by Paula Guran
“Do you really think it’s Qiqi?” he asked.
“Of course it is. Heizi, slap me! I want to be sure I’m not dreaming.”
Like a true friend, Heizi slapped me in the face, hard. I put my hand against my cheek, savoring the pain, and laughed.
“Don’t get too excited,” said Heizi. “Zhao Qi is your age, isn’t she? She’s not a pretty young lady anymore. It’s been decades since you’ve seen her. You might be disappointed.”
“That’s ridiculous. Look at all of us. We’re like candle stubs sputtering in our last moments of glory. Seeing her one more time before I die would be more than enough.”
Heizi chuckled. “You might be old, but you’re still in good health—I bet the parts of your body that matter still work pretty well. How about this? If you two are going to get married, I want to be the witness.”
I laughed and felt calmer. We chatted as we descended the mountain, and then my heart began to leap wildly again as I approached the Arts Academy.
18.
I didn’t recognize her.
She was Caucasian. Although her hair was turning white, I could tell it had once been blonde. Blue eyes stared at me thoughtfully out of an angled, distinctive face. Although she was not young, she was still beautiful.
I was deeply disappointed. That foolish student hadn’t even clarified whether he was talking about a Chinese or a foreigner.
“Hello,” the woman said. Her Chinese was excellent. “Are you Mr. Xie Baosheng?”
“I am. May I ask your name?”
“I’m Anna Louise Strong, a writer.”
I recognized the name. She was a leftist American author who had lived in Beijing and written several books about the China of the Mao era. She was friends with both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Though I knew who she was, I had never met her. I heard she had moved back to the U.S. around the time Shen Qian died. Why was she looking for me?
Anna looked uncomfortable and I felt uneasy. She hesitated, and then said, “I have something important to tell you, but perhaps it’s best to speak in private.”
I led her to my cave. Anna retrieved a bundle from her suitcase, which she carefully unwrapped. Anxiously, I watched as she set a crude brown ceramic jar down on the table.
Solemnly, she said, “This holds the ashes of Miss Zhao Qi.”
I stared at the jar, unable to connect this strange artifact with the lovely, graceful Qiqi of my memory.
“What are you saying?” I asked. I simply could not make sense of what she was telling me.
“I’m sorry, but . . . she’s dead.”
The air in the cave seemed to solidify. I stood rooted in place, unable to speak.
“Are you all right?” Anna asked.
After a while, I nodded. “I’m fine. Oh, would you like a cup of water?” I was surprised I could think about such irrelevant details at that moment.
I had imagined the scene of our reunion countless times, and of course I had imagined the possibility that Qiqi was already dead. I always thought I would howl, scream, fall to the ground, or even faint. But I was wrong. I was amazed by how calmly I accepted the news. Maybe I had always known there would be no happily-ever-after in my life.
“When?” I asked.
“Three days ago, in Luochuan.”
Anna told me that Qiqi had been looking for me for years. Although I had some notoriety as a war criminal, because I was part of the Communist army and always on the march, it was impossible to locate me. Once war broke out with Japan, the Nationalists and the Communists both became American allies and it was no longer difficult to travel to China. Qiqi finally heard that I was in Yan’an and bought a ticket on the boat crossing the Pacific. On the voyage, she met Anna and the two became friends. On the long ride across the ocean, she told Anna our story.
Anna and Qiqi arrived in Hong Kong, but as most of eastern China had fallen to Japanese occupation, they had to get on another boat to Guangxi, from whence they passed through Guizhou and Sichuan, and then continued north through Shaanxi to arrive finally in Yan’an.
“But Zhao Qi was no longer a young woman,” Anna said, “and with her handicap, the journey was very tough on her. By the time she arrived in Xi’an, she fell ill, and yet she forced herself to go on so that she wouldn’t slow us down. In Luochuan, her condition deteriorated. . . . Because of the war, we couldn’t get the medicine she needed. . . . We tried everything, but we couldn’t save her.” Anna stopped, unable to continue.
