I met Dawei and Zichen on the same day, an hour apart. Dawei and I were both late for a bookshop panel, and arrived to find no seats left. We stood at the back and listened for a while, then one after the other we headed to the coffee shop downstairs. Dawei sat at the table next to mine, still holding the book that the event was for: Roberto Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth. We both ordered Americanos. He started talking to me in a not particularly enthusiastic tone, wondering which story from the book was my favourite. ‘Anne Moore’s Life’, I said. You girls all like that one, he said. What about you? I asked. His favourite was ‘Mauricio (“The Eye”) Silva’. Right away I thought he might be gay, because I had a gay friend who also liked that story. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans, which didn’t tell me anything. We chatted for a bit about 2666, then he said the panel would be ending soon, and suggested we go somewhere else before the audience came down and the place got crowded. Outside we saw someone else holding a copy of Last Evenings on Earth. This was Zichen. He’d gone to the loo halfway through the event and, while peeing, realised that none of the speakers understood Bolaño any better than he did, so he went back for his bag and left. Now he was standing beneath a clove tree having a cigarette. It was spring, and there’d just been a rain shower. Zichen told us this reminded him of a Bolaño simile: the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot. Neither of us could remember which book this was from, so we didn’t respond. Dawei had a smoke too, then we asked Zichen if he wanted to hang out with us.
We ended up in a cafe with numerous three-blade fans hanging from the ceiling. After talking more about Bolaño, we parted ways and headed home to bed. In the months that followed we spent many afternoons at that cafe. By summer, we’d decided to start an independent literary journal called Whale. It was Dawei who came up with the name. He insisted that a journal was alive, and so should be named after a living creature. There’d be one issue every three months, which would include short stories and poems, plus a few photographs. Dawei provided the money for paying contributors and printing. His dad had given him a flat in the city centre which brought in a spectacular amount of rent each month. He refused to work at his dad’s firm, though – in his words, it was a rubbish dump of capitalism. ‘Rubbish’ was his favourite term for everything he hated. The world was just one rubbish dump after another. It was 2012. Dawei was twenty-nine, I was thirty and Zichen thirty-two. Not exactly young any more. By the time they were our age, Nick had witnessed Gatsby’s downfall, and Frank had lost April in Revolutionary Road. It was time for us to stop dreaming, but meeting each other seemed only to delay our awakening. In a way, Whale was a shelter for our remaining dreams. I serialised a novel about a young woman and her lover, the ghost of a sailor from Joseph Conrad’s era. Dawei mostly wrote poems. He had been influenced by Conrad too, who believed that even fiction writers needed to go through the baptism of poetry in their youth. As for the actual poems, it was hard to say whose influence was at work in them, though there were traces of Celan, Trakl and Dickinson. His poems were nebulous, full of bizarre images: a polar bear’s kiss, a seal’s toes, Qu Yuan’s pillow. He illustrated them himself. Zichen barely contributed any writing apart from the foreword to every issue; his main duty was soliciting manuscripts. We knew he was working on a novel, but he refused to show it to anyone. His writing was, as he put it, in the midst of a violent transformation.
