Vessel

by Chongda Cai

  Wenzhan’s mother told the kids who knocked at the door, “Wenzhan doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to spend all day talking to you. He wants to be alone. He’s working on something big.”

  Even if there was nobody else he could talk to, I figured he might still think I was worth his time.

  When all the neighborhood kids gave up on Wenzhan, I went and knocked at his door. I didn’t want to ask him about life in Fuzhou. I felt like something unusual was happening with him, and I wanted to know what it was. I thought maybe he had fallen sick with the same illness that once kept me in my bed.

  Wenzhan was still willing to see me, unlike the other kids. He tried to dominate the conversation, but he seemed out of breath. A skinny teenager panting as he talked, he seemed to me to be holding back something big.

  I planned out the conversation in advance. I decided I would ask him for advice, since I knew that would put him at ease. I tried to make conversation about my own high school entrance exam, which was coming up next year, and the trials I was going through as I prepared to take it. I told him that my parents wanted me to go to a teacher training vocational school and get a job teaching elementary school. My parents told me that it would be a “simple, comfortable life.” All I wanted to do was go to high school, then on to university, so that I could experience life beyond our small town.

  Just as I had planned, Wenzhan took the bait and started giving me suggestions. He warned me to stay away from teacher training. “A small town like this sucks the life out of you,” he said. He thought it would be better for me to aim for university and start preparing for life beyond the small town. “When you move to the city, you’ll realize how low and coarse the people here are. You’ll end up hating this place. This is where you were raised, but all it does is drag you down.” He spoke very seriously.

  I never worked up the nerve to ask him about his trouble in Fuzhou. I was going to ask how to deal with people making fun of you. To tell you the truth, from that day on, I made a clean break with Wenzhan. He was like a drowning man, and I was worried that if I got too close to him, he would pull me under with him.

  When winter vacation came around again, I went to the ceremony to hear the men reading in their solemn tone the list of students with hopeful futures. As they always did, they read off the names of all the students who had tested into high school or vocational schools and presented them with awards. Wenzhan’s name had been written on a banner that hung on the doorway to the hall. He never showed up, though.

  Once again, people were nervous and curious about Wenzhan, but I didn’t bother stopping by to see him. Whatever was going on with him, whether it was the same illness that had laid me low before or something else, I was worried that it might be contagious.

  I was worried that, like Wenzhan, I would grow to hate the place that had formed me and resent the people who had raised me.

  He left later that year, but I wasn’t sure where he was going. When summer vacation came around again, he still hadn’t returned, but I didn’t even notice. Even if we had grown up only a couple of houses apart, we were already living in different worlds.

  When I saw his mother, she told me, “Wenzhan told me he wants to stay in the city. That’s what he’s working on doing. He told me he hopes he never has to come back here.”

  It’s sometimes the case that the more you try to reject someone or someplace, the tighter and more inextricably you become perversely bound to it. You fight so hard to escape what it is you resent and are disgusted by, you find yourself exhausted, sinking even deeper into it. I was trying to understand what drove Wenzhan. I tried to imagine what kind of life he led in the city.

  By my third year of high school, Wenzhan was still completely absent from my life. When I was choosing possible schools ahead of my university entrance exam, I decided I wanted to see Wenzhan again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. I thought maybe he represented the type of person who came from a small town like ours. Maybe there was something pure about his ambition. Maybe I carried the same thing with me, too. Maybe I had a part of what drove Wenzhan.

  Wenzhan stayed away from our small town. He called once a year, when everyone was celebrating the New Year. All he had to tell his parents was that he was chasing his dreams. His parents still expected him to someday return home triumphantly. Meanwhile, Wenzhan’s older brother was “idle,” as Wenzhan might say. He lived off his parents for a while, then got married young. He was married before his twentieth birthday and had a kid of his own shortly afterward. He was one of the “useless fathers” that Wenzhan hated, but he made a comfortable life for himself in our hometown.

  When I went off to university and started my “life in the city,” I met plenty of people who reminded me of Wenzhan. They would talk about their plans for the future, too. Their early academic success had given them confidence, and they expected to rocket out of elementary and middle school into a bright future. I could always detect the faint traces of rural upbringing on them, as if the aroma of their native soil clung to them. They were never as sophisticated as their city cousins, but they were honest and straightforward. That meant nobody ever noticed how ambitious and shrewd they were—just as ambitious and shrewd as anyone raised in the big city. After I got to the city, many of my friends fell in that category. I treated them like a local delicacy added to a big city banquet. We made friends, but I knew I wasn’t quite like them. I wasn’t the type of person who could see the big picture. I preferred to take things as they came, incrementally working toward a better life. I didn’t want to transform my life, but instead slowly, piece by piece, turn it into a life worth living.

  Those Wenzhan types, whenever they got excited, started to unconsciously raise their voices until they were almost shouting. Wenzhan had been the same. They reminded me of my childhood friend with his cleft lip. When I was swallowed up in a crowd in the big city, I often found myself suddenly wondering how Wenzhan was getting by.

