Death Fugue

Part Two

1

They had a good breakfast of preserved meats, pickled vegetables, fried eggs and rice porridge. Mengliu washed the bowls, cups, plates, cutlery and pans, and put everything away. He couldn’t see any change in Juli. The sky outside the window was as blue as before and the birds in the garden still sang as happily. It was only Mengliu’s heart that seemed to be missing a piece, like a hole where the roof tile has broken, allowing the cold wind to enter. He took the diamonds out from under the edge of his bed and held them toward the light, trying to draw some warmth from their glow. He bathed and dried himself, then pressed the green button on the wall and received a spray of perfumed toner. After he had put on a silky white dressing gown, he turned one of the golden taps and filled a glass with beer. With his mouth still full of the taste of malt, he went to the living area and spread himself out on the sofa, his feelings for Juli overflowing. He heard music, and at first thought that he had imagined it. Then he suddenly remembered the cavity in the wall which housed the alarm and realised the music had come from there. The Swanese people listened to the same song all the time. He did not know what else was behind the hole in wall. Listening devices? Monitors? A pair of eyes? The melody was like an eraser, wiping the image of Juli from his mind, turning the vivid thick water colour painting of her into a grey filmy form. Qizi and many other women swirled in his mind, and before long they disappeared too, as if sinking into deep water. Now he was sucked into the moving green waves. Distracted, he lay on the sofa like the man of the house and rested a moment. Then he put on his robe and shoes and went out the door.

On the road, he encountered a funeral procession, The deceased, covered by a white cloth and laid upon a board, was carried by four men in white clothing. There was a musical troupe, priests and a group of sympathetic citizens, and they all sang in a soft chorus a poetic narrative of the life of the deceased. It was a calm, serene song, untouched by sadness. Mengliu watched as the funeral procession started to ascend the hill. He could no longer hear the band playing when they stopped and formed a circle, like a wreath worn on top of the hill. They seemed to be holding some sort of ceremony. The blue sky extended beyond his line of vision.

Mengliu headed east, through the deserted streets, to the foot of the mountain. There he found himself facing a complicated grey building. Two spires were raised like swords toward the sky. The heavy wooden doors were open, and on the arch above them was a carved relief. There was a stained glass window above the arch, with red and blue the dominant colours, and window frames of exquisite craftsmanship. He stepped inside. The hall was bright and spacious, under a cathedral-like dome engraved with an elaborate pattern. Light fell through the stained-glass windows, and the soft glow was reflected on the tiled floor. There was a solemn, religious atmosphere in the building, and a cold, lonely air about the hall. The crude columns were painted with dragons and phoenixes, and the carved images of curly-haired heads were distributed about the four corners of the room. The aisle stretched out straight ahead, as if it were a long tunnel through time and space. Mengliu moved deeper into the hall. The temperature suddenly dropped, and he began to shiver. Gradually, he felt the building changing. His footsteps sounded with a metallic echo, as if he were walking through a tin box. Then he seemed to sink, and the sounds were gone. The light dimmed, his vision blurred, and he was finally plunged into total darkness. The air was filled with a strong taste of the sea. Suddenly he felt dizzy, as if the hall was moving rapidly. This feeling lasted for several seconds, then he bent over and vomited. After what seemed like half an hour, his stomach was completely emptied of its contents. A hole opened up in the wall of darkness. His vision became clear, and a strong light fell on him, as if the sun was shining so brightly it made the surroundings dreadfully pale. His eyes were bursting with pain, and he covered them with his hands to block out the light. He heard the sound of a machine clicking. When he opened his eyes again, he was in a diamond-shaped space. The strength of the light above him had weakened, and turned into the soft light of a blue sky. Music floated like snowflakes through the air.

‘Mr Yuan, we welcome you to Swan Valley,’ said a robotic voice. At the same time a metal pipe with a coin-sized opening projected out from the wall and stopped right in front of Mengliu’s face. ‘You can see me through this periscope.’

Mengliu froze for a moment, then took hold of the metal pipe and peered through it. He saw, as if in a reflection on water, a blurred image of a machine control room. It exuded a charming orange glow, and was filled with green plants. There were buttons on the wall with mysterious writing under them. In the middle of the room was a large desk and what looked like a sofa with a person perched upon it. The person gestured to him, and told him that if he adjusted the dial beneath the periscope, he would see more clearly, and in even more fantastic colours.

As he adjusted the focus, Mengliu saw a figure sitting in a chair, with hair as green as seaweed. A white veil covered half its face. Its body was glistening, as if it was wearing golden armour.

The robot seemed to laugh a little, then reached over and pressed a button. The periscope retracted.

Mengliu heard a whirring sound from the machine as it went through its operations. All around him, various sorts of equipment now began to go into action. The instruments, meters, valves and control panels had all been polished until they shone. Electronic numbers jumped as the red screen flashed, and data was generated. A body of glowing spherical electronic bulbs rotated slowly on a screen, as the robotic voice issued from it.

‘Please have a seat Mr Yuan. I am very sorry that I haven’t had time to meet you until today.’

A man came out from a gap in the wall, his bald head shining. He pushed forward a Chinese-style armchair, then stood to one side, his body stiff and his hands folded at his waist.

‘Who are you? Why did you bring me here?’ Mengliu was not willing to sit. He looked around suspiciously.

The robot laughed and said, ‘Mr Yuan, your tone is a little unfriendly. You should feel honoured to come to our beautiful Swan Valley. You are timid and weak, and you lack ideals. But you also lack spiritual support. You need a resuscitation, so we can change your shortcomings and flaws. You will become a poet with impeccable character.’

‘If I am good or bad, what is that to you? I’m just an ordinary man, and of no value to you.’ Mengliu felt that the machine spoke with a style that was vaguely familiar.

‘Ha ha ha ha. Put aside your old ways of thinking,’ the robot continued, laughing. ‘If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I will answer.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Ah Lian Qiu, the spiritual leader of Swan Valley.’

‘You are a woman?’

‘Sorry?’

‘A woman?!’

‘It does not matter.’

Mengliu was silent for a moment, then asked, ‘Why is sexual intercourse not allowed in Swan Valley?’

‘A single person can colour ten million years of history. That is to say, one good, great, perfect person is more beneficial than countless handicapped people, and those with lower IQs. Swan Valley strictly regulates fertility according to scientific principles. It guarantees a quality population, and that we will not produce useless citizens. So…’

‘So you seized upon excellent food, laid claim to blue skies, and captured perfection in humans…’

‘That is blunt, and rather unfriendly.’

‘You strangle human nature…’

‘It is logical to be inhumane. What use is humanity? Humane feeling is just a vat of paint. It will make a mess of everything. I am sure you can see how affluent Swan Valley is, how orderly. The people’s intelligence, their knowledge and spirit as well as their attitude toward life, are all to be commended. There is no desire, no greed, no selfishness or distraction, only good deeds. Swan Valley will be the most ideal place on earth.’

‘Yes. There is no resistance, only compliance. There is no self, only manipulation. People have been turned into robots. It is no different from castration.’

‘In Swan Valley, where everyone has ample food and clothing, how could there be any unhappiness? Who would object to such a comfortable, and agreeable life?’ When the robot had said this, it laughed wildly several times, as if it had revelled in this pleasure for a thousand years.

‘Then what do you want to do with me?’

‘To save you. To let you start over again as a poet.’

‘I am not a poet, and I don’t need saving. Please, let me go home.’

‘As far as I know, you are a good poet, but you are not the least bit patriotic.’

‘Nonsense. You would have no way of knowing what my feelings for my country are.’

‘Mr Yuan, if you were patriotic, why didn’t you join the protests all those years ago?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I have my own way of expressing my feelings for my motherland. Moreover, things were not the way you think they were. What everyone knows is just their view…’

‘You are wrong. One has a clearer perspective as an observer.

‘You are like a frog in a well.’

‘I’m sorry. I meant to praise you. You keep away from messy complications. You are wise.’

‘I do not need to talk to you about such things. You’ve violated my personal liberties.’

‘I wonder. You live like farmers in a village with no church, and yet you talk to me of individual rights? Maybe you are thinking of that girl, Suitang? Don’t worry, we can invite her here, and hope that your genes match hers. Sometimes a prodigy…’

‘No, I’ve got no relationship with her,’ Mengliu said, raising his voice. ‘I don’t want to get married, and I certainly don’t want to father a prodigy.’

‘Ha ha. Mr Yuan, don’t be so quick to reject the idea. You will come to love Swan Valley, and you will make a comfortable life here.’

‘Frankly, I do not feel your goodness. You deprive others of freedom as a means of entertainment.’

‘You are so stubborn. But you will come to understand.’

‘I just want to go home.’

‘We are prepared to make you a cultural officer, and you still want to go back? You’d rather be a zombie, entangled in self-condemnation and guilt?’

Mengliu was secretly surprised. The robot seemed to have completely mastered both his past and his hidden inner world. Yes, he admitted to himself, he did live in a spiritual prison, and he knew beyond a doubt that he had no chance of being set free. He still remembered the day very clearly. Shunyu’s father had brought him the devastating news. The red rosebud appeared. He did not board the train and leave. He had gone in search of Qizi. If she was alive, he wanted to find her, and if she was dead, he wanted to find her body. There was no one at the Wisdom Bureau. The guard’s eyes were red. The horrors he had witnessed that night reverberated in his trembling words. He described the sounds of gunfire, the tanks, the fires, and the hand-to-hand combat, the wounded and the dead, the ambulances, and the chaotic spectacle, like something out of a movie. He bade farewell to the guard, then ran to other places where she might be found, but discovered nothing. The streets were full of people in uniform, patrols searching and cross-examining people. He went to Liuli Street and found it empty. The walls of the Catholic Church were full of bullet holes. The mouth of the injured street had been stopped up — the birds didn’t sing, nor was there a sound from the empty darkness of the broken windows. Beiping Street was even worse. The pavement had collapsed under the weight of the tanks, the surface of the road had been destroyed, stone structures and traffic signs ground into powder. Smoke-charred vehicles stood abandoned along the road. Some of the trees beside the road had been uprooted, and bullet holes filled the walls of the buildings on both sides. The tree trunks were covered in blood. He wanted to go along Beiping Street to Round Square, but was stopped by a man in uniform. He remained resolute, and got a blow from his gun butt as a result. He created an uproar. He wanted them to arrest him. Maybe if they did, it would be like the previous time, when he was locked up with Qizi. He begged them to take him, but they just chased him away. He was unkempt, one foot bare and the other shuffling along in a slipper. They thought he was crazy. In a daze, he sat down on the road beside a motorbike, which had been crushed to a flat, paper-like form stuck to the ground. He looked at it like it was a piece of meat. He knew the odds were against Qizi.

When he returned he just sat in the West Wing waiting for someone to come and arrest him. No one came for him, because the old landlord had told the police that Mengliu never left the house, and stayed in all day every day sleeping. On the third day, he went to the Green Flower, but the bar had been closed and Shunyu’s father arrested on charges of harbouring and abetting wanted criminals. No one knew where he had been taken.

Nearly two years later Mengliu received a letter from him. It was his dying testimony.

Unfortunately, we have no way of discussing together the question of the lady-charming xun. I promise you, it has been passed down from generation to generation in our family for six-hundred years. The words on its base, ‘meng liu’, were inscribed by my own hand. ‘Meng’ means to miss someone, and ‘Liu’ was a girl’s name. I had hoped we would be able to meet again…

The letter had been sent from a prison in the outer provinces. The envelope was postmarked with a date six months earlier.

So Shunyu’s father was the chuixun player his mother had met beside the river…Every time Mengliu thought of this, he felt suffocated and could not speak.

When your innocent relatives were killed by the guns of the nation, your own life had been taken over too. You were no longer yourself.

His voice softened. It was no longer so self-righteous. He did not want to go back to Beiping, but he was filled with a disgust that he could not quite understand. It didn’t matter if the robot of Swan Valley could capture the thoughts of people and understand a person’s past and future, the spiritual leader’s words still needed to be considered. What man did not want to possess power, status, and prestige? He would hold to his sense of dignity though.

‘Don’t try to tamper with my emotions. Even more, don’t slander my brothers and sisters. Whom you choose to breed with whom is your business. All I want is my freedom.’

‘You do go on and on! Today’s conversation ends here. Goodbye.’

The robot was annoyed. With a crackling sound, the machine ground to a halt. Then all was silent.

2

On Saturday mornings, there was usually a public academic report, followed by an open salon, where everyone could listen or speak as they pleased. Mengliu surprised himself by showing up at the event. He was in a daze and did not remember how he got there. He recalled what seemed to be a conversation with a robot, but could not figure out if it was real or a dream. He saw a flat space hewn out of the mountain, and on it an oval table encircled by bamboo chairs. Many young people were sitting there, and some he knew, like Esteban and Juli. They had serious expressions on their faces, which were as hard and cold as stones in winter. He noticed several girls of about sixteen or seventeen, including one with blonde hair and pink skin, a full figure, and long eyebrows above her wide eyes. She wore an indifferent, proud expression. There was also a handsome, elegant-looking young man. His facial features were perfect, delicate and gentle, with idealism flashing in his eyes. They called him Darae, and from time to time, he cast an appreciative glance at the blonde-haired girl.

The mountain breeze blew gently through the leaves on the trees along the slopes, making them sway, with the birds bobbing up and down on their branches. A mighty burst of drums sounded, as Darae presided over the reading of the conclusions of the academic report. The contents were in praise of the beauty of Swan Valley, though there was also mention of a handful of cases of theft, adultery, fornication, and other immoral actions.

‘These came about because people were unwilling to change their bloody values, and some even treated gold or diamonds as treasure. Such decadent ideas would seriously affect the development of civilisation in Swan Valley, hindering it in its quest to become the world’s most ideal place to live.

‘In some countries, there are fucking awesome princes, gold-dealers and loan sharks, and those who do not think of the good of the country or have any sense of crisis, and they all live an aimless, useless, bloody extravagant life. The wealthy all work hand in glove, making unauthorised use of the name of the state for their own bloody profit and enrichment. They exploit the poor, and the labourers and the carpenters and the farmers all have to toil endlessly. They are like bloody beasts of burden, barely making enough money to make ends meet. Their lives are a fucking misery. They suffer worse treatment than animals, but without their labour the country couldn’t survive. Even the beasts of burden are given a time of rest. They need not worry about the future. And what about the humans who are worse off than bloody animals? They labour and suffer, gaining nothing, and have to suffer pain and poverty in old age. But fucking hell, Swan Valley will never repeat those mistakes. Everything the government does is for the citizens of Swan Valley, for the citizen’s fucking lives, to do good, be optimistic and proud of the knowledge we possess. As long as everyone is pure and perfect in his or her spiritual life, this poetic lifestyle will be a reality in Swan Valley.’

‘Fucking’ and ‘bloody’ — such words kept popping up in the academic report, and Mengliu was stunned to hear them, even though he could not help but nod, the smile of a sleepwalker fixed on his face. He observed the others carefully, his eyes finally falling on Su Juli. She always looked grim, but at that moment even her hair was shining with the glory of idealism. He felt that on some nights her body must have trembled with wild joy, and that however sated she was on polite conversation, she too earnestly looked forward to the coming of midnight to lie with a man. On those hidden occasions her face shone with the elixir of love. Her hair was as smooth as silk. She would have taken off her lip ring way ahead of time, in preparation. As he thought of her warm moist lips, his body stiffened, but he immediately broke free of his absurd imagining.

Esteban seemed to have grown thinner, and looked slightly worn out, but was still in high spirits.

Like Darae he was filled with all the arrogance in the world.

The green-haired monster emerged in Mengliu’s mind, along with the robot, and the metallic flavour of that place. ‘I saw a green-haired monster,’ he confided in Esteban.

‘What …monster?’ Esteban asked.

‘A green-haired monster. Your spiritual leader.’

The academic report had ended. It was time for a short break.

On the round table sat a teapot with a spout that resembled the male genitalia. The golden glasses had long stems inlaid with diamonds, and mouths which resembled female genitalia.

The blonde girl picked up the teapot and appeared to pour out a stream of pearls. All that could be heard was a shrill tinkling sound.

Mengliu was thirsty, as if his whole body was on fire.

Before the start of the discussion, Esteban introduced Mengliu to the gathering, calling him a poet. He made particular mention of the fact that he was a carrier of excellent genes.

Still in a daze, Mengliu learned that the blonde girl’s name was Rania, and that she was one of Juli’s students.

Esteban finally introduced Darae, as the young artist who had crafted the naked sculpture of the spiritual leader.

Mengliu shook hands with Darae and was secretly amazed at how soft and smooth his hand was.

In a flash, he thought of Hei Chun, Bai Qiu, the years they had shared together, and the girls.

He sat down, feeling shaken.

‘Mr Yuan, you don’t look well. It seems you need a rest,’ Rania said. The syllables blew from her teeth and lips like a breeze over the valley. Behind her, the blue sea sparkled.

‘It’s like you’ve not quite woken up.’ Darae’s tone was suspicious.

Juli’s face was impassive as she looked at the bundle of papers in her hand, occasionally correcting a line with her pen. She appeared quite confident.

‘Let’s continue with the discussion,’ said Esteban. ‘As for crime, let’s say someone goes into another person’s garden and steals some peaches, or chickens, or perhaps even kills a person. Everyone would agree that these are crimes, and that the criminal should be punished. But when one country invades another, destroying their ancestral temples, snatching treasures, and killing millions of people, it is not considered a crime. On the contrary, it is celebrated. But the nature of these two acts is exactly the same. Both are unjust, both are crimes…’

‘Only people who are dissatisfied with the status quo are eager to rebel, and then dispossessed people make trouble, taking every opportunity to gain something from the chaos,’ Darae interjected. ‘Some governments will try to suppress the confusion by using torture, plundering and kidnapping, thereby reducing the people to beggars. If all the people in the country are beggars, then the whole nation becomes the private property of a small group or elite, much to the sorrow of the people.’

Mengliu’s mind was a little foggy. ‘You are all the private property of the green-haired monster!’

Rania hesitated for a moment, but did not alter the course of the discussion. ‘If the country is private property, it is an autocracy, like a person running his or her private business. No matter how many workers he has, the benefits all go to the business owner, and the workers are under the supervision of the owner alone. But if you look at it another way, it’s like a joint venture, and the people are the shareholders. As the company suffers losses or gains profits, the shareholders will be affected. Everyone has a right to have a say in the company’s operations, and everyone has the obligation to give to the company.’

‘You are all the private property of the green-haired monster. She told me so herself!’

Esteban suddenly turned to address Mengliu. ‘I hear that the crime rate in some of your cities is particularly high because of social dissatisfaction and hatred. What do you think of this situation?’

It seemed no one had heard what Mengliu had said. But he was still thinking of the green-haired monster.

‘Do you have hatred in your heart, Mr Yuan?’ Esteban asked, one hand playing with his teacup.

‘What hatred?’ asked Mengliu.

‘Maybe toward women, such as…’

‘No.’

‘I heard that your people like fancy clothes and elaborate dressing, but that very few think of their spiritual adornment. They never look up at the sun or moon or stars, but are entranced by the sparkle of jewels. Do you think this makes people more noble, Mr Yuan?’ Esteban continued.

As he listened to Esteban’s undisguised sarcasm, Mengliu’s blood was stirred.

‘Of course not. I don’t deny that there are a few who live in great luxury. We can’t expect everyone to live on bread and water. Since you find it impossible to see nobility in outer displays, then what does it matter if some dress freshly and brightly? You can wrap the same body in linen or silk, but it won’t change the spirit of the person. For me, I think a life written in blood is the most noble. Perhaps you want to say that people taking off their hats or bowing to you can’t really make you happy. They can’t cure rheumatism or correct vision either, but I think no one is really all that concerned about who wears a fur, or how they kneel before a diamond. After all, it is the person wearing these things that they pay respect to.’

He spoke quickly, like a burst of machine-gun fire. He suddenly felt that his own words were fresh, and nicely expressive of his thoughts. Because of the pleasure his own remarks gave him, he no longer felt that this sort of discussion was as ridiculous as talking about poetry in a meeting of doctors.

Esteban was very gentlemanly, but his words were oppressive. ‘When the state is rich, there are massive construction projects everywhere, money is spent, and things get done. The government has shown results, but poor taste. To put it plainly, the emphasis is on showing off wealth. If the whole country is this way, no wonder the people…’

‘There is indeed a phenomenon of the sort you speak of, but you shouldn’t generalise. In any case, the government is always there to serve the people, for the benefit of the people…’ Having said this, Mengliu’s voice grew noticeably weaker.

‘Serve the people?’ Rania laughed, leaning her head over. ‘Will those in power serve as nannies to the people? Do you really believe such a childish pack of lies?’

‘Mr Yuan, I’m also inclined to think you are joking,’ Darae said confidently, touching the buttons on his cuffs. ‘In democratic countries, you shouldn’t have to wash the people’s diapers.’

‘I think that the type of government should suit the type of citizens in a country,’ Esteban said.

Rania retorted, ‘No. The type of government determines what type of citizens a country has. What type of chicken you have determines what sort of eggs you’ll get.’

‘That’s also not necessarily the case. An ugly chicken may lay double-yolked eggs. Some chickens have beautiful feathers, are gorgeous and elegant, but they still lay small ugly eggs.’ Darae laughed smugly at his own development of the metaphor.

A small bird landed on the table and began combing its feathers with its beak. It hopped happily a couple of times, then flew onto Juli’s shoulder.

3

At night when he thought of the crime he planned to commit after stripping Su Juli of her clothes, Mengliu’s body felt engorged, as if all its energy were gathered in the root of his manhood. That part of his body was a restless little beast. Fattening itself up with loneliness, now it was robust, protein-rich and ready for action. He was not sure when it had grown so fat. This newly-gained power was inconsistent with the psychological sluggishness he was experiencing. His body was betraying him, was filled with a vengeful desire. He was a stocky, well-nourished, middle-class man with a sparkle in his dark eyes. The scars of history had faded from his gaze, replaced by the charming moderation of Swan Valley.

Like a tree that grows and flowers that bloom, Mengliu opened himself up to enjoy the morning light. He was wearing a navy-blue robe. He stood up from where he was seated and, walking with an easy stride, saw Juli tending the garden, picking off dead leaves, loosening the soil and watering it. He could recognise some of the plants — Holsts Snapweed, spotted leaves of Chimaphila, single-flowered wintergreen grass, calyx, purple loosestrife, willow herbs, hickory grass, hibiscus, mock strawberry, butterfly beans… He thought that this woman with no sex life could only pass the time by tending her flowers — not unlike a widow scattering and gathering coins in the middle of the night — the various heights and different colours of flowers, growing in the ground or hanging from supports, with the wind blowing casually over them as they climbed, as if struggling and full of pain.

‘What is this flower?’ Mengliu pointed to a snowy-white blossom, making idle conversation.

‘Camellias. Boy-faced camellias…Unfortunately, when they’re most beautiful, they fall.’ Juli’s expression was simple and natural as she said this.

‘Not fall, they wither, or die, or fade. You can say that when a woman passes the age of beauty her breasts and buttocks fall,’ Mengliu teased cautiously.

‘…Can people also be said to fade?’ Juli did not understand what he implied.

‘Yes. For example, a woman dies, like a wilting flower. You can say she has faded.’

‘Esteban is waiting for your poem.’ Juli did not smile, nor did her voice become more gentle. ‘He thinks highly of you.’

‘I’m a doctor. I stopped writing poetry long ago.’

‘You can write any time. It’s not difficult for you to do.’

‘I don’t want to write.’

‘Why?’

‘What use is poetry?’ His eyes suddenly grew dark, as if darkness had fallen over the garden. Juli frowned, unsure how to answer.

‘Juli, can I ask you a question?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Throughout the long night…do you ever want that kind of thing? Do you want…to know what it’s like?’

‘What?’ Juli still did not understand what he was getting at.

‘…Have you seen the current spiritual leader?’ Mengliu reined in the hints, fearing he might annoy her.

‘Yes,’ she said, her brows still knitted.

‘With your own eyes?’

‘On the electronic screen. She used to appear once a week. Sometimes she talks with the leading scholars about science and poetry, and sometimes she chats with people about domestic issues.’

‘Is she pretty?’ Mengliu asked.

‘Maybe. She isn’t tall, and she likes to wear veils of different colours.’

‘Does she have green hair, like seaweed?’

‘Sometimes, but not always. It depends on the light.’

‘Then I’m not dreaming. I’ve seen her and talked to her,’ he said in a single breath. ‘I’ve seen her moving about in a room, talking on a phone. She mentioned you, Shanlai, Esteban. She praised all of you…’

‘These days she doesn’t appear on the electronic screen. She has gone on a world tour,’ Juli interrupted gently, burying the leaves that she had nipped off in the soil. She calmly continued clearing the ground, her movements causing her hips to swing and her buttocks to quiver, as if there were an animal under her skirt.

Mengliu wanted to continue talking about what had happened to him, but Juli had lost interest. He stood alone in the bright sunlight, watching as her body was absorbed into the dark shadows of the house.

It was midday, and Mengliu was walking along the road in a hurry. The diamonds in his pocket knocked against his body. The people resting by the side of the road smiled at him, and he saw in that smile a much deeper meaning, as if they knew he wanted to escape from the place. Their expressions told him they saw a terrapin trapped in a screw-top jar. He realised what a stupid thing he was doing, so he slowed down and crossed his hands behind his back, walking unhurriedly as he tried hard to recall the path he had taken into Swan Valley that first day. Strangely, he could not remember. His memory had been cut off at that point. He felt like he was standing on the bank, looking at the wide expanse of water, with no trace of how he got there. He hoped to evoke more of the memory as he walked. He assumed a casual air, and wandered a long way. He had come to the engraved stone, when suddenly he fell, rolling head over heels until his body landed against a heap, some soft object, at the base of the slope. When he came to his senses, he saw two lions looking at him with kind eyes. One of them even raised itself and gracefully offered him its place.

His first reaction was to check the diamonds in his pocket. They were all there, not one missing. He could barely stand. He had pretty much always known there was no way out, but had needed to test this for his own peace of mind. After his fall, his restless soul quietened. He rested his head on the lion’s back, feeling himself no different from the birds, reptiles and other animals. He had no language, no voice, and no one would ask about his disappearance or death. He was the most common sort of creature and easily forgotten, naturally base, not even in need of a sheep dog to look after him. Where everyone is the same, they all become one big organism.

With a faint heart, he got up and walked towards the mountains. The poplars were scrawny, their leaves sparse. Birds’ nests sat in the ‘V’ between their branches. Thorns were growing in bushes. White flowers bloomed and scattered, like a girl’s jacket, giving off a light fragrance. Before long he heard the sound of a stream. Walking along its bank, he came to a body of water. The pond was small, about four or five metres across, and of a dark blue colour. The current chased the fallen leaves to the side of the pond, constantly shoving them into a tight spot. They had no choice but to jostle with each other for position.

Mengliu fished the leaves out and placed them beneath a tree.

He thought, ‘Every stream flows to the sea. If I follow it, I will get some results.’

Sure enough, before it was dark he had come upon a river, about twenty or thirty metres wide. It wasn’t deep, and its surface was placid. Bushes covered the opposite bank, and in the distance behind them he could see the boundless mountains, a touch of white at their peaks, stern and bright.

He went into the water, intending to cross the river. He remembered wading ashore on that first night. He looked around, but he couldn’t see the remains of a boat, so he raised his head to look at the sky. There was no moon, and night was closing in.

He tasted the water and found it salty. Thinking he must be near the sea, he grew excited. The water was cold, and seemed to suck the warmth from his body, making him shiver. His condition also had something to do with the thing he had stepped on, a hard object like a skull, covered with slippery moss. He rubbed the eye and mouth cavities with his toes, and very clearly felt two rows of sharp teeth. He thought he must also have stepped on some ribs.

The water was up to his thighs now. It was not completely dark yet. All around was hazy, with only the snowy tops of the mountains clearly visible. Schools of fish swam by him in the water. He had never seen this kind of fish before. They were oddly shaped and not as long as a finger. Their bodies were almost transparent, and they gathered at a spot about a metre from him and halted, as if waiting to accumulate a larger school of fish in this one place. If not for the ripples on the surface of the water, they would have been difficult to detect. Together they were soft, like a cloudy body of fluid, or like seaweed floating back and forth, constantly changing its formation. Attracted, he reached toward them in the water. The fish scattered, then disappeared. Calm was quickly restored to the surface of the water.

As he continued to make his way across the river, he felt a sting on his left leg and immediately realised something had bitten him. It was followed quickly by another hard bite. He turned and fled back to the shore. He saw two wounds on his calf, flowing with blood like a spring. As he was thinking of how to bandage the wounds, he saw Shanlai looking at him.

It seemed Shanlai had been by the river watching him the whole time. He was chewing something as he casually walked over, spat a bit of foamy grass into his palm, and applied it to Mengliu’s wounds. The bleeding stopped.

‘The squids in the river are very powerful. Within a couple of minutes they can chew you to bits, leaving only a pile of white bones.’ Shanlai carried a small bamboo basket. His eyes flashed in mockery.

‘You’re kidding. Man-eating squids?’ In response to the extreme exaggeration Mengliu’s facial features enlarged to several times their normal size and looked a little grim as they stood out in the darkness.

Shanlai swung his head, motioning for Mengliu to come back with him. ‘Every time there is a river burial, you can hear the ghosts of humans struggling in the water at night. The river churns like it is boiling. Actually, it is the squids snatching food, emitting an eerie sound.’ He turned back and looked at the man behind him. ‘Many millions of years ago, there were man-eating squids. You see them in all of the cave drawings of the early humans. They were very vicious.’ He reached behind and knocked his basket a couple of times. ‘If you stir-fry some of these fellows up with a bit of corn, it’s a dish to die for. I’ve got a few here. They are ferocious, but stupid enough that, with a little light, you can lure them into your net.’

Hearing this, Mengliu grew a bit queasy. Limping behind Shanlai, he encouraged the boy to put the squid back into the river.

Shanlai acted like he didn’t hear. He switched the torchlight on, and swung it back to look at Mengliu’s calf. He saw that no new blood was oozing and said, ‘If you are pure, God will heal the wound…’

Thinking that he had almost been turned into a pile of bones by a bunch of squid, Mengliu shivered slightly. Not daring to act rashly, like an innocent child meekly listening to an elder’s nagging, he followed in Shanlai’s footsteps. Even the snap of dead branches beneath his feet made him flinch. As they moved away from the stream, they pushed their way through bushes with fat thick leaves, into the forest, where they were surrounded by a moist fragrant scent, which mingled occasionally with a rancid odour. Mengliu felt something was wrong. The fear of not being able to get out of the forest enveloped him. The forest at night reminded him of the scene so many years before, when young people grew like trees in Round Square, waiting for rain to come and cleanse them. The forest was silent and furious, bearing great sorrow and helplessness, as if a beast were being held back, waiting for release under the cover of darkness, when it would rush out and devour them. Qizi was like the owl perched on the tree there, eyes bright and vigilant.

‘I don’t understand. What were you doing at the river?’ Shanlai asked, shining his light on Mengliu’s face for a few seconds before he turned away, letting the beam play on the forest again. Someone went fleeing by as if holding something in its hand.

‘I…was checking to see how deep the water was.’ Mengliu’s answer wasn’t very convincing. There seemed to be baby cries coming from the forest. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What sort of strange bird is that calling?’

Shanlai did not immediately answer. They reached a point where the forest was less dense, and the half-moon shone down between the trees. A bat flew low through the light of the fireflies. ‘That is a waste disposal site over there,’ he finally replied. ‘Some people come to discard things, and the vultures call out. They are pleased.’

Mengliu was still not clear about what he meant. They had crossed the hillside, and the quiet face of the town lay spread out before them. He was so surprised he was speechless. The path that had taken him all afternoon to walk took less than half an hour on the return journey. The pain of his wound and the blood trickling down his leg again let him know that he wasn’t dreaming. He set aside all the strange questions that were troubling him and filled his mind with the pleasure of returning to Juli’s side. His heart was as warm as ever. He did not want to leave her.

4

When Suitang first saw Jia Wan’s poetry and photos in the library, she dreamed of meeting the handsome poet, but she didn’t imagine that it would happen years later in a hospital. By that time, Jia Wan was no longer youthful and suave, but he still retained a sort of romantic elegance, the wrinkles on his face enhancing the attraction Suitang had first felt for him. Having just entered society, she was now in the first blush of adulthood, perhaps in part because of the positive experience of her affair with Mengliu. The feelings she had for him were easily transferred to Jia Wan, being a poet as he was, and because of his Cadillac. In Jia Wan’s eyes, she saw a desire for power that excited her. The old gifted scholar and the pretty young lady wasted no time falling into each other’s arms.

Jia Wan had heart problems and needed to undergo surgery. The insurance company was even more concerned about whether he lived or died than his own family was. To begin with, there were problems with his pharmaceutical company. Some patients had died from taking medicine produced by his factory, so Jia Wan was in trouble with the legal system. Suitang said she had tried everything humanly possible to set her man on the right path, but Jia Wan was like a deeply rooted tree, unshaken by any tempest.

When Mengliu learned that Suitang was pregnant with Jia Wan’s child, he felt his head would explode.

Suitang’s affections were nothing more than a youthful whim, not to be counted on. Jia Wan promised to give her two million yuan, provided that she abort the baby. Jia Wan’s wife had dark thoughts regarding the issue, and wanted to wait for Suitang to abort the baby, and then not give her anything. She had to prevent Suitang giving birth to the child, for fear she would demand a share of Jia Wan’s fortune. Though Suitang was enduring the discomforts of pregnancy and pretending she wanted to keep the child, she went quietly to the hospital and had an abortion. Then the injured bird landed in Mengliu’s garden. Imagining it was Qizi, he took her into his warm nest and nursed her back to health, until even her feathers glistened again. When she had recovered, she talked about her fascination with poets once more, mentioning Bai Qiu and the poem in his suicide note. ‘I see soldiers with their bayonets, on patrol in my verse, searching everyone’s conscience.’

Sometimes she wore a long pink chiffon dress as she sat in one of the lounge chairs in Mengliu’s garden, reading his poetry or looking toward the distant mountains in a trance, as if she had not walked out of the shadows of the past.

‘Qi— No, Suitang, let me tell you about Jia Wan,’ Mengliu said, the alcohol perhaps making his speech a little incoherent. ‘You don’t understand him…Hei Chun might still be alive…It’s hard to know the truth.’

He looked at Suitang’s face. She seemed very interested in what he had to say.

In the story of Jia Wan’s infidelities, according to Mogen, the betrayal of his motherland and of certain political beliefs were smaller matters than the betrayal of his friends.

The summer following the breaking up of the protest in Round Square, the atmosphere had been sensitive and fragile, and everyone was on edge. Summer arrived early, many of the flowers refused to open, and the trees remained bare of leaves. People were very interested in poetry readings, which occurred often and were well-attended. The most sensational was the one held in a small garden near Round Square. There had once been grassy mounds there, where the bodies of the dead had been buried, but it had since been covered with concrete. Most of the reciters were students. They read poems by Neruda and Miłosz, Whitman and the Three Musketeers. Later, a young man rushed onto the stage, and recited what was in effect a letter of resignation. He was scrawny as a flagpole. Sweat covered his forehead, and he was nervous, his face suddenly turning brick red. He said, ‘Being obedient citizens under a tyrant’s reign is immoral…’ This phrase pushed the atmosphere to a climax. The young man worked at the Propaganda Unit and was known only by his code name. Somebody shouted that it was time to take care of the headaches, and time for the young people to give their lives for their country. The people’s emotions were stirred. Things got out of control, grew chaotic. One of the less famous poets recited poems as he undressed. Then most of the poets began to strip until they were naked, turning the poetry reading into performance art. Later, when the police came, those who were naked and those who were not, poets and non-poets, were all taken into custody and charged with disturbing social order. They were detained for fifteen days. The enquiries did not address the undressing, most of the questions were about the content of the poetry. More pointed investigations revealed that it had been aimed at inciting the people, and instigating a reactionary movement. This was especially true of the resignation letter, and his use of the word ‘tyranny’ brought the young man, Xiao Guang, a good deal of trouble. He remained incarcerated longer than anyone else, and it was at this time that Mogen met him.

It was finally over, but the situation remained tense. Many had been caught, punished, and even put to death. Many more remained under ‘close observation’. Mogen fled to his hometown on a remote island to hide. Jia Wan went to great trouble to find him, bringing him news of the death or disappearance of many of their classmates. Of course, he also brought cigarettes, liquor and books, and kept him company as they drank, discussed poetry, talked about ideals, and analysed the current situation. Mogen felt that, even as the world collapsed around him, he had gained a valuable friendship. He decided he would continue working with Jia Wan for the sake of their fallen classmates. Mogen acted anonymously, while Jia Wan used his numerous connections to help him find work in the district, procuring materials for the manufacture of illegal cigarettes. Mogen still felt uneasy. When everyone else was living in hiding, why was Jia Wan completely unaffected? He even seemed to be a little too successful. But then, one night, Jia Wan drove for more than two hours, rushing back from the provincial capital to vent his frustrations to Mogen, cursing the authorities and informing his friend that he had resigned from the Plum Party. Mogen gained new respect for Jia Wan, and started treating him as a confidante. It was on that night that Jia Wan brought up the idea of setting up an organisation to carry out underground activities. He would be responsible for handling the money, and he asked Mogen to find trustworthy people. First, they would start an underground newspaper for publicity and the enlightenment of the people, and at the same time, they would correspond with related overseas organisations. He even had the audacity to say that everyone should behave like the poets had.

