Howard Goldblatt (Editor) - Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today

Yet the nights were hard to endure, and this hardship had nothing to do with the weather. Old Mu Xi had long adjusted to wind and rain, scorching heat and freezing cold. In winter, there were fewer tender leaves, so he had to eat old ones, but his stomach had become strong. The hardship derived from his feeling of suspension.

Whenever he fell asleep, he felt clearly that he was suspended in midair. Beneath him, the villagers were busy working their fields, barefoot children ambled along the bank between the plots, chimneys gave out a light-gray smoke; yet all of that had nothing to do with him. Hanging in midair, he felt dizzy; it seemed as if his innards were flying out of his body. The nightmare would continue until he was startled awake by his extreme terror. Since fleeing into the forest, he had spent every night this way. Mornings when he arose, he would be pale, his body shivering like a typhoid victim's. Each step was agony. He would struggle to collect a large quantity of leaves to compensate for the strength he had lost during the night. Slowly, he would recover his energy, and toward afternoon he would have regained his vitality almost fully.

Old Mu Xi passed one month after another, one year after another in such a pattern. In moments of desperation, he often dreamed of finding a place that no one could think of or remember. There, one would neither hear the wind chimes echoing in the mountains nor see the leaves changing color with the seasons. The earth and sky would merge. Perhaps in such a place, he would no longer feel suspended in midair, and he wouldn't have to eat all those leaves.

After many, many years, he finally returned to his hometown. He didn't choose the way home purposely. He never chose his way. This homecoming could only be called a coincidence. Even he was surprised for a long time.

On a familiar little hill, he saw the small tile-roofed house where he had once lived, and a few of the same villagers. Like one transfixed, he stood there for a long time, thinking how awkward it had been to be among them back then, when every day had seemed as long as a year. He didn't feel like going home to have a look around, even if they pardoned him; for him, returning home was meaningless, and he could no longer participate in that way of life. Calmly, he jumped into a stream at the entrance to the village to take a bath; then he returned to the mountain.

Many people saw him, yet nobody recognized him. In fact, the incident had happened so long ago that nobody connected him with it anymore. That night, people in the village closed their doors very early and stayed inside. And the topic they discussed was the wild man. Old Mu Xi stayed for a few days in the mountains near his hometown, but he soon became bored and headed north, where the forest was denser. As he left his hometown, he heard deafening firecrackers, which the villagers, fearing the wild man, set off to boost their courage. Old Mu Xi laughed and walked quickly northward through the smell of gunpowder.

One rather strange thing was that his fellow villagers had already forgotten the murder case. They had also forgotten the position they had taken in the dispute, yet they had never forgotten Mu Xi as a person. In folk legend, he had been gradually elevated to a hero of the forest, a powerful and unconstrained hero like a heavenly steed soaring across the skies. One day, they put up posters inviting Old Mu Xi to return, to come home, to return to the people, but he had gone far away and did not see those notices. Even if he had, he would not have believed in the pardon because he was confident he had seen through the people's hearts and minds. Home would not be the place for him. He wanted to go where people had totally forgotten, a place where the sky and earth had merged.

He found that lately, his capacity for food was growing and the blood in his veins had turned green (he scratched his finger once on a thorny vine). Nights had become more and more terrifying. The clear-cut separation of sky from earth forced him to struggle desperately since he felt suspended between them. Old Mu Xi was both startled and scared.

When Old Mu Xi had begun living in the forest, he often mumbled to himself. The language he had used in society obviously was strongly rooted in him. With passing time, Old Mu Xi's desire to speak grew fainter and fainter. One day, he discovered he could not speak a single word. He tried to use the language that had served him in the past for thinking, but it had escaped him. The sound he produced after much effort turned out to resemble baby talk. Quickly, Old Mu Xi discovered the benefit of losing his linguistic memory. His throat became coarse and natural. Often, he didn't need to think to express his urges accurately and easily. Thus he roared, cried, and shouted at will day and night, feeling completely free. One day after several years in his dream world, he felt extremely lucky that he had not gone home, because he could not have endured the sounds those people made. To him, they were shrill and irritating, a completely senseless display of technique. Even little children would twist their lips strangely to make outlandish sounds. Now that he was hidden in the forest, whenever he recalled that he used to talk like that, he would blush with shame.

Although the murder had occurred years before, the image of his victim was still sharp in Old Mu Xi's mind, for he was a born bearer of grudges. Numerous times in those moments before falling asleep, he engaged his enemy in bloody battle, emitting heroic roars. Numerous times, he experienced the pride of triumph and the humiliation of defeat. In these moments of half sleep, his brief human life repeated itself. When Old Mu Xi woke up, his desire for battle had disappeared completely. He would think of the foe he had killed years before and be somewhat surprised: could it be that he had not killed him? Was that forcible seizure of the cropland some kind of illusion? But regardless of the event's authenticity, it or something like it had forced his departure. Old Mu Xi was certain about that, and he felt himself very fortunate indeed. In the same way that he refused to believe in pardons, the stubborn Mu Xi would not make peace with his enemy. In the dim night, as he floated in midair, facing his opponent across two isolated realms, his emotions were clear and unambiguous. On such occasions, he would devise all kinds of unrealistic schemes for murdering his foe, maneuvering again and again, dismissing the idea, then maneuvering again, and then dismissing the plan again in order to conceal his inner horror, to forget the feeling of being suspended in midair.

One day about half a month after he had left for the north, he saw a group of people tramping around in the grassland in the woods. They all cupped their hands in the shape of a trumpet and called into the air: "Old Mu Xi! Old Mu Xi…"

Old Mu Xi's jaw dropped in surprise. The sound seemed famil iar, yet the memory was so distant and vague that he could not un derstand their cries. The people struck him as somehow strange Their pronunciation was not as displeasing as that of ordinary people, yet it was too mechanical. Always they shouted exactly the same "Old-Mu-Xi" without variation, without rise and fall, very unsatisfyingly. From the bushes, he stared at them, restraining himself, expecting that one of them would give out some different sound.

But they didn't know what he was thinking. They appeared to be indulged in their game as they called out forcefully, "Old Mu Xi! Old-Mu-Xi!" Amid the sound were children's loud voices.

Old Mu Xi flew into a rage. Without thinking, he jumped out from his hiding place, ran into the middle of their circle, and shouted, "Ha! Hahaha! Ah! Guaguagua!"

Seeing the longhaired wild man and hearing his piercing cries echo through mountain and forest, everybody fled madly down the slopes, losing their shoes along the way.