by Hao Jingfang
“Haven’t you heard enough?” she asked Luoying. “A stable marriage is just a way to get a house.”
Luoying was feeling rather low as well. But she persisted. “I don’t think that’s true for everyone.”
Chania could feel the chill in her heart as she spoke. “Why do you think no one on Mars gets divorced? It’s because they can’t. Remember how I explained to you that our low crime rate has nothing to do with our supposed superior moral development? It’s the same with our low divorce rate. Married couples here are no more loving than couples on Earth, and we don’t value family more either. The only reason people stay together is because of the house. After divorce, they would both have to move back to singles’ apartments. That’s all the explanation there is.”
Their conversation with the old woman had affected Chania deeply. Although she had vaguely sensed the truth, it had never been stated to her so clearly. A marriage, a family, a set of vows—none of these were as strong or sacred as she had believed when she was a little girl. On Earth, most people had long since abandoned the institution of marriage, and even on Mars, marriages were not so much driven by tender love as practical economic concerns. The old woman had told them that in order to resolve marital problems, two married couples would sometimes swap partners. After two divorces and two new marriages, there would still be two families and two houses. How much of such an exchange involved love? Chania had no idea, but she was sure her disbelieving position was the right one.
They were almost at the hospital. The pure white walls and simple design, half-revealed behind a row of short, cone-shaped pines, gave off a solemnity composed of cleanliness and lightness. They stopped. Chania looked up at the building, trying to find the small room near the top, which Luoying had described to her.
“Does Dr. Reini know our plan?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I never mentioned it to him.”
“I still don’t think our small gift is enough. We should try to get something more practical.”
“But you’ve seen there’s nothing we can do,” Luoying said with a sigh.
Chania was about to say something more, but at that moment they saw something fall from the top of the hospital: the figure of a man.
Shocked, they stared at the falling figure, unable to make any noise as their hearts pounded wildly. The figure disappeared in a second behind the trees, and a dull thud came to their ears like an earthquake. Before they could even react properly, a man had plunged to the ground like a dropped package. A life had ended.
Chania felt a heavy weight press down on her heart. She couldn’t breathe. Shuddering, she glanced over at Luoying, whose bloodless lips told her that they were thinking of the same memory.
They began to run. Many people emerged from the hospital, racing to the site of the fall. As they stared at the bloody, twisted limbs, Luoying stood still. She whispered to Chania that she had seen the man before. It was the mental patient she had encountered on the skydeck, the man who had slammed his fists and his body against the glass wall.
REINI
This was the 272nd day of the fortieth year of the Martian Republic, and also Reini’s thirty-third birthday.
Reini got up early that morning, as was his habit. After vacuuming the Registry of Files, he stood in the reading room on the second floor and looked outside. Other than the large hall for the files, this was his favorite place in the Registry. It faced the lawn in the back, and the view was peaceful and comforting. He stood between the tall rows of bookcases, facing the window, the bright sun overhead. He didn’t turn down the transparency of the glass. The decorative columns were bathed in the pellucid early-morning light. He loved to watch the light, which reminded him that life could still be bright.
Coming to the Registry was Reini’s own choice. After so many years of writing history, he was familiar with the place. Laak, the Registrar, was someone he respected. The old man needed a younger assistant, while Reini needed inner tranquility.
The windows of the room were tall and narrow, with panes that slid up and down. Above the windows hung rolled-up cloth curtains, a rarity on Mars. The green tassels draped down, an echo of the green lawn outside. Since it was his birthday, he fell into reminiscence and stood longer than usual by the window. Memories overwhelmed him like the tides, and so he didn’t realize he was no longer alone in the room.
“Dr. Reini,” said a soft voice.
Reini turned around and saw Luoying. She was dressed in black, which made her appear even more pale.
“What a surprise!” He smiled at her.
“I came to wish you a happy birthday,” said Luoying, walking up to the window.
“Thank you. I didn’t know you remembered.”
Reini was genuinely grateful. No one had wished him a happy birthday in a long time. Other than Luoying, he really couldn’t imagine who else would visit him. His acquaintances at the various sports clubs preferred to spend their leisure time at home with their families, not visiting an old bachelor like him. He didn’t like to organize parties, and anyway he had no room for guests. For years he had spent his birthdays alone. It touched him that someone had remembered.
“How’ve you been?” he asked.
“Pretty well.”
“Keeping yourself busy?”
“Very busy. With a big project.” Luoying paused and didn’t elaborate, as though deliberately adding to the mystery. Her expression was a mixture of mischievousness and pride. Then she asked, “Dr. Reini, if you get the chance to go back to an atelier, would you prefer a hospital or an engineering research institute?”
Reini was surprised. “Why are you asking?”
“Because we’re trying to find an atelier for you. There’s some hope.”
“Find an atelier for me?”