Whale shut down after a year due to a lack of material; there weren’t many writers we actually found worthy of publishing. More pragmatically, sales were terrible. We left copies at small bookshops on consignment, but barely any of them sold. The returns soon piled up in our warehouse. One evening we shoved them all against the walls to clear some space in the centre of the room, where we sat and held a simple ceremony to dissolve the magazine. We all got very drunk, hugging and kissing each other. When Dawei kissed me, I thought of the polar bear in his poem. There was a purity to it, no lust at all. If I were to fall in love with either of these men it would destroy quite a few things, and our dream would crumble in an instant – an awful prospect. That’s what was on my mind as I stumbled outside to the loo, a red-brick outhouse. When I was done, I heard flowing water nearby and walked towards it. I found myself at a river. The sailor’s ghost was standing on the water. I came up with an ending for my novel, I said, but I have no reason to finish writing it now. It ought to sink along with Whale, don’t you think? The ghost neither agreed nor disagreed. He held up a hand, as if to see whether moonlight could pass through his palm. I went back to the warehouse and stood before the door, thinking about how my laptop had died earlier that day, which meant I’d lost the first half of my novel. If I were to light a fire and burn down the warehouse, every remaining word of my novel would vanish from this world. The sailor, having followed me back, whispered in my ear, If you do that, I’ll become the ghost of a ghost! I ignored him, and imagined flames devouring the building with my two friends still inside. I’d be lonely without them, but also free. I pushed open the door. Zichen was cradling Dawei’s head, rocking him to sleep, but when he saw me he shook him awake. Dawei sat up unsteadily. In the murky light, Zichen stood and officially proclaimed that we were dissolving Whale. He ended by repeating our credo: against philistinism. We also stood against realism and political writing. Personally, Zichen believed novels should be unstructured, without a defined centre. They should be full of riddles that didn’t need to be answered. He thought it was difficult to lead a purely literary life in this country. We finished the booze, and felt sad.
We didn’t see each other for a while after the magazine closed, maybe three or four months. During this time I almost married a guy I met at a friend’s wedding, and Dawei split up with the woman in the UK he’d been dating long-distance for the last two years. We phoned each other to share the pain of our broken hearts. Realising we hadn’t seen Zichen for a while, we each called him separately, which is how we found out he’d broken a leg and had been lying at home for two months. We wanted to see him but he turned us down. I called Dawei, who said, I’m going anyway, he needs us. I’d like to see him too, I said, I feel like we’re losing him. We kept calling Zichen until he said okay, we could get together, but not at his home. We arranged to meet by a lake in a park. It was a strange encounter. Dawei and I arrived at the appointed time to find Zichen already there, waiting alone in his wheelchair. It was evening and there was no one in sight, just wild ducks flying across the water. He seemed to have been there a while, part of the landscape. When we said goodbye, he insisted that we leave first. Someone would pick him up soon, he said. We left him alone by the lake.
It was at that meeting that Zichen first brought up Hai Tong, whose book he’d been reading. Neither of us had heard of her. We asked if we ought to have done.
Not many people have read her work, he said. She’s very mysterious, no one knows where she lives. Remember in 2666 when three academics travel to Mexico in search of Benno von Archimboldi? Maybe Hai Tong is our Archimboldi. Do you mean – we should go searching for her? Dawei asked. The best way to get close to an author is to become part of their story, Zichen said. We all like Bolaño, right? Fiction is a kind of spell, I said, and analysing a story is an exorcism. It loses all its mystery. All great fiction is a maze, Zichen said. You can’t understand if you haven’t walked through it. Dawei pointed at Zichen’s cast, We’d better wait till you’re back on your feet, though.
After saying goodbye to Zichen, Dawei and I went for dinner. Zichen looked a bit fragile, Dawei said, like he hadn’t spoken to anyone for a while. It’s true, I said, being alone for too long gives you all kinds of peculiar ideas. He replied, You’re not wrong, we should go see him again next week.
