Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories (18 page)

At this Meng laughed out loud. ‘No matter how you
put it, you’re still afraid you’ll have to replace it, right?’
Meng’s attitude seemed to amuse Diesel. Keeping a
protective hand on his pocket, he walked self-consciously
towards the door, as if to effect an escape. Meng, behind
him, said, ‘We should have a chat. Can I talk with you?’
But Diesel didn’t turn back; he just waved him off with
his hand and said, ‘No. You should rest.’ Meng followed
him out the door, but by that time his figure was already
disappearing down the stairs; the little old man had made
a break for it, just like a child. Meng could appreciate how
he felt. Actually, he wasn’t at all certain he wanted to chat
with this one-time teacher, especially given that their
student-teacher relationship had long since vanished,
like mist in the morning. Nor did he have any clue what
it was they should talk about.

Through the window, he could see that snow had
fallen on the balcony. A mop was propped up in one
corner; it even had a plastic bag over it. Meng paced
around the room and considered giving his cousin a ring,
but quickly discarded the idea. The air-conditioning was
purring along. Meng put his hand in front of the air vent,
but it was still blowing cold. The temperature in the room
hadn’t changed. He reflected that this was not fated to be
an evening to enjoy; he was mentally prepared for further
unpleasantness. Perhaps Diesel had been right: a native
son returning from his travels should be generous in his
judgements. Meng opened the door onto the balcony and
a gust of cold wind blew in his face. He nearly abandoned
the thought of going out, but then he realized that it
looked out over a school or, to be more accurate, the
sports grounds of a school. And suddenly he felt he had
seen it before.

The sports ground was only 20 metres away, and
the fallen snow could not obscure the oval outline
of a running track. In the nocturnal haze, you could
also clearly make out the straight lines of horizontal
and parallel bars. The school, too, was clearly on the
demolition list, since already certain buildings were
skeletal, the doors and windows removed. A very
high f lagpole stood loftily in the nightscape, but the
flag had been struck, too. Meng followed the flagpole
down with his eye. He could just make out the stairs
leading up to the platform. They were covered in snow,
and from a distance emitted a shimmering white light.
Déjà vu. Meng turned his head to look out to the
north-west, and it was then that he saw the black form
of the brick Song Dynasty tower, facing the f lagpole in
the distance. Meng’s orientation in the city suddenly
returned, and he was certain that the school he was
looking at was Eastern Wind High School, his own
high school.

He could still remember that the length of the track
at Eastern Wind was 375 metres, making it 25 metres
shorter than the track and field standard. That was
something his P.E. teacher had told him back then;
he had been greatly impressed by the talent Meng had
exhibited for the longer distances. Meng looked down on
the snowy sports grounds and hazily made out a whitevested
adolescent dashing along the track – 375 metres
– four laps to make exactly 1500. That had been his
best event. That was his former life. Meng shouted out
in a strange voice at the abandoned sports grounds;
they looked totally desolate in the night. Some concrete
prefab slabs were piled where the sandpit was located.
Someone had built a snowman on the pile, exacerbating
the desolate look of the grounds. A native son returning
from his travels. Meng suddenly contemplated the odd
chance that led him to witness this unnatural scene. He
laughed and thought, I’m not that kind of person. I won’t
bear the cold any longer just to indulge in nostalgia.
Everything is coincidence. And what is coincidence?
Why, coincidence is coincidence.

There had still been no change in the room temperature.
Meng realized quickly that although the air con
was blowing air, it hadn’t been set to heat. He walked
out into the corridor and called downstairs, ‘Hey,
you! There’s a problem with the air con. Can you come
up and have a look?’ He was surprised at how he had
addressed Diesel. No matter what, he shouldn’t have just
shouted ‘hey, you’. There was the sound of languid steps
on the staircase, then Diesel emerged in his sweater,
holding the remote. He looked as though he had been
sleeping.

‘What’s wrong with the air con?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it
working? Why should there be a problem?’ From his
expression, Meng could see that he was in a mood to
make himself unpleasant. He seemed to suspect Meng of
making things up just to pick a fight.

The smile disappeared from Meng’s face: ‘Come see for
yourself if there’s a problem or not.’

Diesel was clearly only superficially acquainted with
the air con. Meng watched as he pressed randomly at the
buttons on the remote. The fan suddenly coughed and
died. ‘Crud,’ Diesel shouted suddenly, ‘Is it locked? It’s
locked, isn’t it?’

