of course, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for you. So, let’s say you gave me a third life. But the person who gave me my second life was a graduate called Suya who I met in a Custody and Repatriation Centre. I was with her for only two weeks, but she changed the way I look at the world. She was unlike anyone I’d met before. Even the way she moved and held herself set her apart. Through her, I began to understand the qualities that distinguish one person from another.’
‘So what happened to her?’
‘We were transferred to a labour camp, and she disappeared just before I left. I sneaked her journal out with me and have kept it with me ever since. But I’ve no idea where she is now, or even if she’s still alive.’
‘Those custody centres are a scandal. The police trawl the cities rounding up peasants, slam them in detention, then sell them to village officials who force them to work on farms for no pay. It’s a modern-day slave trade . . . So, where was Suya from?’
‘Chengdu. But I don’t have her address. I feel as though my old self died in the camp and now Suya is living my life. I was never brave, strong or clever. I’m terrified that if something bad happens, I’ll fall apart, like I almost did in the shop just now, and return to who I was. I’d like to go to Chengdu and try to track Suya’s parents down. If they tell me she’s dead, at least it will give me peace of mind. But if they’ve had no news from her . . .’ Meili thinks of Weiwei searching the Xi River for his mother, and realises she hasn’t thought about him for a long time. She looks up and scans the faces of the other diners in the restaurant.
‘Who are you looking for?’ Tang asks.
‘I was just thinking about someone. A man I met. His mother was ill, and she drowned herself so that he wouldn’t be burdened with her medical fees and could send his son to university. He travelled up and down the river for weeks, searching for her. I don’t know if he ever found her.’
‘People usually commit suicide to escape pain. But the pain doesn’t go. It’s just passed on to the relatives they leave behind.’
When Meili returns home an hour later, Kongzi is busy correcting homework. She takes a deep breath and says, ‘An inspection team swooped into the shop today and confiscated my goods,’ then waits for him to explode. But he remains silent, takes a last drag from his cigarette and flicks the stub onto the floor. Meili squats down, picks it up and drops it in the bin.
‘My eyelid keeps twitching,’ she says, flopping onto the bed in an exhausted heap. In the corner, the television is buzzing and white snowflakes are flashing across the screen. The room still smells of the five-spiced tofu they ate for supper yesterday. ‘It’s my right eye. I forget, is that supposed to be a good or bad omen?’ Heaven presses against her spine, cutting off the oxygen to her brain. She feels faint, and rolls onto her side, then reminds herself that Tang will pay her fine, saving her from financial ruin, and sighs with relief.
‘If a man’s right eye twitches, it’s a good omen; if a woman’s right eye twitches, it’s the reverse,’ Kongzi says blankly. He has cut a cardboard box in half and is lining up Nannan’s textbooks inside, their spines facing outwards. ‘So, what did they take?’
‘All the milk powder. A thousand yuan’s worth.’ She waits again for an angry outburst. A few days ago when he saw a photograph online of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu being ransacked during the Cultural Revolution, he kicked their bookcase onto the ground, incensed that this humiliating episode in the Kong family history is now available for the whole world to see. Meili looks down at the cups, toothbrushes and socks soaking in an enamel basin, then at his books stacked up in the corner near the shattered bookcase. On the table, next to Nannan’s satchel, three green caterpillars are crawling about in a paper cup.
But tonight, Kongzi doesn’t explode. He goes into the yard, sits down on a chair and pulls out a bottle of beer from under the pile of plates beneath the gas stove. Since his mouth was electrocuted by