by Can Xue
“This is a friendly snake. It always wants to play with me. It lives near here.”
The crows weren’t afraid of her, either: they cawed right in front of her.
“My mama certainly can’t be lonely here now. Little animals and people all come to see her.”
While she was talking, the snake opened its mouth, as if to attack Qiming. Qiming thought this was great fun. The two of them sat there, not talking of the dead, because they sensed that the dead were there with them.
Later, they often met at the cemetery. They didn’t arrange to do so, but it seemed arranged. Qiming felt that Amy had an inhuman sort of beauty: she wasn’t at all like her mother. Qiming wasn’t good at talking, so he didn’t talk with her of past events. He felt that the dead were communicating for them. After all, the dead were from the past era, and Qiming was, too. If it weren’t for the mother, Qiming couldn’t have understood this young girl.
Qiming took her to the city, where he entrusted her to Meng Yu’s family, and then he left. He didn’t know Meng Yu well. He just had a vague idea that this family would be suitable for her. The weird thing was that this old couple readily agreed. That day, after making these arrangements, he went back to stay at the Design Institute. On the way, he passed Liujin’s home and heard the merry chirping of birds filling the courtyard. He turned to the entrance to have a look: four snow leopards stood behind that young woman while she sat there drinking wine. Her face was red. It was a stimulating scene. And once more, he felt profoundly that his life was just beginning. Then, he thought of a way to use cages to tempt the birds away from Liujin’s courtyard. Liujin had no idea that he was the one who did this.
Another big thing occurred in Qiming’s life back when he was at the Design Institute. When Qiming was in a slump, the director was in the hospital. Feeling anxious and desperate, he wished he could find a dark hole to crawl into and break free of his insignificant life. In the middle of the night, he sneaked off to see the director. She told him to stand outside the sickroom while she talked. Her days were numbered, and her voice was so hairspring-thin that it might snap at any moment.
“Nancy came here today. She’s interested in the butterflies in the garden.”
“I need to avoid her—avoid that whole family. Director, do you really have to go?”
“I understand, Qiming. You can disappear. For example, I had close friends in the past, too, and then I simply disappeared . . .”
He couldn’t hear the rest of what she said, for she was gasping for breath. Two big guys dragged Qiming out of the hospital. As he walked on the deserted streets, he kept pondering the director’s words: “You can disappear.” At daybreak, he finally understood.
He resolved to become a deaf mute. In other words, he would say nothing and hear nothing. Before long, his decision was acknowledged by people all around. It wasn’t long before even his name was changed: he was called “Dummy.” His colleagues at the Design Institute had bizarre memories. No sooner had the director been buried than no one remembered that he was Qiming. For some reason, they thought of him as a flower grower from the director’s hometown. They said he had sought shelter with the director because he was old and handicapped. Qiming thought he must have changed greatly. How could no one recognize him?
He watered the lawn with a hose. Nancy wandered over with Liujin. She said to Liujin, “Look, this is really hard for Uncle Dummy. The last gardener disappeared, and he has replaced him.”
Nancy’s eyes darted here and there, never looking him in the face. Qiming felt that in the setting sun, the view of mother and daughter’s backs was a little dreary—especially the child. He thought she was pitifully skinny.
With his change in identity, he could behave more freely than before. He felt he had retreated successfully. In the entire Design Institute, only José still recognized him as the same old Qiming. Still, even he called him by a different name. He now called him “Uncle Flower.” José was surprisingly discerning, and he never forgot certain things from that time long ago. With his new identity, Qiming worked an additional two years before retiring. When he inquired about retirement, the person in charge told him, “You can work here until you die!”
But he no longer wanted to work here. He wanted to change himself into a fish.
The manager was a little disappointed. He said, “Go ahead and retire. If you want to come back later, you may.”
This surprised Qiming. Later? How old would he be then? Was the manager teasing him? He looked up at the manager. He didn’t seem to be joking at all.
