Vertical Motion

by Can Xue

  “I’m so lucky,” he said, “to be in the same room with the teacher I loved and respected. Please sit on my bed and put your hand on my forehead, okay? I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time.”

  When Gu placed his right hand on Ju’s forehead, his own body trembled as if an electric current were running through it. It was plain to see that this person really was Ju! Back then, he and Ju had been chasing a red leaf up to the cliff, talking along the way. Seen from the top of the cliff, their high school had looked like blackened scars on trees. It was that day that Gu had told Ju of his own unmentionable disease.

  When someone knocked a few times on the door, Gu wanted to get up and open it, but Ju held him back.

  “Who could it be?” Gu said.

  “Ignore it. It’s those doctors. They knock a few times to confirm that no one is here and then they leave.”

  Sure enough, Gu heard several persons’ footsteps going down the stairs.

  “Don’t you find it hard to lie down in all of this dust?” Gu asked Ju.

  “It’s wonderful here, Mr. Gu! Would you put your hand on my forehead again? Ah, thanks so much. It’s so peaceful here that three roosters are running over.”

  Gu strained to recall what they had talked about back then and finally remembered. Ju had also divulged his own unmentionable disease. He told him there’d been a hole in his chest since birth and his heart protruded from that hole. He could see his own heart beating. Ordinarily, he covered the hole with gauze and then taped it in place. He confided to Gu that he didn’t feel this defect was a major handicap, and he also added innocently, “Look, I get along fine, don’t I?” Later, he jumped into the icy river and didn’t emerge. So was it just on a pretext that he had come to the hospital? Was the real reason that his life was also nearing its end?

  “When I lived next to the maple forest, where were you?”

  “Me? I was in the forest!”

  Ju suggested that Gu lie down too, and so Gu did. When he covered himself with the dusty quilt, a thread of pleasure germinated in his heart. He heard a sound from his fifth-floor room: a group of doctors and nurses were looking for something there. Ah, were they looking for Lei? They said that Lei, who had been tied to his bed, had disappeared. Not only this, but Lei had also pulled a prank: he had tied a piglet onto the bed. He was really devilish! Gu heard not only the doctors’ conversations but also the very familiar meows coming from the fifth floor corridor. Gu thought the meows were coming from a “catman.” That “catman” was with him day and night. Could Lei be a “catman”? Or had those “catmen” set Lei free? Gu looked around the large ward and was surprised by the desolation. When he was downstairs, he always thought the top floor was very busy; it was even more possible that those “catmen” were hiding here. The other day, he had sat in the wheelchair and an aide had pushed him to the flat roof on the ninth floor. At the time, he thought he was about to die. The big fellow pushed the wheelchair around the periphery of the flat roof and told him to look down. He looked a few times: muddy waves were all around. Then he heard all kinds of screams coming from everywhere in the building, as if the end of the world had arrived. Still later, grumbling and swearing, the big fellow took him downstairs and pushed him into his own ward. At the time, five other patients were still in the room. As soon as he entered, everyone rose respectfully and looked at him with envious eyes. One of them—a young person named Bei Ming—said, “This is like winning the lottery!” His entire day floated amidst everyone’s compliments.

  “Mr. Gu, have you seen my mask?” Ju said. “I must have left it on the stairs. Without it, I can’t see anyone except for you.”

  Gu thought for a long time, but he couldn’t figure out why Ju had to wear a mask to see people. He really wanted to ask him what he had experienced after he disappeared, but he could never broach the subject. He thought it would be the same as asking his student: “After you died, where did you go? What unusual things did you see?” He just couldn’t do it. He slowly massaged his fluid-filled belly, and his thoughts flew to the beginning stages of his disease. He’d felt then as if a load had been taken off his mind. In high spirits, he had moved to the slope at the maple forest and had spent some lovely days there. In the autumn, the red leaves had intoxicated and entranced him. He’d never felt so sensitive to the world around him as he did then. In his excitement, he even saw eagles. Autumn was a long season. He said to himself: “Autumn is so long—like eternal life.” Sometimes, old friends came to see him, but they weren’t the one he wanted to see. Back then, he couldn’t think who it was that he wanted to see. Only now, lying here, did he know. The one he had wanted to see all along was this student who had disappeared. As he thought of this, the fluids in his belly made a pleasing sound, and a grateful sensation spread throughout his body.

