Standing by the window at eight in the morning, he looked out and seemed to see a lot of things, but none of them really registered—he was conscious only of a bright yellow patch on the ground. That’s sunshine, he thought. Then, putting his hand in his pocket, he felt a cold, metallic sensation. This rather startled him, and his fingers began to tremble, surprising him all the more. But when his fingers slowly advanced along the side of the metal, the strange sensation did not develop further; it became fixed. So his hand, too, ceased all movement. Gradually the metal lost its chill—it grew warm, as warm as lips. But before long the warmth dissipated. The object seemed to have merged with his fingers, and so it was as though it no longer existed. Its impressive little show was already a thing of the past.
It was a key, its color much like that of the sunlight outside. Its irregular, bumpy teeth somehow conjured the image of a potholed, arduous road, a road that he might one day have to take.
Now he needed to think: To whom was the key related? It would unlock the door. When the key turned in the lock, what would happen? If one imagined a paper fan unfurling halfway like an accordion, that would resemble the arc of the door as it opened—an elegant and unhurried arc, no doubt. At the same time it would make a sound like an accordion’s first, fluttering note. If one proceeded to anticipate what would happen next, surely it would be him entering the room from outside. And he would smell a sweaty odor, an odor that was his. At least he hoped it was his, and not his parents’.
As he was imagining himself pushing the door and stepping inside, his body had actually done quite the opposite: to put it simply, he had exited the room and now was standing outside. He stretched out an arm and pulled the door shut. At the final moment he tugged sharply and the door banged against the frame. The noise was so blunt and powerful, it made him—go out.
Without question, he was now walking in the street. But he didn’t have the sensation of walking—it was rather as though he were still inside the house, next to the window. In other words, he only knew and did not feel that he was walking along the street. This realization took him aback.
At that moment a mop of dark hair glided into view. Bai Xue was approaching. For Bai Xue to appear so suddenly and without preconditions came as rather a shock.
She once had sat, dressed in a pale yellow blouse, at a desk diagonally opposite his. The sight of her had touched him deeply then, although he wasn’t sure if it was she or her blouse that was responsible. One way or the other, he was to suffer the consequences of his susceptibility to her looks, for later he would get the jitters every time he saw her.
This time, however, when she dropped in front of him like a leaf from a tree, he was only a little flustered.
They had been classmates in the past, but now they were no longer connected in any way. She had stopped wearing that unsettling yellow blouse. But now she was standing in front of him.
She clearly had no intention of moving to one side and letting him pass, so it was up to him to make way. As he stepped down onto the pedestrian crossing, he suddenly realized that he was treading on her pitch-black shadow. To his astonishment, he found that the shadow was stationary. So he raised his eyes and shot her a glance.
She happened to look at him at precisely the same moment. Her glance was most unusual. It was as though she was under great stress. And it was as if she was signaling to him, signaling that there was a trap nearby. Then she hurried away.
He was confused, and only when she had gone some distance did he take stock of his surroundings. Not far away a middle-aged man was leaning against a plane tree, watching him. The man quickly turned his head and looked in another direction, at the same time putting his right hand inside his jacket—into a chest pocket, surely. Then the man’s hand came out again, this time with a cigarette between his fingers. The man lit it casually and began to smoke. But he felt the nonchalance was just an act.
Though safely ensconced in bed, he hardly closed his eyes the whole night. Outside, all was still and silent beneath a pale moon. Shadows of trees were faintly visible through the curtains.
He was remembering the past. For him to be so sentimental came as a surprise, even to him.
He saw a boy leaving him and going away. In the background was a pond ringed with willow trees. Trotting down a path as long and slender as a rope, every so often the boy would turn around and look back. But the boy showed no reluctance to leave, and he felt no regret at the boy’s departure, either. The boy seemed foreign to him, but that graceful face and disorderly hair gave him a warm feeling nonetheless—because that boy was him, that boy was his early years.
The past had gone out the door and faded into the far distance, but future days had yet to make their move. Lying there, he felt rather at a loss. But he had already bid farewell to that winsome boy as he wandered away, and in due course he would himself head off in a different direction.
So, in honor of his birthday, he stayed longer in bed, paying his respects to this milestone event that had just arrived and soon would depart. He had entered the station marking eighteen years of age, a station redolent of harmonica tunes.
At the end of the afternoon he was offered neither beer nor cake. He ate dinner as usual, then went to the kitchen to wash the dishes while his parents stood chatting on the balcony. After he’d finished, he went into their bedroom and helped himself to one of his father’s cigarettes. Right now the butt was lying by his pillow and he didn’t feel like throwing it away just yet. And on the floor by his bed was a pile of cigarette ash. It was when he was smoking that he had seen the boy drifting away.
Today was his birthday, but nobody knew that. His parents had completely forgotten. He didn’t blame them—it was his birthday, after all, not theirs.
Now, as that boy was gradually receding into the distance, he seemed to hear his own unfamiliar footsteps approaching. It was just that he hadn’t yet knocked on the door.
He imagined how things would be when he woke up the following morning: when he opened his eyes he would see sunlight through the curtains, or if there was no sunlight he would see a band of gray. Maybe he would also hear the sound of water dripping from the eaves. But hopefully not, hopefully there would be bright sunshine and he would hear all kinds of sounds outside, sounds just as bright as the sunshine. The neighbors’ four doves would be circling the roof delightfully, and he would get out of bed and stand by the window. But all of a sudden he sensed that tomorrow he would feel uneasy when he stood by the window, uneasy because of a new conviction that he was alone in the world.
Alone. That was the theme for the evening of his eighteenth birthday.
Now he had a distinct sense that something was happening to his eyes. They were rapidly becoming cold and sparkling. So he began to think about what he might see tomorrow. Even if what he saw tomorrow might well be just the same as what he’d seen before, he had a hunch things would be different.
Now he was on his way to Zhang Liang’s house.
Bai Xue’s signal and the middle-aged man’s manner had left him baffled, but they also seemed a little droll. Later he thought perhaps he had misinterpreted. Before long, however, he felt he was absolutely right. There was no point in brooding about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was all because of Bai Xue. A yellow blouse seemed to be stirring constantly in the dark shadows of thought.
He had entered a narrow alleyway whose high walls were decorated with moss, clumps of moss that seemed to have been pasted on like slogans. Underfoot, the alley had been laid with stone pavers that with the passage of time had grown unstable: when you stepped on them they would move up and down, and so it was as though he were walking down an alley that rocked back and forth. Above his head was a sky just as narrow as the alley, but cut into even finer lengths by electric cables.
He must now be outside Zhang Liang’s house, he thought. There were two shiny copper rings on the pitch-black door. He felt himself grip the rings and push, and he listened as the aging door gave a creak of protest. A dank courtyard appeared before him. Zhang Liang’s home was on the right.
Maybe it was at this moment that the yellow blouse finally departed from his mind, like a cloud that is dyed yellow by sunlight and then drifts away. Zhang Liang’s image became clearer in his mind now that his home was so close.
“So it’s you, dammit!” Zhang Liang said as he opened the door.
He stepped inside with a smile on his face, as though entering his own home.
They were classmates no longer, but friends. At the moment when they left school for good, he felt he had gained a friend, when before they were just classmates.
The door and window were closed, and the white curtain was drawn. On the curtain were painted an air gun and a catapult; a gun pellet and a catapult bolt were about to collide with each other. Zhang Liang himself had painted them.
At first he thought Zhang Liang wasn’t home, but when he went up to the door he could hear whispering inside. He put his ear against the door, but he could not hear clearly what was being said. When he knocked, the sounds within came to an abrupt stop.
It was a good while before the door opened. Zhang Liang gave a start on seeing him, then muttered something or other and turned away. He could not help but hesitate before entering. Then he saw Zhu Qiao and Hansheng. They too gave a start on seeing him.
He found their manner off-putting. It was as though they did not recognize him, as though he should not have come at this particular time. His appearance, at any rate, had come as a surprise to them.
By the time he had taken a seat by the window, Zhang Liang was already lying on the bed. Zhang Liang seemed keen to say something, but all he did was smile. The smile was so unreadable, it left him spooked.
Zhu Qiao opened his mouth. “How did you know we were here?” he asked.
Zhu Qiao’s question was even more unnerving than Zhang Liang’s smile. He did not know how to answer. He had come to see Zhang Liang, but now it was Zhu Qiao asking the questions.
Hansheng was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed. It looked as though he had been sleeping for at least a couple of hours.
When he shot another glance at Zhu Qiao, he had his head buried in a magazine.
Only Zhang Liang was looking at him as before, but with a glint in his eye that made him uneasy. He felt that to Zhang Liang he was as boring as the ceiling.
“Yesterday was my birthday,” he told them.
