Ocean of Words

LOVE IN THE AIR

After the political study, Chief Jiang turned on both the transmitter and the receiver and started searching for the station of the Regional Headquarters. Half a minute later a resonant signal emerged calling the Fifth Regiment. Kang Wandou, who had served for two years, could tell it was an experienced hand at the opposite end. The dots and dashes were clean and concrete; the pace was fast and steady.

“He’s very good,” Shi Wei said.

“Of course, Shenyang always has the best hands,” Chief Jiang said, returning the call. This was their first direct communication with the Headquarters of Shenyang Military Region. In no time the two stations got in touch. Jiang telegraphed that from now on they would keep twenty-four-hour coverage.

“Understood. So long,” Shenyang replied.

“So long,” Jiang tapped. He turned off the transmitter, but left the receiver on. “Shun Min, it’s your turn now. Little Kang will take over in the evening.”

“All right.” Shun moved his chair close to the machine.

Though the middle-aged chief called him Little Kang, to the other soldiers Kang was Big Kang. His whole person was marked by abnormal largeness except for his voice, which was small and soft. Whenever he spoke, he sounded as though he was mumbling to himself. If his neck were not so long, his comrades would have believed he had suffered from the “big-joint” disease in his childhood. His wrists were thick, and his square thumbs always embarrassed him. But everybody was impressed by the beautiful long lashes above his froggy eyes.

After dinner Kang replaced Shun. The evening shift was not busy. Since all news stations broadcast at dusk and there was too much noise in the air, few telegrams were dispatched or received during these hours. Kang’s task was to answer Shenyang’s call every hour, and for the rest of the time he had to attend to the receiver in case an emergency arose. Having nothing else to do, he opened the fanlight and watched the night. Gray streaks of clouds were floating rapidly beneath the crescent moon and the glimmering stars. In the air there was a mysterious humming, which seemed to come from the constellations. Except for the swarms of lights in Hutou Town, it was dark everywhere. Even the silhouette of those mountains in Russia had disappeared.

Cold wind kept gushing into the office; Kang closed the fanlight and sat back on the chair. Again, nothing could be seen through the window, on whose frosty panes stretched miniature bushes, hills, caves, coral reefs. He picked up a pencil, turned over a telegram pad, and began drawing pictures. He drew a horse, a cow, a dog, a pig, a rooster, a lamb, a donkey, and a hen leading a flock of chicks.

After taps at nine, the quiet grew intolerable. If only he could have something interesting to do. In one of the drawers there was a volume of Chairman Mao’s selected works and a copy of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, which Chief Jiang would browse through at night, but these books were too profound for Kang. He missed the picture stories he had read when he was a boy. Those children’s books could no longer be found anywhere, because they had been burned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Kang took out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette. Smoking was the only way to prevent himself from dozing off. Then he stretched his legs, rested his feet on the table, and leaned against the back of the chair as if lounging on a sofa. Soon the small office turned foggy.

Shenyang began to call at ten sharp. Kang turned on the transmitter and was ready to reply. It was another radio operator at the other end now. The signal was fluctuating at a much faster speed, approximately 130 numerals a minute. Because of the noise, the dots and the dashes didn’t sound very clear, though they were distinguishable.

“Please answer,” it ended.

Immediately Kang started to call back. His large hand held the button of the sending key and pounded out the letters one after another. He was a slow hand and could tap only eighty numerals a minute. But his fingers and thumb were powerful — whenever he telegraphed, the key with its heavy steel base would move about on the table. Holding the base with his left hand, he was repeating the reply signal in a resolute manner. His thick wrist was moving up and down while a little red light was flashing nervously at the top of the transmitter.

The operator at the opposite end did not hear Kang and resumed calling. Now there was less noise in the air and the signal became distinct. The call sign, composed of eight letters, was repeated again and again; it formed a crisp tune, flowing around and around. Kang pricked up his ears. This must be the chief of the station. He had never met such an excellent hand. There were automatic machines that could produce 180 numerals a minute clearly, but those dead instruments always sounded monotonous. They didn’t have a character. The more you listened to them at night, the more likely you would fall asleep. But this fellow was one of those “machine defeaters.”

“Please answer,” the other side asked again.

Once more Kang went about calling back. Affected by the dexterous hand at the other end, he tried hard to speed up. The chair under his hips creaked while he was struggling with the bakelite key button, which turned slippery in his sweating hand.

