Two_Lives_A_Yi_for

Predator

1

I appeared at the entrance to the Research and Analysis Center like an invisible man. My footsteps were among the footsteps of a crowd of returning travelers. The one in the lead was dragging a suitcase, the fixed wheels rolling on the cobblestones, from north to south, rolling through the lane. After five o’clock, every few minutes a large part of the sky turned black. All of them were grandly dressed like yaks, to keep out the famous damp cold of their hometown. I quietly stopped at the entrance to the Research and Analysis Center. Only it still had business. Mr. Fish and a shrunken-neck woman sat by a heater, turning their palms up and down to get warm. “Right right right,” they very genially responded to each other’s words.

The reason he was called Fish was because his head looked like a fish head. Because of his bimaxillary protrusion deformity (buckteeth) and nasal bone concavity, his lips protruded more than any part of his head. When the mouth was almost closed, between his lower lip and chin there was an obvious bulge of soft tissue. On either side of his upper lip there were long strands of hair, similar to a carp’s.

The streamlined structure of a fish allows it to swim fast and long in the water. Mr. Fish craned his neck like a turtle almost all year round, which made the head, and the lips and teeth at the front of the head, dissociated from his body, which also seemed to show an evolutionary force. Ever since the door of light was forever closed, he had been filled with the desire to pry and confide. He was so keen to get information from the outside, so keen to communicate with the outside, he always turned his head to listen, always asked questions, laughed, and flattered. To receive his visitors, he bought two long benches, each could seat four people (although to some customers, fortune-telling was supposed to be a private matter). When I quietly walked in, the woman in an eggplant-purple down coat quietly turned her head and looked toward me. I was followed by a woman in a light-yellow wool coat. The timing was quite good. The newcomer thought I was inside, the one inside thought I came in with the newcomer. I sat down at almost the same time as the newcomer. She sat on the bench on the south side, sat by the woman who had come earlier, Mr. Fish gently adjusted the space heater, allowing the newcomer to be blessed with the warm light too. The round reflection sheet gave out a dazzling shine, like a sunflower, always facing a newcomer. I sat on the bench on the east side. The newcomer gave me a slightly uneasy glance. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me, I thought she was thinking. She turned her head back, told Mr. Fish the eight characters of her birth time, which was not improper. I did my best to steady my breath. I really was blatantly hiding three feet from him, could even smell the foul smell baked in his crotch.

He started rambling. Just like the one I had seen before at the north entrance of the street (East Street), only without an erhu in hand. Before, those blind men would sit in a row at the foot of the wall, basking in the sun, waiting for customers. Now they all rent a storefront near the south entrance, set up their own business. Mr. Fish’s was called Yuan Tiangang Research and Analysis Center. Inside was just an electrometer, a hanging scale, a water dispenser, and a table clock which rang in spasms when it was almost time. The north wind blew through the lane, blew into the room, I was a bit drowsy. He was simply babbling. I turned my head to have a look. The street looked lonelier, colder, the girl selling socks across the street stamped like a crane. Took a long time to stamp once – keeping the leg lifted, then finding the chance to stamp again. When I turned back, I was startled to see his entire face facing me. I almost stood up. His two useless, wax-white eyeballs were staring at me, head shaking slightly. I was horrified by the sheer hollowness in that pair of eyes, right in the hollowness great resentment hid: I hoped no one would secretly show up beside me, make fun of me, really hoped not. They stayed looking at me. I tried to convince myself and to convince him that this was just the overreaction the blind always had, they often, feeling extremely confident, attacked aimlessly. But I didn’t make a sound at all. I held my breath, waited for him to slowly settle down. Then just as I was about to settle down as well – he got relaxed, went on talking with the woman in wool coat – he suddenly turned his head again, gave me an extremely strange, even biting smile. My face went completely red, though he couldn’t see anything.

I’d underestimated the vigilance of a lord in protecting his land, also underestimated a blind man’s unusual sense ability. Perhaps even the shadow of a bicyclist gliding by like a swallow could startle him (my philosophy lecturer from the normal college had repeatedly preached that ‘shadow has mass’ – ‘existence is mass, like shadow, light’. But I believed that a sharp blind man could certainly sense the fleeting coolness, capture the subtle variations of air current), and besides, I came with a body full of smells. The smells from a long-distance trip hid deep in my hair, coat, and gloves, couldn’t be shaken off. When they spoke, they faced him, but the one or two times they faced me (especially when coming to crucial points), were enough to convince him: there was a person, a young man embodying atheism who made them uneasy. He did sit there day and night, his sense of smell, sense of hearing, sense of touch had been cut square, like a fence planted in the area he rented. I’d heard before that some magical blind men have stronger abilities than ordinary people in sensing the course of events. They can, just by hearing a passerby stop his clanking footsteps a dozen meters away, determine that there is a hesitant stranger behind them. They turn, before the other greets them, and greet them.

We often forget this point.

Mr. Fish went on with his shameless speech. For him, he just needed to open his pocket, and the woman in the wool coat, ready to sell herself out with credulity, would jump in herself. Women that age were the easiest targets that fortune-tellers, magicians, and manipulators could get their hands on. I listened carefully only a moment, then got sleepy (there was some kind of funny music to his tone, which paralyzed people’s wills, made people sleepy). In my view his performance was actually pretty unprincipled.

First, he chanted a passage of incantation: . . . . .(rhyme).

Then, commenting on the incantation, he made ambiguous remarks (like “Worse than the best, better than the worst”), considered the other’s response, observed the other’s expressions, beat about the bush.

Third, waited for the other to reveal information, as if choosing between A and B.

Fourth, firm judgment. If the other reveals more information, then he’ll cut in loudly, making the conclusion his own.

And repeat. After calculating the other’s age, making judgments everywhere, like a judge pronouncing a list of judgments.

When Mr. Fish said, “We may as well meet schemes with schemes,” I couldn’t help but snort. Of course this didn’t stop the two women from praising his magic. They always mistook what they said to the other as what the other said to them. Right right right. They responded to him enthusiastically, with such keen enthusiasm and the excitement of complete immersion, like the concubine who heard a faraway aunt would come visit. At that moment, a straggler in the crowd passed the Research and Analysis Center, said to me: “What you staying here for?”

“Staying to listen a bit.”

(Sometimes while window shopping, friendly shopkeepers walk up, ask me which one I have my eye on, I casually say: “Just taking a look.”)

“Don’t be late.”

He walked briskly away with the anxiety of missing the bus. The sky was completely dark a few minutes later. The two women rose one after the other. Following them, Mr. Fish rose, smiling wholeheartedly. “It’s a twenty-yuan note,” the woman in the woolen coat said. Mr. Fish humbly took it, took out five yuan, and gave it to the other. Once they were gone, I seemed to have lost my cover, was about to go too. Then in the light coming from the heater, I saw, on the blind man’s face, the awkwardness of not being able to deal with himself after the jabbering, which we ordinary people often experience. Why was I being so mouthy? I thought his heart must feel hollow at the moment. Then the remaining, slightly abashed smile faded forever – like an iron flower folded up cruelly – in its place was an extremely deep, sharp indifference. The play was over, the stage was empty. He felt the Braille on the money, folded it up, slowly jammed it into the hidden pocket of the trousers. Then squeezed the thickness of it. Then stood there, started counting on his fingers. I was about to, as I’d come in, go out silently when I heard him say:

“Is Ai Zhengjia your grandpa?”

My legs shook. In my heart a sense of weightlessness rose like there had been a cushion waiting where it fell every time, but this time the thing was gone. My heart had never been as flustered as it was now. Deep fear took root and sprouted in my body. My grandfather was Ai Zhengjia, my father was Ai Hongsong, my name was Ai Guozhu. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. He followed me out, cold and merciless footsteps probing behind me. I walked to the road. “You should—” Hearing him about to go on, I started running. When I ran to the Luohu Parking Lot, I vomited up a mouthful of water. The minibus bound for my birthplace was just then starting. They all said my hair was completely soaked, as if showered by rain. I’d never had a word with him. I had nothing to do with those two women. Nobody had reminded him who I was midway. Equally impossible that someone had reminded him in advance that I would come. That was the first time I ever got close to him. I had been away for 11 years. I was one of the 400,000 or so people taking shelter in this county. I only had a word with an acquaintance (I knew he and him had never talked). So many people, so many fish, how could he nail me in one go? Before he said anything (“You should—”), I ran away, I knew that was how Grandpa had fallen into their trap back then.

Grandpa had once been a cadre in charge of 40.47 square meters of land. As his subordinates righteously examined the itinerant quacks whose eyes and words wavered, he, driven by curiosity, leafed through the seized books. To them his attitude was contemptuous. Just like years later, I, already a middle school student, treated Grandpa who took notes on the hand-copied fortune-telling book, with contempt. I looked sideways at the relative who was lost forever in the wrong, felt loathing and sympathy. Reproaching him always made me unbearably tired. “Don’t you know this is just a trick?” I said. To this day I still believe fortune-telling is a magic trick, it goes against honesty. According to an article, the key to magic is to direct the audience’s attention away, then use their ‘inattentional blindness’ to do tricks. The fortune-telling book is a distraction technique, a magician’s fairy dust, what’s real are the six techniques: observe, probe, attack, fool, praise, sell; it’s the crazy stealing of your secrets and privacy. But my grandpa had been immersed in the study of fortune books, unable to extricate himself, till finally, others couldn’t stand his pestering, said: “This is just fraud, all the techniques are fraud.” Astonished, he said angrily, “Fine if you don’t want to tell me, no need to say that.” Cut things off himself. Grandpa went insane because of obsession and died of mania. Because of his tragic life and the corresponding changes in our lives (following him, we went from a city household into a rural household), we believed people from the mystical societies had set him up, made painstaking efforts, moved carefully every step, after doing a lot of groundwork, used Zuo Zongtang’s warcraft of ‘Move slow, fight fast’, in one breath, seized Grandpa.

