Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

Dark clouds swallowed up the moon, the bird of the night let out a scream as if the sudden darkness had bitten into it, deepening the surrounding shadows until everything became indistinguishable patches of blackness. Mengliu quietly listened to his own heartbeat for a while, feeling bored. The constant sound of turning pages came from the room opposite, where Juli sat. He felt that she was summoning him. She had left the door unlatched and slightly ajar. The light in her room was soft.

To express his loneliness, Mengliu put on a show with the chuixun for a while. He sat quietly for a little longer, then stood up and walked straight across to Juli’s room. He stopped in the small strip of light in the doorway, allowing it to split his body in half. The rhythm of his fingers on the door were like a bird pecking. When he got a response, he opened the door and let the light pour onto him.

As he went into Juli’s room, he found himself insufficiently prepared. He was stunned, as if he was standing beneath the vast sky with the lake and mountains shimmering in the distance, and the foliage stirring nearby. The sun shone on her golden face and chest, the low neckline of her gown emphasising the two mysterious mounds that rose like graves there. His spirit was sucked toward the sight, but he bravely tore himself from the grip the spectre of the graves had on him and returned to the warmth of reality.

He pretended to sweep his eyes across the furnishings in the room, a pear-carved table, chairs and wardrobe in the Chinese style. There was a bronze glow over everything, and tassels hung from the edge of the purple linen covering the bed. On the wall above the bed hung a needlepoint depicting Japanese ladies in kimonos. Juli knelt there beneath it. Her long skirt covered her legs, exposing only her feet, which peeped out like the paws of a cat lying on its belly.

Seeing that Mengliu did not speak for some time, Juli straightened her legs and laid her book upon her lap. His eyes immediately fell to the book — or, rather, to her lap. Juli thought for a moment, then sat up and moved to a chair. She wore a pair of white cotton slippers, which looked very comfortable.

‘You can also have a seat,’ she said. The light fell on the side of her face, illuminating the fine hairs on her neck. Her ears looked like a fried snack, golden and crispy thin.

He felt as if he had taken a drag of marijuana. His legs were floating, and his eyes felt as if they had tendrils growing out of them, crawling like ants across the floorboards and stopping at Juli’s feet to gaze up at her.

‘I…don’t really need anything.’

He and Juli sat at a round table with a porcelain vase of white lilies on it. He stared at the flowers and added, ‘I just…wanted to talk.’

Juli smiled gently, revealing four small shell-like teeth. At night, he could see how black her eyes were, and unbelievably soft.

‘Are you still thinking of the nursing home?’

‘No…no! I feel like there’s a caged beast inside of me.’ He seemed to be describing an interesting dream. ‘This wild beast keeps roaring, and trying to crash through the cage it is shut in. Oh! It is going to rush out of my chest!’ He rubbed his chest, as if to appease the unseen beast. ‘It’s nearly crushing my heart.’

Juli frowned in confusion. ‘What? There’s an animal inside you? What should we do? That’s so strange.’ She did not understand this type of analogy at all.

Mengliu looked at her, shocked. He had deliberated on this piece of poetic expression for a long time. But perhaps the beating around the bush only served to magnify the difference in the thinking processes of their different countries. His head was buzzing. After Qizi, Mengliu had never really tried his hand at seriously falling in love. All those years ago in Dayang, in that time of economic development and obsession with liberation, it was easy to get one’s hands on a girl. Each knew she was master of her own body, and as the animals awoke inside of them, they let them loose to play and run wild. Love at that time, like poetry now in Swan Valley, overflowed. No one took it too seriously, and all the young people lived in a state of confused ecstasy.

For a moment, Mengliu felt helpless. Juli’s thin linen nightgown gave him a clear view of the body inside it, provoking the wild beast inside him.

Suddenly he got up and stepped decisively toward her, grabbed her chin in one hand, and kissed her. Juli’s surprised expression was at first like a tightly-shut bud. But under Mengliu’s quick attack on the lips, the bud suddenly blossomed. In plain terms, Juli did not resist. Instead, she plunged quickly into this act of rash wild kissing. Mengliu half expected that his rude behaviour would incite a slap on the face, or perhaps worse, so he was a bit taken aback by Juli’s response. He paused, pulled her into his arms more carefully, and began to kiss her more meticulously and fervently. He felt her firm body warming quickly against him, becoming as hot and floury as a baked potato.

All at once he knew how to strip the skin off the potato and consume the soft flesh inside it. He resorted to an indefinite kissing, while planning how to achieve his goal. He carefully followed Juli’s body movements, but the fingertips of his mind could not find the exact location of the tender button amidst the complex tissues of her brain. He became completely disoriented.

Mengliu thought the hot potato in his hands smelled just right, that it was expanding to readiness, but as soon as he attempted anything further, it turned to a hedgehog in his grasp, offering sharp resistance to his moves and re-establishing certain boundaries. He redoubled his patience and, very gently, plucked the spines out one by one, hoping she would let her guard down, but also taking care not to get pricked. Women all over the world like to play this game, he thought to himself.

He had undertaken a huge, indefinite, but not disappointing project. This was like a major operation, and it required a long-term approach and much preparation. He took a careful but tough approach, covering her mouth with his, slowly making his way down to her breasts. He took his time, making her feel that her whole self was in those breasts, and that she could entrust them to his warm palm. He had never been a pig who would swallow a woman whole, he prided himself on being a master of good taste. He wanted to show her how much he appreciated her body, as if his whole world was contained there.

Finally Juli succumbed. She lay down on the bed before him, and Mengliu breathed a sigh of relief. But when he saw her lying there stiffly, it made him think of a patient on an operating table. With his free hand, he brushed aside the hair on her forehead and asked why she seemed so nervous. Juli looked at him like a patient addressing a doctor, with trusting, begging eyes that seemed about to say something. But her mouth only opened like that of a fish out of water, and issued no sound.

Considerately and cautiously, Mengliu began kissing her again. He saw her liquid chocolate eyes, blazing with the reflection from the light, gazing at him from her flushed face, and was moved by such genuine beauty. He unfastened her gown and as he slipped it off, she rolled over and he saw a large butterfly tattooed on her back, its forewings extended out over her shoulder blades and its rear wings over her hips, wrapping around her buttocks. Her waist was delicately thin. She lay there quietly with her back to him. The butterfly seemed poised to fly away at any time. Without stopping to study the tattoo, he stroked her curvaceous body with his skilled surgeon’s hands, inspecting every crease and crevice. A hidden torrent welled up, violently pushing and shoving through his fingertips, pounding his nerves. He was like an arrow on a bow, ready for release, within seconds he had removed his own clothing. But just as he leapt toward Juli, an alarm sounded in the room.