Unfortunately this was a bad night. The other side simply could not find him. It called him time and again; Kang replied continually, but they could not get in touch. Forty minutes passed to no avail. By now, the other operator had become impatient. The melodious signal gradually lost its rhythm and flowed so rapidly that the letters were almost indistinguishable. It sounded like raindrops pattering on metal tiles. Patient as he was, Kang began to worry.

Around eleven, the telephone suddenly rang. Kang picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” a tingling female voice said. “This is the Military Region Station. Wake up, comrade. Have you heard me on the machine?”

“Ye-yes.” Kang paused with surprise, his heart kicking and his throat tightening. Who could imagine a woman would call you on the border at night? “I–I’ve heard you,” he managed to say. “I ne-never dozed off. I’ve been calling you all the time.”

“Sorry, don’t take it to heart. I was teasing you. Shall we switch to the second set of frequencies?” She sounded so pleasant.

“All righ-t.” His tongue seemed not his own.

“Bye-bye now, meet you on the machine.”

“Bye.”

She hung up. Kang was dazed, still holding the receiver. The sweet voice went on echoing in his ears, “Sorry, don’t take it to heart.…”

The call sign appeared again. This time it repossessed its elegance and fluency, but to Kang every dot and dash was different now, as though they were tender, meaningful words the young woman sent to him alone.

“Switch frequency please,” she ended.

Kang jerked his head and rushed to look for her on the new frequency. Without much effort, he found her again. His body grew tense as he became engrossed in the sways and ripples of the heavenly melody. How wonderful to work with a woman at night. If only she could call him like this for an hour. But she stopped and asked, “Please answer.”

Kang’s hand began to tremble. It settled on the sending key like a small turtle, shaking out every letter brokenly. He cursed his hand, “Come on, you coward! This is not a battle yet.” He wiped his wet forehead with a telegram sheet.

What a pity. She heard him in less than a minute and replied promptly: “No business. Meet you at twelve o’clock. So long.”

“So long.” Kang had to agree, because it was a rule that an operator must never transmit an unnecessary dot or dash. The longer you stayed on the air, the easier it was for the Russians to locate your position.

Kang felt at a loss. He raised his head to look at the clock on the wall — eleven-ten, so he would meet her in fifty minutes. His imagination began to take wing. What was her name? How stupid he was, having forgotten to ask her. How old was she? She sounded so young and must have been around twenty. A good person, no doubt; that pleasant voice was full of good nature. What did she look like? Was she beautiful? Well educated? Intelligent? That voice told everything — all the best a woman could have. But what did she look like exactly? Tall and slim, with large black eyes? Of course he could not find out much about her through only one meeting. It had to take time. He believed that eventually he would get to know her well, because from now on they would meet every night.

The clock moved slowly, as though intending to avoid an ominous ending. Kang kept watching it and longed to arrive at the midnight rendezvous in the twinkling of an eye.

Suddenly somebody knocked at the door. Chief Jiang came in. “You can go to bed now, Kang. I happened to wake up a few minutes earlier tonight.” He yawned.

Kang stood up and didn’t know what to say. He tried to smile, but the effort distorted his face.

“What happened?” the chief asked. “You look as awake as a lynx.”

“Nothing, everything is fine.” Kang picked up his fur hat; with enormous dismay he slouched out. He forgot to take an apple, which was his night snack.

How could he sleep? Every inch of his skin was affected by a caressing tingle he had never experienced before. At the other side of the room, Shun was snoring and Shi murmured something in his dream.

“I was teasing you.…” The voice spoke to Kang again and again. He shut his eyes tight; he shook his head many times in order to get rid of her and go to sleep, but it was no use. She was so close to him, as if sitting right beside his bed in the dark, whispering and smiling.

Little by little, he gave up and allowed her to play whatever tricks she wanted to. The most unbearable mystery was what she looked like. He tried to think of all the women he knew, but he could not recall a pretty one. Surely he had aunts and cousins, surely he remembered some girls who had hoed the cornfields and cut millet together with him, but none of them differed much from his male relatives or from the men in his home village. Every one worked like a beast of burden, and none could speak without swearing.

The prettiest women he had ever seen were those female characters in the movie copies of the Revolutionary Model Plays, but most of them were too old, well beyond forty. How about the girl raped by the landlord in The White-Haired Girl? Yes, she was a wonderful ballerina, slim and good-looking. How deft her toes were. They capered around as if never touching the ground. She could swing her legs up well beyond her head. And the slender waist, which was full of rebellious spirit. What a wonderful body she had! But did she have a wonderful voice? No one could tell, because she kept quiet in the ballet.

