FWP Chapter 11

Chapter 11: 11 My Youthful Bird Flew Away and Never Returned

Chen Buchu’s time of death was between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM. He died from intracranial hemorrhage, and his left leg was severed from the knee down. The zipper of the body bag was pulled all the way up, catching some dull blonde hair inside.

In the days before his death, he couldn’t stand his uneven hair color, so he spent an afternoon at the hair salon, bleaching his hair four times. At night, he lay on the upper bunk of Wanderer’s bed, constantly scratching his scalp.

After his death, no more noise came from the upper bunk. Wanderer should have been able to sleep soundly.

“I couldn’t find the leg.”

“I couldn’t find that leg no matter what.”

“So I ran away, not knowing where to go. I took his money; it included my wages. That money was a large sum. I, a poor man, suddenly became rich, and I went out and had fun, visiting many places. Many people, many houses. Everyone’s personality was as hot as the weather. When someone stole my money, someone else helped me get it back.”

“Escape is a quick fix. Seeing Zhou Zhao do it, I couldn’t help but try it once.” Wanderer’s eyes were bright. He tasted the sweetness of running away at that time. Zeng Haitang was sick, no problem, he’d run away to earn money for her. Zhou Zhao didn’t like him, no problem, he’d escape this country. Unable to face Chen Buchu’s death, no problem, he’d just run further away.

As long as he could still move, there would always be a patch of green grass in this world that he had never set foot on.

Escape is a drug, addictive.

Every sentence was a stone, and they crashed into Yu Zipei’s stomach, smashing her heart down without explanation. Dust flew up and flew up again. Wanderer’s shadow shrank and shrank again. He was an uprooted tumbleweed, rained on and fallen on the road, soon to be crushed.

Yu Zipei realized they didn’t meet by chance; she just happened to be a pedestrian walking this road.

“You came to Beijing, are you here to find him? But…”

Wanderer smiled and said, I know. I saw Li Tinglin at his house. He paused for a moment, inquiring, the two of them…

Yu Zipei: “Don’t worry about that. There’s nothing going on between them. They’re as pure as toilet water.”

Wanderer leaned back because Yu Zipei suddenly stood up and stood in front of him. She propped her hands on her hips, like a Christmas tree, with an expression of hesitating and stopping.

“Little Wanderer… life isn’t really that disgusting. There’s wine to drink, meat to eat, cigarettes to smoke, men, women, cats, dogs. You can choose the lifestyle that makes you comfortable, you can go hiking or lie at home, you can fall in love or break up, you can eat rice or eat noodles. Just thinking about what to eat tomorrow is enough to take up a long time. You’ve been stuck in a dead end for too long, thinking you can’t get out, but it’s just your blood stuck inside. As long as you harden your heart, you’ll still be a free person without burdens.”

Yu Zipei said a long string of words; the main point was only one: I know you want to die, but don’t.

However, Wanderer just looked at her. He first said, thank you, and then said, “Actually, I’m two months older than you.”

Yu Zipei was too good. She was radiant when she said these words, causing Wanderer to lower his head and bury himself in the depths of darkness. He remembered that night with Zhou Zhao. They were both tired, lying in bed. Zhou Zhao was smoking, and Wanderer kicked his foot, asking him to get some water.

Zhou Zhao brought the water. He stood on the ground, the light from the bathroom softly smearing over him. Wanderer saw a scar below his abdomen, very old, like vines clinging to his young body.

Zhou Zhao explained, “It’s nothing big. Just outside, they were renovating the cables and dug into the roof of my room. They found my mom holding me down, and I was struggling.”

“What were you struggling about?”

“She was holding a knife, saying the sun was about to grow out of me.”

Wanderer kissed him, his hand moving down along his body. “She was going to cut you? Did it hurt?”

Zhou Zhao touched Wanderer’s face in the dark. He scraped Wanderer’s eye sockets. “It was okay, thank God.”

/

Li Tinglin returned to his seat with the bottle opener. Zhou Zhao had already pried the beer bottle open on the edge of the table. He poured a glass for Li Tinglin and took a swig himself.

Li Tinglin was thinking about what he wanted to say before, urging, “Where were you just talking about?”

Zhou Zhao grunted, his mind working slowly, “Talking about, talking about… that night in the hotel… never mind.” He didn’t want to tell Li Tinglin about his affair with Wanderer.

Li Tinglin didn’t force him. The two brothers silently drank the horse pee-like beer for a while.

Zhou Zhao grabbed a lamb skewer to eat. The lamb skewers were cold, and the oil and salt had congealed on the meat, getting stuck in his teeth.

Tonight, they ate at a restaurant near Yu Zipei’s house, a Japanese restaurant that cost an average of one thousand per person, half-cooked and half-hungry. After coming out, they directly turned the corner and continued at a street food stall.

They chatted and joked, talking about everything under the sun. They didn’t know who started it, but they actually started talking about Wanderer.

