What followed was like a dream—a dream from which Yahui for the longest time was unable to extricate herself. It appeared the hospital was not at all surprised by Jueyu shifu’s passing. It was as if the hospital workers had already assumed she would die on that day, so they simply sent someone to the morgue and gave Yahui countless forms to fill out and sign. After Yahui had finally finished all the paperwork, she was informed that Director Gong wanted her to return to the school as soon as possible, because there was an urgent matter he needed to discuss. This is how she ended up standing in confusion in front of the hospital. Yahui paused for a while under the cypresses where Jueyu shifu used to do her exercises, before proceeding to the hospital’s main entrance to catch a taxi back to the school.
Director Gong did not meet her in his office, nor in one of the school’s cafés, but rather in a bar called Four Seasons Garden, which was in an alley across from the school. Yahui was vaguely familiar with the various residential quarters near the school, including Zhongguancun Avenue, Suzhou Street, and the Haidian university district, but as she was looking for Four Seasons Garden, she realized that Beijing’s alleys were extremely peculiar—twisting and turning like a tangled ball of hemp. She made three loops around an alley called Willow Land and had to ask six different people before eventually discovering that beneath one family’s house number there was a sign with four fist-sized characters that read The Four Seasons Garden. It was as though someone had intentionally made this bar difficult to find, and she had no idea why Director Gong had suggested that they meet there. As Yahui was hesitating, Mingzheng suddenly emerged, and when he saw her he exclaimed, “The director is waiting! Such an important matter, and now you’ve made him wait!”
Yahui glanced disdainfully at Mingzheng but allowed him to lead her in. The courtyard was separated from the outside world by a wall, inside which there was a gas stove and a beautiful garden. The courtyard had pomegranate and apple trees, together with two-meter-tall Chinese rose bushes. Although the fruit trees were out of season and only a few of the roses still retained traces of red, the courtyard’s arrangement nevertheless reminded everyone of springtime. Next to each fruit tree there was an umbrella positioned so that raindrops would drip down onto the base of the tree, like someone continually reciting a poem. Tables and chairs were arrayed under the umbrellas along with heaters, and as customers enjoyed their drinks and coffee, it was as though they were listening to poetry while sitting next to a fire on a rainy day.
Murky water and misty poetry—just like a celestial courtyard.
Yahui entered the courtyard and stood beneath one of the trees, watching people sipping drinks under the umbrellas. The customers’ glasses were as large as the ocean, yet they each held only a few drops—barely enough to cover the bottom of the glass. There was also the smell of coffee, like the scent of the tea that the Bodhisattva drinks in the legend. As Yahui followed Mingzheng inside, she saw that the entire room was decorated with wood paneling and was filled with European masks and African statues the likes of which she had never seen before, while the waitresses were all wearing uniforms that resembled floral pajamas. Yahui stood bewildered in the doorway, initially thinking they had come to the wrong room. She couldn’t understand why the windows were tightly shuttered in the middle of the day, to the point that you needed a lamp to recognize people’s faces. As customers drank and talked, they leaned close and murmured to each other as though plotting something. Mingzheng walked over and whispered into Yahui’s ear, saying, “This is a bar, which is somewhat fancier than a café.”
Attempting to stay out of sight, Yahui took a few steps forward, and saw that both the counter in the middle of the room and the cabinet behind it were full of bottles that were shimmering neon blue, green, and red in the lamplight. The room had a heater that was generating a sultry warmth. Yahui stood dazed in front of that crescent-shaped counter, feeling as though she had come to the wrong place. She had no choice but to wait for Mingzheng to lead her forward. Meanwhile, Mingzheng, smiling as though nothing had happened, came over and took her hand. “Christmas is around the corner, and Director Gong invited all the students in the religion class who are still around to come here to expand their horizons.” As Mingzheng said this, he led Yahui to a private room, which had upholstered chairs and an old wooden table, a hanging lamp with a wooden lampshade, and chairs whose backs were inscribed with romantic phrases in English. As Yahui lifted the door curtain and went inside, she saw Director Gong and immediately slipped her hand out of Mingzheng’s. Director Gong half stood up, nodded to Yahui, then gestured for her to have a seat in one of the upholstered chairs as he handed her a cup of coffee.
“I know I shouldn’t have invited you and Mingzheng to meet me in a bar,” Director Gong said with a laugh. “But people with Buddha in their hearts won’t be afraid, regardless of where they are.”
Yahui didn’t immediately sit down. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her chest and silently gave Director Gong a questioning look.
Director Gong gazed at her and said, “Mingzheng said … that your Jueyu shifu … is no longer with us?”
“She passed away,” Yahui replied, as though correcting Director Gong’s use of the phrase no longer with us. “The hospital just sent her body to the morgue.”
“Oh … she passed away.” After Director Gong apologetically repeated Yahui’s phrase, Mingzheng brought in several meat, seafood, and vegetable dishes. The food was served buffet style. Mingzheng brought Yahui some salad and fruit, and brought Director Gong some meat, fish, and red wine. After serving himself cold crab, bamboo shoots, and fruit juice, he sat down across from Yahui. He pulled down a curtain decorated with assorted letters, stripes, and Christmas hats, which blocked out the outside noise and muffled the music to the point that it resembled clear water in a small stream.
It was time to eat lunch and discuss the matters at hand, so Director Gong swirled his wine glass, then put it down and said, “Yahui, it wasn’t I who invited you here today. It was the organization.”
Yahui looked at him again.
