Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

‘Does she have green hair, like seaweed?’

‘Sometimes, but not always. It depends on the light.’

‘Then I’m not dreaming. I’ve seen her and talked to her,’ he said in a single breath. ‘I’ve seen her moving about in a room, talking on a phone. She mentioned you, Shanlai, Esteban. She praised all of you…’

‘These days she doesn’t appear on the electronic screen. She has gone on a world tour,’ Juli interrupted gently, burying the leaves that she had nipped off in the soil. She calmly continued clearing the ground, her movements causing her hips to swing and her buttocks to quiver, as if there were an animal under her skirt.

Mengliu wanted to continue talking about what had happened to him, but Juli had lost interest. He stood alone in the bright sunlight, watching as her body was absorbed into the dark shadows of the house.

It was midday, and Mengliu was walking along the road in a hurry. The diamonds in his pocket knocked against his body. The people resting by the side of the road smiled at him, and he saw in that smile a much deeper meaning, as if they knew he wanted to escape from the place. Their expressions told him they saw a terrapin trapped in a screw-top jar. He realised what a stupid thing he was doing, so he slowed down and crossed his hands behind his back, walking unhurriedly as he tried hard to recall the path he had taken into Swan Valley that first day. Strangely, he could not remember. His memory had been cut off at that point. He felt like he was standing on the bank, looking at the wide expanse of water, with no trace of how he got there. He hoped to evoke more of the memory as he walked. He assumed a casual air, and wandered a long way. He had come to the engraved stone, when suddenly he fell, rolling head over heels until his body landed against a heap, some soft object, at the base of the slope. When he came to his senses, he saw two lions looking at him with kind eyes. One of them even raised itself and gracefully offered him its place.

His first reaction was to check the diamonds in his pocket. They were all there, not one missing. He could barely stand. He had pretty much always known there was no way out, but had needed to test this for his own peace of mind. After his fall, his restless soul quietened. He rested his head on the lion’s back, feeling himself no different from the birds, reptiles and other animals. He had no language, no voice, and no one would ask about his disappearance or death. He was the most common sort of creature and easily forgotten, naturally base, not even in need of a sheep dog to look after him. Where everyone is the same, they all become one big organism.

With a faint heart, he got up and walked towards the mountains. The poplars were scrawny, their leaves sparse. Birds’ nests sat in the ‘V’ between their branches. Thorns were growing in bushes. White flowers bloomed and scattered, like a girl’s jacket, giving off a light fragrance. Before long he heard the sound of a stream. Walking along its bank, he came to a body of water. The pond was small, about four or five metres across, and of a dark blue colour. The current chased the fallen leaves to the side of the pond, constantly shoving them into a tight spot. They had no choice but to jostle with each other for position.

Mengliu fished the leaves out and placed them beneath a tree.

He thought, ‘Every stream flows to the sea. If I follow it, I will get some results.’

Sure enough, before it was dark he had come upon a river, about twenty or thirty metres wide. It wasn’t deep, and its surface was placid. Bushes covered the opposite bank, and in the distance behind them he could see the boundless mountains, a touch of white at their peaks, stern and bright.

He went into the water, intending to cross the river. He remembered wading ashore on that first night. He looked around, but he couldn’t see the remains of a boat, so he raised his head to look at the sky. There was no moon, and night was closing in.

He tasted the water and found it salty. Thinking he must be near the sea, he grew excited. The water was cold, and seemed to suck the warmth from his body, making him shiver. His condition also had something to do with the thing he had stepped on, a hard object like a skull, covered with slippery moss. He rubbed the eye and mouth cavities with his toes, and very clearly felt two rows of sharp teeth. He thought he must also have stepped on some ribs.

The water was up to his thighs now. It was not completely dark yet. All around was hazy, with only the snowy tops of the mountains clearly visible. Schools of fish swam by him in the water. He had never seen this kind of fish before. They were oddly shaped and not as long as a finger. Their bodies were almost transparent, and they gathered at a spot about a metre from him and halted, as if waiting to accumulate a larger school of fish in this one place. If not for the ripples on the surface of the water, they would have been difficult to detect. Together they were soft, like a cloudy body of fluid, or like seaweed floating back and forth, constantly changing its formation. Attracted, he reached toward them in the water. The fish scattered, then disappeared. Calm was quickly restored to the surface of the water.

As he continued to make his way across the river, he felt a sting on his left leg and immediately realised something had bitten him. It was followed quickly by another hard bite. He turned and fled back to the shore. He saw two wounds on his calf, flowing with blood like a spring. As he was thinking of how to bandage the wounds, he saw Shanlai looking at him.

It seemed Shanlai had been by the river watching him the whole time. He was chewing something as he casually walked over, spat a bit of foamy grass into his palm, and applied it to Mengliu’s wounds. The bleeding stopped.

‘The squids in the river are very powerful. Within a couple of minutes they can chew you to bits, leaving only a pile of white bones.’ Shanlai carried a small bamboo basket. His eyes flashed in mockery.

‘You’re kidding. Man-eating squids?’ In response to the extreme exaggeration Mengliu’s facial features enlarged to several times their normal size and looked a little grim as they stood out in the darkness.

Shanlai swung his head, motioning for Mengliu to come back with him. ‘Every time there is a river burial, you can hear the ghosts of humans struggling in the water at night. The river churns like it is boiling. Actually, it is the squids snatching food, emitting an eerie sound.’ He turned back and looked at the man behind him. ‘Many millions of years ago, there were man-eating squids. You see them in all of the cave drawings of the early humans. They were very vicious.’ He reached behind and knocked his basket a couple of times. ‘If you stir-fry some of these fellows up with a bit of corn, it’s a dish to die for. I’ve got a few here. They are ferocious, but stupid enough that, with a little light, you can lure them into your net.’

Hearing this, Mengliu grew a bit queasy. Limping behind Shanlai, he encouraged the boy to put the squid back into the river.

Shanlai acted like he didn’t hear. He switched the torchlight on, and swung it back to look at Mengliu’s calf. He saw that no new blood was oozing and said, ‘If you are pure, God will heal the wound…’

Thinking that he had almost been turned into a pile of bones by a bunch of squid, Mengliu shivered slightly. Not daring to act rashly, like an innocent child meekly listening to an elder’s nagging, he followed in Shanlai’s footsteps. Even the snap of dead branches beneath his feet made him flinch. As they moved away from the stream, they pushed their way through bushes with fat thick leaves, into the forest, where they were surrounded by a moist fragrant scent, which mingled occasionally with a rancid odour. Mengliu felt something was wrong. The fear of not being able to get out of the forest enveloped him. The forest at night reminded him of the scene so many years before, when young people grew like trees in Round Square, waiting for rain to come and cleanse them. The forest was silent and furious, bearing great sorrow and helplessness, as if a beast were being held back, waiting for release under the cover of darkness, when it would rush out and devour them. Qizi was like the owl perched on the tree there, eyes bright and vigilant.