Hearing this, they jumped to their feet and cursed him angrily. Why had he not let them know? They all stuck their hands in their pockets, but the money they came up with was only enough to buy a single bottle of beer.
“I’ll go get it.” So saying, Zhang Liang went out the door.
Zhang Liang was still looking at him, and he didn’t know what to do. His sudden appearance had put them out of sorts, and it seemed as though they had been discussing something they didn’t want to tell him. This was a sad discovery to make on such a lovely, sunny morning.
Suddenly he thought of Bai Xue. She actually had not gone far, she had simply hidden behind a utility pole. She could appear at any moment and block his escape route. That look of hers was so hard to figure out.
“What’s the matter?”
It seemed that Zhang Liang had asked this question, but maybe it was Zhu Qiao or Hansheng. He wished he were somewhere else.
He stood in front of a dusty building and looked up at one particular window that lorded it over the others, gaping like the mouth of a corpse. A coal-briquette stove stood on the windowsill, issuing a plume of dense smoke: the window served as a chimney.
Entering the building was like inching one’s way into a dark cave. With his feet he felt for the staircase; then he carefully began to climb. It puzzled him that his footsteps could be so hollow. Then he heard another set of footsteps, equally hollow, and at first he thought it was simply an echo. But the noise was slowly descending, and it faded away just as it reached him. Only then did he become aware that somebody was standing in front of him and blocking his way. He could hear the man breathing heavily—and the man must have heard the noise too. Then the man reached into a pocket and groped about. The rustling noise unsettled him, and he felt a sudden impulse to knock the man off balance and shove him down the stairs. But the man’s hand was already out, and then he heard a click and saw a flame burning. It lit up half the man’s face, leaving the other half in a sinister darkness. That single, half-closed eye made him shiver. Then the man passed him on his left and trotted down the stairs with a tip-tap rhythm, as if playing the organ. He seemed to recall at this moment who the man was, reminded of the middle-aged smoker underneath the plane tree.
Soon after, he stood in front of a door on the fifth floor and gave it a little kick. There was no reaction inside. So he put his ear to the door, only to find to his amazement that an iron nail was poking into his ear. The nail had been driven into the door, he realized, and, groping with his fingers, he found that four other nails were embedded in the door at precisely the same height where his ear had been pressing.
The door now suddenly swung open and a beam of light surged out like a wave, dazzling him. This was followed by a cry of delight. “Hey, it’s you!”
Once his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he saw that Zhang Liang was standing before him. When he thought of how he had left his home shortly before, only to run into him again here, he was stunned. What’s more, Zhang Liang’s cheerful expression was in stark contrast to his manner earlier.
“Why don’t you come in?”
He went in, and found that Zhu Qiao and Hansheng were there. One was sitting in a chair and the other was sitting on the table; both looked at him merrily.
A nameless anxiety surged up in his heart. He smiled awkwardly. “Where is he?” he asked.
“Who?” the three of them asked, almost in unison.
“Yazhou,” he replied. After saying this, he was puzzled: Why did they need to ask? It was Yazhou’s apartment, after all.
“Didn’t you see him?” Zhang Liang seemed surprised. “Didn’t you meet on the stairs?”
How would Zhang Liang know that he would meet someone on the stairs? Could that person have been Yazhou? He saw how the three of them looked at one another and chuckled. So he concluded that the man had just left and was not Yazhou.
He sat down on a chair by the window, the window where a briquette stove had been burning, but now was no longer there. There was sunlight, though, and it shone on his hair. So then he imagined the color of his hair at this moment, and he thought it would surely look weird.
Zhang Liang and the others were still smiling, and it seemed they had been doing so for a long time—they had been smiling even before he entered. So now the amused expressions on their faces were fading away.
Suddenly he was racked with worry. As he came in, to mask his surprise he had forced himself to smile, and now the smile was glued onto his face. It peeved him that he couldn’t get rid of it.
“What’s the matter?”
He heard Zhu Qiao or Hansheng ask this question, and then saw Zhang Liang looking at him quizzically.
“He’s changed a bit.” Again it was Zhu Qiao or Hansheng. But the voice seemed unfamiliar.
“Is it me you’re talking about?” He looked at Zhang Liang. His own voice also sounded strange.
Zhang Liang seemed to nod.
Now they appeared to be rubbing their faces with their hands, until their frozen smiles were rubbed away. They began to look at him soberly, the same way that the math teacher with the glasses looked at him. But he felt there was something unreal about it.
He was rather upset, because he didn’t know what they had been saying before he came in and he wanted very much to know.
“When did you get here?”
What sounded like Yazhou’s voice drifted toward him, as though from outside the window. But then he saw Yazhou for real standing right in front of him, and he couldn’t help but give a start. He had not registered at all the fact that Yazhou had come in, and it was as though he had never left. Yazhou was now looking at him with a grin, the very same grin he had seen on Zhang Liang and the others’ faces.
“What’s up with you?” It was Yazhou who asked. They were all asking this. Then Yazhou turned around, and he saw that perplexing smile reappear on the faces of Zhang Liang and the others. Yazhou, he thought, must be smiling in just the same way.
He didn’t want to look at them anymore, and so he looked out the window. He saw a briquette stove on the windowsill opposite, but no smoke was issuing from it. Then the stove suddenly disappeared and he saw a girl with her back to him, and then she too vanished. So then he felt there was nothing more to see, but he didn’t feel like turning around right away.
He heard one of them stand up and move about, and soon a burst of whispers and stifled laughter issued from the balcony. Only then did he turn his head, to find Zhang Liang and Co. gone. Yazhou, still seated as before, was idly toying with a cigarette lighter.
When he came out of Zhang Liang’s house, a white-haired old lady was standing in the gloomy alleyway shouting someone’s name. He didn’t know whether or not that person was her grandson, but it seemed she was calling, “Yazhou.”
So he decided to go to Yazhou’s place. Although Yazhou was his friend, he seldom got together with Zhang Liang and the others. The antagonism between Yazhou and Zhang Liang and Co. often put him in an awkward position and made things difficult on both sides.
He didn’t head directly for Yazhou’s apartment, but ambled slowly down some street or other. Piles of bricks and heaps of sand lined the street at regular intervals, and a steamroller drove back and forth in a seemingly offhand manner. Walking down the street felt like threading one’s way through a construction site.
For a while he leaned against a pile of bricks and watched the steamroller, which was just as bored as he was. Its huge wheels thumped dully as they leveled the surface.
But this just irritated him: he found the noise unbearable. So he let his legs start moving. The movement felt comical, all the more so when his arms started moving back and forth as though they were walking too.
Later—he didn’t know exactly what time, but he knew it was later—he seemed to be standing in the doorway of a shop that sold tobacco and candy, or possibly it sold silk. Precisely what kind of place it was did not matter; the main thing was that he saw a lot of different colors. Most likely he was standing in between two shops, but in fact the two shops were not adjacent to each other, so maybe it was that he had stood outside first one shop and then the other. In any case he saw a lot of colors, a riot of different hues.
At this moment a comfortable feeling surged up in his heart, so suddenly as to take him by surprise. Then he caught sight of Bai Xue.
He saw her walk along the street, trailing a black shadow. He thought that when she got next to the plane tree she might come to a stop and maybe throw him a glance, a meaningful look that he would find perplexing. That was what happened when he saw her the last time, and he didn’t know why he was repeating it all.
But she really did go over to the plane tree and come to a stop, and she did throw him a glance, and her glance did hint at the same thing it had earlier. And then she hurried away, just as before.
He was staggered to find that his supposition would prove so true. And then he tensed up, for he felt as though a middle-aged man was leaning against the plane tree. He quickly looked all around, but did not see him. But he did spot a suspicious silhouette disappearing into an alleyway. The entry to the alleyway looked as dark as the mouth of a well, and it filled him with dread. But he took off in pursuit nonetheless. He seemed to hope—and at the same time fear—that the silhouette belonged to the middle-aged man.
At the entry to the alley he almost ran into someone, a middle-aged man who muttered something and then walked away. He was heading in exactly the same direction that he had been taking to go to Yazhou’s house. Why wasn’t the man going somewhere else? He suspected that this man was the one whose silhouette he had just seen: after dodging into the alley he had come out again, pretending to be completely uninvolved. It seemed the man knew that he was planning to visit Yazhou, and so he was heading that way too.
After proceeding some twenty meters, he noticed, the man came to a stop and glanced around in all directions, resting his eyes on him briefly, only to look away at once. The man was monitoring his movements, he sensed, and was simply pretending to look around in order to disarm suspicion.
The man remained standing there, but no longer looked his way. The man’s head was slightly tilted in his direction, however, so he felt that he was still in the man’s line of vision. He stood where he was and just stared at him.
