by Yu Hua
“Do they still bear a grudge?” he asked.
“No, they were very upset by the news.”
“I should have gone to see them long ago,” he said.
“I looked for you everywhere,” I said. “It just never occurred to me that you had taken the train there.”
“I boarded the train—” he muttered.
I smiled, thinking how we had been looking for each other in two separate worlds.
Once more he picked up his mournful refrain: “You’re here so soon.”
“Dad, I never thought I would find you here.”
“Every day here I was hoping to see you, but I didn’t want you to come so soon.”
“Dad, we’re together now.”
After a long parting, my father and I had run into each other again. Although we now had no body warmth and no breath, we were together once more. I removed my hand from the slender, bony fingers inside his old glove and carefully placed it on his bony shoulder. I very much wanted to say “Dad, come with me.” But I knew he loved to work, loved this waiting-room usher’s work, so I simply said, “Dad, I’ll often come visit you.”
I felt a smile appear on his skeletal face.
“Does your birth mother know?”
“Not yet, I don’t think.”
He gave a sigh. “They’ll find out before long.”
I said nothing more, and he said nothing either. The waiting room fell back into the quiet of remembrance. We treasured this moment of togetherness and in silence felt each other’s presence. I was conscious that he was gazing intently at the scars on my face. Li Qing had only restored my left eye, nose, and chin, without erasing the scars left there.
His hands, encased in those old white gloves, began to rub my shoulders. His skeletal fingers were trembling, and I felt his caress was designed to signal a reunion just as much as a final parting.
His fingers froze when they reached my black armband. He hung his head, sinking into a distant grief. He knew that after he left I had become a lonely orphan in that other world. He did not inquire what events had led to my arrival here, perhaps because he didn’t want to upset me, or perhaps because he didn’t want to upset himself. After a little while he told me softly that he wanted to wear the armband. This was genuinely his wish, I could tell, so I nodded and took it off and passed it to him. He removed his gloves, and ten trembling skeletal fingers received the armband. He placed it on his empty sleeve.
After he put the worn white gloves back on his skeletal hands, he raised his head to look at me, and I saw two tears fall from his empty eyes. Although he had arrived here before me, he still shed the tears that white-haired people shed for dark-haired ones.
On my way back, a young man hailed me. His left hand clutching his midriff, he was walking in haste but with a slight stoop, as though still recovering from a major illness. “Somebody told me that if I keep going in this direction I can see my girlfriend,” he said to me.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” I asked.
“The prettiest girl around.”
“What’s her name?”
“Her name’s Liu Mei. She’s also called Mouse Girl.”
“You must be Wu Chao,” I said. A fur hat now covered his unruly hair. It must have been a long time since he had dyed his hair, or cut it.
“How do you know that?”
“I recognize you.”
“Where have we met?”
“In the shelter.”
My reminder gradually cleared away the confusion on his face. “I do feel I’ve seen you somewhere.”
“Yes, in the shelter.”
Now he remembered, and the wisp of a smile appeared on his face. “That’s right, that’s where I saw you.”
I looked at the area on his waist that his left hand was clutching. “Is it still sore there?”
“Not anymore,” he said.
His hand left the spot, only to return to the same place out of habit soon after.
“We know you sold a kidney to buy a burial plot for Mouse Girl,” I said.
“We?” he looked at me in confusion.
“Me and the others over there.” I pointed up ahead.
“The others over there?”
“Those of us without graves.”
He nodded, seeming to have understood. “How do you know about me?” he asked.
“Xiao Qing came over, and he told us.”
“Xiao Qing’s here too?” he said. “When did he come?”
“It must be six days ago now,” I said. “He kept getting lost and didn’t get here until yesterday.”
“How did he come over?”
“A traffic accident—it happened in the thick fog.”
“I don’t know anything about fog,” he said, perplexed.
He couldn’t have known, I realized, recalling that Xiao Qing had said Wu Chao was lying in the underground bomb shelter the whole time.
“You were in the bomb shelter then,” I said.
He nodded, then asked, “How long have you been here?”
“This is my seventh day,” I said. “How about you?”
“It seems to me I just came over,” he replied.
“Today, in other words.” I realized that he and Mouse Girl had just missed each other.
“You must have seen Mouse Girl.” An expectant look appeared on his face.
“I did.” I nodded.
“Was she happy?”
“She was,” I said. “But when she realized you had sold a kidney to buy her a burial plot, she wept. She wept her heart out.”
“Is she still crying now?”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll be able to see her very soon.”
Joy appeared on his face like the shadow of a tree leaf.
“You won’t be able to see her,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “She has gone to rest.”
“She’s left for there already?”
The joyful shadow left his face, to be replaced by a shadow of grief.
“When did she leave?” he asked.
“Today,” I said. “Just as you were coming over, she left. You missed each other.”
He lowered his head and walked on, weeping silently. After walking some distance, he stopped weeping. “If I’d just come a day earlier,” he said sorrowfully, “that would have been perfect—I could have seen her then.”
“If you’d come a day earlier,” I said, “you would have seen a dazzling Mouse Girl.”
“She was always dazzling,” he said.