“How could this be a trick?” Grandpa defended himself, embarrassed. “This can’t be explained by coincidence.”

That day what felt like caterpillars crawling all over me was that very sentence. I had imagined a fortune-teller’s hunt and kill, thought it would be like a bullfight, with a long process (entice, pierce, thrust the dart, and so on), confident that I could pull myself away in time. But right in the moment of natural relaxation, he suddenly turned up, nailed me in one go, pierced my neck with the sharp, hooked sword. I couldn’t help but shake from its startling precision. When the minibus reached the village where graves seemed to flicker in faint flames, and broke down, I took the suitcase, stumbled out the minibus, turning back every three steps as I headed home. I was afraid Mr. Fish would turn up in cloth shoes behind me (in his world there was neither light nor darkness, perhaps in our darkness he could actually fly). Before closing the door, I looked silently into the empty darkness for a long time, until I was convinced there was nothing. Mother found a dry towel, stuffed it on my soaked back. “So big already, still can’t take care of yourself,” she said. Her frame was still so short and small, her movements still so rough, powerful. But I knew, on her face, rotting spots like an orange peel’s had long appeared.

For a few hours, I fell into a terrible mania. The more I knew its harm – my grandpa, from overthinking, had long suffered from insomnia and often like an uncontrollable tap, spurted food on the bed and eventually died of cerebral hemorrhaging – the more I couldn’t help but fall into it. I seemed to be very close to the answer, just had to find the right stem that could poke through the layer of window paper, but in the end got nothing. Why, I sat up in the middle of the dark night, wanting to look for that person in town, grab his neck, demand him to say why. My brain was crammed with tangled iron wires. In the end I fell asleep by giving myself harsh orders. Do not become a victim of magic, I said, Do not.

Very early in the morning, I found the driver and the cousin who had reminded me the day before to catch the bus early. They both denied knowing Mr. Fish. But just then I thought things couldn’t be simpler. As if once the radiance of the sun came to the fields people’s minds and rationality recovered, the things and sounds that had been pounding my body the whole night – those bluffing things – didn’t exist anymore, and he became an old man, tricks exposed, huddled and shaking in the corner. “One sentence is enough,” my uncle Ai Hongren said. He taught math at the village primary school, when it was closed, he transferred to the town’s central primary school, then when it was reopened, came back. He searched out the county chronicle published in 1989. On page 446, there was a list of dialect zones in the county:

The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin

The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin; The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei

The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi

The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi

Back then, I walked from north to south through East Street. Those who moved in packs at 5 p.m. could only be the returning travelers. Just like those who went north through the street at 8, 9 a.m. were mostly town-goers. That’s why East Street was built up into a marketplace for farmers going to town. For the townspeople (including the villagers and merchants living in Luohu Village on the outskirts of town), they would rather walk another one or two miles than take this shortcut. At the end of East Street, open like a pocket, was the mire-like Luohu Parking Lot. It was responsible for parking buses coming from those villages:

The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin

The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi

The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi

The guy said: “What you staying here for?”

I said: “Staying to listen a bit.”

This sentence was enough to narrow the range in half. We were a county where talking to each other was difficult. The north-western Gan Language Zone was very much influenced by the Gan dialect spoken in south-east Hubei the south-western Gan Language Zone was influenced by the Gan dialect of the Changjing subgroup, which was entirely different from the Official language. ‘Stay here’ was a common phrase, whose pronunciations were respectively:

The North-western Gan Language Zone: dē gé biān

The South-western Gan Language Zone: dē gé dá

The Official Language Zone: dē dǎ lǐ

Therefore:

The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin

The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin;The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei

The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi

The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi.

Even in the Official Language Zone, there were many nuances. Like for ‘doing what’, some places said ‘do what thing’, some places said ‘for what thing’. The ‘for what’ places can be eliminated:

The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin.

The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi

The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi

In the end there were only four villages left. Among them, Hongxia and Fanzhen were big villages, with one bus per hour on average, the last bus departed as late as 8 p.m. Hongling was the place en route to the other three places. Therefore, the passenger who said “Don’t be late” at 5 p.m. could only have come from: Jiuyuan Village.

There were two buses to Jiuyuan:

one went up, after passing Fanzhen and Zhaoao, the route was Zhuba–Luojia–Xilong–Lifan–Zhongyuan–Shangyuan. The two drivers were master Zhang Jizhao, apprentice Zhang Jisong; the other went down, after passing Fanzhen and Zhaoao, the route was Baiyanglong–Liai–Zhangjiawan–Lifan–Zhongyuan–Shangyuan. The driver was Ai Xiaomao.

As for the last buses departing from the county seats, Zhang’s departed at 17:20 (adjusted for summer, as below). The route was as above, and in the end it returned empty to Zhangjiawan; Ai’s bus departed at 17:45, only got to Liai – Ai Xiaomao’s and my birthplace – and broke down. “Because this son of mine’s very lazy,” Ai Hongren said. “He said at this hour there wouldn’t be passengers from Zhongyuan and Shangyuan taking his bus, he didn’t drive so of course there wouldn’t be, whatever he says happens, whatever he wants he does.”

Bayanglong had no people. Yuanjialong, tucked away in the depths of the thick woods (which could be reached from Baiyanglong by climbing miles of mountain path), had four or five households before. Then one day, all that was left were four or five abandoned houses. So when Ai Xiaomao started the bus from the county seat in the late afternoon, those who rushed to catch the bus could only be people from Liai. Liai was made up of Lijiawan and Aijiawan. Out of a kind of pride, the Lis, since the year before, had decided to ride Zhang’s bus only. The several miles between the village and Zhaao were done by walking – though Ai Hongren had been to every Li household, given out cigarettes to apologize, in the end it didn’t change their minds. Whoever rushed to catch the bus at 17:30 could only be: an Ai.

Mr. Fish knew this very well. It was just common knowledge. The common knowledge all the locals knew, the thieves messing around in the parking lot knew, the merchants on East Street knew – they always went out several times at dusk, targeting the passersby rushing to catch the bus, shouting about discounts. Only I who had been away for years didn’t know. You don’t have to know. When Uncle Ai Hongren looked at me, his eyes were full of understanding, also a tentative blame. In comparison you’re the one who’s blind. I was thinking about Mr. Fish. He always sat in the dark Research and Analysis Center, opened all his sensing organs – like a fierce dragon hunting for food in the dark night secretly beating its giant wings – to catch the information coming and going, sometimes this information required no fishing from him, like drizzle it floated into the room, fell naturally upon him. He was interested in transportation, weather, human affairs, public order, policy, conscription, business openings, exams, recruitment, loans, epidemic prevention, funerals, and other local information, was most interested in the information about people: as soon as someone entered the Research and Analysis Center, he could establish their relationship with many other people (women marrying here and there in the hundred-mile area were like flying threads that bound nearly all the local families together. Like Dong Jiahong and Dong Jiayuan’s younger sister, Dong Chunmei, who married Zhu Zhizhong, and Zhu Zhifen and Zhu Zhihua’s elder brother Zhu Zhiliang; Zhu Zhihua was the manager of the motor repair shop opened by the family of his classmate Wu Xiaoming; Zhu Zhifen was Wu Xiaoming’s elder brother’s ex-wife; the Wu’s fourth daughter Wu Aiwu married Chen Xuping from Henglishan, gave birth to Chen Gang, Chen Yong, Chen Li, Chen Qiang; Chen Yong went to China University of Political Science and Law and after graduation was assigned to the prefecture’s intermediate court, married the younger Zhou’s only daughter Zhou Haiyan. Everyone was related to everyone else. Everyone was like a descendent of a close relative, had some incestuous debauchery). He always started the gears in his brain, calculating those relationships, late at night, would also lick his fingers, slowly leaf though the ledger in his mind that recorded their entire lives, compare and check. It was a huge ledger. When the weather was fine and clear, he would, as in his youth, roam in the countryside, like a census official, from house to house, knock open the doors of their hearts with a bamboo pole. This ledger was his entire property, he possessed everyone – without the memory of them, he would be like duckweed, going with the tides, getting lost in the land of ignorance, he wouldn’t be severed from society by people, but would be exiled from the human world by himself.

In fact we were a pair of memory’s giant beasts. We had the same worries. After age 40, we could remember more than one thousand local people and more than 10,000 relationships between them. Mr. Fish was famous in society, also for his three marriages, the start and end of each, was initiated by him.

Aijiawan had 50 or so households in the past. After the living in the city trend, only 30 households remained.

My voice was the voice of a middle-aged man: between 35 and 38. That’s what others heard, more or less. There were three people from families who hadn’t left Aijiawan: Ai Shijun, Ai Shiquan, Ai Shikun (Ai Guozhu). Due to a car accident a few years ago, Ai Shijun was in a grave. Ai Shiquan first fed free-range chickens in Baiyanglong, then fed free-range pigs. The last was the legendary idiot who gave up public office, went out to work, Ai Guozhu, for 11 years, body carrying the smells of instant noodles, perfume, blended cigarettes, perm solution, and the foul smell of not showering for days. The leather shoes he wore gave off the smell of fresh leather. You could even tell from the strange smell that it was a pair of brown leather shoes.

Aijiawan’s three previous generation names were Zheng, Hong, Shi. The Zheng generation had seven people, the Hong generation had 21 people, the Shi generation had nearly 70 people. Like a big tree, branches grew from the knots, the branches flourished, the leaves thrived. As far as this generation of grandchildren, there were a lot, I’m not sure I can remember clearly, but as for the Zheng generation, I can remember, Mr. Fish thought, I could ask him, Is your grandpa Ai Zhengjia?

