Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

IN AN INSTANT

He is alone, with his back to the sea, sitting in a canvas deck chair on the beach. There's a strong wind. The sky is very bright, without a trace of any cloud, and in the dazzling sunlight reflected against the sea, his face can't be seen clearly.

Big iron doors wet and streaked with rust, water from the top somewhere keeps dripping. The thick, heavy doors slowly open to either side and the gap in the middle widens. Police car sirens can be heard. Through the gap in the doors are towering buildings that block off the sun. One police car after another, and the nonstop sound of sirens.

In the dark passageway of the hall is a woman's back. Without switching on the light, she puts on an overcoat, hesitates, and puts her hand on the knob. She quietly opens the door and goes out. The knob turns softly and clicks as the door shuts.

The warm sun makes him drowsy. He closes his book, leans back in the chair, and puts on sunglasses: the two round lenses screen his eyes from the sunlight. Afterward, he covers his face with a broad-brimmed black hat, and he can hear nothing but the noisy waves of the sea.

The tide surges onto the beach, but before it can recede, the sand soaks it up with a long hiss, so that all that is left is a line of yellowish froth.

His arms, hanging down, start to itch. Ants – first one, then one after another – are crawling up his arms.

She says when she made love with two men in front of the fire, it was very exciting. She is lying across the bed with her head to one side, eyes closed, outside the circle of light. The light is shining only on her long hair, and on her underwear and panty hose on the floor.

He senses the tide swelling. The seawater surges around the legs of the chair, swirls around, then recedes. An old tune fills the air. Beautiful and sad, it is like the wailing of a peasant woman at a funeral, and yet like the sobbing of a reed pipe.

She moves her ankles to kick off her shoes and bends to put on a new pair. A shoe with the heel worn to the quick lies discarded at the side of the passageway near the door.

A poster with a black-and-white photograph shows just the lower half of a woman holding up her long skirt and revealing her beautiful legs. She is standing on her toes. This is another advertisement for shoes, posted on the wall of the platform in the subway station. An old woman with a big empty bag is standing on the platform, a middle-aged man sitting on a bench is reading a newspaper. The train comes; some doors open and some don't. The people getting off head for the exit, and no one so much as looks at the advertisement. With his back turned, he is the only person left on the platform, and as others start to arrive, that back departs.

The legs of the deck chair are already immersed in the lapping water and the sea keeps rising. That sad tune is still playing, but it has become somewhat vague and sounds more like a reed pipe.

She says she wants a man twice her weight to bear down on her. In the dark she is lying on the bed, her eyes wide open. He is sitting at the desk, bare-chested, and without turning he asks if she will cope. She says she loves being squashed until she can't breathe and, having said this, she laughs. Doo – it's the computer.

The tune becomes louder and louder, yet more vague as well. It sounds like the wind tearing the paper used for windows, but with the grating of grains of sand mixed in. The tune becomes more vague, yet still hurts the ears a little. The sea has risen to the seat of the deck chair and it is swaying.

He is sitting at the computer with a cigarette in his mouth. A long sentence appears on the screen. "What" is not to understand and "what" is to understand or not is not to understand that even when "what" is understood, it is not understood, for "what" is to understand and "what" is not to understand, "what" is "what" and "is not" is "is not," and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why "what" needs to be understood or whether "what" can be understood, and also it is not understood whether "what" is really not understood or that it simply hasn't been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand or is pretending to want to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then so what if it's not understood and if it's not understood, then why go to all this trouble of wanting to understand it -

A white-nosed clown in a circus troupe is playing an accordion, pulling and squeezing, pulling and pulling, squeezing and squeezing. He pulls the accordion out fully, gives a hard jerk, breaks the sound box, and the music instantly stops.

In the air, there is only the sound of the wind, the noisy waves of the sea, and the brilliant sunlight.

The ash on the cigarette is about to drop and, flicking it into the ashtray, he deletes each of the words of the uncompleted sentence one at a time.

A pair of hands shuffles a pile of mah-jongg tiles, takes one, feels it; it's a "middle," then there's a "develop," and a "white," and these are put in the sequence "middle" "develop" "white." Next to be picked up are "develop" "middle" "white" "develop" "middle" "white" "east" "develop" "middle" "wind" "north" "east" "south" "wind" "west" "north" "bamboo no. 2" – he pushes over the tiles and starts shuffling them again.

"Tell me a story!" He turns around and the table lamp shines on the back of his head, and in the dark, on the bed, he sees her naked body curled up like a fish.