“She was all the more dazzling on the way to the place of rest,” I said. “She wore a long dress like a wedding dress, which trailed along the ground—”
“She doesn’t have such a long dress. I’ve never seen her in such a dress,” he said.
“It was a dress made from a pair of man’s pants,” I explained.
“I see. I heard that her jeans split—I read about it on the Internet,” he said mournfully. “She must have worn someone else’s pants.”
“Some kind person dressed her in them.”
We walked on in silence. The empty plain was absolutely still, making us feel that our walking was simply walking in place.
“Was she happy?” he asked me. “Was she happy as she went off in her long dress?”
“She was happy,” I said. “She was happy that you had bought her a burial plot and that before the winter was out she could go to rest, taking her beauty with her. We told her she looked like a bride going off to her wedding. When she heard this she cried.”
“Why did she cry?” he asked.
“She thought of how she wasn’t going off to marry you, but going to rest at her burial spot. That’s what made her cry.”
Wu Chao was distressed. As he walked on, he rubbed his eyes with both hands.
“I shouldn’t have deceived her,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to fob off a fake iPhone on her. She was so keen to have an iPhone and would talk about this every day. She knew I was broke and couldn�
��t afford a real iPhone—it was all just fantasy talk. I shouldn’t have tried to fool her with a fake. I understand why she wanted to take her own life—it wasn’t that I’d bought her a knockoff, but that I hadn’t come clean with her.”
He lowered his hands. “If I’d said to her that this is a knockoff, because it’s all I can afford, she would have been pleased, she would have thrown herself into my arms and hugged me, knowing I’d done everything I could.
“She was so good to me, staying with me for three years, three years of hardship. Being poor made us quarrel. Often I lost my temper, cursing her or beating her. I feel terrible when I think about it, for I should never have lost control like that. No matter how poor or hard our life was, she never once mentioned leaving me—it was only when I was mean to her that she wept and threatened to leave me, but after crying she still stayed on.
“She had a girlfriend who was an escort at a nightclub, turning tricks every night, and the girlfriend could make tens of thousands a month, so Mouse Girl wanted to work at the nightclub too, because if she just did that for a few years she’d make enough money to go back home with me and build a house and get married—marrying me was her greatest wish, she said. I said no, I wouldn’t tolerate other men touching her, and I beat her, beat her that time till her face swelled up and she wept and screamed that she was going to leave me. But she woke up the next morning and hugged me and said sorry to me over and over again, saying she would never let another man put his hand on her, even if I died she wouldn’t let another man touch her, she would live as a widow. We’re not married yet, I said, and if I die you don’t count as a widow. She said that’s crap, if you die I’m your widow.
“Last winter was even colder than this one, and after we moved into the bomb shelter we’d spent all the money we had and had yet to find new work, so we lay for a day in bed and just drank some hot water, hot water she’d got from a neighbor. In the evening we were so hungry it was driving us mad, and she got out of bed and got dressed and said she was going out to beg for some food. How are you going to do that? I asked. Stand in the street and beg, she said. I said no, that’s begging. She said if you don’t want to, then just stay in bed, I’ll go and get something for you to eat. I wouldn’t let her leave. I’m not going to be a beggar, I said, and I’m not going to let you be one, either. We’re starving, she said, who gives a shit about being a beggar or not? She insisted, so I had no choice but to put on a jacket and follow her out of the bomb shelter.
“It was freezing that night and the wind was strong, gusting down our necks and chilling us to the bone. The two of us stood in the street and she would say to people as they came up, we haven’t eaten all day, can you give us a little money? Nobody paid us the slightest attention. We stood in the icy wind for over an hour, and she said, this is no way to beg, we need to wait outside the door of a restaurant. She took my hand and we walked past a brightly lit bakery, and she turned around and walked me back and told me to stand outside the door while she went in. Through the window I saw her say something to the girl behind the counter and the girl shook her head; then she went over to people sitting there eating baked goods and drinking hot drinks and said something to them, and they too shook their heads. I knew that they were refusing to give her bread. She came out of the shop as though nothing had happened, then took my hand and led me to the entrance of what looked like a very posh restaurant, and she said, let’s wait here: when the people inside have finished eating and come out with boxed leftovers, we can ask them to give us stuff. By this time I was both cold and hungry and could hardly stand up straight in the bitter wind, but she seemed to be neither cold nor hungry, standing there watching one group of diners after another as they emerged from the restaurant. None of them seemed to be carrying leftovers, and one car after another pulled over and took them away. The place was just too ritzy, and everyone who ate there had lots of money and none of them would have dreamt of taking their leftovers home.
“Later a guy who looked like a businessman was saying goodbye to some people who looked like officials, and then he stood at the door of the restaurant talking on the phone to his driver, so she went up to him and said, We haven’t eaten all day, but we’re not begging, we’re not asking for money, we’re just asking that you do us the kindness of going to the bakery next door and buying us a couple of loaves of bread. The man put away his phone and looked at her, saying, A girl as pretty as you can’t rustle up a couple of loaves of bread? You can’t eat your looks, she said. The guy laughed and said, It’s true you can’t eat your looks, but they’re intangible assets, at least. Intangible assets are empty, she said, but bread is real. Hey, the guy went, you’re smart as well as pretty, why don’t you come with me, I’ll feed you anything you like. She turned around and pointed at me, saying, I’m spoken for. The guy looked at me as if to say, that little down-and-out!
