英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(48)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 48       1/2




His new home, at the hands of its careless dwellers, was absolutely a foul mess. It seemed that, without women, men could live almost like dogs or wolves, turning themselves into half a filthy animal. After years of living in better conditions, Bing found it hard to revert back to the sort of accommodation in his old school days. His new roommates were all male, Chinese students in different age groups, sharing a smelly toilet, working and studying alternately day and night.

If the messiness of the room was something he could tolerate, then the loud snores of one or two of his roommates, as well as the shrill cries of ravens in a tree just outside the window, were things that he couldn’t. The tree was tall and thick with its hardy, unhealthy looking leaves. Almost every afternoon towards twilight, a great throng of birds would visit it and stir the neighbourhood in their frenzied chorus. For the first few days, Bing enjoyed hearing it, for after all it was a kind of birds’ paradise, and they would always shut up in the evening. But the raven, for some odd reason, chose to crow during quiet nights when all other creatures were asleep. Not that it would visit the tree every night, but when it did, it was like an unsettled ghost, haunting his nerves with its typical two-toned, high-pitched mocking sound, so plaintive as if it had never appreciated its life on the Earth.

Once, so annoyed and growing angry by its utterance, Bing got up and tried to throw something, anything in the room that he could use, at the raven to scare it away. However, though many things in the room looked like rubbish, they were not. The pillows were too big and too light, the alarm clock too precious, the books still usable, and the shoes still wearable. If there were only some stones that could be used to attack the bird as he had done in his childhood. Perhaps he should consider collecting some from the street, he thought, pacing restlessly in the room. And strange, his roommates were not affected at all; their snores, big or small, were flowing like windmills.

At last he grabbed one of his slippers, aimed and threw it at the source of the sound. He heard its rustling through the leaves, dropping with a faint thud on the ground. But he didn’t hear it flying away, nor for a minute did it cry any more. Just as Bing began to believe it had already quietly left and to celebrate his little triumph, its cry was up again. Immediately he picked another slipper and repeated his attack. This time it was even less productive; the slipper scarcely touched the leaves, nor did he hear its landing. The bird had not even hesitated for a short moment to continue its vicious utterance.
He had to give it up, compromising the quality of his sleep with a saving of $40 a week in rent. After all, finding a job was still his top concern, though the task would be an experience utterly fresh to him. His first job in Jiaoda was assigned by the university, he had never asked for it. How could he find a job by his own means?

The only comfort, as he was thinking of job hunting, was his better English, which might lend him some advantage. With an effort much greater than he had made in his first English lesson, he set to prepare the dialogue in a situational conversation he imagined for himself.

‘Hi, how you are?’ ‘I am very well, thank you. Can I help you?’ ‘I am looking for a job.’ ‘What job are you looking for?’ ‘Whatever you have, Sir, such as washing dishes, cleaning tables and mopping the floor, or chopping things as a kitchen hand, or waiting on customers.’ ‘Do you have any experience?’ ‘No, but I can learn, I am a quick learner.’ ‘Good morning, Sir,’ ‘Good morning, how may I help you?’ ‘Do you need an extra hand?’ ‘Good afternoon, Madam, do you have any vacancy?’ ‘Morning, do you need anyone to wash the dishes?’ ‘Morning…’ ‘Afternoon…’ ‘Sir…’

And enlightened by Simon who had found a dish-washing job in a Chinese restaurant in nearby Glen Waverley, he decided to try restaurants run by either Chinese or non-Chinese in Box Hill and the surrounding suburbs.

His endeavour went live on a Saturday Morning. The first target was a Chinese restaurant in Box Hill, not the one he had dined at some days before, for the waitress might still recognize him, and he did not wish to be recognized by anyone in the process. After passing the door of the restaurant as an indifferent passer-by, he returned to make an approach more as a job seeker, humble and nervous. In his veins, the blood began to rush; but instead of boosting his courage, it weakened his feet. He simply passed the door again, against reason and his sensible command of entering the door.  

