At one point, I thought I'd remembered it, he was on Mount Song Road. So I asked the way to Mount Song Road. Then I thought he must have said Mount Heng Road, then probably Mount Xiang Road, Mount Huang Road, Elm Street, Heaventree Street, Drum Tower Street, Qingxu Street … The lights in the buildings on either side of me went out one by one, until only the street lights were left. I was still walking, like a machine. I kept telling myself, go back to the train station, just go back to the station and sleep on the street. But I still wasn't willing. Why am I so stupid?
Tramping the big streets of the provincial capital, breathing in the freezing air, was like walking through a wasteland. My heart was bleak and desolate. The streets were strange to me and all the people strangers. I was searching for a little warmth in a man whose childhood nickname was Kale. Kale, where are you?
Later I asked myself, why did you have to do that? You almost walked the whole night, across half the city, stubbornly looking for that guy whose nickname was Kale. Why are you so stupid? Why didn't you go and stay in a little inn? Or you could have rung up one of your old university classmates. But you didn't even think of ringing somebody. You didn't have "telephone consciousness" . Even later, I finally realised that it wasn't me walking at all. It was my background, my homeland, pushing me to walk. I had to walk. I wasn't looking for a person, I was looking for a refuge.
And only much later did I work out that to live comfortably in a city, you have to have three things: an identity, a work unit, and contacts. All three are crucial. If you don't have an identity, work unit or contacts, then you are a drifter. Then the city is like a maze designed to bewilder and ensnare you: danger is everywhere.
I know that in the newspapers everyone is opposing the use of contacts. But don't they understand that "contacts" are the basis for human survival? Humans are inseparable from their "contacts" . Humans depend on contacts to survive, especially spiritually. Marx said that human nature is "the ensemble of social relations" . So what these people are opposing is actually others, not themselves. Nobody opposes themselves. Anyway I was lucky—at 2:27am, I finally found my "contact" .
I found Kale in a construction site. He was "Capable" Youcai, not Kale. To protect his dignity, I couldn't use his nickname anymore. The old man guarding the site told me, "Yes, he's here."
The construction worker Wu Youcai was asleep in a half-finished seven-storey building that didn't even have doors or windows yet. He leapt out of bed and pulled on a pair of underpants. Standing half-naked by his bed, his eyes wide as a pair of bull's balls, his mouth gaped open like a great dustpan, and his hands shivered and trembled, as if in the dead of winter he was clutching two fans, not quite letting them go and not quite gripping them fast. He never imagined someone would come looking for him!
Kale was scared silly.
He clutched his arms to his chest, his teeth chattering with cold, and said, "Diu, is that Diu?" Diu was my childhood nickname. "You, you, ah, you … how did you get here?"
"The guy guarding the site is a good man. He said you were on the seventh floor," I said.
"Old Zhu? Mr. Zhu, he's from our county," said Youcai, hurriedly pulling on his clothes. He glanced at the watch on his wrist. "Fuck, it's half past two. Why've you come at this time of night? I guess you haven't, ah, had any …?" As he spoke he unconsciously glanced over to the unplastered wall, where a small bag hung on a peg. His bowl and chopsticks were in the bag.
"It's so late, I ate ages ago," I said, "It was so hard to find you, I'm absolutely knackered. Didn't you say we could come to the city and find you?"
When I said I had already eaten, he visibly relaxed. "Yes, yes," he said. "Why didn't you come earlier?
"I came to register, but I arrived late."
He looked at me and said, "Sleep now, it's almost three in the morning, get to sleep." He kept repeating himself, and pointed at the bed opposite. "Sleep there. That lazy fucker's gone home for a holiday."
At that moment I instantly relaxed, like my body was collapsing. I went over and lay down on the lazy fucker's bed. There was fresh straw on the wooden boards, and the sheet was newly washed, so soft and warm! The quilt was thick too, lovely and snug. It was great. I was so tired and desperate for sleep, it felt like my eyelids were glued together. But I had to talk, that was the price of staying there.
We lay in our beds, and he did his best to get me to chat about confidential village matters, the things only locals know. I did my best to keep my eyes open, clinging onto my last drops of wakefulness, to keep up with his threads of conversation. It was like a tangled ball of string, rambling here and there and repeating itself endlessly. Silently I begged him to spare me and let me sleep.
But he prattled on and on. "Diu, you've graduated, huh?"
"Yes," I said.
"You're still, ah, a graduate student?"
"Yeah."
"You've been transferred to the provincial capital?"
"Yeah."
"So from now on, you're like government staff?"
"Uh … Uh huh," I said.
"You're such a clever boy. You're a university teacher?"
"… Uh huh."
Suddenly he sat up, clutching his quilt, and crossed his legs. "Diu," he said, "I was almost made an airman. An air force pilot."
"Oh … really?"
"It's the truth," he said, "Diu. I've got ringworm. If I didn't have ringworm, if my Mum had just got me some medicine sooner, I'd be a pilot now."
"Right … in the sky."
"Way back when Auntie played match-maker for me, Tuzi's family looked down on me. Now what is she? … Nothing! … Diu, is that stupid old fucker Cai still the Party secretary? His third daughter never seemed like she was really his … She was so fresh and bubbly, such beautiful white skin!"
I kept mumbling, right, uh huh … but in my heart I was already asleep. How warm and snug that bed was!
