This simple work keeps my chaotic mind from making many mistakes, I am glad to say, since I am a daydreamer who finds it hard to play by the rules. Let's say, for example, that the fainthearted son of a cold-blooded murderer accidentally kills someone. When the death sentence falls upon the frightened son, the father, who has always been able to escape the net of justice, mysteriously takes his son's place at the execution ground. This act must be regarded as a mockery of the law, but I will be moved by the loving sacrifice of a brutish father who kills without compunction, until my face is bathed in tears; I will even hold him in some regard.
When I see an accomplished surgeon refuse to treat a class enemy's vvife who is in great pain and in need of help, I am disgusted. My problematic views and a tendency toward aberrant thinking are enough to deprive me of the chance to become a doctor or lawyer.
They say that to be a writer, you must follow even more rules. I know only too well that my deviant thinking and convoluted logic keep me at odds with those rules. Fortunately, I am aware of these flaws and have never expected or hoped to become much of anything.
Yet there may be another possibility. You might happen to share my way of thinking, which means you could interpret my un-orthodoxy as a rule in its own right. Anything is possible.
Fear of Hypodermics
Dentists always fire Miss Dai Er's imagination. The fantasy begins when she approaches the dentist's office and hears the whir of the drill. As she enters, the sound courses through every nerve in her body. At the same time, in the space taken in by her gaze, countless teeth dance and fly around her like snowflakes. Whirling and spinning, they send forth the delicate fragrance of falling pear blossoms.
At this moment, Miss Dai Er is fantasizing as she sits in dental chair 103, assigned to Dr. Kong Sen, in Hospital 103. Dai Er, twenty-two, possesses a nearly pathological tenderness, charm, and melancholy. A painfully impacted wisdom tooth has brought her here. She looks around carefully: there is a spittoon and a cup on the left armrest; above it are a gadget on an adjustable arm and a small electric fan; directly overhead is a large lamp, like a golden sunflower whose petals move around the patient's mouth; alongside the right armrest is a swivel chair with wheels, on which the young dentist is currently sitting.
He is a reticent young man, tall but stocky and sedate, with focused yet limpid eyes. (Miss Dai Er will never forget his eyes. In the future, she will spot him amid a sea of people by his eyes alone.) His nose and mouth are obscured by a snow-white gauze mask, and it is this hidden part that bestows upon him a space open to imagination and a mysterious, fathomless aura.
Once you lean back in the chair and the lamp lights up the area around your lips, you clench your fists nervously and lay them in your lap. The young dentist presses up close to your face from the right. You open your mouth wide and let him work on your teeth with probes, forceps, and scalpel. His large, strong fingers move ceaselessly in the cramped space of your mouth. Because of the narrowness of the oral cavity, there is tremendous cohesive force as he pulls your tooth. He exerts all his strength, and you exert all yours. If you are a young woman like Miss Dai Er and have a vivid imagination, it will be easy to associate this with another activity.
Dr. Kong Sen leans over to a patient in the chair beside Dai Er to give the gray-haired woman a shot of Novocain in her upper jaw. Then he turns back to Miss Dai Er.
He asks, "Any physical problems?" His voice is low and deep, as if sealed in an underground tunnel.
"No," she says.
"Heart trouble?"
"No."
"High blood pressure?"
"No."
"OK, let's begin."
His comments are terse and precise. She gains a dialectical fascination from such an either-or dialogue.
He turns to get the Novocain. To Dai Er, the ailments he has mentioned pertain to old folks, not to her. But knowing that the questions are routine, she smiles her gratitude to him.
He has fetched the syringe filled with Novocain, the needle pointing upward. He lightly pushes the injector, and tiny droplets spurt from the tip of the needle. The spray fans out in an exaggerated arc; white mist, curling upward, drifts out of the room and into the corridor, then slowly descends the staircase. It glides over twenty-eight stairs, passing through more than a decade, and on toward the internal medicine ward. There Miss Dai Er was barely seven and a half years old.
