Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

  Riding in the taxi, I felt a mix of bewilderment and cool detachment. My heart’s desires were about to meet their doom. A knife was held against my throat. The moment of decision had arrived. If I had any residual feelings for her, I would stay at her side until the bitter end, no matter how degrading it was.

  I entered the emergency room. It was painted a cold, dreary shade of green and filled with the overpowering stench of medicine. I immediately spotted Xiao Fan. She was lying on a stretcher in the hall outside the internal medicine ward. Her eyes, dark and puffy, flooded with tears at the sight of me. Before my eyes, she had become feeble. She sobbed helplessly, her tears surging out from some inexhaustible source. She had come undone. Then and there, I told myself never to forget that image for as long as I lived.

  That image. It took me to a more profound place than I had ever known. God, how can I even explain? It dawned on me what Gabriel Marcel meant: I could write an entire book based on a single moment of silence. This was that moment of silence. In witnessing this woman’s breakdown, I was pulled into her destiny, and my fate became forcibly intertwined with hers. Observing her breakdown, I broke down. I lost myself. Yet there was something to be learned from the bond that was forged between us, though at the time, I didn’t realize it.

  With that breakdown came a total collapse. The weight of her sorrows came down on me, crushing me. Having asked to be responsible for her, and having ventured into her darkest depths, I finally shouldered the burden of my own desires. Unceasing tremors of all kinds—tremors of love, tremors of desire, tremors of hate, tremors of pain—coalesced inside me. It became perfectly clear that I’d always carried this image of the real Xiao Fan in my heart, and now it had materialized before me.

  So there I was, a complete outcast who’d had a collision with cold, hard reality. It didn’t matter what kind of person I was inside, how I yearned for a bond with Xiao Fan, or if my desire to love her had been my undoing: The world didn’t care. It was nothing personal. Even the woman right in front of me was telling me no. There was no right or wrong here. In the end, the world didn’t owe me anything, not even half a chance. That was the hand I’d been dealt in life, and while detachment was enough for me to withstand hatred, extricating myself from the jaws of suffering called for enough detachment to exercise cruelty.

  “Today I got a letter from him. I’ve waited four years for this and now it’s happened. He sent it from training camp. He said he’s decided not to marry me. Another woman is already five months pregnant with his baby. . . one of our schoolmates, younger than us. He said he was penniless and never worthy of me in the first place.” Xiao Fan gripped my hand tightly. Her hair was soaked with tears around her temples, and her cheeks were sunken. She was so emaciated that she no longer looked like an adult. With those words, she turned away. “He did it on purpose. He got her pregnant on purpose. His mother just came to see me. She said a few hours ago he was sent to a hospital . . . a firearms accident. It was all deliberate. . . .” Turning her head back again, she buried her face in my hands. “He’s still alive. Can you check on how he’s doing for me?” She lifted her head. Her eyes, full of trust, now locked with mine.

  “Sure, it’s just that there’s something else I have to do before I can go.” I looked away.

  “But . . . aren’t you going to go? Just when I really need you. . . . Isn’t that what you wanted more than anything?” She brushed away tears, her voice innocent and frail.

  “Xiao Fan, listen to me. This has been going on for a while, but I’ve never had the courage to tell you. I haven’t been doing so well these past two months. I’m barely getting by, and I can’t go on like this. I can’t play the same role that I played in the past. Things have only gotten worse. I can’t open up to you. I can’t even share the same space with you. I honestly feel like screaming at you. If I have to endure this drama of yours, I’ll explode with resentment.

  “This isn’t who I am. I don’t want to suffer. Love should be a beautiful experience. If it can’t be saved, then I don’t want to love anymore. I have to shut down. That’s how I am, and I’m not blaming anyone. I need to get away from you and your drama. I’m sick and tired of it. Do you hear me? I need a break!” I managed to keep my cool. I had no idea where those words came from.

  “I know.” That was the only thing she said. A burden was lifted from me. And it would always be, forever after.

