Frontier. Can Xue

upon hard times. Now in Pebble Town, these distinctions weren’t important. Haizai—this uncouth person—seemed even smarter than he was, and was genuinely optimistic. At this point, he walked out of his room, a little puzzled. It was quiet outside. Only two guests were sitting under the sandthorn tree playing chess. Qiming watched for a long time without seeing either of them make a move. They were simply dazed, looking up at the sky. A little curious, Qiming strode over to take a look.

      It was a man and a woman, both getting on in years. Resting their coarse, weather-beaten hands on the table, they were merely making a show of playing chess. When they saw Qiming, they hailed him. They seemed quite humble.

      “We’re going to stay here a long time. We’re special guests.” The old woman’s lips were dried up, and it seemed hard for her to speak. “The institute director invited us.”

      “You’re very welcome here. We like having guests,” Qiming said.

      The old man struck the ground with his cane and shouted, “Don’t take her seriously. She talks nonsense. We didn’t get a personal invitation. We simply saw a small ad in the newspaper and decided to come. The ad gave the institute director’s name and said that she invited everyone to come here for a tour! We’ve walked all around this area. It’s quite desolate.”

      He stood up, a little agitated. He looked at the sky, then at the ground, then suddenly turned around and picked up a large chess piece. He thumped it down and said, “Check!”

      A slight smile appeared on the old woman’s wrinkled face. She seemed excited, too, but she controlled herself. She moved a piece so quickly that Qiming didn’t see which one it was. Then she stood up and asked Qiming, “Is it true that lodging is free for all the guests here?”

      Startled, Qiming began to stutter. He said he wasn’t sure; this wasn’t part of his job. The old man approached him and whispered, “The gardener here is from our hometown. He used to raise poppy flowers in the garden, and then he was convicted for it. I saw him yesterday. He hasn’t aged much. Why are people here so young? Huh? Look, he’s on his way over!”

      But Qiming saw only a small tree swaying in the wind. These two people annoyed him. He took his leave impatiently. Qiming had noticed a phenomenon here for years: everyone who came to Pebble Town took on certain traits that made them just like the people already here. At first, people weren’t so much the same, but after a few days, they were talking just like the locals. Qiming sometimes felt fragile. At such times, he wanted to confide his feelings to a person from his hometown in the dialect he’d spoken as a youth. Just now, when he saw Haizai, he’d felt this way. But, apart from his name, nothing about Haizai reminded him of his hometown. In fact, he was more like a Pebble Town resident than he himself was. How come? Perhaps when one left home, one automatically became another person. Back then, he experienced this, too. After going with the cadre on cars, trains, and several other modes of transportation, he gradually hardened his heart. The person Qiming admired most was the institute director. He couldn’t say why. Even though she’d had nothing more to do with him after settling him into this shed-like cabin, Qiming still appreciated her. He sensed an invisible solicitude being transmitted from her every day. And so every time this nominal Design Institute took in more newcomers, he gasped at the director’s generosity. She had even gone to the hospital with José to visit Nancy and their newborn baby! What a terrific woman!

      The two elderly people had left, but the chess board was still set up on the stone table. Maybe they would return after a while. The good news about Nancy giving birth to a daughter had invigorated this place. The wind was blowing continuously from the snow mountain. It was so cool, so refreshing! What was his precious goddess doing now? Harvesting grapes? Qiming took out his watch and listened: oh, it was running so forcefully. It ticked vigorously as if to demonstrate its power. Qiming felt it was strange. Maybe this watch was his father, and now his father was finally with him.

      Haizai didn’t appear for days, nor did he go to work in the canteen. Qiming thought, Maybe he went to work on maintenance for the city. It was easy to blend in there. Anyone could go.

      One day, however, José came back from the hospital and made a special point of asking him about this. José said that while he was resting in a hospital room, Haizai had shown up. He introduced himself as Qiming’s fellow villager and said that he’d arrived in Pebble Town only a few days before. He was working in the hospital. When José asked what kind of work he was doing, he answered, “Helping out in the morgue.” He told José that deceased people here were much different from those in the interior or on the coast. Here, the corpse didn’t stiffen and could be moved easily. He liked this work quite well because the pay was good. As Haizai was talking, the institute director came by. As soon as Haizai saw her, he sped away rapidly as though he’d seen a ghost. Had he known this woman in the past? José asked the director if she knew this person. She sneered and said, “Naturally.” She sank into memories and told José that she was in an accident in the interior several years ago and was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. But after a day in the morgue, she came back to life. She was moved into an ordinary room. A young person went to her room every day and chatted with her. As they chatted, the institute director sensed that she’d seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t remember where. The young person said he was a vagrant and constantly on the move. He was currently helping out in the hospital. Not until the day she was discharged did he tell the truth: he said he had talked with her an entire night in the morgue and had almost frozen to death. She suddenly found this young person really annoying. As for him, he knew his place and left. Long after leaving the hospital, the institute director still couldn’t shake off her depression. Later, she gradually found relief in her daily routine.

      “The institute director and I have recently become close friends, and we talk about everything with each other,” José said with feeling.

      Qiming was astounded by this story. After mulling it over, he asked José, “Did the institute director tell you what she and Haizai talked about that night in the morgue?”

      “She said she couldn’t remember. She’s been plagued by this question the last several years.”

      Qiming’s thoughts drifted: he thought of his father. What was it like for his father as he neared death? Was it the same as the institute director’s experience in the morgue? What had Haizai talked about with him? All at once, an image of the fishing village swaying in a storm appeared in his mind. He felt a little dispirited and forlorn. But that feeling passed very soon. He still wanted to talk with Haizai.

      When he went to the hospital to look for Haizai, Nancy had already brought the child home. The morgue was separated a little from the hospital rooms. Many flowers were growing at the entrance, where a guard sat sunbathing. Qiming explained why he had come.

      “Oh, you mean that volunteer. He said he was going to take the day off. He’s a great help to us. It isn’t very often that someone wants to do this kind of work,” he gave a thumbs up as he praised Haizai.

      “Is he really a volunteer?”

      “Yes, that’s why we respect him so much. He told us he would work only as a volunteer. He didn’t want any wages. All he wanted was three meals a day with us. What a wonderful person! Do you want to come in and look around?”

      Qiming sensed that this furtive middle-aged person was constantly taking stock of him, and he was disgusted. He promptly turned down his invitation. Even after walking a long way from the hospital, he could still smell Lysol on his body. He wondered if Haizai had been in the morgue just now. When he thought of him working as a volunteer in the morgue, he couldn’t help but laugh. Apparently he had chosen this work in order to talk with the dead. But this kind of communication must be tough. He could achieve his goal only with someone like the institute director who wasn’t really dead. Qiming recalled that Haizai had been a very stubborn kid. He was so obstinate and so inflexible that he offended almost all the villagers. He had probably traveled to many places and kept doing this shameful thing. Qiming sank into dark memories. This was his new practice—remembering a life he had never experienced. As he walked, he thought about this, and the more he thought, the colder he felt. When he reached the guesthouse, he