Ninth Building E-Book

Jingzhi Zou

• Herausgeber: Honford Star
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 287

Beschreibung

Ninth Building is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from Zou Jingzhi's experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talked about—the sheer tedium and waste of young life, as well as the gallows humor that accompanies such desperate situations. Jeremy Tiang's enthralling translation of this important work of fiction was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant.

Leseprobe

Ninth Building

Ninth Building

ZOU JINGZHI

Translated by Jeremy Tiang

This translation first published by Honford Star 2022honfordstar.comTranslation copyright © Jeremy Tiang 2022The moral right of the translator and editors has been asserted.

(NINTH BUILDING)Copyright © Zou Jingzhi 2010All rights reserved

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7398225-0-7ISBN (ebook): 978-1-7398225-1-4A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design by Qu Minmin & Jiang QianTypeset by Honford Star

Contents

Introduction

Part One: Ninth Building

Part Two: Grains of Sand in the Wind

Afterword

Poems

INTRODUCTION

Dreaming, waking, sunrise, time to get up. The person in the dream was a bit different to the person I am now, but I think it was me. I try to go back but can't.

From childhood till now, I've spoken many bold words. Publicly or in private, I've proclaimed the kind of person I wanted to be, though it never happened in the end. I feel like someone has somehow taken my place, leaving me to become the person I am now.

When I'm around too many people, I lose myself. In an unfamiliar city, among crowds of strangers, I keep having to stand still—not to ask directions, but to find myself. Even when I've done that, I'm still lonely, so I head back to my hotel and listen to the sound of rain.

Apart from my mortal body, I carry around a compilation of shadows, leaving one behind everywhere I go. The other day, I went to admire some flowers, when a shadow abruptly stepped out from behind a magnolia tree of a decade ago. It was me. We looked at each other, speechless. The trees hadn't changed, the flowers hadn't changed, the springtime hadn't changed, but when I looked at myself, I saw a stranger.

I went to a gathering where I only knew a few people. Picked a corner to sit alone. Shortly afterwards, someone in the same plight joined me for a chat. We grew animated. Meanwhile, the real me also sat in that corner, watching this babbling self and loathing him.

Other people are always borrowing me. My wife says, "It's sunny today, come to the mall with me—I want to buy socks." Yes, dear. Then I have to leave myself at home for three hours, to await my return.

While waiting for my daughter to be born, I laid siege to the delivery room. Suddenly, there was a thunderous howl. Definitely my child. I looked through the glass at the infant, who stared back at me. A moment of recognition.

I look at old photos of myself when I was simple and pure as the sky above me. After a while, both of us begin to weep, and it's hard to say which era of our lives was better. All time will vanish. No more looking at pictures, that other me doesn't want his heartstrings tugged at either.

Reading Zhang Ruoxu's poem Springtime River Moonlit Night, “Who first saw the moon from this riverbank? When did the river moon first shine upon a person?” The man on the riverbank turns to glance at me, and the strangeness in that gaze is chilling.

I walk alone through snowy plains. I could laugh or sob or sing or curse or fall silent or sprint or roll across the ground. In an instant, many selves appear, like a carnival crowd. At the same time, people appear in the distance and engulf me. And there I am gaping blankly, standing between white snow and blue sky, snot streaming from my nose.

My hand grips a pen and the pen writes words. When I'm done, another me springs from my heart to read it over and say it's all lies. Why am I lying to myself? Good question. Really good question.

I buy books and don't read them, or I do but actually I'm listening to people chat outside my window, to wind and trees and ghosts and rain. Whap! The book smacks my head as I doze off.

A beautiful woman passes by. I look, I don't look, I'm in a state of looking and not looking. As for her, she both displays and doesn't display contempt for me.

Late at night, I stare mindlessly at a lone star. After some time, I feel that I've always been ancient, or perhaps that was a past life. The wind tugs at my sleeves. Someone is very close to me. I shut my eyes, so I don't have to see who it is.

