The Seventh Day

THE FIRST DAY

The fog was thick when I left my bedsit and ventured out alone into the barren and murky city. I was heading for what used to be called a crematorium and these days is known as a funeral parlor. I had received a notice instructing me to arrive by 9:00 a.m., because my cremation was scheduled for 9:30.

The night before had resounded with the sounds of collapsing masonry — one huge crash after another, as though a whole line of buildings was too tired to stay standing and had to lie down. In this continual bedlam I drifted fitfully between sleep and wakefulness. At daybreak, when I opened the door, the din suddenly halted, as though just by opening the door I had turned off the switch that controlled the noise. On the door a slip had been posted next to the notices that had been taped there ten days earlier, asking me to pay the electricity and water bills. In characters damp and blurry in the fog, the new notice instructed me to proceed to the funeral parlor for cremation.

Fog had locked the city into a single, unchanging guise, erasing the boundaries between day and night, morning and evening. As I walked toward the bus stop, several human figures appeared out of nowhere, only to disappear just as quickly. I cautiously walked ahead for a distance, but found my passage blocked by some kind of sign that appeared to have suddenly grown out of the ground. I thought there ought to be some numbers on it — if the number 203 was there, then this was the stop for the bus I wanted to take. But I couldn’t make out the numbers, even when I felt for them with my hand. When I rubbed my eyes, I seemed to see the number 203, suggesting that this was indeed the stop. But now I had a strange feeling that while my right eye was in the original place, my left eye had moved outward to my cheekbone. Then I became aware that next to my nose a foreign object had attached itself to my face, and something else was caught underneath my chin. When I felt around with my hand, I discovered that my nose was next to my nose and my chin next to my chin — somehow they had altered their locations.

The fog was now even more dense. Amid the murky figures and ghostly buildings I heard sounds of life rising and falling like ripples of water. Then, as I took a few tentative steps farther on, hoping to penetrate the gloom, I heard cars crashing into each other. The fog had drenched my eyes and I couldn’t see the collisions — all I was aware of was a series of violent impacts. A car burst out of the fog behind me and sped past and into the sounds of life, and the sounds churned and popped like boiling water.

I stood there uncertainly for a little while, but soon realized that if there was a pileup on this stretch of road, the No. 203 bus would not arrive anytime soon and I should go on to the next stop.

As I walked on ahead, snowflakes came billowing out of the fog. They seemed to glow like patches of light, and when they landed on my face, my skin felt slightly warmer. I stood still, watching the snowflakes fall through the air and settle on me. My clothes gradually stood out more clearly against the snow.

This was an important day, I realized — my first day of death. I hadn’t washed and I hadn’t dressed in funerary costume — I was simply wearing my ordinary clothes, with a baggy old overcoat on top, as I headed toward the funeral parlor. Stricken with sudden misgivings at my sloppy attire, I turned on my heel and headed back in the direction from which I’d come.

The falling snow had brought some light to the city and the thick fog seemed to slowly dissipate as I walked, so that I could faintly make out pedestrians and vehicles going to and fro. As I reached the bus stop I had left shortly before, a scene of utter confusion met my eyes: the road was completely blocked by a chaotic tangle of over twenty vehicles, with police cars and ambulances ringing the perimeter. There were people lying on the ground and others being pulled from cars that were twisted completely out of shape; there were people moaning and people crying and people who made no sound at all. I stopped for a minute, and this time I could see clearly the number 203 on the sign. I made my way past.

When I got back to my bedsit, I undressed, walked naked over to the shower enclosure, and turned on the faucet. As I filled my palms with water and began to wash, I found that my body was covered in wounds, and I gingerly removed the bits of gravel and splinters of wood that were embedded in the open lesions.

Just then my mobile phone started to ring. I found this strange, because service had been disconnected two months earlier for nonpayment, and here suddenly it was ringing again. I picked it up and pressed the listen button. “Hello?” I said quietly.

A voice responded. “Is that Yang Fei?”

“That’s right.”

“Funeral parlor here. Where are you now?”

“I’m at home.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m washing.”

“It’s almost nine o’clock now! How can you still be washing?”

“I’ll be there soon.” I felt embarrassed.

“Hurry up, then, and be sure to bring your reservation slip.”

“Where will I find that?”

“It’ll be on your door.”

Then the caller hung up. I wasn’t very happy about this — why was there such a rush? I put down the phone and renewed my efforts to clean my wounds. I picked up a bowl, filled it with water, and used it to wash out the remaining grit and splinters. This helped to speed things up.