Hot-blooded Mogen once again found meaning in life. He immediately started preparing and not long after, got hold of a place for the underground press, pulling trusted compatriots together from all over the island. However, Jia Wan’s promised funds never materialised, no matter how long Mogen waited. One day, Xiao Guang, the reader of the resignation letter, suddenly appeared before Mogen, and asked him about his relationship with the overseas organisations. He had stolen a secret document and said it might be valuable. Skeptical, Mogen asked him why he should risk imprisonment. Xiao Guang said that, for the sake of their companions who had shed their blood, he had always hoped to be able to do something to help. He could not just stand idly by. Mogen treated the matter casually at the time, but he did tell Jia Wan about it. Jia Wan was overjoyed and told Mogen to get his hands on the document. Mogen thought Xiao Guang could not be trusted, and did not want to be fooled by him. Several days later, Jia Wan drove to Mogen’s residence, and the two of them discussed Xiao Guang in detail, finally deciding that, even if he wasn’t very reliable, he was at least harmless. Three days later Jia Wan again brought up the document. Mogen remained hesitant, but Jia Wan demanded that he get it within three days, because he had already mentioned it to an overseas organisation. Two days later, he came to Mogen’s residence again, enraged this time. He said five people from the overseas organisation had already come to see him, and he did not want to keep them waiting as they had many other matters to attend to. If they did not establish trust from the beginning, there would be no way to work together in the future. He tossed his cigarette butt out the window, and bunched up his face. He wanted Mogen to pick up the document immediately, then go to the hotel to find the people from the overseas organisation.

Mogen got the file from Xiao Guang and went to the hotel in the city and met Jia Wan, but there was no sign of the members of the organisation. Jia Wan told him it was not convenient for them to meet him at the moment, but that the file would be passed on to them.

Actually, the so-called ‘overseas organisation‘ was just one of Jia Wan’s fabrications. He was also the one who had paid Xiao Guang one hundred yuan to read the resignation letter, then paid him another hefty sum to be part of this ‘document’ scheme. As soon as Mogen left the hotel, he was arrested by plain-clothes police officers and immediately sentenced to five years in prison for leaking state secrets. After his release, he could not find work, nor would anyone publish his articles, so he was left destitute.

Jia Wan, who had rendered meritorious service on the other hand, was transformed. He started up his own business and married the daughter of a senior official. He wrote lyrics praising the political apparatus, and his talent for flattery grew and grew. Using the rotted-out ladder of poetry, he climbed his way to the top through the black chimney of conscience. Hearing that Mogen had fallen on hard times, he secretly contacted him through influential friends, hoping to patch things up by using his wealth to redeem himself for past wrongs.

‘No matter what, Jia Wan is more powerful than you. There’s nothing he won’t do, no crime he won’t commit. He knows what he wants.’ Suitang’s sleepy voice did not lose its harshness. ‘But you? You don’t write poetry anymore. What do you want? Where are your ideals?’

‘After Bai Qiu’s death, poetry became hypocrisy, showing off, meaningless.’ Mengliu’s face darkened. ‘Rows of sentences are just row upon row of corpses. It’s all ringing in the ears, and hallucination.’

Suitang’s eyes closed as she lay on the lounge. She seemed to have fallen asleep.

‘Yes. The Three Musketeers are either dead or castrated. Everyone thinks that romance with a doctor conforms more to reality.’ She lazily opened her eyes and said leisurely, ‘A hot-blooded fellow could soar higher than the wind, higher than any victory ever experienced, transcend the most beautiful utterances in the history of the world. We have left that time behind, and we have learned to crawl. Armed men couldn’t break down the security doors. Only a few men with long hair were left to dwell in Beiping. It is impossible to know whether they feared bloodshed. I still want to believe that, besides shouting and singing, our flesh was also hardened. I am waiting for war, to bring back my homeland. The wolves are growing old and perishing in the wilderness, they have nowhere else to go. I am not a thug. I just want to marry a poet.’

Seeing that Mengliu had no response, Suitang straightened up and said slowly, ‘Those two sentences about war and wolves… would you know who wrote them?’

Of course he knew that the poem was written by Hei Chun on the evening before the bloodshed. The poem had circulated underground. Everyone who read it was struck with sorrow. Those who died would not live again, and those who had disappeared were still missing. The Green Flower had been closed down, Shunyu’s father captured. Mengliu did not want the pressures of his past to bear down on his present life. In particular, he could not bear to let a girl as lovely as Suitang know the cruel weight of history. But his more secret reason was the fact that he had not played the part of a hero at the crucial moment. He didn’t have enough of that quality to fascinate a young girl. He said casually, ‘I’m a doctor. I only care about the life and death of my patients. I do not bother with who writes what sort of poetry.’

5

As Juli applied medication to Mengliu’s wounded leg, it was just like the first time they had met. She didn’t say anything as she squatted before him, her face a distant landscape covered with a light fog. Mengliu felt like a fish, protected in her aquarium, but also limited, barricaded in. He was willing to give her up — he refused to write poetry, and she did not deliberately do anything to make it difficult for him, but his heart was very troubled, and he was sometimes suddenly filled with remorse. But then he would insist that what he was doing was right. If neither his repressed poems nor his body could be liberated, everything was meaningless to him. He thought she should understand this logic. When he had gone to bed with women, the bodies of both parties were free and uninhibited. It had always been this way. In his own room, doing whatever he pleased with his own body, who was there to bother? He looked at the stud flashing in Juli’s nose. Every so often she would get a different part of her body pierced. Her ears had been pierced until they resembled sieves, and even her navel hadn’t been spared. He thought that sooner or later she would become a human quiver, carrying arrows in the various holes on her body. Yet her natural orifices didn’t allow anything to penetrate.

In the dull silence, after she had wrapped his wound in white gauze and told him about the effects of a squid bite, she said that if he tried writing poetry, the distraction would make the healing process go faster. The poetic impulse had a secret property that stimulated healing, causing the body to secrete regenerative cells. Most people, relying on natural healing, would only recover fifty percent of their health. The wound would continue to fester, the new flesh to decay, and the patient would eventually die of infection.

‘I’m going now to the opening ceremony of an exhibition at the art museum.’ Juli wore a knee-length black coat over her grey robe, her hair braided and fastened at the back with a red clip. She was transformed into an emerald-hairpin spiral-bun lady, an independent petal. When she spoke, he felt like he was surrounded by blooming peach trees and green willows. ‘If you are interested, you can come and have a look at what is going on in the minds of today’s young people, and see how things have changed.’

Mengliu envisioned her naked body, her skin the colour of golden wheat, the nectar rippling in her full round breasts. He thought of all the women he had sampled as water, flowing wild and wanton during sex. At the moment of climax the buns in their hair would uncoil in a sudden burst, their bodies blossom, and their greedy throats utter a baby-like sound that hummed in his ears. They gripped his hair, raising their bodies and biting his shoulder, and he did not hold back. Sometimes after they had recovered they expressed sweet feelings of love, or politely exchanged stories about their background, laughing together over interesting people or experiences. But he had never again fallen in love with a woman.

When Mengliu pulled himself back to the present, there was nothing in front of him but a fleeting trail of scent. He looked to the door through which Juli had walked, up the gravel path that cut through the grass, and out onto the empty road. He saw that it was an overcast day, as if rain was in the offing. His feelings grew dull, and the pain in his leg became more noticeable. He brewed a pot of fermented tea, then hung around the house sipping from his cup. The green plants that crowded the living room seemed to make the air more stifling. He went to the window to get some fresh air, and in the distance saw flashes in the clouds. He knew it was raining there, and that the bright flashes were moving in his direction.

The art museum was four kilometres away at the foot of the mountain, about a twenty-minute journey in an environmentally-friendly electric vehicle. Mengliu set out to walk there, giving himself time to think. In this way, he could stop if he changed his mind, take a piss, then return home. The bushes gave way to pine forest, and the pine forest to wheat fields. He sat down on the edge of the grass near a field of wheat. Observing closely how the wheat resembled the colour of Juli’s skin, he plucked a spear, and tested its sharp, hard edge with his fingertip. Suddenly the sun came out, and it was as if a brush had swept over the fields, turning them a bright, glaring yellow. They were like a desert, and his gaze was drawn to a straight row of trees in the distance. Perhaps it was an illusion. When he set off again, he could not remember if he had stopped at all. On the left were rolling hills, covered with tall old trees, oak, elm, chestnut, and beech, all clustered together under the rolling wind and extending far into the distance. As he travelled the road between the wheat fields and the hills, he felt he was passing through emptiness. Suddenly, everything was gone. At the same time, two sentences escaped from his mouth:

‘My corpse is here.’

‘My spirit is there.’

He took out his xun and, after polishing it with his fingers, started playing ‘The Pain of Separation’. The tune howled like the wind.

A small road veered to the right, passing through the middle of a forest, sheltered by trees on both sides, the sky visible in the interstices between the branches. The sun shone on the leaves as they were blown by the wind, reminding him of the rustling of the crowd that had filled Round Square. For all this time Mengliu had not been able to picture the moving armored vehicles in detail. His imagination collapsed completely at some point. But the cold wind at this moment seeping into his oxygen-filled brain from across the vast wheat fields made him realise that it was harvest time. To the beat of a cheerful, pleasing rhythm, the rows of wheat were falling in succession, the farmers’ faces full of a festive spirit. The earth would be left empty as the sun turned red, leaving only the low-flying egret to watch over it. Where were the sheaves of harvested wheat? At the celebration, the wine would be thicker than blood, sweet and sticky. A spilled glass of wine would flow like a river, and a word would transform into a corpse. Right or wrong, man or woman, old or young, innocent eyes would open, large and round, silently swept into the rolling, invading waves and returning with them to the sea when the tide turned. Every summer, all of the world’s wheat lowered its head, the flowers withered, fruit remained underdeveloped, insects were more rampant year after year. Summer was meant to be like a woman in the throes of love, wet and thunderous. At this moment, his imagination and the wheat fields were alike bathed in golden radiance, and poetry soared like the birds of the forest.

He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.

‘Hi! Wake up, Mr Yuan. What are you doing snoozing here?’ a girl’s voice asked. As if in a trance, Mengliu found himself still sitting by the road, facing a seemingly boundless wheat field, leaning back against a birch tree that had been stripped of its bark. An ant was walking in circles on his sleeve.

‘Oh, it’s you…’ He stood up, a little embarrassed because he could not recall the girl’s name.

‘I’m going to the art museum. Would you like a ride?’ Her hair was golden and her skin pink, and her dress a little unconventional. She straddled her bike, balancing her toes on the ground. She had a wicker basket full of scrolls. Her elongated features wore an expression of sneaky arrogance.

‘No, it’s all right. Thanks,’ Mengliu said. A plump girl, he thought.

‘You seemed to be brooding…’ The girl cocked her head to one side in a way that made her look like a fat bird. A cloud of curls was flying around her. ‘Are you cooking up a poem or something?’

‘No, no.’ Mengliu did not want to discuss anything related to writing poetry.

‘God, you mean sitting across from such fine scenery, you’re really just sleeping by the roadside?’ The girl straightened her head and peered at Mengliu.

‘Being able to sleep any time, anywhere, means you were good in a past life and have no regrets.’

‘Sounds like you’re talking about a pig,’ she said bluntly.

Mengliu looked at her carefully. ‘More or less.’ He didn’t want her to go on.

‘That’s right. I see that you aren’t like a poet anyway.’ The girl snorted, threw him a contemptuous look and, with a whoosh, the bike was gone.

As if someone had slapped him, Mengliu sat stunned for a while. Using the force of his back against the tree, he pushed himself up and the friction rubbed off some debris. He wanted to scold the girl, but the view of her riding off on the path between the mountain and the wheat field stopped him from doing so. The girl was nothing like Qizi. He had only to see a girl on a bike to think of her though. Sometimes when he saw a bike, or any turning wheels, he would think of her. All young girls would make him think of her.

He lowered his head as he walked, as if he were looking for something on the ground. After a while he came upon an electric vehicle, which was enveloped in youthful laughter. He remembered then that the girl who looked like a fat bird was Juli’s student Rania. She had a sharp tongue, and enjoyed bandying about all sorts of political rhetoric. Mengliu had a very bad impression of such women. It could even be said that he hated them.

Seen from a distance, the Swan Valley Art Museum looked like an egg sitting horizontally, a grey stone shell wrapped around it, free of all attachments, making it seem aloof. The square outside was full of nude sculptures of strange shapes and sizes, and both sides of the path leading to the museum were lined with national flags. It was noiseless, so silent that even the sound of footsteps was swallowed up. Mengliu sat on a wood-coloured bench. The wound on his leg was hurting, and he began to worry that it would continue to rot, right through the flesh, leaving only a skeleton’s leg. Bai Qiu had long ago turned to a skeleton in the earth. His poems had been authorised and published. People read his poetry, but no one questioned why he had died. Mengliu smelled the mixture of sunshine and fresh grass and felt confused by his own presence at this place. Groups of gorgeous men and women walked into the art museum. Some of them waved, seeming to recognise Mengliu, but he ignored them, immersed in his own emotions. When a colourful bird descended with a screech and perched on a statue’s head, he remembered that he had followed Juli here. He stretched his legs and stood up. All of Swan Valley’s exhibition halls were free of charge and open to the public, so he went straight down the promenade covered with a red carpet that led to the museum. There was applause, as the opening ceremony was just ending, and the crowd began to disperse in an orderly way.

Mengliu thought it was a sealed egg, but then he found that the inside of the egg was brighter and more spacious than he had thought. He could not figure out where the light came from.

The huge space had been constructed out of many scattered pieces, and light broke at various angles through these pieces. There were various types of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and craft…some pieces hung, some floated, and there was space for animations, films and videos. His attention was captured by a cluster of oil paintings. On the canvasses were pictures of a snowy scene with a dilapidated old factory, cold chimneys, a steel ladder, and footprints across the quiet depressed landscape, the traces of poor, humble lives. The strings of steel between the trees were laden with tattered children’s clothing blowing in the wind. Amidst the abandoned train tracks, rusty ventilation pipes and boundless snow, he seemed to be able to see things beyond the canvas. He felt he had been in this remote town, perhaps in his youth or childhood, perhaps in a dream. Anyway, he was familiar with the scene, and his heart was touched. He wanted to say something. There were people around him who likewise stood in melancholy silence for a moment before the group of paintings, then moved on with blank expressions. They had no desire to speak. There was no Hei Chun here, no Bai Qiu, Qizi or Shunyu …The wound on Mengliu’s leg started aching again. He leaned over and checked with his hand to see if the area around the wound was swelling. The skin was very hot to the touch. At this point two pairs of feet stopped in front of him, and their owners held a whispered conversation.

‘Darae, if pigs take an interest in art, how interesting can it be?’

‘From a philosophical perspective pigs do not think, but if you want to know whether pigs think, maybe you should ask a pig…’

‘Hi, Mr Yuan!’ The toes turned toward Mengliu. He straightened up, his head almost bumping against the girl’s chest. It was she again! ‘What a coincidence. Do you think…a pig can take an interest in art?’ Rania smiled as she spoke. Her fertile body crowded his space, and he felt himself being pressed into a corner. He didn’t retreat. It was his first close-up view of the contours of the girl’s face. It looked like it had been carved out of dough. The eyes were light blue amber and the lips red and sexy, and naturally a little mocking. Darae was positioned between Mengliu and Rania, forming the third side of an equilateral triangle. He obviously did not know where ‘the pig’ had come from. The two men shook hands, maintaining the distance between them.

Mengliu still had not spoken. Juli and Esteban suddenly appeared from behind another screen.

‘I heard your leg was injured. Are you all right?’ Esteban wore a brown robe with a straight, standing collar. He had shaved his head, leaving only a short beard encircling his mouth.

‘Never mind. It’s much better now,’ Mengliu said. Seeing Juli and Esteban appear together, he was filled with a wave of jealousy, yet he could not help admiring the way Esteban spoke so compellingly, with a gentle suggestion of arrogance. Mengliu praised Esteban in his heart, but at the same time felt that he had endured some sort of invisible persecution at his hand. Esteban was a man with a burning purpose. Like a candle in the dark, he would turn everything around him into shadows.

Not wanting to be made a shadow, Mengliu turned and continued viewing the exhibition on his own.

‘Mr Yuan, seeing these pieces of the students’ art, you must have an opinion, no?’

Esteban walked a few steps with him. ‘Would you be willing to be interviewed, or perhaps write some articles on the works?’

‘Thanks, but I am just a doctor. I know nothing about art,’ Mengliu waved his hand. ‘I am just filling in time, and casually browsing…’ He paused, then continued, ‘Señor Esteban, may I venture a question? Do you feel that Swan Valley is perfect?’

‘If you would write a long poem, that would be perfect.’ It was as if Esteban had not heard a thing he said. ‘That is what we lack, good poetry, and a great poet.’

Mengliu eyed Juli, and she raised her chin slightly, as if sensing rain falling upon it.

‘I always have a hard time believing the great poet’s background.’ Rania put her hands in the pockets of her fancy dress, as nonchalant as a cat after a meal. ‘People in shackles can only write shackled poetry.’

‘Chaos isn’t freedom. Freedom comes from order,’ Darae interjected.

Esteban turned his back to a snowy scene three or four metres long. His brown robe was silhouetted against the white snow. ‘I think that a great poet’s drive should come from a noble, pure spirit. You know, people are like trees in a forest. They need each other so that they can get air and sunshine. Then each tree can grow up straight and beautiful.’ His mouth flicked to the right, like a breeze blowing the flame on a candle, revealing the trace of a smile. ‘Those trees that are separated from one another grow up crooked and tangled.’

Mengliu glanced at Juli again. He did not want to talk about poetry. He wanted to escape from such conversations.

‘You and Darae go and have a look at the sculpture exhibition. There are a few parts of it that need to be tweaked,’ Juli said to Rania, and the two young people bustled off. ‘Would either of you object to a drink at the café?’

‘Good idea. I am a little tired.’ Mengliu raised his injured leg.

They passed through a maze of corridors. The café seemed to float in the air. Beyond it, the vast expanse of golden wheat spread to the horizon, meeting the sky in the distance. Clouds were scattered overhead.

A waitress with a flower-trimmed apron served them onion rings, French fries, corn-breaded calamari and coffee.

‘Of course, human nature, this crooked piece of wood. It is impossible for us to make anything absolutely straight.’ It seemed that Esteban wouldn’t eat anything until he had finished speaking. He crossed his legs, stretched his hands along his robe, smoothing it out, and looked toward Juli.

Juli took a book of poetry from her bag, saying that such fine weather and such a perfect moment would be ideal for reading. Opening the book, she slowly read, ‘“When I think of the things I regret in life, plum blossoms fall, like seeing her swim across the river, or climbing to the top of a pinewood ladder…”’

Each time she read to this point, she went back and started again. After reading it several times more, just as she was about to reach her momentary pause, Mengliu blurted out, ‘Dangerous things are sure to be beautiful. It is better to see her riding back…’ He seemed to be possessed and continued reciting without taking a breath, his face turning red and his eyes ablaze. He stood up, faced the endless wheat fields, and recited the final lines, ‘“I need only think of the things I regret most in life, and the plum blossoms will fall on the southern slopes’’.’ Tears welled up in his eyes amidst the silence of the abrupt ending. When he turned back, his face was pale again, and the light had gone from his eyes. The three of them stared at each other.

‘Your voice proves that you are still a good poet. You have a very strong feeling for language.’ Esteban was excited, and it broke his usual calm, arrogant demeanour.

‘Esteban is right. Maybe you are not even aware of it, but your appeal just now…’ Juli’s two chocolate eyes stared at Mengliu. Her speech betrayed an obvious lack of confidence.

‘They eat human flesh, but in the end, they will be eaten by humans.’ Mengliu picked up a piece of squid from the bamboo basket, sniffed it, and put it back again. ‘I am a doctor. I recommend that you all eat a healthy diet.’

6

That night, Mengliu was a little sad. He thought of Suitang. In the pink of health, she was like Jupiter hanging in the night sky before his window. The moon in Swan Valley was always round, sometimes golden and sometimes silver. Sometimes she was covered in fine hair, sometimes she was more like cold rock, sometimes like a big sesame seed cake, and sometimes she did not look like anything other than the moon. She was always three-dimensional, often making him feel that he would see her back if he stood on tiptoe. He believed Suitang was there, her white face tightly clenched, chest bulging, black eyes rolling, as if she was always searching for some misplaced item. She was absent-minded when she cared for the sick, and caused her patients a lot of distress. Once, she was responsible for a patient’s death, but of course the incident was only known to a few people. The hospital had to protect its own cadres if it wanted to avoid developing a bad reputation that would harm its ability to generate revenue and to contribute to the nation.

He knew that Suitang had greater ambitions than just to be an anaesthetist. Her lifestyle was on a much higher level than her career. She was an artistically talented girl. Her calligraphy was beautiful, and she produced inscrutable paintings. Society needed more unfathomable works to be produced. All people were doing these days was comparing who could draw the roundest circles. And she could carve. Her desk at work was covered with the carving of a strange creature. It was hard to tell whether it was an animal or a plant, and on closer inspection it was hard to make out anything other than a few scratches. But the identity of an anaesthetist was too strong to be surrendered. The role was part of the mainstream, and as it surged, it washed her clean of everything other than her anaesthetist’s pale face. Mengliu loved the part of her that had been obliterated, like that of an angel that had passed through death. He found it difficult to extricate himself from her gaze.

Now it was Qizi’s face that was imposed over the moon in the night sky, making him feel several centuries had passed. He had in fact already forgotten her face, but every time he grasped the feelings he once had for her, he felt she had grown into a polyp, or a gallstone, or a kidney stone, something like that. He wished the polyp, or kidney stone, would start burning. God, I can’t feel my own body. The moonlight poured over him, venturing east. The birds and insects glided in the wind as if surfing on waves, like black meteors passing before his window. He stroked his major organs one by one — heart, liver, lungs, gall bladder, spleen, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, bladder, kidneys, eyes, nose, lips, ears… finally he remembered his genitals. Ah, my testicles, my penis. Poor little things! They were like refugees, beggars sheltering under the eaves of a great cold house, wrinkled and filled with a malaise. How they wished for a meal with precious delicacies! They waited for a glorious release. He worried about this ligament, that his muscles would deteriorate and he would develop other sorts of dysfunctions…He wanted to soothe his hungry cock. Its body was gradually waking up with the warmth of his touch. It was standing up energetically now, looking at the world. It saw the moon’s flowing in the soft night. It stood up and strutted, flapped its wings and cried out to the moon as it soared heavenward. He saw Qizi. She had just finished bathing and was walking out of the moon’s palace, her hair wet, lips red, dressed in white and holding a rabbit in her arms. Her chest swelled, flowers bloomed in her eyes. She had become a celestial being, was transforming into the rocks which covered wild places.

Mengliu thought of the surgery. Perhaps there had not been enough anaesthetic. He saw a tear roll from the corner of Jia Wan’s eye. His will had been torn by his lawful wife. Practically all the wives of the world’s wealthy men would have been venomous, ready to take down their husband’s lover. Mengliu had thought heroic love had once again appeared amongst humans, when it came to him and Suitang. When Jia Wan died, the teardrop wrapped around Mengliu and Suitang, and they turned it into amber. Millions of years later it would find a place on some antique collector’s shelf. When Mengliu realised he had killed Jia Wan, he fled. He tried hard to recall the scene, but his effort was like breathing on a mirror. His past was becoming more blurred. He kept confusing Suitang and Qizi in his mind. His past was gradually disappearing. Now, he had completely forgotten his youth.

7

The weather had turned even colder, and the early morning fog blocked all the paths from the house. Visibility was low, and the atmosphere pervasively damp. The creatures of the world were unusually quiet. The silence was like a saucer, with nothing to crack it. Water dripped constantly from the ends of leaves, a cosy, soft but sad rhythmic accompaniment to the silence.

Mengliu walked in the fog, his hair falling in sticky white lines. On this morning his body was hard and faced rigidly frontward, like a gun on a ship. He needed an animal to hunt, and aim his gun at. The beast inside him had an urge to feast. He walked along Juli’s well-worn path. A few minutes earlier, she had picked up a basket of clothes and headed toward the river. She liked washing her clothes in running water in the morning, just as she liked bathing at night when she had finished her dinner, and reading a book in bed before she fell asleep…She must have other habits, he thought, like preferring a certain type of underwear or her responses during orgasm. His intuition was that she had been with a man, and that there were certain things she had done surreptitiously. How did she overcome her feelings during ovulation, her desire? Was her eccentric personality the result of this long-term suppression? His own body experienced an indescribable excitement coupled with tender feelings of pity for her. He held his gun resolutely, not weakening even for a moment.

Peering around, he saw he had entered a forest, which was fairly covered in fog. He heard his own pulse, the sound of his blood flowing, the bitter secretions of his gall bladder, and the infinite wind blowing through the silence. He felt like a monkey who wanted to climb up the tree and pick Juli’s solid coconuts, and lay her down whether she resisted or obliged. He was almost lost in the foggy forest, but the faint sound of her rustling clothes guided him, like a bell or drum sounding from some unseen place in the distance. He believed she was calling him, and that her already-damp body was waiting for him in the mist. He became urgent, resolute, and deciding not to turn back, followed Juli’s trail of white chrysanthemums, his hair dripping and his clothes mottled with damp stains. Juli’s laundry had already been packed into a bamboo basket. She sat on a bench reading a paperback, her rose-coloured robe revealing ornate shoes beneath, embroidered with plum blossoms.

He came to a stop five metres from her.

The fog cut them off from everything, as if they were in a secret room. He saw her hair was put up casually, a messiness that revealed her anxiety. He guessed she was reading the bible. He knew what he should do in order not to startle her. So they were at a stalemate for several minutes. Just as he intended to turn and plunge back into the fog in order to make a new entrance, she looked up. She was smiling, and her smile was bright. She was not the least bit surprised at his appearance, as if she had asked him to come.

She seemed to have become a different person. He felt her change. This time she was like a maths problem that wasn’t too difficult, and he thought it wouldn’t take him long to solve her. She looked at him with interest, like a little girl. Like the sticky juice from a fruit, when she blinked, sweetness flowed from her eyes, along with a kind mockery. He noticed an awkward feeling in himself, like a stifled young bird. They could not find opening remarks. The shifting shroud of fog gently enveloped them in an even more profound silence. He slid swiftly toward her.

‘Juli…what a coincidence. You’re here too.’ He ran his hand over his hair at the same time as he realised that his gun was no longer there, and felt a timidity that came from knowing he was unarmed. ‘I heard noise here, so…What book are you reading?’ He held his hands behind his back, and bent his body to look at its cover.

She closed the book, and he saw its title, The Gulag Archipelago. He sat down beside her. She read aloud, ‘“June 3, radio stations in Novacherkassk broadcast the dialogue between Mikoyan and Kozlov. Kozlov did not weep. They made no further promises to identify the perpetrators amongst those in power. As they spoke, they only mentioned that the incident had been incited by enemies, who would be severely punished. Mikoyan said that the Soviet forces had not authorised the use of dumdums, so those using dumdums were certainly enemies. All those injured had not been accounted for, and none had come back. On the contrary, the families of the victims were sent to Siberia. Those others who were implicated, those who were booked, or who had been photographed, all faced the same fate. Those who participated in the marches were arrested and put through a series of trials…”’

‘Hey, Juli, you looked really beautiful when you were reading, like a bird singing.’ Mengliu interrupted cautiously, settling on the point to sweet-talk her. His feelings returned to being pure and simple. ‘I remember the first time I saw your face in the crowd. You were like a lonely century plant, your long hair fluttering. You could not have known my feelings at that moment — just when I thought I would never see another human again, I saw you.’ He looked at her intently. Her face was damp, her lips parted as if in surprise.

She closed the book again and put it in her pocket. Just the right size, the pocket looked like it had been made especially for holding a book. ‘Yes, you dared to go with me then, not afraid that I was some monster who would eat you up in the middle of the night,’ she said, stretching her hands along her skirt.

He continued teasing a little. Feeling that she had already got up onto his wagon, his own speech became a bit more presumptuous. ‘I wanted to be eaten by you. The best is if I could watch with my own eyes as you ate me…’

She did not seem to understand the lewd direction of his conversation, but said that he was lucky, since the Swanese were not cannibals. They were silent a moment, and he tried to think of a way to lead her a step closer to his meaning. ‘Have you seen a wild lotus? The other day I wanted to pick one and bring it back for you, but it was very strange. As soon as I touched it, the petals scattered.’ He shook his head with regret. ‘I think they are the most beautiful flowers in the world. It was just like a folk tale, something seen by very few people. I was lucky.’

Juli grew flowers in her garden, and she recognised many varieties, but she knew nothing about wild lotuses. This ignorance inevitably made her feel uneasy. ‘What colour was it? What flower was it most similar to?’

He pondered for a moment, then said, ‘White, or pink, and the petals were thin as a grain of rice. But up close, it looked very different …It’s difficult to explain, but it was amazing.’

She struggled to picture what the wild lotuses might be like, but gave up. ‘No, I have to see what this exotic flower really looks like.’ She jumped off the chair. ‘Take me there now.’

He liked the way she leapt up, like a wayward girl. ‘What reward will you give me?’

‘Are you taking the opportunity to blackmail me?’

‘Would a hug be too much to ask?’

She looked at him, acquiescing.

He stood up, his arms in a wide circle, like a gambler about to pull in the chips he had just won. She snapped into his embrace, and he raised the gun again. Their embrace grew tighter, neither releasing the other. Everything around them grew quiet, as if immersed in the pleasure of their embrace. Her body was soft, and he pressed against the fullness of it. The parts that were bony made him think she would break if he exerted just a little strength. But when he lowered his head to kiss her, a terrifying scream sounded overhead. A vulture was circling above them at a low altitude like a model aircraft. Their embrace came to a sudden end.

He led her deeper into the forest. They began their walk apart. But after ten minutes, they were clasping each other’s hands. He had no idea where they should go. He was looking for a comfortable patch of grass where he could lay Juli down and show her what a wild lotus really was. She seemed to be very patient, and didn’t ask him about their destination. There wasn’t any sunlight along the way. The trees were wet, and when the cold fog dripped down her neck, she cried out.

‘Tired? Rest here.’ He pointed to a fallen tree. He felt this place was all right, concealed enough, and completely safe. ‘I seem to have taken a wrong turn. I remember it was near the river…’

He braced his feet and sat down on the trunk. Juli looked at him, but said nothing. He reached out and pulled her towards him. She stood between his legs. ‘Have you seen that bit of hazel wood before?’ He took her hand, looking at her wheat-coloured fingers and the white crescent moons in her fingernails. ‘I forgot which hillside it was on. There are so many bushes.’

Her buttocks leaned against his thighs, and he naturally put a steady hand around her waist. Her chest was at the height of his mouth. His passion ignited again, and he buried his face in her cleavage, his body burning. He grasped her. Juli was like a plastic doll which emitted a strange sound when he squeezed. At that moment, as if he had pressed too strongly, the doll popped out of his grip. She looked like a deer standing still there outside his legs, her hair mussed. She said, ‘I still want to see the wild lotus!’

She was full of an unfathomable vivacity today. He felt that he was a penis, stuck in the ground and unable to move. ‘I have one more condition.’ He reached for the hand tucked into her pink jacket sleeve. ‘I want you to kiss me for a minute.’

He also had a puzzling waywardness about him, as if they were two innocent childhood friends.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Just for a minute.’

She stared at him, not making a sound.

‘Okay then, I’ll kiss you.’ As he spoke, he stood up, feeling surprised at how free-flowing his performance was, whatever he said. There was no monitor, no alarm. He got to kiss a real woman, then broke off to breathe, but she did not release him. Feeling she was on board now, his restless hand began daring moves. He decided to take her right there and then.

A crow cawed twice, quite rudely. As if she had heard an alarm, Juli suddenly released Mengliu. She could have been waking from a dream. She tidied herself quickly.

‘No, it’s not safe here.’ She covered her face, leaving only her eyes revealed. ‘Nearby there should be a rubbish dump. The people who go to dispose of things will pass by and see us.’

Mengliu remembered that Shanlai had also mentioned the rubbish dump. Right now he wasn’t interested in figuring out why they chose the forest as a disposal site. His body was about to explode, and that was the only urgent consideration.

They renewed their search for the wild lotuses. He clutched her hand firmly, his nose sniffing out a more secluded spot. She followed closely, like a runaway. Sometimes they climbed a slope, sometimes they moved on at a trot. He felt that with a woman like Juli, he needed to be clearer in his intentions, since she did not understand his hints. She was an elegant woman, and also infinitely spiritual, a vestal virgin. Of course, whether she was really a virgin he had no way of knowing.

‘Wild lotuses only open under certain conditions. I don’t know how our luck will be.’

When they reached a sheltered place behind a small hill, Mengliu stopped. He thought that, whether from a physical or a psychological perspective, this slope was very suitable for lying down on. The grass was dense and clean, and wouldn’t soil Juli’s dress.

‘Don’t you want to know what conditions are necessary for the wild lotus to bloom?’ He turned to face her. He was glad the fog was still thick, like a curtain hanging around them.

She watched his face, hesitating.

‘I do know. It opens when there are illicit sexual relations,’ she said, laughing triumphantly. ‘I also know there’s no such flower.’

‘Eh?’ Mengliu’s heart sank in awkwardness. ‘You…?’

‘Look at the flowers on this tree. I want you to pick me some.’ Her voice was still innocent. He pulled down a branch that held four or five blossoms. She sniffed. ‘I think this is called a wild lotus.’

‘Huh?’ Mengliu was taken aback. The situation had suddenly taken a one hundred and eighty-degree turn. He was the passive one. His mouth was now covered by Juli’s, and the crazed passion that came from her was not at all by his design, which made him feel that his careful schemes had been quite childish after all. He reflected on the situation. She had pretended to be confused. This discovery was unexpected, and also beyond his contemplation. It greatly stimulated his animal nature. All he wanted to do was press himself to her, to prevent any further interruptions. Their bodies intertwined in passion, they fell to the ground, and he felt the slope of the earth beneath helping as he eased himself into her. Without further ado, he began undressing. But suddenly, the sun shone directly on them with the glare of a spotlight. Juli’s body retreated instinctively, and even Mengliu was stunned. They stood up again, watching in amazement as the fog shrouding them disappeared. In the blink of an eye the air was crystal clear and they were standing not in woods, but in an open space, with only an old tree towering impressively overhead. As if grasping at the dissipating fog, there were two screeches from the sky and a pair of vultures rushed downwards into what looked like a meteor crater.

This omen destroyed Mengliu, completely defeating his spirits. He wanted to know what was in the crater. ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said.

‘Don’t,’ Juli held herself tightly, almost begging. ‘It is the waste disposal site. There is nothing good there. We should go.’

‘Wait here. I will take a look. I’ll be right back.’

‘I’m telling you, don’t. Really. If you look, you will be sick.’

The sky was like blue glass. There was not a speck of dust in the air. There were all sorts of weeds and flowers everywhere on the ground. The old gingko tree stood straight up, like a burning torch. Mengliu glanced back at Juli. Her words energised him, and he ran to the pit. She watched him stand there, then quickly turn away, bending over as if his stomach was cramping. She knew very well what he had seen, and that he would be vomiting for the next few days whenever he recalled the sight, expelling everything he ate.

8

At the thought of vultures pecking at the vacant bloody wreckage of the child’s flesh, Mengliu’s stomach did churn. He felt less and less like a doctor who had opened up the flesh of others and more like a fragile girl. He had thought there was nothing left that could disgust him, whether death, politics, poetry or desire. He wanted to vomit, but could not. He had gone for two days without food, and was feeling drowsy. The child seemed to be alive. He watched the vultures snap at its throat, devouring the innards. They pecked at its flesh, staining their feathers with the child’s blood, their eyes grim. No one told him why the pit was called the rubbish disposal site. Both he and the topic were unpopular. Even Shanlai would not explain it to him. He drank fermented tea, which made him hungry, but also calmed him. The intimacy between him and Juli had disappeared, as if it had all been of his own imagining. He could not get any confirmation from her. She remained as polite, civilised and indifferent as ever. He could not imagine her involved in debauchery any more than he could imagine Esteban, stern as the emblem of the nation, in that hidden moment of ecstasy, face twisted as he climaxed and ejaculated.

