The Child's Past Life
Page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2013 Cai Jun
Translation copyright © 2014 Yuzhi Yang
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as in China in 2013 by Beijing Publishing House. Translated from Chinese by Yuzhi Yang. First published in English in 2014 by AmazonCrossing.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477825921
ISBN-10: 1477825924
Cover design by Edward Bettison Ltd.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910636
CONTENTS
PART 1: ROAD TO ACHERON
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
PART 2: THE RIVER OF FORGETFULNESS
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
PART 3: BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
PART 4: MENG PO SOUP
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
PART 5: THE SURVIVORS
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
EPILOGUE ONE
EPILOGUE TWO
AFTERWORD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
PART 1:
ROAD TO ACHERON
CHAPTER 1
I died on June 19, 1995.
The dictionary says that death is a biological state relative to a living entity: the permanent end to all biological functions that keep an organism alive. Things that cause death include aging, malnutrition, diseases, suicide, homicide, accidents, injuries. No known organisms can avoid death.
After death, the material remains of a human are usually called a corpse.
Scientists say that at the moment of death anyone might experience an array of sensations, such as entering a tunnel of white light, or feeling one’s soul fly up and looking down on one’s body, or seeing dead relatives or a flashback on one’s life.
Or seeing Jesus, Buddha, saints, Doraemon.
What is one’s world like after death?
Bracing cold like a freezer? Burning hot like a microwave? Barren like a planet ravaged by intergalactic wars? Or maybe a lush paradise like Avatar’s Pandora?
When I still lived in the basement, I asked the old man to give me a simplified version of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. I really believed in those stories—reincarnation, evil people being tortured in eighteen levels of Hell, wronged souls stuck inside souls like Nie Xiaoqian. It wasn’t until junior high, after I learned about Karl Marx’s dialectic materialism in political science class, that I realized so-called reincarnation was rubbish.
Once we die, there is nothing. Right?
When I was sixteen and playing around too roughly at school, a piece of glass fell out of nowhere and crashed into bits right in front of me. A few jagged shards stuck into my leg. If I had been a second faster, or if the glass had fallen a few centimeters off, I would have suffered a big hole in my head and died on the spot, or I’d have become a vegetable. While the wound wasn’t serious, I threw up, had diarrhea, and was hospitalized. All kinds of nightmares woke me up every night. I was either being slashed in the throat, getting run over by a truck, or falling off a building.
The way I feared death, so do you.
June 19, 1995—Monday, 10:01 p.m.
I died. I was murdered.
CHAPTER 2
I believe death makes itself known before it arrives.
Two weeks before I was killed, death kept dropping in front of me like ripe apples in front of Newton.
June 5, 1995—Monday, 6:00 a.m.
Screams outside my window woke me.
I thought the noise was from my nightmare, which hadn’t come in years. I tried to get up but couldn’t. I felt powerless, as though someone was crushing me. Many people have experienced the same thing—it’s called “Ghost on bed.”
In the predawn darkness, I saw a blurry face attached to a strong male body. I wanted to scream the way I had as a kid, but no sound would come out. My throat felt pinched.
I heard more screaming from outside the window—another scream, and another. Shrill female screams gave way to husky male screams.
Those screams saved my life.
The face in the nightmare disappeared in the dawn. The poster in front of my bed remained. In it, Diego Maradona was holding the World Cup. He was the only idol from my youth.
I was working at Nanming High School. I looked out from my fourth-floor window. A woman in white was lying on the library roof. Although I was at least 100 meters away, I recognized her. It was Liu Man. Her body was contorted and still. Her black hair fell like a waterfall on the red roof tiles. It made me think of The Red and the Black, a book I’d read countless times.
She was dead.
Liu Man was a senior in class Section 2. I was her teacher for both homeroom and Chinese.
My name is Shen Ming. Shen as in Shen Ming, and Ming as in Shen Ming.
I graduated three years ago with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese and was assigned to Nanming High as a teacher.
I ran out of my room wearing only pants and a shirt. The buildin
g was filled with the male students’ commotion; most had never seen a dead body before. I tripped and fell by the stairs, then scrambled to get up again. I didn’t feel my forehead bleeding.