When Liujin called him “Uncle Qiming,” he felt a physiological response.
“My mother got better because of that turtle. I’m not kidding you. It’s true.”
“Your mother was wonderful. And your dad, too. I’ve never seen such strong people.”
They were chatting in a free hostel—the kind where five or six people stayed in one room. Each person had a hard wooden bed. With no chairs in the room, Liujin had to stand. The vagrants were all staring at her. Qiming thought, She’s just as energetic as ever. With so much energy, life must be tough.
They went outside together, Liujin squinting in the bright sunlight.
“Do you know the Peculiar Hostel?” Liujin asked him.
Qiming said that he not only knew it, he was also a shareholder in that hostel—of course, just a rather small shareholder. Liujin noticed that the moment he spoke, the years fell away. He looked only about sixty years old. Earlier, his face was always in the shadows and she hadn’t ever gotten a good look at him. They stood together on the tree-shaded roadside watching cars come and go. The sunlight shone on them through the trees. Liujin suddenly felt that this old man was much like a relative to her: she had known him since she was a child, but she had ignored him. How had she made such a mistake?
“You fit very well in that kind of hostel. My friends strive to make it unique.”
“No, I’m not at all accustomed to it. It’s so close to the sun . . . I’m not perfect.”
Liujin told Qiming she had lost her beloved young friend there.
Qiming smiled and said, “You have to believe that you can’t lose anything at home, no matter what it is.”
It was the first time Liujin had seen Uncle Qiming smiling. This gorgeous smile—surging like dozens of creeks!—affected Liujin deeply.
“Then where is he?”
“You’ll see him soon. Look over there.”
On the sidewalk across the street stood a headless man. His rectangular body was covered in black cloth. A Uighur girl was dancing in front of him.
“See how free he is!”
“Yes. It’s great to be headless. But why is he like that?” Liujin was puzzled.
More and more people crowded around the dancing girl, and her moves were getting wilder. She twisted her body painfully. Liujin saw the headless man walk away hurriedly. When she looked back, she noticed that Uncle Qiming had also walked away.
Liujin wanted to cross the street, but a motorcade was passing through, one truck after another, as though there was no end to it.
She came back home, and as she cooked dinner, she thought that although she could never be as free as Uncle Qiming and the others, maybe she could still make some changes. For example, maybe she could gradually learn to be like them—calmly accept whatever came up in life.
Eating her supper under the grape arbor, she thought of Roy again and felt sad. The way he had hoisted that black umbrella and hurried off made her very uneasy. She felt his future was hanging in the balance. Maybe she was too worried—maybe he would be all right, but she just couldn’t quell her concerns.
After a while, Amy came over. Liujin mentioned the Peculiar Hostel to her. Amy beamed when she heard the name. “That’s his experimental station.” Liujin didn’t understand.
“Who do you mean?” Liujin asked.
“Who else? Uncle Qiming, of course. He and his friends do experiments to see if people can live in that kind of place.
You must have seen it: the sun there is like fire. It’s an out-of-the-way place.”
When Amy talked, she looked euphoric: she was waving her hands. She said she’d gone there once, but had stayed only a short time. She couldn’t get accustomed to it; she’d rather save that sort of thing for her dreams.
“It’s really charming,” she sighed.
Rain was falling on their faces. Liujin said, “It’s raining.” Amy said, “It isn’t real rain. Whenever I talk about the hostel, beads of water float in the air. I’ve experienced this twice.” Her words put Liujin in a better mood.
Amy heard something at the well in the backyard. She got up and walked over to inspect it. Liujin followed and told her that a pangolin came out from there. Amy crouched down next to the well. Her pose of attentive listening captivated Liujin.
“It’s seething under here.” Amy said, “Was it the pangolin you mentioned just now?”
“Hmm.”
“It came from my home village. At midnight, that mountain can suddenly become off-white-colored and dead. Little animals flee in all directions. People say it’s a recurrent scene from ancient times.”