A fever. I float over the edge of a cliff and startle awake. Float some more. Jerk awake again. Why always these terrifying scenarios? To put myself in a cold sweat. It's a way of helping myself. If I weren't able to do that, I'd drift till I hit bottom, finally, the most terrifying word that goes unsaid.

Part One

NINTH BUILDING

Prologue

Ninth Building was the building I lived in as a child. It’s been demolished now, and on the same plot they built a bigger, taller Ninth Building. My words only concern the previous incarnation.

Before the block disappeared, I went back to take some pictures of it. A place I spent my early years. With its vanishing, there'd be no traces left of my childhood.

In the second half of 1996, after the demolition, I began writing these words, producing a first draft of over a hundred thousand characters. I edited four of these stories into shape, and they were published in 1997, along with a few other pieces in journals. In the summer of 1999, I started editing a dozen more in fits and starts, which still left half the manuscript untouched. I originally wrote this book with the idea that by putting them on paper, these past events would release their hold on me. Instead, it felt as if I’d cemented their grip. Having written them out simply made their shadowing more visible.

That’s why I edited this manuscript below, then left it alone. To me, publishing these words is essentially me sharing my treasured childhood with others. But childhood cannot be shared. Her secret parts must remain eternally secret. Even if you try to recall it with your whole heart and mind, you'd find it hard to go back in.

Eight Days

November 16, 1966

Freezing today—it feels extra cold, because the weather’s just turned. At least it’s warm at home, with the heating finally on. In the morning, we sat by the courtyard wall, the south-facing corner with the piles of loose soil and torn paper, the only patch untouched by the wind.

By “we” I mean myself, Zheng Chao, Zheng Xin and Yuan-qiang.

Yuanqiang said the others had formed a unit and got Red Guard armbands printed with the official insignia. Now they were occupying an entire block at the school. At night they shoved the desks together and slept on them. They’d written slogans across the white classroom walls and even the toilets. While correcting Teacher Hou’s thinking, they struck up a chant that Tian Shuhua devised: “Ho ho, Monkey Hou, holds a ball in her hole. Smile, monkey, drop the ball.”

Teacher Hou teaches Chinese. I saw her recently, standing by the second-story staircase. No one was paying any attention to her. As I walked past, she was singing a song about a sad maiden, something to do with resisting the Japanese.

I had a strange feeling that when she was done singing, she’d plummet to the ground. I waited, but she didn’t jump. Her son sat at the other end of the corridor, pretending to play but really watching her. She once praised me for having talent. (I should delete that last sentence—too bourgeois!)

After talking about it all morning, we decided to form a unit of our own. Yuanqiang said there was a place to print armbands near Caishikou, past a place called Dazhi Bridge. There were many gangsters in that neighborhood; last time the guys were there, they got mugged and lost three yuan. Zheng Xin said he’d bring a carving tool with him. It wasn’t a knife, but it was still sharp enough to slice open a face. I felt heartened by his words.

We prepared to set off the next day, as soon as the grownups left for work. We pooled our money and came up with five yuan, one of them mine.

November 17

Today, we took the number one bus to Xidan. I was the only one who had a ticket, the other three slipped on without one. I did too, but spent the whole journey fretting and in the end bought one just before getting off. What an idiot!

From Xidan we headed south, growing anxious as we neared Dazhi Bridge. I put my hand in my trouser pocket, which held a weight from a set of scales—hopefully this would be hefty enough to dent a gangster’s head. It sat cold and heavy in my pocket. I couldn’t warm it. Zheng Xin whistled as he strolled, a hand inside his jacket. The carving tool he held was our heartbeat.

The event we feared never happened. The wind was so strong we had to jog along.

Past Dazhi Bridge, we walked into a rope shop to ask directions to the fabric-printing place. The old man told us where, some hutong or other.

This was the first time I smelled dye. We detected it some distance away. Later, I learned this was the odor of yellow. Each color had its own scent. Yellow’s reminded me of illness.

