“Yes, it is,” a soft voice murmured. “What was she going to do?”
“Punish!”
“Who? How?”
Shi Ding exploded. “Punish whoever she wanted to. Don’t you understand?”
The listeners looked at one another, puzzled. Shi Ding paid no attention to them. “A goods train was approaching. Chi dang kuang dang, chi dang kuang dang. Slowly, the train approached.”
The room was quiet. Some women covered their mouths with both hands.
“Anna’s mind was clear. She had found her way out, out of her misery and out of the humiliation others had dumped on her, and, most importantly, she could punish him, Vronsky, the man who had abused her love.” He pointed at the imaginary train in front of him. “Look, look under the carriages.”
Everyone craned their necks to look.
“Look at the joints and at the chains, and see the distance between the front and rear iron wheels. There, the middle point between the two sets of wheels – that was the place Anna would thrust herself into.”
The listeners abruptly stopped looking. Their mouths were wide open, but no sound came out.
“But first, Anna had to make herself ready.” Stepping down and standing close against the chair, Shi Ding leant back as if he really was trying to avoid an approaching train. “Now, the only thing left was waiting, waiting for the moment when the middle point between the wheels was exactly opposite her. Chi dang kuang dang, chi dang kuang dang …”
You could have heard a pin drop in the meeting room.
“It’s coming, it’s right here!” Shi Ding called out and thrust his body forward. The quilt slid off the chair and fell around him but he took no notice. “The enormous, relentless mass knocked her on the head and dragged her by the shoulders. All the darkness in her life was lifted away and Anna, finally, was free.”
Shi Ding’s body went limp and he collapsed on the floor. A piece of red patchwork chancing to be beside his head looked eerily like blood.
His listeners sat shocked. No sound and no movement. A minute or so passed. Shi Ding remained motionless on the ground. Was he all right? they wondered. The story really seemed to have taken it out of him.
The woman from the kitchen cried, “It’s too cruel! A beautiful woman shouldn’t die this way. Oh, heavens, I can’t imagine …”
Another echoed her, “Why the train? There are other ways.”
An older logger stepped in. “Look, I think Anna choosing the train to kill herself was not accidental because she had seen a railway worker die like that at the beginning. But she didn’t throw herself under the train, and that’s where I’m not convinced.” Realising he had the floor, he cleared his throat and continued. “Suicide is committed on impulse, a fleeting thought. No one can keep a clear head like Anna did, measuring the distance, thinking what would be the exact point to squeeze herself into. I find this a bit much.”
“Mm –” Most of the listeners nodded in agreement.
“It’s true,” the loud woman from the kitchen said. She stood up, stared at the ceiling, imitated some of Shi Ding’s actions, then looked back down and concluded: “There was too much planning going on. I would write it differently.”
The room rocked with laughter. “Of course you would, you’re semi-literate,” someone called out, to more laughter.
Shi Ding raised himself from the floor. All the colour had drained from his face.
Yan Zhu sat there with tears in her eyes. Yan Tao whispered to her, “What do you think?”
She scribbled something on a piece of paper. Yan Tao read it and said to Shi Ding, “My daughter wants to know what about the boy Anna abandoned.”
Shi Ding looked intently at Yan Zhu. Then he tore his eyes away and said quickly, “He had his father.” He got up and walked to the door.
“Hey, don’t go out! You won’t see a thing!” Yan Tao warned him.
“I need some fresh air. I’ll be careful.”
Shi Ding felt his way along the railing to the lookout. He stood there, breathing deeply. Anna’s story had awakened memories of his father’s suicide. If the loggers regarded Anna’s detailed suicide plan as implausible, what would they make of his father’s, if they ever had the chance to know it?
He had imagined that moment so many times that it felt real. He saw his father in that dimly lit workshop of the Beijing Turbine Factory, carefully lying down under the punch machine. He even saw him wriggle a bit to adjust his position, to make sure the punch head was aimed at the middle of his chest. And then he saw his father’s right arm reach for the operating button. He pressed it.
Shi Ding closed his eyes.
Yan Zhu’s question ate at him. What about the abandoned boy? Did his father think about Shi Ding, his only son, at that very last moment? What was in his mind? Shi Ding wished he could, like Tolstoy, extract every piece of his father’s last thoughts. Was there resentment, disgust, any last minute hesitation, as in Anna’s mind? Nothing was clear except the solid fact: if his father’s intention, like Anna’s, was to punish, he had certainly punished his son.
The fog blocked everything out. Shi Ding could imagine the clamour of voices in the meeting room, but all he heard was his own breathing. He went to take a few steps, but was seized by the sensation that he was about to fall into a bottomless chasm, even though he was grasping the rail. His heart leapt with fright and he bent down, gasping for breath. After a long moment, he stood up straight, and shouted into the unseen world the question that he had asked thousands of times: “Why did you do it? Why?”
The valley was silent, except for the faint echo that bounced back: “Why?”
Part One
Red and Black
Chapter One: Snow
I
Shi Ding could not figure out where he was or how he had got there. He stood on a cold stone floor surrounded by thick pillars. The pillars were old and it took him some time to distinguish the reddish paint and golden dragons drawn on them. They supported a high domed ceiling with carved beams and rafters. In the middle of the ceiling, two giant wooden dragons were entwined, craning their necks and gazing down with fearful pop eyes. The place felt like a temple but had no Buddha in it.
A gust of cold wind blew the heavy wooden doors open and a white figure swirled in. It was a woman, thin and pale with frosted hair and ragged clothes. She stood there, waiting for the wind to die down, and then began to dance. Her movements were slow but forceful. Her body swayed and turned, her long, loose sleeves flapped up and down, turning everything they touched white. With each step, the floor became a snowfield and the pillars became icicles. She blew cold air up to the ceiling and the dragons seemed to shiver, their colours fading as they turned into ice sculptures. Shi Ding hid in a corner and watched with fascination. How wonderful it would be to possess this magical power.
The woman swirled outside and Shi Ding followed. To his surprise, he was at No. 10 View Street, where he lived. He had never known a temple was next door! A few children were playing hide and seek around the two ancient scholar trees and two women were chatting and washing vegetables under the tap. A man from the rear courtyard walked a bicycle towards the front gate. Muffled laughs and cries filled the air. Before Shi Ding could identify the neighbours, one by one, as the woman’s sleeves touched them, they turned into ice. The tap was still running but now it spat out foam-like snow. In no time, the yard became a field of ice sculptures – the children, the women and the man – that gradually blended into the blinding white background.
Shi Ding’s fascination gave