by Yu Hua
“You’ve come.”
The punishment expert’s tone sent a shock through the stranger’s body. Although the stranger could hardly credit his own suspicions, it certainly seemed as if this man was hinting at the existence of a certain memory as he stood before him, his white hair gleaming.
The punishment expert continued:
“I’ve waited for a long time.”
This statement did nothing to help the stranger determine what role the man might have played in his past, if any at all. Perhaps he was simply a mote of dust floating across the vast expanse of his memory. The stranger side-stepped past the old man and continued on his way toward March 5, 1965.
Just as the punishment expert had hoped, however, the stranger failed to continue on toward March 5, 1965. Instead, a short and simple dialogue took place between the two men. And because of the punishment expert’s warning
– which was issued casually and without premeditation –
the stranger began to understand his predicament. He discovered that his present course would not lead him to his desired destination. And so he turned in the opposite direction. But the fact of the matter was that March 5, 1965, was receding farther and farther away from him.
This was also the first time the stranger had thought back to the humid night when he had received the mysteri-The Past and the Punishments 115
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ous telegram. For days, his mind had circled around the moment in which March 5, 1965, had emerged in his mind.
Now his focus shifted. He began to ponder several other dates, other memories that had continued to disturb him even as they lay abandoned at the back of his mind. These memories were January 9, 1958, December 1, 1967, August 7, 1960, and September 20, 1971, respectively. And with this realization, the stranger began to understand why he was unable to move toward March 5, 1965. The telegram’s message might have been just as relevant to these four dates as to March 5, 1965. Indeed, it was precisely these memories that had blocked his way to March 5, 1965. And each of these four events represented roads that ran in entirely different directions without ever intersecting with the other.
So even if the stranger abandoned his search for March 5, 1965, he would be unable to find either January 9, 1958, or any one of the other three remaining dates.
This realization took place at dusk, when the stranger, thrown into a quandary by his procedural error, began to ponder how to escape his predicament. That was also when he began to devote his attention to the enigma represented by the punishment expert. He began to sense that the old man was a kind of elusive link to his past. This is why he had come to feel that their meeting had been arranged in advance.
As the sky darkened, the punishment expert’s intense excitement did not detract from a sense that he was in control of himself and the flow of events around him. The stranger unsuspectingly yielded to some kind of preordination and followed the punishment expert into the gray apartment building.
The living room walls were painted black. Here, the stranger sat down without a word. The punishment expert switched on a little white electric lamp. The stranger began to search his mind for a link between the mysterious tele-116 yu hua
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gram and the room that surrounded him. He found something entirely different. He found that the path he had followed on his way to Mist had been crooked.
Almost as soon as the stranger and the punishment
expert sat down to talk, a remarkable affinity grew up between them. It was as if they had spent their lives huddled together in deep conversation, as if they were as familiar to each other as the palms of their own hands.
The first topic of conversation, unsurprisingly, was broached by the stranger’s host. He said:
“Actually, we always live in the past. The past is forever.
The present and the future are just little tricks the past plays on us.”
The stranger acknowledged the force of the punishment expert’s argument, but it was his own present that remained uppermost in his mind.
“But sometimes you can be cut off from the past. Right now, something is tearing me away from my past.”
The stranger, rethinking his failure to approach March 5, 1965, was beginning to wonder if perhaps some other force besides that of the other four dates might be responsible.
But the punishment expert said:
“You’re not cut off from your past. On the contrary.”
It wasn’t simply that the stranger had failed to move in the direction of March 5, 1965. Instead, March 5, 1965, and the other four dates were receding farther and farther into the distance.
The punishment expert continued:
“The fact is that you’ve always been deeply immersed in your past. You may feel cut off from the past from time to time, but that’s merely an illusion. A superficial phenomenon. A phenomenon that, at a deeper level, indicates that you’re really that much closer.”
“I still can’t help thinking that there’s some force cutting me off from my past.”
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The punishment expert smiled helplessly, for he had already realized the difficulty of trying to overcome the stranger with language.
The stranger continued to move along his train of
thought – at the very moment that he had left his past far behind, the punishment expert had appeared before him with a strange smile and the cryptic assurance that “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
The stranger concluded:
“You are that force.”
The punishment expert was unwilling to accept the substance of the stranger’s accusation. Although he obviously found the effort tiresome, he patiently attempted to explain the situation to the stranger once again:
“I haven’t cut you off from your past. On the contrary. I have brought you into intimate conjunction with it. In other words, I am your past.”
As the punishment expert spat out this last sentence, the tone of his voice made the stranger feel that the conversation might not continue for very much longer. He nonetheless continued:
“I find it hard to explain the fact that you were waiting for me.”
