Still suffering from his cold, Mengliu broke out into a high fever again. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He thought hospitals were places for making healthy people sick and sick people die. Some who had been admitted for nothing more than a cold had their appendices removed by mistake, someone with an inflamed gall bladder had ended up having his liver removed. This was no joke. Mengliu did not trust hospitals. He had his own remedies. He rinsed his throat, drank plenty of water and got plenty of sleep. After a couple of days, the fever broke and he felt fine.
When he emerged from his quarantine, he walked on weak legs into the courtyard of his building. There, he heard the radio reports of the experts, still talking about the problem of the faeces. They said that ignorant people had been incited into rallying at Round Square, and they were destroying the public peace. It was producing a very negative impression. They hoped that these people would quickly disperse and go home to their families, keep house and cook for their children. The program’s host similarly persuaded the young people to disband and go home — preferably in time for dinner.
Mengliu felt weightless. He was nearly blown over by the wind. After the coughing, he felt hungry. He needed to get something to fill his belly. He made his way to his landlord’s shop and got two cups of warmed milk and some bean cakes. As he chatted with the landlord, it was not long before the subject of the faeces came up. With the air whistling through the gap where he had a missing tooth, the landlord talked about the lively proceedings at Round Square.
‘Most of the people at the Wisdom Bureau will head over there today,’ he said. ‘You are all intellectuals. We common folk are too uncultured. We don’t know anything, but we trust you fellows. Whatever you say, that’s how it is.’
Mengliu was a little taken aback. A collective action by the Wisdom Bureau was no small thing. He finished his milk, swallowed another bean cake, and went to wave down a trishaw to take him to Round Square.
But before the vehicle could even get out of Liuli Street, it was blocked by a crowd. He had no choice but to get down and walk.
At the intersection of Liuli and Beiping Streets, he saw a mighty procession. The crowd was in uniform, in white T-shirts and with red bandanas tied around their heads. They held up placards and waved banners.
‘We Want a Meeting’
‘Capture the Aliens’
‘DNA Testing for Stool Samples’
‘Live in Truth’
The onlookers shouted warm welcomes from both sides of the street. They raised their voices in a chorus, singing the newly composed ‘Tower Song’, There were some individuals who had always been shy and reserved, but now suddenly they produced placards from inside their clothing, as if by magic. They slipped into the crowd and raised their signs. After a few moments their faces lit up with a burst of energy.
The branches of the trees beside the street were bare, making the birds’ nests there uncomfortably conspicuous. The sky was grey, and it was becoming difficult to see in the failing light.
By the time Mengliu realised that he was caught in the swaggering ranks, it was like waking up in a flood of consternation. He did not know how he came to be standing near the banner at the head of the procession. This was completely out of character for him. He was normally very cautious.
In the chaos, as Mengliu tried to find a way out, several people in blue caps squeezed their way toward him. One with a sharp face and pinched mouth said to him, ‘We workers came especially to express our solidarity with you. You people at the Wisdom Bureau are the best.’
Hearing this, Mengliu was filled with pride. He raised his hand high up in the air, causing the banner above him to tilt.
When he did take note of the banner, he found that the other end was held by a girl with closely cropped hair, an oval face, and fair skin. Her almond-shaped eyes were dark and gentle.
He felt as if his heart stopped beating in that instant.
Just then, the short-haired girl raised her head, and turned a furtive glance his way. His heart came to life again, beating double time. He felt he was a cicada emerging from its cocoon. A ray of sunlight fell on him, making him feel warm all over and full of the joy of life. Stimulated by this joy, he raised his own voice in unison with those shouting slogans. His voice was like a stone thrown by a child, skipping across a lake, and he felt ashamed at the thinness of it. His heart boomed in his chest, and he raised his voice even louder. Perhaps a new measure of courage had been injected into him, for somehow his voice came out mellow and resonant. He gained confidence in his own cries. He pretended not to bother about the short-haired girl, exaggerating the measure of his passion and the grace in his performance. He knew she was beside him, delicate and quiet as a bird perched on a branch.
The short-haired girl seemed to be withstanding a head-on invasion as she faced the storm. Her lips were shut tightly, and she remained silent.
Suddenly, a group came out of nowhere to break up the procession. After a moment of confusion, Mengliu found himself crammed into an unmarked bus. The windows were sealed shut, and everything was dark.
Half an hour later, a light came on in the bus.
When his eyes had adjusted to the light, Mengliu found that the bus was full of people. More importantly, the short-haired girl was standing next to him. Her pale face made her look like a sleepwalker.
It was a rickety old bus. He deliberately turned away from the girl for a few seconds, then turned back to adjust the angle so that he could make an even bolder observation without being noticed.
She had pretty lips, full and red. The smiling mouth rested beneath a perky, slightly freckled nose. She looked down, her gaze following the bridge of her nose and landing at Mengliu’s feet.
The sense of joy once again consumed Mengliu’s heart. He turned a little, gaining a more direct line of sight, and continued to stare.
She was probably not much more than a metre and a half tall. She had withdrawn into herself, didn’t even look up. Her glossy black hair smelled of shampoo. Or perhaps the fragrance came from her body, her fair white skin, the unique expression she wore.
As the bus rattled along, the distance between them changed, altering his perspective of her. Now she was facing him, her expression blank as a wall. She stared at the fourth button on his windbreaker as if examining its texture.
He looked her over. The more he inspected her, the closer he felt to her. The longer he stared, the more he felt he had known her forever.
When the bus had bumped along for more than an hour, making several turns along the way, it finally came to a stop. Several brawny, aggressive fellows suddenly leapt up. They separated the bus’s occupants into groups and led them away to different places.
The dimly-lit basement was damp and cold, with a single bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling, its bamboo shade covered with dust. The concrete walls were uneven, and the mud-yellow floor was dirty. The shoddy tiles were broken in places, and crunched underfoot as they walked. The room was furnished with a single desk and two long, narrow wooden benches. The air was bad, filled with a nauseating mixture of cooking fumes and sewage.
Mengliu and the short-haired girl were brought into the room with a young man from the construction department named Quanmu, a farmer from outside of Beiping, and also a high-school student.
Before long, two men and a woman came in. It was not clear what their vocation was. Their faces were a blur, though they all looked vaguely similar. They carried with them an air of experience, streetwise people who had seen it all. A group of freckles gathered at the tip of the woman’s nose. She sat down, spread her notebook out on the table and uncapped her pen. The first of the two men sat down too, and propped his feet up on the desk, while the other rested his buttocks against its edge. All three pairs of eyes made their way over the group of people who had been brought in.