Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

Mengliu said, ‘You mean she will has to suffer like this the whole night?’

Rania replied, ‘Everything is normal. You can go home and sleep. The nurses will take good care of her.’

Rania reached out for Mengliu, as if she was on her deathbed. Understanding her meaning, he nodded to indicate that he would stay, but he didn’t take her pale hand.

Rania’s continuing contractions grew dull and monotonous throughout the night. The hospital was lonely and silent, and there was a romantic orange light glowing outside the window. Mengliu read, but he felt drowsy and could not help dozing off. When he did finally sleep, he slept like a dead man, not even waking when Nurse Yuyue came in to check on the patient in the morning. Rania’s contractions continued. Her forehead was sweating and her mouth was open, as if she were dying.

When she came in again, Yuyue donned her gloves and checked Rania. This time, she looked puzzled. Rania’s cervix was still not dilated. She checked the time, and said the patient needed to eat something. Mengliu immediately got up and went to the hospital cafeteria to get breakfast. Breakfast was served buffet style, and there was a huge variety of options available — bread, cheese, smoked fish, porridge, steamed buns, dumplings, noodles, fruit, milk, coffee…A card on the buffet table read, Please do not waste food.

Mengliu ate hurriedly, then carried some steamed buns and porridge back to the ward. The white-haired old man led a team of doctors around Rania’s bed. Their expressions and gestures were the same as the previous day. Before they left, the white-haired man said, ‘We’ll observe her for another three hours. If there is no change, we will have to crush the foetus and then do a D&C.’

Mengliu helped Rania up and tried to give her some food. She was only able to take a couple of bites between the bouts of pain. Even chewing was difficult. When Mengliu had been through a similar situation with Qizi long ago, she would playfully bite the spoon and chopsticks, giggling. Lost in thought, he asked Rania if she was in great pain. She closed her eyes, waiting for the contraction to pass, then nodded slowly. Feeling she needed all her strength to wrestle with the pain, he didn’t speak again, but fell instead into the steady rhythm of feeding her. After half an hour, she had only finished half a bowl of porridge and half a bun. She could not eat any more, and needed to lie down in order to deal with the attacks of pain. But before long she started to vomit and her stomach was emptied of its contents. Her body drooped over the edge of the bed, like a wilted vegetable robbed of all its moisture. Mengliu lay her back on the bed, covered her with the quilt, and wiped the sweat and tears from her face. She experienced another violent contraction, then calm was restored. She was very tired, and slept finally. He looked at her childlike face, recalling her unruly manner of speech, her sharp arrogant words, her bike speeding away, her unbridled state as she strutted around…and now she was just a helpless infant, manipulated by others. She had never been master of her own body. He sighed. Her face was drained of its colour. He felt time was frozen in her face. Gradually a creamy layer formed on her lips, and turned to a dry crust. He realised that she needed water. He took a glass and went out to find it. There was a dispenser at the end of the corridor. There was mineral water, fruit juice and instant hot tea. He took a cup of mineral water.

When he returned, he found Rania sleeping soundly and could not bear to wake her, so he stood holding the cup of water as he looked down at her. At this moment, he inexplicably felt a sense of responsibility toward her. No matter what, she was a fragile little girl with a high IQ and a good heart, and had done her duty towards him. He, on the other hand, was cold and often cynical, bickering with her for any reason — or even without reason. He never trusted her, and always thought of her simply as an agent of Swan Valley who was trying to get him to write poetry. When she endured suffering he was insensitive, and didn’t offer any comfort. Thinking of this, he felt some remorse. He sat down on her bed and clutched her hand. It was very cold, like the hand of a patient who had died on the operating table. An ominous feeling came over him, and he pressed her hand harder. She did not respond. At the same time he felt that he was sitting on something sticky. He stood up and discovered blood. Pulling the blanket back, he saw that the lower part of Rania’s body was lying in a pool of blood.

She was dead. He was almost pushed out of the door by this realisation. His chest felt cold, as if his own heart had stopped beating. He stared at Rania as if he had murdered her.

14

Grief is like a perennial frost in the heart, but no amount of grieving could cause an avalanche in Mengliu. He still maintained a doctor’s cold rationality, and his regret and self-condemnation remained buried under the ice, though to alleviate his conscience he continued to blame Rania’s death on the government. The media and the public all thought it was an accident, and there were even some reporters who wrote euphemistically about the couple’s dereliction of duty, saying that they had been immersed in reading erotic Japanese novels at the time of her death, highlighting the apathy between them. This united front of gossip made Mengliu anxious. They had concluded, ridiculously, that it was the marriage, not medical malpractice, that was the cause. The more gossipy magazines began to exaggerate even more, expounding on men and their family responsibilities, and then the moral arrows really started to fly at Yuan Mengliu. For a time, he was a very hot topic.

Swan Valley gave Rania one final glorious moment. Her funeral was carried out to the highest specifications in the most prestigious church. She was laid out among fresh white flowers, her cheeks rouged, her body covered with the Swan Valley flag. A high-ranking government official delivered the eulogy, during which his voice choked several times. People wept silently with a controlled sadness, passing by her coffin to place flowers and say their farewells in an orderly fashion. Then they went out of the church and on with their lives. After a couple of weeks had passed, people mentioned Rania from time to time, saying what a pity it was to have lost such superior genes, and such a talent from Swan Valley, but no one bothered to trace the loss back to its source. When he thought of Rania’s corpse amongst the fresh flowers, there was a dull pain in Mengliu’s mind. Guilt and anger wrapped themselves around his heart. He resigned from his post as Head of a Thousand Households. He wanted to move back in with Juli.

He imagined that he would be released from his old shackles and allowed to put on new ones, but everything was different now from what it had been before. Rania’s death gave him a fresh start. He was polite to people, but behind it there was a quiet kind of alienation. He thought that if he lived with Juli again it wouldn’t be like the last time. Back then fantasies of temptation flew about the house like butterflies, and the atmosphere was one of quiet joy for both of them. His mind then had been like a notched arrow, waiting to fly at the first sight of a suitable girl. But now it was as if he and Juli were coming together again after decades of separation.

They often didn’t have much to say to each other as they went about their business. Even Shanlai didn’t disrupt this scenario, as he came in the door without a sound, sometimes carrying a few books, sometimes turning out his pocketfuls of wild berries and leaving them on the table. They no longer discussed the soul or art. The two of them gave off an air of religious detachment. Esteban came to visit on his own initiative, occasionally looking in on Mengliu as he passed by. When he visited, he was often with Darae or another young person, and they always talked about Rania with regret. Her memorial inscription was an elegiac couplet that Esteban had written, wrought with distress and pain. They did not criticise Mengliu. He tried to avoid them at such times, sometimes going out to check on Rania’s grave to see if the grass had grown on it, sometimes to visit the mountains. Once he looked for the waste disposal site, but he did not find it. He could never quite figure out the state of the roads, and could find no trace of the places in his memory, like the place where the robot had spoken to him or the slopes covered with wild lilies. The weather was as temperamental as a menopausal woman. When it was about to rain the sky would be unusually bright, and sometimes covered with a layer of haze.