Tales of the End of the Century

On the day the jujubes ripened, Old Hu got up earlier than everyone else. Before dawn, he moved a ladder and set it up under the jujube tree, climbing up barefoot, step by step, on the dew-dampened rungs. Tie Niu stood under the tree, holding the ladder for him, looking up and saying that the left branch was out of reach and he'd have to use a bamboo pole to knock it down. Old Hu ignored him, placed his enamel mug on a branch, and used both hands to pick the topmost cluster of jujubes. Dewdrops still clung to the jujube skins; as he picked them, a drop trembled and rolled into his fingers, cool and refreshing. He held the first jujube in his palm, examining it for a long time. He had watched this jujube grow under the tree all summer, from green to white, from white to red, and now it was finally ready to be picked.

Bai Ye came out of the house and placed the enamel mug on the stone table. The blurry chalk writing on the bottom of the mug was slightly whitened by the morning light. He walked to the jujube tree, bent down, and picked up a jujube that had fallen from the branch. A small piece of the skin was cracked, and a tiny drop of juice seeped out, shimmering amber in the morning light. He put the jujube in his mouth, and the sweetness spread from the tip of his tongue to his throat. This sweetness was not the long-warmed sweetness of the deep mining area, nor the finally relaxed relief of the reflection in the mirror of the millennium. It was new. The jujubes that had just ripened this year, the sun that had just shone this year, and the rain that had just fallen under this jujube tree this year.

Lan Susu emerged from the east wing, notebook in hand. She turned to the last page and added a line at the end of the ever-growing list—this morning, an additional signal appeared on the oscilloscope, very new, its frequency still unstable, its direction near that old outpost further north of the desolate wasteland. She put down her pencil and watched Old Hu pick the dates one by one and put them into the enamel mug, the rim clinking softly. "This signal is probably the one with the longest journey. He's been traveling all summer, and by autumn he'll encounter the first arrow left by the white dove on the outpost's outer wall."

Tie Niu climbed down the ladder, went to the kitchen, and brought out the largest enamel basin, placing it on the stone table. Old Hu poured the picked dates into the basin—big and small, green and red, half-ripe—forming a thick layer. A few dates still had dew on them; as they fell to the bottom of the basin, they rolled several times, leaving extremely fine watermarks on the enamel surface.

The men from the old industrial area also got up one after another. The man carrying the jar squatted beside the basin, picked out a green date and a red date, and placed them side by side on the rim of the basin. The two dates were different colors, but both were picked from the same tree. The tall man in the old military overcoat picked the smallest date from the basin, put it in his mouth and chewed it; it was very sweet. He said there were no fruit trees under the cooling tower; the only green thing was the moss growing on the shady side of the power distribution room. The woman who came from the brick kiln took her enamel jar, filled it halfway with dates, placed it on the edge of the stone table, and looked up to ask Old Hu if he could leave a few for those still on their way from the mining area. Old Hu scooped a small pile of dates from the basin and placed them beside him; some were ripe, some were half-green, and some were still dewy. He carefully brushed the chaff off each one. "Everyone will get some. They'll get some when they arrive." He gently placed the jar in the center of the stone table.

Zhao Zhiyuan also arrived. He brought half a bag of millet, which he placed steadily on the kitchen windowsill. A few days ago, the young man surnamed Ji had come by again, leaving behind a paperweight and a packet of braised tofu that had just arrived from the supply and marketing cooperative. Zhao Zhiyuan poured the millet into the rice bin by the wall, and after watching the paperweight settle at the edge of the pile of pebbles, he walked alone to the stone table, picked up a date from the basin, and slowly chewed it. He didn't say anything, but the quietness he exuded, which no longer needed a mirror, perfectly complemented the gray pebble that had been sitting on the inside of the threshold for so long.

The man in gray and Vasily sat down at the stone table. The man in gray picked up a half-red date, looking at the half-green still clinging to its skin, and thought of the jujube tree by the wall of the old farm abroad. Before autumn, he had helped the last survivor, separated from the group, up from under the wall, and the man had said the dates were ripe before leaving. Vasily picked a ripe date from the basin and placed it next to Korsak's toothbrush, telling Bai Ye that they had met enough people along the way—he and the man in gray had encountered no fewer than twenty people who no longer needed to be waited for at the foreign transit station, abandoned farm, and the edge of the old industrial area. Some had come out on their own, some had been led out by chalk arrows, and some had been slowly brought up from the depths of the wilderness by the signal from the three people under the cooling tower. He wrote down each person's name and their condition on a page torn from the back cover of his notebook, the handwriting light and cramped, as if he had hurriedly written it down under the iron shed of the transit station and handed it to the next person.

Bai Ye took the paper and spread it on the stone table. He recognized some of the names on it—those were the blank lines in Sergei's test subject list that had been empty until now, with dates, locations, and very brief annotations: "Moved." "Halfway." "Almost there." He silently read each annotation again, then took the Aurora Project test subject list from the east wing and turned to the last page of the list of those transferred. The names marked "transferred" on the list were originally blank, but now some had dates and locations filled in, while others were still empty, but next to each blank space had been lightly drawn with a very thin vertical line in pencil. He compared these lines line by line, confirming that each one corresponded to the tanks deep in the mine, the newly added stones in the piles of pebbles, and the waveforms on the oscilloscope that had not yet arrived.

He placed the list back on the stone table, weighing one corner down with an enamel mug. On the table lay a small pile of dates left for the few people at the mining area; the dew on the dates had dried in the morning sun, giving them a warm, dark red hue in the enamel basin. He packed the reserved dates into a cloth bag, tied it tightly, and placed it inside his canvas satchel. Tie Niu walked to the courtyard gate, glanced in the direction of the poplar stump, and said that the people at the border outpost would probably take another month or so to arrive, and his signal frequency was slowly approaching.

Bai Ye nodded, placed his satchel beside the jujube tree root, bent down, picked out the smallest pebble from the pile, examined it for a while, and then put it back. Each pebble was different. Some had sharp edges, freshly broken off from the scree slope beyond the border, their edges still bearing weathered rock fragments; others had smooth edges, the kind of old stones picked up after a long walk along the abandoned transfer station marked by white doves. Each one was different; each one had come from a different direction.

Every perch the white dove had once made was now being tended by people tidying up their pebbles, jars, and reflecting mirrors. He shifted his gaze from the pile of pebbles to the dirt path leading to the courtyard—the same path, stretching from the poplar stump all the way to the gate, smoothed out by the footsteps of those who had walked back and forth, even more even than it had been two months ago. Before each figure entered, they would pause for a moment beside the poplar stump, and the next time they stopped there, their footsteps would surely carry fine sand from another barren wasteland.