An empty chair is floating serenely on the water, as ripples of light are reflected on the waves. The sound of the tide can't be heard; only a long note vibrates in the air, sustained and monotonous.

A small boy is leaning on a wall, weeping and wailing, but there is no sound. The stone wall is covered with everlasting spring creeper and the sun is shining halfway up the wall.

On the clipped green lawn an elderly man wearing trousers with suspenders and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar is pulling a length of rope. It is strenuous, but he is relaxed and unhurried.

He happens to stop in front of a glass advertising display on the street and then becomes absorbed with reading what is inside. The street is fairly deserted and only one or two pedestrians are out.

She is standing at the end of the street but there is an endless stream of cars. She is too impatient for the red light to change and starts weaving across the road. Another car speeds by and she quickly stops, retreating to the white line in the middle of the road. She looks in the direction of the approaching cars and runs across just after a small sedan has passed. On the footpath she goes up some steps, appears to stop to think for a while, then presses some numbers at the door. There's a buzz and she opens the door and goes inside. Before the door slowly closes, she turns around, but on that overcast day it is even more difficult to see her face clearly.

There is no chair in the water, only foam. The long-drawn-out sound is intermittent, yet remains suspended in the air, never completely cut off – there is only that bit of sound.

A fine drizzle is falling on the glass advertising display and he moves aside. The display is full of advertisements for houses on sale with prices attached, some with photographs, most are private residences in the country. Some of the houses are for rent, with already rented written prominently in red on the cheaper ones.

Another man comes along to pull the rope. He is dressed immaculately, wearing a tie, and he greets the old man wearing trousers with suspenders. Taking the rope and talking and laughing, he steadily sets about this chore. When a heavy thud comes from somewhere not far away, the second man scowls.

An empty mineral water bottle is floating on the sea, bobbing up and down upon the waves. All this time, the sunlight remains splendid and the sky is so clean, it looks unreal. Maybe because it is too clean, too bright, and too empty, and with the waves sparkling with sunlight, that the empty plastic bottle moving into the distance suddenly turns gray-black and looks like an aquatic bird or some other floating object. At some unknown time the intermittent, long-drawn-out sound has stopped and, like a thread of gossamer blown by the wind, has vanished without trace.

"A pair of swans came to this seaside, then only one of them was to be seen, the other must have been killed for a trophy. The one left behind flew away soon afterward." It is a woman's voice, and clearly for a man to hear. As she speaks, the floating object moving into the distance really looks like an aquatic bird.

A man wearing glasses comes along to watch the two men pulling the rope. He scrutinizes them with his glasses on, then, taking them off, he wipes them but doesn't seem to be able to see any more clearly. He can't tell if he is seeing clearly or if he is seeing, but not clearly. Nevertheless, unfazed about whether or not he's seeing clearly, he puts the glasses into his breast pocket and joins the ranks of the rope-pulling men.

He is standing in the middle of a deserted little street, a cobblestone road that crawls toward the main street. On both sides are old stone buildings and the shops downstairs either have their doors shut tight or have metal grilles in place. He looks up. On both sides, the curtains of all the windows upstairs are drawn. Everything is gloomy, except for a long narrow sliver of green-blue sky. At the place where the road and the sky meet, it is hard not to think that it is the sea.

Seagulls are circling in the sky, screeching noisily. Whether they have to screech like this to look for food or if it's out of sheer joy isn't clear, because they use a language not understood by humans. However, understanding or not is unimportant, what is important is that in the blue sky on this island they can soar as they will and can call out noisily.

Facing the long strip of clear blue sky carved out by the houses on both sides, his back view becomes a silhouette and his tie starts to flap. On the gloomy street this is the only thing moving.

She says she doesn't know what to do! Her voice is agitated. But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can't. Sprawled on the bed in the dark, she sticks up her legs and kicks her feet against one another. He is sitting by the desk lamp typing on the keyboard, and on the screen appears:

From behind, the only thing that can be seen moving is his tie. Going to the front to have a look, he sees that it is the faceless head of a jacket on a coat hanger, the hem of which is also moving in the wind. The stand for the coat hanger is on the footpath. No one is on the street, there are no vehicles, and all the shops are shut.

Screeching, a seagull swoops down and dives into the water. However, most of the seagulls are just sitting there, floating on the waves. Far out at sea, lines of white foam surge up. The sound of the waves is muffled, transmitted slowly, apparently traveling more slowly than the tide.

