Seawater like black satin is spilling over the seawall; at the foot of the wall in the spreading seawater lies a dead fish. There is an absence of sound. The tide and wind have suddenly stopped. Time seems to have frozen. Only the sea, like a length of spreading black satin, is flowing and yet not spilling. Maybe it isn't moving and only seems to be flowing, merely offering the sensation that it is flowing and only sensed as a visual image.
His hand squashes a fleeing cockroach on top of the electric stove. He turns on the tap but doesn't flush it away. Instead he just looks at the splashing water.
"Want marijuana?" The voice is low, so low that it is mistaken for breathing because the music is very loud. As wrinkled black hands fly across the keys, they seem to be the words of the song softly repeated. But the old black man is not singing; head down, he sways as he continues to play the drums.
The shiny brass bomb hanging on a fleshy earlobe of the white woman swings gently.
Cockroaches are crawling on the patterned tiles over the sink, crawling on the lid of the enamel saucepan, crawling on the leather cover of the radio, crawling on the cupboard, crawling along the kitchen door. He puts on a rubber glove.
A big hand with blue veins is on the woman's thigh, under the black leather skirt. Who does it belong to, and where is he? Is the old black man still playing the drums, is the piano still playing? Where is that pinging noise coming from? Anyway, everything seems to be swaying.
An eye, the dazed, cold gray eye of a fish, round and staring, dull and lusterless.
A pair of pointy pliers pulls out a tooth, the pale blood still clinging to the roots. He sniffs at it, it stinks a bit, and with a swing of his arm he tosses it away.
People are mountain climbing. Everyone is trying to outdo the other and it seems to be a race up the mountain. There are men and women, some wearing shorts, some carrying backpacks. There are also old and young people, some have walking sticks and some have small children, and pairs of boys and girls are holding hands, so it doesn't seem to be a race. Everyone has been mobilized. Is it a holiday camp or are they the residents of the whole county town? It suits everyone, men and women, old and young; is it a trendy form of exercise?
Cockroaches are crawling everywhere. Wearing a glove covered with dead cockroaches, he is on his haunches, frantically swiping at them.
Two feet in pointed leather shoes are stepping about in midair. On the stage, a white-nosed clown is walking on his hands to the tune of a leaky accordion soundlessly oozing air.
Everyone is puffing and panting, sweating from their foreheads. All of them take out identical bottles labeled with the same brand of mineral water and, one by one, their broad, contorted faces produce similar smiles of well-being.
A hat spins silently on the end of a walking stick.
The wind is taking a break, and on the boundless sea the layers of white crests keep pushing closer and closer. The sunlight is wonderful, the sky remains azure blue, and the seagulls are screeching.
People are marching in file along the mountain ridge. The person in the lead is holding a tattered old flag that billows in the strong wind. They are off in the distance, but the flapping of the tattered flag can still be heard.
The sea swells up to the stone steps beyond the doors, majestically, turbulently.
The ground is thick with cockroaches. He stands still, and bends his head to look around. He is utterly frustrated and can do nothing but take off the glove that is covered with dead cockroaches.
Without a sound, the sea spills over the doorsill into the room, and the cockroaches scramble to escape by crawling up the walls. Those not quick enough are caught in the swirling current and float up with it or lie on their backs pretending to be dead. He can't help bending to look at them. He pokes at them with the glove, then throws it into the water, straightens up, and doesn't bother with them anymore. The legs of the table and chair are underwater and some of the cockroaches in the water start crawling up them.
The people with the flag are marching in file along the gentle ridge. As they draw near, the man in the lead raises his walking stick high. The flag flapping noisily in the wind is in fact a string of bras – white silk, dark red brocade, flesh-colored netting – all tied together with black nylon stockings. A small black leather bra shakes up and down from time to time and looks like a small bird trying to break free.
A large part of the concrete ceiling is wet, and the pooling water forms droplets that begin to fall.
In the underground cellar, someone is lying faceup on a mattress so old that it should be thrown away. His face is covered with a black hat, and his body is covered with a white sheet; the mattress is right in the middle of four wet concrete walls. Drops of water plop noisily onto the sheet and part of it gradually becomes wet.
His fat belly is exposed, covered only with bamboo medical suction cups; the part below his lower abdomen is covered with the white sheet.
Sitting on a small wooden stool, a cobbler wearing a felt hat takes the nail from between his teeth and presses it into the high heel of the shoe clamped between his knees. With one blow of the hammer, it is in.
The murky black seawater flows down from the stone steps, soundlessly, flowing down, one step at a time.
He looks up to the ruins of the fortress at the top of the cliff and goes up the broken stone steps that are in the shadows. The fortress, however, is in the sunlight and the outline and texture of each stone are quite distinct.
He enters the pitch black doorway of the fortress wall, then suddenly hears the sound of an iron chisel being hammered into rock. He stands still and the sound stops. As soon as he resumes walking the sound follows his footsteps. He stops and the sound stops again. He then deliberately stamps his feet and the iron chisel clangs noisily. Finally, when he starts running hard, the sound vanishes.
It is a long, dark tunnel. He moves slowly ahead, groping. At the other end is a ray of light and the exit gradually appears – a doorway. Outside, the sunlight is brilliant, and the sound of the chisel can be heard clearly. Moving stealthily to the doorway, hiding in the shadows, he sees someone hammering at some rocks. He walks over and stops behind the man. The man turns around. He has a dry, sunken, old face creased with deep wrinkles, yellow and tanned, and his sparse front teeth are completely covered with tobacco stains. He is an old Chinese peasant from a mountain village and as he squints in the sunlight, his eyes are vacant in the slits, staring somewhere else. The vague sound of the sea vanishes just as it starts.
The murky black seawater surges in from the stone steps above on the left, soundlessly. A little light comes in only from outside the half-open doors above the stone steps, and the reflected light indicates that the force of the water is quite strong.
He is pedaling on a bicycle and the wheels are turning at a medium pace. He is riding an ancient bicycle with wide handlebars, traveling along a narrow village highway. In the distance on the left is a big stretch of grassland on a slight incline where there is a line of four people, backs bent, who seem to be pulling hard on something. What they are pulling isn't clear, but it is something very heavy that looks like a wooden boat yet could be a coffin, and leaves a track in the grass wherever they pass. Their every step is slow and strained. Wafting through the air is a woman's wail, like song and lament, like the wailing of a Chinese peasant woman at a funeral.
The sun reflecting off the bell on the bicycle handlebars hurts his eyes, and the wailing seems more and more like the songs or hauling chants of coolie workers. The wheels of the bicycle turn along the straight asphalt road.
Four gaunt men with purplish bronze faces, sweating backs, and bare upper torsos are wearing wide cloth waistbands and straw sandals. As he looks at the rope, which appears to be taut, there is a sudden loud snap.