The Child's Past Life

by Cai Jun

  The saying “Pearls, large and small, on a jade plate fall” seemed wrong here.

  I searched the floor for the beads as though I had lost my mind. It took me half an hour to find them all, until my head was dizzy and my legs felt numb. Yan Li had run out long ago. I tried restringing the necklace, but the hand-drilled holes in the beads were so irregular that it was difficult to do once it had all come undone. I kept trying until early morning, but it was no use. I slammed the floor, not caring if the students downstairs heard me.

  My fist was bruised and it hurt like hell. I found a fabric pouch to hold the beads and lay on the bed like a zombie, still tightly grasping the broken strand.

  Tomorrow night. I was waiting for tomorrow night.

  CHAPTER 9

  Why do we kill?

  First: to protect oneself. Second: to usurp someone else’s possessions. Third: to eliminate competition for the opposite sex. Fourth: revenge. Fifth: to follow a superior’s orders. Sixth: to make money. Seventh: for no reason.

  Which was my reason?

  The Dead Poets Society had once discussed this topic. I wanted to etch these words on my tombstone.

  June 19, 1995. Monday morning. I was still alive.

  The sun illuminated the top of my bed. I opened my eyes in a daze. This must have been the third period. This was the first time I’d ever slept in at school, but of course I no longer had the right to teach.

  I stood on a stool to retrieve an army knife I’d hidden in a ceiling crevice. I was lucky the police hadn’t found it. “Factory 305” was etched into the blade, which had a blood reservoir on the tip. Lu Zhongyue had given this to me two years ago. He was my best friend, my high school classmate—and he’d been my roommate in this very room. His dad worked for the district government and often got his hands on weird things like imported liquors and cigarettes, army boots, and smuggled watches.

  The blade’s frosty glow reflected my face like a distorted mirror, an image so ugly I hardly recognized myself.

  I tied the knife inside my pant leg.

  Breakfast had already ended at the cafeteria. I walked around campus. As I passed senior class Section 2, the lecturing math teacher saw me and nodded. Some students noticed and turned to look. No one could concentrate on what they were studying. They just whispered and acted like they’d seen a zombie.

  Two teachers from elite universities worked at Nanming High. I’d come from Peking University, and Zhang Mingsong had come from Tsinghua University. He was seven years older than me. While I was still in high school, he taught me math. His math was impeccable. He’d qualified as an elite teacher before he turned thirty. His students all did really well. Since math was so important to the overall score in the college entrance exams, countless parents fought to have him tutor their kids.

  I stood outside his classroom, keeping my back straight as a board. I regarded the students with a cool gaze. I’d been their homeroom teacher just two weeks earlier, as well as the advisor for the Nanming Literary Society. The window reflected my weary and moody face, like something out of a nightmare. I stared at my favorite student, Ma Li, but he avoided eye contact, the sadness on his face hard to hide. Even though we would all scatter next month after the exams, saying good-bye like this made everyone misty-eyed.

  I started crying in front of all of my students. Zhang Mingsong came into the hall wearing a pained look. “Sorry, Mr. Shen, but you’re interfering with our class.”

  “I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

  My body felt heavy as I walked downstairs. My pocket held that strand of necklace, and my pant leg hid an army knife with a blood reservoir.

  June 19, 1995. It was the last Monday in my life. My last night, too.

  I took off my watch from Qiusha’s dad and ate my last dinner in the cafeteria. The chefs looked at me like I was a killer. No one sat near me; they all stayed at least ten meters away. I ate heartily. I used up all the meal tickets I’d been saving.

  9:30 p.m.

  Thunder rolled through the night sky.

  Yan Li was still at school, just chatting with someone. He seemed well; occasionally he laughed in his own wretched way. After the conversation ended, he smoked by himself. He didn’t recheck my room—he was probably afraid of getting beat up again. He patted his clothes and walked outside the school gates. I followed him to Nanming Road, hiding in the darkness of the trees. He was heading to the bus stop, but I couldn’t let him get that far. If he made it to a crowded place, it would be hard to act.

