by Xiaolu Guo
I ponder this in silence while the doctor waits for my reply.
‘Which one is cheaper?’ I ask haltingly.
‘Will your employer be paying your medical expenses?’
‘No.’
‘In that case, if you’re paying for it yourself, the drug-induced method is several hundred yuan cheaper. A surgical abortion costs about sixteen hundred yuan.’
‘Then I suppose the drug-induced method is better for me,’ I say quietly.
‘But I should tell you,’ the doctor continues, ‘that the drug-induced method is only effective ninety to ninety-five per cent of the time. In a small percentage of cases, the foetus is not expelled completely.’ Her tone grows serious. ‘In such cases, a surgical abortion is necessary to remove the rest of the foetus. It can be a painful procedure.’
I feel as if my heart has plunged to my stomach.
Red and I walk home from the hospital in silence. I decide to stay home from work for the rest of the day. All that afternoon, I am overcome by a feeling of hopelessness.
Red remains silent.
The cat upstairs meows all through the night, though the rest of the building is deep in sleep. In the silence, broken only by the cat’s wailing, the world seems so deserted, so cold and empty. There is nothing left to cling to in this world, nothing I can hold on to.
When I wake, I find myself alone in the bed. I prop myself up on one elbow and look around the bedroom. Red, dressed only in his underwear, is sitting in the wicker chair by the window, smoking in silence.
The smoke, curling softly upwards, is thrown into relief by the early morning sunlight.
Despite our troubles, the sunlight still consents to shine down upon us. That must count for something.
‘You’re awake,’ Red says huskily, as he exhales a plume of smoke. He looks as if he hasn’t slept.
‘How long have you been up?’
‘Quite a while. I got up before dawn.’
‘Why so early? Was it the noise from upstairs?’ I listen, but the cat seems to have fallen silent. I notice that the entire building is, for once, completely silent.
I can guess what Red is thinking. He must be thinking about going to the hospital together, but is reluctant to bring up the subject.
I sit up and look at my watch. If Red isn’t going to say it, I will. I am on the verge of asking him to accompany me to the hospital when he speaks:
‘Coral, let’s get married.’
Suddenly, the room is a blur of smoke and sunlight. I gaze at Red in confusion, unsure whether I have heard him correctly.
‘Let’s get married.’ He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I want us to have this baby, Coral.’
Red stands up from his chair, walks over and takes me in his arms. We hold each other for a long time. Now that we have something to cling to, neither of us wants to let go.
What goes up must comes down. Even a Frisbee has to come back down to earth some time.
21
WE DON’T GO back to the hospital.
Red says that when the time comes, we will ask the same kindly doctor to help with the delivery.
We decide not to do an ultrasound, because we do not want to know the sex of the baby in advance. Some things are best left to the sea goddess Mazu Niangniang. Let the goddess decide.
My mood gradually improves. I have something growing inside me that makes me feel warm and full, something that is a part of me, something that links Red and me together as never before.
From the moment Red walks into the employment office and fills in a job application form listing his age as thirty, he stops complaining that jobs are idiotic. While he makes the rounds of job interviews at different companies, his Frisbee rests quietly on top of the wardrobe, as if observing the newfound maturity of its owner.
The salted eel that came all the way from the post office in the Village of Stone spends its days shuttling back and forth between our refrigerator and the chopping board. It feeds us for a long time, through meals of eel on rice, eel in soup, steamed and stir-fried eel and eel braised in soy sauce. Little by little, we whittle down its bulk. Red even goes out and buys a cookbook of eel recipes and then proceeds, through trial and error, to master every one. I begin to believe that we have no cause for worry: even if Red is unable to find work, we would have no trouble finding jobs as chefs in one of Beijing’s many upmarket seafood restaurants, because we have more authentic and delicious eel recipes in our repertoire than most professional chefs. For Red, the fishy smell that once proved so unbearable has become the scent of money, a thing of tangible value.
Our lives begin to improve. In the process of digesting our daily meals of eel, we regain our spirit and our strength. Thanks to our new, healthier diet, we suffer no more sleepless nights. The eel recipes are having an effect.
The only thing for which there is no consolation is the memory of the elderly man who claimed to be my father. He has not returned, but I think of him often, a nondescript old man living all alone somewhere, suffering from the same ailments that afflict other men his age. Maybe he has liver spots on his neck or a bad back, perhaps he suffers from poor digestion or frequent constipation, maybe he has been forced to give up smoking and is finding it to be a difficult battle. I must have turned his image over in my mind a thousand times, but I cannot find a single negative or hateful thing about him. Everything about him seemed so kind and gentle, particularly his hands, those hands that so resembled mine.
I still have his card. To avoid losing it, I have tucked it into my pocket diary. Yet I hesitate to take it out and look at it again because I know exactly what I will find there. Besides his name and an address that has been blacked out rather ineffectively in felt tip pen, the only other thing on the card is a telephone number.
I still cannot bring myself to decide whether or not to dial that telephone number.