  6

  At one in the morning, Chu Kuang came to see me. He wheeled his bike so we could walk down Roosevelt Road together.

  Taipei in June. It was late at night, and while the bustle on the streets had died down, a certain feeling still lingered in the air. The fiery red blossoms scattered on the cotton trees had multiplied overnight. Illuminated by the streetlights, they were almost radiant. This scene along Roosevelt Road had long become familiar to me. Every year, I anticipated the first red blossom and counted the days until the last had wilted. The tree-lined road was my earliest memory from freshman year. It was where the upperclassmen greeted us when we first arrived, and where heartwarming songs were sung in the darkness after the lights in the classroom buildings had been shut off. To this day, I can still remember so many faces. . . .

  “Gazing at the cotton trees?” Chu Kuang asked me thoughtfully. He was wearing white wide-leg jeans with a turquoise short-sleeve shirt. His usual stubble had been shaven off. Tonight, there was something different about him, as if he’d been transformed into this squeaky-clean new version of himself. Chu Kuang’s life was a constant drama. He seemed to have passed through a different chamber of hell every time I saw him. His ever-changing mien and the stories he told made it impossible to tell how he was really doing.

  “Chu Kuang, whenever I take the bus to campus and pass the cotton trees in bloom, I get the chills. It’s like my heart’s saying to my ex, ‘Look, the cotton trees are blooming again! It’s been four years.’ ”

  “You know what I think? Ever since that one night five years ago when Meng Sheng took a dump under the cotton trees by the campus entrance, whenever I see those cotton trees, I want to say, ‘Hey Meng Sheng, look! There’s your shit!’ ”

  “Chu Kuang, what’s going on with Meng Sheng these days?” I asked as we sat down by the campus entrance.

  “That’s exactly what I came to talk to you about, Sis. Meng Sheng has vanished from my world.” His face grew flush, and there was excitement in his voice. “Seven years passed in the blink of an eye. You might say I had an awakening. He was like a stain that washed out after a good rinse, and my clothes are nice and clean again. I don’t know why, but I felt like I should tell you. The drama’s over.” Amid his newfound maturity, his old innocence appeared to resurface for a second.

  “Well, you don’t have to convince me. I’m happy for you, Chu Kuang.” I couldn’t resist squeezing his hand. “How did this happen?”

  “Last month, when I was riding my bike, I got hit by a taxi, so I was taken to the hospital and my leg was put in a cast. I was bedridden for a week. During the crash, I had an out-of-body experience. For a minute, I felt as if I was lifted out of my body and looking straight down at myself. The past few years flashed before my eyes like a movie, and everything became clear. Then I reentered my body. The second I felt pain, I knew that Meng Sheng had been excised from me.

  “I couldn’t move for the entire week after I got my cast. It gave me a chance to sort out the past, which is how I arrived at the conclusion that I wasn’t in love anymore. I used to be fickle, but now I’m ready to commit to someone. I realized that love is the one thing I’ve been searching for all along.”

  “Chu Kuang, do you think it’s true that love never dies?”

  “Sis, I think you and I have both been through a lot.” He placed his hands on my head affectionately. “I honestly hope I’m experienced enough to impart a few words of wisdom.” He contemplated this for a moment. “I’m pretty sure it’s not true for you right now, or for me in the past, but I believe it’s true for me today.
”

  “But when you decide to love someone, how do you keep thinking of commitment as a choice, when you’re closing yourself off to opportunities that might lead to even greater happiness? And if you continually demolish your old internal structures, then how can you preserve enough of yourself to keep the same relationship alive day after day?”

  “Right now, I have a plan in my mind, and I can use that as a guide, but it’s not something I can describe.” He scribbled on the ground for a while, then murmured, “If it’s really love, it’ll work out.”

  “Have you ever really loved anyone?” I asked earnestly.

  “Sis, I love someone now!” His eyes lit up. “There’s an eighteen-year-old sailor who’s been pursuing me for the past two years. He’s in the naval academy, and he’s always at sea, but we meet up every so often. I haven’t seen him in a while because Meng Sheng made it hard for me to love.