The school’s sports facility was quite wide. A standard soccer field was in the middle and its outer rings were used for track events. A forest of oleander stood behind the field. There was plenty of space in this rural setting.
On this very field is where I’d become the men’s 100-meter champion ten years ago.
I ran as fast as I could. Time froze as if a deep river separated me and the library. The female student dorm was behind me, filled with screams and cries. Girls leaned against the windows to watch; their attention moved from the body on the roof to me running.
It took me one minute and twenty seconds to run from the dorm to the library.
The buildings of Nanming High were relatively new, with the exception of the two-story library, which had been there for god knows how long. It even had a traditional thatched roof. There was a little attic inside where no one ever went. The mysterious attic had a window through which a faint light could be seen at night. This was the setting for some of the students’ favorite ghost stories.
I scrambled to the second floor. Filled with paper and the smell of ink, the whole building was empty except for the dead body on the roof, and me.
The attic door was locked from the outside with a simple slide bolt, so it was easy to undo that and walk in. A dark room stood before me. The narrow window let in a glaring stream of light. The room was filled with old books and choking dust, along with a strange smell.
The window was open.
The wind tangled my hair as I crawled out the window and onto the roof. I felt tiles and grass under my feet. The girl in white lay in front of me.
I stumbled toward her. I almost slipped. I heard distant screams from the girls’ dorm. A tile fell and crashed.
There was no mistaking Liu Man’s face. She was the prettiest and most gossiped-about girl at Nanming High. The worst of the rumors involved me.
Her frozen expression told me she’d died in pain. Her eyes stared at the sky. Had she been looking at the moon or the stars in her last moment?
Or maybe the killer’s face?
Why did I think this was murder?
The way she died was elegant.
Like a plucked rose, she faded in her own unique way.
I was afraid of death but not of dead people. I leaned down carefully and touched her neck. Screams from the girls’ dorms grew even more piercing. I wondered whether I seemed brave or strange in their eyes.
I touched her. Only the dead felt this cold and had that certain stiffness.
Even though I was mentally prepared, I fell onto the tiles and scooted backward a bit. My fingertips felt electrocuted, ready to decay.
I crawled closer to Liu Man and lay with her on the roof like I, too, was a corpse. I couldn’t see the moon or the stars, only a cloudy morning sky where the souls of the dead floated. Across the bleak air over the sports field, hiding among a group of girls gathered at a dorm window, a soul watched me in silence.
CHAPTER 3
“This is a murder.”
The man was in his thirties. He wore a dark uniform, his face tanned and stern. He wore no expression, and his voice was toneless.
“Are there any leads on the k-killer?”
Damn! Why was I stuttering? I rubbed the bottom of my shirt. Just the two of us were inside the teachers’ office on the second floor. Students passed by from time to time, trying to look in. The teaching director shooed them away.
Six hours ago on the library roof, in the presence of a doctor, I’d confirmed the death of Liu Man, senior in class Section 2.
“I am Huang Hai. I’m in charge of this case.”
“I can’t believe something like this would happen in my class. It’s only a month before the college entrance exams. The principal and I just met with Liu Man’s dad. I kept apologizing, but he still slapped me. I don’t blame him.”
I rubbed my still-burning cheeks; I wanted to look at the floor. Huang Hai’s gazing eyes were like powerful magnets. It was hard to hide from their invisible power.
“Mr. Shen, someone said that you two talked privately in the classroom last night after evening study. Is that true?”
His voice was slow but forceful. It crushed me like a steamroller.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“I . . .”
Obviously I’d become a suspect.
“Don’t be nervous, just tell me what happened.”
“Last night, I passed that classroom. Liu Man stopped me to talk. She asked me about some hard questions in the mock tests for Chinese, like Cao Cao’s ‘Haiku,’ and the source for ‘Green is the gown, my heart yearns for your talent.’ ”
Was this a police interrogation? I felt the sudden urge to pee, but all I could do was press my legs together.
“Is that all?”
Police officer Huang Hai waited for me to say more. His terrifying patience reminded me of the way Liu Man had looked in death.