Dai Er, front teeth missing and two terrified eyes staring out at a white world, was a weak, sickly child. She had just come out of a fever-induced coma caused by meningitis.
"Do you recognize Mommy?" A young woman about the same age as the present Miss Dai Er sat beside her seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, expecting a response as if awaiting a fateful verdict.
"Do you recognize Mommy? Where is Mommy?" the young woman repeated.
Dai Er struggled to open her eyes, which seemed dried out and enlarged by the debilitating illness; she searched the confines of the room. The walls were white; a hovering sound was white; a smile at the upturned corners of the mouth behind the sound was white. Over there stood a large man holding a hypodermic syringe in his right hand; the needle was pointing upward, like a bleak wilderness, awaiting the passage of humans. Long and hollow, it would enter her buttock. He may have been smiling at his young patient, but his expression was changed into cold indifference by the gauze mask.
"Can you recognize Mommy? You see, Mommy is smiling at you!"
Dai Er remained motionless as her eyes followed the movements of the needle. Concentrating all the strength in her little body in her eyes, she was trying to ward off the approaching instrument.
"Mommy is right here, don't you recognize me?" The young woman was losing her composure.
The needle kept coming, with its cold glint and tiny shriek.
"Mommy, I don't want a shot." Dai Er sat up suddenly and draped her arms around her mother's neck. "Mommy, I don't want a shot," Dai Er cried loudly.
The young woman burst out crying, her sobs punctuated by laughter: "My baby's alive again. She's not a mindless vegetable, she's alive again…"
The white uniform and the needle had moved up next to little Dai Er.
"Put her down, and leave us alone, please. It's time for her injection," the mouth above the white uniform said. The huge hypodermic in his hand was cold and hard, like a pistol.
To Dai Er's chagrin, the young woman put her down, shedding tears of happiness, and left the room.
She knew that her mother, too, was afraid of the man. Her leaving was testimony to this. She could not protect Dai Er. Now Dai Er was alone. She stopped crying, for she knew she had to face the cold needle by herself.
"Lie on your stomach, and pull down your pants."
It was useless to resist. Even Mommy obeyed him. She rolled over obediently and pulled down her pants.
For two whole months, the seven-and-a-half-year-old Dai Er experienced the world through the unvarying command of "Lie on your stomach, and pull down your pants." She learned that no one else could take that resonating needle for her. Everyone had his own needle to face.
The long needle entered her buttock and stabbed at her heart. She grew up with that needle.
The dental office resounds with the provocative screeches of teeth being drilled and scraped. They grate on Miss Dai Er's nerves and make her shudder.
The stocky, young dentist approaches her, holding a hypodermic syringe.
"No!" Miss Dai Er's scream disturbs the rigid operating protocols of the dental office.
A Fortuitous Encounter
That I actually met him was certainly the will of heaven. It happened five years ago. One day at dusk when the feeble face of evening had already faded, night's curtain fell in a rush, allowing no explanation. At that time, my persistent nostalgia invariably led me from a stage pieced together by historical fragments to a theater displaying the passage of time. On that day, I walked alone into a grand theater decorated with a mix of luxurious splendor and religious decline. It was at the entrance where I ran into him; to be precise, at first I was captivated by the eyes of a handsome, bright young man, and then I recognized him by his voice.
"Is it really you?"
I collected myself and looked at him, able to identify the focused yet limpid eyes. The space beneath the eyes, however, appeared only in my imagination; except that in my imagination, the chin had been broad, with sharp edges and corners, whereas the one before me was steep yet smooth. The Grecian nose was just as I had imagined, belonging to the right person.
"Yes, it's me. I know you… part of you, anyway." To be acquainted with a handsome man in this way-how could I help but smile?
He was smiling, too. He stroked his chin with his right hand, and the large palm slid along with a lively whistle. Neither of us mentioned the event we had experienced together.
