Two Lives

by A. Yi

  Done cursing, she used a vicious tone to tell Aunt Wen: “You’ll see.”

  “Okay, I’ll see,” Aunt Wen said.

  That’s how the old woman died.

  * * *

  Ruijuan went home for the wake. Her waist-length hair cut by half, her lips smeared with dark-red lipstick – wild, dangerous, aggressive yet aggrieved. It seemed she wanted to change her look to please others and wanted completely to ruin herself. Her eyes were cloudy. Two hours after her grandma had died, her phone was still off. The news of her death got to her by word of mouth. They said in Jigong Ridge a fierce old woman had been killed by her own anger.

  When she got back, the first rain had wet the spent firecrackers. The doorway was being lit temporarily by a light bulb. Above the door green letters read: voice and image remain clear. Her uncles, who wore muddy black rain boots, sat hunched in the hall on the first floor, smoking silently. Halfway through a cigarette, one of them tore open a new pack and handed each person another one. “Still got one,” they said, taking it and putting it behind their ears. When Ruijuan entered, they raised their heads at once, took a look at their city-born niece, then bowed their heads. The look in their eyes was as elusive as an animal’s. She wanted to greet them then decided not to. (When they brought back their mother’s urn from the funeral parlor two days later, they each spat at it, some even blew their noses on it. They hailed a little pickup to take the urn back home. But halfway, still burning with anger, they threw their mother’s ashes in a dirty pond.) From the second floor came the fake cries of Ruijuan’s mother: “My mom, my mom, my mom, how could you leave us to go first, Mom?” How fake was it? It was fake to the point that the crying and the person could separate: the person could go pee and come back while the crying still soared beside the corpse.

  Ruijuan’s father, Little Big Zhang, waited on the second-floor landing, smoking a cigarette. Due to the smog, he squinted one eye. He obviously didn’t smoke. He tried to pry open a perfectly glued-shut box, phone between shoulder and ear. He watched Ruijuan coming up while attending to the third hour-plus-long issue on the phone (first, he asked his son, Ruijuan’s younger brother, Ruijiang, not to come because exams are soon, studying is more important. Second, the cremation, it’s all right if the funeral parlor doesn’t want to send a car, we’ll take the body back to the countryside and bury it, don’t say we’re breaking the law. And transporting the remains was supposed to be the responsibility of the funeral parlor. We’ll pay, but they still refuse, I don’t understand what they’re thinking. Third, demolition, if you’re demolishing my house, you can do it however you want, I 100 per cent agree. The problem is the houses are up against each other, the houses on either side share walls, I can make my own decision, but I can’t make a decision for the neighbors. I said that yesterday, and the day before, hoping you would understand, this has nothing to do with me being a Party member or teacher of the people). It was the first time he watched his daughter coming toward him like this. He couldn’t see her face, nose, eyes, or neck, just the top of her head slowly moving up the stairs. Her newly cut hair looked like a ponytail palm, puffing up on top and hanging down around her head. He saw in her hair a slight quiver (because she was in awe of him) and a few premature white strands. I’m not the only one with white hair. My daughter has it too, he thought sorrowfully. As she was coming up, he hardened his tone and spoke each word clearly:

  “You did a good job.”

  He saw his daughter lurch and cry out loud. “Stop crying,” he added. Then, to his wife who had ceased crying (his loyal and ignorant servant), he said, “I’m going home. I may come back. I may not. Call me if something happens.” As a decent man, before leaving, he thanked Aunt Wen again for staying there. “There’s nothing to thank me for,” the latter said as she was walking his grieving wife to the back room to rest. Ruijuan was left alone with the body. She picked up a black gauze strip from the straw basket, pinned it to her sleeve, and quietly moved toward the body covered by a shroud. Back when she studied at Number Two Middle School, during recess, she and her classmates would run wildly to Railway Dam to see the corpses crushed by trains casually covered by straw mats. It was human nature to be curious about death. She was being curious now, though she seemed to have gone through so many things that day and was psychologically drained. The old woman’s eyes rolled up. The nostrils and mouth were wide open. A few remaining teeth were sticking out randomly like stones. She looked like someone come to a halt in a snore about to swallow down the air left in their mouth. Her female friends who went to a sermon later said: “God said to Israel that Joseph would be on his death bed and close his eyes with his own hands. But Grandma Zhang died with her eyes open.”

