“Dad,” I said, “you didn’t abandon me.”
“I just thought of that rock, and wanted to sit there for a bit. I’d always wanted to go there. When it got dark, I would want to go there, but in the morning I would see you and change my mind, because I couldn’t bear to leave you.”
“Dad, why didn’t you tell me? I would have gone with you.”
“I thought of telling you — I thought of that many times.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you worried I’d be upset?”
“No, that wasn’t it,” he said. “I preferred to go there myself.”
“So you left without saying goodbye.”
“No,” he said, “I meant to come back on the evening train.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I did.” After he died, he meant. “I stood a long time opposite the shop and saw it was someone else who came out from inside.”
“I went to look for you.”
“When I saw that someone else had taken over the shop, I knew you had gone to look for me.”
“I kept looking and looking,” I said. “I went to the department store, because there had been a fire there the day you left and I worried you might have been trapped.”
“What department store?”
“The big silver one not far from the shop.”
“I don’t remember that.”
I realized that when the department store opened he was already struck down by illness and pain. “You never went there,” I said.
“You’re here so soon,” he repeated.
“I looked all over the city, and I went to the countryside to look for you too,” I said.
“Did you see your uncles and aunts?” he asked.
“I saw them, yes. There’s a lot of change there too.” I didn’t tell him how desolate things looked.
“Do they still bear a grudge?” he asked.
“No, they were very upset by the news.”
“I should have gone to see them long ago,” he said.
“I looked for you everywhere,” I said. “It just never occurred to me that you had taken the train there.”
“I boarded the train—” he muttered.
I smiled, thinking how we had been looking for each other in two separate worlds.
Once more he picked up his mournful refrain: “You’re here so soon.”
“Dad, I never thought I would find you here.”
“Every day here I was hoping to see you, but I didn’t want you to come so soon.”
“Dad, we’re together now.”
After a long parting, my father and I had run into each other again. Although we now had no body warmth and no breath, we were together once more. I removed my hand from the slender, bony fingers inside his old glove and carefully placed it on his bony shoulder. I very much wanted to say “Dad, come with me.” But I knew he loved to work, loved this waiting-room usher’s work, so I simply said, “Dad, I’ll often come visit you.”
I felt a smile appear on his skeletal face.
“Does your birth mother know?”
“Not yet, I don’t think.”
He gave a sigh. “They’ll find out before long.”
I said nothing more, and he said nothing either. The waiting room fell back into the quiet of remembrance. We treasured this moment of togetherness and in silence felt each other’s presence. I was conscious that he was gazing intently at the scars on my face. Li Qing had only restored my left eye, nose, and chin, without erasing the scars left there.
His hands, encased in those old white gloves, began to rub my shoulders. His skeletal fingers were trembling, and I felt his caress was designed to signal a reunion just as much as a final parting.
His fingers froze when they reached my black armband. He hung his head, sinking into a distant grief. He knew that after he left I had become a lonely orphan in that other world. He did not inquire what events had led to my arrival here, perhaps because he didn’t want to upset me, or perhaps because he didn’t want to upset himself. After a little while he told me softly that he wanted to wear the armband. This was genuinely his wish, I could tell, so I nodded and took it off and passed it to him. He removed his gloves, and ten trembling skeletal fingers received the armband. He placed it on his empty sleeve.
After he put the worn white gloves back on his skeletal hands, he raised his head to look at me, and I saw two tears fall from his empty eyes. Although he had arrived here before me, he still shed the tears that white-haired people shed for dark-haired ones.
On my way back, a young man hailed me. His left hand clutching his midriff, he was walking in haste but with a slight stoop, as though still recovering from a major illness. “Somebody told me that if I keep going in this direction I can see my girlfriend,” he said to me.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” I asked.
“The prettiest girl around.”
“What’s her name?”
“Her name’s Liu Mei. She’s also called Mouse Girl.”
“You must be Wu Chao,” I said. A fur hat now covered his unruly hair. It must have been a long time since he had dyed his hair, or cut it.
“How do you know that?”
“I recognize you.”
“Where have we met?”
“In the shelter.”
My reminder gradually cleared away the confusion on his face. “I do feel I’ve seen you somewhere.”
“Yes, in the shelter.”
Now he remembered, and the wisp of a smile appeared on his face. “That’s right, that’s where I saw you.”
I looked at the area on his waist that his left hand was clutching. “Is it still sore there?”
“Not anymore,” he said.
His hand left the spot, only to return to the same place out of habit soon after.
“We know you sold a kidney to buy a burial plot for Mouse Girl,” I said.
“We?” he looked at me in confusion.
“Me and the others over there.” I pointed up ahead.
“The others over there?”
“Those of us without graves.”
He nodded, seeming to have understood. “How do you know about me?” he asked.
“Xiao Qing came over, and he told us.”
“Xiao Qing’s here too?” he said. “When did he come?”
“It must be six days ago now,” I said. “He kept getting lost and didn’t get here until yesterday.”
“How did he come over?”
“A traffic accident — it happened in the thick fog.”
“I don’t know anything about fog,” he said, perplexed.
He couldn’t have known, I realized, recalling that Xiao Qing had said Wu Chao was lying in the underground bomb shelter the whole time.
“You were in the bomb shelter then,” I said.
He nodded, then asked, “How long have you been here?”
“This is my seventh day,” I said. “How about you?”
“It seems to me I just came over,” he replied.
“Today, in other words.” I realized that he and Mouse Girl had just missed each other.
“You must have seen Mouse Girl.” An expectant look appeared on his face.
“I did.” I nodded.
“Was she happy?”
“She was,” I said. “But when she realized you had sold a kidney to buy her a burial plot, she wept. She wept her heart out.”
“Is she still crying now?”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll be able to see her very soon.”
Joy appeared on his face like the shadow of a tree leaf.
“You won’t be able to see her,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “She has gone to rest.”
“She’s left for there already?”
The joyful shadow left his face, to be replaced by a shadow of grief.
“When did she leave?” he asked.
“Today,” I said. “Just as you were coming over, she left. You missed each other.”
He lowered his head and walked on, weeping silently. After walking some distance, he stopped weeping. “If I’d just come a day earlier,” he said sorrowfully, “that would have been perfect — I could have seen her then.”