by A. Yi
“You know there is a scratch on my house’s floor, it’s from his leather shoe scraping. You can see there is a scrape on his sole. When I strangled him, his feet scraped the floor out of instinct. After he drank the tea I mixed with sleeping pills, he fell asleep. Then I pulled out the telephone cord, looped it around his neck, and strangled him to death. His head leaned against my ribs on this side, this rib still hurts.
“I killed him. There is nothing else to say. You Lius want compensation, I’ve saved up these years, saved seventy thousand, as repayment to you.”
After she finished a hush fell over the court. Liu’s mother held up the portrait. She wanted to say something but didn’t know what, so she just shook it. “Don’t make me see him. Disgusting,” Zhu Dan said. Prior to her execution, she wrote a brief letter saying: Xiaopeng, You must believe I love you. I’ve always loved you. Our son is yours.
In prison, she was constantly kneeling and she desperately kept her eyes shut like a firing squad was on the way but in the end was executed by lethal injection.
Spring
1
“Take a good look.” The young man stared a long while, suddenly covered his bulging mouth, hunched forward, and ran away. I even saw tears fall diagonally to the ground. The guard raised his eyebrows and ogled me. I told you not to look, what’s there to look at. He pulled up the shroud, and she was just an outline.
I walked right out of the funeral parlor. The young man squatting by the road had vomited thoroughly, but his fingers still pressed the ground, arms shaking incessantly. I patted him, and he turned, tears streaming endlessly like blood from a wound. I completely understood this pain. “Don’t be sad. You came and saw her,” I said.
The corners of his mouth moved.
I helped him up, and slowly we walked. He turned and looked at the funeral parlor. “I’m taking you to wash your mouth,” I said. “Just to wash your mouth.” We ended up at a corner store. I let him lean on the counter while I paid for a bottle of mineral water. I said: “Let’s go out and wash your mouth.” But he seemed asleep. I yanked him, he reacted, followed me out. His gargling was very mechanical like an old man chewing food. A dusty Santana raced over, passing us with a sudden swerve, almost brushing against us.
It stopped at the entrance to the funeral parlor.
A man in his forties squeezed out the driver’s side and hurried into the funeral parlor. He wore a yellow jacket and baggy jeans that only an obese person would wear, a bunch of keys dangling at his hip. Soon a short woman got out of the back seat. She wore a black robe, black pants, black leather flats, a piece of black gauze was pinned to her right sleeve, another piece clenched in her hand. She carried a black bag over her shoulder, ran after the man like a duck.
“Let’s go inside,” the young man said when it was almost dusk. I felt that for a long time he didn’t know what had happened in the world. He didn’t know a girl had died and didn’t know why he came. But when he finally woke up, he started crying again. I walked him into the funeral parlor. The temperature was very low, the hall cool, the guard mopping the cement floor. He said to us: “I really don’t understand.”
“It’s been a long day for you,” I said.
The guard had been mopping a clean spot back and forth for a while. He gestured for us to take the seats on the east side. I could then see the man and the woman sitting on the west. Unlike us – the young man was leaning against me mumbling nonsense – they sat two seats apart, arguing nonstop. They argued more and more bitterly, and their droning voices hovered overhead, making everyone dizzy.
“Stop arguing.” The guard thumped the mop on the floor. The man raised his head, and the woman pulled out a handkerchief, sobbing. When she got too excited, she stopped and blew her nose with her thumb and index finger. The guard bowed and continued to mop. I guessed the excessive boredom had so wrecked him that he saw the floor as some kind of piece of art he had to wipe over and over.
I saw the man was wearing a crimson T-shirt underneath, a gold ring on one hand. He sometimes rubbed his hair, sometimes scratched himself. He picked up the black gauze from the empty seat and pinned it to his sleeve then turned and said to the woman: “I’m wearing it now. I know she isn’t just your daughter, she’s mine too.” Then he looked at his watch and asked: “How much longer will it take?” The guard was still mopping the floor. “Do you really have to rush?” the woman said. The man glared at her, fierce light in his eyes. If we weren’t here, I’d have long beat you to death. But after some silence passed, the man’s eyes turned red and snot hung from his nose.
“I only have one daughter.” Sobbing, he dug out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one cigarette out and held it between his lips. Then he dug out a lighter and lit the cigarette. He smoked and coughed, tears dripping on the cigarette.
“Please put out your cigarette,” the guard said.
“Put it out where?” The man scanned the floor, the chairs, and the cupboard where various cremation urns were kept. The guard was still mopping the floor and seemed about to finish. The man tilted his head, regarding him somberly, then he took a long drag.
“I told you, no smoking in public places.” Even the young man in my arms was startled by the roar. The guard stormed over.
“If it’s not allowed, it’s not allowed. Can’t you be more polite?”
“Don’t you understand smoking isn’t allowed in public places?”
“Can’t you just be more polite? Did I offend you?”
“You didn’t offend me.”