Still dripping wet, I walked over to the wardrobe and opened it, in search of a funerary costume. But I could find nothing answering this description; the closest thing was a pair of white silk pajamas with a low-key flower pattern and the characters, now faded, that Li Qing had embroidered in red thread on the chest — a souvenir of my brief marriage. She had carefully chosen two pairs of traditional Chinese-style pajamas for us one day, and had sewn my name on hers and her name on mine. I had never worn these pajamas since our marriage broke up, but now, when I put them on once more, their color seemed as warm as that of snow.

I opened the door and carefully studied the funeral parlor notice posted on the outside. On the slip was written A3—a reservation number, by the look of it — so I detached it, folded it carefully, and put it in my pajama pocket.

As I was about to leave, I had the feeling I’d forgotten something and stood for a moment in the swirling snow to ponder. Then I remembered — a black armband. I was a single man, parentless and childless, with nobody to come and mourn my passing, so it was up to me to wear one.

I went back into my room and riffled through the wardrobe for some black cloth. After a prolonged search all I could find was a black shirt so worn that it was now turning gray. I cut off part of the sleeve and placed it over my left arm. My mourning attire clearly left something to be desired, but I felt tolerably satisfied with the effect.

Once more my phone rang. “Is that Yang Fei?”

“Yes, hello.”

“Funeral parlor here. Are you still planning to get cremated?”

I hesitated for a moment. “Yes, I am.”

“It’s nine-thirty now — you’re late.”

“Is it so important to be on time?” I wanted to do things right.

“If you want to get cremated, you need to hurry it up.”

Entering the funeral parlor, I found the waiting room spacious and deep. The fog outside had gradually dissipated but the waiting room itself was still wreathed in mist, and some widely spaced wall sconces in the shape of candles gave off a pale glow, also the shade of snow. Somehow I felt warmed by the color white.

The right side of the waiting room was taken up by rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor, while on the left side was an armchair zone with chairs arranged in several rings and with plastic flowers laid out on the coffee table in the center of each circle. On the plastic chairs many people were waiting, but there were only five seated in the armchairs. Those in the armchairs sat comfortably, with a foot resting on the opposite knee, looking very pleased with their accomplishments, while everyone in the rows of plastic seats sat stiffly and properly.

As I entered, a man wearing a faded blue jacket and a pair of old gloves walked toward me. He was so thin that his bones were like sticks and his face seemed little more than a skull, for it had hardly any skin and flesh.

Seeing my face with its altered features, he greeted me softly. “Good morning, sir.”

“Is this the crematorium?” I asked.

“It’s not called the crematorium anymore,” he said. “It’s called the funeral parlor.”

I realized I’d said the wrong thing, a bit like entering a hotel and asking, “Is this the hostel?”

In his voice I detected a weary, jaded tone, and I could tell he was not the person who had called from the funeral parlor earlier. I apologized for my tardiness, but he shook his head gently and consoled me by informing me that late arrivals were not unusual. My reservation number had expired and was no longer valid, so he walked over to the number-dispensing machine at the entrance to pick up a new ticket for me.

I had been pushed back from A3 to A64; according to the ticket, I had fifty-four people ahead of me.

“Will you be able to fit me in today?” I asked.

“There are always some no-shows,” the usher replied.

With a gloved finger he pointed at the plastic chairs to indicate that was where I should wait. Noticing that my eyes were drawn to the armchairs, he explained that they belonged to the VIP zone, and my status qualified me only for a place in the basic seating. As I made my way, ticket in hand, over to the plastic chairs, I heard him muttering to himself, “Another poor guy who’s come here without a face-lift.”

I sat down on a plastic chair. The usher paced back and forth in the pathway that separated the two waiting areas, seemingly lost in thought, his shoes tapping on the floor with the same steady rhythm as that of someone knocking on a door. Late arrivals kept showing up, and he would greet them and hand them a reservation ticket and point a finger in the direction of the plastic chairs. One of the late arrivals was an elite guest, and the usher walked him over to the armchair zone.

The crematees on the plastic chairs talked in low voices among themselves, while the six in the VIP area also chatted, but loudly, like singers projecting lyrics onstage. Our conversations were more like an accompaniment from the orchestra pit.

