Early in the morning, I set off in that direction. I had no sooner reached the path than I saw two people ahead of me: it was the lame girl and the tall youth. This time, they weren’t carrying an umbrella. Empty-handed, they turned around and stood facing me. This time, I saw that the “girl” was actually a middle-aged person wearing a wig, and the “youth” was a thin old geezer who was almost seventy years old. They beckoned to me, asking me to approach them.
Impatient, I spoke first. “I see that the two of you always go over there. I’ve watched you from the window lots of times. What’s it like there? I really want a complete concept of this building.”
They laughed in unison. I didn’t think their laughter was genuine, and I wondered all of a sudden if they were two ghosts, ghosts that had floated out from that deserted building. Frightened, I unconsciously recoiled, but I also kept staring at them.
A key turned in the lock. At the ka-ta sound, I fled for my life. After running a short distance, I stopped again and looked back: the two of them had disappeared. The door was wide open; inside was the corridor I was familiar with. They had probably gone inside. Thinking of the first impression I’d had of them and of the bright colorful umbrella, I felt my knees weaken. I didn’t dare go behind the granite wall again: because of this episode, I’d lost the little confidence I’d had early in the morning.
I went back home, where my husband was sitting in my usual place. His head was bent as he repaired the alarm clock, and the desk was covered with parts and tools.
“You’ve been gone a long time. It’s almost time for lunch,” he said without raising his head.
“True. And I couldn’t find a way to reach the back of the building.”
I thought, annoyed, that perhaps he was also faking it. Sitting here, he had seen everything that transpired this morning. I shouldn’t have retreated: I was really ashamed of myself. What was there to be afraid of? The two ghosts? They might have been nothing but two locksmiths or pharmacists when they were alive. After their deaths, they had disguised themselves. It was nothing more than that.
As I was reasoning like this, the alarm clock suddenly rang with an insistent and terrible sound. It went on and on, as if it would never stop, and it vibrated so much that it numbed my brain. When the sound finally stopped, my husband had disappeared, and nothing was on the desk. Yet, I had seen the desk covered with his tools. Was he sitting here and playing a trick on me? He said, “You’ve been gone a long time.” This was a hint.
I looked out the window. The door was closed, and a little light glimmered on the granite wall. At the upper left corner, close to the eaves, there seemed to be a ball of bright light. My heart throbbing, I wondered again what on earth it was like behind the building. I still had to find out; no one could stop me. Even if the two ghosts wanted to discourage me, they couldn’t guard the path every minute, could they? They must be careless some of the time. A huge time difference existed between the inside of the structure and the outside of it. If they weren’t ghosts and were just two ordinary people, how could they be accustomed to this time difference? My husband had confirmed the time difference: What if he was also lying?
Every day, I faced that gray granite wall, with my brother’s situation lingering in my mind. He had left by car, but that was only a superficial phenomenon. This superficial impression remained in my parents’ minds. The black iron door opened and then closed again, closed and then opened again: the lame woman and the tall youth walked out from there and opened the large sky-blue umbrella. Standing in the rain, they chattered incessantly. One time, I told my husband of the scene I had observed. My husband blinked and said quietly that he had just come in from outside and that it certainly was not raining. It was a bright spring day. He was contemplating hanging his laundry out to dry in the sun. Nonetheless, I still heard the sound of raindrops falling on the umbrella. One of the woman’s sleeves was drenched on one side. It was really mystifying.
Never at Peace
Mr. Yuanpu had really declined. When Jinglan entered that rundown home and the maid Yunma opened Yuanpu’s bedroom door, he was sitting on a chamber pot, taking a crap, and thinking. Maybe he was merely pretending to think and actually was dozing. Looking closely at him, Jinglan confirmed this from his drooling. Since he’d last seen him, his color had grown much grayer. He seemed a little embarrassed, for he immediately wiped his ass, pulled up his pants, and stood up. The smell of shit filled the room at once. When he rapped on the table, Yunma came in and carried the chamber pot out, closing the door behind her and leaving the smell shut up inside. After he and Jinglan looked at each other in speechless despair, Yuanpu staggered toward the big bed, straightened the rumpled bedding, and then lay down and carefully covered his legs. From the way the bed looked, Jinglan knew that he had spent another sleepless night.
“Have you had breakfast?” Jinglan asked with concern.
“Sure I have. Otherwise, how would I be able to defecate?” He was mocking himself. There were thick mats on Yuanpu’s bed. Jinglan estimated that there were five or six of them, each with cotton batting weighing about ten pounds. Yuanpu had three extremely large pillows. At the moment two pillows were behind his decrepit back, and the other leaned against the side of the bed next to the wall. Yuanpu was half-lying on this large pile of cotton batting, but his face was telegraphing agony, as though the soft cotton batting were rubbing and hurting his body. This old home was much higher than ordinary houses. Many years ago, when Jinglan was a child, there had once been a large window in the wall. A bamboo shade had hung from it. Now only a cursorily whitewashed windowpane remained. Yuanpu had taken this action because in recent years he had found windows increasingly repellant. There were no chairs in the room, so Jinglan sat on the night table at the head of the bed. When he had visited the year before, Yuanpu had told him to sit there. When Jinglan considered his friendship with Yuanpu, he couldn’t help feeling proud of himself. But in recent years, Yuanpu’s decrepitude made him a little uneasy. Yuanpu’s sitting on the chamber pot was especially disgusting. Yuanpu had always been a sanitary person. You could even say he was fastidious. It hadn’t occurred to Jinglan that he could change so much. He certainly wasn’t so ill that he had to stay in bed. He was perfectly capable of getting up and going to the bathroom next door, but for the last six months, he had always asked Yunma to bring a chamber pot to his room. The stench was so bad that even Yunma held her nose when she entered and left the room. Jinglan thought, When all is said and done, there comes a day when people go downhill; even a sagacious thinker like his mentor would not be able to avoid declining day after day. Who could defy the laws of nature? In the past, Yuanpu had suffered only from insomnia, but ten years ago, this hadn’t troubled him at all. Time after time, he and Jinglan had argued all night long in this room, and in the daytime, he was in his usual good spirits. When Jinglan tried to imagine what Yuanpu would look like in two or three years, he smiled sadly.
“Your color is really bad. You ought to exercise more in the courtyard. Exercise would give you a better appetite.” Jinglan couldn’t help saying this, but he soon wished he hadn’t. Yuanpu leaned back on his pillow and listened attentively, but he wasn’t listening to Jinglan: he was listening to the noise outside. When he pulled himself together, Jinglan thought that all traces of senility had vanished from his face. His eyes glittered with bright light. He looked like a young man — absolutely different from the way he had looked a moment ago.