By the time the roar of the waves can be heard, the seagull can be seen flying up from the water, neck extended and wings flapping, its eyes round and beady, its wings thrusting.

A round red apple with green streaks shines as if it has been waxed. Slowly and with precision it turns in the delicate hand of the woman examining it and is then put down.

Red wine, dark red like blood, in cut-crystal goblets on a table with a white tablecloth, the quiet sound of knives and forks. Behind the wine goblets is a phantomlike man in a suit and tie, and the bare shoulders and neck of an equally phantomlike woman wearing a necklace. The man is saying something but it can't be made out. He is apparently relaxed and happy.

The woman starts turning the apple again in her hand, and gradually the conversation at the table can be heard. Enthusiastic… Barbara… very interesting… won't you have some dessert… Lily, you're not eating much… thanks… really funny… what did he say… sorry… summer… an antique dealer… quite talented… went to Hong Kong… can't understand war… homosexuality… has a certain elasticity… indeed… is cute… news headlines… specializes in foot massages… sauna… doesn't possess his poise… why… best not to say… try telling… yesterday afternoon… she went crazy… is no longer usable… the kitten I have at home… too painful… maybe it's true… government… what surname… a variety of stout… discover… an absolute oaf…

The open bright red cassock on the statue of Buddha is painted with gold lines and decorated with reverse swastikas, the sign of myriad benevolence and good fortune. With his many-layered chin and his hands holding up his huge, round belly, he sits securely and sedately on the black marble altar above the incense burner on the wall. He is happy and contented, and his lips part in endless laughter. However, if one looks closer, he seems to be yawning, and if one looks again, his narrowed eyes make him seem to be dozing off. On further scrutiny he is glaring horribly.

He goes into a bar and sits on a tall stool. The waiter brings two big glasses of beer and puts them on the counter in front of him. Quite a few are in the bar but it's not too crowded, and in the bright blue light, people's faces can't be seen clearly. They are all drinking and keep to themselves. A piano stands in the light on a small platform, and a black woman is playing. It is jazz blues and very melancholy. Old and ugly like a toad, from time to time she touches the keys, solicitously, fondly, as if caressing her lover. The black man nearby with a wreath of gray crinkled hair on his head is old like her, but he hasn't aged too badly. He is playing on several drums as he sings a sentence or a half into the microphone.

A good fire is burning and the wood crackles quietly; close up, the sound of the wind drawn down into the chimney can be heard. The black marble fireplace is spotless and the shag carpet goes right up to it.

At this point a fourth person arrives. He is wearing a leather jacket. Without a word he too proceeds to pull the rope. The men are all conscientious, unflustered, and the rope is pulled taut. They move forward, one upturned hand after the other, and keep persevering, but it is very strenuous.

"A Chinese guy…" the old black man is singing in English, but doesn't look at him. The old black woman runs her fingers rapidly over a set of keys, bending over the piano and swaying drunkenly, totally absorbed in the music, and also not looking at him. He keeps to himself and goes on drinking his beer. In the dark blue light no one looks at anyone else, entranced as they are by the music, like a crowd of nodding puppets.

The horse rears its hairy hooves. "Wandering all over the world…" sings the old black man.

The hands of the old black woman come down hard on the keys and there's a boom as the ground shakes under the horse's hooves. "Wandering all over the world, wandering all over the world…" As the old man sings, he plays the drums, and people nod to the beat.

The rope edges forward as the men pull on it, one hand after the other, straining their feet inside their shoes against the green grassy ground.

The spray splashes high as waves crash against the seawall. The waves under the seawall surge up and the beach can no longer be seen. The sunlight has the same intense brilliance, but the sky and the sea appear bluer.

One end of the rope finally appears. The fishhook, painted a bright red, has a huge dead fish hooked to it, and it is dragged onto the green grass. The fish on the hook has its mouth wide open and seems to be gasping futilely for air. The fish's wide-open eyes have lost their shine and have a dazed look.

The seawater spills over the seawall and trickles down the other side. The sky turns dark blue and the sunlight seems to be even more strangely transparent.

A big cockroach with shiny wings and trembling feelers runs onto the milk white shag carpet and crawls over the twisted threads of wool. The hanging lamp casts a circle of light on the rear of a beautifully carved mahogany horse: its glossy round rump, its hind legs, and its hooves shod with little red brass nails.

"Wandering… all over the world! Wandering… all over… the world!" The piano keys sing in response to the wrinkled old black hands. The man moves his head to the music. On the counter in front of him are three empty beer glasses, and in his hand he has another half-empty glass. A white woman sits on the tall stool next to him. Her bottom, wrapped in a tight, short leather skirt, is round and shiny, like the horse's rump.

