Anna looked at me strangely, as if unable to comprehend my calmness.
“Why don’t you tell me what her life in America was like following our separation?” I asked.
Anna told me that after I left, Qiqi continued her studies in the US, waiting for me. She wrote to me several times but never received any replies. Once she was awarded her Ph.D., she taught in college and then remarried. Ten years ago, after her husband died, she wanted to return to China, but the civil war put those plans on hold. Finally, only days from Yan’an, she died. Since they couldn’t carry her body through the mountains, they had to cremate her. Thus I was deprived of the chance to see her one last time—
“No,” I interrupted. I picked up the jar of ashes. “Qiqi and I are together now, and we’ll never be apart again. Thank you.”
I ignored Anna’s stare as I held the jar against my chest and muttered to myself. Tears flowed down my face, the tears of happiness.
The setting sun, red as blood, floated next to the ancient pagoda on Baota Mountain. It cast its remaining light over northern China, veiling everything in a golden-red hue. The Yan River sparkled in the distance, and I could see a few young soldiers, barely more than boys, playing in the water.
I sat under a tree; Qiqi sat next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.
The pendulum of life appeared to have returned to the origin. After all we had witnessed and endured, she and I had traversed countless moments, both bitter and sweet, and once again leaned against each other. It didn’t matter how much time had passed us by. It didn’t matter if we were alive or dead. It was enough that we were together.
“I’m not sure if you know this,” I said. “After your mother died during the Cultural Revolution, I helped to arrange her funeral. She had suffered some because of her relationship to you, but she died relatively peacefully. In her last moments, she asked me to tell you to stay away from China and try to live a good life. But I always knew you would return….
“Do you remember Heizi? He’s in Yan’an, too. Even at his age, he’s as goofy as when he was a boy. Last month, he told me that if you came back, we’d all go climb Baota Mountain together, just like when we were kids. Don’t worry, the mountain is not very high. I can carry you if you have trouble with your leg….
“It’s been twenty years since my mother’s death. There used to be two jade bracelets that had been in my family for generations. My mother planned to give one each to you and me. Later, she gave one to Shen Qian, but the Red Guards broke it because it was a feudal relic…. I hid the other, hoping to give it to you. Have a look. I hope you like it.”
I opened the bundle that had been on my back and took out a smooth jade bracelet. In the sun’s last rays, it glowed brightly.
“You want to know what else is in the bundle?” I chuckled. “Lots of good things. I’ve been carrying them around for years. It hasn’t been easy to keep them safe. Look.”
I took out the treasures of my memory one by one: the English letters Qiqi had written to me in high school; the New Concept English cassette tapes she gave me; the posters for Tokyo Love Story; a lock of hair I begged from her after we started dating; the purple hairclip she wore to Tiananmen Square; a few photographs of us taken in New York; the “revolutionese” letter she sent me during the Cultural Revolution….
I examined each object carefully, remembering. It was like gazing through a time telescope at moments as far away as galaxies, or perhaps like diving into the sea of history in search of forgotten treasures in sunken ships. The distant years had settled deep into the strata of time, turning into indistinct fossils. But perhaps they were also like seeds that would germinate after years of quiescence and poke through the crust of our souls….
Finally, at the bottom of the bundle, I found the copy of Season of Bloom, Season of Rain. She left it in my home after visiting my family during middle school, but I hadn’t read it in years. More than fifty years later, the pages had turned yellow and brittle. I held it in my hand and caressed the cover wrap Qiqi had made, admiring her handwriting. The smooth texture of the poster paper felt strangely familiar, as though I was opening a tunnel into the past.
I opened the book, thinking I would read a few pages. But my hand felt something strange. I looked closely: there was something trapped between the poster paper wrap and the original cover of the book.
Carefully, I unwrapped the poster paper, but I had underestimated the fragility of the book. The cover was torn off, and a rectangular card fell out like a colorful butterfly. It fluttered to the ground after a brief dance in the sunlight.
I picked it up.
It was a high-definition photograph, probably taken with a digital camera. Fireworks exploded in the night sky, and in the distant background was a glowing screen on which you could make out the shape of some magnificent stadium. I recognized it: the Bird’s Nest. In the foreground were many people dressed in colorful clothes holding balloons and Chinese flags and cotton candy and popcorn. Everyone was laughing, pointing, strolling….
In the middle of the photograph were two children about four years old. One was a boy in a gray jacket, the other a girl in a pink dress. They stood together, holding hands. Illuminated by the fireworks exploding overhead, the smiles on their flushed faces were pure and innocent.
I stared at the photograph for a long time and then flipped it over. I saw a graceful line of handwritten characters:
Beauty is about to go home. Take care, my Grey Wolf. ☺
More than fifty years earlier, Qiqi had hidden this present to me in a book she had “forgotten.” I had never unwrapped it.
I remembered the last conversation I had with Anna.
“What did she say before she died?”
“She was delirious… but she said she would return to the past you two shared, to the place where she met you for the first time, and wait for you. I don’t know what she meant.”
“Maybe all of us will return there someday.”
“Where?”
“To the origin of the universe, of life, of time… To the time before the world began. Perhaps we could choose another direction and live another life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t, either. Maybe our lives are lived in order to comprehend this mystery, and we’ll understand only at the end.”
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I asked Qiqi. “We’ll go back together. Would you like that?”
Qiqi said nothing.
I closed my eyes. The world dissolved around me. Layer after layer peeled back, and era after era emerged and returned to nothingness. Strings of shining names fell from the empyrean of history, as though they had never existed. We were thirty, twenty, fifteen, five… not just me and Qiqi, but also Shen Qian, Heizi, and everyone else. We returned to the origin of our lives, turned into babies, into fetuses. In the deepest abyss of the world, the beginning of consciousness stirred, ready to choose new worlds, new timelines, new possibilities….
The sun had fallen beneath the horizon in the east, and the long day was about to end. But tomorrow, the sun would rise in the west again, bathing the world in a kinder light. On the terraced fields along the slope of the mountain, millions of poppy flowers trembled, blooming, burning incomparably bright in the last light of dusk.
Many interesting works have been written about the arrow of time. This one is perhaps a bit distinct: while each person lives their life forward, the sociopolitical conditions regress backward.