Vertical Motion

by Can Xue

  When we sat down to eat, a face appeared at the door. It looked like a farmer, a rough guy who was about thirty or forty years old. Uncle Lou said this was his nephew. Curious, I wanted to get a good look at him. But he turned around and went down the stairs. I thought to myself, this person isn’t actually ugly; his features are very ordinary. You could see farmers like this anywhere. But Uncle Lou said that his nephew didn’t come in because he was “terribly ashamed of his appearance.” I said I didn’t think he was at all ugly. Uncle Lou said it was useless for other people to say whether he was ugly or not, for his relative knew himself. Uncle Lou said he had known his nephew since he was little: How could he be mistaken?

  I had a brainstorm and steeled myself to ask:

  “Then, Uncle Lou, was it for the same reason that you distanced yourself from everyone back then?”

  Uncle Lou snorted a noncommittal “Huh.” Just then, his nephew reappeared at the door; still smiling, he revealed a mouthful of white teeth. I wanted to go over and greet him, but he ran off again. I told Uncle Lou about being unable to touch my face when I got up in the morning. Listening gravely, Uncle Lou kept nodding his head. I don’t know why, but—all of a sudden—in this midair where I couldn’t see the surrounding scenery, I couldn’t get a grip on my narration. Was I telling him about a real incident or was I making up a story? But it couldn’t be just an illusion that this morning, dragging my lame legs, I had climbed up to the home of this Uncle Lou whom I hadn’t seen for more than ten years. I had come here specifically to tell him about this: Shouldn’t it be absolutely true? Hadn’t I transferred buses twice on the way over here? After Uncle Lou heard my story, he shifted his gaze to the air and said blandly:

  “You need to exercise.”

  “How?” I asked nervously.

  “Put the mirror under your pillow, and take it out every morning and look in it. You’ll grow accustomed to this, and then you’ll be all right.”

  “But I don’t want to look in the mirror. You have no idea: it’s a terrible feeling.”

  “Then don’t look.”

  I hadn’t expected Uncle Lou to answer me so irresponsibly. In the past, he’d been a considerate old man. Whenever any of us encountered anything frustrating, we all liked to complain about it to Uncle Lou. Not only did he listen attentively, but he also gave us advice.

  After we’d finished the meal and the tea, I stood up, intending to take my leave, but Uncle Lou urged me to sit down and said:

  “It’s going to rain hard. If you leave now, you’ll get thoroughly drenched.”

  Pointing out the window, I said, “It’s a nice day.” But Uncle Lou still shook his head and said that if I left now, the next morning I’d be even unhappier, because I still hadn’t straightened out my thinking. That was true. I had failed to gain strength from Uncle Lou to relieve my inner crisis. What should I do?

  Just then, Uncle Lou asked me if I’d like to sit on the windowsill and look at the scenery with him. He added that he enjoyed this more than anything else in life. With that, he sat on the windowsill. He exerted himself to maneuver one side of his body so it was hanging in midair, and he made swimming motions. Seeing this was terrifying, and I didn’t dare go up to the windowsill: it was too dangerous. This was also the first time in my life that I had come to such a high place, and the glare from the rays outside the window was intense. As I stood there hesitating, the nephew came in quietly and whispered to me, “I’d really like to push my uncle down. But I’m not strong enough. I . . . I’m a good-for-nothing!” He sat on the floor, and held his head in his hands in agony. This nephew was probably about my age, but his hair had turned gray. He smelled of standing grain, giving me a favorable impression of him. But I couldn’t get any handle on this screwball’s mood. He actually wanted to push his uncle down from the twenty-fourth floor! Perhaps this idea had been gnawing at him all along. The nephew gave a loud sigh. His uncle made a hey, hey sound, as if he would fly out from the window. Uncle Lou seemed overjoyed!

  After a while, I heard the gentle sound of rain in the air and smelled its scent, but I couldn’t see any rain. I reached my hand out the window, but no rain fell on my hand. The nephew was also taking in the scent of rain, and he was now in a better mood. He stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes. As he walked to the door, he said:

  “I’ve been really happy today!”