Seawater like black satin is spilling over the seawall; at the foot of the wall in the spreading seawater lies a dead fish. There is an absence of sound. The tide and wind have suddenly stopped. Time seems to have frozen. Only the sea, like a length of spreading black satin, is flowing and yet not spilling. Maybe it isn't moving and only seems to be flowing, merely offering the sensation that it is flowing and only sensed as a visual image.

His hand squashes a fleeing cockroach on top of the electric stove. He turns on the tap but doesn't flush it away. Instead he just looks at the splashing water.

"Want marijuana?" The voice is low, so low that it is mistaken for breathing because the music is very loud. As wrinkled black hands fly across the keys, they seem to be the words of the song softly repeated. But the old black man is not singing; head down, he sways as he continues to play the drums.

The shiny brass bomb hanging on a fleshy earlobe of the white woman swings gently.

Cockroaches are crawling on the patterned tiles over the sink, crawling on the lid of the enamel saucepan, crawling on the leather cover of the radio, crawling on the cupboard, crawling along the kitchen door. He puts on a rubber glove.

A big hand with blue veins is on the woman's thigh, under the black leather skirt. Who does it belong to, and where is he? Is the old black man still playing the drums, is the piano still playing? Where is that pinging noise coming from? Anyway, everything seems to be swaying.

An eye, the dazed, cold gray eye of a fish, round and staring, dull and lusterless.

A pair of pointy pliers pulls out a tooth, the pale blood still clinging to the roots. He sniffs at it, it stinks a bit, and with a swing of his arm he tosses it away.

People are mountain climbing. Everyone is trying to outdo the other and it seems to be a race up the mountain. There are men and women, some wearing shorts, some carrying backpacks. There are also old and young people, some have walking sticks and some have small children, and pairs of boys and girls are holding hands, so it doesn't seem to be a race. Everyone has been mobilized. Is it a holiday camp or are they the residents of the whole county town? It suits everyone, men and women, old and young; is it a trendy form of exercise?

Cockroaches are crawling everywhere. Wearing a glove covered with dead cockroaches, he is on his haunches, frantically swiping at them.

Two feet in pointed leather shoes are stepping about in midair. On the stage, a white-nosed clown is walking on his hands to the tune of a leaky accordion soundlessly oozing air.

Everyone is puffing and panting, sweating from their foreheads. All of them take out identical bottles labeled with the same brand of mineral water and, one by one, their broad, contorted faces produce similar smiles of well-being.

A hat spins silently on the end of a walking stick.

The wind is taking a break, and on the boundless sea the layers of white crests keep pushing closer and closer. The sunlight is wonderful, the sky remains azure blue, and the seagulls are screeching.

People are marching in file along the mountain ridge. The person in the lead is holding a tattered old flag that billows in the strong wind. They are off in the distance, but the flapping of the tattered flag can still be heard.

The sea swells up to the stone steps beyond the doors, majestically, turbulently.

The ground is thick with cockroaches. He stands still, and bends his head to look around. He is utterly frustrated and can do nothing but take off the glove that is covered with dead cockroaches.

Without a sound, the sea spills over the doorsill into the room, and the cockroaches scramble to escape by crawling up the walls. Those not quick enough are caught in the swirling current and float up with it or lie on their backs pretending to be dead. He can't help bending to look at them. He pokes at them with the glove, then throws it into the water, straightens up, and doesn't bother with them anymore. The legs of the table and chair are underwater and some of the cockroaches in the water start crawling up them.

The people with the flag are marching in file along the gentle ridge. As they draw near, the man in the lead raises his walking stick high. The flag flapping noisily in the wind is in fact a string of bras – white silk, dark red brocade, flesh-colored netting – all tied together with black nylon stockings. A small black leather bra shakes up and down from time to time and looks like a small bird trying to break free.

A large part of the concrete ceiling is wet, and the pooling water forms droplets that begin to fall.

In the underground cellar, someone is lying faceup on a mattress so old that it should be thrown away. His face is covered with a black hat, and his body is covered with a white sheet; the mattress is right in the middle of four wet concrete walls. Drops of water plop noisily onto the sheet and part of it gradually becomes wet.

His fat belly is exposed, covered only with bamboo medical suction cups; the part below his lower abdomen is covered with the white sheet.

