do you return to Paris?”
“Next Tuesday. It’s a cheap ticket and hard to change, but if I pay extra I can still change it.”
“No, at the latest, I’ll have to leave by the weekend,” she says. “A Chinese delegation will be in Germany for a conference on Monday and I’ll be interpreting. I’m not as free as you, I work for a boss.”
“Then there are still four days.” You count up the days.
“Tomorrow, no, one night has already passed, there are only threedays,” she says. “I’ll phone the boss and ask for leave, change my ticket, then go to my hotel and bring my luggage across.”
“What about this boss of yours?”
“He can get lost,” she says. “My job here has been completed.”
It is already light outside the window, and clouds swirl above the big building with the white pillars opposite. The peak is shrouded in mist and the lush vegetation on the mountain is the color of black jade. It looks like rain.
5
He did not know how he had returned to his home in Beijing. He couldn’t find the key in his pocket, couldn’t open the door, and was anxious people in the building would recognize him. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs and quickly turned, pretending to be going down. The person coming from the floor above brushed past him: it was Old Liu, the department chief, his boss back when he was working as an editor years ago. Old Liu was unshaven and looked like he did when he was hauled out and denounced during the Cultural Revolution. He had protected this old cadre at the time and Old Liu wouldn’t have forgotten this, so he told him that he couldn’t find the key to his apartment. Old Liu hesitated, then said, “Your apartment’s been reallocated.” At this he remembered that his apartment had been confiscated. “Would you be able to find somewhere for me to stay?” he asked. A worried frown appeared on Old Liu’s face, but, giving the matter some thought, he said: “It will have to go through the building management committee, it won’t be easy. Why did you have to come back?” He said he had purchased a return plane ticket, he hadn’t thought. . . . However, he should have. After being overseas for many years, how easily he had forgotten the difficulties he had experienced in China. Someone else was coming down the stairs. Old Liu pretended not to know him and hurried downstairs and out the front door. He quickly followed to avoid anyone else recognizing him, but when he got outside Old Liu had vanished. The sky was filled with flying dust, it seemed to be one of Beijing’s early-spring dust storms, but he couldn’t be sure if it was spring or autumn. He was wearing a single layer of clothing and felt cold. Suddenly he remembered that Old Liu had jumped out of the office building and had been dead for years. He must quickly escape. He went to stop a taxi on the street to take him to the airport but realized that the customs officials would immediately see from his documents that he was a public enemy. He was troubled about having become a public enemy and even more troubled that he had no place to stay in this town where he had spent more than half of his life. He arrived at a commune in the suburbs to see if he could rent a room in the village. A peasant with a hoe took him to a shed covered with thin plastic, and pointed his hoe at a row of cement kang inside. The place must have been a cellar for storing cabbages in winter, which they had converted with a layer of cement. Probably there has been some progress, he thought. He had slept on the ground at the reform-through-labor farm in a big communal bed: the ground was spread with straw and people slept one next to the other, each with a forty-centimeter bed space, not as wide as these kang. Here, it was one person to a kang, much larger than the single cement lot in the cemetery where he had buried the ashes of his parents together, so there was nothing for him to complain about. Inside, he found more kang
“Next Tuesday. It’s a cheap ticket and hard to change, but if I pay extra I can still change it.”
“No, at the latest, I’ll have to leave by the weekend,” she says. “A Chinese delegation will be in Germany for a conference on Monday and I’ll be interpreting. I’m not as free as you, I work for a boss.”
“Then there are still four days.” You count up the days.
“Tomorrow, no, one night has already passed, there are only threedays,” she says. “I’ll phone the boss and ask for leave, change my ticket, then go to my hotel and bring my luggage across.”
“What about this boss of yours?”
“He can get lost,” she says. “My job here has been completed.”
It is already light outside the window, and clouds swirl above the big building with the white pillars opposite. The peak is shrouded in mist and the lush vegetation on the mountain is the color of black jade. It looks like rain.
5
He did not know how he had returned to his home in Beijing. He couldn’t find the key in his pocket, couldn’t open the door, and was anxious people in the building would recognize him. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs and quickly turned, pretending to be going down. The person coming from the floor above brushed past him: it was Old Liu, the department chief, his boss back when he was working as an editor years ago. Old Liu was unshaven and looked like he did when he was hauled out and denounced during the Cultural Revolution. He had protected this old cadre at the time and Old Liu wouldn’t have forgotten this, so he told him that he couldn’t find the key to his apartment. Old Liu hesitated, then said, “Your apartment’s been reallocated.” At this he remembered that his apartment had been confiscated. “Would you be able to find somewhere for me to stay?” he asked. A worried frown appeared on Old Liu’s face, but, giving the matter some thought, he said: “It will have to go through the building management committee, it won’t be easy. Why did you have to come back?” He said he had purchased a return plane ticket, he hadn’t thought. . . . However, he should have. After being overseas for many years, how easily he had forgotten the difficulties he had experienced in China. Someone else was coming down the stairs. Old Liu pretended not to know him and hurried downstairs and out the front door. He quickly followed to avoid anyone else recognizing him, but when he got outside Old Liu had vanished. The sky was filled with flying dust, it seemed to be one of Beijing’s early-spring dust storms, but he couldn’t be sure if it was spring or autumn. He was wearing a single layer of clothing and felt cold. Suddenly he remembered that Old Liu had jumped out of the office building and had been dead for years. He must quickly escape. He went to stop a taxi on the street to take him to the airport but realized that the customs officials would immediately see from his documents that he was a public enemy. He was troubled about having become a public enemy and even more troubled that he had no place to stay in this town where he had spent more than half of his life. He arrived at a commune in the suburbs to see if he could rent a room in the village. A peasant with a hoe took him to a shed covered with thin plastic, and pointed his hoe at a row of cement kang inside. The place must have been a cellar for storing cabbages in winter, which they had converted with a layer of cement. Probably there has been some progress, he thought. He had slept on the ground at the reform-through-labor farm in a big communal bed: the ground was spread with straw and people slept one next to the other, each with a forty-centimeter bed space, not as wide as these kang. Here, it was one person to a kang, much larger than the single cement lot in the cemetery where he had buried the ashes of his parents together, so there was nothing for him to complain about. Inside, he found more kang
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