Cocoon, page 23
Naturally, I was also prepared to become Dabin’s enemy. This would be a great test of our friendship. I was almost certain he would choose to remain by the side of his goddess. It wasn’t like I treasured our relationship, but over the years, I’d gotten used to having this idiot around. Anyway, I was ready for the whole world to set itself against me. A tragedy to fulfill my dreams of heroism.
No police officers or teachers came looking for me, which made me more and more anxious. Was your family planning their own revenge? Remembering what your grandpa had done to mine sent shivers over my scalp. I kept a pencil knife in my pocket at all times, just in case. One day went by after another, and still nothing. Then Peixuan came back to school, and everything went back to normal. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d punched a hole through the entire world, but in reality, all I’d done was thrown a pebble into the sea. It hadn’t even made a sound.
I’ve never found out why Peixuan covered for me. Was her silence absolution or mercy? How much did she know about the wrong that lay between our families, if anything? That was a mystery. Peixuan herself was a riddle—no one knew what she was thinking. Her body was a black box, containing an enormous force, enough to obliterate all the pain that came her way. Nothing could destroy her. That March afternoon, when I saw her walking towards me, I understood this.
It was very cold, and the sky was overcast. The grass hadn’t grown in yet, and the air didn’t smell of blossoming flowers—winter was persisting. Only Peixuan’s pale yellow cardigan had a springlike floral scent. I didn’t realize it was her at first—I’d never seen her wearing such a bright color. Besides, she was taller and more developed, a young woman now. Then I recognized her steady flag-raiser’s gait, her upright posture like a sapling. She saw me too, and didn’t hide or hesitate, just strode ahead, looking levelly at me.
When I was too far away to see her face, I could pretend nothing had happened. Then she drew closer, her features came into focus, and I stared at the scar—my handiwork. It looked huge from any angle, dwarfing her narrow chin. Being slightly raised, it made the lower half of her face look sunken, as if a meteor had crashed into it. I’ll admit that when I saw that scar, I thought it would settle any scores between us, no matter how large. The guilt swiftly faded because even at that moment, I couldn’t pity her. She looked unflappable, scarred chin lifted, proud gaze eviscerating as ever.
I’d expected her to say something like, You see? Nothing can defeat me. And that would put an end to it. Instead, she murmured with implacable firmness, “My grandfather never hurt anyone. Don’t you ever say that again.”
Li Jiaqi
The afternoon after Dad’s accident, I got a fever. Steeped in memories, the fuses of my consciousness burned out one by one. I lay drowsing, unable to stop sweating. Dreams came one after another, thin ones, like padding spilling from a torn winter coat. My body was so hot it woke me. Still dazed, I sat up and saw the glistening window. Thinking it was ice, I ran over barefoot and pressed my face to its surface. I don’t know how long I stayed there, until my face felt less scalding hot, and my mind was a little clearer. It was dark outside, and clouds were blowing across the sky.
In the inky black room, bags were piled up on the floor like graves. Sleeves protruded from them like arms reaching from the soil. Terrified, I opened the door and fled. The passageway was dark too. I groped my way to the living room and turned on the lights. There were faint creases in the red couch, and the glass ashtray on the coffee table was stuffed full of upright cigarette butts, like tiny people in white robes carrying out a secret ritual. In my father and Wang Luhan’s unlit bedroom, a stark white blanket lay huddled on one side of the double bed. I retreated to the passageway and saw a glimmer of light beneath Granny Qin’s door. Without thinking, I pulled it open.
Granny Qin was sitting alone on the bed, muttering to herself. She didn’t seem to notice me, but after a bit more mumbling she suddenly turned and spat viciously on the floor, before shrinking back fearfully and staring wide-eyed as if someone else had done the spitting.
“Old Wang seems like a good sort, but he can get pretty violent,” she said.
“Stop talking nonsense or I’ll rip your mouth to shreds!” Her again, in a different voice.
“So you’ll do it, but you don’t want people talking about it? Did you know this before?”
“Get out! Get out of here!” She stood and planted her feet firmly, as if ready to chase someone out with a broom.