  “I toyed with this little sailor, and he only fell harder. All of our arguments are caused by jealousy. He gets mad if I don’t need him. After my accident, he was huffing and puffing on the outside, but I caught a few glimpses of true love shining through. In the end, I was the one who was taken in—by his sincerity.

  “Now we’re living together in a log cabin in Danshui and being supportive of each other. I told him that from here on out, it’s for real. If he doesn’t grow up, I’m gone. I told him there are only two things: equality and honesty. I understand you, and you have to try your hardest to understand me. There are other people in my life too, you know. We’re open about everything. If you don’t love me anymore, fine. I’d rather know than have it hidden from me, even if it kills me. That’s how it is. I feel like I could be with him for a long, long time.” We turned onto Xinsheng South Road as he spoke. The streetlights cast a soft, gentle glow on his face.

  “Chu Kuang, don’t you think if you guys are both too masculine, there’ll be a serious conflict?”

  “It’d be hard to live together if he were a different man. But with us, we each have a husband and wife rolled into one!” He beamed with pride for a moment. Then his expression quickly faded. “Sis, I came all the way here to tell you something I feel strongly about: You haven’t been honest with yourself. You’re not ready to love someone if you can’t even admit your feelings and needs to yourself.”

  “Look at that big building over to the side—all the windows are lit now. When I was a freshman, only five of them were!” I turned and faced Chu Kuang. “I’ll remember what you said, Chu Kuang. I appreciate you looking out for me all this time. I hope you take good care of yourself in the future.” Chu Kuang hopped on his bike, and I waved goodbye.

  7

  DEATH EXPERIENCE #1

  A certain part of me has died as I’ve learned to leave behind the qualities of my youth—the overanxiousness, oversensitivity, and self-consciousness, not to mention arrogance and idealism, that diminish with life experience. I was a late bloomer, but at long last, I lost my innocence. Like anyone else when they’re young, I harbored lofty expectations but lacked the self-knowledge to comprehend my own passions and vices.

  DEATH EXPERIENCE #2

  I no longer think of myself as an unhappy person—quite the opposite. Admitting that I have problems is a mode of optimism, since every problem has a solution. Unhappiness is a lot like bad weather: It’s out of your control. So if I encounter a problem that even death can’t solve, I shouldn’t care whether I’m happy or unhappy, thereby negating both the problem and the problem of a problem. And that is where happiness begins.

  (from Suicide Studies)

  8

  Graduation day. No one came to my commencement. I zigzagged through the flocks of graduates in their black caps and gowns. There wasn’t a single person on that huge campus I wanted to see. I just ran around in circles, with no idea where I was headed. There was a sudden downpour in the afternoon, and in the panic that ensued, the crowd dispersed, going home or sheltering in nearby buildings. Yelin Avenue grew deserted as the rain pelted down, leaving a magnificent sheen on the surface of the road and not a soul to be seen under the open sky. Freshly invigorated, the flowers, grass, and trees took center stage. I walked down Royal Palm Boulevard alone, in full regalia. The wind and rain were wild, and there I was, taking it all in, with hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at me from indoors. I stood under the giant palm tree in the plaza at the campus entrance, getting drenched until it was nightfall and my eyes were swollen and aching from the rainwater.

  I went home. I got a strange call from Shui Ling. She’d graduated exactly a year earlier.

  “It’s me!” Her voice was small and wavering.

  “Hey!” I replied.

  “Do you have three minutes to talk to me?” she asked timidly.

  “Sure!”

  “Let me tell you a secret. . . . Today I went berserk. This morning my mother, father, and grandma were all telling me to wake up, but I stayed in bed and ignored them. I didn’t get up or go to work. Don’t tell anyone, but I was going to go to your commencement today. Hah. So finally my mom and dad got mad and left, and only my grandma and I were home. So I got dressed and tried on different outfits, but I couldn’t find one nice enough. I wanted to look my best for you. Suddenly the phone rang. It was her. She said, ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I thought about saying that I was going to see you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And that’s when I lost control and screamed ‘AHH!,’ and I hung up the phone and started throwing a fit. I was yelling at the top of my lungs. My grandma ran into my room and grabbed me. As I was screaming, she had a heart attack. She fell to the floor and said she was dying.

