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He also remembered that when his grandfather died, the mourning hall was hung with layers of coffin curtains, like the backstage of an opera theater, and it was much more fun than that birthday. A troupe of monks struck clappers and gongs as they chanted sutras. He lifted the coffin curtains, ran in and out of them, and had a good time. His mother got him to put on hemp shoes and he did, under duress, but adamantly refused to tie white cloth around his forehead, because it looked ugly. It was probably his grandmother’s idea. However, his father had to tie white cloth around his head even though he was dressed in a white linen Western suit. The men who came to mourn were also mostly in suits and ties, and the women were all wearing qipao and high-heeled shoes. Among the guests was a woman who played the piano; she was a coloratura soprano and the tremble in her singing made it sound like the bleating of a lamb—of course this wasn’t in the mourning hall but at the wake at home. It was the first time he’d heard singing like this and he couldn’t stop laughing. His mother quietly scolded him right in his ear, but he couldn’t help laughing out loud.
In his memory, the time of his grandfather’s death was like a special festival, and there was an absence of grief. He thought the old man should have died much earlier. He had been paralyzed for a long time, and during the day was always reclining in the rocking chair; that he should return to heaven, sooner or later, was quite natural. Death in his grandfather’s case was not frightening, but his mother’s death terrified him. She had drowned in a river on a farm. Her bloated corpse was found floating in the water by peasants when they took the ducks down to the river in the morning. His mother had responded to the call of the Party to go to the farms to be reeducated. She died in the prime of life, at the age of thirty-eight, so her image in his heart was always beautiful.
A present he got as a child was a gold Parker fountain pen, given to him by Uncle Fang, one of his father’s colleagues at the bank. He was playing with Uncle Fang’s pen at the time and wouldn’t put it down. The grown-ups all thought it was a good sign, and said the child was sure to become a writer. Uncle Fang was very generous and gave him the pen, it was not on that birthday but when he was younger, because he had written a piece about it in his diary when he was almost eight. He should have been going to school but, because he was frail and sick all the time, it was his mother who taught him to read and also to write with a brush, a stroke at a time, over the red character prototypes printed in the squares of the exercise books. He did not find it hard, and at times filled a book in a day, so his mother said it was enough of that, and got him to write a diary with a brush to save paper. Some composition booklets with small squares were bought for him and even if it took him half a day to fill a page, it counted as his assignment. His first diary piece read roughly: “Snow falling on the ground turns it pure white, people treading on it leave dirty footprints.” His mother talked about it, and everyone in the family, as well as family acquaintances, knew about it. From that time he could not stop himself writing about his dreams and self-love, sowing the seeds of future disaster.
His father disapproved of his staying indoors all day reading and writing. A boy should be fun-loving, explore the world, know lots of people, distinguish himself; he did not think much of his son being a writer. His father thought of himself as a good drinker. Actually, he liked to show off more than he liked drinking. At the time, a game known as Charging Through the Pass involved downing a cup of liquor with each person at a banquet, and anyone who could make a round of three or five tables was a hero. Once his father was carried home unconscious and left downstairs in what used to be Grandfaher’s chair. None of the men were at home, and his grandmother, mother, and the maid couldn’t get his father upstairs to bed. He recalled that a rope was lowered from the window upstairs and somehow both the chair and his father were slowly hauled up. His father hung high, swaying in midair, drunk and with a smile on his face. This was his father’s great achievement, but he couldn’t tell whether it was fantasy or not. With a child, memory and imagination are hard to separate.
For him, life before he was ten was like a dream. His childhood always seemed to be a dream world, even when his family was on the run as refugees. The truck was careering along a muddy mountain road in the rain and, all day long, he held a basket of oranges, which he ate under the tarpaulin covering. He once asked his mother if this had happened, and she said at the time oranges were cheap, and if you gave the villagers some money, they loaded them onto the truck next to the people. His father was working for a state-run bank, so armed guards, escorting the transport of banknotes, accompanied the family as it retreated with the bank.
