Now it was he who had deserted. The thoughts that had circulated in his mind from childhood had determined that he would later be declared the enemy.
However, he would never again return to the embrace of the homeland that had nurtured him.
He also recalled that the first time he thought hard about something was probably when he was eight, because of where it had taken place; it was soon after he had written his first diary entry. He was leaning out the window of his little room upstairs when he dropped the rubber ball he was holding. It bounced a few times, then rolled into the grass under an oleander bush. He begged his young uncle who was reading below in the courtyard to throw the ball back to him.
His young uncle said, 'Lazy bones, you threw it down, so come down and pick it up yourself.'
He said his mother told him he was not to come downstairs to play until he had finished writing his first diary entry.
His young uncle said, 'But what if I pick it up and you toss it down again?'
He said he hadn't tossed it down, that the ball had dropped by itself. His young uncle reluctantly threw the ball into his window upstairs. Still leaning out the window, he went on to ask his young uncle, 'The ball dropped down, but why didn't it bounce back? If it bounced back the distance it dropped, I wouldn't have had to trouble you to get it.'
The young uncle said, 'It's all very well for you to say so, but this has to do with physics.'
He then asked, 'What's physics?'
'It has to do with a basic theory and you wouldn't be able to understand.'
His young uncle at the time was a middle-school student and greatly inspired his respect, especially with his talk of physics and some basic theory. He remembered these words and terms and thought that while the world looked ordinary, everything in fact was profound and unfathomable.
Afterward, his mother bought him a set of children's books, Ten Thousand Whys. He read through every volume but nothing impressed him, except for the question about the beginning of the world, which has always remained in his mind.
Remote childhood is hazy, but some bright spots float up in memories. When you pick up one end of a thread, memories that have been submerged by time gradually appear and, like a net emerging from the water, they are interconnected and infinite. The more you pull, the more threads seem to appear and disappear. Now that you have picked up one end and again pulled up a whole mass of happenings from different times, you can't start anywhere, can't find a thread to follow. It's impossible to sort them to put them into some sort of order. Human life is a net, you want to undo it a knot at a time, but only succeed in creating a tangled mess. Life is a muddled account that you can't work out.
6
A man you don't know has invited you for lunch at noon. The secretary said on the phone, 'Our chairman of the board, Mr. Zhou, will pick you up punctually in the hotel lobby.'
You arrive in the lobby, and, immediately, a fashionably dressed man walks up to you; he has broad shoulders and a solid build, a broad face and a square jaw. He presents his business card to you in both hands.
'I've been wanting to meet you for a long time.' The man says he's seen your play and has boldly ventured to take up a bit of your time by inviting you to share a meal with him.
You get in his big Mercedes limousine, an obvious sign of wealth.
The chairman of the board drives the car himself and asks what you would like to eat.
'Anything's fine. Hong Kong is a paradise for food,' you say.
'It's different in Paris, the women there are all so wonderful.'
Mr. Zhou is smiling as he drives along.
'Not all are, some in the subways are tramps,' you say. You start believing that the man really is a boss.
The car drives past the bay and enters the long underwater tunnel to Kowloon.
Mr. Zhou says, 'We'll go to the racecourse, it'll be quiet at lunchtime and good for talking. It's not the racing season. Normally, if you go there for a meal, you have to be a member of the Jockey Club.'
So, a wealthy man in Hong Kong likes your play. You start feeling curious.
The two of you are seated, and Mr. Zhou orders some plain food, stops joking about women, and becomes serious. Only a few of the tables are occupied in this spacious, comfortable dining room, and the waiters stand some way off quietly in the courtyard. It's not like most Hong Kong restaurants that are bustling and packed with customers all the time.
'I'm not bluffing. I swam here illegally from the Mainland. During the Cultural Revolution, I was doing hard labor on a military farm in Guangdong province. I had finished middle school, I wasn't stupid, and I wasn't going to sacrifice myself like that for the whole of my life.'
'But crossing illegally was dangerous.'
'Of course. At the time, both my parents were in prison, the house had been ransacked, and whichever way you looked at it, I was a mongrel offspring of the Five Black Categories.'
'What if you came across sharks-'
'That wouldn't have been so bad, at least I'd have had a chance to fight it out to see if I was lucky. It was people I was frightened of, the searchlights of the patrol boats were sweeping the water all the time. When they found anyone trying to cross illegally, they'd just open fire.'
'Then how did you get across?'
'I equipped myself with two basketball bladders, basketballs used to have a rubber bladder with a tube that one blew into.'
'I know them, children used them for floats when they were learning to swim, plastic products weren't widely available in those days,' you say, nodding.
'If boats came along, I'd let out the air and swim underwater. I practiced for a whole summer. I also took some drinking straws with me.' Mr. Zhou has a smile on his face but it doesn't seem genuine.
You sense that he is sad, and he no longer looks like a rich man.
'The good thing about Hong Kong is that you can somehow get by. I suddenly got rich and now no one knows my past. I changed my name a long time ago and people only know me as Zhou such-and-such, the chairman of the board of the company.' A hint of arrogance plays at the corners of his mouth and eyes and once again he has the look of a rich man.
You know this is not directed at you. You're a total stranger and he hasn't hesitated to tell you all about his background. This arrogance has developed because of his present status.
'I liked your play but I don't think it can really be understood by Hong Kong people,' he says.
'When they do understand, it will be too late.' After a pause, you say, 'One needs to have had a particular sort of experience.'
'It's like that,' he confirmed.
'Do you like plays?' you ask.
'I don't usually see plays,' he says. 'I go to the ballet and concerts, and I book tickets for famous singers, operas, and symphony groups from the West. I'm starting to enjoy some artistic things now, but I've never seen a play like yours before.'
'I understand.' You give a laugh, then ask, 'Then why did you think to come and see this play?'
'A friend phoned and recommended it,' he says.
'Does that mean that there are some Hong Kong people who do understand the play?'
'It was someone from the Mainland.'
You say that you wrote the play when you were in China but that it can only be performed outside China. The things you're writing nowadays don't have much to do with China.
He says it's much the same for him. His wife and son were both born in Hong Kong and are genuine Hong Kong people, and he's been here for thirty years and also counts as a Hong Kong resident.
His only dealings with the Mainland have been in business, and that was getting more and more difficult. However, for better or worse, he has managed to extract a big amount of capital from the place.
