Finally my father-in-law appeared. He emerged from behind the Buddha. Shading his eyes from the light with his hand, he singed his hair on each of the oil lamps and calmly sniffed the odor. After some thought, he came to me. “You are forever thinking of floating toward that ball of light,” he said, shaking my hand solemnly. His own hand was warm and dry. “I still remember you coming to my house to buy used pens. I must feel suffocated, right? It’s very complicated. There’s no particular benefit. When you finally float to the top, you feel worse, because you simply can’t breathe. Some people died just like that. All in all, don’t make trouble for yourself. But I, I love the little shrimp that are hiding in the cracks of the rocks. I am completely happy and pleased with myself. I swim here and there, never opening my eyes. That’s why I never have eye disease. My legs are still good. You’ll know it when you see me jumping. “He tried to jump up. I only heard a fit of cracking sounds and found him groaning on the ground. “I can jump really high!” He panted, waving his fists. I simply stepped over his body.
I knew there was something seriously wrong with his legs. What happiness and pleasure was he talking about? He was only pretending to be a young man. He could do nothing but burn his hair at the lamps and steal food from home. It was a life of penal servitude. In order to stretch his neck to let out the stinking hiccups in his throat, he used the words “happy” and “pleased.” But he had overdone it, and now he could not get up again. Why was he so stubborn! He wanted to show people he was not afraid of death by burning his hair. But what’s the use? I still remember his trick of declaring, “Going to the green mountains!” traveling bag on his back, that he had played for decades. Every time he looked full of vigor and vitality. But now even though he had given up the old past, he still struggled for a jump.
“He is living a happy life as a bachelor,” the fat woman told me quietly, with a handkerchief over her mouth. “He is an out-and-out puppet, and he has lost feeling for his surroundings. As a matter of fact, his whole family has sneaked into this temple. When the north wind starts blowing, they hide in the attic. The lady on the ceiling is your mother-in-law, isn’t she? Fortunately the old man doesn’t know, or it would cost him his life. He is too solitary to measure himself objectively. Look at those oil lamps. They lit them. They light the lamps even during the day because they feel distracted. But the old man never recognizes it. This old fool always believes the temple is completely empty. I once gave him some hint, and he was enraged. It’s so stupid that he believes he is unique. Of course, they can’t see the old man either. They have tired themselves out with the game of catching rats. Now they are suffering from a bad cold. They’ve wrapped themselves up in thick clothing, and they poke their flashlight beams here and there every day. Bah, such people.”
Night had fallen. I went out with the fat woman. The wind was strong. Creamy colored phantoms floated past us. We were huddled up, unable to see each other.…
I haven’t told the story as I intended. I am forever circling around, never able to approach reality. Once I open my mouth, I discover I’m telling something that I have falsified, instead of the thing. The whole purpose of talking is to arouse others’ attention. As a matter of fact, I never intend to tell anything, but only to make some noise. There was a time when I had the spirit to go forward. I dissected a toad, laying its organs on the table one after another. As for those little lumps, I broke them one by one with a small knife. We all make noise, which is very different from the noise made by rats. For instance, on a summer noon, we sit at home. It is very quiet around us, but the gal I married suddenly makes a thump. It turns out that the hook on her bra has slipped out. I know she does that on purpose, and that’s extremely different from rats. When she has accomplished her success, she tells me that once she quiets down, she will smell the hair of her dead mother.
The oil lamps were crackling merrily like fireworks. The fat woman mumbled something and declared that she wanted to go to the lake. The lake was very deep, but she could walk into it. She had already mastered how to breathe underwater. She loved the ghastly atmosphere. “My fatigue only attacks when I see black shadows swinging around me and bubbles ascend one after another.” So saying, she hobbled into the dark night. After a while, she could be heard hawking her wares somewhere. The voice was disjointed, as if she were lisping. Suddenly I realized that I could never enter that temple. I made a circle around the wall but simply couldn’t find the entrance. I walked around once more, touching every brick, but still in vain. Listening attentively, I could hear people talking and the oil lamps crackling. Refusing to give in, I walked around again, or maybe several times, nobody knows how many times. The wall was teasing my shivering finger with its firm coldness. At that moment, I remembered my ideal role. Also I knew that for the gang inside, whatever role I played had nothing to do with them. They only considered my change as a child’s game. They always cast me in “the role of selling bowls of tea.” It seemed I would have to circle that damp wall till dawn. Ever since youth, I had had a habit of splitting hairs, and I always stuck to some insignificant thing.…
Now I realized that I could only be a peddler collecting used fountain pens. Despite the fact that I made all kinds of voices — or changed roles every day, putting on a gunny sack or pretending to be crippled or swallowing down live snakes — they just wouldn’t care. The key was that they couldn’t really see me much. In the steam, they were busy washing their hair, breaking walnuts, trimming their toenails, digging rat holes, building attics. Everyone was covered with sweat. That day my staying in the cold water for such a long time drew the attention of the old woman. Yet she was not paying attention to me as a person, but to my pocket watch. She attempted to cheat me out of the watch so she could give it to her sister. She assured me that by all means the watch would be completely destroyed once it fell into the water. Regardless of my trembling from the cold, she forced me to give up the watch by clutching me by the throat. “What do you need that for? You don’t even have a place to hang it, because you never have a body. But I can hang it around my neck,” she said arbitrarily.
“He is nothing but a gust of gloomy wind.” The woman I married made the conclusion peremptorily. “At midnight when I probed into his quilt with my hand, my fingers were frozen up. There was nothing on the bed. Something was swaying and drifting in the room, flocks of gray pigeons were looking for food on the ground.”
I always change my mind on a sunny day. I consider such weather beneficial to me. Though I have trouble opening my eyelids, though I feel like urinating all the time, I always have some new ideas about something that I am interested in, and I always engage myself in doing something. When I am doing something, I feel myself as having a role. But I haven’t been doing anything for a long time, because the sun hasn’t been out for a long time. Now I no longer hear the sharp shouting of the bright sun, nor the south wind booming, only the giggling of the pigeons, as well as traps that are too numerous to be avoided. Now I am forgotten by them. I just can’t give in. How can I give in like this? Tomorrow morning I will smash the tiles on the roof, I will let the panther in the corridor bite people. All this will make me feel that I am acting the role of a warrior.
4. MY MOTHER’S RAVINGS
I once entered the sun. That day when I woke from my nap, the room was filled with the fragrance of broad-bean blossoms. The scent had attracted a pair of butterflies, which were dipping and swooping high and low. As I touched my head, it gave out a loud sound as if it were an alarm; it also shone with a kind of mental white light. My son screamed at me, pushing me out of the house. “The sun is high outside, the rabbits are speeding across the muddy ground, the leaves are soaked with fresh tastes…” He seduced me. Holding my head, I stepped outside. The sunbeams poured down like running snakes. I remember I passed a slabstone path. The stones were so hot that the soles of my shoes were burnt. Every time I raised my eyes, I could see the pagoda among the firs. The pagoda was very tall, with a window on top. A man was experimenting with a tiny solar stove. The fire had caught his clothes. Behind the pagoda, the sky was all red. I began to run in a doddering manner. I remember there were some small woods ahead.