The old home, now frequently appearing in dreams, was not the foreign-style house with the round doorway and the flower garden in which his grandfather had lived, but the old house with a well, left by his maternal grandmother. This little old woman, also dead, was forever rummaging in a big suitcase. In the dream, he is looking down at the house, which doesn’t have a roof, at rooms divided by wooden walls. No one is there except for his grandmother who is frantically rummaging in the suitcase. He remembered that in the house there was an old-style leather suitcase that had been given a coat of paint and that in it, hidden under the clothes, was a parcel containing his grandmother’s deeds to houses and land. The properties had been used to pay off debts or sold a long time before the new government authorities would have confiscated them. When his grandmother and mother burned that parcel of yellow, disintegrating papers, they were in a panic, but he hadn’t reported them because no one came to investigate. However, had he in fact been questioned, he probably would have reported them, because his mother and grandmother were colluding to destroy criminal evidence, even if they did dearly love him.
That dream was several decades later, after he had been in the West for some time, in a small inn in the city of Tours in Central France. He had just woken up but was still in a daze. Behind the gauze curtain, old louvered shutters with peeling paint half-blocked the gloomy gray sky between the leaves of a plane tree. In the dream he’d just had, he was in that old two-story house, standing on the upstairs balcony that hadn’t collapsed, leaning on a rickety wooden railing and looking down. Beyond the gate was a pumpkin patch where he used to catch crickets in the heaps of tiles and rubble among the vines. He clearly remembered that behind the wooden partition in the dream there were many rooms where guests used to stay. The guests had all disappeared just like his grandmother, just like his past life. In that life, memory and dream intermingle and the images transcend time and space.
Since he was the eldest son and eldest grandson, everyone in the family—including his maternal grandmother—had great expectations of him. However, his frequent bouts of illness from early childhood were a worry, and they had his fortune told many times; the first time, he recalled, was in a temple, when his parents took him with them to Lushan to escape the heat. The Immortal Grotto was a famous attraction. Next to it was a big temple with a vegetarian hall as well as tea stalls catering to tourists. It was cool inside the temple and there were not many visitors. In those times, people were carried up the mountain in sedan chairs, and he sat on his mother’s lap tightly clutching the handrail in front of him, but couldn’t help looking down the deep crevasse at the side. Before leaving China, he revisited the place, which, of course, already could be reached by bus, but couldn’t find the temple. Even the ruins had vanished without a trace. However, he clearly remembered that on the wall of the visitors’ hall in the temple there was a long scroll painting of Zhu Yuanzhang with a pockmarked face. The temple, it was said, was founded in the Ming Dynasty and, before becoming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang was said to have sought refuge there. Something as concrete and complex as this could not have emerged from a child’s imagination. Moreover, a few years ago, among the treasures of the Palace Museum in Taipei, he saw the scroll painting of Zhu Yuanzhang with a pockmarked face. So this temple had actually existed, and the memory had not been imagined, and the old monk’s prediction had, in fact, come true. The old monk had warned in a loud voice: “This little one will suffer many disasters and hardships. It will be hard for him to survive!” The old monk even slapped him hard on the forehead. It gave him a fright but he didn’t cry. He remembered this because he had always been spoiled and had never been slapped.
Many years later, he developed an interest in Chan Buddhism, and on rereading those Chan conundrums, he realized that the old monk had probably given him his first lesson in life.
He did have another sort of life, only afterward he simply forgot about it.
2 (#ulink_6c4e85d7-07bc-5c1d-a7f2-9f729b0874e5)
The curtain is partly open. Against the black shadow of the mountain, blocks of lit apartments loom. The sky above the mountain is gray, and the brilliant mass of lights from the night market shines onto the ledge of the window. The insides of the transparent postmodernist building opposite can be seen distinctly, and as the elevator slowly rises in its tubular frame to the level of your room you can even make out the figures of the people in it. With a long-range lens, from over there, it would certainly be possible to photograph the inside of your room, even how you make love with her could be photographed.
However, you do not have to hide, and there is nothing you must avoid doing. You are not a movie star or a television star, or an important politician, or a local Hong Kong magnate who’s afraid of being exposed in the newspapers. You hold French travel documents as a political refugee and have been invited for this visit, your room has been booked and paid for by someone else. You presented your documents on checking into this big hotel, bought by the Mainland government, so your name has been entered into the computer at the reception desk in the lobby. On hearing your Beijing accent, the supervisor and the girl at the desk looked embarrassed but, in a few months, after Hong Kong is returned to China, they will also have to speak with a Beijing accent, and are probably taking lessons right now. It is their duty to keep tabs on what guests are doing, now that the proprietor is the government, so this episode of lovemaking in the nude that you have just indulged in will certainly have been videotaped. Also, for security reasons, in a big hotel, installing a few more video cameras would not be money wasted. Sitting on the bed, you have stopped sweating, feel cold, and want to turn off the buzzing air-conditioner.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Then what are you looking at?”
