“I’ve no idea. For years. Min Fang loves fish. All kinds. And it costs nothing.”
Paul was confused by the answers. If there was something wrong with the fish, why was it only the women who were falling ill? Mrs. Zhuo went along to the lake only rarely; what was she ill with? How was it that the other villagers, who had fished there more often, had stayed well until now?
“And you?”
“I don’t,” Da Long said.
“Didn’t you just say that you ate the fish she caught?”
“Min Fang does. I don’t. I’m allergic. I get a red rash all over my body.”
Paul was so surprised that he nearly dropped Min Fang’s leg. “Does Mrs. Ma’s husband get it too?” he asked, struggling to conceal his excitement.
“No. But he hates fish. Doesn’t touch it.”
“What did you do with the rest of the fish that Min Fang caught?”
“If there was any left, we sold it for a few yuan in the village. We didn’t get much for it. The cats got the rest.”
Paul thought for a moment. “The Zhuos were regular customers, yes?”
“The best. How did you know that?”
“I guessed.”
He carefully laid Min Fang’s leg back on the blanket and wiped the sweat away from his forehead. The fish. It had been no more than a suspicion until now, even though it became more and more certain with everything that Paul found out. What could be so toxic in them that their consumption brought people to the verge of death?
Da Long sat at the end of the bed and massaged his wife’s feet. Paul stood by the nightstand and watched him massage her heels, the balls of her feet, and every single toe with concentration and care. Min Fang’s breathing was labored and rattling.
“Can you give her some water? It’s next to you. I think she’s thirsty,” Da Long said.
Paul put his hand carefully under Min Fang’s head, lifted it a little, put the glass to her lips, and let some water trickle into her mouth clumsily.
“Be careful,” Da Long warned. “She mustn’t choke.”
Paul had been much too quick with the water. Min Fang could not swallow quickly enough, so most of it ran out of the corners of her mouth and down her chin and throat, or trickled onto her pajamas. Paul could see her body struggling, then she suddenly began to cough and gag. Just a little at first, then more and more violently. She was choking. Paul tried to lift her upper body upright, but it got stiffer and stiffer and was almost impossible to move. Da Long rushed over to help, and both of them tried to get her to sit up. He slapped his wife hard on the back and screamed, “Min Fang! Min Fang!”
Her coughing fit worsened with every second. Her pale face grew red; she was struggling for air.
“Please! Min Fang, breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Please. Please,” he pleaded. Da Long’s voice was full of fear and chilled Paul to the bone.
The soothsayer’s prediction darted into Paul’s mind. The first sentence had been: You will take life.
Not kill, not murder, but take life.
Paul started panicking. A rigid human body was having a seizure in his arms, gasping for air and struggling for its life. It was his fault. One glass of water. Water. He had been told to stay away from water. Through his carelessness, the first part of the prophecy would come true.
Da Long grabbed ahold of his wife, put his arms around her torso from behind, and pressed hard several times on her stomach and chest. They waited. Time stood still. No longer one of the living, not yet one of the dead. After a few endless seconds her coughing grew less frequent, she stopped retching, and they heard her draw breath again. Before long, her breathing had stabilized.
Paul staggered over to the sofa, completely exhausted.
“Y-y-you’re trembling all over,” Da Long said. “Sit down. I’ll get some water.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Paul whispered. “It was my fault. I wasn’t being careful.”
“N-n-no,” Da Long said, trying to calm him. “She often chokes, even with me. But it’s not been so bad before. We were lucky.” He looked at Paul for a long moment, then added, “You were just almost as frightened as I was. Is everything all right? You don’t look well.”
Paul emptied a glass of water in one gulp. “Thank you. I’ll be fine in a moment.”
Da Long sat down next to him on the sofa. He was trembling too. His shirt was soaked with sweat and clung to his chest; his full lips had compressed themselves into two narrow lines; his left eye was twitching uncontrollably. They huddled next to each other in silence, each absorbed in his own memories. Paul stared at the digital clock beneath the television. The glow of the light and the reliable way in which the three followed the two and the four the three soothed him.
Da Long was the first to emerge from his thoughts. “Where did you learn to speak Chinese so well?”
“I’ve lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years,” Paul said, turning to him. “I learned Cantonese there. I’ve liked Mandarin ever since I was a child. I traveled in China a great deal in the eighties and nineties. That’s how I learned my Mandarin.”
“What did you do in China?”
Paul hesitated. Would Da Long get suspicious when he found out that he was sitting here with a former journalist?
“I was a reporter for American and British newspapers and also for publications in China.” When Da Long did not react, he added, “Later on, I was an interpreter and adviser to Western companies who wanted to invest in China.”
“And now?”
“You mean, what I do, or how I make a living?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not for me.”
“Then you must be very rich.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Only rich people make this distinction.”
Paul wanted to object, to tell him that he was wrong, but then he realized where he was. From Da Long’s perspective, he was really an extremely wealthy man. A question of perspective. “I live from the returns on my savings. I live simply. In Hong Kong no one would call me rich. In China yes.”
“And what do you do?”
No one had asked him this question for a long time.
