Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (6 page)

Grandfather, can you kick a soccer ball?

It’s the soccer ball that’s kicking your grandfather.

Who are you talking with?

You’re talking with yourself, with the child you once were.

That boy without clothes?

A naked soul.

Do you have a soul?

I hope so. Otherwise this world would be too lonely.

Are you lonely?

In this world, yes.

What other world is there?

That inner world of yours that others can’t see.

Do you have an inner world?

I hope so. It’s only there that you can really be yourself.

Maradona is taking the ball past everyone. There’s a goal! Whose is it? The score is 2–2, a draw for the first time. Doves of peace soar in the stadium. Seventeen minutes to the end of the match: time enough to have a dream. They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack. I’ve eaten hardtack, dried fish in a plastic bag—without scales, eyes, or pointy tails that can cut your fingers. In this lifetime you can’t go exploring in Loulan, you can only sit in a plane and hover in the air above the ancient city, drinking the beer served by the stewardess. The sound in your ears is music, eight channels on the armrest. Screeching rock and roll or a husky mezzo-soprano purring like a cat. Looking down at the ruins of Loulan, you find yourself lying on a beach; the fine sand flowing through your fingers forms a dune. At the bottom of the dune lies the dead fish that cut
your finger without drawing blood. Fish blood and human blood have an odor, but dried fish can’t bleed. Ignoring the pain in your finger, you dig hard and uncover a collapsed wall. It’s the wall of the courtyard of your childhood. Behind it was a date tree, and once you sneaked off with your grandfather’s fishing rod to knock down dates that you shared with her.

She walks out of the ruins and you follow, wanting to be sure that it is the girl with whom you had shared the dates. You can only see her back. Excited, you pursue her. She walks like a light gust of wind, but you can never catch up. Maradona is looking for a path, a path where none exists, and the other team watches him closely. He takes a fall, charges on, and now they are trying for a goal. It’s in! You give a loud yell, and she turns around. It’s the face of a woman you don’t want to recognize. There are wrinkles on her cheeks, eyes, and forehead: a flabby old face without any color. You find it painful to keep looking. Should you smile? A smile might mock her, so you grimace, and of course it’s not a pleasant sight.

Alone in the middle of the ruins of Loulan, you look around. You make out the brick room in the courtyard with the gate screen depicting Good Fortune, Prosperity, Longevity, and Happiness. It is where Blackie used to sleep and where my grandfather kept his little iron bucket for the worms: it is my grandfather’s room. Before the wall collapsed, my grandfather’s shotgun hung on it. That
should be the passageway leading to the back courtyard, to Zaowa’s home. Staring at me without blinking is a wolf crouched in the window frame of the collapsed wall of the back courtyard. This does not come as a surprise. I know that in the wilderness there is often little sign of human settlement, only wolves. But these crumbling walls around me are crawling with wolves. They have taken over the ruins. Don’t look back, my grandfather once told me. A person attacked from behind in the wilderness must never look around. If he does, Zhang the Third will tear out his jugular.

I am scared stiff: these crouching Zhang the Thirds, treacherous bastards that attack from behind, are going to pounce, but I mustn’t show that I’m frightened. The cunning animal at the window frame stands up like a person, resting its head on its right forepaw and watching me out of the corner of its left eye. All around, the wolves loudly smack their long tongues; they are losing patience. I recall how it was when my grandfather, as a young man, came face-to-face with a tiger in the paddy fields of his old home. Had he started to run, the tiger would have pounced and made a meal of him. However, I can neither retreat nor go forward, and can only bend quietly to feel in the earth with my hand. I find my grandfather’s shotgun. Without hesitation, I raise the shotgun and slowly level it at the wolf before me. I must be like an experienced marksman, must not give them reason to think otherwise, must shoot them
dead one at a time, not allowing my feet to get confused. I will start by shooting the wolf at the window, then turn left in a circle. Between each shot, I must work everything out in my mind. I can’t hesitate or be careless. There were 132 goals in the 13th World Cup competition. The match is over; Argentina has beaten West Germany 3–2 and is the winner of the World Cup. I pull the trigger, and just as with the cornstalk shotgun my grandfather made for me when I was a child, the trigger breaks. The wolves roar with laughter, hooting and guffawing. Joyful shouts crash like waves at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, each wave higher. I am embarrassed, but I know that the danger has passed. These Zhang the Thirds are only people dressed as wolves, playacting. Look, the players have been surrounded like heroes and are being lifted over everyone’s heads. They’re protecting Maradona, and he is saying, “Let me kiss all the children of the world.” I hear my wife talking, and her aunt and uncle, who have come from far away. The soccer match, broadcast from early morning, is finished. I should get up to see if that ten-piece fiberglass fishing rod that I bought for my grandfather, who died long ago, is still on top of the toilet tank.