A young lady served us. She reminded me of Liu Naiping’s older sister from Door Three, who’d worn a red swimsuit the one time I went swimming with her. I believed then that only female college students should be called young ladies, and even then, only ones like Zoya. Liu Hulan didn’t resemble one, nor did Zhu Yingtai, nor did my own sister.

She wore a face mask, only revealing her eyes, but I could tell when she was smiling. All four of us were a little tense, a little awkward.

We ordered twenty-one armbands, four inches wide with gold lettering, twenty cents each. That was as many as we could afford—I think she realized that.

As she wrote out our receipt, the kettle on the stove behind her began bubbling, zrr, zrr. The room was draped with pennants displaying various words and pictures, the bright red fabric bearing down on us from all four walls.

I thought of the illustration of d’Artagnan kneeling to kiss the queen in The Three Musketeers. The queen’s feet were invisible beneath her long dress, her hand on her puffed-out skirt, d’Artagnan’s lips just touching her fingertips. I always felt this was something I’d do when I was grown up. (Strike this paragraph—too bourgeois.)

She smiled and asked if we’d like to have a look at the workshop. We said yes.

The room she led us into had liquid sloshing across the floor. The workers glanced at us. I didn’t understand what was going on. The printed cloths were still sodden red, and on each of them were the words “Red Guards,” over and over, covered with a layer of rice chaff. She explained that this protected the color. The chaff was removed when the cloth had dried, leaving an even brighter yellow.

It was noon and we had nothing to eat, so she shared her packed lunch with us. She’d brought it from home and left it on the stove to keep warm. It contained just rice, cabbage and tofu. Not much of a meal.

By the time we left, she still hadn’t taken off her face mask. She was very neat. We hadn’t had a chance to see what she looked like.

Nothing went wrong on the bus home. We slipped aboard through the doors on either side, saving the fare—we’d spend that on our return trip to pick up the armbands.

Before we said goodbye, Yuanqiang asked me if I could guess the young lady’s family background. I had no idea. He said, Probably capitalist. I asked why. He said, Didn’t you see how beautiful she was, also she was wearing a face mask—afraid of the stench of the dye. That made sense.

November 19

More and more people are wearing Red Guard armbands in the street, and ours aren’t ready yet. During the day we’re at Zheng Chao’s place. We don’t want to go out—too conspicuous without armbands. Something might have happened to Zheng Chao and Zheng Xin’s father. I saw him in the boiler room carrying heavy radiators, but the two of them didn’t say a word about him.

November 20

Zheng Chao and Zheng Xin’s dad is in real trouble.

We stayed home this morning, desperate for our armbands to be ready so we could rise up and maybe even denounce our parents. My older brother stuck a big poster on the wall: “Revolution is not wrong, rising up is correct.” The atmosphere at home is a bit tense.

November 21

Two more days …

November 23

On the bus this morning, we all got caught by the ticket inspector. She wanted to take us to Central Station. We were all shaking, then so many people got on at Wangfujing that we managed to slip away. Too scared to try another bus, we walked all the way to Caishikou.

We picked up our twenty-one armbands.

The young lady looked different from six days ago. She had a scarf over her head as she mopped the workshop floor. (Later we realized someone must have shaved her head.) A piece of white cloth sewn across her chest proclaimed “Bourgeois traitor Liu Liyuan.” She still wore her face mask, and all the time she served us, kept her head lowered. In six days she’d been transformed into an ancient crone.

Like before, the stove held a kettle, along with her lunch-box.

A man walked in to make tea. He ordered her to remove her mask. She was motionless for a moment before plucking it off.

She looked as I’d imagined, very pale, like a picture never seen before.

As we walked away, she was already picking up her broom again. She said “goodbye” softly when we left. The mask dangled in front of her chest, not hiding the white cloth. I read the words again swiftly—Yuanqiang had been right, she was a capitalist.

A person inscribed with words became those words, and nothing more than those words. As we walked down the street, I noticed more and more people had been labeled. Even some of the Red Guards were burdened with this white cloth and black lettering. Everyone was just a row of characters.

