I was now completely on my own, isolated, as if I’d woken from surgery to discover I was missing my legs. Or maybe my dick. I was afraid and couldn’t believe I had fallen into a void like this. There was no way out. But at this point my guts broke in and I went to find food.
At the supermarket, the boss (also known as the cashier) was drinking from a large Thermos of boiling water and chewing on a roll. There were at least four or five more packets beside her. She kept eating and it reminded me of Ma. She would always sit at home alone, eating the out-of-date food she brought back from work.
‘Could you stop eating for a second?’
She stopped chewing. I took out twenty yuan.
‘Throw that shit away.’
She took the money, but was puzzled. I turned just as I was leaving. She drank another gulp of water and stuffed the remaining bread in her mouth.
I approached a noodle shop. The young girl in the doorway bowed: ‘Welcome.’ I looked at her tightly pressed lips. How strange, I thought. I watched as another customer arrived. Yet again, the words came out but her lips didn’t move. It was a supernatural power, like those guys on the street who hand out leaflets and somehow always manage to slice them into people’s hands like a knife through turnip.
The meaning of life:
Boredom.
Repetition.
Order.
Entrapment.
Imprisonment.
I spent twenty yuan to have a shower in the public baths and another ten to stay the night. I rested on the sofa in the main hall and, for the first time in ages, watched TV. The anchor was a woman, dressed in blue and with a slight wave in her hair. She looked proper, but her voice was hard like bullets. She fired a whole box of them. Not one mistake. She must have had years of elocution lessons. It made me feel like all the news broadcasts were somehow filtered through her brain. Everything was reported in the same tone, whether the news was happy, tragic, outrageous or mundane.
She finished telling the viewers that ‘two hundred citizens have been engulfed in a forest fire’, turned over her papers and continued. ‘Today more than thirty people were killed when a suicide bomb exploded.’ I listened as she read on, smiled and announced the end of the programme. Nothing about me. I’d been forgotten. Or replaced. I had always thought news broadcasting to be a righteous enterprise, but now I knew there was nothing more shameless. It takes victims by the hand with hot tears in its eyes, listens to them pour their heart out and drops them again as soon as something new comes along. It’s all about feeding the consumers with the spiciest informational treats. I was past my sell-by date. I’d lost my notoriety. I was beginning to feel bored with myself too.
Just then I heard noises in the hall answering each other, infecting each other, like a herd of hippos grunting at each other. I kept jumping to my feet, looking for wire to tie around their fleshy necks (and strangle the crap out of them). The girl at the front desk noticed my discomfort and led me upstairs, where I could rest in peace.
She gave me a single room and an old mother figure came in, carrying a bag. I was a wreck. All because she went into the bathroom and took off her T-shirt, undid her bra and removed her trousers and underpants, as if she was at home. I could see her flabby yellow breasts, bellybutton and her pudenda. For me, sex should be mystical, like an offering to the gods. It has to start with rituals. But she was presenting her privates like a plate of melon seeds. I shrank back into the bed as she pulled my trousers down. She grabbed hold of my erection and tugged roughly (it felt like sandpaper). I begged her to stop, but she rubbed her knees and climbed up. She then prised herself apart and sat on my cock. I tried pushing her away, but she flattened me like a steamroller. She screamed as if in pain. I mumbled something, but she was immersed in her work.
‘Enough!’
She fell silent, but she kept grinding.
‘I’m done,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, rubbing her lower belly and picking herself up unceremoniously.
She stepped quickly into her pants. I reached out sadly, trying to get her to wait. But she dressed, put on her ugly high heels and left.
I went to the second floor, where the sound of snoring formed a chorus that was getting louder and louder and continued downwards into the baths. The attendant thrust a towel in my hands and smiled. There was meaning in that smile, I thought. The old woman had told everyone that I shot my load too early. ‘That boy, he was barely in before he came!’ It was humiliating.
I spent the night curled up in bed and couldn’t sleep. Some screws must have come loose at the joins in the water pipes. The gurgling sound was like a crawling gecko, until a roar of water echoed around the otherwise quiet bathhouse. Like a meteorite shower splashing into the ocean. The loneliness was like a slaughter.
The next morning I got on a bus to the Western Hills. In ancient times they were known as the Qin Mountains, as China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang, was supposed to have reached this spot after conquering the Warring States, forming roads with his whip and slicing mountains with his sword. I was just here for the view from the top, where I could catch the sunrise. I wasn’t the only one to have the same idea, so we sat together in the darkness, like strangers in a doctor’s waiting room.
The sky slowly turned from blue to faded red. It was coming in from the sea. When the sun came peeping from behind the clouds, everyone whooped for joy, but I was disappointed. To be honest it looked a floating orange ping-pong ball gradually moving closer, hotter, spreading its arms out towards us. I was scared, as if I was being examined. I couldn’t escape its evil clutches.
In its overenthusiasm, the sun spat out tongues of fire. At first it was like a ball of dry grass going up in flames, a fireball at its centre and with dry singed outer edges. I could no longer look at it straight. Eventually the metal and rays of light began to melt and fall. It was leaving us, as if trying to flee the sky. A bright black hole burning in it. Then a freeze-frame. And it was back to being that normal sun, the one we see every day. My skin was greasy and my clothes were wet. I was itchy all over. I hadn’t had enough sleep and felt like being sick.
I took my bag and walked down the other side of the hill, where there was still some shade. I checked there was no one around, put down my bag and suddenly cried out, ‘I’m here!’
The sound was like a stone skimmed across the water’s surface, as it travelled up through each layer of cloud and out into the sky. Then I took out the last three banknotes in my possession. Their serial numbers ended with 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
1. Keep running.
2. Give myself up.
3. Suicide.
I would listen to God. I folded and mixed them until I could no longer tell them apart. I reached for one, but unfolded another. HQ24947723. A crooked name written in ballpoint pen: Li Jixi. It had once been in the possession of a poor peasant. And now it wanted me to kill myself.
I removed a nylon rope from my bag (I had planned for this) and started patting nearby trees like a carpenter. I chose one that must have been at least a hundred years old, one that had calmly faced down hail, lightning and snowstorms and would continue to do so for some time to come. I carried two stones, stacked them, knotted the rope and fastened it to a thick branch above. I looked around me. Beyond the dense forest a road circled and beyond that I could see small box-like houses with people crawling around them like insects.