Читать книгу Frontier - Can Xue - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAlthough Qiming was thirty-nine, he didn’t feel old at all. He had no skills; from the time he was young, he’d worked as a janitor in the guesthouse at the Design Institute. Everyone knew him. Sometimes he was a little melancholy, but generally speaking, few people were as optimistic and confident as he was. Qiming had never married; he lived in a simple cabin behind the mailroom of the guesthouse. It was as if the institute administrators had stuffed him indiscriminately into this crude dwelling. But Qiming was quite satisfied with his place. Material life meant nothing to him. For example, he was single, but his heart swelled with erotic dreams. He felt he’d had a lover all along; it was just that they had never lived together. It was because he had a lover that he felt so young. Who could love as he did? Everything he did, he did for the beautiful woman of his memory. He had last seen the Uighur beauty years ago. He still recognized her—of course! The slim girl from back then had now grown up to be a stout housewife, but what difference did this make? Qiming’s yearning for her blazed even more. Aware that someone was staring at her, the stout woman set her satchel down and began dancing with other aunties on the avenue. Qiming stared like crazy. Too bad he didn’t know how to dance. He could only watch from the sidelines. He heard one of the dancing women say in words that he understood: “That guy is awfully ugly, like a savage.” His goddess began laughing uproariously. She flung out her arms and jabbered loudly. After Qiming went home, he was too excited to do anything for the rest of the day. Years had passed; yet, whenever he recalled that meeting, his face burned. The scene hadn’t faded at all. He even imagined that he was holding the beauty tightly and spinning around with her. It wasn’t a Uighur dance, but a dance he had invented. Sometimes others called him Grandpa. Discontentedly, he thought to himself, Am I old? No, no way! My life has just begun! Is it fair for a person to be called Grandpa just because he’s unskilled? He felt more energetic than ever before. Ha, it was time for him to take a wind bath again. He filled a basin with water and, facing the wind blowing over from the mountain, he wiped his face. Then he scrubbed his torso. The guesthouse was great. No one in this quiet place fussed about his activity. While the breeze dried him off, Qiming returned to the time of his youth. His family was a large one; he had eight siblings. They lived at the seaside in the south and made their living as fishermen. He was only thirteen then, but he had gone out on the ocean many times with his father. He loved his life of freedom. He didn’t know why his father had to send him away. He remembered that day: a man who looked like a cadre came to their poor dwelling and took a seat. His father said this person was Qiming’s “lucky star,” and then made Qiming go with him. His brothers and sisters saw him off with envious glances. And so he traveled with that person to this small town in the north—all because he couldn’t disobey his father. Back then, this place was truly desolate. The so-called town was no more than some simple buildings scattered around the wasteland. There were no roads or public facilities. Though there was a little electricity, power outages were frequent. You had to light kerosene lamps. However, as Qiming saw it, this wasn’t a problem because he was used to an even poorer life at home. At first, he did heavy labor. When the officials asked him what he was good at, he said he had only been a fisherman. But this place had no fisheries, and so he worked on constructing buildings, repairing roads, reclaiming land from the river, transporting coal, manning the furnace, and so forth. One day, the Design Institute director noticed him and asked him to work as the guesthouse janitor. That’s when he settled down. He was twenty-two then, and he had no idea why the institute director had chosen him. He thought this sharp-eyed woman was imposing. Finally, after becoming the janitor in this quiet place, he slowly came to understand Pebble Town—and why his father had sent him far away.
