by Can Xue
That night, when most customers had left, that man was still sitting there looking outside.
“You and your mother never came here together,” said Feiyuan.
“Ah,” he said. “The past few years, she regarded this place as a city on the ocean floor. That’s what she told me two days ago. I told her that I’ll live here, too, after I retire. But she said, ‘No, no. Every place is the same.’ Sitting here, I keep thinking that she might walk in at any moment.”
He looked intoxicated, and he reeled a little when he stood up. Sherman thought, Perhaps he’s in the water? After he went out, Feiyuan told Sherman, “His feet have really broken free of the ground. What a forsaken man!”
At that moment, Sherman sensed profoundly that Feiyuan was damned good at living, and that was why he had chosen to open this small shop. He even thought he might open one, too, after he retired. When he walked through this small street and made his way home, the moonlight and street lamps suddenly faded away. In this short time, his feet actually broke away from the ground. But very soon, his feet dropped onto the ground again. When he looked up, he saw lights on in his home—and the silhouettes of his wife and daughter swaying at the window. He bumped into someone in the dark. When he heard his voice, he realized it was the son of the deceased old woman!
“I want to go inside your building,” he said softly.
“Oh! I’d really like to invite you to stay in my home, but my place is just too small,” Sherman said, a little worried.
“No. I’m not used to being in other people’s homes. I just want to sit for a night at the foot of the stairs. It’s so late—it’s dangerous to walk around, isn’t it? Yesterday, Mama told me there were sharks in the neighborhood.”
Sherman hurried into his house. Mother and daughter turned to him in astonishment.
“There’s someone downstairs,” he said. He surprised himself by saying this.
It didn’t occur to him that mother and daughter would ask in unison, “Is it that sailor?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I told Mama just now.” His daughter Little Leaf said, “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s pathetic; he doesn’t fit in anywhere.”
Yuanqing looked a little anxious. She urged her daughter to go with her to the other room to sleep, and so they did. They closed the bedroom door, but kept a small light on.
When Sherman lay down, he heard the strange sound again. This time it seemed particularly clear: it was in the dining room. Accompanying that sound was his daughter Little Leaf’s crying for help. Sherman leaped up and ran, barefoot, to the women’s bedroom and rapped on the door.
“Little Leaf! Little Leaf!”
As he knocked on the door, the light in their bedroom went out, and he heard Little Leaf’s sleepy voice.
“Don’t shout at me, Papa. Don’t make so much noise . . .”
Sherman was shamefaced as he went back to his room. In the dark, he thought of the shark. Could the shark be making this noise? Was that person still downstairs? How was he going to get through this night? His daughter Little Leaf was so grown up. When she was little and he held her in his arms, she stared straight at him with those beautiful black eyes and never cried. Her eyes weren’t like Yuanqing’s; she wasn’t nearsighted, either. Who did she look like?
Recently, a lethargic young person had been coming to Sherman’s office. As soon as he got there, he would hide in the shadows behind the file cabinets and rest, as if exhausted. After dozing for about half an hour, he would jump up and go back to work. He was the new electrician. People said he was “weighed down by the past.” This was what his colleague Zhao had told Sherman. He had never joined in the mischief-making of the other young people in the office. The chair behind the file cabinet had become his designated seat.
“Marco, are you sick?” Sherman asked with concern.
“No, Uncle Sherman. I’m fine. Just tired.” He smiled in embarrassment. “Sometimes it’s really hard for me to keep my eyes open.”
Sherman asked Zhao what it meant to “be weighed down by the past.” The colleague replied that Marco had bizarre hallucinations: he thought he had been transformed into another person. He had moved from his home and cut himself off from his relatives; it was as if he didn’t even know them. He used to have a girlfriend, and then he broke up with her, too. Because of this, the girl had become a kind of lunatic. Marco wasn’t unaware of the trouble he caused others. Sometimes he was lucid. At such times, he went out wearing odd clothing, a red toupee, and sunglasses. No one could recognize him. Zhao somehow saw through his disguise and confronted him. To Zhao’s surprise, Marco actually lied to his face, claiming to be an overseas Chinese returning home, and said that he would stay only temporarily in Pebble Town. When Zhao mentioned his ex-girlfriend, he squatted down abruptly and wailed. Then he wiped away his tears and told Zhao he had to go back to Holland right away.