There on the pavement, a safe distance from the restaurant, he controlled himself and managed to cool down, and decided to try the ordeal a second time. Yet to his dismay, his failure was repeated in exactly same manner as the first. It seemed that, at every critical point, he was persuaded by a voice unlike his own, to give up, to run away from the glass door, at which he only peered uncertainly with the corners of his eyes. At last, after loathing and ridiculing himself for a necessary while, he marched on, with an I-Don’t-Care attitude and, nearing the door, he pulled it open and walked in.

A girl came to him and asked ‘Just one?’ - a question she emphasized by erecting her forefinger. For a moment, he was numbed and could not say a word. Then recovering, he realized he was being treated as a customer. But he was unprepared for this type of situation, so he gave a quick, almost automatic reply, ‘Yes, just one,’ and went inside to seat himself. Then he was given a menu, and then, forced to be a customer, ordered noodles for lunch, or for his second breakfast.

He ate it and paid six dollars for it, retreating from the restaurant to sit on a bench on Main Street, dully looking at the people flocking in and out the Centro Shopping Centre, nursing and soothing his shame and failure.

‘Why didn’t I think of this situation?’ ‘Of course, anyone coming to the shop will be treated as a customer, which is obvious and natural enough. Why haven’t I prepared and designed a proper response to her question?’

With this lesson in his mind, he decided to tackle another restaurant. But more than an hour passed as he aimlessly wandered along the street, and he still couldn’t feel ready for the combat. Dissatisfied with his freakish timidity, he began to scold himself: ‘What a fool; you are an adult, a mature, married man, no longer a skittish boy; and you used to teach on stage, facing hundreds of students; you used to play guitar, facing a formidable audience. What is wrong? Can’t you just go and ask a simple question?’

Then, for some queer reason, he began laughing at himself, with a pity and a jeering smile. Gradually his sense and sanity overcame his inner strife, and then a relief, so precious and duly welcome, was enlightening his mind, lifting the burden of the excessive self-consciousness that had paralysed his ability to act.

He went straight into another restaurant. A waiter asked: ‘Just one?’

‘No, I didn’t come for lunch. Can I talk to your manager?’

In a while, the manager came. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Hi, I am a student here looking for a job, do you need a worker?’

‘No, not at this time.’

‘Thank you!’ he said, and swirling on his heels, he got out of the door with a triumph sensed only by himself.   

For the rest of the day, he repeated his enquiry at more restaurants. Though none of his enquiries resulted in an affirmative, there were two who asked for his number for future reference. At any rate, he had grown less sensitive to the cold and blunt denial of those potential employers.

The next day and many days that followed he did the same thing, but his efforts was fruitless. All Nos; only a number of hopeless future references, which, he believed, had been taken out of courtesy rather than honesty.

The reality was chill and harsh like stones in winter.  

At a high point of frustration, he challenged himself again with the rightness of leaving China for Australia. Maybe his mother was after all wise and correct. Why did he have to come here to suffer, to struggle for a dirty job of dish-washing, a job unimaginable for him back in China? Wasn’t he an admirable university student? Wasn’t he a respectable university teacher?

Perhaps he should forsake all and go back where he had come from and persuade Jiaoda to resume his job. Even if he couldn’t pick up his former career, he wouldn’t mind doing another job, so long as it was not as ‘indecent’ as washing dishes.
However, as soon as his mind began dwelling on the possibility, he was confronted with many doubts. How could he just return and tell his friends and family members that he couldn’t find a job in the new land, and that he was a coward, a failure, unable to survive, while many others, from what sources and information he had no idea, were said to be prosperous and doing very well in the country where the money was six times the value of the RMB? How would he pay back all the expenses and the already paid tuition fees, which, in fact, amounted to four years’ income based on his salary in Jiaoda?

So, like everyone who was supposed to have an adventurous heart, he was not expected to surrender and yield to the harsh environment. Was not Columbus venturing his way to find New America? Was not the British colonist daring to reach here and conquer the aborigines in Australia? Was not Zheng He, the brave explorer in China, going as far as to Africa to spread the seeds of civilization?

