Two Lives

by A. Yi

  That day, his answers were fluent.

  Gentle as the usher in a red robe at the entrance of the foot spa center. Even holding a sort of gentleness tinged with fear.

  When the panic came, in most cases it was to prove she was a sensitive, suspicious woman, but once or twice – for example, many days after he smiled strangely, she rolled up his trousers leg, found the leg had swollen to twice its size, covered in black bruises (“If maggots take hold, this person is done for,” Chen Zonghuo shouted, carrying him, running madly to the clinic. Meanwhile he tilted his head, eyes tinged with some drunkenness, looking sourly at her running behind in great shock.) – was enough to prove he was a cold-hearted traitor. Like his two elder brothers who had died young, body here, heart elsewhere. Since his birth, the expression in his eyes was not right. His two elder brothers were killed one after another by the legendary quilt killer (a mysterious respiratory failure occurring in sleep). This made her and Chen Zonghuo more tense. He, like his elder brothers, was silent, as if waiting wholeheartedly for Death to come, as if that was his real father, he was waiting for his real father to take him away. As if the waiting was his career, but she and Chen Zonghuo had delayed him so, so long.

  She called again, expected to get his approval.

  “Nothing’s wrong, why come to see me?” he said.

  “I just think something’s wrong,” she said.

  “You think something’s wrong, so something’s wrong, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Something must be wrong.”

  “Hey, why would I lie to you?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “I said nothing’s wrong, it means nothing’s wrong, why would I lie to you?”

  “If nothing’s wrong, why are you coughing?”

  “Coughing’s very normal. You cough too.”

  “You must be keeping something from me.”

  “Why can’t you be reasonable, why would I keep things from you?”

  “I’m coming anyway.”

  “Don’t come.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I’ll say it again, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, okay? If something was wrong, fine, come, nothing’s wrong, so why come?”

  “Even if nothing’s wrong, can’t I come to see you?”

  “No.”

  “I have to come.”

  “Dammit, old woman, how can you be so annoying?”

  “I’m not coming to see you.”

  “Then to see who?”

  “I’m coming to see someone else, I’ll see someone else. Be a good person, do good things, bring something to someone else, is that wrong?”

  “Fine, go see someone else.”

  She thought he had hung up, then heard another vicious sentence from the phone. “You are really fucking sick you know. You are really fucking sick.” She stood, stunned. Not ruminating on her son humiliating her, but as usual, letting herself argue with herself. The first self was like his stepmother, or the aunt next door, the second self was his real mother. The first self said: I don’t let my son make fun of me. The second self’s face went crimson, putting up with the lengthy reproach from the first self, finally tenaciously saying: So what, what I would lose going there, wouldn’t lose any property, any land. Thus the woman ended up leaning on the worry flickering nonstop in her heart (perhaps it was the overdose of tea that day that caused the palpations), and that afternoon, with her head held high, headed for Laoyangshu Town a dozen miles away.

  “She was like a monkey jumping off the huge, heavy-duty bike,” Qiuchen, who ran a noodle restaurant, said. “She said she planned to go back, because she remembered that last time her son said that to her too.” The noodle restaurant stood like a sentry at the end of the country road, only a dozen meters from Laoyangshu Town’s paved road. It wasn’t until two months later that Junfeng’s mom would come to this noodle restaurant again. Then she looked extremely hungry, gobbled and gulped, the tip of her nose and forehead sweating. “Are my noodles really that delicious?” Qiuchen said.

  “Very delicious,” Junfeng’s mom said.

  Finished eating, she looked straight at the poster pasted on the side of the refrigerator (there Pan Weibo tilted his head to gulp a bottle of coke), sneakily inched the paper napkins to the edge of the table, pulled them into her pants pocket. “A big stack, more than 10,” Qiuchen said. “She thought I didn’t see, or, thought I couldn’t see, or, thought I wouldn’t say anything even if I saw. She thought right. Then I thought, even now, still knows how to take advantage, then clearly this person’s okay.”

  She held the bike, said to Qiuchen, “Said this last time too, dammit, old woman, how can you be so annoying.” The more he said this, the more she wanted to come, but last time she didn’t find anything, it was like he had been insulted, cursing at her with extreme anger, telling her to fuck off. So she was hesitating, would this time be like last time. Qiuchen felt like reminding her (like someone itching to say the answer to a riddle, wanting to give a hint to the person about to head in the wrong direction), but, as she was about to touch the other’s arm, this female cook stopped. If the other was told. . .Qiuchen couldn’t foresee the risk it would bring, or what risk it wouldn’t bring. Nothing was safer than pretending to be the ignorant. Qiuchen cleared her throat, just like God, mercifully watching the other turn around in circles. She looked only as tall as the bike, funny even imagining her getting on it, but when she did get on it, she was so dignified. She glanced at the time and the distance she had gone, then pedaled a few steps, lifted her right leg over the bike frame, steadily rode to town. Still early, she seemed to say to Qiuchen, or seemed to say to the little person inside her body, Almost there, besides, why’s this town your town alone?