“Yes. Last week we inquired at two hospitals, in Galileo District and Watson District. Yesterday we spoke with an exploratory group within the Land System and gave them a brief description of your technology. They seemed really interested.”
Reini looked awkward. “Thank you for all your efforts … but I’m afraid there’s no possibility of me joining any of them.”
“Why not?”
“Because my file has been frozen. I’m not allowed a transfer.”
“But when we spoke with these ateliers, they all showed a lot of interest. Your technology can bring them renown and a bigger share of the budget. If they agree to have you, why won’t it work?”
Reini shook his head. “It’s not that simple. With my file frozen, it’s impossible for me to register to use their equipment or to apply for funds with them.”
“What if I ask my grandfather to unfreeze your file?”
“He’s the consul,” said Reini, smiling. “If he reversed himself just a month after he issued the order to punish me in the first place, the people would lose faith in him.”
Luoying refused to give up. It was as though she had anticipated his answers. “What if we started a movement to abolish the file and atelier system?”
“What?” Reini was shocked.
“We’ve been thinking about it for a while. The system unreasonably locks every person down. If someone wishes to switch ateliers, they must first receive the system’s approval to transfer their file. Without that, nothing can be done. This gives the system directors and the atelier heads too much power, and everyone has to obey them. And since the budget allocated to each atelier often depends on whether the atelier is responsible for some part of a large engineering project, the result is that everyone is dependent on their direct supervisor to assign them good projects. This becomes a problem for the whole republic. Society ossifies, loses initiative and liveliness. Techno-bureaucratism rules all.”
Reini listened carefully. Luoying explained herself in precise, deliberate phrases, her expression serious. She was like a different person from the Luoying of two months earlier, when she had first returned from Earth. Back then, she had been more confused than determined, and her expr
essions showed much hesitation. Now she seemed far more purposeful, and the light of conviction glinted in her eyes. She seemed thinner and paler, perhaps the result of her injury and the time spent indoors, but her bright eyes gave her whole person more spirit. She was speaking slowly and precisely, so that the unfamiliar words flowed from her smoothly and naturally. Reini wasn’t sure where her theories had come from, but he realized the youths were learning about and understanding the world at a rapid rate.
“You’re trying to change the system, then?” asked Reini when Luoying was finished.
“Yes, I suppose we are.”
“But have you thought that every system exists for specific reasons?”
“What reasons do you mean?”
“Historical ones, and ones imposed by the natural environment. There are always limits to how resources can be fairly distributed.”
“We understand. But we don’t believe we should ignore the faults of the system due to these reasons.”
“It’s impossible to construct a perfect system.”
“But our system has severe flaws. It requires the individual to submit to the system, and those who refuse cannot survive. Those who rebel are imprisoned, perhaps driven mad until they seek the solace of death. A couple of days ago I saw a man jump to his death.”
“I didn’t hear about that. Where was this?”
“There’s been no report,” said Luoying. “You’ve met the suicide: the mental patient we saw on the skydeck at the hospital, striking at the glass cage.”
“Him!”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“Then do you know what happened?” asked Luoying. “We tried to find out more, but no one would tell us anything. We speculated that he was trying to break free from all the bonds around him.”
Instead of answering, Reini was lost in thought. Luoying’s news left a great emptiness in his heart. The trials and tribulations of years past surfaced in his mind all at once, and he felt the full force of the unpredictability of fate. The man’s death was so unexpected. It was always hard to foretell a person’s fortune and misfortune; indeed, sometimes it was impossible to even ascertain which category an event fell into. Compared to death, the struggles that occupied the minds of most seemed so petty.
He sighed. “I’m very grateful to all of you, but please don’t trouble yourselves anymore on my behalf. I need your friendship, but that is all. I’m fine where I am.”
Luoying looked perplexed and unwilling to give up. She nodded reluctantly but added, “I respect your decision, but I still want to urge you to reconsider. I know that you’re indifferent to fame or gain, but that isn’t the same as just giving in. You’re a good man and you deserve better.”
“Thank you,” said Reini, smiling again. “I’ll think about what you said.”
Luoying lowered her gaze. “I don’t believe that a just world should exploit a man like you.”
Reini was deeply moved. When he first told Hans that he was willing to accept the responsibility for the youths’ offense and thereby reduce their punishment, he didn’t think he was doing them some kind of favor. He simply thought there was nothing wrong with the young to have an adventure. To punish them severely and ruin their prospects for the future was not a good result. He had not thought that his act would bring about such gratitude or care. He didn’t know how to express how he felt. For too long he had not expressed such tender emotions.
After a moment he recovered and asked, “What happened to you recently? You seem to have become a radical.”
“Do you really think I’m very radical?”
“A bit,” said Reini. “Last month you were still skeptical about the value of revolution.”
