Yu Hua - The Seventh Day

When I made the gesture of placing the bowl of noodles on the ground, it felt as though I were placing it on a table. Then my left hand made the gesture of holding the bowl and my right hand made the gesture of holding chopsticks. I completed the motion of taking a mouthful of noodles and my mouth began the motion of tasting them. To me they tasted the same as noodles in the departed world.

I became aware that all around me was laughter and good cheer, as people tucked into their meals and exchanged toasts, at the same time gleefully mocking those defective food items so pervasive in the departed world: tainted rice, tainted milk formula, tainted buns, fake eggs, leather milk, plaster noodles, chemical hot pot, fecal tofu, ersatz chili powder, recycled cooking oil.

Amid hoots of laughter, they sang the praises of the dishes here, and I heard words such as “fresh,” “delicious,” and “healthy” being bandied about.

“There are only two places we know where food is safe,” someone said.

“Which two places?”

“Here is one.”

“What about the other?”

“The state banquets over there.”

“Well said,” someone chuckled. “We’re enjoying the same treatment as those top leaders.”

As I smiled I noticed that I was no longer making the motion of eating noodles and realized that I had finished.

“Check, please!” someone next to me called.

A skeletal waitress came over. “Eighty-seven yuan,” she said.

“Here’s a hundred.”

“Thirteen yuan change,” the waitress said.

“Thanks,” the diner said.

Paying the bill was simply an exchange of words, with no action involved. At this point Tan Jiaxin came limping over, making the gesture of holding a dish in his palm. I knew he was giving me a fruit plate, so I made the gesture of taking it from him. He sat down opposite me. “Fresh fruit, just picked,” he said.

I began the motion of eating fruit and tasted sweet, delicious flavors. “The Tan Family Eatery didn’t need long to get going,” I said.

“There’s no public security bureau, fire department, or sanitation, commerce, or tax department here,” he said. “To open a restaurant over there, the fire department will hold things back for a year or two, claiming that your restaurant poses a fire risk, and the sanitation department will delay things for a year or two on the grounds that your sanitation level is not up to standard. You have to give them money and gifts before they will grant you a permit.”

An uneasy look then crossed his face. “You’re not angry with us, are you?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“You were stuck in the room.”

I recalled the last scene in that world, of Tan Jiaxin gazing at me through the smoke and shouting to me.

“You seemed to be shouting,” I said.

“I was telling you to run.” He sighed. “We didn’t manage to hold anybody back, only you.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t that you held me back — I just didn’t leave.”

I didn’t tell him about the newspaper and the report on Li Qing’s suicide, for that would be too long a story. Maybe on some other occasion I would take him through it all, slowly.

Tan Jiaxin was still struggling with an uneasy conscience. He explained why, after the kitchen fire began, they had to block the front door and try to have the customers pay before leaving. The restaurant had been operating in the red for three years in a row.

“I must have been crazy,” he said. “I ruined myself, I ruined my family, and I ruined you.”

“Coming here is not so bad,” I said. “My dad’s here too.”

“Your dad’s here?” Tan Jiaxin was pleased. “Why didn’t you come together?”

“I haven’t found him yet,” I said. “But I have the feeling he’s not far away.”

“Once you find him, be sure to bring him here,” Tan Jiaxin said.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I said.

Tan Jiaxin sat down opposite me, no longer with a frown on his face but wreathed in smiles. As he got up to leave, he urged me once more to bring my father to taste their dishes.

Then I settled my bill. A skeletal girl came over — a new hire, I assumed. “The noodles are eleven yuan,” she said. “The fruit is compliment ary.”

“Here’s twenty,” I said.

“Here’s your change,” she said.

Again, an exchange of words was all that was involved. As I turned to leave, this skeletal girl called to me warmly, “Good to see you! Please come again!”

In front of a verdant bamboo grove, a skeleton wearing a black armband came over to me. I noticed a little hole in his forehead and realized that I’d seen him before. I smiled at him and he smiled too. His smile was not a mobile expression of feeling as much as a light breeze wafting from his vacant eyes and empty mouth.

“There’s a bonfire over there,” he said. “See, over there.”

I looked into the far distance, in the direction of his outstretched finger. A broad meadow spread almost as far as the eye could see, and where the meadow ended there was something bright and glistening, like a silk sash — it looked to me like a river. A green fire was blazing far off in the distance, like the little flame that burns when one flicks on a cigarette lighter. Skeletal people were coming down the hillside and out of the woods, and I could see a number of little groups heading toward the fire.

“How about we go over and join them?” he suggested.

“What’s going on there?” I asked.

“There’s a bonfire by the river,” he said.

“Do they often go there?”

“Not often, but every now and then.”

“Everyone here goes?”

“No.” He glanced at my armband and pointed at his own. “Just people like us.”

I understood now. Over there was where self-mourners would congregate. I nodded and followed him toward the bonfire and the silk-sash river. The grass whispered as we wended our way.

I looked at his black armband. “How do you come to be here?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said.

A note of remembrance appeared in his voice. “I’d been married a couple of years then. My wife had a mental illness, but I didn’t realize that before we married, because I had met her only three times. I did sense something a bit odd about her smile, and it made me feel a little uneasy. But my parents weren’t at all concerned, and her family circumstances were good, with a large dowry and twenty thousand yuan in the bank. The village where I’m from is very poor, and it’s parents who make decisions when it comes to choosing a marriage partner. With that kind of money you can build a two-story house. So my parents went ahead with the match, and it was only later that it became clear she was mentally disturbed.

“She wasn’t that terrible — she didn’t hit me or make a fuss — but she’d spend the whole day laughing at this and that and got absolutely nothing done. My parents regretted their decision and felt they’d let me down, but they wouldn’t let me get a divorce, saying that the house had already been built and it wouldn’t do to dump her after profiting from her wealth. I hadn’t been thinking of divorce, either, and preferred just to carry on as we were doing. She was gentle and quiet as mental cases go, sleeping peacefully at night like any normal person.

“One summer day she went off by herself — I don’t think she had any idea where she was going. I went out to look for her, and so did my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. We looked all over the place and made inquiries everywhere, but could find no trace of her. After three days of futile searching, we went to tell her family. They jumped to the conclusion that I must have murdered her, and they went to the local public security bureau to report their suspicions.