  Then Ruijuan started to cry. Her crying was filled with the imitation of other grown-ups. She punched the edge of the bed, loudly blamed herself for not cooking for her grandma, which had led to her death (“It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be this way?” she asked herself). She also blamed herself for not coming to her grandma’s deathbed in time. Thus she took responsibility upon herself but not for a second did she believe it was the truth. Later, probably at the thought of her own unhappiness and frustration, the young woman let herself go and indulged in wailing by the body. When the crying became overly excited, she stomped. Aunt Wen hurried over, patted her back, and said: “Enough, enough. Crying like that is enough. Don’t hurt your body.” But she was still wailing, “My grandma, my grandma”. A few times her eyes rolled up in her head, and she almost passed out. Aunt Wen took care of her until she came back to this rational and normal world. The traces of tears were still on her face, but she was completely sober. She was sober yet puzzled. Like a confused pupil she asked Aunt Wen: “I wonder why my grandma said this. It seems I just heard her say: If I die, I’ll definitely take you.” Aunt Wen suddenly stood up, almost out of reflex, her face deathly pale. Half an hour later she was at her own home. Looking in the mirror, she found her face still deathly pale, without the slightest blush. Then, at the thought of what Ruijuan had said to her, she could still feel the chill in her body. Because when the old woman was about to die, she heard her say the same thing, word for word:

  “If I die, I’ll definitely take her.”

  To prove she meant it, the old woman gripped Aunt Wen’s hand and said again: “You’ll see, you’ll see when I take her.”

  * * *

  Some people remembered, around midnight in Liuhu Bar, seeing young Zhang Ruijuan wearing a black gauze strip. Grandma’s death gave her an excuse to drink. She always said, “You know, my grandma died, the grandma who raised me died.” As she spoke she shed tears. Hard rain fell all night like the Bible says: That same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. Early the following morning, the sanitation worker Li Shili found Ruijuan lying prone in a puddle, already dead. Later Li Shili returned to the scene. When two hired hands turned the body over at the instruction of the forensic scientist, everyone shouted – there was a deep hole in the body’s white waist from the body being pressed against a pointed rock, pressing the whole night. After Li Shili returned to the scene, she nervously looked at the shiny ring the dead wore on her right middle finger. She struggled a long time with herself about whether to remove it or not.

  The forensic scientist denied that it was a murder or that the body had been moved there. “If she drowned herself, how could it be possible in such a small puddle?” Little Big Zhang asked. “You just never saw this before,” said Little Yuan, the forensic scientist. Little Yuan had graduated from a five-year bachelor’s program at Gan’nan Medical School, a highly educated person whose words people tended to trust. In the end, Little Big Zhang picked up his daughter’s wet body. Her eyes were like the eyes of a dead chicken, slightly closed but a slit. Her extremely thin deer legs hung loosely. She was so scrawny, so totally different from the chubby little girl she once was. She had gotten her weight down to
less than 80 pounds. When Little Big Zhang first heard the news, he started running, but no matter how he tried he couldn’t get going. Walking was too slow, so he skipped, he skipped all the way. As soon as he saw his own daughter, he couldn’t help but let the tears fall.

  Predator

  1

  I appeared at the entrance to the Research and Analysis Center like an invisible man. My footsteps were among the footsteps of a crowd of returning travelers. The one in the lead was dragging a suitcase, the fixed wheels rolling on the cobblestones, from north to south, rolling through the lane. After five o’clock, every few minutes a large part of the sky turned black. All of them were grandly dressed like yaks, to keep out the famous damp cold of their hometown. I quietly stopped at the entrance to the Research and Analysis Center. Only it still had business. Mr. Fish and a shrunken-neck woman sat by a heater, turning their palms up and down to get warm. “Right right right,” they very genially responded to each other’s words.

