by Yu Hua
But two bombs had yet to explode, and so Shen Liang said, “Even Tan Liang himself would be unable to determine their location at this point.
“Thirty-nine years have passed, after all,” he said.
After that, Shen Liang just stood gazing silently at the town of Smoke. It was only as he left that he spoke once more: he said the moonlight was trickling down like water.
In the late afternoon of September 15, 1971, the boiler of the fertilizer plant suddenly exploded with a deafening roar. Five bystanders who witnessed the explosion from a distance said that after the boiler blasted into the sky it shattered into countless pieces like a broken bottle.
Wu Dahai, the boilerman on duty that evening, was lucky not to have been blown up. He was squatting in the toilet when the explosion occurred, and the huge blast knocked him unconscious. He died in 1980 of congestive heart failure, and on the eve of his death the sight of the boiler blowing up replayed itself in his mind. He told his wife that before the boiler flew into the air and exploded, he distinctly heard a detonation underground.
“In fact, that was a bomb going off,” said the young man in the black jacket. “The boiler obscured the true facts. So now it’s just the last bomb that has yet to explode.”
Then he said, “Just now I was talking about the boiler incident with an old woman who lives nearby. She’s Wu Dahai’s widow.”
1
The girl who arrived on the evening of May 8 and revealed her glance the following morning soon made herself part of my existence. Two people now figured in my far-from-spacious life.
In the days that followed I would spend practically all my time in my chair, feeling her move around the room. On good days, in a relaxed mood, she would sit on the bed and gaze at me with that glance I found so captivating. But more often she seemed restless. She so loved to potter about the room, it felt like there was a night breeze constantly blowing back and forth. I tolerated this disregard of my existence and did my best to find excuses for her behavior. I did concede that my room was a bit on the small side and I understood her constant movement as a sign that the room might become a bit bigger. But my self-restraint did not move her in the slightest; she seemed utterly indifferent to the fact that I was expending considerable energy just to keep a lid on my annoyance. In the end her insensitivity stirred me to rage, and one day as dusk approached I bellowed at her, “That’s enough of that! If you want exercise, go outside.”
These words must have hurt her, for she went over to the window at once. Gazing at the river, she conveyed her unhappiness and disappointment. But I too was discouraged. If at that moment she had bolted out the door, I think I would not have stood in her way. That evening I went to bed early but fell asleep late. I lay there brooding, recalling the wonderful life I used to have and lamenting that it had been ruined by her arrival. For hours my anger blazed. As I drifted off to sleep, she was still standing by the window. I felt that when I woke up the following day there was a good chance she would be gone: ultimately she should be capable of executing a permanent departure, and I would neither miss her nor feel the slightest regret. I seemed to see a green leaf falling from a tree, yellowing on the ground, and finally decomposing into the soil. For me, her arrival and departure would be just like that leaf’s passage.
But when I woke in the morning, I could sense that she had not left after all. She was sitting by the bed, her eyes resting on me from time to time, and I sensed that she had sat there the whole night. She gazed at me so enchantingly, it made me feel as though there had never been any friction between us, and my anger of the previous night now seemed an utter sham. Never before had she looked at me in such a sustained way, and so as I returned her gaze I could not help but feel nervous, afraid that she might direct it elsewhere. I lay on the bed not daring to move, lest she sense that something had happened in the room and turn her gaze away. Now I needed to maintain absolute stillness—for only thus would she not divert her gaze, only thus might she possibly forget that she was looking at me.
Her sustained attention made me feel that I was gradually seeing her eyes. I seemed to see her gaze grow and spread, and thus her eyes were slowly revealed. At that point a dark mist appeared in front of my own eyes, but I saw her eyes clearly nonetheless, and as they appeared, so too did her eyebrows. Only now did I understand how her glance could be so beguiling: it was because her eyes were so graceful and attractive. Then her nose became visible: I seemed to see a water droplet fall from the tip of her nose. And then I saw her lips, moist lips that thrilled me to the core. A few strands of hair hung down by the corners of her mouth, like willow fronds on a riverbank, and then all her hair came into view. Her face was now detailed and complete. The only thing I couldn’t see were her ears, for they were concealed by her tresses. Black hair fell quietly around her face, and I was tempted to stretch out a hand to touch it but didn’t dare, fearing that all might suddenly disappear. It was then I discovered that tears were wetting my cheeks.
