by Yu Hua
“What about you?” I asked. “You don’t need an armband?”
“I’ve got family over there,” he said. “But they’ve maybe forgotten me.”
He went through the motions of picking up the bottle and refilling his glass, indicating through the movement that it was his last glass, and once more he made the gesture of swallowing the contents in one draft.
“That’s good stuff,” he said.
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
“Rice wine.”
“What brand?”
“I don’t know.”
I smiled. “How long have you been here?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“It has to be a long time, then.”
“Too long.”
“You must have seen a lot during your time here, so there’s something I’d like to ask you.” I shared with him a thought that had suddenly occurred to me. “How do I get the feeling that after death there’s actually eternal life?”
He looked at me with his empty eyes but said nothing.
“Why is it that after death one needs to go to the place of rest?”
He seemed to smile. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand why you need to bake yourself into a little box of ashes.”
“That’s the custom,” he said.
“If you have a grave, you have a resting place, and if you don’t have a grave, you gain eternal life—which do you think is better?”
“I don’t know,” he said once more.
Then he turned his head and called, “Waitress, the check.”
A skeleton waitress walked over. “Fifty yuan.”
He made a gesture of placing fifty yuan on the table, then got to his feet, nodding to me. “Young fellow, don’t think so much,” he murmured as he left.
I looked at his loose black clothes and his skeletal arms, and couldn’t help but think of a beetle. His silhouette gradually got smaller until it disappeared among the other skeletons.
Tan Jiaxin’s son-in-law came over, making the motion of holding a bowl of noodles in both hands, followed by the motion of giving it to me, and my hands made the gestures of accepting it from him.
When I made the gesture of placing the bowl of noodles on the ground, it felt as though I were placing it on a table. Then my left hand made the gesture of holding the bowl and my right hand made the gesture of holding chopsticks. I completed the motion of taking a mouthful of noodles and my mouth began the motion of tasting them. To me they tasted the same as noodles in the departed world.
I became aware that all around me was laughter and good cheer, as people tucked into their meals and exchanged toasts, at the same time gleefully mocking those defective food items so pervasive in the departed world: tainted rice, tainted milk formula, tainted buns, fake eggs, leather milk, plaster noodles, chemical hot pot, fecal tofu, ersatz chili powder, recycled cooking oil.
Amid hoots of laughter, they sang the praises of the dishes here, and I heard words such as “fresh,” “delicious,” and “healthy” being bandied about.
“There are only two places we know where food is safe,” someone said.
“Which two places?”
“Here is one.”
“What about the other?”
“The state banquets over there.”
“Well said,” someone chuckled. “We’re enjoying the same treatment as those top leaders.”
As I smiled I noticed that I was no longer making the motion of eating noodles and realized that I had finished.
“Check, please!” someone next to me called.
A skeletal waitress came over. “Eighty-seven yuan,” she said.
“Here’s a hundred.”
“Thirteen yuan change,” the waitress said.
“Thanks,” the diner said.
Paying the bill was simply an exchange of words, with no action involved. At this point Tan Jiaxin came limping over, making the gesture of holding a dish in his palm. I knew he was giving me a fruit plate, so I made the gesture of taking it from him. He sat down opposite me. “Fresh fruit, just picked,” he said.
I began the motion of eating fruit and tasted sweet, delicious flavors. “The Tan Family Eatery didn’t need long to get going,” I said.
“There’s no public security bureau, fire department, or sanitation, commerce, or tax department here,” he said. “To open a restaurant over there, the fire department will hold things back for a year or two, claiming that your restaurant poses a fire risk, and the sanitation department will delay things for a year or two on the grounds that your sanitation level is not up to standard. You have to give them money and gifts before they will grant you a permit.”
An uneasy look then crossed his face. “You’re not angry with us, are you?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“You were stuck in the room.”
I recalled the last scene in that world, of Tan Jiaxin gazing at me through the smoke and shouting to me.
“You seemed to be shouting,” I said.
“I was telling you to run.” He sighed. “We didn’t manage to hold anybody back, only you.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t that you held me back—I just didn’t leave.”
I didn’t tell him about the newspaper and the report on Li Qing’s suicide, for that would be too long a story. Maybe on some other occasion I would take him through it all, slowly.
Tan Jiaxin was still struggling with an uneasy conscience. He explained why, after the kitchen fire began, they had to block the front door and try to have the customers pay before leaving. The restaurant had been operating in the red for three years in a row.
“I must have been crazy,” he said. “I ruined myself, I ruined my family, and I ruined you.”
“Coming here is not so bad,” I said. “My dad’s here too.”
“Your dad’s here?” Tan Jiaxin was pleased. “Why didn’t you come together?”
“I haven’t found him yet,” I said. “But I have the feeling he’s not far away.”
“Once you find him, be sure to bring him here,” Tan Jiaxin said.
“I’ll be sure to do that,” I said.