Meng said, ‘It’s an air con machine, not a camera. It
doesn’t have an automatic lock.’ He motioned for Diesel
to hand him the remote, but was ignored. Diesel was still
anxiously hitting the buttons, then he uttered, ‘Young
people think they know everything. Just because it’s air
con and not a camera it doesn’t have an automatic lock.
Is that a scientific way of thinking?’ Meng gave a small
laugh, ‘Let me give it a try.’ He held his palm open and
asked, ‘Do you think I could have a try?’ He watched
as Diesel’s nostrils convulsed for a moment before he
suddenly placed the remote in his hand. ‘You want to try?
OK, go ahead and try,’ Diesel said. ‘If I can’t get it started,
let’s see you do it.’

His totally unnecessary anger reminded Meng once
more of the long-ago physics class. It was with exactly
that kind of annoyance that he had taught the principle
of siphonage. The atmosphere. Pressure. Atmospheric
pressure. Meng couldn’t resist joshing him, and remarked,
‘Maybe there isn’t enough atmospheric pressure.’

But Diesel didn’t take it as a joke and sniggered coolly,
‘That’s what young people are like today, throwing
around concepts they know next to nothing about.’

Meng suddenly felt himself in a tight corner. Under
Diesel’s mocking eyes he pressed the remote control
buttons but failed to reanimate the exasperating air con.
It seemed to have given up the ghost. Scratching his head,
he said, ‘Could it be that it needs a new battery?’

Then he heard Diesel’s pleased voice once again, ‘Impossible.’

‘And why is it impossible?’

Diesel grabbed the remote from Meng’s hands and
said, ‘It’s impossible because it’s impossible. We put in a
new battery just last week!’

Diesel’s victorious expression irritated Meng. Sitting
down on the bed, he looked on at Diesel with the remote
in his hands. ‘If there’s no air con, how am I supposed to
sleep? You said there was air con. But after all your talk,
this air con is a piece of crap.’ Diesel still energetically
pressed the buttons on the remote, while at the same
time motioning to Meng to be patient for a moment.
‘Don’t keep pressing them if you don’t know what you’re
doing. It’s definitely broken. Just give me a new room,
OK?’

Diesel threw a glance at Meng and, seeing his gloomy
expression, he said, ‘This is the only room with air
con. There’s nothing I can do; you’ll just have to put up
with it.’

Meng gave a strange laugh and said, ‘Great! Put up
with a freezing room all night.’

Diesel turned and stared sternly at Meng, then gave
a renunciatory smile. With a darting movement, he returned
the remote to his pocket and walked out. ‘We’ll
take off the fee for air con,’ he said loudly, ‘So I’ll ask you
not to regard me as a cheat, thank you very much.’

With that the door was flung heavily back. Meng sat
on the bed, thoroughly dejected, not only because of his
frosty room, but also because it seemed to him that the
experiences of the evening were the wages of a journey
conceived in error. He had plainly wanted to go south,
but despite himself he had gone north. This was nothing
like a reunion with a former teacher ought to be. Perhaps
he should tell him the truth, but Meng doubted there
was any point now in invoking their common past. No, it
was definitely pointless. The reality staring Meng in the
face was this: he was compelled to spend a night in this
polar room. Only later could he allow this encounter to
become a memory.

He entwined himself in the blankets to go to sleep. He
was young and actually not all that easily affected by the
cold. He had even imagined Diesel would say something
to that effect: ‘Young people can put up with a little cold;
it won’t kill you.’ But Diesel hadn’t said that; he was
someone who made you feel awkward, but he wasn’t
harsh or rude. He had been that way in the past, and he
was that way now. Meng soon fell asleep. Had he spent
a dreamless night, then perhaps things wouldn’t have
happened as they did. But Meng dreamed of an exam,
and in the dream he needed very badly to take a leak,
so he pushed back the examination paper and stood up.
He got out of bed and walked in a daze into the corridor,
heading towards the bathroom door. Shivering and
standing by the piss trough, he heard the sound of a door
slamming in a gust of wind. The sound didn’t register
with him immediately, but when he got back to his room
he found the door wouldn’t open. There must have been
a problem with the lock, because now he couldn’t get
back in. The night was transforming into a long series of
tribulations. He was in his underwear and beginning to
shiver in earnest. He hugged his shoulders and, facing
down the stairs, yelled loudly, ‘Hurry! Bring the key up!
I’m locked out!’

