Ran Chen - A Private Life

Her exaggerated breathing seemed to influence me, because I too had unconsciously begun gasping for breath.

Then I noticed a burned smell in the air.

It is really very difficult to recall the events of that evening, because my instincts unremittingly block them out. They have become so distant and indistinct that they seem like a fabrication immersed beneath all the other disasters of that year.

In that year of death, it was only the power of my reason that kept the memory of those flames from being extinguished. For the longest time I have been looking for a way to lay aside the memories of that year, but it seems like the wind carries secret orders. One old house after another, the curtains tightly closed, the bars on the windows covered with rust, or dense forests of gnarled, old trees seem vaguely, like some kind of screen, to impede my way. It was as if I were pinioned in a crevice, with no way to get out into an open space, into some city square, no way to get rid of this crushing weight. There was no way out – all I could do was get by from day to day trying to stick to safe, familiar routine, my mind burdened with those killing memories. Through the silence, I purposely weighted my footfalls so that they might bother people, thinking that sooner or later there would have to be an echo that would come back to me.

The evil mists that enveloped that year were more than enough to distort many of its realities. But nature seemed to think they were not enough, and on that winter evening the choking black smoke obliterated my life. Like the prelude to a tragedy, this opened the curtain onto a more and more savage plot that within several months had engulfed the entire country.

That night, the clouds of smoke that filled the room brought Mother's and my conversation to a sudden end.

The first thing I noticed was Mother's face going fuzzy like an out-of-focus photograph, her features seemingly no longer where they had been originally. Her nose, eyes, and mouth looked like they had moved to a different place. I rubbed my eyes and stared hard at her. Her face was blurry, as if I were looking at her in a bathhouse through thick clouds of steam. In fact, she was still sitting in the easy chair in front of the desk. She hadn't moved at all. Now she was back where she had been sitting originally, but I still couldn't see her clearly, because she looked as if she were behind a mosquito net or a gauze curtain.

This frightened me, because all sorts of odd scenes had been appearing in my head around that time, filling me with a strange, unreal terror, so at first I was uncertain whether what I was seeing was real or not.

Then Mother asked, "I wonder what's making the smoke?"

As the smell of something burning grew stronger, Mother and I had at almost the same moment become aware that smoke was filling the room.

We looked at the door and saw smoke funneling in through the cracks.

I said, "Mama, is somebody lighting a barbecue in the corridor?" As I spoke, I went over and opened the door.

Thick, dense smoke rolled in around my legs, and I saw that it had completely blotted out the dim light in the hallway. It was obviously eating away at the oxygen as well, for I started to choke and cough. Immediately I shut the door.

In the hallway you could hear, over the clatter and clamor of people fleeing, a chorus of confused voices.

"Hurry up, run…"

Mother and I exchanged a quick glance. There was a fire in our building.

"Mama, we've got to get out of here." Because I was so scared, my voice sounded different, as if it were coming from someone else's throat.

Mother put her hands on her breast as she struggled to breathe. "Where can we go? The elevator's shut down. There's nothing but smoke out there. It'll be impossible to breathe." Gasping for breath, she said, "If the fire's downstairs, wouldn't we just be jumping into it? Smoke and flames always go up, so there's no way the problem is above us. For sure it's somewhere below us," she gasped.

My mother is not a woman to panic in a crisis. In such situations she remains calm and collected.

"But listen" – I wasn't thinking clearly – "everybody's running downstairs."

Now the racket and confusion of fleeing feet and the sounds of household goods and suitcases being kicked and dragged along in the hallway was even worse, and there was the sound of things being smashed.

Because she couldn't breathe, Mother shot over to the window and opened it.

I shot over behind her saying, "Mama, you can't open the window." I remembered reading about that in the newspaper.

As I listened to the wind outside, all of a sudden I heard her coarse, rasping cry blot out the clamor in the building. "The only way out is to jump."

Ignoring my mother's plea, I closed the window and pulled her out the door.

We were immediately swallowed up in the thick, rolling smoke, which stung my eyes until the tears flowed. I clung to my mother's hand like death. We were right next to each other, but I couldn't see her. All around me through the turbid air, I could hear the sound of fleeing feet and people bumping heavily into things blocking their way. Unable to see them clearly, all we could do was grope our way downward with them.

There was very little air to breathe and the smoky hallways were filled with the sound of coughing and frightened shouts. I felt like a vise was clamped on my throat, choking me so that it was impossible to speak. Afraid that Mother might collapse from asphyxiation, I gripped her arm tightly as we fled.

I say "fled," but in actuality we could do no more than fumble our way along slowly.

I could feel that the heat and smoke were spreading upward from downstairs. The thick, endless smoke seemed to foil us with the tremendous buoyant force of sea water. The faster we tried to go down, the more our feet were buoyed back, making it difficult for us to press forward. But we had no choice but to force our way down – the only route to life lay below us. The feeling was exactly like many other absurd contradictions we encounter in life.

Mother's arm began to weigh heavier in my hand, and I was afraid she was going to collapse.

"Jump… jump…" she blurted out with difficulty.

I knew right away what she meant, because we had just groped our way to a landing in the stairwell, where the moonlight was shining in through the window closed tightly against the winter winds. Normally, the moon was like a round, silver eye glittering against the indigo curtain of night. But now it was like the faded eye of a dying man, casting only a thin thread of light in the narrow landing.

I knew what Mother was thinking: if there was no other way, we could jump from the stairwell window. Obviously she wasn't thinking clearly. We lived on the eleventh floor. We'd only come down a floor and a half, so we were between the ninth and tenth floors. Jumping would be suicide.

Paying no attention to what she said, I desperately tugged her along behind me. We groped our way down, one foot after the other. My slippers long since lost, I moved along slowly in my bare feet with only one thought in my mind – getting out of there.

What was odd was that at this particular moment, for no apparent reason, I recalled an incident from my past.

Again, it was when I was in middle school. There was a period of time when I could see no point in living – all I could think of was ending my life. I was not at all like most people contemplating suicide, who go around talking about how they "want to die." I kept it to myself until eventually I decided the time was ripe.

When I got home that day, I very seriously said to my mother, "I've thought about it a lot. Life is stupid. I don't want to live anymore."

Mother gave me a very surprised look. She looked at me for the longest time, but she didn't seem to be in a hurry to answer me.