"Clack." After being locked all night, the dining-car door opened. A conductor gave us an update: the train wouldn't be signaled into the station before ten-thirty. This meant that even though Beijing was only twenty-five minutes away, the train had to stay put for three more hours. No one's eyes registered any disappointment or anxiety, and no one said a word. The interior of the car was silence itself; everyone had to wait and endure. The connecting doors were locked-no one was allowed off the train even though all anyone had to do was walk to the nearest bus stop and catch a bus into the city…
It's a feeling I have, that even now I'm still on that train. My feet seem to be planted on the floor of that railway car, regardless of whether the train is stopped or moving, regardless of whether it's going anywhere at all. I have no way of telling this to my friends in Beijing -that I don't know when that arrival will ever come about…
By that I mean I may have never been to Xi'an at all.
Translated by John A. Crespi
Chen Ran – Sunshine Between the Lips
Another Rule
I am a young woman whose job is very mechanical, as mechanical as the hands of timepieces, always making circular motions with the same radius and in the same direction; as mechanical as a fatigued truck traveling invariably down a fixed route. Usually when I am reading the study materials delivered by my work unit, especially articles about the new trends in struggles, I can never remember whether Iraq annexed Kuwait or the other way around or if the Scud stopped the Patriot or vice versa, even if I read the same news item ten times. But I am able to commit to memory all the typos in the articles. For instance, in the lower-right corner at the end of a line, I will easily spot an apostrophe that should be a comma, and so forth. That's what comes of being a proofreader.
This simple work keeps my chaotic mind from making many mistakes, I am glad to say, since I am a daydreamer who finds it hard to play by the rules. Let's say, for example, that the fainthearted son of a cold-blooded murderer accidentally kills someone. When the death sentence falls upon the frightened son, the father, who has always been able to escape the net of justice, mysteriously takes his son's place at the execution ground. This act must be regarded as a mockery of the law, but I will be moved by the loving sacrifice of a brutish father who kills without compunction, until my face is bathed in tears; I will even hold him in some regard.
When I see an accomplished surgeon refuse to treat a class enemy's vvife who is in great pain and in need of help, I am disgusted. My problematic views and a tendency toward aberrant thinking are enough to deprive me of the chance to become a doctor or lawyer.
They say that to be a writer, you must follow even more rules. I know only too well that my deviant thinking and convoluted logic keep me at odds with those rules. Fortunately, I am aware of these flaws and have never expected or hoped to become much of anything.
Yet there may be another possibility. You might happen to share my way of thinking, which means you could interpret my un-orthodoxy as a rule in its own right. Anything is possible.
Fear of Hypodermics
Dentists always fire Miss Dai Er's imagination. The fantasy begins when she approaches the dentist's office and hears the whir of the drill. As she enters, the sound courses through every nerve in her body. At the same time, in the space taken in by her gaze, countless teeth dance and fly around her like snowflakes. Whirling and spinning, they send forth the delicate fragrance of falling pear blossoms.
At this moment, Miss Dai Er is fantasizing as she sits in dental chair 103, assigned to Dr. Kong Sen, in Hospital 103. Dai Er, twenty-two, possesses a nearly pathological tenderness, charm, and melancholy. A painfully impacted wisdom tooth has brought her here. She looks around carefully: there is a spittoon and a cup on the left armrest; above it are a gadget on an adjustable arm and a small electric fan; directly overhead is a large lamp, like a golden sunflower whose petals move around the patient's mouth; alongside the right armrest is a swivel chair with wheels, on which the young dentist is currently sitting.
He is a reticent young man, tall but stocky and sedate, with focused yet limpid eyes. (Miss Dai Er will never forget his eyes. In the future, she will spot him amid a sea of people by his eyes alone.) His nose and mouth are obscured by a snow-white gauze mask, and it is this hidden part that bestows upon him a space open to imagination and a mysterious, fathomless aura.
Once you lean back in the chair and the lamp lights up the area around your lips, you clench your fists nervously and lay them in your lap. The young dentist presses up close to your face from the right. You open your mouth wide and let him work on your teeth with probes, forceps, and scalpel. His large, strong fingers move ceaselessly in the cramped space of your mouth. Because of the narrowness of the oral cavity, there is tremendous cohesive force as he pulls your tooth. He exerts all his strength, and you exert all yours. If you are a young woman like Miss Dai Er and have a vivid imagination, it will be easy to associate this with another activity.
Dr. Kong Sen leans over to a patient in the chair beside Dai Er to give the gray-haired woman a shot of Novocain in her upper jaw. Then he turns back to Miss Dai Er.
He asks, "Any physical problems?" His voice is low and deep, as if sealed in an underground tunnel.
"No," she says.
"Heart trouble?"
"No."
"High blood pressure?"
"No."
"OK, let's begin."
His comments are terse and precise. She gains a dialectical fascination from such an either-or dialogue.
He turns to get the Novocain. To Dai Er, the ailments he has mentioned pertain to old folks, not to her. But knowing that the questions are routine, she smiles her gratitude to him.
He has fetched the syringe filled with Novocain, the needle pointing upward. He lightly pushes the injector, and tiny droplets spurt from the tip of the needle. The spray fans out in an exaggerated arc; white mist, curling upward, drifts out of the room and into the corridor, then slowly descends the staircase. It glides over twenty-eight stairs, passing through more than a decade, and on toward the internal medicine ward. There Miss Dai Er was barely seven and a half years old.
Dai Er, front teeth missing and two terrified eyes staring out at a white world, was a weak, sickly child. She had just come out of a fever-induced coma caused by meningitis.
"Do you recognize Mommy?" A young woman about the same age as the present Miss Dai Er sat beside her seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, expecting a response as if awaiting a fateful verdict.
"Do you recognize Mommy? Where is Mommy?" the young woman repeated.
Dai Er struggled to open her eyes, which seemed dried out and enlarged by the debilitating illness; she searched the confines of the room. The walls were white; a hovering sound was white; a smile at the upturned corners of the mouth behind the sound was white. Over there stood a large man holding a hypodermic syringe in his right hand; the needle was pointing upward, like a bleak wilderness, awaiting the passage of humans. Long and hollow, it would enter her buttock. He may have been smiling at his young patient, but his expression was changed into cold indifference by the gauze mask.
"Can you recognize Mommy? You see, Mommy is smiling at you!"
Dai Er remained motionless as her eyes followed the movements of the needle. Concentrating all the strength in her little body in her eyes, she was trying to ward off the approaching instrument.
"Mommy is right here, don't you recognize me?" The young woman was losing her composure.
The needle kept coming, with its cold glint and tiny shriek.
"Mommy, I don't want a shot." Dai Er sat up suddenly and draped her arms around her mother's neck. "Mommy, I don't want a shot," Dai Er cried loudly.
The young woman burst out crying, her sobs punctuated by laughter: "My baby's alive again. She's not a mindless vegetable, she's alive again…"
The white uniform and the needle had moved up next to little Dai Er.
"Put her down, and leave us alone, please. It's time for her injection," the mouth above the white uniform said. The huge hypodermic in his hand was cold and hard, like a pistol.
To Dai Er's chagrin, the young woman put her down, shedding tears of happiness, and left the room.
She knew that her mother, too, was afraid of the man. Her leaving was testimony to this. She could not protect Dai Er. Now Dai Er was alone. She stopped crying, for she knew she had to face the cold needle by herself.