Li Tinglin was curious about what exactly happened when Zhou Zhao went to find Wanderer that year. He vaguely knew an outline, but the specific details were still unclear. Wanderer should have confessed to Zhou Zhao.

Zhou Zhao must have rejected him; otherwise, why would he have left home and squatted in America for so many years?

Li Tinglin patted his brother’s shoulder, “There’s something, I was thinking of not telling you, but I see that the Queen Mother of the West didn’t have a good ending, and I’m afraid I’ll be punished too, so, so I should still mention it to you.”

“Get lost,” Zhou Zhao slapped his hand away, knocking off all the goosebumps, “Say it or don’t.”

Li Tinglin raised an eyebrow. Okay, then he really wouldn’t say it.

Another minute passed in silence. Zhou Zhao couldn’t hold back and asked, “What is it?”

“Give me five yuan,” Li Tinglin held out his hand, “In cash.”

Zhou Zhao frowned, rummaging in his pockets, muttering that he didn’t know which ex-boyfriend had trained this cheapskate. He searched all his pockets and pulled out a wrinkled one-dollar bill, putting it in Li Tinglin’s hand, “Give me change, one dollar and sixty cents.”

Li Tinglin quickly grabbed the money in his hand.

Zhou Zhao, who was across from him, wasn’t angry, softening his tone to say, “Is it about Wanderer?”

/

Zhou Zhao’s father had a fortune-teller friend who did a reading for Zhou Zhao, rattling on for three minutes. Zhou Zhao didn’t understand a single word. His dad coughed twice next to him, telling the fortune-teller to speak human language.

The fortune-teller stroked his beard, “I’m doing a reading for the child; it’s fine if the child understands. Child, did you understand?”

Zhou Zhao shook his head, “I only understood this sentence; the answer is I didn’t understand.”

The fortune-teller touched the back of Zhou Zhao’s head, “This unlucky child, he really doesn’t know how to play dumb.”

/

Zhou Zhao, who didn’t know how to play dumb, heard news about Wanderer after many years.

He came to find me, even knocked on my door, and was pushed to the ground by Li Tinglin. The floor at my door is so hard. Wanderer probably has a bruised butt.

“I have to go find him and apologize on your behalf,” Zhou Zhao said seriously.

Li Tinglin couldn’t wait to spit phlegm on his face, “Are you going to apologize? Take a piss and look at your face, okay? Brother, Grandpa, Master, is that a donut in your brain? Do I need to remind you what he did to you?”

Wanderer harmed him? Not really.

Zhou Zhao looked indifferent.

“You broke up with Yu Zipei as soon as you came back and got beaten up by her, and then got beaten up by your dad. Do I need to remind you how you looked when I went to visit you in prison?”

Actually, it was alright, he just couldn’t get out of bed. Zhou Zhao thought that he had a mother who liked to play Dangerous Liaisons for Ten Days. Even if she was dead, the family rules she left behind were still alive and well.

Zhou Zhao wasn’t afraid of being beaten, but he was afraid of being locked up. When the surroundings darkened, his mother’s voice was everywhere. The origin of every sound was connected to his mother’s shadow, one after another, densely packed, filling the room. They pushed and shoved, squeezing him into a corner, high and low voices, laughing and scolding, all converging into one sentence: The sun is dirty, and the moon is incomparably pure.

The sun is dirty, and the moon is incomparably pure.

The sun is dirty, and the moon is incomparably pure.

The sun is dirty, and the moon is incomparably pure.

Screams rose and fell here. Fear was the least amount of resistance. He returned to the age of eight, seeing the first knife in his life. His mother fiddled with it, saying, This is a knife. It can remove dirty things. Would you like to touch it?

He reached out his hand, cold. He didn’t know how hard he should touch a blade, so he was naturally cut.

Red blood dripped down. The cold feeling passed, and then came the pain. In the language his mother taught him, there was no word “pain.” He didn’t know how to express it, so he had to cry.

He heard a thumping sound above his head. His mother grabbed his arm, the tip of the knife pointing at his eyes, then sliding down, the tip of his nose, his chin, his lips, his collarbone, his chest, his navel. The knife came to a position his mother liked.

The thumping sound became louder. This time, his heartbeat and the sound from above his head coincided in one place.

There’s something very dirty in your body. Don’t move. Mommy will help you clean it up, okay?

Zhou Zhao opened his eyes. Outside the glass window, Li Tinglin was grabbing the railing of the terrace, struggling to step over one leg.

It turned out he had fallen asleep leaning against the window.

He said to Li Tinglin, “I want to go find Wanderer. I want to tell him that I broke up with Yu Zipei.”

He said to Li Tinglin, “I want to go find Wanderer. I want to tell him that the puppy you gave me is gone.”

[Author’s Remarks]

It was lightning and thunder outside when I wrote this chapter. Awesome!