18 July 1986, Beijing

He is alone, with his back to the sea, sitting in a canvas deck chair on the beach. There’s a strong wind. The sky is very bright, without a trace of any cloud, and in the dazzling sunlight reflected against the sea, his face can’t be seen clearly.

Big iron doors wet and streaked with rust, water from the top somewhere keeps dripping. The thick, heavy doors slowly open to either side and the gap in the middle widens. Police car sirens can be heard. Through the gap in the doors are towering buildings that block off the sun. One police car after another, and the nonstop sound of sirens.

In the dark passageway of the hall is a woman’s back. Without switching on the light, she puts on an overcoat, hesitates, and puts her hand on the knob. She quietly opens the door and goes out. The knob turns softly and clicks as the door shuts.

The warm sun makes him drowsy. He closes his book, leans back in the chair, and puts on sunglasses: the two round lenses screen his eyes from the sunlight. Afterward, he covers his face with a broad-brimmed black hat, and he can hear nothing but the noisy waves of the sea.

The tide surges onto the beach, but before it can recede,
the sand soaks it up with a long hiss, so that all that is left is a line of yellowish froth.

His arms, hanging down, start to itch. Ants—first one, then one after another—are crawling up his arms.

She says when she made love with two men in front of the fire, it was very exciting. She is lying across the bed with her head to one side, eyes closed, outside the circle of light. The light is shining only on her long hair, and on her underwear and panty hose on the floor.

He senses the tide swelling. The seawater surges around the legs of the chair, swirls around, then recedes. An old tune fills the air. Beautiful and sad, it is like the wailing of a peasant woman at a funeral, and yet like the sobbing of a reed pipe.

She moves her ankles to kick off her shoes and bends to put on a new pair. A shoe with the heel worn to the quick lies discarded at the side of the passageway near the door.

A poster with a black-and-white photograph shows just the lower half of a woman holding up her long skirt and revealing her beautiful legs. She is standing on her toes. This is another advertisement for shoes, posted on the wall of the platform in the subway station. An old woman with a big empty bag is standing on the platform, a middle-aged man sitting on a bench is reading a newspaper. The train comes; some doors open and some don’t. The people getting off head for the exit, and no one so much as looks at the advertisement. With his back turned, he is the only
person left on the platform, and as others start to arrive, that back departs.

The legs of the deck chair are already immersed in the lapping water and the sea keeps rising. That sad tune is still playing, but it has become somewhat vague and sounds more like a reed pipe.

She says she wants a man twice her weight to bear down on her. In the dark she is lying on the bed, her eyes wide open. He is sitting at the desk, bare-chested, and without turning he asks if she will cope. She says she loves being squashed until she can’t breathe and, having said this, she laughs.
Doo
—it’s the computer.

The tune becomes louder and louder, yet more vague as well. It sounds like the wind tearing the paper used for windows, but with the grating of grains of sand mixed in. The tune becomes more vague, yet still hurts the ears a little. The sea has risen to the seat of the deck chair and it is swaying.