Funerary clothes and cinerary urns were the central topics of discussion among the VIPs. They were wearing exquisite handmade silk cerements with bright hand-embroidered designs, and they were discussing casually the price of these garments — all of which cost over twenty thousand yuan. The costumes looked splendid to me, like outfits worn in an imperial palace. Then the VIPs switched their attention to their respective cinerary urns, which were made of large-leaf red sandalwood engraved with exquisite designs and priced in the sixty-thousand-yuan range. The urns’ names were equally splendid and imposing: Sandalwood Precincts, Immortal Crane Manor, Dragon Palace, Phoenix Castle, Unicorn Palace, and Sandalwood Mansion.

We commoners were discussing the same topics. In our case the funerary garments were of synthetic silk with cotton trim, and they cost about a thousand yuan. The cinerary urns were either cypress or wood composite, undecorated, the most expensive costing eight hundred yuan, the cheapest two hundred. The names for these urns took simpler forms, such as Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots, or Fragrance Lingering for Time Everlasting.

Whereas the VIP section was focused on the relative expense of the crematees’ garments and urns, among the plastic chairs the focus was more on who got the best value for the money. Two crematees sitting in front of me found that they had bought identical sets of burial clothes at the same shop, but one had paid fifty yuan less than the other. The one who’d been charged more heaved a sigh. “My wife is hopeless at bargaining,” he muttered to himself.

I noticed that the other crematees in the plastic seats were all wearing funeral garments, either traditional cerements in Ming-Qing style or contemporary designs in Mao-jacket idiom or Western fashion. I was the only one dressed in a pair of Chinese clasp-fastened pajamas, but I was glad that I had at least jettisoned the baggy cotton overcoat — although my white pajamas were shabby, they could scrape by here among the plastic seats.

But I had no urn, not even a cheap one like Falling Leaves or Fragrance Lingering. This issue began to vex me — just where would my ashes end up? Should they be scattered in the boundless ocean, perhaps? But that was out of the question. That’s the resting place for the ashes of the great, with an airplane to carry them and a navy warship to guard the route, the ashes consigned to the sea amid the tears and sobs of relatives and underlings. My ashes would be tipped out of the oven and greeted with a broom and dustpan, then dumped in a garbage can.

An elderly gentleman on one of the adjacent chairs turned his head and looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t washed or reshaped?”

“I washed,” I said. “I did it myself.”

“But what about your face?” he said. “The left eye has come out and your nose has got out of position and your chin is so long.”

I realized now, to my chagrin, that I had forgotten about my face when washing. “I didn’t reshape,” I said.

“Your family really has been remiss,” the old man said. “They neglected both the wash and the reshape.”

In fact, of course, I was all alone. My adoptive father, Yang Jinbiao, who had raised me from infancy, had left me more than a year earlier when he realized he was terminally ill, and my birth parents were far away in a northern city, not realizing that at this moment I was already in another world.

A woman on the other side, who had been following our conversation all this time, now studied my outfit. “How come your cerements look like pajamas?” she asked.

“What I’m wearing is funerary garments,” I explained.

“Funerary garments?” She didn’t seem to understand.

“Funerary garments are the same things as cerements,” the gentleman said. “ ‘Cerement’ sounds better.”

I noticed that their faces were heavily made up, as though they were about to perform onstage, rather than be cremated.

Someone else in the plastic seats began to complain to the usher. “I’ve been waiting for ages now, but I’ve yet to hear my number called.”

“They’re just in the middle of the farewell ceremony for the mayor,” the usher replied. “They stopped after the first three crematees this morning and we need to wait for the mayor to enter the oven. It won’t be your turn until he comes out.”

“Why do you have to wait for him to be cremated before you do us?” the man continued to wrangle.

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“How many ovens have you got?” another person waiting asked.

“Two — one import and one domestic-brand. The import is reserved for VIPs — you’ll be using the domestic make.”

“Is the mayor a VIP?”

“Yes.”

“Does he need both ovens?”

“He’ll be using the imported one.”

“Well, why are you holding back on the domestic one, then?”

“I’m not clear about that — all I know is that both ovens are currently out of service.”

A VIP in the armchair zone waved a hand to beckon the usher, who walked briskly over to attend to his inquiry.

“How long is it till the farewell to the mayor?” the VIP asked.

“I’m not quite sure.” The usher paused. “It’ll be a little while yet, I imagine. Please just wait patiently.”

