Paul hurried through the narrow streets; he had to stop himself from breaking into a run. He wanted to get this conversation over as soon as possible and then get away from here. He did not know what to say to Da Long, how he would make it clear to him that they were facing a force that they had to bend to, that he had been wrong, that he was sorry he had thought otherwise.
The laundry in the courtyard had been taken down; it lay piled in a bamboo basket on the verandah. The ground had been swept clean: there was not a leaf, not a twig, not a cigarette butt to be seen.
“Da Long,” Paul called out. No reply. “Da Long?” he said in an uncertain voice. “Da Long,” he said again, louder this time.
Only then did Paul notice that neither the door nor any of the windows was open. Da Long would not be able to hear him. He climbed the steps up to the verandah, knocked, and tried to open the door. It was locked. He tried to peer through the windows but the makeshift curtains hanging in front of them had been pulled tightly shut. He couldn’t find a single gap to look through.
“Da Long?” His cries grew more urgent. He looked in the shed and walked round the back of the house to the kitchen, but that door was locked too. Paul returned to the front door, kneeled down and tried to look through the keyhole. He couldn’t see much in the dim light. A chair, part of a table with something on it. Paul couldn’t see what it was from the position he’d assumed. He walked around the courtyard one more time, looking for traces in the sand left by men’s boots or by the rolling of a trolley bed, for scraps of paper or any sign that Da Long might have left behind. Paul saw nothing apart from fine, brown, evenly swept sand.
NINETEEN
He had spent his life being protected by her love. Thirty-nine years, seven months, and twelve days.
They had spent every one of those days together. Their children had laughed about it in secret. He knew that. They thought their parents didn’t need much from life. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was a sign of being easily pleased and simple-minded to be unable to imagine living without the other. Or maybe not. Min Fang thought the opposite was true. She thought it was the most demanding of all things to expect to find happiness with just one person.
The protection of their love. It had kept him from despising himself. The long shadow of an autumn day, humid and much too hot. The clatter of young people on wooden steps. A dark-red liquid seeping from a mouth and trickling over cobblestones, draining away in a gap between them, but leaving traces forever.
You were a child. You didn’t know what you were doing. Her words. Spoken so often and with such conviction that Da Long believed them in the end. But what to do with the child? It was not another person; it was strange and mysterious, but it was a part of him. How could a person live with a traitor within him? Who had the courage and the strength to forgive himself? Not to suppress it, not to forget it. To forgive himself. With her help, he had managed. Partly. What she couldn’t take away from him was the deeply felt shame at having done something so wrong at a decisive moment in his life. This shame would haunt him to his final hour.
He got up, walked over to the bookshelf, and looked for a book. Two hours had passed since his wordless farewell to Paul, and Da Long had no idea what he had done in that time. He must have sat numbly at the dining table, unable to think straight. Now he was stirring, gradually, and he needed advice. He could not talk to Min Fang, nor to Yin-Yin. He searched out the dog-eared old copy of the I Ching: The Book of Changes. He and Min Fang had often consulted this book of oracles over the years and read out passages to each other for comfort or support, just as others turned to Buddhist, Confucian, or Christian writings for the same. Thousands of years of Chinese wisdom spoke forth from the I Ching; it had been a help to him in every difficult life situation.
He took the book down, sat next to Min Fang on the bed, looked in the contents list, turned to hexagram number thirty-six and began reading aloud: “MING 1 – DARKENING OF THE LIGHT. In times of darkness, be careful and hold back. Do not needlessly attract powerful enemies by acting without forethought.”
Da Long lowered the book. Had she turned her head toward him or was he imagining it? Was she trying to give him a sign?
“Min Fang?” He looked at his wife. Her stiff limbs sticking out from under the thin blanket. The twisted hands. The half-open mouth from which no more words found their way to him. He leaned over and looked in her eyes. Dark brown. Fixed gaze. He moved her head slowly from side to side, hoping that her eyes would follow him. No reaction in her pupils. “Min Fang? Can you hear me?”
