by Sheng Keyi
She limped, and her head was wrapped so that he couldn’t see her face. The two people behind followed closely, and seemed anxious and mistrustful. Mengliu thought that the one in black robes had caught a glimpse of him. He retreated, and glued himself to the trunk of a tree. He dared not move or breathe. He heard them stop and talk.
‘Little brothers, I am telling you the truth. Please believe me. I can’t go back. That is not a retirement home. It is hell!’ a quivering voice groaned.
‘Please compose yourself. Don’t talk such nonsense or I’m afraid we’ll have to send you to a mental hospital. You’re old now. Why don’t you want to enjoy the blessing you’ve been given? Why should you degrade yourself like this?’
‘I had to escape…listen to me. This is a place where they burn you alive…See the white smoke from that huge chimney? Beneath it is a crematorium. They stick living people under anaesthesia in there…Oh god, I’m hurt. My leg is broken. Let me go to a hospital. Please, I’m begging you.’ It was the same shaky voice.
‘Looks to me like you asked for it. Our job is to take you back to the nursing home. The hospital there is better for you than conditions on the outside. Everyone out here is terribly envious. I’ve never seen anyone willing to leave the nursing home…It’s too bad we have to wait twenty years before we’ll be eligible to enjoy it.’
‘To go in…to go there is to die, little brother. It’s a big scam…they take sick and elderly people and throw them into the furnace alive.’
‘God, all you old people ever do is complain. It would be better for you to cooperate. Let’s get moving.’
‘Let me relieve myself…I’ll go to the side of that tree there.’
‘All right. Let him go. He’s limping. He can’t run.’
There was the sound of dead wood breaking underfoot and the person who wanted to relieve himself walked close to where Mengliu was, then back after a moment, taking up his long-winded pleas with the pair once again. When he was rudely interrupted by the younger men, he finally closed his mouth. They quickly left the scene.
Staring at the quiet path shut in by the forest, Mengliu thought what he witnessed must have been an illusion, but a white envelope under the tree where they had stopped was proof that someone had come this way and had deliberately left a clue. He picked up the envelope and saw it was just a neatly folded piece of paper. When he opened it and started reading, his expression changed completely.
15
With great difficulty, Mengliu made his way out of the woods. The sun fell as lightly as silk at his feet. He had long ago begun to feel weak in his legs and knees. Resting on a bench, he saw the young nurse Yuyue. Though she wore no makeup, her lips were rosy, and her bobbed hair was shiny and smooth. Her black overcoat was unbuttoned. She wore a pink turtleneck sweater inside, her curves obvious, with a black A-line skirt and boots, topped off by the natural black of her eyes. She looked very fashionable. Mengliu’s heart was swayed. If it were not for the critical matter at hand, he would find a way to be with Nurse Yuyue at least once, he was sure of that. The night he had gone to her office and found her on duty, she had hinted that he could manipulate her. She dared to defy the world’s opinions for the sake of love. This girl’s temperament was very different from Juli’s. She was always ready to get cosy with a man, as if sex were her only joy in life. Mengliu had known women like this, but they couldn’t compare with Yuyue. She was not the sort who would burn out too quickly. She possessed a kind of faith that was beyond doubt, and would act like a closed clam, but when her heart was touched…Mengliu’s mind became clouded, and he momentarily forgot the mission that was driving him.
Yuyue had come especially to bring a message from the hospital. Michael, the director, wanted to talk with him. She had her hands in her coat pockets, and was standing before him in a relaxed pose with a compelling look on her face. He hesitated, then stood up and followed her. She walked quickly, but this did not affect the pace of her speech. She said the hospital had had several patients die with similar symptoms, and they suspected it might be the outbreak of an infectious disease. He said a surgeon wouldn’t be any help against an infectious disease. She retorted that he should never underestimate the power of the human spirit. A poet could have a positive impact on a patient’s mood. Sometimes poetry was medicine. ‘Do you need a doctor or a poet?’ Mengliu asked.
Yuyue answered, ‘There’s no real difference between the two.’
