by Xiaolu Guo
In among all the memories bound up in that silent house of stone, I try to recall the things that my grandfather said to me while he was alive. He was always so cold and distant. My grandmother feared him, as did I. To us, he was just the view of a back moving upstairs or downstairs, a back that never bothered to turn towards us, a back that radiated no visible warmth and communicated no information at all. There is one conversation in the mists of my memory, however, that is different from the rest.
One day, my grandfather came down the stairs as I was standing at the window, watching the rain inundate the street outside. For no particular reason, he called my name. ‘Little Dog …’
I made a little grunt by way of reply, wondering why he had decided to speak to me.
These are the words my grandfather spoke: ‘If you ever meet your father, Little Dog, tell him that I was an unhappy man.’
‘My father?’ I was confused. ‘But I thought you said he was never coming back.’
At first my grandfather did not reply. After a moment, he said, ‘Oh, that’s right. I forgot.’
With this, he turned away, picked up an umbrella from behind the door and walked out into the rain.
I think that was the only time that my grandfather ever said anything to me about his attitude towards life. I suppose it was his way of telling my father, the father I had never met, about his own unhappiness.
I had absolutely no concept of the word father. As far as I was concerned, he was a man who didn’t exist.
My memory grows foggy. No matter how hard I try to recall my grandfather’s face, I can’t quite remember what he looked like. I begin to regret that I never touched his face with my own hands, not even once. I think that if a person never touches the face of another with his or her very own hand, then that person will eventually forget what the other looked like.
And so when I think of my grandfather, I think of him picking up that umbrella and walking out into the rain-drenched street. I think of his back disappearing down Pirate’s Alley, that back that never radiated any warmth, and never even bothered to turn round.
8
THE DAY I received the parcel of eel began badly. Red stumbled groggily into the bathroom to use the toilet. Only too late did he realise that the toilet would not flush because the pipes were clogged. Using a plunger and a variety of other household implements, Red tried to get the toilet to flush, but in vain: the water refused to swirl down into the porcelain vortex. Water spilled over the edge of the toilet bowl and onto the floor, transforming the bathroom into a swamp. Red bailed as fast as he could, but the unbearable stench spread through our entire flat. At this point, we began to consider ourselves fortunate to live on the ground floor. At least we did not have to worry about our toilet water flooding any neighbours below. Living on the ground floor of a high-rise building, it seems, is not entirely without its advantages. As for the pipes becoming clogged, Red insisted that this was not our fault. He admitted to having tossed cigarette butts into the toilet on occasion, but even a hundred cigarette butts, he reasoned, would not be enough to clog the pipes. I also admitted to having thrown things into the toilet, such as the tiny balls of hair that accumulated during our daily showers, but I doubted they would have caused a blockage in the pipes. In the end, Red and I concurred that blocked pipes were the collective fault of those thousands of other residents above us; we simply had the misfortune to share their plumbing. They were the ones up there every day eating, drinking, shitting and pissing to their hearts’ content. We were just the innocent victims on the ground floor.
Red, naked from the waist down, picked up a mop and angrily waded into the lake that had once been our bathroom. He began to mop up as best he could, but this went no way towards solving the fundamental problem. The toilet was still clogged. He threw on an overcoat and went out to find the person in charge of building plumbing maintenance. I could not bear to stay inside our flat a moment longer, so I brushed my teeth in the kitchen and headed over to a nearby supermarket to buy some milk.
As I passed the mailboxes in the hallway, I checked to see if we had any mail. I was surprised to find a notice stating that there was a package waiting for me at the post office. My name and address were written clearly in the box marked ‘recipient’. Under ‘place of origin’, someone had written ‘Village of Stone’. I stood rooted to the spot staring at the name of the place I had tried to avoid thinking about for over ten years. A shiver of anxiety ran through me at the idea that someone from the village was trying to contact me. I held the notice up to the sunlight and tried to make out the sender’s name, but it was rendered completely illegible by a large ink-blot. I gave up and began instead to puzzle over what might be in the package. In the space marked ‘Contents’, someone had written ‘edibles’. I glanced at the notice one last time and tucked it carefully into my pocket.
At the store, I bought a large carton of San Yuan brand milk and hurried home. When I opened the burglar-proof metal door to our flat, I discovered that Red had already tidied up the bathroom and managed to resolve the toilet problem. He was standing inside the bathroom, spraying air freshener. When he had finished, he picked up a large bag of refuse and walked over to the doorway where I was standing.
‘This place is a living hell,’ he said as he went out and tossed the bag into the rubbish chute in the hallway.
‘Just watch. Tomorrow it will be the rubbish chute that packs up.’ He was still complaining as he walked back into the kitchen to wash his hands. ‘Next thing you know, it will be the gas …’
I struck a match and put the kettle on, just to give myself something to do. I had no desire to make coffee or tea, or anything else for that matter. I was still mulling over the notice in my pocket.