Sitting on a small wooden stool, a cobbler wearing a felt hat takes the nail from between his teeth and presses it into the high heel of the shoe clamped between his knees. With one blow of the hammer, it is in.

The murky black seawater flows down from the stone steps, soundlessly, flowing down, one step at a time.

He looks up to the ruins of the fortress at the top of the cliff and goes up the broken stone steps that are in the shadows. The fortress, however, is in the sunlight and the outline and texture of each stone are quite distinct.

He enters the pitch black doorway of the fortress wall, then suddenly hears the sound of an iron chisel being hammered into rock. He stands still and the sound stops. As soon as he resumes walking the sound follows his footsteps. He stops and the sound stops again. He then deliberately stamps his feet and the iron chisel clangs noisily. Finally, when he starts running hard, the sound vanishes.

It is a long, dark tunnel. He moves slowly ahead, groping. At the other end is a ray of light and the exit gradually appears – a doorway. Outside, the sunlight is brilliant, and the sound of the chisel can be heard clearly. Moving stealthily to the doorway, hiding in the shadows, he sees someone hammering at some rocks. He walks over and stops behind the man. The man turns around. He has a dry, sunken, old face creased with deep wrinkles, yellow and tanned, and his sparse front teeth are completely covered with tobacco stains. He is an old Chinese peasant from a mountain village and as he squints in the sunlight, his eyes are vacant in the slits, staring somewhere else. The vague sound of the sea vanishes just as it starts.

The murky black seawater surges in from the stone steps above on the left, soundlessly. A little light comes in only from outside the half-open doors above the stone steps, and the reflected light indicates that the force of the water is quite strong.

He is pedaling on a bicycle and the wheels are turning at a medium pace. He is riding an ancient bicycle with wide handlebars, traveling along a narrow village highway. In the distance on the left is a big stretch of grassland on a slight incline where there is a line of four people, backs bent, who seem to be pulling hard on something. What they are pulling isn't clear, but it is something very heavy that looks like a wooden boat yet could be a coffin, and leaves a track in the grass wherever they pass. Their every step is slow and strained. Wafting through the air is a woman's wail, like song and lament, like the wailing of a Chinese peasant woman at a funeral.

The sun reflecting off the bell on the bicycle handlebars hurts his eyes, and the wailing seems more and more like the songs or hauling chants of coolie workers. The wheels of the bicycle turn along the straight asphalt road.

Four gaunt men with purplish bronze faces, sweating backs, and bare upper torsos are wearing wide cloth waistbands and straw sandals. As he looks at the rope, which appears to be taut, there is a sudden loud snap.

A motor car overtakes the bicycle, and speeds off. As he turns his head to look back, the sun directly over the left side of the field is blinding. No one is around and the lingering sound seems to be either the cry of insects or his ears ringing.

In the underground cellar, the mattress is soaked in the black water. The white sheet is also saturated, and the man with a hat over his face is stiff and looks like a corpse. Water keeps dripping from above, and there is now also the pop of bursting bubbles.

With the bicycle parked nearby, he lies on his side in the shade of a tree, looking at this neglected apple orchard. Here and there among the branches are a few red apples that had escaped being picked. Not too far away is the gurgling of a creek.

A barefoot girl appears under the apple trees ahead. She is carrying a bucket of water that seems too heavy for her. Her purplish red jacket has a single slanting lapel, and the legs of her blue floral-print trousers are rolled up to just below the knees. She has two long plaits, and her bright black eyes look too big for her small face. She gives a start, uncertain whether or not to keep walking. Suddenly it is lonely all around.

A small tree is drifting in the wind. Dirt splashes up, and billowing clouds of thick black smoke and dust suddenly spread through the sky. Then, as planes swoop overhead, the strafing of machine guns, exploding bombs, and, immediately afterward, the crying of babies and the wailing of women can be heard.

Several small boys squat around an iron spade, watching it sink into the ground as a foot treads down on it. A clod of earth is dug up and flattened into small pieces with the spade, then another clod of earth is dug up and flattened, and yet another. A big boy stoops to pick up a machine-gun bullet, brushes it on his shirt, puts it into his trouser pocket, then takes the spade to another hole nearby to dig. One of the small boys surrounding him shakes his head as he looks at the row of holes in the ground.

The murky black water makes a gurgling sound as it flows down all the stone steps, unstoppably.