“Jueyu shifu’s death … her passing … is an important matter for the center, and it could create significant problems for us if the higher-ups were to learn she had a heart attack because of the tug-of-war competitions. All the effort we’ve put into the center over the past half year, the past year, and even the several years since I arrived, could end up being for nothing. Therefore, I don’t want others at the center—including disciples and masters, not to mention the center’s instructors and professors—to know that she has died. People die like a lamp being snuffed out, and not even a Buddha or deity can be reincarnated without having died first. Not even the Vedic deities! Not even Allah! Christianity’s Easter came about when Jesus, after he died, was subsequently resurrected and became a god. But no matter what, Jueyu shifu wasn’t going to survive … and given that, please help me keep the circumstances of her death a secret. Let’s tell everyone she passed away after returning to Jingshui Convent. Afterward, you can devote yourself to your work at the center, and I’ll make sure no one is sent to Jingshui Convent to replace her as director—meaning that you’ll be able to become the new director.”
Yahui listened so attentively to what Director Gong was saying that her ears began to throb. As she was watching him speak, however, her gaze slipped away from his face and she instead found herself staring at his gray shirt. His shirt was the sort of handmade Chinese-style shirt that professors during the Republican era liked to wear. There was a loose thread wound around the second buttonhole, and although the air in the room was perfectly still, the thread was nevertheless swinging back and forth as though being blown by a breeze.
“Jingshui Convent … isn’t very large, but it is, after all, a section-level temple.” Director Gong thought for a moment, then added in a brighter tone, as though his voice now had a new layer of light, “Next semester you’ll no longer need to come to class and take exams for your shifu. I’ll tell the other disciples that your shifu is recuperating at Jingshui Convent, and that you are with her. This training session will end in six months, by which point no one will be thinking about her, whereupon you can take up the director position. Out of China’s five major religions, you’ll be the youngest section-level director.”
Yahui remained silent and continued staring at that loose thread on Director Gong’s shirt. She alternated between biting her upper and lower lips until they were both white.
“You’re eighteen and will soon turn nineteen,” Director Gong said. “If you become a director at the age of nineteen, your salary will be more than ten thousand yuan a month—which would be a true miracle within the religious world. This would be an unprecedented development for China, and perhaps even for the entire world.”
Yahui had been clasping her hands together, but now she began picking at her robe with her left hand as though attempting to make a hole, while simultaneously rubbing the wooden table with her right. Her hands were covered in sweat and she tried to wipe them on the table.
At this point, Gu Mingzheng—who had been holding his chopsticks without eating anything—looked at Yahui, then turned to Director Gong. He suddenly asked, “Are you saying that next semester Yahui doesn’t need to come to the religious training center?”
Director Gong replied, “Given that Jueyu shifu is no longer with us, on whose behalf would Yahui be attending class?”
Mingzheng stood up in shock, gazing first at Director Gong and then at Yahui. Meanwhile, Yahui also struggled to understand what exactly Director Gong meant—the same way that the Heart Sutra says that form is emptiness, emptiness is nothingness, and nothingness is existence and eternity, which allows people to understand that form, emptiness, nothingness, and existence are the subject of interminable teachings and allegories, even if it is impossible to explain them directly. Yahui stared at Director Gong, hoping he would explain his question to Mingzheng—hoping that he would explain with the same clarity that we know that clouds are clouds, rain is rain, and clouds, rain, and fog do not get mixed together. However, Director Gong simply held his cup and waved, like a missionary who has already explained his doctrines and has nothing more to say.
The air in the private room was as warm as a bamboo steamer, and the window was covered in a layer of condensation. Sweat was dripping from Mingzheng’s face like water from the eaves of a house, and two drops fell onto the table in front of him. He wanted to say something, but he understood the implication of Director Gong’s question and therefore remained silent. All he could do was wipe the sweat from his brow, look at Director Gong, and hope that someone would ask something or say something to disrupt that doctrinal meaning. However, Director Gong didn’t say a word, and instead simply swished the wine in his glass, took a sip, then used the tip of his tongue to lick his lips and taste the air before returning his tongue to his mouth.
Given that Director Gong remained silent, Yahui couldn’t very well say anything either. Nevertheless, she had to figure out the significance of the allusions to form, emptiness, nothingness, and existence in Director Gong’s sacred utterance. So, she unclasped her hands and wiped her left hand on her robe and her right hand on the table. Then she asked, “Does my shifu need to be cremated?”
“This is Beijing, and no burials are permitted in the city,” Director Gong replied in a loud voice. “Moreover, not only will she need to be cremated, but furthermore no Buddhist ceremonies can be performed at her cremation.”
With this, everyone seemed to suddenly understand the implication of Director Gong’s earlier question. All three of them were silent for a long time, and in the silence it was as though the spirit world were returning to the spirit world, and the human world were returning to the human world. Eventually Yahui looked at Director Gong and asked, “Would it be helpful to you if we don’t tell others that my shifu has died?”
“Of course it would.” Holding his wine glass, Director Gong stood up. “The center is a vice-bureau-level organization, and therefore I currently hold a vice-bureau-level appointment. The center’s instructors and I have been working so hard precisely so that the center might be redesignated as an institute, which would make it a vice-department-level institution, which would raise my rank and help resolve our instructors’ title and housing issues. If the higher-ups were to find out that someone from one of the training classes had died, the center might lose all hope of being redesignated as an institute. It is not particularly important that I might lose hope of changing my own rank, but what is important is that all of our instructors would have no hope of being assigned housing or of being promoted.”
Upon hearing this, Yahui stared at Director Gong with her mouth closed, as though ruminating on the significance of what he had just said.
“You’ve been at the center for half a year now. Don’t you understand that belief is only valuable when it helps others become better? If believers were not attempting to benefit others and instead were only trying to benefit themselves, there wouldn’t even be a rationale for religious belief.”
Yahui continued to listen with her mouth closed. As she sat there gazing at Director Gong, it looked as though she understood, but then again it also looked as though she didn’t.