Vincent was disheartened because in this boring little place his thoughts were already frozen. During the day everyone went to sea to catch fish. Only a few children and the elderly were left in the village, along with four or five of the women. And at night people went to bed early. Once the moon came out there was no stirring in the village; it was profoundly dark. Yet the old man had adapted to this simple, almost primitive, life. He went to the beach every day and stayed there. Vincent saw him sometimes talking to the seagulls, sometimes exclaiming to the sea, but the better part of the time he sat silently dozing in his wicker chair. Vincent had no way to leave. This place received no messages from the outer world. A long-distance bus came once a month. He could only calm his heart and while away the days. Sometimes he realized that he didn’t remember things and he couldn’t think clearly. It was more or less as if he had been born and raised in the fishing village, a loafer eating the food of idleness. He was still able to indistinctly remember his own past busy life, and remember that Lisa was his wife, but the details of his life were like a kite with a cut string. No matter what he did, he couldn’t remember. One boring day he asked the old man, since he’d been in the village so long, why none of their countrymen had come here. The old man answered him:
“That is because you are here.”
After Vincent returned to his room at the hotel he thought again and again of the old man’s statement, and suddenly he understood it. So in his remaining days Vincent no longer sauntered all over, but instead brought a wicker chair to sit by the sea like the old man. Once the sun came out the two men went to the seaside and sat there until the people who’d gone to sea to fish returned. Halfway through the day a worker from the hotel brought them food.
As they sat idly, the old man seldom spoke. Vincent came to know from a few scanty words each day that the old man was from the northern part of Country A. He’d worked for several decades in a timber mill, and was now retired. He had a wife, children, and grandchildren, a large family. He said he’d received an invitation to come to this fishing village. One of his uncles, his mother’s brother, wrote a letter from here inviting him for a brief visit. Although the whole family was opposed, he came. The day before he arrived his uncle fell ill and died. He was only in time for the funeral. He still remembered his agitated emotions on arriving. He had now lived in the fishing village for two years. Because he had no way to communicate with the outside world, his family might already have forgotten him. He felt that in his family’s eyes this would be a good thing. Sometimes Vincent wanted to talk with the old man about life in Country A, but every time, before he opened his mouth, his mind went blank, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. And the old man immediately saw this, always telling him, “There’s nothing to say, let’s not talk about it.”
When heavy winds blew they had to stay inside the hotel. But the old man had something in his heart he couldn’t let go. He made one trip after another, running outside to look at the sea.
“A stranger may come to find me, a local man. I worry about missing him.” When he said this to Vincent, Vincent thought of him on the shore, waiting.
One night at midnight the old man knocked anxiously on the door of his room. Vincent opened the door and saw him standing outside in his pajamas.
“Can you be my witness?”
“What’s the matter?” Vincent already vaguely sensed what it was.
“I need a witness. I’m afraid people will forget me in the same way I fear death.”
“Let me think a bit.”
“So you can’t make up your mind. I need to wait for you to make up your mind.”
He looked a little disappointed. Vincent didn’t know how to console him.
After daybreak, when they met once again at the seaside to sit together, the old man told Vincent that the visit in the night had only been a moment’s impulse. Now his mood was tempered. He shouldn’t be so hasty, he should “let the flow of water make its own channel.” That day a boat arrived. When the boat came, the old man glanced at it with drowsy eyes, then lowered his head, mumbling about something. Vincent guessed what the old man was saying. He felt his heart brought closer and closer to the old man’s.
The atmosphere in the fishing village seemed primed for something to happen very soon. Day followed day, and no one took notice of the two men. Most of the villagers just stood at a distance observing, none of them ever displaying excessive interest. And news from the outer world never reached here. The boats always sped past in a hurry, so that they could not see who was on the deck. When the sea breeze blew through the old man’s white beard, Vincent noticed that his face became more and more expressionless, like a mask. Vincent couldn’t help thinking, Was the coming event happening inside the old man?
He arrived. He came at noon, rowing a small wooden boat over from the coral island. The man was probably a little over forty. He had a face a little like a spider. He was holding a leather bag in his hands. He used the language of Vincent’s country to explain that his leather bag was filled with “precious blood.” The old man stood up from the wicker chair. Vincent noticed his relief, as if he were putting down a heavy load. He realized that the old man wanted to free himself.
They were to set off on a journey. The old man eyed Vincent with a questioning gaze. Vincent opened his mouth and said, “Yes, I saw. I remember.”
In the bright sunlight the fishing village began to seethe with excitement because news arrived that someone had died in an accident.
After the old man was gone Vincent stayed in the fishing village by himself. Every day he went to the beach. Facing the sea, the sky, the blowing wind, he also unconsciously pondered this matter of “witness.” Who could be his witness? Could the ignorant villagers count as his witnesses? Could the wife whose husband had died count as his witness? Could the young boy over there picking up crabs by the sea count as his witness? That there was no true witness proved his time still hadn’t come. Vincent began to long anxiously for the long-distance bus.
The bus arrived on a Wednesday. The whole fishing village, men and woman, old and young, stood by the road to watch him leave. The women held their children and looked into the bus with slightly open mouths. What were they searching for? The driver nodded coldly, signaling for Vincent to board the bus. Then, without turning his head:
“Are you ready?”
Vincent’s heart was in a confused state. He waved his hand to the driver in despair and shouted:
“Go! Go!”
Once the bus started moving, the days and nights in the fishing village came back to life, playing like a movie in his mind. The month hadn’t passed as drearily as he thought. He remembered going out roaming with the old man late at night. They saw will-o’-the-wisps at the grave of a villager who’d met with an accident. There were explorations of the coral island, where he and the old man discovered people sleeping inside a deep cave. They lit pine torches and sat talking with these people for a long, long time. These dreamers knew the answers to nearly all questions; they understood the language of every nation; and their thinking was extraordinarily dynamic. The two of them also visited a fisherman’s home — the family had caught an unmentionable disease. Although each of their lifespans was only forty-one years, they hadn’t turned into gamblers or drug addicts. Their method of coping with the menace of death was to abolish sleep. And so Vincent saw that the family had no beds. The brothers and sisters went about their own work late at night, while their parents sat at the table next to a tiny soybean oil lamp and kept accounts. Vincent and the old man also attended a celebration in the village. Everyone went to the beach and began to dance in the moonlight, to intense drumbeats, until no one could dance any more, until they all fainted on the ground. . There were many other events, Vincent remembered them all. But when he was at the fishing village he’d forgotten all about these things. Why? Probably because they took place in the middle of the night. After passing through sleep and reaching the next day, he forgot them entirely. Now recalling these events Vincent suddenly understood. The old man had entered another kind of existence which he’d desired to attain — an existence he’d desired for several decades. Many years earlier, when he felled trees in the tall mountains and ancient forests, when he heard the long sighing sounds the trees made as they fell before him, he’d planned for that existence countless times. The mysterious uncle had helped him realize his aspiration. But the uncle? Was there such a person? Why had the old man never mentioned him later on? They had gone together to see the village cemetery, and there were no graves of any outsiders. Yet according to his previous narration, the old man’s uncle was buried there. It seemed quite possible that his uncle was inside the deep cave on the coral island. Along the route many travelers boarded the long-distance bus. These people resembled one another. Their expressions were both weary and active. Vincent felt that they all must have come from the same place. In his mind he called that place the village of dreams. It was his firm but ungrounded belief that the village of dreams was the destination of his own journey. Perhaps the old man by the sea had promised him this?