A week later, it was arranged for Mengliu to stay elsewhere, apart from Juli, a couple of kilometres away in a small house with a garden, built exactly the same as hers, though the plants in its garden were disorderly. The furnishings were exactly the same, with a painting of a forest on the wall in the living room, replete with snakes, butterflies and all sorts of creatures. The bedding was new, the batik linen embroidered with drums surrounded by groups of birds facing each other. Between the birds was a snake, which in turn held a gourd. Butterflies flew out of the gourd, filling the spaces between the snake and the birds. The room had an ambiguous wedding-night sort of atmosphere. Mengliu walked numbly in a circle around the bedroom then back to the living room. Juli’s student Rania was there, as if she had dropped from the sky, her plump body stuck in a wicker chair. Her golden hair was piled into a high beehive atop her head, her skin was pale and she had a cold aloof look in her eyes.

‘Where did you come from?’ His meaning was clear. He was not happy about being disturbed.

‘This is my home,’ she said deliberately, getting up from the chair to replenish her cup of fermented tea. Her fingers, pale and plump as maggots in contrast to the black tea, creating a strong visual impact. ‘Surely you cannot be completely ignorant.’

Rania had the charm of a noble lady today, and looked like the Mona Lisa, wrapped in a large loose scarlet robe with pale pinkish purple pyjamas underneath, which left her full bosom half exposed. Even so, Mengliu felt she was too young, with that unique naivety of wayward girls. ‘I would appreciate more information.’ He could not keep the note of sarcasm from his voice. ‘I’d like to see what fresh tricks there will be.

‘Have a good look at this. If you don’t understand it, I’m obliged to translate it for you.’

Rania took an envelope from her robe. Its sticky seal had been carefully opened so as to preserve its original appearance. Mengliu looked inside. It was an official document issued by the Swan Valley Council, a marriage-gene document. He was so shocked he felt the fear of someone about to be executed on the spot. He closed his eyes, as if he was waiting for his throat to be cut. At that moment his mind was in chaos, with red files surfacing above the mess, each as murderous as a bullet, with the list of the condemned giving off a charred odour, and birds like ashes flying in the sky.

The document was handwritten, a lean script on white paper. There was a fresh woody scent, and he could tell careful attention had been given to the document’s format. It was beautifully laid out, impeccable. At the top, in the centre, was a line of text in red and in a bold font. ‘Regarding the decision to arrange the marriage of Mr Yuan Mengliu and Ms Rania Fu…’

Mengliu started, the blood was rushing to his head. ‘Ha!’ he laughed, then said strangely, ‘Arranging for Mr Yuan Mengliu and Ms Rania Fu to be married?’

Rania sipped her tea indifferently. Mengliu’s mouth gasped as he continued reading. The document not only contained detailed information and explanations about the decision, but also described their race, height, weight, blood type, eating habits, hobbies, and included a variety of genetic data. The data was very precise. Scientifically, he and Rania were a perfect match, and their offspring would be a one-hundred-per-cent prodigy. At five or six, or even younger, the child’s thinking would be as mature as any adult’s. Their union would bring about the most perfect creation in history, a genetic legend. The document contained many more theories, such as that strong genes build strong countries, that when a country is involved in international conflict it is a contest based on the quality of the people and their knowledge, that riches and power begin with good genes, grasping the spirit of education starts from birth, and so on. At the end, it said, ‘We have not created a new society because we are better than others, but only because we are simple people with simple human needs. We want air and light, health and honour, freedom and spiritual pursuits. Our impartial behaviour is innate. We, the fine citizens of the new nation of Swan Valley, will capture the world’s attention in a few years.’

‘Absurd! Absurd! Absurd!’ Mengliu shook his head repeatedly. ‘What a cock and bull story! Can you even believe this nonsense? Are you obeying it?’

Rania’s face was like a full moon, like flowers in full bloom protected by strong leaves from the freezing wind. She wiped tea from the table, her clothes rustling with the movement, without showing any response.

‘Rania, we do not like one another, and yet we are commanded to become husband and wife. Don’t you find that ridiculous? If I haven’t guessed wrongly, the person you like is Esteban. You should tell him. We should each pursue our own happiness.’

Mengliu felt that this beautiful girl was like a medicine. Nourishing, adding supplement but not too overbearing, gentle on the liver, stopping pain and harvesting sweat. It was difficult for him to view her as a flower, but maybe this was her misfortune. She was the opposite of Juli.

Swanese girls were not rash. At this critical moment Rania remained quiet and calm.

You could say she was confident, or apathetic, or just dispassionate when she said, ‘Happiness is in the heart. You do not need to pursue it, or even seek it. Whom one likes and whom one marries are different matters. There is no conflict. You Dayangese are used to taking good things for yourselves, turning beauty into something ugly, whole things into something broken. As a result, everything is ruined, and you become disillusioned. You say you want to become a monk, or to migrate, but in fact, you just want to escape.’

‘Rania, don’t you have anything to say about this arranged marriage?’ Mengliu was deflated. ‘I’m a layman, not at all a part of your world…If you don’t know that love can sometimes demand one’s whole life, then you can never understand real love…’

‘Who says a marriage has to have love? For you the world is big, but not as big as your heart. Is there nothing, or no theory outside the heart under heaven?’ Rania had a point of her own to make.

‘Your system in Swan Valley, whatever your observances, has nothing to do with me. I want to choose the person I love and marry her. That is my right.’

‘Well, it seems you really don’t know anything. You’ve been appointed the Head of a Hundred Households. I want to congratulate you on your official position, your contribution to Swan Valley. Your Certificate of Citizenship and letter of appointment will be issued soon and sent to you.’ Rania’s nostrils flared and she snorted. ‘I really do not understand what use Swan Valley has for a washed-up poet. But anyway, please be less selfish and think more for the collective good.’

‘Official? You think marriage is for the collective good?’

‘You don’t love Swan Valley?

‘I love my own country.’

‘But your own country doesn’t love you.’

‘You’re talking nonsense. I won’t marry you. I don’t want to create a child prodigy.’ He thought of the raccoon-like Shanlai becoming a miniature wizened old man, with the verses rotting in his belly and causing indigestion, gallstones, kidney stones, intestinal ulcers. His blood would cease to flow, and he would no longer be able to hold the knowledge inside. They would use a scalpel to dig it out, opening the diseased organ and removing tens of thousands of archaisms and countless useless words.

‘It’s just pride on your part. The match is right. Forget other women.’ Rania thought for a moment, then added, ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

Mengliu’s angry exit from the house brought an end to their unpleasant conversation, but an hour later, when his feelings had calmed, he found that Rania’s attitude had also changed. She was respectful towards him now, and more careful with her words, and even her silences expressed a more reverential obedience. She referred to him as Master Yuan, and she looked like a perfectly submissive wife and a good mother.

‘I think I offended you earlier. Never mind if you write poetry or not, I should still show you the respect I would a poet. I have not done so, but now I know what I should do.’ Rania offered him a pile of clothing, and a scarlet mandarin robe, its collar and cuffs embroidered with birds and flowers. On its hem, the swans were so finely sewn that the wings looked alive. She held up the new robe, and Mengliu involuntarily opened his arms and slipped them into the sleeves. As she helped him dress she said, ‘This was made especially for you, a combination of styles befitting the Head of a Hundred Households, and a bridegroom. You don’t know this, but the position is only given to those who are highly respected, so it’s an honour. I believe you will be able to take the lead in dutifully doing good deeds.’

As if under a strange hypnosis, Mengliu began to feel a little smug. He looked at Rania as she buttoned his robe. As she clasped the next to last button she squatted down, and her breasts swelled as her knees pressed against them. When she finished, she twitched the hem and stroked the birds that were embroidered there. Perhaps because she had squatted down, and her blood flow had been blocked, her pale face was flushed. Her hair was flowing. A red shell hung between her breasts.

Mengliu stepped back, spread out his arms and looked down at himself. His body was covered with birds with strange eyes and gloriously overlapping feathers. It was like a magical robe, and as he wore it, he felt a burning sensation in his chest. His mind was in chaos, and his legs seemed to float, as if he were in the clouds.

‘Tonight at the bonfire party we are to take the lead. We need to arrive on time.’ Rania’s expression was submissive, like a humble wife’s, a lowly sort of humility.

Once it was dark, she was a different person again. She wore a white wool dress, spread her wings and flew out the door, bouncing like a Mona Lisa and singing the wedding march in a shrill voice. He did not know this dance of hers, whether it was tap dancing, or a tango, or line dancing. It was a bit like all of them, and also unlike each. It was dissipated and yet restrained. It stopped as it reached a frenzy. It was a rhythmic pulsing, like waves of flesh. She danced wildly all the way, bringing Mengliu to the square.

There was a lot of people there. The fire had been lit and the drums were beating. It was a masquerade, many of the people were dressed like savages and wore animal masks. Women suddenly exposed their flesh, draping branches over themselves, leaves dangling as they shook their breasts, twisting their bodies in madness and desire. Some people were using metal skewers to roast rabbits, seasoning them with marinade or sprinkling them with herbs. They were also cooking squid, chicken wings, pig hearts, potatoes, onions, cabbages, sending up fragrant aromas.

Mengliu spotted Juli. Even though she was wearing a vulture mask, her eyes were uncovered, and dazzling. Her hair fell like a waterfall, and her painted body was glittering in the light of the fire. Her breasts were clasped in two melon shells, and she wore a string of red cherries around her neck. Her lower body was wrapped in a skirt of corn husks, and her legs were smooth and as sinuous as a swimming dragon. Earlier, when Rania had told him that at parties of this kind the Swanese people were allowed to abandon all modesty and engage in wild pleasure, he did not expect to see such scenes. He wondered what a carnival amongst these aesthetes, the Swanese, would really be like and what the limits of their revelry would be. The beauty of the women and the smell of the food stimulated him. The music was lively, the drums and flutes were playing with abandon. Men and women alike were stirred into action, whipped to intensity, their legs flailing and hips gyrating in a danse macabre. They leapt into any space that became vacant, rubbing hips and shoulders against one another in play that was rough and wanton, full of provocation and seduction, like a grand orgy.

‘Head of a Hundred Households, today is a double celebration. Why are you looking so glum?’ Esteban pulled off his tusked mask. His lower body was encircled by a leopard skin, and he carried a spear.

‘I am appreciating it.’ Dressed in his official robes, Mengliu replied briefly. ‘What is this dance?’

‘The Infinite Dance. It was invented by the Chinese. During the Spring and Autumn period, when the Emperor Chu died, his disciples wanted to pursue his woman, and they invented this dance to tempt her.’

‘Oh, so that’s the Infinite Dance. I’ve heard of people dressing beautifully for it, and eating elegant food to make them radiant… but with you this is…’

‘Yes, the food must be elegant, and the clothing beautiful.’ Esteban gave him an arrogant smile. ‘But to the Swanese, clothing would only cover our perfect bodies.’

As the pair was talking, Darae came over carrying a metal skewer with a roasted animal on it, saying, ‘Mr Yuan, this is the rabbit king. Yesterday, it bit off the water buffalo’s neck, and a hundred rabbits devoured the buffalo.’

Lions that ate grass, squids that ate people, rabbits killing and eating a buffalo. These unusual things in Swan Valley no longer seemed strange to Mengliu.

‘Mr Yuan, Darae’s cooking skills are superb, just like his sculpting skills. Why don’t we watch him use his knife on the rabbit. Esteban waved his hand toward the square, exclaiming, ‘Please play “The Mulberry Song”. Everyone continue dancing!’

Darae took the roasted rabbit off the skewer and sat at the communal table, on which there were laid out knives of various sizes. He took one and applied it to the meat. It was as if his actions were a dance timed to the music. The petals of meat flew in the air like plum blossoms, and their aroma lingered. He paused, changed knives, then took up the dance again, cutting through the muscles and dismembering the animal. Mengliu heard the tearing of the flesh as it was stripped from the bone. The rabbit meat was oily, with a strong taste. With the last note Darae gracefully put the knife down, the process of butchering the rabbit and the song ending together.

‘Ah, that’s amazing. There’s nothing better than watching a skilful butcher dismembering an ox.’ Mengliu was filled with wonder. ‘How have you mastered such skills?’

‘Darae holds in high esteem the chef who butchered oxen for King Hui of Liang,’ Esteban said, smiling. ‘Everything is an art. Does its beauty match that of a good poem?’

Mengliu rubbed his hands, trying to restrain his excitement. But Esteban had mentioned poetry again, and this spoiled the mood a little for him.

Rania, having had enough of dancing, was like a bun that had just come out of the steamer. Her expression showed that she was enjoying herself. She stood to one side, her eyes filled with pride.

Someone brought lotus-leaf cakes, cucumbers, garlic, sweet sauces, hot pepper rings and carrot sticks, placing them in a huge circle on the table. ‘Will you please, together with your wife, taste the rabbit,’ Darae said respectfully, not at all carrying himself like a great artist.

Feeling himself like an emperor in his robes, Mengliu involuntarily fixed a more dignified expression on his face. As he chewed the delicious rabbit meat, his face remained ridiculously stiff.

‘In another forty minutes, the couple will enter the bridal chamber.’ Esteban ate a few cakes then got up and left his seat. ‘Someone will bring you to the hospital. Everything has been set up.’

‘Hospital?’ Mengliu swallowed the last slice of meat. ‘But why should we go to the hospital?’

‘Artificial insemination,’ Esteban said, without looking back.

Mengliu felt like the chair had been kicked out from under him. His face fell.

‘You really don’t know much,’ Rania added. ‘That’s the regulation.’

9

The light of the sun rising in the east fell diagonally across the fence and into the garden. With the fresh seed growing in her body, Rania had the look of a new wife. She was like a pregnant cat, and seemed even more elegant when she walked. The old rebellious, naughty, mean edginess had disappeared. She had begun to tend the plants in the garden as she waited for the seed in her body to germinate in the sun, to flower and bear fruit. Mengliu felt it was a dream. His feelings for her had grown even stranger to him. He had no idea what she was thinking, and feared he would never figure it out. He felt the people of Swan Valley were like robots running on a program. In the face of instruction they offered unconditional obedience. And yet it was as if everyone here was a philosopher, denying personal desire with their lofty spirits and the depth of their insights about life.

The wound on Mengliu’s leg had still not healed. In fact, it was just as they had said, regressing again after it had begun to improve.

Now that she was Mengliu’s wife under the law, Rania used a mysterious potion every day to clean his wound, murmuring as she did so, as if she was saying a prayer before a meal. Since the absurdity of their wedding night, Mengliu had continued to struggle. All the way to the hospital he vowed not to submit to their arrangements, even to die fighting them. Upon reaching the hospital, he and Rania had been separated, and he was brought to a secret chamber with warm lighting and mural-covered walls. The elaborate frescoes with their quasi-religious symbolism moved him greatly. He skirted around green and red mountains, meandering rivers, plains, hills and forests, and a barefoot flying god. Above the giant lotus blossoms men and women engaged in intercourse, employing all kinds of positions. As the light shifted, they seemed to move in a very lifelike way. Meanwhile members of the hospital staff stood in a corner playing sensual tunes on reed flutes, while a woman chanted passages from a book, as if calling him enticingly to bed. Obscene sounds seemed to come from the people in the pictures. Under such stimulation, poor Mengliu’s resolve and dignity crumbled together. A young nurse, smiling with admiration, brought a glass bottle over, and he was happy to pay his debt in pent-up seed. They planned to use an instrument to inject the fresh sperm into Rania. Now he saw that the figures on the lotus were the Hindu god Shiva and his wife. They weren’t moving after all. Perhaps the obscene images had been the product of his own imagination. The last image he saw was of a woman, upside down and with legs spread apart, a plant growing out of her womb.

Rania was a woman who was easily managed now. After marriage, she was idle and dull, brightening her days by sipping fermented tea, cleansing her organs along with her libido. All distractions had been washed away. She had become as pure and innocent as a baby, her mind a vast empty space. Touched by the orange of the sun, Rania’s sunflower-like face looked eastward, filling her fertile body with the sun’s warmth. Mengliu saw the germinating sprout pushing her belly outward. A strange tenderness filled him, brief but sweet. In a way, this unexpected family life had struck a chord in his instincts, as if a candle had been lit in a dark chamber, allowing him to study himself. He was still unable to find clarity — without poetry, his former life had collapsed. It was past. He had often thought about how, in this morass, he could rebuild his world, but it was all in vain. The whole world had caved in.

Mengliu felt a little fondness for the serenity before him. A woman he had never touched, pregnant with his child. He hardly knew her. Her civility towards him gave him a sense of dignity and self-worth. He could appreciate the simplicity and perfection of this kind of relationship, like prescribing the right medicine for a specific illness. Sometimes he missed Juli acutely, and the distant Suitang, and Qizi, though he did not know whether she was still alive. Rania did not mind his moodiness at such times. She gave all his belongings a good cleaning, even destroying his wallet — credit cards and all — without his permission. She said it was all rubbish, not needed by the Swanese, and therefore cumbersome. The spirit could not be measured in Arabic numerals. People could not live by figures alone. It was a waste of time to fight for worldly possessions. She said the spring has flowers while the autumn has the moon, summer has breezes and winter snow. Having nothing to do is the best season. You could write poetry, study or meditate, with nothing confusing or surprising happening, no improper thoughts, you needed only to feel cheerful, because the family and the nation were prospering. She related everything to the politics of the nation, turning a flea into an elephant with her descriptions, or a crocodile into a gecko. It was her responsibility to assist Mengliu fully in his role as Head of a Hundred Households, and possibly even as the future Head of a Thousand Households. A dutiful wife should naturally push her husband forward in this way.

Rania was bathed in sun, her hair pulled back into a bun, her forehead white and shiny, idealism crystallising in her features. Her arms lay on the armrests of her chair, as white as porcelain in the sunlight. She looked like she could break. Her fingers were plump as maggots, their nails rosy. Mengliu had never known their texture or their warmth, their desire or even their curiosity.

They had never known the plains of his body, and yet they belonged to him.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at Rania’s dazzling white face. It was a leering expression, as if he was calculating how he might seduce her. Since he could not do anything with his own legal wife, except perhaps one day escape with her to the forest for an illicit liaison, he now understood how seriously wrong the situation was.

‘Where did you put my bag of marbles?’ he asked, thinking of his diamonds.

‘I threw them away,’ she answered.

‘You tampered with my stuff again? That was a souvenir Shanlai gave me.’ He was angry, and distressed about the diamonds.

‘Are you still talking about “mine” and “yours”? Yours is mine. You forgot that this authority was conferred on me by Swan Valley,’ Rania said casually. ‘I was assigned to be your wife according to the document.’

Having nothing to say to that, Mengliu turned to the rubbish bin, but he could not find the bag of marbles. ‘You should marry your Swan Valley. It is more suitable than any man to be your husband. I want to annul the marriage right now.’

‘I know. If you had married Su Juli, you wouldn’t say this. But I should remind you that only genes can be a basis for annulment.’

‘You don’t need to bother about who I might have married… Swan Valley’s ban on sexual intercourse, its reliance on artificial insemination — creating geniuses — don’t you find these things contrary to human nature?’ Mengliu turned his back to the sun. His body was covered by a soft layer of dust motes. ‘Rania, as a human, as a woman, do you really not have an opinion about this?’

‘No. They’re the rules.’

‘There’s always a place not exposed to the sun. A little bit of shadow is nothing very unusual…but now, this sort of thing…’

Rania smiled quietly, as if to say he was making a fuss over nothing. She turned and went into the house, and when she came back out she carried a tea set. ‘Many years ago we had an artist who went to China and returned with many relics. Look at this purple clay teapot. It’s said to be a thousand years old. Try it and see what is different about our fermented tea when it is brewed from Swan Valley’s water in a Chinese purple clay teapot.’ She was very particular about her tea-making, not the least bit perfunctory as she spoke. ‘Smoking is bad for one’s health. Smoking is not allowed, and tobacco production is prohibited. Tea-drinking has been designated the national pastime because tea cleanses the heart, promotes goodness and fosters a peaceful environment.’

Rania did not speak like a big-hearted, empty-headed person, and Mengliu had some respect for that. ‘If people maintain a preference for a single flavour there will be nutritional imbalance. The provisions in the tea referendum seem a little overbearing.

‘In some places, good tea is ruined by common hands, just as a good landscape can be ruined by a mediocre artist, or good students made poor by inferior teaching. Swan Valley does not have such terrible problems.’ Rania took a sip of her tea, testing its flavour with her eyes closed. ‘Mr Yuan, don’t be a nitpicker. You have admitted that your own place is quite imperfect. Your pitiful attempt at democracy crushed by the government and left to die…’

‘You bitch, don’t try to change the subject,’ Mengliu interrupted rudely, having gulped down two cups of tea. ‘This tea isn’t so special. The one who brewed it didn’t put her heart into it, so there’s no soul in the tea.’

‘You’re right. I was distracted. I kept thinking of a question. Did you…’ she stared at his face. ‘Did you do that with Su Juli?’

‘Do what?’ He pretended to be innocent.

‘Okay, I’ll say it directly. Did you go to bed with her?’

‘No,’ he said coldly.

‘You are my husband. I will not betray you.’

‘It’s true. I didn’t.’

‘Then Esteban? Her relationship with him?’

This was something Mengliu also wanted to know, so he gave a mysterious knowing smile, deliberately provoking her. ‘I can’t say. You should ask the parties involved.’

‘Mengliu, I feel we should have no secrets between us.’ She had changed, and was now calling him by his given name.

‘What? No secrets? I hardly know you. I wouldn’t even count you as a friend.’ Mengliu suddenly wanted to mess with this woman.

‘You did not see the requirements in the files…Of course, we shouldn’t talk of requirements, but I really do want to be your friend…your confidante…your wife.’

‘You don’t need to offer sweet talk. Of course, if you have a good attitude, I will change my view of you.’ Then Mengliu added abruptly, ‘Let me ask you. What sort of place is the waste disposal site in the forest?’

Rania’s face darkened. She stammered, and said she really did not know, as she had never gone roaming about there.

‘You’re still not honest enough,’ Mengliu snorted. ‘I was testing you. You just missed a chance to earn my trust.’

Rania was embarrassed, and her face was mottled, as if crisscrossed with the shadows of tree branches. She looked as if she were suffering from vitiligo.

10

No one had given Yuan Mengliu a concrete idea of what the Head of a Hundred Households should do. Life in Swan Valley was based on virtue. They didn’t need to lock the doors at night, or keep watch on the roads. The more leisurely an officer’s life was, the more it proved that the society was stable, like a smooth surface on a deep lake, free of waves. There had never been sit-ins, poster campaigns, riots or any such thing. There was a regular flow of inactivity, with everything kept calm and quiet. Of course there could be no substantial change in Mengliu’s relationship with Rania either. They were still two unconnected wells, each with its own patch of sky. They always seemed courteous enough to each other. As for a marital relationship, Mengliu was secretly inclined to feel that marriage practices here were more civilised than in Dayang, and of a higher nature. Dayang’s marriage customs were more hypocritical. He remembered Suitang’s evaluation, how she had said that most married men kept another woman on the side. The wives’ forbearance, tolerance, magnanimity, and the so-called idea of their being sensible all allowed the root of their husbands’ vice to grow stronger and thicker. A wife had no power to lessen the drive of the male in her husband, and she certainly wasn’t attractive enough to increase it. And yet, she emphasised, this was society’s mindset, its immovable way of thinking, and marriage was its highest form of self-deception. The male temperament was never as humble as its root, aware as it was of the demands of the situation. His spirit was more like this wretched root, full of wrinkles and folds that would house filth. But men were never as frank and sincere as their own dicks. They could put on all the trappings of a eunuch — falsetto voice, ambiguous discourse and all — then read Playboy when they were alone and get off with the girl next door after dark. It was obvious that Suitang’s explosive verbal power was something Jia Wan had given her. But Mengliu thought that her argument, though a bit extreme, wasn’t unreasonable, and was useful in bringing him to terms with his own sense of absurdity.

Their house was full of poetry books. Rania would readily pick one up and start reading. It was if she read the poems full of sexual content especially for Mengliu’s hearing, to stir his tired body. To begin with, as soon as he heard her reading poetry he would leave the house for long enough to become exhausted. There was no way to coexist peacefully with her. He had submitted a request for separation, but it was rejected by the Genetics Governing Body, so he ended up writing a confession letter instead, and here his attitude toward poetry became even more ambiguous. He knew Rania was trying to stimulate him, to stoke his desire and inspiration for poetry, but her efforts were futile. She was overly concerned with whether or not he would write poetry, and this lead him to feel it was all a conspiracy, including the marriage. The doubts snowballed in him. As he thought of the mysterious unknown spiritual leader, of the landfill in the forest, the strange pension system, he often touched the edges of a memory that remained a huge blank patch, like a hole where a tooth was missing. It was chilling.

In the midst of this boring, tedious stalemate, he thought of organising a meeting or holding a spiritual forum. This would also be the best way to keep out of Rania’s way. First he would call together the leaders or heads of the various households, then choose a suitable theme for the forum. They would settle on a place with attractive scenery to stay for a few days, and send the conclusion of their discussion to be published in the news so that everyone could learn from it. The first meeting went well, the baptism of spirit reflected in their gloomy but energetic faces. Since no specific problems had arisen for them to solve, they had to come up with plans for possible rainy-day scenarios. The meetings began on a monthly schedule, and soon moved to once a week, running for two or three days at a time. They were held in various parts of the country, with large or small groups as suited the situation. The groups might include a director of social studies, a chief body-guard, a medical foreman, the Head of a Thousand Households, and multiple subordinate leaders under the Heads of a Hundred Households. It was mandatory for those invited to attend, each submitting their thoughts over the past week, giving spiritual reports on the public, asking questions and making suggestions. They put special emphasis on investigating and researching those whose spiritual condition and interests were of a low level. Individual counselling and exchange would be carried out based on gender and place, with the development of a spiritual model and benchmarks for future members to learn from.

Mengliu’s work was impeccable. From a life of leisure he had suddenly become very busy. He ran an efficient operation. In just a short time he solved all the spiritual crises that might arise over the next fifty years. They were stockpiling, their minds steaming forward. They were bending over backwards to advance the spiritual work of Swan Valley. The influence of this attitude was widespread, and a lot of people from different places came to learn from them. Darae was the hospitality and logistics manager. He preferred cooking to sculpting, and he often greeted guests with a display of ‘Darae’s settling of a rabbit’, while privately practising his next feat, ‘the settling of a sparrow’. He was preparing to show off his skill at the annual work report. Mengliu and Darae worked well together. But then a rift occurred, because a group of important officials were coming to do an inspection. Mengliu panicked, and ordered a vigorous city-wide urban sanitation, whitewashing, road repairs, planting of trees and flowers, and the preparation of Darae’s specialities for a hospitality banquet.

‘What is a specialty? What’s a banquet?’ Darae was already against lavishness, and he could not quite adapt to Mengliu’s changes.

‘A specialty is something different from the norm,’ Mengliu said solemnly, stroking the embroidery on his robes with his fingertips. ‘In my opinion, we should kill a lion, and prepare bear claws, tigers’ testes and penises, sharks, whale meat…’

Darae exclaimed loudly that the Swanese never ate such things. Mengliu said they should serve everything fresh. He wanted someone to be sent to the woods immediately to find hunters, and then to the wharves to look for fishermen, to tell them what to deliver. Darae said that no one in Swan Valley hunted or fished. Mengliu broke into laughter. ‘Can any place be without hunters and fishermen? Darae, in order to be an excellent chef, in addition to your rabbit you must know how to cook a variety of rare and valuable animals. A chef must possess the skills to cook anything in the world. He should even be able to make timber taste like pork fat. Of course that’s just an illustration, but you do know what I mean?’

‘Mr Yuan, this is your wish, but people cannot eat just anything,’ Darae replied. ‘I know you’re trying to manipulate the laws put in place to prohibit the killing of animals in order to satisfy the extravagant tastes of the rich and powerful. That is a performance that has no boundaries or beliefs.’ Darae would not pander to the dignitaries. He believed that as long as a person was sincere what they ate was secondary. He had recently gone to painstaking efforts to learn a few new dishes, different from those he had cooked in the past, and he would put these on display. Darae’s suggestion allowed Mengliu to back down gracefully, so he relented. He asked him to list the names of the dishes. Darae explained in detail how each was cooked, the nutritional value, the colour and taste. He went at full throttle for a long time, and didn’t seem to be talking about recipes, but about the gospel of good health. He put his ideas into the preparation of his dishes, hoping that the diners would feel that they were not just eating food, but culture.

‘Of course, if dinner included poetry slams and readings, then the characteristics of the feast and the flavour of the food would really emerge.’ Darae was adamant in his ideas. ‘Mr Yuan, you are a poet, a cultural official. If you don’t object…’

Mengliu didn’t say anything. Afterwards Darae really did as he said he would, so Mengliu claimed he was unwell and went home. He could hear the rhythm of the recitations, like the solemn rich beat of a watchman’s drum, filling the space around him.

The following week this outstanding model of ‘the meeting’ was promoted all over Swan Valley. Mengliu was elevated from Head of a Hundred Households to Head of a Thousand Households. He was given a new robe. Its collar and cuffs were still covered with a bird motif, but this time it was a phoenix with gorgeous feathers in a noble pose. Mengliu couldn’t differentiate between dream and reality anymore, as if he were starring in a drama. After frolicking about in his robe, he went to Su Juli’s house and found her inside drinking tea with Esteban. Although they congratulated him, they seemed somewhat indifferent to his success. He sat for a while, but felt bored and could not find anything to say.

When he returned home, Rania’s expression pleased him. She was obedient and thoughtful, and meticulous in her attentions. They even began to chat calmly about life. When Rania suddenly put her hand to her mouth and rushed into the bathroom, her face flushed, he knew immediately that she was pregnant.

‘The government’s aim is accurate.’ He followed her and, standing outside the bathroom door, took a nonchalant stance.

She stopped retching. ‘What aim?’

‘Hey, it’s highly efficient. There’s no excitement, no frustration, no prelude, and no climax. Everything is cultivated successfully according to the will of Swan Valley.’ Mengliu leant against the door frame, smiled cheekily, and said, ‘But having a child without putting effort into the creative process is really shameful. You see, Swan Valley has played me for a fool.’

More retching sounds came from Rania and she flushed Mengliu’s words down with the fresh vomit. When she had finished, he had to accompany her to the hospital for a checkup, filling in forms and waiting for the government’s birth permit. Rania stuffed her mouth with cranberries and started reading Rousseau’s Emile. She chatted about the child’s name and education. As soon as she placed her hand on her abdomen, Mengliu became red-faced and breathless, as if she were clenching his heart.

At night he grew inexplicably anxious. He was unable to concentrate on a single thought without the pockets of blankness appearing in his mind. He walked on the darkened streets. The moonlight flowed around him, and where the bushes grew he could hear rustling sounds. Experience told him that a couple must be involved in illicit sexual relations, secretly enjoying the freedom of sex as they did the freedom of the moonlight. The moistened bushes were dishevelled, and the trees stout and carnal, creating an indulgent atmosphere.

The moon painted the streets and houses in a poetic mist, but one which was also rational and calm. Getting a taste for this impersonal kind of romance, he found himself close to a demonic blue light that rotated and flickered. He chased after it, and the beam of light seemed to play a game with him, stubbornly keeping at a certain distance. Without realising it, he had walked into the forest, and the blue light rotated three times in quick succession and charged at his face. His head exploded into a white cloud, and he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, he was seated in a Chinese official’s chair, surrounded by the familiar machine room. He immediately stood up and shouted, ‘Hey! Listen to me. I’m just an ordinary guy, not one of those big brains with superior intelligence. I’m the kind of scum who’d take the taxpayer’s money and do shoddy work. You should be out looking for the high-level people. They have a sense of justice, conscience, ideals, patriotism. They are so heated up with enthusiasm their blood burns. Frankly, their excellent genes are much more suitable for your plans. I can give you a list. Men, women, fat, thin, educated, politically motivated — I know them all. I can take you to Dayang. I know every building on every street. The people there trust the state, they trust ideals, and they trust other people. I think it is safe to say they could quite easily be taken away.’

‘Mr Yuan, you really shouldn’t say anything.’ It was the robotic voice again, languid, full of disdain and mockery. ‘You are the one our machine searched out, the man with the highest quality of genes. Of course, you can be suspicious of anyone, but you have to trust science, and you have to trust the machine.’

Mengliu assumed the robot would give him the periscope, as it had done before. He really wanted to have a better look at the woman with green hair. But apparently the robot did not plan to do so. ‘That can’t be right,’ he replied. ‘There must be a problem with the machine. Someone like me is just rubbish, not even worth mentioning.’

‘Ha! Mr Yuan, you were born a Swanese. Humble, low-key, with the virtue of not being proud of your special talent. You can win a much better reputation and status…’

‘I don’t need it. You can’t possibly know what it is people need!’ Mengliu shouted, his voice lingering.

‘Don’t worry about that. I know exactly what the people of Swan Valley need. We won’t be tarnished by the modern pleasures of life, the decay, the erosion of principle, the moral turpitude, the spiritual emptiness…human life is limited. We won’t create waste or let crises brew. Our practice is to allow each individual to be innately elite, genetically so. We must improve the quality of the human race.’

‘That’s just subjective fantasy. Winston Churchill said that Western society has two things that were least flawed. One is democracy and the other is a market economy. From what I have seen, Swan Valley has two things that are most flawed.’

‘Oh? May I ask which two?’

‘Abstinence and politically arranged marriages. Since ancient times, humans have seasoned food with spices to satisfy their taste, used the fragrance of flowers and grass to cultivate their sense of smell, and created art to satisfy our eye for beauty — but you want to put restrictions on all human feelings and imprison people in their bodies. And as for excellent genes…’

‘Mr Yuan, you greatly underestimate an elite race’s tenacity of will. Immorality caused the death of nations even in ancient times. Lowly personal desires only exist in vulgar people. The citizens of Swan Valley are broad-minded, they hold manners and virtues in high esteem and focus on noble spiritual pursuits, so how…’ The robot was talking slowly.

‘This is a perverted illusion of peace. I know that not long ago there was a man who went missing. And a girl committed suicide — she was forced to death by what you think of as nobility, but others call insanity. You lied and said the man lost his mind and fell into the river and was eaten by squid. The girl who committed suicide was just following her own beliefs…’

‘For maintaining the normal social order and institutional dignity, death is the most common deterrent.’

‘That is a fallacy. It is disregard for human life,’ Mengliu interrupted.

‘Wrong. Your mind is overgrown with weeds. You need to cleanse your brain, clear away anything that hinders the operation of the machine. But then again, you are doing a good job with the forums. Evaluating the psychological state of the people, and reporting on their thoughts — very impressive. You have ambition, and you know how to use power to serve the people. This is an excellent quality.’ The robot took a deep breath. ‘The direction of all human activity, whether political, economic or cultural, is not something that can be decided by individual intuition or feeling. A machine is selfless, it pays attention to data…Oh by the way, let me congratulate you. You are going to be a father. The government will send a professional to take care of the expecting mother. The food has been arranged scientifically to ensure good nutrition.’

Mengliu wasn’t listening to the robot. He noticed the fluorescent blink and alternating colours on the machine nearest to him. There were oddly shaped controls that made clicking sounds. He reached out and pressed a purple switch with his finger. The lights faltered in a drunken chaos. He began moving both hands frantically over the machine, as if playing an instrument. All he could see was a crackling burst of fiery light, as all the machines began to shake, and then to roar like frightened, crazed beasts. Their parts jostled, and there was a great confusion of noise, as if he were in a huge workshop. The robot’s angry voice mixed with the cacophony. ‘Ruined! You’ve broken the machines! You’ve dared to destroy the machines, and you will be hanged, fed to the squid…The machines are failing. The information is confused! The data is incorrect…You’ve acted in ignorant recklessness. It will lead to numerous miscarriages of justice.’

The temperature in the room had suddenly increased. Sure enough, the machine in front of him was manically producing statistics, filtering data, creating analogues and clicking away like a typewriter. The data printed out continuously, faster than a newspaper press. It piled up, full of strange hieroglyphics. Mengliu found himself blocked in. He climbed over the stack of paper, intending to flee, when he saw a sheet headed ‘A Comprehensive Report on the Swan Valley Mind, and Spirit Data Chart Statistics’. Printed in red were the names of people with mental defects and other diseases. His name was there, like a centipede, bloated with blood, crimson and plump, wriggling its numerous feet. It suddenly turned into a huge monster, its mouth open to bite him. Mengliu went limp and fell to the ground.

11

The officially-brewed recipes for pregnant women gave special attention to nutrition. There were three vegetables dishes, one or two meat dishes, and a soup, and in addition to these regular meals, there was a flexible supply of extras. If the pregnant woman vomited, complementary foods were to be taken immediately, and it was considered a traitorous act for an expecting mother to refuse food. Noble dedication would quickly overcome the symptoms of morning sickness, and the pale-faced Rania, each time she vomited, placidly ate another meal, only to expel it again in an ongoing cycle of eating and vomiting. She remained calm and maintained her appetite. She no longer minded the sounds or uncomfortable poses that her retching produced, she acted like a filter. Food and fresh fruit juice went into her mouth, and were deposited in the golden toilet bowl very soon after.

