Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (3 page)

I reached the seventh floor. When I looked down, I could see over the dense treetops nearby. I saw a gravestone among the trees. First one, then two, then three. When I looked carefully, I saw they were all over, like stars in the sky or men on a chessboard, and I realized it was a cemetery. So
that's
what was going on. All along, the man had been gazing at the cemetery. That's what was going on. That's why the woman was dressed so plainly and neatly. Maybe it was the anniversary of someone's death, and they had come together to visit the grave.

Death has always been the most mysterious of affairs. A living, breathing person is gone. A living soul, someone who could think, could speak, could laugh, could love… suddenly is gone. You and he were once so intimate. You could see him whenever you wanted.

You could say to him whatever you wanted to say. But he died, and you'll never see him again. If there's something you forgot to tell him, it's too late now. But even after many years, when the woman came to the dead man's grave, she still couldn't accept this fact. She placed a handful of earth on the grave, sprinkled a little wine on it, and set down a bouquet of wildflowers. But the deceased? He was dead, gone, couldn't be found, couldn't be found anywhere, would never be found. The woman sat by the grave and felt chills run through her body and her heart, too.

The man pleaded with her. "This is the natural way of things. You've got to understand that this is the inevitable resting place for us all."

Looking at the irrefutable grave, she still could not believe death was so cruel.

"Don't be this way, OK? Don't be like this." He pleaded with her in a gentle, humble tone, as if it were all his fault.

"To live, you've got to learn to forget," the man said.

Looking at the grave, the woman also saw the dead man's likeness, smiling and very real. She still could not imagine what dying was.

The man said, "You have to keep thinking that he's gone, that he's been released. You have to keep thinking that we are alive.

"You and me," the man said, "we're together. I'm here with you."

After a long time, the woman left the graveside and walked blindly through the woods. Her long skirt drifted in the air like a ghost. She walked out of the woods. There was a white apartment building surrounded by a long, green brick wall. She walked through the small gate. It was a good place, with a big, lonely tree that calmed one down a little and gave one something to lean on. "Let me be alone for a while, just be by myself, OK?" she said. She didn't have to look back to know the man was right behind her. Obediently, he turned and walked back through the gate. She sat down against the tree. It was a little better here, by the vacant building. Unfamiliar places help one forget the past. The gently sliding shadow of the tree and the softly falling leaves made just the place for a grieving heart. Go with the flow, just go with the flow, she thought. Really, he was right-death didn't have to be so scary. "Go with the flow," she said quietly. Maybe she thought the man had come back inside the courtyard, or maybe she was speaking to whomever it was who had died. She didn't see clearly who I was, didn't understand at all what I was asking. The man kept watch outside the gate. The woman's persistent heartache often left him at a loss. He didn't know if he respected the dead man or was jealous of him; maybe he even hated him a little. At such times, he couldn't say if he himself was decent or base and mean. He had come here with her, he had agreed to come every year. He knew he would live up to his word, but he also knew, and only he knew, that he truly wished that she would forget that man, forget him forever. He looked toward the woods and the grave they surrounded. He prayed to heaven either to bless and protect him or forgive him: let that man die for good, and let the two of them never come here again, never return to this place.

The ninth floor. It was evening, and the autumn breeze had stiffened. If there was a strong wind that night, by the next day most of the leaves on the trees would be down. By now, the rays of the setting sun seemed to be coming in on the horizontal. I could see that the man outside the wall was shading his eyes with his hand and staring at the woods, in the same direction in which he had been looking so expectantly before-toward the setting sun. In that direction, through the trees, I could see two roads that intersected. Where struck by sunlight, the roads' pale surface was dazzling. One of the roads ran east-west, the other north-south. At the far end of the east-west road-the west end-I could see a stop sign for a suburban bus. A bus was pulling in just then, and a few people got off. The man was looking in that direction. He remained absolutely still as he watched the people. He seemed to be waiting for someone. Then the bus pulled away, and the people dispersed. They had probably come to visit graves. Some carried fresh flowers. The man's hand came down slowly, fished out a cigarette, and placed it between his lips. As he lit the cigarette, he began to pace back and forth. But now he seemed to notice something else. He raised his hand to shade his eyes and looked off in the same direction again: a woman was walking this way. She had probably taken the wrong road; she turned around and headed back this way. Her snow-white windbreaker was striking as it appeared and disappeared among the trees. The man's head turned slowly as he followed the woman with his eyes. But she stopped, looked around for a minute, then turned, and headed north. The white windbreaker disappeared among the trees to the north. At this, the man finally took a drag from his cigarette. He was definitely waiting for someone. Who? A woman? So that's what was going on. He was waiting for another woman. They had agreed to meet below the empty building east of the woods.

