by Can Xue
Night had fallen. I went out with the fat woman. The wind was strong. Creamy colored phantoms floated past us. We were huddled up, unable to see each other.…
I haven’t told the story as I intended. I am forever circling around, never able to approach reality. Once I open my mouth, I discover I’m telling something that I have falsified, instead of the thing. The whole purpose of talking is to arouse others’ attention. As a matter of fact, I never intend to tell anything, but only to make some noise. There was a time when I had the spirit to go forward. I dissected a toad, laying its organs on the table one after another. As for those little lumps, I broke them one by one with a small knife. We all make noise, which is very different from the noise made by rats. For instance, on a summer noon, we sit at home. It is very quiet around us, but the gal I married suddenly makes a thump. It turns out that the hook on her bra has slipped out. I know she does that on purpose, and that’s extremely different from rats. When she has accomplished her success, she tells me that once she quiets down, she will smell the hair of her dead mother.
The oil lamps were crackling merrily like fireworks. The fat woman mumbled something and declared that she wanted to go to the lake. The lake was very deep, but she could walk into it. She had already mastered how to breathe underwater. She loved the ghastly atmosphere. “My fatigue only attacks when I see black shadows swinging around me and bubbles ascend one after another.” So saying, she hobbled into the dark night. After a while, she could be heard hawking her wares somewhere. The voice was disjointed, as if she were lisping. Suddenly I realized that I could never enter that temple. I made a circle around the wall but simply couldn’t find the entrance. I walked around once more, touching every brick, but still in vain. Listening attentively, I could hear people talking and the oil lamps crackling. Refusing to give in, I walked around again, or maybe several times, nobody knows how many times. The wall was teasing my shivering finger with its firm coldness. At that moment, I remembered my ideal role. Also I knew that for the gang inside, whatever role I played had nothing to do with them. They only considered my change as a child’s game. They always cast me in “the role of selling bowls of tea.” It seemed I would have to circle that damp wall till dawn. Ever since youth, I had had a habit of splitting hairs, and I always stuck to some insignificant thing.…
Now I realized that I could only be a peddler collecting used fountain pens. Despite the fact that I made all kinds of voices—or changed roles every day, putting on a gunny sack or pretending to be crippled or swallowing down live snakes—they just wouldn’t care. The key was that they couldn’t really see me much. In the steam, they were busy washing their hair, breaking walnuts, trimming their toenails, digging rat holes, building attics. Everyone was covered with sweat. That day my staying in the cold water for such a long time drew the attention of the old woman. Yet she was not paying attention to me as a person, but to my pocket watch. She attempted to cheat me out of the watch so she could give it to her sister. She assured me that by all means the watch would be completely destroyed once it fell into the water. Regardless of my trembling from the cold, she forced me to give up the watch by clutching me by the throat. “What do you need that for? You don’t even have a place to hang it, because you never have a body. But I can hang it around my neck,” she said arbitrarily.
“He is nothing but a gust of gloomy wind.” The woman I married made the conclusion peremptorily. “At midnight when I probed into his quilt with my hand, my fingers were frozen up. There was nothing on the bed. Something was swaying and drifting in the room, flocks of gray pigeons were looking for food on the ground.”
I always change my mind on a sunny day. I consider such weather beneficial to me. Though I have trouble opening my eyelids, though I feel like urinating all the time, I always have some new ideas about something that I am interested in, and I always engage myself in doing something. When I am doing something, I feel myself as having a role. But I haven’t been doing anything for a long time, because the sun hasn’t been out for a long time. Now I no longer hear the sharp shouting of the bright sun, nor the south wind booming, only the giggling of the pigeons, as well as traps that are too numerous to be avoided. Now I am forgotten by them. I just can’t give in. How can I give in like this? Tomorrow morning I will smash the tiles on the roof, I will let the panther in the corridor bite people. All this will make me feel that I am acting the role of a warrior.
