by Can Xue
Before he fell into sleep he struggled to the window and looked down by raising the craft paper. He saw her standing on the street in front of the grocery store raising her injured hand. She also saw him, so using the other hand she pointed at her feet and nodded her head. He didn’t understand the meaning of her gesture, not even once. Whenever he thought of that he felt very disheartened. He fell into sleep dejected and slept very deeply.
When he awoke he noticed many bloody finger marks on the wall put there by her the day before. At the time, he hadn’t noticed, but after one day the blood marks had turned a bit black. They looked like leeches crawling on the wall, making him uneasy. Watching those leeches—her masterpiece—he remembered she had always been against him, and she was always mysterious in her ways. Nobody could predict what she was going to do in the next minute. With her back toward him and her face toward the wall, she said in a harsh voice, “People like me had better hide themselves in order not to upset people.” He turned her face back and saw an expression similar to that of a little deer being chased. He was so touched that he almost cried out. That time they stayed together for three days without leaving each other for one minute. At dusk, they would open the window and watch the sunset. Standing at the window hugging tightly against each other, they exchanged breath. She even leapt into the air naughtily. Every time she did so, he would be so frightened that his face turned pale and he would pull her down tightly. In the short three days, she forgot about things like the craft paper. She was jumping up and down and saying crazy things. Perhaps it was because both of them were young at the time, and also they were confused by the emotion caused by pity. That was the longest time she stayed. It was so long that he even had some illusion that she would stay forever. But, of course, this result was not to be.
Later on they could no longer share such intimate talk. Instead, they would talk vaguely and exchange evasive glances. When they met on the street, they would greet each other with some obscure gesture the same way she did in front of the grocery store. This method was decided on by her, and he went along with it. It appeared that they had a tacit understanding, but in reality they were very distant. Even at the climax of making love, the feeling was vague and ambiguous as if they were thousands of mountains and thousands of rivers apart. It was totally different from lovemaking with other women when he was young. Every time when it was finished he would be overwhelmed by an infinite confusion, his head feeling as if a bird’s nest had grown there. At those moments he meant to dash out and chase her, yet he had no confidence whatsoever. Finally he would drop the idea. It was not because of his self-esteem, but just because he felt it would be in vain.
As she got older, her tone and glances became colder, and their distance and grievances grew deeper until they began holding grudges against each other. Once she revealed to him that their present situation was the best, exactly what she wanted, because it reflected the truth of their relationship. If they were, instead, to do nothing but stand at the window enjoying the setting sun, she would have to jump down and never return. However, such a relationship was horrifying to him. He couldn’t remember how many times he had sneaked into the morgues of those hospitals to check the corpses, feeling exhausted from anxiety and fear. And he never dared to doze off in the morgues because there was always a red-eyed cat glaring at him fiercely. The days of waiting were endless spiritual torture because there were no lines or color there, just complete emptiness. It was during that period that his mouthful of strong teeth started to loosen.
Then an odd thing happened—she bit a small piece of flesh from his arm. According to her, she did it unintentionally, and she promised that nothing similar would happen in the future. The wound was not deep and healed quickly, leaving only a tiny scar. But whenever he thought of it he shivered with fear. When he inquired as to where the flesh that she bit off went, she replied that she had swallowed it. When she said that, she appeared furious, sending a chill up his spine. Yet he missed her every minute, every second, even missed the long bench by the fence on the lawn. It was there that she sat in the open air and gave him that magnificent talk. Besides there was that warm, sliding sun, the rising warmth from the earth, making him mistake her for a fine young maiden. She had forgotten all that long ago. Whenever he raised the issue later on, she appeared bored. Using her strong index finger, she would make a decisive gesture to stop his story. “I was only waiting for a boat there,” she would say shortly and drily. He couldn’t help feeling very indignant.
It was fairly recently that she had gone to extremes in her appearance. In the past, she had never paid much attention to her appearance. Yet she always dressed simply and comfortably. Her clean underwear gave off a fine fragrance. But recently she had put on a set of extremely ugly men’s clothes and refused to change. They had become dirtier and dirtier, shabbier and shabbier. She even boasted about them, saying they were so convenient. In the past, time spent washing clothes was nothing but trouble for her, and so on. Then she would say that since she could no longer smell the odor of the dirty clothes, why should she spend time pursuing formalities? It was even acceptable that she would not take a bath from now on. The only reason she kept taking baths and washing her hair was as a compromise with his strange habits, despite the fact that she felt they were vulgar. This took place in the third month after she cut her finger. They saw each other at the dock. Both appeared a little bit wan and sallow, a little bit melancholy. He told her he had heard someone knocking at the window of his apartment late at night. Could it have been her?
“That’s impossible. When I’m outside I never think of you. You’ve known for a long time that I don’t have a memory.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Can you guess if I have just returned or am planning to leave? An eternal puzzle.” She pointed at the passing boats and asked him to look. The river appeared vast and endless with boats floating as if in outer space.
He did not answer her question because he knew it had no answer. It was she who had told him that. Lowering his head, he saw that her bare feet wearing the sandals had turned a bit rough.