  Gu heard them free the Dutch piglet that Lei had tied to the bed. As soon as the piglet was freed, it scurried out of the ward. The people garbed in large white gowns looked at each other in dismay. Someone said softly, “This never would have occurred to me.” But Gu thought, Perhaps this had occurred to them some time ago. Nothing could easily defeat someone like Lei. Even the person who jumped from the window the night before had ordinarily done as Lei said.

  Ju was snoring comfortably in the next bed. Gu thought, He’s so at peace with himself that even the clamor in the building can’t disturb him. Gu really wanted to learn how far Ju’s disease had progressed. He intended to ask him as soon as he woke up. Gu had seen Ju jump into the icy river, but he couldn’t ask him how he had been revived after his bare heart had been submerged in the icy water. He merely wanted to ask about his present condition. His face had always been as white as limestone, and it still was. From looking at him, it was impossible to guess how bad his condition was. He felt that although his appearance had changed, he was still as gentle as before. Perhaps it was because he could see his own heart that he had been so sure about what he was doing—for instance, jumping into the icy water.

  “Ju, let’s go to see the red leaves next year, okay?” Gu said to the air.

  A meow came in from the door: it was Lei talking with someone. Of course Lei was a “catman.” It seemed three people were outside: Why didn’t they come in? The big white gowns from the fifth floor were also heading upstairs, but neither Lei nor the others paid any attention to the doctors. Gu heard them say that doctors were “garbage.”

  After the doctors came upstairs, they didn’t encounter Lei and the others. Gu heard them plotting something—something that Gu was very familiar with, something that he had once participated in but had completely forgotten. What was it? Gu felt unable to express it in words. When this group entered the opposite ward, they closed the door, nipping the Dutch piglet’s leg in the process. The piglet howled. Someone turned around, freed the curious little pig, and let it in.

  Gu groped under his pillow for a flashlight; probably a former patient had left it there. Feeling excited, he immediately walked to Ju’s bed with the flashlight. Seeing that he was still sound asleep, he lifted the quilt and shone the flashlight on his chest. Ju’s torso was bare, and so Gu immediately saw his pulsating heart. For some reason, his heart was the color of milk. It beat much slower than most people’s. Peering through the hole, he saw that the beating heart was shifting its position. This baffled him.

  “This is just the way my heart is, Mr. Gu.” Ju opened his eyes and spoke apologetically.

  “Ju, can you hear the secret meeting in the ward across the way? What are they discussing?”

  Ju took hold of the flashlight and shone it toward the door. Gu also turned his gaze in that direction. A doctor was standing there, but he wasn’t one of the doctors who made rounds. Gu had never seen him. The doctor blocked the flashlight’s rays with his left hand and said: “It’s good to be here. We’re prepared for an emergency at any moment.”

  Then he left, closing the door behind him. Ju laughed softly and commented that this hospital was “quite interesting.” He put
on his black jacket and his opera mask. Gu asked him where he had found the mask, and he said that actually he hadn’t lost it: he’d forgotten that it was at his waist all the time. After he dressed, he told Gu that he wanted to go across the hall “to take part in the meeting.” Gu—heart thumping—went with him. He had a hunch that the truth would come out. His hands began trembling.

  When Ju appeared in the room wearing the opera mask, everyone’s head swiveled in his direction. The blinds were all open, so it was quite light, and Gu noticed that neither Lei nor the doctors were there. They were all his closest friends and relatives, but he couldn’t recall any of their names.

