by Yu Hua
Mouse Girl’s boyfriend’s cell phone had its service suspended because money was owed on the account, so she couldn’t reach him directly, and all she could do was sit in an Internet cafe, calling him on her QQ space for five days in a row and demanding that he get his ass back right away. By the fifth day her boyfriend still had not responded, so she cursed him as a spineless coward, then announced that she wanted to die, and made public the time and place of her intended suicide: noon the next day, on one of the bridges over the river. But someone on the Internet urged her to think of some other way, since it was midwinter and the river was so cold it would be excruciatingly painful; she should find a warm place to commit suicide, for you need to be good to yourself even when taking your own life. She asked for suggestions, and this person recommended that she buy a couple of bottles of sleeping pills, swallow them all at one go, wrap herself in her comforter, and dream away happily until she died. Other commenters thought this a lousy idea, because her doctor would give her at most a dozen or so pills for each prescription, and if she wanted to get two full bottles’ worth she would need to postpone her suicide by a good six months. She was not going to delay her suicide, she declared; instead she had decided to throw herself off a building—the apartment building opposite her underground home. When she named the location, two residents asked her not to die just outside their front door, for this would bring them bad luck. One of them suggested she find a way to climb up onto the roof of the city government headquarters and jump off from there, arguing that this would really make a statement, but others ruled that out, since there were military policemen guarding the entrance to the city government headquarters and they would detain her as a suspected petitioner before she even got through the front door. She decided in the end to make her leap from the Pengfei Tower—at fifty-eight stories the tallest building in town. This time no netizen opposed her plan—indeed, some praised this as an excellent choice, saying that before dying she could enjoy the stunning view. The last line that she left in cyberspace was addressed to her boyfriend. “I hate you,” she said.
Mouse Girl killed herself in the afternoon. I happened to be at the Pengfei Tower just at that time, carrying my university diploma in my pocket, because I had learned that several companies handling English tutorial services were based in the Pengfei Tower, and I wanted to see if I could find a position as a tutor.
There was a huge crowd out in front. Police cars and ambulances were there too, and people had their mouths hanging open as they gazed up at the skyscraper. This was right after the first heavy snow of winter; the snow gleamed in the bright sunshine, under a blue sky. A tiny figure could be seen some thirty stories up, perched on a wall. Before long the glare of sunlight became uncomfortable, and I had to lower my gaze and rub my eyes. Others did the same, craning their necks and then lowering their heads and rubbing their eyes, before looking up once more. Amid a clamor of commentary, I heard that the girl had been standing there for over two hours.
“Why is she standing there?” someone asked.
“She’s going to jump off,” another said.
“Why does she want to do that?”
“She’s tired of living, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Hell, that’s not so hard to figure out, is it? So many people these days are tired of living.”
Petty tradesmen and street vendors arrived on the scene, squeezing in and out among the throng, flogging wallets and bags, necklaces, scarves and whatnot, all knockoff versions of name brands. Some were selling “happy oil.”
“What’s happy oil?” somebody asked.
“A quick rub and you’ll have a hard-on” was the reply. “Firm as iron, hard as steel, more virile than Viagra.”
Some were offering spying paraphernalia. “Do you want a bugging device?” they asked in a low voice.
“What would I do with one of those?” someone asked.
“You can check whether your wife has taken a lover.”
Another vendor was selling sunglasses. “Ten yuan a pair!” he shouted, and recited a little jingle for good measure: “You can see far, you can see high, no need to fear the sun in your eye.”
Some people bought sunglasses and put them on right away, so they could focus more intently on the tiny figure high up on the Pengfei Tower. I heard them say that they could see a policeman sticking his head out of a window next to the girl. He must be trying to talk her out of it, they said. A minute later, the spectators wearing the ten-yuan sunglasses began to shout: “The policeman is sticking his arm out!” “And the girl is sticking hers out, too!” “She must have changed her mind.” But almost immediately there was a uniform chorus of “Ah!” and then a sudden hush, and moments later I heard a heavy thump as the girl’s body hit the ground.
The last sight that Liu Mei left in that world was a spurt of blood from her mouth and ears. And the force of the impact split the legs of her jeans wide open.
“You can still call me Mouse Girl,” she said. “Were you there when I fell?”
I nodded.
“Someone said I was a terrible sight, with blood all over my face. Is that true?”
“Who said that?”
“Someone who came over later.”
I said nothing.
“Was I really that scary?”
I shook my head. “When I saw you, it was as though you were sleeping, meek and mild.”
“Did you see any blood?”
I hesitated, reluctant to mention it. “Your jeans split open,” I said.
She gasped with surprise. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“Who didn’t?”
“The man who came later, I mean.”
I nodded.
“My jeans split open,” she murmured. “In what way?”
“They split into strips.”
“What do you mean?”
I thought for a moment. “A bit like the strips of a cotton mop.”
She looked down at her pants, a pair of long, wide pants—men’s pants.
