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3
I moved here half a year ago.
The day before I moved, I met someone at a friend's home who claimed he could tell fortunes. As soon as he saw me, he congratulated me on my pending move. I smiled. It was no big secret. Then I asked casually if there was anything else to congratulate me tor. He held my hand for a careful examination and said he saw a peach blossom, which meant lucky in love. After that, he stared intently at my palm for a long while.
This romantic good fortune of yours is really peculiar. Look here, it lies hidden in the lines of your palm." He stroked my palm with his index finger. "Also, there is major yin influence."
"Any harm in that?" I asked.
"Can't tell."
This amateur fortune-teller was the first honest man I had met, someone who would actually admit that he couldn't tell. Which must have meant that he could tell about the other stuff.
The next day, I moved.
I should make it clear that even after finishing the move, I didn't have any luck that was even remotely peachy.
A chrysanthemum I had planted in a flowerpot was blooming-yellow petals, the kind the woman poet Li Qingzhao liked to write about. The mums made my empty balcony look like a small cemetery.
Now back to my move. The building was finished only a few years before, yet I was already the third owner of this apartment. The day I moved in was dark and cloudy. Our truck was stuck in the tu
The move was completed, and not a single neighbor had come out to watch the show.
It was dark by the time I saw my friends off. Standing at the curb, I looked at the building. Only a few lights were on, including my own two. Weeds grew amid heaps of construction material abandoned at the curb. The streetlight was broken, and there was darkness all around.
It was a bit of an effort to walk all the way up to the sixth floor. I opened the cast-iron gate and realized that someone was standing in the corridor, leaning over the banister to look down.
I cleared my throat.
"Are you the new tenant?" It was a woman with a very soft voice. Her door was half-open, and the light from inside lit up the tip of her nose. Some music wafted out, the kind with poor sound quality.
"Are you the owner of six-oh-two?" I asked.
"Oh, no. I used to live here, in six-oh-one. Just here to take a peek. No, I'm not the owner."
I couldn't very well pursue the matter, so after exchanging some pleasantries, I went back to my own apartment.
Inside the new place, even the four walls felt cold. I didn't plan to stay here for long, so I decided not to paint the walls. The noise from the tu
I started to gather together some odds and ends, tripping all over myself. Just to boost my spirits a bit, I turned on all the lights in the apartment. Still, it didn't feel bright. The walls were beige, painted by the previous owner. There were drawings by a childish hand, friendly like. And a faint footprint. A couple of mosquito corpses. At this point, the doorbell rang.
As I strolled over to the door, I tried to guess who it might be.
The door opened, and there was the neighbor I had met just a minute ago. I asked if anything was the matter.
She answered, beaming a bright smile, "If you have any questions, or if there's anything you don't know, just come and ask me."
"All right. I won't hold back."
Under the light, her face seemed pale, her lips painted a bright red. She had a pretty neck. Her hand rested casually against the doorframe, a young-looking hand. We were standing so close that I didn't look at her figure. She had a sort of baby face, but there were tiny wrinkles in the corners of her eyes.
"This place is different from Huangpu West," she said. "You hardly ever see anybody, and it might take some getting used to."
She gave me another smile and went back to her own apartment.
At this point, I remembered the fortune-teller's peach blossom. When the mums were fading, would a peach come into bloom?
Alongside the beige walls, I resumed my unpacking, starting to feel very lonely. My stereo system was still packed away, so not a sound could be coaxed from it. I dropped what I was doing and walked over to the wall. I pressed my ear against the wall but couldn't hear anything. I opened the door-the corridor was pitch-black. The cast-iron gate was shut, the iron bars glistening under the faint light.
I smoked a cigarette in the corridor and went back inside, leaving my door open.
Then I sat down in a chair and lit up another cigarette, keeping my eyes on the open door.
4
She didn't close the door when she came in but walked straight to the study and, without saying anything, started putting my books into the bookcase. Her waist was like a young girl's, a nice figure. I watched her upper body as it rose and fell, and when she bent down, her buttocks, wrapped tight in jeans, looked like a twisted face wanting to speak. She had long limbs and elegant wrists. Her breasts were not prominent, barely discernible, and when she raised her arms to put the books into the bookcase, they were no longer even that.
I finished my cigarette. Still, I didn't move.
When she had filled two bookcases, she stopped, sat down in an armchair, and took a cigarette from the coffee table. I lit it for her. "Want something to drink?"
She nodded.
I went to the refrigerator for a beer and poured it into two glasses. "Cheers."
"Cheers." She downed half a glass in one gulp.
Then I finished mine. The beer was tepid.
"More?"
I nodded.
She came back with more beer, refilled mine, topped off her own. "Let's go outside."
I followed her out and leaned against the balcony. The cars had thi
"Huangpu East is like an island," I said. "And this building is an islet surrounded by an island."
Without looking up, she said she was a little cold. So we went back inside. The lights were bright.
"My bed, it used to be here, too," she stated out of the blue. "A bed is like an island. Or maybe a pool of water. When I lie on the bed, my body becomes a boat."
I understood that when she talked about the bed, it was just a metaphor, with no undertones of seduction. We continued with our beer.
"You've got a lot of books."
"Do you like to read?"
"No. I don't read much."
She looked like an educated woman-although even educated women nowadays, once they leave school, don't tend to read much. It's the same with men.
"The books I do read a lot are medical books," she said. "Every chapter is intriguing. Having an illness is like an art. Bacteria and viruses are the artists, the human body is the canvas, or the clay for sculpting." She continued, "I like to imagine myself living through one disease after another. I have now lived through every possible kind of disease. Every one has been painful but artistic."
I said, "I don't like being sick."
"Me neither. But I like to imagine myself being sick. I can really get into it."
"I don't even like to imagine it."
She said, "You and I are not the same kind of people."
I wanted to find a medical book in the bookcase for her. But by the time I found one, I realized she had already walked to the door. She noticed I was looking at her, gave me a smile, and vanished.