“Shall we return to the apartment?” he asked.
“No,” she said harshly. “From now on let’s see each other here. It’s very convenient for both of us. Of course, there’s no way for me to arrange the date ahead of time. You’ll just have to come often and see if I’m here. That shouldn’t be too difficult.” Arrogantly she threw back her short hair, putting her hands into her wide pockets.
“I turned over a person’s ear, and I saw that mole,” he said. “At the moment I was in a unique situation.”
“There are such cheap marks everywhere,” she sneered in contempt. “Now you’d better go. Let me see you disappear among the crowd.”
“It’s you who has raised the issue.”
“It’s possible that I have said so. Don’t always remember. You should forget along the way. Why don’t you go?”
At that moment a gray boat was anchoring. She raised her long legs and boarded the ship. This time she did not look back. The boat gradually sailed away as if it were departing into the vast universe.
But he knew there was a thread linking him with that boat. He turned around and walked away. At every step he felt his chest being pulled at painfully by that thread. At the same time, that triangle in his mind’s eye was shooting out gold sparks.
APPLE TREE IN THE CORRIDOR
The Little Gold Ox
There’s frost outside. One sniff of the glistening air tells me that. Frosty mornings always create discord among people. I inhale deeply and smile quietly. Then I chuckle unexpectedly, giving out the queer “heh-heh” that I often find myself producing lately. The frigid, discordant wind rattles the window frame repeatedly. In the clear sky floats a ball of red silk thread, spinning and bobbing, up and down, circling around. I can’t get the window open. I know that the bright sunlight is only a deception—the bitter cold would freeze my nose. “I have a very sensitive nose,” I say to myself, noddin
g firmly and staring out at the frozen earth.
Everything gives the appearance of being real. The little gold ox on the tea table is moving again, its tail swinging. “You, old boy, are already fifty-seven this year,” the mask on the wall says to me. The mask is covered with a fuzz of white mold resembling a beard. It reminds me of a jade green cobblestone that I saw embedded between tree roots poking up out of the soil at the side of the highway. One dusk I attempted to dig it out with a small knife.
On that last day, a huge crowd swarmed into the city’s streets. With surprise I discovered the scene from a very high vantage point just as it was happening. Of course, these people have long ago disappeared completely, and the incident has left me with no solid impression. At the beginning, I had pried open a window to climb into the building. In every empty room I found a pale mask. On the wall the swinging shadows of the wild vines made threatening gestures, reminding me of haunted houses. Then my face went moldy. Every time I look into the mirror, I see a hazy white oval. This is so disgusting.
My father’s brown leather jacket, ornamented with multicolored birds’ feathers, still hangs in his closet. As soon as the closet is opened, the feathers stand up, as if they were about to fly away. He spent his whole life traveling in the mountains. He looked forever travel-stained and smelled of grass. Leaning over a greasy table at a bar, he once discussed with me an intestinal disease and its cure. He was laden with anxieties.
“Before dawn, the Seven-Li Fragrance always causes me migraine, and it smells of seawater, too. The Seven-Li Fragrance must be blossoming on both sides of a seaside highway. I can imagine the place.” After these words, he lowered his head and fell into sleep.
He died of an intussusception. It wasn’t until three days later that we, together with a doctor, found him under a Chinese chestnut tree. His travel bag was stuffed with stinking orioles and turtledoves killed with an airgun days before. We simply left him there. Out of fear, we pretended to have forgotten about burying him. On our way back, Mother and I kept talking loudly to control our fright. The doctor was walking in front of us. His white coverall was stained with bird droppings, large smears of yellowish green. Every now and then, Mother cast sharp sidelong glances at me with her aged eyes. I knew that she had guessed my thought. So I jabbered on at random, ill at ease. I mentioned a past incident in a watermelon field, and asked if she could remember which day it was.
“That’s very odd.” She halted and said hesitantly, “How could I have given birth to you? I have so much doubt about it. Just at that moment, I lost my memory. So the thing cannot be confirmed.”
I carry on my father’s dream. Time and again, I feel so vividly that I touch the paving of the highway warmed by the sun, and hear mimicking cock crows. This also happens at the instant just before dawn when I smell the Seven-Li Fragrance. The dreams are drawn out, with an extremely long white thread fluttering behind each one of them just like a kite. But what is the matter with the ostrich? Ever since my father’s death, my intestines have started to twist and turn. Glaring at me, Mother ordered simply, “You have to go to the mountains.” Then she threw the blood-stained travel bag at my feet.
I intend to look for a kind of herb that can cure intestinal diseases.
Upstairs there used to live a fellow with sunglasses. This guy was about fifty, though he told everybody that he was twenty-seven. One day he entered our kitchen. With one leap, he jumped into the cistern and refused to come out. He lived in the cistern for several years like a hippo, splattering water all over the kitchen. Every time I stepped into the kitchen, he would let loose a torrent of abuse. He then disappeared with my third sister. One day when the sweet scent of the Seven-Li Fragrance was spreading unchecked, we met on a cliff. My third sister exposed my little trick with a single remark. I seemed to hear them whistling to pigeons in the bamboo forest, but I dared not turn my head, because the turkey behind the rock made me very nervous. Venus rattled past my ear, and a surreal rosy color appeared along the rim of the sky. After that they disappeared together. How very suspicious.
