Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (23 page)

On a summer night in 1990 in his muggy apartment, the stranger opened and read a telegram of unknown origin. Then he sank into deep reverie. The telegram consisted of just two words-return quickly-and indicated neither the name nor the address of the sender. The stranger, filing through the mists of several decades of memory, saw an intricate network of roads begin to unfold before him. And in this intricate network, only one road could bring the slightest of smiles to the stranger's lips. Early the next morning, the lacquer-black shadow of the stranger began to glide down that serpentine road like an earthworm.

Clearly, in the intricacy of the network that constituted the stranger's past, one memory, as fine as a strand of hair, had remained extraordinarily clear. March 5, 1965. A simple string of digits, arrayed in a specific and suggestive order, had determined the direction in which the stranger had begun to move. But in reality, at the same time that the stranger had decided upon his course, he had also failed to discover that his forward motion was blocked by yet another group of recollections. And because he had been standing at a remove from the bright mirror on his wall, he had been unaware of the ambiguity that had plagued his faint smile in the moments after he had deciphered the telegram. Instead, he had felt only stubborn self-confidence. It was precisely because of this excessive faith in himself that the procedural error that was to occur later on became unavoidable.

Several days later, the stranger arrived at a small town called Mist. It was here that the procedural error became apparent. The rror was revealed to him by the punishment expert.

Imagine for a moment the stranger's face and posture as he walked through Mist. Besieged by several different strata of memory, he had been left virtually incapable of perceiving his immediate surroundings with any sort of clarity or accuracy. When the punishment specialist caught sight of the stranger for the first time, his heart cried out like a trumpet. The stranger entered the punishment specialist's field of vision like a lost child.

When the stranger walked past a gray, two-story building, the punishment specialist blocked his forward movement with an exaggerated grin. "You've come."

The punishment expert's tone sent a shock through the stranger's body. Although the stranger could hardly credit his own suspicions, it certainly seemed as if this man were hinting at the existence of a certain memory as he stood before him, his white hair gleaming.

The punishment expert continued, "I've waited for a long time."

This statement did nothing to help the stranger determine what role the man might have played in his past, if any at all. Perhaps he was simply a mote of dust floating across the vast expanse of his memory. The stranger sidestepped past the old man and continued on his way toward March 5, 1965.

Just as the punishment expert had hoped, however, the stranger failed to continue on toward March 5, 1965. Instead, a short and simple dialogue took place between the two men. And because of the punishment expert's warning-which was issued casually and without premeditation-the stranger began to understand his predicament. He discovered that his present course* would not lead him to the desired destination. And thus he turned in the opposite direction. But the fact of the matter was that March 5, 1965, was receding farther and farther from him.

This was also the first time the stranger had thought back to the humid night when he had received the mysterious telegram.

For days, his mind had circled around the moment in which March 5, 1965, had emerged in his mind. Now his focus shifted. He began to ponder several other dates, other memories that had continued to disturb him even as they lay abandoned at the back of his mind. These memories were January 9,1958, December 1,1967, August 7, i960, and September 20, 1971, respectively. And with this realization, the stranger began to understand why he was unable to move toward March 5, 1965. The telegram's message might have been just as relevant to these four dates as to March 5, 1965. Indeed, it was precisely these memories that had blocked his way to March 5, 1965. And each of these four events represented roads that ran in entirely different directions without ever intersecting with the other. So even if the stranger abandoned his search for March 5, 1965, he would be unable to find either January 9, 1958, or any one of the other three remaining dates.

This realization took place at dusk, when the stranger, thrown into a quandary by his procedural error, began to ponder how to escape his predicament. That was also when he began to devote his attention to the enigma represented by the punishment expert. He began to sense that the old man was a kind of elusive link to his past. This is why he had come to feel that their meeting had been arranged in advance.

As the sky darkened, the punishment specialist's intense excitement did not detract from a sense that he was in control of himself and of the flow of events around him. The stranger unsuspectingly yielded to some kind of preordination and followed the punishment specialist into the gray apartment building.

The living room walls were painted black. Here the stranger sat down without a word. The punishment expert switched on a little white electric lamp. The stranger began to search his mind for a link between the mysterious telegram and the room that surrounded him. He found something entirely different. He found that the path he had followed on his way to Mist had been crooked.

Almost as soon as the stranger and the punishment expert had sat down to talk, a remarkable affinity grew up between them. It was as if they had spent their lives huddled together in deep conversation, as if they were as familiar to each other as they were to the palms of their own hands.

The first topic of conversation, unsurprisingly, was broached by the stranger's host. He said, "Actually, we always live in the past. The past is forever. The present and the future are just little tricks the past plays on us."

The stranger acknowledged the force of the punishment expert's argument, but it was his own present that remained uppermost in his mind. "But sometimes you can be cut off from the past. Right now, something is tearing me away from my past." The stranger, rethinking his failure to approach March 5, 1965, was beginning to wonder if perhaps some other force besides that of the other four dates might be responsible.

But the punishment expert said, "You're not cut off from your past. Quite the contrary."

It wasn't simply that the stranger had failed to move in the direction of March 5, 1965. Instead, March 5,1965, and the other four dates were receding farther and farther into the distance.

The punishment expert continued, "The fact is that you've always been deeply immersed in your past; You may feel cut off from the past from time to time, but that's merely an illusion, a superficial phenomenon, a phenomenon that at a deeper level indicates that you're really that much closer."

"I still can't help thinking that there's some force cutting me off from my past."

The punishment expert smiled helplessly, for he had sensed the difficulty of trying to overcome the stranger with language.

