FRAGMENT 27
Father's Lie and Prohibition
Fragment: The Rhythm of Utterly Humble Pleading
Time & Location: Winter 1984 · Ministerial Residence, Wanshou Road, Beijing
The autumn air of Wanshou Road no longer carried the swampy scent of reeds and lake water that lingered around Houhai.
Instead, everything smelled of carefully maintained vegetation.
Cold.
Trimmed.
Disciplined.
The tall poplars and cedars possessed no such obedience.
Their leaves rubbed against one another in the darkness.
The sound gave the row of six-story buildings an increasingly imposing presence.
"You're back?"
Father reclined halfway into the sofa.
Across from him sat two military officers.
Their shoulders formed a connected right angle.
The red stars on their insignia resembled bloodstained ninja blades.
Each breath they took was measured.
Balanced.
Controlled.
"Sit."
Father's voice produced a faint echo in the spacious living room.
The echo carried exhaustion.
The exhaustion of a man who had returned to the summit.
It also carried something deeper than anything I had heard in the matchbox room of Pocket Alley.
The sound of walking on thin ice.
The two officers rose and greeted me.
They came from a military compound near Huangsi.
The fingers holding their introduction letters were applying pressure.
"Chief, we're only carrying out orders."
One of them bowed slightly.
A humble tremor moved through his throat.
At last I understood.
The military wanted to recruit me.
Listening to them, I realized they regarded me as a human stepping stone toward the summit of what they called Human Science.
"Hahaha."
"You've made a mistake."
Father released a ring of smoke.
It spun in the air.
Pale.
Perfectly obedient to its creator.
"He?"
"He doesn't have any special abilities."
A tiny crack sounded from his knuckles.
"If he doesn't write."
"If he doesn't do mathematics."
"He's an idiot."
"He spends all day staring into space."
"Heh-heh."
The officers remained seated.
Waiting.
"Was I unclear?"
Father smiled.
Performing kindness.
"Very clear."
"Very clear."
"Chief, we'll take our leave."
The heavy door closed behind them.
Father turned.
Stared directly at me.
Inside his slightly bent frame, waves of disordered low frequencies began colliding.
"Attention!"
"Yes, sir!"
I snapped upright on the wooden floor.
Like a Hero fountain pen driven into a desk.
"Bai Ying."
"Listen carefully."
Father bent forward even farther.
"This is the last warning."
"Immediately."
"Right now."
"Block up those troublesome ears of yours."
"In this world, every piece of human speech you hear may be a trap."
"Look at this building."
"Look at that wall."
"Look at the ceiling."
"None of it is insulation."
"None of it is privacy."
"It's a honeycomb."
"It's a sieve."
Suddenly he covered my ears with both hands.
The pressure changed.
Heavy.
Then light.
Then heavy again.
Inside his palms flowed the warm sound of blood.
There was no trace of power in it.
No desire to command.
No political will.
Only the rhythm of utterly humble pleading.
"My son!"
"Stop showing off."
"You'll start hearing the noise inside people's bodies."
"Stop showing off."
"You'll hear pens scratching paper miles away."
"Stop challenging those qigong frauds to their faces."
"Please."
"Please, Comrade Bai Ying."
His fist ground against the tea table.
He knew.
He knew everything.
I fired back.
"I never show off."
"Never."
"Right."
"Right."
"Your father chose the wrong word."
"It's not showing off."
"It's exposure."
"Exposure."
"Do you understand?"
His heartbeat accelerated.
"You really want them to lock you away?"
"Spend the rest of your life like a nail?"
"Let other people hammer you whenever they wish?"
"No."
"Absolutely not."
His voice softened.
His heart pounded harder.
I nodded.
"At ease."
The words seemed to consume the last of his strength.
He collapsed back into the sofa.
I intended to obey him.
Yet something inside me refused.
The mice covering the floor of Xiao Huang's house.
The bowls of bean pork lined up in perfect rows.
Neither of them would agree that I should surrender so easily.
FRAGMENT 28
The Sound of a Throat Repeatedly Swallowing Saliva
Fragment: The Sound of a Matchbox Being Moved by "Mind Power" | Unable to Bear the Weight of Truth
Time & Location: Winter 1984 · Editorial Department, China Youth Daily, Beijing
The newsroom.
I sat at my desk by the window.
Holding a fountain pen.
Without any paper.
I opened a reader's letter.
One sentence caught my eye:
"The Master emitted energy.
The tumor disappeared."
Normally I would have burst out laughing.
Loud enough to startle the entire office.
This time I did not.
Father's prohibition remained lodged inside me.
Perhaps it was time to learn mediocrity.
From a room at the far end of the corridor came Gao Yong's voice.
I wandered over.