“What do I do . . . ?” Where to start? “I had a son. He died. Since then . . .” Paul did not know how he should put it in words. “Since then . . . since then, I don’t do much.”
Da Long looked at him for a long time. There was no suspicion in his look, more wonder and curiosity, perhaps respect too, but Paul did not know him well enough to be certain. His face had stopped twitching, and his lips were no longer drawn thin.
“When a person’s true self has not emerged, it will surely do so during the mourning period.”
“Who said that?”
“Confucius.”
Paul closed his eyes. An inner voice repeated the words; he let his head fall back on the leatherette couch. If this statement by the Chinese philosopher was right, when he looked back on what had unfolded in the last three years, he had to ask himself what kind of person he was. Someone who could not let go? Who enjoyed wallowing in self-pity? Someone who knew no limits?
No limits to his ability to grieve.
No limits to his ability to isolate himself.
No limits to his fear, to his rage, to his longing.
No limits to his ability to love.
He had always been comfortable with extremes. He had left home at nineteen after his mother had taken her own life, and had never seen his father again. He had left the country he was a citizen of, according to his passport, and had returned only once, for his father’s funeral. He had lost his last job as a reporter for an American magazine because he had poured his beer over the visiting chief editor during an argument at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. After that he had never written a line as a journalist again. After the birth of his son, he had wanted to be a father to the exclusion of all else; he turned down commissions and job offers and cared for the child while his wife pursued her caree
r at the bank.
He did not know a middle way. Hungry for love. Hungry for life.
Maybe, he thought, he had withdrawn not so much from life after Justin’s death as from the community. Perhaps his true self had chosen the isolation of those years because it was able to emerge only that way, in that period of time. What was closer to living than to press up against oneself and look one’s own truth in the eye?
“I’ve never thought about it that way. Confucius may be right.”
“Then you really must be rich.” When Da Long saw that Paul did not understand what he meant, he added, “Anyone whose true self emerges is rich, isn’t he?” Da Long smiled mischievously. He got up, went to the kitchen, and returned a few minutes later with a pot of tea, two cups, and a bowl of roasted watermelon seeds.
“And you?” Paul asked.
“I’m an engineer. After the Cultural Revolution I went to college and worked first in a military factory in Sichuan, then for a company in Yiwu that manufactured tools. I took early retirement a year ago.”
“And?”
“There’s no and.”
Paul leaned his head to one side and gave him a look of disbelief. “That must be the short version.”
“You’ll get the details another time,” Da Long said firmly, but not in an unfriendly way.
Paul wondered for a moment if he should ask Da Long about Christine, but decided in the end that the reasons for the silence in the Wu family were none of his business. If Da Long wanted to, he would tell him about it at some point.
He remembered the fortune-teller’s words instead. “Do you believe in Chinese astrology?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Just wondered.”
Just wondered? A questioning look.
“The short version of my reply. You’ll get the details another time,” Paul said.
Da Long smiled. “When two people have the same sense of humor, the house of friendship stands on good foundations.”
“Confucius?”
“No. Da Long.”
It was the first time that Paul had seen him laugh heartily.
“I think that there are lots of things between heaven and earth that we can’t explain but that are true all the same. Whether astrology is one of those things, I cannot say.” Da Long looked at the clock and stood up. “I have to prepare a lotion for Min Fang.”
Paul followed him into the tiny kitchen, where Da Long fetched an old kitchen scale and carefully adjusted the weights. He took a handful of herbs out of a porcelain jar and weighed out fifty grams of it. He did the same with dried roots, leaves, mushrooms, and various unidentifiable animal body parts. Then he poured everything into a pot full of water and brought it to the boil, stirring all the time. Soon steam rose from the pot; it smelled unpleasant and stung the nostrils.
“A Chinese doctor prescribed this mixture. I have to rub it into her limbs three times a day. It’s supposed to help relax the cramping of her muscles.”
He poured the brew into a bowl and back into the pot again, repeating the procedure until it had cooled a little. Then he went to the bed, pushed the blankets aside, carefully rolled Min Fang’s pajama pants up, wet a cloth with the black liquid, and started rubbing it against her legs with slow, rhythmic movements. Next came the arms. Then Da Long brushed his wife’s hair, trimmed her toenails and fingernails, laid her back on the bed, and massaged her feet. While he was doing all this they did not exchange a word. Paul was not even sure if Da Long was still aware of his presence. Suddenly there was a sound of gas passing through. A brown stain spread on the bed linen. Da Long sighed briefly.
“Can I help you?” Paul asked, knowing that his offer didn’t sound convincing.
Da Long gave him a long look and, to his relief, shook his head. It was clear that he would prefer to be alone.
Paul took his leave and promised to be back the next day at eleven on the dot. He went in search of his taxi.
What do you believe in? He thought about Justin, about Christine’s question, and about her brother. Maybe, Paul thought, he would now say to his son and to her that he believed in human beings. In some of them, at least.
