The Seventh Day (20 page)

I
was searching for my father among the throngs of skeletal people. I had the uplifting sensation that he had left traces here, even if those traces were as faint as the distant call of a departing goose. Surely I would discern the marks he had left, just as one feels the movement of a breeze as it ruffles one’s hair. I knew that I might not be able to recognize my father even if he was standing in front of me, but he would be able to recognize me at a glance. I would make my way toward the skeletal people—som
etimes a large crowd, sometimes a small clump—and stand before them as though on display, hoping that one among them would call me by my name.

I knew that such a voice would sound foreign to my ears, just as Li Qing’s greeting had sounded unfamiliar. But I would be able to distinguish my father’s call just from his tone. In the world that had left me, there had always been an intimate note to my father’s greeting, and in this new world that should remain unchanged.

Here there roamed everywhere the figures of those who had no graves. Denied a place of rest, these figures were like trees in motion—som
etimes scattered, disconnected trees, sometimes dense stands of timber. When I walked among them, it was as though I were wending my way through a well-managed forest. I was looking forward to hearing the sound of my father’s voice, ahead of me or behind me, to the left or the right. I was looking forward to that call of “Yang Fei!”

Often I would run into people wearing black armbands. With the black gauze fastened in place, their sleeves seemed empty. The absence of skin and flesh told me these people must have been here a long time. They would look at me and smile—a smile conveyed not by facial expression but through their vacant eyes. It was a smile of understanding, because we were all in the same boat. In the other world no one would wear a black armband on our behalf—we were all grieving for ourselves.

One such self-mourner noticed my searching look. He stood in front of me and I gazed at his bony face. There was a little hole in his forehead. He greeted me in a friendly fashion.

“Are you looking for someone?” he asked. “Or for several people?”

“Just one,” I said. “My father. He may be here.”

“Your father?”

“Yang Jinbiao is his name.”

“Names don’t mean anything here.”

“He was in his sixties—”

“It’s impossible to tell people’s ages here.”

I looked at the skeletons walking in the distance and close by, and it was true that one couldn’t tell how old they were. My eyes could distinguish only tall and short, wide and narrow, and my ears could differentiate only male and female, old and young.

Recalling how debilitated my father had become in his final days, I added further details: “He’s five foot seven, very thin—”

“Everyone here is thin.”

Looking at these people who were all so thin that only their bones were left, I didn’t know how further to describe my father.

“Do you remember what he was wearing when he came over?” he asked.

“A railroad uniform,” I told him. “A brand-new railroad uniform.”

“How long ago was it that he came over?”

“It’s been over a year now.”

“I’ve seen people in other kinds of uniform, but nobody wearing a railroad uniform.”

“Maybe somebody else has noticed him.”

“I’ve been here a long time. If I haven’t seen him, nobody else will have, either.”

“Maybe he changed his clothes.”

“A lot of people do change before coming here, it’s true.”

“I feel he must be here somewhere.”

“If you can’t find him, he may have gone to the burial ground.”

“He has no grave.”

“If he has no grave, then he should be here.”

As I wandered here and there in search of my father, I found myself once more approaching the two avid chess players. They sat cross-legged on the grass, as concentrated as two statues. Their bodies were completely motionless, and it was just their hands that continually gestured, as though making moves. I saw neither board nor chess pieces, just their hands moving forward and back or side to side, and I couldn’t tell whether the game they were playing was Chinese chess or Go.

One skeleton’s hand had just put down a piece, only to raise it again immediately. Two skeletal hands immediately clasped that skeletal hand, and their owner shouted, “You can’t retract your move!”

The owner of the single hand cried out, “But you just retracted a move yourself.”

“I retracted that move because you did that before.”

“I did that because you retracted your previous move.”

“I retracted that previous move because yesterday you retracted moves.”

“Yesterday it was you who retracted a move first—that was why I did it.”

“The day before yesterday it was you who started it.”

“Well, who started it the day before that?”

The two of them kept up an endless wrangle, accusing each other of retracting moves and tracing their adversary’s history of such misdeeds farther and farther back into the past, from days to months and from months to years.

“I can’t let you take back that move,” the owner of two of the hands cried. “I’m about to win.”

“No, I’m taking back that move,” the owner of the one hand cried.

“I’m not playing with you anymore.”

“I’m not playing with you, either.”

“I’m never going to play with you again.”

“I’ve been wanting to stop playing with you for ages.”

“Let me tell you something: I’m leaving. I’m going to get cremated tomorrow and then go off to my burial ground.”

“I’ve been meaning to get cremated for ages now—can’t wait to get to my burial ground!”

I interrupted their bickering. “I know your story.”

“Everyone here knows our story,” one of them said.

“Newcomers maybe don’t,” the other said.

“Even if they don’t, our story is still kicking ass.”

“Or, to put it more delicately, our story is the talk of the town.”

“I know about your friendship too,” I said.

“Friendship?”

The two of them chortled.

“What’s friendship?” one asked the other.

“Haven’t a clue,” the other said.

Laughing away, they raised their heads, and two pairs of cavernous eyes looked at me. “You’re a newbie, are you?” one of them asked.

“He came with that cute girl,” the other said, before I had time to reply.

The two skeletons lowered their heads and with a titter resumed their game. It was as though they had never been arguing, as though neither of them had ever taken back a move.

After playing for a little while, one of them raised his head. “Do you know what board game we’re playing?”

I glanced at the movements of their hands. “Chinese chess.”

“Wrong. It’s Go.”

Soon the other one turned to me. “Now you know what we’re playing, right?”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re playing Go.”

“Wrong! It’s Chinese chess.”

They then asked me the following question at the same time: “Now what are we playing?”

“If it’s not Go, it’s got to be Chinese chess.”

“Wrong again!” they said. “Now we’re playing Five in a Row.”

They heaved with laughter, each of them making exactly the same gestures, pressing one hand against his own midriff and the other hand on the other’s shoulder. The two skeletons shook with laughter, like withered trees whose intersecting branches tremble together in the wind.

Afterward the two skeletons continued their game, but before long they were in an argument once more, because of yet another retracted move. It seemed to me that they were playing these games just in order to be able to argue, with each of them taking his turn to denounce the other’s record of retracting moves. I stood there listening to the history of their happy chess playing and the history of their happy arguments. Gleefully each fulminated against the other’s vile record of retracted moves, and when their respective surveys of past offenses finally went back as far as seven years earlier, I lost patience, knowing there were another seven or eight years of retracted moves still to be accounted for.

“Which of you is Zhang Gang?” I asked. I hesitated a moment, realizing suddenly the inappropri
ateness of referring to the other man as “the male surnamed Li,” as the newspapers at the time put it. “And which of you is Mr. Li?”

“Mr. Li?”

They looked at each other, then burst into gales of laughter.

“Why don’t you guess?” they both said.

I studied them carefully, and to me the two skeletons looked exactly alike. “I’ve no idea,” I told them. “You could be twins, as far as I can tell.”

“Twins?” Again they burst into laughter. Then, once more, they resumed their game in the most cordial of moods. The tempestuous argument of a moment earlier had vanished into thin air after my interruption.

Soon they were back to their old tricks, asking me, “Do you know what game we’re playing?”

“Chinese chess, Go, Five in a Row.” I recited all the possibilities.

“Wrong!” they chortled. “We’re playing Chinese checkers.”

Once again they burst out laughing and again I saw each of them gripping his midriff with one hand and clapping the other hand on his adversary’s shoulder. The two skeletons shook with a tidy rhythm.