Tales of the End of the Century

Zhao Zhiyuan slept soundly on his first night in Yushugou. He slept so soundly that Lao Hu got up to cook noodles in the morning, Tie Niu chopped half a bundle of firewood, and Lan Susu finished copying two pages of notes in the east wing, and he still hadn't woken up. He said he hadn't slept for more than three hours straight in the same place in a long time, always waking up in the middle of the night to check his hands, making sure his fingers were still there and that his reflection wasn't in the corner. Last night, he didn't wake up once. When he did wake up, sunlight was already streaming through the window of the west wing, falling on the enamel mug he had placed on the windowsill, making the chalk writing on the bottom of the mug appear slightly white.

He picked up the jar and looked at it, then put on his shoes and pushed open the door. In the courtyard, Old Hu was squatting by the kitchen door peeling garlic, Tie Niu was sharpening his knife under the jujube tree, and Lan Susu was sitting on the threshold of the east wing flipping through her notebook. Bai Ye stood beside the vegetable patch, holding an enamel jar in his hand, a small piece of chili oil floating on the surface of the water.

"Good morning," Bai Ye said.

Zhao Zhiyuan stood on the threshold for a while, looking at the people in the courtyard. He had traveled north for so many years, and he had never seen so many people in one place at the same time—not just passing by, but living in the same courtyard, greeting each other with "Good morning" every morning, and then going about their own business. Tie Niu chopped firewood, Lao Hu peeled garlic, Lan Susu copied notes, and Bai Ye watered the plants. Everyone was doing their own thing, but everyone knew what the others were doing. He placed the enamel mug on the stone table, walked to the jujube tree, and looked at the new pebble he had personally added to the pile of stones yesterday. It was like the stones on the windowsill of Old Wei's shelter; he had already placed it there.

"When I was in the north, I saw more than one person like Xiao Ji from the supply and marketing cooperative." Zhao Zhiyuan squatted down and slowly drew three crosses on the stone slab with his finger, each with a very short vertical line pointing to the same center. "In the border farms, abandoned transfer stations, and the northern branches of the old mining area, they didn't gather, they didn't talk, they just stayed in their respective directions closest to Yushugou. Some sat in empty workshops staring blankly at the ripples in the water, some squatted at the head of the broken bridge, picking at pebbles—the pebbles were so hot from being warmed, he kept holding them, not knowing how to put them down. They were like me before, afraid to find their way around on their own."

Bai Ye looked down at the vertical lines forked into the stone slabs. When Zhao Zhiyuan mentioned "the direction closest to Yushugou," the rows of enamel mugs in Old Wei's cave came to mind again—each mug's bottom was covered with the same character, but the pressure of the writing varied: some were written heavily, chalk dust embedded in the enamel's pores; others were written lightly, so lightly that the headlamp beam had to be shone sideways to see the outline. Those who wrote heavily no longer needed the mugs when they left, casually placing them on the canvas. He remembered Zhao Zhiyuan pointing deep into the mine tunnel when he entered, saying that those who were hammering on the rock walls had been hammering all night with the same rhythm as his scars—not because they didn't want to come out, but because they were still warming up that darkest section of the road. "They needed someone to make the first strike."

Zhao Zhiyuan withdrew his hand from the stone slab, looking at the two old scars of varying depths on the inside of his left wrist. Many years ago, he had carved the first scar into the iron gate frame with his fingernail, and later, when the road was too long, he carved the second. "The gray-clad men and Vasily stopped people on the outskirts of the foreign farm, and helped them push open the gate blocked by sandstorms in front of the transfer station. However, they only accompanied people for a short distance, not staying anywhere themselves. They accompanied them for a while but refused to bring them directly into the courtyard—afraid that if they got too close, they would extinguish their own light."

Lan Susu placed the oscilloscope on the stone table and turned it on. The screen no longer displayed three signals: the fluctuations Zhao Zhiyuan had experienced upon entering were now synchronized with the rhythm in the Yushugou courtyard; Xiao Ji's waveform from the supply and marketing cooperative stood steadily beside it; and the slow, monotone from the depths of Old Wei's mining area, along with several low-frequency peaks further away that she had never publicly explained, undulated gently against the dark green background, neither overlapping nor falling silent simultaneously. She marked the locations of all the newly added signals from the past few days on Bai Ge's hand-drawn map, connecting them with faint dotted lines drawn with different colored pencils—all pointing in the same direction.

"These people are still in the same place." She put down her pen, looking at the increasingly dense markings on the map. "But they no longer lock themselves in the shadows. Some are knocking on the rock walls in the mine tunnels, some are pushing open the rusty iron doors of abandoned transfer stations, some are picking pebbles at the end of broken bridges, and some are lighting kerosene lamps in the empty workshops of old factories. Their wicks are still wet, but their fingers are already warming up. They haven't set off yet, but they are already preparing to go."

Tie Niu stood up from the stone table and walked to the courtyard gate, looking at the row of poplar stumps at the end of the dirt road. The new branches on the poplar stumps had grown quite long, a bright green, swaying gently in the wind. "The gray-clad man and Vasily haven't returned yet. They've been searching for the people scattered outside one by one, pushing them to places where they can see Elm Gully. But they don't bring them into the courtyard—if they're brought too close, their own lamp wicks won't light."

Bai Ye picked up the pebble Zhao Zhiyuan had set aside, turned it over, and ran his fingertips along its rough surface, whitened by chalk dust. The reflection in the mirror Old Wei had handed him deep in the mine tunnel wasn't his own face; the man who had placed the kerosene lamp in the center of the mirror said he was just accompanying someone through the darkest part. Bai Ge remained standing outside the door, refusing to step into the cavern. He had knocked on every door that needed to be opened beforehand. He placed the pebble back next to Zhao Zhiyuan's jar. "They're not trapped—they're waiting for someone to go first. No need for a guide, just the first person to go and put the lamp on the ground. The others will stand up and light their own lamps." He turned to Lan Susu. "Give me the map."

Lan Susu pulled the hand-drawn map of the white dove from her notebook and spread it on the stone table. She could now annotate each of the dotted lines on the map: the route Zhao Zhiyuan had taken yesterday led in the direction of the abandoned transfer station at the border farm; the path Lao Wei had pointed out after pushing open the door at the end of the shelter on the northern branch of the old mining area; and the dotted line that ran across the entire wasteland from the overseas old industrial area ended with a tiny circle, next to which was written in pencil, "About three people, haven't moved yet." She lightly tapped the circle with the pencil. "There are also people approaching from the direction of the overseas old industrial area, about three. The signal is even weaker than when Zhao Zhiyuan first arrived, at the same stage—they know where they're going, but they don't yet know where they can get up. The gray-clad man and Vasily have already encountered them."

Bai Ye picked up a pencil and drew a new dotted line on the map, stretching from the old industrial area all the way to Yushugou. "We don't need to look for them. They'll come to us—just like the people in the mines didn't come to us, they just left marks on the doorframe. They're waiting to see the light in someone else's hand; as long as one of them moves forward, they'll stand up themselves. We can't be their door, but we can be their door knocker—we don't come in, we just knock from the outside. Every time we knock, someone turns on the light." He placed the pencil on the map; the water in the enamel mug had cooled, its surface reflecting the dappled light filtering through the jujube tree branches. "We'll set off this afternoon. First, to the nearest transfer station—Xiao Ji's supply and marketing cooperative bench was the first one discovered; there are many more transfer stations yet to be opened."