However, a frosty morning still makes me ready to do something—it’s my nature. So I put on my cap and shoulder the traveling bag. I purse my wrinkled mouth to whistle, and kick out my legs, causing a messy fit of noise in my intestines—gestures preliminary to a long journey. In the mirror, I see the mask spit and say, “Fifty-seven.” Then I take off my cap and sniff the greasy brim, recalling the secret of my father’s artificial leg. He kept this secret from me very carefully. His leg was of high quality and showed almost no marks of being unreal. In fact, I did not know about it until after his death. For several days, Mother appeared to be on tenterhooks. Finally, she couldn’t control her urge to tell me that the reason she did not bury my father was because of the artificial leg. She never failed to have an attack of epilepsy every time she saw that smooth pink object.
“His own leg was okay, but he broke it intentionally in order to fix that wretched thing on—one of his wild fantasies. Wearing that stupid thing, he declared forever to people that he had become a young bachelor again. He even boasted to me that the artificial leg was as soft and light as cotton, and claimed his nerves had grown into the leg. He tried to create a special image of himself.”
I found the herb in the house of my third sister’s classmate. It was planted in a huge pot placed on the windowsill facing south. It dawned on me that this woman was also once tortured by intestinal diseases. Her room was littered with old newspapers, revealing her unbearable affliction.
Everything that happened in the past is real. At the time when I met my third sister on the cliff, pigeons were whispering in the woods, and it seemed to be drizzling. I had extreme trouble opening my tired eyelids. Then all of a sudden, she started talking from behind me, laying bare my trick.
The little gold ox is pacing back and forth on the tea table. A lump of frozen cloud drifts by the window. A dolphin is trapped between the dead branches of a camphor tree. Numerous roosters are crowing one after another. The mask on the wall is talking again: “Fifty-seven years old.” This mask used to be an old fellow picking odds and ends from the garbage. Purposefully, he hanged himself from our doorframe, naked.
1. OUR FAMILY SECRETS
“What are the long-legged mosquitoes humming about? It’s so ridiculous.” Mother’s voice came unexpectedly from the shadow behind the bed. She had been hiding in that corner since the last rain. She wanted people to think she had disappeared. Excitedly, she found a big umbrella and covered herself completely with it. “My body is puffed up like an oxygen pillow.” In the drawer she had found a five-headed needle, and she was punching it into her skin. With her teeth clenched, she punched and pressed, saying, “I’ve got to get rid of some water, or I’ll be dead.”
I wanted to tell her something about the summer. Hesitantly, I opened my mouth: “The hornet’s nest was humming on the bare branch. Something was swinging in the air … Once I lost a wallet. Obviously you remember the incident. It was stolen by a guy with a beard. The streets at the time were covered by white bed sheets, which shone in the sun. Children were running around carrying torches. Don’t you feel that the needles are pushing against rotten meat?”
All my family members had undivulged secrets. They must have seemed like frightening people. My father, for instance, was a very unusual person. I never understood him. To me, he was analogous to insects, because he always gave me a feeling of beetle shells. He would sneak in every night after supper had already started. Darting to the table, he would fill his bowl with rice while scanning the other dishes. He chewed and swallowed all the good dishes before banging his bowl down on the table and fleeing.
“Father is suffering some internal agony,” my third sister would say, showing the whites of her eyes. Her voice resembled a noodle hanging in the damp air. She always gnawed at the rims of the bowls at mealtime. As a result, all of our blue china bowls had chipped edges. I saw with my own eyes that she swallowed the chips with her rice. For a
cure to her asthma, she had, up to that time, eaten more than a thousand earthworms. Actually, she drank them after melting them down in sugar. “Isn’t that miraculous!” Panting, she would put on an expression of wonder.
“Your third sister, it’s hard to say,” Mother commented in a sarcastic tone. “Did you hear her thumping the bed? The doctors think she’s having endocrinopathy. It’s a subtle ailment.”
I was about to reply when I heard a deafening noise from the upstairs neighbor. According to my reconnoitering, the guy had been fooling around with an iron drilling rod. The cement floor of his apartment was covered with small holes like a honeycomb. Mother continued indifferently, turning a deaf ear to the noise from upstairs: “I can see through anybody’s tricks. I have become so ingeniously skillful that I am close to being a master of magic. Day after day, I sit in this corner, puncturing myself with needles in my fight against the fluids. Sometimes I simply forget you are my children. Whenever I recall the past, the wild mountains and deserted forests appear in my mind’s eye, stars fall down like fireworks, and the black figure of your father hangs from a branch of the tree. Quickly he has turned into what he is now. It’s just too fast.”
At the window pane appeared a pair of huge sunglasses. That was the guy from upstairs coming down to spy on our reaction to his dirty trick. He never forgot to put on his sunglasses, believing that no one could recognize him this way.