She lost weight very quickly, and her face grew sharp and her shoulders narrow, like the Mona Lisa morphing into Lin Daiyu, the willowy heroine of the sentimental tragedy The Dream of the Red Chamber. Her pale skin was suffused with green, her plumpness disappeared, a gaunt look took its place. The poor girl suffered the sacrificial pains of motherhood, she underwent a severe testing of her patriotic doctrines. Mengliu did not bother about any of this. He was immersed in his musings about the robot, and whether it was a dream or a real place he had visited. Perhaps his auditory hallucinations, or his perceptual problems, had become more serious. He was always in a daze, unable to recall even the names of Hei Chun and Bai Qiu, much less a line of their poetry. His permanent place was beside the window where he could see the mountains and the river and the herds grazing on the slopes, and hear the playful voices of the people floating by, as if he were seeing characters taken right out of the Old Testament. They had land and cattle, and God was always with them. He longed to talk to God.

The government and the scientists were very concerned about whether Mengliu and Rania’s offspring would be a genetic wonder. They took great pains to provide the necessary culinary and nutritional care, assigning Darae to be Rania’s nutritionist. When the weather was bad and there were no meetings, Mengliu was surrounded by an unshakeable sense of melancholy. Darae was the only friend he could talk to. Every time he saw him, it was like grasping at a lifesaver. Darae brought Rania his newly created dishes: Snow Fox (fried pieces of squid), Battle of Bosnia (cabbage and black mushrooms), Running My Fingers through Your Hair (pig trotters stewed with seaweed), and Small City, Unique Talent (a mixed salad). Mengliu said that the mix of hot and cold in this menu, eroticism and war, was not a bad combination. Darae thought that eating was an art, requiring a certain level of genius when it concerned the appetite of a pregnant woman. Mengliu was shocked to hear Darae’s view of Rania’s pregnancy. He said that depriving a young girl of her vitality and making her conceive was inhumane and, to put it more seriously, was almost equivalent to raping her. He had been naive not to have anticipated this sort of thing. He asked if there was a girl Darae fancied. Darae remained completely silent for a long while before he finally said no.

It was hard to say what brought about the miracle. Morning sickness didn’t interfere with Rania’s appetite anymore, and she was able to suppress the vomiting with the strength of her willpower. Her skin regained its colour and her body returned to its plump state. She was praised as the pacesetter for pregnant women, and invited to travel around giving lectures about her experience in controlling morning sickness, turning the lectures finally into a bestselling book. Her message was, ‘Will determines everything.’ Nailed to Mengliu’s lintel was a golden sign emblazoned with the words Home of a Spiritual Pacesetter. He felt like he was a fake Christ being nailed to a cross, full of unease. He could not break through the shell of Rania’s spirit. She focussed all of her attention on her budding career and her abdomen. Her skin glowed, once again white and lustrous as porcelain.

But during this time, something wasn’t right with Rania. Her temperament was eccentric, flaring up from some unknown source, making Mengliu irritable in his turn. He read that pregnancy could affect the sexual functions of a woman, but Rania’s actions were also very odd. This Lin Daiyu would break plates in her anger, which was swift and fierce. Sometimes she seemed completely out of control, suppressing her vomiting one minute, weeping the next, making a mess of her whole face. He didn’t know whether to stop her, or simply let her vent her unhappiness. He didn’t understand women at all, especially not pregnant women. He felt like he was watching someone else’s wife, wondering what sort of husband she must have to make her so unhappy, thinking he must be a real piece of shit. He also wondered whether the woman had a mother or father, siblings or friends. The government sent servants to care for her, but could they really make her happy? Could they meet all her needs?

Mengliu’s expression, at once innocent and stupid, further intensified Rania’s emotions. She scolded him, this stranger who had come to ruin her life. When the government had been unable to find her a genetic match for a parenting partner, she had been quite happy, since it left her free to participate each day in intellectual debates. Not to say she was all that good at it, but she had developed something of a reputation. She didn’t want to marry and have children, she just wanted to pursue knowledge in order to sharpen her tongue in the debates. She could be subtle and underhanded. The government arranged for her to marry someone she liked, but she found out that he was another woman’s man, and hypocritical to boot. In the end, she thought that Mengliu must be her lucky star. But since he had appeared she’d gotten herself into all kinds of trouble. He was the one who had turned her into a fertility machine.

As her accusations against Mengliu grew more fierce, he grew happier. He preferred her like this. It meant they could really talk.

‘You wrong me when you blame me for turning you into a fertility machine. That is your beloved government’s doing. I was abducted by Swan Valley and have also become a reproductive machine. Maybe you don’t believe me, but the people of Swan Valley are nothing more than data, a bunch of guinea pigs.’ Mengliu took a considerate attitude toward Rania, hoping to catch her at a sober moment. ‘In fact, I’d love to go back to Dayang. If you could help me, I will remember you forever. As for the child…it’s also not what you and I want, and moreover it will be raised by the government. Anyway, you and Su Juli, you Swanese women do not need men. Rania, let me say it again, I was kidnapped and brought here. I will leave Swan Valley sooner or later, and whether or not you choose to believe that is up to you. I simply don’t care about this damned official post, I would rather go back and be locked up in prison than stay here —’ As he said this, Mengliu suddenly stopped, wondering if it was really necessary for him to go back and sit in jail.

Rania flushed. ‘You…are the most sordid man I’ve ever met.’

Mengliu responded cheekily, ‘Since this is how you feel about your husband, you should apply for a divorce. I will certainly cooperate. I’ll present you with all the support you need. Does that sound all right?’ He was mostly sincere in saying this, as he had no desire to quarrel. Rania did not understand. She said he was narrow-minded, making concessions out of condescension toward a pregnant woman. She called him a villain, and said he would never understand the breadth and height of the spirit of Swan Valley. Then she resumed her gentle obliging state, using polite speech to shame Mengliu. He was at pains to smile bitterly as he responded. ‘Tea cleanses the mind and calms the soul. I’ll brew a fresh pot of tea.’

During this time Mengliu’s skill at brewing tea had improved, and he drank it like an addict. It was difficult to imagine how his meetings could be carried on without the beverage. Holding the cup, smelling, sipping — this series of actions could divert attention and demonstrate his leadership qualities. They contributed to the pretence of being serious, churning out ideology reports, digging up a batch of ideas wrapped in spirit, thrashing it out before the others, arguing, holding up their souls which were purer than snow as they cried out.

Rania sat down, looking dignified with her knees touching the underside of the round wooden tea table, her skirt falling over them to the ground. She wore a pale-pink lined jacket. Her neck was slender, with no sign of wrinkles. It was such a waste to use this unblemished youthful body to carry a foetus. Her maternal instinct was still hidden, she exuded a powerful sense of youthfulness and innocence. You could easily think of her as a competitive young girl. Mengliu was visualising her in this way, when she said to him, ‘Let me tell you the truth. I’m not pregnant with your child.’

Mengliu was not as shocked as she expected, his expression was cold. ‘Nothing strange about that. I’ve always doubted the government’s workmanship. In a place where abstinence is practised, this sort of confusion isn’t surprising. But I don’t understand why you are telling me.’

‘If you expose me for having premarital sex, you will be promoted.’

‘But I don’t care.’

‘That’s not being magnanimous. It’s cowardice.’

‘Even if it’s cowardice, that’s how I feel.’

‘You don’t mind at all?’

‘Rania, we are husband and wife in the legal sense, but we have no emotional connection. Still, what do you need me to do? I’ll give it my best shot.’

‘Please expose me.’

‘Why should I expose you? What benefit is there to you?’

‘Do you really want to go back? I know a secret passage.’

‘Huh? A secret passage? Why haven’t you escaped yourself then?’

‘Whether I’m to live or die, I won’t leave.’

‘Even if they’re all just out to test me, they shouldn’t have sent a novice like you to try.’

‘…Mengliu, I haven’t been sent by anyone to test you. I only want to know what you want. Even if I was pregnant with your child, you wouldn’t care about me. You’re the most cold-blooded man I’ve ever known.’

Mengliu handed her a glass of water. ‘Rania, the debt of bearing this child is best paid by Swan Valley.’ When she had calmed down a little, he went on, ‘I want to tell you something serious. Can you guarantee that you won’t tell anyone?’

She nodded.

‘This may sound a bit strange, but I’m sure you’re not from here. You’re from somewhere in Eastern Europe, such as Germany, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria… your parents and siblings and friends must be there. Think about it. Isn’t that so?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I suspect that your memory has been tampered with. Tell me, what is the earliest memory you have? What year? Where?’

She thought, then shook her head.

‘I believe we can get to the bottom of this.’ Mengliu felt he could talk to her about the robot. He told her about his meetings and conversations with the machine and the circumstances surrounding them. ‘You have amnesia for a reason. And it’s not just you. It’s Juli, Esteban, Darae. They all have this problem. Perhaps after a few years I will be just like you, forget the past, my family and friends, and think of myself as Swanese. This is a frightening prospect. We will all be like fruit from a tree, picked and put in a basket, never knowing which tree we’ve come from. We’re alive, but our names are already recorded in Hades, we’re dead without having seen the grave. Our relatives grieve over us. Have you ever wondered why Esteban is dark-skinned, Juli appears to be of mixed Indian blood, Darae looks Korean, and you seem like someone from an Eastern European aristocracy? There are people here from all sorts of races. We all speak English in our own accents. It’s obvious we come from different countries. I can’t explain how. You say you are a child-bearing machine, and I’m just a breeding stud. We’re like grasshoppers on a string.’

‘I can see you are bewitched.’ The yellow leaves rustled as Rania spoke, coldly. ‘And quite sick.’

12

The meetings had become boring and were eventually replaced by debates. Esteban was always a major figure at the debates. On this occasion he was leaning against one of the pavilion’s pillars, watching the decorative fish in the pond as if he were one of them, a fish that had left the school and was swimming alone. Perhaps he had something on his mind, something he could not say to the fish, because the fish population was the incarnation of morality. He could only blow bubbles in the midst of the fierce ideological turmoil within him, and think of a plan while facing the bubbles as they floated constantly to the surface.

Mengliu threw a pebble into the pond, startling and scattering the fish. The lone black koi swayed its tail a few times, not moving from its spot. When Mengliu finally spoke to Esteban he said, ‘Who knows what fish think? When two of them swim together, can they be considered a couple? Do they have any concept of a family connection? Do they shed tears?’

He went on to say he was tired but he couldn’t sleep well. He woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the stars. He felt tortured. God had too many suffering souls to look after, and the devil was given free rein to go about at his pleasure. ‘What should I do Esteban? Tell me, Rania and I…don’t you think it’s just too absurd?’

The black carp started swimming away, looking for a more secluded spot. It stuck its head under a rock, leaving its rear exposed to the world.

‘Mr Yuan, to tell you the truth, you are the nastiest person I have ever met. You know it to be true too, but you don’t want to admit it.’

Talk of the spirit and that sort of thing was like a drug to Esteban. Once it had taken effect, a rosiness emerged from the darkness of his face. It was hard to describe that sort of radiance. It looked like he had activated some sort of impenetrable shield. No language or culture or onslaught of gun or cannon fire could shake his inner faith.

Mengliu remained silent for a while. Other than feeding the black fish with bits of the bread he held in his hand, he could think of no word or act that was consistent with his inner world.

But then he resumed. ‘I’d very much like to know where you are from. One day when we all return to our own homes, we should remain in close contact, and visit one another often. We may even become brothers in adversity. Actually, I’ve had a lot of brothers who’ve been through trials and tribulations with me, but you wouldn’t know. They bled, died, disappeared, fled, sought refuge elsewhere…but me, I have escaped through the gate of history, and I have lost contact with my brothers.’

Mengliu’s words felt fuzzy. He was like a koi blowing bubbles, with smooth spangled scales, perfect lines of muscle. He could not be singled out as he swam among the fish. The school made him feel safe and secluded. It was a quiet group of fish. They swam as one, playing by the rules. He became completely caught up in his recollections of the past. When he looked down again, the black carp had disappeared, leaving only an empty crevice and a confusion of young shrimp learning how to jump.

Several days of unusually heavy rain left Swan Valley in a state of disorder and darkness.

The rain showed no intention of stopping, so Mengliu took an umbrella and went out. The rain beat on the umbrella like a drum, creating waterfalls at its edges. He was like a rock, a wasted log, a huge ship, his heart turning in agitation. Later, the rain let up a bit, and a misty red strip of cloud appeared in the sky. The sun poked its face out, still half-hidden by the clouds. The light rain looked both alive and tired in the sunlight. He walked to Juli’s house, his shoes and socks getting soaked. It was just like the first time they had met, with Juli bringing clean clothes for him to change into. They started to talk about the rain. The great inconvenience it brought also had its benefits. It was as if Mengliu had come specifically to discuss the rain.

Juli took his damp clothes to dry, then casually went about making tea, her movements haphazard and her eyelashes sticking to her cheeks, her speech cool and courteous. Mengliu felt like they were looking at each other from opposite sides of a river. With the waters between them surging, he grew somewhat bored. The distance made him sad. It was as if they were being pushed apart by some unseen hand. He hoped Juli was hiding something, that she was in fact about to collapse, and would soon be throwing herself into his arms in tears. The porcelain teacups had three painted herrings swimming in them, with a muddy yellow line running around the sides of the cup. Juli knitted her brow, her eyelashes trembled, and her hands shook. She spilled the tea.

He felt that she was fatter than before, her face was like a Buddha’s, full of meaning. From time to time she would break into a crazy laugh, creating a tense atmosphere in the room. When she wasn’t speaking, she was like a mushroom growing in the crevice of a cliff, lying low, wet and preoccupied. He wanted to talk to her about something more than the weather, like artificial insemination, or a marriage ordered in red ink by forms from the state, or the present, or the future. But Juli’s unbreakable quiet elegance prevented him. He took a book from the table and flipped through it idly. He remembered a topic that interested her, grew animated, and decided to end his dilemma.

‘Let me tell you something interesting.’ He put the book on his knee, caressing the cover with his palm. He wanted to see a renewal of life in her eyes, and so he paused, waiting for her to ask him what it was.

But there was nothing urgent in Juli’s demeanour when she asked flatly, ‘Is it a funny story about the Three Musketeers? Or is it about the leaders? You shouldn’t rely on the same old material all the time. Come up with something fresh.’

‘This is something I’ve never talked to anyone about. It’s a secret about Hei Chun and Shunyu. Shunyu was always in love with Hei Chun, but his heart was just not inclined that way. Love is unfathomable, sometimes it is able to attack a long-standing fortress and topple it in an instant.’ Mengliu stalled again. The house grew dim, as the sun set behind the slight misty rain that fell on the trees. ‘At that time, the crowds on the streets had carried out a sit-in that lasted almost a month. One day, there was a conflict between the civilians and the military on West Beiping Street. A military vehicle was smashed up. Hei Chun took a brick and, in anger, threw it at the pile of scrap metal. Suddenly he saw a girl in a white dress digging out two bricks from the door frame of the public toilet and slamming them at another military vehicle. It was Shunyu. Hei Chun was very surprised. He thought her posture had perfect revolutionary style when she threw the bricks, and he was enchanted. He trotted over to her, grabbed her hand, and ran. Shunyu said, “What are you doing? Leave me alone. I’m not a party member. I quit the Plum Party.” Hei Chun said, “You better stay in the Plum Party. I want people to see how I do a Plum Party member.”’

Juli lowered her head, as if the story stimulated her and gave her the shivers. ‘That’s barbaric!’

‘Sometimes savagery is romantic. They ran into the nearest alley. Hei Chun pressed her against the wall, raised her skirt…that son of a bitch! You know, Shunyu loved him. Even if he tried to have her killed, she wouldn’t resist.’

Juli’s body retreated instinctively.

‘It’s all true. Nothing that happened was unusual at that time. That was Hei Chun’s revolution, and his romance. He said when the conflict ended he would marry Shunyu…’ A light fell on half of the living room as the rain stopped completely and the setting sun floated in. Mengliu squinted, paused for a moment, then said, ‘After Shunyu died, Hei Chun went missing, and the conflict ended.’

A person can close his eyes, but not his ears. The sound of flowers opening, night falling, birds singing, bones shattered by bullets, machine gun chatter, explosive missiles hitting glass, the pulsing moans and the fires punctuating the dark…these sounds were like a symphony that was both passionate and cruel as they blared in Mengliu’s mind.

Juli wiped water stains from the table with a towel. ‘You are still alive. It’s a pity you have run out of ideas.’

Mengliu didn’t speak. He felt blood on his tongue, and he tasted its salt. When he went out the door, the sun splashed over him. He heard Juli say, ‘the walking dead’, and his leg injury began to ache faintly. He walked alone, slowly, not knowing where he should go. Since moving out he had lost all sense of belonging. He still burned for Juli, but she didn’t display a trace of warmth. The ground was wet, the air cool. A curved rainbow hung over the hilltops in the mist. The golden forest stretched to the horizon. It was autumn, and there was a hint of a chill in the air. Mengliu sat under an acacia looking into the distance at a cluster of clouds on the mountains, watching the occasional fall of a yellow leaf. He looked at the wound on his leg. It had healed, now the pain was mostly in his mind. He was overcome with sadness, and had to breathe in deeply.

The appearance of Shanlai cheered him. He wore a dark-coloured lightweight jacket. It had been many days since they had met, and he had a new sense of maturity and calmness, as if he knew all the secrets. He met Mengliu with the warmth of an old friend. Mengliu had much he wanted to say, so when he saw Shanlai, it came pouring out of his mouth.

‘Shanlai, you once said the soul is a box. Where does this box go after we die?’

‘It turns into a star.’ Shanlai pointed to the sky. ‘When a meteor falls, a soul has disappeared.’

Mengliu looked at him. He turned into a fish, a mysterious black-and-white speckled furry fish. Its tail swung eerily, and its chocolate-coloured eyes flashed slyly, seeming to taunt the human inability to understand a fish’s world. Mengliu rose from his sadness, as if he’d suddenly remembered he had a meeting to attend. He was willing to go on sitting here, perhaps sitting forever. But he thought, You little shit. I’m treating you as a good friend, but you don’t understand the complexity of the world…

‘Head of a Thousand Households, the world is indeed complex, and always surprising.’ Shanlai seemed to read his mind. ‘They asked me to look for you and take you immediately to the hospital. I’ve heard that the machine data was mistaken, and that you and Rania are not the perfect couple…’

Upon hearing the machine had made an error, Mengliu was so happy he nearly laughed out loud.

The distant snow covered the mountain like a veil on a demure bride. The sky was so thin that a fingertip could poke through it. The moon floated out, transparent as a soap bubble, shiny as a coin. If one blew at it, a string of silvery whistles could be heard.

13

Mengliu had no interest at all in procreation. He considered his own life quite terrible, and always lived in confusion. To bring a child into this world would be irresponsible, even without considering the fact that the world was only getting worse, there was pandemonium and pollution everywhere. He had seen a lot and he was sick of it. He would rather be alone, free to come and go as he pleased, without care. It wouldn’t matter if he lived or died.

He was not anxious to go to the hospital, and dallied on the way there. He wondered what Rania being at the hospital had to do with him. She had Swan Valley, an omnipotent, meticulous and all-embracing government. It gave her the warmth of a husband, the dignity of a father, the omnipresence of God…

He seemed to see her lying on a white hospital bed, with a family of doctors and nurses for companionship, holding her hand, examining her body, stroking her forehead, their smiles calming and comforting her. So he was superfluous. His only value was that he had carried the genes and provided the sperm. He was special material. But someone like him would not be particularly favoured in Dayang for this reason. Dayang didn’t care for such things. They just wanted mediocrity, so long as you were servile enough, and stayed firmly fixed in your place until you were rusted on there. Even if you were versatile, useful, full of ideas, if you weren’t obedient you’d be ostracised until you were broken and then allowed to drift away.

From this point of view, living in Swan Valley was a blessing. Mengliu came to this conclusion for a moment, and the beauty around him deepened the conviction, as the clean air scrubbed the bitterness from his heart, and emptied his mind. His light, transparent body floated, as if the wind was carrying him on his way to the hospital.

The hospital was cool and quiet, shrouded by trees. A stream flowed under a wooden bridge, seaweed swaying and leaves floating on its surface like boats on a voyage. The courtyard was warm and orderly. In the garden patients in pink-striped garments were strolling, reading or telling stories to each other in controlled voices, and looking good. Mengliu walked through the garden and a hundred-metre-long hallway hung with paintings, past an art gallery, library and concert hall, and finally along a narrow path full of flowers. He arrived at the obstetrics ward. A scent like that of a lady’s bedroom surrounded him, and irritated his nose. He sneezed several times, as the sound of his footsteps disappeared into the sky-blue carpet.

He pushed open the door to the ward, and ran into a tall nurse who was just coming out. A pair of big black eyes gave him a fright. He had been engulfed by a dark sky with two lone stars twinkling in it. She looked like a giraffe, with her too-large eyes blinking as rhythmically as wipers on a windscreen, though in slow motion, which made her look lazy and arrogant, and somewhat knowledgeable. She knew who he was, and she forced him back a little as she closed the door before saying his name. Her speech was gentle and easy-going, and she said she had been hearing his name for a long time, and that she counted it as a privilege to meet him. She admired the fact that he was humble and unassuming, even though he carried good genes. And she adored poets. She rambled on, not allowing him to interrupt. Finally, in a whisper, she revealed a secret, some of the parties concerned had come to the scientific conclusion that she and he would provide a perfect combination of genes. As she spoke, she donned an expression of academic rigour, then turned to open the door, and made him sidle through the narrow opening into the ward.

Rania lay there, face paler than the wall, hair dishevelled. She looked as if she was being ripped apart. Her eyes remained closed. From the expression she wore it wasn’t obvious that she was enduring pain. She seemed calm and detached when the convulsions passed. Mengliu bent over and looked at her face, asked how she was, and what had happened. Rania opened her eyes no wider than a seam. They looked faint and scattered. She said nothing, but then her face suddenly tensed and her body doubled over. She did not make the slightest sound. He thought she looked like a giant shrimp, convulsing and then returning to stillness, and he almost laughed. Actually, he did laugh in his mind, but he stood still, waiting for her to finish convulsing, then asked again how she was. She didn’t try to open her eyes this time. It was as if she were dead.

At that moment, the tall nurse came in. She said that this sort of pain was normal after labour-inducing drugs had been injected, and that after a few more hours, after the foetus was out, things would be back to normal. Mengliu was shocked. ‘Induced labour? Who dares to tamper with this government-sanctioned child? This is illegal.’

The tall nurse took a document from the bedside table and handed it to Mengliu. It bore the red stamp of the Gene Department. The content of the file was quite lengthy, but the gist of it was that the data produced by the upgraded version of the machine showed that any offspring produced by a combination of Mengliu and Rania’s genes would create a child with an IQ of less than eighty, which did not meet Swan Valley procreation requirements and was contrary to genomic principles. To ensure a quality population, the pregnancy had to be terminated immediately.

Rania convulsed a few more times.

‘I am Head Nurse Yuyue. If you need anything, just press this.’ The tall girl pointed to a red button on the side of the chest of drawers. Her figure was slim but curvaceous, and checking her out required Mengliu to climb up and down some mountains. She looked quite naive, her bob-cut hair was black and smooth, as if covered in water drops. She took the file with her, and seemed to smile back at him as she left.

Mengliu gazed at the woman on the bed waiting for her contractions. The head nurse’s attitude showed that Rania’s ‘normal labour pains’ were hardly worth mentioning, and that pity would be wasted on her. If it meant bidding farewell to an unpleasant identity, then Rania’s pain was a positive thing. Mengliu thought of what he had read in the file. The clear implication was that he and Rania would soon be released from the bonds of marriage. Like someone who had been tied up for a long time and then released, his body was still numb, and he was not quite sure what to do with himself. He poked through the books on the shelf, picked up the one that seemed most interesting, and then sat down on the sofa beside the bed and flipped through it. He felt warm and comfortable, his blood resumed its smooth life-giving flow, and he became absorbed in the book. Occasionally he looked at Rania as she maintained the fixed rhythm of expression and convulsion, and noted nothing especially out of the ordinary.

In the dark room Rania’s face looked paler under the lights. She couldn’t eat anything. Even drinking water was a struggle. At seven or eight o’clock, Nurse Yuyue, lips shiny, returned to check on her, apparently satiated with dinner and complacent, as if she was doing everything on autopilot.

‘If you don’t eat, how will you have strength to carry on? You’ve got to force something down,’ she said to Mengliu in a professional, authoritative manner. She paused for a moment, then putting on a pair of rubber gloves, she told Rania to lie flat and began poking around inside her body with her fingertips. She wrinkled her brow and grumbled, ‘What’s this? You’re still not dilated.’ She took off the gloves and threw them into the rubbish bin, then went to consult the chief physician.

Before long, some people came in, led by an elderly man with fluffy white hair. It seemed he had been drinking excessively, for his face was flushed. Without a word he put on a pair of gloves and began his investigation. His face grew tense. A young intern clumsily repeated the same procedure. No more than five minutes after they had come in, they all left the ward. Rania was like a pile of refuse discarded there. Her convulsions continued. Sometimes she opened her mouth like a fish, but she didn’t cry out.

Yuyue told Mengliu that in order to maintain a peaceful cosy atmosphere in the hospital, they often needed to inject patients with sedatives. Howling was detrimental to human dignity, and the hospital would be turned into a place of terror. She wrote something on Rania’s chart, slotting it back into the clipboard when she was finished and returning her pen to her breast pocket. She said there were complications with Rania’s situation, but that he should rest assured she would be fine by the next morning. Yuyue sat down on a rotating stool and turned a full circle. Then she spread her legs and planted them firmly on the ground. Evidently she wanted to have a heart-to-heart chat with Mengliu. She took a small book out of a pocket in the side of her uniform. In it were the poems she had written over the past couple of years, more than a hundred of them. She had never let anyone see them before, but because he was a poet, she wanted him to be her first reader. She didn’t use words such as ‘ask’ or ‘edit’, assuming the pleasure would be all his.

He opened to the title page and saw a photo of her there. She was pure as jade, only eighteen years old. She wore faded jeans and a tank top. She was like a giraffe. He handed back the little book and said that he didn’t understand poetry, nor was he interested in it. He stood up and looked at Rania, and asked if there was any way to alleviate her pain more quickly. Yuyue put the poetry book back into her pocket, and explained that when it was really time to give birth to the child, the cervix would dilate to the width of five fingers. Her current pain was nothing, he shouldn’t worry, the foetus would certainly come out the next morning.

Mengliu said, ‘You mean she will has to suffer like this the whole night?’

Rania replied, ‘Everything is normal. You can go home and sleep. The nurses will take good care of her.’

Rania reached out for Mengliu, as if she was on her deathbed. Understanding her meaning, he nodded to indicate that he would stay, but he didn’t take her pale hand.

Rania’s continuing contractions grew dull and monotonous throughout the night. The hospital was lonely and silent, and there was a romantic orange light glowing outside the window. Mengliu read, but he felt drowsy and could not help dozing off. When he did finally sleep, he slept like a dead man, not even waking when Nurse Yuyue came in to check on the patient in the morning. Rania’s contractions continued. Her forehead was sweating and her mouth was open, as if she were dying.

When she came in again, Yuyue donned her gloves and checked Rania. This time, she looked puzzled. Rania’s cervix was still not dilated. She checked the time, and said the patient needed to eat something. Mengliu immediately got up and went to the hospital cafeteria to get breakfast. Breakfast was served buffet style, and there was a huge variety of options available — bread, cheese, smoked fish, porridge, steamed buns, dumplings, noodles, fruit, milk, coffee…A card on the buffet table read, Please do not waste food.

Mengliu ate hurriedly, then carried some steamed buns and porridge back to the ward. The white-haired old man led a team of doctors around Rania’s bed. Their expressions and gestures were the same as the previous day. Before they left, the white-haired man said, ‘We’ll observe her for another three hours. If there is no change, we will have to crush the foetus and then do a D&C.’

Mengliu helped Rania up and tried to give her some food. She was only able to take a couple of bites between the bouts of pain. Even chewing was difficult. When Mengliu had been through a similar situation with Qizi long ago, she would playfully bite the spoon and chopsticks, giggling. Lost in thought, he asked Rania if she was in great pain. She closed her eyes, waiting for the contraction to pass, then nodded slowly. Feeling she needed all her strength to wrestle with the pain, he didn’t speak again, but fell instead into the steady rhythm of feeding her. After half an hour, she had only finished half a bowl of porridge and half a bun. She could not eat any more, and needed to lie down in order to deal with the attacks of pain. But before long she started to vomit and her stomach was emptied of its contents. Her body drooped over the edge of the bed, like a wilted vegetable robbed of all its moisture. Mengliu lay her back on the bed, covered her with the quilt, and wiped the sweat and tears from her face. She experienced another violent contraction, then calm was restored. She was very tired, and slept finally. He looked at her childlike face, recalling her unruly manner of speech, her sharp arrogant words, her bike speeding away, her unbridled state as she strutted around…and now she was just a helpless infant, manipulated by others. She had never been master of her own body. He sighed. Her face was drained of its colour. He felt time was frozen in her face. Gradually a creamy layer formed on her lips, and turned to a dry crust. He realised that she needed water. He took a glass and went out to find it. There was a dispenser at the end of the corridor. There was mineral water, fruit juice and instant hot tea. He took a cup of mineral water.

When he returned, he found Rania sleeping soundly and could not bear to wake her, so he stood holding the cup of water as he looked down at her. At this moment, he inexplicably felt a sense of responsibility toward her. No matter what, she was a fragile little girl with a high IQ and a good heart, and had done her duty towards him. He, on the other hand, was cold and often cynical, bickering with her for any reason — or even without reason. He never trusted her, and always thought of her simply as an agent of Swan Valley who was trying to get him to write poetry. When she endured suffering he was insensitive, and didn’t offer any comfort. Thinking of this, he felt some remorse. He sat down on her bed and clutched her hand. It was very cold, like the hand of a patient who had died on the operating table. An ominous feeling came over him, and he pressed her hand harder. She did not respond. At the same time he felt that he was sitting on something sticky. He stood up and discovered blood. Pulling the blanket back, he saw that the lower part of Rania’s body was lying in a pool of blood.

She was dead. He was almost pushed out of the door by this realisation. His chest felt cold, as if his own heart had stopped beating. He stared at Rania as if he had murdered her.

14

Grief is like a perennial frost in the heart, but no amount of grieving could cause an avalanche in Mengliu. He still maintained a doctor’s cold rationality, and his regret and self-condemnation remained buried under the ice, though to alleviate his conscience he continued to blame Rania’s death on the government. The media and the public all thought it was an accident, and there were even some reporters who wrote euphemistically about the couple’s dereliction of duty, saying that they had been immersed in reading erotic Japanese novels at the time of her death, highlighting the apathy between them. This united front of gossip made Mengliu anxious. They had concluded, ridiculously, that it was the marriage, not medical malpractice, that was the cause. The more gossipy magazines began to exaggerate even more, expounding on men and their family responsibilities, and then the moral arrows really started to fly at Yuan Mengliu. For a time, he was a very hot topic.

Swan Valley gave Rania one final glorious moment. Her funeral was carried out to the highest specifications in the most prestigious church. She was laid out among fresh white flowers, her cheeks rouged, her body covered with the Swan Valley flag. A high-ranking government official delivered the eulogy, during which his voice choked several times. People wept silently with a controlled sadness, passing by her coffin to place flowers and say their farewells in an orderly fashion. Then they went out of the church and on with their lives. After a couple of weeks had passed, people mentioned Rania from time to time, saying what a pity it was to have lost such superior genes, and such a talent from Swan Valley, but no one bothered to trace the loss back to its source. When he thought of Rania’s corpse amongst the fresh flowers, there was a dull pain in Mengliu’s mind. Guilt and anger wrapped themselves around his heart. He resigned from his post as Head of a Thousand Households. He wanted to move back in with Juli.

He imagined that he would be released from his old shackles and allowed to put on new ones, but everything was different now from what it had been before. Rania’s death gave him a fresh start. He was polite to people, but behind it there was a quiet kind of alienation. He thought that if he lived with Juli again it wouldn’t be like the last time. Back then fantasies of temptation flew about the house like butterflies, and the atmosphere was one of quiet joy for both of them. His mind then had been like a notched arrow, waiting to fly at the first sight of a suitable girl. But now it was as if he and Juli were coming together again after decades of separation.

They often didn’t have much to say to each other as they went about their business. Even Shanlai didn’t disrupt this scenario, as he came in the door without a sound, sometimes carrying a few books, sometimes turning out his pocketfuls of wild berries and leaving them on the table. They no longer discussed the soul or art. The two of them gave off an air of religious detachment. Esteban came to visit on his own initiative, occasionally looking in on Mengliu as he passed by. When he visited, he was often with Darae or another young person, and they always talked about Rania with regret. Her memorial inscription was an elegiac couplet that Esteban had written, wrought with distress and pain. They did not criticise Mengliu. He tried to avoid them at such times, sometimes going out to check on Rania’s grave to see if the grass had grown on it, sometimes to visit the mountains. Once he looked for the waste disposal site, but he did not find it. He could never quite figure out the state of the roads, and could find no trace of the places in his memory, like the place where the robot had spoken to him or the slopes covered with wild lilies. The weather was as temperamental as a menopausal woman. When it was about to rain the sky would be unusually bright, and sometimes covered with a layer of haze.

On this day, a heavy rainstorm had just passed and the company was again talking of Rania’s death, about what might have been if she were still alive. Mengliu walked quietly away, not wanting to recall the sight of her dying right there before his eyes. The air was fresh and damp in the mountains, the valleys quiet and the narrow path he walked on empty. A scattering of black fungus grew on the side of the path. The leaves on the trees appeared disordered by the storm. Dark thin clouds floated high above, and the vegetation on the hillside changed at intervals, sometimes grass, sometimes bamboo, and whole patches of azalea bushes. There was not a breath of wind. Mengliu’s shoes were soon soaked and the sweat was flowing off him. He didn’t know where he was going. Everything around him seemed desolate. The wind ripped into the warmth of his body. His lips started to quiver violently, and his teeth were knocking together. He wrapped his arms around himself and began to run in this awkward posture. Sweat ran down his face, and his feet exploded the puddles and snapped the twigs beneath them. He was running through the Wisdom Bureau’s sporting grounds. The cries of the girls were ear-splitting as they cheered Hei Chun on. He wore a blue and white sweatshirt, and looked supple as a stallion. He galloped along, stirring up waves and clouds of sand, leaving Mengliu in his wake. He always lost to Hei Chun. This was an indisputable fact. He just didn’t possess Hei Chun’s desperate passion. They had fought once for the sake of a poem, and he had suffered a hard blow from his friend. Hei Chun told him why he had hit him — he believed that fists could make fools a little cleverer, at least for a while. Mengliu had never questioned his own intelligence. His proof lay in the fact that he had been admitted to the nation’s top schools and finally to the Wisdom Bureau itself because he was a champion of the arts. Hei Chun said it was just a silly exam that propelled a stupid fellow like Mengliu to a high position, but he couldn’t change his fate and become just a useless mediocrity. For some time afterwards Mengliu drank alone in crowded bars, not talking and not thinking, just listening to the complicated strains of jazz that wove through the contorting bodies that surrounded him, like the sound of a stream flowing past. He sat there, indifferent. Then the sun would come up and the people dispersed. They had their work, their health, and their sobriety. Their eyes were bright, and they lived contented lives, while his heart was cramped with a sense of loss. Sometimes he thought Hei Chun might be right. A high IQ was nothing in some circumstances, and could lead one to live an impotent life.

But obviously Hei Chun was mistaken, and Swan Valley was proof of that. Not long ago, he had risen to the position of Head of a Thousand Households. Those who prepared the spiritual briefing materials wrote them in a more interesting way than he was used to. They knew he was a poet and were happy to rack their brains and modify their style to try to find an interesting way to express themselves. In the meetings they read the reports as if they were reading poetry, intentionally breaking long sentences into manageable lines, carefully pausing at the right spots and for the right length of time. They put a lot of effort into getting the emphasis right, and they were studious in displaying rich emotions. Some used body language or exaggerated expressions, raising the government work conference to an unprecedented level of literary and poetic showmanship. People loved this format, and some started writing poems themselves, furtively showing them to Mengliu and asking him to ‘feel free’ in his criticisms. He quickly drew every kind of poetry fanatic to himself, and the meetings were transformed into poetry readings. Darae was especially affected. Both his temperament and his talent were like a replica of Bai Qiu’s.

Mengliu recalled an unpleasant confrontation with Darae. Like Bai Qiu, Darae believed that revolutionaries were the greatest poets. Mengliu said that revolution was not something to toy with. From ancient times until the present, many people had gone crazy for revolution, but even after their sacrifice, nothing had changed. ‘You’d be better off going for a Nobel Prize for Literature like Rabindranath Tagore, Neruda, Miłosz…’

Darae smiled quietly. ‘You’re right. When the fascists undertook a war of aggression, Tagore was outraged, ready to sound the battle cry for the fight against the beast in human skin. When the Spanish War broke out against the fascist dictator, it was the outcast Neruda who said, “I must take to the streets, shouting until the last moment.” And as for Miłosz, when the Second World War broke out, he chose not to flee but stayed to take part in the resistance movement.’