  After he left, Uncle Lou came down from the windowsill. The old man appeared energetic and invigorated. The sound of rain still came from outside, not the sound of rain falling on the rooftop but the sound of rain in the air: you had to listen quietly in order to hear it. It was like the sound of moths’ wings flapping. I saw that half of Uncle Lou’s body was drenched. He was changing out of his wet clothing and rubbing his hair with a towel. Because I didn’t believe this, I stretched my hand out the window again, but I still felt no rain.

  “If you go downstairs now, you’ll get soaked through!” Uncle Lou said.

  “What about your nephew? Isn’t he afraid of being caught in the rain?”

  “He looks forward to it. He came to the city from the countryside two years ago and lives in a basement room. You also noticed this: he’s very happy . . . If he weren’t ugly, he’d be running wild.”

  “But I don’t think he’s ugly.”

  “That’s because you didn’t get a good look at him.”

  Although I couldn’t see the rain, I could feel that the room had cooled off. Uncle Lou asked me to “go for a walk” with him on the stairs. He said that when we were finished walking, the rain would have stopped.

  This time, the stairs were steady and solid under my feet. The illusion of hanging in the air had disappeared. But apparently afraid that I would fall, Uncle Lou kept a tight grip on my arm. He said that he frequently slipped on the stairs because this kind of staircase was treacherous. When Uncle Lou walked downstairs, he was in high spirits. He started talking to me about events of more than ten years ago. I was excited, too, and wanted to talk with him about the past. All of a sudden, I realized that I didn’t know anything he was talking about. For example, he said there was a zoo outside the entrance to our home, and the panthers had escaped from the zoo and wandered back and forth on the street. He said he had gone fishing one day and had caught a human head: it was a murder case. He said a circus had come to town. The performers were all spies whose mission was to steal the state’s top secrets. He said that one day when I went fishing, I’d forgotten to lock the door. As a result, a thief had stolen a priceless treasure—a rock ink-stone that had been passed down from antiquity. As he talked on and on, I had no idea how long we walked. The stairs descended endlessly. Where were we going? Had we already walked out of the “Village in the Big City” and reached the underground? I didn’t ask Uncle Lou, for I was afraid of interrupting his stories. These were the stories I liked best. When Uncle Lou and I walked down another floor, I noticed an open door. I saw the family members celebrating some kind of ritual around a circular table. I didn’t have time to get a good look before leaving. Later, I saw the same thing in another home, and then in a third home, and a fourth. Uncle Lou said the people in this building were all noble-minded people. If I came here often, I would realize this.

  “Hedgehog, as soon as you arrived, I started feeling remorseful. During these years I think I let you drift around by yourself. You must have been so lonely. Hedgehog, you won’t blame me, will you? I did this for your own good.”

  I told Uncle Lou that I didn’t blame him at all. Even though we hadn’t seen each other for so long, I had always considered him someone I could rely on. That I had now sought him out proved this. Except for Uncle Lou, I had no other true family in this world. As he listened, Uncle Lou alternately nodded and shook his head. I didn’t know if he agreed with me or not. Suddenly, he shoved me aside with one hand and said:

  “You wretch: you still haven’t altered your basic parasitic nature! Do you want to depend on me forever? Listen, the rain has stopped. You shou
ld go home. As for me, I’m going to stop here and visit for a while.”

  With that, he left me and went to the home on the right. I heard him bolt the door from within.

  I’d been left on the stairs by myself. I must have gone down seventy or eighty flights of stairs. Why was it that I still couldn’t see the bottom? Scared, I turned around and climbed up. My legs were really supporting me. Nothing was wrong with them. I had never been as strong as now! In the stillness, I climbed and climbed. The afternoon scene from the past kept flashing through my mind. It was always that obscure wing room, and always with the four childhood friends. We were crowded around the small stool where the deck of cards lay. The deck of cards lay on a square stool, and the four of us were crowded around the square stool. Outside, it was raining. Uncle Lou’s silhouette flashed out from behind the mosquito net and disappeared out the door . . .