“Somebody has changed my pants,” she said.
“They don’t look like yours.”
“You’re right,” she said, “I don’t have any pants like this.”
“Some kind person must have done that for you,” I said.
She nodded. “How did you come over?” she asked.
I thought back to that last scene in the Tan Family Eatery. “I was eating noodles in a restaurant and reading a newspaper when the kitchen caught on fire. There was an explosion, and I don’t remember anything after that.”
“You’ll hear the rest of it from one of the later arrivals,” she said knowingly. “I didn’t really want to die,” she added. “I was just angry.”
“I know,” I replied. “When the policeman stretched out his hand, you stretched out yours.”
“You saw that?”
I didn’t, but the people with the ten-yuan sunglasses did. I nodded all the same, to confirm that I saw it.
“I’d been standing there a long time, and the wind was so strong and so cold, I maybe just got frozen stiff. I wanted to grab his hand, but my foot slipped—I might have stepped on some ice….There was saturation coverage in the papers, I’m told.”
“For three days,” I said. “No more than that.”
“That’s still a lot. What did the papers say?”
“They said your boyfriend gave you a knockoff iPhone, not a real one, and so you killed yourself.”
“That’s not right,” she said. “The thing was that he deceived me, claiming it was a real iPhone when it was a fake. If he hadn’t given me anything, I wouldn’t have got mad. I just couldn’t stand him lying to me. The papers are just making things up. What else did they say?”
“They said that after giving you the fake iPhone your boyfriend went back home to tend to his father.”
“Well, that was true.” She nodded. “But I didn’t kill myself over some fake merchandise.”
“The journal you had on your
QQ space was published in the papers too.”
She sighed. “I wrote that for him to read, and wrote it that way on purpose, because I wanted him to come back right away. I would have forgiven him if he had just apologized.”
“But instead you climbed to the top of the Pengfei Tower.”
“He never had the guts to respond to me. The only thing I could think of was to climb the Pengfei Tower. That would make him show up, I thought.”
She paused for a moment. “Did the papers say anything about him being upset when I died?”
I shook my head. “They had no news about him.”
“The policeman told me my boyfriend had rushed back and was down below, in an awful state.” She looked at me, perplexed. “That’s why I reached for the policeman’s hand.”
I hesitated for a moment. “He didn’t come, I don’t think. At least, none of the papers said he had.”
“So the policeman lied to me too.”
“He said that to save you.”
“I know.” She gave a little nod. “Did the papers mention him later?”
“No.”
“He kept his head down the whole time, the little creep,” she said bitterly.
“Maybe he never heard,” I said. “Perhaps he never went online and never saw what you wrote in your journal. He wouldn’t have seen our papers where he went.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “He can’t have known.”
“He must know now,” I said.
I walked with her a long way. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’d like to sit down on a chair.”
The open land on all sides created an enormous emptiness around us, and the sky and the earth were all we could see. There were no trees in the distance and no river flowing; we heard no rustle of breeze through the grass and no sound of footsteps.
“There are no chairs here,” I said.
“I’d like to sit down on a wooden chair,” she continued. “Not a concrete one or a metal one.”
“You can sit down on whatever kind of chair you like,” I said.
“I already have the chair in mind,” she said, “and I’m already sitting on it. It’s a wooden bench. You have a seat, too.”
“All right,” I said.
As we walked, we sat on the wooden bench that we had imagined. She seemed to be sitting at one end and I at the other, and I felt her looking at me.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I feel like leaning on your shoulder….Forget it, you’re not him. I can’t lean on your shoulder.”
“You can lean on the back of the bench,” I said.
As she walked, she leaned back. “I’m leaning against the back of the bench,” she said.
“Do you feel better now?”
“Yes, I do.”
We walked on in silence, and it seemed as though we were relaxing on a wooden bench.
A good deal of time seemed to pass, and in her imagination she rose from the bench and said, “Let’s go.”
I nodded, and together we left the bench of our imagination.
It seemed as though we were walking on at a more rapid pace.
“I’ve been looking for him all this time,” she said morosely. “But I can’t find him anywhere. By now he should know what happened to me. He won’t be lying low any more, surely. He must be looking for me.”
“The two of you are separated now,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s there and you’re here.”
She bowed her head. “That’s true,” she said.
“He must feel terrible,” I said.
“He’s bound to,” she said. “He loved me so much, he must be looking for a burial plot for me now, so I can have a good resting place.”
Saying this, she gave a sigh. “He’s got no money,” she went on. “And his friends are just as poor as he is. How will he work up the money to buy me a burial plot?”
“He’ll think of something.”
“That’s true,” she said. “He’d do anything for me, and he’ll figure it out.”
A smile of relief appeared on her face, as though she had recovered a sweet memory from that departed world.
“He used to say I was the prettiest girl in town,” she murmured. “Is it true that I’m pretty?”
“You’re very pretty.” I was sincere.