“That was true,” said Luoying. “But recently I’ve come to appreciate the meaning of starting a movement. I think life requires action, otherwise there is no direction. I’ve been thinking a lot about Camus’s L’Homme révolté, one of the books you gave me. It talks about the soil, the people, and the furious love of the heart strung like a tight bow. These things give life meaning. I want to do something. We’re in search of targets, and this is the only action we feel has meaning.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” said Reini.
Luoying looked at him. “Tell me the truth: Don’t you think our system is too rigid, too lacking in freedom?”
Instead of answering her directly, Reini asked another question. “Do you remember what you said to me about the distance between one person and another on Earth? The unfamiliarity, the loneliness, the mutual distrust?”
“Of course.”
“In reality, there are only two systems in the world: the solid and the liquid. A solid system features stable structure, in which every unit is fixed in its position. Between the atomic units the bonds are strong. A liquid system, on the other hand, features freedom of movement, and the units are relatively independent. Between them there is no fixed bond, and little strength.”
“Are you saying …” Luoying pondered this. “… that there is no way to have freedom and attachment both?”
“There are many values that are mutually exclusive.”
Reini understood that Mars was the very embodiment of the crystal. The city was as stable as a crystal lattice. Every family had a house, and every house, with its yard, was similar in size. Houses were arranged in neat chains like periodic necklaces. Martians rarely moved. Children grew up in the houses of their parents until they got married, when they registered for their own houses elsewhere. A whole life was spent in two houses, and people were as rooted as plants. The neighborhood was the most important social structure, a child’s whole world. Everyone they knew were the people who grew up with them and the people who, after their choice of atelier, accompanied them for the rest of their lives. While the city expanded as the population grew, each new residential district looked exactly the same as the rest of the city: the same neat chains of houses, the same peace and equality. Each house could be decorated in thousands of variations, but all of them together belonged to the same whole. Twenty million people were distributed evenly, and there was no structural center to the city. Stability was premised on fixed bonds.
“But didn’t you speak of clouds? There’s both freedom and connection.”
“Clouds, yes.” Reini nodded. “But clouds require an external source of light and cannot last.”
“I don’t know,” said Luoying, her gaze lowered. “I just think that if you avoid all conflict, where is your direction in life? If you accept everything and see through everything, doesn’t that feel nihilistic?”
“Me?” Reini looked down, thinking, and then pointed to the other side of the reading room.
He took her through the long rows of bookcases. Old-fashioned books were arranged neatly on them, the gleaming golden letters against the red spines evoking another land. The paper had yellowed with age, like ancients living in the past. In the slanting sunlight, the room felt especially quiet. Overhead, the ceiling was decorated with the constellations turning almost imperceptibly, a reminder of unstoppable time. Reini walked through the stacks like a man walking through layers of illusions toward the heart of reality, facing the simple truth hidden in the memory banks. They walked without talking, the clicking of heels on floor the only sound in the room.
Reini stopped in front of a shelf labeled EARTH CLASSICS. He pointed at one of them. “L’Homme révolté.” Then he took down a thin volume right next to it, flipped through until he reached the page he was looking for, and began to read aloud.
When he was finished, he closed the book, and, as always when he read these passages, his heart became storm torn. In his mind he saw the black sea facing the characters in the book, as well as the rough and vast desert of this planet. They showed his direction, he always knew. He could see all the people passing over this world, coalescing out of the swirling sand before scattering into dust again, busily coming and going, noisily shoving an
d pushing. He walked among them, their joys and sorrows surrounding him. He gazed at their faces. In his heart, what they wore, what customs they followed, what system they made, what acts they committed, were unimportant; what was important was whether they stopped to face each other, to look at each other. This was what he was truly interested in.
“Not heroism, not sainthood,” Luoying muttered. “… you’re more interested in being a human being?”
“Yes,” Reini said. “That’s what I want.”
“But what does it mean to be a human being?”
“It means to be able to face another human being.”
Luoying pondered the meaning of his words without asking more questions. Her absorption made her black eyes seem like two deep pools. She took the book from him and gently caressed the cover, gazing at it carefully.
“La Peste,” she read.
“La Peste,” Reini repeated. “Nowhere to go.”
Luoying turned to the first page and began to read: “ ‘It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not.’ Daniel Defoe …”
Reini did not explain, letting Luoying read on by herself.
Reini knew that, given how little time they had, it was impossible for her to read very far or for him to explain very clearly. More truths about life hidden in the depths of the cosmos were not even comprehensible to him. He contemplated the meaning of the movement Luoying mentioned, questioning himself whether he was too passive or reluctant to act. When he had suffered in life, he had asked himself the same kinds of questions, wondering if he had deviated from the appropriate course one should follow. Normally, he viewed action pessimistically. In the endless ocean, he felt that hunkering on a barge that drifted with the current was a better choice than taking arms against a sea of troubles. But sometimes he berated himself for the pain he suffered as a contemplative and passive observer. Luoying’s question struck at the very conflict in his heart.