“The guy’s Mercedes came over and he opened the door and said to the driver, go over to the bakery and get four loaves of bread. The driver got out and trotted over to the bakery. The guy’s phone rang and he picked it up. His driver ran back with the bread, and as he talked on the phone the man said to the driver, Give it to them. The driver gave her the bag of bread, and she said, Thanks. The guy got into his Mercedes and the car drove off. Her hand reached into the bag and broke off a piece of freshly baked bread and popped it into my mouth, then she put the bag inside her jacket. Her ice-cold hand took my ice-cold hand and she said to me, ‘Let’s go back home to eat.’
“We returned to our underground home and she went over to a neighbor’s to ask for a cup of hot water. We sat on the bed and she had me first drink some hot water, before eating the bread—she was afraid I might choke. She was beaming with pleasure as though we had nothing more to worry about. As I was eating, I suddenly burst into tears, but I swallowed my tears as I swallowed the bread, saying to her, we’d still better separate, best not to keep suffering with me. She put down the loaf she was eating and tears spilled from her eyes. Don’t even dream of dumping me, she said, I plan to stick with you all my life—even if I die and become a ghost I will still stick with you.
“She was so pretty and was pursued by so many men, all of whom made better money than me, but she steeled herself to live in poverty with me. Sometimes she would complain, complain that she’d chosen the wrong guy, but that was just talk, and after she said it she would forget she was with the wrong guy.”
A smile appeared on Wu Chao’s face. We had already walked a long way and on all sides was still an empty plain; we were walking on in isolation. A sweet smile now appeared on Wu Chao’s face—he was talking about the scene when he first met Mouse Girl.
“When I saw Mouse Girl for the first time three years ago, she was washing hair in a salon. I just happened to pass by and casually glance into the salon, and I saw Mouse Girl standing by the door and greeting clients. She looked at me too, and my heart started pounding right there and then, for I’d never seen such a pretty girl before—when her eyes rested on me it was as though she was stealing my soul. I walked ahead some twenty yards but couldn’t go any farther. I hesitated for a long time, then walked back, to find her still standing at the door. When I gazed at her, she gave me another look, and that look was enough to make my heart jump. After passing, I hesitated once more, and when I walked back again, the girl at the door to welcome clients was not Mouse Girl anymore. Mouse Girl was inside washing someone’s hair. Through the window I saw her face in a mirror, and she saw me in the mirror and gave me the once-over.
“After four times back and forth in front of the salon, I summoned up the courage to go inside. The girl by the door thought I had come to get my hair cut and said, Welcome. I stammered out a question, Is the manager in? A man standing by the cash register said, I’m the manager. Do you need a hairwasher? I asked. Not just now, he said. But the salon opposite is looking for someone, you could try there.
“I walked out of the salon rather forlornly, not daring to look Mouse Girl in the
eyes. I walked for ages but simply couldn’t get her out of my mind. A couple of days later, I summoned up the courage to go in again and ask the manager if he needed a hairwasher. Again the manager suggested I try the salon opposite. In the month that followed I went back every week, and each time I felt that Mouse Girl was looking at me. The fourth time, as luck would have it, a male hairwasher had quit and I was able to fill his position. His work number had been 7, so now I was Number 7. Mouse Girl threw me a glance and her face twisted into a grin.
“On my first evening at the salon there weren’t many customers getting their hair done, so Mouse Girl sat in a chair flipping through a hairdressing magazine, occasionally raising her head and fluffing her hair in the mirror, as though contemplating different options. I sat down in the chair next to hers, and because I was nervous I was wheezing for breath, so Mouse Girl turned to me and said, ‘You got asthma?’ I hastily shook my head, and said no, I didn’t have asthma. ‘Your wheezing is scary,’ she said.
“I got more and more tense the longer I sat next to her, worried that my wheezing sounded like asthma, and I breathed carefully, as though holding my breath underwater. She kept flipping through the hairdressing magazine and experimenting with different hairstyles. Finally I summoned up the courage to ask, ‘What’s your name?’
“ ‘Number 3,’ she said, not even raising her head.
“Her tone was frosty, and I felt deflated. But a moment later she raised her head and looked at me with a smile. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
“ ‘Number 7,’ I said in a fluster.
“She chuckled. ‘What’s Number 7’s name?’ she asked.
“Only then did I remember my name. ‘Number 7 is called Wu Chao.’
“She closed her magazine. ‘Number 3 is called Liu Mei,’ she said.”
Wu Chao broke off his account and came to an abrupt halt as he gazed at the view before him. A look of awe appeared on his face, for now he saw for the first time the scene that had made such an impression on me—streams flowing, grass covering the ground, trees in luxuriant growth, with fruit hanging from their branches and heart-shaped leaves that fluttered to a heartbeat rhythm. And people—some fully fleshed, many just bones—were strolling at leisure, back and forth.