She was arguing with herself, playing both parts. Before, I’d have run from the room, but now I stood there staring steadily at her. Her expression moved swiftly from anger to hatred to glee to disappointment. This strange, exuberant behavior seemed to be her way of proving she was still alive. I slowly walked over to sit at her feet.
She slumped back onto the bed, still talking quietly. I felt her breath on my face, warming me. I rested my head against her legs. Her body was toasty too.
“I’m so scared.” I began to weep.
“Don’t be scared. It’s alright.” Granny Qin placed her hand on my head, and distractedly stroked my hair.
“I feel bad, and I don’t dare to sleep,” I said. “Scary things come whenever I shut my eyes. Dead people’s hands reach up from the ground …”
“If the police ask questions, tell them you don’t know anything.”
“I dreamed about my mom’s wedding. Someone gave me a chocolate, but when I unwrapped it, there was a dead sparrow’s head inside.”
“Even if you had gone there, what would that prove?” She caught hold of my hands. “You didn’t do anything. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
“And I dreamed about a ghost, a ghost with no legs …”
“Let them investigate,” she said. “So what if the nail was yours? That doesn’t prove anything!”
“Is there such a thing as a soul?” I asked. “My dad’s dead. Do you understand? He’s dead.”
She shuddered. “Your dad’s dead, your dad’s dead.” She chewed over the words, trying to find a hidden meaning. “No, that can’t be—your dad can’t be dead.” She shoved me aside and pointed at the ceiling. “Quick, fetch the scissors, we have to cut the tube around his neck!” Her head tilted back. “A stool! Get a stool! It’s fine, your dad will be fine.” She took a couple of steps back and grabbed hold of me. “Don’t be scared, Han. Good girl. We’ll bring your dad back down. He won’t die, he’ll be fine.”
At the word die, I sobbed even harder.
“Don’t cry, your dad will be fine.” She knelt and swabbed roughly at my tears. Her wrinkled face looked like a paper lantern that had been trampled on. Her body sagged and she sat on the ground, still holding me, and started crying too.
The two of us sat there, hugging each other and crying. I smelled camphor on her sweater, and decay on her body. Like a burned-out building whose crumbling walls still smoldered.
As she wept, I felt I’d reached the bottom of her heart, clear as a mirror. She remembered and understood everything. I started to think she wasn’t mad—that was just a label other people had put on her. Her hair remained immaculate, the black clips like shackles.
I gradually forgot we were crying for different people, different dads whose deaths were separated by time. Our sobs merged into a single sound.
*
That evening in December 1993, the deaths of my father and Wang Luhan’s father became mysteriously intertwined. I was mourning my father, who’d just departed, but also a more distant death.
It rained heavily the night before the interrogation in 1976, and lightning streaked the windows. Unable to sleep, Wang Liangcheng paced around the room as his wife tried to comfort him. Just before dawn, the rain faded, and he finally lay down, only to jolt upright a second later. His wife drowsily asked what was wrong. He said he’d just remembered there were a couple of nails in a drawer. He had to hide them from the police. He looked in every drawer, but there were no nails. He upended them all, and crawled around the floor searching. Sweat poured off his face as he rummaged, his breathing frenzied. Suddenly, his palm landed on a length of rubber tubing, a fleshy brown color, warm as a body. The rain had stopped, and he felt very calm.
There was a small window in the bathroom, right up against the ceiling. He tied the rubber tubing to the frame, looped the noose around his neck, and kicked the stool out from under him.
His daughter found him when she got up to use the bathroom. He was dangling from the window, gray-green face slick with rain. She screamed and ran out.
It was Xie Tiancheng who told me this, many years later. He only knew the bare bones—after all, he’d heard it at several removes, and too much time had passed. Even so, I saw each scene as he spoke, as vividly as if I’d been there.
Xie Tiancheng arrived at Wang Luhan’s apartment late that night in 1993. Years later, he still remembered turning on the lights and being surprised at what he saw. He’d expected chaos; Granny Qin cursing and hurling things around, me howling from hunger and fear. Instead, we were asleep in Granny Qin’s bed, still embracing tightly. She’d curled up her legs so mine could rest on hers. He stood in the doorway looking at us, and forgot what he’d been going to do next.