“It would help if you could set aside the notion of necessity,” the punishment expert continued, “and realize that I was waiting for a coincidence.”
“That makes more sense,” the stranger agreed.
The punishment expert, content, continued, “I’m very happy we are of one mind concerning this question. I’m sure we both understand just how very dull necessity really is.
Necessity plods blindly and inexorably ahead on its accustomed track. But chance is altogether different. Chance is powerful. Wherever coincidences occur, brand new histories are born.”
While concurring with the thrust of the punishment ex-118 yu hua
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pert’s theory, the stranger was preoccupied with an entirely different sort of question:
“Why were you waiting for me?”
The punishment expert smiled:
“I knew that question would come up sooner or later. I may as well explain now. I need someone to help me. Someone endowed with the necessary spirit of self-sacrifice. I believe that you are just that sort of person.”
“What kind of help?”
“You’ll learn everything tomorrow. For now, I’ll be happy to discuss my work with you. My calling is to compile a summation of all human wisdom. And the essence of human wisdom is the art of punishment. That is what I’d like to discuss with you.”
The punishment expert clearly had an excellent grasp of his field. He was well versed in each and every one of the varied punishments employed by mankind throughout its history. He provided the stranger with a simple and straight-forward explanation of each punishment. His accounts
of the bodily consequences of each punishment once it had been carried out, moreover, were stirring narratives in and of themselves.
On the conclusion of the punishment expert’s lengthy and vivid discourse, the stranger realized with a shock that the punishment expert had neglected to touch on one rather important punishment: death by hanging. A dark, complex, and mercurial reverie had descended on him just as the punishment expert had begun his lecture. He had somehow seemed to have been anticipating the appearance of that particular punishment all along. As the punishment expert spoke, the blurred contours of March 5, 1965, had once again begun to clear. Given the circumstances, the hypothe-sis that someone intimately connected with the stranger’s past had died by hanging on March 5, 1965, began to seem not entirely far-fetched.
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In an effort to escape from the dark grip of these recollections, the stranger decided to point out the punishment expert’s mistake. In doing so, he hoped to elicit another stirring discourse on this particular punishment and thus escape its grip.
His question only served to throw the punishment expert into a rage. It was not that he had overlooked a punishment, he shouted. He had just been ashamed to mention it at all.
The dignity of that particular punishment, he proclaimed, had been trampled on by the indiscriminate and vulgar usage of suicidal miscreants. He bellowed:
“They were unworthy of such a punishment.”
The punishment expert’s unexpected rage released the stranger from the memories by which he had been besieged a moment before. After taking a long breath, he directed another question to the punishment expert, who sat lividly across the room:
“Have you tried performing any of the punishments
yourself?”
The punishment expert’s rage was immediately extin-
guished by this query. Instead of replying, the punishment expert sank into a deep and boundlessly pleasurable reverie.
Crows of memory flew across his features. He counted his inventory of punishments like a stack of bills. He told the stranger that, of all the experiments he had carried out, the most moving had involved January 9, 1958, December 1, 1967, August 7, 1960, and September 20, 1971. It was clear that these dates hinted at events that transcended the sterile numbers of which they were composed. There was something of the aroma of blood about them. The punishment expert told the stranger how:
. . . He had drawn and quartered January 9, 1958, tearing it into so many pieces that it had drifted through the air like a flurry of snowflakes. He had castrated December 1, 1967, cutting off its ponderous testicles so that there hadn’t been a drop of sunshine on December 1, 1967, while the 120 yu hua
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moonlight that evening had been as dense as overgrown weeds. Nor had August 7, 1960, been able to escape its fate, for he had used a rust-dappled saw blade to cut through its waist. But the most unforgettable had been September 20, 1971. He had dug a trench in the ground, in which he had buried September 20, 1971, so that only its head was still exposed. Owing to the pressure exerted on the body by the surrounding earth, September 20, 1971’s blood had surged up into the head. The punishment expert had proceeded to crack open its skull, from which a column of blood had immediately spurted forth. The fountain of September 20, 1971, had been extraordinarily brilliant.
The stranger fell into a silent, boundless despair. Each of the dates of which the punishment expert had spoken concealed a deep well of memory: January 9, 1958, December 1, 1967, August 7, 1960, and September 20, 1971. These were precisely the four events, isolated from the enormity of the stranger’s past, that had been pursuing him all along.
The stranger, of course, had long been unaware of their pursuit. The four dates had become four musty breezes wafting toward him. The content that the dates concealed had hollowed, crumbled to dust and nothingness. But their aroma lingered on, and the stranger had the vague impression that if it weren’t for these four dates, his strange encounter with the punishment expert would never have transpired.
