Chapter 31 (1/2)
Thirty-one
All love is in the heart
All past is in a dream
–Bei Dao, All
One streetlight, and then another.
There was someone singing quietly somewhere in the night.
“In the ancient Orient is a dragon. Its name is the Middle Kingdom; In the ancient Orient is a tribe. They are all descendants of the dragon…”
The stars in the sky were blazing away from thousands of light years away in s.p.a.ce. After a hundred thousand years, two hundred thousand years, what was left by the time their light reached this tiny, infamous planet was but a lifeless spark. Compared to the stars, the life of humans was as short as the life of a flower. A life could end in the blink of an eye. However, even the seemingly eternal constellations cooled and died after burning all of their energy and would eventually become s.p.a.ce dust, defeated by the laws of time.
Xu Ping gasped for air as he leaned on a power line pole.
The pole was covered with ads and flyers of all colours. Beside the ad for psoriasis was a white notice with the word ‘democracy’ in huge font. Someone had torn off half of it, leaving the other half flapping in the night wind.
The People’s Square was just a right turn away. He could faintly hear the commotion from here.
The main road leading to the square was brightly lit. Military vehicles drove past one by one.
Xu Ping felt a burning anxiety, but his legs would not step forward as though they were lead-laden.
A quick rest. Just a quick rest, he thought.
He heard footsteps approach him from behind – slappity slap slap – and stop somewhere behind him.
“Gege.”
Still holding the pole, Xu Ping looked up in surprise. “Xiao-Zheng?! How did you get out?”
His brother was still wearing a tank top, shorts and a pair of blue plastic slippers from home. It seemed like he had fallen along the way, as his top and knees were grey with dirt.
“So? How did you get out?! I locked the door!”
His brother hung his head low. “I climbed down from the balcony.”
His vision suddenly seemed to flicker in and out, and he couldn’t see very well for some time. He asked quietly, trying to ignore the discomfort, “How did you climb down from the balcony?”
“…along the pipe.”
There was indeed a pipe for the drainage of the rooftop nailed to the wall right next to the balcony and leading straight down to the gutter on the ground.
Furious and upset, Xu Ping kicked his brother. “Are you insane?! Do you know how much you weigh?! What if the pipe broke and you fell from up there?!”
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, and soon he was using his fists as well.
His brother stood there and didn’t budge while taking the beating.
Xu Ping leaned on the pole, panting for a while before recovering.
“You go home.” He fished out his keys from his pocket. “Take the keys and go in through the door.”
“What about you, Gege?”
“I still have something to do, can’t go with you.”
“…I’ll go with you.”
Xu Ping barked, “What do you want with me?!”
Xu Zheng gazed at him dumbly.
Xu Ping gave him a shove. “Go home!”
His brother stepped back.
Xu Ping shoved him again. The boy backed up again.
“I’m telling you to go home. Are you deaf?!” Xu Ping snapped.
Xu Zheng straightened himself and diverted his gaze sideways to the road. “I’m not going home.”
“What did you say?! You say that again!”
Xu Zheng didn’t speak.
Xu Ping grabbed him by the tank top and shoved him back, but this time Xu Zheng flung him aside.
“I won’t go home!” The boy roared. “I know! You want me to wait at home and you go see that bad person! I don’t want to go home! You’re mine, Gege! Only mine!”
Xu Ping was pushed to the ground and stayed there for some time before staggering to his feet and dusting himself off.
He thrust his keys in Xu Zheng’s hand and held the boy’s shoulders as he instructed, “You listen to me now, Xu Zheng. You go home straight away. If I find you taking one step after me, I will disown you as my brother!”
He shoved Xu Zheng on the back, making the boy stumble forward. Xu Zheng turned to look at his brother to find a cold, hard frown.
“Gege.”
“GO HOME!”
After standing there with his head down, Xu Zheng eventually started walking. Every few steps or so, he would take a look back at his brother. His gege’s shadow under the streetlight seemed very drawn-out.
Only when Xu Zheng disappeared around the corner did Xu Ping hurry along towards the square.
When Xu Ping recalled this night many, many years later, he would feel as though it was all a dream. Everything seemed hazy. He thought he remembered but when he thought about it carefully, the faces and the words in the depth of his memory all seemed to dissipate like fog.
Of course, the Xu Ping many, many years later was an extremely different person from the current Xu Ping. Years of life trained him to endure and be wary. He began to believe in the evil of man, that humans could commit heinous crimes without any self-restraint. He began to doubt the sincerity of others’ words and didn’t display any joy even from being praised. He became a person not so different from the thousands of others in this society. Cold and cautious, he wrapped his precious things deeper and deeper in his heart, never said anything he shouldn’t have said, and didn’t do what he shouldn’t have done. It’s not to say that this Xu Ping was bad. It’s just that he had paid a heavy price to become an adult.
Each one of us loses the naivety in our heart as we grow up, some earlier than others. Some are like lemons being grated for their zest, slowly being ground into the shape of an adult’s by the forces of life. Others are like porcelain shattering on the floor into a gazillion pieces. They have to crawl back up and try their best to piece themselves back together, and in this process it’s not unusual to lose a piece here or gain a piece there. By the end of it all, each will have become a brand new person.
Our protagonist, Xu Ping, was now only eighteen years old, thirty three days away from the nation-wide postsecondary entrance examination. He was presently racing through the city street in the dark of night.