I wasn’t asleep, but didn’t dare to move. Every so often, Granny Qin would cry out for Han, and I would answer, terrified she would realize I wasn’t her daughter and chase me out. I thought everyone had forgotten me, that we were trapped in this icy place, and would quietly die, bit by bit. Our eyes would die, our teeth would die, our toes would die. I stopped feeling her arm under me, and only sensed the softest part of her, her drooping breasts, pressed against my face through a thin layer of clothes, loose as grave soil.
The lights snapped on with a click, and a tall man was in the doorway.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’m your dad’s friend.”
“You’re here.” Granny Qin sat up. She seemed to know him. “Is it cold outside?”
“I’ll make you something to eat,” he said. “Luhan will be back soon.”
I went to the kitchen and watched him slice cabbage. He turned to me and said, “Fried noodles okay?”
He tossed chopped onions into the wok, and steam rose from the hot oil. He hadn’t taken off his coat and sweat was beading on his forehead.
He set a bowl of noodles on the table, gestured for me to sit, then brought a bowl to Granny Qin’s room. I faintly heard him promise to bring her to see the lantern show on the fifteenth day of the New Year. When she was done eating, he got her to take her meds, which she docilely did. I heard the pills rattling from their bottle. He knew where they were kept, and the correct dose.
He came back out and saw me staring at the empty bowl. “Still hungry? There’s more in the wok.”
I shook my head and he took the bowl away. After a while, he emerged from the kitchen with two bowls of noodles and gave me the smaller portion. “I’m having some too.”
He began slurping up his noodles, a loud, joyful sound. I found it touching. Even humble noodles seemed delicious now, and soon I’d finished my portion.
“Where’s Wang Luhan?” I asked.
He put down his chopsticks and sat up straight. “I have something to tell you.”
“My father’s dead,” I said.
He froze for a second, and nodded painfully. After a short silence, he said, “Luhan fainted. She hadn’t eaten in a few days. A friend took her to the hospital, and I came straight here.” He pulled me over and brushed the hair off my forehead. “What’s your name?”
“Li Jiaqi.”
“Listen to me, Jiaqi. All this will pass. Nothing in the world lasts forever.” His hand rested on my forehead. “Do you have a fever?” He went over to the cabinet and found a thermometer, watched as I placed it in my armpit, and went to the kitchen for some warm water. I’d never hoped more to be ill, to express my anguish, to get even with Wang Luhan for fainting. I had to suffer more than her, to prove I loved Dad more. 36.8 degrees, he said, No fever. He poured me a glass of water and told me to go to bed.
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
“No. Don’t worry. Go to sleep.”
“Can I sleep here?” I sat on the sofa.
He went into the storeroom and came back out with bedding and a pillow. He indicated I should stand, and started laying out the bedding, but stopped.
“Did you get your period?” His voice was very soft.
I followed his eyes to a brownish stain on the couch.
He studied my face. “First time?”
I kept my mouth clamped shut.
He hesitated. “The convenience store downstairs might still be open. I’ll go and see.”
I grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“Okay … Do you want to change?”
The thought of going into the storeroom or bathroom terrified me, and I shook my head. He shrugged, and went to the bedroom for a towel, which he folded and set on top of the bedding. I lay down, and he pulled the blanket over me.
He turned off the lights, leaving only the one in the passageway on, and brought a chair over to sit by the sofa. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here.”
Seeing my eyes still open, he said, “You don’t need a bedtime story, do you? At your age?”
“Do people really have souls?” I asked. “Can I see my dad’s soul?”
He lit a cigarette and drew deeply from it. “When I was a kid, whenever the anniversary of my grandpa’s death came round, my grandma would climb up onto a stool and pull all the nails from the walls, or she’d cover them in red paper. She said demons brought Grandpa back to the house at night, leading him by a chain around his neck, which they would attach to a nail. If there weren’t any nails available, Grandpa could walk around freely rather than being strung up. She also left snacks for the demons; a plate of little fish, the ones with a lot of bones so you have to eat them slowly. That way, Grandpa could stay longer.” Smoke drifted from his cigarette between us. “One year, I crept out of bed in the middle of the night and hid behind the door.”
