‘You try manipulating me. You’re just pretending to be romantic,’ Suitang said.
‘I couldn’t bear to manipulate you. If I had wanted to I would’ve done so earlier.’ He knocked on a brick and listened to the sound.
‘Well why was I the fish that escaped the net? That Su Juli…’
He gestured for her to be quiet, as if he had made a major discovery. In truth, he only wanted to stop her line of questioning.
‘Help me think. What would this building be used for? How can we get in?’
‘Maybe it’s a heating unit. It must be used to get rid of exhaust.’
‘Yeah, that’s imaginative. Do you think we can get in?’
‘I think…maybe the wall is a decoy. Somewhere there’s a hidden switch or button.’
‘That’s so old-fashioned. You might as well say, Open sesame! Or pineapple! Or whatever…’
As if this spell had had its effect, a door like that on an aeroplane suddenly slid open. He tripped on it, and practically fell inside.
It was another hall of images, full of electronic screens flickering in silence.
On one screen, beasts beneath a canopy of trees. In a white robe, Esteban lies on a boulder covered with a white sheet. The mortician is shaving his head and beard. Four people, using only their hands, raise the sheet as if they are an honour guard handling the national flag. They solemnly place Esteban in the ice coffin, then cover it with a layer of white chrysanthemums.
The morning sun blazes on the ice. The vast sky is filled with puffy, unremarkable clouds.
A low-flying bird suddenly drops to the ground.
The band and the dozens of mourners are all in white robes, almost invisible in the snowy funereal world.
Shanlai and Darae are amongst them, wearing clumsy snow boots and sombre expressions. Their difficult journey through the deep snow creates an even deeper sense of ritual. The group of mourners is halfway up the hillside when the mountain bursts open. Blocks of snow tumble away, followed immediately by an influx of loose snow rolling down the hill. The snow swells, and in an instant engulfs the doll-like group of mourners.
On a second screen, the hospital is empty. On the gate is an announcement saying that the plague had been brought by vultures. All birds and reptiles have been infected, and humans will inevitably be infected as well. The announcement makes no mention of the vultures’ food source at the waste disposal site. Abandoned infants. The road with mobs of people fleeing the disaster, continually stumbling, no one bothering. Some are hastily buried, or thrown haphazardly aside…They gather at the cliff edge because the cable car is the only way to the outside world. On the first trip, four squeeze into the trolley, but as it bumps and glides along, the rope suddenly snaps, and the cable car hurtles like a stone into the abyss.
On a third screen, a circle of people in white coats and learned faces stare at an aquarium. It is an academic discussion. There are observations and recordings…In the aquarium, a bloodied baby with its umbilical cord still attached is towed through a pool of alcohol, its hands and feet flailing like a dying fish…its mouth opens rapidly, then it no longer moves.
All of the screens told stories. Some were videos, some live feeds. Then all the smaller screens were turned off, leaving only a huge black-and-white screen still broadcasting. Its subject was familiar to Mengliu. It was the sit-in at Round Square…The crowd was in chaos. A large number of uniformed men entered the square…It was just like Shunyu’s father described, a blood-filled night with half the sky scorched red…
A patch of bright light shot down from the top of the column through the darkness but because it was so far away, it became dim by the time it reached the ground. Even so, everything inside the room could be seen clearly. There was an area like a disc jockey’s podium, and in the middle of one of the walls hung a disorderly array of banners. They were flanked on both sides by several small machines. In the centre was a leopard-skin chair, its back facing outward. Someone sat there, head only half exposed.
‘I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to get here so quickly… Well, let’s get to the end of the game.’ The voice from the leopard-skin chair was that of the spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu, but still transmitted through a machine.
In such close proximity at last, Mengliu was very curious about Ah Lian Qiu’s appearance, but he controlled his curiosity. ‘Ah Lian Qiu, spiritual leader, I do not know anything, nor do I want to know anything…I have no questions to ask you. I only request that you take care of the people trapped in Swan Valley, and tell us the way home.’ But as soon as he said ‘us’, he realised that Suitang had not come in with him. She had stayed outside the door.
‘The cable broke. There’s nothing I can do about that. Surely you have discovered that they don’t need me. Because they are self-aware and self-disciplined, they will govern one another…a good ruler’s presence is not felt…a spiritual leader need only transmit a beneficial spirit, and there will be nothing to worry about…As for you, rest assured that you have earned your way back home. The road is open to both of you.’
‘Nothing to worry about?’ Mengliu could not help but ask. ‘Don’t you know the lives of all the people living here have been placed on the altar constructed by you, their spiritual leader?’
‘When a person understands what he really wants, his nature as a human can be fully realised. Take Esteban, for example. He found his own worth, and in his death the noble dignity of the individual was restored to him.’ Ah Lian Qiu continued in a leisurely fashion. ‘A person should have a proper understanding of himself.’
‘I only have one more thing to say, spiritual leader.’ Mengliu controlled his voice and the rhythm of his speech. ‘Your spirit is nothing more than a lure. It just enables a system of annihilation. Some day…’
‘If that’s how you see it, that’s your business.’ The leopard-skin chair began to turn around slowly, then stopped at one hundred and eighty degrees. The spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu sat in a wheelchair, head bowed, long hair covering his face. ‘So many years. Now you are finally free from the burden of history!’ The leader ripped off the lapel microphone and raised her head, revealing the whole of her pale face.
All the horrifying things Mengliu had experienced in his life had not prepared him for this shock. He was stunned, and a doubt-filled scream escaped from his mouth:
‘Qizi?’
‘No. I am the spiritual leader of Swan Valley. I am Ah Lian Qiu!’
Hearing her real unaltered voice filled Mengliu with ecstasy. It was Qizi! He ran to her, but, the podium on which she sat was encircled by a force field, and he was thrown back. It burned a hole in his clothes, and nearly scorched another in his flesh.
She turned off the force field and rolled her battery-powered wheelchair down from the podium, coming slowly to a halt in front of him.
Ah, Qizi! She was as young and beautiful as the first time he saw her. He wanted to embrace her, to say, I’ve never stopped looking for you. I knew you had to be alive. But he stood there, rooted, his warm feelings curbed by something unseen. He faced Ah Lian Qiu. She looked at him with rational, calm, indifferent eyes.
‘The Qizi of the past, like these two legs, was crushed by a tank.’ Ah Lian Qiu removed her two legs from her thighs. Her upper half sat in the chair on two stumps, like a bust.
Mengliu seemed to be welded to the ground. Feeling had left his own legs, so that he remained stuck there, motionless.
‘At the same time as I was crushed, so were truth and idealism…and beauty and goodness.’ She toyed with the prostheses. ‘Afterwards, the people lived like fish returning to water, right? There was numbness, a philosophy of survival, but that doesn’t mean their concept of the nation had changed.’