After listening a while longer, Amy stood up and said she had to go because she had to deliver food to Uncle Qiming. “That kind of hostel doesn’t provide meals. It just provides pleasures that are disappearing in the world. If I don’t give him food, he’ll starve just like those vagrants.” She left the courtyard in a hurry.
Amy had just gone when people from the Health Bureau showed up. There were four of them, all wearing white sailcloth uniforms, pulling two dump trucks of cement into the courtyard. They said they wanted to seal the opening of the well and then dump these two truckloads of cement onto the opening to form a small cement mound.
Liujin stood in the courtyard and watched. She felt that this home would soon be destroyed. Even a long time after the Bureau people left, she was still scared out of her wits as she paced back and forth in her room. Later, she felt drowsy, and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
When Liujin awakened, it was night. Someone was playing the flute in her courtyard. The sound was so melodious that it brought to mind the paddy fields of the south and the foothills where small trees grew. She was amazed because she had never been to the south, and yet the soft, moist blue sky appeared before her now. She dressed and walked to the entrance, and the flute music stopped. It was Uncle Qiming, sitting in his old place. Surrounding him were many animals that looked like something between cats and dogs. It seemed they had all been listening to him play the flute. Where had they come from?
He said, “They made a tremendous disturbance in the well tonight, and then they all came out.”
“But the opening was sealed tightly with cement.”
“So what? They have many other passageways.”
Recalling the serious manner of the men from the Health Bureau, Liujin was amused.
“Have you been to the bottom of the well?”
“No. I couldn’t, and there’s no point in going, anyhow. Don’t you see that these animals have come up? Their lives are mixed up with ours.”
Liujin thought of Roy, who used to search for such creatures in the crowds on the streets. How anxious he was when he did this. Had the Peculiar Hostel perhaps put the underground world in the same place as the world above? No wonder that as soon as he arrived there, Roy felt at home. He was busy, yet relaxed. Liujin looked up at the poplar: oh, a bird was singing in the nest there! A nameless bird. Why did it sing continually? She really wished that Qiming would play the flute again, for she was sure that it was the music that called the little animals up. But he was silent, as if remembering.
“Liujin, are you happy?”
“Very happy, Uncle Qiming. Just now when I awakened and heard the flute, I felt as though I were living in Shangri-La. I’ve heard people say that this is Shangri-La. I never knew before that little animals could communicate with people.”
The moment Uncle Qiming left, those strange little animals fled. Liujin was still feeling moved. She thought that she really was living in the most beautiful place and among the best people. How fortunate she was! And she hadn’t had to work for it. It was as if good fortune had come knocking on her door. In a flash, she had developed the same love for Uncle Qiming that Amy felt for him. That bird was no longer singing; it was probably feeling peace and joy. Liujin recalled that Sherman hadn’t been here for quite a while. Did he—like her—now feel fortunate? Thinking of this, she went inside and brought the rattan recliner out so she could lie down in the courtyard.
Dad used to spend so many sleepless nights here. Was that perhaps to prepare her for the independent life she now enjoyed? When he left by train, he hadn’t even glanced back at Liujin. His resolution had contained such deep fatherly love. Even though she did her best to remember, there were many things that she couldn’t remember, but they lay all around her, gradually unfolding. For example, Uncle Qiming’s relationship with her was one of these things. Liujin had long sensed that he was very close to her when she was a little child, but she had no memory of it. Liujin heard something stirring at the well’s opening: animal claws were scratching at the cement. She was amused as she remembered the white-uniformed people who had come to seal the well. The world was so funny! At this moment, she felt a light fog drifting in—very unusual in this dry season.
