AFTER OLD MR. LIU PASSED AWAY, I thought that maybe when I got old, I’d end up like him too.
When Old Mr. Liu was still alive, I often said behind his back: spineless people tend to live longer. The difference between Mr. He and Old Mr. Liu was like heaven and earth. Mr. He plunged righteously off the top of a building whereas Old Mr. Liu was beaten once or twice and broke his gall. But when he died, I was nonetheless worried. When I got back home, Bell said to me: go see how Old Mr. Liu is doing, he’s snoring on his bed and won’t answer. When I entered his room, I saw that he was drooling all over himself. When I lifted his eyelids, I saw that his eyeballs weren’t moving. Immediately, I turned and bopped Bell on the head: are you dead? Hurry and get a cart, we’re taking the old man to the hospital!
According to Bell, when Old Mr. Liu came home, he rode at a flying speed and his forehead oozed sweat. The moment he got in, he checked on the duck; the meat was already falling off the bones. He rubbed his hands and wiped his drool. But then he said he didn’t feel well and needed to take a nap; ask Wang Er to check his blood pressure when he gets back. But when Wang Er got back, he didn’t check anyone’s blood pressure but bopped Bell on the head instead: look at what state the old man’s in, why would you wait for me?
Bell was never the oil-saving kind of lamp. As I pedaled Old Mr. Liu to the hospital in a tricycle cart, she sat in the back and bickered: uh-huh, so you can hit me now! I’ll get you back no matter what. I said: Old Mr. Liu had a stroke. If he recovers, he’ll end up with a crooked mouth and a paralyzed eye, check if his mouth is crooked. I only said those things to distract her. When we got to the hospital, we rolled Old Mr. Liu to the emergency room. After only a short while, a gurney with a white sheet covering it rolled out. A doctor said to me: the old mister has already passed. I said: stop kidding around. When we brought him in here, he was still snoring: you’ve got the wrong guy.
The doctor said: I’m sorry for your loss, but we only had one patient in there. My eyes bulged as I said: no way! We just sent him in, you didn’t even take a look! He said: when your grandpa came in here, he had already stopped breathing. Can you stop pulling on my collar! Someone! Help!
A bunch of white gowns gathered around us, but I still wouldn’t let the emergency room doctor go. A guy in a uniform showed up and yelled: stop stirring up trouble! What department are you with? I want to talk to your superior. I said: you sure as hell can fucking try! I’m a goddamn intellectual youth! When they heard that, they backed off. Everyone knew that our kind had nothing to lose, so no one dared to fuck with us.
The story of Old Mr. Liu ended like this: in the end, the head of the hospital sat down with Bell and me in his office. He said: everyone dies eventually, it is an unavoidable fact of life. Some illnesses are so serious that we cannot save the patient. If you have doubts about our medical practice, perhaps you would like to have the body examined? We have to be responsible not only to the patients, but to the doctors as well. By then my head had cleared. I said: I’m not related to the dead guy; you guys can wait for the mining school’s rear battalion to come and sort this out. With that, I went home with Bell. On our way, I said to Bell: he died out of craving for that duck.
That night, as Bell and I slept together, we recounted all sorts of frivolous little stories about Old Mr. Liu. For example, when he got to the dark cluttered hallway, he would hit everything with his cane because he couldn’t see. His cane looked like it had been chewed on by a dog. When Old Mr. Liu had his cravings, he baked a sausage on the charcoal burner only to have us walk in on him. He was so afraid that we would yell at him that his face turned red. He stared at us as if to say: if you dare to speak a word, I will kill myself! I’ll die! How did he all of a sudden, actually die? How uncanny. We should empty a bottle in his memory.
We told each other many of Old Mr. Liu’s stories. They were all funny except for one. Once, my father said to me: Old Mr. Liu wasn’t always a fool; everyone at the mining school knew that he was a genius. But he played a fool for so long that eventually he became the real thing. So once when I asked him: old man, why don’t you care about dignity? He replied instantly: don’t have the luxury!
Later on, I got out of bed and walked to the window. The night outside was dark; a sea of stars glimmered. Everything was just as it was last night, with the exception of Old Mr. Liu. Suddenly, I realized that even though Old Mr. Liu was really annoying and his mouth stank, I didn’t actually wish for him to die. I wished he could continue to live in this world.
Years as water flow, the sun and moon shuttle like a loom. Many things have come to pass. Looking back at the end of ’67 from New Year’s Day of ’73, many things had already happened, but there were some things that hadn’t yet. Whether I have been talking about the things that had happened, or the things that had not happened yet, my explanation has not been very clear. The reason for this is that in my above narration, the most important thread has been missing—this thread being the changes that happened within me. Some of the changes had already taken place and some had not yet taken place. As I mentioned earlier, when Old Mr. Liu told me about Mr. He’s dying words, I was not very impressed. But that night, when Bell and I were in the middle of lovemaking, I stopped and walked to the window. I thought about those words again and it felt tragic. When I saw the stars outside, I thought about the candles flickering around his brain and it felt tragic. Old Mr. Liu’s death was also tragic. The fact that there was nothing I could do in the face of death was also tragic. When I began to talk to Bell about this, she cried; I also wanted to cry. To look death in the face and do absolutely nothing about it wasn’t really in my character.
When I said, in the years as water flow, there were things that worried me day and night, I was worried precisely about these things: when Mr. He died, he was erect. When Old Mr. Liu died, he just wanted to eat a duck. When I was in America, my father passed away at his desk. He was in the middle of writing a letter to me, discussing the topic of relativism. Although they died in various ways, what all of them had in common was the strength to live on. I sincerely wish for them to have had the opportunity to live for longer, to continue to live. As for me, I no longer wished to wrap my intestines around anyone’s neck.