No, she wouldn’t do. He would not accept a woman who might lack that charming voice. Besides, that actress had long white hair like an old crone’s. She must have been weird, or her hair wouldn’t be so silvery.

How about the revolutionary’s daughter in The Story of the Red Lamp? Well, that was a good one. But did she not seem too young? She was seventeen, old enough to be somebody’s wife. A marriageable girl indeed. What he liked most about her was that long glossy braid, which reached her buttocks. But she was too thin and must have been too feeble to work. Her aquiline nose was narrow; that was not a sign of good fortune. Even worse, her voice was sharp. It was all right for singing Peking Opera to a large audience, but who dared to quarrel with a girl like that? In real life, she must have been a “small hot pepper.” No, he had to look for another woman.

Now he had it — the female gymnastic athlete he had seen in a documentary film. She performed on the uneven bars. Her body was so supple and powerful that she could stretch, fly, and even somersault in the air. No doubt, that was a healthy energetic woman, not a bourgeois young lady who would fall in a gust of wind. What did she look like? He had not seen her face clearly in the film and could not tell. Then this woman had to go too, at least for the time being.

The radiator pipes started clinking and whistling gently. The boiler room pumped steam at four. With dawn approaching, Kang was worried and tried to force himself to sleep. But that voice would not leave him alone. “Wake up, comrade. Have you heard me on the machine?…” It sounded even more pleasant and more intimate. You fool, he cursed himself. How stupid you are — bewitched by an unknown voice! Forget it and get some sleep.

Soon he entered another world. He married a young woman who was also a telegrapher. They worked together at the post office in his hometown. They lived in a small house surrounded by a stone wall that had a gate with iron bars. Their garden was filled with vegetables and fruits. The beans were as broad as sickles, and the peaches as fat as babies’ faces. Poultry were everywhere, three dozen chickens, twenty ducks, and eight geese. Who was his bride? He didn’t know, for he only saw her back, a tall, sturdy young woman with a thick braid.

At breakfast he felt giddy. He could not tell if he had slept at all. Neither was he sure whether the prosperous domestic scene was his dream or his fantasy. How absurd the whole thing was. He had never loved a woman before, but all of a sudden he’d fallen in love with a voice. His first love was an unknown voice. He was scared, because he could not determine whether it was real love or merely a delusion from mental illness. Did people feel this way when they were in love? He felt sick and beside himself. How long would it take for him to grow used to this thing or get over it?

He could not sleep that morning when he was supposed to have a good rest to make up for the previous night and prepare himself for the evening shift. That voice, mixed with the call sign, whispered in his ears constantly. Time and again, he forced himself to think of something else, but he could not summon up anything interesting. He dared not smoke, for fear that Chief Jiang, who slept in the same room, would know he had remained awake for the whole morning.

In the afternoon, during the study of Chairman Mao’s “Combat Liberalism,” Kang was restless, longing for the arrival of the evening. The words grew blurred before his eyes. When he was asked to read out a page, he managed to accomplish the task with a whistling in his nose. His comrades looked at him strangely. When he finished, Shun said, “Kang, you must have a bad cold.”

“Yes, it’s a bad one.” Kang blew his nose with a piece of newspaper. He was both miserable and hopeful. Probably the more he worked with her, the better he would feel. Everything was difficult in the beginning; the end of suffering was happiness. At the moment he must be patient; a few hours later, he would be in a different world.

How ruthless Heaven was. She did not show up in the evening. It was a different operator at the other end. Kang spent the six hours racking his brains about what kind of schedule she had. The following three evenings passed in the same fruitless way. Kang was baffled. Every night he could not help thinking of that mysterious woman — all women — for several hours. In the daytime he was very quiet. Although pining away, he dared not talk to anyone about it. How shameful it would be — to have it known that you were enchanted by a woman about whom you didn’t know anything. How silly he was! That woman must have forgotten him like used water. No, she had never bothered about knowing him. How could she, a pretty young woman in the big city and perhaps surrounded by many smart officers in the headquarters, be interested in a soldier like him, who was so dull, so homely, and so rustic? He knew he was the toad that dreamed of eating a swan, but he couldn’t help himself.

On Saturday morning, Kang was roused from his catnap by Shi Wei. “Big Kang, come and help your younger brother.”

“What’s up?”

“Too many telegrams this morning. I’ve been copying for three hours and can’t handle it anymore.”

“All right, I’m coming.” It was almost eleven o’clock anyway. Kang got up and wiped his face with a wet towel.