From that day on, I was constantly shedding tears. My eyes ached the whole day through, and I kept feeling there must be a bunch of unripe grapes in some corner of the room. I began to sense that changes had taken place in my home. My bed and chair gradually lost their firmness and seemed to swell like rising dough. A fortnight had passed since I last saw the lovely spectacle of moonlight shining in, and during the day I found the sunlight dark. Sometimes I would stand by the window and hear the sound of the river below, but I could not make out where its banks were and I was left with a feeling that the river had widened enormously. As my tears fell, she no longer paced the room as she had before. She began to linger quietly by my side, seemingly aware of my pain and racked with worry.
As the objects around me grew blurred, she became more distinct. When she sat in the chair, I seemed to see her left foot slightly raised, the top of her white sock peeping out above her black leather shoe. She wore a long dress, in colors I found dazzling—I was unable to distinguish them in detail. It made me recall the bright curtains hanging in the windows of my neighbors, and those pictures in my mind in turn led me back to her dress. Later, I was even able to gauge her height: she looked to be 1.65 meters tall. I don’t know how I came up with that figure, but I felt sure it was correct.
After a fortnight, my eyes no longer watered. I woke up one morning to find the pain had gone and everything had grown quiet. She was in the kitchen, it seemed, as I lay in bed watching the murky sunlight seep in from outside. From the river came the pure sound of a boat’s scull cleaving the water, bringing a melodious note to the peace I felt and giving me a refreshing confidence that my health was on the mend: turbulence had flowed away into the distance, leaving a permanent calm. I knew that my past life had gone on too long and that now had come the moment to make a new start. Thanks to her, fresh blood was flowing in my veins; out of what once had been a clump of weeds, a gorgeous flower had emerged. From this time on, my lodging would be imbued with twin energies, harmoniously connected.
I felt her come out of the kitchen and move toward me, radiating happiness, for it seemed that she knew the pain in my eyes had gone and had heard every word of my inner monologue. She came over and sat down on my bed, an indication that she agreed completely with my thoughts. Her look told me she wanted to join me in designing our future, and this desire was entirely appropriate, this emotional investment was exactly what I was hoping to see. And so we began to discuss things.
I asked her several times what she was thinking. She never replied, but simply looked at me without saying a word. Later I realized that her idea was the same as my idea. So I began to look around the room. The first thing I noticed was the absence of curtains. Window coverings were needed, I felt. Life was not the same anymore: in the past I had been brazen and unabashed, but now she and I would have our secret affairs, and such affairs called for the screening that curtains provide.
“We
should have curtains,” I said.
She nodded, I felt.
“Do you like the color of grass?” I asked. “Or do you prefer the color of flowers?”
I could sense that she liked the color of grass. I found her answer pleasing, for I liked that color too. So I sat up and told her I would go out right away and buy curtains the color of grass. She stood up too, seemingly appreciative of my resolve, and I felt her move contentedly toward the kitchen. I jumped out of bed, and when I’d put some clothes on and was going out the door, I seemed to pass the kitchen and see her with her back to me, though what I saw was more like a shadow, dim and unclear, on the wall. I slipped quietly out the door, hoping to come back shortly with the curtains—ideally, even before she realized I was gone.
And so, as I stepped into the little street outside my residence, I had no reason to repeat the tentative kind of walk that had formerly been my custom. Recalling how a bicycle can zip off in no time at all, I aimed to be just as nimble and speedy. Although I kept bumping into people as I strode along the hazy streets, this did not make me slow down, and when I reached the crossroads I felt that the mist was beginning to lift. It occurred to me that once we had curtains hanging in my residence, when we opened them in the morning it would perhaps be just as light as it was now.