For the next two weeks his plight remained, ceaselessly haunting his mind and soul. His study was easy enough; but the raven who croaked every now and then in the depth of night, and the snoring roommates, and the filthy room he crept in, and the tasteless sandwiches for every breakfast and lunch, and worst of all, no call-backs from those potential employers who had noted down his phone numbers, were enough to dull his spirit, distress his face, contract his intestines. His confidence, inherited from his teacher’s job, and from his guitar skills, was dwindling day by day; and his resentment upon himself, upon Australia, upon the world he was thrown in, was gathering intensity.

One night, after he was again awakened by a raven, a sudden idea came to his mind that he was not unlike the sad, solitary raven, except for an inability to cry out his agony. Lying in bed, his hands under his head, he paid full attention to its two-toned voice, and found it not as disturbing as before. In fact, the more he listened to it, the more fascinating it seemed to be. Its first down-toned ‘Ah!’ sounded like it was startled by a surprise, shocked by a sort of horror; the second up-toned ‘Ah?’ was then to question it, to mock and sneer at the very horrifying source.

Since then he felt he was unable to hate the raven any more, for he pitied the bird as much as he did himself. And strangely enough, as soon as he regarded the raven as a friend, as one of the sad creatures in the hopeless world, he began to sleep better, as if the cries had somehow transformed to a melody, like a mother lulling her baby to sleep. And during the day, when he saw one or two ravens walk on the road, or rest musing in the parched twigs, he would approach them carefully and behold their feathers, marvelling at the inky plumage which looked as if the bird had just come out of a bath with the blackest oil the Earth can find.  No black hair of beautiful women could possibly match its sleekness and dark lustre.   

Then one day he was advised by Jason, one of his roommates, that a job was available washing dishes at a restaurant at a racecourse; three days, from 8pm to 2am. When there were races, there was always a shortage of labour in its restaurants. The rate was $10 an hour, two dollars more than the average.

He was instructed to take a train from Box Hill to the station nearest the restaurant. Jason, who would go as well, had an old and rusty Toyota. But because he had another job in a factory on the day he could only give Bing a lift home after work at midnight, essential when trains and trams were out of service.

Bing was excited with his first employment opportunity, which was to begin the next evening. Then he was told he also needed a TFN, tax file number, for work. He had already applied for it at the same time when he opened his bank account a week earlier, but had not yet received a reply. Tax was a new concept to him. In China, he had no concern with tax; his salary was all for his disposal for food and clothes and other minor expenses. The Chinese government looked after the rest, such as accommodation and medical costs.

So it seemed that, due to his lack of TFN, the opportunity had to be missed. Then Jason advised he could use other people’s TFN and bank account, so long as he could earn the money. He couldn’t use Jason’s, for the latter had worked there before. So, he asked Simon for help to solve his problem.

His classes the next day, in his anticipation for the job in the evening, were passed with his mind utterly distracted. He was recalling his previous dish-washing experience at home, which, so far, had been very little. Well, dish washing wouldn’t be difficult, everybody knows how to do it.

His last class seemed to have lasted exceptionally long. As soon as it had finished, he rushed for a bus back to Box Hill, where, in the Centro food market, he bought a bag of bread, a carton of milk, two kilos of chicken legs and wings which were regarded by Chinese students as the cheapest supply of protein. Then as he lingered in the market, he was attracted by a bundle of greens which looked like a thinner type of bamboo shoots. Picking it up, he saw in its label ‘Asparagus’, a word difficult to pronounce as he had mentally tried. He had never seen it in China, and the stalks, ten in a bundle, in his hand felt cool and succulent. The price was $2.50, very expensive compared to lettuce or Chinese cabbages. But he took a bundle; after all, it was a day with expectation.

The asparagus was boiled for several minutes. Then he picked it up and spread them a nice array, tip to tip, tail to tail, on a platter. Green and fresh, it tasted as good as, or even better than bamboo shoots. After eating two of them, he added some salt to make it more tasteful. Then, session after session he was eating and chewing it, indulgently, at the same time reflecting on some good memories in the past.



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洋八路

Chapter 48        2/2




At 6pm, he arrived at the station, two hours prior to the start of his work. As agreed, he would wait for Jason, who would lead him to the workplace.