When I got home, I looked up Hai Tong. She’d published a novel in 2008, The Pleiades, which was now out of print. The used-book site I checked only listed one seller in Beijing. I bought a copy, and later learned Dawei had done the same. Our books arrived the following day. By that time, I’d read all the information about Hai Tong I could find on the internet. The publication of The Pleiades had caused some controversy. Readers were outraged by the graphic scenes: a young boy sexually assaulted by an older man, a woman masturbating with a police truncheon, a teacher suffocating a cat in a piano, a water cooler full of blood. Critics assumed these sensational moments were there for spectacle, to attract readers’ eyeballs. Four hundred and eighty seven pages of chaos, with no structure to speak of. Reading it, you had no idea what the author was trying to say. Some readers said they felt so uncomfortable they wanted to fling the book from a window. Others said they pitied the author, who was clearly a confused woman with severe childhood trauma. The novel was resolutely ignored by the literary establishment until a prominent award unexpectedly named it Book of the Year. The citation went: This book is impossible to summarise or analyse. It manifests the author’s abundant life force and unrestrained talent. Hai Tong didn’t attend the ceremony. Her editor explained she was travelling abroad. When interviewed afterwards, this tall, skinny man with black-rimmed glasses confessed he’d never actually met Hai Tong in person, they’d only ever emailed. The reporter – who seemed in a rush to get home in time for the school run – tried to wrap things up by asking, In your view, what kind of person is Hai Tong? The editor pushed his glasses up his nose and said, I sense that she’s a little plump, even though she doesn’t eat much, and that she’s on the shy side, with a quiet voice, and . . . The reporter put her recorder away and said, All right, thank you, we look forward to reading more of Hai Tong’s books.
The book arrived by courier at five in the evening. I ripped open the parcel, sat at my dining table, and began reading. A bizarrely scattered narrative voice, like someone shouting into a gale. The protagonist is a thirty-year-old novelist who can’t stand her husband and eventually leaves him. She moves into the home of a reader she meets at an event, a single mother of a nine-month-old boy. Each day, after the reader leaves for work, the author tells the infant macabre fairy tales of her own creation: a goldfish becoming infatuated with a fisherman, the moon burying her bastard son, Rapunzel strangling a suitor with her own hair. These stories take up thirty pages of the novel, but just as it’s threatening to turn into A Thousand and One Nights, the author decides to leave. She brings the boy along – he can walk by then. They take a cable car up a mountain. Along the way, the author realises the passenger sitting across from them is her mother’s lover. The novel then flashes back to the author’s childhood: her father, a soldier, is stationed overseas, and her mother leaves her with an uncle while she meets her lover. The uncle, a deaf artist, uses the little girl as his model. His paintings are influenced by Chinese erotica from the medieval period, except they are dour rather than exuberant. He removes the young girl’s clothes and ties her to a Ming dynasty four-poster bed. One day, before he can have his way with her, she struggles free of the ropes, punches him to the ground, and flees. That very night she is on a train to Beijing, where she finds work as a model. Sitting beneath the skylight of an art studio, she pops mints into her mouth as the boys bend their heads over their drawings. When her mother tracks her down she asks after the lover, but her mother says she no longer has one. Oh right, he was dealt with during the 1988 crackdown. The novel switches to his story, minus the author’s mother. All of that in chapter one.
In the second chapter, the reader’s son – now fifteen – takes an older girl to an abandoned building in the city centre. In the basement is a door to a dark passageway where a white flower grows. The next fifty pages are a botanical treatise about this plant, which can survive without photosynthesis, and arrived in China via Persia. A history of the passageway followed. In the Republican era, the abandoned building was the residence of a Kuomintang official, who fled there with his family during the liberation of Beiping. One of his concubines chooses not to escape, but hangs herself in the attic. Then the novel goes into the concubine’s story, and her reasons for not wanting to leave. The second chapter ends with the boy telling the girl that as a child he’d spent two years living in this passageway.
The third chapter, which has nothing to do with the first two, is about three young people leaving the city and going to the countryside to return to an agricultural way of life. One by one, the young people go missing, and their newly-built village becomes a ghost town. This is interspersed with increasingly gory tales of actual village ghosts, hinting that they were responsible for the young people’s gruesome deaths. This chapter is titled ‘Speedwell’, with a note at the end: Speedwell: a type of figwort the shape of a dog’s bollock, allegedly possessing the power to banish ghosts.
The fourth chapter returns to the author, now aged thirty-nine, homeless and itinerant. She is happy living this way, though from time to time she wishes she could have a hot shower. Her editor lets her have a mailbox in his office, where readers can leave their keys. She goes to the addresses they send her, chats with them, and uses their showers. Sometimes she gets caught up in the moment and ends up in bed with them. The novel ends on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the protagonist walking up the stairs of a building she’s never been in before, pressing her ear to the door to listen for movement inside, inserting a key into the lock.