Unlike her father, Liujin felt drowsy after lying down for a while. Just as she was about to doze off, that bird awakened her again. Could the bird be ill? Liujin stood up and walked over to the fence, where she heard a man and a woman arguing vehemently on the other side. She looked out from the gate and saw Sherman and the young woman she’d seen before. That woman slapped Sherman in the face; he crouched down and cried. The woman stood there watching him. Liujin pulled back immediately. A while later, Sherman shouted tragically, as though bitten by a beast. Liujin had to look. What she saw was strange: the woman was supporting Sherman, and they walked intimately into the curtain of night. Liujin sighed softly, as if relieved of a heavy burden. She said to herself, “Sherman . . . the son of Mother Earth.” An image appeared before her of him climbing out of the well. And once again, she remembered those frogs.
The bird in the poplar chirped again and flew out. This bird was dark-colored and had big wings. It flew around the courtyard once and stopped on the roof. It wasn’t like local birds. Could it be a nocturnal bird? Might it have flown here from Smoke City? When Liujin passed beneath her window, the parrot said to her, “The good days are coming!” Liujin laughed, and so did the parrot. Her drowsiness vanished. She went to the kitchen, took a tender ear of corn out of a pot, and gnawed on it. It was still the same kitchen, still the same stove. And the hole at the base of the wall next to the stove still hadn’t been blocked up. A withered garlic bulb still hung on the wall where her mother had put it. Her parents had left so hurriedly. But it was possible that this had been meticulously planned.
Liujin got into bed. She felt calm and self-assured. She vaguely recalled that someone in the past had slept this way every day. Who had it been? She remembered that person said his sleeping was like “sinking into Mother Earth’s belly.” Thinking about this, she drifted off quickly. She dreamed of the blue sky and of white birds flying in formation.
“Liujin, have you ever thought of moving to Smoke City?” Qiming asked.
“No, not at all. Wouldn’t that be betraying their hopes?”
“Once upon a time, I thought of you as my own daughter.”
“I am your daughter. I feel telekinesis each time you approach.”
“Amy, too. I have two daughters.”
They stood and talked under the poplar next to the stream. Qiming sighed to himself: because of his rheumatism, he could no longer go into the river. He used to derive so much pleasure from this river.
“Roy is so young. How could he leave home on his own and live here so long? I’ve never seen anything like it. What’s so special about our Pebble Town?”<
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“Roy actually isn’t young,” Qiming said. “You can’t guess a person’s age only by his appearance. For example, look at that poplar across the river: Does it look very young? But it didn’t grow from a seed. It grew out of an old tree’s roots. Our Pebble Town is a huge magnetic field, attracting people who are fascinated with secret things. Liujin . . .”
“Huh?”
“My dad—he was a fisherman at the coast. He left me with a debt—an old watch. My grandfather took it from the body of a dead prisoner of war. In the last few days, I buried our family’s watch. I thought, anyhow, no matter where I go, I can always hear its tick-tock, so there’s no need to carry it with me.”
“You’re so determined.”
“That year, I was standing in the river trawling for fish when your parents came over. I still remember how bewildered they were, because one of our people had abandoned them in the wilderness. In fact, it only looked like a wilderness. A lot of people were all around, but at the time, they couldn’t see them. Later, they adapted quickly. Your parents aren’t ordinary people: you’re lucky. Back then, the city was overrun with Mongolian wolves: they didn’t hide as they do now.”
Liujin quivered. She couldn’t say anything. She was looking at Uncle Qiming, and yet she seemed to see not him, but only an illusory mask. She flung out her arms involuntarily, but she threw herself into a void: Qiming wasn’t there. She looked down and saw freshly dug earth in the lawn. She bent over and listened: she heard the watch—tick-tock, tick-tock . . .
“I can’t remember it. Why?” she murmured distractedly.
One time, in order to see those fish, she and Roy had come here. Roy had told her that all the outsiders who came to Pebble Town had to go through the path next to this stream. He said that the night he came here, this path had become a dead end: each end had been tightly sealed off by shrubs. He had to spend the night sitting beside the stream. He said the stars that night drove him crazy. At this point, Liujin looked up and saw an elderly white-haired couple approaching. They were supporting each other. The old man spoke to Liujin.