“Don’t blame yourself. You did your best.” I tried to console her.
Anna looked at me strangely, as if unable to comprehend my calmness.
“Why don’t you tell me what her life in America was like following our separation?” I asked.
Anna told me that after I left, Qiqi continued her studies in the U.S., waiting for me. She wrote to me several times but never received any replies. Once she was awarded her Ph.D., she taught in college and then remarried. Ten years ago, after her husband died, she wanted to return to China, but the civil war put those plans on hold. Finally, only days from Yan’an, she died. Since they couldn’t carry her body through the mountains, they had to cremate her. Thus I was deprived of the chance to see her one last time—
“No,” I interrupted. I picked up the jar of ashes. “Qiqi and I are together now, and we’ll never be apart again. Thank you.”
I ignored Anna’s stare as I held the jar against my chest and muttered to myself. Tears flowed down my face, the tears of happiness.
Coda
The setting sun, red as blood, floated next to the ancient pagoda on Baota Mountain. It cast its remaining light over northern China, veiling everything in a golden-red hue. The Yan River sparkled in the distance, and I could see a few young soldiers, barely more than boys, playing in the water.
I sat under a tree; Qiqi sat next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.
The pendulum of life appeared to have returned to the origin. After all we had witnessed and endured, she and I had traversed countless moments, both bitter and sweet, and once again leaned against each other. It didn’t matter how much time had passed us by. It didn’t matter if we were alive or dead. It was enough that we were together.
“I’m not sure if you know this,” I said. “After your mother died during the Cultural Revolution, I helped to arrange her funeral. She had suffered some because of her relationship to you, but she died relatively peacefully. In her last moments, she asked me to tell you to stay away from China and try to live a good life. But I always knew you would return. . . .
“Do you remember Heizi? He’s in Yan’an, too. Even at his age, he’s as goofy as when he was a boy. Last month, he told me that if you came back, we’d all go climb Baota Mountain together, just like when we were kids. Don’t worry, the mountain is not very high. I can carry you if you have trouble with your leg. . . .
“It’s been twenty years since my mother’s death. There used to be two jade bracelets that had been in my family for generations. My mother planned to give one each to you and me. Later, she gave one to Shen Qian, but the Red Guards broke it because it was a feudal relic. . . . I hid the other, hoping to give it to you. Have a look. I hope you like it.”
I opened the bundle that had been on my back and took out a smooth jade bracelet. In the sun’s last rays, it glowed brightly.
“You want to know what else is in the bundle?” I chuckled. “Lots of good things. I’ve been carrying them around for years. It hasn’t been easy to keep them safe. Look.”
I took out the treasures of my memory one by one: the English letters Qiqi had written to me in high school; the New Concept English cassette tapes she gave me; the posters for Tokyo Love Story; a lock of hair I begged from her after we started dating; the purple hairclip she wore to Tiananmen Square; a few photographs of us taken in New York; the “revolutionese” letter she sent me during the Cultural Revolution. . . .
I examined each object carefully, remembering. It was like gazing through a time telesc
ope at moments as far away as galaxies, or perhaps like diving into the sea of history in search of forgotten treasures in sunken ships. The distant years had settled deep into the strata of time, turning into indistinct fossils. But perhaps they were also like seeds that would germinate after years of quiescence and poke through the crust of our souls. . . .
Finally, at the bottom of the bundle, I found the copy of Season of Bloom, Season of Rain. She left it in my home after visiting my family during middle school, but I hadn’t read it in years. More than fifty years later, the pages had turned yellow and brittle. I held it in my hand and caressed the cover wrap Qiqi had made, admiring her handwriting. The smooth texture of the poster paper felt strangely familiar, as though I was opening a tunnel into the past.
I opened the book, thinking I would read a few pages. But my hand felt something strange. I looked closely: there was something trapped between the poster paper wrap and the original cover of the book.
