Then I read the accompanying story. Wealthy businesswoman Li Qing had committed suicide the day before by slitting her wrists in her bathtub. She had been implicated in a corruption case involving a highly placed official — the newspaper said she was his mistress, and when people from the investigation bureau went to her home, planning to take her in to help them with their inquiries, they found she had committed suicide. The crowded lines of newsprint filled my gaze like a wall studded with bullet holes. It was a struggle to read the details of the case, for they pained me to the core and I found myself losing the thread of the story.
All of a sudden, thick smoke came billowing out of the kitchen door. The diners on the ground floor gave cries of alarm and I looked up to see them dashing for the door and running outside. Tan Jiaxin stood at the exit, shouting to the customers to first pay their bill, but several simply pushed him aside and fled. Tan Jiaxin kept shouting and his wife and daughter and son-in-law, joined by several waitresses, ran over to block the exit. They and the customers engaged in a shoving match and there seemed to be a war of words as well. I desperately wanted to read the whole newspaper story, but the uproar in the restaurant just kept getting louder. When I raised my head once more, I saw that the people from the private rooms upstairs were running down the stairs. Reaching the front door, they thrust the Tans aside and bolted in panic into the street. Other customers picked up chairs and smashed windows, then clambered over the windowsills and fled. Before long the waitresses were in full flight too.
I tried my best to ignore the chaos in the dining room and continued to read the newspaper report, but soon the smoke made it impossible to decipher the words on the page. As I rubbed my eyes, people dressed like officials came running down from upstairs and dashed through the dining room, yelling angrily as they approached the front door. After a moment’s hesitation, Tan Jiaxin yielded passage to them and they fled out into the street, cursing for all they were worth.
Tan Jiaxin and family remained by the door. He stared at me through the smoke and he seemed to be shouting something. Then there was a deafening roar.
I had reached as far as memory’s path would lead. No matter how hard I tried to recall what happened next, I could recapture no further moments after this — not even the faintest trace. Tan Jiaxin’s stare and the deafening roar that followed it — these were the last scenes that I could find.
In that final scene, my body and soul were transfixed by the news of Li Qing’s death, for it awoke in me memories both beautiful and excruciating. My grief for her had been nipped in the bud, long before it had had time to grow to its natural dimensions. Snow was still blowing and the fog showed no sign of dispersing. I continued to wander along the paths of memory. A weariness came over me as I journeyed ever deeper, and I wanted to sit down, so I sat. I don’t know whether I sat down on a chair or on a stone, but I seemed to rock back and forth as I sat, like an overladen cargo ship tossed by a swell.
A blind man approached, tapping the hollow ground with his walking stick. When he reached me he came to a stop. “Someone is sitting here,” he murmured to himself.
“You’re right,” I said, “someone is sitting here.”
He asked me directions to the funeral parlor and I asked him if he had a reservation. He pulled out a ticket, on which was printed A52. I told him he must have taken a wrong turn, for he needed to head back the way he came. He asked me what was written on the paper, and I explained the reservation system at the funeral parlor. He nodded and set off again, and after he had walked into the distance, tapping on the echoless ground, I began to wonder if I had given the blind man the wrong directions, because I myself was lost.
THE SECOND DAY
An unfamiliar female voice was calling my name. “Yang Fei…”
The sound seemed to have traveled an immense distance. It lingered as it reached me, then faded like a sigh. I looked around but could not make out from which direction it had come. All I was conscious of was the name winging its way toward me in fragments. “Yang Fei…Yang Fei…”
It seemed that I had woken up in the place where I had sat down the previous night — a rotting wooden bench. When I sat on it, I had a feeling that it might topple over any moment, and it was a little while before it became as stable as a rock. Rain was falling steadily amid the whirling snow, and oval droplets of water broke open to discharge even more water droplets, some of which continued to fall, some of which disappeared on top of the snow.
A familiar old building emerged vaguely from the rain and snow; in it a one-bedroom apartment had recorded the shapes and sounds of Li Qing and me. I had arrived here in the dark and sat down on a bench as quiet as death, and the fall and flutter of rain and snow were as quiet as death also. Sitting in this silence, I felt on the verge of slumber and closed my eyes once more. That’s when I saw the lovely, brilliant Li Qing and our brief love and fleeting marriage. That world was in the process of leaving, and yet the past events in that world were on a bus that was arriving. The scene where I first glimpsed Li Qing slowly approached.
Squeezed in tightly among the standing passengers, I swayed back and forth just as they did. Someone sitting in front of me rose to get off the bus and I moved to take his seat, only to be preempted as a female shape quickly occupied the spot that should have been mine. I was startled by the speed with which the young woman had seized her opportunity, and was equally struck by the beauty of her perfect features. As she raised her head slightly, the eyes of all the men on the bus lingered on her face, but she gave no sign of being aware of that — she seemed to be preoccupied with her own thoughts. It was vexing to me that she had stolen my seat but didn’t even give me a look. But I was happy all the same, happy that on a crowded, noisy journey I had the chance to admire her pale skin and delicate profile. After about five stops I started making my way toward the door, which opened as the bus came to a halt. Disembarking passengers squeezed into such a tight mass that I was practically propelled out of the bus. Soon the young woman was skimming past me, as light as a breeze. From behind I watched her dress flutter; she walked and swung her arms with vigor and grace. I followed her into an office block, where she quickly entered an elevator. Its doors closed before I reached it; she was looking out but did not see me.
It turned out that we were working for the same company — it was my first job. As an employee I was unexceptional, but she was already a budding star, with attention-getting beauty and intelligence. The general manager would often take her along with him to business dinners, so she already had considerable experience of the informal negotiations that went on at such events. Women were actually the main topic of conversation at these dinners, with business mentioned only in passing. She discovered that a focus on women helped to bring successful men together: within just a few hours bare acquaintances would become best buddies and cooperation on business deals would proceed smoothly. I heard that at the dinner table she was always poised and chic, adept at putting others at their ease and entertaining men who fancied her, making sure they grinned happily even as she rebuffed them. What’s more, she had a formidable capacity for alcohol and could drink most clients under the table. They enjoyed being toasted by Li Qing until they were completely sloshed, and when calling to set up the next banquet they would enjoin our CEO: “Don’t forget to bring Li Qing.”