miracle. Is it not enough that a conscious physical body is able to perceive the pains and joys of life?
What else is there to be sought?
Your fear of death came about when you were mentally and physically weak. There was the feeling of not being able to breathe, and you were afraid that you would not be able to last long enough to take your next breath. It was as if you were falling into an abyss, this sensation of falling was often present in dreams during your childhood, and you would awaken in fright, drenched in perspiration. In those days, when there was nothing wrong with you, your mother used to take you for numerous hospital tests. Nowadays, even under your doctor's instructions to have tests, you often procrastinate.
It is clear that life naturally ends, and when the end comes, fear vanishes, because fear is itself a manifestation of life. On losing awareness and consciousness, life abruptly ends, and there can be no further thinking and no further meaning. Your affliction had been your search for meaning. When you began discussing the ultimate meaning of human life with the friends of your youth, you had hardly lived. However, it seems that having savored virtually all of the sensations to be experienced in life, you simply laugh at the futility of searching for meaning. It is best just to experience this existence, and, moreover, to look after it.
You seem to see him in a vast emptiness, with a faint light coming from some unidentified source. He is not standing on any specific or defined patch of ground. He is like the trunk of a tree, but has no shadow, and the horizon between the sky and the earth has vanished. Or, he is like a bird in some snow-covered place, looking here and there, occasionally staring ahead, as if deep in thought, although it is not clear what he is pondering. It is simply a gesture, a gesture of aesthetic beauty. Existence is, in fact, a gesture, it is striving to be comfortable, stretching the arms, bending the knees, turning to look back upon his consciousness. Or, it may be said that the gesture is actually his conscious mind, that it is you in his conscious mind, and it is from this that he is able to gain some fleeting happiness.
Tragedy, comedy, farce, do not exist but are aesthetic judgments of human life, which differ according to the person, the time, and the place. Emotional responses are probably also like this, and what is felt now and what is felt at some other time can fluctuate between being perceived as sad and being seen as absurd. And there is no longer any need for mockery, for it seems that there has been enough self-ridicule and self-purification. It is only in the gesture of tranquilly prolonging this life and striving to comprehend the mystery of this moment in time, that freedom of existence is achieved. It is through this act of solitarily scrutinizing the self, that others' perceptions of one's self lose relevance.
You do not know what other things you will do, or what else there is to do, but this is of no consequence. If you want to do something, you do it. It's fine if you do it, but it doesn't matter if you don't. And you don't have to persist in doing something. If, at a particular moment, you feel hungry and thirsty, you just go and have something to eat and drink. Of course, you still have your own opinions, interpretations, inclinations, and you even get angry, because you are not so old that you don't have the energy for anger. Naturally, you still become indignant, but it is with little passion. And while you still have the capacity for feelings and sensory pleasures, then so be it. However, there is no longer remorse. Remorse is futile and, needless to say, harmful to one's self.
For you, only life is of value, you have a lingering attachment to it, it continues to be interesting because there are still things to discover and amaze you. It is only life that can excite you. That is just how it is with you, isn't it?
55
One day, passing Drum Tower around dusk, he got off his bicycle and was about to go into a small eatery when someone called out his name. He turned. A woman stood there, looking at him. Uncertain about smiling, she was biting her lip.
'Xiao Xiao?' He wasn't sure.
Xiao Xiao gave an awkward smile.
'I'm sorry.' He didn't know what to say. 'I didn't think…'
'You can't recognize me, can you?'
'You're more robust…' In his memory, she was a young girl with a slight build and small breasts.
'I'm a peasant woman?' the woman asked sarcastically.
'No, you're just more sturdy!' he hastened to add.
'I am, after all, a member of a commune. But I am not that flower turning with the sun; it withered and died!'
Xiao Xiao was caustic. She was referring to a song in praise of the Party, which compared the members of a commune to a sunflower that turned with the sun. He changed the topic, 'Are you back in Beijing?'
'I'm trying to get a residential permit. I've put down that my mother is ill and needs me to look after her, I'm the only child in the family. I'm dealing with the formalities for getting back to Beijing, but I haven't got my residential permit yet.'
'Is your family still at the same place?'
'The place is a shambles. My father is dead, but my mother has come back from the cadre school.'
He knew nothing of Xiao Xiao's family circumstances and could only say, 'I went to the hutong where your house is, I went to see…'
He was talking about ten years ago.
'How about coming to my house for a visit?'
'All right.' He agreed without thinking, although he hadn't originally intended to. That year, he had cycled many times through that hutong in the hope of running into her, but he didn't say this, and simply mumbled, 'But I didn't know your house number…'
'I didn't ever tell you.' Xiao Xiao remembered very clearly. She had not forgotten that winter night when she left before daybreak.
'It has been a long time since I've lived in that house. I was in a village for almost six years, and I am now living in a workplace dormitory.'
This explained things, but Xiao Xiao didn't say if she had also tried to see him. He pushed his bicycle, walking for a while in silence beside Xiao Xiao, until turning into a lane. He had gone through this hutong on his bicycle many times, from one end to the other, then had gone into another lane, circled around, and come back from that end of the hutong. He had noted each of the courtyard gates, thinking that he might bump into her. He didn't know Xiao Xiao's surname, so he couldn't make inquiries, he thought Xiao Xiao had to be a name her classmates and her family called her. The hutong was quite long when it came to walking through it.
Xiao Xiao went ahead, through a gate leading into a big courtyard shared by a number of families. On the left, was a small door with a padlock hanging on it, and, next to it, a coal stove. She opened the door with a key. Inside was a big bed piled with folded bedding, the rest of the room was a mess. Xiao Xiao quickly grabbed the clothes from a chair and threw them onto the bed.
'Where's your mother?' He sat on the chair, and the springs in the seat cushion squeaked noisily.
'She's in a hospital.'
'Why is she in a hospital?'
'Breast cancer, it's already spread to the bones. I hope she will last the year and a half it will take to get my residential permit issued.'
After such a response, he couldn't ask anything else.
'Like some tea?'
'No, thanks.' He had to try to think of something to say. 'Tell me about yourself-'
'What about? What's worth talking about?' Xiao Xiao asked, standing right in front of him.
'About your years in the countryside.'
'Didn't you also stay in the countryside, don't you know?'
He started to regret having come. The cramped room was a total mess, and destroyed the image of the young girl he had cherished in his mind. Xiao Xiao sat on the bed and looked at him, frowning. He didn't know what else he could say to her.
'You were my first man.'