Another middle-aged man came over and said a few words to the first one, and the two men walked off together. After going a little way, the second man turned his head and threw him a glance. His companion patted him on the shoulder, and he did not look back again.
Now it was dusk. He stood on the balcony and gazed at the building opposite. Some of its windows were bright, and some were dark. The bright windows seemed to him like a series of rectangular lights, and together they formed an intriguing picture: not symmetrical, perhaps, but perfectly proportioned. He tried to think of what the picture looked like, but couldn’t come up with an answer. This was because whenever he thought of something, two windows would suddenly brighten and the composition would be critically altered. So he had to start from the beginning again.
Just now, when he was in the kitchen washing the dishes, all of a sudden he had become aware of a distinct possibility that his parents were discussing him. He had pricked up his ears to listen. Faint though the voices were, there was no doubt that he was being talked about. After a little hesitation he had edged closer, but by then they were on another subject and he couldn’t make much sense of what they were saying. It had seemed to him that their conversation was strained: evidently they were having to rack their brains to find words that they would understand intuitively but that would leave him none the wiser.
He had suddenly felt as though he was a barrier that inhibited communication between them.
“Have you finished the washing up?” his father had asked.
“No.” He shook his head.
His father looked at him with disapproval. His mother had then struck up a conversation with someone on the adjacent balcony. “Are you pretty much all ready now?” she asked.
“How about you?” the neighbor responded.
His mother did not reply, but switched to another topic.
Then he had gone back to the kitchen, and this time tried to make as little noise as possible when washing the dishes. Soon he again seemed to hear them talking about him. Their voices began to get louder, and several times he heard his name mentioned, but then they appeared to realize their mistake and promptly lowered their voices.
He put the dishes back in the cabinet, then went out onto the balcony and leaned against the railing in the corner opposite them. Despite that, he still sensed that he was getting in their way.
They clearly found his reappearance displeasing, because again his father had a bone to pick with him. “You’ve got to stop being so aimless,” he said. “You ought to study.”
So he had no choice but to leave. Once back in his room, he picked up a book. He didn’t know the title—all he knew was that it had words printed on its pages.
On the balcony, his parents continued their discussion, punctuating it with chuckles. They chuckled without restraint.
He felt uneasy, and after a moment of hesitation he took his book and went out onto the balcony.
This time his father had said nothing, but had eyed him silently, just like his mother. Even without looking at them he could tell what kind of expression was in their eyes.
It was then that dusk had arrived, then that he gazed listlessly at the building opposite. He had been eager to hear just what they were saying. But all he could see was a mysterious picture.
Later he gave a start, because he discovered that he was standing by the door to their bedroom. The door was tightly shut. They were no longer talking without a pause as they had been earlier—they now spoke at intervals and their words were difficult to make out. The only two that came across plainly were “April Third.” But he was hard put to discern their import.
Suddenly the door opened and his father emerged. “What are you doing here?” he asked testily. He saw that his mother was looking at him with feigned astonishment. There was no mistaking it—her surprise was just a performance.
He didn’t know how to answer his father’s question. He just looked at him dumbly, then walked off. He heard his father grumbling as the bedroom door closed behind him.
He went back to his own room and lay down in bed. Now everything around was in darkness, but he felt his eyes were glowing bright. There was noise outside, some of it close by and some of it far away, but by the time it reached his room it had all become a monotonous hum.
According to the arrangement he had imagined the night before, today he ought to wake up at 8:30. Then, after seeing the sun filter through the curtains and linger on the socks that were hanging on the footboard, he would get out of bed and hear a knock on the door.
Before the old wall clock emitted its lonely chime, he had been sunk in a deep whirlpool of confused slumber. Even in his sleep, however, he had heard various noises outside his room, and the noises had simply added to his lassitude. When the old clock chimed, it changed everything, like a light that comes on suddenly in a darkened room. So then he woke, to find himself covered in sweat.
Wearily, he propped himself up. Sitting there in bed, he felt a lot more relaxed. At the same time he glanced at the clock: 8:30. He leaned back against the headboard and began to think about something or other. Suddenly he gave a start and threw another glance at the clock: he was now convinced that 8:30 had indeed been his wake-up time. He looked at the sunlight, which was lingering on his smelly socks just as expected. All this was in keeping with the arrangement he had made in his imagination the night before.
What should follow was a knock on the door. But that should happen after he got out of bed. Even though the first two points had been verified, he was somewhat doubtful whether the knock on the door would materialize. He lounged on the bed, unwilling to get up, for in fact he wanted to limit the possibility of hearing the knock after he got out of bed. If someone was really going to knock on the door, he would prefer to hear the knock when lying in bed.
So he stayed in bed until 9:30. His parents left for work at 7:30, so he could listen very single-mindedly to the clock without any danger that he would be distracted by other noises in the house.
By 9:30 he felt he was not going to hear a knock—that was last night’s imagination, after all. He decided to get up.
After getting out of bed he first opened the window, and the sunshine burst in boldly, accompanied by a breeze and some noise. The noise annoyed him, because to his ears it seemed remote and unreal.
On his way to the kitchen he heard a knock. It was after he had gotten up, and he turned pale with astonishment that things had turned out just as he had envisioned.
When last night he imagined hearing a knock on the door, he did not turn pale but simply felt a little bemused; he’d then gone over and opened the door. The time for surprise would have been after he opened the door, because that was when a middle-aged man (the smoker who had leaned against the plane tree) entered the room without saying a word.
He would have challenged the visitor, obviously. “Can I help you?”
But the man ignored his question. Instead the man came closer and closer, forcing him to take several steps backward, until he was up against the wall and could not retreat any farther, at which point the man stood still. He had sensed that something would surely happen next. But what precisely was going to happen, he had not been able to imagine the night before.
Now, when he heard the noise, he couldn’t help but tense up. He stood still, as if unwilling to open the door. The knocks became louder and louder, making him feel the visitor was sure he was inside, and given the visitor’s confidence on this score, he felt there was no way to avoid all that was about to happen. At the same time, from another angle, he was keen to find out just what would transpire.
He opened the door and was startled (just as projected in last night’s imaginings), because the man was knocking on the door on the opposite side of the landing (an act different from what he had imagined). He saw a sturdy figure, and, judging from that, he thought the person had to be a middle-aged man (the man’s age, then, was consistent with what he had imagined). But was it the man so closely associated with the plane tree? He found it hard to make a determination. It seemed that he was the man, and also that he wasn’t.
The shop’s display window functioned somewhat like a mirror. He walked back and forth in front of it, turning his head sideways and looking at his reflection. But the moving image was blurry, and impaired by the items on display.
As he stood in front of the pharmacy window, he noticed that three boxes of herbal extract ingeniously formed his abdomen, while his shoulders were replaced by a triangle of bottled calcium tablets. The apex of the triangle ended precisely underneath his nose, so his eyes were not compromised. He looked at the reflection of his eyes, and it was very much as though another pair of eyes was watching him.
Then he walked over to the window of the department store. There his abdomen was restored to him, but his chest was obstructed by a child’s shirt. And his head disappeared, its place occupied instead by a pair of swimming trunks. But his hands were free: when he stretched out his right hand it could touch the bell of a bicycle, and when he stretched out his left it almost made contact with a badminton racket, but not quite.
Just at this moment the window reflected several hazy human shapes, also interrupted by items on display. He saw half a head saying something to most of a face, as several legs shifted about, and a few shoulders as well. Then he saw a complete face appear, but without a neck—there was a red bra where the neck should have been. Detecting a furtiveness in several of the fragmented reflections, he spun around, only to see a number of people standing on the opposite sidewalk pointing at him and making remarks.
Because he had turned so suddenly, they all appeared a bit flustered. “What are you doing?” one of them asked.
He gave a start, for he could see they were all looking at him in amusement and he couldn’t tell which one of them had asked the question. He felt he didn’t know who they were, although they looked familiar.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
Again he could not discern which of them had spoken. But it was true he was waiting for someone. How would they know that, though? He was taken aback.
Seeing that he didn’t react, they seemed a bit embarrassed. They talked in low voices and then left together. Strangely, they did not look back.
He began to walk. What had just happened was puzzling, and now the stuff in the window seemed as dull as dishwater. So he switched his attention to the street. There were not many pedestrians about; those that he did see were half in light and half in darkness.
“Why didn’t you answer?”
Zhu Qiao’s voice sounded in his ears and gave him a start. Now Zhu Qiao was standing in front of him. Zhu Qiao seemed to have suddenly emerged from hiding, and he was rendered speechless.
“Why didn’t you answer them?” Zhu Qiao asked once more.
He looked at him in confusion. “Who are they?” he asked.
Zhu Qiao gave an exaggerated expression of surprise. “They’re your classmates.”
