“It’s not necessary to run. It could be an illusion. The forest is aswarm with rabbits. You might stumble over them.” My son gave a snort of contempt. He was standing not far away, staring at me with two bloodred eyes.
I felt extremely hot; the pagoda was still burning, and the flames singed my eyebrows. It was useless to flee, because the horizon was so far away, and in my field of vision, there were only boiling hot slabs. There really were some rabbits, yet they were all those unrealistic red rabbits that run without the sound of footsteps. Now I could see clearly that the sunbeams were skins of tiny red snakes. They wriggled across my hips every now and then. Each snake had a ball of dazzling fire on its head. They looked like stars falling all over the place. Yet my son was indifferent to the heat. People told me that every day he climbed up the pagoda to test his solar stove, but I knew that guy on top was not him. At home he always complained that my eyes were too complicated and colorful and “looked evil.” What color would they reflect in the sunlight? I thought about this time and again.
In my pocket there was a small mirror. I looked at it and saw a big letter E, a black E. I turned it round and round, and the letter was still E. How could the mirror show an E? Yet I remember it so well. I tried it more than thirty times. In the sun, there was always that E. But inside the house was another matter. The room was cold. I put the mirror on the table, then I could see my dull, swollen face. Every time the sunlight passed my hip, I would miss something. It could have been a wallet, black in color, it could have been an old pin. In such circumstances, I would grab the person I met on the way and report to him. My talk was very fluent. That man would record every word I said with a pen and notebook. He was all seriousness. Frequently, he would shade the sun from his face with a hand and ask me that formal documentary question: “What kinds of complications can viral flu cause?” His question stimulated my boldness further. When I got more excited and verbal, I would clutch at his chest ferociously for fear he would leave before I finished. The man did not escape; instead he became vaguer and vaguer, and his body became lighter. I knew something had gone wrong, yet I rattled on and on like a machine gun.
When I finally finished and raised my head, I felt my eyeballs were filled with different colors. My facial expression must have been like a devil’s. I felt both annoyed and lost. Those people, why should they always carry a pen and notebook? This was something profound. They all had soft, smooth faces, and they could easily shade the sunlight with a thin, narrow palm. In emotional moments, they would instantly withdraw into seclusion, obviously to avoid trouble. At those moments, they smiled modestly and then disappeared. It is very subtle to avoid trouble: What kind of trouble were they trying to get rid of? How could they consciously realize such trouble was approaching? No matter how hard I tried to please them, they forever considered me as alien.
When I felt restless at home, overanxious from searching for lost objects, my daughter set obstacles to prevent me from approaching her. This disheartened me so much. Sometimes she would sit cross-legged and say in a lazy voice: “One of my friends covered himself with a bag that he made, like a silkworm cocoon. He stayed there till the last day. Even the fallen skin was well protected, and he didn’t need to worry about the sun. There was nothing missing. It was just a joke.”
My face blushed on hearing this. Consequently, I tried to avoid her. I was very careful. At the beginning, I sneaked out through the window, then I simply stayed out, wandering along the streets. The night was long and empty. I needed to find somebody I could talk to strategically about the Chinese parasol tree. The tree was very tall and straight. Against the purple sky, the leaves rattled in a loud voice as if they were emphasizing something. Every time I talked about a tree that could shout, my daughter would comment that it was a hornet’s nest. She complained that I had something wrong with my eyes. The tree died the day she was born. What can I do to prove it?
Gathering my spirit, I decided to go and see the old house. I waited till midnight. When I waded across the drying-up stream, my legs were covered with leeches. The place was once a stone pit, but it had been abandoned. Piles of big stones stood there like dreams. That night there was no moon, and everything was quiet. I was frightened by my own footsteps. I heard a clang. It was a cigarette lighter. A short man with only one leg was smoking in the empty yard, but he disappeared before I could see his face. I gave a push, and a big pile of stones fell with a noise resembling a landslide.
Last night, I saw the camel again. At the time, it was very tall, shining like gold. I sat on it and rode along the wide avenue of the city. It was elegant and graceful. But as soon as we arrived home, it lay down and simply refused to get up again.
“Tell it that the ground is very dirty. It will stain its belly,” my son said seriously. Hearing this, the camel stood up shakily. It stood motionless the whole night through outside our window. The whole time both my son and I were fidgety, discussing nervously what to feed it, how to manage its excrement, and so on. At dawn, the camel started moving. It chewed on the window frame then peeped inside the house. Suddenly it turned around and walked away without any hesitation. We lost it despite our pursuit.
“Where did you find it?” my son asked, grinning in a challenging way.
“It’s been there all the time.” I could not help appearing at a loss. I dug at the cracks on the wall with my fingers.
Plaster fell on my son’s leather shoes. He stamped his feet with disgust and gave a prolonged “Ohhh” sound. He said, “In that case, it won’t get lost. Take it easy, it’s only gone for a walk. Did it feel very bored with you?”
In those days, I strolled along the streets every day harboring a secret hope. I gazed around, observing every guy with a northern accent.
My son tried to persuade me that the camel would never get lost, and I should stop wandering about. “How can a thing that has been there all the time get lost?” Besides, even if we found it, we couldn’t solve the problem of its food.
But my third daughter never looked at us, taking it for granted that we were making up stories. She stroked her fingers through the air and said: “Camel? Humph! People will laugh their heads off! Just ask others. Where in the city can one find such things? I saw clearly that the thing you tied outside the window was a mangy dog. It ran away when I poured dirty water out. You are lauding the story to the skies: Camel! Stop fooling others, you will pay for the lie!”
But it really was a camel! Its skin shone like gold. It was so tall that I didn’t know how I had climbed up. Anyway, I was on its back the moment I found it. My third daughter was too vulgar to believe in miracles. When I was on top of that creature, I even dangled one leg to show my fearlessness. I believed many people were watching. The bigger the audience, the more high-spirited I became. At dusk, little black birds with deep thoughts flew over my head. In the grayish blue evening light, the footsteps of the camel were as soft and light as if it were stepping on mushrooms.