My dearest Da Long. I turned my head, perhaps a finger’s width. I have no strength for more than that. If only I could at least look you in the eye. Just one more time. I understood every word. You know what they are doing. You have always known. They are forcing us to do things that we should not do. Things that will make us one with them and betray all that is beautiful. I don’t know of any way out. If I could end my life myself, I would. But I can’t; I need your help to do it. I can’t even kill myself anymore. How should I make myself understood? If only I could move my hands. Pick up a pen and write for you what I want to say. Or sing it for you. Hum it. Breathe it.
I can’t do any of that. I’m a prisoner. Useless. If I were no longer here, you would not have to press charges against anyone on my account. If I were no longer here, you could move to Shanghai to be with Yin-Yin. If I were no longer here . . .
She did not move; he must have been imagining it. Da Long read the lines a second time.
In times of darkness, be careful and hold back. This was not a piece of advice he knew what to do with at this time. Was he needlessly attracting powerful enemies? Powerful, yes, but needlessly? What should he do? Sign a piece of paper saying that his wife was ultimately responsible for being in the state that she was? What a thing to ask. What a disgrace. It was blackmail; cold, calculated malice. What choice did he have? He could not write such a letter even if he had wanted to. Everything in him revolted at the thought. But at the same time he had no doubt that they would make good their threats and take Yin-Yin to court. It was like playing a game of Go with no hope of winning: the opponent was backing him into a corner, one move after another. He was hemmed in; his white pieces were surrounded; the ring around him grew tighter; it was impossible to break free. No matter how often he looked at the board, or from which angle he did so.
The river that separates life from death is a shallow one.
Tell me, Da Long, can a person love someone more than he loves himself? Is that our secret? We remained true to ourselves by staying true to our beloveds. Where does that lead us now? We have to part. I’ll go first, and you’ll follow me. Later. I’ll wait for you. Patiently. Set me free. Let me go.
Da Long looked elsewhere in the I Ching for words that could help him. “The times are difficult,” he read out into the silence, in a loud voice. He watched Min Fang out of the corner of his eye at the same time to see if she was not giving a sign to him after all. At least a little one. “You must hurry on restlessly without fixed abode. If you do not want to make compromises within yourself but wish to stay true to your principles, a lack results.”
Were these the words that he had been looking for? You must hurry on restlessly without fixed abode. In times of darkness. But where to?
There was no place to head to for shelter; nowhere to aim for. They only had this one house. Just this one life. He had the feeling that he had come to the end of a long march. A wanderer whose path had taken him to the outermost edge of the cliff at the end of a peninsula. The sea roared beneath him. There was no going back.
Of course Xiao Hu was right. Whoever it was who put him under pressure now, whether it was Sanlitun or the authorities in Yiwu or Hangzhou, had all the power, and he had nothing but his own stubbornness. Pigheadedness, some would call it. How difficult was it to sign a piece of paper? It would free his daughter and wouldn’t make Min Fang’s condition any worse, quite the opposite. With compensation he could try
to improve her care. What was there to object to?
Da Long turned to number forty-seven and cleared his throat. “KUN – THE OPPRESSION (THE EXHAUSTION). Times of adversity are the opposite of success. But they can lead to success if they befall the right person. If a strong person encounters hardship he remains cheerful despite all danger, and this cheerfulness is the foundation for success later on. It is the constancy that is stronger than fate. He who allows himself to break under exhaustion will certainly not have success.”