Rania had interrupted at this point, saying that a poet could not just sit as a silent observer of life.

Mengliu felt a little ashamed. He thought they were setting an ambush for him. Then Darae said, ‘Some poets are trees, rooted in their own land. Others are birds, flying all over the earth. I wish I could be a bird, living everywhere in exile.’ Against his own conscience, Mengliu said his comments reflected the thinking of a naive student, an expansive fantasy, pure and ignorant idealism. Not being able to return to one’s home was not romantic. Nobody wanted to taste that sort of bitterness.

Streaks of fog were creeping over the hilltop, like the bent backs of a stealthily invading enemy, slowly passing over the weeds and through the dead trees. Mengliu made his way down from Rania’s grave, his face wet and his hair knotted in mist. Thinking of taking a shortcut, he made his way east. He was sure there was a way out there. He was now more determined than ever to leave Swan Valley. He became more and more convinced of its urgency, and grew desperate, scratching and scrambling where there was no way through, rolling and crawling, and when the path was clear, hurrying to push ahead. He did not believe in the secret passage Rania has spoken of, but he needed to find the way by which he had come in. He saw a grey wall in the distance and the glow of the meandering river, with white flowering branches from the bushes dangling over it. The familiar scenery encouraged him. But he couldn’t get any closer to the wall and seemed further from it the more he circled the place. Eventually, he couldn’t see the other elements either, as if they had all been a hallucination. He continued walking through the woods, but he had lost his way.

Just as he was about to look for a place to rest, he heard a strange sound echoing through the forest. Suspecting it was a wild beast, he hid amongst the trees. The continued rustling sound brought three dark figures into Mengliu’s view. One was in front and two behind, as if they were transporting a prisoner. The person in front looked like a nun, wrapped in a black gown that brushed the ground and was caked in mud.

She limped, and her head was wrapped so that he couldn’t see her face. The two people behind followed closely, and seemed anxious and mistrustful. Mengliu thought that the one in black robes had caught a glimpse of him. He retreated, and glued himself to the trunk of a tree. He dared not move or breathe. He heard them stop and talk.

‘Little brothers, I am telling you the truth. Please believe me. I can’t go back. That is not a retirement home. It is hell!’ a quivering voice groaned.

‘Please compose yourself. Don’t talk such nonsense or I’m afraid we’ll have to send you to a mental hospital. You’re old now. Why don’t you want to enjoy the blessing you’ve been given? Why should you degrade yourself like this?’

‘I had to escape…listen to me. This is a place where they burn you alive…See the white smoke from that huge chimney? Beneath it is a crematorium. They stick living people under anaesthesia in there…Oh god, I’m hurt. My leg is broken. Let me go to a hospital. Please, I’m begging you.’ It was the same shaky voice.

‘Looks to me like you asked for it. Our job is to take you back to the nursing home. The hospital there is better for you than conditions on the outside. Everyone out here is terribly envious. I’ve never seen anyone willing to leave the nursing home…It’s too bad we have to wait twenty years before we’ll be eligible to enjoy it.’

‘To go in…to go there is to die, little brother. It’s a big scam…they take sick and elderly people and throw them into the furnace alive.’

‘God, all you old people ever do is complain. It would be better for you to cooperate. Let’s get moving.’

‘Let me relieve myself…I’ll go to the side of that tree there.’

‘All right. Let him go. He’s limping. He can’t run.’

There was the sound of dead wood breaking underfoot and the person who wanted to relieve himself walked close to where Mengliu was, then back after a moment, taking up his long-winded pleas with the pair once again. When he was rudely interrupted by the younger men, he finally closed his mouth. They quickly left the scene.

Staring at the quiet path shut in by the forest, Mengliu thought what he witnessed must have been an illusion, but a white envelope under the tree where they had stopped was proof that someone had come this way and had deliberately left a clue. He picked up the envelope and saw it was just a neatly folded piece of paper. When he opened it and started reading, his expression changed completely.

15

With great difficulty, Mengliu made his way out of the woods. The sun fell as lightly as silk at his feet. He had long ago begun to feel weak in his legs and knees. Resting on a bench, he saw the young nurse Yuyue. Though she wore no makeup, her lips were rosy, and her bobbed hair was shiny and smooth. Her black overcoat was unbuttoned. She wore a pink turtleneck sweater inside, her curves obvious, with a black A-line skirt and boots, topped off by the natural black of her eyes. She looked very fashionable. Mengliu’s heart was swayed. If it were not for the critical matter at hand, he would find a way to be with Nurse Yuyue at least once, he was sure of that. The night he had gone to her office and found her on duty, she had hinted that he could manipulate her. She dared to defy the world’s opinions for the sake of love. This girl’s temperament was very different from Juli’s. She was always ready to get cosy with a man, as if sex were her only joy in life. Mengliu had known women like this, but they couldn’t compare with Yuyue. She was not the sort who would burn out too quickly. She possessed a kind of faith that was beyond doubt, and would act like a closed clam, but when her heart was touched…Mengliu’s mind became clouded, and he momentarily forgot the mission that was driving him.

Yuyue had come especially to bring a message from the hospital. Michael, the director, wanted to talk with him. She had her hands in her coat pockets, and was standing before him in a relaxed pose with a compelling look on her face. He hesitated, then stood up and followed her. She walked quickly, but this did not affect the pace of her speech. She said the hospital had had several patients die with similar symptoms, and they suspected it might be the outbreak of an infectious disease. He said a surgeon wouldn’t be any help against an infectious disease. She retorted that he should never underestimate the power of the human spirit. A poet could have a positive impact on a patient’s mood. Sometimes poetry was medicine. ‘Do you need a doctor or a poet?’ Mengliu asked.

Yuyue answered, ‘There’s no real difference between the two.’

He laughed. ‘If a poet was to wield a scalpel and a doctor treat sickness with a sonnet, then the world would really be perfect. Money may be no problem in treating the sick in Swan Valley, but in some places, the poor can’t even get through the door of a hospital. They ignore their minor illnesses, and cannot afford to treat their major illnesses, so many people lie on their beds and just wait to die. In any case, I’m no longer a doctor, and I’m certainly no poet. I am just a foreigner who got lost.’ He went on to ask Yuyue to get him out of this maze he was in and point the way home.

No ripples appeared on the two deep cold pools of Yuyue’s eyes. She was a perfect inflatable doll. There was no response to his words. Her eyes narrowed, like curtains falling over a window. The wind fluttered the curtains as she mused. She said that they had just received a lame patient who was dressed in black. He had a high fever that would not subside and was uttering nonsense, saying that the nursing home was a slaughterhouse. It sounded horrible, and they had to give him a sedative to shut him up. She thought for a moment, then noticing that Mengliu seemed distracted, continued cautiously, ‘Hey, it’s not the plague, is it? You know how the medieval plague was carried by the fleas on rats, and the rats carried the fleas across the English Channel and spread them all over England, and there were countless deaths in rural areas? The city garbage and sewage were handled by ignorant sanitation workers who didn’t understand what was happening, and so the illness was passed along even faster. Doctors exhausted all of their options — bloodletting, smoking, burning of the lymph nodes — but still people died. Some Christians thought the plague was the result of human depravity, and a form of divine punishment. They paraded through the towns and cities of Europe, using whips lined with metal barbs to scourge confessions out of one another. In Germany Jews were treated as plague-spreaders and were burned alive. A lot of Jews were massacred. But there also awakened in their minds the possibility that it was being spread by animals, so they killed their livestock too…’

As soon as Yuyue started speaking she became long-winded, but it was not just useless rambling. She was intelligent, well-read and well-mannered. Sometimes she came up with a smile that seemed to indicate she didn’t care how many people had died. She was calm. She spoke as if the rhythm of her speech was guided by punctuation. Commas would make her pause, but it was a half-beat shorter than the pause for a full stop. When she met an ellipsis, she would look at the distant landscape attentively before going on.

When she came to the next ellipsis, Mengliu suddenly quickened his steps, and walked in front of her.

‘Miss Yuyue, lives are at stake. We must go to the hospital as soon as possible.’

Soft chuckling came from behind him, as if leaves were rustling down. ‘Didn’t you say you were neither a doctor nor a poet? What can you do if you go there?’

He turned back, stunned. He saw that she had draped her coat over her arm. As she stood there in her charming pink sweater, her face suddenly looked as if it was covered in rouge. Her dark eyes were watery above a graceful smile, dark as night, with a solitary star shining in each one.

‘Are you joking?’ He felt that this was a game of cat and mouse, and he was annoyed. ‘How can you joke about a thing like that?’

‘Of course it’s true.’ Her face perked up, restoring the look of the inflatable doll. ‘I was just wondering what you would do?’

‘There is nothing I can do.’ He suddenly felt his tone had been too harsh, and was sorry.

‘Michael, our director, must have been indoctrinated, to put so much hope in a washed-up poet.’

‘I will say it again. I am really not a poet. Definitely not a great poet.’

The hospital loomed before them, its door framed by a pair of trees, all their leaves fallen. A blackbird flew out from its nest in the branches of one, and sounded strange.

Michael’s office was at the end of a corridor. Mengliu walked in to see his fluffy white head bent over the desk, and a magnifying glass sweeping back and forth over a book, as if he was making a careful examination of an antique. The bent head raised itself, revealing the flushed face of one who had had too much to drink. Mengliu had seen him before, but had not known he was the head of the hospital. In the Dayang National Hospital the director rarely went to the wards, being too busy with meetings, overseas study tours, dining with his wife, sleeping with his mistress…and, most importantly, maintaining a decent, dignified image. This old man seemed to have long ago passed the age for entering the nursing home, but in reality he had just turned fifty. The Swanese were all like this. They didn’t exactly age prematurely, but they were a special breed.

Three of the walls in the office were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the books there stood in neat rows.

‘Have a seat. You’re a poet. Have a look at this. How do you explain it?’ The old man handed him a bunch of records. His accent was from the west of England.

Letting a poet look at medical records is to treat him like God! was what Mengliu thought, but he simply said, his manner not lacking sincerity, ‘I was just a surgeon at a small hospital. I’ve not studied infectious diseases. I don’t dare to offer a professional opinion.’

‘Don’t be so humble. Michael has never been wrong in his judgement of people.’ Yuyue leaned her rump against the desk, propping her feet on the floor, making herself seem extraordinarily slender.

Mengliu guessed her relationship with Michael wasn’t strictly professional.

‘Dr Yuan, modesty is not a virtue. It will only affect your ability to judge.’

The medical records all displayed similar symptoms — cough, fever, chills, black blood, and some had blisters on their bodies.

‘It looks like a new infectious disease. If we can locate its point of origin, it will be easier to deal with.’ Mengliu wished to be done with the matter. He felt it was a smokescreen, and that the really important information was to be found in the nursing home. ‘You have to find the source and learn how to control it, and then at the appropriate time inform the people about the epidemic, then you can begin to limit the spread of the disease by disseminating information on prevention, and following up with frequent reminders.’

‘Several of the newly admitted patients have identical symptoms. Besides the fever and cough, they experience vomiting and diarrhoea and other symptoms similar to food poisoning.’ Yuyue now sat on a wicker chair, with her arms draped over the armrests. With her knees pressed together, she angled her legs in a glamorous pose. ‘The patients are unconscious or confused, unable to say anything coherent.’ She finished and smiled. She was a queen.

‘Hundreds of years ago, a village tailor in England received a piece of foreign cloth. Four days later he died. By the end of the month, six were dead. A swathe of fabric brought the plague into the village, and eventually led to the death of all the people there. So we should consider whether this situation might play out in a similar fashion.’ The old man picked up his magnifying glass and slowly swept it over his book again. His manner was unhurried. ‘The seriousness of the situation should not be underestimated. Dr Yuan, I’m putting you in charge of this matter. Your room has been prepared. Yuyue will send you the relevant information shortly. You probably don’t know, but the status of a poet in Swan Valley is on par with that of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.’ He raised his head and, with an effort, looked at Mengliu. ‘If you tell the patients you are a great poet, they will conceal nothing from you. That is the main reason I wanted you to be involved.’

Mengliu felt his hands and feet grow cold, as if he was in the grip of a nightmare.

‘I feel it is necessary that we perform a test, so that we can eliminate inferior individuals. This would be consistent with how the natural world works.’ Yuyue straightened her legs and stood up from the wicker chair, as if she were going to see a guest off on Michael’s behalf.

The director’s flattery and Yuyue’s sudden fierce opinion left Mengliu dumbstruck. He stood there in embarrassment and, with great difficulty, spoke his mind. He asked to see the patient who had been admitted that day, the one dressed in black. ‘While the patient is awake and can speak, perhaps we can get important information from him.’

But the answer he received was that the patient had died suddenly and had already been cremated.

16

The smell of pinewood and pale green smoke was scattered throughout the city. In the depth of winter, all of the fireplaces were astir. Regardless of whether it was freezing rain or snow falling outside, the ward was warm and dry. The soft mattresses imparted a saffron and orange scent to the air. It was as if the patients were living in their own homes. The books on the shelves were changed at regular intervals, the patients could also go to the hospital’s library to read or to borrow a book themselves. There were different patterns on the curtains for the patients to choose from, each room had its own private bathroom, fitted with a white porcelain toilet and basin, a half-length wall mirror, and anti-slip floor tiles colour-coordinated to match the wall tiles. A small closet held earthenware art, and sandalwood or lavender incense was lit on a stone shelf, eliminating all unwanted odours. Here a patient’s stay was undoubtedly a pleasure. Wealthy Swan Valley might have some aspects of life which were not quite satisfying, but no one would mind too much. They all had it rather easy. There was no pressure, and no worries about money. Everyone tried to outdo the other in artistic, spiritual, or moral excellence.

The windows of the ward offered a variety of views. The yellow rays of the sun shone obliquely from the sky and entered the forest, where a thin fog shimmered like the heat produced by the sun. In fact the sun had cooled long ago, and was left there without warmth. An unfamilar bird hopped amongst the dead wood and dry leaves, uttering a shrill sad horrible cry, caw caw caw, as if it wanted to rip the human heart to shreds. When the bird call ceased, the world outside the window seemed to fall into a decayed submarine state, with the living creatures swimming about in it in a slow and orderly fashion. The wildflowers that opened there held a trace of loneliness. Mengliu thought of the girl Yuyue. She and the wildflower alike could blossom or wither and it wouldn’t matter. It only mattered that they were lovely now. Every morning and evening she washed her face with fruit juice. She was a vegetarian and did not touch fried or spicy foods. She read the Bible, and was like a lotus springing up out of clear water, exuding a fruity fragrance.

She was waiting to record the patients’ histories, but she had discovered nothing. Some of the patients talked nonsense, and looked at the doctor with disdain. She repeatedly hinted that he should reveal to them that he was a poet, and he brooded over this for a long time, but he never had the courage to say ‘I am a poet,’ or anything like it. Asking an accomplished doctor to proclaim himself a poet in front of his patients seemed to Mengliu humiliating and awkward. When he was young he had already become aware of the fact that people no longer respected poets. They suffered a worse fate than the common people. They were even regarded as rogue elements, who were fanning the anti-revolutionary flames. They were good-for-nothings, and that’s why many remade themselves as businessmen. Now they were bosses, entrepreneurs and merchants, burying their poetry beneath their pillows, not bringing it even a half-step out of the bedroom. They were duplicitous all day long, expressing scorn for poetry when they were out drinking with friends, except perhaps for a line of coarse doggerel. All art was just a sick pretence. They gradually fell in love with this life, business was the main disguise they wore. They maintained an ambiguous attitude — and a discreet distance from the affairs of the nation, holding on tight to their women and children, while they watched the stock market as if their lives depended on it and engaged in a little antique collecting, or calligraphy, or landscape painting. They never bothered to open a book, unless it was the passbook to their bank accounts.

Mengliu took off his stethoscope and mask and walked out of the ward, feeling that his cooperation could come to an end now. Infectious disease was like poetic inspiration — he had no wish to catch either. He would have to tell those superstitious people that poetry was rubbish, not even as useful as a rag. He was angry, and as he took off his white lab coat, his tight black sweater looked like it was about to burst. Yuyue chased him outside, her feet were moving quickly. She was like a hovering fairy, with a calm expression and not a strand of hair out of place in her bob. He thought she was going to stop him, but she smiled sweetly, showing her teeth, as if she appreciated his actions. He was surprised she was on his side, and a little flattered. If he had met a girl like this earlier he would be thinking happily now about how to get into her pants, but he just said sternly, ‘You confuse me, Yuyue. You’re on the wrong side.’

He abandoned her to go his own way. These days a stay in the hospital had the flavour of house arrest. But Yuyue stuck to him. He needed to get rid of her as soon as possible, to find Juli. She was the only one he could trust.

‘I don’t want to call you Mr Yuan anymore, it’s so formal.’ She followed him down the corridor. ‘Are you going to see Michael? He’s not in today. Don’t worry. I will speak to him on your behalf.’

Mengliu pondered her words as he walked. She was unpredictable. Why should she help him?

Her attitude kept him guessing. Later, when they had returned to the entrance to the hospital, a flock of birds had gathered in the trees. Yuyue reached out to bid him farewell. Mengliu took the pale soft hand, and her fingertips seemed to scratch his palm. He saw her smile, her eyes dark pools as if saying, ‘You really can trust me.’

His hand seemed stuck to hers. He wasn’t able to detach it for a moment. He wondered if he told her what he had seen in the woods, revealing the contents of the letter, what her scream would sound like. Of course his motive wasn’t to frighten her. In the end he suppressed the desire and didn’t say anything. Yuyue’s hand was like the kitten he had raised in his younger days. When she withdrew it, he felt a sense of nostalgia. It was at such moments of loneliness that one was most likely to commit an error. So he looked back at her. She stood motionless, hands in the pockets of her white coat, like a newly built snowman. It was the first time he had smiled at her. He had not smiled in such a long time he felt his muscles had grown stiff.

‘Maybe we can go some place interesting.’ Yuyue stepped forward again, hands still in her pockets. ‘There are some rare creatures to see. I am sure you will like it.’

He didn’t immediately reject her. Since the person in black had died, things could slow down a little. If that letter really was just mental trickery, and he took it seriously and went to the authorities, he would be a laughing stock. He did not want to lose face in front of Juli. When he thought of Juli’s description of the nursing home and the look of longing on her face, his heart dropped. So he stayed where he was and waited for Yuyue to change her clothes in the office. A sort of excitement like elopement brewed in him. Not long ago the two of them had been relatively cold towards each other, and now they were planning a sightseeing trip together. Although it was difficult to adapt to all the changes, he found it fairly easy to fall into step with his emotions. He didn’t know what sort of battle awaited him. How would things progress with Yuyue? Was she one of those who liked revolution? His thoughts now turned towards such questions with the same liveliness as his sperm. When he saw Yuyue in her casual clothing, like a bluebird in flight, he almost thought they had been in love for a long time.

They each took a bicycle from the hospital garage. Their wheels turned in unison, the silver rims ran over the hard grey road. A brightness swept over the snowy mountain slopes. The sun and the moon were both overhead. The clouds looked like a sandy desert swept clean by the wind. The air was very pure.

‘Yuyue, how old are you actually?’ Mengliu asked, slowing down as they reached a flat stretch of road. He knew nothing about her.

‘Me? I turned twenty-one today,’ she said.

‘Go —’ Mengliu braked suddenly. He had not thought she was already twenty-one. ‘Oh. Your birthday.’

Yuyue stopped her bike and said, ‘Twenty-one years ago today, my mother was successfully impregnated via artificial insemination. The moment the sperm and egg met is considered my birthday. The day of my birth was my mother’s Day of Suffering, and was also Mother’s Day. We have a special celebration. It’s a custom in Swan Valley.’

‘That’s very humane,’ he said. ‘But where are your mother and father now?’

‘My father passed away, and my mother is in the nursing home.’ Yuyue sat herself happily on the saddle again, her pale blue jacket and white skin blended with the sky. Perhaps the sky was too bright. There seemed to be a halo around her.

Her mention of the nursing home coincided perfectly with what was on his mind. He caught up with her and said casually, ‘Why don’t we go to the nursing home now to visit your mother?’

‘Staying there she is like an immortal, with nothing to worry about.’ Yuyue laughed easily. ‘Hey, it’s as if you believed that patient you saw. Poets love to imagine things, but life goes on as usual. It’s very rare that anything extraordinary happens.’

‘You’ve never been to see her?’

‘No.’ Yuyue shook her head, and her hair flapped against her face. ‘She writes to tell me how things are going for her. She’s happy. Last year she even entered her “second spring” there, and fell in love like a teenager.’

‘Why haven’t you thought of going in to have a look?’ Mengliu knew the Swanese were independent from the time they were small, and never relied on their relatives much. They were not sentimental, but surely they must have some curiosity about this mysterious place.

‘I’m not interested in a place where a bunch of old people live. And in order to get into the nursing home, you need a special pass that requires you to go through a physical exam, get approval stamps, and then there’s a long waiting period. Who wants to go to such trouble?’

‘When did she go in?’

‘A few years ago.’

They began pedalling uphill, with the last few metres becoming so strained that it seemed impossible to move forward. After ten minutes of pushing, they reached a downhill slope a few hundred metres long. They slipped between endless rows of birches, their golden leaves rustling all around them. There was no path through the trees, but there were plenty of ways around them on every side, though they had to deal with their bikes getting stuck, and avoid falling. Their previous conversation had been interrupted. Naturally, in such bright sunlight, amongst the trees and bushes, in the forest air, with a beautiful girl by his side, Mengliu forgot his interest in the nursing home. He kept the talk with Yuyue light, as he tried to avoid the stones and other obstacles in their path.

Playing cards, drinking and travelling are all quick ways to excite the feelings, especially travelling. By the time they reached the dilapidated old house they were as unrestrained as two old friends. The old wooden building had a Gothic spire reaching to the sky and blurred stained-glass windows. Its windows and doors were shut tight, and leaves covered the steps. A railway track buried in weeds ran past the door and disappeared into the depths of the forest. This place must have been a small train station in the past. From time to time a lone traveller must have got off the train, or on the train, coming home or leaving it. Mengliu thought of the noisy stations in Beiping, always crowded and with young people from everywhere hopping off the trains to head straight to Round Square, some wounded, some humiliated, some dying in their dreams.

‘Let’s rest here a while.’ Yuyue brushed the fallen leaves aside, exposing the wooden steps. When she sat down, her movements were a little jerky, as she rested her elbows on her knees and intertwined her fingers. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘someone is reading.’

The sound came from inside the house. It was speaking Mandarin with an accent. Judging from the person’s rhythm, Mengliu thought he must be reading a Chinese rhapsody. At the same time, he recognised the voice. It was Shanlai.

Surprised, he opened the door and went in. His eyes were momentarily unable to adapt to the dimness of the room, but a skylight allowed some natural light in, and he could see it was covered in dust. The building was full of sacks of grain, and there was a layer of grain on the floor too. A huge millstone occupied the remaining space. A person with white hair and beard and dust all over his body was working the millstone. The gold crown on his head glittered. He was like a negative film, flashing in the glare, then retreating into the darkness. On the other side of the millstone, Shanlai sat on a sack, his legs dangling and a book perched on his knees, its pages pure white. Dust motes hovered around his head like a band of mosquitoes.

‘Those who strike in hatred will be sadder in the nether world.’ Shanlai stopped reading and asked the person grinding, ‘Why is it called the nether world?’

‘Legend says there are nine levels of heaven above, and nine levels of hell below. Amongst the odd numbers the greatest is nine, and the nether world is the deepest of the nine levels below. All who die must go there.’

‘Wherever you go, I will go too,’ Shanlai said. Then he continued asking about the book he had been reading, ‘The poet Yu Xin was a great deserter, and forgot his loyalty to the aspiring politician Wang Shao. Should he be considered a pathetic coward?’

‘This…you can ask Mr Yuan.’ He continued grinding as he replied, turning the millstone in circles.

When he once again passed through the pillar of light, Mengliu saw that the person with the white hair and beard was Esteban. Noticing that Mengliu was too surprised to speak, Esteban stopped, and used a cowhide brush to sweep the flour off him, from head to foot. Like the cold and snow disappearing from a person who comes home on a stormy night, the young Esteban stood there, black hair poking out from the thorn-like golden barbs of the crown around his head.

Mengliu secretly wondered why Esteban was doing a mule’s work. Why was he wearing a golden crown, with his hands bound in golden chains, dressed like a prisoner? Had he committed some crime?

‘Mr Yuan, was Yu Xin a coward?’ Shanlai asked.

A shadow of embarrassment crossed Mengliu’s face. He wanted to brush Shanlai off, but Esteban seemed to take the question seriously. He was watching them, and looked calm as he waited for the answer.

‘Well…in a sense it could be said that he was a coward, abandoning his armour…though even if he stayed, he might not have been able to keep them from destroying his home city…he was miserable and his family ruined and three of his children were executed,’ Mengliu said.

‘He was miserable? He lost his country? Wasn’t he eventually roped in to be an important government official?’ Shanlai responded quickly. His comment gripped Mengliu.

‘Yes. He was in great conflict and suffered all his life. He developed a split personality. One side of him hated the rebels who invaded his homeland, the other gratefully sang the praises of its new rulers, then he hated himself for it late at night when he was alone. Of course, if he had been killed in battle you would not now be able to read such compelling poetry,’ Esteban said, renewing his work of grinding the grain, still with a calm demeanour.

For a while no one spoke, they just listened to the sound of the millstone. The white flour fell slowly from it, covering the whole room.

‘Shanlai, many things are not as simple as they seem. We might have been less decent than he was. Yu Xin’s mental suffering is hard for outsiders to understand. A single poem could not alleviate his pain.’ Yuyue had walked into the room, breaking the silence. ‘But if he had not written about it, nor found some other release, he would have gone crazy.’

‘I cannot like anything written by a deserter,’ Shanlai said. ‘Some people stop writing, and seem to manage to live happily enough without suffocating.’

‘Oh…because the lies of a contrary spirit can never become good poetry. Some people need a long time to think things over…’ Yuyue was like a fire extinguisher.

‘A real poet would not use poetry to spread lies…It’s all about attitude.’ Esteban came back from the shadows into the light.

Mengliu had not expected the arrow to be pointed at him the whole time, but now he understood that he was in a trap. They had not come to this place by chance. Perhaps the rare creatures Yuyue had spoken of were these two people, Esteban and Shanlai. Together they had captured and trained a fly to recite poetry, and whenever they got the opportunity, they let it out to buzz in his ears. They were crazy. Regardless of the time or place, they would talk about poetry or the spirit, and make him feel awkward. He would rather talk to them about the basic needs and freedoms of the body, or why Esteban was wearing golden chains and pushing a millstone. What crime had he committed, he wanted to ask, but he suddenly found it was too private an issue for the level of friendship he shared with Esteban, not to mention the fact that the atmosphere didn’t suit the change of subjects.

He stood there stiffly. Now his mind was pounding with the sound of sloshing water. Which of you is worthy to talk to me about poetry? You sprouts in the greenhouse, you people of talk and no action, have you seen its blaze, or heard its roar? None of you have touched the soul of poetry and its wounds. None of you have tasted it. There isn’t anyone who is above the material attractions of the world. Our last great poet died nobly. He stood in the night as a testament. You’re just a bunch of busybodies full of useless knowledge.

17

It seemed Juli had gone missing. The stove in her house was cold and lifeless.

From time to time Mengliu took out the letter he had found under the tree in the forest. The initial shock it had caused now turned to suspicion. Increasingly he came to feel that the allegations it contained regarding the real business of the nursing home were quite impossible. How could it be like that? The letter was full of deranged comments. He recalled the strange scene in the forest, but whenever he tried to expand his memory of it in an attempt to verify the experience and put it into perspective, it was like fishing for the moon in water. When he lowered a finger to its surface, the moon dispersed. He could not even confirm where the letter had come from. Perhaps it was a novelist’s discarded draft, or a drunkard’s ramblings, or the product of a random graffitist’s whim. He put a pot of tea on to steep. He thought about the contents of the letter as he drank his tea. He was still troubled. He did not feel grounded. But he stopped feeling that way after drinking half a cup.

The sky was very overcast. The cold pierced him like a knife. Mengliu stoked the fire in the fireplace with dry wood, and noticed that it was now snowing outside. The snowflakes hit the ground like beans, making the leaves crackle. After half an hour, it turned downy and continued to fall. Soon, other than the great white snowflakes, there was nothing else to see outside.

It was the morning of the third day before the snow really stopped. The sun shot out through a layer of ice, the cloudless sky was a thin transparent blue. There was a sharp tranquility to the cold wind. The earth was swollen with the snow cover, making the black strip of the river seem thinner. The silver hair of the willows floated on the wind, and the hills looked like a sleeping woman, her curves rising and falling.

When Juli came back at last, Mengliu was warming himself by the fire as he read. Perhaps because she was wearing so many layers, she looked plump, thick around the waist, and a little clumsy. He stood up quickly. The tip of her nose was so cold it was red. She looked at him dully, her eyes like solidified chocolate, as if a layer of autumn ice had formed over a pond. There were no withered lotus leaves in this landscape. There was only a clean vastness.

‘Where did you go?’ He wanted to ask her why she had vanished without a word, but he suddenly remembered that he was the one who had been drawn away to the hospital, so he couldn’t blame her. He changed tack, saying he had almost registered her with missing persons. Looking like someone who had just returned from a long journey and was extremely tired, she sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace and closed her eyes. He didn’t say anything else, but took a blanket and covered her. He noticed that her face was also slightly swollen, and felt that she must have been in a great deal of trouble.

‘I thought the squid must certainly have eaten you this time. I didn’t think you’d survived,’ Juli said, with barely enough strength to smile. ‘It’s a miracle.’

Hearing her speak, Mengliu was very happy. ‘What would you like to drink? Tea? Milk? Or rice wine?’

‘Give me a cup of warm milk. If you can add a couple of eggs, all the better,’ she said bluntly. Of course, since this was her house, there was no need for formalities. She spoke lightly, but it still knocked him senseless.

‘Actually…I’m pregnant,’ she said.

He had just turned around to prepare the milk. He spun back to face her, and stood mutely for a moment. Finding nothing to say, he went back to boiling the milk. A few minutes later, carrying it over in a pot, he said, ‘Your husband?’

She did not say anything.

‘Your government made you undergo artificial insemination?’

She shook her head.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘You acted freely…adulterously…and are in big trouble.’

Her expression surprised him. She was smiling. ‘I won’t die. Esteban surrendered himself, so at least the child can be born.’

Mengliu suddenly thought of Esteban in golden chains, but his consternation was only momentary. His attention was completely focused on the child. ‘Oh…if it is allowed to be born…then it’s not all that bad,’ he said mechanically.

‘Yes. It’s not that bad…but I have to comply with the National Planned Parenthood Non-Matching Data Policy…this will determine whether the child will be allowed to live, but first it must pass a test, and be soaked in alcohol for half an hour.’

‘What? Soaked in alcohol for half an hour? Isn’t that infanticide? They might as well do it as quickly as possible…’ Mengliu lost control of his voice, and was unconsciously shaking the pot in his hands.

‘No, Shanlai also survived this test. When he was a year old, people found his mother’s body next to the river, her lower half eaten by squids. A poor Cuban woman.’

In his mind, Mengliu reached out for the wound in his own leg. ‘You mean you are not his…?’

‘I brought him up…I like children, and I definitely don’t want an abortion.’ She paused, then said, ‘What’s more, this is love…’

Love. She was talking about love. That was fresh! Now he was really uncomfortable. He would prefer to think it had been a moment of passion, so he could tell her that losing control was a virtue, that he was glad her body was awakening to the freedom to be used as she chose, that he liked her courage to resist in secret, and that her suffering now would be his, he would bear the burden for her. But she insisted it was love, and moreover, it was Esteban she loved. He did not believe she knew what love was. A citizen who allowed the government to decide his or her marriage did not have the capacity for love, because love required freedom, and freedom came at a cost. He thought, What was all that ambiguity in her conduct with me? That night in her bedroom, and later in the forest? Wasn’t that almost ‘love’? He wanted to slap her ‘love’ a few times, yet he was grateful for this moment. They were talking deeply for the first time, almost like good friends.

She ate the milk and eggs as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

The house was surprisingly bright. He thought hard, looking for something to say, like a fly searching for a crack on an eggshell. But even though he crawled over the surface several times, he couldn’t find a suitable opening.

‘You know Yuyue, right?’ He knew this was rather roundabout.

‘Yes. She has very exotic genes. The government can’t find a match for her genetic data.’

‘Her mother went into the nursing home a few years ago, and she has never gone to visit her. She said her mother often writes…’ He frowned, remembering the white smoke from the chimney. ‘I wonder if she didn’t die long ago.’

‘Hm. There are all sorts of talented people there, so it’s entirely possible there are ghostwriters too. But from such attention to detail, you can see that the nursing home must be a warm, humane place.’

He had no answer for that, given that her thinking and his on this issue were so much at odds. But he wanted to continue talking, and felt obliged to engage her, to clarify the situation for himself.

‘You remember the waste disposal site?’

She finished the milk, her expression showing that she was satisfied now and ready for battle. ‘All the flawed, rejected babies are discarded there…’

Though her words only confirmed what he already suspected, they made his heart thump. ‘I understand now, altering the quality of people by starting with the genes…I just don’t know what to say…’ He reached into his pocket. Perhaps it was time to talk to her about what was in the letter.

‘He will hold on.’ She patted her stomach optimistically.

‘I want to show you a letter,’ Mengliu said. ‘Maybe you will feel it is all nonsense…’

‘If you’ve got something to say, go ahead. Why did you have to write?’ Her tone indicated that she was thinking, There’s nothing new under the sun.

‘I didn’t write it. I don’t even know the person who did. He died recently.’

‘You think reading a letter from a dead person you didn’t know is good for the baby?’ She was a little harsh, as if she didn’t care about anything except what she carried in her belly.

Hesitatingly, he took his hand out of his pocket. He thought she had a point. Sharing the contents of the letter, which had nothing to do with her child, with a pregnant woman, could be a bit dangerous and might be met with disdain. From his experience with Rania, he knew that pregnancy could make a woman a little slow, mentally, as if she had turned into a primitive female animal.

‘Well…okay,’ he said. ‘I will make an exception and read a poem for him instead…it was written in Round Square a long time ago by my friend Hei Chun.’

The fire crackled busily. He reached out his hand, warming it for a moment in front of the fire. He noticed that her eyes had suddenly lit up.

Standing by the fireside, he recited the poem.

autumn has come

I am in this wheat field

and you are in that

the poor children are looking for fruit

the fields are covered with scars

inflicted by their torturer

I have brought a porcelain bowl

to collect the blood that won’t sleep

I believe only in the night

the sins of darkness and its wounds

unhealed, even after many years

a child wanders on the outside

waiting for the snow to melt

from his mother’s forehead

he drives his dagger into the salt

you live at the bottom of a stagnant lake

I have come to the end of my journey

while you smile, guarding the fire

in a time of confusion, let me die as I wish

in a sweet embrace

leaving a black seed behind

18

Mengliu went to see Yuyue to get her input on the question of soaking a child in alcohol and its surviving. As she skipped a piece of ice across the surface of the river, she answered him, saying that it was something no one could answer with any certainty. In short, she was not very optimistic. The ice danced on the surface of the water twice before disappearing. Yuyue said his question had compromised her level of effectiveness. He then asked for examples of survivors. Having already chosen a better-shaped piece of ice, she faced the river and arced her arm overhead. The ice hit the water with a dink dink dink dink, creating a row of ripples. She gave herself a thumbs up, in celebration of the joy of victory. She criticised him for sticking his nose in other people’s affairs, and asked what business it was of his whether other people’s children survived. When she finished, she glanced at him contemptuously and said, ‘You don’t have that kind of courage!’

He heard the provocation in her words, surrounded by the desolate, snow-covered landscape. If he were just to casually press her down to the snow-covered ground, he could change her perspective, and convince her of his superiority. But he was in no hurry to prove anything. He locked eyes with her for a full minute, as if using infra-red rays to make her transparent. A jackal would rather eat carrion than starve, but for a fresh piece of meat he was patient enough to play with his prey.

‘Look at it from another perspective. Say you encounter the sort of thing Su Juli is facing…it would be hard enough to bear.’ His attitude was like that of an elder. ‘Of course I would be worried about you too, and I would help you think of a way to abort the problem.’ As he spoke, another thought flashed into his mind. ‘Yuyue, you are very clever. Tell me honestly, if this were happening to you, what would you do?’

‘Um, let me think…when the time came, I would make a civet cat take the place of the prince.’

‘No, that would be wicked. Moreover, every child is a national treasure. And where would you find a civet now that they’ve all been killed to save us from disease?’

‘Well, you could consider hiding, or go into the mountains and give birth there.’ She was a little proud. ‘The law does not mention this, so there’s a loophole.’

