by Can Xue
Late that night, Little Leaf screamed because she distinctly felt her body falling apart—falling apart into many little pieces. Only her head remained intact. And her mouth was still able to scream. Her head floated in midair. She saw Marco busying himself in the wooden box, holding up a candle, picking up those little fragments (who knows why there was no blood?) and piecing them together. He did this conscientiously, inspecting everything carefully lest he miss something.
“Marco?!”
“Oh, baby, I’m here.”
Little Leaf was worried: Would Marco bury these little pieces in the ground? Marco urged her to go to sleep, and—in midair—Little Leaf closed her eyes. But she couldn’t sleep. In a haze, she again saw Marco bustling around. Somewhere, a cuckoo bird was calling: it was midnight. She didn’t know what Marco was doing. Suddenly, her hand felt very weak, like an infant’s. She tried to grab a glass from the table, but she couldn’t. She heard Marco talking.
“I came home and didn’t see you. I just knew that you’d gone to the wasteland and turned over those seeds. You had to relive that person’s experience. I’ve just figured it out. The gardener raised the cuckoo bird. See: he has raised just about everything here. He raised those China roses, and they all blossomed as large as basins.”
Then the candle went out, and Marco continued bustling around in the dark. He seemed to be sewing. Was he sewing those fragments together? If he had buried a few small pieces in the ground, what would have happened? She heard him say, “This is Holland’s border.” His voice was a little eerie.
Little Leaf couldn’t fall asleep until the first rays of dawn entered the box. She slept in through the day and didn’t go to the restaurant. While she was sleeping, their neighbors saw two older strangers circling around her box numerous times—taking careful stock of it. The neighbors saw the old woman lift a large black watch toward the sun and wind it up. The neighbors were bewildered: Why did she have to face the sun to wind a watch?
After a day of rest, Little Leaf returned to work feeling refreshed. When she entered, the manager was sitting at the entrance smoking a water pipe. He gave her an artificial smile and said, “Have you recovered so soon? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“What? I wasn’t sick. I simply overslept. Really . . .” She was flustered.
“You overslept? That’s okay. It could happen to anyone.”
The customers hadn’t yet arrived. She started her day by cleaning the dining hall. The restaurant was rather desolate. After cleaning for a while, she set the tables. The manager told her they would have no business today because there’d been a free reception the day before and the customers had all filled up then.
“It was a great day of rebirth for everyone,” he said.
Little Leaf looked up: the picture of the “sail” had disappeared from the wall. In its place was a birdcage. She looked again: the other picture was also gone. On the wall was a white rectangle where the frame had hung. Little Leaf contemplated this for a long time. The silence all around seemed to be warning her of something—but what? She went to the kitchen and then to the storeroom: she was looking for Marco. In the back of the storeroom, a door led to the wasteland. Little Leaf looked out. She saw Marco bent over raking those holes.
“Are you wrecking their hard work?” Little Leaf asked with a smile.
She noticed that he had dug up seeds from most of the holes. She didn’t understand why the little grayish-blue stones became black in the bright sunlight and lost their round shape. They were no different from ordinary stones. Were these the seeds the old man had planted? Marco was still digging energetically: he said he wanted to find a Holland pea. When Little Leaf asked what a Holland pea was, he said, “It’s a person’s heart.” He kept turning over the soil, but what he found were only the same black stones. He was sweating and depressed. Little Leaf realized he never forgot his days in Holland, yet as she saw it, past events were like narrow, dark little alleys; it was hard to say where they would lead. Little Leaf felt vaguely threatened.
At last, he dug out a little round stone that was slightly larger than the others. In the sunlight it remained grayish-blue. When Marco held it up to look at it, Little Leaf heard the slight noise of an electrical discharge in midair. Marco blanched, and in a split second he became a different person. He said to Little Leaf, “I have some property in Holland that I haven’t taken care of. Tomorrow I’ll meet with people in the tax office. They’re pursuing me all over the world. I’ve bought a train ticket. I’ll set out tomorrow.”
Little Leaf smothered her laughter and asked, “Are you an alien?”
“Yes. Even I think it’s strange. Why have I stayed in this country so long?”
He threw down the stone and rake and gazed ahead. Then he clenched his teeth and walked away without looking back. He was heading to the city. Was he looking for someone else to talk to? Little Leaf detoured around the wasteland, and the sweet time she spent with Marco in the park archives kept flashing through her mind. The manager appeared at the door to the storeroom. The smoke he puffed out from his water pipe blocked her view of his face. Little Leaf thought he was observing her. She walked toward him.
When the manager suggested that they sit beside the river for a change, Little Leaf agreed. Taking a cinder path, they reached the poplar trees on the riverbank. They had no sooner sat down than Little Leaf saw a beautiful woman dressed in a red skirt come up from the river with a sheep. The red and white color combination was very attractive.
“Who’s that?” Little Leaf asked the manager.
“She’s related to the old man who opened up the land behind our restaurant. I’ve seen her several times. Each time, she brings a sheep here and then slaughters it. Another time, I saw her sleeping on the sheep’s dead body. She’s really a tough girl!”
