his body.
Gu heard them free the Dutch piglet that Lei had tied to the bed. As soon as the piglet was freed, it scurried out of the ward. The people garbed in large white gowns looked at each other in dismay. Someone said softly, “This never would have occurred to me.” But Gu thought, Perhaps this had occurred to them some time ago. Nothing could easily defeat someone like Lei. Even the person who jumped from the window the night before had ordinarily done as Lei said.
Ju was snoring comfortably in the next bed. Gu thought, He’s so at peace with himself that even the clamor in the building can’t disturb him. Gu really wanted to learn how far Ju’s disease had progressed. He intended to ask him as soon as he woke up. Gu had seen Ju jump into the icy river, but he couldn’t ask him how he had been revived after his bare heart had been submerged in the icy water. He merely wanted to ask about his present condition. His face had always been as white as limestone, and it still was. From looking at him, it was impossible to guess how bad his condition was. He felt that although his appearance had changed, he was still as gentle as before. Perhaps it was because he could see his own heart that he had been so sure about what he was doing—for instance, jumping into the icy water.
“Ju, let’s go to see the red leaves next year, okay?” Gu said to the air.
A meow came in from the door: it was Lei talking with someone. Of course Lei was a “catman.” It seemed three people were outside: Why didn’t they come in? The big white gowns from the fifth floor were also heading upstairs, but neither Lei nor the others paid any attention to the doctors. Gu heard them say that doctors were “garbage.”
After the doctors came upstairs, they didn’t encounter Lei and the others. Gu heard them plotting something—something that Gu was very familiar with, something that he had once participated in but had completely forgotten. What was it? Gu felt unable to express it in words. When this group entered the opposite ward, they closed the door, nipping the Dutch piglet’s leg in the process. The piglet howled. Someone turned around, freed the curious little pig, and let it in.
Gu groped under his pillow for a flashlight; probably a former patient had left it there. Feeling excited, he immediately walked to Ju’s bed with the flashlight. Seeing that he was still sound asleep, he lifted the quilt and shone the flashlight on his chest. Ju’s torso was bare, and so Gu immediately saw his pulsating heart. For some reason, his heart was the color of milk. It beat much slower than most people’s. Peering through the hole, he saw that the beating heart was shifting its position. This baffled him.
“This is just the way my heart is, Mr. Gu.” Ju opened his eyes and spoke apologetically.
“Ju, can you hear the secret meeting in the ward across the way? What are they discussing?”
Ju took hold of the flashlight and shone it toward the door. Gu also turned his gaze in that direction. A doctor was standing there, but he wasn’t one of the doctors who made rounds. Gu had never seen him. The doctor blocked the flashlight’s rays with his left hand and said: “It’s good to be here. We’re prepared for an emergency at any moment.”
Then he left, closing the door behind him. Ju laughed softly and commented that this hospital was “quite interesting.” He put on his black jacket and his opera mask. Gu asked him where he had found the mask, and he said that actually he hadn’t lost it: he’d forgotten that it was at his waist all the time. After he dressed, he told Gu that he wanted to go across the hall “to take part in the meeting.” Gu—heart thumping—went with him. He had a hunch that the truth would come out. His hands began trembling.
When Ju appeared in the room wearing the opera mask, everyone’s head swiveled in his direction. The blinds were all open, so it was quite light, and Gu noticed that neither Lei nor the doctors were there. They were all his closest friends and relatives, but he couldn’t recall any of their names.
Someone pushed a wheelchair out, and Gu thought it was for him. He never imagined that Ju would beat him to it. Sitting in the wheelchair, Ju looked happily inebriated. Gu begrudged him the wheelchair, because he usually used it. Two big fellows were pushing Ju, and Gu thought they intended to leave the room, so he quickly made way for them. But they didn’t go out; they just pushed the wheelchair around in the empty ward. Ju grabbed at something in the air. He looked absorbed, and the people around him were cheering him on. Just then, Gu glanced out the window: what he saw was the splendid spectacle of drifting red leaves. Astonished, he sat down on the floor. How could there be red leaves in the winter? In the sunlight, the leaves were like flames.
Now—with Gu at the end of the line—everyone was following the wheelchair as it made the rounds in the room. The footsteps sounded like marching. As Gu listened attentively, he even felt that everyone’s footsteps were lost in thought. Walking and walking, Gu no longer looked out the window, because a shadow was filling this circle. Everyone was sinking into this dense, dark shadow. At last, Ju plucked something from the air. He took off his mask and smelled the thing.
“Mr. Gu! Mr. Gu! This is it!” He seemed to be weeping.
“What is it, son?” Gu asked.
“It’s the thing I jumped into the river for!”
All of a sudden, the people’s footsteps were no longer in sync. In the dense, dark shadow, Gu couldn’t get a good look at these faces, nor could he see the scenery outside the window. But he could still hear Ju calling him and he could still hear the wheelchair rolling past. The two big fellows had vanished, and the wheelchair was being steered automatically. A dark gust of wind in the room took hold of him and detached him from the circle. In the corridor, Gu still heard Ju shouting: “Mr. Gu! This is it!!”
When Gu went downstairs, the entire building rang with all sorts of meows. They were meowing wildly everywhere—in the wards, the offices, and the bathrooms. Gu knew they weren’t cats but were “catmen” hiding in this building. Perhaps they’d been provoked by Ju’s arrival. He himself had stayed here such a long time, and yet they’d never gone wild like this before. Ju must be the key character. If he hadn’t come, the “catmen” might have merely been a little restless. And the red leaves wouldn’t have appeared outside the window in winter. He quickly went down to the fifth floor, where the odor of Lysol made him drowsy. He thought, The person who jumped from the ward window last night: perhaps the words he had shouted were identical to the words Ju had just shouted—“Mr. Gu! Mr. Gu, this is it . . .”
Night
Visitor
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“Everyone has to die. After death, there’s nothing.” My late father once said to me, “After you die, who knows what you had planned while you were alive?” Having said this much, he lifted his head arrogantly. A nearly despicable expression floated across his face.
After hearing this, I remember glaring at him a few times and sneering inwardly twice. As for him, he strolled around the room. He was wearing a pair of old-fashioned shoes, and his nylon socks gave off a sour, sweaty smell. That smell permeated the room all summer, for he never opened windows.
Father’s bedroom was at the end of the house; when he went out, he had to go through all of our rooms, but we didn’t need to go through his room. I went to see him about once a month. He generally closed his door and kept busy as a mouse with his large pile of old books. When I knocked, he was flustered when he came to the door. As he covered what he was working on, he led me around a large stack of disorganized books and settled me into an old chair beneath the window. The cushion, made of yellowing reed catkins, was lumpy and uncomfortable. When he and I talked, he blocked my line of vision with his broad body. Perhaps he was afraid that I’d see what he was working on.
At the time, I regarded Father as an old man with nothing to do, a person who lingered on in a worsening condition in a dark room. Family members and neighbors thought the same thing. Because he’d been retired for years, you could say that he had retired from life a long time ago. Generally, no one thought much about him. Sure, he had a few foibles. You couldn’t say he was sick just because he liked staying in his room and not going out. Old people always take things to extremes.
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