by A. Yi
In truth, it’s pretty difficult to kill a man. On one of our breaks outside, I saw the officer being led around, his face blue and swollen. He spotted me and in his eyes I saw panic because he couldn’t get his revenge. He wasn’t faking it. If it hadn’t been for the other guards, he would have accepted the death penalty as a price worth paying for being able to run over to me there and then and strangle me. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, almost coquettishly. This would probably make him more sick.
A few days later I was led into a meeting room. I sat waiting until the door opened and then a man wearing reading glasses and with neatly combed white hair walked in. He bowed to each of the prosecutors, one by one.
‘Excellent, excellent,’ he said.
My first impressions were not good. This guy was a running dog if ever I’d seen one.
He acted like we were old acquaintances, asking me politely where he should sit. Wherever, I said. He said he didn’t want to cause me any pressure. Finally he moved a bench over and sat in front of me. Only then did I realise that he was right, having him sit in front of me like this made me feel trapped in his gaze. It was pretty uncomfortable. But I didn’t say anything.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m not a policeman and I don’t work for the judiciary. I have no legal right to punish or incarcerate you and I’m not here to pass judgement. I’m an old man of sixty-four and you are only nineteen, but here we are equals. I want us to talk, open up. Fate has brought us together.’
I took his business card:
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CITY EDUCATION
ASSOCIATION
MEMBER OF THE PROVINCIAL FAMILY EDUCATION
RESEARCH UNIT
He watched me read it, then said, ‘I’m just an ordinary citizen.’
He took out a packet of cigarettes and asked if I wanted one. I accepted without saying anything and he leaned over to light it. I remembered a film I saw once where a man lit a cigarette like this and was then captured by the prisoner and taken hostage himself. The lighter wouldn’t produce a flame, but he kept flicking patiently. I was starting to like him. Maybe I could tell him some personal things. The thought was a beautiful one, in the same way mathematics is beautiful and in that beauty you can find comfort. I needed the right person to listen. I just wanted him to listen.
He took a pile of loose papers from his briefcase, licked his finger and began flicking through them. They were covered in red notes. He put some to one side. He carried on like this for some time. I smoked alone. It was my first cigarette in ages and I was surprised by the taste. It almost tasted of shit. I felt dizzy, like I’d been drinking cheap booze. The sun came flooding through the window. I’d been longing for it while alone in my cell, but now I just felt hot and itchy.
Eventually he finished tidying the papers on the table, looked up. ‘Uh huh.’ He pinched the fingers of his left hand together (as if catching a mosquito) and spoke.
‘Do you think this kind of incident is an exception or quite common in today’s society?’
‘An exception.’
‘Uh huh. It does seem to be an exception, but in fact exceptionality and normality are united in their opposition. Normal behaviour contains abnormal behaviour and exceptional incidents embody society’s norms. We must find the reason here.’
The chances of us talking had been ruined. He was right, but it was the kind of right that gave no moral nourishment. I had no idea what he was doing here, other than showing off his education. He was like an old sheep, soft and warm, kind-looking. He could have decided to be a good listener.
Suddenly he asked me who I lived with before the age of five.
‘Grandpa and Grandma.’
‘What did they give you?’
‘Love.’
‘What kind of love?’
‘Unconditional. They spoilt me.’
‘To what degree?’
I began talking, it flowed out, moving stories of their love. His pen moved quickly. In the gaps between my stories he drew lines in his papers, as if solving a mathematical problem. He wanted answers and that made me despise him. If he’d given the matter two seconds’ thought, he would have realised no one could have such clear memories of life before they turned five. I reminisced about my short life just as he requested: when I went back to live with my parents, when I left again, my moves between schools in the village, county town and provincial capital, the pressures and troubles that had brought me to my critical juncture.
‘Do you think leaving the life in which you were the object of your grandparents’ love was beneficial or detrimental to you?’
‘It did much more harm than good. It’s essentially the reason I killed Kong Jie.’
He was jumping with excitement, as was his pen on the page. He made one last stab in his notes. Full stop. He took to his feet like a scientist who had discovered a new wonder cure or a writer who had just finished his masterwork. Caught in the ecstasy of creation. He would probably have embraced me had it not been for the armed police in the room. Controlling himself, he feigned a pained expression.
‘You, son, are a typical case of a fallen prince.’
‘No, I’m the redeemer.’
I brushed him away, my heart filled with loathing and bitter disappointment.
Two days later I was led once again into the meeting room with the same camera set up. I felt an overwhelming weight, like I was standing high up on a stage, my lapels fluttering in the wind, and thousands of expectant faces looking up at me. I was used to straightening my hunched spine, putting on a show of spiritedness, but not capriciousness. It was a painstaking performance, a completely different me.
The person sitting before me, trying to make me feel comfortable, was a female journalist. The table had been removed, there was nothing between us. She had short, permed hair, alabaster skin and an ever so slightly plump, round face. She wore a hemp-grey Western suit jacket and navy skirt. She was leaning forward, her fingers criss-crossed and placed on her raised knees, smiling (as if smiling was the mouth’s only function). Her chin was raised, ever so slightly looking up. Her eyes never left me.
