The compound where Uncle Lou lives has a pleasant name—“Village in the Big City.” Because the power was off that day, I climbed twenty-four flights of stairs to reach his small loft on the top floor. As I stood at the entrance, I was dimly aware that the old pain in my foot was coming back. Damn! Why did I have to seek out Uncle Lou right now? Because I could no longer bear the inner panic. This is what was happening: for several days, as soon as I woke up, I felt strange because I couldn’t touch my face. I stretched my hand out toward the place where my face was supposed to be, but I could touch only my hair. And my hair was coarser than usuaclass="underline" it even pricked my hand. After a while, when I looked in a small mirror, my face returned to normal. Then, in the interval before I looked in the mirror, what was my face like? I put the small mirror back under the pillow, so that as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I could look in the mirror. It was strange, for when I looked in the mirror, nothing was there but the bed’s headboard. I touched my face again, but I could still touch only my coarse hair. There were also some grain-shaped things on my scalp, like the coarse sand that adheres to sandpaper. I put away the mirror and waited a while to look again. This time, I saw my face, and there was certainly nothing abnormal about it.
Uncle Lou had been my next-door neighbor when we both lived in an old house. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, so — standing at his door now — I hesitated a little. It was strange: the door wasn’t closed, and yet, though I knocked several times, no one answered. After pushing the door and entering, I saw Uncle Lou sitting upright in front of the window and looking into the distance. Even after all these years, Uncle Lou didn’t seem to be getting a bit older; although he was more than seventy, his hair was still black. The room was neat and clean, the furniture simple — a bed, a chest of drawers, a dining table, and a few chairs. That was all. The kitchen was in a corner under the slanted ceiling. There was a window, so Uncle Lou could look at the cityscape as he cooked. A few shallots were on the stove, and next to the stove stood a small bamboo basket of eggs. The old man was leading a decent life. This was a relatively large loft, with several windows on the south, north, and east sides. Living here was like living in a glass greenhouse. With the sun high in the sky, it was uncomfortably hot in the room, yet Uncle Lou was relaxed and calm. I really admired him.
“Are you observing our city, Uncle Lou?”
“No, I’m waiting for someone.”
That was weird. He’d known I was coming. Perhaps, sitting at the window, he’d seen me enter this residential area. If I wasn’t the one he was waiting for, who was it? It was no secret that he’d been trying to stay away from others for a long time. For example, he was the one who had taken the initiative more than ten years earlier to hold me at arm’s length. And yet now, he was waiting for someone! It really wasn’t the right time for me to have come. Should I leave?
“Uncle Lou, I’m leaving. I’ll come back another time.”
“No, Hedgehog, why not wait with me? The sun is so nice.”
I was shocked, because Hedgehog was my deceased younger brother. I had stood here so long, and he hadn’t looked at me even once. Following Uncle Lou’s line of vision, I looked out and saw a water tower in the distance, as well as the post office, the tax office, various other large buildings, and the mirage-obscured suburban quarry. I blinked, and it suddenly changed into a vast expanse of whiteness. I looked hard again, but it was still the vast expanse of whiteness. And thus, the anxiety I had experienced this morning rose again from the bottom of my heart.
“Uncle Lou, I’m not Hedgehog. I’m Puppy. I’m Puppy — the one who used to go fishing in the creek with you. Sure, I’ve degenerated a lot over the years. ” I was starting to babble.
“Puppy? Aren’t Puppy and Hedgehog the same person?”
Uncle Lou still hadn’t looked at me even once. What was he looking at? I was distressed because I couldn’t see anything. Feeling as if my knee had been gnawed by a little animal, I sat down on a chair. At last, Uncle Lou faced me, and only then did I get a good look at his face. His brown face not only wasn’t getting any older, it looked even younger than in the past. The wrinkles that had previously lined his forehead had fled. But one thing bothered me: his gaze was flickering. In the past, his gaze had always been focused.
“He’s arrived,” Uncle Lou said, and with that, he appeared to be really satisfied.
“Who is he?”
Uncle Lou didn’t reply, but only listened attentively. I did, too, and heard footsteps that sounded odd: the sound neither came closer nor did it recede. That is to say, he was neither coming up the stairs nor going down. He went up and down between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors. I listened for a while, and then the sound stopped. I wanted to get up and look out the door, but the stabbing sensation in my knee hurt so much that I broke into a cold sweat. Uncle Lou asked:
“Have you remembered?”
I didn’t know what he meant. I couldn’t speak. I was sweating all over.
All of a sudden, Uncle Lou clambered up to the windowsill and sat there with one leg swinging back and forth in midair.
“If you clench your teeth hard, you’ll feel no pain. In the past, a lot of crocodiles bit my legs in the lake. When I clenched my teeth, they swam away. This room of mine is linked with the lake. Have you remembered?”
Sure enough, when I clenched my teeth, the pain eased. In this “lake,” this loft from which you looked out and saw nothing clearly, what did I recall? I recalled the playing cards I had lost as a child. It was a deck of expensive waxed playing cards that I cared about very much. Four people had been in the room that afternoon. Who had stolen the cards? This was a frightening question. And what’s more, a storm that afternoon caused a flood that ruined our floor boards. For a short time, the city was a vast expanse of whiteness. Was it rainwater or lake water?
“I think you’ve remembered a little something, haven’t you?”
Uncle Lou jumped down happily from the windowsill. He was as agile as a thirty-year-old. I replied that I had remembered one incident, but that I didn’t understand the point of his question. It was even hotter in the room, probably because the sun was higher. Uncle Lou walked quietly to the door and looked out. Then he walked back and said to me, “That person has gone down.” He also said that he was anxious every day, because he waited for him every day. He sometimes came and sometimes didn’t; he was absolutely inconsistent. “He’s my nephew from the countryside.”
I was looking at the large window on the south side. I saw the sun, which was like a circle made of metal flakes — a white circle without dazzling rays, a solitary circle hanging in the boundless sky. Then, could it be that the dry heat in this room wasn’t coming from the sun? I wiped the sweat from my face with my sleeve. I wanted to stand up, but my feet couldn’t manage it. I looked at Uncle Lou again. He said he passed his life feeling “anxious,” but he didn’t feel at all hot in this sauna. He wasn’t sweating; he looked fresh and energetic.
“Uncle Lou, why didn’t this relative of yours come inside?”
“He can’t. He’s too ugly.”
“What? I never heard of such a thing!”
Uncle Lou sat down on the windowsill again. This time, both legs were swinging in midair. This frightened me a little, but he was relaxed, as though there were lake water outside the window and he could swim across it.
I could still hear footsteps on the stairs, so I thought the ugly relative hadn’t left yet. Why did Uncle Lou wait every day for this relative who was so ugly that he couldn’t associate with others? And since he was too ugly to be with others, then why did Uncle Lou insist that I wait with him in the room? Alas, Uncle Lou: in the more than ten years since I’d seen him, he’d become an enigma of an old man.