FRAGMENT 02
The Crow Never Forgets
Fragment: A Fatal Bang | Bones Fighting Each Other in Rage and Fear
Time & Location: Autumn 1969 · Compound No. 7, Beijing
At dusk, Longevity Hill looked like a traditional Chinese painting soaked through with water.
Every patch of color.
Every line.
Blurred.
The Red Guards of Compound No. 7 were struggling against my father.
Far away, I crouched beneath an old pagoda tree. Behind me stood an abandoned building. I often sat there listening to crows sing.
The songs were always interrupted by noises as hard as steel.
My eyes grew dry again. Then suddenly painful.
I put on my dark glasses.
The white glare still poured in.
I could no longer see branches.
Could no longer see grass.
I could only see countless tiny particles dancing wildly inside the light.
Each produced a faint sound.
Dry.
Metallic.
Like endless miniature explosions.
A boy approached carrying a slingshot. In his other hand hung a dead crow.
He pinched his throat and mocked me in a strange voice.
The same old insults.
My white hair.
My weak eyesight.
And my father, who had lost his power.
His name was Gao Yong.
Our neighbor.
For some reason, as he turned to leave, he let out a laugh I had never heard before.
"Heh-heh."
The world before me turned white.
No lines.
No shapes.
No colors.
A faint acoustic trace entered my ears. My fingers stiffened. My toes cramped.
The monkey-faced boy across from me became increasingly blurred.
Twisted.
Broken apart.
Until he was nothing more than a black dot.
The sacred bird sleeping deep inside me suddenly awoke.
Fragments of images shattered before my eyes. They fell faster than a flock of startled crows taking flight.
In my previous life, I had worn white feathers.
An albino crow.
A monster among crows.
Mocked.
Rejected.
Humiliated.
Until one day, a black feather touched mine.
A brief touch.
Its metallic sheen flashing in the sun.
Then came a fatal bang.
From the slingshot of that child.
The female crow who had always stayed beside me exploded apart.
Puff.
A streak of dead-black crossed the air. A tiny whistle followed.
Then she fell.
Three-year-old Gao Yong jumped with delight. One shoe flew off.
And he left behind that laugh.
"Heh-heh."
The figure.
The laugh.
Both were carved forever into the memory of the crow clan.
I rubbed my eyes.
Gao Yong had become a pale ghost.
I sprang to my feet, my fists clenched tight.
From my pelvis.
Through my chest.
Through my throat.
Through my grinding teeth.
A low-frequency vibration burst out of me unlike anything I had ever produced before:
"Ekhig-Chini-Arakh!"
Clatter.
The slingshot hit the ground.
Clatter.
The dead crow hit the ground.
Then came the sound of running.
Gao Yong bolted.
His rubber soles scraped against the concrete, trying to sound brave.
There was even a faint smell of urine.
Wham.
My father's heavy hand struck my left cheek and pinned it in place.
The smell of tobacco rushed into my nose.
The blow turned the whiteness of my vision into a dark red haze streaked with blood.
I heard my father's knuckles crack.
It sounded like bones fighting each other.
Rage against fear.
"What did you just say?”
FRAGMENT 03
Father's Nickname
Fragment: As If He Wanted to Chew Every Word to Pieces | Striking Match After Match
Time & Location: Autumn 1969 · Compound No. 7, Beijing
My father's voice was low.
So low it sounded as if he wanted to chew every word to pieces.
Those eyes, trained by a lifetime of reading people, were fixed on the white glare behind my dark glasses, trying to see the shape of the monster living inside me.
I said nothing.
I did not even rub the half of my face still burning from the slap.
He grabbed me the way one might seize a bird.
His heart rate shot up to one hundred and thirty-six beats a minute.
After checking the surroundings, he dragged me behind the building.
His voice became a length of rusted wire.
Again and again, he ordered me to pretend I could neither hear nor speak.
Otherwise, he said, they would pierce my ears.
I did not know whether he was lying.
But I could hear him using sheer muscular control to suppress the abnormal trembling inside him.
He talked for a long time.
His heartbeat was chaotic.
Then he said something about being terrified that my Mongolian heritage might be exposed.
The expression on his face made me shiver.
Back then, many revolutionaries in Compound No. 7 were still hunting down the bloodlines of the distant grasslands.
And my voice—whether it came from the steppe or from a crow—carried the scent that would draw the revolutionary hounds.
It was the first time Father had spoken so much to me.
My mother had died in childbirth.
The instinctive warmth of a mother's love never existed in my world.
For ten years, Father had raised me alone.
Sometimes he loved me.
Sometimes he hated me.
Sometimes he called me a monster and blamed me for the death of the woman he loved most.
He loved his work far more than he loved me.
Even while cooking or washing his feet, he talked endlessly about "work."
Whether I understood or not never mattered.
In private, I gave him a nickname:
“Work”.
I never liked calling him Father.
I crouched against the wall, curled into a ball.
He leaned against the opposite wall, striking match after match.
Our family had been forced to leave the ministerial residence inside Compound No. 7 and move to Pocket Hutong in Houhai.
Deep inside the alley stood a small courtyard.
The newly built red-brick rooms were low and crude, like four matchboxes lined up side by side.
Father was six feet tall.
I had never seen him bend his back.
Yet every time he stepped through the wooden gate of that courtyard, he had to lower his head.
"Get up. Come home with me."
His growl was heavy.
But there was softness hidden inside it.
04 Cloth Buttons
Archive Fragment: An Obviously Fake Tremor in the Voice | The Sound of Cloth Buttons Slipping Free
Time & Location: Autumn 1969 · Pocket alley, Houhai, Beijing
Oh my. The leader's home.
Grandma Yang's voice seeped out from the room on the eastern side like a damp snake.
She was the only neighbor in our new home.
Not long before, she had moved into the two eastern rooms.
She had been chosen by Gao Yong's father.
The same man who, during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, had stirred up zealots to remove my father from his position as vice minister.
This residence, and this neighbor, had both been arranged by him.
Grandma Yang was not yet sixty.
There was not a trace of revolutionary spirit about her.
Instead, she carried a thick scent of powder and perfume.
Her dark-gray blouse fit tightly.
A row of cloth frog-buttons ran diagonally across her chest toward her left armpit.
In those years, Zhongshan suits filled the streets. I had grown accustomed to women appearing flat-chested.
She was not.
Her breasts were full. They swayed when she moved.
And I often found myself wanting to sneak a look at the large hips that twisted from side to side.
Not long after we moved in, the skinny old man who played the erhu near the alley entrance quietly told me:
"Kid, that old woman used to be a famous prostitute.
Know what that means?
Hahaha."
I was only ten.
I did not know what a prostitute was.
But I could hear something.
Whenever she swayed her waist, those cloth buttons rubbed against the fabric.
They produced an extremely faint sound.
A tiny rhythm.
Zzz—pop.
Zzz—pop.
"Leader, the coal stove isn't hot enough.
How about your little sister here gives it a poke?"
The tremor in her voice was obviously fake.
Father struck another match.
Scratch—
hiss.
The match head flared violently, as if it too were in a temper.
I crouched in my room against the wall.
Using the White Crow's hearing, I listened to the sound patterns beyond it.
Grandma Yang was undoing those cloth buttons.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
The sound of cloth buttons slipping free from their loops was soft.
Muted.
I lay down and turned from side to side.
The image of those heavy hips would not leave my eyes.