As the red and the white walked into the distance, Little Leaf still felt great admiration.
“Have you seen her slaughter a sheep?”
“Yes. She’s quick and nimble. Oddly enough, the sheep couldn’t seem to wait: it came over to her with its neck stretched out.”
“Oh!”
Little Leaf looked at the black river with grief-laden eyes—disturbed again by Marco’s behavior.
She asked the manager if it was possible for one to be psychologically transformed into another person and never change back. The manager asked if she meant the man in the river. Little Leaf saw a small boat sail past with an old and lonely fisherman on it. Little Leaf had never seen this white-bearded old man.
“He’s the only one who couldn’t return to his original self.” The manager’s voice rang out in midair.
“I’ve been here a long time. Why haven’t I ever seen him?”
“Ah, he’s always in this river, but not everyone can see him.”
Little Leaf thought this was a strange day: she had seen two odd things. Were they connected with Marco’s metamorphosis? In a split second, she had become fascinated with this black-colored river. It was a gently swaying world that would inhale her. She sighed deeply, and her eyes filled with tears. The old fisherman sailed past, and a strange scent blew in on the breeze. All at once, she thought of the tropical garden.
“Is he the gardener?” she asked, glancing suspiciously at the manager.
“Yes,” the manager nodded. “He is. This river looks black to you, but actually it’s as transparent as crystal. Have you ever seen crystal? It’s exactly like crystal.”
Little Leaf took her leave of the manager and walked quietly toward her box. She saw the old man’s boat go past again, this time upstream. He was rowing it. After sizing him up at close range, Little Leaf thought he didn’t seem as old as he had just a while ago. Though his hair and beard were white, his eyes were bright and expressive, his arms still muscular. She couldn’t believe he was the gardener, because the old gardener who lived in the wooden box over there was so old that he couldn’t even walk steadily. But when she took another look, she felt that this old man in the r
iver did resemble the gardener a little. Could they be relatives?
And so it was that the two of them—she on the bank, he in the river—moved ahead at the same speed. When Little Leaf reached her wooden box, the old man was pulling the boat ashore and tying it to a tree. He rushed toward his own wooden box, and Little Leaf finally believed that this one was indeed that one. Then was he the legendary immortal? The sunlight on the river hurt Little Leaf’s eyes. She burrowed into the box. Marco was sleeping on the floor.
In the dark, Marco said to Little Leaf, “How come I’m still here?”
Little Leaf started to laugh. She answered, “The manager told me that only the gardener had changed permanently into another self. But he can change his age and become young again: I saw this for myself today. He can also sail a boat: he’s exactly like a young person.”
“But I’ve bought my train ticket. I leave tomorrow.”
Ignoring him, Little Leaf picked up some garlic and green vegetables, as well as cooked meat that she had brought back from the restaurant, and went out to the shed to cook.
While she was cooking, she heard Marco shouting, “I’m an alien! Didn’t any of you know that?!”
Little Leaf heard rustling noises outside the shed. She whipped open the curtain and saw the old gardener. He was the same as before—a humpbacked man with glaucoma. He said something obscure and motioned several times. Little Leaf finally realized that he was asking for a bowl of food. She gave it to him, and he sat on the rock outside and ate. He was toothless so he ate slowly. He closed his eyes as he chewed, as if falling asleep. Then Marco came over, and the three of them ate together on the large rock. In the sunshine, each of them was preoccupied. For some reason, Little Leaf looked a bit distracted. She felt that at this time and in this place, she had become a lady of ancient times who was painting on rice paper. As far as the eye could see, dragon boats were racing in the river.
During the night, when the weather was vile, Little Leaf and Marco both saw a fish while they were having sex. It was an enormous fresh-water fish lying motionless on the river bottom. People said there had been no fish in this black-water river for a long time. Was this large fish real? All night, Little Leaf and Marco thought about fish-related things. The more they thought about it, the closer the fish appeared to be. Halfway through the night, they got up, grabbed a flashlight, and went outside for a closer look. The river water was black; they saw nothing unusual.
“Maybe it swam up from another place,” Little Leaf said.
“I think it was native born and bred.” Marco looked a little sorrowful.
They waited a long time, but the large fish didn’t swim up as they hoped it would. In the river wind, the two of them embraced tightly and shivered. Something was going on inside the riverside boxes: one after another, they lit up. Did everyone know about this fish? They went back to the wooden box and lay down again. The fish was still there, but not in the same place. When they went out, the large fish also swam a short distance.
As soon as they turned off the light the next night, they saw it again—a little blurry this time. Marco called it “Holland fish.” He supposed it had swum out from the dark events of the past. He told Little Leaf of an incident from long ago. When he was two years old, his foster mother had taken him to play on the beach. Then she had taken him to a large fishing boat. The people on the boat had locked him up in a small cabin that was so dark that he couldn’t see his fingers. When he heard the ocean water flowing beneath him, he had a vivid sense that he was swimming. This story scared Little Leaf, and she begged him to stop talking.
