In the days before my father’s death, he stayed in a hospital room much like my cell – cramped, dark and moist, the floor like rat skin giving off the stench of nothingness. At one point, having been in a coma for a while, he quietly woke and took my hand.
‘I keep seeing a young man in a white robe sitting over there by the wall. I think I know him, but at the same time I don’t. He is eating a simple apple. Or maybe he is simply eating an apple. Can you hear the chewing? He sits with his back pressed against the wall, his eyes shut, concentrating on the piece of fruit. He will never finish. He is waiting for the right moment to stand up. He will throw the pips on the floor, step on them. He is waiting, but you don’t know what for.
‘He is the angel of death,’ he continued. ‘He has come to tell you that death is not a flash or an exclamation mark. It doesn’t come suddenly, in a violent moment. It is a process.Your organs are waiting to malfunction, one by one, like a water bottle cooling. It’s not about waiting for that one painful moment. Child, what I really want is for someone to lie down beside me and die with me. But that rarely happens in life. I see only you healthy people, growing. You frown, you cry, but you still have energy in your bones.Your bodies are like buds after the spring rains. I was exhausted long ago. You come only to reinforce this truth.You’ve locked me
in this cell, but you are outside running like children in a playground.Your laughter is like a metal weight pressing on me, pinning me down. I feel ashamed of you. There is such a distance between us. Either fuck off, or get a gun and shoot me.’
My father sighed, his dreadful attempt at a poetic monologue over, and finally brushed me away in disgust. I left, thinking of the injustice of it all. You’re born, you get old, you get sick, you die. Oh, humanity! It’s nothing but a fucking disgrace. All of it. But as soon as my mother walked in, my father rolled into her arms and cried. Ma didn’t say anything to comfort him.
I
started trying to keep up with life outside my cell. I would scrape my finger along the dusty floor and mark the days on the wall. But I soon gave up. I was going to die whatever, so what was the point? Time turned into a primal chaos, days could pass in what felt like only one, or they went on for ever (like broken shards of glass, impossible to count). Sometimes I wanted to keep the night from coming and other days I longed for it to come quickly, even when it might already have been dark outside. My dreams became more vivid. Once I pictured myself in bed. I went to get up, to visit someone, but I was paralysed. This was the only person in the whole world whom I cared about and who felt the
same way about me. There were no feelings of resentment between us. I couldn’t see his face, he had no name. I went through everyone I had ever met, but there was no such person. But when he brushed against the clouds, the branches and the occasional lightning when he flew up into the sky, at that moment I felt I knew him better than I would ever know another human being. He shook his scales and from them drops of water rained.
‘I dreamed of you, so I came,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am the person in your dreams.’
‘Then who am I?’
‘You are the person in my dreams.’
‘Do you exist here on Earth?’
‘No.’
‘What about me?’
‘Neither do you.’
‘But I felt it, when you pinched my hand.’
‘We don’t exist.’
‘I want to die.’
‘I dreamed that you died. But I can also dream that you live.’
‘Then dream that I live.’
‘It doesn’t make a difference.’
I woke up and felt amused. I started imagining I was
a character in a novel. I saw a hunched author sitting in the glow of a lamp. He wrote my name on a white piece of paper before adding more detail: my clothes, where I lived, my school and friends, general personality traits, my life story, what would happen to me. And I in turn outlined his life. Every time my mind speeded up, I instructed myself to slow down. I planned it all, down to the songs he listened to when writing. He chose ten or so from his collection and listened to each in turn until the sounds of‘Silver Springs’ came from his speakers. This was when he found his writing rhythm. He wrote a few sentences, but it wasn’t quite flowing, so he read out loud. Anything just a little off, he excised like a ruthless despot. He stopped only when he felt it was too cruel.
‘That’s enough. You have to learn to forgive yourself.’
This gave him courage to continue. The inspiration had finally come, but just as he was about to throw himself into the flames of creativity, his telephone rang. A friend. He made some excuses to push the friend away, but more and more accusations came down the line. Flustered, and more than a little hostile, he sighed and went to meet the friend. He feigned interest well into the night, until the moment arrived when he could finally make his escape. But the inspiration had bolted,
leaving him naked. He sat for hours, trying to catch it and bring it back, just one small bit of it, but nothing. He put his head in his hands and tried to cry, his regret as deep as the sea. He spoke to me, on the paper.