2

What made me, after returning to my hometown, pay a special visit to fortune-tellers (I passed nearly 10 fortune-tellers on East Street, saw only Mr. Fish’s still had business) is a story. That story gave me a profound understanding of all women on earth. It happened in Laoyangshu Town, a small town 36 kilometers from the city where I worked. Every week I went to the city to work three days, then came back to the town and rested for four days. (Ten years ago, by the old poplar tree, next to the auditorium, there had been a few roadside shops, old tires hanging outside the windows, tap water always spilling out of the red plastic tubs, washing feathers and scales to the ground. A paved road black as the pond water ran to the horizon. Now it has three or four million people. Every day, dozens of planes quietly rise from behind the buildings, their silver-gray bodies leave giant shadows on the ground.) At first, the townspeople, Zhangsan or Lisi, each possessed a fraction of the story, after someone started, they couldn’t wait to piece it together into a whole, like weaving a giant and incredible tapestry together. In the end, they all felt that they had absolute private ownership over the story. They said more and more, to the point that the content had long outstripped the original facts, but they still found it far from enough. “This really is a very shocking incident,” they said. As if seeing the cloth-like blood once again splash onto the front window of the white truck (the car body, after braking sharply, leaned forward then finally settled back). The driver Anfang was wide-eyed, tongue-tied. He dared not handle it with the wipers or a rag, until the dry air turned the bloodstains into shiny rouge chips, naturally falling off. The half-life of this story’s circulation was so long that I, after going in and out of town numerous times, inevitably heard talk of it:

Junfeng’s mom,

or, Chen Zonghuo’s woman

a fifty-going-on-sixty widow

without any great experience worth mentioning

without even the tiniest scandal or travesty – with just a little self-importance, human beings easily end up with a tacky or splendid tragedy, don’t they – she wore

dark-blue or indigo garments (sometimes a robe dyed with ladybug-like dots),

a camouflaged animal like the dead-leaf butterfly or geometer moth,

making herself invisible before people’s eyes

time slipping away again and again from the walls and the crevices in the walls

Death, like the safest ship, coming slowly

Her – when people finally remembered her because of a certain incident, they had to think a long, long time before scraping together a conclusion

only mission in this world, was constantly worrying about one of her two sons

like a girl at the edge of a cliff, palms together, head bowed, trembling

worrying about the lover walking on the tightrope

Thursday afternoon, after calling him

she felt a flurry of panic

* * *

It was an overly accurate panic given the logic of the conversation. The woman, from her son’s response, sensed the patience the spies would show when passing a sentry, they would light a long cigar, wave their hat, act very co-operatively, as if willing to stay there the whole afternoon. That was a bit unusual. Usually, he would irritably say, “That’s it,” and hang up. Sometimes, she could tell he had pressed the speaker button, his person walking back and forth, always long after she spoke, after a scary silence, he realized he had an obligation to fulfill, and so answered: “Oh.” Once, while waiting for his response, she watched one of the country’s rockets take off on TV, after rising, almost still, for a long time, it quietly disappeared into space. He was so reluctant to speak to her. At first they talked over the phone three times a week, then it was down to twice, once. All were calls from her. “Once a week, call at this hour, understand?” he said.

That day, his answers were fluent.

Gentle as the usher in a red robe at the entrance of the foot spa center. Even holding a sort of gentleness tinged with fear.

When the panic came, in most cases it was to prove she was a sensitive, suspicious woman, but once or twice – for example, many days after he smiled strangely, she rolled up his trousers leg, found the leg had swollen to twice its size, covered in black bruises (“If maggots take hold, this person is done for,” Chen Zonghuo shouted, carrying him, running madly to the clinic. Meanwhile he tilted his head, eyes tinged with some drunkenness, looking sourly at her running behind in great shock.) – was enough to prove he was a cold-hearted traitor. Like his two elder brothers who had died young, body here, heart elsewhere. Since his birth, the expression in his eyes was not right. His two elder brothers were killed one after another by the legendary quilt killer (a mysterious respiratory failure occurring in sleep). This made her and Chen Zonghuo more tense. He, like his elder brothers, was silent, as if waiting wholeheartedly for Death to come, as if that was his real father, he was waiting for his real father to take him away. As if the waiting was his career, but she and Chen Zonghuo had delayed him so, so long.

She called again, expected to get his approval.

“Nothing’s wrong, why come to see me?” he said.

“I just think something’s wrong,” she said.

“You think something’s wrong, so something’s wrong, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Something must be wrong.”

“Hey, why would I lie to you?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“I said nothing’s wrong, it means nothing’s wrong, why would I lie to you?”

“If nothing’s wrong, why are you coughing?”

“Coughing’s very normal. You cough too.”

“You must be keeping something from me.”

“Why can’t you be reasonable, why would I keep things from you?”

“I’m coming anyway.”

“Don’t come.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’ll say it again, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, okay? If something was wrong, fine, come, nothing’s wrong, so why come?”

“Even if nothing’s wrong, can’t I come to see you?”

“No.”

“I have to come.”

“Dammit, old woman, how can you be so annoying?”

“I’m not coming to see you.”

“Then to see who?”

“I’m coming to see someone else, I’ll see someone else. Be a good person, do good things, bring something to someone else, is that wrong?”

“Fine, go see someone else.”

She thought he had hung up, then heard another vicious sentence from the phone. “You are really fucking sick you know. You are really fucking sick.” She stood, stunned. Not ruminating on her son humiliating her, but as usual, letting herself argue with herself. The first self was like his stepmother, or the aunt next door, the second self was his real mother. The first self said: I don’t let my son make fun of me. The second self’s face went crimson, putting up with the lengthy reproach from the first self, finally tenaciously saying: So what, what I would lose going there, wouldn’t lose any property, any land. Thus the woman ended up leaning on the worry flickering nonstop in her heart (perhaps it was the overdose of tea that day that caused the palpations), and that afternoon, with her head held high, headed for Laoyangshu Town a dozen miles away.

“She was like a monkey jumping off the huge, heavy-duty bike,” Qiuchen, who ran a noodle restaurant, said. “She said she planned to go back, because she remembered that last time her son said that to her too.” The noodle restaurant stood like a sentry at the end of the country road, only a dozen meters from Laoyangshu Town’s paved road. It wasn’t until two months later that Junfeng’s mom would come to this noodle restaurant again. Then she looked extremely hungry, gobbled and gulped, the tip of her nose and forehead sweating. “Are my noodles really that delicious?” Qiuchen said.

“Very delicious,” Junfeng’s mom said.

Finished eating, she looked straight at the poster pasted on the side of the refrigerator (there Pan Weibo tilted his head to gulp a bottle of coke), sneakily inched the paper napkins to the edge of the table, pulled them into her pants pocket. “A big stack, more than 10,” Qiuchen said. “She thought I didn’t see, or, thought I couldn’t see, or, thought I wouldn’t say anything even if I saw. She thought right. Then I thought, even now, still knows how to take advantage, then clearly this person’s okay.”

She held the bike, said to Qiuchen, “Said this last time too, dammit, old woman, how can you be so annoying.” The more he said this, the more she wanted to come, but last time she didn’t find anything, it was like he had been insulted, cursing at her with extreme anger, telling her to fuck off. So she was hesitating, would this time be like last time. Qiuchen felt like reminding her (like someone itching to say the answer to a riddle, wanting to give a hint to the person about to head in the wrong direction), but, as she was about to touch the other’s arm, this female cook stopped. If the other was told. . .Qiuchen couldn’t foresee the risk it would bring, or what risk it wouldn’t bring. Nothing was safer than pretending to be the ignorant. Qiuchen cleared her throat, just like God, mercifully watching the other turn around in circles. She looked only as tall as the bike, funny even imagining her getting on it, but when she did get on it, she was so dignified. She glanced at the time and the distance she had gone, then pedaled a few steps, lifted her right leg over the bike frame, steadily rode to town. Still early, she seemed to say to Qiuchen, or seemed to say to the little person inside her body, Almost there, besides, why’s this town your town alone?

On that overly bright afternoon, the townspeople walked out in disappointment. Twenty minutes ago, the police cars drove out of the police station and the transport police division, blared sirens, stopped at several intersections, intercepted cars. Their intercoms kept blasting, as if a fleet was clamoring over, but the rumor only spread a few minutes then stopped: no sort of founding father but a bunch of deputies of the National People’s Congress would pass through. The situation was just as expected, after a police car sped by to clear the way (its siren only gave a shriek, very abruptly), a light-brown minibus followed, rambled past. That’s all. But they still kept glancing back, until Widow sped down riding her bike.

She flew by in a whizz.

Those who knew Junfeng and her, couldn’t help but half raise their hands, move their feet forward, but very quickly were stopped by an invisible boundary of pain (like fishes in an aquarium anxiously jostling against the glass wall, while knowing they couldn’t wake up the ignorant travelers walking briskly by in the transparent, underwater tunnel). On Widow’s wrinkled face there was neither pain, nor lack of pain, there was just what Chairman Mao called seriousness. She rode the bike with extreme seriousness, rode toward her son’s place of work. The bike brushed past the quiet street, too fast for the spokes of the wheels to be seen. For the people it was a helpless kind of pain, difficult to share with the party concerned, could even be called the pain of the philistine. The last time they felt such pain was when they watched a father narrow his eyes, hold a cigarette between his lips, and driven by curiosity, make his way to the bank of the pond (he didn’t know why he suddenly got such respect that everyone made way for him. His only son, the dead, like a shaved dog corpse, dripping with water, was lying on the grass, waiting for him).

Since that afternoon, the townspeople, like Qiuchen, just held their useless pain, stood afar, watched her break through to the truth, indulge in the truth, struggle with the truth, and drown in the struggle. The tragedy that happened later was like an awl piercing their hearts. It seemed so unexpected, but it also seemed fated.

Widow was going to hear at the end of this trip:

her son Junfeng, 33, still unmarried, would punctually die three months later.