4. MY MOTHER’S RAVINGS
I once entered the sun. That day when I woke from my nap, the room was filled with the fragrance of broad-bean blossoms. The scent had attracted a pair of butterflies, which were dipping and swooping high and low. As I touched my head, it gave out a loud sound as if it were an alarm; it also shone with a kind of mental white light. My son screamed at me, pushing me out of the house. “The sun is high outside, the rabbits are speeding across the muddy ground, the leaves are soaked with fresh tastes…” He seduced me. Holding my head, I stepped outside. The sunbeams poured down like running snakes. I remember I passed a slabstone path. The stones were so hot that the soles of my shoes were burnt. Every time I raised my eyes, I could see the pagoda among the firs. The pagoda was very tall, with a window on top. A man was experimenting with a tiny solar stove. The fire had caught his clothes. Behind the pagoda, the sky was all red. I began to run in a doddering manner. I remember there were some small woods ahead.
“It’s not necessary to run. It could be an illusion. The forest is aswarm with rabbits. You might stumble over them.” My son gave a snort of contempt. He was standing not far away, staring at me with two bloodred eyes.
I felt extremely hot; the pagoda was still burning, and the flames singed my eyebrows. It was useless to flee, because the horizon was so far away, and in my field of vision, there were only boiling hot slabs. There really were some rabbits, yet they were all those unrealistic red rabbits that run without the sound of footsteps. Now I could see clearly that the sunbeams were skins of tiny red snakes. They wriggled across my hips every now and then. Each snake had a ball of dazzling fire on its head. They looked like stars falling all over the place. Yet my son was indifferent to the heat. People told me that every day he climbed up the pagoda to test his solar stove, but I knew that guy on top was not him. At home he always complained that my eyes were too complicated and colorful and “looked evil.” What color would they reflect in the sunlight? I thought about this time and again.
In my pocket there was a small mirror. I looked at it and saw a big letter E, a black E. I turned it round and round, and the letter was still E. How could the mirror show an E? Yet I remember it so well. I tried it more than thirty times. In the sun, there was always that E. But inside the house was another matter. The room was cold. I put the mirror on the table, then I could see my dull, swollen face. Every time the sunlight passed my hip, I would miss something. It could have been a wallet, black in color, it could have been an old pin. In such circumstances, I would grab the person I met on the way and report to him. My talk was very fluent. That man would record every word I said with a pen and notebook. He was all seriousness. Frequently, he would shade the sun from his face with a hand and ask me that formal documentary question: “What kinds of complications can viral flu cause?” His question stimulated my boldness further. When I got more excited and verbal, I would clutch at his chest ferociously for fear he would leave before I finished. The man did not escape; instead he became vaguer and vaguer, and his body became lighter. I knew something had gone wrong, yet I rattled on and on like a machine gun.
When I finally finished and raised my head, I felt my eyeballs were filled with different colors. My facial expression must have been like a devil’s. I felt both annoyed and lost. Those people, why should they always carry a pen and notebook? This was something profound. They all had soft, smooth faces, and they could easily shade the sunlight with a thin, narrow palm. In emotional moments, they would instantly withdraw into seclusion, obviously to avoid trouble. At those moments, they smil
ed modestly and then disappeared. It is very subtle to avoid trouble: What kind of trouble were they trying to get rid of? How could they consciously realize such trouble was approaching? No matter how hard I tried to please them, they forever considered me as alien.
When I felt restless at home, overanxious from searching for lost objects, my daughter set obstacles to prevent me from approaching her. This disheartened me so much. Sometimes she would sit cross-legged and say in a lazy voice: “One of my friends covered himself with a bag that he made, like a silkworm cocoon. He stayed there till the last day. Even the fallen skin was well protected, and he didn’t need to worry about the sun. There was nothing missing. It was just a joke.”