Tan Jiaxin sat down opposite me, no longer with a frown on his face but wreathed in smiles. As he got up to leave, he urged me once more to bring my father to taste their dishes.
Then I settled my bill. A skeletal girl came over—a new hire, I assumed. “The noodles are eleven yuan,” she said. “The fruit is complimentary.”
“Here’s twenty,” I said.
“Here’s your change,” she said.
Again, an exchange of words was all that was involved. As I turned to leave, this skeletal girl called to me warmly, “Good to see you! Please come again!”
In front of a verdant bamboo grove, a skeleton wearing a black armband came over to me. I noticed a little hole in his forehead and realized that I’d seen him before. I smiled at him and he smiled too. His smile was not a mobile expression of feeling as much as a light breeze wafting from his vacant eyes and empty mouth.
“There’s a bonfire over there,” he said. “See, over there.”
I looked into the far distance, in the direction of his outstretched finger. A broad meadow spread almost as far as the eye could see, and where the meadow ended there was something bright and glistening, like a silk sash—it looked to me like a river. A green fire was blazing far off in the distance, like the little flame that burns when one flicks on a cigarette lighter. Skeletal people were coming down the hillside and out of the woods, and I could see a number of little groups heading toward the fire.
“How about we go over and join them?” he suggested.
“What’s going on there?” I asked.
“There’s a bonfire by the river,” he said.
“Do they often go there?”
“Not often, but every now and then.”
“Everyone here goes?”
“No.” He glanced at my armband and pointed at his own. �
��Just people like us.”
I understood now. Over there was where self-mourners would congregate. I nodded and followed him toward the bonfire and the silk-sash river. The grass whispered as we wended our way.
I looked at his black armband. “How do you come to be here?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said.
A note of remembrance appeared in his voice. “I’d been married a couple of years then. My wife had a mental illness, but I didn’t realize that before we married, because I had met her only three times. I did sense something a bit odd about her smile, and it made me feel a little uneasy. But my parents weren’t at all concerned, and her family circumstances were good, with a large dowry and twenty thousand yuan in the bank. The village where I’m from is very poor, and it’s parents who make decisions when it comes to choosing a marriage partner. With that kind of money you can build a two-story house. So my parents went ahead with the match, and it was only later that it became clear she was mentally disturbed.
“She wasn’t that terrible—she didn’t hit me or make a fuss—but she’d spend the whole day laughing at this and that and got absolutely nothing done. My parents regretted their decision and felt they’d let me down, but they wouldn’t let me get a divorce, saying that the house had already been built and it wouldn’t do to dump her after profiting from her wealth. I hadn’t been thinking of divorce, either, and preferred just to carry on as we were doing. She was gentle and quiet as mental cases go, sleeping peacefully at night like any normal person.
“One summer day she went off by herself—I don’t think she had any idea where she was going. I went out to look for her, and so did my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. We looked all over the place and made inquiries everywhere, but could find no trace of her. After three days of futile searching, we went to tell her family. They jumped to the conclusion that I must have murdered her, and they went to the local public security bureau to report their suspicions.
“Five days after she left home, a woman’s body floated to the surface of a pond a mile from our village. It being the height of summer, the corpse was already decomposed and unrecognizable. The police called me and my wife’s relatives in to try to make an identification, but none of us could be sure, at most simply noting a similarity in heights. The police said the drowning happened on the day she left home, and to me this suggested strongly that it must be my wife, and her family felt the same. She must have stumbled carelessly into the pond, I thought, for she wouldn’t have realized the danger of drowning. It upset me, for whatever else you say about it, we had been husband and wife for over two years.
“A couple of days later, the policemen came back to ask what I was doing the day my wife left. I’d gone into town that morning and it was evening when I got home and discovered she was gone. The police asked if anyone could testify that I had gone into town. I thought that over and said no. They took notes and left. Her family was convinced I had killed her and the police thought so too, so they arrested me.
“At the outset, my parents and my brother and his wife didn’t believe I killed her, but later, when I admitted I had, they were finally convinced. They were very upset and hated me for shaming them so much—they couldn’t raise their heads. That’s what our village is like: if there’s a murderer in the family, nobody dares to venture out of the house. When the court sentenced me to death not one of them was in attendance, and it was only her family who came. I don’t bear them any grudge. After I was arrested, they wanted to visit me but the police wouldn’t let them. They’re all honest, simple people, and they had no idea I was unjustly accused.
“I had no choice but to say I’d done it. The police strung me up and beat me, insisting I confess, beating me till I was shitting and pissing in my pants. My hands were tied tightly for two whole days and four of my fingers went black—I’d never be able to use them again, I was told. Later, they strung me up by my feet instead, with my head pointing down. When you get beaten that way, it’s not your body that hurts most, but your eyes. Tears are salty, and they can be as painful as a needle stabbing you in the eyes. I thought I’d be better off dead, so I admitted the crime.”
He paused for a moment. “You know why we have eyebrows?”
