Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

6

That night, Mengliu was a little sad. He thought of Suitang. In the pink of health, she was like Jupiter hanging in the night sky before his window. The moon in Swan Valley was always round, sometimes golden and sometimes silver. Sometimes she was covered in fine hair, sometimes she was more like cold rock, sometimes like a big sesame seed cake, and sometimes she did not look like anything other than the moon. She was always three-dimensional, often making him feel that he would see her back if he stood on tiptoe. He believed Suitang was there, her white face tightly clenched, chest bulging, black eyes rolling, as if she was always searching for some misplaced item. She was absent-minded when she cared for the sick, and caused her patients a lot of distress. Once, she was responsible for a patient’s death, but of course the incident was only known to a few people. The hospital had to protect its own cadres if it wanted to avoid developing a bad reputation that would harm its ability to generate revenue and to contribute to the nation.

He knew that Suitang had greater ambitions than just to be an anaesthetist. Her lifestyle was on a much higher level than her career. She was an artistically talented girl. Her calligraphy was beautiful, and she produced inscrutable paintings. Society needed more unfathomable works to be produced. All people were doing these days was comparing who could draw the roundest circles. And she could carve. Her desk at work was covered with the carving of a strange creature. It was hard to tell whether it was an animal or a plant, and on closer inspection it was hard to make out anything other than a few scratches. But the identity of an anaesthetist was too strong to be surrendered. The role was part of the mainstream, and as it surged, it washed her clean of everything other than her anaesthetist’s pale face. Mengliu loved the part of her that had been obliterated, like that of an angel that had passed through death. He found it difficult to extricate himself from her gaze.

Now it was Qizi’s face that was imposed over the moon in the night sky, making him feel several centuries had passed. He had in fact already forgotten her face, but every time he grasped the feelings he once had for her, he felt she had grown into a polyp, or a gallstone, or a kidney stone, something like that. He wished the polyp, or kidney stone, would start burning. God, I can’t feel my own body. The moonlight poured over him, venturing east. The birds and insects glided in the wind as if surfing on waves, like black meteors passing before his window. He stroked his major organs one by one — heart, liver, lungs, gall bladder, spleen, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, bladder, kidneys, eyes, nose, lips, ears… finally he remembered his genitals. Ah, my testicles, my penis. Poor little things! They were like refugees, beggars sheltering under the eaves of a great cold house, wrinkled and filled with a malaise. How they wished for a meal with precious delicacies! They waited for a glorious release. He worried about this ligament, that his muscles would deteriorate and he would develop other sorts of dysfunctions…He wanted to soothe his hungry cock. Its body was gradually waking up with the warmth of his touch. It was standing up energetically now, looking at the world. It saw the moon’s flowing in the soft night. It stood up and strutted, flapped its wings and cried out to the moon as it soared heavenward. He saw Qizi. She had just finished bathing and was walking out of the moon’s palace, her hair wet, lips red, dressed in white and holding a rabbit in her arms. Her chest swelled, flowers bloomed in her eyes. She had become a celestial being, was transforming into the rocks which covered wild places.

Mengliu thought of the surgery. Perhaps there had not been enough anaesthetic. He saw a tear roll from the corner of Jia Wan’s eye. His will had been torn by his lawful wife. Practically all the wives of the world’s wealthy men would have been venomous, ready to take down their husband’s lover. Mengliu had thought heroic love had once again appeared amongst humans, when it came to him and Suitang. When Jia Wan died, the teardrop wrapped around Mengliu and Suitang, and they turned it into amber. Millions of years later it would find a place on some antique collector’s shelf. When Mengliu realised he had killed Jia Wan, he fled. He tried hard to recall the scene, but his effort was like breathing on a mirror. His past was becoming more blurred. He kept confusing Suitang and Qizi in his mind. His past was gradually disappearing. Now, he had completely forgotten his youth.

7

The weather had turned even colder, and the early morning fog blocked all the paths from the house. Visibility was low, and the atmosphere pervasively damp. The creatures of the world were unusually quiet. The silence was like a saucer, with nothing to crack it. Water dripped constantly from the ends of leaves, a cosy, soft but sad rhythmic accompaniment to the silence.

Mengliu walked in the fog, his hair falling in sticky white lines. On this morning his body was hard and faced rigidly frontward, like a gun on a ship. He needed an animal to hunt, and aim his gun at. The beast inside him had an urge to feast. He walked along Juli’s well-worn path. A few minutes earlier, she had picked up a basket of clothes and headed toward the river. She liked washing her clothes in running water in the morning, just as she liked bathing at night when she had finished her dinner, and reading a book in bed before she fell asleep…She must have other habits, he thought, like preferring a certain type of underwear or her responses during orgasm. His intuition was that she had been with a man, and that there were certain things she had done surreptitiously. How did she overcome her feelings during ovulation, her desire? Was her eccentric personality the result of this long-term suppression? His own body experienced an indescribable excitement coupled with tender feelings of pity for her. He held his gun resolutely, not weakening even for a moment.

Peering around, he saw he had entered a forest, which was fairly covered in fog. He heard his own pulse, the sound of his blood flowing, the bitter secretions of his gall bladder, and the infinite wind blowing through the silence. He felt like a monkey who wanted to climb up the tree and pick Juli’s solid coconuts, and lay her down whether she resisted or obliged. He was almost lost in the foggy forest, but the faint sound of her rustling clothes guided him, like a bell or drum sounding from some unseen place in the distance. He believed she was calling him, and that her already-damp body was waiting for him in the mist. He became urgent, resolute, and deciding not to turn back, followed Juli’s trail of white chrysanthemums, his hair dripping and his clothes mottled with damp stains. Juli’s laundry had already been packed into a bamboo basket. She sat on a bench reading a paperback, her rose-coloured robe revealing ornate shoes beneath, embroidered with plum blossoms.

He came to a stop five metres from her.

The fog cut them off from everything, as if they were in a secret room. He saw her hair was put up casually, a messiness that revealed her anxiety. He guessed she was reading the bible. He knew what he should do in order not to startle her. So they were at a stalemate for several minutes. Just as he intended to turn and plunge back into the fog in order to make a new entrance, she looked up. She was smiling, and her smile was bright. She was not the least bit surprised at his appearance, as if she had asked him to come.

She seemed to have become a different person. He felt her change. This time she was like a maths problem that wasn’t too difficult, and he thought it wouldn’t take him long to solve her. She looked at him with interest, like a little girl. Like the sticky juice from a fruit, when she blinked, sweetness flowed from her eyes, along with a kind mockery. He noticed an awkward feeling in himself, like a stifled young bird. They could not find opening remarks. The shifting shroud of fog gently enveloped them in an even more profound silence. He slid swiftly toward her.