  On that overly bright afternoon, the townspeople walked out in disappointment. Twenty minutes ago, the police cars drove out of the police station and the transport police division, blared sirens, stopped at several intersections, intercepted cars. Their intercoms kept blasting, as if a fleet was clamoring over, but the rumor only spread a few minutes then stopped: no sort of founding father but a bunch of deputies of the National People’s Congress would pass through. The situation was just as expected, after a police car sped by to clear the way (its siren only gave a shriek, very abruptly), a light-brown minibus followed, rambled past. That’s all. But they still kept glancing back, until Widow sped down riding her bike.

  She flew by in a whizz.

  Those who knew Junfeng and her, couldn’t help but half raise their hands, move their feet forward, but very quickly were stopped by an invisible boundary of pain (like fishes in an aquarium anxiously jostling against the glass wall, while knowing they couldn’t wake up the ignorant travelers walking briskly by in the transparent, underwater tunnel). On Widow’s wrinkled face there was neither pain, nor lack of pain, there was just what Chairman Mao called seriousness. She rode the bike with extreme seriousness, rode toward her son’s place of work. The bike brushed past the quiet street, too fast for the spokes of the wheels to be seen. For the people it was a helpless kind of pain, difficult to share with the party concerned, could even be called the pain of the philistine. The last time they felt such pain was when they watched a father narrow his eyes, hold a cigarette between his lips, and driven by curiosity, make his way to the bank of the pond (he didn’t know why he suddenly got such respect that everyone made way for him. His only son, the dead, like a shaved dog corpse, dripping with water, was lying on the grass, waiting for him).

  Since that afternoon, the townspeople, like Qiuchen, just held their useless pain, stood afar, watched her break through to the truth, indulge in the truth, struggle with the truth, and drown in the struggle. The tragedy that happened later was like an awl piercing their hearts. It s
eemed so unexpected, but it also seemed fated.

  Widow was going to hear at the end of this trip:

  her son Junfeng, 33, still unmarried, would punctually die three months later.

  This was the conclusion reached by two professors (one was a PhD supervisor; the other was a Master’s supervisor) after multiple calculations. That day, they got off the medical school’s bus like generals, followed by a dozen pretentious students, who from time to time gave the crowd sidelong glances. The director of the local health bureau, like a dog, led the way himself. When they jumped onto the extremely filthy stairs of the township health center, the hems of their robes rippled, their presence was quite something. Because the newcomers were too great in number, three other patients in the ward were kicked out. Junfeng showed brief excitement as the honor to do something for medicine shined in his heart, he knew nothing about medicine, but he knew he was a precious living body. In the future, perhaps he would become a precious dead body, long soaked in formaldehyde (through his entire convalescence, he was lifeless, his body seemed already on the mortuary bed, just waiting for the breath to slowly drain). Equally honored was Doctor Liu, head of radiology at the township health center, it was she who had sharp eyes, discovered this difficult case from a pile of photos. Then in the Tuberculosis Institute (the Tuberculosis Research and Prevention Institute) of the Number Two Municipal Hospital, he did a series of tests (including a sputum culture, an enhanced CT, a CT guided puncture, a bronchoscopy, a bone marrow aspiration, a lymph node biopsy, and more than 70 tubes of blood withdrawal) which confirmed that

  it was tuberculosis, but also not

  it was pulmonary embolism, but also not

  it was pneumoconiosis, but also not

  it was interstitial pneumonia, but also not

  it was panbronchiolitis, but also not

  it was fungal infection, but also not

  it was tumor (lung cancer, lymphoma), but also not

  it was vasculitis, but also not

  it was an IgG4-related disease, but also not

  It was a familiar, ambiguous, diagnosable, but not exactly diagnosable, severe disease. It had many similarities, but from somewhere inside, it denied it was a definite disease. Perhaps the medical journals of the future could provide a clear name, provide a solution. But at present, clinicians could only consolingly give the patients an IV of anti-inflammatories, or, to deal with the cough, prescribe some compound methoxyphenamine capsules. Every day it seemed that he was evaporating, irrevocably trimmed down from all sides. Because of their own inability, and in order to save him money, they let him return to the township health center. First the doctors kept it from Junfeng for a month, then he kept it from his family for almost two months – She always gave him reasons to feel shamed (either by wearing blue polyester work clothes printed with the manufacturer’s name like ‘Xuejin Beer’ on the back, or by wearing that pair of wintermelon-green liberation shoes), so he always objected to her coming to town, so as not to harm his identity as a townsperson – Until she, pulled by strong worry, stormed town herself. The two professors took out the CT photo buried under the bed, held it up to the light, pointed to each other, Look, so crowded, huge development from last photo, and still developing. This reminded Junfeng of the frights he experienced the previous few times. When he went to the Tuberculosis Institute’s outpatient department for checkups, he waited more than a week for the results of the laboratory tests, when he registered again and came to the doctor, the other said anxiously: “Go to the big hospital, we’re a small hospital, this checkup, that checkup, all take a week to get the results, will have you completely delayed.” There was another time, in the Number Two Municipal Hospital, the ward doctor looked at the blood test result, stood still for a long time then said, “How’d it get so bad?” That day sweat poured out from Junfeng’s soaked hair, his whole body seemed to have sweated a layer of thick hot mud. But also from that day on, he had little regard for life and death. Like indulging in games, he indulged in waiting for death. He regained his detached nature, detached from things, and detached from himself. He put on earphones, lay for a long time, listened to a song with a tragic melody but no lyrics, as if his pending, soon-to-be-effective death, as the song replayed, attained some kind of divinity. Until the uncontainable cough knocked him over again. He always ordered himself to hold back the cough, hold back, but like a gambler gambled everything away and began to see red, he was always defeated by that unbearable, extreme itch.