I read the novel in three sittings, pausing only to sleep. The second time I laid down I dreamt of the author. She was in the garden downstairs, feeding a cat. When I approached, she and the cat both darted into the undergrowth. I drew her from memory when I woke up: sharp chin, high cheekbones, pale brown catlike eyes (or maybe this detail was muddling her with the cat). I finished the book at noon. Starving, I ordered a pizza and stood at the window, waiting. I found some of the details in the novel already blurring in my mind, as if they’d melted and were seeping into the folds of my brain. A forceful melding, a sort of colonising. My memories were being replaced by the novel. I could clearly recall the white flower in the tunnel. The doorbell rang. The pizza was here, even though I hadn’t seen the delivery person come down the one road to my building. As if he’d always been concealed within these walls, and just changed into his red uniform. Perhaps he had many identities. At some level I understood that these wild conjectures meant my way of seeing the world had been fundamentally altered.
That night I phoned Dawei to ask about going to see Zichen. Have you read it? he asked. I understood that he’d read the book as well, and abruptly we fell silent. After a long while, he said, I can’t tell if the book is any good. Uh-huh, I said. I’m not sure I understood it, he said. I have a lot of questions. But – how should I put this? – I feel like I’m in the story. Do you understand? His voice was raspy, as if he’d just woken up. Yes, I said, I understand. What do you think of the book? he said. I’ve just finished it, I said, I’m exhausted, I need to sleep. But tell me what you think, he said, I need to talk about it. If you hadn’t called me, I’d have called you. I said, This novel isn’t about love, guilt or sex, it’s about loneliness. I feel very lonely having read it. I know I’m lonely, but I don’t often feel it. He said, I understand. We were silent for a moment. Should we visit Zichen tomorrow? he asked. I said yes.
This time round Zichen agreed to see us more readily, though once again he insisted on meeting by the lake. It was raining when we got there. A park-keeper who’d been cutting grass came over and said, Your friend is waiting in the pavilion. We jogged over and found Zichen alone in his wheelchair, completely dry even though it had been raining for more than an hour. His cast had been removed, and the leg was visibly smaller than the other one. I thought it looked dainty, ladylike. Zichen said he could walk now, but hadn’t wanted to show up struggling with crutches. He asked what we’d been reading, and neither of us answered. Finally, Dawei said, Why did you start looking for Hai Tong? There are lots of things I don’t understand about her novel, Zichen said. She might not understand them herself, Dawei said. Zichen smiled. True, she must be full of plot holes. That’s precisely why it’s interesting to look for her. Like in 2666, when they go in search of the German who’s been nominated for the Nobel Prize. That’s no different to us seeking out an author not many people know about. The search has a significance greater than the person being searched for. Let’s get real: this country is dead, and if you want a rich literary life, you need action. We can’t have demonstrations or public gatherings, so what’s left?
It costs a lot to write like this, I said. Maybe Hai Tong will never do it again – The Pleiades might be her only book. Zichen said, You forget that in the novel, she says being an author is innate, not a profession. Even if she never writes another word, she’ll always be an author. Besides, I sense that she won’t stop writing, it’s the only way she can prove she exists.
You haven’t fallen in love with her, have you? Dawei asked. Falling in love with someone so remote would be very painful, Zichen said. No one on earth understands her work as well as you, I said. Not necessarily, Zichen said. Her editor must too. We should start with him, then, Dawei said.
That night, I dreamt the sailor’s ghost wanted to join our search for Hai Tong. Take me with you, he said. I’ve left the ocean and I’m quickly turning into a wind-dried relic. What about the girl? I said. She left me after you stopped writing your novel. Maybe she’s long gone, but hasn’t told you yet. Oh, I said, I sensed that too. He shrugged. An unfinished novel is like unset amber. Time still moves forward, no? I’m sorry I made you sad, I said. I’m not crying, he said. I’m no Marguerite Duras character, they’re always weeping. You’re destroying me, you’re good for me. You’d never write a line like that. I might, I said. I’m not a generous person.