A crematee who had just arrived provided an update as he made his way to his seat. “If you add up all the city officials, big and small, as well as those from adjacent districts and counties, that must amount to over a thousand people, and every one of them needs to say goodbye to him, and they can’t walk fast — they need to walk past slowly, and some will want to weep as well.”

“What’s so special about a mayor?” the VIP grumbled.

The new arrival had not finished. “Starting this morning, all the main roads in the city were sealed off and the vehicle carrying the mayor’s remains moved along at walking pace, with several hundred cars following to escort it. What should have taken just thirty minutes required a good hour and a half. The main roads are still sealed off and regular traffic won’t resume until after the mayor’s ashes have been returned home.”

If the main roads are sealed off, the other streets are bound to be crammed with traffic. I remembered the sound of collisions when I was walking in the fog that morning and the scene of havoc that I saw later. Then I was reminded of the news of the mayor’s sudden death that had circulated in all the newspapers and on television channels a couple of weeks earlier. The official explanation was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack as a result of overwork; the popular version making the rounds on the Internet was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack in the executive suite of a five-star hotel just as he reached orgasm with a young model. The model was so shocked that she ran into the corridor screaming and sobbing, forgetting she was naked below the waist.

Then both sets of conversations turned to the topic of burial plots. Those in the plastic seats had plots measuring one square yard, whereas the burial grounds for the VIPs were all at least six acres. Perhaps because the VIPs had heard what the plastic-seaters were saying, one of them asked loudly, “How can one possibly make do with one square yard?”

A hush fell over the plastic seats as people began to listen to the luxurious appointments of those in the armchairs. Five out of the six burial plots were established on mountain peaks, facing the sea, encircled by clouds, the most uplifting and awe-inspiring ocean-view grave sites imaginable. The sixth was in a dale where trees grew thickly, streams gurgled, and birds sang, and where a natural rock that had been rooted there for hundreds of thousands of years served as headstone. These days everyone wants to eat organic foodstuffs, the owner said, but his was an organic headstone. Of the other five burial plots, two had monuments that were miniature versions of real buildings — one a Chinese-style courtyard dwelling, the other a Western-style villa — while two others boasted formal grave steles: they didn’t go in for all that showy stuff, their owners said. The last one took everybody by surprise, for the stele was a full-scale replica of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, the only difference being that the inscription in Mao Zedong’s calligraphy on the monument, “In eternal tribute to the people’s heroes,” had been changed to “In eternal tribute to Comrade Li Feng”—also in Mao’s calligraphy, since the owner’s family had hunted down the characters for “Comrade Li Feng” in Mao’s manuscripts, enlarged them, and inscribed them on the stele.

“Comrade Li Feng — that’s me,” the owner added.

“It all sounds a bit risky,” another VIP said. “One of these days the government might insist on demolishing a memorial like that.”

“I’ve already paid my hush money,” he responded confidently. “I can’t afford to let the story get out, so my family has already deployed a dozen people to keep reporters from covering it. Twelve is exactly the strength of an army squad, and with a team of guards protecting me I can rest without any worries.”

At this point the two rows of ceiling lights in the waiting room came on, and the twilight hour suddenly was transformed into noonday. The usher quickly marched toward the front door.

The mayor entered, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He walked in soberly, sporting heavy makeup on his face, a pair of bushy black eyebrows, and bright lipstick on his lips. The usher greeted him, leading him in solicitously. “Mayor, please make yourself comfortable in the VIP luxury suite.”

The mayor, nodding, followed him in. Two huge doors in the waiting room slowly swung open, only to close again slowly once he had entered.

The VIPs in the armchairs had all gone quiet. The VIP luxury suite had reduced the armchair zone to silence; wealth conceded its inferiority to power.

Among the plastic chairs, conversation continued to rise and fall, with burial remaining the topic of interest. Everyone bemoaned the fact that graves were now even more expensive than houses. In graveyards that were terribly crowded, despite their remote location, a square-yard plot still cost you thirty thousand yuan — and with a guaranteed tenure of only twenty-five years. Although houses were expensive, at least you could be sure of keeping them for seventy years. Some crematees were highly indignant, while others were racked with anxiety. “What will happen after twenty-five years?” they worried. By that time the price of a grave plot would most likely have reached astronomical levels, and if their family couldn’t afford to pay out for a renewal of the lease, their ashes would simply end up as fertilizer.

“Dying is such an expensive business these days!” one of the crematees in the front row grumbled.

