Xu Zechen - Running Through Beijing

His shaved head made his body feel lighter and his feet fleeter. He sold DVDs in four different places, and it was eleven by the time he returned home. When he walked in the philosophy student asked him, point-blank, “Have you seen my cellphone?” Dunhuang said he hadn’t, then put down his bag and went to the toilet. When he came out again he noticed something was wrong. The students of foreign languages and mathematics were rooting under the beds and in the corners like mice, while the philosophy student stared at Dunhuang as if he was drunk, the whites of his eyes growing wide.

“You really haven’t seen it?” he asked.

“I really haven’t,” said Dunhuang, shaking his head just in case he wasn’t making himself understood.

“This place must be fucking haunted!”the philosophy student said. He’d put his cellphone on the table before he went to sleep the night before, but had forgotten to take it with him when he left in the morning. When he got back it was gone. “There’s only the four of us here, that’s eight hands — where would a ninth hand have come from?”

“Unless it was a ghost, it had to have been one of us,” said the mathematics student, his expressionless face drawing even longer.

“It must’ve been,” agreed the pudgy language student. “Maybe we should report it?”

Dunhuang looked from one to the other and discovered that all three were looking at him. He took a big step back, then raised a hand and said, “Sure, I vote we report it.”

The philosophy student called 110. On the phone he kept repeating the phrase, “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” Dunhuang thought this was a senseless thing to keep saying. The four of them stayed silent until the police arrived. After a few questions, they were all taken to the police station to make a report. The four were questioned separately, the philosophy student first, then the pudgy language student, then the skinny mathematician, and finally, Dunhuang. It was 1:20 in the morning at that point. He’d spent the whole time up until then sitting in a chair and looking at two girls opposite him. They’d also come to make a report — a theft. They also lived in a collective dormitory. Half of their Chinese was rural dialect, and the two obviously came from different places, but they appeared to have found a common enemy. They were both wearing low-necked little shirts over round white breasts, and as they spoke they threw glances toward Dunhuang instead of looking at each other. So the wait went by quickly, and he wasn’t nervous like the last time he’d been caught. As far as he was concerned, he was only here, in the police station in the middle of the night, to look at buxom girls.

“You really didn’t see anything?” the officer asked.

“I really didn’t,” Dunhuang said.

The officer was tired. He lit a cigarette, dragged, and took a long time exhaling. Through the smoke he said, “I hear you’re selling pirated DVDs?”

“I don’t sell them.” Dunhuang got nervous. “I’m just helping a friend temporarily.”

“You do know that selling pirated DVDs is illegal?” The officer was making notes.

“I know, of course I know. I’ll give him the movies back right away. I’m applying for my doctorate — really, I’m in the doctorate program in Peking University’s art department.”

“Oh. . a doctorate.”

“Right, a doctorate. I really didn’t see that phone, honestly. I don’t even know what it looks like.”

“So it was a ghost.”

“Sure, it was a ghost.” Dunhuang felt a little more relaxed. “Like they said — a ninth hand appeared.”

The officer laughed, then pushed his notebook over and said, “Take a look, sign it if everything’s in order.” After he’d signed, the officer added, “Watch it with the DVDs, there’s going to be a crackdown.”

The only result of the night’s investigation was a pile of documents — the whereabouts of the phone remained unknown. The doctoral student kept persisting until the officer finally said, “That’s enough for tonight, there’s no need to create bad blood. We’ll come visit you in the morning, I can’t imagine the thing sprouted wings. None of you are to leave before ten.”

They walked back together, in unprecedented unity, along the way discussing what grisly end the phone might have met, then sighing over Beijing’s crime, then complaining over the high price of phones, the unfairness of two-way charges, and so on, as if the loss of the phone had no direct connection to them. When they reached the basement room and saw the empty table, however, the shadow of the theft fell over them once more. “My phone. . ” said the doctor. No one comforted him, they said nothing. They washed up in turns and went to bed.

Dunhuang woke suddenly at around five in the morning, something that had never happened before. The pudgy master’s student was snoring and the skinny one occasionally ground his teeth disconsolately — as if he had a rat caged in his mouth. By the light spilling in from the corridor, Dunhuang could see his bag of DVDs on the table, and knew why he’d woken. Gingerly, he got out of bed and dressed, stuffing a few clothes and his toiletries into his bag, and headed for the door. They were still asleep. He closed the door, but then, feeling that vanishing in the night like this was too suspicious, he left a little note on the handle of the door: “If I stole the phone, may I lose a hand to rot and marry a wife with no asshole.”

He had paid rent through another two days, but Dunhuang couldn’t help that. If he had to lose the forty kuai then so be it. It was better than letting the police confiscate all his DVDs. Without the DVDs he’d have to start all over again.

That day, Dunhuang was the first to arrive at Three Corners, looking on the billboards for information on rooms to rent. By seven thirty he had called the numbers of five different landlords. One didn’t answer. Another said his place was rented. Two said they were busy that morning, and he should call back in the afternoon. The fifth was an old lady who hadn’t gotten out of bed yet, and spoke thickly. She had a private room, in Weixiuyuan, four hundred a month — four hundred and fifty with utilities added. It was just about the cheapest of all the rooms advertised at Three Corners. Dunhuang was interested.

The landlady wasn’t as old as he’d imagined; she wasn’t yet sixty and was dressed fairly well. She said she’d been Party secretary in some government-owned business before she retired. Dunhuang thought she looked the part, but who knew — there were no rules about what a Party secretary should look like. Her bad breath was disappointing, though. Even more disappointing was the room itself — he hadn’t realized that the so-called private room was the shack behind him, barely taller than he was. It had been hastily erected in the middle of the courtyard, the walls a single layer of brick, the ceiling a few concrete slabs, and above that a sloping roof of asbestos tile to keep the rain from running inside. It would truly take a miracle of architecture to turn a shack like this into an apartment. Inside was a bed, a table, a stool, a little bookshelf, and nothing else — nor was there room for anything else.

“Can you go a little lower?”

“Not a penny. It’s a private room, very quiet. I’m only renting it to you because you’re a Peking University student. . You’re not? Well, a prospective student is fine too, you’ll get there eventually.”

Private room. Private room. Dunhuang poked around the room, accidentally pulling the light cord and bathing the white-washed walls in brilliance. He suddenly realized how good it would be to have his own place. He could buy a television and watch his movies; he would have somewhere to retreat to during Beijing’s nights, where the wind couldn’t reach him, nor the rain wet him. He was unable to stand the landlady’s breath any longer, so he said, “All right. One condition: I pay rent monthly. I’m still waiting on some cash from home.”