrying on all fours through the warehouse. He seemed to be in his right mind now, though. How had Yuan Xile and he recovered so thoroughly? What were they doing here now? Instead of responding, I pinched myself, hard, trying to see whether this was really all just a dream. I scanned the rest of their group. There was another man, the oldest in the group, now coughing discreetly. Yuan Xile handed him a towel. He wiped the mud from his face. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was an old expert, extremely famous and supposedly living in the Soviet Union, but I'd seen his corpse tangled in wire at the bottom of the sinkhole. And there was Old Cat inconspicuously smoking a cigarette, that familiar worldly expression on his weathered face.
"Mao Wuyue," I said Old Cat, unable to contain myself.
Surprised, he looked at me. "Who are you? Have we met before?"
Frowning, I studied his expression. I couldn't tell whether his confusion was real or fake, but at this point it no longer mattered. Had we run into only Yuan Xile and the special emissary, I could have come up with some other explanation, but now that I'd seen the old expert, I could no longer deny what was really going on. Sitting before me was the first prospecting team of the 723 Project.
***
Another team had explored the cave prior to our arrival. Yuan Xile had been its leader, Su Zhenhua its special emissary, and the old expert its skilled advisor. They and the rest of their nine-person team had encountered danger after danger within the cave, until all but three were dead. Old Cat alone had made it to the surface. Yuan
Xile and Su Zhenhua had remained below, both having lost their minds to mercury poisoning. But now every single member of this team was alive and well and sitting before us. Not only that, there were also far more of them than we'd been told. Had Old Cat lied to us?
From the looks of their equipment, they seemed ready to begin prospecting work in the area. They were probably searching for the cave. How was it possible for us to run into them here? We were this team's reinforcements. How were we meeting them now? I could think of only one explanation. Had we somehow traveled back in time to when this whole thing was just getting started?
I thought back on everything that had happened, how when we'd landed the plane—our runway gone, camp empty, and all our equipment vanished—there remained not a single sign of our presence at the abandoned Japanese camp. Had something happened to us while we were flying through the abyss? Was this even possible? If it was, then how had we done it? I had no idea. I knew only that at this point, if our two choices were having either lost our minds or traveled back in time, then I was sticking with Old Tian. Madness remained much easier to swallow.
