was a floating home for clumps of half-dead grasses. There was plenty of activity all over town, except at this spot. The polluted water in the ditch was a spawning ground for tiny red insects; the second time he came to town to sell his garlic, he had seen an old white-clad man catching with mosquito netting attached to the end of a long bamboo pole. Someone said he used them as food for goldfish.
The police removed his handcuffs, and once his hands were free, even the two ugly purple welts girding his wrists did not lessen his tearful gratitude. A comrade policeman hung the cuffs on his belt and gave Gao Yang a shove. “Inside!” he said gruffly, pointing to a cot near the window. “That’s yours,” he said. “From now on you’re Inmate Number Nine.”
One of his cellmates-a young fellow-jumped down off his cot and clapped his hands. “Welcome, comrade-in- arms. Welcome.” The metal door clanged shut. The young fellow made drumrolls with his mouth and, in the cramped space, began twirling and prancing about. Gao Yang watched him nervously. His head had been shaved, but it had so many little dents that tufts of dark hair the razor missed gave his scalp an ugly, mottled look. As the young fellow twirled around the makeshift cell, Gao Yang’s view of him alternated between a pale, gaunt face and a mole-spotted back. He was so skeletal he didn’t seem to have any hips at all, and when he pranced around the cell he looked like one of those paper figures that turn somersaults when you squeeze the sticks they’re tied between.
Someone outside banged the door with a hard object, then shouted. Almost immediately a somber, angular face appeared in the window high on the door. “Number Seven, what the hell are you up to?” the face thundered.
The young fellow stopped dancing, rolled his not-quite-white eyes, and looked at the face in the window. “Nothing, Officer.”
“Then why are you hopping around?” the angular face asked sternly. “And why are you shouting?” Gao Yang saw the glinting blade of a bayonet.
“I’m exercising.”
“Who said you could exercise in here, you dumb prick?”
“Aha!” The young inmate blurted out as he walked up to the door. “So, as an officer, you enjoy calling people names, is that it? Chairman Mao’s instructions say; ‘Don’t beat people, and don’t call them names!’ I want to see the man in charge. We’ll find out if you can talk to me like that!”
The guard-the so-called officer-banged the bars of the window with his rifle butt. “Hold your tongue, or I’ll get the turnkey to cuff you!”
The young inmate turned and ran back to his cot, holding his head in his hands and begging shamelessly. Officer, good Uncle, I’ve stopped, see, I’m sorry, please!”
“Shitty little prick!” the face grumbled as it disappeared from the window. Gao Yang heard the staccato sound of boots retreating down the corridor, which seemed endless. When Gao Yang was brought here in the police van, he was taken down the long corridor, past one steel door after another, one small window after another, behind which a parade of ashen faces appeared; they looked like white-paper cutouts, which he could have crumbled merely by blowing on them.
He dimly recalled watching two comrade policemen lift the horse-faced young man down off the van, the white tunic still wrapped around his head. A stretcher arrived then, if he wasn’t mistaken, and the young man was carried away on it. He tried to imagine what happened to him after that, but those thoughts just confused him, so he gave up.
It was a murky cell, with gray flooring, gray walls, and gray cots; even the eating bowls were gray. The last few rays of light from the setting sun filtered in through ‘ the barred window, turning portions of the gray wall a reddish purple. All that was visible through the window was a blue derrick, outfitted with a glass cage that shimmered in the sunlight. A flock of doves, wings painted a golden red, swept past the cage, their mournful cries making Gao Yang tremble with fear. They flew out of sight, then changed course and returned, accompanied by the same cries.
A hunched-over old man walked up to the disoriented Gao Yang and touched him with a quaking finger. “Smoke… a smoke… new man… got a smoke?” he squeaked.
Gao Yang, barefoot and barechested, was wearing only a pair of baggy shorts, and his skin crawled when the old man’s sticky, rank-smelling hand touched it. Somehow he kept from screaming. Rebuffed, the old man shuffled off angrily and curled up on his cot.
“What’re you in for, my man?” a voice across from Gao Yang asked offhandedly.
Gao Yang couldn’t make out the man’s features in the murky darkness, but instinct told him that he was middle-aged. He was sitting on the concrete floor and resting his large head against a gray cot. “I…” Gao Yang was reluctant to answer. “I’m not sure.”
“Are you saying you were framed?” the man said with hostility.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Gao Yang defended himself.
“Don’t lie to me!” the man snapped, pointing menacingly with a pudgy black finger. “You can’t fool me-you’re in for rape.”
“Not me,” Gao Yang protested bashfully. “I’ve got a wife and kids. How could I do something despicable like that?”
“Then you’re in for robbery.”
“I am not!” Gao Yang fired back angrily. “Not once in my forty years have I stolen so much as a needle!”
“Then… then you must be a murderer.”
“If anybody’s a murderer, you are.”
“You’re close,” the middle-aged man replied. “Except the fellow didn’t die. I cracked his skull with a club, and they say it shook his brain loose. Who the hell ever heard of shaking a brain loose?”
A shrill whisde reverberated up and down the corridor, cutting short their conversation.
“Mealtime!” someone shouted hoarsely in the corridor. “Get your bowls out here.”
The old man who had touched Gao Yang took two gray enamel basins out from under his bed and shoved them through a small rectangular opening at the base of the door. The cell was illuminated by a bright light, but only briefly, before being thrown back into a murky darkness. But it was enough for Gao Yang to see how tall and narrow the cell was: a small electric lightbulb shaped like a head of garlic hung from the ceiling-painted gray, naturally-like a single dim star in a vast sky. The high ceiling couldn’t be reached even by one tall man standing on the shoulders of another. Why, he wondered, would anyone want to make a ceiling so high? It just made it hard to change the bulb. A couple of feet north of the light fixture was a small skylight covered by sheets of tin. When the light went on, a dozen or so large flies began buzzing around the room, which unsettied him. He spotted another phalanx of flies stuck to the walls.
The would-be murderer-he was indeed middle-aged, as it turned out-picked up an enamel bowl from his cot and wiped some crumbs of food from the inside with his bare hand, then held it by the edge with one hand and began drumming it with a pair of red chopsticks. The gaunt young inmate fished his bowl out from under his cot. But instead of drumming it, he flung it onto the cot, then stretched lazily and yawned, squeezing tears from his eyes and mucus from his nose.
The other inmate stopped drumming his bowl long enough to kick his younger cellmate with a rough leather shoe that looked as if it weighed several pounds; dark skin and yellow hair poked through rips in his trousers. His kick-it must have been a hard one-caught the younger man on the shin, drawing a painful screech out of him. Jumping to his feet, he hopped over to his cot and fell on it to rub his sore leg. “What was that for, killer? Do you enjoy being mean?”
The middle-aged man clenched his strong, discolored teeth and snarled, “Your old man must have died young, right?”
“Your old man died young!”
“Yeah, he did, the lousy bastard,” the man said, to Gao Yang’s puzzlement. How could he call his own father a bastard? “But I asked if
“My old man’s alive and well,” the young inmate said.
“Then he’s a bad father, and an old bastard to boot. Didn’t he teach you it’s impolite to stretch and yawn in front of others?”
“What’s impolite about it?”
“It brings bad luck,” the middle-aged man said somberly. He spat on the floor, stomped three times on the