After about a minute, Diesel appeared in the corridor,
eyes heavy with sleep.

‘What now? Why did you close the door when you
went out? You should keep it open.’

Meng said, ‘I didn’t close it; the wind blew it shut.
Everything in this place is broken. Even the door lock
is broken!’ Meng gave Diesel a sidelong glance, as if he
intended some response, but he said nothing and instead
dangled his keychain from his hand.

‘Go to the duty room and put an overcoat on. Watch
that you don’t catch cold.’

Meng said, ‘No need for that. Just hurry up and open
the door.’ Then came the greatest surprise. Meng watched
as Diesel kept passing back and forth through the keys;
he couldn’t seem to find the right one. ‘What now?’
Hugging both shoulders, Meng pressed in close in order
to look at the keys. ‘Tell me you haven’t lost it.’

Diesel raised his head, and from his dismayed expression
he could see that his guess had hit the mark. Diesel
exclaimed, ‘It’s ridiculous! Ridiculous! What happened
to the key?’

Meng almost leapt to his feet, ‘Everything has to
happen to me! What terrible luck! Enough bad luck to last
me eight lifetimes!’ He saw that Diesel’s expression had
become extremely disagreeable, but he was past caring.
He rubbed his hands, stamped his feet and said, ‘Enough
bad luck to last me eight lifetimes!’ Diesel stared blankly
for a moment, then suddenly took off down the stairs,
and as he ran he said, ‘I’ll get that overcoat for you first.’
But Meng was enraged, and he screamed at Diesel’s back,
‘What good is an overcoat? I want to get into my room.’
Shouting was not enough to cool his anger, though, so he
delivered a flying kick to the door.

‘They should close down hostels like this, and the
sooner the better!’

It was very quiet in the hostel. Except for the sound of
the wind outside, Meng could hear only the fragmentary,
hectic sounds coming from the duty room. He lifted
up his eyes and heaved a sigh heavy with resentment.
Before long, a flustered Diesel was hurrying up the
stairs carrying a padded army overcoat, which he tossed
over to him, saying, ‘Please don’t shout. Shouting isn’t
going to help.’ Meng wrapped the overcoat around his
shoulders and found that it was still quite warm; Diesel
had no doubt been using it as a blanket. Now that he had
something to ward off the cold, Meng’s mood took a slight
turn for the better. Looking at the keys in Diesel’s hand
he said, ‘That’s fine. You made me come and stay here.
First-class facilities. First-class service. I didn’t realize you
were going to make me stand in the hallway and shiver
till dawn.’ Meng saw that Diesel’s head was beginning
to sway back and forth and that his eyes were shooting
out a dreadful, scorching fury, a fury far exceeding that
of the remembered physics teacher. He began to regret
his excessive words, but it was too late for regret, for all
of a sudden Diesel hurled the keys to the ground. Then,
dragging over a chair that stood in the corridor, he sprang
on top of it. Meng realized now that he was planning to
go through the window above the door; it hadn’t occurred
to him that Diesel might resort to such a method. As he
watched Diesel clumsily push the window open, Meng
felt he shouldn’t let Diesel do such a thing for him, but
strangely the words that came out of his mouth were
something entirely different: ‘I bet the window’s locked
tight, too.’ Diesel’s back, which was hanging in mid-air,
trembled a moment, then he suddenly struck the window
and it opened with a clatter. Diesel turned his head to
shoot Meng a contemptuous glance. Meng evaded his
look, turning away in embarrassment. In the periphery
of his vision, however, he could see Diesel’s head go
through the window, then his legs and chubby torso
all squeezed through while his feet kicked and swayed
outside. Meng could see Diesel’s old-fashioned, cotton-lined
shoes, torn at the toe, and the worn-through nylon
socks. Above him, he could hear his panting. Only now
did Meng make a tardy gesture, grabbing Diesel’s feet
and protesting, ‘Never mind. Don’t go up there. I’ll go
through the window myself.’ But Diesel’s feet kicked free
of his hands; Meng could feel the anger residing in them.
Then he watched as they slowly disappeared through the
window; Diesel’s whole body had finally passed through
the narrow window. At the same time, dust from the
window frame and from Diesel’s coat streamed onto the
ground.