Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (5 page)

Suddenly I have a brainstorm and remember Guandi Temple. It was in the opposite direction from the way I went to school, in the direction of the movie theater. When my mother took me to see a film we had to pass a lane called Guandi Temple. If I can find Guandi Temple, it won’t be hard to work out the location of my home. So I start asking people how to find Guandi Temple.

Oh, so you’re looking for Guandi Temple? What number? This confirms that Guandi Temple still exists. The person I encounter is so earnest and keen to help that he asks for the house number. Unable to think of a number right away, I mumble that I was wondering if the address still existed. If there’s an address, of course it exists. Who are you looking for? What family do you want? He wants more details. Probably he thinks I’m back from overseas searching for my roots, or that I’m some drifter who abandoned his village. I explain that my family used to rent the house, and that it didn’t belong to my grandfather. What was the name of the landlord? All I know is that the landlord had a daughter called Zaowa, but I can’t tell him that.
As I continue mumbling, a scowl appears on the man’s face and his eyes turn cold. He looks me up and down as if he’s considering whether to report me to the police.

If you’re looking for No. 1, go straight, then take the first lane on the right, it’s on the south side of the road. If you’re looking for No. 37, go that way, after about a hundred paces take the second lane, go to the very end, and it’s on the north side, on the left. I thank him repeatedly, but when I go, I can feel his eyes boring into my back.

I see the first lane on the right, but before turning I see the brand-new blue road sign beside the red sign of the men’s public lavatory. Written on it clearly and unmistakably is Guandi Temple, but this is not the impression I had of it as a child. I turn into the lane to show that I really did come to see my old home and am not up to any mischief. There is no need for me to look from No. 1 to No. 37. At a glance I can see to the end of the lane: it is not as long and winding as I remembered. I don’t know whether or not a temple was there then. No tall buildings are on either side of the lane; rising above the old-style buildings is only one three-story redbrick building, an economy structure that seems less permanent than these old courtyards. Suddenly I remember that Guandi Temple burned down after being struck by lightning, but that was before I was capable of remembering anything. My grandfather told me about it. He said that the spot attracted lightning because the
qi
energies underground were in disharmony,
so they built the temple to drive away the demons and evil spirits. Still it ended up being struck by lightning, proving that the site was not suited to human habitation. Anyway, my home was not in Guandi Temple, it was somewhere not too far from it. I must retrace the way my mother took me when I was a child. Having a child myself won’t make it any easier, but I know that it’s futile to keep asking people. I have gone in circles on the lake, beyond the lake, in the middle of the lake, around the lake, but if the sea can turn into mulberry trees, so too can this little lake. I suspect that my old home is hidden deep in the little forest of aerials in that stretch of old buildings, new buildings, and economy buildings that are neither old nor new, right in front of me. But no matter how much you keep going around them you can’t see it. So you can only imagine it from your memories. It might be beyond that wall, converted to family dormitories by some urban environmental-protection authority. Or a plastic button factory might have turned it into a warehouse with iron doors and a guard, so unless you can state your business, don’t even think about going in to nose around. Just tell yourself that people couldn’t be so cruel as to demolish the gate screen with the carvings. But past and present sages and philosophers in China and the West believe that humans have a propensity for evil, and that evil is more deeply rooted than good in human nature. You like to believe in the goodness of people. People just wouldn’t be so mean as to
deliberately trample the memories of your childhood, because they too have a childhood worth remembering. This is as clear as one plus one cannot equal three. One plus one may change in quantity and substance, change into something grotesque, but it will never become three. To abolish such thoughts you must get away from these asphalt roads that all look alike, and away from these new buildings and old buildings, these blocks upon blocks upon blocks of half-new, half-old economy apartment blocks, under their forests of television aerials, bare branches devoid of leaves, as far as the eye can see.

I must go to the country, to the river where my grandfather took me fishing. He took me to the river, and although I can’t remember if we caught any fish, I know I did have a grandfather and a childhood. I remember feeling awful when my mother made me take off all my clothes in the courtyard for a bath. I have also searched for the other houses I lived in as a child. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to go hunting, but it was not with my grandfather. After a whole day we killed a feral cat we thought was a fox. And I remember my poem in which I’ve strapped rattling hunting knives all over myself. I am a tailless dragonfly flitting over a plain, but the critic has barbed thorns growing in his eyes and a wide chin. I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.