Although a brightness had appeared in front of me, things remained indistinct, but I knew I was now walking on the broad avenue. I heard a clamor on all sides, surging toward me like a tide. I could faintly make out streets, houses, trees, pedestrians, and vehicles, but all had taken on an unfamiliar aspect: flabby, they glimmered with an ambiguous light. And the shapes of the pedestrians had grown strange and anomalous: although each individual walked separately, the vague glow lumped them all together. As I threaded my way among them, I could not help being cautious. Confused by the uncertain light, I was afraid I would stumble into a huge cobweb and never be able to extricate myself. But my zigzag advance went rather smoothly: apart from several unavoidable collisions, my progress was never interrupted.
Before long I arrived at the place that in the past had always made me hesitate. I needed to cross the main street and get to the other side; from there I would follow a narrow side street to what was always a quiet intersection.
This crossing was not, in fact, a complicated proposition. But on reaching the middle of the street, I suddenly realized that to cross it made no sense at all—carrying on in that direction would take me back to the residential area, when I had come out specifically to buy curtains. I didn’t reproach myself—I simply turned around and headed back. No sooner did I take a second step than I was thrown into the air by the impact of a hard, solid vehicle, and the next thing I knew, I’d hit the ground. I heard the crisp snap of bones breaking and felt the blood in my veins thrown into chaos, as though a riot had erupted.
2
The sun was shining on the afternoon of September 2, 1988, as I sat next to a raised flower bed in the courtyard of a Shanghai hospital. Holding a clump of grass between my fingers, I watched as a nurse with no wrinkles on her face walked slowly toward me.
I had been replaying in my mind all that had happened since I went off into town to buy curtains. My morning had ended with a traffic accident: I was knocked senseless by a Liberation truck and packed off to the hospital in Smoke. As I was recovering from my injuries, an ophthalmologist came into my ward looking for a surgeon and noticed that my vision was severely impaired. She sat down by my sickbed and warned me that without treatment I was in danger of losing my sight altogether. Once I was able to get up, they crammed me into a white ambulance and I was delivered to the hospital in Shanghai. On August 14, three eye doctors performed a corneal transplant. On September 1, the gauze on my eyes was removed, and I felt that everything around me had recovered its former clarity.
Now the nurse was standing by my side and looking at me with young and buoyant eyes as the sunshine danced on her white scrubs. I caught a whiff of surgical dressings and ethyl alcohol.
“Why are you holding a clump of grass?” she asked.
I did not answer, because I did not understand the question.
“There are so many lovely flowers,” she said. “Why do you prefer grass?”
“I really don’t know,” I said.
She laughed. Her laughter made me think of a kindergarten in Smoke that I had once walked past.
“There was a girl named Willow Yang—she’s not with us anymore,” she said. “The last time I saw her, she was sitting where you are now, a clump of grass in her hand. I asked her the same question that I just asked you, and she gave me exactly the same answer.”
I must not have displayed sufficient interest in her remarks, for she went on, “The look in her eyes was just like that in yours.”
Our conversation continued for some time. The nurse told me the story of how seventeen-year-old Willow Yang had been admitted to the hospital with leukemia and died shortly after my arrival. It was she who gifted me the corneas that restored my sight. She died a little after three o’clock on August 14, just as the hospital was awaiting a donor.
The nurse pointed at a five-story building in front of us. “Before she died, Willow Yang was up on the fourth floor, next to the window.”
My bed was precisely two floors below. I realized that I had been lying in the same location as she, except with one floor in between.
“Who is in the bed by the third-floor window?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
When she left, I went on sitting by the flower bed, the clump of grass still in my hand. I began to think about the girl named Willow Yang; I was trying to imagine the expression on her face as death approached. This train of thought held me in its grip for a long time, and so when I was settling my bill with the hospital cashier I took the opportunity to inquire about the girl’s place of residence. She lived in Smoke, at 26 Carpenter Square Alley. I wrote her address on a piece of paper and slipped it into the left pocket of my jacket.