  There were no streetlights on Nanming Road and no pedestrians, either. Flickering starlight lit the way, shining on the half-closed steel factory. I took out the knife, held my breath, and caught up to Yan Li. Just as he was about to turn at hearing my footsteps, I stabbed him in the back.

  The night before, I’d practiced so many times—I’d visualized hitting him right in the middle of his back. But in the darkness, I couldn’t tell where the knife went in, though it did meet great resistance. I stabbed deeper. I heard Yan Li’s muffled yelling. With a violent force, he turned to grab me, flailing like a dog about to be put to sleep. His blood splattered across my face.

  Movies always made killing a human seem easier than killing a chicken. It wasn’t until I tried it that I realized just how difficult it really was. After a heart-pounding sixty seconds, Yan Li collapsed on the ground and stared up at me. I groaned and leaned over him. I’m sure my face looked as horrific as his.

  A few raindrops fell on my head, and a moment later it was raining cats and dogs. The cold rain cooled my boiling blood. My adrenaline seemed to stop pumping, too. In that moment I felt a little sorry for Yan Li.

  Why do we kill?

  I suddenly felt more afraid than if I was about to be executed.

  It was too dark to see one’s own hands, but Yan Li knew who I was. He coughed hard, his mouth dripping with blood.

  “Shen . . . Shen Ming!” he gasped. I . . . I swear . . . I . . . I didn’t . . . hurt . . . hurt you.”

  The rain fell into Yan Li’s open mouth. He couldn’t say another word or take another breath.

  He didn’t hurt me?

  Blood muddied his face. I felt for a pulse, but he was a corpse.

  Last month, I saw a French movie called Léon: The Professional. In it, Léon said, “Everything changes after you kill someone.”

  My fate could no longer be different.

  CHAPTER 10

  June 19, 1995. Before the exams. A rainy night on the rural Nan-ming Road.

  A few minutes ago, I’d just killed someone. He was my school’s teaching director.

  Before I turned myself in to Huang Hai, I needed to go somewhere. I dumped the body next to the road and stumbled forward. I was very familiar with this landscape. The walls around the steel factory had almost all crumbled; the structures sat mutely in the rain, like graves with no souls to honor. I walked around to a small rear door on the largest building.

  Students called this area Demon Girl Zone.

  I took out the strand of necklace and clutched it in my hand. I didn’t care whether I stained it with blood. I lit a still-dry match in the putrid air. All I could see was rusty machinery. I looked outside anxiously. Thunder and lightning tore through the sky, and the second the light seared my eyes, blackness took over the sky again, leaving only the sound of persistent rain.

  Why wasn’t she here yet?

  From the tunnel that reached down into an even blacker darkness, I heard soft cries that faded in and out after circling endlessly in the damp, decaying air.

  It took great effort to walk. My hands were bloody. Shakily, I clutched the walls and faced the tunnel. The opening looked like a hole leading to the center of Earth in a Jules Verne book.

  Thunder rolled.

  My left foot stepped down.

  June 19, 1995—9:55 p.m.

  The cries turned i
nto soft and resilient strands: They looped around my neck, dragging me down into the tunnel.

  The hatch was open.

  Demon Girl Zone.

  There was a round handle on the outside of the hatch. One twist and it would lock the tunnel.

  Why was the door open?

  Flames danced. My shadow swayed across the spotty walls, and with my mourning sash it looked like a cave painting from ten thousand years ago. Every time I came to the Demon Girl Zone, the air was so damp—like a blanket in the rainy season. My skin felt like it could leak water.

  A nauseating smell smacked me in the face. The match only remained lit for a few meters before the wind from the tunnel snuffed it out.

  The last thing I did in this lifetime was turn around.

  My heart was filled with regret—the same type of sadness those who jump to their death feel during their fall.

  It hurt so much. A piercing pain flared across my back. Metal had entered my body.

  The world spun.