“The elevator going up and down in the building opposite. You can see the people inside the elevator, there’s a couple kissing.”
“I can’t sec them,” she sits up in the bed.
You’re talking about using a long-range lens.
“Close the curtains.”
She is lying on her back, her white body completely bare except for the luxuriant clump of downy hair between her legs.
“They wanted to make a video but the hairs were too stark,” you tease.
“Who are you talking about? Here? Who’s making videos?”
You say it’s a machine, that it’s automatic.
“Impossible, this isn’t China.”
You say that the Mainland authorities have bought the hotel.
She sighs softly, sits up, and says: “You’ve got a phobia.” She puts out her arm and runs her fingers through your hair. “Switch on the table lamp, I’ll go and switch off the main light.”
“No need. Just now we were in too much of a hurry for me to have a good look.”
You utter sweet words, bend down to kiss her lustrous white belly in the bright light, and ask, “Do you feel cold?”
“A little,” she laughs. “Want some more cognac?”
You say you’d like some coffee. She gets out of the bed, switches off the air-conditioner, plugs in the electric kettle and puts instant coffee into a cup. Her full breasts sway weightily.
“Don’t you think I’m fat?” she says with a laugh. “Chinese women have better figures.”
You say, not necessarily. You adore her breasts, their solidity, their sensuousness.
“Haven’t you ever had …?”
Facing you, she sits in the round chair by the window and leans back, tilting her head and letting you look as much as you want. She is blocking the illuminated building with the elevator, and the mountain behind looks darker. On this wonderful night, you say that her body is incredibly white, as if it’s not real.
“And you want coffee so that you will be more awake?” There is scorn in her eyes.
“So that I can hold onto this instant better!”
You say that life, at times, is like a miracle and you are lucky to be alive. All this is pure coincidence and yet it is real and not a dream.
“I’d like always to be dreaming but it’s just not possible. I prefer not to think of anything.”
She sips the cognac and closes her eyes. She is a white German woman with very dark hair and long eyelashes. You get her to part her legs so you can see clearly and have her deeply imprinted in your memory. She says she doesn’t want memories, only to feel this instant. You ask if she can feel you looking at her. She says she can feel you roaming over her body. Where have I roamed? you ask. She says from her toes to her waist, oh—she’s gushing again, she says she wants you. You say you want her, too, but you also want to see how this body, so full of life, twists and turns.
“For a better photograph?” she asks, her eyes closed.
“Yes.” Your eyes are fixed on her and scour her entire body.
“Can you photograph everything?”
“Nothing is left out.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of what?”
You say you have no inhibitions. She says she has even less. You say this is Hong Kong, and China is now far away from you. You get up and press against her. She asks you to switch off the main light, and you again enter her moist body.
“Are you deeply attracted to me?” She is slightly breathless.
“Yes, I’m buried.” You say you are buried in her flesh.
“Flesh only?”
“Yes, and there are no memories, only this instant.”
She says she also needs to be fused like this in darkness, in nebulous chaos.
“Just to feel the warmth of a woman. …”
“Men also have warmth. It’s been a long time since. …”
“You’ve had a man?”
“Since I’ve had this sort of sensation, this trembling. …”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know why. …”
“Try to say why!”
“I wouldn’t be able to make myself clear. …”
“Is it because it happened so suddenly and was totally unexpected?”
“Don’t ask.”
But you want her to tell you! She says no. But you keep at her, keep taking it further, go on asking her. Is it because you’ve met by chance? Is it because you don’t understand one another? Is it more exciting because you’re strangers? Or does she simply seek after such thrills? She shakes her head each time to say no. She says she’s known you a long time; even though many years have passed and she’d only seen you twice, your image stayed with her and grew more and more distinct. She also says that just now, a few hours ago, when she saw you she became excited. She says she doesn’t casually go to bed with men, she isn’t a slut, but she doesn’t lack men either. Don’t hurt her like this. … You’re moved by her, need to be intimate with her and not just sexually. Hong Kong is a foreign place for you and for her. That small association with her is a memory from ten years ago on the other side of the sea, when you were still in China.