He seemed to remember now: they were indeed his former classmates. But when he saw Zhu Qiao smiling so comically, he couldn’t help but doubt that this was so.
Zhu Qiao patted his shoulder warmly. “What are you doing here?”
He found this familiarity rather excessive. But that was a minor issue—the big question was why he was asking this.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
It was obvious: Zhu Qiao had some obscure connection with those other people just now, and it seemed they were all concerned about who he was waiting for.
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, why have you been standing here all this time?”
This was a shock. Clearly Zhu Qiao had been watching him from some hidden vantage point. So it was pointless to argue that he wasn’t waiting for anyone.
“What’s the matter?” Zhu Qiao asked.
He could see that Zhu Qiao was on edge—having noticed his wary manner, no doubt. Uneasily he turned his head away, and he contrived to take a casual look around.
It was then he realized with surprise just how many people were paying attention to them. Practically everyone in the street was acting strangely, he felt. Even though their surveillance of him might take different forms, just a single glance revealed their inner secret.
Opposite him were three people standing in a cluster and chatting as they kept him under observation, and similar situations unfolded to his right and left. People walking along the street would cast a glance in his direction, then quickly avert their gaze as though fearful he would notice. He suspected that Zhu Qiao was talking to him now as a way of diverting his attention. He discovered that those people who seemed to be strangers to one another turned out to be slowly coalescing into a group as they walked. Although they soon separated again, he knew that they had had time to exchange remarks—brief remarks, perhaps, but concerning him.
Later, when he looked back, Zhu Qiao was nowhere to be seen. He had no recollection of when he had left.
The brawny figure in front of him reminded him of a stone monument. When he had seen such a monument and what exactly it was like were not questions he was inclined to consider in more detail. What was more to the point was that this figure was knocking on the door. And he knocked with care, using two knuckles, but the noise was very loud, as though he were pounding on it with both fists. The man’s feet were not being employed, but if they were—he supposed—the outcome would surely be ugly.
He stood by the door, waiting, it seemed, for this man to turn around. He tried to guess what a frontal view of him would be like. All he could be sure of was that he would look more complicated from the front than from the back. Would he turn out to be the middle-aged man who had leaned against the plane tree?
But the man continued to knock on the door, with a beat so steady and mechanical it sounded like the rhythm of a lathe.
Given his interest in seeing the man’s face—an interest he could not contain—he decided to say something to him. There was no other way.
“There’s nobody home,” he said.
The man turned around, finally exposing his face. His front was not as solidly built as his back, but his eyebrows were short and unnervingly bushy, so it looked almost as though he had four eyes. He could not readily establish whether this was the man who had leaned against the plane tree, but he was disinclined to rule out the possibility.
“There’s nobody home,” he repeated.
The man looked at him as though looking at a door. “How do you know there’s nobody home?”
“If there were, they would have opened up by now.”
“Would they open up if I didn’t knock?” the man asked mockingly.
“But if there’s nobody home, they won’t open up no matter how much you knock.”
“But if there is somebody there, they will open up if I keep knocking.”
He took a couple of steps back and shut the door. He found the exchange perplexing. The knocking on the door resumed. But he didn’t want to pay it any attention, so he went into the kitchen, where a couple of fried dough-sticks awaited him. His mother had bought them that morning, in keeping with her usual practice. Left on top of a bowl, they were now drooping at both ends. He picked them up and ate them, at the same time picturing how straight they would have been when just purchased.
After he had finished, a strange thought struck him: the dough-sticks might have been poisoned. And soon he realized he was quite convinced that this was the case, because he could feel a discomfort in his stomach, though it stopped well short of acute pain. He stood still, waiting for the disturbance to develop further. But after a little while it subsided and his stomach reverted to calm. He stood a bit longer, and finally heaved a sigh of relief, as though unburdened of a heavy weight.
The man was still pounding on the door. And the more he pounded, the more it sounded like the man was knocking on his door. He began to suspect that that was really what was happening. So he stood by the door and listened intently. Yes, the door was being knocked on—he seemed to feel the door trembling. He took a deep breath and threw the door open.
What he saw was the neighbors’ door slamming shut. It must have just been opened, because the burly figure was no longer there.
If last night’s imaginings were to be fulfilled, he would see Bai Xue here again today. This time she would give no clear signal. She would walk past him as though he weren’t there and not even look at him. But that too would be a signal. So, pretending to be out for a stroll, he would follow close on her heels. What would happen next he had not been able to imagine.
The girl standing behind the writing supplies counter had long hair that fell to her shoulders. She was looking at him as if spellbound.
Zhu Qiao had disappeared all of a sudden, as though in a jump cut in a movie, and now he found himself in a very suspect environment. He noticed the girl’s look only after he had turned in her direction.
Because he had turned around so quickly, the girl appeared to have been taken by surprise. First she tensely shifted her gaze, then turned her back to him and began to count ink bottles and coloring boxes as though checking the inventory.
He hadn’t expected that people would monitor him also from behind his back, and he felt a tremor of alarm. But she was different from the others, after all, for she seemed panic-stricken when discovered, whereas they were able to feign complete innocence.
He moved slowly toward her. She kept on checking her inventory, but she could sense that he was standing next to her—she could hear him breathing. So she seemed all the more nervous and her shoulders began to quiver. She tried to avoid him, moving off to one side, her back to him.
Now he spoke up, in a voice both firm and calm. “Why are you watching me?” he asked.
She froze, and her shoulders trembled acutely.
“Answer me,” he said. But his tone was cordial.
She hesitated a moment, then turned around and said bleakly, “They made me do it.”
“I know.” He nodded. “But why do they want to monitor me?”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She looked around fearfully.
Without even checking, he knew that everyone in the shop was now looking at her threateningly.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured.
She hesitated a moment, then summoned her courage to say, “I’ll tell you.”
He stood at the entrance to the shop and watched her intently. She kept on doing the inventory for quite some time before turning around, but when she realized he was still looking at her, she at once became flustered. This time she did not turn her back to him, but moved to the other end of the counter. She was no longer in his line of vision and all he saw were neat rows of ink bottles and coloring boxes.
He thought about whether or not to go back in, march up to her, and conduct the kind of conversation he had just imagined. But he lacked the sangfroid that he had possessed in his mock situation, and she clearly was not as gentle and kindhearted as the girl in his hypothesis. For this reason he lacked confidence in the outcome of a conversation that would be absolutely real and would lack even the slightest imaginative coloring.
He stood indecisively at the entrance, as chaotic footsteps sounded behind him. He could vividly imagine the look in the eyes of those people tailing him. At this moment he had his back to them, and they would be free to watch him without the least scruple and even gesture to one another. But, he thought, if he suddenly turned around, they would be taken completely by surprise. He was pleased with himself for hitting on this plan, and immediately put it into action.
But when he turned around, he did not achieve the anticipated effect. A quick survey of the surrounding scene failed to uncover anyone watching him. They had read his mind, and this he found infuriating. They’re getting more cunning, he thought.
But Bai Xue did appear.
According to his imagined scenario, Bai Xue would come ambling along the street (from either direction). But now Bai Xue was coming over the bridge. Although the particulars differed, his overall projection had again proved correct.
As Bai Xue came down the bridge, she did not look his way. But he knew she had seen him, and he knew that she knew he had seen her. When she did not look his way, it was so as to avoid notice. She sauntered down the bridge very coolly and then walked off in the opposite direction from him. Bai Xue’s casualness impressed him deeply, and he began to follow her.
Bai Xue stood out conspicuously among the pedestrians because she was wearing a bright red corduroy jacket. He knew there was something significant about her choice of attire and he appreciated her attention to detail. But immediately he realized that it was silly of him to stare at her, because that could so easily give him away.
He had to think hard before he could recall the exchange between his mother and the neighbor on the balcony the previous afternoon.
“Are you pretty much all ready now?” she had asked.
“How about you?” was the rejoinder.
Just now, while still a little way from home, he could see a boy lying on the neighbors’ balcony and gazing at the street below. At the same time he saw that the door to his own balcony was open, so he concluded that his parents were home. As soon as the boy saw him, he turned around and ran indoors. At first he did not give any thought to that, but when he got to the foot of the stairs and was about to go up, he saw the boy a second time, and this time he was pointing a toy pistol at him. Then, in a flash, the boy darted into his apartment and the door slammed with a bang.
It was only when he got home that he realized his parents were not there. He looked carefully in all the rooms, and on the easy chair in his parents’ bedroom he saw a nylon shopping bag. Without question, his parents had come back, because at lunchtime he had seen his mother go out with that bag. He remembered that his father had asked, “What do you need that for?” He couldn’t remember now how his mother answered. But that wasn’t important—what mattered was that he had verified that his parents had returned before he did.