This was the conclusion reached by two professors (one was a PhD supervisor; the other was a Master’s supervisor) after multiple calculations. That day, they got off the medical school’s bus like generals, followed by a dozen pretentious students, who from time to time gave the crowd sidelong glances. The director of the local health bureau, like a dog, led the way himself. When they jumped onto the extremely filthy stairs of the township health center, the hems of their robes rippled, their presence was quite something. Because the newcomers were too great in number, three other patients in the ward were kicked out. Junfeng showed brief excitement as the honor to do something for medicine shined in his heart, he knew nothing about medicine, but he knew he was a precious living body. In the future, perhaps he would become a precious dead body, long soaked in formaldehyde (through his entire convalescence, he was lifeless, his body seemed already on the mortuary bed, just waiting for the breath to slowly drain). Equally honored was Doctor Liu, head of radiology at the township health center, it was she who had sharp eyes, discovered this difficult case from a pile of photos. Then in the Tuberculosis Institute (the Tuberculosis Research and Prevention Institute) of the Number Two Municipal Hospital, he did a series of tests (including a sputum culture, an enhanced CT, a CT guided puncture, a bronchoscopy, a bone marrow aspiration, a lymph node biopsy, and more than 70 tubes of blood withdrawal) which confirmed that

it was tuberculosis, but also not

it was pulmonary embolism, but also not

it was pneumoconiosis, but also not

it was interstitial pneumonia, but also not

it was panbronchiolitis, but also not

it was fungal infection, but also not

it was tumor (lung cancer, lymphoma), but also not

it was vasculitis, but also not

it was an IgG4-related disease, but also not

It was a familiar, ambiguous, diagnosable, but not exactly diagnosable, severe disease. It had many similarities, but from somewhere inside, it denied it was a definite disease. Perhaps the medical journals of the future could provide a clear name, provide a solution. But at present, clinicians could only consolingly give the patients an IV of anti-inflammatories, or, to deal with the cough, prescribe some compound methoxyphenamine capsules. Every day it seemed that he was evaporating, irrevocably trimmed down from all sides. Because of their own inability, and in order to save him money, they let him return to the township health center. First the doctors kept it from Junfeng for a month, then he kept it from his family for almost two months – She always gave him reasons to feel shamed (either by wearing blue polyester work clothes printed with the manufacturer’s name like ‘Xuejin Beer’ on the back, or by wearing that pair of wintermelon-green liberation shoes), so he always objected to her coming to town, so as not to harm his identity as a townsperson – Until she, pulled by strong worry, stormed town herself. The two professors took out the CT photo buried under the bed, held it up to the light, pointed to each other, Look, so crowded, huge development from last photo, and still developing. This reminded Junfeng of the frights he experienced the previous few times. When he went to the Tuberculosis Institute’s outpatient department for checkups, he waited more than a week for the results of the laboratory tests, when he registered again and came to the doctor, the other said anxiously: “Go to the big hospital, we’re a small hospital, this checkup, that checkup, all take a week to get the results, will have you completely delayed.” There was another time, in the Number Two Municipal Hospital, the ward doctor looked at the blood test result, stood still for a long time then said, “How’d it get so bad?” That day sweat poured out from Junfeng’s soaked hair, his whole body seemed to have sweated a layer of thick hot mud. But also from that day on, he had little regard for life and death. Like indulging in games, he indulged in waiting for death. He regained his detached nature, detached from things, and detached from himself. He put on earphones, lay for a long time, listened to a song with a tragic melody but no lyrics, as if his pending, soon-to-be-effective death, as the song replayed, attained some kind of divinity. Until the uncontainable cough knocked him over again. He always ordered himself to hold back the cough, hold back, but like a gambler gambled everything away and began to see red, he was always defeated by that unbearable, extreme itch.

He had cut meat for almost every family in the town. In the supermarket, he wore a white robe, in charge of the meat counter (unlike the soft white robe in the hospital, the fabric of this white robe was very thick, seemed to have been converted from a tablecloth, and often pilled). People liked coming to him, because they need only arrive for him to know which cut they wanted, then according to their liking, diced, cubed, or sliced it. Meat was grouped as tenderloin, butt, belly bacon, and so on, more than 20 kinds, priced differently, but whether a customer wanted a certain price, or wanted a certain weight, he could always get it precise in one cut, the error so small it was negligible. Later people thought, perhaps it was to avoid too much communication with people that he studied it over and over again, cut so precisely. This was a young man who gave a light cough from time to time, and didn’t like talking. His tragedy came about on a morning, when he coughed while cutting a piece of pork, the cleaver stopped midair, from his throat a blackish red blood clot flew out – big as a plum, or big as a big cherry. He watched it fly to the pork: a clear rising then falling, but also a seemingly nonexistent, merely delusional arc. He stared stunned at the stuff he had coughed out, as if figuring out whether it was the pork’s or his. He even reached an index finger out to touch it. And smelled it. He didn’t show uneasiness, instead using a piece of paper to list the foods he had eaten over the past two days, to check if there was watermelon, tomato, strawberry, wolfberry, or other material that could easily cause confusion. It wasn’t until he came out of the township health center that he began to feel a bit worried. He told the apprentice, Little Qi, he found it a bit unreal. “As if the world has nothing to do with me,” he said. That day, the sunshine was very strong, because of the waves of heat, everything was changing shapes, at noon, the security guard hid in a shady place, the pancake seller sweated like rain, the cars on the road flowed, bustled, while he and Little Qi held a chest X-ray which gave doctors difficulty choosing words.

An hour after taking the chest X-ray, he got the result.

Doctor Liu asked the intern to call him in: “Chen Junfeng, is Chen Junfeng’s family here?”

“Here,” Junfeng said.

“You’re Chen Junfeng’s family.”

“I am,” Junfeng said. “I am him.”

“Come here.”

This meant he was getting some kind of special treatment. Other people got their photo, went to see the outpatient doctor, but he was called in by the radiologist to be examined. Many of Doctor Liu’s words were only half-said. She said she still needed to discuss things with the outpatient doctor. The outpatient doctor told him he better to go to the Tuberculosis Institute to check for tuberculosis, and go to a grade-A hospital to check for signs of a malignant lesion. Back then he didn’t know what malignant lesion meant. He went unhurriedly to the Tuberculosis Institute, got registered. As if he could choose his own disease. He chose tuberculosis, but the kind female doctor in the Tuberculosis Institute sent him away.

The professors approved the former doctors’ method. This made the doctors following them there from the Number Two Municipal Hospital and everyone in the township health center relieved, they were basking in the joy of getting approval, becoming noticeably more talkative. On that same day, their Mandarin level and the provincial nature of their behaviors, because of the authorities from Beijing, were clearly exposed before their fellow countrymen. But they would still discuss this event for a long time. Not everyone could receive approval from Professor Xu and Professor Gao, especially Professor Gao – he graduated from Harvard Medical School. As to whether to do the video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, and the more invasive open-heart surgery on the patient, they wavered, watched time pass quietly and resolutely in their wavering. Today, the two professors are very certain that their decision to give up was right. If surgery had been done, the patient’s life would have ended more quickly, even if larger pulmonary tissue had been taken out in the surgery, it’s not likely that they could have come to a better conclusion than the previous one. Nothing would help. There was no way. The professors jammed their hands into their pockets, like they couldn’t make a bear crawl out of barbed wire, or make a camel go through the eye of a needle.

The professors asked every student who followed them there, certified or uncertified, to walk up, and perform auscultation on Junfeng’s stark-naked back where the clothes had already been rolled up. Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out, okay. Every one of them felt a bit sorry, held the head of the stethoscope, tried to grasp the classic symptoms their supervisors had mentioned this strange disease would show. They signaled with glances to the classmates who had experienced it, Right, that’s right. The ceremony went on for a long time, only Junfeng alone had reasons to immerse himself in the terrible disease. But even he got bored. In the end, as if to deal with the boredom of being in the middle of something and also unable to speak, he asked: “Doctor, could you tell me how to treat my disease?” The two professors, as if seeing a frog in the laboratory tray speak, exchanged a look. In the end the one who had been expressionless answered: “What do you need us to do?”

Junfeng didn’t speak any more.

After all comers heard the incredible moist crackles (including the director of the health bureau who had graduated from the agricultural college), as if to make up for their regrets, the two professors found pen and paper, and checking with a stack of blood test slips and CT photos, started to make rough calculations. They argued in low voices now and then, scribbled on the paper (sometimes, one of them would stare long at the other, as if waiting for the other’s opinion, but was really doing his best to think). It was like they were solving a math problem we had all encountered in primary school: Suppose there is an inlet pipe inside the swimming pool, which can fill the empty pool in eight hours, and there is an outlet pipe at the bottom of the pool, which can drain a full pool of water in six hours, with the condition that half of the pool water is left, how long does it take for the water to drain completely? One hundred days, they gave the conclusion with two horizontal lines drawn underneath to the doctors of the health center, margin of error: ±2. After they were gone, the entire health center fell into unbearable loneliness – a great event that rarely happened once in fifty, even a hundred years (although the center had been founded less than five years before): the very top talents in the field, international authorities, nationally renowned doctors who had probably treated central leaders, came to visit. Then, without meals or group photos, they left (the only thing the health center could keep was the piece of paper they left behind, the paper wasn’t full of equations or coordinates as imagined, but a few lines of Russian). Now, the concrete ground is still smooth, shady, gives out the fishy smell of being mopped. The one-meter high green paint around the bottom of the walls is already old, even time is old.