  Someone pushed a wheelchair out, and Gu thought it was for him. He never imagined that Ju would beat him to it. Sitting in the wheelchair, Ju looked happily inebriated. Gu begrudged him the wheelchair, because he usually used it. Two big fellows were pushing Ju, and Gu thought they intended to leave the room, so he quickly made way for them. But they didn’t go out; they just pushed the wheelchair around in the empty ward. Ju grabbed at something in the air. He looked absorbed, and the people around him were cheering him on. Just then, Gu glanced out the window: what he saw was the splendid spectacle of drifting red leaves. Astonished, he sat down on the floor. How could there be red leaves in the winter? In the sunlight, the leaves were like flames.

  Now—with Gu at the end of the line—everyone was following the wheelchair as it made the rounds in the room. The footsteps sounded like marching. As Gu listened attentively, he even felt that everyone’s footsteps were lost in thought. Walking and walking, Gu no longer looked out the window, because a shadow was filling this circle. Everyone was sinking into this dense, dark shadow. At last, Ju plucked something from the air. He took off his mask and smelled the thing.

  “Mr. Gu! Mr. Gu! This is it!” He seemed to be weeping.

  “What is it, son?” Gu asked.

  “It’s the thing I jumped into the river for!”

  All of a sudden, the people’s footsteps were no longer in sync. In the dense, dark shadow, Gu couldn’t get a good look at these faces, nor could he see the scenery outside the window. But he could still hear Ju calling him and he could still hear the wheelchair rolling past. The two big fellows had vanished, and the wheelchair was being steered automatically. A dark gust of wind in the room took hold of him and detached him from the circle. In the corridor, Gu still heard Ju shouting: “Mr. Gu! This is it!!”

  When Gu went downstairs, the entire building rang with all sorts of meows. They were meowing wildly everywhere—in the wards, the offices, and the bathrooms. Gu knew they weren’t cats but were “catmen” hiding in this building. Perhaps they’d been provoked by Ju’s arrival. He himself had stayed here such a long time, and yet they’d never gone wild like this before. Ju must be the key character. If he hadn’t come, the “catmen” might have merely been a little restless. And the red leaves wouldn’t have appeared outside the window in winter. He quickly went down to the fifth floor, where the odor of Lysol made him drowsy. He thought, The person who jumped from the ward window last night: perhaps the words he had shouted were identical to the words Ju had just shouted—“Mr. Gu! Mr. Gu, this is it . . .”

  NIGHT

  VISITOR

  =

  “Everyone has to die. After death, there’s nothing.” My late father once said to me, “After you die, who knows what you had planned while you were alive?” Having said this much, he lifted his head arrogantly. A nearly despicable expression floated across his face.

  After hearing this, I remember glaring at him a few times and sneering inwardly twice. As for him, he strolled around the room. He was wearing a pair of old-fashioned shoes, and his nylon socks gave off a sour, sweaty smell. That smell permeated the room all summer, for he never opened windows.

  Father’s bedroom was at the end of the house; when he went out, he had to go through all of our rooms, but we didn’t need to go through his room. I went to see him about once a month. He generally closed his door and kept busy as a mouse with his large pile of old books. When I knocked, he was flustered when he came to the door. As he covered what he was working on, he led me around a large stack of disorganized books and settled me into an old chair beneath the window. The cushion, made of yellowing reed catkins, was lumpy and uncomfortable. When he and I talked, he blocked my line of vision with his broad body. Perhaps he was afraid that I’d see what he was working on.

  At the time, I regarded Father as an old man with nothing to do, a person who lingered on in a worsening condition in a dark room. Family members and neighbors thought the same thing. Because he’d been retired for years, you could say that he had retired from life a long time ago. Generally, no one thought much about him. Sure, he had a few foibles. You couldn’t say he was sick just because he liked staying in his room and not going out. Old people always take things to extremes.

  =

  It was time for me to visit Father again. I was a little concerned, because he hadn’t eaten much for a few days and he wasn’t in a good mood, either. He was always angry, scolding people at the dinner table for no reason. Everyone was baffled by this. When he opened the door, his thin face was expressionless. I glanced into the room: he’d covered all the books with an old cloth, and the old chair had been moved away from the window. Father didn’t seat me while we talked. He was standing, too, because—apart from that old chair—the only place to sit was a small stool. Ordinarily, he sat on it to straighten out his heap of old papers, but this time, for whatever reason, he had tucked the small stool under the bed.

