Xu Xiaobin - Dunhuang Dream

The sound was coming from Chen Qing’s room!

That night Zhang Shu played the thief. He pressed against the grimy window to see what he could see. Directly opposite to him was Chen Qing, whose old face was a bit vague under the dim light. An old woman sat with her back to him, but her silhouette looked very familiar.

The sound of weeping continued.

“. . Don’t be too upset, it’s fate!” Chen Qing’s lips suddenly moved.

“If it’s not fate, what is it?” came the woman’s voice. Zhang Shu’s heart skipped a beat — it was Yu’er’s mother. He pressed his ear against a crack in the window to hear more clearly. “But that painting was handed down by my ancestors! It has been handed down for so many generations and I’ve lost it. I’m sure it was Dayejisi who slipped me the fake.”

Chen Qing timidly lowered his head and said, “Be careful. Dayejisi is a powerful person. If you’re wrong, you’ll pay with your life.”

“Sooner or later it is bound to come to an end. Life has no meaning anyway. One daughter won’t have anything to do with me and the other is no good. Why bother to go on living?”

Chen Qing tried to comfort her. “You have to go on living even if life has no meaning. Why these tears at your age? Stop crying. I feel awful when you cry.”

Zhang Shu could see tears streaming from Chen Qing’s eyes.

It was clear that they hadn’t done it, but who had?

A convention of cheap mystery novels suddenly occurred to Zhang Shu: the most unlikely suspect was usually guilty. The experienced detectives always said, “One has to watch out for the darkness beneath the lantern.”

Then an image slowly rose before his mind’s eye, followed by another, both of which gradually merged.

“What marvelous partners,” he thought.

15

Wuye returned at dusk on the fifth day.

He appeared silently out of nowhere. Xingxing, who was sitting by the window, stood up and stared calmly at him.

She said nothing nor did she cry. As if in a dream, she repeated those warm, honeyed words capable of reducing one to tears over and over again to herself. Each time she repeated them, tears trickled from her eyes. Xiao Xingxing was easily moved to tears. But in life, she rarely resorted to tears and she seldom cried in front of others, even if she was sad.

Perhaps the tears she shed in public had all been shed twelve years before.

Wuye was much thinner and he appeared distracted, as if he had just returned from the dead and was still unaccustomed to his surroundings. Xingxing hugged him tightly and closed her eyes. She could feel the warmth of her body as it flowed away. She wished she could pass all of her warmth to him. He accepted her attentions stiffly. His ten cold fingernails began to sink into her flesh, deeper and deeper. She grit her teeth to bear the pain and she nearly burst out screaming several times — more out of fear than pain. She sensed he was a man who had just escaped from the lair of a beast; his body was covered with the cold scent of it. The whole day she cared for him as if he were a baby. She got him out of his clothes, heated a bath for him, and bathed him with Imperial Crown Bath Gel. The silvery soap bubbles wreathed his pallid face. His blank eyes gradually filled with warmth and gratitude.

Strangely, when she undressed him, she didn’t feel in the least bit embarrassed, as if she were the Holy Mother bathing the Holy Infant. She gently rubbed his entire body and washed the dirty, soapy water from him. Then she proceeded to wrap him in a clean, white sheet. He lay there like a baby in swaddling clothes, falling to sleep amid the sound of her hushed lullaby.

Why did his eyelashes continue to twitch even after he had drifted off to sleep? She thought of the distant young man, who had the same long and sensitive eyelashes. That corn-scented night and those many scarlet evenings from the past merged together. She had no idea if he was the reincarnation of that distant young man. She didn’t know where they came from, but she was frightened by returning spirits.

She felt warm and damp in that steamy little room. At dusk, when Zhang Shu came over to borrow her thermos, he saw Wuye. It was precisely at that moment when Wuye woke. Through his narrowly opened eyes, he saw Zhang Shu’s blue shaved face; it was in fact a handsome face, very masculine.

16

Xingxing did not like to kiss. Whenever anyone tried to kiss her, she would turn away. This included her husband, Mousheng. Kissing never made her happy. She didn’t know why, but perhaps it was because all men had bad breath. She knew that this morbid preoccupation with cleanliness, this pursuit of perfection, was an obstacle to her happiness. That distant young man was no exception. She gave him much more, but it amounted to a spiritual love. She couldn’t squarely face her own physical needs. They existed and charmed. Once after bathing, she came out from behind that heavy purplish-red velvet curtain that was in his house opposite to which stood a mirror. She saw the momentary matchless glory of the moon and the sun that had risen at the same time before the heavy curtain and she was shock by this glory. She knew that Xiaojun’s room was next to hers and she actually wanted to walk in leisurely. No, she didn’t want to do anything except let him see her, see her unadorned. She regretted not having done so; she regretted it all her life, for he left this world before ever having really seen her.

Narcissism is the last refuge for anyone seeking the perfect man or woman, because perfection does not exist in the world. Some famous person once said that the first love and the last love is narcissism.

17

Wuye talked as he slowly exhaled the steam from the hot glutinous millet porridge.

He said he had been taken to a large room by that group of people. It was a beautifully decorated room, like a tastefully decorated office. He was tied up because he kept struggling. The thin cords cut into his flesh. He found that skinny woman very strange for her lack of feminine compassion and the way she spit, berated him, and shouted at him. Everyone disappeared, and he was left tied there, where he trembled like an abandoned child. The silence was oppressive. He spent the entire night with his eyes wide open; every time he heard a noise, he would quake with fear. Several times he screamed just to hear the echo. Later he heard the window creak and it appeared to open a crack. He thought that someone had used a scaling ladder like in the movie Robin Hood and had come to rescue him. But he finally realized that it was just the wind that was rattling the door and windows.

He thought of Xingxing and when he did so, his heart ached. He thought of how she had smiled and pleaded with those people on his behalf, which must have been difficult for her. She had done it all for him. She was thrust alone into the darkness. How would she get back? She had a poor sense of direction.

He wept for Xingxing and for himself. Although he had been born into a big Christian family, no one really showed any concern for him. His mother and father were both engaged in geographical research. Less than a month after he was born, his mother had left him to accompany his father to the northwest. He was weak from the start and it was a distant female relative who had raised him. The strange old spinster punished him in a variety of ways. At the height of winter, she had punished him by making him stand by the door, as a result of which he developed a bad case of the flu that nearly claimed his young life. Later, in his youth, the old woman often let him go without eating. When he was so hungry he couldn’t stand it any longer, he went and ate table scraps at a restaurant. It is said that a child who grows up in a loveless household will turn into a wolf, but he was an exception. Even after such a terrible childhood, he became even more refined and sensitive. He wanted to store up all of his feelings and offer them to one person. In twenty-some years he had not once encountered a woman who moved him, so he developed an interest in traveling. He never expected to meet Xingxing, who became the star of his life, in the northwest.