  After university, I got a job as a reporter. I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than being given the job of discovering what made individuals special. The higher I climbed in the profession, the bigger the platform I had, and the more freedom I had to meet people. I became completely swept up in it all and, without really meaning to, ended up in Beijing.

  When people are left alone, they go back to being what they have always been. When I settled in Beijing, the first thing I did was to go out to Jingshan Park and buy a ticket to go up the hill that overlooks the city. As I made my way to the top, I tried to imagine what Wenzhan would have been thinking if he were here in my place. Maybe he would be imagining himself as the conquering hero, the city spread out below him just as his future was. I was more ambivalent: I knew I would enjoy having a bigger platform at a job in Beijing, but I wondered if I would get any real satisfaction out of life in the big city.

  When I got to the highest point in the park, I had the urge to call Wenzhan. I had gotten his number on my last trip home. His mother always made sure she came to see me during the New Year break to give me Wenzhan’s latest contact information. She said, “You should give him a call if you’ve got the time.” I knew Wenzhan’s mother was worried about her son, even though she wouldn’t voice her concerns. I think she thought if she said it out loud, it might just manifest her darkest fears.

  The call went through. Wenzhan answered: “Talk to me, brother! Who’s there?” I noticed that the speech impediment from his cleft lip seemed to be gone. He seemed to have overcome his disability again.

  I was on the verge of speaking, but something made me hang up instead. There was something about the way he answered that put me off. He sounded like some oily businessman. I didn’t know what to say to the new Wenzhan.

  Maybe he knew that I had asked his mother about him, or maybe he just guessed it was me calling, but a week after the aborted phone call, I got a letter from Wenzhan, sent to the address I had put on my blog.

  He enthusiastically praised what he called my “ac
complishments.” He went on to write, “You’re the only one of us from back home who ended up in Beijing. I hear you’re working for a big company, too.” He mentioned that he had seen some of my articles and offered his own critique. He told me he was preparing for a major project that would finally show everyone who had ever looked down on him. When he had finished this latest project, he would finally be able to hold his head high.

  I thought for a long time about what to say and finally wrote, “Nobody looks down on you. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen you at all. You should go back for the New Year break. We can get everyone together again, just like the old days.”

  Until I left to work in the city, I didn’t realize how much I would miss my hometown. After I got settled in Beijing and had the financial wherewithal, I tried to get as much time off work as I could so that I could go back to my hometown for the New Year holiday and other local festivals. The road by my house had already been paved a few times since I had left. The old neighborhood had changed countless times; it was no longer a uniform cityscape of stone and brick. My own house had been renovated and now stood at four stories. I stayed on the top floor, and I could see Wenzhan’s room from the balcony. Over the years, Wenzhan’s house had stayed the same. On those trips home, I often sat at my desk and looked over at the house and Wenzhan’s darkened room.

  Wenzhan didn’t reply to my letter. He didn’t return home for the New Year holiday. I didn’t expect him to contact me again either. But I decided to reconnect with some of my other former playmates. I decided it would be a good idea to interview them.

  Some of them had already gotten married and had kids of their own. One of them told me about running a shop at the night market. A few others told me about working as fishermen, and they took a self-conscious step back, asking if I could smell it on them. One had opened a clothing factory and was making a decent living. He took me out for dinner and bragged about the age of the mao-tai he was forcing me to drink. He pulled me close to him and said passionately, “We’re still brothers, right? If you don’t look down on me for staying here, I won’t look down on you for being broke. Let’s have another drink, huh?”

  I realized that my proposal to Wenzhan to get the old gang back together was hopelessly naive. Everyone had moved on. They were leading their own lives, living in their own worlds. It was hard to get people from different walks of life together, even if they had once been friends. I knew the next time they would come back together would be many years from then, when old age had wiped out all the differences between them. When you’re old, it seems to wipe clean all other identities.

  Shortly after I got back to Beijing, my mother called to tell me that Wenzhan’s father had died of a stroke. “Wenzhan came back for the funeral,” she said, “and I didn’t even recognize him. He looked frail and his skin was so dark, his hair was falling out, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  A month after that, my mother called again to say that Wenzhan had gotten a job in our hometown. “His mother wanted him to stay,” my mother told me, “or that’s what I heard at least. She got him a job at the town broadcasting station. He’s going to be an electrician, but they’re going to let him edit some stuff, too.”

  When I heard Wenzhan was back for good, I started trying to come up with some excuse to head home. I knew I couldn’t tell my boss—or my mother either—that I was going home just to see a childhood friend.

  The more I scrambled for a reason to go home, the more hopeless I became. I ended up delaying the trip for a whole year, preparing to head back for the New Year holiday.

  The month before I was set to leave, I started to try to imagine what it would be like to see Wenzhan again. I tried to decide whether I would give him a polite handshake or pull him in for a hug, like we would have done back when we were still close friends.

  I knew it wouldn’t be easy, since it had been more than ten years since we had last seen each other. They say that all of the cells in your body are completely replaced every ten years, so that meant we were both basically new people.

  I left Beijing for my hometown as early as I could, but I didn’t go directly to see Wenzhan. The way I thought, we lived close enough together that I would eventually run into him. I thought that was a better idea than going up and knocking on his door.