The punishment expert rose from his chair and walked into his bedroom. As he moved past the white glare of the lamp, he resembled a recollection. The stranger sat motionless in his chair, tortured by a sense that March 5, 1965, was the only memory that he had left. Even March 5, 1965, was far away. It was only later, after he had already fallen asleep, that his features took on the serenity of a memory anchored firmly in the slipstream of the past.
When they resumed their conversation the next morn-
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stronger. As soon as they had begun to talk, they arrived at the heart of the matter.
The punishment expert had suggested the night before that he needed the stranger’s help. Now, he began to explain why:
“Of all my punishments, only two have yet to be tested.
One of them is reserved for you.”
The stranger, in need of further explanation, was led into another black room. The room was empty save for a table in front of a window. There was a big slab of glass on the table top. The glass glittered in the sunlight pouring in through the window. Leaning against the wall was a freshly sharpened butcher’s knife.
Pointing at the glass by the window, the punishment expert said:
“Look how very excited and happy it is.”
The stranger walked over to the table, gazing at the chaos of light playing through the glass slab.
Pointing at the butcher’s knife leaning against the wall, the punishment expert told the stranger that he would use this knife to slice through his waist and cut him in half.
Immediately thereafter, he would place the stranger’s torso on the glass. His blood would continue to flow out from the wound until he slowly died.
The punishment expert informed the stranger of just what it was that he would see before he bled to death on the glass. His description of the scene was compelling:
“At that moment, you will feel a tranquillity you have never known before. All sounds will fade, slowly becoming colors that will hover in front of your eyes. You will feel how your blood begins to flow more and more sluggishly, feel how it pools on the glass, how it cascades into the dust below you like millions of strands of hair. And then, finally, you will catch sight of the first dewdrop of the morning of January 9, 1958. You will see this dewdrop gazing at you from the dimness of a green leaf. You will see a bank of bril-122 yu hua
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liant colored clouds glowing in the noonday sun of December 1, 1967. You will see a mountain road. The road will wait patiently for you as the evening mist gathers overhead and night falls on August 7, 1960. You will see two fireflies dancing in the moonlight on the evening of September 20, 1971, shining like a pair of faraway tears.”
On the conclusion of the punishment expert’s serene narrative, the stranger sank once again into reverie. The dewdrops of January 9, 1958, the brilliant colored clouds of December 1, 1967, the warm dusk on a mountain road of August 7, 1960, the fireflies like dancing tears in the moonlight of September 20, 1971. Each of these memories arrayed itself like an empty canvas before the stranger’s rov-ing eyes. The stranger understood the punishment expert’s narrative as a promise of things to come. The stranger sensed that the punishment expert had offered him the possibility of reunion with his past. A tranquil smile lit his face, a smile that indisputably signaled his submission to the punishment expert’s wondrous designs.
The punishment expert was boundlessly excited by the stranger’s expression of consent. His joy, however, was contained – rather than leaping into the air like a grasshopper, the punishment expert merely nodded his head in agreement. Then he asked the stranger to take off his clothes.
“It’s
not for me. It’s just that the punishment demands that you leave the world in the same state that you entered it.”
The stranger happily complied – it seemed appropriate.
He began to imagine what it would be like to encounter his memories naked. His memories, he mused, were sure to be surprised.
The punishment expert stood by the wall to the left, watching as the stranger stripped off his clothes like a layer of leather, revealing skin battered and scored by the blade of time. He stood next to the glittering slab of glass, his body glowing in the sun’s rays. The punishment expert emerged The Past and the Punishments 123
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from the shadows by the wall, walked over to the stranger’s side, and grasped the gleaming butcher’s knife in his hand.
The sunlight danced furiously across the blade. He asked the stranger:
“Are you ready?”
The stranger nodded. His eyes were incomparably tranquil. He had the look of a man awaiting the inexorable arrival of unparalleled happiness.
The stranger’s tranquillity filled the punishment expert with a sense of confidence and certainty. He reached out a hand to stroke the stranger’s waist, only to discover that his hand was trembling. This discovery opened up a world of new and unwelcome possibilities. He didn’t know if the trembling in his hands was due to excessive excitement or whether his strength had finally deserted him. The punishment expert’s strength had begun to ebb long before. And now as he held the blade his hands began to shake uncontrollably.
The stranger had already turned to gaze out the window in silent expectation of reunion with the past. He tried to imagine the knife slicing his body in two. A pair of wondrous, icy hands miraculously tearing a blank sheet of paper neatly in half. But the punishment expert’s gasps forced their way into his consciousness. When the stranger turned to look, the punishment expert, sighing at his own humiliation, directed the stranger’s attention to his trembling fingers. At the same time, he explained that it would be impossible for him to sever his body in two with one single stroke of the blade.