by Can Xue
“Hey, take it easy,” he said.
Father-in-law came increasingly frequently. It started with visits twice a week, then every day. Every time he would bring with him a huge medical book on neuropathology. He had folded down the corners of many pages, so he could always find just the place he was looking for. Then he would put on his spectacles unhurriedly, and read aloud those sentences and paragraphs from the book. After his reading, he would wink at me lasciviously and say, “Vanity cannot bring any benefit in the long run.” He firmly rejected our every invitation of staying for a meal as if he had been insulted.
Once I mentioned to my husband his father’s strange behavior. He smiled and raised his eyebrows, saying, “Can’t you see that he is desperate because of his fear of death?” When I pondered my husband’s remark, I felt as if I understood something, yet I did not understand anything. One thing was sure—my father-in-law took an extreme interest in me, or maybe we could call it extreme jealousy and hatred. But why? We had had no contact with him. My husband had left home at an early age and never took his father very seriously. In fact, he seldom even mentioned him. What had disturbed the old man so much that he decided to come to our house to make such confessions? Was it because of my not-very-great fame in the athletic world? But why should my fame irritate him so much? This whole business was very puzzling.
After about three weeks, he came one day with some pills of different shapes made of Chinese herbal medicine. He suggested that I take all of them. Staring at me, he declared that such pills could “snatch a patient from the jaws of death.” Of course I refused to take them. Then we fell into a real mess of an argument. Quite to my surprise, he slapped my face. In the flurry, I kicked him with all my marathon strength. He squatted down slowly, holding his belly, his whole body trembling. After a long time, he struggled up and limped home.
After three days, my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital. According to my husband, excessive melancholy had destroyed the old man’s physical balance. He believed that the argument had been fatal to him. “He hit you only because he was afraid of death!” my husband said, looking pensive. “The fear of death can make one lose his reason.”
We went to see my father-in-law, who was lying in bed unconscious. Once he came to, he would stare at us in a threatening way with his bloodshot eyes.
On the way home from the hospital, I suddenly felt something wrong with my legs—my left leg, it so happened. I couldn’t bend it, as if something were growing on the joint. My husband carried me onto the bus. By the time we arrived home, I could no longer stand up. We’ve been to hospitals numerous times and have taken numerous X rays. But there appears to be nothing wrong with the bones. No doctor can explain the case. I figure the reason that nothing can be diagnosed is that I am extremely antagonistic to the doctors.
Could it be that I had some subconscious guilty feeling about father-in-law’s illness? Did I feel regretful about my rude behavior at the moment of our fight? Not at all. When I kicked him, I felt the joy of mischief in my subconscious. When I heard he was sick, I was indifferent. I only felt that he looked funny lying in the hospital.
Another strange thing was that my appetite completely recovered after my legs became sick. I ate and ate every day. Soon a ruddy complexion returned to my cheeks. Every piece of news about father-in-law’s critical condition gave me a feeling of relief. Although I could not return to the athletic field, I felt my life had become more meaningful, with my renewed appetite as the sign. Once in a while, I would remember the wizardish glances of my father-in-law and his talk about my legs. Then I felt a little bit uneasy.
One day my husband came home and told me, “Father is wrestling with the god of death for the last time.” Then he said that if he told his father about the problem with my legs, the news would no doubt bring him back to life. But he did not intend to tell the old man. He did not tell me the reason. After a long silence, he said quietly to himself, “The struggle in the dark depths is spectacular. In no sense can an ordinary person reach such a place.”
One year later, I became confined to a wheelchair. Ever since that happened, my visual and audial abilities have been developing rapidly. It seems that the world surrounding me has become a crystal palace, transparent and shining from morning to night. However, at the extreme depth of my vision there is a small, moving black spot similar to a colon in a piece of writing. One night when I woke up I heard a weak noise resembling the clawing of a rat scratching among scraps of paper. I did not turn on the light—because darkness has no existence for me. Looking straight ahead, I could see that the black dot had turned into a small torch that disappeared after bobbing up and down several times. That rat’s noise grew steadily louder, until it became deafening. My husband was startled awake. Sitting up, he mumbled, “Father’s dead, died just now. I didn’t tell him about your illness.” I could feel the hesitation in his subconscious, though it was only a flash. In the end, he had come around to my point of view.
My complete victory increased a certain feeling of safety in me. It seems that my father-in-law was too fragile to withstand a single blow. After he passed away, I became more and more contented with my life in the wheelchair. One day a doctor came and gave me a thorough examination. His diagnosis was that my legs were perfectly normal. Immediately he ordered me to stand up.
“But why?” I stared at him with hatred.
At this moment my husband came in. With great effort he explained to the doctor, emphasizing repeatedly the advantages of my life in the wheelchair, as well as the disadvantages of standing up and walking, and so on. Finally, he said, “It seems to me that it’s good enough for her to be able to live like this. It is much more natural than her running the marathon in the past.”
Blinking his eyes, the doctor was completely confused. After a while he stuttered, “Then why should you ask me to come in the first place?”
