Vertical Motion

by Can Xue

  I was despondent, for I thought I had certainly fallen to the place where I was before I started my vertical motion. But a long time passed, and silence still lay all around me. Did another kingdom lie beneath the desert, a dead kingdom? It was very dry here, and the earth was not the black earth of before. All of a sudden, it came to me: this wasn’t earth, it was sand! Right. This was shapeless sand! I had clearly fallen down, so how had I ended up in this kind of place? Could gravity have changed direction? I didn’t want to think about this too much. I had to start my work as soon as possible, for it was only work that could put me in a good mood with a steady self-confidence.

  I began digging—still in the upward, vertical motion. Motion in the desert was quite different from motion in the earth. In the earth, you could sense the track—and the sculpture—your motion left behind. But this heartless sand submerged everything. You couldn’t leave anything behind, and so you couldn’t judge the direction of your motion. Of course, with my present lifestyle, vertical motion was just fine, because my inner body was attuned to gravity. As this went on, I felt that this work was harder and tenser than before. And what I ate was sand: flavor was out of the question. I ate it just to fill my stomach. I was tense because I was afraid of losing my direction by mistake. I had to keep paying attention to my sense of gravity: it was the only way to maintain the vertical route. This sand would seemingly choke all of my senses. I had no way to know if I was even in motion. And so my feelings shrank inward. There was no longer a track, not to mention the sculpture, but only some blurred throbbing innards, along with flashes of faint light in my brain.

  And so, was I squirming in the same spot or was I moving up? Or sinking down? Was I capable of determining this? Of course not. Every so often I made expanding and contracting motions, which I thought meant I was moving up. Of course the sand’s resistance was not nearly as great as the earth’s, but this slighter resistance left me uneasy. If you have nowhere to stand, then you have no way, either, to confirm the results of your exertions, and there’s likely to be no result. After tiring from my activity, I ate some sand and then fell into a death-like sleep. After my skin cracked, it healed again, and after healing it cracked again. Little by little, it was thickening. The humankind above me wears thick skin. Had they all gone through what I was experiencing? Ah, this quiet, this desolation! One can probably endure it for a short time, but if it persists, isn’t it the same as being dead? Uneasiness germinated tardily in my mind. I reflected on the one who had disappeared: Perhaps he was still alive? One possibility was that he and I were both living and that we would never actually die. Buried by this boundless yellow sand, each of us leapt on his own, and we would never be able to see each other. When I considered this possibility, I began twitching all over. This occurred a number of times.

  The last time it happened, it was really dreadful. I thought I would die. I became aware of the mountain, which was the two black things that had formerly been above me. After disappearing for a time, they had returned. They pressed down toward me, but didn’t press me to death. They were just suspended above. At this time, I stopped having spasms at once. As this eased, at first my consciousness functioned rapidly, and then it was entirely lost. I leapt up with all my strength! At once, the mountain weakened so much that it was like two leaves—leaves of the phoenix tree above ground. Indeed, I sensed that they were drifting. As I saw it, a miracle was taking place. In my excitement, I leapt again, and now there were four phoenix leaves! There were actually four. I heard the sound of each one. It was the metallic sound mentioned in legends. I knew I hadn’t lost my way: I was on the correct path! Soon, the metallic leaves would split and I would see light! Although I had no eyes, this wouldn’t preclude my “seeing.” I—an insect underground—would see light! Ha ha! Not so fast. How would I do this? With my scarred, haggard, restless body? Or was it just my mirage? Who could guarantee that the instant I emerged from the earth wouldn’t be the moment of my death? No, I didn’t want to get to the bottom of this question. It would be fine if I could just keep sensing the phoenix leaves above me. Ah, those eternal metallic leaves: the cool breeze on Mother Earth shuttled among the leaves . . .

  I fainted. When I came to, I heard sand buzzing all around me, and in this sound an old, low voice spoke:

  “M, is your beak still growing?”

  Who was it? Was it he? Who else could it be? So much time had passed. This desert, this desert . . . How could things be like this?