The guard walked up to him and continued: “You haven’t offended me. If you want to smoke, could you please smoke outside?” The man rubbed his eyes, holding the cigarette in the other hand. The ash, which had grown quite long, dropped to the floor. The guard’s eyes followed it to the floor.
“I’m just smoking, what are you gonna do?” the man said.
“What am I gonna do?”
Probably to his own surprise, the guard gave the man a slap in the face. Now things got heated. The man straightened up, and grabbed the scrawny guard. “You know what, they’re cremating my only daughter. I only have one daughter, and she’s being cremated. Do you understand?” He pounded the guard in the face. “Do you understand?”
The guard screamed and shouted. The man took a look around him, then threw the guard to the floor, and gave him a kick. “Fuck you.” Then he took off the keychain and strode to the door. First I heard the Santana chirp, then the car door slam shut, and the engine start up, then came the sound of the tires scraping hard against the ground as the car turned. He fled.
The woman sat shaking. When the guard got up, she said: “I have nothing to do with him. He hasn’t been my husband for a long time.” The guard glared at her, and she shrank back. Then a worker in a white flame-retardant uniform rushed over with a shovel. She repeated those words. The shovel was smoking. Imagine, it must have been burning red when first taken out. Now it was gray. I remember seeing a blob trickle down the shovel, the way plastics trickle when burned. Then the woman made another remark. It was this remark that woke up the young man. He stood up straight, kept clenching his fists, then he walked toward the crematorium at the end of the hall. Before I rushed ahead, he had dropped to his knees and spread out his arms, babbling. I guessed he was begging them not to turn the body of the dead girl into nothing. Though it was inevitable, I still wished they wouldn’t burn her up real fast.
His face looked like water kept being poured over it. I wanted to fucking cry too. That woman, that is the deceased’s mother, said: “Spring, it was your dad who made you this way.”
She kept mumbling: “I’m always the one who cleaned up the mess. Not one time did I not. What responsibility did you ever take for your daughter? Where was your responsibility? You sized me up, you knew I was a softie, you knew when you ditched Spring by the road, I’d no doubt go carry her back. You were so he
artless. Spring wasn’t just my child. Weren’t you supposed to take some responsibility as a father? Why did I have to clean up your mess every single time? Was I born your servant?”
When the guard and the worker scurried to their boss’s office, the mother, who wore a black blouse, black pants, black leather shoes, and black gauze like a black duck, walked out clumsily but resolutely. She followed the footsteps of her ex-husband. She walked and said: “I will not come back no matter what. I’ve had enough. I’ve long had enough. I’ve decided if you don’t come back I won’t come back. You think I will, I definitely won’t. Let’s see who comes back, who’s more heartless. You leave her alone. I’ll leave her alone too. Let’s see who comes back.”
2
He took out the letter of introduction of no more than 30 words. Judging by its format, the letter was originally addressed to the prison, but the addressee had been changed to the funeral parlor. Where it said REASON FOR VISIT, the police officer put a slash. “You’d better write something specific here, like, ‘assisting investigation and interviews’”. He looked troubled. “That’s enough,” the police officer said. “We’ve never issued an introduction letter like this.”
He spent two days handling the matter. He called the journalists in his newspaper office, asking them to contact the journalists who covered the city’s political and legal news and ask the latter to get in touch with their contacts in the local public security bureau. Each link further than the next. His fellow journalists promised to do it right away, but he waited from morning to afternoon. In the end, he broke into the office, and called their names.
“Can’t you see I’m busy,” one of them said.
“I just want hurry to there to see her, brother,” he said more and more softly. “She’s my girlfriend, my woman.”
“Look, the sub-bureau will be off duty soon.”
Waiting, he thought: If this doesn’t work, pour petrol over the abandoned hearse at the corner of the parking lot. The only tire is flat anyway. The car is rusted inside and stuffed with damp wood sticks. Set them on fire to create smoke. When they rush over, slip into the funeral parlor. But this isn’t a wise move. Just grab a club and knock them down one by one.
The first time he walked into the funeral parlor, the guard stopped him. “Look at you.” He saw his shoes had left marks on the freshly mopped floor. “What are you doing?” the guard said.
“I come to see my woman. She died.”
“How many days ago was she moved here?”
“Should be seven or eight days.”
“Got your household registration?”
“No.”
“Marriage certificate?”
“We’re not married.”
“What do you have to prove you’re her boyfriend?”
“I’m her man.”
“Then so am I.” The guard continued: “You have to have a way to prove it.”
“Why would I lie to you? I still haven’t gotten to see her.”
“Everyone says so, that they’re the dead’s relative or close friend. Don’t you know the funeral parlor is also a place of business? You come when you want, leave when you want. Don’t you think you should follow the rules?”
“Look, there’s no one else here.”
“Rules are rules.”
“Please do me a favor.”
“Why do I have to do you a favor? I work here, and this is what I do. I have to ensure the dead are not disturbed.”
“She really is my woman.”
“No one says otherwise.”