A match is struck in the dark and a yellowing, slightly faded old photograph is set alight. It is the photograph of a young man in a suit and tie and a young woman in a qipao together with a three- or four-year-old boy. Their shoulders pressed together, both the adults have posed smiles on their faces. The eyes of the boy between the parents are rounded, and he has a surprised look. The flames on the edge of the photograph are burning toward his parents. The photograph is shrinking and beginning to curl up, then – whoosh! – the whole photograph is burning, his parents are alight and the child is charred.

A bubble keeps growing as it is blown. The soapy surface is moving faster and with the sun shining on it, the colors become brighter, more colorful, more sparkling, until it can't get any bigger. It silently bursts as amazement lights up the face of the little boy blowing bubbles.

The mattress in the black water slowly begins to float up. It tilts slightly, wobbles back, sways a few times, each time becoming steadier, and eventually it is floating on the water.

Water is dripping everywhere. He looks up at the rainwater coming down from the eaves; outside on the ground there are some abandoned iron plows and farm machine parts. Two dogs charge at him with their jaws wide open. He retreats into the granary, where the ceiling is high and bundles of fodder are stacked right up to it. There is a long wooden bench in the middle of the dark granary and young women are sitting around it. All of them have flour sticking to different parts of their faces: eyelids, nose, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, ears. Heads bowed, they shape lumps of dough in their hands as they chant, engrossed in grief. However, a young woman with long plaits has an oil lamp with a shade in front of her. She is looking into a mirror at her woman companion behind who has untied her plaits and is combing her hair for her. Without realizing it, he is right by the mirror and sees the scissors cut her long hair short. Immediately, the barking of dogs is heard.

Rainy weather, an empty lane in a village that is so lonely, it is hard even to hear the rain. Above the stone wall is a row of tightly shut old wooden windows. A small wooden door reinforced with iron strips set into the stone wall stands as tall as a person on the cobblestone road. Dried by wind, the rough grain sticks out on the timber. The sad song of a girl weeping at being married seems to seep faintly through the cracks of the door. As one approaches the door, everything becomes more and more hazy.

Hands slowly push open a heavy door, inside is a church. The rows of empty pews retreat in the midst of the reverberating footsteps echoing on the stone floor. On the walls are the remains of medieval murals. The lines are blurred, the colors blackened with grime, and none of the crumbling faces of the disciples can be made out.

A mountain creek with rounded pebbles and a fast-flowing current. He looks back. In the gray drizzling rain, opposite, on the mountain slope is a village connected by stone steps; it has a church with a prominent bell tower. The rain is falling even more heavily.

He is walking on the village highway, his clothes almost soaked through, and water is running down the back of his head. As a car drives past, he signals. It has gone ten paces past him, but stops. He quickly runs up and a door opens.

A woman is driving. From the rearview mirror the woman's profile can be seen: she has wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She asks him something and he answers. The woman turns to look at him. She really knows how to use her makeup. The woman asks him something again and he answers again. The woman looks away, but in the rearview mirror there is the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. The car windows swept by the rain are dripping with water.

The murky seawater goes over the steps behind the doors and continues to surge inside. In the light behind the doors it looks more like black satin running off a roll and cascading down.

Looking down, he sees naked men and women on a long table. They are huddled in couples and move up and down and turn around endlessly, as drops of milk white flour and water splash onto the table and their bodies, making a sound like pattering rain. All around are bundles of straw; it seems to be a granary, yet from time to time there is snorting, and it seems to be a stable.

He is sitting at an old round table wearing a pair of dark blue swimming trunks. Both of his hands are on the shiny grain-patterned hardwood surface, one of them turning a glass half filled with red wine. A hanging lamp with a metal shade casts a yellow light that shines only on his hands. In the circle of light there is also a highly polished stone ball that leaves a distinct shadow on the table. He withdraws the hand with the wineglass from the circle of light, and his other hand moves the stone ball so that from that position the shadow is extended. Music instantly starts up. It seems to be jazz blues, trembling and restrained, intermittent, powerful yet weak, seemingly far and yet near, and finally it stops abruptly, yet seems still to be suspended there… He gets to his feet and walks around the table, observing the endless positions of the stone ball and its shadow in the circle of light.

Next to the white curtain, a wall lamp illuminates the portrait of a woman on the wall, with black lips, fair skin, black hair piled high on the head, eyes looking down, lips slightly parted, and looking almost asleep. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that one eye is open and the other is shut, and if one takes a step back, it would seem that one eye is higher than the other. To look up at an angle, one would see that the lower lip is thick and fleshy. But looking at it sideways, one would see that the lips are pouting. Another look would make it seem like the wide-open mouth of a bird. An upside-down look would make the tongue seem to stick out. Away from the light, there are knife marks all over the cheeks: it is a shaman with an evil look. A look with eyes narrowed and with an air of indifference would return the sexiness to the face. There is a pop as the light goes out.