  The reason he was called Fish was because his head looked like a fish head. Because of his bimaxillary protrusion deformity (buckteeth) and nasal bone concavity, his lips protruded more than any part of his head. When the mouth was almost closed, between his lower lip and chin there was an obvious bulge of soft tissue. On either side of his upper lip there were long strands of hair, similar to a carp’s.

  The streamlined structure of a fish allows it to swim fast and long in the water. Mr. Fish craned his neck like a turtle almost all year round, which made the head, and the lips and teeth at the front of the head, dissociated from his body, which also seemed to show an evolutionary force. Ever since the door of light was forever closed, he had been filled with the desire to pry and confide. He was so keen to get information from the outside, so keen to communicate with the outside, he always turned his head to listen, always asked questions, laughed, and flattered. To receive his visitors, he bought two long benches, each could seat four people (although to some customers, fortune-telling was supposed to be a private matter). When I quietly walked in, the woman in an eggplant-purple down coat quietly turned her head and looked toward me. I was followed by a woman in a light-yellow wool coat. The timing was quite good. The newcomer thought I was inside, the one inside thought I came in with the newcomer. I sat down at almost the same time as the newcomer. She sat on the bench on the south side, sat by the woman who had come earlier, Mr. Fish gently adjusted the space heater, allowing the newcomer to be blessed with the warm light too. The round reflection sheet gave out a dazzling shine, like a sunflower, always facing a newcomer. I sat on the bench on the east side. The newcomer gave me a slightly uneasy glance. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me, I thought she was thinking. She turned her head back, told Mr. Fish the eight characters of her birth time, which was not improper. I did my best to steady my breath. I really was blatantly hiding three feet from him, could even smell the foul smell baked in his crotch.

  He started rambling. Just like the one I had seen before at the north entrance of the street (East Street), only without an erhu in hand. Before, those blind men would sit in a row at the foot of the wall, basking in the sun, waiting for customers. Now they all rent a storefront near the south entrance, set up their own business. Mr. Fish’s was called Yuan Tiangang Research and Analysis Center. Inside was just an electrometer, a hanging scale, a water dispenser, and a table clock which rang in spasms when it was almost time. The north wind blew through the lane, blew into the room, I was a bit drowsy. He was simply babbling. I turned my head to have a look. The street looked lonelier, colder, the girl selling socks across the street stamped like a crane. Took a long time to stamp once – keeping the leg lifted, then finding the chance to stamp again. When I turned back, I was startled to see his entire face facing me. I almost stood up. His two useless, wax-white eyeballs were staring at me, head shaking slightly. I was horrified by the sheer hollowness in that pair of eyes, right in the hollowness great resentment hid: I hoped no one would secretly show up beside me, make fun of me, really hoped not. They stayed looking at me. I tried to convince myself and to convince him that this was just the overreaction the blind always had, they often, feeling extremely confident, attacked aimlessly. But I didn’t make a sound at all. I held my breath, waited for him to slowly settle down. Then just as I was about to settle down as well – he got relaxed, went on talking with the woman in wool coat – he suddenly turned his head again, gave me an extremely strange, even biting smile. My face went completely red, though he couldn’t see anything.

  I’d underestimated the vigilance of a lord in protecting his land, also underestimated a blind man’s unusual sense ability. Perhaps even the shadow of a bicyclist gliding by like a swallow could startle him (my philosophy lecturer from the normal college had repeatedly preached that ‘shadow has mass’ – ‘existence is mass, like shadow, light’. But I believed that a sharp blind man could certainly sense the fleeting coolness, capture the subtle variations of air current), and besides, I came with a body full of smells. The smells from a long-distance trip hid deep in my hair, coat, and gloves, couldn’t be shaken off. When they spoke, they faced him, but the one or two times they faced me (especially when coming to crucial points), were enough to convince him: there was a person, a young man embodying atheism who made them uneasy. He did sit there day and night, his sense of smell, sense of hearing, sense of touch had been cut square, like a fence planted in the area he rented. I’d heard before that some magical blind men have stronger abilities than ordinary people in sensing the course of events. They can, just by hearing a passerby stop his clanking footsteps a dozen meters away, determine that there is a hesitant stranger behind them. They turn, before the other greets them, and greet them.

