Back in her room, tenderly unfolding the photo in her hand, Jia Jia kneeled on the wooden floor and faced the window. The mountains were sleeping beasts piled on top of each other; by this hour, the valley was beginning to form the shadow of a feeding bowl for those beasts. But it seemed as though the day would never stir.
‘Wu Jia Jia,’ Ren Qi said. ‘Why do you think you’ve ended up here?’
Jia Jia rubbed her icy feet with her hands.
‘I was there, in the world of water,’ she said.
Ren Qi joined her on the floor with a loud thump.
‘So it exists?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been there, I think,’ Jia Jia told him. ‘I don’t know how.’
Ren Qi crossed his legs. ‘Why are you still looking for the fish-man? If you’ve been to the world of water, you’ve seen him?’
‘I haven’t seen him there. I’ve only been inside the water. But every time, I’ve been afraid that I’d get stuck. It’s as if the water knows. It’d spit me out.’
Ren Qi contemplated for a moment. A few times, he opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but decided against it and finally reached into his chest pocket for a cigarette.
After a few impatient puffs, he said, ‘You know, when that woman was speaking, I couldn’t help but think that my wife must be there in that world.’
Jia Jia took the cigarette from his fingers and smoked it.
‘Why would she be there?’ she asked.
‘She’s been gone for more than a month now.’
He wiped his forehead with his hand. Then he took the photo from Jia Jia and studied it.
‘It’s definitely a lousy photo.’ He brushed it as if it were dusty, and handed it back.
‘You don’t know why your wife is missing, so you think she’s in the world of water. It’s because you don’t understand it. We explain things that we don’t understand by using other things we don’t understand.’
‘Wu Jia Jia, I don’t think anything is chance. You believe in fate?’
Jia Jia did not respond.
‘I do,’ Ren Qi continued. ‘I think it really must be fate that brought us here together, Wu Jia Jia. There must be a reason for me finding out about the world of water. I’m going to stay in this village, find the fish-man, plant tulips if I must, locate the world of water, and find my wife.’
He beamed like a child who believes he has found his way home. His teeth were stained yellow and his eyes were black lacquer. Jia Jia could see his suffering. It was the kind of torment still unfamiliar to the person in pain, the kind that induced more hope than resignation, the kind that would scar more deeply. He was still so young.
‘All the uncertainty around your wife must be hard,’ Jia Jia said.
‘Pain is pain,’ Ren Qi said calmly. ‘There are various things that bring about pain, but in the end, we all feel it in the same way. These memories stick to you like the smell of tobacco on your fingers that won’t wash away with soap.’
Silent for a few more seconds, Ren Qi said, ‘Tell me more about the world of water.’
Jia Jia gave it some thought. It felt as though he was enquiring into something deeply private, as if he was asking her to take off her clothes and spread open her legs. For her to tell him what he wanted to hear, if she was even able to translate the experience into words, she would have to crack herself open like an egg and let the liquids spill out, leaving nothing for herself. But she could not refuse this man, she could not shut herself away this time. The moment she had found her hand wrapped in his as she swam in the cold, black water, her shell had already cracked. She gathered her words and began to speak.
‘All I can tell you is this,’ she said warily. ‘In the world of water, if that’s indeed where I’ve been, like I said there’s nobody there. In that world, you disintegrate. Your body, your emotions, your perceptions and your thoughts are all separated into different components, like pages of a book that’s been ripped apart. There is a fish there, a silver fish, but that’s it. Everything else is just pitch-black. There is no other human. You’re no longer human. So I can tell you that your wife is not there. Even if she is, you won’t see her. Not in the way you’re used to seeing her. She won’t be looking for you either. It’s a dreadfully empty place that is also overwhelmingly full. Do you understand what I’m getting at?’
Jia Jia looked up searchingly at Ren Qi.
‘Sounds frightening,’ Ren Qi commented.
‘At first, it’s frightening. Then you forget fear, and instead, you feel cold. Like ice that will never melt. I’m not talking about the bodily cold, but the sense that you will remain the same for ever, that nothing will change again. Do you know how that feels?’
Ren Qi pulled repeatedly on his earlobe.
‘I thought my wife would always be with me,’ he said. ‘Like a character I’ve fallen in love with from my novel. I thought we’d always be the same us, in the same little apartment, eating the same porridge for breakfast, battling the same shower water that was either too hot or too cold. But now she’s vanished, like pollen in the air. And nothing is the same any more. So to answer your question, no, I don’t believe I know how it feels.’
Jia Jia nodded lightly. The sky was growing paler, though the sun was still nowhere to be seen.
‘But to hell with all that. My plan is to find her. What’s your plan, Wu Jia Jia?’ Ren Qi asked.
‘I’m going to leave,’ Jia Jia said, surprised at how quickly she came to that decision. ‘I don’t think I will find any more answers here.’
Jia Jia gazed out at the gradually awakening world, pausing briefly at her awareness that nothing had stopped for Grandpa’s disappearance. Wolves were going on their hunts, ants were building their nests, birds were fetching food for their hatchlings. And T.S.’s mother was already standing on the roof above the donkey shed, tossing hay at the animal.