There she was! He had hardly entered the office when Kang froze stock-still. The pleasant signal, for which he had been yearning for days, was singing proudly as though to a large audience. The dots and dashes sounded like amorous messages inviting him to decode their secret meanings. How magnificent her telegraphic style was in broad daylight. Kang lost himself in an imaginary melody composed of both the electric signal and the tingling voice — “Hello, this is the Military Region Station. Wake up, comrade. Have you heard me on the machine?…”

“What’s the matter with you?” Shi rapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh nothing,” Kang muttered, moving to the desk. “Never met such a good hand.”

“True, he has gold fingers.”

There was no time to tell Shi that it was she, not he, because the receiver was announcing: “Please ready.”

Kang started writing down the numerals rapidly. In the beginning it went well, but soon his attention began to wander. He was distracted by his desire to appreciate the rhythm and the personal touch in the sounds, and he had to drop some numerals now and then. More awful, that voice jumped in to trouble him — “Sorry, don’t take it to heart. I was teasing you.…”

“Repeat?” she asked, having finished the short telegram.

“Yes, noise,” Kang pounded nervously. “Group eight in line four, from group three to eight in line six …”

Meanwhile, Shi Wei watched him closely. He was surprised to find Kang, a better transcriber than himself, unable to jot down the telegram sent out so clearly. There was no noise at all; why did he tap “noise” as an excuse? Kang was aware of Shi’s observing and was sweating all over. He rushed to bring the receiving operation to an end.

“Are you all right?” Shi asked, after Kang signed his name on the telegram.

“I don’t know.” He felt sick. He got up and hurried out of the office.

Another fruitless evening and another sleepless night. Kang could no longer contain himself. On Sunday evening, he revealed the truth to Shi and Shun, who happened to be in the office.

“Shi Wei, you know, the Shenyang operator with ‘gold fingers’ is a woman, not a man.” He had planned to say a lot, to make a story, but he was bewildered, finding that he completed the project in just one sentence. He blushed to the ears with a strange emotion.

“Really?” Shi asked loudly. “No kidding? Why didn’t you tell me earlier, Brother Kang?”

Kang smiled. Shun was not sure who they were talking about. “Which one?”

“The best one,” Shi said with a thrill in his voice. “I can’t believe it. A girl can telegraph so well. Tell me, Big Kang, how did you get to know her?”

“She called me, because she couldn’t hear me,” he declared proudly.

“What’s her name?” Shi asked.

“I have no idea. Wish I knew.”

“Must be a good girl. I’ll go to Shenyang and get her.”

“Come on, don’t brag,” Shun said. “I want to see how you can get her.”

“You wait and see.”

Kang was shocked that Shi was also interested in her. He regretted telling them the truth. If Shi made a move, Kang would have to give ground. Shi was an excellent basketball player and had in his wallet the pictures of a half dozen young women, who he claimed were all his girlfriends. In addition, his father was a divisional commissar in the navy; Shi had grown up in big cities and knew the world. Most important of all, he spent money like water. How could Kang compete against such a smart, handsome fellow?

It was this new development that made him fidgety that evening. He paced up and down in the office, chain-smoking for two hours. Finally, he decided to investigate who she was. He picked up the telephone and called the Shenyang Miliary Region. It took half an hour for the call to get through.

“Hello, this is Shenyang, can I help you?” an operator asked sleepily.

“Ye-yes,” he struggled to say. “I want to speak to — to the wireless station, the one that communicates with Hutou?”

“What’s ‘Hutou’? A unit’s code name?”

“No, it’s a county.”

“Oh, I see. Please tell me the number of the station you want to speak to.”

“I don’t know the number.”

“I can’t help you then. We have hundreds of stations, and they are in different cities and mountains. You have to tell me the number. Find the number first, then call back. All right?”

“Uh, all right.”

“Bye-bye now.”

“Bye.”

It was so easy to run into a dead end. All the clever questions, which he had prepared to ask the radio operator on duty about that woman, had vanished from his mind. How foolish he was — having never thought there could be more than ten stations in the Regional Headquarters. What was to be done now? Without an address, he could not write to her; even with an address, he didn’t know how to compose a love letter. Why was Heaven so merciless? It seemed that the only way to meet her was through the air, but he had not figured out her capricious schedule yet.