My husband said, a little annoyed, “I asked you to treat her cold. These days she has a slight cold. We would like you to prescribe some medicine. But as soon as you arrived, you started to treat her legs indiscriminately. You are too subjective.”
The doctor wrote a prescription and left in a rage. After the doctor was gone, my husband said to me, “Take it easy. Now that father is gone, nobody will come and bother you anymore.”
Once in a while I hear news of sports from the outside world, such as who has won the championship or placed second and so on. Such things have become like smoke and clouds from another world to me in the wheelchair. My mind is becoming duller and duller and stiffer and stiffer daily. Every day I wander around from this room to that room by pushing the two wheels with my hands. Sometimes, I even go out the door and circle around the houses nearby.
The years of my life in this crystal clear world have caused my body to become radiant. At the beginning it was a little bit phosphorescent, starting from the nails on my toes. Because of the shoes I had on, nobody could see it and it was nothing. Finally, the day came when my husband told me that my legs had disappeared completely from his sight. From a distance I looked like a half-bodied person floating on a cloud of phosphorescence. Besides that, the crown of my head had started to shine with little dots of light. He also discovered that my arms had become extremely strong and powerful. Maybe it was the result my pushing the wheelchair. Thus I float and swim freely in and around the house. I feel completely satisfied and comfortable. The only trouble is that I can’t help feeling sorry for my husband because all the household chores have become his burden. But I don’t take this seriously once I see his happy-go-lucky attitude. At the beginning my children complained, but before long they got used to the fact and conscientiously shared part of the chores. Because I am very satisfied with my present situation, they feel that it is very natural for me to be sitting in the wheelchair. What outstanding children they are.
I remember the way my younger son explained the thing once when he came home from school. He said, “Somebody told me that you will die on
ce you get wet from the rain. So don’t go out for too long. It’s dangerous.”
“Who told you that? Who’s poking his nose into my business?”
My son kept silent. He simply wouldn’t tell me despite my pursuit. I started to feel uneasy. Instinct told me there was some kind of disgusting secret in my son’s statement. Who was the person who couldn’t wait to destroy my peaceful mind? Who on earth was my most direct enemy?
Suddenly it dawned on me: Could it be the spirit of my father-in-law that refuses to let go? After much thought he seemed to be the only one who could be considered an enemy. I told my husband about my uneasiness.
He replied, while glancing at our younger son with contempt and disapproval, “Don’t even bother about the child’s words. Pure nonsense. What’s more, you can even order your legs to disappear from vision. This is some unusual ability that nobody can compete with. You should at least have that much confidence, huh?”
After listening to him I felt not only uneasy but also guilty. My uneasiness did not disappear.
After several days, my youngest son said to me again, “Mom, aren’t you moving too much? You should pause for a while and think about something, somebody told me.”
“But who?!” I blew up. In that instant, I found that all the phosphorescence on my body disappeared and both legs started to tremble.
“I can’t tell…”
“Tell me immediately!”
“… Grandpa.”
“Hah! Where is he now?” I jumped up from the wheelchair, staggered toward my youngest son and caught his shoulder. I saw his face turn extremely pale and his eyes open wide as if he had seen a ghost.
“In his home! At his home! Everybody knows, except you!” My son started to sob. Covering his face with his hands, he ran away.
Hearing the sound, my husband rushed in and complained loudly, “Why do you bother? It would be so good if you just considered that old guy as dead! Yes, it’s true that he recovered, but to us he’s dead. That’s why I told you he died. We have nothing to do with him.”
“So he’s not dead!” I howled like a lioness. I added, “I’m going back to my sports team and start my training.”
“Aiya! Why bother about training? Why take the trouble? A person like you is simply unsuitable for running the marathon. I say it’s a waste of energy. There are enough marathon champions. But how many can you find who are confined to a wheelchair by their own psychosomatic will? You should forget about the drawbacks. Just think about the advantages of your present life. Doesn’t your food taste better this way?”
My husband’s words are always very convincing. After a long silence I decided to accept his opinion because my experience tells me that it’s always the most comfortable to deal with people and the world according to his opinion.
From that time on my legs have no longer been paralyzed, nor do they shine. They are no more than two normal legs. However, I still prefer sitting in a wheelchair without moving my legs, pushing the wheels with my hands instead. Such a life has brought me extreme inner peace.
My children are as busy as before. On the sly, they go to visit their grandpa. My husband still stands by me. But I no longer bother about those things. After a while I forgot everything about the past.
It’s not until today, after so many years, when my youngest son has brought the news that his grandpa’s dead, that I remember he had such a grandpa.
“On his deathbed he kept rumbling, ‘Oh how lonely, how lonely.’”
My husband said, “Such people are born to suffer.”
You see, my story ends like this.
THE CHILD WHO RAISED POISONOUS SNAKES
Sha-yuan—one might call him Sandy Plain—was a child with an ordinary face, lacking any notable features. When he was not talking, his face was a dead blank. But of course this is somewhat different from being a corpse.