Jia Jia traced her story in her head. Chen Hang’s death had brought her here. She had met Grandpa, who knew about the world of water and made fish-man sculptures, but Grandpa had disappeared during the night. T.S.’s mother had given her this photo, and the couple in it must have had something to do with Grandpa and the world of water. The fish-man takes tulips, but no tulips have blossomed.
She needed some sleep. Ren Qi seemed to sense this and, like an animal that had accidentally stepped into another’s territory, he retreated to his side of the room and took out his notebook. He did not write anything, only opened it to a blank page and began stroking his chin. Jia Jia curled under the covers and turned away.
She imagined tulips. An entire field of them. She imagined that it was night, and the moon was radiating a pale, creamy light. The thousands of buds bloomed into white flowers, and one by one, the gradual opening up of each flower lulled Jia Jia a little deeper into sleep.
When Jia Jia packed up her things the following afternoon, Grandpa was still missing. Daylight had not brought him back. There seemed to have been an unspoken consensus in the village that if Grandpa had not returned by the next day, then his departure would somehow become permanent.
And now it was Jia Jia’s turn to leave. T.S.’s family stood in front of their home and, waving their hands, told Jia Jia to visit again. She waved back and responded that she would. Disappearance, she thought, was really nothing more than departure without saying goodbye.
Ren Qi insisted on walking her to the car. Panting, he limped across the fields and up the hill.
‘Where will you stay?’ Jia Jia asked.
‘I asked T.S. whether I could pay and stay in his house. But he knows my wife, so he brought me to her family. They told me that I can stay there for now,’ Ren Qi said. ‘I hadn’t even met her parents before, until this morning.’
‘Do they know where your wife is?’
‘Her family had no idea. She hasn’t contacted them, they told me. But don’t you worry, I’ll find the fish-man and my wife. Then I’ll message you.’
‘Sure.’
‘Are you not going to pass by the river again?’ Ren Qi asked.
Jia Jia shook her head. It was not about the log any more, that was only one of the many things that had directed her here. She would come back one day, she decided, to paint all of this. Perhaps she would ride an army-green motorbike as well, with her canvases strapped to the back. For a moment, she felt the mountains growing taller around her.
T.S. met her at the entrance of the village with his car boot already open. Before Jia Jia got in the car, Ren Qi gave her a pat on the shoulder. It was a warm, loving touch that rested there for a second longer than she had expected, as if something was flowing from him into her through his fingertips.
‘Have a good flight back,’ he said.
‘Until next time,’ Jia Jia said. The words came out of her with a certain stickiness, like honey being pulled out of a jar. She jerked open the car door.
Ren Qi adjusted the crutch under his armpit and said, ‘Do you think your husband is there too? In the world of water? After all, he was the one who showed you the fish-man in the first place.’
Jia Jia paused. A group of children ran past on their way home from school. The image of Chen Hang kneeling in the bath with his forehead stuck to the bottom plunged itself into Jia Jia’s mind. She shook her head decisively.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, and climbed into the Jeep.
‘That’s right,’ Ren Qi said in a tone that people used when they did not understand something but were fearful to ask again. He closed the door for her and took a step back from the car. A reserved smile hovered under his nose.
T.S. started the engine and manoeuvred a bit on the narrow road to turn the car around. Before they drove out, Jia Jia managed to catch a glimpse of the field where Grandpa had planted tulips less than twenty-four hours ago. T.S.’s mother was right, not a single leaf had grown there, even though Grandpa had been planting for years. As they turned the corner, the farmhouses disappeared one by one until Jia Jia could not see the village any more. And so began an eight-hour drive through winding mountain roads; a meditative drive. A left turn followed by a right turn, repeatedly, until they lost track of how many turns they had already made and how many they had coming up. After a while, it felt as though they were always driving on the same strip, and what was moving was the road below, not the car.
Jia Jia was on her way home, and her mind began wandering back to Beijing, to Leo. She took out her phone, but he had not messaged her since their last meeting. She could picture him at the bar, hair gelled back, wearing his bow tie, squeezing lemons. When was the last time an image had brought her so much comfort? It made her miss him terribly.
How long had she actually been gone? Counting the time she had needed to finish up Ms Wan’s painting and arrange her travel documents, she realised she had not seen Leo for more than a month. She had told him that she did not want him to wait for her, and it had been the right thing to say. But now, she wanted to tell him about everything: the log, the stories she had heard, the tulip bulbs, the writer she had met, the photo.
The road was still weaving a net around the mountains. What if T.S. fell asleep? The car would tumble down the cliff and both of them would die. There was a good chance that nobody would find them in these lost mountains; their bodies would merge with the soil. If Leo was in fact waiting for her to return, she would disappoint him.
A sudden urgency for Beijing scratched at her heart. She had to be in the same city as Leo again, to know that if she walked in a certain direction, he would be there. These thoughts were like warm stones piling up inside her, and she closed her eyes and tried to still her mind.