I wrote to the editor of The Pleiades, asking if we could meet. He replied half a month later, explaining that he’d left the publishing house and they’d taken a while to forward the email. He was grateful for my interest in Hai Tong, and offered to meet the following week. I didn’t mention I’d be bringing two friends, so when we showed up at the coffee shop he was at a table for two. By this time Zichen was able to walk with the help of a stick, which looked quite dashing. It made me want to get him a top hat. Seeing us, the editor hastily moved to a larger table, shook our hands, and sat back down.
How should I put this? he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. I feel like Hai Tong’s best days are behind her. We’ve had some opportunities, but they didn’t work out. He sighed gently. Did you hope this book would get more attention? I said. That’s what I promised her, he said. When I came across The Pleiades online, she’d only posted the opening, and I very much wanted to know what came next, so I emailed her. She responded quickly, with the entire manuscript. You’re the fifteenth person to ask for this, she wrote, thank you. I read it, and though there were some flaws, it was clearly a unique creation. I wrote back saying I’d like to publish it, and asked her to meet so we could talk about revisions. She replied that for reasons she didn’t want to go into we couldn’t meet, and that she wasn’t prepared to make any changes to the novel. I told her we had to consider the readers – there couldn’t be such a proliferation of characters, and the secondary storylines shouldn’t take up as much space as the main ones. She replied that a novel is like a computer program, and every character is an unknown variable. They’re of equal value, and the calculations for each one must be completed before returning to base. I tried persuading her a couple more times, but she wouldn’t budge. Faced with an author who wouldn’t show herself and refused to make any changes, I ought to have given up. I put the manuscript in a drawer, but a few days later, I took it out for another look, and began making changes – Dawei interrupted, So the published version is your edit? The editor shook his head. I only revised twenty-four pages before I fell ill. I lay in bed for two days, and during that time I changed my mind: I would publish the novel without touching a word. I spent a lot of time winning over my bosses. As you’ve seen, it contains a lot of sensitive material. The day before we went to print, Hai Tong emailed asking to cancel. She didn’t give a reason. I chose to ignore her. When the book was out, I wrote her back: Trust me, this book will create a stir, and lots of people will fall in love with you. I asked for her address to send her copies. She replied with just one line: No need, I’ve bought one. Unfortunately, a few months later, the book was banned and taken off the shelves. Why do you think Hai Tong wouldn’t reveal herself ? Zichen asked. I don’t know, the editor said, maybe to protect her real identity. Do you think anything in the novel is based on fact? I said. I believe everything in it is true, he said. It’s right in front of your eyes. But everyone just thinks I’ve been poisoned by the book. Does anyone suspect you know where she is? Dawei asked. Of course, the editor replied. I bet you think so too. Go ahead. I’ve been attacked so many times because of this book! That’s why you resigned? I asked. That had something to do with it, yes. But mainly the publishing house refused to put out any further books by Hai Tong. She wrote more books? Zichen said. She never mentioned any, the editor said, but I told her if she ever did, I’d find somewhere to publish them. You’re very loyal to her, I said. The editor smiled. I’m just trying to find something to do, otherwise my life would be empty. She must have signed a contract for the book, Dawei said. Her real name and address would be on that. The editor said, I took a risk and signed the contract in my ex-girlfriend’s name. No one noticed. And her advance? Dawei said. Did you send that to her? Yes, along with the keys. What keys? Dawei said. When the book was first out, the publishing house had a promotion: readers could post their keys to a PO box and we’d pass them on to Hai Tong. The idea was that, just like in the book, she might show up at people’s homes one day. The book had been out for a month. Sales were bad, and everyone was shouting at us on the internet. A colleague thought up the idea. Imagine it, she said. One day you’ll open your front door and there’ll be a strange woman sitting in your living room. A once-in-a-lifetime