When some of the townspeople noticed Junfeng’s mom again, she was already running back. Presumably she had heard about her son’s news in the supermarket, the bike already discarded. She ran back to the health center she had just passed. She was among a bunch of raging motorcycles, electric cars, and electric trikes, like striding in deep water, laboriously running forward. Her body leaned forward, two arms raised in front of her chest, swaying left and right. We rarely saw women nearly 60 running, That day when she started running, we knew she was no better than a cripple with one leg longer and one leg shorter. Her two legs never left the ground at the same time, her whole person seemed to writhe left and right, writhe forward. Her face looked so aggrieved. “Son son son.” Near the health center, she gave sad cry after sad cry. “Son son son son son son son.” This time the son didn’t push her away, just let her throw herself at him, tear at the quilt cover. He looked blankly at the ceiling, gave sighs that could no longer be hidden. The long sighs, like balloons being pricked, brimming with blame for her, and brimming with blame for his fate.

This pain seemed to take root in her ever since.

Whenever people, or say, whenever she thought she was a bit more normal, the pain would, like the ferocious Monkey King with sharp nails, grip her viscera tightly. She rubbed her hair, stumbled to the wall corner, crouched there, dodged left and right – as if there was a young worker kicking her again and again from the outside. She took one from the left, took one from the right, took a kick again and again. She bared her teeth, opened her mouth, wanted to cry but no tears came out, her face contorted, as if catching a chill shivered for a long time. People were frightened by this horrible rustle, this unshakable pain. It wasn’t until 10 minutes later when she gave low calls of ohs and ahs, that it started to show signs of retreat. “If I had seen through your tricks early, you goddamned fool, this tragedy could have been avoided,” she scolded her son, announcing with an attitude of certainty, that she would be in charge of him now, but the latter looked at her with contempt. Like there was obviously a lock nobody could open, but everyone took it for granted that they and they alone could open it. All went to try. Sometimes she would stand dully before the window of the corridor, staring at the endless white smog emitted by the big chimney in the distance, saying to herself, I really should die, hearing the news late, my son is dying, but I am still alive, I really should die. Every time she went to pester the doctors and nurses at the health center – when she said to them, “Don’t look at me like I don’t have money, I do, I have two houses” – it would always bring on a new round of pain. She gripped their sleeves or pants hems, begged them to save this son, which only brought on their repeated emphasis of when they estimated he would die. Two months later, it was they, those angels who had spoken coldly but still fairly polite, and got her water from the water dispenser, pinned her down roughly on one of the health center’s front doors, and using the ceiling light, jabbed a tube thick as a finger into her throat, jabbed it straight down, let water push into her stomach. The water, from the corners of her mouth, from the mouth of the tube, from the doctor’s hands in rubber gloves, flowed down endlessly, down her body, down the worm-eaten lines and crevices in the door panel and the stairs, flowed toward the black soil burned the previous night, still lingering with some burned scent. She lay on her side on the shiny door panel, exposing her belly button and bare feet with the shoes and socks scraped off, like a boar fallen into a coma from injury, under everyone’s eyes, twitching horribly.

“This is a hopeless thing,” they said after she begged. Suggested she’d better take her son home.

“Can’t give any medicine?” she asked.

“Already gave all the medicine that could be given.”

They also wanted to say, under the present circumstance, any medicine would not only delay the patient’s recovery, but might activate hidden lesions, hormones for example. This was what the professors had said. But figuring she wouldn’t understand, they didn’t say this.

When her thirty-one-year old daughter Dongmei and twenty-nine-year-old son Zhifeng came late, she vented all her anger at them. Of these children, she loved the strange Junfeng the most, such partiality had been open, had been voiced again and again, as if she was afraid Dongmei and Zhifeng wouldn’t remember. I just want to be good to him, just be good to him. Such unfair treatment continued from their childhood to the present. Dongmei and Zhifeng felt they were their elder brother’s slaves, helpers, and servants. They knew full well that defense was useless, but couldn’t do without mumbling a few words. One said, “Put the child in the nursery, can’t just leave him outside, and let him be, huh?” (Zhifeng’s suburban wife echoed, “Right right.”) One said with hidden bitterness, “Look, I’m really sick too, yesterday I vomited all over the floor.” Since Chen Zonghuo died of cerebral hemorrhage, Dongmei had fallen ill. The illness was real and unreal, neither what Dongmei herself exaggerated (she said the veins in her brain tangled together, tangled more and more tightly, like shoelaces being tied), nor a complete farce as other people thought (checkups showed her blood pressure was really a little too high). Dongmei is still alive today, but life is like a huge burden, oppressing her with extreme cruelty – People had never seen a person whose fear of death came so early, so deeply, so meticulously and so long-lastingly. She shook all the time. After her blood relatives died one after another, she inherited their legacy: the seed of cerebral hemorrhage, the seed of rapid weight loss and acute mental illness. The punishments that had blossomed and borne fruit in her relatives, the seemingly inescapable misfortune, were nearing her inch by inch. She had never felt so close to her relatives as she did now. She thought she would definitely, in their way, before everyone else, die extremely shamefully, die in the shit from sphincter incontinence. “My body is full of these genes,” she told neighbors. They were tired of this pleading and pestering day after day. Fundamentally speaking, she had hypochondria. In the history of her suspicion, only once was she completely right: she suspected she had hypochondria. But then she denied it: “How is it possible, what happens in my body are real reactions, I feel out of breath.” She always stopped halfway, shaking, felt the world and passersby were like islands splitting, rapidly receding under her feet – “I am so lonely,” she started to cry – until Death, which had been riding on her neck, gripping her throat, drifted away with a ferocious see-you-later smile.

“People your age, so many sick, everywhere in the hospital, don’t you see?” That day, Mother frightened Daughter to warn her about not coming in time. Then she said, teeth clenched: “Would be great if you had a stroke early, you don’t care about your big brother, your big brother got this fatal disease all because of your laziness and negligence.”

As in childhood, Dongmei started crying – in Chen Zonghuo’s words, started crying very poorly, just let her cry, nobody should pay attention to her. She would stay in a corner, cry unhurriedly (like those finicky people who spend an hour or so eating a bowl of noodles in a restaurant), until the tears dried and became salt stains. She’d sit there a long time, in a trance, already forgetting why she cried, or even the fact that she had cried, then stand up, walk to her family, respond to everyone’s words, flatter everyone. Like she was still the person very important to them – But that day, crying wasn’t a cleanse, an escape, or a game she played with herself, that day, Mother’s words stomped on the roots of her life. Mother’s words swept away her last bit of hope, made the boat of her mind shake fatally: “Don’t you see, people sick like you are so many, I’m talking to you, don’t you see.”

Faced with such harsh abuse, Zhifeng just threw his mother a glance. Is it fun to talk like this? He walked into the ward, hands behind his back.

“Zhifeng, you came.” Junfeng tried to sit up, but due to lack of strength, slid down again.

“Yeah, brother.” Zhifeng helped him up.

“Sit,” Junfeng said.

Zhifeng brushed the bed with gloves, sat down. Half raised his head, looked at the window. Before long, he took out his cell phone, quietly swiped the touch screen. You can’t say he treated his older brother coldly, deep in their hearts, there was a tacit intimacy, such intimacy didn’t have to be concretized in a hug or words of concern. And you can’t say he didn’t treat his older brother coldly either. He already had his own family, when a person has his own family, he gets a bit estranged from his original family. We all know, a person’s most intimate relation in this world is his partner. Because they can meet naked, make their genitals mesh. Their immoderation and vulgarity in words and behavior (which means boundless freedom between people) have moral approval. Besides, in the big suburban house provided by his wife’s older brother, his wife had given birth to one son and one daughter. After Junfeng was asleep, he whispered to his wife, “Look, there’s nothing going on here, better go back, go back, make something delicious, I mean –” he raised his voice so his mother could hear “– Better take Brother home, take him home, make something delicious for him.”

Widow looked glum, full of pain, looked at the eldest son who had a moment of peace in sleep, tucked in the blanket, took the bag of photos out from under the bed. “Can you take it to find a city doctor, you’re a city person, there must be a way,” she said to Zhifeng.

“Hard to find.”

“Go to your wife’s two brothers, they’re capable people.”

Zhifeng put down the phone, raised his eyelids. He had just given it an understanding smile, like he was talking face to face with his friends on the phone. “You only play on the phone, day and night playing on the phone.” She went on, “Play on the phone less, okay, you’ve only got one older brother.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t ask you to carry him to the city. I just—”

“I know, look, we went to the Tuberculosis Institute, we went to the Municipal Hospital, the best doctors from Beijing came, everyone said no way, what else do you want me to find?”

“Go find other doctors, maybe there are other ways.”

“It’s already diagnosed, whoever I find it’ll still be the same.”

“How do you know it’ll be the same, after all you’re just lazy, just don’t want to lift a finger.”

“This isn’t about whether I’m lazy or not.”

“You don’t even want to make the slightest effort for your older brother. Are you going to just watch him die?”

“I’m not, I’m just saying this is hopeless, hopeless, so why keep doing it?”

“Why’s it hopeless, haven’t tried and still say it’s hopeless, aren’t you ashamed to say that?” She started crying. “Aren’t you sorry?”