Da Long read the lines again, and then once more. He who allows himself to break under exhaustion will certainly not have success. “Min Fang,” he said, “am I like that? A broken person? Not a strong one? No, no longer. Maybe I’ve never been one. I know you would say that wasn’t true if you could. But a strong person would never have told anyone about secrets that lay hidden under the kitchen floorboards. A strong person would have seen through the lies back then and not years later. A strong person would have looked for his mother and his sister. Wouldn’t have been accused of wrongdoing by his son. Min Fang, forgive me. I don’t know what I should do. It’s too much for me. They are destroying us, and I don’t even know who they are. Who is holding Yin-Yin under arrest? Who has stipulated these conditions for us? Who are we defending ourselves against? Why don’t they dare to come out of their hiding places and show their faces? We thought that the dark times belonged in the past, thought we lived in a new age. Just because the cities had new faces. Because cars had replaced the bicycles on the streets, because our children could go to university, because of a thousand big and small things, we let ourselves be deceived by appearances. Willingly surrendered ourselves to the tempting promises of a new era, an era in which we had no place. Now I have no more strength. Can you understand that? What a question! I’m sorry, I’m confused. What was I saying? It’s the loneliness that makes me talk this way. I miss you so. Why can’t we simply disappear? Just steal away from here. Dissolve into thin air, like the smoke from the joss sticks on the altar to our ancestors.”
Why don’t you read on? You’ll find the answer you are looking for in the next few lines. I know KUN by heart. We read it together. Several times. We were familiar with adversity. We were often oppressed. “When the water has flowed out of the bottom of the lake, the lake must dry up and become exhausted. That is fate. At such times there is nothing a person can do but accept his fate and stay true to himself. But that is the deepest level of our actual self.” We have come to that, Da Long. To the deepest level. You and me. We didn’t seek it out. I didn’t ask for the poison in my body and you didn’t ask to have a sick wife. The deepest level is not a comfortable place. It’s not one we stay in gladly. Anyone who climbs down this far is stronger than he imagined. Not everyone can bear to meet his actual self. You have the strength. I have never heard you complain since I fell ill. Not once. You clean me up at night. You clean me up in the day. You put up with my stink. You have accepted it, your fate. Do not despair.
Hurry on. Restlessly. They could not stay here. It was no place for her. Da Long closed the book and buried his head in his hands. Accept his fate and remain true to himself. How was he to do that? There was one option, but he flinched at the thought of it. He could kill both of them. A few weeks after Min Fang fell ill he had thought about it for one long agonizing night, but rejected the idea the following morning. Only people who no longer had any hope willingly ended their lives. He was not yet one of those people. Apart from that, he did not presume to act for his wife, and did not want to leave his children on their own. Now things were different. An important condition for Yin-Yin’s release would no longer apply if her parents were dead. As far as the other condition went, he could not help her; only she could decide if she would withdraw her accusations or not. He hesitated as he weighed everything up. The thought of leaving Yin-Yin alone caused him the most pain. But she would be thirty years old before too long. She would get married and have a child herself at some point. Min Fang was no more use to her. How long could he care for Min Fang? What would happen if he himself fell ill? Before Min Fang died. It was only a question of time before he became a burden to her daughter.
How was a decision to die made? In a few hours or even from one moment to the next, because we no longer see a way out? Or did it stretch itself out over weeks, months, perhaps years, without our being aware of it? How did a person get tired of life? Da Long had no answers to these questions; he was not a person who had given much thought to how he would die. He had hoped to spend as much time as possible with his future grandchildren and not to suffer at the end. He had wished to die quickly and with Min Fang at his side. The thought of circumstances arising in which he would take his own life had not occurred to him before. Now he actually felt relief at the thought.
How could he do it? He had to make sure that neither of them survived and that they did not suffer any pain. With a knife? He could never manage to slit Min Fang’s wrists, to do physical violence to her. Da Long looked through his wife’s medication: painkillers; pills for cramps; not enough to kill them both. If they had both been in good health they could have lain down on the railway tracks, but they were too far away; he would never manage to carry her all the way there. Rat poison? One of the pesticides stored in the shed? He had read that farmers who committed suicide that way died agonizing deaths.