“Best not to think about the future,” the old gentleman next to me calmly advised.

The old man told me that seven years earlier he had purchased a square-yard plot for three thousand yuan, and now it was worth thirty thousand. He rejoiced in his foresight at the time — if he wanted to buy it now, he would never be able to afford it.

“In seven years the price has risen tenfold,” he sighed.

Reservation numbers began to be called. The mayor had now been cremated, and his urn, over which the Communist Party flag had been laid, was deposited on a black hearse, which then slowly moved away, followed by several hundred sedans. Funereal music began to sound from the sealed-off roads. I realized now that whereas ordinary reservation numbers began with an A, VIP reservation numbers began with a V. I wasn’t sure what letter reservation numbers of luxury VIPs like the mayor started with — perhaps they didn’t require any number whatsoever.

The six VIPs with the V numbers went in. Many A numbers were called, but just as the usher in blue had said, there were a lot of no-shows — occasionally there would be ten or more no-shows one after another. I noticed now that the usher was standing in the passageway next to me, and when I raised my head to look at him, his weary voice again sounded. “The no-shows don’t have graves.”

I had neither urn nor grave. Why did I come here? I wondered.

I heard the number A64—my number — called, but I stayed put in my chair. A64 was called three times, and then they moved on to A65. The woman next to me stood up. She was wearing a traditional shroud — in the Qing dynasty style, it looked like — and as she walked, her wide sleeves swung back and forth.

The old man next to me was still waiting, and still chatting. He said that although his grave site was out of the way and hard to get to, the scenery was decent, with a small lake nearby and some just-planted saplings. He said that once he was there he planned to stay put, so it didn’t matter to him that it was far away and not convenient to reach. Then he inquired in which funeral garden he would find my grave.

I shook my head. “I have no grave.”

“Without a grave, where will you go?” he asked in astonishment.

I felt my body stand up. It took me and left the waiting room.

Once more I placed myself in the enveloping fog and swirling snow, but I didn’t know where to go. I was stricken with uncertainty, knowing I had died but not knowing how.

I walked in a hazy, indistinct city, my thoughts searching for a direction to follow amid the densely intersecting paths of memory. I needed to track down the last scene in my life, I realized, and this final scene was bound to lie at the farthest end of one such path; finding it would mean I had identified the moment of my own death. Taking their cue from my body’s motion, my thoughts traversed a myriad of scenes that swirled in profusion like so many snowflakes before finally arriving at one particular day.

This day seemed a lot like yesterday, or a lot like the day before, or perhaps it was today. The only thing I could be sure of was that it was my last day on earth. I saw myself walking down a road with a cold wind blowing in my face.

I was walking, walking toward the square in front of the city government headquarters. About two hundred people were standing there, protesting against forced demolitions. They had not, however, unfurled protest banners and were not shouting slogans — they were simply swapping stories of personal misfortune. From what I could make out as I made my way through their ranks, they had all in various ways fallen afoul of recent demolitions. An old lady with tears running down her face was saying that she had just left her house to buy groceries and returned to find her house was gone — she had thought for a moment that she had taken a wrong turn. Others were relating the terror they had experienced during late-night demolitions, when they were woken from sleep by huge blasts, their house swaying back and forth as though in an earthquake; only when they rushed out in panic did they see bulldozers and excavators destroying their housing complex. One man was loudly relating an embarrassing experience: just as he and his girlfriend were making love, their front door suddenly opened with a crash and several fierce-looking men burst in, tied them up inside their comforter, and then carried them, comforter and all, into a waiting vehicle. It drove around the city the whole night, with him and his girlfriend scared out of their wits, not knowing where they were being taken. Only at dawn did the car return them to their place of departure; at that point their captors dumped them on the ground, untied the cord that bound them, and tossed them some items of clothing. Shivering, they hastily dressed, as passersby watched them curiously, and when they finally stood up and looked around they found that their home had been flattened. His girlfriend burst out wailing and vowed never to go to bed with him again — sleeping with him was scarier than watching a horror movie.

With the house gone and his girlfriend gone, he told the people around him, his sexual desire had completely dried up. He stretched out four fingers. In an effort to cure his erectile dysfunction, he said, he had already spent over forty thousand yuan and consumed all kinds of Western and Chinese medicines and resorted to remedies both orthodox and unconventional, but down below, his plane was only capable of taxiing.

“Does it start its descent just after taking off?” someone asked.