She smiled happily, but then a vexed look crept over her face. “I’m worried,” she said. “Spring is coming, and then summer. My body will rot and then I’ll just be a bunch of bones.”
“He’ll get you a burial plot soon,” I reassured her. “That way you’ll have a resting place before spring arrives.”
“You’re right.” She nodded. “That’s what he’ll do.”
We walked on in silence, the silence of death. We said nothing more, because our memories made no further progress. Those memories of a departed world were of many colors, empty but also real. I felt the silent motion of the desolate young woman by my side and sighed over the heartache that other world had left her with.
Then it seemed we had reached the end of the open country. She came to a halt. “We’re here,” she said.
To my amazement I now saw another world, one where streams were flowing, where grass covered the ground, where trees were thick with leaves and loaded with fruit. The leaves were shaped like hearts, and when they shivered it was with the rhythm of hearts beating. I saw many people, some just bones, some still fleshed, walking back and forth.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“This is the land of the unburied.”
Two skeletons sitting on the ground playing chess blocked our path, as though a door were in our way. We stood in front of them as they argued, each accusing the other of trying to take back his move. The sounds of their quarrel continued to escalate, like flames that rise higher the more they leap.
“I’m not playing with you anymore!” the skeleton on the left said, making a gesture of tossing aside the pieces.
The skeleton to the right made an identical gesture. “Well, I’m not playing with you!”
Mouse Girl spoke up. “Stop quarreling, you two! You were both trying to change your moves.”
They stopped arguing and looked up at her, opening their empty mouths. That must mean they’re smiling, I thought. Then they noticed there was someone else next to Mouse Girl, and two pairs of empty eyes began to take stock of me.
“Is this your boyfriend?” the one on the left asked.
“Your boyfriend’s too old for you,” the one on the right said.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Mouse Girl. “He’s not old, either. He just got here.”
“I could tell that from the flesh on him,” the one on the right said.
“You must be in your fifties, right?” the one on the left said.
“Forty-one,” I answered.
“Impossible!” said the one on the right. “You must be at least fifty.”
“No, I really am forty-one,” I said.
“He knows our story, right?” Left Bones said to Right Bones.
“He ought to, if he’s that age,” Right Bones said.
“Do you know our story?” Left Bones asked.
“What story?”
“Our story over there.”
“There are lots of stories over there.”
“Yes, but ours is the most famous.”
“What story’s that?”
I waited for them to tell me their story, but they stopped talking and concentrated on their chess game instead. Mouse Girl and I took a step over the gap between them, as though we were stepping over a threshold.
Mouse Girl and I walked forward together. I looked around me as I went, and it felt as though the leaves were beckoning, the stones were smiling, the river was saying hello.
Skeletal people approached us from the river, from the grassy slopes, and from the woods. They nodded to us gently, and though they brushed past without stopping, I could see their attitude was friendly. Some greeted us warmly
, one asking if Mouse Girl had found her boyfriend, another asking if I had just arrived. It was as though their voices had meandered about before coming to my ears, bringing with them the moisture of the river, the freshness of the grass, and the swaying of the leaves.
Now once more we heard an argument erupt between the chess players. It exploded in the air like a firecracker, but it sounded empty, like a quarrel and nothing more.
Mouse Girl told me they were both unreasonable when playing chess, constantly retracting their moves as they played, then getting into a row. Over and over again they would vow to abandon the game, go off to get cremated, go off to their respective graves, but neither of them had ever once stood up when saying this.
“They have burial places?”
“Yes, they both do,” Mouse Girl said.
“Why don’t they go?”
All Mouse Girl knew was that they had been here for at least ten years. The one surnamed Zhang had been a policeman. He wouldn’t get cremated, and wouldn’t go to his burial place, because he was waiting for his parents over there to secure the title of “martyr” for him. The other one, surnamed Li, wouldn’t get cremated or be buried either, because he wanted to keep Zhang company. Li said that once Zhang got approved to be a martyr, then the two of them together—close as brothers, since they were—would proceed to the crematorium oven and each would move on to his own resting place.
“I heard that one of them killed the other,” Mouse Girl said.
“I know their story,” I said.
More than ten years earlier, after my birth parents arrived from that northern city to claim me and the tale of “the boy a train gave birth to” had come to a satisfying conclusion, another story had begun. During “Operation Thunderclap,” a police-led crackdown on vice in my city, one of the prostitutes caught in the net proved to be a man. Surnamed Li, he had dressed up as a woman to troll for customers.
A young policeman named Zhang Gang, just graduated from police academy, took part in “Operation Thunderclap”; he conducted the questioning the night when Li was brought in. Li showed not the slightest remorse over either his cross-dressing or his flesh-peddling and even showed a fulsome pride in his ingenious technique. According to him, he was a past master at handling those clients of his, and if the police hadn’t caught him not a single john would ever have discovered that he was a man. Unfortunately, he had focused too much of his energy on attending to his clients and not taken enough steps to guard against the police. That was how he ended up tumbling into the sewer, he said.