  Just as I had expected, a few days after returning home, I caught sight of him coming up the alley. I figured he must be heading home. I called out, “Wenzhan!” I waved excitedly, and he looked up and seemed to see me, but he just kept going, turning into a smaller lane that led off the alley.

  I asked my mother what time Wenzhan got off work, then, saying I was going “out for a stroll,” went to stake out the alley. He appeared right on schedule, and we repeated the same procedure, me waving to him and him glancing up and then turning down the lane.

  I knew Wenzhan was avoiding me, but I wasn’t sure why.

  With the end of the holiday quickly approaching, I knew I would have to go knock on his door.

  His house was only about fifty or sixty feet from mine, a right turn and a short walk down the alley. His door was still the same; the sounds of my knuckles on it sounded the same, too. “Is Wenzhan home?” I called.

  “Who’s there?” Wenzhan’s mother said from the other side of the door.

  “It’s me. I came to see Wenzhan.”

  The door swung open. Wenzhan’s mother smiled warmly. “He’s in his room,” she said. “You can find your way.”

  Of course I could.

  Although I hadn’t been inside his house in more than a decade, it seemed as if nothing had changed. The house matched the blurry snapshot saved in my memory, but when I focused on the scene, I started to see that it wasn’t quite as I had remembered. It seemed smaller, I thought. The walls were mottled, too, everything seemed worn out, and there was a moldy smell in the air.

  When I got to Wenzhan’s bedroom, I found the door shut. I knocked and Wenzhan opened it.

  He was just as my mother had described: skinny, tanned dark, with his hair thinning. Something else had changed in him, though, something below the surface. . . . He was hunched over, and his eyes were slits, as if he was both weary and on his guard. His cold expression did not look like studied indifference but actual apathy.

  “It’s been a long time, Wenzhan,” I said. I tried to talk to him as if no more time had passed than the week or two we might have spent apart as children.

  He seemed surprised to see me. He stared back at me.

  I was stunned silent for a moment, too. I wondered whether I should move in to hug him, but I could tell from his expression and his attitude that this wasn’t the same Wenzhan I had known as a child. It was as if his life had whittled him down into something lesser. I could still detect hints of the old Wenzhan here and there: the tilt of his eyebrows, something lingering on his face—it was still him somewhere inside that body.

  Wenzhan made the first move for me. He didn’t shake my hand or embrace me but pointed at a chair. “Take a seat,” he said coldly.

  It was still light outside, but the bedroom curtains were tightly drawn and a yellow bulb lit the room, giving everything the sepia tone of an old photograph.

  I looked for more traces of my old friend. The old Wenzhan was the person I had gone to see. That was whom I wanted to talk to. “Your bedroom’s still the same, huh?” I said. “What about that suitcase? You had a thousand years of history written out in there.”

  “We put my father’s old clothes in there. It got burned with him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I went quiet.

  “I thought that was really amazing work,” I said.

  “Oh, that old crap? I took it all with me to Fuzhou, but I ended up throwing it in the trash.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. I didn’t know what else I could say.

  We both went quiet for a long time. Perhaps he realized that I had come to him with good intentions, so he tried to come up with
a new topic. “I’m working over at the broadcast station,” he said. “They read some of your articles on the radio.”

  “Was that your idea? You know, I’m not exactly a famous author.” I thought some self-deprecation might ease the mood.

  I started to tell him about my time in Beijing and how hard it had been to make a living.

  He was unexpectedly silent. I expected him to say something and for the conversation to get back on track, but the silence only deepened until I felt like it was a yawning chasm that could swallow me whole.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Well,” I said, “sorry for bothering you. I’d better get home.”

  “Sorry,” he said suddenly, “I couldn’t explain it even if I wanted to, but I hate you.”

  I stared back at him, speechless.

  “I just want you to tell me,” he said, “why it was you and not me.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. I knew exactly what he wanted me to explain to him. But neither of us had the answer.

  The day after I saw Wenzhan, I changed the date of my flight to get back to Beijing a day early. I tried to figure out why I had worried about Wenzhan. Maybe it was because I had always felt guilty for living the life Wenzhan had intended for himself. Maybe it was because both of us were the same in another way: we had both left our hometown looking for a new home, but neither of us had found one.

  That was the last time I visited Wenzhan. I would see him when I went back home for the holidays, but I was careful to avoid him. My mother didn’t know quite what was happening between us, and she continued bringing me news of Wenzhan and his family. Wenzhan and his brother eventually had a major falling out. His brother had received some money from his wife’s family and invested it in a seafood shop. He had done quite well for himself, but perhaps because of their strained relationship when they were younger, he cut Wenzhan out of his life. While his brother was prospering, Wenzhan was struggling, making only about a thousand yuan a month. On top of that, Wenzhan hated his job and looked down on his coworkers. Wenzhan’s mother tried to find a woman to marry her son, but his cleft lip and low salary made him an unattractive marriage partner. Eventually, Wenzhan left town again. His destination was not a big city but a small village, where he took a job with the state broadcaster running the local transmitter.