Tales of the End of the Century

Bai Ye was awakened by his left hand. It wasn't pain, but an itch. The scab on his palm had fallen off, revealing pink, tender new skin. Lying in bed, he held his left hand up to his eyes, examining it in the morning light. Nothing had changed. But he remembered placing the enamel mug on the left side of his bedside table before going to sleep last night; now it was on the right. He didn't remember getting up to drink water, nor did he remember moving the mug.

He lowered his hand and sat up. Tie Niu was already chopping wood in the yard, the sound of the axe striking the ground steady and rhythmic. Old Hu was scrubbing pots and pans noisily in the kitchen. Lan Susu's window was still closed, the curtains drawn tightly. There was no movement in the gray-clad man and Vasily's room—they had stayed up most of the night in front of the oscilloscope, only going to bed just before dawn.

Bai Ye puts on his shoes, his left foot first. He now steps with his left foot first every day, not out of habit, but because he chooses it. Yesterday he chose his left foot, today he chooses his left foot, tomorrow he might choose his right foot. He himself doesn't know. Neither does it.

He pushed open the door, a gust of cold wind hitting his face. A thin layer of frost clung to the branches of the jujube tree, gleaming grayish-white in the morning light. Tie Niu saw him, his axe paused in mid-air, he nodded, and continued chopping. Bai Ye walked to the jujube tree, reaching out to touch the most recent axe mark—Tie Niu had driven it in with his left hand the day before yesterday; the bark was peeling back, still oozing sap.

"Good morning," Tie Niu said.

"Good morning," Bai Ye said. He realized that when he answered, his lips moved a beat slower than his voice. It wasn't intentional; he was just slow. He didn't correct it. Slow is slow, and that's a kind of change too.

In the morning, Lan Susu reorganized Sergei's notes. She sat on the threshold of the east wing, her canvas bag resting on her lap, turning page after page of those papers—soaked by water, burned by fire, their writing blurred by time. Bai Ye sat beside her, eating a bowl of noodles as he read. The noodles were cooked by Old Hu; today he added fermented bean paste, but no chili.

"During the later stages of the rift period, Sergei did something very strange." Lan Susu turned to the last few pages of her notebook, pointing to a passage of Russian text that she had circled in red pen. "He started recording his dreams. Not the dreams of the subjects, but his own. He said he dreamed that he was standing in front of a mirror, and the person in the mirror was not him, but someone he had never seen before. That person was wearing a drab gray cotton-padded coat, holding a piece of chalk in his hand, standing in a basement, writing on the wall."

Bai Ye looked down at the red oil stains of fermented soybean paste in his bowl. He remembered the chalk mark he'd seen on the air-raid shelter wall yesterday—it had been erased, but the mark remained. Someone had stood in front of the wall, writing on it many times, erasing and writing, writing and erasing. Then, that person's image was captured in a mirror, reflected countless times, and finally entered Sergei's dream. Not someone Sergei knew, not a colleague from Project Aurora, not anyone he had ever met. Someone he didn't know had silently written on him for a long time in his dream.

"Sergei said in his notes, 'This is not a dream.'" Lan Susu read the translation aloud, "'This is a contact. Not through a resonator, not through a rift. It's through a mirror. That person also has a mirror. He stands in front of his mirror writing, and I stand in front of my mirror watching him. There is a great distance between us, not a spatial distance.'"

She turned to the next page of her notebook, where there was only one line of words that had been crossed out and rewritten; the last letter wasn't even finished before the pen tip pierced the paper. "He didn't know the exact year. He only knew that there were others before him."

Bai Ye placed the bowl he was holding on the threshold. He suddenly understood why there was only one footprint in the air-raid shelter. The moment the curtain was lifted and light streamed in, his expression had never been so calm—not because he had found an answer, but because he no longer needed to search. It wasn't that person had disappeared; it was that person no longer needed to leave, but had stepped out of the mirror. Not from the doorway, not from the stairs, but from the arcs of fingernails pressed into the mirror's surface, moving himself out. Leaving behind an empty basement, a wall without a reflection, and a piece of damp chalk.

He picked up the bowl and continued eating his noodles. The fermented bean paste was very strong, overpowering the natural aroma of the noodles. He chewed for a while, then suddenly stopped.

"You said that in Sergei's last few pages of notes, he kept talking to someone. He called that person 'the fellow traveler'."

"right."

"Maybe he wasn't talking about that thing. Maybe he was talking about this person. Someone who went in earlier and came out earlier than him."

Lan Susu closed the notebook, placed it on her lap, and looked at him.

The man in gray and Vasily emerged from the house, both with calm expressions. The man in gray placed the cassette tape he was holding on a stone, squatted down, and drew a circle on the ground with a twig, inside which he drew a triangle. "Sergei's last recording. Side B, the last part." Vasily plugged the headphones into the tape recorder and handed it to Bai Ye.

Bai Ye put on his headphones and pressed play. The tape hissed as it spun. Sergei's voice appeared, very soft, unlike the previous recordings which were calm to the point of being cold. This time, there was something in his voice that Bai Ye had never heard before—a certainty.