It did not make much difference after they rotated the shifts. Now Kang worked afternoons. No matter how exhausted he was when he went to bed at night, he would lie awake for a few hours thinking of one woman after another. His dreams ran wilder. Every night the pillow, which contained his underclothes, moved from beneath his head, little by little, into his arms. He was tormented by endless questions. What was it like to kiss and touch a woman? Did women also have hair on their bodies? Was he a normal man? And could he satisfy a woman? Was he not a neurotic, drenched in sweat and burning away like this in the dark? Could he have children with a woman?

Whenever he woke up from his broken sleep that mysterious voice would greet him, “Wake up, comrade. Have you heard me on the machine?…” The sounds grew deeper and deeper into him, as though they were sent out by his own internal organs. During these frantic nights, he discovered that Chief Jiang had to rouse Shi Wei at least three times every night. Shi worked the small hours.

Kang’s skull felt numb in the daytime. He was convinced that he was a lunatic. How panicked he was when receiving a telegram, because that melodious signal and that tender voice, again and again, intruded themselves into his brain and forced him to pause in the middle of the transcribing. How good it would be to have peace once more. But peace of mind seemed remote, as though it belonged only to a time that he had outgrown and could never return to. Even the exercises in the mornings became a torture. He used to be able to write down 160 numerals per minute with ease, but now he had to struggle with no. When they sat together reading documents and newspapers, his comrades often waved their hands before his eyes to test if he could see anything. Somebody would say, “Big Kang, why do you look like you lost your soul?” Another, “What do you see in your trance? A goddess?”

On these occasions Kang would let out a sigh. He dared not tell anybody about the ridiculous “affair.” He was afraid that he would be criticized for having contracted bourgeois liberalism or become a laughingstock.

One morning during the exercises, the telegraphic instructor, Han Jie, looked at Kang’s transcription and said under his breath, “No wonder the Confidential Office complained.”

Suddenly it dawned on Kang that he had become a nuisance in the Wireless Platoon. A pang seized his heart. No doubt, the confidential officers in the Regimental Headquarters were dissatisfied with his work and had reported him to the company’s leaders. It was this stupid “affair” that had reduced him to such a state. He had to find a way to stop it — forget that woman and her bewitching voice — otherwise how could he survive? Although in his heart he knew he had to get rid of her, he didn’t know how. Neither did he want to try.

On Thursday evening two weeks later, Chief Jiang held an urgent meeting at the station. Nobody knew what it was about. Kang was scared because he thought it might be about him. The secret would come out sooner or later. Had he babbled it during his sleep at night? He regretted drawing three pictures of women on the back of a telegram pad. Chief Jiang must have seen them. What should he say if the chief questioned him about those drawings?

The meeting had nothing to do with him. When Jiang asked Shi Wei to confess what he had done in the small hours, Kang at last felt relaxed. But like Shun, he was baffled about what had happened. Shi protested that he had not done anything wrong.

“You’re dishonest, Comrade Shi Wei,” the chief said.

“No, no Chief Jiang.” Shi looked worried. “I did all the work well.”

“You know our Party’s policy: Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse. It’s up to yourself.”

“Why?” Shi seemed puzzled. “This policy applies only to the class enemies. I’m your comrade, am I not?”

“Stop pretending you’re innocent. Tell us the truth.”

“No, I really didn’t do anything wrong.”

“All right, let me tell you what happened.” The chief’s voice grew sharper. “You were caught by the monitoring station. You thought you were smart. If you didn’t want us to know, you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Look at the report yourself.” He tossed the internal bulletin to Shi and handed Shun and Kang each a copy.

The title read: “Radio Operators Proffered Love in the Air.” Kang’s heart tightened. He turned a page and read “From February 3 on, from 1:00 A.M. to 5:00 A.M., a radio operator in the Fifth regiment and an operator at the 36th station of Shenyang Military Region have developed a love affair in the air.…”

Kang was stunned, and his thick lips parted. He could never imagine Shi would make such an unlawful move. A small part of their love talk was transcribed in the report:

I am Shi Wei. Your name?

Lili. Where are you from?

Dalian. And you?

Beijing.

Your age?

Twenty-one. And you?

Twenty-two. Love your hand.

Why?

It is good.

Why? Not love me?

Yes, I do.

!

Love me?

Maybe.

……

Kang wanted to cry, but he controlled himself. He saw Shi’s face turn pale and sweat break out on his smooth forehead. Meanwhile Shun bit his lower lip, trying hard not to laugh.

“Now, what do you want to say?” Jiang asked.

Shi lowered his eyes and remained silent. The chief announced that the Communication Company had decided to suspend Shi Wei from his work during the wait for the final punishment. From now on, Shi had to go to the study room during the day and write out his confession and self-criticism.