  I widened my eyes in the darkness. I could feel myself lying on the cold ground in dirty water. Blood spurted out of my back. My fingers shook a few times before I stopped moving altogether. I tasted the metallic tang of my own blood, flowing endlessly into my mouth.

  Frantic footsteps sounded next to my ears. My eyes were open, but I saw nothing.

  Time disappeared. It felt like a few seconds, or maybe decades. The world became quiet. I had no sense of smell; my lips were not my own. My body floated, and the pain disappeared. I didn’t know where I was.

  A life for a life. My punishment had been delivered quickly.

  June 19, 1995—10:01 p.m.

  I died.

  In the last second of my life, I did not believe in reincarnation.

  CHAPTER 11

  June 19, 1995. Year of Yihai, month of Renwu, day of Xinsi, May 22 on the lunar calendar, and 10:01 p.m. According to the Twelfth Earthly Branch on the traditional Chinese calendar, it was “a bad time to do anything.”

  That’s exactly when I died.

  On every Grave-Sweeping Day and Winter’s First Day, I visited my mother’s grave. With each visit, I understood death even more. If someone remembered you after you died, then you hadn’t really died. You still lived with them. You may be in a grave, but you lived in your children’s DNA. Even if you had no descendants, your name and photo remained on ID cards, residency registrations, library cards, swimming membership cards, homework sheets, and exams.

  But still, I was afraid of being forgotten.

  My name was Shen Ming. I used to be the homeroom teacher for Nanming High’s senior class, Section 2.

  I killed someone, and then I was killed by someone.

  Someone stabbed me in the back in the Demon Girl Zone under the abandoned factory.

  I believe my eyes stayed open. I still wore the mourning sash. I did not rest in peace. But I also didn’t see my killer’s face.

  Did I stop breathing? Did I still have a pulse? Were my arteries still pumping? Was my blood still flowing? Did oxygen still reach my brain? Was I brain-dead?

  I couldn’t feel myself at all.

  Is it death when you can’t feel yourself exist?

  People said dying was painful, whether it was by stabbing, hanging, choking, suffocating, poisoning, drowning, falling, or illness. That endless loneliness followed.

  I vividly remembered a reference book in college describing the process of death: paleness and a stiffening starts setting in after death; livor mortis—the settling of blood in the lower body; algor mortis—a drop in body temperature, which gradually lowers until it matches that of the immediate environment; rigor mortis—the limbs become stiff and hard to move; decay—the body decomposes, producing a strong odor.

  My memory was pretty good, right?

  Suddenly a stream of light lit up the ground. I saw a fantastic tunnel lined in white marble. It looked like the tunnel to Demon Girl Zone, or an ancient underground palace. A young boy was crying under the light. His thin clothes were covered in patches. Runny-nosed, he was sobbing on top of his dead mother. A cold man stood nearby, smoking. A shot rang out and then the smoking man was dead, too. Blood oozed from the bullet hole and pooled on the ground, covering the boy’s feet. A middle-aged woman took the boy to a quiet street. The address seemed to be Road of Serenity. The house was old. The boy lived behind the window in the basement. Every cloudy day, he looked out at the rain-slicked road, watching people’s shiny or dirty shoes pass by. The boy never smiled. His face was as pale as a ghost’s but for the two spots of red on his cheeks that looked frightening when he was angry. One late night as he stood by his window, a scream rang out from inside a big house across the street. A girl ran outside and sat down on the stairs to cry.

  I wanted to cry, too.

  But I was only a corpse. I could no longer cry, just leak pus.

  Soon, I would turn into ashes. I would lie in a mahogany or stainless-steel box, six feet under. Or I’d stay on the ground in the Demon Girl Zone and decompose into a dirty mass, turning into something not even the rats and bugs would eat. Eventually, microorganisms would eat away at me, leaving behind a young skeleton.

  If the soul existed, I could have left my body and observed myself as a corpse, seeing my killer. I could have sought revenge as a fierce ghost. I’d have spread the bitterness brought to life by my death from the Demon Girl Zone and all through Nanming High.