A lot of people, race-goers they must be, were strolling on the streets. Men were attired like gentleman, with bow ties and nice suits and shining shoes; ladies like lady, high-heeled, long-skirted, with perceptible makeup on their faces. The ladies rested their hands gracefully on the arms of the gentlemen, whose backs were stiff and straight like hard boards, and whose heads would now and again bend and tilt a little conducing their petting conversation.

Jason, tall and thin, came up from the car park.

‘Ok, let’s go,’ said Jason.

‘Is the factory you work for far from here?’

‘No, in Mulgrave.’

‘Oh,’ Bing had no idea where it was, ‘what type of work?’

‘Chopping beef,’ he replied. ‘Do you remember reading the story in a Chinese textbook about the cattle butcher, Paoding, who had skills to cleave flesh clean from bones?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am doing exactly the same job.’

‘Really? Are you able to do it like the legendary Paoding?’  

‘Haha, almost,’ Jason laughed. ‘In a few months, I could do it even better.’

‘How did you find this job?’ Bing was curious about the opportunity.

‘My friend told me. But it was some distance from the station, so I bought a car.’

Jason was in his last year of a three-year accounting course, so his time was more flexible, suiting better  the hours required by various jobs.

‘I tried to find a job in many restaurants, but no luck.’

‘Well, take patience and time. You have only been here a few weeks. Your English is good, surely you can find something good.’

‘I hope so,’ said Bing, doubtfully.

As soon as they stepped into the building, Bing saw a man, tall and bulky and thickly bearded, passing across the hall.

‘Hi, Bob,’ called Jason, and received a brief, careless ‘Hi’ from Bob. They followed Bob to an office, where Jason made an introduction, ‘This is “Simon”, my friend. Can I have a registration sheet for him?’

‘No problem,’ Bob said, as he fiddled among the piles of paper on a desk and handed the sheet to Jason. ‘Just place it on the desk afterwards,’ he said as he walked out the door.

‘Bob is the overseer,’ Jason said, in a low voice. ‘Have you brought the TFN and  Simon’s account number?’

‘Yes,’ Bing took out a slip of paper and began to fill in the form.

The dish-washing area was very spacious. But more impressive to him was the multitude of plates, glasses, forks and spoons waiting to be cleaned. They were stacked up full on a long and wide bench against the wall. Beside that, there were more than a dozen trolleys scattered around the place, each stuffed with all sorts of cutlery. Eight people were presently positioned at the sinks, working on the items by hand. The noise of running water was like that of a sizable river, in addition to the clatter of chinaware and silverware.   

‘Oh, my…’ Bing was to exclaim, but had to suppress it as he noticed Bob just entering from the door.

‘Jason, you and the new guy go to another room,’ said Bob.

‘All right, boss,’ Jason replied and, followed by Bing, went into another room as big as the first, with no fewer dirty, mountainous piles of dishes and plates. Three boys and one girl, who looked like students, , bent over the sinks full of froths and bubbles  and did not look up when they came in.

‘This is unimaginable.’ Bing said incredulously.

Jason went straight to a sink, ‘Well, this is about one hundred times as big as a common Chinese restaurant. It needs sixteen people working three days, two shifts, each shift six hours.’ Then, swiftly he turned to Bing, pointing to another sink, ‘You go to that one. You watch me  while I show you how it is done. Basically, wash them clean first, then move them into the dish washer. When it has finished, all of us stop to move the hot plates out onto shelves, to free up the machine for the next run.’
Bing wanted to ask why the dishes were not directly put into the machine, instead of being washed first by hand. But seeing Jason already starting his work, he suppressed his curiosity and began mimicking Jason’s gesture.

Well, it was not as if Bing had to learn from him how to wash dishes. Everyone knows how to do it; it is almost a born skill of human beings. But the issue here was not about how, but about the speed, about the quantity of them you had to finish within a specific period of time. At home, one may wash, say, twenty dishes after your dinner. Now, instead of twenty, you wash two thousand, and instead of standing fifteen minutes, you stand six hours with only ten minutes break for every two hours. And, further, instead of doing it at your own leisure, you are closely watched by a supervisor, who may come over to indicate the stains on a plate you think you have already cleaned with your best care and exertion.  