What required consideration now was where his parents had gone. He could not help thinking of that highly suspicious knocking on the door by the middle-aged man. For this reason the neighbors next door also seemed to him highly suspicious. And even their child gave him cause to be wary. Although the boy was only six years old, he was just as sneaky as a grown-up.
It was obvious that his parents were next door. Now, when he closed his eyes, he could picture them sitting with the neighbors and discussing things.
“Are you pretty much all ready now?”
“How about you?”
(What was worth noting was that they were preparing something. He could feel a twinge of foreboding, but could not imagine the particulars.)
The boy had been sent onto the balcony to observe whether or not he was on his way back. Later the boy had appeared at the doorway, and when he started going upstairs the boy had slammed the door. This noise had to be significant: it would tell them that he was on his way up.
He knew what he had to do now. He had to verify this hypothesis. And the means of verification were simple: he just needed to open the door, stand in the doorway, and keep his eyes fixed on the door opposite.
His glance would not be the timid glance of before—his glance would make it clear that he had seen through their scheme. And so, when his parents emerged, they would be totally taken aback.
They would expect the door to be closed and him to be inside. So they’d put on a show of being at ease, as if they had just come up the stairs, unaware he was standing in the doorway.
First they’d be astonished, and then embarrassed, because it was all so sudden and they hadn’t sufficient time to prepare a cover-up. Sure, they’d be quick to assume a relaxed posture, but there was no way they could mask their discomfiture.
The red jacket maintained such a steady distance from him—always twenty meters ahead—it was as though it were not really moving. This was because Bai Xue walked with such even steps.
Bai Xue continued along the same street, and that was dangerous, because he was more and more conscious that the bystanders were paying attention to them. He had observed that several people passed right next to Bai Xue, only to turn back to look at her, and then, as though noticing something, they took a look at him too. After he brushed past them, he felt as though they took a few steps and then seemed to turn round and follow him. He did not turn his head—at this time he must absolutely avoid doing that. Just hearing footsteps close behind told him all he needed to know. There was no longer a clear pattern to the footsteps, which showed there were all the more people shadowing him.
But Bai Xue kept on walking along the street. He knew exactly how far this street extended, and was aware that before long it would peter out into a dirt road. The dirt road, which skirted a river on one side and open land on the other, led eventually to the crematorium, whose tall chimney gave one the feeling that the long, spindly dirt road was now suddenly standing erect.
Bai Xue had not yet gotten to the start of the dirt road, but she wasn’t that far away. She hesitated at the entry to several alleys, but carried on straight ahead. Only he could sense that hesitation of hers. Clearly she had noticed she was being watched.
Just at this moment Bai Xue came to a stop. If she didn’t stop now, she would miss the chance altogether, because she was nearing the end of the street. Bai Xue entered a shop, a little convenience store that stocked the same items as all the shops she had already passed. It was obvious that making a purchase was not her aim.
He slowed his pace, knowing there was an alley about ten meters on this side of the shop, a very narrow alley. He moved forward cautiously. There seemed to be fewer people in the street now. He observed that up ahead only two people were watching him: one walking toward him, the other standing by the door of a waste recycling depot.
As he passed the shop, he did not look inside, but he began to feel that the footsteps following him had dwindled in number, and when he reached the alley he heard no footsteps at all. Bai Xue’s ruse had worked perfectly, he thought. But the man outside the recycling depot was still looking at him.
He slipped into the alley.
Here the sunlight was blocked by the high walls on both sides, and no sooner had he stepped inside than he was hit by a wave of clammy air. The passageway ran straight and long, like a path through a dense forest. He walked on quietly, into the depths of the alley. At intervals on both sides there appeared still smaller alleys, so narrow they could accommodate only a single person, and they were quiet and empty. The alley was a full hundred meters in length. He walked all the way to the end before turning around, and from that distance the alley entrance looked like a narrow slit. Seeing no one, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, because that meant that for the time being nobody was watching him. He stood waiting for Bai Xue to appear.
Before long Bai Xue completed a graceful turn and entered through the slit. As he watched, the bright red jacket turned a darker red. Bai Xue strolled casually, with footsteps as enchanting as the sound of water drops hitting the ground. There was brightness behind her, and so as she walked toward him her body was bathed in light.
All of this was consistent with his projection, and now he knew everything that would happen next.
But at that moment two people suddenly entered from a side alley and walked shoulder to shoulder toward the street. Their bodies blocked his view of Bai Xue.
What shocked him was that one of them was his father, and the other seemed to be the man who had leaned against the plane tree, smoking. Walking with their backs to him, they did not notice him. They were discussing something, and though they kept their voices low he could hear a snatch of their conversation.
“What day?” It had to be the middle-aged man who asked this.
“April Third,” his father replied.
He could not catch anything else they said. As they proceeded forward, the two silhouettes slowly contracted and the slit slowly expanded, but still they blocked his view of Bai Xue. Their footsteps were very loud, as though they were banging on a table with their hands. Then they reached the slit and went separate ways, his father to the right, the other man to the left.
But he did not see Bai Xue.
His parents, it turned out, came up the stairs. He knew it was them as soon as he heard their footsteps.
Without a doubt, when he went into the apartment, they had come out of the door opposite and quietly gone downstairs. Otherwise the boy’s slamming of the door would have lost its significance. And so, when he was standing in the doorway, his parents were already downstairs.
Now they were coming upstairs (they had much more experience than he did, after all). He saw how they looked at him in surprise, but it wasn’t the kind of surprise he had been expecting.
“What are you doing standing in the doorway?”
His father’s mouth had moved, and this sound emerged from inside. Then two human figures came to a halt in front of him. He noticed that the buttons on his father’s jacket were different from those on his mother’s.
“What’s the matter?”
It was his mother’s voice, different from the first one. It was like cotton.
Suddenly he felt he was blocking his parents’ path, and so he hurriedly moved to one side. Now he noticed that his parents exchanged a look, a look that was rich with meaning. They said nothing more, and after entering the apartment they each went their own way, his mother to the kitchen, his father to the bedroom.
But he didn’t know what to do: he would seem so clueless just standing there. It dawned on him that there was something foolish about his stance just now, because his parents must have known what was on his mind.
His father emerged from the bedroom and walked toward the kitchen. Halfway there he stopped and said, “Close the door.”
He put out his hand and closed the door, listening as that simple sound rapidly disappeared.
A moment or two after his father entered the kitchen he said something else: “Take out the trash.”
As he picked up the dustpan he gave a sigh of relief: he no longer felt quite so helpless. He opened the door to find the neighbors’ son standing on the landing, toy pistol in hand. Cockily, the boy aimed the gun at him. He knew why the boy was so pleased with himself, even at such a tender age.
He stepped forward and grabbed the boy’s weapon. “My parents were over at your place just now, weren’t they?” he asked.
The boy wasn’t the least bit afraid. With a quick tug he grabbed the gun back, at the same time shouting, “No, they weren’t.”
So, even the kid’s well trained, he thought.
He stood there for a long time, his eyes on the slit, as though he were at the bottom of a deep well and watching its mouth. Occasionally someone slipped past the entry to the alley, like a large bird sailing over the well with a flap of its wings.
He proceeded forward with caution, and the sound of his footsteps bounced off the walls and tapped against his toes. Peering down the side alleys, he found they were all equally empty of people. As he reached the fourth side alley he saw a utility pole in front of him and realized he was now very close to where Hansheng lived.
Entering the side alley, one found oneself on an untidy, ramshackle path that sloped slightly upward. At the fourth door there was no need to knock—one could simply push the door open, revealing a small courtyard, its four corners swathed in moss. Then one followed a dark, unpaved passageway, skirting a small water-filled pit, to reach Hansheng’s door.
Hansheng’s house was much like Zhang Liang’s, and so the scene in which they were hiding in the room and whispering to one another vividly came to mind.
What now needed serious consideration was this: At what point could Bai Xue have disappeared? But to follow this thought to its logical conclusion would only heighten his unease. Because he felt she had disappeared right here. Moreover—if he continued to pursue this line of thought—she would have come to a stop outside the fourth door, would have pushed the door open and walked along the dark passageway. So Bai Xue should be sitting in Hansheng’s house right now.
He felt that this premise must be very close to reality, and so his disquiet grew all the more real. At the same time it made him take a first step toward Hansheng’s home. What he needed now was not imagination, but verification. He came to a stop outside the fourth door.
Soon he had skirted that sinister pit and was knocking on the crude door. Before he did that, he conducted a manual inspection. There were no nails on Hansheng’s door. So he could knock on it without any qualms.
The door opened quickly, but just a crack. Then Hansheng’s head appeared in the opening. It was motionless, as though suspended in the air.