The stranger continued to move along his train of thought-at the very moment that he had left his past far behind him, the punishment expert had appeared before him with a strange smile and the cryptic assurance that "I've been waiting for you for a long time."

The stranger concluded, "You are that force."

The punishment expert was unwilling to accept the substance of the stranger's accusation. Although he obviously found it tiresome, he patiently attempted to explain the situation to the stranger once again: "I haven't cut you off from your past. On the contrary, I have brought you into intimate conjunction with it. In other words I am your past."

As the punishment expert spat out this last sentence, the tone of his voice made the stranger feel that the conversation might not continue very much longer. He nonetheless continued, "I find it hard to explain the fact that you were waiting for me."

"It would help if you could set aside the notion of necessity," the punishment expert continued, "and realize that I was waiting for a coincidence."

"That makes more sense," the stranger agreed.

The punishment expert, content, continued, "I'm very happy we are of one mind concerning this question. I'm sure we both understand just how very dull necessity really is. Necessity plods blindly and inexorably ahead on its accustomed track. But chance is altogether different. Chance is powerful. Wherever coincidences occur, brand-new histories are born."

The stranger, while concurring with the thrust of the punishment expert's theory, was preoccupied with an entirely different sort of question: "Why were you waiting for me?"

The punishment expert smiled. "I knew that question would come up sooner or later. I may as well explain now. I need someone to help me, someone endowed with the necessary spirit of self-sacrifice. I believe that you are just that sort of person."

"What kind of help?"

"You'll learn everything tomorrow. For now, I'll be happy to discuss my work with you. My calling is to compile a summation of all human wisdom. And the essence of human wisdom is the art of punishment. This is what I'd like to discuss with you."

The punishment expert clearly had an excellent grasp of his field. He was well versed in each and every one of the various punishments employed by mankind throughout its history. He provided the stranger with a simple and straightforward explanation of each punishment. His accounts of the bodily consequences of ach punishment, once it had been carried out, were, however, stirring narratives in and of themselves.

Upon the conclusion of the punishment expert's lengthy and vivid discourse, the stranger realized with a shock that the punishment expert had neglected to touch on one rather important punishment: death by hanging. A dark, complex, and mercurial reverie had descended upon him just as the punishment expert had begun his lecture. He had somehow been anticipating the appearance of that particular punishment all along. As the punishment expert spoke, the blurred contours of March 5, 1965, had once again begun to clear. Given the circumstances, the hypothesis that someone intimately connected with the stranger's past had died by hanging on March 5, 1965, began to seem not entirely far-fetched.

The stranger, in an effort to escape from the dark grip of these memories, decided to point out the punishment expert's mistake. In doing so, he hoped to elicit another stirring discourse on this particular punishment and thus escape its grip.

His question served only to throw the punishment expert into a rage. It was not that he had overlooked a punishment, he shouted. He had just been ashamed to mention it at all. The dignity of that particular punishment, he proclaimed, had been trampled on by its indiscriminate and vulgar use by suicidal miscreants. He bellowed, "They were unworthy of such a punishment."

The punishment expert's unexpected rage released the stranger from the memories by which he had been besieged a moment before. After a taking a long breath, he directed another question to the punishment expert, who sat livid across the room: "Have you tried performing any of the punishments yourself?"

The punishment expert's rage was immediately extinguished by the query. Instead of replying, the punishment expert sank into a deep and boundlessly pleasurable reverie. Crows of memory flew across his features. He counted his inventory of punishments like a stack of bills. He told the stranger that of all the experiments he had carried out, the most moving had involved January 9, 1958, December 11, 1967, August 7, i960, and September 20, 1971. It was clear that these dates hinted at things that went far beyond the numbers themselves. There was something of the aroma of blood about them. The punishment expert told the stranger how…

He had drawn and quartered January 9, 1958, tearing it into so many pieces that it had drifted through the air like a flurry of snowflakes. He had castrated December 1, 1967, cutting off its ponderous testicles so that there hadn't been a drop of sunshine on December 1, 1967, and the moonlight that evening had been as dense as overgrown weeds. Nor had August 7, 1960, been able to escape its fate, for he had used a rust-dappled saw blade to cut through its waist. But the most unforgettable was September 20, 1971. He had dug a trench in the ground, in which he had buried September 20, 1971, so that only the head was still exposed. Owing to the pressure exerted on the body by the surrounding earth, the blood of September 20, 1971, had surged up into the head. The punishment expert had proceeded to crack open its skull, from which a column of blood had immediately spurted forth. The fountain of September 20, 1971, had been incomparably brilliant.

The stranger fell into a silent, boundless despair. Each of the dates of which the punishment expert had spoken concealed a deep well of memory: January 9, 1958, December 1, 1967, August 7, 1960, and September 20, 1971. These were precisely the four events, isolated from the enormity of the stranger's past, that had been pursuing him all along.

The stranger, of course, had long been unaware of their pursuit. The four dates had become four musty breezes wafting toward him. The content that the dates concealed had hollowed, crumbled to dust and nothingness. But their aroma lingered on, and the stranger had the vague impression that if it weren't for these four dates, his strange encounter with the punishment expert would never have transpired.

The punishment expert rose from his chair and walked into his bedroom. As he moved past the white glare of the lamp, he resembled a recollection. The stranger sat motionless in his chair, tortured by a sense that March 5, 1965, was the only memory that he had left. Even March 5, 1965, was far away. It was only later, after he had already fallen asleep, that his features took on the serenity of a memory anchored firmly in the slipstream of the past.