After staying in the hospital for a long time, Gu was more and more content with his situation. In private, he even praised the hospital as “fascinating.” He was a taciturn patient, accustomed to being moved around along the corridor that connected the white structures. Actually, he could walk slowly by himself, but the doctors insisted that he use a wheelchair. He sat in a wheelchair, and a big fellow pushed him carefully to the treatment room. Gu thought this arrangement was actually intended to prevent him from escaping. At first, he thought this was suspicious, but later he grew accustomed to it and even understood it a little. The next time he was in the wheelchair, he imagined that he was a general making a leisurely inspection of a battlefield littered with corpses.
He was resting with his eyes closed when he suddenly heard the cleaning woman say: “As the man jumped, he was shouting Mr. Gu’s name.” When he opened his eyes, he saw the cleaning woman turn and leave the room. Her words agitated Mr. Gu. For some reason, all at once his hearing became extremely acute: once again, he heard two people talking on the top floor. They walked downstairs, arguing about something. As they made their way from the ninth floor to the seventh floor and then to the sixth floor, their voices grew louder, as if they were quarreling. They stopped on the sixth floor. They then lowered their voices, and the quarrel turned into a discussion. They sounded like two cats mewing softly. Gu’s room was on the fifth floor. The two people would have to descend only one more floor and they’d be at his door. But they didn’t. They stood up there and kept talking. Their language became completely distorted. The more he heard, the more it sounded like cats meowing. The word “catmen” appeared in his mind, and he even imagined that many “catmen” were in this hospital. They hid in dark corners and sometimes emerged to confide their loneliness in someone, just as they were doing now. The right side of his belly throbbed a few times, and he heard the fluids gurgle there. He closed his eyes and saw the red leaf again. The edge of the leaf had thickened and was imbued with a bizarre fleshy sensuality. Gu felt something flicker in his head. One of the “catmen” suddenly gave a loud shout before his voice became inaudible. The door opened. Breakfast had arrived.
Gu wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat. Lei, the patient next to him, urged him: “Have a little. If an incident like that is repeated tonight, you’ll need some energy to deal with it.” Lei was in the last stages of his disease. He’d lost his hair long ago and had only a month or two to live. After thinking it over, Gu reluctantly sipped a little milk and rinsed his mouth with water. Holding back his nausea, he lay down again. He noticed that Lei was in high spirits as he ate his egg. This person?? How come? He wanted to talk with Lei about the “catmen,” but he felt too weak to talk. Last night, why had the accountant Zheng shouted his name as he jumped? It was a little like toying with him. At this point, he subconsciously raised one hand, but then he heard Lei saying:
“Mr. Gu, don’t ward it off with your hand. Let it fall on your face. Maybe it will be hypnotic.”
“What?!” He was shocked.
“I’m talking of the small leaf. Look, it fell onto your quilt. Ha!”
Sure enough, there was a withered leaf on his quilt. It had come in through the window. When he twisted the leaf lightly, it crumbled into powder. The powder stuck to his hand, so he shook it off. Then he wiped his hands clean with a handkerchief. His eyes half-closed, he leaned against the pillow and heard the consulting doctors enter the room. Under the doctors’ questioning, Lei appeared unusually happy and answered their questions loudly. He declared that he had “conquered the disease.” Through the slits of his eyes, Gu observed the disgusted frown of the physician in charge. Gu thought, “Lei will die soon. Perhaps tonight?” Suddenly, Lei uttered, “Ouch,” and Gu opened his eyes.
He saw several doctors pressing Lei down onto the bed. He resisted vehemently, but they still bound him to the bed with strong tape. He was yowling through it all, and it looked as if his bulging eyes might jump out of their sockets. The doctors pulled out handkerchiefs to wipe away their perspiration and appeared to breathe sighs of relief. For some reason, they didn’t approach Gu, but went to the two beds on the west side of the room. After asking questions for a while, they left the ward. Their unusual behavior made Gu’s brain alternately tighten and turn blank. After a while, Lei vomited blood. It fell onto his face and then streamed onto the pillow. The blood was blackish-red. He no longer struggled, nor could he struggle. Now he could move only his mouth, eyes, and nose. No. His ears, too. Gu noticed that his ears were moving, making him look as cute as an animal.
“Lei, let’s just take it easy” Gu found something to say.
“You — idiot!” he said.
Gu fell silent. The right side of his belly pulsed again, and he patted it. It throbbed even more. With waves of heat gushing in, he began feeling feverish. In the west part of the room, wardmates — a man and a woman — compared notes on cemetery reservations. Their meticulous, earnest attitude made Gu shiver with cold. Feeling partly hot and partly cold, he touched those spots and said softly, “This isn’t like my body.” He secretly intended to slip out after a while and look for those “catmen.” Ordinarily, he didn’t dare leave the ward, because as soon as he left, Lei would push the call button and he’d be hemmed in by nurses.
Gu got up stealthily and, making his way along the wall, left the room. At the doorway, he looked back and saw Lei glowering at him. This suddenly struck him as quite funny, and he almost laughed. At this time, the corridor was empty, and he stole over to the staircase and quietly went upstairs. As he climbed the stairs, he held his paunch with both hands and imagined that he was a kangaroo.
When he reached the sixth floor, he heard the “cat language.” But where were the “catmen”? No one was on the sixth floor corridor except for two nurses making their rounds with medications. After a moment’s rest, Gu continued climbing up. On the seventh floor, a worker delivering water was pushing his small cart. He stopped at the edge of the corridor and sat on the stairs to smoke a cigarette. Gu wondered how he could smoke near the wards. The person patted the floor next to him and invited Gu to sit down and have a cigarette with him. Surprised, Gu accepted his cigarette and a light. The cigarette was very strong. Gu had never seen this brand before; perhaps he had rolled it himself. Then he noticed that the cigarette case was plastic.
“You know how to roll your own cigarettes,” Gu commented admiringly.
“My buddies. We have the right tools. ” he answered vaguely.
After finishing the cigarette, Gu thanked the worker and stood up, intending to continue up the stairs, when he suddenly heard the worker beside him make a cat sound. It was very harsh. But when he glanced at him, he looked as if nothing had happened. No one else was here. If he hadn’t made the sound, who had? Gu changed his mind; he wanted to see if this person would do anything else.