He got up early and went to work. At the bottom of the big work-place building was a corpse. It had been covered with an old straw mat taken from one of the beds in the living quarters of the building security personnel. The foot of the building and the cement ground were splattered with gray-white brain matter and purplish-black blood from the corpse.
"Who is it?"
"Probably someone from the editorial office…"
The head was covered with the mat. Was there a face?
"Which floor was it?"
"Who can tell what window it was?"
Up to a thousand people worked in the building, and there were several hundred windows; it could have been from any of the windows.
"When did it happen?"
"It must have been just before daybreak."
They couldn't say that it was late at night after the ferret-out meeting.
"Didn't anyone hear it?"
"Stop your babbling."
People paused for a moment but went straight into the building to start work on time. In each of their offices, they looked at the wall with the portrait of the Leader, or else looked at the backs of the heads of the people who had arrived before them. Exactly at eight o'clock, loudspeakers in all the rooms sounded, and the whole building reverberated with the loud singing of "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." This big beehive was more disciplined than it used to be.
On his desk was an envelope with his name on it. He gave a start. It had been a long time since he had received any correspondence, and nothing was ever sent to his workplace. He stuffed it into his pocket without reading it, but spent the whole morning trying to work out who had written the letter. Was it from someone who didn't know his address? The handwriting was unfamiliar, could it be a warning? If someone wanted to expose him, it wasn't necessary to send him a letter, could it be an anonymous letter of warning? But there was an eighty-fen stamp on it, and local postage was only forty fen, so it had to be from somewhere farther off. Of course, the eighty-fen stamp could be a camouflage. The person must be very kind, maybe it was someone from his own work unit who couldn't contact him directly and had thought up this way of doing it. He thought of Old Tan from whom he had not heard for a long time. But would Old Tan be allowed to write letters? Maybe it was a trap, a snare set for him by someone in an opposition faction, and his actions were being observed right then. He felt he was being spied on, for sure he would be on that third list, still without names, that the army officer had spoken about at the meeting of the ferret-out teams. He became disoriented and started wondering if the people walking in the corridor were watching for abnormal behavior in hidden enemies after that big ferret-out meeting. That was exactly what the army officer had ordered at the meeting the previous night to rally people into battle: "Make sweeping accusations, make sweeping exposures, dig out every single one of those active counterrevolutionaries who are still operating!"
He became aware of the window behind him. Suddenly, realizing how someone could jump just like that, he broke into a cold sweat. He struggled to calm down and to look unperturbed. Those in the office, who had not jumped, all looked unperturbed. Surely, they were also pretending? Those who were not able to pretend, lost control, and had jumped out of windows.
He held out until it was time for lunch. Even people more revolutionary than him had to eat, he thought. Instantly, he realized he had just had a reactionary thought. He had to obliterate such reactionary thoughts, and it was not a question of a single sentence. All that accumulated anger in his heart could foment disaster for him. Indeed: "Disaster springs from the mouth." This famous saying, the epitome of rationality, was the essence of human intelligence in ancient times. What truth do you still want? This truth is absolute, don't think about anything else! Don't even try thinking. But you are a spontaneous being, your affliction is precisely that you always want to be the initiator of your actions, and this is at the root of your endless disasters.
All right, now let's go back to him. That spontaneous being lingered about until everyone had left the office, then went to the lavatory. It was quite normal to relieve oneself before going to eat. He latched the door of the lavatory cubicle and took out the letter. It turned out that the letter was from Xu Qian. "We of this generation that has been sacrificed do not deserve any other fate…" As soon as his eyes fell on these words, he immediately tore up the letter, but, changing his mind, he put the pieces back into the envelope. He noisily flushed the toilet, inspected the cubicle for any stray pieces of the letter, came out, washed his hands, scrubbed his face with water to steady his nerves, then went to the dining room.
Back in his room at night, he latched the door and pieced together the letter. He read it over and over. It was a voice of grief that spoke of despair, but said nothing of the night they had spent in the little inn, or of what had happened after she was intercepted at the wharf. In the letter, she said that this was her only and last letter to him, and that he would never see her again. It was a suicide letter. "We of this generation that has been sacrificed do not deserve any other fate" was how the letter began. She said she'd been assigned work as a primary-school teacher in some remote place in the big mountains of northern Shanxi province, but had refused to go and would not budge from the hostel in the county town. Before her, an overseas Chinese student had been sent to a school in the big mountains, where she was the only teacher. The woman had taken with her by donkey six boxes of trousseau prepared for her in advance by her parents in Singapore. Within a week, she was dead, and no one was able to give the cause of death. If she went, he would never see her again. Qian was crying for help. He was her last link to a bit of hope. It seemed that her parents and her aunt had not been able to do anything to save her.
