A motor car overtakes the bicycle, and speeds off. As he turns his head to look back, the sun directly over the left side of the field is blinding. No one is around and the lingering sound seems to be either the cry of insects or his ears ringing.
In the underground cellar, the mattress is soaked in the black water. The white sheet is also saturated, and the man with a hat over his face is stiff and looks like a corpse. Water keeps dripping from above, and there is now also the pop of bursting bubbles.
With the bicycle parked nearby, he lies on his side in the shade of a tree, looking at this neglected apple orchard. Here and there among the branches are a few red apples that had escaped being picked. Not too far away is the gurgling of a creek.
A barefoot girl appears under the apple trees ahead. She is carrying a bucket of water that seems too heavy for her. Her purplish red jacket has a single slanting lapel, and the legs of her blue floral-print trousers are rolled up to just below the knees. She has two long plaits, and her bright black eyes look too big for her small face. She gives a start, uncertain whether or not to keep walking. Suddenly it is lonely all around.
A small tree is drifting in the wind. Dirt splashes up, and billowing clouds of thick black smoke and dust suddenly spread through the sky. Then, as planes swoop overhead, the strafing of machine guns, exploding bombs, and, immediately afterward, the crying of babies and the wailing of women can be heard.
Several small boys squat around an iron spade, watching it sink into the ground as a foot treads down on it. A clod of earth is dug up and flattened into small pieces with the spade, then another clod of earth is dug up and flattened, and yet another. A big boy stoops to pick up a machine-gun bullet, brushes it on his shirt, puts it into his trouser pocket, then takes the spade to another hole nearby to dig. One of the small boys surrounding him shakes his head as he looks at the row of holes in the ground.
The murky black water makes a gurgling sound as it flows down all the stone steps, unstoppably.
A match is struck in the dark and a yellowing, slightly faded old photograph is set alight. It is the photograph of a young man in a suit and tie and a young woman in a qipao together with a three- or four-year-old boy. Their shoulders pressed together, both the adults have posed smiles on their faces. The eyes of the boy between the parents are rounded, and he has a surprised look. The flames on the edge of the photograph are burning toward his parents. The photograph is shrinking and beginning to curl up, then – whoosh! – the whole photograph is burning, his parents are alight and the child is charred.
A bubble keeps growing as it is blown. The soapy surface is moving faster and with the sun shining on it, the colors become brighter, more colorful, more sparkling, until it can't get any bigger. It silently bursts as amazement lights up the face of the little boy blowing bubbles.
The mattress in the black water slowly begins to float up. It tilts slightly, wobbles back, sways a few times, each time becoming steadier, and eventually it is floating on the water.
Water is dripping everywhere. He looks up at the rainwater coming down from the eaves; outside on the ground there are some abandoned iron plows and farm machine parts. Two dogs charge at him with their jaws wide open. He retreats into the granary, where the ceiling is high and bundles of fodder are stacked right up to it. There is a long wooden bench in the middle of the dark granary and young women are sitting around it. All of them have flour sticking to different parts of their faces: eyelids, nose, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, ears. Heads bowed, they shape lumps of dough in their hands as they chant, engrossed in grief. However, a young woman with long plaits has an oil lamp with a shade in front of her. She is looking into a mirror at her woman companion behind who has untied her plaits and is combing her hair for her. Without realizing it, he is right by the mirror and sees the scissors cut her long hair short. Immediately, the barking of dogs is heard.
Rainy weather, an empty lane in a village that is so lonely, it is hard even to hear the rain. Above the stone wall is a row of tightly shut old wooden windows. A small wooden door reinforced with iron strips set into the stone wall stands as tall as a person on the cobblestone road. Dried by wind, the rough grain sticks out on the timber. The sad song of a girl weeping at being married seems to seep faintly through the cracks of the door. As one approaches the door, everything becomes more and more hazy.
Hands slowly push open a heavy door, inside is a church. The rows of empty pews retreat in the midst of the reverberating footsteps echoing on the stone floor. On the walls are the remains of medieval murals. The lines are blurred, the colors blackened with grime, and none of the crumbling faces of the disciples can be made out.
A mountain creek with rounded pebbles and a fast-flowing current. He looks back. In the gray drizzling rain, opposite, on the mountain slope is a village connected by stone steps; it has a church with a prominent bell tower. The rain is falling even more heavily.
He is walking on the village highway, his clothes almost soaked through, and water is running down the back of his head. As a car drives past, he signals. It has gone ten paces past him, but stops. He quickly runs up and a door opens.
A woman is driving. From the rearview mirror the woman's profile can be seen: she has wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She asks him something and he answers. The woman turns to look at him. She really knows how to use her makeup. The woman asks him something again and he answers again. The woman looks away, but in the rearview mirror there is the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. The car windows swept by the rain are dripping with water.
The murky seawater goes over the steps behind the doors and continues to surge inside. In the light behind the doors it looks more like black satin running off a roll and cascading down.
Looking down, he sees naked men and women on a long table. They are huddled in couples and move up and down and turn around endlessly, as drops of milk white flour and water splash onto the table and their bodies, making a sound like pattering rain. All around are bundles of straw; it seems to be a granary, yet from time to time there is snorting, and it seems to be a stable.
He is sitting at an old round table wearing a pair of dark blue swimming trunks. Both of his hands are on the shiny grain-patterned hardwood surface, one of them turning a glass half filled with red wine. A hanging lamp with a metal shade casts a yellow light that shines only on his hands. In the circle of light there is also a highly polished stone ball that leaves a distinct shadow on the table. He withdraws the hand with the wineglass from the circle of light, and his other hand moves the stone ball so that from that position the shadow is extended. Music instantly starts up. It seems to be jazz blues, trembling and restrained, intermittent, powerful yet weak, seemingly far and yet near, and finally it stops abruptly, yet seems still to be suspended there… He gets to his feet and walks around the table, observing the endless positions of the stone ball and its shadow in the circle of light.
Next to the white curtain, a wall lamp illuminates the portrait of a woman on the wall, with black lips, fair skin, black hair piled high on the head, eyes looking down, lips slightly parted, and looking almost asleep. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that one eye is open and the other is shut, and if one takes a step back, it would seem that one eye is higher than the other. To look up at an angle, one would see that the lower lip is thick and fleshy. But looking at it sideways, one would see that the lips are pouting. Another look would make it seem like the wide-open mouth of a bird. An upside-down look would make the tongue seem to stick out. Away from the light, there are knife marks all over the cheeks: it is a shaman with an evil look. A look with eyes narrowed and with an air of indifference would return the sexiness to the face. There is a pop as the light goes out.