The Far Side of the Night

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  Grandpa had promised him one yuan per rat or mouse. Because they ate their rice and corn. And gnawed holes in the baskets. And in the roof.

  One yuan. He had eight already.

  There was no sign of the rat. He hoped that it would stay a while longer in the shed and that the visitors would lose interest in him.

  Against his will, his thoughts turned to his mother once more. He wondered where she was. What she was doing there. Whether she thought about him. And why she had not come home for Chinese New Year. She had rung one day before. One day.

  She was sorry, she had said to Grandpa. She had to work. She wanted to explain it to him. He had not believed a word. The parents of the other children had all come home for Chinese New Year. From Shenzhen. From Shanghai. From Guangdong. From Beijing. One mother had even come from Harbin. All the factories in the country closed for the entire week. Everyone knew that.

  He was not interested in her explanations. She had promised, and promises weren’t to be broken.

  Why isn’t she coming? he had asked Grandpa. But the old man had only given him a sad look and said nothing. Then Da Lin had thought that maybe there were questions to which it was better not to have any answers at all.

  The first thing he spotted was the two tiny black eyes. The rat was sniffing the wood, looking around uneasily, as though it could smell the danger. It turned round quickly and disappeared again. It must have smelled the strangers. But then it reappeared again. Da Lin could tell from its movements that it wouldn’t turn back again. A quick glance to the left and to the right, then it was set for its dash.

  He whipped his catapult upright, pulled the rubber band back as hard as he could, took aim, and let go. The rat rolled over and lay still.

  He got up and took a good look at his victim. He couldn’t have been more on target. The head was nothing but a fleshy pulp; the rat must have died immediately.

  Once the stone had been too small, or he had not been strong enough. He had hit the target well, but the rat was still moving. It clawed at the ground and tried to crawl to safety. He had started crying. If he really felt sorry for it, Grandpa had said, he should help it along with a heavy stone.

  He had done so.

  He had not hunted for weeks after that.

  VII

  Paul climbed the ladder rung by rung, uncertain of whether this incredibly wobbly home-made bamboo construction would support him. He stepped gingerly onto the flat roof, which had only a slight pitch to it. The weatherworn tiles were porous and broken in many places. Every time he moved there was a loud cracking or crunching sound. With his second step, he broke a tile, and with his third. In the courtyard below were Luo and Christine with David in her arms. They watched him with doubtful looks.

  “I don’t know if it will take my weight,” Paul called out.

  Luo directed him to the place in the roof where he thought the first leak was. All the tiles there were indeed broken. Paul could see down into the kitchen. He pushed the rubble aside and inspected the wood. It was still in surprisingly good condition. It had to be possible to make the roof here watertight with a dozen new tiles. The same went for the roof over the other rooms.

  Luo wrinkled his brow in thought when Paul told him about the state of the roof. “We have enough tiles,” he said. “Do you think you can do it? With our help?”

  Paul nodded, even though the thought of having to climb up onto the roof and move around on it again made him feel uneasy.

  Luo led him to one of the sheds, in which there were two large piles of new roof tiles.

  “Da Lin!” he shouted across the courtyard. Soon the boy was standing sulkily next to them.

  “Help the man to mend the roof, do you hear me? Do what he tells you.” Then, turning to Paul, Luo added, “Talk to him. He understands you even if he doesn’t reply. Give him something to do. You may not think it, looking at him, but he’s tough.”

  Paul lifted one of the tiles. It was much too heavy for the slight boy. “Thank you, but I can manage on my own.”

  Da Lin stayed by his side and Paul found it impossible to read the expression in his eyes no matter how hard he tried. It changed too quickly. Sometimes he had the feeling that they showed nothing but indifference and boredom, but then in the next moment he thought he could see suspicion and a burning rage.

  The boy bent down, picked up one of the tiles, hefted it onto his narrow shoulder, cast a defiant look at Paul and carried it to where the ladder was. He laid it carefully down on the ground and walked back to the shed to get another.

  “Wait, let me help you,” Paul said.

  They carried the next roof tile over together. And the third. Paul hurt himself with the fourth. A splinter of ceramic got into his hand. It was an unpleasant, stinging pain, and Paul couldn’t tell where it came from. All he could see was a reddish line on his right thumb. He wanted to ask Christine for help – her eyes were better than his. Then Da Lin reached out for his hand, pulled it to him, had a good look at it, and gestured to Paul to wait. Soon he returned with a pair of tweezers, a needle and a pair of shabby gloves. Carefully, he slit open some skin with the needle and pulled a centimeter-long splinter out with the tweezers. Then he gestured to Paul to disinfect the wound with some spit.

  “Thank you.”

  Da Lin passed him the gloves and smiled briefly.

  They carried the first pile of tiles over, then the second. When they broke out in a sweat, they stopped to rest. Da Lin went into the house and returned with two cups of boiled water.

  “Thank you very much,” Paul said, taking a big mouthful. “You’re really quite strong.”