In the middle of the night, he rode his bicycle to the post and telecommunications building in Xidan. There was a telephone number printed on the county hostel letterhead, and he asked to make an urgent telephone call. An unfriendly woman's voice speaking in a drawl asked for the name of the person he wanted. He explained that he was making a long-distance call from Beijing and that he wanted to speak to Xu Qian, the university student waiting to be assigned work. He was put on hold. The receiver buzzed for a long time before an equally unfriendly voice asked, "Who is it?" He repeated the name of the person he wanted to talk to, and the other party said, "That's me." He couldn't recognize her voice, because that night they spent together, neither dared speak aloud. Hearing this unfamiliar voice, he didn't know how to respond. The receiver kept giving a hollow buzz, and he mumbled, "It's good to know you're alive." Qian said, "You gave me a terrible fright! I'm in shock from being woken in the middle of the night!" He wanted to say that he loved her, that she must go on living no matter what, but he found it impossible to say all the things he had thought up while he was cycling. The switchboard operator in this small county town would certainly be listening to the urgent long-distance call from Beijing so late at night. The telephone was still making a hollow buzz, and he told her he'd received her letter. The telephone was buzzing again, and he didn't know what to say. She said coldly, "If you have to, phone during the day." He said, "I'm sorry, go back to bed." She hung up.
37
A young woman is lying on top of you. You're in bed, not fully awake. She's giggling and the two of you are messing around. You're really enjoying yourself and hope you are not dreaming. You're squashed under her, and, down her open collar, you touch her smooth skin, feel her firm breasts. She doesn't resist, and goes on having fun with you. You're delighted by this unexpected encounter, but can't say her name. You vaguely know it, but are afraid of getting it wrong. You sift through your memories. In such-and-such a situation, there was this girl, you often saw her on your travels but were never able to get close to her. She is now pressing against you and you say you didn't think you would meet her like this. You're really so very happy! She says that she is here just to see you. On her way through the city, she heard that you were here for a conference, so she came to see you. You say don't leave! She says of course not, but she does have to fix up her luggage and go through registration procedures. You don't immediately make love with her, thinking to yourself there will be plenty of time, she has come from far away specially to see you, so it's not likely that she will leave right away. You get out of bed and ask where her luggage is. She says over there, in the adjoining room. You turn and see that the two rooms indeed adjoin, in fact there is nothing separating them, and, moreover, the other room has two beds in it. You're worried someone else will take the room, so you say you will have to quickly get a hotel attendant to get you a double room. But it happens to be the lunch break, so you go to the dining room together to have something to eat. She follows closely, snuggles against you, and says it was very hard, finding you. You keep trying to remember her name, steal glances at her familiar face, but you can't be sure. She's more like a woman than a young girl, an older teenager or a young woman, so there shouldn't be any problem making love with her. Moreover, she has come to see you. She says shouldn't you first introduce her to the person in charge of the conference? You say you are now a free man and can stay with anyone you want to. You don't have to get anyone's approval, and you take her with you to the service desk of the hotel to change to a double room. The man behind the desk hands you a key and a slip of paper. There's a number on the key tag, and you ask where the room is. The man says he is only in charge of registration, and, to find that out, you would have to phone up, the phone number is on the slip of paper. You ask if you can use the phone on his desk, and he says you will need coins. You can't find any coins in your pocket, and talk to the man again. Is it all right to call first and pay later? He doesn't say either yes or no, so you make a call and are told that the room is on the third floor. You get in the elevator, and it takes you to the top floor, and you come out onto a parking lot. The two of you get back into the elevator, go down, but still can't find the room. You stop a maid with a trolley, who is cleaning rooms, and she tells you to go down one floor. The two of you finally arrive on the ground floor and find an elegant dining room, so you think you may as well eat first. The maître d' in a tie politely apologizes and says reservations are needed, and that they are fully booked. You tell him you are taking part in the conference, and he says special arrangements have been made for conference participants in another dining room. You and she get into the elevator again, to look for the room. You scrutinize the number on the key and find something odd about it. The number is 11 GY, and you've found rooms with numbers 14, 15, and 16, but there isn't a number 11. You ask the fat woman sitting on a high stool at the bar by the passageway, thinking she is a hotel guest and will know about the number. The swivel stool spins around as the woman points behind you, saying, right there, it's that hole! You don't understand why it's a hole. Written on the brass plate on the doorframe is number 11 G, the second letter isn't clear but it could be Y. You part the glass-bead curtain, and inside is a huge row of joined mattresses. You look around the big room. Above, to the right of the joined mattresses, there is yet another layer of bedding, which stretches inside the wall. Access is only by crawling in, but the four double mattresses all have pillows. You think that if you want to make love with her, you will put her luggage in the farthest corner. You come out of the room and think to yourself that somehow you will have to find another room. However, she says she is traveling with another woman and they have to stay together. Luckily, they know people in the city and will be able to find somewhere to stay. But, you say, as she has come to see you… She says next time, there will be opportunities. She turns to leave, and you wake up, full of regret. You try to recall the memory, to clutch at some clues, so that you will know how you came to have this dream. You discover you are in a single bed in a small room, and there is a bird chirping outside the window.