Light from the room spilled out and there was a strange look in Hansheng’s eyes. He heard Hansheng ask tensely, “Who is it?”
He hesitated. “It’s me,” he answered.
“Oh, it’s you.” Only now did the door open fully.
Hansheng’s voice took him off guard, because he had not planned on hearing such a loud voice.
He did not find Bai Xue in the room. But as he entered, he seemed to catch a whiff of scent. He couldn’t tell if it came from a girl’s hair or from a girl’s face, but he was certain it came from a girl. He thought Bai Xue had maybe already left, but immediately he ruled this out. If she had left, she would have had to go back the way she’d come, but he had not seen her.
Hansheng led him to his room, which was spotlessly clean. He didn’t let him see the other two rooms. The door to one of the rooms was open, and the door to the other was tightly closed.
“What brings you here?” Hansheng put on a show of being casual.
He felt this question inappropriate, for in the past he had been a frequent visitor. But now, he thought, the question perhaps made sense.
“I’m reading something interesting,” Hansheng said.
He ignored this remark. He hadn’t come here to engage in desultory chitchat with Hansheng; he had another purpose in mind. So he listened with great concentration.
“It’s really well written.”
He heard a slight noise, like that of something falling on the floor. He tried to determine its source, and decided that it came from the room whose door was closed.
Hansheng said nothing more. He picked up a magazine and started flipping through it.
He was glad of that, for this way he could concentrate on listening. But Hansheng made a lot of noise as he flipped through the magazine, and this was annoying. No doubt he was doing it deliberately.
Even so, at intervals he could still hear some slight movements. Now he was certain that Bai Xue was inside. She had concealed herself when Hansheng called out, and his shout had drowned out the sound of her closing the door.
Evidently, when Bai Xue ducked into the shop earlier, that was to give him the slip. It would drive him to despair if he discovered that she was in league with them, but he could not be absolutely sure this was the case.
He saw Hansheng close the door that was still open, as though he had remembered something. Too late, he thought.
Never before had he observed so intently the sky turning dark as he did this evening.
After dinner he didn’t wash the dishes but went out onto the balcony instead. What was odd was that his father did not reprimand him. He heard his mother go into the kitchen, and soon there was a clatter of bowls and plates.
Rosy light sprinkled itself everywhere, like fresh blood, and the sun fell slowly like a punctured balloon, disappearing behind the building opposite. Then he heard his father come over, and soon he felt a hand pat his hair.
“Why not go out for a walk?” his father said pleasantly.
Inwardly he gave a cold smile. His father’s affability was a sham. He shook his head. Now he felt his mother join them.
The three of them stood in silence for a moment, and then his father asked once more, “How about a walk?” Again he shook his head.
His parents exchanged a glance and then left the balcony. Soon he heard a door shut and knew that they had gone out.
He lowered his gaze, and soon he saw their silhouettes slowly moving away.
Then the family of three who lived next door appeared—also walking down the street at a leisurely pace. At almost the same time he saw other neighbors come out onto the sidewalk, all heading in the same direction, pretending to go for a stroll.
“Spring is here—let’s go for a walk,” he heard someone say. This comment was intended for his ears, he thought. It was just as fake as his father’s invitation just now.
It was patently obvious: while pretending to be out for a stroll, they had set off on their mission, and they would all gather somewhere to confer, and no doubt their discussion would focus on him.
Some residents had not left, but were still standing on their balconies. That was part of the plan, he thought—to leave a few people to watch him.
He raised his head and scanned the sky. It seemed to be turning pale. The ruddy clouds had dispersed and the deep blue had receded into the far distance. It was the first time he had noticed that the sky turns pale after sunset. But the paleness was temporary, and behind it the blue could still dimly be seen. Then the blue gradually deepened, at the same time slowly spreading out of the paleness. That was how the sky got dark.
He remained on the balcony even after the sky turned black. He saw that in the building opposite only four windows were lit up. Then he looked down at his own block, which had five windows that were illuminated. Only then did he go in and turn on the light.
As he slowly descended the staircase, the thought occurred to him that perhaps those dark windows were watching him too. So when he reached the ground floor he pretended to walk with a limp. That way they would not recognize him. Because he didn’t turn the light off when he left, they would assume he was still at home.
Once he could no longer be seen from the two housing blocks, he resumed his normal walking gait. He turned into an alleyway. There was a water tower at the end of it, though the pipes had yet to be installed.
There were no streetlights in the alleyway, but the moon had now risen and he walked softly in the moonlight, which shone as clearly as water on the paving stones. There were no footsteps behind him.
The alley did not extend far, and soon the water tower was standing before him. First he saw the sharp end of the tower, which stood quietly and ominously in the moonlight. Its full shape, which emerged when he left the alley, was chilling. It seemed like a huge, dark shadow, empty and formless.
All around was desolate, with a light shining only in a shack at the foot of the water tower. Quietly he made his way around the shack, and when he found the narrow iron ladder that was clamped to the water tower, he climbed it, rung by rung. The breeze grew stronger, and by the time he got to the top his clothes were puffed up by the wind and flapping as though torn. His hair blew across his face.
Now he had a bird’s-eye view. In the moonlight the town looked gloomy and chilling, as if in a coma.
It’s a plot, he thought.
Zhang Liang and the others swept in like a tide when he was still holed up in bed. He saw Yazhou and the other guys, plus a girl whom he had not seen before. He looked at them all in astonishment.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
They burst out laughing, as though they’d just heard a terrific joke. All of them except for the girl collapsed laughing into a chair, and the chair creaked as though it were laughing too.
“Who’s she?” he asked.
They laughed even more loudly, and Zhang Liang stamped his foot on the floor in delight.
“Don’t you recognize me?” The girl suddenly gathered in her laugh, and he was astounded that such a loud laugh could fade away so quickly.
“I’m Bai Xue,” she said.
He was astonished, wondering how on earth he had failed to recognize her. Now, studying her carefully, he felt she did look a bit like Bai Xue. What’s more, she was still wearing that red corduroy jacket, though it was no longer bright red but dark red.
“Time to get up,” Bai Xue said.
So then Zhang Liang threw open his quilt. Four of them grabbed his arms and legs, picked him up, and threw him toward Bai Xue. He gave a cry of alarm, only to find that he was sitting very comfortably in a chair, while Bai Xue had sat down on the edge of the bed.
He didn’t know what they were going to do next, so he put on an expectant air.
Zhang Liang tossed him some clothes, obviously wanting him to put them on. So he dressed. After that he sat back down in the chair and continued to wait.
“Let’s go,” Bai Xue said.
“Go where?” he asked.
She made no reply, but stood up and went outside. Zhang Liang and the rest came over and lifted him up, then pushed him toward the door.
“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,” he said.
For no obvious reason Zhang Liang and the others burst out laughing once more.
So in just that way he was strong-armed into going downstairs. A lot of people were standing there, and it looked as though they’d been waiting a long time.
He saw how they pointed at him and made comments. As he walked on, he felt they were all falling in behind him. He wanted to make a run for it, but his arms were gripped by Zhang Liang and the others and he could not escape.
Then he was led out into the street, which he found was completely empty, devoid of people and activity. They marched him out into the middle of the street. Now, after vanishing for a while, Bai Xue appeared on the scene once more. She seemed to look at him pityingly, and then she strode off without saying a word.
Someone—he wasn’t sure if it was Zhang Liang, or Zhu Qiao, or Hansheng, or perhaps Yazhou—said to him, “Look, who’s there?”
He looked straight ahead, and there on the sidewalk not far away stood his father, smiling in his direction. Now he suddenly felt a truck was careening toward him from behind. But what was strange was that he heard the sound of a door being knocked on.
Later he slowly climbed down the iron ladder, and once more he stepped into the unlit alley. But now the windows on either side were illuminated by lamplight, and the light from inside brightened patches of the alleyway as well. Many of the windows were open, and voices talking inside could be heard clearly, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
The alley was lined with houses—mostly old, single-story residences. As he walked, he would pause momentarily every time he passed an open window.
He was eager to know what the people inside were saying, because he felt they had to be talking about him. He knew that their meeting was over and his parents would be back home. So he felt a real need to stick his ear close to the windows. The reason he hesitated was that there were human figures visible through the windows, and the people inside were too close for comfort.
Finally he approached a suitable window. There were no figures in the window, but the voices inside were unusually clear. So he went over, hugging the wall, and gradually he could make out some of the words.
“Are you just about ready?”
“That’s right.”
“When do you start?”
But now he suddenly heard a noise behind him. “What are you doing?” It was as though someone was shouting in his ear. He spun around and knocked the man down with one punch. Then he began to run as fast as he could. The man gave a shout and behind him he heard a pounding of footsteps in hot pursuit, and at the same time many people stuck their heads out the windows.
