Mengliu thought of the surgery. Perhaps there had not been enough anaesthetic. He saw a tear roll from the corner of Jia Wan’s eye. His will had been torn by his lawful wife. Practically all the wives of the world’s wealthy men would have been venomous, ready to take down their husband’s lover. Mengliu had thought heroic love had once again appeared amongst humans, when it came to him and Suitang. When Jia Wan died, the teardrop wrapped around Mengliu and Suitang, and they turned it into amber. Millions of years later it would find a place on some antique collector’s shelf. When Mengliu realised he had killed Jia Wan, he fled. He tried hard to recall the scene, but his effort was like breathing on a mirror. His past was becoming more blurred. He kept confusing Suitang and Qizi in his mind. His past was gradually disappearing. Now, he had completely forgotten his youth.
7
The weather had turned even colder, and the early morning fog blocked all the paths from the house. Visibility was low, and the atmosphere pervasively damp. The creatures of the world were unusually quiet. The silence was like a saucer, with nothing to crack it. Water dripped constantly from the ends of leaves, a cosy, soft but sad rhythmic accompaniment to the silence.
Mengliu walked in the fog, his hair falling in sticky white lines. On this morning his body was hard and faced rigidly frontward, like a gun on a ship. He needed an animal to hunt, and aim his gun at. The beast inside him had an urge to feast. He walked along Juli’s well-worn path. A few minutes earlier, she had picked up a basket of clothes and headed toward the river. She liked washing her clothes in running water in the morning, just as she liked bathing at night when she had finished her dinner, and reading a book in bed before she fell asleep…She must have other habits, he thought, like preferring a certain type of underwear or her responses during orgasm. His intuition was that she had been with a man, and that there were certain things she had done surreptitiously. How did she overcome her feelings during ovulation, her desire? Was her eccentric personality the result of this long-term suppression? His own body experienced an indescribable excitement coupled with tender feelings of pity for her. He held his gun resolutely, not weakening even for a moment.
Peering around, he saw he had entered a forest, which was fairly covered in fog. He heard his own pulse, the sound of his blood flowing, the bitter secretions of his gall bladder, and the infinite wind blowing through the silence. He felt like a monkey who wanted to climb up the tree and pick Juli’s solid coconuts, and lay her down whether she resisted or obliged. He was almost lost in the foggy forest, but the faint sound of her rustling clothes guided him, like a bell or drum sounding from some unseen place in the distance. He believed she was calling him, and that her already-damp body was waiting for him in the mist. He became urgent, resolute, and deciding not to turn back, followed Juli’s trail of white chrysanthemums, his hair dripping and his clothes mottled with damp stains. Juli’s laundry had already been packed into a bamboo basket. She sat on a bench reading a paperback, her rose-coloured robe revealing ornate shoes beneath, embroidered with plum blossoms.
He came to a stop five metres from her.
The fog cut them off from everything, as if they were in a secret room. He saw her hair was put up casually, a messiness that revealed her anxiety. He guessed she was reading the bible. He knew what he should do in order not to startle her. So they were at a stalemate for several minutes. Just as he intended to turn and plunge back into the fog in order to make a new entrance, she looked up. She was smiling, and her smile was bright. She was not the least bit surprised at his appearance, as if she had asked him to come.
She seemed to have become a different person. He felt her change. This time she was like a maths problem that wasn’t too difficult, and he thought it wouldn’t take him long to solve her. She looked at him with interest, like a little girl. Like the sticky juice from a fruit, when she blinked, sweetness flowed from her eyes, along with a kind mockery. He noticed an awkward feeling in himself, like a stifled young bird. They could not find opening remarks. The shifting shroud of fog gently enveloped them in an even more profound silence. He slid swiftly toward her.
‘Juli…what a coincidence. You’re here too.’ He ran his hand over his hair at the same time as he realised that his gun was no longer there, and felt a timidity that came from knowing he was unarmed. ‘I heard noise here, so…What book are you reading?’ He held his hands behind his back, and bent his body to look at its cover.
She closed the book, and he saw its title, The Gulag Archipelago. He sat down beside her. She read aloud, ‘“June 3, radio stations in Novacherkassk broadcast the dialogue between Mikoyan and Kozlov. Kozlov did not weep. They made no further promises to identify the perpetrators amongst those in power. As they spoke, they only mentioned that the incident had been incited by enemies, who would be severely punished. Mikoyan said that the Soviet forces had not authorised the use of dumdums, so those using dumdums were certainly enemies. All those injured had not been accounted for, and none had come back. On the contrary, the families of the victims were sent to Siberia. Those others who were implicated, those who were booked, or who had been photographed, all faced the same fate. Those who participated in the marches were arrested and put through a series of trials…”’
‘Hey, Juli, you looked really beautiful when you were reading, like a bird singing.’ Mengliu interrupted cautiously, settling on the point to sweet-talk her. His feelings returned to being pure and simple. ‘I remember the first time I saw your face in the crowd. You were like a lonely century plant, your long hair fluttering. You could not have known my feelings at that moment — just when I thought I would never see another human again, I saw you.’ He looked at her intently. Her face was damp, her lips parted as if in surprise.
She closed the book again and put it in her pocket. Just the right size, the pocket looked like it had been made especially for holding a book. ‘Yes, you dared to go with me then, not afraid that I was some monster who would eat you up in the middle of the night,’ she said, stretching her hands along her skirt.
He continued teasing a little. Feeling that she had already got up onto his wagon, his own speech became a bit more presumptuous. ‘I wanted to be eaten by you. The best is if I could watch with my own eyes as you ate me…’
She did not seem to understand the lewd direction of his conversation, but said that he was lucky, since the Swanese were not cannibals. They were silent a moment, and he tried to think of a way to lead her a step closer to his meaning. ‘Have you seen a wild lotus? The other day I wanted to pick one and bring it back for you, but it was very strange. As soon as I touched it, the petals scattered.’ He shook his head with regret. ‘I think they are the most beautiful flowers in the world. It was just like a folk tale, something seen by very few people. I was lucky.’
Juli grew flowers in her garden, and she recognised many varieties, but she knew nothing about wild lotuses. This ignorance inevitably made her feel uneasy. ‘What colour was it? What flower was it most similar to?’
He pondered for a moment, then said, ‘White, or pink, and the petals were thin as a grain of rice. But up close, it looked very different …It’s difficult to explain, but it was amazing.’
She struggled to picture what the wild lotuses might be like, but gave up. ‘No, I have to see what this exotic flower really looks like.’ She jumped off the chair. ‘Take me there now.’