“Also, she asked about Bai Juyi’s ‘Pipa Song,’ and how to explain the ‘hair comb’ in ‘Hair comb trimmed in gold was crushed, the red skirt stained with wine.’ That’s it. I left as soon as I answered her questions.”
My mind was filled by the image of a “red skirt stained with wine.”
“Mr. Shen, what was your impression of Liu Man?”
“She was a bit odd. She loved to ask about all sorts of things, and there was no school secret she didn’t know. Some kids disliked her. But a girl that pretty was always popular with boys. She had not dated yet. She was braver than a lot of boys. She was probably the only one who dared to go to the library attic in the middle of the night.”
“How do you know she went by herself?”
“Oh, her killer was there, too, of course!” I hadn’t killed anyone, but everything I said seemed suspicious to the cop. “Was there a third person besides the killer and the victim?”
Huang Hai shook his head calmly. “Sorry, I am not here to discuss the case with you.”
“Liu Man seemed outgoing, but she was actually quite a loner, probably because she came from a single-parent home. She grew up with her dad and lacked a mom in her life. Her grades were bad, and she was easily distracted. She knew a lot of random people from outside the school. Nanming High is a really prestigious boarding school and sends a lot of kids to elite universities. But I’m not sure Liu Man could have even gotten into college. As her homeroom teacher, I was worried about her, so I tutored her at night.”
“I’m sorry, what I need to know is—”
“I know what you want to ask,” I said, slamming my fist on the glass table. “This is ridiculous! There was this shameless rumor at school the last two weeks, saying Liu Man and I had some sort of relationship. This is the ultimate insult to my character and profession as a teacher. This is slander!”
“Mr. Shen, I talked to the principal and a couple of teachers about it. The rumor is unfounded, just talk among students. I believe in your innocence.” Huang Hai lit up a cigarette and puffed on it hard. “I heard you also graduated from here?”
“Yes, I spent my high school years here. I remember everything, every plant and every flower. I couldn’t believe I was assigned to work at my alma mater after graduating Peking University, but I was fortunate to be named a People’s teacher.”
Cliché sayings like this came out of my mouth effortlessly, mindlessly.
“You remember everything?” Huang Hai said, frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Shen, you’re only twenty-five and yet already so enlightened. It’s quite impressive.” His face was covered by blue smoke, making it hard to see his eyes. “I heard you’re leavin
g Nanming High soon?”
“I am really reluctant to go, as I have been here only three years. This is my first and also my last senior class. I’ll transfer to the city’s Education Bureau Youth League Committee after the exams in July.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’ll miss teaching. It will be hard to adjust to a government-agency life.”
He nodded without an expression and stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. “I’d better get going. You won’t leave town anytime soon, I trust?”
“No. I live in the school dorms. Exams are next month, and I can’t leave my students now.”
“Keep in touch.”
Huang Hai swooped out of the room like the wind. I looked at the teaching director in the corridor. He shied away from my gaze and left with the cop.
I’d lied to the police.
Liu Man may have liked dreamy poems, but she knew little of classical Chinese poems. She would never have asked about “hair comb trimmed in gold.”
Last night in the self-study classroom, she told me, “Mr. Shen, I know her secret now.”
Did this have to do with the school’s Dead Poets Society?
My heart beat rapidly. I wanted to leave so no one would see us and make trouble. This girl had already given me enough trouble. I hoped she would disappear that night.
Five minutes later, she said things only dead people knew. Using “witch” to describe her was apt.
“What does all this have to do with you?” I asked.
Though there wasn’t even a whisper of wind in the classroom, the fluorescent light overhead kept shaking, casting our shadows on the floor.
She leaned against the blackboard and said, “At this school, I know everyone’s secrets.”
This is what we really talked about last night.
But I didn’t kill anyone.
June 5, 1995. Noon.
Everyone went to the cafeteria. I sat alone in the office. How could I have an appetite after touching a dead body?
In the afternoon, I taught one Chinese class and corrected the tests from a few days ago. There was an empty seat in the classroom.
Someone put an oleander flower on the desk. The students stared at me from time to time and whispered. I spoke faintly, not daring to mention Liu Man. It was as though the dead girl had never been in our class.