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I was a little critter submerged in the desert. This was the outcome I had pursued. In this mid-region, I was envisioning the phoenix leaves on Mother Earth. Yet, I didn’t forget my kindred in the dark.
Red
Leaves
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The first light of morning had just streamed through the sickroom’s window. Teacher Gu lay on the bed with his eyes closed. The cleaning woman was spraying disinfectant in the room. She had arrived particularly early today, as though coming not to clean but to disturb him. Gu knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, for each time this happened, his thoughts leapt up in the midst of the strong smell of Lysol. One red leaf floated in the air above the forest of his thoughts—a forest that was totally bare, for it was winter now. Gu had been pondering a question for several days: Did a leaf start turning red from the leafstalk, the color gradually spreading throughout the entire leaf, or did the entire leaf gradually turn from light red to deep red? Before falling ill, Gu hadn’t observed this phenomenon, probably because he missed the chance every year. In front of his home were hills where maples grew. But it was only after he fell ill that he had moved there.
After the cleaning woman left, Gu bent his legs and lightly massaged his distended belly. He thought: perhaps one’s body is most vibrant when one’s disease reaches its last stage. His poor liver, for instance, must have reached this stage. A tragedy had occurred last night in this large ward: a terminally ill patient had rushed with a roar to the balcony and jumped. After that, the ward was as still as death, as though no one lying there dared utter a sound. Was it because someone had died that the cleaning woman had come so early to disinfect the room? He thought this was unreasonable. The person hadn’t killed himself because his condition had worsened and his pain was unbearable. He knew he was improving after going through chemotherapy. The next day he would have been moved out of the ward for serious cases. Who could have guessed that he would do this? This guy really chose an original approach.
After staying in the hospital for a long time, Gu was more and more content with his situation. In private, he even praised the hospital as “fascinating.” He was a taciturn patient, accustomed to being moved around along the corridor that connected the white structures. Actually, he could walk slowly by himself, but the doctors insisted that he use a wheelchair. He sat in a wheelchair, and a big fellow pushed him carefully to the treatment room. Gu thought this arrangement was actually intended to prevent him from escaping. At first, he thought this was suspicious, but later he grew accustomed to it and even understood it a little. The next time he was in the wheelchair, he imagined that he was a general making a leisurely inspection of a battlefield littered with corpses.
He was resting with his eyes closed when he suddenly heard the cleaning woman say: “As the man jumped, he was shouting Mr. Gu’s name.” When he opened his eyes, he saw the cleaning woman turn and leave the room. Her words agitated Mr. Gu. For some reason, all at once his hearing became extremely acute: once again, he heard two people talking on the top floor. They walked downstairs, arguing about something. As they made their way from the ninth floor to the seventh floor and then to the sixth floor, their voices grew louder, as if they were quarreling. They stopped on the sixth floor. They then lowered their voices, and the quarrel turned into a discussion. They sounded like two cats mewing softly. Gu’s room was on the fifth floor. The two people would have to descend only one more floor and they’d be at his door. But they didn’t. They stood up there and kept talking. Their language became completely distorted. The more he heard, the more it sounded like cats meowing. The word “catmen” appeared in his mind, and he even imagined that many “catmen” were in this hospital. They hid in dark corners and sometimes emerged to confide their loneliness in someone, just as they were doing now. The right side of his belly throbbed a few times, and he heard the fluids gurgle there. He closed his eyes and saw the red leaf again. The edge of the leaf had thickened and was imbued with a bizarre fleshy sensuality. Gu felt something flicker in his head. One of the “catmen” suddenly gave a loud shout before his voice became inaudible. The door opened. Breakfast had arrived.
Gu wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat. Lei, the patient next to him, urged him: “Have a little. If an incident like that is repeated tonight, you’ll need some energy to deal with it.” Lei was in the last stages of his disease. He’d lost his hair long ago and had only a month or two to live. After thinking it over, Gu reluctantly sipped a little milk and rinsed his mouth with water. Holding back his nausea, he lay down again. He noticed that Lei was in high spirits as he ate his egg. This person?? How come? He wanted to talk with Lei about the “catmen,” but he felt too weak to talk. Last night, why had the accountant Zheng shouted his name as he jumped? It was a little like toying with him. At this point, he subconsciously raised one hand, but then he heard Lei saying:
“Mr. Gu, don’t ward it off with your hand. Let it fall on your face. Maybe it will be hypnotic.”
“What?!” He was shocked.
“I’m talking of the small leaf. Look, it fell onto your quilt. Ha!”
Sure enough, there was a withered leaf on his quilt. It had come in through the window. When he twisted the leaf lightly, it crumbled into powder. The powder stuck to his hand, so he shook it off. Then he wiped his hands clean with a handkerchief. His eyes half-closed, he leaned against the pillow and heard the consulting doctors enter the room. Under the doctors’ questioning, Lei appeared unusually happy and answered their questions loudly. He declared that he had “conquered the disease.” Through the slits of his eyes, Gu observed the disgusted frown of the physician in charge. Gu thought, “Lei will die soon. Perhaps tonight?” Suddenly, Lei uttered, “Ouch,” and Gu opened his eyes.
He saw several doctors pressing Lei down onto the bed. He resisted vehemently, but they still bound him to the bed with strong tape. He was yowling through it all, and it looked as if his bulging eyes might jump out of their sockets. The doctors pulled out handkerchiefs to wipe away their perspiration and appeared to breathe sighs of relief. For some reason, they didn’t approach Gu, but went to the two beds on the west side of the room. After asking questions for a while, they left the ward. Their unusual behavior made Gu’s brain alternately tighten and turn blank. After a while, Lei vomited blood. It fell onto his face and then streamed onto the pillow. The blood was blackish-red. He no longer struggled, nor could he struggle. Now he could move only his mouth, eyes, and nose. No. His ears, too. Gu noticed that his ears were moving, making him look as cute as an animal.
“Lei, let’s just take it easy” Gu found something to say.
“You————idiot!” he said.
Gu fell silent. The right side of his belly pulsed again, and he patted it. It throbbed even more. With waves of heat gushing in, he began feeling feverish. In the west part of the room, wardmates—a man and a woman—compared notes on cemetery reservations. Their meticulous, earnest attitude made Gu shiver with cold. Feeling partly hot and partly cold, he touched those spots and said softly, “This isn’t like my body.” He secretly intended to slip out after a while and look for those “catmen.” Ordinarily, he didn’t dare leave the ward, because as soon as he left, Lei would push the call button and he’d be hemmed in by nurses.
Gu got up stealthily and, making his way along the wall, left the room. At the doorway, he looked back and saw Lei glowering at him. This suddenly struck him as quite funny, and he almost laughed. At this time, the corridor was empty, and he stole over to the staircase and quietly went upstairs. As he climbed the stairs, he held his paunch with both hands and imagined that he was a kangaroo.
When he reached the sixth floor, he heard the “cat language.” But where were the “catmen”? No one was on the sixth floor corridor except for two nurses making their rounds with medications. After a moment’s rest, Gu continued climbing up. On the seventh floor, a worker delivering water was pushing his small cart. He stopped at the edge of the corridor and sat on the stairs to smoke a cigarette. Gu wondered