"I looked at my reflection in the mirror for a long time today. Not to see if it was mimicking me, but to see myself. I raised my right hand, and it raised its right hand too. I lowered it, and it lowered it too. Then I did something I'd never done before: I raised my right hand, and it didn't move. It looked at me. Then it raised its left hand, and I didn't move. We were both waiting for the other to move first. Then we laughed at the same time."

A long silence followed, broken only by the background noise of the tape. Then Sergei spoke again.

"A fellow traveler. Not an enemy, not yourself, not a reflection. A fellow traveler. It has learned from me for a long time. I have also learned from it for a long time. We have both learned things that the other did not know. Now I raise my right hand, and it raises its left hand. Together, we are a complete person."

Bai Ye took off his headphones and placed them on the rock. He picked up the mug, took a sip of water, and slowly swallowed. Lan Susu wrote a line on the last page of her notebook, using the handwriting she had finally chosen after trying different pen-holding positions several times. After she finished writing, she closed the notebook and tucked the pen into the title page.

“He wasn’t talking to himself.” She picked up the jar, but didn’t drink. “He was talking to that person. The one who experienced the rift before him. The one who stood in front of the air-raid shelter wall writing with chalk. He called that person his companion. Not out of fear or hatred. But out of gratitude.”

Bai Ye placed the enamel mug on the stone. The pebble he had picked up from the air-raid shelter was still underneath. He picked it up, holding it in his palm; it was cool. He still didn't know the name of the person who had written with chalk, nor where that person was now. But he knew that person had succeeded. Not just driven away the rift, but taken it with him—the reflection no longer imitated him; the reflection and he each stretched out a hand, joined together, and became a complete person.

At noon, Tie Niu began practicing throwing the axe with his right hand. He could already hit the bullseye with his left, so he switched back to his right yesterday—not as a regression, but as a complete relearning. Having mastered it with his left, his right felt strange. He stood at the other end of the yard, axe in his right hand, aiming for at least twenty seconds. Old Hu, squatting in the corner peeling garlic, glanced up and said, "Your posture is like a child learning to throw an axe." Tie Niu didn't reply, continuing to aim. The axe flew, grazed the jujube tree trunk, and bounced away. He went over, picked it up, gripped the handle with his right, and aimed for another twenty seconds. Bai Ye recalled the first time she brushed her teeth with her left hand, standing in front of the mirror for over a minute, toothbrush in mid-air, unsure where to begin. That strangeness wasn't regression, but the starting point of regeneration—once her right hand was also relearned, her left hand would no longer be just her left hand.

In the afternoon, the man in gray began learning Chinese. It wasn't Lan Susu who taught him; it was Vasily. Vasily's Chinese was also rudimentary; he'd learned it from traders at the border, and his vocabulary was roughly equivalent to a second-grade student. However, he could write one Chinese character—"人" (person). He wrote a crooked "人" on the trunk of a jujube tree with chalk, then said to the man in gray, "This character represents you and me." The man in gray took the chalk and wrote another character next to Vasily's "人." It was also "人"—but in reverse direction, the left stroke skewed to the right. Vasily glanced at it, then erased both characters with his palm and drew a new circle, empty inside.

"What does this mean?" the man in gray asked.

"We don't need the person anymore," Vasily said. "The circle is still there."

The man in gray placed the chalk on the stone under the jujube tree and pressed his palm next to the circle, leaving a mark. Bai Ye sat on the threshold, noting these things down in his notebook. Date. Weather. The man in gray and Vasily wrote the character for "person" on the jujube tree, erased it, and drew a circle. He added a line at the bottom of the page: "A circle is more complete than a person."

That evening, Bai Ye brought out the reflecting mirror. He lifted his trench coat, mirror facing upwards, and placed it on the stone under the jujube tree. Everyone was there. Tie Niu leaned against the tree trunk, his axe across his knees. Old Hu squatted at the kitchen doorway, an enamel mug at his feet. Lan Susu sat on the threshold of the east wing, her notebook closed on her knees. The man in gray and Vasily sat side by side against the wall, Sergei's cassette tape in front of them. Bai Ye walked to the stone, looked down at his reflection, and then did something he had never done before. He raised his right hand.

The reflection in the mirror raised its right hand. Then it lowered its right hand, extended its index finger, and lightly drew a line on the mirror surface, diagonally from the upper left to the lower right, parallel to the old crack. It placed the chalk back on the stone, without erasing anything. The person in the mirror didn't follow its line; it simply stood there, watching it. Then it raised its left hand. Bai Ye didn't move. They were waiting for the other to move first, then they laughed simultaneously.

He flipped the mirror over so the back was facing up. He put his trench coat back on, tucking the four corners under the stones. Tie Niu took the axe off his knees and placed it next to the doorframe, while Lao Hu filled the enamel mug with hot water and carried it into the kitchen. Lan Susu put her notebook into her canvas bag. The man in gray and Vasily stood up against the wall, dusted off their trousers, and then simultaneously pulled their hands out of their pockets, opened them, and glanced at them.

Vasily laughed first. The man in gray followed a beat later. White Night picked up the chalk again and lightly traced a line next to the newly drawn line on the mirror. The mirror no longer reflected his image—it was just an ordinary mirror with two parallel marks etched on it. The old crack, the new chalk line, separated by a finger's width of light.