She heard a loud sound on the shore. It was Reagan falling into a water-filled depression. Perhaps a snake had attacked him. The snakes had always been friendly with him before. How could they wildly assault him now? Ida felt a certain comfort.
Reagan really was wrestling with the snakes. The violent little bastards not only poured their venom into his body, they also got into his abdomen and thrashed around inside it, making him die and come back to life again and again. He told himself, “Die, just die.” But he couldn’t die. Then one of the deadly poisonous bastards went into the arch of his foot, and he finally passed out. The last image he saw was a red star exploding in the sky.
When he came around Reagan heard Ida crying. She squatted at a spot five meters from him, looking very much like an orangutan. Her long arms propped her up on the ground, and in the night’s luminescence even her eyes turned red. Thoughts assembled in Reagan’s extremely weakened mind: “Did this woman grow up among the orangutans?”
“I-da.” He spoke the two syllables with difficulty.
“How good,” Ida spoke from her heart. “A nightingale just flew by.”
“Come here.”
“No. I’m not used to it any more. I want to stay for a while on the farm. May I?”
“You may, Ida.”
Reagan felt his body disappearing in the vanishing of hope.
Ida slowly left. Reagan saw her crawling away. She crawled ahead bit by bit. Reagan wanted to cry, but there were no tears in his eyes.
In that endless time before daylight Reagan sat unmoving in the water-logged ditch. The venom already flowed throughout his body, yet the great pain slowly brought him cheer. What he found astonishing was the way the snakes had suddenly disappeared, without leaving a trace. His surroundings were therefore tranquil. All the small living things were hibernating and did not stir. From the lake came the incongruent sound of singing. It was a woman, a bereft woman, but of course it wasn’t Ida. She had already gone in the opposite direction. So who was it? He didn’t want to move. Lightning flashed in his mind, flash after flash illuminating its most hidden corners until they were as bright as snow. White horses, red foxes, and spotted leopards sliced the air like comets. Tolling thunder surged, pressed by the black wind. Perhaps the pain made his imagination so keen. Reagan saw his own life turn into unimaginably clear lines of ideas, like veins. The path of his thoughts stretched out from the dark surface of the lake, slipping unimpeded along the ground. At this moment he couldn’t help sighing like Ida, “How good!” What he saw wasn’t a nightingale but rather the spotted leopards, white horses, and red foxes in his mind. He didn’t want to separate himself from his great pain. This novel experience made him reluctant to pull away. Every time he swung his head, there were ever stronger flashes inside it, and from its hidden corners ever more incredible animals ran out. Ancient Chinese qilin, dragons, and so on. .
Ida crawled far away before finally straightening up. She walked slowly. She wanted to return to the apartment building where she’d lived before, a building set among the banyan trees.
But the building had collapsed. Her friends Lara and Liang sat in the rubble of its broken walls.
Ida walked to the half-wall of piled-up debris and saw their small single beds spread with clean white sheets. The two girls were both orphans, and Ida knew nothing could happen that would surprise them. Reagan’s farm had another name, “the orphanage,” because a large part of the staff were orphans.
“Ida’s come back,” Lara raised her head. “Look, we have to sleep out in the open now. Liang and I have already gotten used to it. Will you be able to? Mr. Reagan tore down the building. His own home is torn down, too.”
“How did he tear it down?”
“It’s unclear. We were sitting inside when a thunderclap blew us to the ground beneath the building. It toppled backward before our eyes. Everyone heard the farm owner howling in the thunder. We think he did this in order to seek a better life. We should be patient.”
It was only Lara who spoke. Liang stood stooped over the head of the bed playing with several white mice. She appeared to be training them to stand on their hind legs. Her mouth made a si si hissing, like a snake.
“They are survivors from the disaster. Liang wants them to work miracles,” Lara explained off to the side. “When it rains, we prop up a tiny canvas tent. .”
Ida felt that when she said “prop up a tiny canvas tent” her voice was filled with a certain bitterly sad memory. The mice started squeaking, chi chi, as if echoing Lara’s speech.
“Ida, sit down.” Liang was calling to her.
Ida sat on Liang’s bed and saw the mice make their way into Liang’s arms. It was completely dark. Fortunately Ida’s eyes could see everything clearly in the dark. But her two friends didn’t possess her special eyesight. Ida thought of how in this rolling dark world, they were so lonely.
“Lara, where did all the other workers go?”
“They went to the mountainside and built a log cabin. Mr. Reagan wanted us to stay here.”
“Stay here and do what?”
“Wait for you to come back. Look, there’s another cot over there, that’s your bed.”
Ida followed the direction she pointed in, and to her great surprise she really did see a small white speck.
“Since you left, Mr. Reagan comes every day to change your sheets. We mock him, but he doesn’t get angry.”
Ida walked over to her cot. The bed abutted the trunk of a large banyan tree. When she spread out the quilt and lay down with her head on the pillow, the crown of the banyan hung down, protecting her. She shut her eyes and saw a calm, beautiful beach, the sea, and seagulls. A gentle breeze blew. Her dead friend appeared with a solemn face in the shallow part of the water. She was still wearing that work uniform. She was undoing the buttons on her chest but none of them would open. Her long, thin, agile fingers moved rapidly up and down. Ida sighed: “Oh Reagan, Reagan, how could you have ordered such unlucky uniforms for us?” A large flock of seagulls flew up, then dropped again near her friend. She was still undoing buttons, and above her the sun blazed down. Liang was also there, playing with her mice. Now she laughed cheerfully, and Lara was at her side, screaming. Ida’s mood became calmer. For the first time in many days she entered a deep sleep.
She dreamed of rubber trees. She didn’t know how, but the rubber trees grew on the mountain slope, and the farm looked as it had when it was still undeveloped. There were lotus pods in the lake and wild ducks drifted on it. The sun, unexpectedly, was black. “If the rubber trees are transplanted, their survival rate will be very low,” she said to Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan was panting inside her. She struggled to open her eyes in her dream and saw the crows she hadn’t seen for so long filling the sky. They flapped their wings and drops of water fell on her face. It was those soggy wet crows. They crossed through time and flew to the past. In tiny increments, her desire became a remotely ancient memory, in the process of reviving. This kind of desire lost its previous violent nature and came to resemble a silkworm’s thread, both disarrayed and distinct. Now she reached the deepest place inside Reagan’s body.
“Who’s crying?” Ida asked.
“I am,” Reagan said in the dark.