He left the alleyway with this scenario in mind. He felt it was very realistic—if he were actually to put his ear up against a window, that’s to say.
When he got home, his parents were already asleep. He put the light on. He reckoned it must now be quite late. Normally his parents went to bed at ten o’clock, and if he came home this late his father would deliver some woozy, bad-tempered words of censure. This time he didn’t do that, but said calmly, “Hi there.” He had not been sleeping.
He gave a curt response and headed off to his bedroom. Now he heard his mother say, “There’s hot water in the thermos for you to wash your feet.” Again he mumbled an acknowledgment, but once in his room he undressed and lay down in bed.
It was pitch-dark all around. After lying there for a while, he got up and went over to the window. He saw that many windows in the building opposite had now disappeared, and others were in the process of disappearing. His own block would be just the same, he thought. Now they could rest easy for a bit, for the next task would fall to his parents.
He went back to bed and lay down again. He had a hunch that something was about to happen, for they had obviously been preparing for a long time. His father had changed his attitude, and this signaled that they had noticed he was on guard. Quite possibly this would induce them to take action sooner than originally planned.
So now he needed urgently to exercise his imagination, to work out what action they might take against him the next day. Even though he had slept poorly the last two nights and was hard put to stay awake, he still did his utmost to avoid falling asleep.
Tomorrow morning, Zhang Liang and the gang, along with Bai Xue, would come over before he had gotten up. They would pretend to be in a boisterous mood, perhaps inviting him to go someplace or finding an excuse to stop him from going out. And then…He heard his breathing getting heavier.
The knocking was complex: in other words, there were several people pounding on the door at the same time. He was awake now, but everything that had just happened was vivid in his mind, even though he knew it was all a dream. Now the knocking on the door made him conscious of reality approaching.
He immediately decided that it was Zhang Liang and the gang, and Bai Xue, too. What was different from the dream was that they did not roll in like a tide. The door was blocking them.
Several of them at once were knocking on the door, and this showed they were annoyed.
But when he listened more carefully, it didn’t sound as though they were knocking on his door—it was as though they were knocking on the door opposite. He sat on the bed and heard the knocking growing louder and louder and sounding more and more like it was on the door opposite. So he put on his clothes and quietly went over to the door, and the knocking abruptly ceased.
He pondered for a moment, then opened the door decisively. Sure enough, Zhang Liang and the gang were standing outside. They roared with laughter at the sight of him. Then they rushed in all at once.
He was unmoved, feeling that their laughter and their boisterous entry corresponded to his dream of the night before.
Bai Xue, however, did not appear—it was just the four of them. But when they thronged inside, they did not pull the door to. Pretending to shut the door, he stuck his head out and looked around, but didn’t see Bai Xue.
“Is it just the four of you?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Isn’t that enough?” Zhang Liang countered.
It is enough, he thought. Four against one is more than enough.
“Let’s go,” said Zhang Liang.
(If Bai Xue were present, it should be she who said that.)
“Go where?” he asked.
“You’ll know when we get there.”
“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,” he said. As soon as he said this, he was stunned. Without intending to, he was repeating what he’d said in the dream.
“Let’s go.” So saying, Zhang Liang opened the door, while Zhu Qiao and Hansheng pinned his arms. (Just like in the dream.)
“We’re going to take you somewhere that will really surprise you,” Zhang Liang said when they got to the bottom of the stairs.
But there weren’t many people watching, just three or four pedestrians on the move.
Zhu Qiao and Hansheng frog-marched him along as Zhang Liang and Yazhou led the way. He felt that Zhu Qiao and Hansheng were not using as much force as they had at the start.
All of a sudden, Zhang Liang shouted, “Once there was a mountain.”
“On the mountain was a temple,” Zhu Qiao continued.
Then it was Hansheng’s turn. “In the temple were two monks.”
A little pause, and Yazhou picked up the thread. “An old monk and a young monk.”
Zhang Liang nudged him. “Your turn.”
He looked at Zhang Liang in confusion.
“You say, ‘The old one said to the young one.’ ”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “The old one said to the young one.” They all laughed like crazy.
Zhang Liang picked up the thread again. “Once there was a mountain.”
Zhu Qiao: “On the mountain was a temple.”
Hansheng: “In the temple were two monks.”
Yazhou: “An old monk and a young monk.”
It was his turn now, but again he did not do his bit, because they had reached the main street. They were standing on the sidewalk.
“Hurry up,” Zhang Liang said impatiently.
“The old one said to the young one,” he said listlessly.
Zhang Liang was displeased. “Can’t you say it a bit louder?” Then, crying, “Once there was a mountain,” he crossed the street. Zhu Qiao and Hansheng let go of him and followed Zhang Liang, shouting their lines as they went. Then Yazhou did the same.
Now it was his turn once more. He saw a truck slowly approaching to his left, and he knew that as soon as he got to the middle of the street it would come careening toward him.
What was this noise that kept chasing him and wouldn’t give up? He’d been running so fast he was gasping for breath, but the noise was still on his tail and there was no way to shake it off.
In the end he huddled next to a utility pole and threw a glance back. The sound was approaching. It was his father.
His father was now standing right in front of him. “What’s the matter with you?” he cried.
He looked at his father and made no reply. This is right, he thought. My father ought to make an appearance at this point. It simply came a bit later than in the dream.
“What’s the matter with you?” his father asked again.
He felt sweat pouring out of all his pores. He was damp all over.
His father said nothing more and simply stared at him. Sweat was dripping down his forehead and blurring his vision. And so it looked as though his father were standing in the rain.
“Let’s go home.” His father’s arm felt strong on his shoulders, and he had no choice but to follow.
“You’re a grown-up now.” He heard his father’s voice circle around him, and it was as though his father was circling around him too. “You’re a grown-up now.” His father’s voice continued to sound, but he could no longer make out the words.
As they walked back along the street, he noticed that his father’s footsteps were poorly coordinated with his own. His father’s tone, in contrast, was quite cordial, though this cordiality was bogus.
Later—he hadn’t registered just where they’d got to—his father suddenly made some remark or other and left him.
Now for the first time he scanned the surroundings attentively. He saw that his father was crossing the street to where someone else was standing. He felt that this person looked rather familiar, but he couldn’t immediately think who it was. The man threw him a smile. His father stopped in front of him, and the two of them began to converse.
He stood where he was, as if waiting for his father to come back, or perhaps wondering whether he should leave. Then he heard something fall out of the sky and hit the ground nearby. When he turned his head, there was a brick lying there. He gave a start, realizing now that he was standing directly beneath a building. Looking up, he saw someone perched on the scaffolding above. It was a middle-aged man, a lot like the one who had leaned against the plane tree. He felt that any minute a brick would come hurtling toward his head.
The man was leaning against a plane tree, right next to the street. Although he wasn’t smoking a cigarette, he was definitely the man he was looking for.
He remembered, now, that this was the place where Bai Xue first signaled to him. At that time he was still completely in the dark; at that time he was in a buoyant mood. He had just made his escape from that creepy building, and he didn’t know why he ended up here.
When he came to a stop about ten meters away, the man took notice. He said to himself: That’s right, he’s the one.
As he slowly approached the man, the man’s expression grew more and more wary, and the hand he’d kept in his pocket slowly began to emerge. And the people walking in the street slowed their pace to watch him—he knew they might rush him at any time.
He went up to the man. The man was rubbing his hands in front of his chest as though ready to throw a punch at any moment, and his legs were tensed.
But he stuck his hands in his pant pockets and said with composure, “I’d like to have a word with you.”
The man perceptibly relaxed and seemed to smile. “You’re looking for me?” he asked.
“That’s right,” he said.
The man looked toward the street, as though to deliver a signal. “Go ahead.”
“Not here,” he said. “I want to talk to you alone.”
The man looked hesitant. He did not want to leave the plane tree, meaning he did not want to leave those accomplices of his who were pretending to be pedestrians.
He gave a smirk. “You don’t dare?”
The man laughed loudly. “Let’s go,” he said.
So he began to lead the way, the other man following close behind. He walked with a measured pace, so that he could repel at any time a sneak attack. Now he heard a disorderly medley of footsteps behind him, which meant there were now several people following him. He did not look back. “It has to be just you and me,” he said.
The man made no reply and the footsteps behind him did not diminish in number.
“If you don’t have the guts, just leave.”
Again the man laughed.
He continued forward, but stopped for a moment when he got to the entrance to an alley. Only when he saw there was nobody in the alley did he enter. Now the steps behind him dwindled.
He couldn’t help but smile as he proceeded to the deepest section of the alley. The man was close behind. He knew he could not afford to look back now, for if he did, that would put the man on guard and he would keep a few steps back. So he walked on as though at ease, while mentally calculating the distance between them. It seemed a little too far. So he unobtrusively slowed his pace, and the man did not notice.