‘Work sucks my energy and destroys my intellect. But I had it, just then, for a moment. Then my friends stole it from me. Why can’t you give me one clean day? Why?’
‘You’ve already given half your life to me. Why are you so desperate to kill me off?’ I said to him.
‘Death is the only way you’ll live a little longer.’
‘In that case, I’ll kill you. I’ve murdered before.’
‘No. Even if you kill me, I won’t be a sell-out.’
He sucked in his cheeks and let out a long breath through his nostrils. I’d never seen anything so hilarious in my life. I patted him on the head and flew away.
I spent a lot of time absorbed in this wrestling match. Sometimes I gave form to a man in another dimension; he’s been asleep for years. He made us. I tried using sex as a way of denying the reproductive order he created, but then I realised sex comes from dreams. Humans have sex, he said, and so it was. Sometimes I saw a world in my head in which humans had already been exterminated and a complex modern society was revealed to be nothing more than a mirage, a reflection in a mirror, created by a Song or Ming dynasty witch. Sometimes I
scaled it down. I became merely one of ten thousand different mes. I saw them everywhere, at the docks, living apathetic lives as carpenters, or taking flights to São Paulo, or waiting in crowds for the executioner to arrive. There were times when I pictured my future grandson taking me up in his helicopter away from Shawshank Prison; if he doesn’t take me away, he tells me, he won’t exist in the future. He is lost in thinking, high up in his plane, until we reach our highest altitude, when he speaks.
‘Actually, I only need your sperm.’
I
lay like that day and night, living inside my own intricate drawings, excited to the point where I’d forget to eat and drink. If someone had come by and told me I could go free, perhaps I might have been angry to be disturbed. Where else could I find such peace? A life with no obligation to work, with free food and drink? This was the best place for me to reflect on humanity and the universe. Then, after nights of sleeplessness, my head would pound and I’d start to cry. I began to regret not considering the possibility of incarceration before committing my crime. I would have devoted myself to others, lived a healthy and harmless life. But in some ways this smugness was a product of knowing that I was soon to die – that I was locked up with nowhere to go.
The guard eventually took pity on me and gave me a piece of newspaper. He was originally going to give me one full side, but after a brief moment of reflection he took it back and ripped off a piece the size of my palm. I could have that instead. He laughed and left happy. But it was big enough. In it, I read a brilliant story with the headline: TOGETHER MAY WE EXPLODE.
One day, Tom lit a match to find out if there was any petrol left in the tank. Yep.
It kept spinning in my head and I began to invent a family saga about Tom’s ancient ape-man relatives. I thanked the guard. He’d given me a perpetually bubbling spring of the sweetest water.
I
have on occasion asked myself, who is going to miss me? And I suppose my mother is the only possible answer. I thought she would visit me in prison, but after waiting for an eternity I figured she must have remarried, moved and forgotten me. Then one day one of the guards came to tell me she was here. I said I didn’t want to see her, but he told me it would be good to get some fresh air and I was dragged over.
The visiting room had a high, vaulted ceiling and visitors and inmates were separated by a long, thick piece of glass. A large door at the opposite end was opened and a slow surge of free people pressed in, like a glacier, their arms outspread. Ma staggered dumbly behind, hands on the back of her thighs, her head bobbing, as if to say, ‘No, no, don’t hit me.’ I didn’t really want to see her.
She spotted me and sat down, placing a plastic bag containing a half-eaten bun in her lap. She lowered her head and said nothing, as if she was the criminal, not me. I snorted, a sneer. It was like a railway station waiting room, the noise bubbling, popping, drifting up, turning into a collective hum. Ma almost spoke several times.
‘Go on, say something.’
Trembling violently, she looked up.
‘Aren’t you going to say what you’re doing here?’ She lay out her palms, tilted her head and showed me her tears. Calluses, hard and dirty like a stone covered in weeds.