A gurgling sound, water is flowing down the stone steps in places. Now and then a dim light flashes a few times.

The curtains open noisily. A woman's bare back appears in front of the curtains. She opens the window, and outside is a mass of gray rooftops. Farther off, one after the other, are endless balconies and apartments of old buildings. The dark blue sky is unusually clear, but it could be morning or dusk. The woman turns and leans on the laced wrought-iron railing outside the window, wearily. Her face and body are in the dark and only her eyes glint, like a cat's eyes in the dark. A bracelet on the wrist of her hand that grips the railing also has a faint glint. A car speeding by brings with it the rumbling of the waves.

Seagulls circle the sea, screeching, as if they have found something and are following the rising and falling of the waves. The waves are huge, and between the crests are expanses of smooth, deep blue sea.

Underfoot is withered grass, swaying in the strong wind, soundlessly. He is walking on a mountain slope and he goes behind the ruins of a wall where a few young people are waiting for him. One of them is wearing glasses, and the thick lenses for severe shortsightedness look like fish eyes. Another, a young woman with short hair and dark complexion, is eating melon seeds. She spits out the shells that float and then drop into the clumps of grass. Seeing him arrive, without a word, they head down the slope together. Below is a cluster of houses, a bell tower, and a football field.

In the underground cellar that has filled with seawater, the mattress soaked in murky water slowly floats up. The faint rumble of cars driving past sounds like the wind.

The young people go into a long corridor where sections of sunlight broken by pillars appear unusually bright. It is a classroom with the doors and windows wide open but empty of people. It is filled with tables and chairs that pass them, one by one, as their footsteps sound after they have passed.

At the end of the corridor is a room. The door is shut but there is a sign. They come to a halt and look at the sign that has nothing written on it, hesitate, seem to be having a discussion, then knock on the door. It opens instantly, soundlessly. Inside the room, teachers are sitting at desks as if they were students, all busy marking homework. While they are wondering whether to ask someone, a young teacher appears behind them. She is as young as she was in those times, only her face is pale and she looks to be made of wax. Fatigue shows all over her face; her eyes are puffy and have grayish shadows. She says she will escort them to the principal and also says she is delighted that, so many years after graduating, they have come to visit their old school. She says she remembers the class, back then they were all children but full of mischief. As she talks and jokes, her voice is coming from a paper person. Of course she remembers the time when there was a cruel struggle right on those very desks. Someone had started banging on a desk and everyone unthinkingly followed, so that every desk was banging. As she mounted the dais, textbooks under her arm, her rounded eyes swept the class, but she couldn't isolate the ringleader. Confused, she threw down her textbooks and ran out in tears. Everyone was scared stupid, then suddenly it was quiet and nobody made a sound.

There is a red-colored cross on the door of the medical clinic in the passageway. She points to the window. The small, dark room is piled with junk as well as some musical instruments – erhu, pipa, gongs, and drums – all of them covered in dust. He knows that this used to be where students were kept after class as punishment for failing to hand in homework. Those passing the window can see that miserable desk scarred with knife cuts and covered in ink stains and pencil marks.

He stares at the desk for some time and, from where he is looking, there clearly emerge, one on top of the other, pencil drawings of little people and little crooked houses as well as Chinese characters carved with a penknife. Some of the character strokes have been inked in, and some inked characters where the ink couldn't be scrubbed clean had been penciled in and again carved with a penknife. It is a jumbled picture but it conjures up fantasies.

The sound of water dripping, dripping in the cellar filled with seawater, dripping on the floating mattress, dripping and soaking the sheet. And the ink black seawater keeps rising, soundlessly. The floating mattress hits a soggy wall, bounces, and changes direction.

The principal, who has a dark, ruddy complexion, a big Adam's apple, and a husky voice, tells them the history of the school. His low drone reverberates around the ridgepole and rafters of the big temple-like ceiling above the auditorium, filled with long wooden benches. Bells start ringing, and the sparrows fly off in fright.

Below the ceiling are several Taoists clad in long gray cotton gowns, their hair in topknots. Heads bowed and hands clasped in front, the one in the lead swinging a horsetail whisk, they are chanting scriptures around a coffin.