Da Long had another idea. He got up, walked slowly through the room, and looked around him carefully. Too big. Too many windows. Too many doors. It was unsuitable for what he had in mind. He had another thought, and went into the small, narrow kitchen, which only had room for the stove, the old oven, the sink, and a sideboard. One window. Two doors. He looked at the window and traced the cracks in the wooden frame with his long fingernails. The frame was old and cracked all over; the door leading outside was the same. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Da Long fetched a pair of scissors, towels, blankets, and sweaters, and started to cut them up into strips and stuff them into the cracks in the door and window frames. Carefully, he wedged material into the smallest of crevices with a screwdriver and put more layers over them. He opened the door to the courtyard and stuffed thin cloths between it and the frame so that it took all his strength to close it again. He stuffed pieces cut from a dishtowel into the keyhole.
Da Long, where are you? What are you doing? I can hear you moving around in the kitchen; I can’t make out what you’re doing from those sounds. You’re not clattering pots and pans. You’re not washing dishes. You’ve been gone so long and you know how I don’t do well without you. I never have. Come to me. Sit on the bed again. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me something. Read to me. I need to hear your voice. I need you.
He returned to check on Min Fang every now and then, gave her water, and held her hands, which seemed colder than usual. For a moment he was overcome by doubt: was he allowed to do what he was doing? Was he allowed to raise himself to a position of mastery over life and death? He could not ask his children for advice or his wife for her agreement. Was he allowed to decide for her? For himself, he had no doubt. He was free, at least in this respect. Da Long bent over his wife and kissed her forehead, her mouth, and her neck. He moved her gently to one side and lay next to her. He took the book from the nightstand, turned to hexagram thirty-three and read: “DUN – THE RETREAT. The circumstances are such that the enemy forces, helped by the times, are prevailing. In this case to retreat is the right thing and it is through withdrawal that success is gained. Success consists of conducting a retreat in the right way. Withdrawal is not to be confused with flight. Retreat is a sign of strength. Do not waste the right moment so long as you are in full position of your strength and wits.”
Only now do I realize what you have in mind. Are you sure? Have you thought through everything? It’s not in your power to go back on this. I wish you would let me go alone. You are too young. You are in good health.
Twilight had fallen outside. Da Long got up, went outside, sat on the steps, and lit a cigarette. It
was a mild and pleasant evening; there was no lovelier month than May. Not as hot and humid as the summer, but no longer as cold as the winter, when he felt more and more pain in his bones every year. A bird cheeped on the shed roof over the roar of the highway in the background. He heard a goods train pass in the distance.
Was there an alternative? Of course, he thought, there was always an alternative, but it was not one that he wanted to choose. He was tired, incredibly tired. When the water has flowed out of the bottom of the lake . . .
When the bird fell silent, Da Long got up and tidied the house. He mopped the floor, took the laundry off the line and piled it up carefully. He picked up the cigarette butts and swept the courtyard thoroughly. It should not look like they had left the house in a rush, even though that would have been impossible anyway with Min Fang’s condition. They were not fleeing. They were retreating, and if a retreat was conducted in the right way it was “a sign of strength.” That was what the I Ching said. That was what Da Long thought.
He looked in the closet for the white nightgown that Yin-Yin had brought back for her mother after a trip to Beijing a few years ago. The long sleeves were decorated with frills and there was a ribbon and beautiful mother-of-pearl embroidery on the front. Ming Fang had laughed, embarrassed, when she unpacked it, and said that she was too old for it, but Yin-Yin had contradicted her with vigor. And then Min Fang had indeed worn it, so often and for so long that she finally put it away in the closet because the material was getting thinner and she was worried that she was wearing it out from wearing it and washing it too many times. He sniffed it, hoping to find a trace of her scent on it, but it smelled only of laundry detergent and of the closet. How big it seemed now on her emaciated body. It was difficult for him to pull it over her stiff arms and legs. In the end, he used the scissors to widen the neckline at the back. He combed her thin gray hair and fastened it with a hair tie. Min Fang had liked to wear her hair that way. He wiped her face; he had cut her finger and toenails only a few days ago. “The person of superior character retreats in a spirit of goodwill and withdraws cheerfully.”