Whenever Marco arrived, Sherman felt heavy-hearted. Each time, he wished he would leave soon. Sherman wondered if it was possible for a person to transform himself into another person while asleep. In just half an hour, the young guy fell sound asleep, snoring openmouthed. Sherman didn’t know, either, why he was so heavy-hearted. Was it because he couldn’t transform himself? The other young men fastened clothespins on their ears, and crawled around on the floor, but—who knew why?—they didn’t disturb the sleeping Marco. Zhao crawled over and told Sherman sorrowfully that he would also like to go to Holland—but where was Holland? He had no idea. And so all he—and the rest of them, too—could do was to crawl on the ground, crawl and crawl some more. It might have looked like fun, but actually they did this to release their inhibitions. When Sherman heard “release their inhibitions,” he glanced sideways again at these people. He couldn’t help but laugh. Later on, he asked Marco very seriously what Holland was all about. Marco said that his family used to be very poor. When he was still an infant, a Dutch woman had adopted him and taken him to Holland. But when he was three, his adoptive mother had sent him home. People said he’d gotten into trouble there, and the adoptive mother no longer wanted him.
“What’s Holland like?” Sherman asked.
“I don’t know. Every day, I try to remember, but I can’t remember anything about that country. That isn’t right, because I lived there three years. Damn. It’s as if I’d never been there.”
Feiyuan also knew about Marco’s situation. He looked down on Marco and called him a “white-eyed wolf”—a heartless, ungrateful person. He also said that Marco’s adoptive mother saw through him and that’s why she finally sent him back. Feiyuan’s verdict: “This person is dangerous.”
“Then I shouldn’t have any contact with him, should I?” asked Sherman.
“Contact? Contact is fine. It’s good for you to have contact with him.”
His daughter Little Leaf, however, actually came to his office looking for Marco. When—thick as thieves—the two of them sat talking in the dark behind the file cabinet, Sherman grew nervous. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. He considered leaving, but that didn’t seem right. That day, none of the young people showed up. It was just the three of them in the room, and his daughter didn’t seem to mind his being there.
On the way home, he told Little Leaf, “People say he’s a white-eyed wolf.”
“True. I’ve heard that, too! I like white-eyed wolves. They’re the kind I really like! Pa, I’ll be with him, and later on, I probably won’t come home much. Even if I come home, my heart won’t be there. Haven’t you ever wondered why Marco was hanging around your office? It’s because I told him to. Whenever he complained that his workplace was too noisy, I suggested that he rest in your office. Ah! Just look at that sailor!”
The sailor blocked the entrance to the dormitory, spreading his body out like the “” character. Whenever people went in, he immediately dodged to one side and then went back to blocking the space with the “” pose. Little Leaf started laughing and said, “He’s imitating a curtai
n.” Sherman thought this guy’s trick was quite amusing. But he also thought, If no one comes through for a long time, it will get tough for him. A person can’t maintain that pose very long. Perhaps he was trying to make up for something he missed during his life on the ocean.
When they went through, the sailor didn’t move. Little Leaf lowered her head and forced her way through.
“How are you doing today, young man?” Sherman joked with him.
“This place is great, so passionate,” he replied earnestly.
Then he sighed and his arms sagged.
“I have to go. The ocean is calling me. This lost child has waited too long to go home.”
In just a few days’ time, Sherman noticed that Marco’s face had been strewn with straight lines that looked like knife cuts. Were these caused by dehydration? If he hadn’t seen him earlier, he’d have thought he was an old man. His clothes also looked old, covered as they were by a layer of dust. Yet his mother had been an elegant woman who had dressed with exquisite taste. An idea flashed through Sherman’s mind: this place was his mother’s maritime space, it wasn’t his. He was wasting time staying here so long. Upstairs, Little Leaf called to Sherman, as though she had something urgent for him to solve.