“Oh, I wish,” he said. “No, it taxis only, no taking off at all.”

“Demand compensation!” someone shouted.

“The government compensated me for my demolished house”—he smiled grimly—“but not for my traumatized libido.”

“Take some Viagra,” someone suggested.

“I did that,” he said, “and it made my heart pound sure enough, but down below all I could do was taxi.”

Much laughter followed this remark; it seemed to me that these people weren’t protesting so much as having a party. After crossing the square, I passed two bus stops; ahead of me was Amity Street.

My life was at a low ebb by this point: my wife had left me long before, and more than a year earlier my father had fallen gravely ill. So as to pay for his treatment and look after him better, I had sold our apartment, handed in my notice, and bought a little shop near the hospital. Later, my father left without saying goodbye and disappeared in the endless sea of people, so I gave up the shop and moved into a cheap rental, searching for my father despite all the odds stacked against me. I had roamed through every corner of the city, scanning men’s features wherever I went, but my father’s face always eluded me.

With the loss of work and apartment and shop, my determination flagged. As my savings dwindled, I needed to find a way to support myself, for I was only forty-one, with plenty of time ahead of me. Through an agency involved with extramural education I found a job as a tutor.

Amity Street was where my first pupil lived. When I initially placed a call to her father, from the other end of the line came a hoarse and hesitant voice. The girl’s name was Zheng Xiaomin, her father said; his daughter was a good student, now in fourth grade. He and his wife worked in a factory, for a low income, so it was difficult for them to afford my proposed fifty-yuan-an-hour fee for tutoring their daughter. Hearing a helplessness in his voice that sounded a lot like my own, I suggested he pay me thirty yuan an hour instead, and after a moment he said “Thank you” three times.

We arranged that I would teach the first lesson at four o’clock in the afternoon. I got my hair cut, then went home and had a shave, changed into clean clothes, and put on a cotton overcoat. My overcoat was old, and so were the clothes I wore underneath.

I arrived on Amity Street, in an area I knew well. I knew where up ahead there was a supermarket and where to find Starbucks, McDonald’s, and KFC, where there was a street lined with fashion boutiques and where to go for Chinese food.

After I passed these businesses, everything suddenly became unfamiliar. The three six-story apartment buildings that used to overlook Amity Street were now just a heap of ruins. The apartment that I was due to visit for the tutorial session would have been in the second block.

The three buildings had still been standing when I passed this way a few days earlier, with laundry hung out to dry on the balconies and white banners hanging from some of the windows. In big black characters the banners read: “We firmly resist forcible demolition,” “We are opposed to violent demolition,” and “We will defend our homes to the death.”

As I gazed at the ruins, I could dimly make out a few items of clothing caught among the tangle of steel rods and broken concrete. Two excavators and two trucks were stopped nearby, along with a police car in which four policemen sat with the engine running.

A young girl in a red down jacket was sitting alone on a concrete slab, from which severed steel rods jutted out in twisted shapes at both ends. Her satchel was resting on her knees and a textbook and exercise book were lying open on her lap; she was bending down to write something. She had walked out of her own building when she left for school that morning, but it was gone when she came back at the end of the day, and there was no sign of her parents. She sat in the ruins waiting for them to come home, doing her homework and shivering in the cold.

Swaying awkwardly on the debris, I made my way over to where she was. When she raised her head, I saw a face scoured red by the wind.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

I pointed at the KFC nearby. “It’ll be warm inside,” I said. “Why not do your homework there?”

She shook her head. “My mom and dad wouldn’t be able to find me when they come back.”

She lowered her head again and went back to doing her homework on the table she had made with her legs. I scanned the ruins.

“Do you know where Zheng Xiaomin lives?” I asked her.

“Right here.” She pointed at where she was sitting. “I am Zheng Xiaomin.”

Seeing her surprise at my knowing her name, I told her I was the man engaged to tutor her. She nodded to indicate that she knew of the arrangement, but looked around blankly. “Mom and Dad aren’t home yet.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said.

“We won’t be here tomorrow,” she said. “Call my dad,” she suggested, “he’ll know where we’ll be tomorrow.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll call him.”

As I clambered back over the rubble, I heard her voice behind me. “Thanks, teacher.”

It was the first time I’d been called “teacher.” I looked back at the girl in the red down jacket. Sitting there, she softened the ruins.