He laughed. ‘If a poet was to wield a scalpel and a doctor treat sickness with a sonnet, then the world would really be perfect. Money may be no problem in treating the sick in Swan Valley, but in some places, the poor can’t even get through the door of a hospital. They ignore their minor illnesses, and cannot afford to treat their major illnesses, so many people lie on their beds and just wait to die. In any case, I’m no longer a doctor, and I’m certainly no poet. I am just a foreigner who got lost.’ He went on to ask Yuyue to get him out of this maze he was in and point the way home.
No ripples appeared on the two deep cold pools of Yuyue’s eyes. She was a perfect inflatable doll. There was no response to his words. Her eyes narrowed, like curtains falling over a window. The wind fluttered the curtains as she mused. She said that they had just received a lame patient who was dressed in black. He had a high fever that would not subside and was uttering nonsense, saying that the nursing home was a slaughterhouse. It sounded horrible, and they had to give him a sedative to shut him up. She thought for a moment, then noticing that Mengliu seemed distracted, continued cautiously, ‘Hey, it’s not the plague, is it? You know how the medieval plague was carried by the fleas on rats, and the rats carried the fleas across the English Channel and spread them all over England, and there were countless deaths in rural areas? The city garbage and sewage were handled by ignorant sanitation workers who didn’t understand what was happening, and so the illness was passed along even faster. Doctors exhausted all of their options – bloodletting, smoking, burning of the lymph nodes – but still people died. Some Christians thought the plague was the result of human depravity, and a form of divine punishment. They paraded through the towns and cities of Europe, using whips lined with metal barbs to scourge confessions out of one another. In Germany Jews were treated as plague-spreaders and were burned alive. A lot of Jews were massacred. But there also awakened in their minds the possibility that it was being spread by animals, so they killed their livestock too…’
As soon as Yuyue started speaking she became long-winded, but it was not just useless rambling. She was intelligent, well-read and well-mannered. Sometimes she came up with a smile that seemed to indicate she didn’t care how many people had died. She was calm. She spoke as if the rhythm of her speech was guided by punctuation. Commas would make her pause, but it was a half-beat shorter than the pause for a full stop. When she met an ellipsis, she would look at the distant landscape attentively before going on.
When she came to the next ellipsis, Mengliu suddenly quickened his steps, and walked in front of her.
‘Miss Yuyue, lives are at stake. We must go to the hospital as soon as possible.’
Soft chuckling came from behind him, as if leaves were rustling down. ‘Didn’t you say you were neither a doctor nor a poet? What can you do if you go there?’
He turned back, stunned. He saw that she had draped her coat over her arm. As she stood there in her charming pink sweater, her face suddenly looked as if it was covered in rouge. Her dark eyes were watery above a graceful smile, dark as night, with a solitary star shining in each one.
‘Are you joking?’ He felt that this was a game of cat and mouse, and he was annoyed. ‘How can you joke about a thing like that?’
‘Of course it’s true.’ Her face perked up, restoring the look of the inflatable doll. ‘I was just wondering what you would do?’
‘There is nothing I can do.’ He suddenly felt his tone had been too harsh, and was sorry.
‘Michael, our director, must have been indoctrinated, to put so m
uch hope in a washed-up poet.’
‘I will say it again. I am really not a poet. Definitely not a great poet.’
The hospital loomed before them, its door framed by a pair of trees, all their leaves fallen. A blackbird flew out from its nest in the branches of one, and sounded strange.
Michael’s office was at the end of a corridor. Mengliu walked in to see his fluffy white head bent over the desk, and a magnifying glass sweeping back and forth over a book, as if he was making a careful examination of an antique. The bent head raised itself, revealing the flushed face of one who had had too much to drink. Mengliu had seen him before, but had not known he was the head of the hospital. In the Dayang National Hospital the director rarely went to the wards, being too busy with meetings, overseas study tours, dining with his wife, sleeping with his mistress…and, most importantly, maintaining a decent, dignified image. This old man seemed to have long ago passed the age for entering the nursing home, but in reality he had just turned fifty. The Swanese were all like this. They didn’t exactly age prematurely, but they were a special breed.