One time when outsiders came to visit the Design Institute, Qiming saw the Uighur beauty who would change his life. She wasn’t wearing her minority dress; for some reason, she was wearing a drab grayish outfit. But her plain clothing couldn’t cloud her stunning beauty. Qiming couldn’t stop staring and tagged along behind her. This playful girl actually broke away from her group and led him to hide behind the rockery. They sat on a cobblestone, watching little birds hopping here and there, and watching the poplars dance in the sunlight. It was so beautiful—like a fairyland. But this stunning beauty couldn’t speak his language, so he could only ogle her and caress her elegant hands over and over. Finally, the tour group had to go back. Their bus stopped outside the gate. When the people passed the rockery, the girl jumped out like a fawn and rejoined the group. This, then, was Qiming’s fleeting encounter, and this encounter had shaped his life. Later, he saw her once more in the market: she was with her father. She seemed to have forgotten him. He followed her all the way to her faraway home—at the big mountain over there. He didn’t dare go in because several large dogs guarded the entrance. The next time they met each other, she was already a married woman. Later, he saw her several more times, almost always with her family. He rarely saw her alone. But Qiming wouldn’t give up: this woman could set his heart afire. What more could he possibly want? He couldn’t sleep at night in the narrow bed in his humble home: he spent a lot of time meditating. He liked this feeling: it made him feel special—a man destined to pass his lifetime in solitary meditation. His father had been farsighted!
When Qiming bathed in the wind and thought of his family, he didn’t feel sentimental. In his memory, his poor home became sweet. He recalled how sad his three sisters were when he left. They had tears in their eyes—Father had warned them not to cry. Their rough hands had reddened from the freezing cold water. Their noses—congenitally flat—made them look rustic. Qiming had turned around at once, because he felt like crying, too. Then he said farewell to his mother’s grave: he placed his young face on that stone marker—and all at once he felt his mother’s warmth. There had been much human warmth in Fish Village and in that ugly three-room adobe house. He could see seagulls from the entrance to his home. Whenever he saw them, the idea of leaving home for distant places rose vaguely in his mind. How had Father known this? Although he longed for his faraway hometown, he didn’t plan to go back for a visit. Partly because he reveled in this aesthetic faraway feeling, he was afraid that any bold action would destroy his spiritual pleasure. Another secret reason was that he had obeyed his father’s will in leaving home in the first place; it wasn’t his own choice. On the way, indignant and grief-stricken, he vowed over and over to never go back. Now, more than twenty years had passed, and as Qiming reflected on this matter, he started to question his views. Was it all about Father’s will? Now, he liked everything here so much, and he was self-sufficient and content with his life. It was that one migration that had brought him everything! Just think, if his father hadn’t been so astute and hadn’t entrusted him to that cadre (this was of course his father’s long-range plan), what would his life be like now?
The newly-arrived young couple were completely bewildered, especially the man. Qiming could see this, because he used to feel the same. Who wouldn’t be puzzled by Pebble Town’s strange ways? Back then, besides feeling gratified, he was also puzzled and uncomfortable—until the incident that changed him. Qiming’s “incident” was, of course, the appearance of the Uighur beauty. Before that, when he was working in construction, he frequently felt so confused that he didn’t want to go to work. He would sit at the riverside for several hours looking at the tamarisk trees. The foreman was a folksy middle-aged man. He squatted down, clapped Qiming on the shoulder, and said, “You can’t go back, son.” He told Qiming to look up at the sky. Qiming did—and saw only a goshawk. The sky was so high, and its color held no gentleness: it was completely unlike the sky at the seaside. The foreman told him to take another look, to look more carefully. So he looked up again—and suddenly realized what had puzzled him. He stood and quietly followed the foreman back to the work site. It was such a wondrous feeling: the foreman was terrific. Before this, he had paid no attention to this old man, though he had seen his family. His three children wore ragged clothes, but the children’s eyes were composed and bright. Like him, they worked in construction. They weren’t the least bit bewildered, probably because they were locals. Having had all these experiences, when Qiming saw José and his wife abandoned by the crazy guy on the hill, he understood completely why they felt rattled. After a few days, he sensed that Nancy was somewhat like the locals. He sensed, too, that José was stepping into his role, even though he didn’t understand the role. José was a little impatient. So what? The tranquil frontier would help calm this young man. The reason Qiming took note of this couple was that they reminded him of himself when he had just arrived on the frontier.
