Wang’s cries were interrupted by laughter. “Hahaha, another one bites the dust!”
He turned around.
Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.
10
Da Shi
Shi sat down next to Wang and handed him his car keys. “You parked right at the intersection at Dongdan. If I had arrived just a minute later, the traffic cops would have had it towed.”
Da Shi, if I had known you were following me, I would have been comforted, Wang thought, switching to Shi Qiang’s familiar nickname in his mind, though self-respect made him hold back the words. He accepted a cigarette from Da Shi, lit it, and took his first drag since he quit several years ago.
“So how’s it going, buddy? Finding it hard to bear? I said you couldn’t handle it. And you insisted on playing the tough guy.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Wang took several more deep puffs.
“Your problem is, you understand too well…. Fine, let’s go grab a bite.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then we’ll go drinking! My treat.”
Wang got into Da Shi’s car and they drove to a small restaurant nearby. It was still early, and the place was deserted.
“Two orders of quick-fried tripe, and a bottle of er guo tou!”[22] Da Shi shouted, without even looking up. He was obviously a regular here.
As he stared at the two plates filled with black slices of tripe, Wang’s empty stomach began to churn, and he thought he was going to be sick. Da Shi ordered him some warm soymilk and fried pancakes, and Wang forced himself to eat some.
Then they drank shots of er guo tou. He began to feel lightheaded, and his tongue loosened. Gradually, he recounted the events of the last three days to Da Shi, even though he knew that Da Shi probably knew everything already—maybe Da Shi even knew more than he did.
“You’re saying that the universe was… winking at you?” Da Shi asked, as he slurped down strips of tripe like noodles.
“That’s a very appropriate metaphor.”
“Bullshit.”
“Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.”
“More bullshit. Come, drink!”
Wang finished another shot. Now the world was spinning around him, and only the tripe-chomping Shi Qiang across from him remained stable. He said, “Da Shi, have you ever… considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does the universe go? Et cetera.”
“Nope.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“You must see the stars. Aren’t you awed and curious?”
“I never look at the sky at night.”
“How is that possible? I thought you often worked the night shift?”
“Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape.”
“We really have nothing to say to each other. All right. Drink!”
“To be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in the sky, I wouldn’t be thinking about your philosophical questions. I have too much to worry about! I gotta pay the mortgage, save for the kid’s college, and handle the endless stream of cases…. I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass. Naturally, I don’t know how to make my bosses like me. Years after being discharged from the army, my career is going nowhere. If I weren’t pretty good at my job, I would have been kicked out a long time ago…. You think that’s not enough for me to worry about? You think I’ve got the energy to gaze at stars and philosophize?”
“You’re right. All right, drink up!”
“But, I did indeed invent an ultimate rule.”
“Tell me.”
“Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”
“What… what kind of crappy rule is that?”
“I’m saying that there’s always someone behind things that don’t seem to have an explanation.”
“If you had even basic knowledge of science, you’d know it’s impossible for any force to accomplish the things I experienced. Especially that last one. To manipulate things at the scale of the universe—not only can you not explain it with our current science, I couldn’t even imagine how to explain it outside of science. It’s more than supernatural. It’s super-I-don’t-know-what….”
“I’m telling you, that’s bullshit. I’ve seen plenty of weird things.”
“Then tell me what I should do next.”
“Keep on drinking. And then sleep.”
“Fine.”
Wang Miao had no idea how he got back into his car. He tumbled into the backseat and fell into a dreamless slumber. He didn’t think that he was asleep for long, but when he opened his eyes, the sun was already near the horizon in the west.
He got out of the car. Even though the alcohol that morning had made him weak, he did feel better. He saw that he was at one corner of the Forbidden City. The setting sun shone on the ancient palace and turned into bright gold ripples in the moat. In his eyes, the world became once again classical and stable.
Wang sat until it got dark, enjoying the peace that had been missing from his life. The black Volkswagen Santana that he was now so familiar with pulled out of the traffic streaming through the street and braked to a stop right in front of him. Shi Qiang got out of the car.
“Slept well?” Da Shi growled.
“Yes. What next?”
“Who? You? Go have dinner. Then drink a little more. Then sleep again.”
“Then what?”
“Then? Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?”
“But the countdown… there’s only 1,091 hours left.”
“Fuck the countdown. Your first priority right now is to make sure you can stand straight and not collapse into a heap. Then we can talk about other things.”
“Da Shi, can you tell me something about what’s really going on? I’m begging you.”
Da Shi stared at Wang a while. Then he laughed. “I’ve said the very same thing to General Chang several times. We’re in the same boat, you and I. I’ll be honest: I know fucking shit. My pay grade is too low, and they tell me nothing. Sometimes I think this is a nightmare.”
“But you must know more than I.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you what little I know.” Da Shi pointed to the shore of the moat around the Forbidden City. The two found a spot and sat down.
It was now night, and traffic flowed ceaselessly behind them like a river. They watched their shadows lengthening and shortening over the moat.
“In my line of work, it’s all about putting together many apparently unconnected things. When you piece them together the right way, you get the truth. For a while now, strange things have been happening.
“For example, there’s been an unprecedented wave of crimes against academia and science research institutions. Of course you know about the explosion at the Liangxiang accelerator construction site. There was also the murder of that Nobel laureate… the crimes were all unusuaclass="underline" not for money, not for revenge. No political background, just pure destruction.
“Other strange things didn’t involve crimes. For example, the Frontiers of Science and the suicides of those academics. Environmental activists have also become extra bold: protest mobs at construction sites to stop nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams, experimental communities ‘returning to nature,’ and other apparently trivial matters…. Do you go to the movies?”
“No, not really.”
“Recent big-budget films all have rustic themes. The setting is always green mountains and clear water, with handsome men and pretty women of some indeterminate era living in harmony with nature. To use the words of the directors, they ‘represent the beautiful life before science spoiled nature.’ Take Peach Blossom Spring: it’s clearly the sort of film that no one wants to see. But they spent hundreds of millions to make it. There was also this science fiction contest with a top reward of five million for the person who imagined the most disgusting possible future. They spent another few hundred million to turn the winning stories into movies. And then you’ve got all these strange cults popping up everywhere, where every cult leader seems to have a lot of money….”
22