"The building is white and has a green brick wall around it. After you get off the bus, go east. Pass through a grove of trees and a cemetery."

"A cemetery?"

"Yes, I'll wait for you there."

Maybe it was at the entrance to an alley. Maybe it was while they were both rushing to work. Maybe the streets were already full with a crashing flood of cars and people. Or maybe there was only a handful of pedestrians on the sidewalk, and the city was still a pale blue.

"What did you say, there's a cemetery there?"

"Don't worry about it, don't worry. It isn't scary in the least."

Maybe it was a Saturday or a Sunday evening, at a bus stop near her dormitory, the last time they said good-bye. The sky was already very dark, and it was about to rain. The wind came in swift, violent gusts; dampness spread out through the black night. Or maybe it was after the rain, and everything was quiet, not a single person in sight. The streetlamps shone on the wet street, which was like a river reflecting festival lights.

"Honest, it's not scary. It's a pretty cemetery."

"Go east? Is it far?"

"No, not far. You'll be able to see it as soon as you get off the bus. It's a very tall building."

Maybe it was close to midnight, in a gloomy corner of a diner. The occasional sound of lonely whistling from someone walking came from the street. The little diner was about to close.

"The building is twenty-one stories. It's white."

"A green brick wall?"

"Right, I'll wait for you there."

But what about the woman inside the wall? Who was she? What was she doing here? Maybe she and the man outside the wall had absolutely no connection to each other. But did they really have no connection? She was sitting beneath the big tree, not making a sound. Behind it, actually. If you looked carefully, you would notice that she, the big tree, and the small gate all happened to line up perfectly. If you looked in through the crack between the doors of the gate, you wouldn't be able to see her. Why should this be? The man couldn't see her, but she could hear everything outside the wall. And why didn't the man go to the bus stop to wait for his friend? Why did he hide over here and waste all that energy peering into the distance? "Go with the flow" was what the woman said. If her husband had fallen in love with another woman and if she had found out, what could she do? Suffer, yes, she would suffer. She would cry, argue, throw a fit, but in the end what good would that do?

"Nothing like it, nothing at all," the man said. "There just isn't anything like that going on."

But after he said this, she knew that if he continued to see the woman, there would be little she could do. "No! No!" She would cry and shout. "No, this won't do! It won't do…"

"How can you be so vulgar?" the man said. "How can you be so petty?"

The man said, "I never thought you'd act like this. She's just a friend, an ordinary friend."

But he spent far more time with his ordinary friend than he spent with her. When he was with his ordinary friend, he laughed and talked excitedly, but when he was with her, he had less and less to say, and he grew more and more withdrawn. What could she do?

"For the children," she said to him. She didn't want to argue anymore, and she didn't have the strength to cry anymore.

She said, "You don't have a thought for me, but you must think of the children."

"OK, OK," the man said. "Since you refuse to believe me, I won't have any more to do with her."

But after he said this, he kept seeing the other woman behind his wife's back. If that was how things were, what could she do? She could take him to court. She could cause a scandal, raise such a fuss that everyone in the neighborhood would know. She could walk away. She could leave him. But she loved him. Love was as difficult to explain as death. She didn't want to hurt him, and she didn't want to leave him. What should she do? Obsessed, she followed him here. She watched him walk back and forth along the outside of the wall, anxiously waiting for that ordinary friend of his. Quietly, she went around to the other side of the vacant building, crossed the little bridge, and came in through the main gate. She walked over beneath the big parasol tree and listened for a while. She could hear that he was still outside the wall. Not wanting him to discover her, she hid behind the thick trunk of the parasol tree. She wondered what it was she thought she was going to do. Make her existence known to the other woman?