I see my grandfather sitting on a small wooden stool, his back hunched, sputtering on his pipe.
Grandfather!
I call
out to him, but he doesn’t hear. I go right up to him and call again,
Grandfather!
He turns around but is no longer holding his pipe. Tears stream from his ancient eyes, which seem bloodshot from smoke. In winter, to get warm, he always liked to squat by the stove and burn wood.
Why are you crying, Grandfather?
I ask. He wipes the snivel with his hand. Sighing, he wipes his hand on his shoe but it doesn’t leave a stain. He is wearing old cloth shoes with thick padded soles that my grandmother made for him. Without saying a word, he looks at me with his bloodshot eyes.
I’ve bought you a fishing rod with a hand reel,
I tell him. He grunts deep in his throat but without any enthusiasm.

I come to the riverbank. The sand underfoot crunches and sounds like my grandmother sighing. She is fond of chattering endlessly, although no one understands her. If you ask,
Grandmother, what did you say?
she will look up absentmindedly and, after a while,
Oh, you’re back from school? Are you hungry? There are sweet potatoes in the bamboo steamer.
When she chatters it’s best not to interrupt, she is talking about when she was a young woman, but if you eavesdrop from behind her chair, she seems to be saying,
It’s hidden, it’s hidden, everything is hidden, everything….
All these memories are making noises in the sand under your feet.

This is a dried-up river, flowing with nothing but rocks. You are walking on rocks that have been rounded and smoothed by the river, and, jumping from rock to rock,
you can almost see the clear current. But when the mountain floods came, an expanse of muddy water spread into the city. To get across the road, people had to roll their trousers up, and they kept falling in the brown slush where worn-out shoes and rotting paper floated. When the water receded, the bottom part of all the walls was covered with a sludge that, after a few days in the sun, dried into a shell and flaked off like fish scales. This is the river where my grandfather once took me, but now there is no water even in the gaps between the rocks. In the riverbed there are only unmoving big round rocks like a flock of dumb sheep huddled close to one another, afraid that people will drive them away.

You come to a sand dune with sinewy willow roots in it. The willows were cut, stolen, made into furniture, and then not a blade of grass would grow here. As you stand, you begin sinking, and suddenly the sand is up to your ankles. You must get away quickly or you will sink to the calves, knees, and thighs and be buried in this dune, which resembles a big grave. The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything. It has swallowed the riverbank and now wants to swallow the city, along with your childhood memories and mine. It clearly does not have good intentions, and I can’t understand why my grandfather is just squatting there, not fleeing. I decide to make a hasty getaway, but a dune suddenly looms before me. Under the hot sun appears a naked child: it is myself as a child. My
grandfather, in his baggy trousers, has risen to his feet. The lines on his face are no longer as deep, and he is holding the child’s hand. The naked child, who is me, hops and skips at his side.

Are there any wild rabbits?

Mm.

Is Blackie coming with us?

Mm.

Does Blackie know how to catch rabbits?

Mm.

Blackie was our dog, but he disappeared. Some time later someone told my grandfather he saw Blackie’s fur drying in a courtyard. My grandfather went there, and the people claimed that Blackie had killed their chicken. It was lies. Our Blackie was very obedient, and only once was he rough with our rooster and pulled out a few feathers. He was punished with a broomstick by my grandmother until he lay whining, front paws flat on the ground, begging for forgiveness. My grandfather was miserable, as if he had been beaten with the broomstick. The rooster was my grandmother’s pet, and the dog went everywhere with my grandfather. From that time on, Blackie never bothered chickens, just as a good man never fights with a woman.

Are we going to run into wolves?

Mm.

Are we going to run into black bears?

Mm.

Grandfather, have you ever killed a black bear?

Grandfather grunts loudly but you can’t tell whether it’s a yes or no. I worshipped my grandfather because he had a shotgun, and it was really exciting when he filled his empty cartridges with gunpowder for it; I would pester him nonstop until he got cross. He seldom lost his temper, but once he did. He stamped his feet and yelled at me in a loud voice,
Go away! Go away!
I went inside, then suddenly heard an explosion. I was frightened and almost crawled under the bed, but finally I peeked out the door and saw that one of my grandfather’s hands was covered with blood; his other hand was frantically wiping his face, which was all black. He was hurt, but he didn’t cry.

Grandfather, are you also going to shoot a tiger?

Stop talking so much!

It was only after I grew up that I learned that real hunters don’t talk much. My grandfather’s hunting friends probably talked all the time, and that’s why they didn’t ever shoot anything; they also kept my grandfather, who didn’t talk much, from shooting anything. When my grandfather was young, he came upon a tiger; it was in the mountains, not in a zoo. This happened in his old home, which was also my father’s home, so it was my home, too. Back then, there were thick forests, but one time I passed my old home in a bus while on a work assignment. There were only bare brown slopes, and even the mountains had been turned into terraced fields. Those fields were once
forests. The tiger looked at my grandfather and walked away. On television they say that in south China tigers have been extinct for more than ten years, except for those in zoos. Not only has no one ever shot a tiger in the wild, no one has even seen one. In the northeast there are still tigers: the experts estimate that there are at most a hundred of them. It’s not known where they’ve hidden, and hunters would count themselves lucky if they saw one.

Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared?

Bad people scare me, not tigers.

Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people?

There aren’t many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can’t shoot people.

But they’re bad!

You can’t tell right away whether they’re good or bad.

What about when you can tell, can you shoot them then?

You would be breaking the law.

But aren’t bad people breaking the law?

The law can’t control bad people, because bad people are bad in their hearts.

But they do bad things!

You can’t always be sure.

Grandfather, do we have far to go?

Mm.

Grandfather, I can’t walk anymore.

Just grit your teeth and keep walking.

Grandfather, my teeth are falling out.

You bad boy, stand up!

Grandfather gets down on his haunches and the naked child climbs onto his back. With the boy on his back, he totters a step at a time in the sand, his feet turned outward. The boy whoops with joy and kicks his little feet, as if spurring on an old horse. You watch your grandfather’s back gradually recede into the distance and sink behind a dune. Then there is only you and the wind.

Voller has three of his team protecting him. Their solid bodies form a barrier, and it won’t be easy to take the ball from him. At the edge of the sand, a line of yellow smoke rises, and like an invisible hand it brushes the big dune into a roll of unfurling silk. You are in a desert. It is a dry sea to the horizon, burning red, still as death. You seem to be flying in a plane over the great Taklamakan Desert. The towering mountain range looks like the skeleton of a fish. The vast mountains will certainly be swallowed up in this burning, dry sea, yet in March the Taklamakan can be extremely cold. Those few blue circles are probably frozen lakes and the white edges are shallow beaches. The dark green spots that look like the eyes of dead fish are where the water is deep. In the second half of the match everyone can see that West Germany has stepped up its attack and is in the lead. Argentina will have to strengthen its defense; everything depends on how they counterattack and take advantage of gaps in the other side. Good kick! Valdano has the ball and he scores! There is no wind, just the gentle rocking of the
motor. Outside the cabin window, there seems to be no horizon. The Taklamakan looms up diagonally in so straight a line that it could only be replicated on a blueprint; it divides the window into two. Following the line of vision and direction of flight, it moves clockwise from 0:50 to 1:20 or 1:30. At the end of the needle is a dead city. Is it the ancient city of Loulan? The ruins are right below and you can see the collapsed walls. The palaces have all lost their domes: here the ancient cultures of Persia and China once fused, then sank into the desert. Look everyone! Argentina is making a rapid counterattack and the other side can’t keep up. Argentina scores a goal. In fifty-one matches in the series 127 goals were scored, and if you count the penalties in extra time, 148. In today’s match, there were 2 more goals. Not counting the penalties in extra time, the 128th and 129th goals have been kicked. Now Maradona has the ball. Shifting sands and the ball. With is a loud howl, yellow shifting sand slowly forms a mound, then trickles down in waves—waves that rise, fall, and ripple outward, like breathing, like singing. Who is singing with a kind of sobbing under the shifting sands? You want desperately to dig it out, the sound right below your feet. You want to make a hole to let out this sound tinged with sadness, but as soon as you touch it, it twists and bores downward, refusing to come up. It’s like an eel, and you catch only what seems to be a slimy tail that you can’t hold on to. You dig furiously with both hands into the sand. On the riverbank you had to dig
only a foot deep and water would percolate up—cool, pure, sparkling river water—but now there is just cold grit. You put your hand into it and feel a tingling sensation, then touch something sharp and cut your finger, although it doesn’t bleed. You are determined to find out what it is. You dig and scrape and finally pull up a dead fish. The head was pointing down and it’s the tail that cut you. Stiff and hard, the fish is as dry as the river: mouth clamped shut, eyeballs shriveled. You prod it, squeeze it, step on it, throw it, but it doesn’t make a sound. It is the sand that makes a noise, not the fish, and it whispers to mock you. The dead fish, stiff in the blazing sun, sticks up its tail. You look away, but its round eye continues to stare at you. You walk off, hoping that the wind and sand will bury it. You won’t dig it up again. Let it never see the daylight; let it stay buried in the sand. Burruchaga is offside, loses a great opportunity, and the defense kicks the ball out. In the second half Argentina gets a third corner but West Germany takes it, goes for a goal, and scores! At the twenty-seventh minute Rummenigge kicks it right at Maradona. The score is 1–2, and everyone sees Maradona taking his team toward the goal—