“He has been a well-behaved child,” his mother explained to me. “The only trouble with him is that he should never be allowed outdoors. There wouldn’t have been any trouble if he had stayed at home. We discovered his problem when he was only six. Once he sneaked away without the notice of his father and me. I looked for him everywhere. Finally we found him sleeping among the rosebushes in the park. He was lying on his back, with his limbs stretched out in a casual way. He told us later that he had not seen any roses, but many snake heads. He said he could even see the bones inside the snakes. Then, as one snake bit him, he had fallen asleep. To tell the truth, Sha-yuan hadn’t seen a single snake in his life up to that point. He only saw snakes on TV. His father and I were terrified, and we were more cautious than ever not to let him out.”
While we were talking, Sha-yuan was sitting in the room facing a cupboard door covered with paper resembling wood grain, absolutely still and motionless. In my astonishment, I kept peering at him.
“Don’t pay any attention to him. He long ago acquired the ability not to listen whenever he doesn’t want to. Once a doctor suggested that we take the child to a resort and let him socialize with other people. According to the doctor, this would improve his condition. So we went to the seashore. Sha-yuan often played with the kind of unruly children one finds at the seaside during the day. But he felt tired very easily. We had been observing him because we couldn’t help feeling anxious about the child. Whenever he felt tired, he simply lay down no matter where and fell asleep. He became so languid that he could sleep while washing his feet in the evening. We thought he was washing, but it was no more than a mechanical movement—his brain was at rest.
“The third day after our arrival at the seaside, a fisherman’s son ran in with a bleeding finger, telling us that Sha-yuan had bitten him. We questioned Sha-yuan afterward about the incident. He smiled absentmindedly and claimed that the finger was the head of a snake. If he had not bitten it, it would have bitten him. We stayed at the shore for a month. Apparently the beautiful scenery had no positive influence on Sha-yuan. That year he turned nine.
“After that, we traveled somewhere every year—to the desert or the lakes, to the forest or the plains. But Sha-yuan was completely indifferent. Sitting in the train, he behaved exactly as he did at home, never looking out the window, never talking to anybody. It was possible that he did not even know he was traveling. But his father and I knew that the child had been too carefree ever since he was young. He never paid attention to his surroundings. He might have been a little cold. I don’t know how to put it, but he lacked sensitivity toward new things.
“It culminated last year when we discovered that his right arm was covered with wounds. Questioning him closely, we were led to a pitch-dark air-raid shelter where he squatted down with a flashlight. We found a box of little flowery snakes. His father asked him with horror where those snakes had come from. Sha-yuan replied: ‘I caught them one after another.’ This was very odd because he had been with us every day. Hadn’t we watched him with care? ‘I was not always with you. Don’t be fooled by superficial appearances,’ he said in his casual tone. After his father coaxed him away, I found a hoe and exterminated those little vipers.
“When we got home, we stayed up nights to prevent his sneaking away again. Yet after two days, fresh wounds had appeared on his arms—like pairs of red spots from snakebites. He said to us, ‘Why bother to tire yourselves out. You simply can’t understand that I’m only sitting with you in appearance. But there’s no place I can’t go even while I seem to be sitting with you. There are so many snakes, and they lose their way often. So I gather them from here and there, so they won’t feel lonely. Of course you can’t see them, but yesterday I found one over there under the bookshelf. I can always find snakes if I look around. I was afraid of them when I was young. I even bit a snake’s head once. I can’t help laughing at myself when I think of it now.’ He kept talking to us like this.”
One day, while sitting with his back to us, Sha-yuan suddenly patted his head with his hand. We walked over, and Sha-yuan’s mother turned him around so he was facing us. His
facial expression was calm and relaxed. Cautiously choosing my words, I asked him what he was thinking about while sitting here, and if he was feeling lonely.
“Listen,” he replied briefly.
“What do you hear?”
“Nothing, very quiet. But the situation will change completely after nine o’clock in the evening.”
“How can you possibly dare to desert us like that? How can we live without you?” Sha-yuan’s mother started her lament.
“You can’t call it desertion,” Sha-yuan said gently. “I was born to catch snakes.”
I advised Sha-yuan’s mother not to worry too much about her son. In my opinion, her boy, odd as he was, appeared to be a genius, who might one day turn out to be somebody.
“We don’t care if he will be somebody,” the mother said. “Both his father and I are only ordinary people. How is it that we should have a son who is involved in such shameful business? Raising poisonous snakes, that’s frightening. What does he want to do? I might as well have given birth to a poisonous snake! We simply can’t stop worrying about him. We’re completely worn out by him. The worst thing is that now he can do strange things even without going outdoors. He always has a way to achieve what he wants.”
* * *
One day I saw Sha-yuan’s mother coming out of the air-raid shelter with a hoe in her hand. She looked wan and sallow. She told me she had just exterminated another nest of little snakes, eight altogether. She was almost bald, and she walked like an aged woman. Behind her appeared Sha-yuan’s father, an old man who couldn’t stop blinking one eye. Finally Sha-yuan himself emerged. His back was bent, and he appeared calm. When he saw me, he nodded and started talking: “I created this scene of slaughter on purpose. It might even be described as spectacular—eight lives destroyed once and for all. To them, it was not a matter of any particular terror. I was only surprised by the firmness and confidence of the hands that raised the hoe.”