  He had cut meat for almost every family in the town. In the supermarket, he wore a white robe, in charge of the meat counter (unlike the soft white robe in the hospital, the fabric of this white robe was very thick, seemed to have been converted from a tablecloth, and often pilled). People liked coming to him, because they need only arrive for him to know which cut they wanted, then according to their liking, diced, cubed, or sliced it. Meat was grouped as tenderloin, butt, belly bacon, and so on, more than 20 kinds, priced differently, but whether a customer wanted a certain price, or wanted a certain weight, he could always get it precise in one cut, the error so small it was negligible. Later people thought, perhaps it was to avoid too much communication with people that he studied it over and over again, cut so precisely. This was a young man who gave a light cough from time to time, and didn’t like talking. His tragedy came about on a morning, when he coughed while cutting a piece of pork, the cleaver stopped midair, from his throat a blackish red blood clot flew out – big as a plum, or big as a big cherry. He watched it fly to the pork: a clear rising then falling, but also a seemingly nonexistent, merely delusional arc. He stared stunned at the stuff he had coughed out, as if figuring out whether it was the pork’s or his. He even reached an index finger out to touch it. And smelled it. He didn’t show uneasiness, instead using a piece of paper to list the foods he had eaten over the past two days, to check if there was watermelon, tomato, strawberry, wolfberry, or other material that could easily cause confusion. It wasn’t until he came out of the township health center that he began to feel a bit worried. He told the apprentice, Little Qi, he found it a bit unreal. “As if the world has nothing to do with me,” he said. That day, the sunshine was very strong, because of the waves of heat, everything was changing shapes, at noon, the security guard hid in a shady place, the pancake seller sweated like rain, the cars on the road flowed, bustled, while he and Little Qi held a chest X-ray which gave doctors difficulty choosing words.

  An hour after taking the chest X-ray, he got the result.

  Doctor Liu asked the intern to call him in: “Chen Junfeng, is Chen Junfeng’s family here?”

  “Here,” Junfeng said.

  “You’re Chen Junfeng’s family.”

  “I am,” Junfeng said. “I am him.”

  “Come here.”

  This meant he was getting some kind of special treatment. Other people got their photo, went to see the outpatient doctor, but he was called in by the radiologist to be examined. Many of Doctor Liu’s words were only half-said. She said she still needed to discuss things with the outpatient doctor. The outpatient doctor told him he better to go to the Tuberculosis Institute to check for tuberculosis, and go to a grade-A hospital to check for signs of a malignant lesion. Back then he didn’t know what malignant lesion meant. He went unhurriedly to the Tuberculosis Institute, got registered. As if he could choose his own disease. He chose tuberculosis, but the kind female doctor in the Tuberculosis Institute sent him away.

  The professors approved the former doctors’ method. This made the doctors following them there from the Number Two Municipal Hospital and everyone in the township health center relieved, they were basking in the joy of getting approval, becoming noticeably more talkative. On that same day, their Mandarin level and the provincial nature of their behaviors, because of the authorities from Beijing, were clearly exposed before their fellow countrymen. But they would still discuss this event for a long time. Not ev
eryone could receive approval from Professor Xu and Professor Gao, especially Professor Gao – he graduated from Harvard Medical School. As to whether to do the video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, and the more invasive open-heart surgery on the patient, they wavered, watched time pass quietly and resolutely in their wavering. Today, the two professors are very certain that their decision to give up was right. If surgery had been done, the patient’s life would have ended more quickly, even if larger pulmonary tissue had been taken out in the surgery, it’s not likely that they could have come to a better conclusion than the previous one. Nothing would help. There was no way. The professors jammed their hands into their pockets, like they couldn’t make a bear crawl out of barbed wire, or make a camel go through the eye of a needle.

  The professors asked every student who followed them there, certified or uncertified, to walk up, and perform auscultation on Junfeng’s stark-naked back where the clothes had already been rolled up. Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out, okay. Every one of them felt a bit sorry, held the head of the stethoscope, tried to grasp the classic symptoms their supervisors had mentioned this strange disease would show. They signaled with glances to the classmates who had experienced it, Right, that’s right. The ceremony went on for a long time, only Junfeng alone had reasons to immerse himself in the terrible disease. But even he got bored. In the end, as if to deal with the boredom of being in the middle of something and also unable to speak, he asked: “Doctor, could you tell me how to treat my disease?” The two professors, as if seeing a frog in the laboratory tray speak, exchanged a look. In the end the one who had been expressionless answered: “What do you need us to do?”