Zhifeng shook his head hard, Mom was so stubborn, stubborn as a cow, he snatched the bag of photos, walked quickly away, coming back, the result would still be the same, you just have to make me make the useless effort. He registered with an expert at the Number One Municipal Hospital, to see the doctor three days later, the doctor examined the photos, very fascinated, took photos every two squares with his mobile phone. “This needs more research, if you can go borrow the biopsy from the Number Two Hospital, that would be great,” he said. After asking the borrowing procedure, Zhifeng said okay, went out, called his mother: “Have to nurse him carefully, they said, there’s still a glimmer of hope, depends how you nurse him.” He went to his father-in-law’s, took care of his son for a while, as Mother required, went to buy a piece of jade and a copper bell cast with the inscription Om Mani Padme Hum, then went back to the township health center (“Buy jade for what?” he said. “You’re not paying, I’ll pay,” she said). While his mother-in-law, in the very early morning, went to the temple and burned incense for Junfeng. Dongmei, meanwhile, sat gravely on the edge of the bed every day, like an intelligence agent, softly asking her older brother what reactions he had, what reactions he’d had before, what reactions he had afterward, in order to compare with the signs that had already shown in her own body. “Sometimes, I cough a little,” she said. But their mom always asked him pitifully: “Do you want to eat anything, child, whatever you want to eat I’ll go buy now.” He didn’t respond to her. He always stared at the ceiling with his eyeballs popping out. The eyeballs were like half an egg stuck in a chicken’s asshole. He could hardly move, except when a violent cough came up, which made him suddenly, almost uncontrollably sit up. Whenever this happened, Widow would rush over, slap his back with her palm to make him cough smoother. Son, cough harder, cough out the phlegm and it’ll be better. The intervals between his coughs got shorter and shorter, the time longer and longer. Sometimes the cough, like a repeating crossbow, could not be taken back once fired, sometimes it was like a whimper that made people cry, sometimes it was like the flint on the gas stove which sparked, sometimes crackled, sometimes it was like the wind whipping rapidly in a tunnel, making sand fly, stones roll, sometimes it was like a car laboring up a slope on a rainy day (the wheels spinning rapidly in the ever-deepening ruts they created, struggling in vain), sometimes it was like an iron shovel digging and scraping the concrete road where only ground gravel was left after rain erosion, sometimes it was like a section of burning intestine rolling up, sometimes it was like mercury thrashing in a sealed tube, sometimes it was like a shocking attack in the dark of night, sometimes it was like a hung body dangling in the air, sometimes it was like a solid flogging, whip after whip, sometimes it was like an animal howling (picture a dragon, its tail pinned, lifting its upper body again and again, dripping with blood as it tears itself), sometimes it was like two trains quickly scraping the wreckage of the other, sometimes it was like a flagrant murder. Each time, they felt it wouldn’t be until the victim coughed out a small earthworm, a sticky worm, a black lump, or a mouthful of blood red as a red flag that he would stop. Everyone coughed for purpose, there isn’t a cough without a purpose, just like there isn’t a revolution without a purpose, there isn’t love and hate without a purpose. Coughing was a prison you couldn’t plead to, only marbles couldn’t cough.

“I’m dying.” After Junfeng screamed agonizingly the whole afternoon (because of fever, in the early winter, he only wore a blue vest, kept talking crazy talk), and after asking an acquaintance to find a ‘photo-reading expert’ in Number One Municipal Hospital to check the photos (he said: “Incurable”). Afterward, Widow considered it over and over, deciding to take him home. That day, everyone calmly watched tightly wrapped Junfeng being carried into the car, they had long grown used to the fact that Junfeng had a strange disease, in the way oysters contained sand, they contained this fact in their lives, regarded it as normal, their faces showed relief that things was finally pushing forward (“Care at home may get him cured.” This, instead of being a way to console Widow, was what they optimistically thought.) Only Widow was sad, unusually, that she understood clearly; from then on, her son would have one day less for each he lived. She found the vegetable field in the backyard of the health center, and facing a mound of used syringes, had a good cry.

When the car drove to the village, she said to the women coming up to it: “I say he’s calling me, whenever he gets anxious, curses me, I know he’s calling me.” They wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know where to start. “His language and ours are just different,” she went on. As soon as her eyes closed slightly, a pool of tears poured out. The creamy-white light truck didn’t break down, the body, because of the engine’s throbbing, was purring, shaking. Zhifeng carried Junfeng down. Widow opened the door of the new house. It was a house built for Junfeng by her orders, done with tiles, aluminum alloy window frames, good paint, and western-style pendant lamps. It was being saved for when Junfeng got married, so she and Chen Zonghuo never came to stay one night, preferring to live instead in the smoky, fiery, old, old-fashioned house. Once in a while, she came to the new house to clean, kneeled on the ground, wiped carefully, as if Junfeng would come back anytime to use it. But it wasn’t until he was sick beyond recovery, that he was brought there. As light as a chicken, Zhifeng said to those who told him to be careful. Junfeng drooped his head, eyes like two short clubs moving at will in front of others’. After sitting on the sofa, he pursed his lips tightly for a while, eyelids blinking in panic, forehead breaking out in sweat (as if smeared with a layer of shiny lard), while his entire body struggled in vain. He seemed to be tied up, couldn’t move. Ah, perhaps it took a very bright mind to know, it was because he knew he was back in the village, so difficult to get away, but back again, and back forever. Zhifeng pulled out his leather belt, whipped it hard against the red seat of the folding chair, he was completely quiet. Ah, my older brother is light as a chicken now. It was like Zhifeng was introducing a new product. Almost as light as a pillow.

Afterward, Junfeng, as if he was being enslaved or ruled over, refused to talk, eyes calm, dull, and thoughtless as an animal’s. He always woke up with no idea where he was, but then was unusually at ease with this confusion. He let shamans wave burning charms before him, let Mother put a jade pendant to expel evil on him, hang bells to expel evil on the windows, let two or three people feed him medicinal liquids from thunder god vines, then let it trickle down from the corners of his mouth. “Coughing is hard for him, hard as the work we do,” sometimes Widow said. At that time she was unusually calm. But very quickly she was startled by her carelessness, hurried over to grip his hand, like he would die soon or had already died. When he strained to cough – it took a full 15 minutes, like a middle-aged man standing hunched in the cold field, gripping the cold handles, trying to make the stupid, stubborn walk-behind tractor rattle – and almost burst his windpipe, boundless hatred arose in her heart. Who on earth has he offended, has he harmed, he coughed out a mouthful of blood the size of a ping-pong ball, a thread of blood drooled from the corners of his mouth. She reached her shaking hands out to catch the blood that was like black juice. Who has my son offended, who on earth has our Chen Zonghuo family offended? The more she thought, the angrier she got, walked toward Chen Zonggong’s house at the village entrance. She walked fast, as if she wasn’t walking herself, but carried by the flying bird of hatred.

“There is something I have to say today,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Chen Zonggong who could hardly rise said.

“When burying Zonghuo, digging the grave, why did your son-in-law throw an iron spade into the grave?”

The grave was reserved for me, never thought Zonghuo would die first, Chen Zonggong responded with silence. My son-in-law was afraid I would die without a place to rest.

“How can you be so unreasonable.”

“I have no idea about what happened back then, I wasn’t well either, didn’t go.”

“You just tell me if it is true.”

“It is.”

“Wasn’t Zonghuo your younger brother?”

“He was, not the closest by blood, but very close.”

“The younger brother from the first wife, but still. Be clear today, what’s your intention?”

“No intention.”

“You harmed my Junfeng so that he was about to die you know.”

“I know, Aunt,” Chen Zonggong’s tears poured down. “I regret it.”

“What’s the use of regret, my Junfeng is already like this.”

“My son-in-law is at work, hasn’t gotten home yet, if you want to get back, get back at me.”

“Fine, I will.”

“I’m going to die soon too.”

“Dying soon won’t do any good.”

“What do you want me to do now, Aunt? If you want to curse, curse me. If you don’t, I won’t have peace.”

After saying this, Chen Zonggong gripped Widow’s hands, wiped the blood covering her hands on his white hair and face. “Punish me, I didn’t mean to be difficult with Junfeng. If I could trade, I’d trade my life for Junfeng’s life now.” He started crying with no restraint. “Hurry and find someone to beat me to death.”

“Can’t beat you to death.”

Widow swung her arms, headed back. Cried out loud the whole way. You tell me who he has offended, who he could offend. Every time she saw a person she sobbed complaints. One day later, she carried the same hatred to the supermarket in town. She figured it was the supermarket’s damp and bacterial work environment that made her son’s lungs defenseless, but she gained nothing there. The ground was much cleaner and drier than she imagined, no dirty blood in the seams between the floor tiles, not even a strand of hair in sight. Imagine, in the height of summer, no mosquitos or flies. Little Qi wasn’t around. At the exit there were two cash registers. The proprietress, looking ferocious, wearing a red vest, with dark circles around her eyes from anxiety, stood outside the exit, glancing down at every customer’s bag. To keep them from losing their tempers, she wore a smile for everyone. Take care, mind the steps. At times even made a gesture to help. Those irritated people would deliberately swap the bag back and forth between their two hands, then gave it to whoever was with them, her gaze always following anxiously, until she raised her head, saw they had been watching her, and started to feel embarrassed. You’d better fucking go back running the corner shop. People shook their bags and walked out, hated her for being despicable, and hated themselves for being despicable. One stolen, 10 fined said a notice pasted on the wall. It was because there were more and more thefts in the supermarket, or the proprietress thought there would be more and more thefts otherwise. That day, when she heard a poorly dressed country woman had been standing on tiptoe, looking behind the meat counter for a long time – the staff used looks like relay beacons to relay the information to their only master – she walked up briskly, turned the other’s shoulders. They looked at each other maliciously, one suspected the other was a thief (otherwise why so sneaky), one suspected that the other wanted to shirk all responsibility.

“You want to buy something?” the proprietress asked.

“Not buying anything,” Junfeng’s mom said seriously. “Just looking.”

She didn’t reveal her identity. She thought she’d better go back and discuss this matter with the young people, perhaps Zhifeng could see something in it later. You just wait. She headed for the Laoyangshu Town street. After she was gone, the supermarket staff told the proprietress it was Junfeng’s mom. That day, the smog very heavy like a bunch of fairies kept blowing smoke from the distance. The ground still had snow on it, a strong smell of chemicals used to make smoked chicken hovered over the entire street. Junfeng’s mom parked the bike outside the lottery shop the local villager Reai opened. Reai smoked, had already smoked so much her teeth were black, but was still a trustworthy girl. Reai asked: “Is Junfeng better now?”

“Still the same,” she said.

“Is there something to be done?”

“Nothing to be done.”