  “I was so scared, I ran and got her medication. Then the police came. They said the neighbors had called. I tried to stay calm as I sent them away. My grandma was on the floor, asking for a doctor. I said I’d wait for you to take me to the hospital. Then I waited by the phone. I kept dialing your new number. For half an hour, it rang and rang. You lied to me. You said I should call you before I went crazy, but you weren’t there. . . .”

  I hung up the phone and closed my eyes. All I wanted right that instant was to find Meng Sheng.

  Meng Sheng. Someone told me they’d seen him a lot recently in an abandoned security booth near the rear entrance after sundown. I rode around campus all night, searching for signs of him. When I found him, he was near a tall brick building in that area, curled up in the corner of a phone booth by the door, shooting up.

  I immediately recognized two signs of a full-blown addiction. His eyes were not only bulging but glassy and bloodshot. The skin on his face looked as if it had been partially gnawed away. His shorts were wrinkled, and on his feet, covered in mud, were a pair of canvas shoes that were falling apart. A gray coat was draped over his shoulders, revealing his bare chest underneath. His torso was wrapped in thick layers of bandages.

  I took his left arm and examined it, tracing the length of his veins. The skin was riddled with tiny needle-insertion marks. I took a few steps back and squatted on the ground. I lit a cigarette and took a few slow drags. Silence filled the air.

  “Hey, congratulations, you nabbed yourself a diploma! Me, I dropped out a long time ago.” He forced a cackle. “So, how about it? How does it feel, seeing me looking like a coward right now? It doesn’t matter what you say, I really am a weak man. I’ve been reduced to making a mess of myself like a three-year-old!” There was a strange wickedness in his laugh. His entire body shook as he coughed.

  “Shut up!” I shot him a stern look. Sulkily, he reached over and motioned for the cigarette. “How’d you get that wound on your chest? Tell the truth. I didn’t come to hear your bullshit.”

  “What’d you come here for, then?” he sneered. “This . . . this is from last week when Chu Kuang stabbed me, that fucker. He used this beautiful dagger I gave him. It cut through the skin, but didn’t puncture deep. I had to see a specialist. Why not send me to my maker once and for all, and save everyone the trouble? I was sent to the hospital, and
they operated on me and saved me. Look at me now—I’m permanently scarred!” His laughter reverberated inside the booth. “If you want me dead, no problem. Just give Big Brother a ring and he’ll have me lying soundly in my grave in a matter of days. It’s that simple. If I’ve got any brains, I’ll run. Then, when you receive word, you can be the star-crossed lover who rushes to my side, only to find me dead.”

  “Nonsense. Last night Chu Kuang came to see me. He said he was just in a car accident. He’s over you. He has a brand-new life now, and he’s happy. I saw it for myself. He’s a different person now,” I told him indignantly.

  A sinister smile crossed Meng Sheng’s face. For a long time, he didn’t reply. “He hasn’t changed. There have always been a lot of different Chu Kuangs inside of him. You can’t tell because you’ve only known the Chu Kuang that’s more or less stable. There’s a dominant Chu Kuang who can focus and interact normally whenever he has to. This past year, he stopped going to his psychiatrist. It was a gradual process, but one by one, each personality split off into its own domain again. Now there isn’t one that dominates anymore, and he switches depending on who he’s talking to.”

  He continued as if this were a funny anecdote. “I got to know his transformations well. There’s nothing wrong with how he’s been recently. This way, he doesn’t seesaw so much, since every part of him can come out and take a breather. Everybody gets a turn at being king. That’s where he’s heading, and he’ll probably outlive us both. I was the only one who got along with all of them, you know. I just find it fascinating.”

  I was quiet. “Meng Sheng, will you still die with me the way you asked me to four years ago?”