“Marco and I have decided to quit our jobs and become gardeners.” She looked intently into her father’s eyes.
“That’s good. You’re young. Changing jobs is a good idea.”
“We’ll take lessons from the old gardener. You won’t see us for a while. Ah—that kind of gardening! There’s no way I can describe it to you. After seeing it once . . .”
As she was speaking, she left the room and went downstairs. Sherman fell into his chair, a campfire appearing in his mind—along with thick smoke filling the sky. Once more, he felt deeply that life in the small town was infinitely intriguing. His daughter was going off to do things he hadn’t done.
After Little Leaf and Marco resigned from their jobs, they disappeared. Sherman and Yuanqing went to Little Leaf’s rented apartment, where the landlord told them she had moved out some time ago. When they got home, Yuanqing regretted having gone and said they shouldn’t have looked for her. “What good does it do?” Sherman thought Yuanqing knew the ins and outs of the whole thing.
He made up his mind to go with Feiyuan to find the old gardener and have a talk—partly because he was uneasy about Little Leaf and partly because he was curious. He wanted Feiyuan to continue his last conversation about the garden. He felt unconvinced.
When he went to Feiyuan’s shop, Feiyuan was stocking goods, so he helped out, too. After the mutton was all put away, it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Feiyuan vacillated. Taking stock of Sherman’s face, he asked, “Do you have to go now?”
“Of course. She’s my daughter,” Sherman rebuked him.
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Let’s go.”
When they reached the old man’s place, they saw no campfire. It was a foggy evening. They could see some indistinct shapes ahead of them. They looked like houses, but they weren’t. Getting closer, they discovered several large wooden boxes arranged along a small river. Why hadn’t they seen this river the last few times they’d come here? Sherman put his head inside one box and saw bedding and a few bowls inside. Just then, Feiyuan called to him.
“The gardener’s in the sixth box. He’s sick. I certainly don’t want to disturb him. Just think. He’s ninety years old.”
“Can we help him?”
“Who can help him in this desolate country? Don’t be silly.”
Feiyuan sounded dismayed. He didn’t hide his discontent with Sherman. He said they’d better hurry back to the road, so they wouldn’t lose their way in the dark. Sherman wanted to look at these boxes some more, but it was so dark that when he stuck his head in, he could see nothing. Although he didn’t want to do so, he agreed that they had better leave. After walking a while, he looked back and saw a figure next to the river. Was it Little Leaf? Ah, it wasn’t just one person; others also emerged. They formed a line. The small river was dark and a little dirty. Sherman had noticed earlier that it wasn’t like a frontier river.
Feiyuan walked ahead and urged Sherman to hurry. He said it would soon be totally dark. If they waited any longer, they wouldn’t even be able to find the road. Sherman thought quickly and said, “Okay. Leave me here alone. I’m not afraid of losing my way. I have nothing to worry about.” Having said this, he felt much more relaxed. Grumbling something, Feiyuan walked off into the distance. Sherman turned and walked back to the river.
Now, apart from the glistening river water, he could see almost nothing. Sherman groped his way slowly toward the riverside. He recalled there were some poplars there. The boxes weren’t far from the poplars. He stretched out his hand and felt a tree trunk, and then another. Great!
“Little Leaf! Little Leaf!”
When he shouted, he heard alarm in his voice. No one answered him. A campfire began to burn. It was like the earlier one, smoldering and producing dense smoke. Sherman covered his nose with a handkerchief and walked past the dark fire. After a few steps, he bumped into a wooden box and nearly fell. He felt his way to the opening of the box, bent over, and went in. Inside was bedding. And something hard—a flashlight. He fiddled with it a few times; the battery was dead. He heard the moan of an old person. Ah, someone was here! Smoke from the campfire floated in with the wind. The acrid smell made them sneeze. The old man looked outside and said, “Wonderful, great!”
“Are you the gardener, sir?”