“Did you see your grandpa?”
“I fell asleep sitting there on the floor.”
“I’m not going to fall asleep.”
“It’s okay, you’ll see him even if you do. They come to us in dreams. Not just on special days, anytime. If you go to sleep quickly, you might see him soon.”
I closed my eyes but didn’t dream. In the dark, I heard the man next to me thunderously breathing in and out, enveloping me in warm air and making me feel safe. I’d always wanted Dad to stay with me as I slept, but instead this was a man whose name I didn’t even know. The thought filled me with shame, as if I’d betrayed Dad. I felt a churning in my belly, and my shorts moistened. Of course, I had no idea what menstruation was, but it felt very far away. Shouldn’t it have waited till I was older and ready to fall in love? But here it was, tied up with fear and sadness right from the beginning. It seemed to come from somewhere very deep within me, carrying with it a pain that came and went, reminding me of Dad, and of the clump of flesh. I imagined it flowing endlessly, until it was all gone. Perhaps I’d see him. On a night like this, bleeding could be a way of getting closer to him.
The sound of a key in the front door. The man jumped up from his chair, and I sat up too. Wang Luhan walked in, her orange-and-green-checked coat unbuttoned to reveal a sweater glistening with snowflakes. She stood there taking in the whole room: drinks cabinet, windows, couch, me. The way she looked at me, I felt like just another piece of furniture.
“Didn’t Huiling come back with you?” said the man, going over to her.
Wang Luhan shook her head and hung her coat from the back of a chair. The man supported her as she sat, and poured her a glass of warm water.
“I need you to do me a favor,” she said. She reached for her coat, not seeming to have noticed it had slid to the floor as she groped the empty air. The man picked it up and handed it to her. She took two slips of paper from the pocket. “Huiling got us these tickets. You’ll have to bring the child back to Jinan tomorrow morning.”
“But you …”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
The man knelt and put his hand on her knee. “I’ll be back tomorrow night, and I’ll stay with you after that.”
I couldn’t make out his face in the dim light, but I sensed the tenderness in his eyes. My heart chilled as I remembered what my father had said while quarreling with her: she had someone waiting for her. This man had come to take care of me and Granny Qin, but he wasn’t Dad. He was replacing Dad as the head of this household. I glared furiously at his hand on Luhan’s leg.
Luhan shoved his hand away. “It’s late. You should go home.”
The man put on his coat, but lingered. I ran over to him and pushed him out of the living room towards the front door. He walked out silently, and I slammed the door behind him.
Back in the living room, all the lights were on, illuminating every corner of the room. Luhan was by the liquor cabinet, pouring herself some vodka. Dad’s warmth still lingered on that bottle. She held the glass in both hands. The spotlight above her spat out blinding light, licking the drink like a snake’s tongue. The vodka trembled, and so did her shadow on the wall, a large, startled bird flapping its wings. She took a big mouthful of vodka, called me over, and told me about the car accident in the simplest possible way, as if this were an item on the daily news. Your dad is gone, she said somberly. It was as if we’d made an agreement that neither of us would cry. You’ll go back to Jinan tomorrow, she said, and you won’t be at the funeral—it’s better that way, you’ll understand someday.
I didn’t argue. There was something very sincere in her voice that made me want to believe her. I didn’t cry either. I just looked at her; I was closer to her face than I’d ever been. Her protruding cheekbones and nose bridge made her seem unfamiliar. Or maybe it wasn’t the angle, maybe she was a stranger now. Before, she’d been Dad’s wife. Now, she had no connection to us, like two planets in the same solar system breaking away from their orbits because their sun was gone. I studied her, this unlucky woman. Her father had killed himself when she was a little girl, her mother lost her mind, and now her husband was dead. These sorrows must have burrowed through her heart, turning it into a bottomless well.