He is sitting at the computer with a cigarette in his mouth. A long sentence appears on the screen. “What” is not to understand and “what” is to understand or not is not to understand that even when “what” is understood, it is not understood, for “what” is to understand and “what” is not to understand, “what” is “what” and “is not” is “is not,” and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why “what” needs to be understood or whether “what” can be understood, and also it is not
understood whether “what” is really not understood or that it simply hasn’t been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand or is pretending to want to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then so what if it’s not understood and if it’s not understood, then why go to all this trouble of wanting to understand it—

A white-nosed clown in a circus troupe is playing an accordion, pulling and squeezing, pulling and pulling, squeezing and squeezing. He pulls the accordion out fully, gives a hard jerk, breaks the sound box, and the music instantly stops.

In the air, there is only the sound of the wind, the noisy waves of the sea, and the brilliant sunlight.

The ash on the cigarette is about to drop and, flicking it into the ashtray, he deletes each of the words of the uncompleted sentence one at a time.

A pair of hands shuffles a pile of mah-jongg tiles, takes one, feels it; it’s a “middle,” then there’s a “develop,” and a “white,” and these are put in the sequence “middle” “develop” “white.” Next to be picked up are “develop” “middle” “white” “develop” “middle” “white” “east” “develop” “middle” “wind” “north” “east” “south” “wind” “west” “north” “bamboo no. 2”—he pushes over the tiles and starts shuffling them again.

“Tell me a story!” He turns around and the table lamp
shines on the back of his head, and in the dark, on the bed, he sees her naked body curled up like a fish.

An empty chair is floating serenely on the water, as ripples of light are reflected on the waves. The sound of the tide can’t be heard; only a long note vibrates in the air, sustained and monotonous.

A small boy is leaning on a wall, weeping and wailing, but there is no sound. The stone wall is covered with everlasting spring creeper and the sun is shining halfway up the wall.

On the clipped green lawn an elderly man wearing trousers with suspenders and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar is pulling a length of rope. It is strenuous, but he is relaxed and unhurried.

He happens to stop in front of a glass advertising display on the street and then becomes absorbed with reading what is inside. The street is fairly deserted and only one or two pedestrians are out.

She is standing at the end of the street but there is an endless stream of cars. She is too impatient for the red light to change and starts weaving across the road. Another car speeds by and she quickly stops, retreating to the white line in the middle of the road. She looks in the direction of the approaching cars and runs across just after a small sedan has passed. On the footpath she goes up some steps, appears to stop to think for a while, then presses some numbers at the door. There’s a buzz and she opens the
door and goes inside. Before the door slowly closes, she turns around, but on that overcast day it is even more difficult to see her face clearly.

There is no chair in the water, only foam. The long-drawn-out sound is intermittent, yet remains suspended in the air, never completely cut off—there is only that bit of sound.

A fine drizzle is falling on the glass advertising display and he moves aside. The display is full of advertisements for houses on sale with prices attached, some with photographs, most are private residences in the country. Some of the houses are for rent, with
ALREADY RENTED
written prominently in red on the cheaper ones.

Another man comes along to pull the rope. He is dressed immaculately, wearing a tie, and he greets the old man wearing trousers with suspenders. Taking the rope and talking and laughing, he steadily sets about this chore. When a heavy thud comes from somewhere not far away, the second man scowls.

An empty mineral water bottle is floating on the sea, bobbing up and down upon the waves. All this time, the sunlight remains splendid and the sky is so clean, it looks unreal. Maybe because it is too clean, too bright, and too empty, and with the waves sparkling with sunlight, that the empty plastic bottle moving into the distance suddenly turns gray-black and looks like an aquatic bird or some other floating object. At some unknown time the intermit
tent, long-drawn-out sound has stopped and, like a thread of gossamer blown by the wind, has vanished without trace.

“A pair of swans came to this seaside, then only one of them was to be seen, the other must have been killed for a trophy. The one left behind flew away soon afterward.” It is a woman’s voice, and clearly for a man to hear. As she speaks, the floating object moving into the distance really looks like an aquatic bird.

A man wearing glasses comes along to watch the two men pulling the rope. He scrutinizes them with his glasses on, then, taking them off, he wipes them but doesn’t seem to be able to see any more clearly. He can’t tell if he is seeing clearly or if he is seeing, but not clearly. Nevertheless, unfazed about whether or not he’s seeing clearly, he puts the glasses into his breast pocket and joins the ranks of the rope-pulling men.