The editor-in-chief's office door stood open.
Gao Yong was conducting a demonstration for the newspaper's leadership.
Beside him stood two men in white lab coats.
"Human Science Experts."
Click.
A matchbox moved across a tabletop.
At least that was what everyone else believed.
To my ears, it was not mind power.
It was an extremely thin metallic wire.
Magnetized.
Dragging against the surface.
The wire was hidden inside Gao Yong's sleeve.
The sound it produced was pathetic.
Sneaky.
Obscene.
Yet inside that room full of silent observers, it expanded into thunder.
Most of them were veteran editors and reporters.
People trained to doubt everything.
"Do you see?"
"This is precisely what must be promoted to the nation's youth."
"The awakening of the Chinese nation."
The propaganda official spoke with solemn conviction.
Inside Gao Yong's voice floated an overtone.
Relaxed.
Cruel.
Amazing.
He could really spray nonsense.
I knew him.
Since childhood he had enjoyed persuading other children to believe things.
Any things.
More than once he had told me:
"Never use a scam."
"If people from Compound No. 7 get exposed, it's humiliating."
I leaned against the doorframe.
Listening to the performance.
I heard the master's throat.
Repeatedly swallowing saliva while preparing backstage.
I heard the audience.
Those self-proclaimed intellectuals.
Their racing heartbeats recording a belief they could no longer suppress.
In medical terms, I was a patient.
Noise tortured me constantly.
When frequencies violated nature itself, they struck the whitewashed walls of the corridor.
Shattered.
Into thousands of rusted blades.
My eardrums ached.
That evening an idea occurred to me.
I would try to trace the private conversations of Gao Yong and his father.
I sealed the doors and windows of my dormitory.
Pressed my cheek against the cold floor tiles.
Using acoustic principles I had taught myself, I attempted to exploit structural resonance.
Twenty kilometers away.
One target voiceprint.
Hum—
Hum—
Nothing.
I could not hear the familiar frequencies.
Could not hear the truth I wanted.
Instead, my ears filled with the background noise of the earth itself.
A beast grinding its teeth beneath the ground.
Sewage flowing through pipes.
Subway vibrations.
Someone snoring in a bedroom.
The sounds surged toward me like a landslide.
My skull felt as though it were about to split apart.
Blood began dripping from my eyes.
Capillaries rupturing under extreme vibration.
The field of white before me instantly darkened.
Stained red.
Sickening red.
Sampling had to stop.
Immediately.
I collapsed onto the floor.
Gasping.
My organs churned.
My body was strong.
Yet it could not bear the weight of truth.
I put on my dark glasses.
Left the audience of the qigong craze behind.
And locked myself inside that pale, silent world once again.
FRAGMENT 29
Humming with Pretended Tenderness
Fragment: A Tone as Still as a Lake Without Ripples
Time & Location: Spring 1986 · Ministerial Residence, Wanshou Road | China Youth Daily | Zhengyangmen Restaurant, Beijing
Following Father's repeated instructions, I went to a cinema on a blind date.
The young woman was remarkably fair-skinned.
She possessed a quietness unlike any I had encountered before.
She was an electronic publishing engineer at a printing factory.
Progressive.
Forward-looking.
And utterly uninteresting.
A few months later, we were married.
The wedding banquet was held at Zhengyangmen Restaurant.
Only two tables.
There was no band.
No background music.
Only toasts.
Political slogans disguised as congratulations.
And the endless clinking of glasses.
Before the guests dispersed, Father called me over.
His hand curved into a half-circle.
"I spent my entire life working in secrecy."
"Do you know what secrecy really means?"
"The most important thing isn't keeping other people's secrets."
"It's keeping your own."
"Never forget."
"Never attract attention."
His tone was as smooth as a lake without ripples.
I smiled.
"Then why did you allow me to become a journalist?"
Everything that followed belonged to the young.
Yet late at night, her voice sometimes carried the faint sourness of aged vinegar.
Gradually that frequency amplified all the low-frequency machinery hidden inside her body.
It became a switch.
A switch capable of extinguishing desire.
At last Sister Rong surrendered to my persistent pleading.
She transferred me to the Editor-in-Chief's Office.
Night shift.
No more field reporting.
No more suffering over the difference between truth and falsehood.
I could remain silent.
Like a stone.
Every day my colleagues continued hammering out the rhythms of their era upon sheets of paper.
I pretended to be deaf.
Pretended to be mute.
When there was nothing to do, I played Go in the office.
Or sat holding a cheap six-string guitar.
Humming with pretended tenderness:
"Things of the past, let them stay in the past..."
Occasionally I sang Teresa Teng.
"Beautiful flowers do not bloom forever.
Good things do not come forever."
"The moon represents my heart."
Relaxation.