  Da Lin picked up a stick, twiddled it in his fingers for a moment and then drew two Chinese characters in the sand. Paul looked at the writing from all sides but could not decipher it. “What does that mean?”

  Da Lin scratched the strokes of the characters again, impatiently. He looked at Paul expectantly.

  Paul could not make out the characters, no matter how he tried. “I’m sorry, but I can’t read that. Can you say the words to me?”

  Disappointed, the boy rubbed out the words with his feet.

  “What a strict teacher you are,” Paul said, smiling at Da Lin. “Your grandfather told me that you like playing billiards. Would you like a game?”

  Da Lin shook his head.

  “Or a round of ping pong? . . . No?”

  Paul walked over to the billiard table, tugged the gloves off, picked up a cue and held it out the boy. Da Lin did not move.

  The table was a little lower than usual. It was a good meter wide, with eight corners, each with a hole at the edge hung with netting. Instead of felt, someone had tacked a worn piece of green cloth to the surface. In the middle were six colored balls and one white one. Paul picked it up, placed it at the edge of the table, gave it a sharp tap with the cue and watched it crash into the others, scattering them across the surface. Two balls landed in the pockets. One by one, he potted the rest of the balls. They rolled surprisingly well on the improvised surface.

  Da Lin was suddenly standing right next to him with his hands buried in the pockets of his sweatpants, staring at the table.

  Paul stopped playing and handed the cue to him.

  No reaction.

  “Come on.”

  Now they were looking each other in the face. The boy hesitated. He clearly wanted nothing more than to take the cue, but something held him back.

  “Come,” Paul repeated, and smiled at him encouragingly. “We’ve worked together, now we can surely also play together.”

  Da Lin pressed his lips together.

  Paul waited patiently. “Did you make the table?”

  Silence.

  Paul looked more carefully at the netting, the table legs, and the cloth. He passed his hand over it, rolled a ball against the edge and caught it on the rebound. “You really did quite a good job. Well done. I couldn’t do it. Did your grandfather help you?”

  Da Lin trembled. At first it was onl
y his lips that shook, then his whole body. He turned away abruptly, ran into one of the wooden sheds, and slammed the door shut.

  “His father made it for him. It was a surprise present for his birthday.”

  Startled, Paul turned round. He hadn’t noticed Luo joining them.

  “My son worked on it every evening for almost six months while Da Lin slept. Da Lin wept with joy when he received it. I think it was the first time I saw the boy cry. Both of them played together every day.”

  Paul nodded.

  “You can carry on talking to him. He won’t reply. And he won’t play with you either. He doesn’t even do it with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he only plays with his father.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Paul swallowed. “I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry,” he said quietly.

  “It’s OK. You couldn’t have known.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Two years.”

  “An accident?”

  “No. He was murdered.”

  “By whom?”

  The old man shrugged.

  “Is that why the police visit?”

  “Hmm . . . In a way, yes.”

  “Why is his mother in Beijing and not here with him?”

  “Why indeed?”

  Paul felt annoyed with himself for asking stupid questions. He walked straight over to the shed without thinking about it, opened the door carefully, and stepped in.

  VIII

  It was warm in the wooden shed, and smelled of dried grass.

  Dust motes danced in the beams of sunlight that streamed in through the gaps between the planks. Da Lin was crouched in a corner with his arms around his knees.

  Paul made his way past baskets, rakes, and spades and sat down next to him on the floor.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tears streamed down Da Lin’s cheeks. Paul could see how quickly his chest was rising and falling under his T-shirt and how fast his heart was beating.

  “I didn’t know any of that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you if you would play with me.” He wished he could take the boy into his arms and just hold him.

  “Can I help in any way?” Paul thought he detected a slight shake of the head, but perhaps he was just imagining it.

  “Of course I don’t know how you feel, but I’d like to tell you a story about me.” Paul spoke calmly and slowly, pronouncing every word carefully. “I had a son who was your age. He was called Justin.” He paused, not sure if Da Lin was listening to him. “One day, he fell sick.”

  Pause.

  “Soon after that, he died.”

  Pause.

  Da Lin cast a sad glance at Paul. He seemed to be about to say something but then changed his mind and stared out of the shed through a gap in the planks. Luo was still standing in the same spot leaning on his stick, his face etched with pain. A gust of wind raised a brown dust cloud that surrounded him for moment before it continued across the courtyard and past the well.

  “After that,” Paul continued, “I didn’t speak to anyone for a long time. Just like you. It was so painful that I thought I would not survive the loss. My wife could not stand my silence so we separated. I moved to an island where not many people lived because I wanted to be on my own. I could not stand having anyone around. A day on which I did not exchange a word with anyone at all was a good day. I wanted to have nothing more to do with the world. You must know that feeling. All that was left of my son was memories, just like you have of your father, and I had the feeling that if I spoke, my memories would fade until nothing was left of them. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Paul repeated his question. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  The reply was a slow, but decided nod.