My face blushed on hearing this. Consequently, I tried to avoid her. I was very careful. At the beginning, I sneaked out through the window, then I simply stayed out, wandering along the streets. The night was long and empty. I needed to find somebody I could talk to strategically about the Chinese parasol tree. The tree was very tall and straight. Against the purple sky, the leaves rattled in a loud voice as if they were emphasizing something. Every time I talked about a tree that could shout, my daughter would comment that it was a hornet’s nest. She complained that I had something wrong with my eyes. The tree died the day she was born. What can I do to prove it?
Gathering my spirit, I decided to go and see the old house. I waited till midnight. When I waded across the drying-up stream, my legs were covered with leeches. The place was once a stone pit, but it had been abandoned. Piles of big stones stood there like dreams. That night there was no moon, and everything was quiet. I was frightened by my own footsteps. I heard a clang. It was a cigarette lighter. A short man with only one leg was smoking in the empty yard, but he disappeared before I could see his face. I gave a push, and a big pile of stones fell with a noise resembling a landslide.
Last night, I saw the camel again. At the time, it was very tall, shining like gold. I sat on it and rode along the wide avenue of the city. It was elegant and graceful. But as soon as we arrived home, it lay down and simply refused to get up again.
“Tell it that the ground is very dirty. It will stain its belly,” my son said seriously. Hearing this, the camel stood up shakily. It stood motionless the whole night through outside our window. The whole time both my son and I were fidgety, discussing nervously what to feed it, how to manage its excrement, and so on. At dawn, the camel started moving. It chewed on the window frame then peeped inside the house. Suddenly it turned around and walked away without any hesitation. We lost it despite our pursuit.
“Where did you find it?” my son asked, grinning in a challenging way.
“It’s been there all the time.” I could not help appearing at a loss. I dug at the cracks on the wall with my fingers.
Plaster fell on my son’s leather shoes. He stamped his feet with disgust and gave a prolonged “Ohhh” sound. He said, “In that case, it won’t get lost. Take it easy, it’s only gone for a walk. Did it feel very bored with you?”
In those days, I strolled along the streets every day harboring a secret hope. I gazed around, observing every guy with a northern accent.
My son tried to persuade me that the camel would never get lost, and I should stop wandering about. “How can a thing that has been there all the time get lost?” Besides, even if we found it, we couldn’t solve the problem of its food.
But my third daughter never looked at us, taking it for granted that we were making up stories. She stroked her fingers through the air and said: “Camel? Humph! People will laugh their heads off! Just ask others. Where in the city can one find such things? I saw clearly that the thing you tied outside the window was a mangy dog. It ran away when I poured dirty water out. You are lauding the story to the skies: Camel! Stop fooling others, you will pay for the lie!”
But it really was a camel! Its skin shone like gold. It was so tall that I didn’t know how I had climbed up. Anyway, I was on its back the moment I found it. My third daughter was too vulgar to believe in miracles. When I was on top of that creature, I even dangled one leg to show my fearlessness. I believed many people were watching. The bigger the audience, the more high-spirited I became. At dusk, little black birds with deep thoughts flew over my head. In the grayish blue evening light, the footsteps of the camel were as soft and light as if it were stepping on mushrooms.
I screamed just to draw the attention of others. My voice resounded in the air. A guy squatting on the ground smashing a jar remained indifferent to my scream. I fixed my eyes upon him, only to realize that the whole street was empty, and not even one soul was watching me. An old lady stretched out her head to empty a basin of dirty water. She didn’t even see me. There must have been some kind of mistake. Residents in a city had never seen such an animal. They pretended not to notice it just because they were not used to it and they did not want to admit it. What would happen if they finally recognized the undeniable fact and if I made public the magnificence of my sitting on the back of a camel?
It had disappeared however. According to my daughter, I was no more than a bundle of rags with a kind of flamboyant character. Therefore, I decided to look for it. I had a bronze mirror, an heirloom from my grandma who told me that I could see a fire dragon at the very center of the mirror. I decided to go far away with the mirror. I still remembered that the camel had gotten up as soon as my son told it that the ground was dirty. It was such an obedient beast. But when I told this to my third daughter, she replied that I was finishing a dream. She told me that I had said the same thing repeatedly ten years ago. I was also making a strange sign with my hands (she tried to mimic the sign for me). She also told me that while I was talking, there appeared on the wall behind me a red torch, shining and dazzling. I was totally confused by what she said. Her specialty was to mess things up, thus making people desperate.