The lid of the coffin is open and he almost guesses that the corpse in the coffin, with its head wrapped in the shroud, is himself. Apparently confused, he turns and looks around, although he doesn't know what it is he is looking for. However, he sees behind him two big heavy doors that are half-open, and outside in the sun, on the stone steps, a little wooden bucket with peeling paint. A lizard is crawling on the stone step in front of the wooden bucket.

He walks out of the auditorium, or maybe it was originally a temple that had been converted into a school auditorium, or maybe it was in fact a temple hall. In the shadows of the covered walkway stands an old stone tablet with parts missing. It looks like the wild-grass calligraphy of Mi Di, but the inscription in very standard regular script reads: "Written by Meng Chun in the ding-mao year of the reign of Yuanyou of the Great Song Dynasty." Long ago, ink rubbings were made of it, but later the main piece of calligraphy was engraved over and now can barely be made out and is completely undecipherable.

He walks out into the sun. A boy in a vest and shorts, riding on a brand-new Dinglan junior bicycle, passes by. He asks the boy something. The boy stops and, with a foot on the grass, points ahead, then speeds off.

He walks on ahead and passes a piece of neatly trimmed lawn. Past the lawn, in a mass of weeds, are the shiny handlebars of a bicycle. He goes over to have a look, and covered with weeds in the ditch is the frame of a Dinglan bicycle.

He strides quickly up the hill, begins to run, and then runs faster and faster, panting hard, but in his mind he seems more and more to understand that he is surely pursuing the self of his childhood. On the top of the hill is a sour-date tree, though not a very tall one, with its small leaves trembling in the wind.

The child is running in his direction from behind the hill but stops in front of the sour-date tree and looks about with a worried look. Then, probably discovering something, he dashes off somewhere else. Not far from the top of the hill is a small, sparse forest where between two trees a white bed sheet is drying; something seems to be moving behind the sheet, and the child charges headlong into the sheet but gets wrapped in it and can't get free.

The mountain wind is toying with the sheet. Out of breath and with great difficulty the child manages to lift the sheet and get out, only to find yet another sheet hanging between two trees and flying about.

The child stares for a while, then quietly walks over to it. There seems to be the shape of a person behind the sheet. This time the child carefully and gently lifts a corner of the sheet. Nothing is there, but nearby, another sheet is hanging between two trees. Instinctively, the child looks behind himself.

All around, far and near, sheets are swirling in the wind. Stopping in front of one, he sees the legs of a woman emerging on the white sheet, and he holds his breath to examine the heaving white breasts with protruding nipples. Then, roughly separating the sheets, he comes face-to-face with the child standing among the white curtains with a terrified look in his eyes. There is a loud scream, the sound of the suona, and he covers his face with his hands.

Crawling from the front of the coffin covered in white streamers, the child runs off wailing and howling, and echoing this silent weeping is the long, drawn-out scream of the suona. When the sounds of the child and the suona vanish, there remain around the open coffin only white curtains and paper streamers drifting in the wind.

The gloomy sea keeps rising and the wet mattress is partly floating on the water. The black hat over his face gets closer and closer to the ceiling of the room.

He leaps out of the coffin that is covered in long paper streamers and, dragging the shroud with him, he staggers and stumbles as he flees this mountainside with paper streamers hanging all around. He runs down to the expanse of green lake in the valley, enters the water, plunges into the lake, and somehow becomes tangled in weeds and is struggling. In the distance, ripples are spreading in circles, but it is hard to tell whether he is drowning or swimming out to the middle of the lake.

The sea reaches the ceiling, gurgling like a drowning person who is swallowing water and giving off bubbles like a blocked underwater pipe.

The watery passage grows bluer and bluer and eventually comes out at a seaport with sparkling waves. In the distance, the sea and the sky are virtually one color.

A gray-black floating object is bobbing up and down on top of the waves. As the tide rises and falls, a naked man can be seen lying on a wet mattress that is about to sink.

Lines of white crest surge upon the deep sea; it is ink blue, verging on black. The sky is so bright and the sea wind is so strong.

The flat sea suddenly stands upright. In the trough of the waves, on the mattress about to be engulfed, the naked man, wearing only a narrow leather tie around his neck, is seen removing the black hat from his face with one hand and his sunglasses with the other. In that instant, when the tide crashes down, those dead-fish eyes and the frozen, ambiguous smile on his face can be seen.

Seen through the window, facing the sun, in the distance, on the desolate beach, there seems to be a man sitting in a deck chair, his back to the sea, with a towel draped over him. With one hand he pushes aside the hat over his face and with the other he retrieves a book from the sand and starts reading it.