‘Relax. We’re just here to chat,’ the first man said, his face rigid.
‘Come on, we have the right to choose not to talk.’ The room was as icy as a freezer. Quanmu, seemingly quite familiar with the routine, turned and looked at his comrades. His face was bruised.
In the strange atmosphere, Mengliu wondered whether he had unwittingly gotten himself mixed up with Triads.
‘What were you all doing playing in the streets? Don’t you know it seriously obstructs traffic and disrupts public peace?’ the first man said, ignoring everyone else. ‘Tell me. Just tell me all about it and you can go home.’
‘It was all about that pile of crap,’ the farmer cried. ‘Weren’t the slogans written out clearly enough?’
The woman, who was busy scratching out her report, looked up. The first man looked like he wanted to give the farmer a good beating.
‘He’s right. It was all for shit,’ the short-haired girl suddenly interjected.
3
Now, with the heat close to 50 degrees during the day, Yuan Mengliu closed all the doors and windows in the house, drew the curtains and turned his room into a cave. Like an ant, he carried lots of food into his quarters, where he sometimes holed up for days at a time. When he looked out the window, he saw mounds of earth covered with weeds and small trees.
The past rose up before him with all the force of a hallucination. He saw bodies lying in a disordered heap on the ground. The sun scorched them so that the people were faint and dehydrated. Starved of electrolytes, they fell into convulsions…Everything was chaos. There were ambulances, gunshots, and the blaze of red flames filled the night sky. He had discovered that there was no solace for him, even in the arms of a woman. Lately, he had turned to Jesus, spending his weekends reading a hidden copy of the English Bible and visiting the city’s magnificent churches. But he had overestimated God, and the result of his conversion to Christianity was simply that he discovered the strange hypnotic power of hymns. As he sat on the churches’ pews, he entered into the same dream. In this dream, he was speaking in Round Square, surrounded by a crowd of people. The ferocity of his speech always jolted him awake. His face felt flushed, his eyes bloodshot, there was an icy pit in his stomach. After a vigorous ‘Amen’, he would leave the church and aimlessly follow the dispersing congregation into the streets.
As he walked a complete circuit around Beiping Street, passing through the metropolis which had been attacked by financial crisis and turmoil, none of the city’s attractions held any appeal for him. The trees along the roadside had grown thicker, the road was wider and prettier, and the people were well-nourished and healthy. He bent his head and walked. The ground gradually turned red. He had walked all the way to the edge of the city. The water in the moat there was a violent scarlet stream. Dizzy, he leaned against the stone balustrade covered with engravings. The railings had been repaired so thoroughly that they were far superior to what they had been in their original state. The damage had been covered by a seamless reconstruction. Now that all the injury done had been compensated for, the events of a thriving life had taken over and filled in all the remaining cracks.
A faint smell of blood was detectable, sometimes seeming to come from the flora and fauna, sometimes from the sewer, and sometimes from a certain class of people who couldn’t seem to rid themselves of it no matter how often they bathed, applied perfume, or covered it up with gorgeous clothing. Mengliu planted flowers, grass, fruit trees, but the poetic artificiality of the peaceful natural scenes could not rescue him from the restless feelings of the displaced. His spirit was never still. When he heard the night insects or a barking dog, or the wind howling in the dark, the sound was always interspersed with piercing jeers. His impeccable life had been calm as a brook, meandering through the plains and across the land, eventually to lose itself in the expanse of the sea. Now happiness had become shameful. He was filled with doubt, as if some conspiracy were brewing and a huge trap awaited him. He occupied his mind with research every day, seeking ways to better satisfy his physical needs. He went to night clubs, hung out with a group of female doctors. He seduced the bridesmaids at his friends’ weddings, or hooked up with female students on the train. Any consenting female was fair game. He would take women home, offering them his warmth and respect in exchange for the grave pleasure of having his way with them.
He placed women in two basic categories. There were those who liked revolution and those who did not. Women who liked revolution were energetic and restless. They liked to take the initiative, riding him for their own pleasure. Those who did not like revolution blindly closed their eyes and wore pained expressions. They secretly enjoyed being ravaged by him, and even when they reached a climax, it died on their lips. He could not say which group fascinated him more. Eventually he would think of Qizi, imagining her in his bed, and what it was like when the two of them were together.
It was a painful torment to him.
Each year at the height of summer, Yuan Mengliu was stricken with a strange disease, involving itchy skin, inflammation, muscle spasms, convulsions and headaches, and his hallucinations grew more severe. He beat his body and bathed himself in hot water, soaking there until his skin was as red as a newborn baby’s.
He had had a few lengthy relationships over the years, and during his bouts of illness he spent much effort convincing those innocent girls that he needed to be alone for a while in order to recover. None of them believed that his illness required him to be away for such a long stretch. Most were convinced that it was a cover for him to engage in an affair. Others, those with a deeper disposition who understood his personal experiences a little better, laughed at him for shouldering the burden of history, telling him that life was short and he should seize the day. One broad-minded girl gritted her teeth, pulled out a few of his white hairs and tenderly warned him that he should pay attention to his safety. A secret spring brews in the hearts of women. When it bubbles into action, it is the recovery of all things, a sort of rejuvenating power. It is as unstoppable as the coming of spring, and the opening of flowers — and just as short-lived. He was not saddened by this. On the contrary, he appreciated it.
Mengliu believed Qizi was alive. She must be in some corner of the vast territory of Dayang, raising a family. So every year he went travelling, driven to find her by his gathering hysteria.
This summer he decided to go even further than usual, on the recommendation of a girl he had met.
After a long journey he came to a fertile land with exquisite scenery. He sat in a small café by the lake, where the well-endowed proprietress knew that the taste for delicacies was like going to the opera; the leading actors were the main attraction. Haltingly, she rattled off the names of the four specialties from the area around the lake. There was wild celery, wild artemisia, asparagus and knotweed. She was like a procuress carefully reading off the names of famous courtesans in a pleasure quarter. The wild, the lovely and the innocent — all kinds of beauties to please and entertain her guests, who had travelled such distances.
Mengliu went on a little binge, indulging in fried whitebait, steamed mandarin fish and braised carp, along with the four regional specialties. The table was overflowing with delicacies as he drank his wine and gorged himself on the fish. His face was flushed all the way down to the base of his neck. Even his pores gave off the smell of alcohol. When he’d finished eating he felt a little sleepy and so he settled down to take a nap in the breeze. He was awakened by a sudden roar, to find several motor boats resembling tanks bulging with machine guns taking a colourful, noisy crowd to the island in the lake.