Bing, since his childhood, had done a lot of hard labour in his village. The strain of skins, muscles and bones, by either carrying a pine tree down a hill, or threshing rice in a sun-blazing field, or carrying grains with a bamboo stick, was undoubtedly more than the dish washing could possibly incur. However, there was one thing fundamentally different: the freedom of labour. In his village, he was largely responsible for his own discipline; when he felt tired, he could just take a rest, lying down on the ground. But this job was like a factory, where you were closely supervised, repeating a fixed set of actions thousands of times, where you were supposed to work like a machine.   

At his first break, after two hours of continuous washing and moving, he felt a distress or numbness in his hands and shoulders that couldn’t be relieved. He tried to hold his fingers into a fist, but the muscle was anguished, slow responding; if exerting a force with his will power, his arms began to tremble.   

‘How do you feel?’ Jason asked him, who should have already known the answer. ‘Take the drink, cakes over there, plenty of them, free, you can even take some home.’

‘Hehe,’ Bing smiled ruefully, walking behind Jason to get a can of Coke. But he couldn’t even open the can, for whenever he was to pull the lid, his hand began shaking. Jason noticed his clumsiness, opened the one in his hand, and gave it to him, ‘You will feel a bit numbed at the beginning, after a few more times, you will feel better.’

Two of other workmates, one boy, one girl, came over to form a little circle.

Jason spoke to them, ‘Hi, Mary, Jason, this is Bing, my roommate, just come here, Deakin University.’

‘Hi…’ Bing sipped the coke, still feeling his hand unstable, ‘are you also at Deakin?’

‘No, I am at Melbourne University, and Mary, Monash,’ said the new Jason. ‘We are from Beijing.’

‘Me, Sichuan.’

They continued to chat for a little while, then Bob entered the room, announcing, ‘Okay, guys…’ and at once they put away the drink and cakes, finished or unfinished, moved to their position resuming their work.

Until the next break, which was around midnight, Bing felt he was short of energy for any chatter in the circle of workers. At the end of the six hours, at 2am in the morning, he felt a kind of fatigue had taken control of him. The only speech he made in the car going back to Box Hill was, ‘Jason, how could you cope with it, after already doing eight hours in the beef factory?’
And his humorous answer was, ‘Haha, I had been like a soft piece of lamb back in China, not doing anything like this sort of thing, now I am a hard chunk of beef, like the ones I have to cut with  great force in the factory.’

Next morning Bing woke up at seven, the time he set to get up for the class. He managed to rise, but then slipped back onto the bed, for his limbs and waist were sore and pained as if after doing hundreds of pull-ups. When Simon reminded him of the class, the time was already 7:25am. Concerned that he would miss the bus, he forced himself to roll off the bed and rush to the bathroom, where he checked his face in the mirror. To his surprise, he saw a healthy, ruddy face, not at all terrible as he had imagined from the way his muscles ached. Then he turned on the tap, fetched some water to rinse his mouth, and without bothering to brush his teeth, he ran to the fridge, taking out three pieces of bread which he thrust into a paper bag, before grasping his school bag and hurrying to the bus station.

Strange he had not felt as much soreness in his body after he had got out of bed and begun to run. And, during his morning lessons, apart from the tight-feeling in his body, he was able to attend to the teacher without much impact from his lack of sleep. However, in the afternoon he felt very sleepy, his weariness persistent through the classes. So heavy were his eyelids that he had to shake and fling his head hard to fight off the relentless intrusion of sleep. Worse, the smaller classroom, where only twenty-two students took the subject, was not like the bigger lecture theatre where one could hide and doze safely without too much a risk of being sought out by the teacher.

As soon as the classes finished for the day, he caught the bus and hastened back to his room, where he managed to recoup a few hours of slumber. Then, after filling his stomach with almost twice amount of rice, and twice the number of chicken wings of his usual intake, he was back on his journey to the workplace to earn his second day’s money.

