Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

Her laughter almost sent him to the sky as well. She was more to his liking all the time. ‘Conceal the epidemic? Paper can’t contain a fire. This is probably the stupidest decision Swan Valley has ever made.’

‘Let them do what they want.’ She stepped on the snow, letting it crunch beneath her feet. ‘“The only regret I will have in dying is if it isn’t for love” — that’s from a novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera .’

When he had read Marquez, those words hadn’t made any emotional impact on him, but now he felt as if a knife had pierced his heart. It was on account of Qizi.

‘Just don’t die because of the plague.’ He did not want to get entangled in the question of love and death. ‘Do you dare to go with me to the nursing home? If there really is an outbreak of some plague, that might be the safest place. Let’s at least go and familiarise ourselves with it.’ He was trying to rally her to his side.

‘I’m not going. I’m staying at the hospital. If I can’t die for love, I’ll die for altruistic reasons,’ she replied perfunctorily.

Mengliu took the letter from his pocket. He had carried it with him constantly. ‘Do you want to read this?’

‘A love letter?’

‘Something like that,’ he joked.

Yuyue took it, making as if she were viewing a piece of art.

Mengliu had read it countless times. He even remembered the punctuation clearly, and could recite the whole thing by heart.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to tell you a harsh reality. The truth is, you are living in a sheltered society where the truth is hidden. Our happiness is a lie. Our fermented tea contains chemical substances that will slowly wash your mind clean of the memory of your past, your motherland and all your relatives. Then you will come to identify with everything here, and you will be at her mercy. The nursing home is an execution ground for the elderly. Living people are thrown into ovens, as if they were burning pieces of wood. Please break open the gate of the nursing home and have a look inside. You will find no one there, only ghosts.’

‘If this is true, I’m not the least bit surprised.’ Yuyue finished reading the letter very quickly, and her reaction was muted. ‘In Swan Valley, everything is possible. I have thought before that my mother must be dead. If not, she would have found a way to come out for a breath of air.’ He did not know whether this was what she really thought. Something in her tone made him think she didn’t believe it, and he wondered whether he should continue discussing the matter with her.

‘I’ll go with you to see her now, then at least we’ll know the situation clearly,’ he said.

‘It’s no use. I’ve been there many times. There’s only a cable car to the nursing home.’

‘It sounds like a military base,’ Mengliu said. Anyway, we have to find a way in…’

‘Only if you turn into a bird.’

‘You said that all things are possible…and we are highly intelligent.’

‘The analytical data of those stupid machines makes everyone think he or she is special. Even you are confused.’

‘But you really are special.’

‘Oh, I’ve got it…’ Yuyue suddenly grew excited. ‘Michael is retiring and next month he will go to the nursing home. On the eighth the cable car will come, and we…’ She stared at his bloodshot, sluggish eyes, as if she were ready to hold his shoulders and shake him awake.

He marvelled secretly at her imagination, how her thought and his had coincided so perfectly.

‘But, what if we get in and then can’t get back out? We need to let someone know…’ As she went on, it was clear her mind was racing. ‘We need to find a couple more people.’ She was completely immersed in her own thoughts. He listened to her calm analysis, as if she were going through the stages of a game, overcoming difficulties along the way, and getting straight to the heart of the matter. In her narration, they were highly skilled martial arts warriors. They had become the Condor Heroes, and with the great rapport between them, they would settle every difficulty that lay before them.

She was, after all, an experienced young woman. When she started to depart from reality in her imagination, a light flooded from her face. He wanted to touch her satin black hair and porcelain skin, to put her into a love cradle, and to hum a lullaby to soothe her into a sweet, deep sleep. He reminded her that the adventure could endanger their lives, but she brushed this off contemptuously.

At that moment the sun extinguished itself like a burnt-out fire, and they grew a little colder.

19

The hospital now looked like an over-inflated balloon which was about to explode. It was so overcrowded that the patients and non-patients mingled together. There were even people sleeping in the entrances to the washrooms. There weren’t enough beds, the medication was stretched thin, and there was confusion everywhere. Some people resorted to unscrupulous methods to get a bed, pulling out the patients’ tubes or blocking their noses, helping those who needed it to go on their way to a speedier death, and those who had the chance, to meet death immediately. Some tried their seductive charms on Michael, and even the general practitioners had to put on a stern front, so as to deter anyone from getting too close. Then visits were prohibited. People were quarantined without knowing why. Yuyue described it as like being in a silent war. The doctors would not say a word more than was necessary. Some doctors who had a more aggressive nature protested in secret, which resulted first in a yellow warning, then in a black threat, then a red education, and then, dejected finally, they would shut up. Before the arrival of the expert medical team, no one was qualified to diagnose the infectious disease definitively or announce the deaths, but rumours spread like wildfire. People hoarded food and medication in their panic, hoping they were just rumours as they awaited the official announcement.

Yuyue ridiculed the childish ways of the government, but she was only voicing her opinion on the matter. She wasn’t hopeful. The situation was the government’s baby, and she didn’t care about its life or death. Drinking strong spirits was a sign of bad character, but this didn’t affect her attempts to find pleasure. Whether there were problems or not, she always had a couple of drinks. When the day shift was over, she secretly procured wine prepared with dates and other ingredients. It would cause diarrhoea and vomiting in those who were not accustomed to it, but once you got used to the strong drink, it kept you fit. Mengliu was completely adjusted to the habit, and they enjoyed peanuts, tofu slices and dried beef as they drank and chatted in front of the fire until they were red in the face and lit up from within.

Yuyue constantly spoke of the deaths at the hospital, how the drugs were ineffective and the patients would die slowly and excruciatingly. One had stopped breathing under her care. She had not rested for three days and three nights, and she was weary to the bone. Just as she thought she would collapse, the medical experts arrived. There were eight of them in all, six men and two women, dressed like astronauts ready to visit the moon, each carrying a toolbox. They looked stern. Walking uniformly and resolutely across the lawn, they blew into the hospital entrance like a cold wind.

Yuyue enthusiastically described one of the women on the team, how young she was and how pretty. As Mengliu listened, his heart thumped. When Yuyue said Suitang’s name, he stood up from his chair. He only feebly expressed his doubts, because he had known that eventually she would be brought here. He believed without reservation that she had come. He could not refute that reality. This was followed by a feeling of pleasant surprise, and an urgent need to see her, which sobered him up completely.