Now he felt things were just about right, so he swiftly crouched, putting his weight on his left leg and at the same time stamping backward with his right foot. He heard a scream, and then the sounds of a stumble and fall. He looked back to find the man, his face pale, sitting on the ground and clutching his stomach in pain.
He took a step forward and aimed another kick, this time at the man’s face. The man groaned and fell to the ground.
“Tell me, what were you trying to do?” he asked.
“I wanted Zhang Liang and the others to steer you into the middle of the street and have a truck hit you.”
“I know that,” he said.
“If that didn’t work, I was going to have your father lead you under that building and let a brick fall on your head.”
“And then?” he asked.
The man was still leaning against the plane tree. Now he stuck his hand into his chest pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
It’s definitely him, he thought. But he lacked the determination to confront him. He felt that if the two of them did face off, the outcome would be the opposite of what he had just imagined. The one left moaning on the ground, in other words, would be he himself. This man was heavily built, after all, and he was so weak and scrawny.
The man no longer looked so distracted; his gaze was distinctly hostile.
He suddenly realized he had been standing here too long.
“Do you know something?” Bai Xue said.
He had no idea how he had arrived at Bai Xue’s house. He recalled that one day a couple of years earlier he had seen her glide out of this door, just as she glided out now.
Bai Xue clearly had been startled to see him.
And he noticed that she was a bit embarrassed—window dressing, of course.
Bai Xue’s bedroom was stylish, but not as tidy as Hansheng’s. When he sat down on a chair, Bai Xue blushed a little, but it was natural for her to blush—in the final analysis she was different from them, he thought.
It was then that Bai Xue said, “Do you know something?”
She planned to tell him everything directly—now it was he who was astonished.
“Yesterday I ran into Zhang Liang in the street….”
Sure enough, she was going to spill the beans.
“He suddenly called my name.” No sooner had her normal coloring returned than she again reddened. “We never talked to each other in school, so I was flabbergasted….”
He began to be perplexed, not knowing what Bai Xue would go on to say.
“Zhang Liang said that you all would come over to my house today—you, Zhu Qiao, Hansheng, and Yazhou. He said it was your idea. They were here this morning.”
Now he understood. Bai Xue was trying to cover up for the activities of Zhang Liang and the others that morning. She was more devious than he had imagined.
“Why didn’t you come with them?” she asked.
He didn’t know what to say and could only look at her mournfully. He now saw a dramatic change in Bai Xue’s expression: she looked rather stunned.
She’s learned how to perform, he said to himself.
A long time seemed to pass, and he saw that Bai Xue was at a loss. It seemed she didn’t know where to put her hands.
“Do you remember what happened the other day?” he said. “I saw you as I was walking down the street. You signaled to me.”
Bai Xue turned bright red. She sputtered a reply: “I thought you were smiling at me, so I smiled too—how did you get the idea it was a signal?”
So, she’s determined to playact, he thought. But he continued undeterred. “Do you remember there was a middle-aged man close by?”
She shook her head.
“He was leaning against a plane tree,” he said, to jog her memory.
But still she shook her head.
“So, what was it you were signaling?” He couldn’t help losing patience.
She gazed at him as if dumbfounded. “What makes you think it was a signal?” she said uneasily.
He ignored this. “From then on I realized I was being watched.”
Now she assumed an air of utter bewilderment. “Who’s watching you?” she asked.
“Everyone.”
It looked as though she wanted to laugh but decided against it, given how serious he was. She did venture a comment, however. “You love to joke.”
“Cut out the playacting!” he cried.
She gave a start and looked at him fearfully.
“Tell me this: Why are they watching me, and what are they going to do next?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He could only sigh with disappointment, for he could see she would tell him nothing. She was no longer the Bai Xue in a yellow blouse. Now she was wearing a dark red jacket. He was astonished to find he had only just noticed.
He stood up and left Bai Xue’s bedroom; he realized the kitchen was on the right. When he entered the kitchen, he saw a knife sitting there. He picked it up and tested its sharpness: it would do. He went back into Bai Xue’s room, knife in hand. Now he saw her jump to her feet in alarm and retreat to the corner of the room. As he stepped forward, he heard her give a cry of panic. Then he pressed the knife against her throat and she trembled with fear.
Bai Xue stood up, and so did he. But he was unsure whether to go to the kitchen and get the knife.
He saw Bai Xue go over to the calendar on the wall. She tore off a page, then looked at him over her shoulder. “Tomorrow is April Third.”
He was still hesitating over whether or not to go to the kitchen.
“How about you guess?” Bai Xue said. “What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
He was startled. What would happen on April Third? April Third? He remembered now. His mother had mentioned this, and so had his father.
He understood that Bai Xue was dropping a hint; she could not say things in so many words, because she had worries of her own. He felt he ought to leave: further delay might make things tricky for her.
As he came out of the bedroom, he realized the kitchen was not on the right but on the left.
He had never known that the long moan of a train horn could raise his spirits so high.
At this time he had found himself a hiding place on the fourth floor of a building; he was sitting beneath the window. He’d slipped in at dusk, seen by no one. The building still lacked a staircase, and so he had climbed up the scaffolding. He watched as the night sky grew ever darker and listened as the sounds in the street faded into the distance. In the end even the man selling wonton down below had packed up his stall and gone home. A bit like how smoke dissipates in the air, the noises of human beings dissipated too. It was only his own breath that murmured quietly, as though he were talking to himself.
He did not know what to do now, just as he did not know what time it was. But tomorrow—April Third—something was going to happen. He was very clear on that score. He didn’t know what he should do about it, however.
He heard a train horn. This gave him an inspiration, and he stood up. When he stood up, the first thing he saw was a bridge, a bridge that just lay there as though dead. Then he noticed the little river, flowing ominously. Its waves glittered, like countless blinking eyes watching him. He laughed coldly.
Then he climbed out the window and slid down the scaffolding, which creaked like a door.
He followed the shadow-darkened street toward the railroad line. He did not hear his own footsteps; their sound seemed to be have been soaked up by the ground. He felt he was floating along like a breeze.
Before long he was standing on the tracks, which gleamed in the moonlight. On the platform of the little station nearby a single dim, yellow light was shining, and he saw nobody about. Opposite him, a dim light was also shining in the lineman’s little cabin. There had to be someone inside, perhaps already dozing off. He looked again at the railroad tracks, still bathed in moonlight.
Now he heard a sound like a wave surging. It came closer and closer and slowly expanded. He felt the noise blow his hair, and then he saw a sharp, bright light pointing his way, and then the light came sweeping toward him, only to be blocked by his body.
The train was beginning to slow down. It was a freight train, and it came to a stop next to him. Human figures appeared on the platform. He rushed forward and grabbed the metal ladder attached to one of the cars. It was even narrower than the ladder of the water tower. He climbed up and into the car, only to find it was loaded with coal. So he lay down on the pile of coal, and at the same time heard people talking. Their voices seemed to be blown into pieces by the wind, so that when they reached his ears they were just scraps.
Perhaps they had turned out in full force, it occurred to him. He had not gone home all day and his parents would surely suspect he would try to make a run for it. So they would have informed the neighbors opposite, and soon all the lights in that dark housing block would come on, and then all the lights in town. Even without closing his eyes he could imagine the clamor and excitement as they launched their search.
Now he heard the footsteps of someone walking past, so he quickly turned and lay on his stomach as flat as he could. Then came the noise of wheels revolving over the rails, a crisp sound that spread in all directions like lamplight. The footsteps faded into the distance.
Suddenly he heard the train emit a ponderous sound and at the same time he felt his body shake. Almost immediately he saw the station slowly moving, and a breeze began to move with it. As the wind blew more strongly, the noise of the wheels on the rails grew smoother.
He sat up straight on the coal heap. He saw the station tossed into the distance and the whole town along with it. The town receded farther and farther, and soon he could see nothing at all; behind him there was only a pale darkness. Tomorrow would be April Third, he thought. He began to imagine how disconsolate and demoralized they would all be. Without doubt his parents would be punished for failing in their duty. The realization that he had completely shattered their plot filled him with triumph.
Then he turned his head and let the wind blow on his face. Ahead there also lay a pale darkness, and there too he could see nothing at all. But he knew he was now moving farther and farther away from the plot. They would never be able to find him. Tomorrow and forever, the very mention of his name would reduce them to speechless despair.
He thought of a boy he had known when he was younger, and the harmonica that the boy used to play. Every evening he would head over to the house where he lived, and the boy would lean over the windowsill and play that harmonica of his. Later the boy died of hepatitis at the age of eighteen, and the harmonica died then, too.