Three of the walls in the office were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the books there stood in neat rows.
‘Have a seat. You’re a poet. Have a look at this. How do you explain it?’ The old man handed him a bunch of records. His accent was from the west of England.
Letting a poet look at medical records is to treat him like God! was what Mengliu thought, but he simply said, his manner not lacking sincerity, ‘I was just a surgeon at a small hospital. I’ve not studied infectious diseases. I don’t dare to offer a professional opinion.’
‘Don’t be so humble. Michael has never been wrong in his judgement of people.’ Yuyue leaned her rump against the desk, propping her feet on the floor, making herself seem extraordinarily slender.
Mengliu guessed her relationship with Michael wasn’t strictly professional.
‘Dr Yuan, modesty is not a virtue. It will only affect your ability to judge.’
The medical records all displayed similar symptoms – cough, fever, chills, black blood, and some had blisters on their bodies.
‘It looks like a new infectious disease. If we can locate its point of origin, it will be easier to deal with.’ Mengliu wished to be done with the matter. He felt it was a smokescreen, and that the really important information was to be found in the nursing home. ‘You have to find the source and learn how to control it, and then at the appropriate time inform the people about the epidemic, then you can begin to limit the spread of the disease by disseminating information on prevention, and following up with frequent reminders.’
‘Several of the newly admitted patients have identical symptoms. Besides the fever and cough, they experience vomiting and diarrhoea and other symptoms similar to food poisoning.’ Yuyue now sat on a wicker chair, with her arms draped over the armrests. With her knees pressed together, she angled her legs in a glamorous pose. ‘The patients are unconscious or confused, unable to say anything coherent.’ She finished and smiled. She was a queen.
‘Hundreds of years ago, a village tailor in England received a piece of foreign cloth. Four days later he died. By the end of the month, six were dead. A swathe of fabric brought the plague into the village, and eventually led to the death of all the people there. So we should consider whether this situation might play out in a similar fashion.’ The old man picked up his magnifying glass and slowly swept it over his book again. His manner was unhurried. ‘The seriousness of the situation should not be underestimated. Dr Yuan, I’m putting you in charge of this matter. Your room has been prepared. Yuyue will send you the relevant information shortly. You probably don’t know, but the status of a poet in Swan Valley is on par with that of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.’ He raised his head and, with an effort, looked at Mengliu. ‘If you tell the patients you are a great poet, they will conceal nothing from you. That is the main reason I wanted you to be involved.’
Mengliu felt his hands and feet grow cold, as if he was in the grip of a nightmare.
‘I feel it is necessary that we perform a test, so that we can eliminate inferior individuals. This would be consistent with how the natural world works.’ Yuyue straightened her legs and stood up from the wicker chair, as if she were going to see a guest off on Michael’s behalf.
The director’s flattery and Yuyue’s sudden fierce opinion left Mengliu dumbstruck. He stood there in embarrassment and, with great difficulty, spoke his mind. He asked to see the patient who had been admitted that day, the one dressed in black. ‘While the patient is awake and can speak, perhaps we can get important information from him.’
But the answer he received was that the patient had died suddenly and had already been cremated.
16
The smell of pinewood and pale green smoke was scattered throughout the city. In the depth of winter, all of the fireplaces were astir. Regardless of whether it was freezing rain or snow falling outside, the ward was warm and dry. The soft mattresses imparted a saffron and orange scent to the air. It was as if the patients were living in their own homes. The books on the shelves were changed at regular intervals, the patients could also go to the hospital’s library to read or to borrow a book themselves. There were different patterns on the curtains for the patients to choose from, each room had its own private bathroom, fitted with a white porcelain toilet and basin, a half-length wall mirror, and anti-slip floor tiles colour-coordinated to match the wall tiles. A small closet held earthenware art, and sandalwood or lavender incense was lit on a stone shelf, eliminating all unwanted odours. Here a patient’s stay was undoubtedly a pleasure. Wealthy Swan Valley might have some aspects of life which were not quite satisfying, but no one would mind too much. They all had it rather easy. There was no pressure, and no worries about money. Everyone tried to outdo the other in artistic, spiritual, or moral excellence.