After he finished work that day, he rested on the rockery cobblestones. In the haze, he sensed a sheep approaching him, a red cloth tied around its neck. It was a domesticated sheep. After smelling his hand, it knelt down beside him. Qiming was fighting in his dream with a kid with whom he often played back then in Fish Village. This kid threw him to the ground, stepped on his chest, and looked down at him. But as soon as the sheep knelt beside him, the kid above him disappeared. He struggled to open his eyes and saw Nancy sitting next to him. He blushed and stood up in embarrassment. He said, “Hey, I was dozing.” Nancy looked bewildered, and—as though discussing a problem with an invisible person—said, “Hunh. I’m puzzled by lots of things here; they’re mixed together. Still, this place is magnetic. Look at that eagle, flying and stopping . . . Everything’s unresolved.” Qiming thought to himself, This young woman who has just arrived has already become a Pebble Town local. The transformations in the world were so rapid. He heard they were from Smoke City. What was a smoke-swathed city like? Nancy was still sitting on the rock. The wind blowing here had reddened her pale, delicate face. She looked at him, and yet she didn’t seem to actually see him. So Qiming couldn’t decide whether to talk with her or not. Except for his goddess, he hadn’t been this close to a woman for years. He was a little nervous. Nancy quietly pulled some weeds and deftly plaited them into a chain to wear on her head. Qiming’s heart throbbed, and nostalgia rose in him, but he couldn’t remember the scene across from him. So he did his utmost to imagine the scenery in Smoke City. Was it similar to the misty mornings in Fish Village? People often bumped into each other at such times.
“Ms. Nancy, are you getting used to this place?” he asked a little hesitantly.
“Mr. 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 and the shoals. In the past, Qiming had looked down on him and his family, because Qiming’s father was educated and moved to Fish Village only after coming upon hard times. Now in Pebble Town, these distinctions weren’t important. Haizai—this uncouth person—seemed even smarter than he was, and was genuinely optimistic. At this point, he walked out of his room, a little puzzled. It was quiet outside. Only two guests were sitting under the sandthorn tree playing chess. Qiming watched for a long time without seeing either of them make a move. They were simply dazed, looking up at the sky. A little curious, Qiming strode over to take a look.
It was a man and a woman, both getting on in years. Resting their coarse, weather-beaten hands on the table, they were merely making a show of playing chess. When they saw Qiming, they hailed him. They seemed quite humble.
“We’re going to stay here a long time. We’re special guests.” The old woman’s lips were dried up, and it seemed hard for her to speak. “The institute director invited us.”
“You’re very welcome here. We like having guests,” Qiming said.
The old man struck the ground with his cane and shouted, “Don’t take her seriously. She talks nonsense. We didn’t get a personal invitation. We simply saw a small ad in the newspaper and decided to come. The ad gave the institute director’s name and said that she invited everyone to come here for a tour! We’ve walked all around this area. It’s quite desolate.”
He stood up, a little agitated. He looked at the sky, then at the ground, then suddenly turned around and picked up a large chess piece. He thumped it down and said, “Check!”
A slight smile appeared on the old woman’s wrinkled face. She seemed excited, too, but she controlled herself. She moved a piece so quickly that Qiming didn’t see which one it was. Then she stood up and asked Qiming, “Is it true that lodging is free for all the guests here?”
Startled, Qiming began to stutter. He said he wasn’t sure; this wasn’t part of his job. The old man approached him and whispered, “The gardener here is from our hometown. He used to raise poppy flowers in the garden, and then he was convicted for it. I saw him yesterday. He hasn’t aged much. Why are people here so young? Huh? Look, he’s on his way over!”
But Qiming saw only a small tree swaying in the wind. These two people annoyed him. He took his leave impatiently. Qiming had noticed a phenomenon here for years: everyone who came to Pebble Town took on certain traits that made them just like the people already here. At first, people weren’t so much the same, but after a few days, they were talking just like the locals. Qiming sometimes felt fragile. At such times, he wanted to confide his feelings to a person from his hometown in the dialect he’d spoken as a youth. Just now, when he saw Haizai, he’d felt this way. But, apart from his name, nothing about Haizai reminded him of his hometown. In fact, he was more like a Pebble Town resident than he himself was. How come? Perhaps when one left home, one automatically became another person. Back then, he experienced this, too. After going with the cadre on cars, trains, and several other modes of transportation, he gradually hardened his heart. The person Qiming admired most was the institute director. He couldn’t say why. Even though she’d had nothing more to do with him after settling him into this shed-like cabin, Qiming still appreciated her. He sensed an invisible solicitude being transmitted from her every day. And so every time this nominal Design Institute took in more newcomers, he gasped at the director’s generosity. She had even gone to the hospital with José to visit Nancy and their newborn baby! What a terrific woman!
