Qizi finished her recitation with the shouting of a few slogans. Then, as if she had suddenly discovered Mengliu was there, she shouted at him, ‘You! How did you get here? Quickly, go back! Go back and wait for me!’ She opened the door of the hall with her remote control.
Startled for a moment, he bent over and picked up more pages. He thought, I’ve agitated her with my appearance, and that’s caused her to escape into the past, and now she is unable to return to the present.
‘I’m not alone. I’ve got a lot of people here with me. Everyone is with me…You? You still haven’t gone?’
Seeing that he did not move, she pulled out a gun. ‘Get out of here now!’
His heart pumped violently. ‘Qizi…calm down,’ he said.
She fired a shot, shattering the big electronic screen.
Like the barrel of the gun, her gaze was now pointed right at him.
He saw that she was trapped inside her fantasy.
He walked slowly out through the doorway.
In the icy air Mengliu realised that he had perspired a great deal in the room, though he was not sure whether it was because he was hot or because of fear. He was cold now, and his wet clothes clung to his skin. His heart tightened. He looked at the mess of papers clenched in his hand. For a moment he couldn’t remember that this was Hei Chun’s manuscript.
He hastily straightened the papers, rolled them up, and concealed them in his clothing. He found Suitang near the column. He suddenly heard a series of muffled explosions inside it, and felt the rumble under his feet. Looking up, he saw smoke billowing from the top, growing thicker by the moment.
In a confusion of anxiety he shouted out Qizi’s name as he searched for the door. He banged on the wall as he ran around the column.
The flow of smoke from the chimney grew stronger. The wall was hot to the touch.
What was the password…Open sesame…pineapples…He shouted a confused flow of incantations, his feet and hands running rapidly around and across the wall. The bricks remained steadfast and unmoved.
Suitang seemed to come from nowhere, she grabbed Mengliu’s hand and they bolted.
They had only run about ten paces when they heard a noise behind them so loud it threw their bodies to the ground. A wave of heat swept over their heads. Their hair felt like it had been singed. Sediment rained down on them until they were both buried in debris.
Mengliu slowly pulled himself up and looked back. The cylindrical building had collapsed, and was burning in a chaos of smoke and fire.
A page of manuscript drifted down from the sky. Catching it, Mengliu read:
white doves have taken our eyes away
and people are left with hungry tongues
in a domain buried in silence
where thorn-like arms wave
nothing in the world that exists
is higher than you
in this land, on this soil
you are equal to the storm
the sun itself may be imprisoned
and the death bell will toll
resistance will alter your face
lightning will pierce the sealed horizon
silence is despicable
oh children! exalt your spirits
a mother has put on her dark shroud
and nobly welcomes a dawn
as bright as death
Epilogue
A banquet had been arranged on a cruise boat in Beiping. It had just gotten dark, and the boat was moored on the lake beside the moon. The lake’s glittering surface extended to the barely distinguishable shore in the distance. The lights of houses could vaguely be seen. The cabin of the boat was like a small auditorium decked out for a celebrity performance seasoned with literature and art. Jazz and the smell of fruit juice mingled with the taste of champagne. The gathering swelled, evening gowns swished, voices bubbled, the sound of intimate conversation produced the inevitably dull buzz of a party.
Mengliu leant against a window, looking apathetic, depressed and weary. It seemed as if he had not quite awakened from sleep. His biological clock had been a mess. He had only just established his own pattern of day and night, operating according to his own laws. Over the years a quiet voice like a Jedi’s constant meditations had run in the back of his mind, reciting Hei Chun’s poetry, and causing his mind to be in a constant state of tension.
‘Lightning will pierce the sealed horizon…silence is despicable…’
He was wearing an archaic navy blue robe with flat black shoes. After returning from his years of travels, he had adopted this eccentric dress, and his speech had taken on a more discrete and elegant character, as he talked of Plato or Epicurus’s garden city, playing the part of the poet on all occasions. Everyone has the right to self-correction. There is no shame in it. Theodor Adorno said that after Auschwitz poetry was impossible, but he later changed his views. If such a great philosopher could deny his earlier position, then Mengliu felt he had strong support. He continued to write poetry now, but for some reason he couldn’t publish it. For a true poet publication is not always the motive. He edited a national poetry journal, which collected a variety of voices, and he printed poetry in books to be read only by those who needed them. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t interested in happiness, or perhaps he thought this was happiness. His passion for women had not subsided, but he had renounced the world of frivolity and promiscuity, and now showed a heartfelt appreciation and respect for them instead.
It was an eclectic gathering of beauties clad in revealing evening dresses, elbows tucked to their sides to display their white necks and cleavage to the best advantage. The Mengliu from long ago would have already succeeded in his conquest, and would be whispering to a girl in some private corner. But now he just stared over his wine glass, squeezed into a space in his own mind in a corner by the window, acting cool while appreciating the subtleties of his own heart.
He still remembered drinking the fisherwoman’s leicha, sailing to the middle of the lake, suddenly being shaken by waves, then looking up over his arm where his sleeping head had lain at the fierce tornado and the black hole…After losing consciousness, he had found himself in a place called Swan Valley…He was sure he had lived there for a long time. It was a thrilling experience, full of wonderfully romantic times. He had finally found Qizi, and this time she had really gone. He missed the place, and Juli, and Yuyue…
Presently, the waiter came over and asked if he needed more wine. He nodded and handed over his glass.
Still, what was hard to understand was how he had woken to find himself again in the sailboat. The setting sun seemed to prove that he had just been in a deep sleep. The night was coming on. When he rowed the boat back to the village, the sky was dark and the fisherwoman and her husband were waiting for him by the lake with a lantern. They said they thought a monster from the lake had caught him and carried him away. He stayed the night, and while they ate, the couple told him of the monster’s doings, how it hunted people during storms and carried them off…
Outside the window, the lake shimmered. Not far off, a small boat was moored. A red lantern hung from the front of its canopy. There were people in the boat chatting and playing the xun in soft tones.
At eight, Mengliu began to feel it was the middle of the night. The party had just begun. He knew nothing about the occasion, having been dragged along by his wife. Marrying Suitang had been the natural thing to do. He didn’t need to think much about why he should marry her. He was in a sleepwalker’s trance, and felt that everything was an illusion. Known and unknown thinkers and professors, experts and scholars, black-, silver-, blonde- or white-haired, they were all a blur before him. As they shimmered, he saw their mouths move in conversation, but he couldn’t quite hear what they said.