  Ultimately, I never found the exit and I returned to Uncle Lou’s home. His nephew greeted me at the door.

  “Hedgehog, you’re back from your walk. You must feel great.”

  “No, I’m feeling a little depressed. I want to go back to my own home.”

  As I said this, I was taken aback: How had I become “Hedgehog”? He was my twin brother. In the past, when we lived in the old house, we had been inseparable. It was my brother who had scraped together enough from our pocket money to buy the deck of cards: he was a boy with ideas. Over the years, I had gradually rid myself of the shadow of his death. I had never expected that both Uncle Lou and his nephew would think I was Hedgehog.

  “You’ve already been gone fourteen years. What difference does it make if you go back a little later?”

  Ah, he still thought I was Hedgehog!

  “I’m Puppy.”

  “We know you’re Puppy.”

  When he said this, I suddenly noticed that his face had become scary, just like a leper’s. He looked as if he would throw himself at me, so I turned around right away and ran off. I ran to the elevator; its door opened automatically. It was empty. I closed the door and quickly pushed the button for the first floor. The elevator was slow, and, staggering, it finally stopped. As soon as the door opened, I streaked outside. The sun was bright, so dazzling that I couldn’t open my eyes. When I passed the gate guard, I heard the middle-aged man say loudly:

  “Isn’t this Hedgehog from Old Qin’s family? How did he happen to come to our ‘Village in the Big City’?”

  The others burst into loud laughter. I flushed, but I didn’t know why they were laughing.

  I walked to the main street, and turned around to look at the “Village in the Big City.” Uncle Lou and his nephew were standing at the entrance waving to me. They looked reluctant to see me go, but as soon as I recalled the nephew’s hidden ugly face, I began trembling. The cars going back and forth blocked their images, and I continued walking ahead. I walked for a long time. The three twenty-four-story residential buildings were still behind me. If I turned around, I would see the compound. It was so close that I could even see Uncle Lou’s small room. I picked up my pace, but after a while I couldn’t help looking back again. Ah, a bamboo pole was sticking out from Uncle Lou’s window. What game was he playing? Was he greeting me? I waved and hurried on.

  Sitting in the bus, I heard the following conversation:

  “This rain was really heavy; it’s never rained so hard before. The tadpoles in your pond all swam over to my side . . .”

  “Yes, it rained really hard, welcoming us home.”

  “When you left, did you put the playing cards away?”

  “Someone did it for me. They’re safe.”

  I opened my eyes and saw two men who looked like farmers in front of me, but they certainly didn’t seem to be the ones who had just been talking. My staring made them unhappy, and I hurriedly shifted my gaze.

  I transferred to another bus and went home. The first thing I did when I went inside was to see if the small mirror was still under the pillow. It was. I looked in the mirror several times. Nothing was wrong.

  I sat at the table and recalled today’s adventure. I felt that my innermost being had been substantially enriched. Perhaps I should start calling on Uncle Lou frequently. It was about time. “Village in the Big City”: what a marvelous name!

  ELENA

  =

  When she arrived, it was already three in the morning, a time when the lights were all out in the apartments in this old building. I heard her coming up the stairs, and then she entered my apartment. She must have walked through half the city to get here—I figured she lived in the suburbs. It was a little absurd that someone like me chose to live in the downtown area. Even though the room was so dark, I saw her long hair glistening. Where was the light coming from? As always, she stood in the middle of the room, giving off a slight smell of dried red peppers. When I asked her to let me stroke her hair, she walked over and bent down in front of me. Her hair was like a horse’s mane, icy cold and vigorous. I couldn’t help burying my face in it.

  “Can you see me?” I asked.

  “Of course. But I’m not accustomed to using my eyes. Where I live, we have lots of things to play with—as many as the cockroaches you have here, layer after layer of them . . .”