‘I’ve been burning incense and praying.’
‘What for?’
She didn’t answer, but wiped her eyes with her hand. ‘That’s unhygienic,’ I said.
She pulled at her scarf and that’s when I saw how white her hair had become. Last time I saw her, she had barely one grey hair.
‘What happened?’
‘I woke up one morning and it was like this.’
This was the most intimate moment we’d ever shared. I tried to push my fingers through the small holes of our conversation, but I couldn’t.
‘Take care of yourself, Ma. Find a husband. Make sure you eat properly.’
She just shook her head. The guard approached and suddenly she seemed to realise something.
‘Do what they say. And tell them everything.’
She was then led away. Or rather, she led them away. She was gone, along with her half-eaten bun. Just like that. She’s no real mother.
O
nly when the courts sent along a copy of the indictment did I realise I’d been locked up for four months.
‘We will assign you a lawyer if you don’t appoint one yourself,’ they said.
‘What if I don’t want one?’
‘Most people want one.’
‘OK,’ I said.
They asked me if I had any evidence or witnesses I wished to present. I said no. Before long the lawyer came and asked the same question. He kept taking calls during our meeting and didn’t stay long.
When the day of the trial arrived they unshackled me and led me to another cell. My feet felt light, as if I might fly up into the air. A big sign with black characters hung above the metal door, which had a window cut into it. The walls were made from greyish-white bricks. A clump of poplars grew in the yard outside, next to which an armed officer carrying an assault rifle paced, guarding his post. I looked out on the scene, the flood of morning light, the sky blue like a smashed vase. This must have been its most beautiful moment.
Ma was hiding behind the trees in the distance; I could see her peek out occasionally. As the car drove past I shouted, ‘Ma! Ma!’ She couldn’t hear me. But I saw her frightened expression. It was in her eyes; it
oppressed her. It was like watching your limbs being drawn and quartered.
At the court two policemen led me into a small room and told me to sit. I swallowed. The courtroom must have been next door, because I heard the sound of footsteps come and go. Then someone started reading the court rules and asked the public prosecutor, defence counsel, presiding judge and judicial officers to take their seats.
The judge knocked his gavel. ‘Bring in the defendant.’
The metal door was pulled open and an officer took me by the arm. As if on a gust of wind, I was announced. My spirit gave way. I stood and shook my handcuffs to show my displeasure. My lawyer asked for the handcuffs to be removed, but the prosecutor objected vociferously, arguing I was a danger to the court.
Fewer than ten people were seated in the public gallery, curious spectators for the most part. One woman looked at me with poison in her eyes. She wore a black dress and a discreetly patterned scarf draped over her shoulders. She had tied a black ribbon around her arm. She looked like a lanky crow. Her skin hung loose around her face like drying noodles, the ravages of age. She pursed her lips and her nostrils flared, like a kettle ready to pop its lid. I wondered how such an ugly
woman could have given birth to Kong Jie, but as Qian Zhongshu once wrote: ‘Just because you liked the egg doesn’t mean it is wise to go looking for the chicken.’ Before the hearing could begin the judge asked a series of meaningless questions, like my name, date of birth, ethnicity, previous criminal record, the date I had received the indictment. Finally he announced that it would be a closed trial, to respect the victim’s privacy. She’s dead, I thought, what privacy? He then read out a list of names and, when called, each person stood up, nodded or mmed. He then read my rights and asked if anyone should be removed from the court.
‘Yes, everyone,’ I said.
‘Your reason?’
But I couldn’t think of anything. ‘Fine, let them stay.’ The public prosecutor then read aloud the indictment, as procedure dictated. He emphasised certain key words for effect, adding spices to his pot. But all things considered, he worked in an orderly fashion. Then Kong Jie’s mother read out a civil indictment. Her hands shook and she made many mistakes. She wanted me to pay three hundred and twenty thousand
yuan
in damages.
Asking for money seemed a bit hypocritical, like she was trying to make money out of her daughter’s death. It muddied her calls for justice. She seemed aware of it
too, and so added, ‘I want to make you bankrupt, that’s all. I won’t keep a cent of it. I’ll give it all away.’