On the train, the thought that he had already earned his first sixty Australian Dollars in this country gave him a sudden delight, greatly lifting the state of his spirit. The extra sleep in the late afternoon, as well as his full supper, had also restored his energy sufficiently to go for the next harvest. Through the window, the houses, the trees, the antennas, and the small shops that flitted past, looked so clean and tidy, so well organized, not the least like the ones he had seen anywhere in China. Inside the train most passengers sat expressionless, lazy and brooding, yet with their soft and unperturbed eyes, they didn’t appear as indifferent or unfriendly as one might have surmised. And their hair, either black or gold, or silvery or brown or streaked, was just remarkable.

On arriving at the station, without the need for Jason’s guidance, Bing went straight to the dish-washing room of the restaurant. There he saw some students already on site, drinking and eating the supply they took free from the fridge. A couple of minutes later, Jason also arrived.

At exactly 8pm, Bob called, and their shift began. And seven hours later, he was on the bed, his mind flashing a math calculation: 3 (days)* 6 (hours) * $10 (rate per hour)* 6 (exchange rate) equals 1080 Yuan, before plunging into the darkness of sleep.

On the third day, he got there at the same time, but Jason didn’t turn up even after he had started work. Bing was concerned. Then during the first break, Bob came to inform him that Jason had called to pass a message that he would come to pick him up at about 2am and go home. Bob didn’t mention the reason why Jason had not come, but Bing guessed he must have been tied up in the beef factory.

Not sure if Bob had arranged more shifts during the day for the workload, or the productivity of the workers had been higher than estimated, the fact was they had finished all the work by 1am, an hour earlier than scheduled. Bing was slightly disappointed in missing out on ten dollars because of losing an hour’s work, though he was exhausted enough to yearn for repose.

However, Bob told them, he was happy to give them one hour’s bonus, and asked them to go home. They all thanked Bob heartily for his generosity and left the place.

Outside, Bing saw off other students, saying to them he was to wait for Jason to pick him up. Mary and the Jason from Beijing told him they lived close by. They walked home together. Although they were not holding each other’s hands, they looked very intimate in their talks and gestures. They must be lovers, Bing guessed, as he watched them fading to a couple of spectres in the moonlight.

He was left alone in the street.

Looking up into the sky, the moon was round and big; it must be at its fullest in the month. The stars, hundreds of them, were twinkling, scattered through the firmament. It was so amazing. When he was a child, he used to see the big and full moon in his village climbing over hills, sailing majestically across the sky. But was it as big as this one? He doubted it. The moon looked so close and clear, almost as big as the sun. It was beaming, though without any warmth or heat he could feel. In its pale, tranquil light, the trees, the shrubs, and the buildings were edged with a trickle of silver, becoming mere silhouettes.   

He checked the time, only ten past one; he had to wait fifty minutes before Jason could come. Having sat on the harsh kerb for about five minutes, he felt strained and uncomfortable. So he rose and decided to take a walk in the direction of the railway station.

On his way, he found a bus stop, with a nice, sheltered wooden bench. He sat down, leaning against the corner arm of the seat, relaxing his tired body in delicious moments. April was the second month of the Australian autumn; the night was cold, but he had his jacket as the shield. He pulled its zip up to the top, crossed his arms and clutched them tightly over his chest. Feeling warm and comfortable, he closed his eyes.

Then, he seemed to hear a sound, low but distinct. He opened his eyes, saw nobody but heard a cuckoo calling in the distance. Looking around, it came to his sudden awareness he must have slept for a long time. He got up immediately, and went under the lamplight to make out the time on his watch. ‘Oh, my…’ he was alarmed. It was already two forty-five.
Urgently he trode back to the front of restaurant, but found no sign of Jason or any other souls in the street. Jason must have gone; he must have thought he had got a lift, or even stayed the night at some workmate’s home.

An instant of dread, of panic filled his frame, even the tiredness seemed to have been driven away. But it faded as quickly as it had come. For it was nearly three in the morning; in another two hours, the dawn would wake up the whole city, and the train would be rumbling again. If he wanted, he could make a phone call to his home and ask Jason to collect him. But in another moment, he reflected that he didn’t have any coins in his pocket, therefore, there were no other options but spending some hours in the street.