  “Are there cockroaches in my room?”

  “Yes. They’re under the floor struggling to emerge. The city is the cockroaches’ kingdom. Where I live it’s different; we have different things—like clouds floating in the air, sometimes dense and sometimes sparse. When they are extruded too densely, they usually discharge sparks that make pih-pah pih-pah sputtering sounds. When I’m there for a long time, I get scared, so I’ve come to you. Give me your hand, okay?”

  Her mouth was ice-cold, gripping my palm like an acetabulum. My hand tingled. She asked me what it felt like, and I said I was a little afraid but it didn’t matter. It was always better not to be alone. I also asked her what she’d seen on her way here. She said it seemed there’d been some white mice, but she hadn’t seen them. She’d figured this out from the shape, because one had jumped onto her breasts.

  She suddenly leapt from the bedside and then squatted. I heard sharp teeth biting sand. The light on her black hair flickered.

  “Elena (this was the foreign name I had given her), may I go to your home?”

  “No. The air there is too thin. Your lungs couldn’t take it.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of cockroaches?”

  “Yes, I am. But you’re here. You’re a man, and I love you.”

  She curled up into a ball under the table. She looked like a little bear, a little bear nibbling on quartz. She looked sweet.

  A lot of noise started coming from the streets, as if a powerful army were hurrying past. This sort of thing didn’t occur very often—probably only once or twice a year. She just sat there, aloof and indifferent. The chachacha . . . chachacha was rhythmic. I asked when she had started loving me, and she said a long time ago.

  “At that time, there was nothing frightening where we lived. My parents and my five brothers swam around all day long. As for me, I stood at the window and yearned for you.”

  “Back then, I probably wasn’t in the picture, was I?”

  “Possibly. Then you appeared later. I remember that I first saw you at the small coal pit. I often went there and listened closely to how those people emerged from the ground. You were the last one to come out. I heard your whole body make a tiny sound; perhaps it was discharging electricity. This was eight years ago. My parents also knew about you and me. They said this was a good thing. My parents and my brothers often bring this up to make fun of me.”

  It grew quiet outside. Hand in hand, Elena and I went downstairs. The street lights were on, and we kissed under the moonlight. It rained yesterday, so the streets were clean, and they didn’t look at all as if an army had just passed by. Skipping and leaping, she started running off. Her long hair was like a torch. I wanted to chase her, but I couldn’t catch up. Turning the corner, she disappeared without a trace. Ah,
I heard a lot of people opening their windows to look at me.

  When I went upstairs, I saw some cockroaches in the corridor. Some were even flying back and forth in the lamplight. In the daytime, we couldn’t see them. Our building was well-known in this city for its cleanliness and comfort. No one living in the building had seen Elena here at night. They said I walked in my sleep; maybe this was the building’s fault. Once in the daytime, when I had introduced Elena to a few of the other residents, they all said she was a cashier in a nearby supermarket. “She’s really a vivacious girl.”

  =

  Because I persisted, Elena had to agree to take me to her home. Sure enough, she lived in the suburbs. Although it was a fine day, she told me to wear a raincoat and boots. I countered, asking her why she wasn’t wearing them. She said she didn’t get sick easily, for she was accustomed to the wind and rain. She also said that even though I had worked in the small coal pit, I was very frail. Because I couldn’t foresee what I might run into, I deferred to her.

  That place wasn’t the one I used to be familiar with. I recall that not long after we set out, we crossed an overpass. From there, we made several turns in small alleys. Soon, I no longer recognized anything. It seemed to be a densely settled residential area. The paths between the buildings were crowded with peddlers selling all kinds of things; most of their goods were made of plastic. The peddlers were hawking their wares, and it was so crowded that one couldn’t walk through. Elena was very agile, wriggling her way like a snake through the goods and the peddlers. Soon, she disappeared. Worried, I shouted hoarsely: “Elena! Elena!” When I bumped into and overturned a booth, the peddlers pushed me to the ground and trampled on me. Everything before me turned black.