  But the world after death knew not of time. My bitterness would probably last forever.

  Yet people don’t live forever. Death is always present.

  Didn’t people always wait for death after birth? My wait had been too short.

  Maybe one of you would be smart enough to discover the truth behind my murder—and catch my killer.

  Who killed me?

  What if reincarnation was real? What if you could relive everything? What if you could avoid all of your mistakes and missteps? If I saw Yan Li in another world, I’d say, “I’m sorry.”

  I felt like I’d slept for a long time, and I could feel my body again. It felt very light, like I could fly away with the wind. I also felt joy. Was this reincarnation?

  I stood up without meaning to and left the Demon Girl Zone. The road ahead seemed unfamiliar. The dilapidated factory was gone. The surroundings looked more like an embroidered painting. I walked aimlessly for a while, then I followed a dim passage through the sparse trees. Bones stuck out of the soil; ghostly light flickered; owls screeched overhead. Birds with human faces flew over me. The birds’ bodies looked female. Were they the mythical Ubume birds?

  A river stopped me. The water ran blood red and a hot wind carried a fishy smell from across the shore. The current seemed to hide human bodies, as if several boats had sunk right there. I walked along the bank, unafraid. I found an old bridge. An old white-haired woman sat at the entrance to the black bridge. Her hunched figure made it hard to tell her age. I thought of my grandmother who’d just passed away. This woman held a chipped porcelain bowl filled with hot soup. She looked up at me. Surprise peeked out from behind her cloudy gaze. The soup’s greasy surface filled me with disgust.

  “What is this place?”

  “Drink this soup, then you can cross the bridge and go home.”

  I hesitated but took the bowl, forcing myself to drink the soup. It didn’t taste horrible; it reminded me of the tofu soup my grandmother used to make.

  The old woman moved out of my way. “Hurry up and cross the bridge,” she urged. “There is not much time.”

  “Is there time for reincarnation?” In high school, this had been my favorite saying.

  “Yes, child.”

  As we talked, I crossed the old bridge over the water. It was tangled with weeds as long as women’s hair. When I got to the other side, nausea overcame me. I knelt on the cold riverbank and vomited. All the soup wa
s on the ground in front of my, as though I’d never eaten it.

  Before I knew what was happening, the river crested behind me and swallowed me up. In the dark water, surrounded by skeletons, a strange and beautiful light shone toward me and lit up a face.

  It was a dead person’s face: It was the twenty-five-year-old Shen Ming.

  I was about to become someone else.

  I never believed what old books said—how the dead always crossed the gate of Hell and took the road of Acheron to the underworld. There was also the River of Forgetfulness. After you crossed the River of Forgetfulness on the Bridge Over Troubled Water, you would be reincarnated. An old woman named Meng Po sat by the Bridge. If you didn’t drink her soup, you would not be allowed to pass the River or cross the Bridge. If you did drink the soup, you’d forget everything from your previous life.

  River of Forgetfulness. Meng Po. The next life. Would I really forget everything?

  “If there was tomorrow, how do you want to make up your face? If there was no tomorrow, how would you say good-bye?”

  PART 2:

  THE RIVER OF FORGETFULNESS

  CHAPTER 12

  October 11, 2004.

  A BMW 760 drove into the Number One Elementary School on Longevity Road. The narrow entrance gave way to two rows of school buildings, beyond which lay a sports field. The principal had been waiting for a long time. When the car stopped, he opened the door and said with humility, “Ms. Gu, welcome to our school. Please help advise us.”

  Gu Qiusha carried a limited-edition designer bag as she struggled to step out of the car in her awkward high heels. The principal escorted her along meandering paths into a small quad. A kindergarten was on the left side of the yard, and old-fashioned houses sat on the right. There were robust stands of bamboo and fig trees. Boys must have liked to play hide-and-seek there. In front of them stood a three-story building, its walls painted white and pale blue. Through the open windows came the sounds of schoolkids reading.