The windows of the ward offered a variety of views. The yellow rays of the sun shone obliquely from the sky and entered the forest, where a thin fog shimmered like the heat produced by the sun. In fact the sun had cooled long ago, and was left there without warmth. An unfamilar bird hopped amongst the dead wood and dry leaves, uttering a shrill sad horrible cry, caw caw caw, as if it wanted to rip the human heart to shreds. When the bird call ceased, the world outside the window seemed to fall into a decayed submarine state, with the living creatures swimming about in it in a slow and orderly fashion. The wildflowers that opened there held a trace of loneliness. Mengliu thought of the girl Yuyue. She and the wildflower alike could blossom or wither and it wouldn’t matter. It only mattered that they were lovely now. Every morning and evening she washed her face with fruit juice. She was a vegetarian and did not touch fried or spicy foods. She read the Bible, and was like a lotus springing up out of clear water, exuding a fruity fragrance.
She was waiting to record the patients’ histories, but she had discovered nothing. Some of the patients talked nonsense, and looked at the doctor with disdain. She repeatedly hinted that he should reveal to them that he was a poet, and he brooded over this for a long time, but he never had the courage to say ‘I am a poet,’ or anything like it. Asking an accomplished doctor to proclaim himself a poet in front of his patients seemed to Mengliu humiliating and awkward. When he was young he had already become aware of the fact that people no longer respected poets. They suffered a worse fate than the common people. They were even regarded as rogue elements, who were fanning the anti-revolutionary flames. They were good-for-nothings, and that’s why many remade themselves as businessmen. Now they were bosses, entrepreneurs and merchants, burying their poetry beneath their pillows, not bringing it even a half-step out of the bedroom. They were duplicitous all day long, expressing scorn for poetry when they were out drinking with friends, except perhaps for a line of coarse doggerel. All art was just a sick pretence. They gradually fell in love with this life, business was the main disguise they wore. They maintained an ambiguous attitude – and a discreet distance from the aff
airs of the nation, holding on tight to their women and children, while they watched the stock market as if their lives depended on it and engaged in a little antique collecting, or calligraphy, or landscape painting. They never bothered to open a book, unless it was the passbook to their bank accounts.
Mengliu took off his stethoscope and mask and walked out of the ward, feeling that his cooperation could come to an end now. Infectious disease was like poetic inspiration – he had no wish to catch either. He would have to tell those superstitious people that poetry was rubbish, not even as useful as a rag. He was angry, and as he took off his white lab coat, his tight black sweater looked like it was about to burst. Yuyue chased him outside, her feet were moving quickly. She was like a hovering fairy, with a calm expression and not a strand of hair out of place in her bob. He thought she was going to stop him, but she smiled sweetly, showing her teeth, as if she appreciated his actions. He was surprised she was on his side, and a little flattered. If he had met a girl like this earlier he would be thinking happily now about how to get into her pants, but he just said sternly, ‘You confuse me, Yuyue. You’re on the wrong side.’
He abandoned her to go his own way. These days a stay in the hospital had the flavour of house arrest. But Yuyue stuck to him. He needed to get rid of her as soon as possible, to find Juli. She was the only one he could trust.
‘I don’t want to call you Mr Yuan anymore, it’s so formal.’ She followed him down the corridor. ‘Are you going to see Michael? He’s not in today. Don’t worry. I will speak to him on your behalf.’
Mengliu pondered her words as he walked. She was unpredictable. Why should she help him?
Her attitude kept him guessing. Later, when they had returned to the entrance to the hospital, a flock of birds had gathered in the trees. Yuyue reached out to bid him farewell. Mengliu took the pale soft hand, and her fingertips seemed to scratch his palm. He saw her smile, her eyes dark pools as if saying, ‘You really can trust me.’