“But the children? Won’t their parents—”
“We’re the kids’ parents now,” the old man interrupted me.
Holding hands, one next to the other, they silently slipped past me and went on their way. They moved on in a tight throng, and even the strongest wind could not have blown them apart.
In the far distance I spotted a couple, still fully fleshed, emerging from a lush stand of mulberry trees. They were dressed very skimpily, in garments that looked more like simple coverings than real apparel. As they came nearer, I realized that the woman was dressed in only a black bra and panties and the man in blue underpants. The woman wore a shocked expression and walked with a slight crouch, her hands folded across her thighs as if to screen them from view. The man bent down and put his arm around her protectively.
As they arrived in front of me, they scanned me carefully, as though searching for a familiar face. Disappointment gradually registered on their features, for they had decided they did not recognize me.
“Are you a new arrival?” the man asked.
I nodded. “And you are, too? Husband and wife, I take it?”
They nodded simultaneo
usly.
“Did you see our daughter?” the woman asked pathetically.
I shook my head. “There’s such a multitude of people over there,” I said, “I don’t know which of them is your daughter.”
The woman bowed her head in distress. The man patted her on the shoulder. “There will be other new arrivals,” he comforted her.
“Yes, but there’s such a multitude of people over there,” the woman answered, repeating what I’d just said.
“There’s bound to be someone who has seen Xiaomin,” the man said.
Xiaomin? I seemed to have heard this name before. “How did you come to be here?” I asked.
A wisp of fear crossed their faces as the shadow of their ordeal in that departed world projected into this one. Their eyes evaded my glance — or perhaps it was their tears that made them appear to do so.
Then the man began to recount their terrifying experience that morning on Amity Street. The city had been determined to demolish the three apartment buildings, but the residents had refused to move out, resisting all pressure for a good three months, until forcible demolition was authorized. The couple came home early one morning after getting off the night shift, woke up their daughter, and prepared breakfast for her. She went off to school, her satchel on her back, while they went to bed and fell asleep. In their dreams they heard a loudspeaker outside delivering one warning after another, but they were just too tired to wake up properly. In the past they had heard other such warnings and seen bulldozers lined up in combat readiness, but after the confrontation with the residents, the loudspeakers and bulldozers had retreated. So they thought this was simply another round of intimidation and went on sleeping. They were shaken awake only when the building began to sway violently amid a clamorous din. The man jumped out of bed, tugging his wife by the hand, and ran toward the door. Just as he opened it, she ran over to the sofa to collect her jacket. He dashed back to pull her away — and the building collapsed with a crash.
His account came to an abrupt halt, and she began to weep.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t say that.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to get my jacket—”
“We didn’t have enough time anyway. Even if you hadn’t gone back, we wouldn’t have had time to escape.”
“If I hadn’t tried to pick up the jacket, you would have got out alive.”
“Even if I’d got out, where would that have left you?”
“Well, at least Xiaomin would have a father.”
I realized now who their daughter was — the little girl in the red down jacket who sat amid the chaos of steel and concrete, doing her homework in the cold wind as she waited for her parents to come home.
“I’ve seen your daughter,” I told them. “Her name is Zheng Xiaomin.”
“Yes!” they cried together. “That’s her name.”
“She’s in fourth grade.”
“That’s right. How do you know?” they asked.
“We’ve talked on the phone,” I told the man. “I’m the one who promised to do the tutoring.”
“You’re Teacher Yang?”
“Yes, I’m Yang Fei.”
The man turned to the woman. “This is Teacher Yang. I told him we didn’t make much money and he immediately lowered his fee to thirty yuan an hour.”
“That was kind of you,” the woman said.
To hear thanks in this context made me smile wanly.
“How is it you’re here too?” the man asked.
“I was sitting in a restaurant when the kitchen caught fire, and then there was an explosion. I arrived on the same day as you, just a few hours later. I called you from the restaurant, but you didn’t pick up.”
“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
“You were buried in the ruins then.”
“You’re right.” The man looked at his wife. “The phone was probably crushed.”
“How was Xiaomin?” she asked impatiently.
“We had arranged that I would come to your apartment at four p.m. When I got there, the three buildings were no longer standing….”
I hesitated for a moment, and decided not to tell them how their deaths had been hushed up. A story would be concocted about how the two of them had died. Their daughter would receive an urn in which other people’s ashes had been placed, and would grow up believing in a beautiful lie.
“How is Xiaomin?” the woman asked again.
“She’s well,” I said. “She’s the most levelheaded girl I’ve ever met. You don’t need to worry about her. She knows how to take care of herself.”
“She’s only eleven,” the girl’s mother moaned. “Every time she leaves the house to go to school, she’ll stop after a few yards and call, ‘Dad,’ and ‘Mom,’ and wait for us to respond. Then she’ll say, ‘I’m off now,’ and head off to school.”
“What did she tell you?” the father asked.
I remembered how she told me she was cold and how I suggested she do her homework in the KFC nearby and how she shook her head, saying that her mom and dad wouldn’t know where she was when they came home.
After hesitating once more, I decided I should tell these things to her parents, adding, “She was sitting right above you.”
Tears flowed silently down their faces, and I knew that theirs was a wellspring of grief that would never dry. My eyes misted up too as I went on my way. After I had gone some distance, the wailing behind me pursued me like a tidal surge. Just the two of them wept as much as a whole crowd might. In my mind’s eye the tide carried the girl in the red down jacket and tossed her onto a beach, and when the waters retreated she was left all alone, there in the human world.
I saw what a feast was like here. In a land of scented grasses and babbling streams, there were thriving vegetables and trees laden with fruit. The dead sat around in circles on the grass, as though seated around the multiple tables of a banquet hall. Their movements were infinitely varied: some ate rapidly and with great determination, some savored things slowly, some chatted away, some smoked and drank, some raised glasses in a toast, some rubbed their bellies when full….I saw several people with flesh and others just with bones shuttling back and forth, and they were making the motions of carrying dishes and pouring wine, so I knew these were serving staff.
When I approached, a skeleton greeted me. “Welcome to the Tan Family Eatery.”
This name, rendered in a young woman’s dulcet tones, gave me a start. Then I heard an unfamiliar voice call my name: “Yang Fei.”