It was like being cursed. I felt a sudden urge to plead with her. I was awaiting her instructions.
‘Don’t think about the camera,’ she said.
‘Uh huh.’
I was shy. Her teeth were white and straight, the tone of her voice warm, like a breeze flitting through leaves, deep and richly magnetic. Every word was itself a form of clarity.
She passed me the morning paper. The vice-president of the City Education Association had concluded that there were three contributing factors as to why I had committed murder:
1. A failure in my upbringing.
2. Pressure resulting from the college entrance exams.
3. Negative societal influence.
He finished with more nonsense, meant to prevent
similar incidents in the future:
1. Understanding and comprehension.
2. Attention and patience.
3. Equality and reciprocity.
‘What do you think?’ she asked me.
‘Bullshit.’
I already knew what she wanted. She smiled broadly.
‘Then why do you think you did it?’
‘Diversion. I’d say diversion.’
‘What did you want diversion from?’
She nodded, her eyes leading me on. I was desperate to speak. I began telling her the truth, one sentence, two sentences, but then in burst a middle-aged man (like a lion trespassing into our territory, she was my lioness). He was clutching a piece of paper which she read, reclined in her seat and exchanged meaningful looks with him as he left.
That was it, it was over, whatever there had been between us. I shut my mouth.
‘Diversion from what?’ she asked with a heavy heart, having seemingly forgotten my earlier explanation.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
Then I said, ‘For a moment, you reminded me of my cousin.’
She liked this and leaned forward again. It was the most hypocritical thing I’d ever witnessed. To think I’d thought her worth trusting, just like my cousin. Now I could see that supposed sincerity for what it was, a superficial technique. She was trying to cheat an answer out of me. Everything was leading to this; even her dress and make-up were carefully chosen to this end. As soon as I’d given her what she wanted, she would leave, high- fiving her colleagues on a job well done.
‘Please continue with what you were saying,’ she said.
‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ I said.
The atmosphere became frosty and she wasn’t expecting it. In one last-ditch attempt, she started an onslaught of ridiculous questions.
‘What does it feel like to be sent away from home?’
‘It’s not what you’re thinking, I wasn’t constantly burning with anger.’
This was possibly my last offer of kindness, but she didn’t take it. Instead she rushed to the next question.
‘What was it that stopped you from putting the fire out?’
‘Putting the fire out?’
‘I mean, the flames of your rage, your desire to kill?’
‘It was impossible.’
‘How come?’
‘Because the ground beneath me was burning.’
‘So you just let the flames grow?’
‘I didn’t let them grow, they were going to grow without me.’
We carried on like this, not fully understanding each other, until she decided she had had enough. She turned her back on me and spoke to the camera. She read the words beautifully:
Resplendent flowering youth, joy and wild abandon
suddenly, this was the outcome
My heart, what pain?
Child, I don’t understand
Why would you do such a thing?
I hear mother’s blood-filled tears
Child, I lament
I cannot, will never comprehend
why you would do such a thing.
I wanted to cry. If I’d known someone was going to write such a shit poem, I wouldn’t have killed her.
In Prison
No one came to visit after that. I was handcuffed and tied by my feet, like a bear in captivity. After hours of sitting for too long, I began to feel like I’d become stuck to the cold, damp floor, that I had become part of the building. I’d heard people say that prisoners could spend a whole afternoon playing with one ant and eventually were able to distinguish between males and females. But there were no insects here, so I had my hands on my crotch most of the time. In, out. My hands were sticky from semen and smelt like a fish market. I took to wiping them on the soles of my feet until they were black with grime. I didn’t do it for pleasure, I was just bored senseless.
I asked the guard for a Rubik’s cube, but was refused. I said it wasn’t exactly a lot to ask.
‘What would be the point of locking you up if I were to give you a Rubik’s cube?’
He pulled the small metal window shut and I start thumping at it.
‘What’s a Rubik’s cube got to do with my incarceration?’
He ignored me. I asked him again when he came with food.
‘You want to play with the Rubik’s cube. If I gave you one, I would be undermining any sense of punishment.’ He was kind of right.
I started obsessing over my arrest; the blue skies of freedom outside my window didn’t occupy my thoughts much. I could have pushed over the police officer and run. I could have used stones or a kitchen knife to keep passers-by away. They would probably have shot me. Instead, I sat alone in my cell facing the immeasurable void that was time itself. Life’s petty problems (frustrated commutes, tedious work, inconsequential arguments, sexual escapades) were all designed to create a screen between the flesh and time’s inevitable stranglehold. But I was stuck in my cell, with nothing to do, or at least nothing that could keep me occupied for more than a few minutes, and time’s infinite embrace kept leaning towards me. Herculean, invincible, omniscient, flesh without feeling, it listened not to your entreaties, cared not for your sorrows, it was the dirt always crushed, the waves always crashing, it forced itself into every space, drowned you, dismembered you, it pressed on top of you so that its weight felt solid, it dug into you like a quick, relentless bamboo arrow piercing through your nails. There was no resisting it. It was a slow demise. My father’s image came to me and hot tears gathered in my eyes.