“It was in your home, one night in winter. …”
“That home was confiscated a long time ago.”
“Your home was warm, special, it had a warm feeling.”
“It was warm air piped in by a generator. The pipes were always very hot. Even in winter, only a single layer of clothing was needed inside. The two of you arrived in big padded overcoats with upturned collars.”
“We were worried about being seen and getting you in trouble—” “Yes, the regular plainclothes police were on duty at the front of the building. They finished at ten o’clock at night. It was pretty awful for the next shift in the howling winter wind.”
“It was Peter who suddenly thought to drop in on you, without phoning. You were old friends, he said, and as he was taking me to your home it was best going at night to avoid being stopped and questioned.”
“I didn’t have a line installed because I didn’t want friends talking carelessly on the phone, and also to avoid having anything to do with foreigners. Peter was an exception, he’d come to China to study Chinese. At the time he was passionate about Mao’s Cultural Revolution and we used to argue often, but he’d been a friend for some time. How is he?”
“We separated long ago. He was a representative in the China office of a German company, found a Chinese girl, married her, and took her back to Germany. I heard that he’s now the boss of a company he had started up. Back then, I’d only just arrived in Beijing to study. I didn’t speak much Chinese and it was hard to make Chinese friends.”
“I remember you, of course I remember you. As soon as you came through the door you took off your big padded coat and your scarf, and there stood a very beautiful young foreign woman!”
“With big breasts, right?”
“Of course, very big breasts. Blushing white skin and bright red lips even with no lipstick. Really sexy.”
“You couldn’t have known at the time!”
“You were so bright red, it was impossible not to notice.”
“It was because it was too hot in the room and we’d been cycling for more than an hour.”
“That night you sat quietly opposite me but didn’t say much.”
“I was struggling to understand what was being said. You and Peter were talking all the time, although I don’t recall what about. I didn’t know much Chinese at the time but I remember that night, I had a strange feeling.”
You, of course, also remember that winter night, you had candles burning, which added to the warmth, and you couldn’t tell if there was anyone downstairs watching your window. You had finally obtained a little apartment, a decent refuge, a home, and you had a fortress to protect yourself from the political storms outside. She sat on the carpet with her back against the bookcase. It was a clipped woollen carpet made for export, that had gone on the domestic market. Sold at a reduced price as a second-grade product, it was still expensive, exactly the amount of advance royalty you had received for your book. However, that book, which did not so much as touch on politics, stirred up a great deal of trouble for you. Her shirt collar was open and her skin was very white, and those long legs in sleek black stockings were enticing.
“Don’t forget, you had a girl in your apartment. She was wearing very little and, unless I’ve remembered wrongly, she was barefoot.”
“She was usually naked, and she was when the two of you came in the door.”
“That’s right, we had been sitting and drinking for some time before the girl quietly came out of the bedroom.”
“You two were obviously not going to leave right away. I asked her to join us, so she put on a dress.”
“She shook hands with us but didn’t say a thing all night.”
“Like you.”
“That night was very special, I had never seen a Chinese home with that sort of atmosphere. …”
“It was special because a white German girl with bright red lips had suddenly arrived. …”
“And there was also a barefoot little Beijing girl who was lovely and slender. …”
“Flickering candlelight. …”
“We sat drinking in your warm, cozy apartment as we listened to the howling wind outside.”
“It was unreal, just like it is now, and probably there are also people watching. …”
You again think that the room is probably being videotaped.
“Is it still unreal?”
She clamps you with her legs and you close your eyes to experience her, hugging the fullness of her body and mumbling, “There was no need to go before morning. …”
“Of course, there wasn’t. …” she says. “At the time, I didn’t want to leave. It was a bitterly cold winter night and we had to cycle for an hour. Peter wanted to go, and you didn’t try to get us to stay.”
“Yes, that’s right.” You say that it was the same with you. You had to cycle back with her to the barracks.
“What barracks?”
You say that she was a nurse in the army hospital and she couldn’t stay out overnight.
She lets go of you and asks, “Who are you talking about?”