  We often forget this point.

  Mr. Fish went on with his shameless speech. For him, he just needed to open his pocket, and the woman in the wool coat, ready to sell herself out with credulity, would jump in herself. Women that age were the easiest targets that fortune-tellers, magicians, and manipulators could get their hands on. I listened carefully only a moment, then got sleepy (there was some kind of funny music to his tone, which paralyzed people’s wills, made people sleepy). In my view his performance was actually pretty unprincipled.

  *

  First, he chanted a passage of incantation: . . . . .(rhyme).

  *

  Then, commenting on the incantation, he made ambiguous remarks (like “Worse than the best, better than the worst”), considered the other’s response, observed the other’s expressions, beat about the bush.

  *

  Third, waited for the other to reveal information, as if choosing between A and B.

  *

  Fourth, firm judgment. If the other reveals more information, then he’ll cut in loudly, making the conclusion his own.

  *

  And repeat. After calculating the other’s age, making judgments everywhere, like a judge pronouncing a list of judgments.

  *

  When Mr. Fish said, “We may as well meet schemes with schemes,” I couldn’t help but snort. Of course this didn’t stop the two women from praising his magic. They always mistook what they said to the other as what the other said to them. Right right right. They responded to him enthusiastically, with such keen enthusiasm and the excitement of complete immersion, like the concubine who heard a faraway aunt would come visit. At that moment, a straggler in the crowd passed the Research and Analysis Center, said to me: “What you staying here for?”

  “Staying to listen a bit.”

  (Sometimes while window shopping, friendly shopkeepers walk up, ask me which one I have my eye on, I casually say: “Just taking a look.”)

  “Don’t be late.”

  He walked briskly away with the anxiety of missing the bus. The sky was completely dark a few minutes later. The two women rose one after the other. Following them, Mr. Fish rose, smiling wholeheartedly. “It’s a twenty-yuan note,” the
woman in the woolen coat said. Mr. Fish humbly took it, took out five yuan, and gave it to the other. Once they were gone, I seemed to have lost my cover, was about to go too. Then in the light coming from the heater, I saw, on the blind man’s face, the awkwardness of not being able to deal with himself after the jabbering, which we ordinary people often experience. Why was I being so mouthy? I thought his heart must feel hollow at the moment. Then the remaining, slightly abashed smile faded forever – like an iron flower folded up cruelly – in its place was an extremely deep, sharp indifference. The play was over, the stage was empty. He felt the Braille on the money, folded it up, slowly jammed it into the hidden pocket of the trousers. Then squeezed the thickness of it. Then stood there, started counting on his fingers. I was about to, as I’d come in, go out silently when I heard him say:

  “Is Ai Zhengjia your grandpa?”

  My legs shook. In my heart a sense of weightlessness rose like there had been a cushion waiting where it fell every time, but this time the thing was gone. My heart had never been as flustered as it was now. Deep fear took root and sprouted in my body. My grandfather was Ai Zhengjia, my father was Ai Hongsong, my name was Ai Guozhu. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. He followed me out, cold and merciless footsteps probing behind me. I walked to the road. “You should—” Hearing him about to go on, I started running. When I ran to the Luohu Parking Lot, I vomited up a mouthful of water. The minibus bound for my birthplace was just then starting. They all said my hair was completely soaked, as if showered by rain. I’d never had a word with him. I had nothing to do with those two women. Nobody had reminded him who I was midway. Equally impossible that someone had reminded him in advance that I would come. That was the first time I ever got close to him. I had been away for 11 years. I was one of the 400,000 or so people taking shelter in this county. I only had a word with an acquaintance (I knew he and him had never talked). So many people, so many fish, how could he nail me in one go? Before he said anything (“You should—”), I ran away, I knew that was how Grandpa had fallen into their trap back then.