The two elderly people had left, but the chess board was still set up on the stone table. Maybe they would return after a while. The good news about Nancy giving birth to a daughter had invigorated this place. The wind was blowing continuously from the snow mountain. It was so cool, so refreshing! What was his precious goddess doing now? Harvesting grapes? Qiming took out his watch and listened: oh, it was running so forcefully. It ticked vigorously as if to demonstrate its power. Qiming felt it was strange. Maybe this watch was his father, and now his father was finally with him.
Haizai didn’t appear for days, nor did he go to work in the canteen. Qiming thought, Maybe he went to work on maintenance for the city. It was easy to blend in there. Anyone could go.
One day, however, José came back from the hospital and made a special point of asking him about this. José said that while he was resting in a hospital room, Haizai had shown up. He introduced himself as Qiming’s fellow villager and said that he’d arrived in Pebble Town only a few days before. He was working in the hospital. When José asked what kind of work he was doing, he answered, “Helping out in the morgue.” He told José that deceased people here were much different from those in the interior or on the coast. Here, the corpse didn’t stiffen and could be moved easily. He liked this work quite well because the pay was good. As Haizai was talking, the institute director came by. As soon as Haizai saw her, he sped away rapidly as though he’d seen a ghost. Had he known this woman in the past? José asked the director if she knew this person. She sneered and said, “Naturally.” She sank into memories and told José that she was in an accident in the interior several years ago and was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. But after a day in the morgue, she came back to life. She was moved into an ordinary room. A young person went to her room every day and chatted with her. As they chatted, the institute director sensed that she’d seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t remember where. The young person said he was a vagrant and constantly on the move. He was currently helping out in the hospital. Not until the day she was discharged did he tell the truth: he said he had talked with her an entire night in the morgue and had almost frozen to death. She suddenly found this young person really annoying. As for him, he knew his place and left. Long after leaving the hospital, the institute director still couldn’t shake off her depression. Later, she gradually found relief in her daily routine.
“The institute director and I have recently become close friends, and we talk about everything with each other,” José said with feeling.
Qiming was astounded by this story. After mulling it over, he asked José, “Did the institute director tell you what she and Haizai talked about that night in the morgue?”
“She said she couldn’t remember. She’s been plagued by this question the last several years.”
Qiming’s thoughts drifted: he thought of his father. What was it like for his father as he neared death? Was it the same as the institute director’s experience in the morgue? What had Haizai talked about with him? All at once, an image of the fishing village swaying in a storm appeared in his mind. He felt a little dispirited and forlorn. But that feeling passed very soon. He still wanted to talk with Haizai.
When he went to the hospital to look for Haizai, Nancy had already brought the child home. The morgue was separated a little from the hospital rooms. Many flowers were growing at the entrance, where a guard sat sunbathing. Qiming explained why he had come.
“Oh, you mean that volunteer. He said he was going to take the day off. He’s a great help to us. It isn’t very often that someone wants to do this kind of work,” he gave a thumbs up as he praised Haizai.
“Is he really a volunteer?”
“Yes, that’s why we respect him so much. He told us he would work only as a volunteer. He didn’t want any wages. All he wanted was three meals a day with us. What a wonderful person! Do you want to come in and look around?”