“Why?”
“To block sweat.”
I heard him chuckle as he smiled to himself.
He pointed at the back of his head, then at the round hole in his forehead. “The bullet came in the back, and this is where it came out.”
He looked down at his black armband. “When I got here, I noticed that some people were wearing armbands for themselves, and I wanted to do the same. I felt nobody back there would wear an armband for me—certainly nobody in my family. I saw someone with a long, loose black jacket. I asked him if he would mind tearing off a piece of sleeve for me. He understood what I had in mind, and complied. With a black armband I feel at ease.
“Someone who came over later filled me in on what happened subsequently. Six months after I was shot, my wife suddenly returned home. Her clothes were ragged and torn, and her face was so filthy nobody could recognize her. She stood outside the front door cackling happily away, and eventually someone put two and two together.
“Everyone finally realized that I had been wrongly convicted. My parents and my brother and sister-in-law all wept for two days straight, so upset were they. The government gave them compensation to the tune of five hundred thousand yuan, and they bought a fine grave for me—”
“You have a burial site?” I asked. “Why are you still here?”
“At first, when I heard the news, I took off my armband and tossed it under a tree, preparing to head there straightaway. But before I’d gone ten yards, I felt I couldn’t bear to leave here, so I went back and put the armband on again. Now I don’t feel like going.”
“You don’t want to go to the place of rest?”
“No, I do,” he said. “My thought at the time was that I have a burial spot all lined up, so there’s no big hurry—I can go there whenever I feel like it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Eight years now.”
“Is the burial plot still there?”
“Yes, it always has been.”
“When do you plan to go?”
“Sometime in the future.”
We walked to the gathering place of the self-mourners. Before my eyes there stretched a broad river—the gleaming scene had also broadened. A green bonfire was blazing vigorously on the riverbank, and the leaping sparks looked like dancing glowworms.
Already there were many skeletons wearing armbands sitting around the bonfire. I followed my companion into the throng, looking for a spot to sit. Some of those seated adjusted their positions, opening up several vacant spots. I stood there in a quandary, until I saw my new friend sitting down in a nearby spot; I sat down next to him. When I raised my head, I saw others approaching, some along the grassy hills, some along the riverbank; they were blending together the way quiet little streams spill into a wider flow.
The skeleton next to me gave a friendly greeting. “Hi there!”
“Hi there!” seemed to form a little soundwave, veering off, making a circuit around the bonfire, then returning to me before it subsided completely.
“Are they greeting me?” I whispered.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re a new arrival.”
I felt that I was a tree transplanted back to its native forest, a drop of water returning to the river, a mote of dust returning to the earth.
One by one the armband-wearing self-mourners sat down, and voices gradually reverted to quiescence. We sat around the bonfire, and in the spacious silence there quietly surged a thousand words and ten thousand comments—the sound of many humble lives presenting an account of themselves. Every one of the self-mourners had bitter memories, too painful to recall, of that departed world; every one was a lonely orphan there. Mourning ourselves, we gathered here, but when we sat in a circle
around the green bonfire, we were no longer lonely and abandoned.
There was no talking, no movement, just silent, understanding smiles. We sat in the silence, not with any goal in mind, just for the sensation that we were united, instead of being isolated individuals.
In the quiet circle of sitters I heard the dancing of the fire, the tapping of the water, the swaying of the grass, the soughing of the trees, the rustling of the breeze, the floating of the clouds.
These sounds seemed to be pouring out their woes, as though they too had suffered many reverses, ordeals too painful to recall. Then I heard snatches of a song reaching me, a song like that of the nightingale. I would hear a little burst of song, and then a pause, and then another burst of song….
I heard a sound like a whisper in my ear. “So, you’re here.”
When I walked toward this unfamiliar voice, it was like raindrops dripping from the eaves onto a windowsill, clear and light. I could tell that it was a woman’s voice, one that after enduring hardship and heartache had been reduced to twilight’s dim glow, but still retained a distinct rhythm, like a knock on the door—one, two, three. “So, you’re here.”
I was a bit confused. Was this greeting really directed at me? But there was a faraway intimacy—the kind of intimacy you find in the depths of memory—that made me feel this greeting was for me. It was followed by a song like that of the nightingale, rippling toward me, and then that tender greeting reached my ears once more.
I walked toward the warbling song, toward the call of “So, you’re here.”
I entered a copse of trees, and it seemed to me that the nightingale-like song was gliding down from the trees in front of me. As I came closer, I noticed that the tree leaves were getting bigger and bigger, and then I saw a line of tiny skeletal babies settled in the cradles formed by the spreading, swaying leaves, and the babies were rocking back and forth and singing a song that tugged at the heartstrings. I stretched out my fingers and counted them one by one, until I reached twenty-seven. This number made my heart quiver, and my memory at once caught up with that lost world, and I thought of those twenty-seven dead babies labeled “medical refuse” that were washed up on the riverbank.