  “Yes, my beak, my beak! Please tell me: Where am I?”

  “You’re on the uppermost crust of the earth. This is your new home.”

  “Can’t I bore my way out of it? Are you saying that from now on I can only wander around in this sand? But I’m accustomed to vertical motion.”

  “You can only engage in vertical motion here. Don’t worry, there’s more sand on top of this sand.”

  “Are you saying I cannot break out completely? Oh, I see. You’ve tried it. How long have you lived in this region? It must be a very long time. We can’t measure the time, but we know we lost you long ago. Dear ancestor, I never imagined, never imagined that in this—how to say it?—that in this extremity, I would come across you. If my father . . . ah, I can’t mention him. If I do, I’ll faint again.”

  He didn’t say any more. I heard his far-off voice: cha, cha, cha . . . as he dug the sand with his long, senile beak. My bodily fluids were boiling. It was bizarre: I’d stayed in such an arid place for so long and yet I still had fluids in my body. Judging by the sound I heard, this ancestor had fluids in his body, too. This was really miraculous! Somewhere above me, he walked away. He must have seen the phoenix leaves, too.

  Ah, he returned! How wonderful—now I had a companion! I had someone to communicate with. The boundless yellow sand was no longer so frightening! Who . . . who was he?

  “Grandpa, are you the one who disappeared?”

  “I am a wandering spirit.”

  This was great: I spoke, and someone answered me. How long had I been without this? Someone of the same species would engage in the same activity and live with me in this desert . . . Father’s last wish was for me to find him: I realized this!

  =

  I was a little critter submerged in the desert. This was the outcome I had pursued. In this mid-region, I was envisioning the phoenix leaves on Mother Earth. Yet, I didn’t forget my kindred in the dark.

  RED

  LEAVES

  =

  The first light of morning had just streamed through the sickroom’s window. Teacher Gu lay on the bed with his eyes closed. The cleaning woman was spraying disinfectant in the room. She had arrived particularly early today, as though coming not to clean but to disturb him. Gu knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, for each time this happened, his thoughts leapt up in the midst of the strong smell of Lysol. One red leaf floated in the air above the forest of his thoughts—a forest that was totally bare, for it was winter now. Gu had been pondering a question for several days: Did a leaf start turning red from the leafstalk, the color gradually spreading throughout the entire leaf, or did the entire leaf gradually turn from light red to deep red? Before falling ill, Gu hadn’t observed this phenomenon, probably because he missed the chance every year. In front of his home were hills where maples grew. But it was only after he fell ill that he had moved there.

  After the cleaning woman left, Gu bent his legs and lightly massaged his distended belly. He thought: perhaps one’s body is most vibrant when one’s disease reaches its last stage. His poor liver, for instance, must have reached this stage. A tragedy had occurred last night in this large ward: a terminally ill patient had rushed with a roar to the balcony and jumped. After that, the ward was as still as death, as though no one lying there dared utter a sound. Was it because someone had died that the cleaning woman had come so early to disinfect the room? He thought this was unreasonable. The person hadn’t killed himself because his condition had worsened and his pain was unbearable. He knew he was im
proving after going through chemotherapy. The next day he would have been moved out of the ward for serious cases. Who could have guessed that he would do this? This guy really chose an original approach.

  After staying in the hospital for a long time, Gu was more and more content with his situation. In private, he even praised the hospital as “fascinating.” He was a taciturn patient, accustomed to being moved around along the corridor that connected the white structures. Actually, he could walk slowly by himself, but the doctors insisted that he use a wheelchair. He sat in a wheelchair, and a big fellow pushed him carefully to the treatment room. Gu thought this arrangement was actually intended to prevent him from escaping. At first, he thought this was suspicious, but later he grew accustomed to it and even understood it a little. The next time he was in the wheelchair, he imagined that he was a general making a leisurely inspection of a battlefield littered with corpses.