He felt enlightened as he listened. You should engage in a game of hide-and-seek with the government. You should not have to witness them killing a child. When things had blown over, you could come back. It could be done, one step at a time.

Having such frequent contact with Yuyue, Mengliu’s understanding of and trust in her had deepened. He felt she was the most clear-headed person in Swan Valley. She was calm, rebellious and spoke clearly and logically. Occasionally she relied on the uniqueness of her genetic disposition to act without restraint. When she gave a backward kick like a mule, nobody could resist her power. Even Michael, the head of the hospital, seemed a little afraid of her, and was always careful not to provoke her.

Yuyue had both brains and beauty, she was a really stunning woman. Mengliu praised her. She was unceremonious in accepting his praise.

‘Do you believe every child we would have together would be a genius?’ she said, laughing. She put on her cashmere gloves. ‘But I don’t want to have a child. I don’t like children. You see the relationship between me and my mother is…so distant. Anyway, I don’t want to be a reproductive machine.’

‘But, Yuyue, there are some things no one can defy. One day that official red letter will come to you, then you’ll…’

‘I’ll jump off a ledge!’ she unzipped her down coat. ‘I take it off and put it on…When it comes to my body, I am likewise master of myself.’

Mengliu snorted with a laugh, obviously indicating that he thought she was terribly naive. She did not understand that the ‘self’ was never free in Swan Valley. It didn’t even exist.

She knew he didn’t believe her. Raising her trouser leg, she knocked her right shin a couple of times. It sounded like hard rubber. ‘My jumping skills were not very good. I survived, but my leg did not. Damn…’ She laughed cheerfully, into the wind, her face especially fair and clear. ‘I was only seventeen at the time, pure and noble…The next time they tried to force me into a marriage, I took poison…then I fell in love with a man, but he chose the fucking red letter, just like you. I understand you both. You see, I’m still intact, right? No one bothers me now. I used death to fight for my freedom. Don’t say I don’t understand it as well as you.’

She spoke happily. He was shocked. When he came to himself, he found that she was already in his arms, and his arms and her body were welded fast together. He was not quite sure how they came to embrace one another. He touched her neck, which had the fragrance and light glow of fresh snow. For the first time, his hands discovered the real feeling of hair that was smooth as silk. She was a young girl, as dazzling as sunlight on the snow. He felt that if he whispered in her ear, she would blow away, like a petal carried off by a running stream. His kiss would defile her, like a dirty streak across the whiteness of the snow. So he just held her, frozen in stillness. He just held her, like the wind brushing a cloud, as if he were holding the hidden secret of spring, a sprouting seed, a river through the mountains, like holding time, like holding his past and present self. He felt the heat of his body warming the surrounding cold air, like an unsullied flower blooming in the middle of a pond.

After a while, as if she had been asleep on his bosom, Yuyue rubbed her eyes. Then she left him, as if she was getting up from a sofa, lifting her face slightly to see the river disappearing around a bend in the distance.

‘Tell me, will I ever meet the person who is willing to die with me?’ She turned to face him.

‘Why do you want to die for love? You should think about how to live happily with the person you love.’ He was especially good at reasoning out such things, he didn’t need to think about it at all. ‘Of course, it’s more difficult to figure out how to live than how to die, and much more valuable.’

‘Really? I think it depends on the way you live and the way you die. I mean…’ she paused and looked up at the snow on the tree, ‘death at the guillotine of freedom is valuable.’

He very much agreed with what she said. But he had lost the ability to express such things, and he didn’t know how to respond to her. She shook the branches of the tree then quickly ran away, so that the snow dropped on him. She stood laughing on the side. This was how their serious conversation would end.

‘Have any more people died at the hospital these past few days?’ He changed the subject, suddenly recalling the matter of the infectious disease. ‘Was it “just the flu”?’

‘A dozen more have been admitted, one has died, and a couple are in a critical condition. Also, a nurse has been infected. She collapsed, and died a few hours later. It’s incurable. The hospital staff is running round in circles right now.’ Yuyue picked up a frozen leaf, and stripped the ice from it, leaving the leaf imprint on the ice. She shut one eye, and looked at him through the ice-leaf with the other. ‘We stopped short of wearing gas masks. Gowns, surgical masks, shoe covers, gloves…anyone who didn’t know better would think we were a biochemical team. Michael reported the situation to the higher-ups in Swan Valley. I heard that they are sending out their top medical experts.’

He had become a weird shadow through the ice, moving oddly. ‘The most critical thing right now is to inform the people, instruct them to stay at home and take preventive measures. As much as possible, they should not go out, so that we can reduce the spread of the infection and prevent an epidemic. Otherwise, the situation will be even more difficult to control in the future.’ He spoke flatly. His heart wasn’t in what he said.

‘The higher-ups have already enacted provisions stating that we cannot broadcast these things. In fact, we aren’t allowed to say how many people have died, out of fear that this would cause a panic. To destroy the perfect image of the present, that will be hard to salvage.’ Yuyue threw the ice into the river. He noticed here was a flaw in the way her leg moved during the course of this activity. He felt guilty for noticing, as if he were responsible. ‘Michael, the deputy director, and the heads of the various departments were taken to a government building for a meeting. They came back and conveyed the spirit of the meeting to all of us “grassroots comrades”. What a joke! They had learned the art of spinning and bluffing. Damn!’ She looked as if she completely understood why things were this way. Her laughter flew to the sky like dandelion seeds, but the stem remained on the ground, standing gracefully.

Her laughter almost sent him to the sky as well. She was more to his liking all the time. ‘Conceal the epidemic? Paper can’t contain a fire. This is probably the stupidest decision Swan Valley has ever made.’

‘Let them do what they want.’ She stepped on the snow, letting it crunch beneath her feet. ‘“The only regret I will have in dying is if it isn’t for love” — that’s from a novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.’

When he had read Marquez, those words hadn’t made any emotional impact on him, but now he felt as if a knife had pierced his heart. It was on account of Qizi.

‘Just don’t die because of the plague.’ He did not want to get entangled in the question of love and death. ‘Do you dare to go with me to the nursing home? If there really is an outbreak of some plague, that might be the safest place. Let’s at least go and familiarise ourselves with it.’ He was trying to rally her to his side.

‘I’m not going. I’m staying at the hospital. If I can’t die for love, I’ll die for altruistic reasons,’ she replied perfunctorily.

Mengliu took the letter from his pocket. He had carried it with him constantly. ‘Do you want to read this?’

‘A love letter?’

‘Something like that,’ he joked.

Yuyue took it, making as if she were viewing a piece of art.

Mengliu had read it countless times. He even remembered the punctuation clearly, and could recite the whole thing by heart.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to tell you a harsh reality. The truth is, you are living in a sheltered society where the truth is hidden. Our happiness is a lie. Our fermented tea contains chemical substances that will slowly wash your mind clean of the memory of your past, your motherland and all your relatives. Then you will come to identify with everything here, and you will be at her mercy. The nursing home is an execution ground for the elderly. Living people are thrown into ovens, as if they were burning pieces of wood. Please break open the gate of the nursing home and have a look inside. You will find no one there, only ghosts.’

‘If this is true, I’m not the least bit surprised.’ Yuyue finished reading the letter very quickly, and her reaction was muted. ‘In Swan Valley, everything is possible. I have thought before that my mother must be dead. If not, she would have found a way to come out for a breath of air.’ He did not know whether this was what she really thought. Something in her tone made him think she didn’t believe it, and he wondered whether he should continue discussing the matter with her.

‘I’ll go with you to see her now, then at least we’ll know the situation clearly,’ he said.

‘It’s no use. I’ve been there many times. There’s only a cable car to the nursing home.’

‘It sounds like a military base,’ Mengliu said. Anyway, we have to find a way in…’

‘Only if you turn into a bird.’

‘You said that all things are possible…and we are highly intelligent.’

‘The analytical data of those stupid machines makes everyone think he or she is special. Even you are confused.’

‘But you really are special.’

‘Oh, I’ve got it…’ Yuyue suddenly grew excited. ‘Michael is retiring and next month he will go to the nursing home. On the eighth the cable car will come, and we…’ She stared at his bloodshot, sluggish eyes, as if she were ready to hold his shoulders and shake him awake.

He marvelled secretly at her imagination, how her thought and his had coincided so perfectly.

‘But, what if we get in and then can’t get back out? We need to let someone know…’ As she went on, it was clear her mind was racing. ‘We need to find a couple more people.’ She was completely immersed in her own thoughts. He listened to her calm analysis, as if she were going through the stages of a game, overcoming difficulties along the way, and getting straight to the heart of the matter. In her narration, they were highly skilled martial arts warriors. They had become the Condor Heroes, and with the great rapport between them, they would settle every difficulty that lay before them.

She was, after all, an experienced young woman. When she started to depart from reality in her imagination, a light flooded from her face. He wanted to touch her satin black hair and porcelain skin, to put her into a love cradle, and to hum a lullaby to soothe her into a sweet, deep sleep. He reminded her that the adventure could endanger their lives, but she brushed this off contemptuously.

At that moment the sun extinguished itself like a burnt-out fire, and they grew a little colder.

19

The hospital now looked like an over-inflated balloon which was about to explode. It was so overcrowded that the patients and non-patients mingled together. There were even people sleeping in the entrances to the washrooms. There weren’t enough beds, the medication was stretched thin, and there was confusion everywhere. Some people resorted to unscrupulous methods to get a bed, pulling out the patients’ tubes or blocking their noses, helping those who needed it to go on their way to a speedier death, and those who had the chance, to meet death immediately. Some tried their seductive charms on Michael, and even the general practitioners had to put on a stern front, so as to deter anyone from getting too close. Then visits were prohibited. People were quarantined without knowing why. Yuyue described it as like being in a silent war. The doctors would not say a word more than was necessary. Some doctors who had a more aggressive nature protested in secret, which resulted first in a yellow warning, then in a black threat, then a red education, and then, dejected finally, they would shut up. Before the arrival of the expert medical team, no one was qualified to diagnose the infectious disease definitively or announce the deaths, but rumours spread like wildfire. People hoarded food and medication in their panic, hoping they were just rumours as they awaited the official announcement.

Yuyue ridiculed the childish ways of the government, but she was only voicing her opinion on the matter. She wasn’t hopeful. The situation was the government’s baby, and she didn’t care about its life or death. Drinking strong spirits was a sign of bad character, but this didn’t affect her attempts to find pleasure. Whether there were problems or not, she always had a couple of drinks. When the day shift was over, she secretly procured wine prepared with dates and other ingredients. It would cause diarrhoea and vomiting in those who were not accustomed to it, but once you got used to the strong drink, it kept you fit. Mengliu was completely adjusted to the habit, and they enjoyed peanuts, tofu slices and dried beef as they drank and chatted in front of the fire until they were red in the face and lit up from within.

Yuyue constantly spoke of the deaths at the hospital, how the drugs were ineffective and the patients would die slowly and excruciatingly. One had stopped breathing under her care. She had not rested for three days and three nights, and she was weary to the bone. Just as she thought she would collapse, the medical experts arrived. There were eight of them in all, six men and two women, dressed like astronauts ready to visit the moon, each carrying a toolbox. They looked stern. Walking uniformly and resolutely across the lawn, they blew into the hospital entrance like a cold wind.

Yuyue enthusiastically described one of the women on the team, how young she was and how pretty. As Mengliu listened, his heart thumped. When Yuyue said Suitang’s name, he stood up from his chair. He only feebly expressed his doubts, because he had known that eventually she would be brought here. He believed without reservation that she had come. He could not refute that reality. This was followed by a feeling of pleasant surprise, and an urgent need to see her, which sobered him up completely.

He tried to stay calm, and downed another glass of wine. It had begun to snow again. The snowflakes floated lazily. He told Yuyue that the biggest benefit of snow was that it allowed one to stay indoors with old friends, chatting and drinking languorously before the fire, heedless of everything else. As she listened to his insincere talk, Yuyue smiled as brightly as a peach blossom, in a merciless accusation that his mind had already left the fireside. ‘If I were you, I would not be hiding here. I would have flown straight to the hospital.’

Hearing this, Mengliu stood up and adjusted his clothes as if preparing himself to leave, but Yuyue mocked him again, saying that the hospital was completely off limits. Outsiders couldn’t come and go as they pleased, unless they wanted to be quarantined for at least two weeks. Quarantine was not something amusing, sharing toilets and bathing facilities, crowded into a room with other people with only the roughest of provisions. More importantly, he would not be able to see Suitang. ‘But if you can tell me the most exciting thing that happened between you and her, I’ll take you to see her.’

Her teasing was all quite serious. Unembarrassed, Mengliu returned to his seat. In fact a number of times, as he sat in front of the fire and with the spirits working their way through his belly, he had wanted to talk about the women in his past, Suitang or Qizi, and those whose names he had forgotten, though they had each left an impression on him. He would gladly open the baggage of his past in this cold weather, sharing it with a beautiful girl, but really, what was the most exciting part? Did sex count? If he took the secrets between him and Suitang and told them to her, what would Yuyue think?

‘Perhaps we will all die of the plague, even those who are sweetly in love. Why don’t you discard your sense of shame and tell me all about it.’ Yuyue seemed to have read his mind, for her words were hitting the mark. ‘Sometimes love can turn a devil into an angel.’

Mengliu laughed. ‘You’re amazing. I’m becoming more and more convinced that no one can compete with you, in science or the emotions.’ He was suddenly in no hurry to see Suitang.

Yuyue winked at him as she sipped her drink.

‘If I tell you that I killed someone for Suitang, don’t be surprised.’ He came straight to the point.

‘The murderer was not you,’ she said dismissively. ‘It was love.’

He ignored her irony, watching the flames dance in the fireplace as he slowly told her everything.

‘I never thought I would speak of these things, but perhaps I really was a murderer. I may be a wanted criminal. Until this day, I don’t know how Suitang feels about me. She looked like my first love Qizi. Deep down I took her as Qizi, not caring whether or not she loved me. I’ve told you about my affair with Qizi before. She disappeared, and might still be alive. Maybe she changed her name and got a fresh start. Suitang was my assistant. She had been swindled by a sick old poet called Jia Wan with whom she was deeply involved. One day Suitang told me her plan, and it frightened me. There was no way I could do what she had in mind, but when I saw her turn away in disappointment, I promised her. You know, for a surgeon it was really not that difficult. What Suitang wanted was quite easily accomplished during a heart bypass operation. She wanted me to destroy an artery near his heart while mending another, cutting it as if that were as common a thing as snipping a thread.’

Yuyue refilled his glass and tossed another log on the fire.

‘No one knows how Suitang got Jia Wan to change his will before the surgery, leaving her two million yuan whether she aborted his child or not. Suitang told me that she wasn’t going to have Jia Wan’s child. She was only twenty-three years old and there were things she wanted to do in life. She would use the money to start a foundation dedicated to poetry and poets. She said that if I didn’t hold anything against her, and if I wasn’t merely trying to get her into bed, we could officially date and be loyal to one another. She thought that with the two million, we could accomplish our ideals. If I could not accept her greedy and broken heart, then we should keep a distance like that between siblings, and she would deposit five hundred thousand in cash into my account. To tell you the truth, I calculated at the time that this dirty money, not being taxed and all, was equal to several years of salary for me. But even someone who is poor at maths knows that two million plus Suitang was worth much more than five-hundred thousand alone — moreover, I liked Suitang. She looked like Qizi. Of course, I also knew that even for women one did not like, one’s feelings could change when two million yuan was involved. A man might easily feel he couldn’t extricate himself from a situation like that, and the woman would think it was her charm that had captivated him. But there’s nothing like cash to make a person understand himself less and less. You can always feel you are upright and aloof, then one day you find that isn’t the case, and you’re no better than a monkey rushing headlong for the prize, or a dog eager to grasp a bone. You take all the values you’ve built up over the years and smash them — though at least, for someone like me, those values had fallen to pieces long ago.’

‘That’s true. A poet who doesn’t write poems anymore can’t do much, nor can he really talk about values.’ Yuyue’s voice showed she was satisfied with his story. She was like a judge issuing expert opinions on the work of a performer. It was these words that pierced Mengliu’s heart. When a person is as self-deprecating as he had just been, he is really after praise from others, but Yuyue had knocked him down a notch, and made him feel lower than a dog. Still, he had to admit the truth of what she said. She was the only person he had ever met who was completely devoid of bullshit. Her comments were better than empty hypocritical words of comfort, and they brought a quick end to his self-pity, preserving the vital resources he needed to pull himself together. He knew what she meant — to act in the name of love was better than any of those things done by the authorities.

‘After Jia Wan died, what happened to you and Suitang?’ Yuyue wanted to know the outcome.

‘She didn’t get a thing. She was set up by Jia Wan and his wife.’

‘Poet, doctor, murderer. Yuan Mengliu, you are living in comfortable exile!’ Yuyue laughed heartily again. Her nose was perspiring. She was like a spring. ‘Honestly. This place suits you. You are so free here. If only you were still writing, your status would be of the highest rank.’

‘That’s a joke. Really — a big joke,’ he said, bored.

‘Those who have suffered for a long time have even more right than others to express themselves. It’s like the tortured having a need to cry out, so the argument that after this or that difficulty you cannot write anymore must be wrong.’

He seemed to have drunk too much. He felt awful as he stood up again. ‘I have to go look for Suitang.’

So he made his way through the wind and snow to the hospital. He accomplished nothing other than to get a whiff of the hospital’s smell. It was a wasted errand. Yuyue brought news that Suitang would only get to have some rest after a few days. It was a ray of hope, but after a couple of days the ray of hope faded away. Suitang was infected and confined to a ward. She sprayed germs about when she talked, and was running a high fever. With life and death hanging in the balance, no one could see her.

20

Cold temperatures seemed to stop the spread of the infectious disease. Of course this was an illusion, but even more false was the impression that the whole thing had never happened. After a brief panic, people’s emotions stabilised and they waited instead for some new, curious turn of events. The sun was still round, and it still came up in the east, and it still hung in the sky without falling. Those who craned their necks waiting grew tired after a while, and so withdrew their necks, and slowly themselves. Yuyue said that the hospital’s morgues were full, and the incinerators were so overworked each day that the ashes of the dead were immediately flushed down the drain. When those in angelic white garments visited the families of the dead, fake ashes were handed over, along with false records and false compassion. But the flowers were genuine. The government was doing everything humanly possible.

Yuyue was the only one in the hospital not dressed in a hazmat suit. Unafraid of death, she spoke to the patients just like she always had. She patted Suitang’s head, telling her not to worry, it was important to believe that she would not die. There was a man waiting for her. This sort of talk did nothing for Suitang, who said with a hint of hatred in her words that she had not thought Yuan Mengliu was still alive. A week later she recovered miraculously, and received a red pacesetter medal as a result. She was given two days’ leave of absence from the hospital and after promising not to disclose any information, was allowed to go outside.

Mengliu waited for her in the beech grove. He felt as if they knew each other from another life. She wore a black down jacket and her hair was pulled back in a very high bun, revealing her full forehead. Her brown plaid scarf covered her sexy white neck. She did not wear a hat, unwilling to hide her pretty hair. Her mouth chomped constantly on chewing gum.

When he asked her why she had come to Swan Valley, she said that her plane had been hijacked. The other hostages were dead. She was the only one who had been rescued, but she had been brought against her will to the hospital to help deal with the epidemic. She said the hostages could have all been rescued, but neither the police nor the hijackers had any intention of leaving witnesses behind. She did not consider herself rescued, since the police and hijackers were in it together, and she was the person they wanted.

‘But you’re just an anaesthetist…Damn those human traffickers!’ Mengliu, unable to explain the complex emotion he felt in a few words, swore bitterly. He had already reawakened to her unique charms, and recovered his feelings from the past. It felt like he had been apart from Suitang for less than a year, but she seemed to stand decades away, blurring the concept of time for him. ‘Suitang, don’t go back to the hospital. You’ll die in vain…’

‘I’m immune. I won’t die. It seems you have been very happy here,’ she said, looking at him contemptuously. ‘It seems that what you are best at is playing hide-and-seek. Actually, you needn’t hide. You know I won’t cling to you. You know I don’t like to beg.’

‘You…it’s not that I wanted to stay here. I mean…I don’t know how to explain it. I was knocked out by a huge wave while on a boat, then when I woke up I was in Swan Valley.’ Even as he said it, Mengliu found his own words unbelievable. He laughed ruefully. ‘I’m telling you the truth…What happened after the incident with Jia Wan? Did you get into any trouble?’

‘Nothing happened. The insurance company investigated, and that was it. The funeral for that scumbag was very grand, with writers and poets coming from all over the country to attend the memorial service. There was an awards ceremony, and the deceased was granted the nation’s highest poetry prize.’ She looked out at the sky above the woods, then spat silently. ‘No one was more qualified for this award than Hei Chun and Bai Qiu. And you — if you had continued to write poetry.’

Mengliu thought that if the poetry prize was being devalued like this, poets didn’t really matter. He wasn’t concerned with poetry but with the Jia Wan affair. It had ended. He suddenly felt very light. He turned a gracious eye on the landscape around him.

The forest after a snowfall. A girl in black. A bough covered with ice on its north side. A pristine blue sky. A refreshing wind. Yes, he could remain calm. During his conversation with Suitang he kept recalling that the time he and Yuyue had decided on for their raid on the nursing home was only three days away, and he wasn’t going to spend those days talking about poetry or the dead, he would have to focus on perfecting their plan. Of course, if he wanted to arrange a reliable network of agents, he would need to recruit Esteban, Juli or Darae. There was no way to reveal all the ins and outs of it to Suitang now. He could only warn her that the place was not what it seemed.

‘I know you have already obtained Swan Valley’s certificate of citizenship.’ Suitang spat out her chewing gum, and took a small bit of ice from the tree and sucked on it like it was candy. ‘How could you escape without letting me know? I want to ask you a question. If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine, but only tell the truth if you do. To you, am I really just a shadow of Qizi?’

‘Of course not.’ Mengliu knew this was the moment for some hypocrisy, for sweet, kind words. Just like when a girl asked him in bed whether he would marry her, and he would always say that if he were not still waiting for his first love, he would marry. These sorts of words were useful for maintaining a girl’s self-respect and confidence. ‘You are you. You are not like her,’ he said.

Suitang’s mouth melted into a smile, and she quickly asked him about his relationship with Yuyue, and how many women he had been with in Swan Valley. Finally she asked whether he had written any poems for them.

‘There were no women, and no poems.’

He felt her voice piercing his defences, every word was a confrontation. She thought that when she had failed to get the large amount of money from Jia Wan’s will he had abandoned her, and so she had every right to criticise him.

He kept an apologetic tone. ‘I often thought of you, but I could not get back. This damned place!’

It seemed that his story was full of holes. She wouldn’t stop bickering with him, interrogating him. She didn’t want anything from him, but she didn’t want to be played for a fool either. She had felt like slapping him the moment she saw him, but instead she had acted indifferent. It was not because they were in the same boat again and she had to put away her personal grudges. It was more because when Yuyue had first told her he was here, she really was overjoyed, and when she saw him, her heart was filled with warmth and happiness. But she was afraid of losing face, so she had pretended to be cold, hoping to win back a little self-respect in his eyes.

It was as if she were reciting a tongue-twister, drawing out the minute details of her rich emotions.

Of course, he understood, so he kept speaking in low tones, allowing her plenty of space to vent her feelings, wanting nothing more than to play his role once her performance was complete. At last, in good time, he caught hold of three fingers on one of her hands and pulled her to him saying, ‘If you keep crying out here, your face will turn to ice. If you want to come back to my fireside and continue crying, that would be fine.’

So they returned to his house to continue their conversation.

She was surprised to find him living alone in such a large house. As she looked around, she said that only a wealthy man could live this way, a normal surgeon’s salary wouldn’t pay for more than the bathroom. If men did not sell their souls for their professions and women did not sell their bodies, what would become of the world? She rambled on. Who would dig out a three-room underground house, who would turn a scrapped vehicle into a mobile camper, who would fake a divorce for the sake of a house. She talked a lot, and energetically, and quickly forgot her tears. She said, ‘You must have had a windfall, or you’re being kept by a rich woman. You’re living in such luxury, no wonder you don’t want to leave.’

‘My material comforts were not less there than here. At first, I didn’t want to go back. I was attracted by the freedom they enjoyed here. In our art back home we wouldn’t be allowed to paint a moustache on our leaders. Their art allowed them to strip their dead leader naked. But I know now that their freedom is only superficial.’

The house was nice and warm. They sat cross-legged on the carpet. For a while, they almost forgot that they were living abroad. Her wounded feelings over Jia Wan had apparently healed, and her recent illness had had almost no effect on her. She was healthy and young, like fresh fruit on a tree. He could see that she was excited, that everything in Swan Valley seemed fresh and lovely, and that she did not intend to leave. He unceremoniously poured cold water on that prospect, telling her truthfully all that had happened to him, including Rania’s death, the letter from the person in black, his conversation with the robot, and his doubts about the nursing home. He also summarised his own temptations when faced with beautiful women, but he didn’t think that terribly important right now.

Artificial insemination and the prohibitions on sex surprised her, but hearing about the squid that nearly ate him and the waste disposal site turned her insides to ice. She moved closer to Mengliu, and felt a little better. She asked him why he had not sneaked back to the site. He said he had tried many times. Once he became lost, and once he was nearly killed. He hid the additional factor of the woman, especially the more captivating moments with Juli. There was no need to complicate the issue.

Her chest heaved as she sat watching the flames. He looked at her silently, secretly surprised at his own cool head. The warm fire and the pretty young woman had failed to stir his body, or the appetites of the little beast within him.

Perhaps this was a good omen.

21

‘What did you say? The nursing home is actually a crematorium?’ Esteban’s voice issued from the dark grey mattress, blurred and cold. ‘Oh…is that right? Then so be it. It’s no big deal. When one is old one is useless, and fire has a purging power.’ He was a completely changed man.

There was no heating system in the mill, and it was filled with sacks of grain which lay everywhere, piled up to the windows. It wasn’t too cold, but Esteban’s words were frigid, his body like a toppled mountain. There was no energy in his voice. A half hour earlier, when Mengliu and Suitang had set out on their bikes to the mill, as if they were just out to enjoy the scenery, they hadn’t expected to find Esteban in such a state. They had to put aside the matter of the nursing home and concentrate on the condemned man’s health.

Mengliu knew what the punishment was for a man who had committed adultery. Those who kept repeating the crime would be put to death. First-time offenders might be condemned to five years of service as a coolie, living in exile with only vegetables to eat. The sick were not allowed to see a doctor. They laboured during the day, while reading and making notes at night in order to keep their minds from degenerating to the point where they would be of no use after their release from imprisonment. In truth, some were ruined, but some were completely transformed, becoming thinkers and gaining a very different understanding of life. They buried themselves in books, gave lectures, engaged in theoretical discussions, became admired and celebrated gurus.

In Swan Valley, anything was possible.

Esteban wasn’t concerned about his health. Mengliu, afraid he had contracted the plague, encouraged him to apply for permission to see a doctor. This was blasphemous to Esteban, who believed himself to be a sinner and fully intended to atone for his wrong-doing. There was nothing Mengliu could do about his pious repentant attitude, and Esteban’s stubbornness was driving him crazy.

Suitang looked on anxiously. Several times she started to speak, but Mengliu stopped her because he knew she had nothing positive to say. All the way there she had cursed Swan Valley, saying the people were deranged, lacked any discernment, were clearly a bunch of idiots. He replied that they enjoyed simplicity, the natural state of people living in abundance and reunified with their spirit. She included him in her ridicule, saying Swan Valley had made him short-sighted and weak-minded, as if he had been struck ill too.

‘Dr Yuan,’ she leaned the bike next to the trunk of a tree, speaking in a deliberately pinched tone, ‘if this continues, you will be just like them in time.’ She pretended her jacket needed a good beating to clean the spots on it, stomped the snow from her shoes, and looked up contemptuously at the snow-capped mountains.

All of this made Mengliu think of Qizi. But when Qizi was angry, her eyes welled up with tears and she would shout and yell.

He had not quarrelled with Suitang before, and he secretly admired her energetic expression of discontent. He felt that a man should never engage in a war of words with a woman. A woman was like candy, and all you needed to do was keep her in your mouth and allow her to soften quietly until her hardness had completely disappeared.

So he smiled and said she was right. Swan Valley really was rotten and not worth bothering about, but for the sake of friendship he should try to help. He did not say that he was curious, or that uncovering Swan Valley’s secrets was of great interest to him, for that was too much even for him to believe. Other than women, he wouldn’t normally take the trouble to investigate into the truth of anything. The thought suddenly brought to mind his past silent self, like a pig eating, drinking, relieving itself and sleeping, day after day.

This deeply engraved image of his past streamed through the empty spaces in his heart and quickly engulfed the last ray of light there.

‘No matter what you believe, you must be treated, rather than insisting on your so-called…faith.’ Mengliu decided he would try one last time with Esteban. As he got up from the millstone and walked to the dim lamp, he smelled decay. ‘Sometimes faith is nothing but a guard who exists in name only at the gate of a village. If you are arrogant, you can walk through easily, but if you look left or right before you enter the gate, he will stop you and interrogate you.’

Esteban did not move. He looked like a dead man.

‘If you are stopped at the gate, what else can you do? There’s nothing you can do but dream.’ Mengliu came at it from another angle. ‘And love…yes, you remember you are a father? Surely you don’t want your child to be born fatherless? You have become enslaved because of him, but you have to grit your teeth and carry on living. Even if it is for your…so-called faith.’

Suitang’s expression said that she thought Esteban’s faith was a load of bullshit. ‘For pilgrims, the temple is everything, all culture and happiness,’ she muttered. But she did not speak that softly.

She seemed impatient, so much so that she left the mill and went out to stand in the cold, looking up at the sky.

Mengliu was shocked. She said so bluntly exactly what he meant. He felt a little awkward but, even more, he was relieved, since to say anything else would be superfluous. He assumed Esteban had also heard Suitang. Seeing some movement, he thought the other man was trying to sit up, not imagining that he was simply changing his position so he could continue sleeping.

‘A poet can do without poetry. Why can’t a sinner who is sick go without a doctor?’

Mengliu was about to leave when he suddenly heard this barbaric logic coming from Esteban. He turned to see that Esteban was standing up, and looked like an African tribesman. His face was the canvas of a colourful oil painting, his hand clasped a spear, and was pointing the end of it towards Mengliu’s breast. He couldn’t move, as if the lack of oxygen had made his brain sluggish.

Just then, Darae came in. Perhaps because of the cold, he looked bleak, dreary of spirit. That wise handsome young man had become sluggish and dull. After pulling something from a box, he placed dishes on the millstone. There were four pieces of tofu, a wilted cabbage, and two slices of corn bread. It was standard criminal’s fare, coldly waiting for a mouth to devour it.

‘Darae, what has happened to your excellent skills?’ Mengliu, very carefully moving his body away from where he thought the tip of the spear might go, tried to inject a bit of humour into his voice. He really didn’t blame Darae, but the meal was too rustic to overlook. If he were still Head of a Thousand Households, he would have the best food served to Esteban.

‘I gave him something good, but he won’t eat it. What can I do?’ Darae said.

‘Are you also sick Darae? I know the recent flu has been very powerful…No, I should say, since the epidemic began…’ Mengliu tried to get a good look at Darae’s face. ‘I’m worried that Esteban’s illness…maybe you can persuade him…’

Darae just shook his head.

Mengliu suddenly felt discouraged. He saw Suitang pacing outside. Her image made him think of the situation with Juli. He engaged in some more useless talk, saying how a child couldn’t possibly soak in alcohol, how they shouldn’t be manipulated, how they should take Juli to the mountains to give birth, staying until things had blown over and she could come back.

Darae laughed, his laugh like a blast of cold wind piercing Mengliu’s body, but he finally agreed to go with them to the nursing home. He agreed to help them, to serve as a lookout. He said he too wanted to know, once and for all, what was going on.

But Mengliu backed away from Darae in the end, feeling he could not be relied on. Suitang seemed to hate his half-dead attitude. She thought they didn’t need to drag anyone else into it. Regardless of the outcome, it was a Swan Valley problem.

22

Accommodating two women at the same time always leads to trouble. Mengliu found that Yuyue had become difficult to get along with, never saying what she meant, remaining aloof, or merely answering any question with, ‘You should ask her.’ This ‘her’ referred to Suitang. When she was with Suitang, Yuyue always seemed warm and friendly, as if they were sisters. They would even crowd him out of their private conversations, with one of them always ready to throw menacing glances at him. Mengliu knew that Yuyue intended him to feel in the wrong, and that they were the innocent ones, and women should always unite. Perhaps in their imagination he had already turned into something wicked, but he had no idea what he had done wrong. At first, neither of them cared for him, but now, probably because each had found a competitor, they were both inspired to possess him. He lamented at how diabolically clever the two goblins were. They never showed their true intent, they hid their dark hysteria behind happy faces. He once overheard them talking. They were quick to reach the consensus that he would write poetry one day, and that he would again ‘rise up.’ He didn’t like this sort of prediction. It was like witches telling fortunes by casual divination. It was just superstition. Especially when it came to a matter as serious as poetry. They shouldn’t make such irresponsible comments. No one had a right to tell him what he should do. His intentions were like his personal beliefs, and his privacy should be respected and protected. As usual, he didn’t lose his temper but repeated his old line, ‘I am a surgeon, unable to do anything related to poetry. Please don’t waste your fantasies on me.’

The night before visiting the nursing home, they had dinner at Juli’s house. The dishes were rich and the rice wine sweet. She was in good shape, not as worried as he thought she would be about Suitang, and not in the least surprised by her arrival. Yuyue had already corrected Juli’s view on the matter, by declaring that Suitang was not Mengliu’s girlfriend. They were simply colleagues who had sometimes worked very closely together in the past. The three of them had come to persuade Juli to try to escape Swan Valley, but in the end they didn’t say anything. As soon as they entered her house, they knew that it would be a waste of breath to do so. Juli had more backbone than anyone. Dinner turned into a joyous affair. The rice wine made them tipsy and they lost all inhibition, laughing with abandon, and making Mengliu feel that he was a lascivious, fatuous, self-indulgent ruler in the midst of his wives and concubines. During the gathering Juli, pregnant though she was, performed a dance. Her body moved sinuously as her hands held her belly. It was as if she were at the harvest, the light from the fire turned her face golden, and her shadow formed weird shapes on the wall. She was excited, quite different from her usual self. When they told her about Esteban’s appearance at the mill, she was lukewarm, indifferent, as if the burden of his forced labour, the atonement, and the hanging between life and death were all normal aspects of love.

This beautiful life cannot be false. Even if it is, it is still beautiful. If it is not for the sake of rebuilding, why bother destroying it? The idea popped out of nowhere in Mengliu’s head, throwing him into confusion. It is perverse to shake people out of their dreams. They don’t need the truth. The truth is like a leftover scrap of bread, it’s unnecessary.

At this point, their entertainments were turning ridiculous because they had become overly merry. It was as if they were all play-acting even though they were sincere. Under the influence of alcohol Suitang and Yuyue both urged Mengliu to recite poetry, booing and hissing when he refused to be drawn into their pranks. Suddenly he saw the balalaika on the wall, and was grateful for the timely rescue. He took the instrument down. It had a solid body with an open-mouthed dragon carved at its head. The neck was made of rosewood and the drum covered with python skin. It looked very old. He plucked a few strings, and the sound was full-bodied, it lingered like smoke. He said he would perform a storytelling and ballad sequence in the Suzhou dialect, employing chen diao. When Yuyue asked what chen diao was, Suitang said, ‘I’m afraid it means clichéd tunes and phrases.’

As Mengliu continued to pluck, testing the strings, he said that there were three genres of pingtan — chen diao, ma diao, and yu diao. They were skeptical at first, not believing a traditional surgeon could play pingtan. When he really did begin to play, they fell silent. He sang softly, and his face became strangely animated. No one understood the words, but they were mesmerised by the music. While they were indulging themselves, he ended the performance with a few violent chords.

‘I have not seen anyone who could play that instrument,’ Juli said, holding her belly and wearing a look of perfect mental and physical well-being. ‘You play beautifully. I feel that tonight you are close to the heart of a poet, and your music reveals the secrets of that heart.’

‘You’re wrong. I have no secrets. It’s your own imagination.’ Mengliu smiled, stroking the head of the instrument. ‘On the contrary, what was on my mind just now was a surgical procedure,’ and he described the whole process, every bloody detail. They all listened quietly, none of them in the least horrified. He, on the other hand, was uncomfortable. He was remembering how he had caused Jia Wan’s death with his own hand, and how he had harboured hatred toward him in his mind, a so-called poet who had sold out his friend for glory. A scumbag who had used poetry to cheat on a girl’s affections, and in the year of the Round Square incident acted as a mole, betraying people in the Wisdom Bureau. But what was really dirty was the government who awarded Jia Wan the supreme poetry prize — that was equivalent to a public reward for a lackey, and a contemptuous insult to all poets. Thinking of this, Mengliu had become emotional. But he quickly recovered, fleeing behind the safety of the walls he’d erected around himself.