In idle moments, Red and I sometimes talk about the old man. I suggest that perhaps he was telling the truth, that he does only have two months to live. Maybe he is lying alone in a sickbed in a hospital somewhere, with only an IV drip and an oxygen tube to keep him company. When I start talking like this, Red always tries to change the subject. He points out that because I have always considered my father dead, his sudden visit was more like the visitation of a ghost or spirit than a real person. My father was nothing more than a ghost who came to seek my forgiveness.
I resolve not to think any further about the elderly man who stood, alive and in the flesh, in my front hall that morning. There are plenty of other things to think about. During the day, my melancholy thoughts are effectively drowned out by the noise of our building, these twenty-five storeys filled with other people, other lives.
But when I am alone, when Red has gone out to buy a newspaper or some milk, and silence settles over the apartment block, I once again find myself plunged into reflection. Try as I might, I cannot convince myself to forget the old man who came to my house claiming to be my father. His words ring in my head:
‘Coral, I have cancer. They say it’s terminal.’
I try to rationalise by telling myself that this man, Jiang Qinglin, is simply one of countless old men out there dying of cancer. But these comforting excuses disappear the minute I feel the life growing in my belly. At these times, I feel a sense of responsibility, the responsibility that one human being feels for another.
I can talk myself out of it no longer. I dig out the card the old man has left, and dial his telephone number.
My hand trembles as I hold the telephone receiver. I am already regretting my impulsive decision, made in a moment of haste. I am happy with my life the way it is, and I am aware that I could be plunging myself into a great deal of trouble by making this call.
While I mull this over in my mind, the phone on the other end of the fine continues to ring. The ringing seems to go on for ages. After what seems like an eternity, someone answers.
‘Hello,’ I say, ‘I’m looking for Jiang Qinglin.’
A crude and unfamiliar male voice replies, ‘Who?’
‘Jiang Qinglin.’
‘There’s nobody called that here!’ the man says rudely.
‘Isn’t your address 30 Jintai Road?’
‘Yeah.’ The man on the other end of the line sounds impatient.
‘Well, this is the number someone gave me on a business card.’
‘We’re a guest house.’
‘A guest house? Oh, I see. Have you had a man named Jiang Qinglin, thin, about sixty years old, check in recently?’
‘What business is it of yours?’ the man on the other end asks suspiciously.
‘I … I’m his daughter and I’m trying to find him.’ What else can I say? It is the only thing that comes to mind.
‘I think he might have been here about a week ago, but he isn’t staying here now. He’s already left.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
The man slams the phone down. He must not have replaced the phone in the cradle properly, though, because when I press the receiver to my ear I can hear the slap of the man’s slippers echoing down what sounds like a long empty hallway. Judging from the acoustics, the place must be deserted, or perhaps it is simply one of those inexpensive guest houses installed in a basement somewhere. Finally, the footsteps fade and all I can hear is the faint buzzing of the telephone fine. There is something surreal about it, as if I have reached a number that exists in no real time or space.
I hang up and study the card again. Other than the telephone number and a vaguely legible address, it contains no useful information.
I think about Jiang Qinglin all day, and at night I dream that he is standing by my bed. He has been transformed into an angel with a pair of snow-white wings sprouting from his back. Though he says nothing, only stands and stares at me, I can see in his eyes that he needs my forgiveness. I nod to him, wordlessly, and it seems as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Yes, I can forgive him. But what other sins has this man – this man who claims to be my father – committed in his lifetime? As soon as I have forgiven him, he flies through the window, his body carried away on wings of white.
When I wake to the faint light of dawn, I feel frightened by a dark premonition. I look at Red lying next to me, deep in sleep. Unable to wait for him to wake up on his own, I shake him until he opens his eyes. He does not seem particularly happy to have been woken so early.
‘I have to go and see Jiang Qinglin,’ I tell him.
Red stares at me in confusion, but at least this time he does not try to talk me out of it.
I take the card from my diary again and glance at the address. This time, I decide, I will go directly to the guest house.
The guest house is in a basement, just as I guessed. It is deserted, save for a few traders with business in Beijing who appear to live in the guest house all year round. By the look of them, they are mainly poor pedlars, the sort of failed middle-aged men who make a modest living buying and selling whatever wares they can find. Through open doors, I can hear water being poured from a thermos, a man yawning, all the sounds of loneliness and failure. The rooms are spartanly furnished, containing only a bed, a pair of plastic slippers, a table, a hot water thermos and glass, a washbasin and a fluorescent lamp. Besides the communal sinks and bathrooms, further down the corridor, there are no other amenities. Although the guest house is underground, there is still some faint sunlight visible through the windows. It is more of a half-basement really, with windows at street level from which you can see people’s feet as they walk past. The air is permeated with the odour of damp and mould. Perhaps because they are left on twenty-four hours a day, the lights in the corridor are very low wattage, more suited to feline vision than to human eyes. When someone passes down the corridor, their footsteps echo from end to end, and the dim lights overhead cast vague shadows along the walls. The man at the reception desk, perhaps the same man who answered my phone call, ignores me, keeping his eyes glued to a television programme he is watching on a set with exceedingly poor reception. I finally manage to glean some information from one of the other boarders, who says he works in the pharmaceutical trade. He tells me that Jiang Qinglin has left the guest house and moved into a hospital for terminal cancer patients.