“Don’t ask that. When you arrived, the dogs didn’t bark, did they? You must smell familiar, so they didn’t bark. Listen: that large fish is swimming past again.”
Sherman also heard the fish swimming. It was strange: it didn’t make a sound, so how could he hear it? But he did. The big fish swam slowly, as if conducting an inspection. When Sherman heard the fish, something warm and strange sprang from his heart. A hairy creature approached. It was a dog, and it definitely wasn’t little.
“It’s your dog, sir.”
“Did you smell it? It ate a corpse again.”
The dog kept sniffing Sherman from head to toe. Sherman wondered if it was trying to decide where to bite him.
“Do I smell like a dead person?” he asked the old man.
“Well, a little.”
While they were talking, the dog suddenly jumped out of the box—in response to shouting outside. Sherman raised himself up enough to look outside and saw that the campfire had turned into a large bright fire, which was reflected in the river. Although he’d heard someone shout, he couldn’t see anyone. It seemed those inhabitants of the boxes were in the river, or in a cave. Sherman climbed out of the wooden box and walked toward the campfire. It looked close, but he walked a long way before reaching it. He tripped over something underfoot: it was a person lying on the ground. Three others were with him, all lying on their stomachs. The person told Sherman to lie down as they were doing. He said, “Otherwise, the fire will incinerate you.” After Sherman lay down, he asked the man if he had seen Little Leaf. After laughing for a moment, the man said that Sherman was “behind the times.”
All of a sudden, the wind shifted direction, and tongues of flames licked them. Sherman saw that the others kept their faces close to the ground, and so he did, too. Soon, the fire had burned the weeds around them and moved past them. Sherman, however, just felt a little hot, and his rubber shoes smelled terrible from being burned. The person next to him stood up, as did the other three. They warded off the smoke with their hands, as if looking at the stars, but no stars were in the sky. Except for the fire, it was dark everywhere. That old man said, “We should go back.” Sherman asked where they were going. The man next to him said, “Where? Home. Everyone here lives in the heart of Pebble Town. Look at the shooting stars in the sky. We plan to call this place ‘Garden of Shooting Stars.’”
But Sherman didn’t see any shooting stars. However, the word “garden” reminded him of some other
things. The others made their way into the wooden boxes at the riverside, leaving Sherman standing alone watching the fire. The fire slowly burned out. Several dogs came over and sniffed at his legs, but they didn’t bite him. “Dogs, ah, dogs, am I dying?” he kept repeating.
He walked back and forth along the river, listening to the large fish swimming. At dawn, he finally heard Little Leaf calling him. She and Marco scrambled up from the riverbank and walked over.
“Where did the two of you spend the night, Little Leaf?”
“Ha! Papa, we were busy with the durian trees. It’s the first time we’d seen that kind of tree, and we were so excited . . .”
Suddenly, a filthy dog pounced on her. She shouted “Ouch!” as she fell. She stared straight ahead, like a dead person. Marco kept shouting at her and lightly patting her face. Sherman also shouted at her. After a while, she finally revived, and the color returned to her face.
“Where did it bite you?” Sherman asked immediately.
“It didn’t. That wasn’t a dog. That’s, that’s my auntie.”
“Your aunt? You have no aunt!” Sherman said sternly.
Little Leaf began laughing and said, “Oh, I forgot. You and Mama are orphans. What does it mean to be an orphan? Marco, do you know?”
Marco shook his head blankly and rolled his eyes, looking distressed. Sherman asked if they could take him to see the garden. They held out their hands and said no, because “It’s broad daylight now.”
“Oh, so the garden isn’t supposed to be exposed to light,” Sherman said, purposely acting scornful.
“No, no,” Little Leaf said. “The sun shines everywhere in the garden. It’s just that in the daylight, you can’t find it. Give it a little thought. Durians and bananas aren’t native to the frontier.”
“But I saw the gardener.”
“Did you? Actually, it isn’t his garden. It has nothing to do with him. That’s his wishful thinking. Papa, why haven’t you gone home yet? There’s no place for you to rest here. Everyone here sleeps during the day. Go on back.”