We put on our armbands as soon as we emerged from the hutong. Our arms grew glorious, weighty. Only swinging them vigorously made them feel natural.

Swaggering, we strutted into a small eating house and ordered four portions of roast meat. We splayed the food open, pouring soy sauce and vinegar in great streams that splashed across the table. The waiter saw the mess we were creating but didn’t dare say a word. Our arms moved stiffly, as if we’d just been vaccinated.

Garbage Cart

Yes, come and see, this is the downfall of the landlord class. She was a landlady, my stepmother, she’s dead now, killed herself, slit her throat with scissors, slowly sliced it open, so blood splashed on the wall, you can see how it squirted all over, even in death she had to do the wrong thing, why would she want to die in this house, why did she have to bleed so much, enough to drown a family, enough to drown them dead? (Here, he burst into tears.)

When we’re dead we get cremated, but where should she go now, who’d be willing to drag this she-landlord, her entire body soaked in blood, all the way to the mortuary? No one, no comrade of the Revolution would do such a thing, I understand, I’m not willing either, but even Hell can only be reached through the crematorium chimney, am I right? Revolutionary comrades, help me open the gates of Hades, let cow demons and snake spirits swarm in, unleash the torments of fire and whipping and knives and water, no hope of liberation for all eternity.

Come! Little generals of the Revolution, go find a rickshaw, never mind if it has no engine, I’ll pull it, I’ll move it with these hands dripping with the fresh blood of landlords. I want to send her to hell, after all we can’t let the dark spirit of the landlord class linger here, can we? Rise up, overthrow landlords! She can’t hear me, but her blood is still flowing. Comrades, even a handcart would do, even the one from the morning trash collection. Please, I beg you, help me find one, I’ll pull it twenty li if it gets her to the crematorium. No! First I’ll wrap her in white cloth so her filthy blood doesn’t soil our socialist roads.

Do something, little generals of the Revolution, let this landlord scum be blown away as ashes and smoke! Observe her wounds, not just one cut but many, how could she have brought herself to do it, slit her neck with her own hands, not like slaughtering chickens, not an accident, this was deliberate, the determination of the landlord class, she’d made up her mind to die. None of us realized last night as she drank her bowl of rice porridge, the slushy sound of congee slipping through the toothless crack—where’d she get the strength to cut herself to death?

Where’s the cart? Why haven’t the gates to hell opened yet? I can’t wait anymore, I can’t let the death of one demon affect the progress of the Revolution. Faster, little generals, faster!

She cut herself to death.

You there, please take care, don’t let Chen Zhe and Chen Yu barge in here. They were brought up by their granny, I don’t want them to see this, our lives completely changed, what are we going to do about this bloodstained wall, cover it, plaster it, but it’ll still be there, just that we can’t see it, it’s turning darker, reddish brown, not like blood any more, but still there, you see how forcefully the blood gushed out, look at this, look here, how it splashed, she was already more than sixty years old, but her blood still had such strength in it, yes it did!

Overthrow the landlord class! If the landlords won’t surrender, let them be exterminated! Good, well shouted.

No! You don’t need to take any action against me, I’m her adopted son, an orphan, I’m a child with no status, the blood that flows in my veins might come from a warrior of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, last year someone tried to verify my ancestry, they did! So I might be a martyr’s orphan, really I have more reason than any of you to desire Revolution, I’ve always yearned for Revolution, and now it’s finally here, but I’ll admit I wasn’t sufficiently prepared, I didn’t think it would be like this.

Why hasn’t a cart been found yet? In the name of the Revolution, I urge you to hurry! As a descendant of an old Revolutionary, I ask—I even order you—what? If you need the key, go find the old guy who collects the rubbish, he’s at Yang-fangdian number seventeen, go quickly, cycle there!

