Unticlass="underline" ‘You there! You’re bleeding.’
Sirens start and I’m running and, with legs made of springs, I leap up and over the roof. I’m flying through the air. I’ve escaped, I think. I look back, but they’re right behind me. They’re not giving up that easily. I escape into an old building by the side of the road.
I wake to the sound of thumping. Shit. The train is starting to move. Shit, shit. Only as the faces of the strangers around me come into focus do I return to reality. I go to the toilet, but it’s locked, so I walk down the corridor and smoke a cigarette. The train is like a fish gliding through dark waters. I’m having a bit of a poetic moment.
I go back to my seat. Then I see them, two police officers standing at the other end of the carriage. They are carrying card machines to check everyone’s IDs. All these innocents, happily rooting around in their bags. I couldn’t tell if this was routine or they were looking for something in particular. But I didn’t have time to think. I turned and went back to the toilet. I could feel them looking at me. I bent over, held my stomach and started banging on the door.
‘Hold on,’ came the voice from inside.
I pretended to go looking for the toilet in the next carriage, but realised halfway that this was the last one. I sat in an empty seat and stared blankly ahead. Maybe I could hide under the seat. No, that was a stupid idea. After a while someone came staggering towards me. The farmer again. His shoulder kept banging against the seats and the walls of the carriage. He was looking for somewhere to be sick. He pulled at the toilet door and then continued onwards.
‘Get back,’ I hissed.
He looked at me. The corners of his mouth twitched.
‘Go back. I mean it.’ I was guarding my territory.
He seemed to think of something and stumbled in the direction from which he’d come.
Just then I heard the sound of the door unlocking. I rushed over and pushed past the young woman who was emerging, fastening her belt. We got caught in a bit of a tussle before I made it inside. I nudged the door shut with my shoulder and locked it three times to be sure. I’d wait for a half an hour until they’d passed on and left the train, but I could hear the sound of scuffling and hushed talking. The police had found me out. I’d made myself a trap, I realised. The lower half of the window was fastened shut. The top was open, revealing a crack of black sky. But try as I might, I couldn’t pull it further open.
Furious knocking at the door. I didn’t answer. Kicking.
‘Get the fuck out.’ It was an unmistakable order.
Something pounded inside me, wanting to burst out. It needed me to run, but I couldn’t. I was going crazy. The yelling and cursing were getting louder. My breaking point came as he shouted about my mother’s flabby pussy. This isn’t how it is supposed to go, I thought. I killed someone, sure, but you don’t know that. Why do you need to insult my ma? Say whatever you like about me, but what right do you have to insult my ma?
I wrenched at the lock and pulled open the door. He grabbed me by the collar. I tried to push him off, but he was stronger. He picked me up as if I was no more than a little bird and moved me aside. He then charged in and, without closing the door, pulled down his trousers and started shitting.
Out in the corridor I heard only the hum of the air-conditioning. I’d never smelt anything like it.
No one came to speak to me. I drew myself up, feeling somewhat disappointed, as if I’d left matters half finished. The other passengers were talking about the farmer; in his rush, he’d knocked one of the police officers to the floor.
The older officer punched him to the ground, held him down with his elbow and growled, ‘I knew there was something not quite right about you.’
I understood. My heart was thumping, but my face was stiff like dead wood. I struggled to hold back the laughter. I needed to pee. Despite being in there all that time, I hadn’t gone and now I was about to wet my pants.
Holding it in, I knocked on the door. No answer. I went over to the washbasins. There was no one around, so I started pissing. Once the stream started it wouldn’t stop, two minutes, ten minutes. Still going. It was goddamn embarrassing.
On the Run II
The train drew in to the first stop and I, along with a stream of other passengers, disembarked. I crouched in the shade of a nearby planter. We waited ages before one of the railway staff came to announce that the train would be leaving soon. The stallholders packed up and left, the platform gates were locked shut and I went down onto the tracks. I walked through the inky night, my feet soon covered in shit, which was pretty humiliating. Luckily I only had to walk ten minutes before I came to some lights.
I was walking fast. It felt familiar, but as I approached and saw the street lights, the houses and signs and even the shadows, everything seemed to be made of sharp knives thrusting at me. A few young guys stopped their game of pool and stared at me, puzzled as to my sudden appearance in the darkness. An old man sat beside them, fanning himself. He smiled, his mouth empty of teeth (they’re going to kill me, I thought, and he’ll watch them, clapping). Moments later, I was surrounded by motorbikes. They spoke quickly in the local dialect and I saw a fierceness in their eyes that was impossible to misinterpret. They weren’t waiting for my answer. I was pulled onto one of the bikes, driven around the town and relieved of fifty yuan along the way.
I walked into Benefit the People Guest House, bag in one hand. The place had originally been someone’s private home and there was still an altar burning incense in the front room-turned-lobby. Bars blocked all the windows street level, the tiles on the floor were slippery and the blanket smelt foul. I wanted a room on the first floor. They noted down my fake ID, saw I was from Beijing and felt flattered. But when I wanted them to change the black and white TV, they slammed the door shut in my face. The screen was capable of broadcasting one white thread only. The curtains were ragged, the sheets were sallow, the pillows black and without pillowcases. A pair of flip-flops sat sadly on the bathroom floor, one of them broken.
I snapped the bolt shut across the door and walked over to the window. I looked out on an empty courtyard and an endless sky. I had no idea why I was here, of all places.
For the next few days I didn’t leave the room, except to go downstairs to eat. The kitchen was in the courtyard surrounded by a low wall. One time, after I’d finished dinner, I smashed the shards of glass pressed into it. Then I positioned a ladder I found lying around under my window. I might have been taking precautions. Or maybe I was just bored.
I took to sleeping. Excessive sleep and masturbation. I could recite the contents of the police poster on the wall by heart. Eighty-five characters in total, including three exclamation marks. At one point I detected the stench of dead rat. I went looking for it and discovered a smelly sock soaking in washing detergent in the bathroom. I was like a noble animal disgusted by its own excrement and the loneliness I had myself created. I started weaving together what remained of my life. I splashed the floor with water, mopped it, knelt down and went over it again with a cloth. Then I took a bottle of shoe polish and shined my shoes, wrung out the cloth and buffed until I could see my own reflection by the moonlight in the leather.
I had found happiness in labour, but the feeling passed just as quickly as I had found it. My body was telling me something, giving me an order: go outside.
Outside exploded with fireworks like a never-ending festival, like there was still love out there for an adventurer. But as I drew close, all I saw was one breeze block after another, one electrical pole after another, one street after another, one face after another, at once familiar and utterly unrecognisable. Never a car accident, never a fight, not even the gentlest of arguments. I saw an internet café, but it wouldn’t be easy to use my fake ID and I didn’t want to risk using my real one. A sign flashed CINEMA, but as I approached all I saw was a heap of rubble and a small market of people selling scraps for a few cents. A nearby kiosk carried no recent newspapers, so I bought two yellowing copies of Sports Weekly and Former News Weekly and went back to the guest house to read them. It took me seven hours to read every single character contained within their pages.