Though he was working two more hours a day to cover for Shi, Kang no longer expected to meet Lili, whose family name was not revealed in the bulletin. Obviously she was also suspended from her work and must have been doing the same thing as Shi did every day in the company’s study room. But the tune created by her fingers and her charming voice were still with him; actually they hurt him more than before. He tried cursing her and imagining all the bad things that could be attributed to a woman in order to pull her out of himself. He thought of her as a “broken shoe” which was worn by everyone, a bitch that raised her tail to any male dog, a hag who was shunned by all decent men, a White Bone Demon living on innocent blood. Still, he could not get rid of her. Whenever he was receiving a telegram, her voice would break in to catch him. “Sorry, don’t take it to heart. I was teasing you.…” It was miserable. The misery went so deep that when he spoke to his comrades he often heard himself moaning. He hated his own listless voice.

Shi’s punishment was administered a week later. Both Shi Wei and Wang Lili were expelled from the army. This time the woman’s full name was given. To Kang’s surprise, Shi did not cry and seemed to take it with ease. He ate well and slept well, and went on smoking expensive cigarettes. Kang figured there must have been two reasons why Shi did not care. First, with the help of his father, he would have no problem finding a good job at home; second, the expulsion gave him an opportunity to continue his love affair with Wang Lili, since they were now two grasshoppers tied together by one thread. Lucky for Shi, he didn’t lose his military status for nothing. It seemed he would go to Shenyang soon and have a happy time with her.

The station planned to hold a farewell party for Shi Wei. Though it was not an honorable discharge, they had worked with Shi for almost a year and had some good feelings about him. For days Kang had been thinking what souvenir he should give Shi Wei. He finally chose a pair of pillow towels, which cost him four yuan, half his monthly pay. In the meantime his scalp remained numb, and he still could not come to himself. Not only did the task of receiving a telegram frighten him, but any telegraphic signal would give him the creeps. He had developed another habit — cursing himself relentlessly for his daydreaming and for having allowed himself to degenerate into a walking corpse for that fickle woman, whose name he would now murmur many times every night.

Four older soldiers from the Wireless Platoon were invited to the farewell party. Chief Jiang presented an album to Shi, and Shun gave him a pair of nylon socks. When Kang’s pillow towels were displayed, everybody burst out laughing, for on each towel was embroidered a pair of lovely mandarin ducks and a line of red characters. One said: “Happy Life,” and the other: “Sweet Dreams.” Peanut shells and pear cores fell on the floor because of the commotion the garish towels caused.

“You must be joking, Big Kang,” Shi said, measuring one of the towels against his chest. “You think I’m going home to get married?”

“Why not?” Kang smiled. “Won’t you go to Shenyang?”

“For what? I don’t know anyone there.”

Kang stood up. The floor seemed to be swaying beneath his feet. Tears welled up in his eyes. He picked up a mug and gulped the beer inside, his left hand holding the corner of the desk. He put down the mug, then turned to the door.

“Where are you going?” Chief Jiang asked.

Without replying, Kang went out into the open air. He wanted to bolt into the snow and run for hours, until his legs could no longer support him. But he paused. On the drill ground, a dozen soldiers from the Line Construction Platoon were practicing climbing telephone poles without wearing spikes. Behind the brick houses stood the thirty-meter-tall aerial, made of three poles connected to one another, which had been raised for their station by these fellow men. In the northeast, the Wusuli River displayed a series of green, steaming holes along its snow-covered course. On the fields and the slopes of the hills, a curtain of golden sparks, cast by the setting sun, was glittering. The gray forests stretched along the undulating mountain ridges toward the receding horizon. The sky was so high and the land so vast. Kang took a deep breath; a fresh contraction lingered in his chest. For the first time he felt a person was so small.

That evening he wrote a letter to the company’s Party branch, imploring the leaders to transfer him to the Line Construction Platoon. He did not give an explicit reason, and merely said that somehow his mind was deteriorating and that he could not operate the telegraphic apparatus anymore. The letter ended as follows:

If I can no longer serve the Revolutionary Cause and our Motherland with my brain, I can at least work with my hands, which are still young and strong. Please relieve me from the Wireless Platoon.

After writing the letter, he wept, filling his hands with tears. He used to believe that when he was demobilized he could make a decent living by working as a telegrapher at a post office or a train station, but now he had ruined his future. How painful it was to love and then give it up. If only he could forget that woman’s voice and her telegraphic style. Whether he could or not, he had to try.