I know that there are two cancer hospitals in Beijing, so I follow my intuition and go to the one I know specialises in late-stage cancer treatment. The hospital deals with cases in which the cancer has spread so badly that there is not much hope for a cure. It is not so much a cancer treatment centre as a hospice, intended to make the patients as comfortable as possible while they wait for death. Just as I suspected, Jiang Qinglin is a patient there.
There is no mistake. His name is right there in the hospital registration book: Jiang, Qinglin.
I enter my own name in the visitors’ book: Jiang, Coral.
Jiang and Jiang. Between these two names, I wonder, does there really exist some connection, some inescapable and unavoidable link?
When I finally get to see Jiang Qinglin, he is about to be operated on. He is lying on a hospital trolley and is dressed in a sterile paper gown. Even his feet have been wrapped in sterile blue paper bags. Because he has been sedated, he is unable to talk or move. As I enter, the nurses are just wheeling him into the operating theatre.
I do not even have the chance to talk to the old man. He cannot see or hear me.
I tell the nurses that I am his daughter and ask them to let me into the theatre, but they inform me that no one is allowed in during the operation.
The door closes behind them, the red light over it goes on and I am left to wait outside. It is a long wait. I feel nervous somehow, as if the last judgement were already at hand, but I know that there is nothing I can do but wait.
When the nurse comes out some time later, I ask her what is happening. She tells me that the operation will take several hours.
I ask her what is wrong with him. She says that he has throat cancer, but it has already spread to the lymphatic system and now his body is filled with tumours. The surgery will excise the most life-threatening parts, but there is nothing that the doctors can do about the other tumours, short of chemotherapy. The prognosis is grim.
I sit outside the main door to the surgical department, watching patients being wheeled back and forth.
When the nurse emerges from the theatre a second time, she seems rather curious about me. ‘Are you really his daughter?’ she asks.
What am I supposed to say?
I nod my head.
‘That’s very odd,’ the nurse replies, taken aback. ‘If you are his daughter, how can you not have known he has cancer?’
I struggle to find a plausible answer. ‘Well, you see … we’ve only met once.’
The nurse seems even more surprised. ‘Well, well … that’s one I haven’t heard before. Before sending a patient in for serious surgery, this hospital usually requires a signature by a family member or close friend. But in his case, he had no one to sign for him. We just assumed he had no living relatives.’
‘What did you do?’
‘In the end, the head doctor gave his approval because it is such an urgent case. Without surgery, he wouldn’t make it through another week.’
With this, the nurse hurries back to her duties.
Seven hours later, the operation is finished and the anaesthetic is beginning to wear off. The old man has regained partial consciousness. He has been wheeled out of the theatre and into the intensive care ward, which already houses several other patients.
The nurse warns me that when the anaesthetic wears off completely, the old man will be in a great deal of pain.
I stand at his bedside staring at his face. His wrinkled neck and haggard face make him look so very old. Even in his semiconscious state, he is grimacing, his brows knit with pain. I can see the hole in his throat where they have cut out the tumour. The hole seems to extend all the way through, as if his throat has been hollowed out completely. I can almost
see the blood moving slowly through his blood vessels and filling the dark hole, as if emptying into an open grave. When at last he regains full consciousness, he opens his eyes and looks at me. Our eyes meet. I think he must recognise me, for the minute he sees me, his eyes fill with tears.
At that moment, a nurse carrying a bottle of medicine enters the room.
The old man opens his mouth as if to say something, but no sound comes out. At the very same moment, he and I realise that he can’t speak.
The nurse hastens to explain. ‘They had to remove his vocal cords.’
Stunned, I glance back at the old man and see the hopelessness in his eyes. He looks just like a frightened child.
He raises his hand and weakly signals for something to write on. I pull some paper out of my backpack and the nurse hands him a pen. He places the paper on the sheet over his chest and begins to write something. Though he is unable to see the paper and his hand is trembling, he manages to scrawl the following words: ‘It hurts.’
I feel a lump in my throat, and know that I can contain myself no longer. I pick up the paper and rush from the hospital ward. Before I am out of the door, I am choked with sobs. Outside in the corridor filled with doctors walking back and forth on their errands, I stand and weep.
When I realise that my sobs are audible, I press my hand against my mouth. The last thing I want is for the old man in his hospital bed to hear me outside crying.
When night falls, I keep a vigil at his bedside. Because he cannot speak, and is so weak with pain that he isn’t even able to write, no words pass between us. Just after 2 a.m., the family members gathered around the next bed begin crying. The patient has died. Two nurses quickly wheel his body from the room.