Yu Hua - The Seventh Day

I nodded, and together we left the bench of our imagination.

It seemed as though we were walking on at a more rapid pace.

“I’ve been looking for him all this time,” she said morosely. “But I can’t find him anywhere. By now he should know what happened to me. He won’t be lying low any more, surely. He must be looking for me.”

“The two of you are separated now,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s there and you’re here.”

She bowed her head. “That’s true,” she said.

“He must feel terrible,” I said.

“He’s bound to,” she said. “He loved me so much, he must be looking for a burial plot for me now, so I can have a good resting place.”

Saying this, she gave a sigh. “He’s got no money,” she went on. “And his friends are just as poor as he is. How will he work up the money to buy me a burial plot?”

“He’ll think of something.”

“That’s true,” she said. “He’d do anything for me, and he’ll figure it out.”

A smile of relief appeared on her face, as though she had recovered a sweet memory from that departed world.

“He used to say I was the prettiest girl in town,” she murmured. “Is it true that I’m pretty?”

“You’re very pretty.” I was sincere.

She smiled happily, but then a vexed look crept over her face. “I’m worried,” she said. “Spring is coming, and then summer. My body will rot and then I’ll just be a bunch of bones.”

“He’ll get you a burial plot soon,” I reassured her. “That way you’ll have a resting place before spring arrives.”

“You’re right.” She nodded. “That’s what he’ll do.”

We walked on in silence, the silence of death. We said nothing more, because our memories made no further progress. Those memories of a departed world were of many colors, empty but also real. I felt the silent motion of the desolate young woman by my side and sighed over the heartache that other world had left her with.

Then it seemed we had reached the end of the open country. She came to a halt. “We’re here,” she said.

To my amazement I now saw another world, one where streams were flowing, where grass covered the ground, where trees were thick with leaves and loaded with fruit. The leaves were shaped like hearts, and when they shivered it was with the rhythm of hearts beating. I saw many people, some just bones, some still fleshed, walking back and forth.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is the land of the unburied.”

Two skeletons sitting on the ground playing chess blocked our path, as though a door were in our way. We stood in front of them as they argued, each accusing the other of trying to take back his move. The sounds of their quarrel continued to escalate, like flames that rise higher the more they leap.

“I’m not playing with you anymore!” the skeleton on the left said, making a gesture of tossing aside the pieces.

The skeleton to the right made an identical gesture. “Well, I’m not playing with you!”

Mouse Girl spoke up. “Stop quarreling, you two! You were both trying to change your moves.”

They stopped arguing and looked up at her, opening their empty mouths. That must mean they’re smiling, I thought. Then they noticed there was someone else next to Mouse Girl, and two pairs of empty eyes began to take stock of me.

“Is this your boyfriend?” the one on the left asked.

“Your boyfriend’s too old for you,” the one on the right said.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Mouse Girl. “He’s not old, either. He just got here.”

“I could tell that from the flesh on him,” the one on the right said.

“You must be in your fifties, right?” the one on the left said.

“Forty-one,” I answered.

“Impossible!” said the one on the right. “You must be at least fifty.”

“No, I really am forty-one,” I said.

“He knows our story, right?” Left Bones said to Right Bones.

“He ought to, if he’s that age,” Right Bones said.

“Do you know our story?” Left Bones asked.

“What story?”

“Our story over there.”

“There are lots of stories over there.”

“Yes, but ours is the most famous.”

“What story’s that?”

I waited for them to tell me their story, but they stopped talking and concentrated on their chess game instead. Mouse Girl and I took a step over the gap between them, as though we were stepping over a threshold.

Mouse Girl and I walked forward together. I looked around me as I went, and it felt as though the leaves were beckoning, the stones were smiling, the river was saying hello.

Skeletal people approached us from the river, from the grassy slopes, and from the woods. They nodded to us gently, and though they brushed past without stopping, I could see their attitude was friendly. Some greeted us warmly, one asking if Mouse Girl had found her boyfriend, another asking if I had just arrived. It was as though their voices had meandered about before coming to my ears, bringing with them the moisture of the river, the freshness of the grass, and the swaying of the leaves.

Now once more we heard an argument erupt between the chess players. It exploded in the air like a firecracker, but it sounded empty, like a quarrel and nothing more.

Mouse Girl told me they were both unreasonable when playing chess, constantly retracting their moves as they played, then getting into a row. Over and over again they would vow to abandon the game, go off to get cremated, go off to their respective graves, but neither of them had ever once stood up when saying this.

“They have burial places?”

“Yes, they both do,” Mouse Girl said.

“Why don’t they go?”

All Mouse Girl knew was that they had been here for at least ten years. The one surnamed Zhang had been a policeman. He wouldn’t get cremated, and wouldn’t go to his burial place, because he was waiting for his parents over there to secure the title of “martyr” for him. The other one, surnamed Li, wouldn’t get cremated or be buried either, because he wanted to keep Zhang company. Li said that once Zhang got approved to be a martyr, then the two of them together — close as brothers, since they were — would proceed to the crematorium oven and each would move on to his own resting place.

“I heard that one of them killed the other,” Mouse Girl said.

“I know their story,” I said.

More than ten years earlier, after my birth parents arrived from that northern city to claim me and the tale of “the boy a train gave birth to” had come to a satisfying conclusion, another story had begun. During “Operation Thunderclap,” a police-led crackdown on vice in my city, one of the prostitutes caught in the net proved to be a man. Surnamed Li, he had dressed up as a woman to troll for customers.

A young policeman named Zhang Gang, just graduated from police academy, took part in “Operation Thunderclap”; he conducted the questioning the night when Li was brought in. Li showed not the slightest remorse over either his cross-dressing or his flesh-peddling and even showed a fulsome pride in his ingenious technique. According to him, he was a past master at handling those clients of his, and if the police hadn’t caught him not a single john would ever have discovered that he was a man. Unfortunately, he had focused too much of his energy on attending to his clients and not taken enough steps to guard against the police. That was how he ended up tumbling into the sewer, he said.