Come along, little generals, we can’t just stand here gaping, we ought to swiftly eliminate the traces of the landlord class, we won’t leave a shred behind, can someone go fetch some sawdust, yes, we’ll cover the blood first, and if we dare we’ll scrape each bloodstain off the wall, we’ll put all this behind us as quickly as possible, we won’t let the enemy affect the Revolution, come on, little generals, let’s see whose Revolutionary spirit is the strongest.

Let’s call out, “Overthrow …”

That’s right, we’ll rip the plaster off the wall, never mind if the concrete shows through, don’t worry, this is the enemy’s blood, we should treat it with hatred, come, let’s sing the Chairman’s quotations, my Revolutionary spirit isn’t as strong as yours, I haven’t memorized enough of them, but starting tomorrow, I’ll throw myself wholeheartedly into the Revolution, yes. First I’ll learn the words, then I’ll broadcast them in the streets.

Hey! Don’t touch her, she’s already dead, let her be, let her rest where she is, don’t touch, let’s tidy up, get rid of the bloodstains. That’s better, more like a regular death, not a gruesome suicide. Why did she have to do this? Less mess if she’d hanged herself. Why the hell scissors? What was she trying to show? Some sort of womanly tenderness, or callousness?

Did she have to die? She was just a landlord’s mistress, little revolutionary generals, just a mistress, she spent half her life being oppressed too, wearing tattered clothes and eating bad food, she was brought here by boat from Yuanjiang City and sold to the landlord, when he died she continued collecting rents in his name, she did, but she also suffered humiliation from her clan, and after Liberation, this all had to be surrendered, leaving her with nothing. When I was at university, she supported me by unraveling and winding yarn, hands covered in scars and feet always swollen, her wounds were my sustenance all through college, and now I’m a cadre, a Beijing cadre, from a starving orphan to a cadre in Beijing, and she was by my side every single day, now she’s dead, cut herself to death with scissors, like a bolt of lightning her death strikes my body, I feel a little sad now, like I should cry, howl loudly, but I won’t get in the way of your slogans, please shout away, she can’t hear anything now, and to think last night she was drinking her congee with a sound like innumerable words being choked away, now I think she must have swallowed everything she wanted to say.

The cart is here, good the garbage cart, garbage cart, garb—no, I’m fine, but I’ve changed my mind, I, I’m going to request a van, a clean van with Liberation license plates, I can’t let her travel all that way lying in a garbage cart, you can say what you like, I’m not afraid, but this won’t do, I can’t let her go like this, I have the right, I might be the orphan of a martyr, no, no, I won’t put her in this cart.

Chen Zhe, Chen Yu, come in, come in, I’ve covered up her wounds, come see your granny. One last look.

Capturing the Spoon

While on patrol around midnight on the eighteenth of October, we noticed a light in Wang Hao’s home. There were five of us: Jinjing, White Monkey, Little Jianzi, Zhang Liang and me. We wanted to see what they were up to so late at night. The whole building was in darkness except for that one ground-floor apartment.

The blinds only covered half the window. It wasn’t hard to see inside.

Wang Hao’s dad was naked, thrashing around on top of Wang Hao’s mom. It took us a moment to realize she was naked too. We could see everything so clearly, it felt fake. They squirmed against each other, chatting about putting money aside to buy a bicycle. All five of us witnessed this, and when we were sure what was going on, we retreated.

Two grown-ups from our compound’s “Attack With Words, Defend With Force” Unit were working the night shift. When we knocked on the door, they were both there sporting their red armbands. One was in the middle of a story about a work trip. He was smoking and kept interrupting himself to draw on his cigarette, not in any hurry. He saw us come in but didn’t stop his anecdote, something about being on a train and buying a box lunch, and the meat that came in it being as thin as paper. When he said “paper,” he pinched two fingers together. We didn’t know what to say to this, so we sat and stared at each other, uncertain how to bring the matter up.

Finally, Jinjing interrupted. “Wang Hao’s home still has a light on.”

He looked down and fiddled with his pockets, adding, “Their lamp is on.”