Carefully, I unwrapped the poster paper, but I had underestimated the fragility of the book. The cover was torn off and a rectangular card fell out like a colorful butterfly. It fluttered to the ground after a brief dance in the sunlight.
I picked it up.
It was a high-definition photograph, probably taken with a digital camera. Fireworks exploded in the night sky, and in the distant background was a glowing screen on which you could make out the shape of some magnificent stadium. I recognized it: the Bird’s Nest. In the foreground were many people dressed in colorful clothes holding balloons and Chinese flags and cotton candy and popcorn. Everyone was laughing, pointing, strolling. . . .
In the middle of the photograph were two children about four years old. One was a boy in a grey jacket, the other a girl in a pink dress. They stood together, holding hands. Illuminated by the fireworks exploding overhead, the smiles on their flushed faces were pure and innocent.
I stared at the photograph for a long time and then flipped it over. I saw a graceful line of handwritten characters:
Beauty is about to go home. Take care, my Grey Wolf.
More than fifty years earlier, Qiqi had hidden this present to me in a book she had “forgotten.” I had never unwrapped it.
I remembered the last conversation I had with Anna.
“What did she say before she died?”
“She was delirious . . . but she said she would return to the past you two shared, to the place where she met you for the first time, and wait for you. I don’t know what she meant.”
“Maybe all of us will return there someday.”
“Where?”
“To the origin of the universe, of life, of time. . . . To the time before the world began. Perhaps we could choose another direction and live another life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t, either. Maybe our lives are lived in order to comprehend this mystery, and we’ll understand only at the end.”
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I asked Qiqi. “We’ll go back together. Would you like that?”
Qiqi said nothing.
I closed my eyes. The world dissolved around me. Layer after layer peeled back, and era after era emerged and returned to nothingness. Strings of shining names fell from the empyrean of history, as though they had never existed. We were thirty, twenty, fifteen, five . . . not just me and Qiqi, but also Shen Qian, Heizi, and everyone else. We returned to the origin of our lives, turned into babies, into fetuses. In the deepest abyss of the world, the beginning of consciousness stirred, ready to choose new worlds, new time lines, new possibilities. . . .
The sun had fallen beneath the horizon in the east, and the long day was about to end. But tomorrow the sun would rise in the west again, bathing the world in a kinder light. On the terraced fields along the slope of the mountain, millions of poppy flowers trembled, blooming, burning incomparably bright in the last light of dusk.
Author’s Postscript:
Many interesting works have been written about the arrow of time. This one is perhaps a bit distinct: while each person lives their life forward, the sociopolitical conditions regress backward.
This absurd story has a fairly realist origin. One time, on an Internet discussion board, someone made the comment that if a certain prominent figure in contemporary Chinese politics came to power, the Cultural Revolution would happen again. I didn’t agree with him at the time, but I did think: What would it be like if my generation has to experience the conditions of the Cultural Revolution again in our forties or fifties? More broadly, I wondered what life would be like if society moved backward in history.
The frame of this story might be seen as a reversed arrow of time, but strictly speaking, what has been reversed isn’t time, only the trends of history.
This story was written as a work of entertainment, and so it should not be read as some kind of political manifesto. If one must attribute a political message to it, it is simply this: I hope that all the historical tragedies our nation has experienced will not repeat in the future.
Footnotes
1 - Translator’s note: English translation courtesy of Anatoly Belilovsky, © 2014. Used here with permission.
2 - Translator’s note: In our timeline, Jin Yong, Gu Long, and Liang Yusheng are three of the acnkowledged masters of wuxia fantasy, and most of their best works were written before 1980. Huang Yi’s works rose to prominence later, in the 1990s.
3 - Translator’s note: This is a bit of an inside joke for Chinese sf fans. In our timeline, Yao Haijun is the assistant chief editor for Science Fiction World, China’s most prominent sci-fi magazine. Bao Shu, the author of this story, began his career as a fanfic author in the universe of Liu Cixin’s “Three Body” series.