Talk face to face with her? Expose the man's lies there and then? But what good would any of that do? What would be the point? If he had already fallen out of love with you, if he longed for another woman, what more hope could you have in him? All you could do was go with the flow. Let him go, all you could do was let him go. "Go with the flow." When she said this, her heart was like a cemetery. She was unaware that somebody had walked over to her, unaware that somebody had asked her a question. The sun had sunk completely behind the trees. The evening breeze was stronger with each gust. It grew gloomy and lonesome beneath the tall tree. The shadow of the tree and the dots of light that had swayed and pulsated were the same as the past, the same as yesterday; they passed away quietly, unnoticed. Of course, tomorrow they would do it all over again in the same place. Let's go, but where? Let's go home, but what is home? Were you just going to wait? Wait until when? You didn't care? You were indifferent? OK, OK, go with the flow. But I had to be on my way, for I still had a dozen more floors to climb.

As I'd expected, my new apartment wasn't bad. Two bedrooms and a living room. The bigger bedroom was close to 180 square feet, sixteen feet long and eleven feet wide. The smaller bedroom was sixteen feet long and eight feet wide, 128 square feet. It was a miracle for a bachelor like me to have an apartment like this. The living room was 75 square feet. The kitchen was only 54 square feet, but there would just be me cooking and me eating, so it was big enough. To my surprise, the toilet was in a different room from the shower. I hadn't expected that. The closet was so large I could sleep in it. The balcony? Four feet by seven feet. (How many square feet would that be?) From it, I could look down to the woods.

Under an unfathomable autumn sky, the trees were a riot of color. The maple leaves were already red, the ginkgoes were completely golden, the pines and cypresses were so green they were almost black, and numerous white tombstones ornamented the spaces between the trees. I wondered if in the future I would want a gravestone. If I did, where would it stand? Would I want words engraved on it? What should I have engraved? Over the years, a number of people are likely to come to my grave, on rainy days, on windy days, on snowy days, on clear days. They will pass by my grave, read the words on the gravestone, and then walk away. Who will they be? Will they wonder who the person buried in the grave might be or wonder about the experiences he might have had? Will it occur to them that the person in the grave once imagined their coming? Perhaps some of the people destined to walk by my grave have already been born and are walking toward my gravestone. Of course, they have a long way to go, and many things have to happen in their proper sequence. There is no way to predict which road they will take to get to my grave, because I have yet to die. There is no way yet to determine the place and time, but this sort of thing is certain to occur. Someone who is certain to pass by my grave has already begun his trip. Maybe he is in Africa, or maybe he is within my field of vision. As I was thinking about all of this, I suddenly noticed a child in the woods.

It was a baby. You could see him only from the twenty-first floor. He was lying behind a gravestone in the pale red light of the setting sun. There was a baby carriage beside him, filled with many colorful toys. He was wrapped in a pink woolen blanket so that only his little face showed. He was sleeping soundly and peacefully, as if nothing could disturb him. Who was he? Whose child was he? Where were the adults? Where had his mother and father gone? Why had they stayed away so long? There was no one else around; I could see clearly from the twenty-first floor that there was no one else anywhere in sight. Why wasn't the child in the baby carriage; why was he sleeping on the ground? Heavens! I understood: an abandoned infant! In a flash, I realized what was going on. The man outside the wall! And the woman inside the wall! The man was gazing steadily in the direction of his child. He paced back and forth beyond the wall, looking off into the distance at his child. He watched the bus stop to see who would come take the baby away. He had no choice but to abandon his child, but he was uneasy; he wanted to see with his own eyes what sort of person would take the boy. Why are you doing this, young father? And you, the mother, why are you doing this? She couldn't bear to watch, so she hid. After walking in through the small gate, she no longer had the strength to stand, and so she sat down beneath the big tree as if at the center of a nightmare. She listened to hear if the child was crying or not. She wondered if she had brought along enough toys. She listened for any movement from the distant woods. She wondered what sort of fate was in store for the child. Yes, when she looked at me, her eyes were full of alarm. It never occurred to her that someone might come in through the main gate to the south. "Go with the flow," she said in a voice heavy with despair. Maybe I look reasonably honest and decent, but I didn't go toward the small gate, and she couldn't say to me, "Go into the woods. Thank you. Please take care of the child for us." She thought with resignation, Go with the flow, just go with the flow. The sky grew darker and darker, but the child was still lost in his sweet dreams. Did he dream? What did he dream of? No, no! This could not be! No matter what had happened, they could not do this. I went down the stairs. I have a little heart trouble, but going down stairs is always easier than going up. I rested on the fourteenth floor and again on the seventh. When I reached the bottom, it seemed that other than the fact that my heart was beating a little faster than usual, nothing was amiss.