this desert . . . How could things be like this?
“Yes, my beak, my beak! Please tell me: Where am I?”
“You’re on the uppermost crust of the earth. This is your new home.”
“Can’t I bore my way out of it? Are you saying that from now on I can only wander around in this sand? But I’m accustomed to vertical motion.”
“You can only engage in vertical motion here. Don’t worry, there’s more sand on top of this sand.”
“Are you saying I cannot break out completely? Oh, I see. You’ve tried it. How long have you lived in this region? It must be a very long time. We can’t measure the time, but we know we lost you long ago. Dear ancestor, I never imagined, never imagined that in this—how to say it?—that in this extremity, I would come across you. If my father . . . ah, I can’t mention him. If I do, I’ll faint again.”
He didn’t say any more. I heard his far-off voice: cha, cha, cha . . . as he dug the sand with his long, senile beak. My bodily fluids were boiling. It was bizarre: I’d stayed in such an arid place for so long and yet I still had fluids in my body. Judging by the sound I heard, this ancestor had fluids in his body, too. This was really miraculous! Somewhere above me, he walked away. He must have seen the phoenix leaves, too.
Ah, he returned! How wonderful—now I had a companion! I had someone to communicate with. The boundless yellow sand was no longer so frightening! Who . . . who was he?
“Grandpa, are you the one who disappeared?”
“I am a wandering spirit.”
This was great: I spoke, and someone answered me. How long had I been without this? Someone of the same species would engage in the same activity and live with me in this desert . . . Father’s last wish was for me to find him: I realized this!
=
I was a little critter submerged in the desert. This was the outcome I had pursued. In this mid-region, I was envisioning the phoenix leaves on Mother Earth. Yet, I didn’t forget my kindred in the dark.
Red
Leaves
=
The first light of morning had just streamed through the sickroom’s window. Teacher Gu lay on the bed with his eyes closed. The cleaning woman was spraying disinfectant in the room. She had arrived particularly early today, as though coming not to clean but to disturb him. Gu knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, for each time this happened, his thoughts leapt up in the midst of the strong smell of Lysol. One red leaf floated in the air above the forest of his thoughts—a forest that was totally bare, for it was winter now. Gu had been pondering a question for several days: Did a leaf start turning red from the leafstalk, the color gradually spreading throughout the entire leaf, or did the entire leaf gradually turn from light red to deep red? Before falling ill, Gu hadn’t observed this phenomenon, probably because he missed the chance every year. In front of his home were hills where maples grew. But it was only after he fell ill that he had moved there.
After the cleaning woman left, Gu bent his legs and lightly massaged his distended belly. He thought: perhaps one’s body is most vibrant when one’s disease reaches its last stage. His poor liver, for instance, must have reached this stage. A tragedy had occurred last night in this large ward: a terminally ill patient had rushed with a roar to the balcony and jumped. After that, the ward was as still as death, as though no one lying there dared utter a sound. Was it because someone had died that the cleaning woman had come so early to disinfect the room? He thought this was unreasonable. The person hadn’t killed himself because his condition had worsened and his pain was unbearable. He knew he was improving after going through chemotherapy. The next day he would have been moved out of the ward for serious cases. Who could have guessed that he would do this? This guy really chose an original approach.
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