Qiming sensed that this furtive middle-aged person was constantly taking stock of him, and he was disgusted. He promptly turned down his invitation. Even after walking a long way from the hospital, he could still smell Lysol on his body. He wondered if Haizai had been in the morgue just now. When he thought of him working as a volunteer in the morgue, he couldn’t help but laugh. Apparently he had chosen this work in order to talk with the dead. But this kind of communication must be tough. He could achieve his goal only with someone like the institute director who wasn’t really dead. Qiming recalled that Haizai had been a very stubborn kid. He was so obstinate and so inflexible that he offended almost all the villagers. He had probably traveled to many places and kept doing this shameful thing. Qiming sank into dark memories. This was his new practice—remembering a life he had never experienced. As he walked, he thought about this, and the more he thought, the colder he felt. When he reached the guesthouse, he was shaking all over. He figured he should go home and lie down and rest until he recovered.
“Old Qi—old Qi, is something wrong?” Sun Er, from the mailroom, caught hold of his arm and shook him hard.
“Don’t—don’t worry,” he managed to say.
Sun Er chortled for no reason. Qiming struggled free of him, and even though everything was blurry in front of him, he groped his way into his room, removed his shoes, and got into bed.
No sooner had he lain down than he had a sudden recollection. It was a rainy night. He’d been sleeping peacefully, but was awakened with a start by the sound of rapping on the wall. Was it a thief? It was really pathetic if someone had to come out and steal during a downpour like this. He gradually became aware of a sliver of light entering the room. What on earth? He sat up to light the kerosene lamp beside the bed. The first match he struck didn’t catch. When he struck a second match, someone grabbed his hand, preventing him from lighting the lamp. Just then, Qiming noticed the sliver of light widening. A wall was moving, and he smelled the weeds and shrubs. Was he in the open country? The person who grabbed his hand spoke, his voice sounding as if it came from a vat. It was unpleasant.
“I want to create a tropical garden here. What do you think? I tried it, but tropical plants won’t survive here. But we can build a greenhouse in the air. Don’t you see? It’s absolutely unobstructed. It’s ideal for a tropical garden. I’m a southerner, wandering around this place. Can you identify my accent?”
Actually, aside from the unpleasant buzzing quality, his accent was the same as the local people’s.
“But my house wasn’t originally built in the unobstructed wilderness,” Qiming protested.
“So what? Living here, young man, we have to be flexible. Hunh. Can’t you tell what my accent is? I’m from the southernmost place.”
Qiming wanted to ask him something, but the sliver of light suddenly disappeared. Maybe the wall had come together again. The person disappeared in the dark. The next morning, it was still raining. He forgot all about this incident.
Now although he wanted to think this incident was a dream, it certainly hadn’t been a dream. It was simply an incident that he’d completely forgotten. When he had talked with that person back then, he’d been absolutely clear-headed—a little as if his body had been in another space. Was that person the Design Institute’s gardener? Qiming thought he hadn’t conversed with the gardener before. The gardener was taciturn and a little arrogant. No doubt that person was one and the same; he had conversed with him. This person did build the tropical garden of his dreams here: Qiming had heard several people talk of his flower garden, but he hadn’t seen it yet. He wondered if the gardener knew Haizai in the past. How were they connected? Why had Haizai said the gardener was also from Fish Village? Also, he hadn’t approached this taciturn guy for years, and now as soon as Haizai arrived and mentioned him, he finally remembered talking with him on a rainy night about the garden—the garden that, even now, he still hadn’t seen. What kind of garden was it? Several people had spoken of it, but they disagreed on where it was. Some said it was on the east side; some said the south. Others said it was inside the Design Institute; still others said it was on a hill in front of the Design Institute. Someone else said the gardener’s tropical garden was halfway up the snow mountain. Later, Qiming saw the gardener again, but the gardener was cold to him, giving no sign that he knew Qiming.
Another week had passed since he remembered his brief conversation with the gardener. One night, Qiming really did dream of the tropical garden. Many poppies were growing outside the garden, and one huge banyan tree nearly occupied the entire space. It wasn’t like a tree, but more like the devil. He walked around amid the aerial roots—so dense that the wind couldn’t penetrate them—and thought he would never be able to extricate himself. He felt, too, that the aerial roots had turned into countless frosty hands that were grabbing and pinching him.
