One Man Read online

  When he felt his way back to the bed after putting out the light, he bumped her leg, and she immediately moved away but let him lie beside her. He was very careful, and lay on his back very straight on the outside part of the bed. However, in the single bed, their bodies inevitably touched, and, if she didn't move away, he didn't try too hard, either. The woman's clammy warmth and the stifling heat in the room made him sweat all over. In the dark, he could vaguely make out the sloping ceiling that seemed to press down on him and made the heat feel even more oppressive.

  "Would it be all right if I took off my clothes?" he asked.

  The woman didn't respond, but didn't indicate that she objected. When their bodies touched after he'd removed his shirt and trousers, she didn't move away, but she was obviously not asleep. "Why are you going to Beijing?" he asked.

  "To see my maternal aunt."

  Surely this wasn't the time to be visiting relatives? He didn't believe her.

  "My aunt works in the Ministry of Health," the woman added.

  He said he also worked in a state workplace.

  "I know."

  "How do you know?"

  "When you took out your identity card."

  "And do you also know my name?"

  "Of course, didn't you register just now?"

  In the darkness, he seemed to see, or, rather, sense that the woman had her lips scrunched up in a smile.

  "Otherwise, I wouldn't…"

  "Be sleeping with me, right?" he said it for her.

  "As long as you know!"

  He detected something gentle in her voice, and when he unavoidably put his hand on her thigh, she didn't try to move away. But then he thought she trusted him and he didn't dare do anything else.

  "Which university are you at?" he asked.

  "I've already graduated, I'm waiting to be assigned work," she said, evading his question.

  "What did you study?"

  "Biology."

  "Have you dissected corpses?"

  "Of course."

  "Including human corpses?"

  "I'm not a doctor, my studies are theoretical, but, of course, I've done practical work in hospital laboratories. I'm just waiting to be assigned to a work unit. The project was set up, if it hadn't…"

  "If it hadn't what? This Cultural Revolution?"

  "It had already been settled that I would go to a research institute in Beijing."

  "Are your parents cadres?"

  "No."

  "Then your maternal aunt is a high-ranking official?"

  "You want to know everything."

  "I don't even know if your name is real or not."

  The woman was smiling again; this time, her whole body was shaking, and he could feel it with his hand. He grasped her thigh and could feel her flesh through her trousers.

  "I'll tell you," she put her hand on his and shifted it from her thigh as she murmured, "I'll tell you everything…"

  He took her hand in his, and it gradually became relaxed, soft.

  Banging on the door! It was the front door of the inn.

  The two of them went stiff, and, listening with bated breath, tightly clutched one another's hands. There was a commotion, and the front door opened; it was either a night search or a special investigation. A group of people loudly questioned the woman in charge, then went around knocking at each of the downstairs rooms. Some of them went upstairs, and their footsteps resounded above on the wooden steps. A door-to-door search was taking place on both floors. Suddenly, there was a loud thumping noise on the floor-boards, someone was running. Shouting and swearing immediately followed, then total chaos. There was a dull thud, like a heavy burlap bag falling to the ground, a man howling, and then a confusion of footsteps. The howling abruptly turned into a piercing scream then gradually faded.

  They sat on the bed, their hearts pounding wildly, as they waited for someone to knock on the door. There was another period of agony as the search was repeated upstairs and downstairs. However, no one came to their door, either they had overlooked this small room under the stairs, or the details he gave upon registering meant that he was of no interest to their investigation. The front door was locked, the woman grumbled for a while, then silence prevailed again.

  In the darkness, she was suddenly shivering. He swept her trembling body into his arms and kissed her sweaty cheeks and soft lips. Their perspiration and tears mingled as they lay in the bed. He ran his hand over her sweat-covered breasts, unbuttoned her trousers, and put his hand between her legs, she was wet, couldn't move, and let him do whatever he wanted. When he entered her body, the two of them were naked…

  Afterward, she said he had taken advantage of her momentary weakness to possess her, it wasn't love. But, he said, she had not resisted. Silent, when they had finished, he touched the sticky fluid between her legs and became anxious. At the time, university students were not permitted to marry, and becoming pregnant and having to get an abortion would bring disaster upon her. However, she put his mind at ease by saying, "I've got my period."

  At this, he made love to her again. This time, she held nothing back, and he could feel her thrust herself forward to accept him. He realized that he had changed her from a virgin into a woman: he had had experience with women. However, if she only resented him and did not have tender feelings for him, as the morning sunlight came through the cracks of the door, she would not have let him wash the blood from her thighs with a wet towel, then, afterward, been so loving to him. He remembered, when he knelt on the brick floor and began kissing her erect nipples, that it was she who tightly embraced him and murmured "Don't make them go big" but she lay there on the bed with her eyes closed and again gave herself to him.

  At the time, neither could have known what awaited them, or could predict what would follow. It was irrepressible wild passion, he kissed every part of her, and she did not try to stop him. His pent-up tensions violently discharged, and the two of them were covered in blood, but she didn't rebuke him. Afterward, when he came back with a basin of clean water, she asked him to turn around until she had tidied herself up.