On their day off, they found a boat, sat on it, and floated with the current.
“Little Leaf, Marco, what are you doing?!”
Their neighbors looked panic-stricken. Nobody here did this kind of thing, except perhaps the old gardener. They all knew this river wasn’t an ordinary one.
“We’re having fun,” Marco answered. “We’re going to Holland.”
From far away, Little Leaf saw the restaurant manager smoking his water pipe at the entrance. He was completely shrouded in smoke. Next to him was a large dog, also shrouded in smoke. Flabbergasted, Little Leaf wondered how the manager could puff so much smoke. Marco asked her if she’d ever seen the manager’s wife. She said she hadn’t. Marco said he’d seen her once. She sat in the basement the whole day knitting sweaters. “That woman is afraid of any noise.”
After a while, they sailed away from their living area. The river turned, and both shores opened up.
A strange bird dropped onto the prow of their boat: Marco said it was a cormorant. Little Leaf thought it must have come to this stagnant river by mistake, because there were no fish in the water. Yet, the bird stood alert on the prow. Wasteland lay on both banks—a few willows, each with one solitary bird calling, were scattered about. The city was far behind: Little Leaf had never come here before.
When they went ashore, Little Leaf asked what they should do with the boat. Marco said they didn’t have to do anything. He’d seen it floating in the river and had pulled it to the riverbank. He didn’t know whose boat it was. Marco said he would go to Holland now. He told Little Leaf to go home by herself. With that, he walked off into the distance along the path beside the wasteland. Little Leaf stared blankly, then squatted on the ground and began to cry. After she finished crying, she looked up: it suddenly began drizzling—unusual in this season. Little Leaf headed back in the rain. Soon, her hair and clothing were drenched. No one was on the bank, and the sky was dark. She felt as if she were walking at night. Just then, she saw the strangest sight—a slender young man fishing with a bamboo-frame fishing net. He stood on the bank, the net immersed in the river. Every now and then, he lifted the net up. Little Leaf stood to one side and watched him pull it up twice. Naturally, it held no fish at all.
“Are you new here?” Little Leaf asked.
“No, I’m an old hand, an old hand at fishing.”
“But this river is stagnant. How could there be any fish here?”
“Hmm, I know. Different people have different ideas. And on a dark rainy day like this, I can’t even get a good look at you.”
Little Leaf couldn’t understand him. He looked so young—how could he talk like this? She noticed, too, that he had no creel. All of a sudden, Little Leaf felt excited by her train of thought. She seemed to see a hazy way out of her impasse. Although she couldn’t say what it was, her earlier dismay faded. She wanted to continue watching, but the young man urged her to leave, saying he couldn’t concentrate when someone else was there.
“We’ll see each other again. I come here often. My name is Roy,” he said.
After walking a while, she turned around and looked again. Even when she had walked a long way, she could still see the slender figure and the fishing net. She thought he really was concentrating. She didn’t know when the rain had stopped. It was still dark. Little Leaf’s footsteps were lighter now. The scenery ahead was still depressing, but the stone in her heart had vanished. She wanted to hurry back to her wooden box, for she was starting to feel hungry.
After Marco had been gone several days, Little Leaf figured he wouldn’t come back for a while. Although his smell still permeated the wooden box, Little Leaf rarely thought of him.
In the restaurant, the stolid old man sat across from the old woman clad in mourning clothing. Both ordered rice curry. When Little Leaf set the food down on the table, the old woman grabbed her hand.
“Sweetheart, have you lost something?” she asked with a smile in her eyes.
“Me?” Little Leaf tensed up.
“I think you’ve lost something, or you wouldn’t look so worried.”
“But I’m not—not at all.”
“Okay then, that’s good.” She let go of her hand.
When Little Leaf returned to their table, the two old people had disappeared. A bulging handbag had been left on the chair. Little Leaf picked it up; it was heavy, as though it held stones. The manager came
over, and Little Leaf picked up the bag for him to look at. He said, “Listen to it.” Little Leaf placed her ear next to the bag and heard a jumble of tick-tock sounds, as if the bag contained a lot of watches or small clocks.
“Open it,” the manager said, his eyes drooping.
Little Leaf unzipped it: only ordinary stones were inside.
“That woman didn’t seem to be desperately ill. What do you think, Little Leaf?”
“That’s what I think, too. She isn’t. She’s just deluded.”
“Hmm. It’s hard to define sickness.”
The manager put the handbag away. Little Leaf thought hard, but she couldn’t bring back what had been lost from her memory. She walked outside and stared blankly at the bright blue sky. The back of one departing customer reminded her of her father: they were much alike. She ran ahead of him and turned around to look: it wasn’t her father. All smiles, the manager said to her, “Those two want to open up some more land for extensive cultivation. Ha.”
The manager urged her to go home, and she agreed. It was the first time in a long time that she had remembered that leaky apartment and her parents’ endless arguments. She had tried to find out how these two orphans had found each other, but she had quickly given up. Now she had changed her view of life: she would not deliberately try to understand anything again. She would just stay alert—that was enough.