* * *
Back in Yiwu, he hurried to eat in a Hunanese restaurant opposite the hotel. He ordered “Chairman Mao’s Favorite,” pork with a thick rind and chunks of fat as big as his thumb, in a thick sweet-and-spicy sauce. He downed his beer quickly and was back in his room at the computer in less than half an hour. It would be a short night. There were 221,284 hits under the name of the Japanese fishing village. Paul crawled his way thought the endless World Wide Web, going deeper into the universe of letters, images, and numbers with each link. He made notes, compared figures, searched through archives, read scientific papers, and wrote emails to Christine and his friend Zhang in Shenzhen. Zhang had been made the head of the homicide department in Shenzhen the previous year after a corruption scandal, and he had been so busy lately that the two men had hardly seen each other. The last time he had visited Paul on Lamma, a few weeks earlier, they had cooked a meal together and promised again to meet more often. Now Paul urgently needed a contact in Shanghai from him. He would text him by tomorrow morning at the latest. He could count on Zhang.
Paul made a few calls to a professor at Mainz University, and had a long conversation with another in San Diego. He had gathered enough information for the next two or three days. After everything that he had read and learned, the diagnosis of a stroke in Min Fang’s case had to be wrong. Was it deliberate or due to incompetence? Shortly after five a.m., Paul finally went to bed. He switched off the light, exhausted, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
Da Long was incredibly tense. He paced the house restlessly, unable to be still for even a moment. The twitch in his left eye was back, and he stammered even more while speaking than he had done during the reunion with his sister. Paul tried to distract him by asking a few questions, but received only monosyllabic replies. He sat on the couch, drinking tea and eating roasted pumpkin seeds, wary of being drawn into Da Long’s agitation. The fear, the panic attacks before consultations with doctors. The ever-present desire for a miracle. The disappointments. The hope that kept resurfacing. He would never forget any of that. As though it were yesterday.
Dr. Zhou stepped into the courtyard at half-past eleven as arranged. He was a tall, gaunt man, wearing rimless spectacles, and even without speaking, he radiated calm and professional authority. He looked to Paul to be in his late thirties. He greeted them briefly, not in an unfriendly fashion, but with few words, sticking to the minimum. It was clear from his manner that by paying this visit he was doing a friend or acquaintance a not inconsiderable favor, one that he most probably expected to be returned.
He listened respectfully but impatiently to Da Long’s description of the first symptoms of the illness and how it progressed. Then he took a small flashlight, a small hammer, a tongue depressor, and an ophthalmoscope out of his bag and went over to the bed. Da Long and Paul followed him.
“How are you?” he asked Min Fang, not expecting a reply.
“Can you tell me what your name is?” He felt her neck, pulled her eyelids up, and peered at her eyes.
“Are you in pain?” Dr. Zhou opened her mouth carefully with a wooden stick, turned her head from one side to the other, lifted it slightly, and held it in his hand for a moment, as though he were feeling how heavy a fruit was. He lifted her arm and bent it until her fingers touched her chest, then laid it back on the blanket. Paul could see that Da Long was watching every movement keenly, and could guess what he was thinking: the desire for a miracle outweighed the suspicion. A loving heart. Exploitable, easily led astray. Defenseless against the promise of hope.
“Is anyone there? Can you hear me?” The doctor walked around the bed, testing the reflexes in her knees and feet with the small hammer. He wrinkled his brow in a worried way and asked to see the documentation from the hospital. Da Long passed him a big brown envelope. Dr.
Zhou opened it, took the test results and the CAT scans out, and held the images against the light, looking at each one of them in turn for a long time with great concentration. He put them aside, skimmed the written findings and the list of medications administered, looked at results of the tests on the blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and electrical activity in the brain, and finally put everything back in the envelope.
Da Long looked at him expectantly.
“Your wife is suffering from an irreversible, aggressive degenerative disease of the brain.”
I’m sorry to have to tell you. Da Long said nothing, and Paul could see that he was not in the position to ask any questions. This was why Paul had stayed.
“How do you know that?” Paul asked.
“Because from everything that I see, a stroke is completely out of the question. There is also no indication of a tumor in the scans. The symptoms and the way the illness progressed are clear. Is there any hereditary disease in this woman’s family that affects the brain?”
Da Long shook his head slightly. He reached out to lean on a chair, then sat down.
“To be absolutely sure, we have to get an MRI scan. But that can only be done in Shanghai. It’s very expensive and not necessary. It will only confirm my diagnosis, not help your wife. Recovery is out of the question. The brain has been irreversibly damaged. No treatment or medication in the world can bring her back.”
“Are you quite positive?” Paul asked.
“Yes, completely.”
Paul found the certainty in Dr. Zhou’s manner more and more jarring. The doctors who had treated his son in Hong Kong, especially Dr. Li, the oncologist, had been older; they knew that the human being was a mystery that had to be treated with respect, humility even, in full knowledge that every answer led only to new questions. There was not a hint of that in Dr. Zhou.
Dr. Zhou continued. “It’s difficult to make a prognosis. She could live on for several years in this condition or die in two weeks.”
“Might there be other medications that—”
“No,” the neurologist interrupted him. “You can give her something for her cramps and some pain relief, but you’re doing that already. Of course, there’s the matter of whether this is the right place for her. But that is a decision for the family, not a medical one, if you understand what I mean.”
The Language of Solitude Page 11