He is standing in the middle of a deserted little street, a cobblestone road that crawls toward the main street. On both sides are old stone buildings and the shops downstairs either have their doors shut tight or have metal grilles in place. He looks up. On both sides, the curtains of all the windows upstairs are drawn. Everything is gloomy, except for a long narrow sliver of green-blue sky. At the place where the road and the sky meet, it is hard not to think that it is the sea.

Seagulls are circling in the sky, screeching noisily. Whether they have to screech like this to look for food or if it’s out of
sheer joy isn’t clear, because they use a language not understood by humans. However, understanding or not is unimportant, what is important is that in the blue sky on this island they can soar as they will and can call out noisily.

Facing the long strip of clear blue sky carved out by the houses on both sides, his back view becomes a silhouette and his tie starts to flap. On the gloomy street this is the only thing moving.

She says she doesn’t know what to do! Her voice is agitated. But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can’t. Sprawled on the bed in the dark, she sticks up her legs and kicks her feet against one another. He is sitting by the desk lamp typing on the keyboard, and on the screen appears:

From behind, the only thing that can be seen moving is his tie. Going to the front to have a look, he sees that it is the faceless head of a jacket on a coat hanger, the hem of which is also moving in the wind. The stand for the coat hanger is on the footpath. No one is on the street, there are no vehicles, and all the shops are shut.

Screeching, a seagull swoops down and dives into the water. However, most of the seagulls are just sitting there, floating on the waves. Far out at sea, lines of white foam surge up. The sound of the waves is muffled, transmitted slowly, apparently traveling more slowly than the tide.

By the time the roar of the waves can be heard, the seag
ull can be seen flying up from the water, neck extended and wings flapping, its eyes round and beady, its wings thrusting.

A round red apple with green streaks shines as if it has been waxed. Slowly and with precision it turns in the delicate hand of the woman examining it and is then put down.

Red wine, dark red like blood, in cut-crystal goblets on a table with a white tablecloth, the quiet sound of knives and forks. Behind the wine goblets is a phantomlike man in a suit and tie, and the bare shoulders and neck of an equally phantomlike woman wearing a necklace. The man is saying something but it can’t be made out. He is apparently relaxed and happy.

The woman starts turning the apple again in her hand, and gradually the conversation at the table can be heard. Enthusiastic…Barbara…very interesting…won’t you have some dessert…Lily, you’re not eating much…thanks…really funny…what did he say…sorry…summer…an antique dealer…quite talented…went to Hong Kong…can’t understand war…homosexuality…has a certain elasticity…indeed…is cute…news headlines…specializes in foot massages…sauna…doesn’t possess his poise…why…best not to say…try telling…yesterday afternoon…she went crazy…is no longer usable…the kitten I have at home…too painful…maybe it’s true…government…what surname…a variety of stout…discover…an absolute oaf…

The open bright red cassock on the statue of Buddha is painted with gold lines and decorated with reverse swastikas, the sign of myriad benevolence and good fortune. With his many-layered chin and his hands holding up his huge, round belly, he sits securely and sedately on the black marble altar above the incense burner on the wall. He is happy and contented, and his lips part in endless laughter. However, if one looks closer, he seems to be yawning, and if one looks again, his narrowed eyes make him seem to be dozing off. On further scrutiny he is glaring horribly.

He goes into a bar and sits on a tall stool. The waiter brings two big glasses of beer and puts them on the counter in front of him. Quite a few are in the bar but it’s not too crowded, and in the bright blue light, people’s faces can’t be seen clearly. They are all drinking and keep to themselves. A piano stands in the light on a small platform, and a black woman is playing. It is jazz blues and very melancholy. Old and ugly like a toad, from time to time she touches the keys, solicitously, fondly, as if caressing her lover. The black man nearby with a wreath of gray crinkled hair on his head is old like her, but he hasn’t aged too badly. He is playing on several drums as he sings a sentence or a half into the microphone.