After their brief alliance, the three women went back to their own concerns. Only the crackle of the fire could be heard. There was a trace of hostility in the atmosphere, and the wind outside was whistling and sharp, distant and sorrowful like a wolf on the prowl. Inside it was like an oil painting in a warm hue; the non-living and the living alike were quiet. Yuyue burped softly, then quickly covered her mouth. Juli stood up and began to clear the dishes. Suitang helped to empty the rubbish into the bin. Suddenly, they all found something to busy themselves with.

Mengliu thought of the journey to the nursing home the following day. Would Suitang or Yuyue be the lookout? Yuyue’s mother was inside, so it stood to reason that she should go in, but Suitang thought that Yuyue, being from Swan Valley, should be the lookout. If something happened, people would believe her. She and Mengliu were both outsiders — if they disappeared, so what? But Yuyue insisted she wanted to go in, saying that the plan had been hatched before Suitang had arrived. ‘It’s my mother who is in there, not yours.’ They were like children bickering over a sweet.

But only two people could sit in the cable car.

In the end it was Juli who came up with a solution. When she had cleaned up, she cut two small pieces of paper, wrote on them, crumpled them up, and then like a general presiding over a meeting said, ‘You two draw lots to determine who will go and who will stay.’

The scheme worked, leaving neither girl with anything to say. They reached out to draw lots, each took a small ball of paper. Just as they did so Shanlai came into the room, his body emitting a chill and his face blue.

‘Señor Esteban has gone to the nether world.’

His weird expression made it appear that he was joking. Those in the room looked down at him in surprise.

‘He was lying there, and no matter how I called, he wouldn’t wake up.’ Shanlai looked at his feet. His pudgy shoes were embedded in circles of mud, making them look even clumsier. He raised his head and looked at them again and said boldly, ‘He’s dead…really dead.’

The house was like a grave. Then the commotion began.

Five minutes later, everyone left. The snow crunched under their feet as they ran toward the mill.

23

Mengliu didn’t sleep a wink all night. Time flowed from the rising sun, and stopped at eight o’clock. According to Yuyue’s news, Michael would be leaving on the cable car at twelve, escorted by a male underling. Again and again, Mengliu imagined the scene. They would lurk around, waiting, their faces hidden behind black cloths, just like in a movie. If necessary, they would carry small arms, ready to stun or kill the underling, then rescue Michael and tell him that going to the nursing home was certain death. Michael would be so frightened by the sudden turn of events that he wouldn’t resist. Completely misunderstanding Mengliu, he would stammer, and say he could go back to the hospital and do whatever was required of him — he was not a man who liked leisure. He would slap his arms and legs, and show how robust his body was. He would tremble and beg for mercy. Mengliu would have to knock him unconscious, just to shut him up, and then drag him into the bushes. In his own imaginings Mengliu was a tall and powerful figure, cool in his fighting moves as he dealt with the monsters around him. But in reality, when he saw the sun rising over the windowsill, he grew nervous. He didn’t want to resort to violence. He preferred to settle it all with a civilised conversation. He had no confidence in a fight.

Today Esteban would be transported to the mountain. His attitude toward atoning for his sin and his bravery would earn him a high-level snow burial, and all charges of wrong-doing would be expunged at the funeral. He was an intellectual of Swan Valley, and would be placed in a three-inch-thick ice coffin. A snow tomb would be erected, along with a giant ice sculpture for a tombstone. In good weather, everyone would be able to see the tombstone on the peak from the foot of the mountain, like a shining sword.

The previous night Shanlai had stayed at the mill while the others returned to Juli’s house, where they alternated between sharing their memories of the deceased and moments of respectful silence. The glory of the dead had nothing to do with Juli’s fate, and the law wouldn’t spare the child in her belly. It would have to undergo the alcohol test as if nothing had happened. She was very confident and persuasion was useless. She was the only one who slept that night, and in the morning, full of energy, she made eggs and pancakes and porridge for breakfast, without any sign of grieving for her lost love. Mengliu, smelling the aromas from the kitchen as he went through his morning ablutions, thought of the war games that were soon to come. He was surprised at the murderous expression in the eyes of the man who looked back at him from the mirror, hovering above his overnight beard, below his shiny forehead. Maybe he should do as Suitang had said and carry a dagger and pepper spray with him, in case words didn’t work. Yuyue said it was best to use an anaesthetic, since it wasn’t life-threatening. ‘If he says anything, just poke it up his arse, and he’ll really sleep. Or use a brick and knock him out.’

Before leaving, Mengliu embraced Juli. ‘Farewell,’ he said, hoping she would survive her plight.

When they departed, the funeral procession was crawling slowly across the side of the hill. If it hadn’t been for the shadows it cast on the snow, it would not have been easy to see the pure white procession. They had no doubt that it included Shanlai and Darae. The sun-kissed snow was dazzling. Mengliu, Yuyue and Suitang looked dignified in their sunglasses. Their consultations complete, they were ready to act according to plan, and didn’t speak as they travelled. Walking quickly, they reached their destination at ten o’clock. From far away, they saw the cable car on the peak opposite, like a bird cage hanging on a thin wire. It was skirted on both sides by cliffs. Below was a bottomless pit of silence. The dense virgin forest was still full of life in the piercing cold.

Mengliu’s calves and stomach had turned to jelly, and Suitang was having doubts about the thin wires.

Yuyue said proudly, ‘If anyone wants out, it’s not too late to go back. There is no way out once you’re on the cable car.’ She underestimated Suitang, who was not the least bit intimidated.

They hid themselves in the bushes like cats.

‘A fire in the snow would be good right now.’ They had already digested their breakfast and began to feel less and less able to fight the cold. Suitang was so cold she kept thinking of the hypothetical fire. ‘If we could roast some wild game…this would be a really nice trip.’

‘If you come back alive, I’ll go with you on a camping trip in the snow.’ Yuyue pointed off into the distance, as if coaxing a child, then adjusted her artificial leg to a more comfortable position before continuing. ‘We’ll have a huge camp fire, roast a wild rabbit, and a pheasant, grill mushrooms, barbecue pork…ah! Then we can drink some wine, you know, to warm ourselves up. We’ll lie in the snow under the stars, tell ghost stories…’ As she whetted Suitang’s appetite, she was herself moved by her wonderful descriptions. Staring at the other two intently, she said with great seriousness, ‘I’ll be here waiting for you. Don’t you two run away. Be sure to come back!’

Mengliu smiled. ‘I can’t say for sure.’

The sun was directly overhead, pale and weak. He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-five. His heart banging, he clawed through the bushes and looked out. Each tree was like a human shadow, but there was nothing on the road. He felt frozen, barely able to control his fingers. Time seemed to have come to a standstill. The wind blew from time to time, raising a dust-storm of snow. White clouds puffed from the three conspirators’ nostrils. It seemed they could see each other’s eyes through their sunglasses. Without knowing who reached out first, three pairs of thickly gloved hands were suddenly stacked one upon the other. With this action, their hearts were filled as with a divine mission.

There was a loud roar in the distance.

‘Avalanche,’ Yuyue said, as if it were as common as rain.

‘If you get caught, don’t say anything. Don’t mention anyone

else’s name,’ Mengliu instructed Suitang, as if he were a surgeon addressing his staff at the operating table. Then he stared at Yuyue and said solemnly, ‘Don’t say anything to Michael until we come back.’ He released his hands from theirs, then took off his gloves and sunglasses and readied for action. ‘Wait for us.’

Yuyue nodded, and also removed her gloves, rubbing her hands and cracking her knuckles. ‘I’ve had practice in free combat.’ She had a lot of confidence.

‘The cable car will only stop for five minutes. Attack furtively, don’t confront anyone head-on,’ Suitang said. ‘Just one blow, then leave his life to fate.’

‘Sh!’ Mengliu pointed to two figures in the distance. Suddenly, they could hear nothing but their own heartbeats. Perhaps he had been squatting too long. Mengliu’s legs felt weak. He tried to stand but could not, as if branches had hooked onto his clothing, or plants had wrapped around his body. He heard the crunch of footsteps on the snow, getting closer and growing louder, until at last they were a mighty force thundering on his eardrums. His breathing became laboured and he was dizzy. He forced himself to control his trembling. It was like a nightmare from which he could not wake.

‘You wait here, I’ll settle it.’ Perhaps perceiving Mengliu’s fear, Yuyue deviated from the plan. She looked at her watch, then calmly went out and greeted those who approached. From a gap in the bushes Mengliu could see their lower bodies. Yuyue spoke the local dialect, occasionally mixing in an English word. She laughed heartily, as if meeting and chatting with old friends. As they joked, someone suddenly gasped, and Mengliu could just see Michael’s escort clutching his hip, then staggering to the ground as if drunk.

She made easy work of the escort.

‘Michael, they want to go over and have a look around for a while. You and I can wait here for them to come back. You don’t mind, do you?’ She pointed to the people who had just emerged from the bushes.

Michael looked bewildered. ‘Have I somehow offended you? When…? Why should I be denied the chance to enjoy the benefits of the nursing home?’ His face was still crimson, his cheeks trembled as he spoke. ‘Yuyue…don’t be manipulated by these outsiders. Surely you’ve figured out that they don’t have beliefs. They’re just cowards, right to the core.’

‘Michael, attacking them will serve no purpose for you,’ Yuyue replied, laughing. She saw that Mengliu and Suitang had propped the collapsed escort against a tree trunk, so that he looked like he was having a nap. ‘I can’t vouch for them to come back.’

Michael moved close to her and said softly, ‘You heard the avalanche, right? I guess the funeral procession has been buried alive. A large-scale epidemic will soon break out. The medical team will retreat tomorrow. Swan Valley is doomed…I suggest you also go somewhere safe. It’s better that you come to the nursing home with me and stay for a period of time…See, the cable car is coming.’

The car had come to a stop just above the edge of the cliff, like a steel cage for a wild beast, with thick bars. The automatic doors propped open. A chill emanated from the empty cage.

Michael suddenly ran toward the car, but tripped on a branch. By the time he recovered, his hands had been tied behind his back.

‘Sorry to do this, Michael. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to suffer for long.’ Mengliu bound the director and the escort back to back, then gave the tape to Yuyue, in case she deemed it necessary to tape their mouths shut. He realised that the heroic self from his fantasies had emerged. His legs had stopped shaking. His mind was clear, he wasted no effort. He had dealt with the current scuffle with amazing efficiency, and now caught Suitang’s hand and headed toward the cable car.

As soon as they entered the car, the doors snapped shut. The floor beneath them was made of wooden planks, affording them a view of the misty abyss through the gaps when they looked down. Mengliu was frightened half to death. He had not heard Yuyue’s final words clearly, though he had a faint notion it had been something about the avalanche. All of his energy went to quelling his fears. No matter how cold it was to the touch, he had to keep a firm grip on the iron railing. The cable car trembled violently, then started up, swinging slightly. It moved very slowly, but they could not overcome their fear to appreciate the grandeur around them. The strange rocks, towering trees, the cliff and its crevices covered with white flowers, and the gorgeous smoky clouds held nothing for them.

Suitang did not dare to look anywhere other than at Mengliu’s chest, yet she seemed to see everything. ‘Put your gloves on,’ she said, shivering.

He opened his arms, but kept one hand on a pole, afraid to let go. He didn’t feel the cold. The truth was, he was afraid of heights. He was afraid to take an aeroplane. Even climbing a ladder set his legs trembling, and standing on the three-metre-high platform at readings had always made him dizzy. Now he was flying, and it was like suddenly reaching a climax. His spirit went back in time and the woman before him turned into Qizi. They were in the police bus going to their interrogation, their bodies close, but not looking at each other. She was gazing at the buttons on his chest in the same way as Suitang was now. He bent and looked at her eyes, and her lips, and thoughts of love surged through him, wishing the journey would go on forever, that the vehicle would never stop.

‘Come, hold me. Close your eyes. Imagine we are on a boat…’

But before he had finished, the gliding cable car stopped convulsively. The entire cage vibrated.

Now the cable car was hanging above the abyss and shaking gently.

If they so much as breathed, it rocked.

He had felt the urge to urinate when he first boarded the car. When Suitang screamed and grabbed hold of him, Mengliu nearly wet his pants in fear. His face was as pale as a zombie’s, his mouth was tightly shut. Hoping to hide his complicated feelings, he squeezed out a smile, but it only made him look even more ghastly.

Suitang lay collapsed in his arms for several minutes before gathering her senses. Now she beheld an earthly paradise. Everything was bathed by the sun in a warm coating of yellow. They were above the clouds, close to the heavens.

‘Ah…you see that cluster of clouds? Just like a castle.’ She tried to stand firm, without leaning on anything, as if she were on level ground.

He turned cautiously to see her castle, and it was indeed as magnificent as a heavenly palace, as if a beast guarded the gate and fairies floated around it. But then, in the blink of an eye, it looked more like a house on fire, with smoke billowing and wounded people falling to the ground.

He closed his eyes in an expression of torment.

‘It’s interesting how they change…Well, and then…’ She continued to investigate the clouds, apparently grown completely accustomed to the dangerous environment. ‘It’s like a big cruise ship cutting through a choppy sea. Look, there’s a row of waves.’

He, on the other hand, was thinking of the precariousness of their situation, that they might fall into the abyss at any moment.

‘If the cable car has broken down and cannot move we will soon become mummies.’ He glanced at her full forehead with his half-closed eyes, wondering at her ability to enjoy the scenery. He didn’t want to talk about the clouds. Inwardly, he cursed the damned cable car, though it wasn’t so much out of hatred for the thing as an attempt to vent his fear. With one breath he damned the car’s creators and a whole lot of other people and especially Swan Valley. Finally he calmed down.

‘If we are going to die here…could you…compose a poem for me?’ Suitang said. ‘I don’t want to die silently…When people find us, they will have your poem, and people will remember my love.’

‘Women! Damn your vanity!’ He liked her look of fearlessness before death. It was full of longing. But at the same time, he felt his heart jolt, and after the stabbing pain, a drop of blood dripped on Qizi’s face. She had been pushed onto the stage by vanity, and now a greater desire was controlling her, making her sacrifice her life. If he were to replace vanity and desire with more edifying words, it would be idealism and faith. This was what had become clear to him, after much pondering. When he had devoted himself to working in the hospital in a desperate attempt to anaesthetise himself against his memories of the past, people had taken it as an act of selflessness and applauded his exceptional conscience, praising him as a model of morality in the medical community.

‘As long as I live, I will have my vanity.’ Suitang wore a look that suggested that she wanted to talk to Mengliu about love. ‘Will you write for me? Do it now. If we don’t die it will still be a keepsake.’

He was suddenly angry. ‘Do you know that I have a phobia of heights? I couldn’t squeeze out a fucking fart right now, much less a poem.’

‘I’m afraid of heights too. But I’m not afraid when I’m with you. Do you know why?’ Women are more able to maintain their composure at crucial moments than men. Suitang didn’t get angry, even though she had every right to accuse him. ‘Because we are doing something meaningful.’

Mengliu’s face regained a little colour, his shame doing much to dispel his fear of heights. He wondered why he had been losing to women so often recently, why they had continued to pamper him like a baby, tolerated and given way to him, overlooked all his flaws. He was like their dog. They had all been confused by his superficial heroism. He wasn’t going into the nursing home because of Yuyue or for the truth, or at least, not completely. He lacked the quality of courage. He was naturally uninterested in truth, except for medical truth. But as for the question of how to go on surviving, he had his way…and his walks through the forest were proof of that. He would quietly take every opportunity he could to inspect the lay of the land. He drew a map of Swan Valley in his mind. It could not be completely isolated. There must be a way out. As for the river suddenly disappearing, he imagined that it must have continued flowing beneath the mountain, like a ghost. But now the river that flowed secretly beneath the mountains was filled with squid. Yes, that’s definitely how it was. And this cable car was the instrument for crossing the river.

‘Maybe we can get away from Swan Valley from here…if the cable pulls us over safely.’ He wanted to grab Suitang’s hand, but his fingers were stiff. He felt excited by his ability to let go now and stand on his own. He was blowing on his hands and slowly rubbing them together to warm them. He tried several times to look down at his feet, but failed. At last, gritting his teeth, he did look down, but all he could see was a river of rolling clouds.

Suitang said it would be horrible if they just ditched Juli and Yuyue. ‘Yuyue is waiting for you, you know. You must honour your word.’

‘They are on their own turf, with their own sense of law and order. We can’t do anything about that.’ He found he was overcoming all of his mental obstacles. He looked out from their cage and was awed by the beauty around them. He was thinking, Maybe the cable car stops here to let people feast their eyes on paradise before sending them to heaven. Such views only appear on a road close to heaven.

A gust of wind ran across the valley, shaking the cage.

From afar, they must have looked like a fallen leaf hanging on a spider web.

Suitang whispered, clinging to Mengliu to balance herself, ‘Well, if you won’t write, I can’t force you. But I want to know why you are so hardhearted. Even for a dying wish, you won’t do this to satisfy me?’

‘…If you want to think like that, I can’t do anything about it. Qizi would understand. She knew what I thought. She chased me out of Round Square because she didn’t want me to accompany her, to sacrifice myself fruitlessly. She was a true believer, but I wasn’t. She thought of the public, but I only thought of her. I was just tagging along. To be honest, I did not want to share in the fruits of their victory — but even more, I did not want them to lose so tragically, blown away like ashes in the wind…’ He was silent for a while, tears shining at the corners of his eyes. ‘So we need to think about how to get back…people cannot live without their motherland, even if it has no feeling for them, even if it takes everything from them, even if…’

As he was speaking in this sombre fashion, in these parallel sentences, she interrupted him. ‘Here, chew this. I think we should make love now, right here.’ She eyed him with a sort of apocalyptic indulgence.

He chewed the gum. He had thought of this possibility countless times, but today it didn’t attract him at all.

The cage, seemingly startled by Suitang’s words, began to twitch. With a burst, a bang, and a clicking sound, it started gliding towards the other side.

24

After entering a black hole, the cable car suddenly accelerated, whizzing along like a bullet. Mengliu felt like the top of his skull had been ripped off, and the skin on his face peeled back. Suitang’s long hair whipped about him, burning his face like fire. Without thinking, he grabbed hold of the railing and pulled Suitang into a protective embrace. He heard her shout, but couldn’t make sense of the garble of words that came speeding out of her mouth. Then he couldn’t hear anything, and after that he knew nothing.

When he awoke, they were lying on a wooden floor. The room was hot, and he was sweating. The beating of war drums slowly retreated from his ears, and he felt a kind of warmth, like sunshine after a storm. A ray of light struck his eyes, and he mistook it for the sun. When all the other lights came on one after another, he realised he was on a stage framed by a scarlet curtain, with a piano on one side, and various props on the other. The ceiling was dozens of metres high. He saw a circular painting on the ceiling and black velvet seats with yellow armrests filling three storeys of the auditorium, all of which were empty. The white gauze curtains on the boxes were held back with gold herringbone hooks. He recognised Darae’s work in the relief work covering the walls. At this point the familiar smell of the sea stimulated a memory. It seemed he had been here before — he remembered his conversation with the robot. Yes, that was here. Presumably the hall had been renovated extensively after the destruction he caused. He remembered it fully. It wasn’t a dream. He pulled himself up, and shook Suitang, who was like a sparrow hawk in full spin when she awoke, asking where they were as she looked around. When the light struck her body he saw fine traces of blood on her face.

‘It doesn’t matter where you are. It only matters that you have arrived safely,’ said a robotic voice, resonating around the whole space. ‘Now you both need to rest. In a moment, someone will come to show you to your rooms. I dare say that you will like the view, overlooking the sea on one side, the garden on the other, and with the stars overhead.’

Mengliu ran to the front of the stage. He was enveloped by a strong golden light. ‘It’s you again, the great spiritual leader.’ He enunciated his address carefully, leaning forward in an eloquent manner, with a fluid, natural dramatic flair. ‘An epidemic has broken out in Swan Valley. You shouldn’t be hiding here. In fact… why don’t you show your true face?’

‘You really disappoint me, Mr Yuan. You are still so long-winded. The punishment for trespassing on military land is to be thrown to the squid. But this depends on your luck. And my mood. Ha ha ha.’

‘Why don’t you show yourself? Let me look at Swan Valley’s spiritual leader, so I can see whether you are superhuman or not.’ Mengliu moved to a different spot, peering suspiciously into the dark. ‘Well, you’re obviously just a machine. You aren’t human. You have no heart, much less a sense of goodness.’

There was another fit of soundtrack laughter. ‘Dr Yuan, when you start using real language, like a poet, I will talk with you face to face. Farewell.’

The light went out and the scarlet curtain closed from both sides.

A robot of indistinct gender appeared at the side of the stage, waiting for them. Following the robot, they walked through a dimly lit passage, accompanied by a sound like the sea crashing against rocks. After five minutes they entered a garden where snow covered the flowers, grass and trees, the pavilions, a stone bridge spanning an artificial lake, and around the knot of the icy lake, a row of willows.

As Suitang walked, she repeatedly asked what military grounds had to do with the nursing home. The spiritual leader was full of hot air, just a pretentious fool. Suddenly remembering she said, ‘Isn’t he that robot person you mentioned?’

Mengliu nodded. He couldn’t retell the whole of his conversation with the robot. Perhaps he wasn’t a robot. The voice had been manipulated. Maybe he was a woman, but he had the cold processes of a machine. He remembered it had said it wanted to save him, to allow him a renaissance as a poet. That had developed into an argument about enslavement and freedom. A lot of information rushed into his head at the same time. To avoid watching eyes and listening ears, there were some things he could only discuss with Suitang in private. For now, he knew nothing about their situation, why they had been brought here, and what the military grounds had to do with the nursing home. Suitang’s thoughts were even more bizarre. She said she feared that they had been put here for genetic testing, perhaps even to be disembowelled, their flesh flayed, tortured until they were neither humans nor ghosts, and then tossed into the incinerators like medical waste. When she said this, it made her own hair stand on end.

They crossed through a stand of low trees on a path with snow piled up on either side. Their sweat had not yet dried, making their icy clothes cling to their bodies, freezing them both through and through. After five minutes, they were separated, and another robot led Suitang away. In a building that looked like an ancient castle, the robot opened the door to a room, then stood at the door without moving, as if standing guard. Mengliu went into the room and, to his surprise, was greeted by dazzling luxury. There were rugs, crystal lamps, murals, large divans, bookcases and a desk set before an expansive window, skirted by a tasselled curtain, through which he could see an azure sea. There was a card on the table, prompting him to ring the bell to call for assistance. He tried pressing the button, and someone answered him from outside the room. He knew what all this was about, but he was certainly not going to be taking this approach. He had no interest in pleasure. His spirit had died long ago. He could not be bought. He only wanted to go on living. He had to pretend he didn’t know anything. The less you know the safer, was always an irrefutable truth.

‘What is it they want?’ It was hot in the room. He began to sweat again, so he removed his coat and spread himself out on the bed. The crystal lights in the ceiling were like ice, and looking at them gave him a chill. The ceiling panels were dark blue, filled with twinkling stars. He lay there thinking for a while, at a loss and feeling irritable. His stomach rumbled, so he rang the bell and asked for food, then went to the window and looked at the sea. Maybe he could find some inspiration there, but he found that the sea was actually air-brushed on the glass, and even the window was fake. Behind it was a blocked-up wall. He turned to the bookshelf and found Paul Celan and Walt Whitman amongst the books arranged there. He felt a surge of joy, which soon turned to horror. They even knew his favourite poets. He refused to touch them, but quickly suppressed the disgust inside him, then reached out and fingered the spines of other books. He pulled out The Golden Lotus. There was no doubt in his mind the room had surveillance equipment and that spies somewhere were observing his every move. If they were really doing genetic experiments, then it would be necessary to observe him too. He stopped at the thought of genetic experiments, shuddering a little. He had done experiments on animals, and many of humanity’s medical advancements had first been made on animals such as dogs, rabbits, rats…He personally had done experimental surgery on a dog, opening it up four times, the last of which was to remove the pancreas, draining the animal of life. The dog was continuously sick after surgery, lying down, or swaying as it walked. Up until it died it still wagged its tail each time it saw him. At the time he felt he had been cruel, and that sooner or later retribution would come. Perhaps this was his day of reckoning.

He put the book back, then pressed the bell again. He asked to talk to someone. While he was waiting for a response, he worried about Suitang, and at the same time thought of Qizi, of the time they had sat together in the interrogation room chatting, fearless. He remembered how she looked when she spoke, expressive and full of banter, her temper not as loud as her voice, stomping her feet in her tantrum, delicate and charming. How did a weak little girl suddenly become so big and independent? Her voice gathered strength. She used hand gestures to awaken her sleepy eyes, letting everyone know that the faeces question was a human rights issue. At the time he thought it was funny, but he wasn’t laughing now.

The door opened, and the person who entered carried a whole roasted rabbit, the flesh cut off and accompanied by the complete frame of its skeleton, brown and shiny with oil, with a special sauce and a plate of the local dough sticks. From the artful way it had been carved, he could tell this was Darae’s work, and was even more certain of that fact after tasting it. From that moment he knew he was still a valued guest in Swan Valley. He ate and drank, leaving his utensils in a mess, and thinking all the while. This time he was determined to get to the bottom of things.

He heard a familiar voice coming from the corner.

‘Mr Yuan, now do you understand a little better? Our motive is simple. We just want you to write an ode for the increasingly large number of people in Swan Valley — you could call it ‘Google’s Swan Song’ — to be sung at the five-hundredth anniversary of our valley-building, which we will celebrate next month. You can use the opportunity to restore your identity and your glory as a poet. I can say for certain that your reappearance in the poetry world will be a fabulous event.’ The spiritual leader was uncharacteristically gentle, full of patience and amicability. ‘Your memory has been recorded. I have seen your whole history. Many years ago you wrote the poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, then when you left Round Square you also left poetry. But there is one minor issue — why were your actions and your poetry in such contradiction?’

He couldn’t answer. He felt that his privacy had been invaded, and he had been stripped naked in public. Looking around for an excuse he glanced at the ceiling and saw that a certain star up there was emitting a weak red light. He knew there were eyes on him.

‘Never mind if you don’t answer Mr Yuan, there are pen and paper on the desk. You can start composing your Swan Song any time you like.’

‘Surely it’s not just machines? Is anyone here?’ he asked aloud. ‘I want to talk to someone. Where is Suitang? I need to see her.’

‘She is fine. After you have finished writing, you will meet.’

‘Goodness is the highest virtue in Swan Valley, but you illegally place a citizen under house arrest. It won’t be good for you if this is made public.’

‘You don’t need to worry about that. We’re being very hospitable to you. We’ve given you the finest food Swan Valley has to offer, and the most comfortable lodgings,’ the spiritual leader said in a tepid tone. ‘Look how quiet it is here, much more conducive to writing than your West Wing. As long as you don’t ring the bell no one will disturb you.’

A sudden apprehension rose in Mengliu. Testing just how much the spiritual leader actually knew, he said, ‘What West Wing?’

‘You wouldn’t have forgotten that. There was an acacia tree in the courtyard, and you kept a pot with a rose that refused to bloom.’

‘No! You’re wrong. It did bloom! It bloomed!’ Unable to bear the slanderous remarks against the rose, he interrupted without thinking. ‘It bloomed, and it was…’

‘Bloomed?’ The spiritual leader sounded surprised, as if it were hearing something impossible. ‘What colour was it?’

Mengliu had retreated into his own memories, and saw nothing but the rose before his eyes. ‘She said open, and it opened. She said it would be red, and it was red.’ His tone was almost that of a dream. ‘It bloomed six times in all, always with four blossoms, which remained open until the frost came. The scarlet petals would drop around the flower pot, then dry and harden. I collected them and laid them into a collage forming one word.’

‘Was it “Qizi?”’

‘No. It was “Freedom!”’ He was like an old friend pouring his heart out. ‘I was free. I got rid of her. No one would care about me anymore. Oh. I’m glad you know everything. I have nothing to hide, and nothing to talk about. I hope you understand my feelings. I have not told this to anyone before. Now I can really let go.’

The spiritual leader was silent for quite a while, then said, ‘Too bad your fiancée did not see the flowers. That is to her credit.’

‘Later, I left the Wisdom Bureau and studied medicine for five years. As if to affirm my choice, my hands took naturally to the scalpel.’ He reached out his soft thin hand in a moment of appreciation. ‘The language of exile has no motherland. Writing poetry is just misguided.’

‘These excuses make it obvious that your problem is one of self-esteem, Mr Yuan. Your talent is beyond doubt…but since the rose bloomed — and moreover, it was red — you should at least honour your promise — never to give up writing poetry.’

‘It’s too late, useless. I have lost my imagination. Who can make a butterfly with broken wings fly? Poetry abandoned me, choosing of its own free will to fall short.’ Mengliu felt as if he had returned to himself after being put into a trance. He faced the red flashing star and said, ‘See, we can carry on an agreeable conversation. You might as well tell me about yourself now. Perhaps talking face to face. That would be better.’

‘As Swan Valley’s spiritual leader I solemnly promise you, as soon as you finish your Swan Song, it will be your choice whether you stay or go.’

‘I recommend Darae. He’s the most outstanding local poet. And he has a much better understanding of Swan Valley than I ca—’

‘You have a month. I wish you well.’

The red star suddenly went blank. The stars on the blue ceiling continued to glitter.

25

Over the next two days Mengliu passed the time with The Golden Lotus, though secretly he was considering all sorts of counter-measures to employ against his captors. His days were not too difficult, spent idly reading the erotic passages. On the third morning, two robots entered uninvited, took down the paintings decorating the walls, and the crystal chandelier, leaving only a dim bulb for light, casting shadows on the four uneven concrete walls of the room. At four o’clock in the afternoon, they also took his bed and mattress, removed the carpet, and left him only a pile of tattered quilts. On the fourth day, the room was completely emptied, revealing a rugged cell with a cracked toilet and no water coming out of the faucet. His food too was stripped bare, to cabbage and tofu accompanied by a cup of cold water once a day. The bell was completely disregarded. He looked angrily at the pen and paper on the table, then threw them at the wall. Then the radiator was switched off, and even with all of his clothes on he was cold. He wrapped a quilt around him. On the seventh day he started counting the stars on the ceiling, and used his footsteps to measure the room. He picked up the pen and paper, placed them on the small table, and stared at them for a long time. He had no water to wash himself with, nor clothes to change into, and the toilet smelled of urine and shit. He scratched his itchy body until the dry skin bled. He felt he had become an animal. Before long, he would grow fur all over his body and lose the ability to understand human speech. He would begin to howl.

On that seventh day someone new served his food, a young person. He was strong and good-looking, his skin and hair as black as a gorilla’s, his waist flexible, his lips thin and wide. His eyes were those of an actor, his expression soft and tender, his face youthful and yet tainted with age. He was a quiet creature. He set the dishes down as if he was serving a meal to a king, with his eyes humbly lowered and his hands clasped. He bowed as if waiting for orders, and didn’t seem to mind the pungent odour in the room. Mengliu tried to strike up a conversation with him. He didn’t speak, just bowed at the waist in response. Mengliu thought perhaps he did not understand English. He scratched his head in distress. Not to speak with someone would surely drive the prisoner mad. Taking a few phrases of Swanese he had learned from Yuyue, he asked the simian fellow in tortured language if it understood English, suggesting that perhaps they could chat a while, he had a belly full of stories to share for free. He sincerely hoped the ape-like creature would look up at him, even if it really was an ape. If all it did was watch him as he spoke, that would be enough.

Actually, his expectations had been too low. Using charming eyes to look askance at him a couple of times, the fellow began to speak. In an effeminate tone, he answered in perfect American English, looking on Mengliu with devotion the whole time. He said, ‘I’m your ardent fan. I know you’re an awesome poet. I really admire you…you established your status in literary circles when you were only in your twenties. You’re really amazing! The poems the Three Musketeers wrote, I read them all when I was ten, and yours are the ones I like the best. I always dreamed of getting a chance to meet and talk to you, but I never really believed this day would come. And…you’re still so young! You have the grace of a poet, just like I imagined you would have.’

As the monkey spoke, he shyly took out a little notebook and asked his idol for an autograph.

Perhaps because of his hunger, Mengliu felt slightly dizzy. Steadying himself, he took the notebook from the monkey’s hand. The book contained autographs by many famous people. He leafed through it slowly, thinking how after so many years, in this strange place, a fan had emerged, and it made his heart churn a little. He thought of how fans had asked for the autographs of the Three Musketeers in just the same way years ago. The Three Musketeers would hide behind closed doors and practise their signatures in their free time. Hei Chun’s autograph was very artistic, written with a flair that made it impossible to read. Bai Qiu’s was clumsy and honest, belying his wisdom. But Mengliu had completely forgotten what his own signature looked like in those days. Certainly it was not the same as he had used to sign medical charts. He thought of finding a blank page to show off a little, just to satisfy the effeminate’s request. Suddenly, a few words in Dayangese jumped out from the book, stinging his eyes and making his heart tingle. Yes! It was Qizi! He recognised it as soon as he saw it. It was Qizi’s autograph! He grabbed the ape’s hairy hand excitedly, barraging him with questions. The poor fellow, shaking like an electric shock had bolted through him, shot back, ‘It’s not mine. I found it in a dead person’s pocket.’

‘Where?’ asked Mengliu.

‘Underground. Probably only the bones are left now.’

Mengliu said in an authoritative tone, ‘I don’t mean the body. I mean, where did you pick up the book?’

The simian fellow looked frightened by his idol’s expression. His thin lips were speechless for a while, then he said in a sorrowful tone, ‘It was in the woods. About five years ago.’

Mengliu flipped through the pages of the autograph book once more and, holding it tightly to his chest, looked up and let out a long sigh. The clue’s thread had been cut with a stroke, but the signature at least meant that Qizi might still be alive. The discovery made him shake uncontrollably. He seemed to smell her breath, to hear her voice on the wind, to see the shadow of her figure haunting the foliage.

The fellow placed his folded hands on his abdomen again and said shyly and cheerily, ‘If you want this book, it’s all yours. I’ve always dreamt of giving my most treasured possession to my idol. Oh God is good to me! I am so blessed! My name is Sama. If you can remember that — Sama — I will die happy.’

Mengliu did not move, not even a twitch. Confronted with his fan’s emotional expression of adoration, he offered no emotion of his own.

He ate nothing. Stimulated by the thought of Qizi, he suddenly felt it would be too shameful to eat in a stinking place like this, as if he were some barnyard animal. He had never been treated like this in his life, and he would hold his head up with dignity now. Changing tactics, he rang the bell, and asked for someone to clean the toilet, and allow him to shower and dress before writing his poem. A voice simply reminded him of the due date for the Swan Song, telling him to cherish his time and his life. If he failed to complete the task, he would be thrown in the river to feed the fish. He quietly cursed the ruthless robot. It’s unscrupulous to force a surgeon to write poetry. The arrogance of this authoritarian attitude! Well, let’s just see how you’ll make these hands write!

As time went on, each day was harder than the one before. There was less food. Sometimes he didn’t eat all day. The water was cut off again. His body was mouldy and infested with bugs. Only the lice grew fat, and fleas, who leapt out from his quilt to attack what was left of him. He remembered how well he had dressed in the past, in shirts so fresh they always looked new, and clean underwear, always paying close attention to his sideburns… At that moment, if there had been a mirror in the room, he would not have been brave enough to look at his reflection. He was constipated, and soon developed haemorrhoids. His breath was offensive, and his muscles atrophied. He knew they were trying to turn his dignity to dog shit. Then, when he had written a Valley ballad singing the praises of their goodness, they would elevate him on the poet’s pedestal, and restore the dignity he had lost.

He picked up the pen, looked at the paper and struck the pose of one lost in thought.

Write, he said to himself, one poem, one ballad, ten lines, twenty…I just want to bathe and change clothes. It’s very simple.

He started writing. The white paper was like a screen with a film flashing across it. Juli’s gold-as-wheat body and coconut breasts, and a man’s inward stirring and frustration. He kept writing. A red file, artificial insemination, Rania’s blood flowing from the ward, through the forest, to the waste disposal site. He wrote faster and more wildly. His pen and the film were in a violent firefight, facing off in the chaos. Those sounds, those colours, the shouting, the distant snow-capped wind-swept mountains, the sun like a sharp sword striking his eyes. His eyes were bleeding. He kept writing. Qizi’s coquetry in the West Wing, the sadness on the radio, in Round Square. She turned into a phoenix and soared away from the smoke, speeding from the red earth, through the blue sky and into the pristine clouds. He wrote. He wrote! He wrote of Hei Chun and Bai Qiu. He wrote of sorrow and regret. He wrote of hunger…He and Qizi were together, fainting then transfused with energy, standing up together. They held their heads high and were inseparable. They pressed forward, speaking with one voice, moving towards the same goal. She leaned against him as if he were a great tree. Oh, and he wrote! Dazed with hunger, they entered a pretty restaurant and ordered Kobe beef, platters of sashimi, grilled saury, stir-fried seafood, gingko nuts, durian cakes, wine, spirits, sake, a table overflowing with fragrant food — so exquisitely fragrant. He poured the wine and gave it to her. Suddenly there was a gunshot. Blood splattered everywhere as Qizi’s head flew off. As it flew away from her body, in her dilated pupils he saw himself. His face was dirty, unlike man or ghost.