“Not asleep?” said the smoking man.

“Not asleep,” said two or three of us at the same time.

“Do you know what they’re up to?” The other man had been reading a mimeographed news sheet, but now looked up at us.

“His dad, his mom, they’re … they’re naked.”

“They’re doing … bad things.”

We were stammering so much, the business of putting money aside to buy a bicycle didn’t even come up. We waited.

The two grown-ups barely moved. One of them clearly wanted to finish his story about the boxed lunch, and the other continued to flip the newssheet. They didn’t seem to think what we’d seen was important.

Nothing came of our waiting. We’d imagined they would jump up immediately to stop whatever incorrect action was taking place. This was at the height of the Revolution, and the train we were on had switched to another track. What we’d seen didn’t fit the scenery on this route; red armbands and nakedness didn’t go together. The five of us had three flashlights between us, and for more than half a month now we’d stayed awake night after night, fully alert, wishing something would actually happen. Now something had, but the adults didn’t seem to feel about it the same way we did.

It was like the day before, when we caught a night-shift worker from Beijing Steelworks. When White Monkey spotted him, he had an empty aluminum lunchbox going gwodong gwodong, and he walked down the street ringing out gwodong gwodong. We were both excited and afraid when we stopped him, because he didn’t show any panic, which only made him seem like one of those calm villains. He didn’t have the oily, mucky, large hands a worker ought to have—he was sturdy and small. The gwodong racket was from a stainless steel spoon in his lunchbox. When we first heard it, I had actually thought it might be a spoon, but then quashed the thought, because no matter how you told the story, it sounded ludicrous to capture a stainless steel spoon in the middle of the night.

The “Attack With Words, Defend With Force” Unit let that guy go when dawn arrived. They even shook hands, and before the man walked away, he asked, “Is there anywhere around here to buy dough fritters?” White Monkey told him, “At the entrance of the Railway Hospital.” He left, pulling the spoon from his lunchbox and placing it in his shirt pocket, so there was no further noise as he walked, only silence.

Quiet nights provided the atmosphere we needed, the atmosphere of Revolution, so we had to do something about Wang Hao’s family.

The two red armband men finally muttered something about continuing our patrol, without mentioning Wang Hao’s mom and dad. As we walked out, we felt as if the grown-ups had some kind of secret they were keeping from us, which made the rest of that night’s sentry duty somewhat depressing.

Anyway their lamp was out by the time we reemerged, leaving the entire block in darkness.

We walked around the courtyard with our flashlights, and Jinjing said, “I saw his mom squeezing her legs together. That wasn’t how I imagined it. Dammit, I know about this sort of thing, it’s just not the right time for it. Think about it, two days ago Hong Jiong’s dad jumped from the roof of their building, and Wang Hao’s mom saw the body, I remember calling out ‘Auntie’ as I walked past her. Her face was white as a pagoda flower and her whole body was trembling, like she was completely shocked. Damn difficult to imagine getting from that moment to tonight so quickly. And the bicycle—it was her, wasn’t it, who said they should put money away for a bicycle? What do they want with a bicycle?”

“It was her talking about the bicycle and saving money. Wang Hao’s dad didn’t say anything.” As I spoke, I flicked my flashlight on and off. When it was lit, the world suddenly appeared, and when it went out, I couldn’t see anything, didn’t even know where Jinjing was standing. Facing the black night, I asked, “If you know about these things, could you tell us?”

No answer. I had plenty more questions. Jinjing didn’t say anything, and nor did the rest of the group. I felt that of the five of us, some understood while others were like me, totally ignorant.

From behind, I shone my light at their backs. Everyone seemed weighed down. This night, we’d moved away from the Revolution.

The next afternoon, as I sat on the steps, I saw Wang Hao’s dad coming home. He carried an ordinary black bag and wore glasses, a serious man with an air of accomplishment and responsibility. Thinking of the previous night, the wobble of his naked swaying buttocks, so different to his stern face, I felt the happiness of having seen through a secret, a joy that flickered through my heart. I ran after his gray-blue jacket that was about to disappear through the doorway.