4 - Translator’s note: In our timeline, “workers’ Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams” were a unique creation of the Cultural Revolution. They consisted of teams of ordinary workers installed at colleges and high schools to take over the administrative functions and to put a stop to the bloody Red Guard factional wars. For the most part, they stabilized the chaos introduced by the early stages of the Cultural Revolution.
THE LAST WITNESS
K. J. Parker
I remember waking up in the middle of the night. My sister was crying. She was five years old, I was eight. There was a horrible noise coming from downstairs, shouting, banging. We crept to the top of the stairs (really it was just a glorified ladder) and I peered down. I couldn’t see all that well, because the fire had died down and the lamps weren’t lit. I saw my father; he’d got his walking stick in his hand, which was odd because why would he need it indoors? My mother was yelling at him; you’re stupid, you’re so stupid, I should have listened to my family, they said you were useless and you are. Then my father swung the stick at her. I think he meant to hit her head, but she moved and he caught her on the side of the left arm. Oddly, instead of backing away she went forward, toward him. He staggered and fell sideways, onto the little table with the spindly legs; it went crunch under his weight, and I thought; he’s broken it, he’s going to be in so much trouble. Then my sister screamed. My mother looked up at us, and I saw the knife in her hand. She yelled, “Go to bed!” She yelled at us all the time. We were always getting under her feet.
I also remember a night when I couldn’t sleep. I was about six. Mummy and Daddy were having a horrible row downstairs, and it made me cry. I cried so much I woke up my brother. Forget it, he told me, they’re always rowing, go to sleep. I couldn’t stop crying. Something bad’s going to happen, I said. I think he thought so too, and we crept to the top of the stairs and looked down, the way we used to spy on the guests-for-dinner. I saw Daddy knock Mummy to the ground with his stick, and then Uncle Sass (he wasn’t really our uncle) jumped out from behind the chimney corner and stabbed Daddy with a knife. Then Mummy saw us and yelled at us to go back to bed.
I also remember the night my husband died.
I remember that job very clearly.
I remember, when I was growing
up, we lived on the edge of the moor, in a little house in a valley. About five miles north, just above the heather-line, were these old ruins. I used to go there a lot when I was a boy. Mostly the grass had grown up all over them, but in places the masonry still poked out, like teeth through gums. It must have been a big city once—of course, I didn’t know about cities then—and there was this tall square pillar; it stood about ten feet and it was leaning slightly. Between the wind and the rain and the sheep itching against it, there wasn’t much left to see of the carvings; rounded outlines that were probably meant to be people doing things, and on one side, where the slight lean sheltered it a tiny bit from the weather, there were these markings that I later realized must have been writing. I can picture them in my mind to this day; and when I became rich and had some spare time I searched the Studium library, which is the finest in the world (the memory of the human race, they call it) but I never found anything remotely like that script, or any record of any city on our moors, or any race or civilization who’d ever lived there.
I remember the first time I met them. When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, clients tend to merge together, but these ones stand out in my mind. There was an old man and a younger one; father and son or uncle and nephew, I never did find out. The old man was big, broad and bony, with a long face and a shiny dome of a head, nose like a hawk’s beak, very bright blue sunken eyes, big ears sticking out like handles. The young man was just like him only red-haired and much smaller; you could have fitted him comfortably inside the old man, like those trick dolls from the East. He didn’t talk much.
We heard all about you, the old man said, the stuff you can do. Is it true?
Depends what you’ve heard, I told him. Most of what people say about me is garbage.
I think he expected me to be more businesslike. Is it true, he said, that you can read people’s minds?
No, I told him, I can’t do that, nobody can, not even the Grand Masters. That would be magic, and there’s no such thing. What I can do (I said quickly, before I tried his patience too far) is get inside people’s heads and take their memories.
