Qi, when you first arrived, did you see the snow leopards come down the mountain? Someone said more than one hundred of them are walking around in the town.”
Qiming didn’t dare make eye contact with a woman whose eyes were so abnormally bright. He thought to himself, How could eyes like this be produced in a smoky city? He was torn: he wanted to leave, but he also wanted to listen to this woman.
“No. But it’s said there are a lot of them. For a while, everyone was talking of the snow leopards coming down the mountain.”
“So it’s just a legend,” Nancy asserted.
“It’s a legend,” he agreed.
When Nancy said “legend,” she looked absolutely absorbed. All at once, Qiming felt her expression was familiar. Where had he seen it? Perplexed, he glanced at her. But she stood up and removed the chain of weeds from her head. She said, “Just now, I saw how happy you looked as you were dreaming, and so I assumed you had seen the snow leopards coming down the mountain. You see, I like to make inferences, don’t I?”
After she’d been gone for quite a while, Qiming finally remembered where he had seen the absorbed expression on her face. It was in a mirror—no wonder it seemed so familiar. He was stunned.
Qiming didn’t contact the young couple for a long time, but he did take note of their activities. This was instinctive; he had no idea why he did it. He noticed they were always wandering around: it was said that the director hadn’t given them any work. Qiming snickered to himself: what work could they be assigned to do? They would just go on waiting. He heard that they were both engineers. But this town had already been built, so construction design engineers were no longer needed. This Design Institute was merely an empty name. He had witnessed Pebble Town’s construction, but José and Nancy had arrived only long after it had been finished. They were a new generation: how could she have the same expression as his? This Nancy woman must be unusual; no one should take her lightly.
When he first arrived at the Design Institute, the director had been like a mother to him. She often came over to see how he was doing, often sat in the dark in his little cabin and talked with him about the snow mountain. Sometimes, she came to his place as soon as she arrived for work and chatted with him right up until lunchtime. They didn’t do any work. She consoled him, “It doesn’t matter. I’m the institute director.” Qiming was greatly astonished by her behavior, and also happy. He considered her his mentor. But later on, she didn’t come to see him, nor was she concerned about him. She no longer seemed aware of his existence. So years later, Qiming still lived in temporary housing, while his workmates had moved to more comfortable apartments long before. Had he been forgotten? In the beginning, Qiming felt aggrieved, but the longer he lived in the small cabin, the more he realized the benefits of living here. Every night, he felt he was sleeping in the embrace of mother earth. And so he rested well. When he arose the next morning, he was in high spirits. Second, this kind of house was like a public place. He didn’t even bother to lock the door; anyone could walk in uninvited. Nothing seemed to be a secret, yet everything was mysterious at the same time. Take the blocked-up wall out front, for example: it seemed to be made of brick, but after noon, it became adobe. And the next morning, it was restored to brick. After being here only two days, he spotted this mystery and told the director about it. She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Young man, you have very good prospects.” His rooftop was made of cement tiles. Sometimes the sunlight streaming through the countless broken holes brightened the room, and sometimes the holes disappeared and the room darkened. Of course it was dark most of the time, especially when he had guests. Nancy had come over once. She had sharp eyes. She glanced back and forth in the dark and could see everything. When she moved close to talk, Qiming felt a long dormant urge awaken in him. In that moment, even the Uighur girl’s image faded. He marveled at the heat emanating from Nancy’s body! Qiming thought that the moment she entered, she had fused into one with this room. It was miraculous. What had this young couple’s lives been like in the faraway Smoke City? Was the ocean there?
The day that Nancy’s daughter was born, Qiming was building a grape arbor in front of the guesthouse. He murmured to himself, “She’s put down roots here.” Then he saw José rush to the hospital, the institute director beside him. Soon, a cold wind blew up. Qiming put away his tools and went inside, where he brewed himself a cup of tea and sat down to think about this incident. Time had passed so quickly. The day he had been fishing in the river and the young couple lost their way seemed like yesterday. Qiming called their daughter (he firmly believed it was a girl) “Daughter of the Frontier.” He thought, after this little girl—who had inherited her mother’s heat—after she grew up, he would tell her about the ocean. It was yesterday that he’d gotten `word that his father had died. The person who came to tell him was a sallow-faced man with whom he had played when they were children. He had stood awkwardly in his room and hadn’t spoken about his father, but about his own arthritis. It was as if he had traveled thousands of miles just to tell Qiming this. He said he wouldn’t go back, because their fishing village no longer existed. He wanted to stay at the Design Institute.
“They have to take me in! Hunh,” he roared suddenly with great confidence. His eyes were fierce.
Qiming thought this guy was ridiculous. Was he a little crazy? He didn’t quite believe the news he had brought; maybe he was talking nonsense.
“Tell me more about my father’s death,” he pressed him.
“Oh. He had an odd disease. He fell asleep and didn’t wake up. But before he fell asleep, he gave me this.”
He took an old watch out of his pocket and gave it to Qiming. Father always had this on him. Qiming’s hand trembled as he took the watch. He told the other man not to be upset; some place would take him in. Everyone could find shelter in this Pebble Town, especially people like him with no home to return to.
“It’s true that I no longer have a home. There was a tsunami. Don’t you read the newspapers?”
Actually, Qiming hadn’t read a newspaper for years. Pebble Town had a superiority complex, and everyone who lived here was soaked in this atmosphere. Outside events never interested them. He rarely even thought about his own family.
“I hopped a passing freight train to get here. They threw me off, but I hopped on again. This happened several times.”
“How did you know which train was coming to Pebble Town?”
“Do you mean those coal trains? I could tell just by looking at them!”
Hands behind his back, this man, named Haizai, stood in the middle of the room, staring at the opposite wall. Qiming thought apprehensively, Will he discover the secret in this room’s wall? But Haizai laughed again and dropped his gaze. He had spent several dizzying days on the coal train to get here. Why wasn’t he at all tired? And he wasn’t dirty, either. Qiming asked Haizai if he wanted to rest on his bed. Haizai kept refusing, insisting he wasn’t tired. He was focused on finding a job right away. He’d better deal with this before dark, and then he could move into an apartment of his own. His luggage was stored at the train station. He need only move it over here. Qiming had a sudden thought and said, “Why not wash dishes in the canteen?” Several others working in the canteen had done just that—hanging on there at first without being formally hired. Anyhow, most of the apartments were vacant. One could simply move in. At the end of the month, he would automatically get his monthly wages. It was said that the director gave no attention to minutiae: she simply paid everyone who was there. Haizai listened, his expression unchanging. At last, he said, “That’s what I thought, too.” Qiming was surprised. Haizai continued, “I got here yesterday, and walked around, getting the lay of the land.” Qiming was even more surprised. This person, his childhood playmate: How come he talked just the way the Pebble Town residents did? He had completely lost the simplicity of Fish villagers. Had he just begun to change or had he changed long ago? Before Qiming had worked this out in his mind, Haizai waved goodbye and departed. He took buoyant and decisive steps. This encounter had occurred only yesterday.
Qiming remembered Haizai’s father was an illiterate guy, a real fisherman who was at one with the ocean