Ma Jian - The Noodle Maker

What will happen to me tomorrow? the professional writer wonders. Perhaps I’ll bump into those two on the street, and see the look of despair in the father’s eyes. The writer’s mind turns to the quiet waitress with long hair who works in the noodle shop where he goes to eat rice congee. He likes to gaze at her. She is brimming with life, but has a reserved and peaceful demeanour. He wonders how he can manage to work her into his novel too.

His bark often woke me from my sleep. It sounded different from the bark he used during our conversations: it was the bark of a dog. In the two months following his death, his bark continued to wake me. I’ll never recover from the fact that I was not with him when he died.

(The professional writer strokes his cigarette lighter and remembers the day he had lunch with the painter in the cafeteria of the municipal museum. The painter stared at him and asked, ‘Do you think my dog will be reincarnated again? How come he could talk like you and me? I’ve never told anyone the truth about him before, not even my girlfriend. I’ll tell you now, but you may not believe it.’)

I never saw what he looked like when he was dead. When I returned from my conference trip, he was already being transformed into a museum exhibit. Secretary Wang, the director of the museum, never told me the story behind his death, he just sent an officer up to my room to criticise me for secretly rearing a dog. The children downstairs told me they’d seen the dog being beaten to death by the old carpenter who lives on the fourth floor. They even led me to the alleged scene of the crime. They pointed to a dirty patch on the concrete floor and claimed it was the dog’s blood. I examined the patch carefully, and discovered that it was in fact a paint stain left behind by the decorators a few years ago. So I didn’t tackle the old carpenter about the subject. One day, Secretary Wang saw a picture I’d taken of the dog and said, ‘Well, if you didn’t want this to happen, you shouldn’t have let your dog piss in the lift.’ I came straight out with it, and asked him whether the old carpenter had been responsible for my dog’s death. Secretary Wang glanced at the door and said, ‘Did that security officer pay you a visit in the end? He was furious to hear that you were keeping a dog.’

When I asked him again how the dog had died, Secretary Wang seemed to change into a moth. His eyes became smaller and smaller, then he turned his back on me and flitted away through the open door. I could tell that his arse was no cleaner than any of the others I see in the public latrines. When I returned from my conference trip, the kennel was empty and there was no smell of urine on the terrace. The piece of cloth I had cut from the blanket on my bed was still lying in his basket, but it was infested with ants now. When I peered down, the ants looked up at me, then continued to race though the forest of woollen threads, as fast as the people in the streets below.

I crawled out of the kennel and started searching the roof terrace for any signs of the dog’s presence. The terrace is huge. There are so many chimneys sticking up from it, it looks like a forest of dead trees, or a field of gravestones. Some of the chimneys are over fifty years old and built in the shape of a cross. My room is in the tall clock tower on the edge of the terrace. It has a small window that looks out onto the streets below. Before my girlfriend committed suicide, she often came to visit me. She complained that the terrace was like a graveyard, and the clock tower like the house of the cemetery guard. She hated all the pipes that cut across the roof, she was always tripping over them. But my dog leaped happily across the terrace for more than two years without complaining once, and he only had three legs.

The clock doesn’t strike the hour any longer. During the Cultural Revolution, a Maoist cell called ‘Army of Millions’ took control of the tower and removed some parts of the clock to make weapons for use in their battles against the rival Maoist cell, ‘The Expulsion of Enemy Factions Brigade’. In the past, policemen all over town used to time their shifts by the clock. You can see its face from any road in the city. Likewise, I can see the entire town from my terrace, including the new urban district by the sea. When I get up in the morning and step out onto the terrace, I can see my former classmates and other people I know squeezing onto buses or eating breakfast at street stalls. Some who’ve made it into the office already and are trapped in a political meeting, wink up at me through their windows. When they finish work, I shout out to them, and they all shout back to me. It’s easier than using a telephone.

My dog was born up there.

(This was obviously impossible, the writer thinks to himself. For a start, no female dog had ever set foot on the terrace. The truth is, his dog was in fact born in the suburbs, in a yard outside a private crematorium. Only there was it possible for dogs to produce puppies that were so similar to men. The yard was haunted by the spirits of the dead. The dogs took pity on some of them, and allowed them to reincarnate themselves in their offspring.)

When I saw he only had three legs, I was overwhelmed with pity and decided to take him into my care. He wasn’t steady on his feet. If he was standing up, I would sometimes prod his front leg and he’d topple to the ground. After a few months, he learned that if he splayed his legs out in a tripod position, he was less likely to fall. The next time I tried to topple him, he curled his lip and said, ‘Don’t waste your energy, my friend.’ I was so startled to hear the dog speak, I felt like running away. But before I’d had a chance to move, he sighed, ‘I’m just telling you — give it a rest.’

‘Are you really a dog?’ I asked.

‘Well, what are you?’

‘A man, of course.’

‘Well I’m a dog then. But I must have been a man in a previous life, otherwise how would I be able to speak your language?’

‘Which man do you think you were?’

‘Go and check the municipal death register, if you’re so interested. Why should I tell you? One thing I will say is that I’ve lived in this town for over a hundred years. I would never have guessed I’d come back this time as a three-legged dog, though. What a joke!’

‘Who were you in your past life?’ I repeated, my body still shaking like a leaf.

‘I’m not sure. There’s no way of knowing. All I do know is that I didn’t want to return as a human in my next life. I don’t mind being a dog, it’s just a shame I have one leg missing.’

We got on well together. As soon as I finished my work in the museum, I would run upstairs to the terrace and see him waiting for me outside his kennel. I’d jump over the maze of pipes, unlock my door and let him in. I would paint for a few hours, then we’d retire to bed to read books and discuss various matters of the day. He read nearly every book in my room, apart from the ones on the highest shelf. I forbade him to touch those because I was afraid that their contents might corrupt his mind, and besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of him overtaking me. I also insisted he made sure the door to our terrace was locked before he raised his voice or barked. Three of the museum’s staff, including the old carpenter and his son the plumber, belonged to the dog extermination brigade. If news had reached them that there was a dog on my terrace, they would have had the authority to search my tower then eat any dog they found. They always ate the dogs they killed — their leaders only required them to hand in the dog’s head.

I work as an illustrator for the municipal museum’s natural history section. My task is to make sketches of all the stuffed animals that are exhibited in the museum. The job is much better than any my old classmates were assigned, so I consider myself very fortunate. After the survivor moved in with me (that’s the name the dog gave himself), I was afraid he might jeopardise my career. So to protect myself, I began to work more assiduously, and stepped up my efforts to join the Party. But the dog died in the end, and all that survives of him now is his beautiful hide.