Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

All of the screens told stories. Some were videos, some live feeds. Then all the smaller screens were turned off, leaving only a huge black-and-white screen still broadcasting. Its subject was familiar to Mengliu. It was the sit-in at Round Square…The crowd was in chaos. A large number of uniformed men entered the square…It was just like Shunyu’s father described, a blood-filled night with half the sky scorched red…

A patch of bright light shot down from the top of the column through the darkness but because it was so far away, it became dim by the time it reached the ground. Even so, everything inside the room could be seen clearly. There was an area like a disc jockey’s podium, and in the middle of one of the walls hung a disorderly array of banners. They were flanked on both sides by several small machines. In the centre was a leopard-skin chair, its back facing outward. Someone sat there, head only half exposed.

‘I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to get here so quickly… Well, let’s get to the end of the game.’ The voice from the leopard-skin chair was that of the spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu, but still transmitted through a machine.

In such close proximity at last, Mengliu was very curious about Ah Lian Qiu’s appearance, but he controlled his curiosity. ‘Ah Lian Qiu, spiritual leader, I do not know anything, nor do I want to know anything…I have no questions to ask you. I only request that you take care of the people trapped in Swan Valley, and tell us the way home.’ But as soon as he said ‘us’, he realised that Suitang had not come in with him. She had stayed outside the door.

‘The cable broke. There’s nothing I can do about that. Surely you have discovered that they don’t need me. Because they are self-aware and self-disciplined, they will govern one another…a good ruler’s presence is not felt…a spiritual leader need only transmit a beneficial spirit, and there will be nothing to worry about…As for you, rest assured that you have earned your way back home. The road is open to both of you.’

‘Nothing to worry about?’ Mengliu could not help but ask. ‘Don’t you know the lives of all the people living here have been placed on the altar constructed by you, their spiritual leader?’

‘When a person understands what he really wants, his nature as a human can be fully realised. Take Esteban, for example. He found his own worth, and in his death the noble dignity of the individual was restored to him.’ Ah Lian Qiu continued in a leisurely fashion. ‘A person should have a proper understanding of himself.’

‘I only have one more thing to say, spiritual leader.’ Mengliu controlled his voice and the rhythm of his speech. ‘Your spirit is nothing more than a lure. It just enables a system of annihilation. Some day…’

‘If that’s how you see it, that’s your business.’ The leopard-skin chair began to turn around slowly, then stopped at one hundred and eighty degrees. The spiritual leader Ah Lian Qiu sat in a wheelchair, head bowed, long hair covering his face. ‘So many years. Now you are finally free from the burden of history!’ The leader ripped off the lapel microphone and raised her head, revealing the whole of her pale face.

All the horrifying things Mengliu had experienced in his life had not prepared him for this shock. He was stunned, and a doubt-filled scream escaped from his mouth:

‘Qizi?’

‘No. I am the spiritual leader of Swan Valley. I am Ah Lian Qiu!’

Hearing her real unaltered voice filled Mengliu with ecstasy. It was Qizi! He ran to her, but, the podium on which she sat was encircled by a force field, and he was thrown back. It burned a hole in his clothes, and nearly scorched another in his flesh.

She turned off the force field and rolled her battery-powered wheelchair down from the podium, coming slowly to a halt in front of him.

Ah, Qizi! She was as young and beautiful as the first time he saw her. He wanted to embrace her, to say, I’ve never stopped looking for you. I knew you had to be alive. But he stood there, rooted, his warm feelings curbed by something unseen. He faced Ah Lian Qiu. She looked at him with rational, calm, indifferent eyes.

‘The Qizi of the past, like these two legs, was crushed by a tank.’ Ah Lian Qiu removed her two legs from her thighs. Her upper half sat in the chair on two stumps, like a bust.

Mengliu seemed to be welded to the ground. Feeling had left his own legs, so that he remained stuck there, motionless.

‘At the same time as I was crushed, so were truth and idealism…and beauty and goodness.’ She toyed with the prostheses. ‘Afterwards, the people lived like fish returning to water, right? There was numbness, a philosophy of survival, but that doesn’t mean their concept of the nation had changed.’

‘Qizi…’ He wanted to wake her up, but he was actually the one who was confused.

‘When he tried to save me Hei Chun was badly burned… Shunyu’s father hid us in a friend’s hospital, and on the third day, secretly drove us to a place that was far away but safe. For a whole year we were constantly on the move, escaping from one place to another.’

Mengliu was stunned. ‘I had no idea. I was looking for you… Hei Chun…where is he?’

‘He was seriously injured. One eye was burned out. His fingers were damaged. He was unrecognisable…After we came to Swan Valley, he spent half a year writing The Principles of Genetics .’ Leisurely, she turned her wheelchair in a circle. ‘He said it was better than More’s Utopia . The original manuscript is here.’

‘He wrote that book…I knew it was his writing style! But… does that mean that all along Swan Valley has been a product of your ideas?’ Mengliu stammered. ‘Wh…where is Hei Chun? I want to talk to him.’

‘I’m afraid that will be a little difficult.’ She pointed to a table on the podium. ‘He is in the urn over there. For him, after finishing The Principles of Genetics , a life of the flesh was superfluous. It was his own choice.’

‘He…you…you two…’ Mengliu feared his head would explode.

‘How is Shunyu’s father now? Does he still manage the Green Flower?’ She chatted as she operated on her prostheses, calmly and skilfully.

‘The tavern was seized. He was sent to prison…’

‘Prison huh? What crime did he commit?’ She stopped the action of her hands. Her speech filled with emotion.

‘There was a bunch of charges. Harbouring known criminals, escorting insurgents, participating in subversion…He died during the second year of his imprisonment. I don’t know how he died. No one could tell me…’

One of the artificial legs rattled and dropped to the ground.

She clicked a remote control and the electronic screens all flashed on again, creating a mess of fluorescence that flickered across her confused face, but the sadness in her eyes remained cold and bright.

‘He is your biological father.’

‘Yes. When I found out, it was too late.’ He picked up the prosthesis and handed it back to her. ‘I didn’t get a last chance to see him. And there were no ashes left…’ His voice grew lower, finally sinking all the way to the ground.

She turned and reattached the artificial leg.

‘Did you bring your xun ?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She looked at him, then moved the wheelchair beside him and reached out and took the xun from his pocket.

‘Play a tune,’ she ordered, but it also sounded like a plea.

From the flawless accuracy of her action he knew she remembered their past, and it warmed his heart. It surged up in him. He could not refuse her order, or request. And right at this moment his confused heart also needed a release valve.