I walked back to the city square, where now there were gathered two or three thousand people holding banners and shouting slogans — this time it looked as though they really were demonstrating. The perimeter of the square was filled with policemen and police cars, and the police had closed the roads and were preventing others from entering the square. I saw a demonstrator standing on the steps in front of the city government headquarters. He was holding a megaphone and shouting over and over again at the restive crowd: “Keep calm! Please keep calm!”

With the repetition of this message, the demonstrators gradually calmed down. Holding the megaphone in one hand and gesticulating with the other, the man began to address the crowd. “We are here to demand equity and justice. Our demonstration is peaceful. We mustn’t do anything extreme, we mustn’t give them a pretext to discredit us.”

He paused. “I have to inform you all,” he continued, “that in the demolitions conducted this morning at Amity Street, a married couple were buried under the rubble and it’s not clear if they are alive or dead….”

A van stopped next to me and seven or eight men jumped out of it, their pockets bulging. They went up to the police who were blocking the roads, waved ID in their faces, and then proceeded directly in through the cordon, first with a swaggering confidence, then at a rapid trot. They ran onto the steps in front of the government offices and began to yell, “Smash the city government!”

They pulled stones out of their pockets and threw them at the windows and doors of the city government headquarters; I heard the sound of breaking glass. Police now poured into the square from all directions and began to disperse the crowd; chaos ensued as the demonstrators fled in all directions. Those who tried to resist were soon pinned to the ground. The group of men who had broken the windows came trotting back, nodded to the two policemen standing in front of me, and hopped into the van, which immediately sped off. It had no license plates, I noticed.

That evening I went to a restaurant called Tan Family Eatery. It served tasty food at a reasonable price, and I had become a regular customer, though all I ever ordered was a bowl of noodles. I tried calling Zheng Xiaomin’s father several times from the phone next to the cash register, but nobody ever picked up and all I heard was a monotonous ringtone.

On TV they were covering the afternoon’s demonstration. The report claimed that a small group of troublemakers had created a disturbance in the square in front of the city government headquarters, misleading those ignorant of the truth and causing damage to public property. The police had detained nineteen suspects and the situation had now been stabilized. The TV did not broadcast any video footage and all we saw were the two news anchors, a man and a woman, reporting this news. Then the media spokesman for the city government—well-dressed, sitting on a sofa — appeared on the screen, taking questions from a network reporter. The reporter would ask a question and the spokesman would answer it, the two of them simply repeating the lines uttered just a few moments earlier by the news anchors. Then the reporter asked if a married couple had been buried in the rubble during the demolitions on Amity Street. The spokesman strenuously denied this, describing it as pure rumor and announcing that those responsible for fabricating it were now in custody. The spokesman finished up by cataloging the outstanding achievements of the city government in recent years and extolling the improvements to people’s standard of living.

“Waitress, change the channel!” a man drinking at the table next to me yelled.

A waitress picked up the remote and came over to change the channel. The news spokesman vanished and a soccer game now occupied the screen.

The man turned to me. “Did you hear what those jokers are saying? I don’t even believe their punctuation.”

I smiled thinly, then bent down again to eat my noodles. During my father’s illness, I had brought him here, supporting him by the arm. We sat at a corner table on the ground floor and I ordered his favorite dishes, but he couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls before throwing it all up. After cleaning up the mess on the table and floor, I had helped him home, saying to the proprietor as we left, “I’m sorry about that.”

He gently shook his head. “No worries. Look forward to seeing you next time.”

After my father’s disappearance, I would come here alone and sit in that same corner, dolefully eating my noodles. The proprietor would come over and sit opposite me and ask about my father’s situation, for he remembered us. On one occasion I broke down and told him my story, how my father had gone off by himself, so that he wouldn’t be a burden to me. The proprietor didn’t say anything, just looked at me with sympathy.

Later, every time I came here, the proprietor would treat me to a fruit plate at the end of my meal and join me for a chat.

His name was Tan Jiaxin. He and his wife and their daughter and son-in-law ran this restaurant together, with private rooms on the second floor and open seating on the first. They came from Guangdong and sometimes they would bemoan the fact that they had no family ties in this city and no network of connections, so life was hard. Seeing how there was a regular flow of customers and business seemed to be booming, I assumed he was making good money, but he always had a look of worry on his face. Once, he told me that people from public security, emergency services, sanitation, and the commerce and tax bureaus would regularly come and eat extravagant meals, but they refused to pay up front, insisting that everything be put on credit, with some private business or other clearing the debt at the end of the year. At the beginning it wasn’t so bad, he said, and seven or eight out of ten of the bills would be paid, but with the economy in poor shape these past few years, many companies had folded and fewer and fewer were coming to settle the accounts, but these government officials still kept coming to feast. So although the restaurant might seem to be doing well, he said, actually the Tans’ expenditures exceeded their income. Nobody dares to offend government people, he said.