  I stood there chatting aimlessly of household trivia. As I talked, I was getting more and more flustered, for all I wanted was to escape from there as soon as possible and steer clear of this awkward errand in the future. Through all of this, Father kept a straight face and paced with his hands behind his back. All of a sudden, he stopped, walked over, and shoved open a side door that faced the courtyard. The room brightened at once. Only then did I notice that he had moved the cupboard and begun using the side door behind it that had been closed for years. The door had warped, requiring great strength to open it, and it was even harder to close again. Father beckoned to me to help him. We pushed it hard several times before it reluctantly closed. As I brushed the dust from my clothes, I noticed that his haggard face was a little flushed.

  “Rushu, you never thought I could open this door, did you?” Father turned around so that I couldn’t see his expression. “This door goes straight to the courtyard. Something could happen without anyone knowing. Of course the rest of you wouldn’t notice, for you’re preoccupied with other things. Your attention wanders, and so does your sister’s.”

  “Papa—” I said.

  “One can do whatever one wants to do!” He twisted around crabbily and looked at me almost savagely. “Do things furtively, and no one knows. Ah!”

  “Papa, if you feel bored staying here alone, you could take walks in the park with me every day,” I said uncertainly.

  “Me? Bored? Whatever made you think that? Let me tell you, I’m a very busy man.” With that, looking extremely arrogant, he seemed to start thinking intently about something.

  “Rushu, get me the scissors from the lowest drawer,” he ordered.

  I felt that at this moment Father was extremely vigorous. It was as though he wanted to strut his stuff over something.

  The drawer was a jumble of little sundries. After searching for a while, I found the small scissors and handed them to him.

  Taking the scissors, he charged over to where he usually sat, removed the old cloth, grabbed an old book, and began carefully snipping the book into scraps. In this dim room, the kaki kaki sound of the scissors was particularly grating. I could hardly control my feelings.

  After cutting up one book, he cut up another. There were not only books in the pile, but also all kinds of old notes and correspondence. He cut whatever he got hold of. After a while, the floor was stacked with wastepaper. I saw his old bare, blue-veined h
and squeezing the scissors hard. His fingernails turned purple. When he wasn’t paying attention, I quietly withdrew to the doorway.

  “Rushu, go ahead and leave. There’s nothing here that concerns you,” he said from behind me.

  =

  It was about a week later when I heard my colleagues’ rumors about my family members and me mistreating my aged father. They made special mention of me, saying that I “had cut Father’s palm with scissors” and that Father “had wailed.” The rumors were well-founded and vivid, and I couldn’t help shuddering. I didn’t dare look at the others, nor did I dare defend myself. I just shivered blindly.

  It was tough to endure this until I got off work. When I reached home, I groped for my key in my purse in the dark corridor. Just then, my brother leapt out from an invisible place and patted me on the shoulder. Paralyzed with fright, I nearly fell to the ground.

  “Ha ha!” He patted me on the shoulder again and said with a laugh, “You got off work really early today.”

  “Early? It doesn’t seem early to me.” I looked at him bitterly. I wanted to go to my own room.

  “It is early.” He yanked on my arm and continued talking. “It’s hard for all of us siblings to get together. Usually everyone is busy. We only sit at the same table at mealtimes. Although we sit together, we don’t talk much. I think this is because Father is present. Looking at him, who dares talk and laugh freely? As I see it, when one is old, one should know one’s place and retreat from life. Paternalistic behavior won’t do him any good in the end. Sometimes, I can’t avoid thinking that this family isn’t a family anymore! It’s oppressive, disorganized, and unreasonable. Do any other families maintain patriarchy as we do?”

  “You’ve been dismissive of Father for a long time, haven’t you? Why are you being so alarmist?” I interrupted him in disgust.