“Bicycle!” I shouted after him. I hadn’t planned to holler at him like that. How I longed for him to turn his head. But, no. He vanished, and I heard his front door open and shut.

Bicycle. From then on, that’s what we called him.

Specimens

My specimen collection, wedged inside a magazine, got sold to the rag-and-bone man. It consisted of three or four morning glory blossoms, five or six dragonflies, as well as three different breeds of cockroach and the feet of a dead hen. Fang Yong cut off those feet with scissors and dried them in the sun, before presenting them to me. All these things were preserved inside a journal of the technical economy, which also contained pictures of apartment blocks just like the one I lived in, Ninth Building.

I sold them in front of Ninth Building, Door Three.

At the moment of the transaction, I'd expected the man to flip through the magazine and was looking forward to his rage and shock as flowers and insects tumbled out. Perhaps he would stamp on them? But no. He only looked at the cover and tossed it onto his scales along with the rest. Three jin, including the weight of those specimens.

Maybe those old magazines ended up in a junkyard somewhere, and in the night stray cats would drag them out, moonlight gleaming in their eyes as they flicked the pages with their tongues, and when they found them, gnawing those dried chicken feet beneath the stars, crunch crunch crunch. My specimens would turn into food, like the dry-pickled vegetables I enjoyed.

*

A squished mosquito is a drop of blood. Once, I used a rolled- up newspaper to kill a mosquito, flattening it against the wall. When it had dried out the next day, there was nothing left but a couple of lines like an ink smear. I never collected mosquito specimens. If I had, sticking them in rows on a sheet of white paper, they'd have looked from a distance like a poem. Sounded like it too: wenzi (mosquito) and wenzi (words).

Qiao Xiaobing asked me to accompany him to the savings center on Lishi Road to withdraw some money. I said I would, but he'd have to let me look at his pet lizards.

From beneath his bed, he pulled out a cardboard box containing a thick hardcover book that had been hollowed out. Lined up neatly in the space were two medicine bottles of the type usually found in clinics, each of which held a lizard.

He brandished these, and I could clearly see the four- legged snakes' white bellies pressing against the glass as they breathed shallowly. When they looked at me, their eyes were absolutely unwavering.

"Of course they're alive. They were tiny when I caught them, and now they've grown too big to crawl out of the bottles. I feed them flies every day, live houseflies. I pluck their wings off and stuff them in, and they get swallowed up quick as lightning. Four-legged snakes have no facial expressions, only when they eat something their cheeks puff up a bit. Have you seen an insect with only one wing? It tries to fly with just that side of its body, so it goes in circles, but can't take off. It's fun to watch. The faster it tries to move, the more it's stuck."

I asked if the lizards ever took a shit.

"Sure, I just pour the crap out."

He put the bottles away and said, "We should go, it's almost noon."

Before we left, he shouted behind him, "Sis, I'm going out, I'll be back around noon. Have lunch without me."

We walked about forty minutes to get there. His right hand was stuffed into his pocket, where I knew he had a passbook with five hundred yuan in savings. Before his mom and dad were caught, they sewed that passbook into his trousers. His dad was Qiao Binghao, his mom was Cui Hong. They were both spies and had been detained two months ago.

He said the day they were taken, he'd been waiting downstairs to swap his bronze hook for Fang Yong's yellow marble. He saw a bunch of grown-ups painting a slogan on the garage wall. They pasted white paper over the surface, then wrote the words one after another. First, "Overthrow Central Committee scum." He thought this was a strange thing to say, then he saw the character "Qiao," but didn't imagine it had anything to do with him. When they wrote "Bing" after it, he started to think it might be his dad, but didn't expect them to write "Cui" next. So his mom was marked too. Then a big red cross after the black words. He said he didn't have any thoughts at the time, only he forgot all about the swap with the marble.

When he headed home, he saw his sister watching him from the window.