The water was up to his thighs now. It was not completely dark yet. All around was hazy, with only the snowy tops of the mountains clearly visible. Schools of fish swam by him in the water. He had never seen this kind of fish before. They were oddly shaped and not as long as a finger. Their bodies were almost transparent, and they gathered at a spot about a metre from him and halted, as if waiting to accumulate a larger school of fish in this one place. If not for the ripples on the surface of the water, they would have been difficult to detect. Together they were soft, like a cloudy body of fluid, or like seaweed floating back and forth, constantly changing its formation. Attracted, he reached toward them in the water. The fish scattered, then disappeared. Calm was quickly restored to the surface of the water.
As he continued to make his way across the river, he felt a sting on his left leg and immediately realised something had bitten him. It was followed quickly by another hard bite. He turned and fled back to the shore. He saw two wounds on his calf, flowing with blood like a spring. As he was thinking of how to bandage the wounds, he saw Shanlai looking at him.
It seemed Shanlai had been by the river watching him the whole time. He was chewing something as he casually walked over, spat a bit of foamy grass into his palm, and applied it to Mengliu’s wounds. The bleeding stopped.
‘The squids in the river are very powerful. Within a couple of minutes they can chew you to bits, leaving only a pile of white bones.’ Shanlai carried a small bamboo basket. His eyes flashed in mockery.
‘You’re kidding. Man-eating squids?’ In response to the extreme exaggeration Mengliu’s facial features enlarged to several times their normal size and looked a little grim as they stood out in the darkness.
Shanlai swung his head, motioning for Mengliu to come back with him. ‘Every time there is a river burial, you can hear the ghosts of humans struggling in the water at night. The river churns like it is boiling. Actually, it is the squids snatching food, emitting an eerie sound.’ He turned back and looked at the man behind him. ‘Many millions of years ago, there were man-eating squids. You see them in all of the cave drawings of the early humans. They were very vicious.’ He reached behind and knocked his basket a couple of times. ‘If you stir-fry some of these fellows up with a bit of corn, it’s a dish to die for. I’ve got a few here. They are ferocious, but stupid enough that, with a little light, you can lure them into your net.’
Hearing this, Mengliu grew a bit queasy. Limping behind Shanlai, he encouraged the boy to put the squid back into the river.
Shanlai acted like he didn’t hear. He switched the torchlight on, and swung it back to look at Mengliu’s calf. He saw that no new blood was oozing and said, ‘If you are pure, God will heal the wound…’
Thinking that he had almost been turned into a pile of bones by a bunch of squid, Mengliu shivered slightly. Not daring to act rashly, like an innocent child meekly listening to an elder’s nagging, he followed in Shanlai’s footsteps. Even the snap of dead branches beneath his feet made him flinch. As they moved away from the stream, they pushed their way through bushes with fat thick leaves, into the forest, where they were surrounded by a moist fragrant scent, which mingled occasionally with a rancid odour. Mengliu felt something was wrong. The fear of not being able to get out of the forest enveloped him. The forest at night reminded him of the scene so many years before, when young people grew like trees in Round Square, waiting for rain to come and cleanse them. The forest was silent and furious, bearing great sorrow and helplessness, as if a beast were being held back, waiting for release under the cover of darkness, when it would rush out and devour them. Qizi was like the owl perched on the tree there, eyes bright and vigilant.
‘I don’t understand. What were you doing at the river?’ Shanlai asked, shining his light on Mengliu’s face for a few seconds before he turned away, letting the beam play on the forest again. Someone went fleeing by as if holding something in its hand.
‘I…was checking to see how deep the water was.’ Mengliu’s answer wasn’t very convincing. There seemed to be baby cries coming from the forest. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What sort of strange bird is that calling?’
Shanlai did not immediately answer. They reached a point where the forest was less dense, and the half-moon shone down between the trees. A bat flew low through the light of the fireflies. ‘That is a waste disposal site over there,’ he finally replied. ‘Some people come to discard things, and the vultures call out. They are pleased.’
Mengliu was still not clear about what he meant. They had crossed the hillside, and the quiet face of the town lay spread out before them. He was so surprised he was speechless. The path that had taken him all afternoon to walk took less than half an hour on the return journey. The pain of his wound and the blood trickling down his leg again let him know that he wasn’t dreaming. He set aside all the strange questions that were troubling him and filled his mind with the pleasure of returning to Juli’s side. His heart was as warm as ever. He did not want to leave her.
4
When Suitang first saw Jia Wan’s poetry and photos in the library, she dreamed of meeting the handsome poet, but she didn’t imagine that it would happen years later in a hospital. By that time, Jia Wan was no longer youthful and suave, but he still retained a sort of romantic elegance, the wrinkles on his face enhancing the attraction Suitang had first felt for him. Having just entered society, she was now in the first blush of adulthood, perhaps in part because of the positive experience of her affair with Mengliu. The feelings she had for him were easily transferred to Jia Wan, being a poet as he was, and because of his Cadillac. In Jia Wan’s eyes, she saw a desire for power that excited her. The old gifted scholar and the pretty young lady wasted no time falling into each other’s arms.
Jia Wan had heart problems and needed to undergo surgery. The insurance company was even more concerned about whether he lived or died than his own family was. To begin with, there were problems with his pharmaceutical company. Some patients had died from taking medicine produced by his factory, so Jia Wan was in trouble with the legal system. Suitang said she had tried everything humanly possible to set her man on the right path, but Jia Wan was like a deeply rooted tree, unshaken by any tempest.
When Mengliu learned that Suitang was pregnant with Jia Wan’s child, he felt his head would explode.
Suitang’s affections were nothing more than a youthful whim, not to be counted on. Jia Wan promised to give her two million yuan, provided that she abort the baby. Jia Wan’s wife had dark thoughts regarding the issue, and wanted to wait for Suitang to abort the baby, and then not give her anything. She had to prevent Suitang giving birth to the child, for fear she would demand a share of Jia Wan’s fortune. Though Suitang was enduring the discomforts of pregnancy and pretending she wanted to keep the child, she went quietly to the hospital and had an abortion. Then the injured bird landed in Mengliu’s garden. Imagining it was Qizi, he took her into his warm nest and nursed her back to health, until even her feathers glistened again. When she had recovered, she talked about her fascination with poets once more, mentioning Bai Qiu and the poem in his suicide note. ‘I see soldiers with their bayonets, on patrol in my verse, searching everyone’s conscience.’
Sometimes she wore a long pink chiffon dress as she sat in one of the lounge chairs in Mengliu’s garden, reading his poetry or looking toward the distant mountains in a trance, as if she had not walked out of the shadows of the past.