I kicked off my slippers, changed into a pair of sandals and informed Red that I was going to the post office.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to send a letter?’
‘Have you ever known me to send a letter?’
‘Well, if you’re going there to subscribe to a newspaper, sign me up for a six-month subscription to Sports World News while you’re at it.’
‘I’m not going there to get a subscription.’
‘Why else would you go to the post office? It’s not likely anyone sent you a money transfer.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that someone might have sent me a package?’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s probably some video company sending you movies for the shop.’
‘I doubt it. All our videos are pirated.’
‘What else could it be, then?’
‘I have no idea.’ I pocketed my identification card and started for the door.
Having failed to elicit any useful information from me, Red seemed to lose interest in the topic. As I closed the door, I could hear him spraying the flat with another round of air freshener.
The whole way to the post office, I tried to think who could possibly have sent me a package. I went through a mental list of the people I knew in the Village of Stone, but I had lost touch with all of them long ago. I had moved house so many times over the years that I could not imagine how anyone from the Village of Stone could possibly know my current address.
When I reached the post office, I lined up at the package delivery window and waited for about five minutes while the clerk rummaged through the disorderly storeroom. He finally emerged with a large white cloth parcel, which he tossed onto the counter with a thump.
I picked up the mysterious parcel and examined it carefully. First I held it to my nose and sniffed. The overpowering odour of salted fish assaulted my nostrils. It was a familiar smell, one that I remembered well. Images of all the different types of seafood in the Village of Stone flashed before my eyes. Perhaps it was one of the local fish, such as cuttlefish, butterfish, yellow croaker or hairtail. Or maybe it was oysters, prawns, Buddha Hand scallops, mussels or some other shellfish that lived in the tide pools of the Village of St
one. I examined the opening of the parcel and noticed that it had been sewn shut, although the seam had already burst in several places. Judging from the crude-ness of the stitches, I guessed them to be a man’s handiwork. There were two seams, as if the man had been worried that the package might come open and so had decided to add another line of stitching.
I gazed at the two rows of stitches and tried to imagine someone familiar, some man I knew, standing at the counter of the village post office as he stitched the package. There was only one post office in the Village of Stone. I remembered the old man in glasses who always sat near the door, ready to help illiterate villagers write their letters. He did good business and his calligraphy was competent, though rather slow, as he traced out each ideograph as painstakingly as if he were making a painting. His pace was well suited to the illiterate villagers, who were generally slow to put their thoughts into words. In the post office there was also a long table with a pot of water-diluted paste, and next to that, a tangled ball of rough cotton thread and a few large needles used for sewing packages. The needles, which always seemed to be bent, were thrust into an old chunk of crumbling sea sponge. It was as if long years of use, or the accumulated pressure of so many pairs of hands, had somehow bent the needles out of shape. Were the villagers still using the same old set of bent sewing needles all these years later? Were the needles covered in rust by now, I wondered, or had they been replaced by new ones?
I borrowed a pair of scissors from the stamp counter and cut into the package.
Inside was a black plastic bag, and inside the bag lay the monstrous dried eel.
Who could have sent this to me? And how on earth did they find me?
As I stared down at the eel, I suddenly began to feel frightened. It was as if I were trapped within the unseeing gaze of those dead eyes, caught in the power of the Eel Demon and unable to move.
At the package counter, there was a constant stream of people coming and going, carrying parcels to be posted or lugging parcels that they had received. But as soon as they caught sight of me holding the enormous eel, every one of them stopped to stare. One man even made a point of coming over to tap the eel on the head with his finger, as if to confirm that it was not, in fact, constructed of wood. Filled with misgivings, I carefully replaced the smelly creature in its parcel and lifted it gingerly, as one might a newborn infant.
I must have given Red quite a shock when I returned home and tossed an enormous salted eel onto the table.
At first, Red was not even sure what it was. Why anyone would want to salt and dry such an enormous piece of seafood was completely beyond his imagination. After asking where it came from, he just stood and stared, until at last he could no longer stand the fishy odour. Grumbling that he couldn’t believe he was having to deal with yet another bad smell in the course of one day, he raced around the flat flinging windows open one by one. When this proved insufficient to drive out the stench, Red threw open the front door. Our flat was now open to the public.
Before long, the draught in the flat had intensified to a crosscurrent. Air raced from the open windows to the open door and back again, setting everything flapping in the breeze. The flat was like a boat being tossed by waves on an open sea, and anything that was not anchored down was in danger of being swept away. Only the enormous dried eel on the kitchen table remained unmoved. I heard the hesitant footsteps of someone outside in the hallway. A curious neighbour, most likely, but I was too embarrassed to go and see. The person outside must have been equally embarrassed, for the footsteps soon halted, then moved off into the distance. But a few minutes later, I heard the click of heels in the hall once again. Like a fly attracted by the smell of rotting meat, the persistent neighbour had returned.