At midnight on the third, I heard a tricycle passing my door. At the moment, my sick ear was running pus. I pulled out the cotton ball, fearing that I had heard wrong. Pus dripped onto my left shoulder.
“Don’t turn on the light, or the pigeon will be scared,” my son warned me. I could see his apelike arms swinging through the air. He was playing at Chinese boxing, while mumbling about the crazy spiders that were running rampant.
There was a passenger on the tricycle. It was a short man with one leg. On his chin there was a big tumor. I could hear his coughing from afar. Once that tricycle passed underneath the grape trellis, leaving behind an extremely long shadow. It was simply too troublesome to move out of the house. It was not worthwhile to move those broken things which had no value at all. (In the mess, I threw away a kettle.) But nobody was willing to consider such a serious matter as the camel. When I was on the street, I almost broke my vocal cords from shouting. I saw only some very small images sliding by. They could have been some tricks of the sun, not even images. Pedestrians in the distance were as straight as poles.
My family members indulged in the foolish deed of feeding pigeons. At midnight disturbed pigeons would shrill as if they wanted to take the soul out of me. The whole house was littered with their excrement. Sometimes, they even sneaked into the wardrobe, attempting a terrorist attack. When I inquired about the pigeons during the day, everyone acted like a gentleman and denied their existence with a serious face. Pigeons? Where are the pigeons from? Then they smiled with contempt. By the foot of the guy my third daughter seduced, there lay a big gunnysack. Something was moving inside. I certainly knew what it was, but I attempted to stamp on it pretending not to know what animal was in there.
Before I could raise my foot, I was pushed to the ground by my son. They were birds of a feather. Approaching my ear, he shouted, as if I were deaf: “There are red rabbits in the wilderness. A mosquito is waving. Go there, it suits you.”
To him, I was out of date, no more than “something old and broken” at home. My son understood me. When he was twelve, he got a big mirror and placed it in front of my bed, saying in a serious tone: “Mama, what a
magnificent son is rising up inside you!” I felt joyful though I knew he was lying, because what he said was exactly what I was thinking. “This is not a lie. When she was young, there must have been a tremendous explosion in her mind, which left fatal scars. What reason do we have, as her offspring, to tease her? Who hasn’t chased a leaf, a beam of sunshine? How can we stand the idea of exposing her last hope just for that and turning her into a beggar? Mother now is as weak as a baby. We have to treat her dearly.” He was so full of righteous indignation that his eyes were filled with tears. Finally, he declared that he would “firmly share sorrow and worry with old mom” and “protect her fragmentary soul.” Later on, my third daughter told me that it was my son who had “instigated” the fleeing of the camel. At dawn, he “threw stones” at the back of the beast. But I had many doubts about this, because she wore a challenging expression.
Every evening, the guy seduced by my third daughter swaggered in, his gunnysack on his back, waiting for the fall of darkness. Before the sky darkened, the couple was extremely busy. Putting on their big-mouthed masks, they ran in and out, back and forth several times. My third daughter was hot tempered, and she’d been afflicted with vain hopes ever since youth. However, this was the first instance of such publicizing. The most annoying thing was that my son might also have been in cahoots with them. I was determined to give them a blow. I hid in the wardrobe, waiting for that guy to release the pigeon. As soon as the little thing flew into the wardrobe, I grabbed it and broke its neck, then I threw the bloody body outside before going back to my bed. The two set up wild shrieks and howls the whole night.
The next morning, though their eyes looked like walnuts, they said to me indifferently: “Mother, such gloomy weather is not good for planting vegetables.”
Holding back my pleasure, I replied: “Such weather is no good. I did not sleep deeply, so I feel very tired. I saw my camel hiding in a bathroom, eating the cement on the ground.”