In the days before my father’s death, he stayed in a hospital room much like my cell – cramped, dark and moist, the floor like rat skin giving off the stench of nothingness. At one point, having been in a coma for a while, he quietly woke and took my hand.
‘I keep seeing a young man in a white robe sitting over there by the wall. I think I know him, but at the same time I don’t. He is eating a simple apple. Or maybe he is simply eating an apple. Can you hear the chewing? He sits with his back pressed against the wall, his eyes shut, concentrating on the piece of fruit. He will never finish. He is waiting for the right moment to stand up. He will throw the pips on the floor, step on them. He is waiting, but you don’t know what for.
‘He is the angel of death,’ he continued. ‘He has come to tell you that death is not a flash or an exclamation mark. It doesn’t come suddenly, in a violent moment. It is a process.Your organs are waiting to malfunction, one by one, like a water bottle cooling. It’s not about waiting for that one painful moment. Child, what I really want is for someone to lie down beside me and die with me. But that rarely happens in life. I see only you healthy people, growing. You frown, you cry, but you still have energy in your bones.Your bodies are like buds after the spring rains. I was exhausted long ago. You come only to reinforce this truth.You’ve locked me in this cell, but you are outside running like children in a playground.Your laughter is like a metal weight pressing on me, pinning me down. I feel ashamed of you. There is such a distance between us. Either fuck off, or get a gun and shoot me.’
My father sighed, his dreadful attempt at a poetic monologue over, and finally brushed me away in disgust. I left, thinking of the injustice of it all. You’re born, you get old, you get sick, you die. Oh, humanity! It’s nothing but a fucking disgrace. All of it. But as soon as my mother walked in, my father rolled into her arms and cried. Ma didn’t say anything to comfort him.
I started trying to keep up with life outside my cell. I would scrape my finger along the dusty floor and mark the days on the wall. But I soon gave up. I was going to die whatever, so what was the point? Time turned into a primal chaos, days could pass in what felt like only one, or they went on for ever (like broken shards of glass, impossible to count). Sometimes I wanted to keep the night from coming and other days I longed for it to come quickly, even when it might already have been dark outside. My dreams became more vivid. Once I pictured myself in bed. I went to get up, to visit someone, but I was paralysed. This was the only person in the whole world whom I cared about and who felt the same way about me. There were no feelings of resentment between us. I couldn’t see his face, he had no name. I went through everyone I had ever met, but there was no such person. But when he brushed against the clouds, the branches and the occasional lightning when he flew up into the sky, at that moment I felt I knew him better than I would ever know another human being. He shook his scales and from them drops of water rained.
‘I dreamed of you, so I came,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am the person in your dreams.’
‘Then who am I?’
‘You are the person in my dreams.’
‘Do you exist here on Earth?’
‘No.’
‘What about me?’
‘Neither do you.’
‘But I felt it, when you pinched my hand.’
‘We don’t exist.’
‘I want to die.’
‘I dreamed that you died. But I can also dream that you live.’
‘Then dream that I live.’
&n
bsp; ‘It doesn’t make a difference.’
I woke up and felt amused. I started imagining I was a character in a novel. I saw a hunched author sitting in the glow of a lamp. He wrote my name on a white piece of paper before adding more detail: my clothes, where I lived, my school and friends, general personality traits, my life story, what would happen to me. And I in turn outlined his life. Every time my mind speeded up, I instructed myself to slow down. I planned it all, down to the songs he listened to when writing. He chose ten or so from his collection and listened to each in turn until the sounds of‘Silver Springs’ came from his speakers. This was when he found his writing rhythm. He wrote a few sentences, but it wasn’t quite flowing, so he read out loud. Anything just a little off, he excised like a ruthless despot. He stopped only when he felt it was too cruel.
‘That’s enough. You have to learn to forgive yourself.’
This gave him courage to continue. The inspiration had finally come, but just as he was about to throw himself into the flames of creativity, his telephone rang. A friend. He made some excuses to push the friend away, but more and more accusations came down the line. Flustered, and more than a little hostile, he sighed and went to meet the friend. He feigned interest well into the night, until the moment arrived when he could finally make his escape. But the inspiration had bolted, leaving him naked. He sat for hours, trying to catch it and bring it back, just one small bit of it, but nothing. He put his head in his hands and tried to cry, his regret as deep as the sea. He spoke to me, on the paper.
‘Work sucks my energy and destroys my intellect. But I had it, just then, for a moment. Then my friends stole it from me. Why can’t you give me one clean day? Why?’
‘You’ve already given half your life to me. Why are you so desperate to kill me off?’ I said to him.
‘Death is the only way you’ll live a little longer.’
‘In that case, I’ll kill you. I’ve murdered before.’
‘No. Even if you kill me, I won’t be a sell-out.’