There was jazz playing on the stereo, Billie Holiday’s languid rendition of I’m a Fool to Want You. I had the strange sensation that the spirit of the dried eel was being channelled through Billie Holiday’s voice, poking gentle fun at itself by way of her lyrics, and that everything in the house – the walls, the furnishings, even the curtains swaying in the breeze – was oddly complicit in this bizarre scene.
‘Who would send you something like this?’ Red asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No, I was just wondering the same thing myself.’
‘Wasn’t there a name on the receipt?’
‘It wasn’t clear.’
‘Take another look.’
‘It’s no use. All you can see is a big ink-blot.’
‘You’ve no idea who sent it to you?’
‘I can’t even begin to guess.’
‘Why would someone send you something like this? It’s so salty and … well, fishy.’
‘I have no idea why.’
This pointless speculation did nothing to quell Red’s suspicions about the identity of the mystery sender. For Red, the most pressing question now was how to dispose of the creature.
He put on an apron, picked up a knife and, placing the eel on a chopping board, prepared to get down to work. Unfortunately, Red had little experience in matters such as these. In the first place, the eel was far too large to fit on the chopping board. The only way to cut an eel that large without soaking it first is to place it on the floor, anchor it by the tail with one of your feet and use all your strength to cut through it.
There was a terrific thump as Red brought his knife down on the chopping board. The eel went sailing through the air and landed unscathed in the kitchen sink.
I tried to dissuade Red from his methods. ‘You’ll never cut it that way,’ I told him. ‘It’s hard as a rock. You have to soak it in water before you can cut it.’
Completely ignoring my advice, Red braced himself for another try. I stood by patiently while he attempted the second cut. It ended much as I had expected, with both eel and chopping board clattering to the floor, and the eel sustaining no visible damage. Red, disheartened, set down the knife, removed his apron and went over to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. The mighty eel lay triumphant on the kitchen floor.
‘What are we going to do with it?’ Red asked.
Ever since I slit open the mysterious package in the post office, I had been so immersed in thoughts about the Village of Stone that I hadn’t stopped to think about what I was actually going to do with the eel. Now Red’s question made me remember the dried eel that hung from the rafters of my grandmother’s kitchen, gathering dust, and the mouthwatering smell of my grandfather’s delicious eel stew. I was determined not to be like my grandmother and waste a perfectly good eel.
‘What do you mean, what are we going to do with it?’ I said. ‘We’ll eat it, that’s what! After all, it’s perfectly edible.’
Red seemed to have his doubts. ‘I’m having a hard time imagining putting that thing in my mouth.’
‘Why? What’s the problem?’
‘It’s like some kind of sea goblin, a big shrivelled sea goblin. I’m afraid to eat it.’
How could anyone be afraid to eat an eel? I wondered.
But Red did have a point. In a way, the eel was a sort of sea goblin. Goblins are said to be very long-lived, and eels can live for up to fifty years, sometimes even longer. What was more, this one had travelled from the depths of the East China Sea overland to a city one thousand eight hundred kilometres away. It seemed almost a shame to eat it.
But if we weren’t going to eat it, what else would we do with it? Put it on display? Prop it up on an altar like a household god and burn incense to it? Since I no longer had any connection with people who earned their living from the sea, there was no danger that I could bring them bad luck by mistreating an eel. I was determined to eat it.
‘Listen,’ I told Red, ‘we’ll soak it in tap water to wash away all the salt. Then when it’s soft enough, we can cut it into chunks. If we add some water, slices of ginger and cooking wine, we can make it into a clear soup. Or we can add some potato flour and make it into a stew like the eel stew I used t
o eat as a kid.’
‘Are you really sure it’s edible?’ Red sounded doubtful.
‘Of course. It’ll be delicious.’
‘Well, at any rate, I haven’t got the time to deal with it.’
Red left the kitchen and headed back to his computer, as I filled the sink with water to soak the eel.
The eel was much too large to fit into the sink, and every few hours I had to feed more of its body into the water so that all of it got a chance to soften. While I was absorbed in this task, Red stayed glued to his computer, typing up the rules and regulations for his Frisbee tournament. After he had finished doing this, he designed a scorecard to keep track of points and began planning the schedule, practice locations and team assignments for the upcoming season. For Red, when it came to Frisbee, there was always work to be done.
The tournament would be held in the autumn, in the Fragrant Hills west of Beijing. It would be open to expatriates who had lived in Beijing for at least one year and to Chinese who had lived abroad for at least one year. I didn’t quite understand the logic of this, but Red explained that these types of people were ‘floaters’ well suited to playing an airborne sport. They were also more likely than most to be able to afford the tournament and practice fees. Free-spirited by nature, they possessed the right personality type for Frisbee. I had no way to check the veracity of this claim, but Red firmly believed that the idea was the most innovative aspect of his tournament. He was trying to come up with an interesting name for the tournament or, better yet, a catchy slogan. ‘Flight is Elsewhere’, ‘The High Life’ and ‘Catch!’ were just a few of the slogans he was considering.