You know what, in this world I only love her. If I can’t see her, I can’t go on living. If I can’t, don’t ever think you can. He took out two notes from his wallet and looked pleadingly at the guard. But the guard shoved his hands into his pants pockets and walked away without turning back. A while later, the guard came back with a mop and started to mop the floor under the young man’s feet.
“I have no time to get sentimental with you,” the guard said.
“I’m a journalist.” He thought a long while and said, “I have the right to investigate the cause of her death.”
“Didn’t you just say you were her man?”
“I’m a journalist and also her man.”
“Then your press card?”
“Didn’t bring it.”
“Go away.”
He took out the introduction letter of no more than 30 words and handed it to me. “I didn’t even know if this would work. I just stopped by to say goodbye to you. You’re a good person.”
“You have to rest first. You can rest at my place.”
“I have no time.”
“Let me go with you. I have nothing to do anyway.”
I have to thank you. But it’s better to do this myself. How can I express my rejection to you properly? I have to thank you. You are a good person. He seemed troubled. “I have to see her off anyway,” I said then put my arm around his shoulders, walked toward the garage. I drove him toward the outskirts to the west. The afternoon sun came through the car window; he got drowsy. He slept very little. Even if he had time to sleep, there were probably various nightmares mingling in his mind. A short while later he woke up and asked: “Where are we?”
“Still a long way to go.”
“I must have slept long.”
Then he looked ahead vacantly. Finally a big smoking chimney came into view. “Right there,” he said. And we drove to the funeral parlor beneath the chimney. In front of it was a cracked cement parking lot and a small flower bed with two rows of plastic flowerpots with plastic chrysanthemums inside.
The guard wore a uniform in the honor guard style, white from head to toe, including the leather shoes and gloves. Only his epaulettes and the decorative strips around his cuffs were red. He tapped the seams of his pants, looking at us as he walked over. The young man took out a pack of Chunghwa cigarettes and for a long time couldn’t figure out how to open the seal. He wrinkled all the filters, said, “Have a cig, boss.” The guard raised a hand to his lips, waved. “Don’t smoke.” He really should die.
“Read this please.”
The guard took the letter, turned and studied it in the sunlight. Then the young man clenched his right fist and raised it to his chest. He was ready to give the guard a blow on the back of the head. I pulled his shirt, but it only made him angrier. He waited until the guard waved and said: “You know, I act according to the rules. I do what the rules require me to do.”
I said, “Of course, of course.”
We followed him inside. Before entering the guard said: “Wipe them clean.” So we wiped our soles back and forth on the red doormat. Although the young man had been full of inner courage, as soon as he was inside the huge quiet hall, he became shaky, and sweat broke out all over his pale face.
The guard led us through the hall to the boss’s office. A man with glasses was reading a newspaper. When the introduction letter was handed over to him, he signed it without reading it. Then we went back to the hall and walked out through the small door on the north-western side. At the end of the path was the crematorium. They say the incinerators there shimmer, are neatly arranged like bread ovens. The mortuary was halfway down the path to the crematorium, adjacent to cold storage on the left. “The refrigeration is broken. We tried to fix it but failed. So we have to burn her today no matter what. Gah, we’ll have to cut the corpse open, otherwise it’ll burst,” the guard said.
The young man stopped, unable to walk on.
“You insisted on seeing it,” the guard said.
The young man gasped, took several deep breaths, before managing to keep walking. The guard pushed open the frosted glass door; a pungent smell of formaldehyde rushed out. There were 10 or so iron beds inside. Some were covered with shrouds, showing the outline of the corpses. There was a ring of moss six inches high around the corner
s. Where there are corpses vegetation flourishes, I thought. The guard walked straight to one of the corpses. Like a magician he lifted a corner of the white shroud and said: “Do you really want to see it?”
The young man nodded seriously.
Slowly, the guard raised the shroud. Ah, it’s still so disgusting to think of now. Spring lay there, swollen to twice her size, but her belly was shriveled, the opening in her shirt revealed rough stitch marks from the autopsy; the skin was one part brown, one part black, like tofu going moldy; only her face retained some slight traces of her former image, but her ears stretched out from her cheeks, eyeballs protruding, lips swollen and turned out, showing teeth like sharp stones. I twisted my face and closed my eyes in agony. I’d already vomited hard because of the corpse once. The young man kept standing stiffly. The guard asked him:
“You look?”
“Yes.”
“Take a good look?”
“Yes.”
3
I entered the apartment block where my home was. The elevator door opened at the fourth floor. A young man was squatting in the opposite corner. He met my gaze and wanted to say something, but I stopped him. I walked over, and opened the door of my home. I heard a slight rustle; it was him standing up. I turned to look. His lips opened again, again they closed, like a tent put up with difficulty suddenly falling to the ground.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Are you Mr. Chen?”
“I don’t feel well, and I won’t give an interview to any of you.” I shut the door. After a while, there was a knock on the door. I pulled the door open and shouted: “Enough, buddy, I said enough.”
“I’m Spring’s ex-boyfriend,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m Spring’s ex-boyfriend.”
“What are you up to?”
“I’m wondering if she left anything here.”