By the time I finished my noodles, somebody had changed the channel and again there appeared coverage of the afternoon’s demonstration. A female reporter was interviewing some people in the street, who all expressed outrage at the reckless behavior of those who had vandalized the government headquarters. Then a professor appeared on the screen, a law professor at the university I had attended. He talked with a slick fluency, first condemning the violence that afternoon, then emphasizing how the people needed to trust and understand and support the government.

Tan Jiaxin brought me a fruit plate. “It’s been a while since you were here,” he said.

I nodded. But my expression was gloomy and he did not sit down to chat as was his custom. After setting the fruit down on the table, he turned and left.

Slowly I ate the slices of fruit. I also picked up a copy of that day’s paper, left behind by another diner. I flipped through the pages until a large photo caught my attention. It was a half-length portrait of an attractive woman; I recognized her at once.

Then I read the accompanying story. Wealthy businesswoman Li Qing had committed suicide the day before by slitting her wrists in her bathtub. She had been implicated in a corruption case involving a highly placed official — the newspaper said she was his mistress, and when people from the investigation bureau went to her home, planning to take her in to help them with their inquiries, they found she had committed suicide. The crowded lines of newsprint filled my gaze like a wall studded with bullet holes. It was a struggle to read the details of the case, for they pained me to the core and I found myself losing the thread of the story.

All of a sudden, thick smoke came billowing out of the kitchen door. The diners on the ground floor gave cries of alarm and I looked up to see them dashing for the door and running outside. Tan Jiaxin stood at the exit, shouting to the customers to first pay their bill, but several simply pushed him aside and fled. Tan Jiaxin kept shouting and his wife and daughter and son-in-law, joined by several waitresses, ran over to block the exit. They and the customers engaged in a shoving match and there seemed to be a war of words as well. I desperately wanted to read the whole newspaper story, but the uproar in the restaurant just kept getting louder. When I raised my head once more, I saw that the people from the private rooms upstairs were running down the stairs. Reaching the front door, they thrust the Tans aside and bolted in panic into the street. Other customers picked up chairs and smashed windows, then clambered over the windowsills and fled. Before long the waitresses were in full flight too.

I tried my best to ignore the chaos in the dining room and continued to read the newspaper report, but soon the smoke made it impossible to decipher the words on the page. As I rubbed my eyes, people dressed like officials came running down from upstairs and dashed through the dining room, yelling angrily as they approached the front door. After a moment’s hesitation, Tan Jiaxin yielded passage to them and they fled out into the street, cursing for all they were worth.

Tan Jiaxin and family remained by the door. He stared at me through the smoke and he seemed to be shouting something. Then there was a deafening roar.

I had reached as far as memory’s path would lead. No matter how hard I tried to recall what happened next, I could recapture no further moments after this — not even the faintest trace. Tan Jiaxin’s stare and the deafening roar that followed it — these were the last scenes that I could find.

In that final scene, my body and soul were transfixed by the news of Li Qing’s death, for it awoke in me memories both beautiful and excruciating. My grief for her had been nipped in the bud, long before it had had time to grow to its natural dimensions. Snow was still blowing and the fog showed no sign of dispersing. I continued to wander along the paths of memory. A weariness came over me as I journeyed ever deeper, and I wanted to sit down, so I sat. I don’t know whether I sat down on a chair or on a stone, but I seemed to rock back and forth as I sat, like an overladen cargo ship tossed by a swell.

A blind man approached, tapping the hollow ground with his walking stick. When he reached me he came to a stop. “Someone is sitting here,” he murmured to himself.

“You’re right,” I said, “someone is sitting here.”

He asked me directions to the funeral parlor and I asked him if he had a reservation. He pulled out a ticket, on which was printed A52. I told him he must have taken a wrong turn, for he needed to head back the way he came. He asked me what was written on the paper, and I explained the reservation system at the funeral parlor. He nodded and set off again, and after he had walked into the distance, tapping on the echoless ground, I began to wonder if I had given the blind man the wrong directions, because I myself was lost.