"Are you… alone?" He asked.
"Yes."
"If you don't mind, I happen to have two tickets."
"I've got one." I showed him the ticket in my hand.
"But mine are in the front row."
"Um… aren't you going to wait for her any longer?"
"Who?"
"Um…" I turned and looked around.
He took my arm gently before I turned back around. "I'm waiting for a girl just like you."
I smiled and shook my head but followed him nevertheless.
The heavy curtains opened, the lights dimmed, and all was quiet. I've always thought that the biggest difference between an office and a theater is that an office is a stage and that even if you don't like to perform, you must play a role regardless of how unimportant it is. There is no escape. Even though your office is tranquil as still water and only one or two people-actors-are around you, you are still unable to indulge in your inner world: your facial expression will betray you. The office is a stage, an outer life, an unclosed space. In a cinema or a theater, however, once the lights are turned off and the darkness spreads around you, you are swallowed up by a vast emptiness. Although in the darkness, countless heads are hidden and the air is filled with whispers like a tired night wind quietly perched in a vast forest, you gain a peaceful space where your heart is able to wander freely. You watch a miniature world and telescoped time on the stage; your pearllike tears flow, you giggle, you can't help yourself, you let yourself go.
That day's play was about love, and the actors performed with wild intoxication. A man poured out his heart to a woman as beautifully as if he were lying, and a woman lied to another woman as beautifully as if she were telling the truth. I was totally immersed in the story and the passion on stage. When the curtains closed and the lights came on, I was dragged back to the theater from somewhere within my heart by the noise of movement around me, and once again I saw his focused yet limpid eyes.
I said thanks.
He also said thanks.
We walked out together. We made our slow way through the excited crowd, his arm shielding my back to protect me from being jostled. From time to time, his arm was pushed up against my back or waist by the crowd, and to me it felt like a gentle, comforting caress. When we reached the exit, he helped me with my coat. This act, subtle and natural, made my coat warmer and more velvety.
To get from the theater to the bus stop, we needed to pass down a narrow lane with buildings on both sides. I had already thought about the hidden dangers in the cramped space on the way to the theater, but since it had not yet been entirely dark, the imagined danger had been no more than a fleeting concern. Now the darkness was thick as ink as we left the theater, and the moon, like an eroded boulder, showed only a tiny sliver. Completely caught up in the dangers of the long, narrow, dark passage, I asked him to stand at this end of the lane and wait until I ran to the other end and said good-bye to him.
He laughed. "Why so complicated? I'll go with you."
"No."
"I don't mind. Really."
"There's no need. I… really no need…"
"But why?"
"I'm just afraid… suddenly somebody might…"
"Oh! Including me?"
"Um…"
"You really are a little girl. You need me, but you're also afraid of me. OK, you go first, then shout, and I'll come over and see you home."
I accepted happily.
I ran the whole way without taking a single breath, as if it were a hundred-meter dash. His eyes and silhouette remained behind me, exactly where I'd left them. As soon as I reached the other end, I shouted, "I made it."
And from the other end, his footsteps sounded.
When we were together again, he earnestly guaranteed my safety. I felt I could trust him. This trust originated from a shared memory, which I cannot reveal here.
As we walked, reluctantly we recalled that event. I told him how impressed I had been by his eyes and by his voice-the low, gentle voice of a cello filtering out from behind closed doors and windows. Unexpectedly, every detail of the event, including my manner and behavior, remained fresh in his memory.
"I knew then that you'd never return," he said.
Walking slowly along the deserted night street, we talked about things far and near, including the romantic play we had just seen. I said I didn't agree with one of the leading man's lines. The "rib theory" is ridiculous, I said. However intimate the original Adam and Eve or their future replacements might have been, they each had their own heads, their own thoughts, and their own spirits. Women were independent.
He agreed.
"Maybe that's why I have no religious beliefs," I said. Five years ago, I talked about love as earnestly as I did about death.
We parted a short distance from my house.