He snapped out of his reverie. The mouth-watering cuisine disappeared. There was nothing in front of him but a stack of blank paper. Qizi was still in his mind, still her former pale beautiful self, with sharp chin and dark almond eyes.

Barely able to suffer the horror of the dream, Mengliu was covered in sweat. His limbs were lifeless.

Though he wasn’t hungry, and couldn’t eat anything, the knowledge that she must still be alive strengthened him. Everything made sense again. She was watching him, listening to him. He had to respond to her, to make up for the past, to pay a belated tribute to all that their history represented after this long period of separation. He was pleased to see that his conscience was touched, that it had not been completely silenced.

At night he was hungry and cold. The wind moaned outside his cell. He couldn’t sleep, so he sat beneath the light catching lice, listening to the crunch of their bodies as he burst them between his nails. Every time he thought of her he killed a louse. He wiped their blood on the walls, and used it to draw Round Square, the people, the slogans, the faeces, the vehicles, the police in their helmets…He looked for his place there, but couldn’t find it, and didn’t know where he should draw himself. He faced the wall, deep in thought, until daybreak. He could only feel that night had turned to day. The room was always bathed in the same dim light. Just as he was thinking this, the light went off. The stars on the ceiling flickered out.

A bell burst into the depths of his mind with a sharp ring, shattering his sleep. It sounded for two full minutes, during which he felt the floorboards tremble and shake. Thousands of feet ran through his mind, along with the roar of waves, neighing horses, and the bursting permafrost. An amputee’s shrill scream of misery. Suddenly the door opened. A light pierced the darkness and a chill wind entered in. He saw Qizi in the doorway — no, it was Suitang. She looked like she had just been to the beauty parlour. Her skin was pink and her long hair flowing. She said she had spent her days very well, and that they had taken her to visit the nursing home. It was paradise. She loved it. She wanted to stay there. He was in a semi-conscious state from hunger and sleep deprivation, but when he saw her he immediately grew clear-minded. He didn’t bother at all about what she said, he just felt embarrassment at the filthy state of his own body. Trying to hide deep in his blanket he yelled, ‘Go away! Don’t come in.’ He kept hollering until he couldn’t hear any movement. He stuck his head out from under the quilt. Suitang stood above him her hand outstretched.

‘You should eat,’ she said softly, eyes full of sympathy and affection, ‘and then write some poetry, the Swan Song, or a love poem, or many many poems, just like you used to do. You think you are sticking to your values, but it’s all meaningless, it’s all a cloud.’

He ducked away from her pale hand, and her red lips. Her eyes too were red, as if bloodshot.

‘Suitang, I just want you to be happy. Whatever you choose to do is fine. That is your business,’ he said weakly. He was like someone about to die, filled to the brim with tolerance and peace. ‘I was in Beiping. I was in the crowd, yet I felt more lonely than I do in this room. I am with them every day now, we talk about women, we talk about poetry, we curse whomever we want to curse. I see Qizi every day, hear her speeches, chat with her about her dreams. If Swan Valley wants to destroy my flesh in the name of poetry, then that’s just fulfilling my wish. Sometimes tainted things are good, though they make the heart uncomfortable — serious things, like ideals and beliefs, they make you ill-at-ease forever. Stifling the poetic impulse, it has been more painful than I imagined, like…don’t think I’m vulgar, but it’s like facing the woman you love and trying to control an erection, refusing to enter her body…I’ve written hundreds of poems in my mind…I don’t want to publish them. I am ashamed. Poetry has become a whore’s cry. Its dignity is in ruins. If the language of poets cannot furnish banners for the next generation…we haven’t been taught yet how to use our language in the service of freedom…’

His logic had grown muddled and incoherent.

He cried softly, reaching out into the void, his head hanging down feebly. ‘I will stay with you to the end.’

He spoke the last sentence as if from a dream, his voice so low even he could barely hear it, the rest of his words turning to wind between his teeth and lips.

‘Who will write your names in the history books martyrs? Those who write history aren’t your people…You don’t count as good citizens… Everything will be lost.’

When Mengliu rose from his quilt, he found that the room had made a miraculous recovery. The crystal chandelier was lit, the floor was carpeted, the window opened onto the sea again, and the stars in the ceiling sparkled. A pleasant fragrance had returned to the room, the toilet had been cleaned, the books restored to the shelves. For a moment he was startled, thinking he had woken in a wedding chamber. He looked down and saw he was wearing a new robe, its belt tied with a slip knot. His red underwear was new, and just the right size. He couldn’t help fumbling his hands over his face, finding it clean-shaven and his hair slightly damp, as if it had not yet dried after a recent shower. He panicked, wondering who had washed him clean. Who had undressed him without his permission? What had they done?

There were bottles on the night stand, showing that he had been on a drip. The room temperature was just right. He wasn’t hungry and his throat hurt, so he knew they had pumped food into his stomach. He angrily rang the bell. Suitang appeared in the doorway, her long hair flowing, with a cold look on her face. It extinguished his excitement. There was an invisible wall between them. A rush of emotion swirled in his heart, and inflamed his face.

‘You look good. Seems you’ve recovered well.’ She spoke casually, showing no signs that she had been under house arrest. Her eyes were like a rabbit’s, as if blood might drop from them at any moment. ‘You’re taking this too seriously. It’s a poem for the occasion, easy enough to write. Do you really think it’s worth your life…We’re down to the last three days. They will try physical torture. I suggest you eat and drink now. They will whip you, flog you. I hope you can survive the pain.’

What did she say? Whip? Flog? They wanted to use torture on a surgeon, a common citizen? His expression was full of doubt. He didn’t believe the spiritual leader of Swan Valley would be stupid enough to threaten torture. Brutal tactics should be used on important people, but he was just a powerless foreigner. He wondered whether it was really Suitang who had come. He couldn’t tell what was illusion and what was real. ‘I hope you didn’t betray yourself.’

Suitang didn’t answer, but continued with her own train of conversation. ‘You think this pettiness can make you noble and great, cleansing you of your past cowardice and indifference…It’s just wishful thinking. If you write your Swan Song poem, you can preserve yourself and leave Swan Valley. At least your poetry will save your life.’

He thought Suitang must have been put under a magic spell to make her say those words. Once her sense of justice and art and order had disappeared, she grew dim, and her beauty turned tacky. She had already returned to the vanity of material things. The people of her generation simply didn’t have ideals, and she was puzzled by his assertiveness and sense of mystery. Because she had never loved through troubled times, she would feel the deep love of an Akhmatova or a Pasternak to be ridiculous. He said goodbye to her, then calmly acknowledged that he was willing to die. He would leave no trace, nor would he need anyone to mourn for him.

26

At ten the next morning, the simian-like Sama visited. His appearance was startling. His hair was tied up with a black headband, and his face painted with Chinese opera makeup. The hook-shaped eyebrows made him look quite handsome. He wore a blood-coloured robe with a broad belt around the waist, and sleeves of the kind worn by actors in a martial role. His feet, clad in high boots, moved unsteadily. Mengliu had seen Chinese opera and thought his outfit an insult to it.

Sama pulled his expression into a smile and winked conspiratorially. Then he told Mengliu he first needed to complete a ritual, which was to recite poetry for his arms to hear, so that when they were filled with emotion they would not be too harsh. These words seemed as crazy to Mengliu as Sama’s appearance, so he interrupted the recitation, and asked Sama what was going on. Sama replied, ‘Today is the day you’ll be whipped. For a professional thug, this would be nothing special, but for a poetry-lover like myself, it is a rare honour.’ He started reading again, and it was actually a verse from ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. He finished with a flourish, then from behind his waistband he drew out a bamboo cane and flexed it until it formed a circle. As he released it, the cane made a whooshing sound, and created a tremor in the room.

Mengliu was gripped with horror. He asked weakly, ‘Where will you strike?’

‘The whole body.’

‘How many strokes?’

Sama, casting a charming glance his way, replied, ‘It depends on your endurance.’

As he saw Mengliu’s face slowly lengthening, like one who is making a vow to die without surrendering, Sama expressed the admiration he felt deep in his heart. He thought Mengliu possessed the appropriate attitude for a poet under the threat of flogging. He believed in a poet’s moral courage, so he had decided to help the poor fellow. As if by magic, he pulled out a bottle of red pigment and whispered, ‘You’ve got to cooperate. Each time I whip you, you should scream, and you’ll need to show agony on your face too if you’re going to fool them.’ A look vaguely like love appeared on his face, and he used his shoulder to give Mengliu an intimate push as he quietly hid the paint.

‘Now we go on stage.’

‘On stage?’

‘Yes. Where I will whip you.’

Woodenly, Mengliu followed Sama out of the room. The frozen lake was smooth as a mirror, with the light of the sun reflecting off it in a surreal glare. His dazzled eyes could barely adapt to the landscape around him. He hung his head as he walked. The cracks between the stones underfoot made him dizzy. Lashing? At first he thought this was a good word, that they wanted to encourage him. When he saw the bamboo cane, he understood it to be a whipping, like they might do to animals. But that wasn’t anything very different. Once you’ve landed in the hands of people who’ll use any means to control you, it doesn’t really matter what they call it. ‘Yes, the place where you will be beaten.’ He thought the effeminate tone sounded like it was describing a place where peach blossoms were in bloom, a place full of beauty and longing. But that was true enough too, since bruises would soon blossom across his back. If the cane was equipped with metal hooks, the blossoms would mature into rotted fruit. Perhaps his innards would gush out, flowing from his body. When this came to mind, he became unusually calm. He did not intend to accept Sama’s kindness, and to emit shrill screams to fake his pain. That sort of idea insulted a dignified man greatly. He hoped he would lose consciousness in a moving and tragic way with the first stroke, leaving his body to its fate. He really wished Qizi could see the scene, a poet enduring a beating without uttering the slightest groan.

They crossed a stone bridge. A lake. A forest. During the days of confinement Mengliu had grown accustomed to talking to himself, and now he was chattering all along the way.

‘A lost decade. My fiancée. She’s alive. I know she’s been alive all this time…She couldn’t come back, couldn’t get in touch with me, couldn’t find me. She knows I’m waiting for her. You don’t think so? Why would you say that? Do you know what love is? Everyone plays around a bit, but other than that? When disaster strikes…What Jia Wan said was right. He told me not to go out that night, that something big was going down…If I’d gone to warn her instead of collapsing into a deep sleep at home…The reason I didn’t go with them to the court was not because of cowardice… it’s because I really didn’t know, and I really didn’t believe that kind of thing would happen…no one believed it. They were innocent as doves…Now they’re lost to the sky…’

He stopped Sama for a moment, wanting him to talk about the time he had found the notebook, who the dead person was, why he had died, and where he had lived, but Sama didn’t know. Curious why a small book could be of such interest to his idol, Sama said, ‘We often find dead foreigners in the forest.’

They soon reached their destination. The theatre was completely empty.

The curtain opened. The backdrop on the stage was of a dark cell, its wall painted with angry script. A spotlight fell on it, illuminating a ladder, over which was draped a rope, the props for a flogging. The spotlight swept to stage left. There was an old narrow table, on which was a pen and paper, and a vase of unopened rosebuds.

Backstage, Mengliu was changed into a white frog suit, then moved toward the ladder, under the dim sleepy dust swirling in the lighted air around him. He turned his back to the empty seats in the theatre. There was a hole in his clothing, exposing his bare back, buttocks, and hips. He was like a wooden puppet going through an out-of-body experience. Under Sama’s guidance he faced the ladder, arms straight and legs splayed, and allowed himself to be tied to the rungs. Sama patted his buttocks several times, then pinched, testing their elasticity and firmness to determine how much force to use as he swung his cane. Undoubtedly flogging was an art. The whip in hand and the interior of the mind had to work in unison to generate the right amount of pain without causing death. Sama understood what it took to create just such a masterpiece.

As he checked the bonds on his idol’s hands, Sama asked softly, ‘Does it hurt? Is it too tight?’

Mengliu moved slightly, and Sama was almost in tears, thrilled at being in such close contact with his idol. Finally, he leaned into Mengliu’s ear and said, ‘You look even more attractive than the crucified Christ. Remember to cooperate. You have to scream, okay?’

Everything was ready. Sama elegantly lashed the ground with his cane, and a resounding thwack stirred up the dust.

A band sounded from the back of the stage, an ensemble of erhu, yueqin and a three-stringed lute.

After a moment the plaintive music stopped. Sama directed all his strength to his belly and squeezed out some lines from a play in a strange tone:

‘My most loved and respected poet, before you endure the scourge of my rod would you like to change your mind?’ The last word was uttered in a heavy tone, shrill and trembling. At this moment, the erhu grew articulate in its accusing tones. Sama ran his hand along the cane, applying red pigment to it. ‘Now I ask you in the name of the spiritual leader of Swan Valley, regarding your Swan Song — will you or will you not write it?’ He pointed his finger with an actress’s hand gesture, a classic pose made on stage to show delicacy and grace.

Mengliu’s chin rested on the rung of the ladder. He was unable to move, and his eyes stared straight ahead. ‘I swear by my fiancée, you can give up…you’re all crazy!’ He matched Sama’s tone.

Turning to face the audience, Sama laughed. Not without irony, he announced, ‘He says that for the sake of a woman he will…’ He turned back again. ‘Oh? So this woman, what sort of extraordinary person is she?’

‘She…she stared at the bleeding world without flinching, a thousand times greater than your spiritual leader!’

The ladder started to rotate, turning the front of Mengliu’s body toward the audience. The light fell on him. His face was pale and sweating.

Slightly startled, Sama turned around and pulled out a thin booklet, flipping to his next lines. ‘You…you can’t elevate your fiancée so as purposely to devalue our spiritual leader. This does not suit the spirit of debate, don’t you understand?’

‘Well, let your spiritual leader face me. Count it as my dying wish. I want to look on his ugly face so I can remember it and find him in hell.’

‘What do you want to find him for?’ Suddenly, a small gong sounded twice. Sama turned to another page. ‘He selflessly serves the people, owing no one anything…’

‘He deprived me of my freedom. He’s deprived many people of their freedom, their rights, even their lives.’

Sama put the booklet away and murmured, ‘My idol, pay attention to your lines. You’re engaging in slander.’

‘What? I…I was tied to this ladder by you. What I am saying is true. I am the truth. You…don’t even distinguish between right and wrong. You’ve reversed black and white, distorted the facts, smitten the innocent, made a lie of justice!’ His words were as fierce as firecrackers. He paused, and the gong clattered three more times. ‘As a poet, I hate to use clichés. I hate it when language fails to express meaning, I fucking…’

‘Wait a minute! You said…you are a poet?’ Sama turned and faced the theatre, breaking into a laugh. ‘Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!..did you hear that? He claims he is a poet!’

The idol’s pale face had turned crimson. Now he was tongue-tied.

All six pieces of the ensemble sounded at once, hissing in disapproval.

Suddenly they broke off.

The idol seemed to awaken from a dream. ‘Yes…I am a poet… But now, as a poet, I solemnly tell you that I will never write poetry for Swan Valley!’

After he said this the three-piece percussion group, the single drum, the large gong and the small gong, struck up a manic military tone, a reckless, merciless racket.

Sama’s whip cracked, and the first signs of redness appeared on Mengliu’s white haunches. The accompanying music immediately turned joyous, and Sama began to appreciate his own value. Obviously a strict man, he completed each stroke with the same graceful posture. But his damned idol would not cooperate, and remained mute. So Sama accompanied each stroke with a howl of his own. The whole scene had a tragic feel, which soon left him and his idol both covered in blood.

After ten minutes, Sama fell to the ground with a plop, and declared the end of the flogging.

The soothing strains of the erhu were raised like a supplicant’s hands toward the sky.

‘When a poet no longer writes poetry, he acquires dignity, perhaps a far greater dignity than he ever had when he wrote.’ Sama slowly raised his head and stood up. Tossing the cane from his hand, he spread out his arms toward the auditorium. ‘Lying down or standing up — who can say which is more humble, and which more noble? Perhaps it requires more courage to stop writing, than to write.’

The crimson curtain slowly closed on the stage.

The lights were extinguished.

27

In the past, during the dark nights of his soul, every day felt like three in the morning for Mengliu. Now there were no dark nights, the light in his cell blazed all the time, making red roses dance before his eyes. Who was smoking and drinking in the room while I was asleep? What unpleasant smells, the whole place littered with cigarette butts, and could I still have slept like the dead? Mengliu’s throat was dry. On the night stand were three cups, one with water, one with green tea, and one with rice wine. He drank them all and was still thirsty. The stars on the ceiling no longer sparkled. At the window the sea seemed to be moving, and there was a vague sound of waves. The door to the cell was unlatched, and the hint of a chill wind slipped in through the crack there. It wasn’t cold, but it cleared his head. The unlatched door seemed to imply an opportunity for escape. He smiled contemptuously. How could he escape his own mind? He waited quietly for someone to come and take him to his suffering. He took this as a battle, a standoff; he would never flee.

A ray of sunshine squeezed in through the crack at the door, creating a bar on the ground that fell all the way to his feet. Extremely weak, he felt an unusual sense of fulfillment. His heart was like a radiator, throwing out heat. He opened the autograph book and stroked Qizi’s signature, wondering whether she was dead. But he was numb inside and the concept of life and death no longer had meaning for him. He hid the book, then went to clean himself up. He washed his face and shaved. He could not see the person in the mirror clearly, and had no notion of his appearance. He did everything in very low spirits, stroking his face with his long fingers. When he came out, Suitang was in the room. There was a platter of sleek, sliced rabbit on the table, accompanied by a variety of spices.

‘What’s this? I’m a VIP again?’ The tangy smell made his mouth water.

Suitang smiled. ‘This could be your last meal on earth.’

‘If it’s the first, that’s good, and if it’s the last, that’s fine too. What’s the point?’ He ate greedily. ‘Tell me. There’s no need to beat around the bush.’

‘Don’t be so uncongenial. We are the only two of our kind in Swan Valley.’ Suitang’s resentment had a hint of coquetry. ‘Sama has been sent to the mill for re-education because of his dereliction of duty…Who knows, maybe it’s all a sham. It’s hard to believe your fan club could have penetrated to such a remote location.’

‘So?’ he interrupted.

‘You’re angry? What are you angry with me for? I didn’t betray my friend for glory…’

‘This…is good. It tastes like Darae’s work. Want to try it?’

Ignoring him, she walked straight to the window and pushed it open. The sudden gust that blew in struck him fiercely. Raising his head, he saw the golden shine of the sea outside and was astonished, as if he had seen a miracle. The genuine sea, boundless, waves crashing in the bay, seagulls soaring, and the sea breeze constantly blowing his way. His hand touched the ledge and on the wall a crack showed through. It was a sliding door. He opened it, and found a balcony outside. It was connected to a long passage like a bridge standing above the sea. He could not help but grasp Suitang’s hand, and she followed him obediently out the door. They reached the end of the bridge and turned to look back at the island far behind them. The sea and sky were both boundless, they couldn’t believe they were on Earth.

‘I’ve felt I was in a fog these past few days. Suitang, is this a dream?’ A man may suffer from waking nightmares, especially when he has gone without sleep for nights. Standing in the dazzling sun, gazing at the vast world, his feelings might be even more overwhelming. Mengliu was on the bridge with the water rippling beneath him, and a tempest stirring in his mind. He wanted to write a poem. The words were already on the tip of his tongue. No, on his lips, ready to fly out of his mouth at any moment, like a bird leaving its nest. No. It could not be. He looked into the distance and tried hard to swallow the verse. Apparently choking on it, his face reddened. Before long, he began to feel dizzy, nauseous, and bloated. He leant his head over the sea and vomited. Pieces of rabbit that had turned to debris rained down on the water, then sank quietly.

Suitang said, ‘The sea breeze is not good for you.’

‘I must have been poisoned. If they want to kill me, it would not be difficult. Why bother poisoning me in secret?’ he shouted as he turned back.

Suitang rushed after him, saying, ‘Are you crazy? I ate the other half of the rabbit. There’s nothing wrong with me. Your empty stomach rejected the oily food. You should eat porridge first.’

‘Eat porridge? I would rather drink the west wind! Look at me. I could float away now.’

He really did look like a sage. Stumbling like a kite that could not get lift-off, he almost fell into the sea several times more.

They returned by the same route. Strangely, the place they had come from was gone, and the entire topography seemed to have changed too. They had somehow ended up in a secluded courtyard halfway up the mountain. The wide doorway to the courtyard looked like the entrance to a square. There was a nude sculpture by the door and an abandoned armoured vehicle topped with a long gun pointed off in the distance. There was nothing in the courtyard, only a large column shooting up to the sky in the centre and below it, an area the size of a basketball court. Mengliu thought of the white chimney he and Juli had seen. He clearly recalled Juli’s longing look. This should be it.

He walked around the base, but there was no entrance. He looked up, but he could not see the top. He instinctively knew this wasn’t a chimney. Perhaps it was a military watchtower. Its top would afford a panoramic view of Swan Valley, as well as the distant sea. Suitang agreed. As he checked the bricks, he asked where she had been in recent days and how she had been treated. Suitang prevaricated, saying, ‘I just can’t describe the place. Don’t think I’m making things up. It was like I was sleepwalking. I was in a different place every day. I had plenty to eat and drink, and I listened to a lot of lectures. They said you were writing a ballad.’

‘You really don’t know me. I’m not like you, easily manipulated… even to the point of becoming their lobbyist.’

‘You try manipulating me. You’re just pretending to be romantic,’ Suitang said.

‘I couldn’t bear to manipulate you. If I had wanted to I would’ve done so earlier.’ He knocked on a brick and listened to the sound.

‘Well why was I the fish that escaped the net? That Su Juli…’

He gestured for her to be quiet, as if he had made a major discovery. In truth, he only wanted to stop her line of questioning.

‘Help me think. What would this building be used for? How can we get in?’

‘Maybe it’s a heating unit. It must be used to get rid of exhaust.’

‘Yeah, that’s imaginative. Do you think we can get in?’

‘I think…maybe the wall is a decoy. Somewhere there’s a hidden switch or button.’

‘That’s so old-fashioned. You might as well say, Open sesame! Or pineapple! Or whatever…’

As if this spell had had its effect, a door like that on an aeroplane suddenly slid open. He tripped on it, and practically fell inside.

It was another hall of images, full of electronic screens flickering in silence.

On one screen, beasts beneath a canopy of trees. In a white robe, Esteban lies on a boulder covered with a white sheet. The mortician is shaving his head and beard. Four people, using only their hands, raise the sheet as if they are an honour guard handling the national flag. They solemnly place Esteban in the ice coffin, then cover it with a layer of white chrysanthemums.

The morning sun blazes on the ice. The vast sky is filled with puffy, unremarkable clouds.

A low-flying bird suddenly drops to the ground.

The band and the dozens of mourners are all in white robes, almost invisible in the snowy funereal world.

Shanlai and Darae are amongst them, wearing clumsy snow boots and sombre expressions. Their difficult journey through the deep snow creates an even deeper sense of ritual. The group of mourners is halfway up the hillside when the mountain bursts open. Blocks of snow tumble away, followed immediately by an influx of loose snow rolling down the hill. The snow swells, and in an instant engulfs the doll-like group of mourners.

On a second screen, the hospital is empty. On the gate is an announcement saying that the plague had been brought by vultures. All birds and reptiles have been infected, and humans will inevitably be infected as well. The announcement makes no mention of the vultures’ food source at the waste disposal site. Abandoned infants. The road with mobs of people fleeing the disaster, continually stumbling, no one bothering. Some are hastily buried, or thrown haphazardly aside…They gather at the cliff edge because the cable car is the only way to the outside world. On the first trip, four squeeze into the trolley, but as it bumps and glides along, the rope suddenly snaps, and the cable car hurtles like a stone into the abyss.

On a third screen, a circle of people in white coats and learned faces stare at an aquarium. It is an academic discussion. There are observations and recordings…In the aquarium, a bloodied baby with its umbilical cord still attached is towed through a pool of alcohol, its hands and feet flailing like a dying fish…its mouth opens rapidly, then it no longer moves.

All of the screens told stories. Some were videos, some live feeds. Then all the smaller screens were turned off, leaving only a huge black-and-white screen still broadcasting. Its subject was familiar to Mengliu. It was the sit-in at Round Square…The crowd was in chaos. A large number of uniformed men entered the square…It was just like Shunyu’s father described, a blood-filled night with half the sky scorched red…

A patch of bright light shot down from the top of the column through the darkness but because it was so far away, it became dim by the time it reached the ground. Even so, everything inside the room could be seen clearly. There was an area like a disc jockey’s podium, and in the middle of one of the walls hung a disorderly array of banners. They were flanked on both sides by several small machines. In the centre was a leopard-skin chair, its back facing outward. Someone sat there, head only half exposed.

‘I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to get here so quickly… Well, let’s get to the end of the game.’ The voice from the leopard-skin chair was that of the spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu, but still transmitted through a machine.

In such close proximity at last, Mengliu was very curious about Ah Lian Qiu’s appearance, but he controlled his curiosity. ‘Ah Lian Qiu, spiritual leader, I do not know anything, nor do I want to know anything…I have no questions to ask you. I only request that you take care of the people trapped in Swan Valley, and tell us the way home.’ But as soon as he said ‘us’, he realised that Suitang had not come in with him. She had stayed outside the door.

‘The cable broke. There’s nothing I can do about that. Surely you have discovered that they don’t need me. Because they are self-aware and self-disciplined, they will govern one another…a good ruler’s presence is not felt…a spiritual leader need only transmit a beneficial spirit, and there will be nothing to worry about…As for you, rest assured that you have earned your way back home. The road is open to both of you.’

‘Nothing to worry about?’ Mengliu could not help but ask. ‘Don’t you know the lives of all the people living here have been placed on the altar constructed by you, their spiritual leader?’

‘When a person understands what he really wants, his nature as a human can be fully realised. Take Esteban, for example. He found his own worth, and in his death the noble dignity of the individual was restored to him.’ Ah Lian Qiu continued in a leisurely fashion. ‘A person should have a proper understanding of himself.’

‘I only have one more thing to say, spiritual leader.’ Mengliu controlled his voice and the rhythm of his speech. ‘Your spirit is nothing more than a lure. It just enables a system of annihilation. Some day…’

‘If that’s how you see it, that’s your business.’ The leopard-skin chair began to turn around slowly, then stopped at one hundred and eighty degrees. The spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu sat in a wheelchair, head bowed, long hair covering his face. ‘So many years. Now you are finally free from the burden of history!’ The leader ripped off the lapel microphone and raised her head, revealing the whole of her pale face.

All the horrifying things Mengliu had experienced in his life had not prepared him for this shock. He was stunned, and a doubt-filled scream escaped from his mouth:

‘Qizi?’

‘No. I am the spiritual leader of Swan Valley. I am Ah Lian Qiu!’

Hearing her real unaltered voice filled Mengliu with ecstasy. It was Qizi! He ran to her, but, the podium on which she sat was encircled by a force field, and he was thrown back. It burned a hole in his clothes, and nearly scorched another in his flesh.

She turned off the force field and rolled her battery-powered wheelchair down from the podium, coming slowly to a halt in front of him.

Ah, Qizi! She was as young and beautiful as the first time he saw her. He wanted to embrace her, to say, I’ve never stopped looking for you. I knew you had to be alive. But he stood there, rooted, his warm feelings curbed by something unseen. He faced Ah Lian Qiu. She looked at him with rational, calm, indifferent eyes.

‘The Qizi of the past, like these two legs, was crushed by a tank.’ Ah Lian Qiu removed her two legs from her thighs. Her upper half sat in the chair on two stumps, like a bust.

Mengliu seemed to be welded to the ground. Feeling had left his own legs, so that he remained stuck there, motionless.

‘At the same time as I was crushed, so were truth and idealism…and beauty and goodness.’ She toyed with the prostheses. ‘Afterwards, the people lived like fish returning to water, right? There was numbness, a philosophy of survival, but that doesn’t mean their concept of the nation had changed.’

‘Qizi…’ He wanted to wake her up, but he was actually the one who was confused.

‘When he tried to save me Hei Chun was badly burned… Shunyu’s father hid us in a friend’s hospital, and on the third day, secretly drove us to a place that was far away but safe. For a whole year we were constantly on the move, escaping from one place to another.’

Mengliu was stunned. ‘I had no idea. I was looking for you… Hei Chun…where is he?’

‘He was seriously injured. One eye was burned out. His fingers were damaged. He was unrecognisable…After we came to Swan Valley, he spent half a year writing The Principles of Genetics.’ Leisurely, she turned her wheelchair in a circle. ‘He said it was better than More’s Utopia. The original manuscript is here.’

‘He wrote that book…I knew it was his writing style! But… does that mean that all along Swan Valley has been a product of your ideas?’ Mengliu stammered. ‘Wh…where is Hei Chun? I want to talk to him.’

‘I’m afraid that will be a little difficult.’ She pointed to a table on the podium. ‘He is in the urn over there. For him, after finishing The Principles of Genetics, a life of the flesh was superfluous. It was his own choice.’

‘He…you…you two…’ Mengliu feared his head would explode.

‘How is Shunyu’s father now? Does he still manage the Green Flower?’ She chatted as she operated on her prostheses, calmly and skilfully.

‘The tavern was seized. He was sent to prison…’

‘Prison huh? What crime did he commit?’ She stopped the action of her hands. Her speech filled with emotion.

‘There was a bunch of charges. Harbouring known criminals, escorting insurgents, participating in subversion…He died during the second year of his imprisonment. I don’t know how he died. No one could tell me…’

One of the artificial legs rattled and dropped to the ground.

She clicked a remote control and the electronic screens all flashed on again, creating a mess of fluorescence that flickered across her confused face, but the sadness in her eyes remained cold and bright.

‘He is your biological father.’

‘Yes. When I found out, it was too late.’ He picked up the prosthesis and handed it back to her. ‘I didn’t get a last chance to see him. And there were no ashes left…’ His voice grew lower, finally sinking all the way to the ground.

She turned and reattached the artificial leg.

‘Did you bring your xun?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She looked at him, then moved the wheelchair beside him and reached out and took the xun from his pocket.

‘Play a tune,’ she ordered, but it also sounded like a plea.

From the flawless accuracy of her action he knew she remembered their past, and it warmed his heart. It surged up in him. He could not refuse her order, or request. And right at this moment his confused heart also needed a release valve.

He kneaded the xun with both hands then, without thinking, played ‘The Pain of Separation’.

The cylindrical hall was like a giant speaker. The mysterious deep tune, fluctuating between regret and mourning, seemed to spread out and fill the universe. In every corner of the world creatures listened to the music. They moaned, they howled, they lamented, they cried, and then they were silent.

Ah Lian Qiu slowly stood up from her chair. She struck the keys on her remote like a skilled typist, commanding the movement of her legs, the bending of her knees, her walk, and then her standing still, all in fluid motions. It was hard to tell they were prosthetics, but the mechanical rhythm of her legs could not be completely disguised, so that in the end she resembled a lifelike robot.

‘There are two things that made your father proud,’ she said, as if preparing to see a visitor off. ‘One was your poetry, the other was the feeling in your playing of the xun. He planned to let the backlash from the demonstrations blow over, then sit down and have a good drink with you.’

‘Maybe he would be ashamed that I didn’t stay by your side and protect you.’

‘No. The one you needed to protect was Shunyu, your half-sister. I had the whole square, the whole of Beiping — the whole crowd of people waiting for the truth — to protect me.’ Her voice grew rich with pride.

‘Qizi?’ He wanted desperately to do something to dissolve the distance between them, and thought that recalling the memory of the earliest stages of their acquaintance might be the best way. ‘I remember the interrogation room. You said you were developing a mysterious machine…At the time I laughed to myself, thinking it was impossible.’ He paused, suddenly alarmed. He looked at the lake and saw what looked like a tornado in the sky above it. ‘But you did it.’

Ah Lian Qiu’s nostrils flared as she sneered, ‘I am the spiritual leader of Swan Valley, Ah Lian Qiu.’

‘Qizi?’

‘I am the spiritual leader of Swan Valley, Ah Lian Qiu.’

‘You’ve become a stranger…’

‘Power, beauty, physical torture — you’ve withstood them all. You refused to write poetry. You have proved yourself a poet. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘I want to take you away. You can’t stay here. Death is spreading through Swan Valley. It’s over…’

‘Leave? Where would I go? Back to your motherland? Ha!’ Her wild laughter stopped suddenly. ‘Go back? Tell her, only when she chooses the most beautiful spring, when the red rose blooms, when she walks the truest path with the most sincere attitude, and admits her wrongs to me! Admits it to everyone! Admits it to the whole world!’

She left him angrily, walking to the podium with a mechanical but swift pace. She picked up a red cloth from the table and expertly wrapped it around her head. She took up the remote control in her hand, then as she walked, she recited the old poem ‘Hunger Strike’, as if an audience of countless people were listening. ‘On sunny days, we are on a hunger strike…’

When her recitation reached its climax, she took a stack of paper from the drawer and tossed it skyward, as if scattering pamphlets. Her tone suddenly rose.

‘…Democracy is life’s highest form of existence. Freedom is an eternal, inherent right. Everyone has the right to know the truth…’

The leaves of paper fell. Mengliu picked one up. It was a page from the manuscript of Hei Chun’s Principles of Genetics. It was exactly the section he was familiar with.

‘To reconstruct the Roman Republic or the early emperor-governed Rome is possible. To achieve this goal, we must have people of courage and genius to constitute the ruling class…We do not need the common public to participate in politics…the contest between nations is only a contest between the quality of their people. It is a battle of knowledge. Therefore, to have a rich and powerful population one must begin with its genes…We will create a new society not because we are better than others, but because we are simple people with simple human needs — for air and light, health and honour, and for freedom and the highest spiritual pursuits. Our impartial behaviour is innate…The excellent and new nation of Swan Valley, in a few years’ time, we will demand the world’s attention.’

Qizi’s voice rolled on, ‘Farewell, parents! Please forgive me. Your child cannot serve two masters. Farewell, citizens! Please allow us to serve you in this unusual manner…’

As quickly as he could, Mengliu scrambled to collect the scattered manuscript. He had caught a glimpse of the value and weight of the work. It was Hei Chun’s vision. He had a responsibility to compile and publish it. And he had a great desire to read it.

Qizi finished her recitation with the shouting of a few slogans. Then, as if she had suddenly discovered Mengliu was there, she shouted at him, ‘You! How did you get here? Quickly, go back! Go back and wait for me!’ She opened the door of the hall with her remote control.

Startled for a moment, he bent over and picked up more pages. He thought, I’ve agitated her with my appearance, and that’s caused her to escape into the past, and now she is unable to return to the present.

‘I’m not alone. I’ve got a lot of people here with me. Everyone is with me…You? You still haven’t gone?’

Seeing that he did not move, she pulled out a gun. ‘Get out of here now!’

His heart pumped violently. ‘Qizi…calm down,’ he said.

She fired a shot, shattering the big electronic screen.

Like the barrel of the gun, her gaze was now pointed right at him.

He saw that she was trapped inside her fantasy.

He walked slowly out through the doorway.

In the icy air Mengliu realised that he had perspired a great deal in the room, though he was not sure whether it was because he was hot or because of fear. He was cold now, and his wet clothes clung to his skin. His heart tightened. He looked at the mess of papers clenched in his hand. For a moment he couldn’t remember that this was Hei Chun’s manuscript.

He hastily straightened the papers, rolled them up, and concealed them in his clothing. He found Suitang near the column. He suddenly heard a series of muffled explosions inside it, and felt the rumble under his feet. Looking up, he saw smoke billowing from the top, growing thicker by the moment.

In a confusion of anxiety he shouted out Qizi’s name as he searched for the door. He banged on the wall as he ran around the column.

The flow of smoke from the chimney grew stronger. The wall was hot to the touch.

What was the password…Open sesame…pineapples…He shouted a confused flow of incantations, his feet and hands running rapidly around and across the wall. The bricks remained steadfast and unmoved.

Suitang seemed to come from nowhere, she grabbed Mengliu’s hand and they bolted.

They had only run about ten paces when they heard a noise behind them so loud it threw their bodies to the ground. A wave of heat swept over their heads. Their hair felt like it had been singed. Sediment rained down on them until they were both buried in debris.

Mengliu slowly pulled himself up and looked back. The cylindrical building had collapsed, and was burning in a chaos of smoke and fire.

A page of manuscript drifted down from the sky. Catching it, Mengliu read:

white doves have taken our eyes away

and people are left with hungry tongues

in a domain buried in silence

where thorn-like arms wave

nothing in the world that exists

is higher than you

in this land, on this soil

you are equal to the storm

the sun itself may be imprisoned

and the death bell will toll

resistance will alter your face

lightning will pierce the sealed horizon

silence is despicable

oh children! exalt your spirits

a mother has put on her dark shroud

and nobly welcomes a dawn

as bright as death