“I mean, when it rained, Junfeng never took an umbrella, just walked out and got wet.”

After getting directions, Junfeng’s mom walked down Hongguang Lane in the north. There was a line of red-brick, single-story houses and asbestos-roofed woodsheds that filled every bit of available space and occasional pigeon cages and chicken coops. The urine spilling from the public toilet flowed in the middle of the street. Right on this quiet lane (after the lane bent to the east) hid a huge, fantastic, underground market which she, living five or six kilometers away, had never heard of before. When Junfeng’s mom walked into the beautiful world made of formal hats, felt hats, Korean-style knit hats, shawls, scarves, silk scarves, wool coats, down jackets, V-neck sweaters, Erdos wool sweaters, shirts, vests, pajamas, thermal underwear, bras, panties, sexy lingerie, lace lingerie, shoulder bags, cross-body bags, handbags, genie pants, sagging pants, leather pants, jeans, skinny pants, casual pants, corduroy pants, leggings, dresses, wool skirts, sweater dresses, stockings, lace stockings, booties, snow boots, round-toed leather shoes, high heels, embroidered shoes, sneakers, walking shoes, lipstick, masks, deep hydration kits, skin cream, perfume, toner, Olay, car stereos, MP3s, MP4s, phones that play music, smartphones, touch screen phones, table lamps, gas stoves, range hoods, induction cookers, microwave ovens, rice cookers, stainless-steel pots, folding tables and chairs, brooms, mops, swabs, aprons, tablecloths, towels, bowls, plates, chopsticks, knives and forks, spoons, thermos flasks, glass bottles, dishwashing liquid, detergent, 84-brand disinfectant, tea-smoked duck, roast duck, tea seed oil duck, duck necks, duck tongues, Laizi’s smoked chicken, Dezhou-style braised chicken, spring chicken, chicken wings, chicken feet, pig head meat, pig ears, pig liver, pig stomach, trotters, pig tails, chicken eggs, duck eggs, preserved eggs, dried tofu, five-spice tofu, brined tofu, cakes, pumpkin cakes, honey cakes, steamed buns, dry-flour buns, steamed twisted rolls, steamed stuffed buns, meat patties, sunflower seeds, ‘toothpick’ sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds, pumpkin seeds, boiled peanuts, pan-fried peanuts, salt-roasted peanuts, pistachios, pine nuts, chestnuts, easy-peel walnuts, pecans, Xinjiang walnuts, Hetian dates, raisins, hazelnuts, almonds, wood ear, meatballs, ribbon fish, frozen shrimp, baby shrimp, Wuchang fish, Wujiang fish, goldfish, carp, catfish, lifeless crabs, squid, cuttlefish, kelp, radishes, carrots, scallions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, onions, bean sprouts, taros, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, red chilies, green peppers, mushrooms, spinach, celtuce, cabbage, bok choy, choy sum, lettuce, cinnamon-vine, strawberries, hawthorn berries, white pears, Asian pears, bananas, baby bananas, red grapes, kiwis, kumquats, tangerines, tangerines, navel oranges, blood oranges, pomelos, Fujis, Red Fujis, and Qixia Fujis she was dazzled.

(Once I talked with a man who wanted to be a woman. The lonely middle-aged man had been tense and restrained, until talking about the market. Then light started to flicker in his eyes. “You know what, once you go in, all your worries are gone, the feeling is fantastic you know, fantastic.” He talked extremely fast, as if I would argue with him. He was so eager to persuade me. I told him I understood – the sacred light, the climax, the warm, electrifying feeling, the friendly and cohesive atmosphere, the everything-within-reach abundance, the ambition for a beautiful life and the joy of creativity, vividly in mind – I said I could totally sense God’s arrangement and compensation.)

Those colorful products which came from all over the country, or at least all over the county, and needed to be sold promptly, were like the New World, shocking Widow’s barren soul (many years ago, she had bent over the fields, familiar only with the regular grocery store which was converted into a small supermarket later – to her, the piece of paper pasted on the shopfront, New Arrival: Dumplings and Rice Balls, was incredible information). She felt the market was too long, no matter how far she walked, she couldn’t reach the end. So she complained, like a girl about to lose her virginity, but also like a queen. All the shopkeepers, like slaves, called out to her. I’ll just have a look, women warned themselves as they walked to the market. Then, after they went in, they sighed, Just looking is enough, just looking. Junfeng’s mom grabbed a handful of wormwood, weighed it in her hand. This thing costs 6.98 a jin, that is, 7 yuan a jin, she was going to tell this incredible finding to Reai. Then, she eventually couldn’t resist the constant temptation of the goods. In front of a brown scarf with a picture of the Taj Mahal printed on it, she swallowed.

“Try it on, you won’t know what it’s like if you don’t try it on.” The shopkeeper walked up, pulled it from her fingers, shook it open, draped it over her shoulders, then turned the mirror toward her. “Look.” She seemed to be under the other’s control. The feeling was very uncomfortable, but then she saw the self she had imagined. The shopkeeper, in her silence, found orange, red, blue, and other styles of silk scarves, which she politely rejected. This might increase what she had to pay. She couldn’t bargain, so just mumbled throughout, looking clumsy and embarrassed.

“But what,” the shopkeeper asked. “You tell me but what.”

“But a bit too expensive,” she said. “That’s all I have, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth all I have.” She was very sorry about it, and willing to bear the other’s scorn. While she waited she said: “That’s really all I have.”

They parted on bad terms. With more or less the same disappointment.

When she was about to wander out of the lane, she remembered the purpose of the trip. Behind her was the sound of the skilled confession of a woman 20, 30 years younger than her. She paused but then walked on. At the end of this winding market, opposite a poplar tree, sat a white-haired woman, who wore an apron converted from a urea sack. She was shaving radishes nonstop. Whenever people came and asked, she would turn the knob lock, call the fortune-reader inside who was famous for his accuracy. Mr. Dong wasn’t really blind, only had night blindness. Later when Widow gave him money, he almost stuck it on his eyes to look. That day, he seemed to profoundly sense the querent’s sorrow. He said she walked in heavily as if carrying several corpses on her back.

After seriously singing a passage, he held the erhu, said:

“Really want me to say?”

“Please.”

“The truth?”

“The truth.”

“Then I will.”

“Please, begging you.”

“Your family will wear mourning clothes this year.”

“Wore it last year, wear it again this year?”

“Wear it again.”

This sentence was like a candy which Junfeng’s mom chewed for a long time, before digesting it clearly. She gave a long sigh, remembered a curse put on her, also by a fortune-teller. “Sir, here’s the money for you.” After settling up, she went back the way she had come, but just couldn’t find the shop, like a flower it had disappeared into the sea of flowers. She asked the price in another shop, which charged 20 yuan, so she didn’t even have any interest in bargaining for a lower price. Then the previous shopkeeper, gripping poker cards, hurried over.

“Ten yuan, it’s yours, can’t do less.”

“No.”

“Look—”

“I only have seven yuan.”

The shopkeeper folded the silk scarf. She said: “The brown one, orange doesn’t suit me.” So the shopkeeper got her the brown one. She went back to the lottery shop, examined the silk scarf for a long time with Reai. Reai said it wasn’t even worth seven yuan, but it wasn’t much of a loss. “Look at the texture, the texture is real good,” Reai said.

“I also saw the texture is real good,” she said.

When she rode off the paved road, rode onto the village road, feeling hungry, she went into Qiuchen’s restaurant to have a solid meal. “There’s no way,” she said when Qiuchen didn’t ask, while pulling down the hem of her hip-length shirt. She got on the bike, used her forefeet, or that is, her toes to pedal the pedals, advancing meter by meter, like a crow carrying a sword on its back slowly disappearing into that five-day, frighteningly quiet, seemingly ominous fog. Back home, she carried the bike in, put down the kickstand, locked the bike, then took down the half a watermelon wrapped in Saran wrap (it cost fifteen yuan and four jiao total – in town she had carefully kept Reai from seeing it), and went into the new house. “Hey Junfeng, never thought there’d be watermelon this time of year, huh? Shame it got beat up on the way, broke.” She scooped a piece with a spoon, fed the other. “Mouth open.”

He opened his mouth.

“Teeth open.”

He opened his teeth.

“Swallow.”

He started to swallow, but the food stayed there, didn’t move at all.

“Swallow hard, son.”

He tried hard, but it was in vain. She mashed that small piece of watermelon, pushed it in with spoon. He choked, started to cough. After that, she pounded the watermelon into juice, fed him with a spoon, but it always spilled out from the corners of his mouth. As usual, she said: “Junfeng, what do you want to eat tonight, whatever you want to eat, I’ll cook it now.” Then went on: “How about we eat fried egg soup. I forget whether it needs chives or not.”

He didn’t say anything.

“My brother doesn’t even have the strength to agree or disagree.” Zhifeng, gripping his mobile phone, walked in and said: “Mom, since you’re back, I can go, I have some stuff to do.”

“Go.”

“I won’t have dinner.”

“I know.”