3
After my release from the hospital on September 3, I boarded a long-haul bus bound for Smoke.
It was an overcast morning, and as the bus drove along Shanghai’s dark streets, heavy banks of cloud covered the tops of the few high-rise buildings. The scene outside the window conjured a picture in my mind of a monotonous expanse of gray-tiled roofs. I reminded myself that I would soon be in Smoke, and visualized how at midday I would take out a key and insert it into the lock on my door. And so as I sat in the bus I could not avoid the sight of her sitting in the chair in the room. My mind was as still as a dry riverbed, and my passion was spent. I knew that when I entered my lodging she would rise from the chair, but I did not imagine the form in which she would express her feelings. I would nod in her direction, and nothing else would happen. It would be as though I had not been away long, but had simply gone out for a stroll. And she would not have just recently arrived—it would be as though she had lived with me for twenty years. Tired from the journey, I might well lie down in bed and fall asleep right away. Perhaps she would stand by the window as I fell asleep. Everything would happen in utter silence, and I hoped this silence could be sustained indefinitely.
Once the bus got clear of Shanghai, I saw broad fields, and the black clouds extended endlessly, roaming at will across the landscape. The drab colors outside the window did little to raise my spirits.
Inside the bus voices swayed back and forth, knocking against one another like discarded bottles. I was sitting by the aisle, in seat 27. In seat 25, next to the window, sat an old man wearing a dark blue jacket. A somewhat fishy odor wafted from his direction. In the middle, in seat 26, sat a young man who seemed to have traveled far and whose manner evoked an expanse of green grass dancing in the breeze. We were besieged by a hubbub of voices. The outlander looked out the window, while the old man was lost in thought, his eyes clo
sed.
The bus sped along under the lowering sky. Before long it stopped in Jinshan, and then it set off again. The old man by the window now opened his eyes and turned his head to look at the passenger in seat 26, who continued to face the window—I couldn’t tell whether he was looking at the scenery outside or at the old man next to him.
At this point I heard the old man say, “My name is Shen Liang.”
His voice continued. “I’m from Zhoushan.”
He added, with particular emphasis, “It’s the first time in my life I ever left Zhoushan.”
After that he said nothing more, but he maintained the posture in which he had been while talking. It was not until some forty minutes later, as the bus was approaching Smoke, that he spoke again. His voice now sounded different.
He told the outlander an old, old story—how, in early 1949, a Kuomintang military officer named Tan Liang had directed sappers to plant ten time bombs in Smoke.
The story unspooled like a highway that extends to the far horizon, and the old man’s voice was slow and unhurried. It was only when Smoke could dimly be seen in the distance that he brought his narrative to an abrupt halt and his eyes turned to the scene outside the window.
The bus drove into the station in Smoke. The three of us were the last travelers to leave the station. Outside, several people were waiting to meet passengers. Two men were smoking; a woman was greeting a man on a bicycle. We left the station together and must have gone some twenty meters when the old man came to a stop. He stood there, looking at the town with a strange expression on his face, while the outlander and I continued on our way. Later the outlander stopped to talk to a young woman standing by the side of the road, and I went on alone.
1
Much later, when I looked back once more at the events that began on the evening of May 8, 1988, the image of the young woman would vividly emerge before me. All those early scenes appeared very real in my later recollections. The result was that I believed more and more firmly that a young woman had truly appeared in my life, and not in my imagination. At the same time I realized clearly that these things had all happened in the past, and now, as before, I had nothing. Once again I resumed my former life. Almost every night I walked around the neighborhood and bathed in the curtain light. What was different was that in the daytime, too, I would roam boldly through the streets where ordinary people milled about. Now I no longer felt a danger if others smiled at me—and nobody was smiling at me in any case.