  He was resting with his eyes closed when he suddenly heard the cleaning woman say: “As the man jumped, he was shouting Mr. Gu’s name.” When he opened his eyes, he saw the cleaning woman turn and leave the room. Her words agitated Mr. Gu. For some reason, all at once his hearing became extremely acute: once again, he heard two people talking on the top floor. They walked downstairs, arguing about something. As they made their way from the ninth floor to the seventh floor and then to the sixth floor, their voices grew louder, as if they were quarreling. They stopped on the sixth floor. They then lowered their voices, and the quarrel turned into a discussion. They sounded like two cats mewing softly. Gu’s room was on the fifth floor. The two people would have to descend only one more floor and they’d be at his door. But they didn’t. They stood up there and kept talking. Their language became completely distorted. The more he heard, the more it sounded like cats meowing. The word “catmen” appeared in his mind, and he even imagined that many “catmen” were in this hospital. They hid in dark corners and sometimes emerged to confide their loneliness in someone, just as they were doing now. The right side of his belly throbbed a few times, and he heard the fluids gurgle there. He closed his eyes and saw the red leaf again. The edge of the leaf had thickened and was imbued with a bizarre fleshy sensuality. Gu felt something flicker in his head. One of the “catmen” suddenly gave a loud shout before his voice became inaudible. The door opened. Breakfast had arrived.

  Gu wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat. Lei, the patient next to him, urged him: “Have a little. If an incident like that is repeated tonight, you’ll need some energy to deal with it.” Lei was in the last stages of his disease. He’d lost his hair long ago and had only a month or two to live. After thinking it over, Gu reluctantly sipped a little milk and rinsed his mouth with water. Holding back his nausea, he lay down again. He noticed that Lei was in high spirits as he ate his egg. This person?? How come? He wanted to talk with Lei about the “catmen,” but he felt too weak to talk. Last night, why had the accountant Zheng shouted his name as he jumped? It was a little like toying with him. At this point, he subconsciously raised one hand, but then he heard Lei saying:

  “Mr. Gu, don’t ward it off with your hand. Let it fall on your face. Maybe it will be hypnotic.”

  “What?!” He was shocked.

  “I’m talking of the small leaf. Look, it fell onto your quilt. Ha!”

  Sure enough, there was a withered leaf on his quilt. It had come in through the window. When he twisted the leaf lightly, it crumbled into powder. The powder stuck to his hand, so he shook it off. Then he wiped his hands clean with a handkerchief. His eyes half-closed, he leaned against the pillow and heard the consulting doctors enter the room. Under the doctors’ questioning, Lei appeared unusually happy and answered their questions loudly. He declared that he had “conquered the disease.” Through the slits of his eyes, Gu observed the disgusted frown of the physician in charge. Gu thought, “Lei will die soon. Perhaps tonight?” Suddenly, Lei uttered, “Ouch,” and Gu opened his eyes.

  He saw several doctors pressing Lei down onto the bed. He resisted vehemently, but they still bound him to the bed with strong tape. He was yowling through it all, and it looked as if his bulging eyes might jump out of their sockets. The doctors pulled out handkerchiefs to wipe away their perspiration and appeared to breathe sighs of relief. For some reason, they didn’t approach Gu, but went to the two beds on the west side of the room. After asking questions for a while, they left the ward. Their unusual behavior made Gu’s brain alternately tighten and turn blank. After a while, Lei vomited blood. It fell onto his face and then streamed onto the pillow. The blood was blackish-red. He no longer struggled, nor could he struggle. Now he could move only his mouth, eyes, and nose. No. His ears, too. Gu noticed that his ears were moving, making him look as cute as an animal.

  “Lei, let’s just take it easy” Gu found something to say.

  “You————idiot!” he said.

  Gu fell silent. The right side of his belly pulsed again, and he patted it. It throbbed even more. With waves of heat gushing in, he began feeling feverish. In the west part of the room, wardmates—a man and a woman—compared notes on cemetery reservations. Their meticulous, earnest attitude made Gu shiver with cold. Feeling partly hot and partly cold, he touched those spots and said softly, “This isn’t like my body.” He secretly intended to slip out after a while and look for those “catmen.” Ordinarily, he didn’t dare leave the ward, because as soon as he left, Lei would push the call button and he’d be hemmed in by nurses.