  She was stopped at the wharf on the river just as he got onto the ferry. They heard at the inn that trains were running but that people were only being allowed out of the station, not into the station. Those wanting to board the train had to take the ferry to the other side of the river, so a huge number of passengers had amassed at the wharf. A heavy morning mist clung to the river, and the sun was a red ball in the sky. It was like a painting of the Judgment Day. On the ferry, a sailor with a round-neck shirt and a badge on his chest shouted through a hand-held loudspeaker, "Let the nonlocal travelers get on first! Nonlocals should present their work identity cards and get on first!"

  The crowd squeezing onto the wharf was not in a line, and, suddenly, there was chaos. The two of them became separated, and when he called out her name, the name she had used to register at the inn, she didn't answer to it. He still had her bag, which she had pushed into his hand. Maybe she wanted to get rid of the bag, for it contained her student card and that dossier of requests for help printed by her workplace. He was shoved onto the deck, but anyone who couldn't produce nonlocal identification was stopped on the wharf. She, with her two short plaits, was squashed in the jostling crowd. He looked down from the railing of the deck and shouted out to her again. It was still her made-up name, and she seemed not to have heard and just stood there in a daze, maybe she didn't understand in time that he was calling to her. The ferry drew away from the wharf.

  31

  A vast quagmire, reeds growing here and there, you're in a quagmire, you reek of stinking mud and want to crawl somewhere dry so you can stand up, you wash yourself, even your face, with the water lying on top of the mud, clearly knowing you won't be able to wash yourself clean, somehow you've got to get out of this swamp, you jump as hard as you can but still land in swampy water, you somersault and get yourself into a worse mess, muddy and wet, you have to crawl on…

  A faint glow
in the distance, there seems to be a light, you head for it, that is, you crawl toward it, light is coming through a crack, it's a house, there's a door, you crawl to the threshold, reach for the door, it suddenly opens, you hear wind but there's no wind, the large hall has a circle of light, you crawl into the circle of light, you finally stand up, it's a solid timber floor, then you find-fuck!-not a thing at all, you can't see a thing…

  You need to adopt a posture, so you don't move, turn into a statue.

  You need to be like a thread of gossamer, drift in the air, gradually disappear like clouds.

  You need to be like a thorny branch on a jujube tree, like leaves frozen purple on a tallow tree in early winter.

  You need to wade across a stream, need to hear bare feet squelching on cobblestones.

  You need to drag heavy memories out of a vat of dye, make the floor wet.

  You need a stark, white stage with bright lights, so that he and a woman, both naked, can roll about as everyone looks on.

  You need to look down at them from high up, show your gaping eye sockets, two black holes.

  You need to see the dark shadows of the bright, round moon in the lonely sky behind this door.

  You need to couple with a she-wolf, put your heads up together and howl.

  You need to take light quick steps, di-di-da, di-di-da, and pirouette right here.

  You hope your dancer, he, will thrash and leap about like a fish out of water.

  You hope a cruel hand will seize that big, slippery, thrashing fish, slash it open with a knife, yet you don't want it to die just like that.

  You need a soprano voice using the highest pitch to narrate a forgotten story, like your childhood.

  You need to be in darkness, like a sinking ship slowly entering the seabed, and you want to see a profusion of bubbles rising serenely and soundlessly.

  You need to turn into a fish with a big head and swim about in the reeds, swishing your tail and moving your head.

  You want to be a sorrowful eye, penetrating and grieving, an eye observing the world as it turns this way and that, and this eye is in the palm of your hand.

  You want to be a multitude of sounds, a velvety alto teased out from its midst and set against a wall of sounds.

  You want to be a piece of jazz, flowing but unpredictable, passionate and yet so smooth. Then you abruptly strike an odd posture, adopt a scary expression with an ambiguous smile, an enigmatic smile that solidifies, then turns wooden and stiff. Afterward, you calmly slide out, turn into a mud fish, and leave that odd smile on that atrophied face. The mouth opens and reveals two tobacco-stained front teeth, or, maybe, they are two fitted front teeth that are shining with a golden glow on that joyful, smiling, atrophied face. All this will also be a lot of fun.

  You want to be the little boy pissing in a small square in the center of Brussels. Young boys and girls, taking turns, crane their necks so that the spring water he pisses collects in their mouths. Some other girls stand on the side, cackling with laughter. However, you are an old man sitting in a cafe, watching them, a very old man whose deeply wrinkled face looks the same whether he is laughing or not. You take a sip of the sweet ale that is as dark as soy sauce.