Widow knew it was in vain but still meticulously made a dinner. Every time a dish was made, she would pick up the kitchen towel, gently wipe her hand, find an empty bowl and cover it. She made some of his all-time favorites: bacon stir-fry, egg and chive stir-fry, spicy shredded potato, and fried egg soup. In the past, whenever he ate in front of her, she would carefully observe his likes and dislikes (what he disliked, she firmly disliked too), but in front of Zhifeng and Dongmei, she needed their constant reminding. After the cover was lifted, the hot steam and the smell specific to chernozem rice wafted out of the rice cooker. She scooped the rice into the egg soup, mixed them. “Eat as much as you can.” She put a pillow at the head of the bed, lifted him up, settled him. He intended to say something, but decided the process of saying it was too complicated, and gave up. He turned his face sideways, fixed his eyes at some point, ignored her. Soon he closed his eyes. Wanted to sleep. She moved him straight, used the hot water in the thermos flask to wet the towel, wipe his face, wipe his back, then carefully tuck in the blanket. Then filled his thermos with a straw with water. Back in the old house, she put the dishes on the table (only the bacon stir-fry went in the rice cooker basket to heat up). Out of pity, she made a good bucket of pig feed, went to the pig shed to reward the two pigs which had gotten thinner since others fed them the past few days. When she struck the ladle, called luo-luo, they tumbled up, leaped up, stood upright against the wooden railing, anxiously twitching their pink noses at her. She also replaced the light bulb with a broken filament in the courtyard. After coming back, she kept tuning the radio, and the unique, bright, weak clamor of the signal came, which created an atmosphere where all the talented people had come, and the house was filled with distinguished guests: (an alto singing): so potent, took a sip, got drunk, got drunk – (a middle-aged woman imitating a child’s voice) so Miss Glass Shoes played on the swing. When Miss Glass Shoes found Curious and Surprised Shoes, she shouted brightly: “Want to come and play?” – (two-person crosstalk) the audience is very enthusiastic, everyone knows you, (oh, familiar) the famous comedian from Tianjin – (a movie soundtrack) he didn’t die. . . Why, why keep it from us, who gave him food – (theater chorus)??? (Peking opera) In the old days the family was too poor to feed. Of four sons two were frozen and starved to death. In the famine year they became horribly indebted to the Diao family. To pay the debt, his third brother worked in the fields. She walked under the dim light, sat at the dining table, poured alcohol, as usual, slowly, in the order of good to bad, picked at the plates, ate what was on them. The dregs went to the chipped, small, white bowl. What she couldn’t throw away went to the small red bowl. She slowly drank the alcohol, slowly chewed. Her mouth, like a grinding machine, ground the food. Until all food was completely gone. In the process of chewing, sometimes she would stop, go into a long trance, then come to, and go on chewing. This is a common thing when one eats alone. The door was open, facing the fields. Night was gathering from all directions. The dark night, like lake water overflowing its banks, poured in front of her. She burped, picked up another bottle from the ground. The bottle was blue, covered with dust. She wiped it clean with her sleeve, shook it, shook it again, unscrewed the cap, sniffed the amber-colored liquid. After making sure that was it, lifted the bottle, drank down in one gulp. Perhaps thinking it was a private business, halfway though, she held the bottle, went to close the door. As she staggered, lurched, almost getting to the fir door panel (ten minutes later it would be taken down by a bunch of people jumping with anxiety) a shot of piercing, twisting pain like the one preceding delivery bent her waist. She crouched, let her head slowly lean on the threshold, clenched her teeth, tried to bear it. Sweat, like rain, dropped to the ground. But the gush of food pulp with its choking stench still violently prized her mouth open, spurted out from it.

It’d been 12 years since anyone drank pesticide.

The news alone was enough to make people’s hearts pound and pound. The last time they were this tense was when Batu, who married into his wife’s family, fell into a well a dozen meters deep. As if venerable Death, now dragging the sack (it rustled, scraping against the ground covered with wet pine needles and fallen leaves), was, from the near future, from the dense fog with branches and shadows, distinguishable, walking up. Her bewitched reactions – the muscle spasms, the exposure of the whites of the eyes, and the animalistic howls – shocked the few people who arrived first. Hurry, hurry – anxious shouts with indefinite content were everywhere – hurry. A bunch of people holding emergency lights, flashlights rushed to the houses of the barefoot doctor and the driver. Unspoken coordination. The driver Anfang was informed by mobile phone. When he drove the truck, hurrying over, there were still people running toward his house. Even though the car lights already shone on them, they backed away to the side to let it pass. Someone took a shortcut through the fields, ran to the village committee a kilometer off, kicked the door open, found the First Aid Manual for Pesticide Poisoning from a pile of documents.

Shouts and reproaches abounded. Someone who simply thought doing so might help a little moved her away, stripped off her outer clothing, and kept pouring water on her forehead, neck, upper body, while at the same time wiping off the food sludge and foam spilling incessantly from the corners of her mouth. Some people fanned their shirts to circulate the air. After the door panel was taken down, they carried her into the car. Someone held a flashlight to light the stone heaps and wild grass by the road, while running ahead of the car, as if doing so would help the driver see more clearly, until the car easily passed him. By then, people felt a bit relieved, panted, and, along with the barefoot doctor who arrived late, watched the car skid this way and that (like a car stolen on TV, driven by a fleeing robber) as it rushed toward the emergency health center.

After Widow was conveyed back alive, it was broken.

Anfang parked it by the back door of Widow’s house.

Of course he could push it home – that meant convenience in fixing it, many people offered to help – but he still used fatigue as an excuse, left it there. It was a small demonstration: to see if there would still be people willing to save the dying and heal the injured in the future. He pushed away the toll money Zhifeng offered, he said: “Later.” And the women watching over Widow, while she was fast asleep (now her breathing was even and smooth), started talking: there were several ways to drink pesticide, the first was to not drink, the second was to drink, the third was to drink in front of others, hers was to drink not in front of others but knowing others would find out. The door was open. The lights were on. There was only a little at the bottom of the bottle, which had been drying for so long, exposed to the absorbing sun, the poison long decomposed. She, well, does need to let something out, needs to be cleansed, but doesn’t want to die for it.

This was some kind of ceremony.

They took turns going on watch, watched over her for several days, until she could get out of the bed. She leaned on the walking stick, helped by another, to check on her son. Still the same. A little shrunken. She said to everyone she saw, “Nothing to be done, really nothing to be done.” Saw someone, said it once. Fearing the cold, they set up a coal stove in the kitchen, used a poker to make the fire blaze, gathered around her for warmth. Someone said coal smoke was bad for recovery. She said it was no problem. She drank hot water, shivering, then spread her hands over the coal stove to get warm, sadly said: “There is nothing at all I can do.”

They remained silent. She was the only one constantly and routinely singing of helplessness and desperation, her rising and falling cry tearing their hearts. Eventually, to lead her out of weeping, Mrs. Ju said: “Auntie, you still want to die?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Pain.”

“Pain how.”

“A lot of pain, heartbreaking pain.”

“I’m afraid you still want to.”

“No, I don’t.”

Judging by her eagerness to argue, she had lingering fear about the tormenting experience. So everyone laughed. She didn’t laugh, though, but didn’t cry either. “You shouldn’t worry about me.” Widow nodded at them, then asked: “Ah, you eat candy or not.” All said they don’t. “No, no, Auntie, don’t move, I don’t eat it.” But she still got up. Someone stood to help her but was refused. “Better to walk a little,” she said. She stumbled over, opened the cupboard door, pulled out the middle drawer, dug around. People went on spreading their hands over the coal stove. Some were in a trance. Some looked at her. She dug out a cleaver with a red plastic handle and yellow rust, stared at it for a while, as if judging if it belonged in her house. She touched the teeth of the edge with the top part of her index finger, then aimed it at her neck, made a sudden cut. Like cutting a handful of straw, cutting a handful of wheat, she cut herself again and again, cutting without getting to the point, until finally cutting a main artery. There was simply nothing they could do to get up. Their faces were deathly pale, whole bodies trembling, sitting there frozen, no way to stand up at all. For a week afterward, they were all like that, as if paralyzed. Fresh blood, like the nation’s flag hoisted in the morning, was suddenly thrown out by the guard’s white-gloved hand. Humans have so much blood – from the blood streaming out endlessly you could tell if she hadn’t committed suicide, she would have lived for many years – like endless water gushing out from the hole of a plastic water tube, the enormous gushing force made the water tube wiggle crazily like a snake. This was a suicide method unheard of for a very long time, it belonged to the ancient times: throat cutting.

No need to think. No way to rescue. No possibility at all.

With one hand Widow held on to the kitchen, the doorframe, walked heavily out. As if walking out would give her relief. She covered her throat, pushed down the empty bamboo scaffolding outside, then threw herself at the white truck, which had been repaired and was driving away. Anfang slammed on the brakes. The truck thereby stopped there again. More and more people gathered around. They stood carefully, from time to time lifting a leg to let the red, bubbling blood flow away under their shoes. The body lay prone there, twitched for the last time.

Junfeng lived out his remaining days, died punctually.

About Mother’s death, he had no opinion. Cleaning his body for the last time, his younger brother Zhifeng couldn’t take it anymore, cursed him cruelly. Zhifeng gripped the toilet paper stained with his excrement, moved up to him, shouted: “You killed Mom. You know you killed her.” He had no response. No anger, and no grievance, no fear and no shame. He died when he got as thin as he could possibly be. The skin, already like a soaked shroud, clung tightly to his protruding skeleton, showing the prominent gaps between his ribs, made people terrified – or that is, like a rubbing, the appearance of a skeleton was rubbed out. His beard, like a handful of grass, grew on his proud chin. His eyeballs were particularly big. Almost as big as billiard balls, Zhifeng said.

In the moment of farewell, Dongmei came, she wanted to pry into the details of people near death. His lips slightly open, she put her ears closer to listen and guessed his obscure plea from his breath. She asked him about it, but there was no response. She moved to the other side of the bed, found the mobile phone under his pillow, plugged the charger connected to it into the wall socket. During this process, her older brother died.

Around that time, two strange incidents happened one after another in Laoyangshu Town: one, on the icy surface of the Yao River, a giant, one-meter-long lizard was found. Although human beings issued more than one hundred calls to it (they believed it was like an alien, could understand friendly signals from human beings), it still dared not go onshore. After busily spinning round and round on the ice, it simply died. Two, a truck slammed into the auditorium. The driver was killed, dozens of dogs jumped off the truck, ran east in packs like wild horses. These two incidents weren’t as shocking as Widow’s suicide. Many people said, “I really want to have a good long cry over this incident.”