  Gu got up stealthily and, making his way along the wall, left the room. At the doorway, he looked back and saw Lei glowering at him. This suddenly struck him as quite funny, and he almost laughed. At this time, the corridor was empty, and he stole over to the staircase and quietly went upstairs. As he climbed the stairs, he held his paunch with both hands and imagined that he was a kangaroo.

  When he reached the sixth floor, he heard the “cat language.” But where were the “catmen”? No one was on the sixth floor corridor except for two nurses making their rounds with medications. After a moment’s rest, Gu continued climbing up. On the seventh floor, a worker delivering water was pushing his small cart. He stopped at the edge of the corridor and sat on the stairs to smoke a cigarette. Gu wondered how he could smoke near the wards. The person patted the floor next to him and invited Gu to sit down and have a cigarette with him. Surprised, Gu accepted his cigarette and a light. The cigarette was very strong. Gu had never seen this brand before; perhaps he had rolled it himself. Then he noticed that the cigarette case was plastic.

  “You know how to roll your own cigarettes,” Gu commented admiringly.

  “My buddies . . . We have the right tools . . .” he answered vaguely.

  After finishing the cigarette, Gu thanked the worker and stood up, intending to continue up the stairs, when he suddenly heard the worker beside him make a cat sound. It was very harsh. But when he glanced at him, he looked as if nothing had happened. No one else was here. If he hadn’t made the sound, who had? Gu changed his mind; he wanted to see if this person would do anything else.

  He waited a while longer, but the worker didn’t do anything; he just put his cigarette butt in his pocket, rose, and went back to the water cart. He pushed the cart into the ward. Gu subconsciously put his hand into his own pocket, took out the cigarette butt, and looked at it, but he saw nothing unusual. In a trance, he twisted and crushed the butt. He saw an insect with a shell moving around in the tobacco threads. The lower half of its body had been charred, but it still didn’t seem to want to die. Nauseated, Gu threw the butt on the floor and, without looking back, climbed to the eighth floor.

  Everything was in a hubbub in the eighth floor corridor, where there were a lot of people. Probably someone’s condition had worsened, for he saw a cart of instruments being pushed into the ward. After resting for a moment, Gu started up to the ninth floor—the top floor.

  When he had almost reached it, he looked up and was so startled that he nearly fell down the stairs. A person clothed all
in black and wearing a ferocious opera mask stood there, looking as though he were waiting especially for Gu.

  “Hello, Mr. Gu!” he said in a loud voice, as harsh as a chapel gong.

  Gu sat on the floor, gasping for breath and unable to speak. Suddenly, he felt tired and his belly began aching. It seemed that no patients were on the ninth floor, so the corridor was empty. Gu wondered which room the “catmen” were in. Was this masked person a “catman,” too?

  “I was your student!” the masked person said loudly. “I’m Ju—the one who jumped into the icy river to save someone. Have you forgotten?”

  “You’re Ju? Take off your mask and let me look at you. So you didn’t disappear, after all!”

  He took off the mask, and Gu saw the pale face of a middle-aged man who was a stranger to him. How could he be the Ju who had jumped into the icy river to save another person and then disappeared? That had been a warm-hearted boy. Something was wrong with this middle-aged man’s eyes; there was a film on them—probably cataracts. But never mind: Gu felt quite emotional about encountering a student he had liked in the past.

  “I’ve been looking for you all these years, and not long ago, I finally ran into someone who knew where you were. He said you were hiding out here. This place is really concealed!”

  Ju took Gu’s arm and said he wanted to go into a room to talk. They went into a ward and sat on the beds. It was dark with the blinds closed. Gu started coughing because of the dust raised from the bed. Puzzled, he wondered how long it had been since someone had stayed in this room. Ju sat on the bed opposite his. When Gu looked up to take stock of him, this middle-aged man seemed to have turned into a flimsy shadow. Gu watched him writhing as he lay down, lifted up the dusty quilt, and covered himself. Gu started coughing hard again.