Having decided, he strolled leisurely on the way back to the bus stop. The cuckoo was calling; two-toned, the voice sounded so miserable and desperate, as if calling for a lost partner. Compared to the raven’s solitary and mocking voice, the call of the cuckoo was only sad and grieving.

He remembered hearing a cuckoo’s call when he first visited his grandma’s grave, and he had supposed she was then calling for him. When she died, he was not at her deathbed, so she had lost him, so she had to keep calling him.

He shuddered.

He walked on, the shape and the length of his lone shadow, cast by the mixed light of the street lamp and the moon, was changing. Then, a cat, walking on the driveway of a house, came to his attention. Its pace was very slow and steady, so he was not scared. Moreover, with a familiar creature in the depth of night, he felt not as lonely as a moment earlier.

Without slowing down, he moved forward. But the cat, instead of travelling on a separate path, reached his feet, and rubbed its arched back against his leg, as if he were its master.  

Curiously, Bing stooped to pat its head and caress its back. Its fur, brown or yellow, uncertain under the pale light, was warm, soft, smooth. It didn’t mew like a cat, though heavily purring.  

After a while, he resumed his steps and strolled on. But the cat seemed reluctant to leave him; it quickened its steps and, preceding him by a short distance, awaited him for a chance to brush against his leg again. It continued to befriend him in the same manner, until he had to turn and cross to the other side of the street. Then, in his belief that the cat was still at the edge of the footpath, and probably sitting on its haunches watching him off, he thought he should make a gesture to say ‘bye, bye’. However, when he turned and strained his eyes to check it, he found no sight of it.

Wondering where the cat had gone, and knowing he had several hours more to spare for the night, he crossed the street and retraced the path he had a little while before shared with the cat. But to his disappointment, the cat didn’t turn up again, even if he deliberately slowed his steps for the purpose.

It was as if the cat had vanished the moment they were parted.

The cuckoo kept on calling, in its consistent and insistent two-tones.

Returning to the bus stop, he took the same position on the bench, wishing to sleep as before, but he failed. He was tired and weary all the same, but the instance of warmth and comfort refused to come back, despite his effort to snuggle and hug himself. At last, he rose to his feet, and slid out of the shelter.

The moon was even brighter; the stars blinking faster.

It was such a beautiful night!

He walked to a tree, and leant his back against it. For a long time, in the serenity of the universe, he held his gaze at the beaming moon, and the sparkling stars, and the mysterious sky so vast, so infinite and eternal.

Like a child, he began to fancy and wonder. He felt that all the people whom he had known, and loved, and befriended in his life, were those stars, remote and unreachable, but nonetheless traceable and definite, with fathomable forms and lines. The only exception was the moon; nobody was able to take that crown position, for, in its majesty. humans ought to be humble. A star may die and give its last flashing splendour, but the moon, like the sun and earth, is immortal.   

Now his friend Kang is talking to him, lifting a bottle of beer, ‘Cheers,’ he says, tossing a peanut into his mouth; now Fang comes to him, with her round and plump face, ‘Hi, Bing, you haven’t forgotten me, have you?’ Now his cousin Dan is dawdling over, with his perpetual smirking smile, his hand holding a fishing stick with an earthworm twisting in the hook. His sister, in her police uniform, is showing her well-trained fist, beckoning him over to wrestle with her, and his mother, carrying the pine bark for him to needle the loaches in the field, and his father, wistful, reserved, and discontented with the field work, fiddling with a watch he is repairing for a customer. Then, ‘Aiya-hah…’ is the drawling voice of his grandma, who, rising from a stone seat, has to habitually stroke her back and arms. Then his wife, alone at the dining table, miserable, looking at him, with her long fingers holding a white bowl full of white rice. Then his childhood friend Kai, telling the story about Great Wall, about Meng Jiang Nu, about the crying raven, and the girls around him, including Vivian…

Yes, at this moment, Vivian comes to him, in her billowing skirt, her wide eyes smiling at him; yet in another moment, she turns away from him, her hair tumbling over her shoulder.

Then, all of the sudden, they are all vanishing, leaving only him on this hemisphere.



--End of Chapter 48 ---

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