  “I think I spoke to almost no one for two years, apart from my friend Zhang, of course. Everyone must have one friend, mustn’t they? I was silent until I realized that life went on whether I spoke or not . . .”

  Paul saw that the boy’s attention was elsewhere once more, that the tentative interest had turned to indifference. What had he done wrong? Da Lin sat up, as if nothing that had been said mattered to him. He pushed his thin legs downward and his body up against the wall of planks, stood up, and took a step forward.

  “But of course that doesn’t mean that my memories of Justin, of my son –”

  The boy stepped over Paul’s outstretched legs without taking any further notice of him. Paul reached out for his arm and stopped him.

  “Don’t run way,” he said calmly. “Stay here.”

  Da Lin stared at him, surprised and shocked. He tried to free himself from Paul’s grip but Paul did not let go.

  “Please. I’d like to talk to you. I haven’t finished my story.”

  Nothing happened for a few seconds, then Paul gently pulled the boy towards him.

  “Let me go!” An angry hiss. A movement as though Da Lin wanted to hit him.

  Paul let go.

  IX

  “Mama, are we here on holiday?”

  “No.”

  “Why are we here, then?”

  “We’re visiting.”

  “Are the man and the boy our friends?”

  “No.”

  “But Papa said they were.”

  “What?”

  “That they were our friends.”

  “Then that’s right.”

  “But if they’re our friends, why doesn’t the boy speak to us?”

  “I’m sure he will soon. You can ask him questions. Maybe he’ll reply to you.”

  “I did. But he doesn’t.”

  “What did you ask him?”

  “Where his papa and his mama are.”

  X

  “Eeeight . . . niiine . . . teeen . . . Right, I don’t want to see anyone now. I’m coming.” Christine took her hands from her eyes, dropped her arms by her side and turned around slowly and deliberately. She mustn’t be too quick or David would object. She glanced around the courtyard in search of them. The two sheds, the wheelbarrow, the baskets, and the open door to the house. The place looked much more abandoned than a few seconds before when Paul and David had been there.

  Da Lin sat on the well and watched her.

  The lonely scene in the courtyard made her feel frightened.

  “Paul!” she called. “David! Where are you?”

  Silence.

  “Darling boy, give me a little clue.”

  Silence.

  She grew warm and began to feel that she could hardly breathe. She did not want to look for her son. Not to know where he was seemed suddenly unbearable, even if he was only crouching behind a pile of wood and feeling glad that she could not see him. She wanted to have him by her side and hold him tight.

  “Where are you?”

  Christine tried not to show how she was feeling. Hide-andseek was David’s favorite game; it was a ritual. They played it almost every evening in the garden in Lamma when she came home from work. She had to seek first, then Paul, then David. And she was never supposed to find him. Until he crept out of his hiding place of his own accord, she always had to pretend that she was completely at a loss and despairing over his sudden disappearance.

  She walked across the courtyard and looked on the other side of the well. And behind the bench. Into the wheelbarrow. And between the stacks of wood.

  “Where are you?” Her voice ought to have sounded playful; she had tried her best, but she didn’t sound in the least lighthearted. She did not want to search any longer. She did not want to be alone.

  “Paul, where are you? Come out.”

  Nothing moved.

  Why were they doing this to her?

  “Paaaul . . . ?” Why didn’t he hear the fear in her voice? “I can’t find you. Please come out.”

  Da Lin had been watching her the entire time. Their eyes met and he seemed to feel that she was becoming more and more frightened, for he inclined his head tow
ard the second shed. She took a few steps in that direction and he nodded in confirmation. She stood in front of the door and listened. All was quiet. Da Lin gestured to her impatiently to open the door.

  Christine pulled the door open. The two of them were crouching inside.

  “That’s very mean!” David complained. “You weren’t supposed to find us.”

  Paul gave an uneasy laugh.

  XI

  Christine stretched out both arms. No matter which direction she turned in, her fingers could feel nothing but cold, damp stone. She was standing at the bottom of a dried-up well and faint light was streaming down the shaft. Far above her, she could see a round patch of blue sky. There was no ladder and there were no steps built into the walls. She knew neither how she had got into the well nor how she was going to get out of it again.

  Suddenly, earth and water rained down on her.

  She screamed for help but no one answered. The shower of earth and water increased in intensity. Her dress was soaked and her hair was filthy. Soon she was up to her ankles in mud. Before long she was up to her knees in it. She took as deep a breath as she could and held it in. Her inflated lungs gave her buoyancy. She began to float like a balloon, but after a few seconds up in the air she had to exhale, and fell back into the swamp. She tried again, but in vain. The mud was now up to her hips.

  Then up to her chest.

  She pushed her arms to the sides, trying to cling to the walls, but the stones were too smooth to climb up them. When her head was the only part of her body left above the mud and she was on the verge of sinking, she woke.

  Christine touched stone with her fingers. She was lying next to a cold, damp wall. She heard David and Paul breathing next to her.

  She reached out for her son under the blanket, stroked his tummy and chest and pulled him closer to her. The smell and the warmth of his small body calmed her a little.