  You want to weep and wail in front of everyone, but don't make a sound. People won't know what you are weeping about, won't know whether you are really weeping or whether you are acting, but you want to have a good cry in front of this playacting world. Not making a sound, of course, you mime that you are weeping, and get the honorable members of the audience to look on helplessly. Next, you rip open your shirt and take out a plastic red heart. Then, from it, you take out a handful of straw or toilet paper and throw it to those willing to applaud. You strut about with an elegant gait, and then, then slip and fall and can't get up. You have had a heart attack on stage. Really, you don't need to be saved. It's just theater to show suffering, joy, grief, and lust. And then, with a crafty smile that could be a laugh or a grimace, you quietly slip off with a young woman. You have just met, but she has won your heart, and you make love standing up in the lavatory. People can only see your legs, her legs are around your waist. Then you noisily flush the toilet. You want to flush yourself like this, to cleanse yourself, so that the world will weep, so that the windows of the world will be washed with rain, so that the world will turn all hazy, so hazy that it could either be rain or mist. You then stand at the window and watch snowflakes falling soundlessly outside. Snow covers the whole city like a huge white shroud wrapping corpses, and you, by the window, mourn his loss of his self…

  Or, for a different perspective, it is you in the audience, watching him crawl onto the stage, a deserted stage. He is standing naked in the bright light, and it will take a little time for him to get used to it, to see past the stage lights, and to see you sitting in the red velvet seat in the last row of the empty theater.

  32

  The bag the girl left with him had a student card in it. Xu was, in fact, her surname, but her given name was Qian. There were also some pamphlets and reports on the crisis. She could have been heading for Beijing to file a complaint, but all this was public printed matter, so maybe she was just going to Beijing to get out of danger and had given him her bag because she was afraid of being identified.

  He had no way of knowing what had happened to Xu Qian and all he could do was search for news about the city from posters and pamphlets posted in the streets. He rode his bicycle along Chang'an Avenue from Dongdan to Xidan, to the railway station at Qianmenwai, and then to the gate at the back of Beihai, and he read through each of the crisis notices about armed battles in the provinces that were posted everywhere. There were reports about massacres, shootings, and brutal tortures, even photographs of corpses, and these all seemed somehow related to Xu Qian. He was certain that disaster had already befallen her, and could not help feeling an acute sense of pain.

  The bag, also containing Xu Qian's sleeveless round-neck top with little yellow flowers, which still smelled of her, and the blood-stained underpants she had rolled into a ball, seemed to have become a relic that gave him twinges of pain deep in his heart. It was as if he had developed some sort of fetish, and he kept shifting about the contents of the bag. He even took off the red plastic cover from the copy of Mao's Sayings, where he found a slip of paper with an old address on it. The name Boundless Great Men Hutong had already been changed to Red Star Hutong, and it probably was the home of her maternal aunt. He charged out the door but, thinking he would appear too presumptuous, returned to his room, stuffed all the things on the table back into the bag, and took it with him, leaving behind only the top and underpants she had worn that night.

  At ten o'clock at night, he knocked on the gate of a house with a courtyard and got them to open up. A sturdy young fellow who stood blocking the entrance gruffly asked, "Who are you looking for?"

  He said that he wanted to see the maternal aunt of Xu Qian. The young fellow scowled and was clearly hostile. He thought of mentioning his Red Guard lineage, but that strong impulse vanished, and he said coldly, "I've come to convey a message and to deliver something to her aunt."

  At this, the other party said to wait, and closed the gate. After a while, the young fellow came back and opened the door. He was with an elderly woman. The woman looked him over and politely asked what could he have to tell her. He took out Xu Qian's student card and said he had something to hand over to her.

  "Please come in," the woman said.

  The northern room directly facing the courtyard was in disarray but retained the style of a senior cadre's reception hall.

  "Are you her maternal aunt?" he asked.

  The only response seemed to be a nod, as she got him to sit down on the sofa.

  He said that her niece-presumably, it was her niece-was stopped on the wharf and couldn't get on the ferry. The aunt looked through the pile of pamphlets. He said it was very tense in the city, machine guns were being used, and there were night searches. Xu Qian clearly belonged to the faction they w
ere searching for.

  "Why are they rebelling!'" the aunt exclaimed, or, maybe, asked, as she put the pamphlets on a low table.

  He explained he was worried that something might have happened to Xu Qian.

  "Are you her boyfriend?"

  "No." He wanted to say that he was.

  There was a lapse of silence, so he got up and said, "I just came to let you know. Of course, I hope nothing has happened and she is safe."

  "I'll get in touch with her parents."

  "I don't have her home address," he mustered the courage to say.

  "I will write to her family."

  The aunt clearly didn't intend to give him the address, so he could only say, "I can leave the address and telephone number of my work unit."

  The old woman gave him a piece of paper to write on, then escorted him to the gate. As she locked it on the other side, she said, "You know this place, you're welcome to come again."

  She was just being polite in response to his unnecessary act of kindness.

  Back in his room, he lay on his bed and tried to remember every detail of what had happened that night, every word Xu Qian had spoken. Her voice in the dark and the responsiveness of her body were now etched in his mind.

  There was knocking on his door. It was a cadre from his faction. Huang came in and asked, "When did you get back? I've been here several times, looking for you. You haven't shown up at the work-place, what have you been up to? You can't keep on being so carefree! They are beating up the cadres one at a time, and are breaking up our meetings!"

  "When did this start?" he asked.

  "This afternoon. They have already started fighting!"

  "Has anyone been hurt?"

  Huang said Danian's gang beat up the section chief in charge of accounts in the finance office and broke the man's ribs when they kicked him. It was because he had a capitalist family background. The cadres who showed support for his faction have all been threatened. Huang's background as a petty trader was also bad, even though he had been a Party member for almost twenty years.