encounter. I told her I didn’t believe people would send in their house keys just like that, but we got a dozen in less than a fortnight, all with little cards giving the address. We hadn’t asked Hai Tong beforehand, and I assumed she’d say to throw them away, but instead she said her cheque and the keys could both go to a safety deposit box at a bank. Even now we occasionally receive a set of keys, and my colleague forwards them. Dawei chuckled. You haven’t sent your own keys, have you? I don’t play silly games! the editor said huffily, flushing bright red. We asked him for the address of the bank but he refused to tell us. I’m her editor, he said, I’m happy to answer questions, but I won’t help you find her. With that, he stood and left the cafe. We sat a while longer. I have a feeling Hai Tong was secretly watching all that, I said. Right, Dawei said, maybe she’s hearing every word we’re saying now. Zichen smiled. He’d become very smiley since breaking his leg, as if the smiles were oozing from his wound. Maybe Hai Tong is waiting for us to find her, he said. I’m wondering about the people who actually sent her keys, Dawei said, think how lonely they must be. The cafe lights dimmed, and the woman behind the counter started closing out the cash register. Let’s go, I said. The other cafe was better, let’s meet there in two days.
As it turned out, the cafe with the fans had closed down and been replaced by a children’s swimming school. A huge inflatable cartoon fish bobbed up and down by the entrance. I think that’s a whale, Dawei said. Maybe in memoriam to our magazine. Years later, Zichen said, one of these kids will open an issue of Whale and remember the first time they saw a whale. This reminded me of the dream I’d had the previous night: the ghost sailor’s face twisted in pain, as if he’d just risen from a cage in hell. You’ve never stopped to think about the protagonists whose novels are never finished, he said. Do you know how we live? Wandering the world like lonely ghosts.
We found another cafe nearby. It was deserted and the coffee tasted of rubber – by the look of things, it wouldn’t be in business for long either. We started meeting there every few days, trying to bring a new discovery each time. There was a description in the novel of the four-year-old author watching her uncle climb a ladder to paint a family-planning propaganda mural; Dawei believed this must be based on experience, which meant Hai Tong was probably a few years younger than her protagonist, an only child. She’d have been frail when she was young, bad at sports, not great at music or art either. She probably had a sweet tooth and liked chocolate with nuts, and would also have been fond of nougat and pineapple cakes. Zichen tracked down the abandoned building from the novel, which had indeed been the residence of a Kuomintang official, though it had since been torn down. An office block was being built on the site. None of the news stories mentioned a secret tunnel, but three construction workers mysteriously went missing during the demolition, and their whereabouts were still unknown. Zichen believed the plant in the tunnel must be a mutation of speedwell, whose blue flowers might have turned white in the absence of sunlight. The flower represented two choices in life: exorcism or the summoning of demons.
As for me, I found the start of the novel in a niche literary forum, the same one the editor had stumbled upon. Hai Tong never posted anything else, nor had she replied to any comments. Her profile picture looked like a wash of black, but when I enlarged it I spotted a tiny white flower in one corner. The image was blurry, as if taken in dim light. There was an email address on the profile, and we started discussing what kind of message to send. Should we pretend to be a reporter, or maybe an overseas publisher interested in her novel? In the end, we decided to tell the truth. We shared a few thoughts about The Pleiades, added some questions, and ended with a sincere request to meet. I wrote that last bit: First of all, we’re grateful to you for bringing the three of us together. We hope to gain a deeper understanding of particular elements of your novel in order to separate ourselves from ordinary people, and to confirm our belief that literature is the only exit for the soul. We all believe we will meet you one day – either we will move towards you or vice versa. If you are willing to move towards us, we very much look forward to seeing you. Dawei wanted to add a few lines from one of his poems, but we dissuaded him.
There was no reply to the email. Another fortnight passed, then Zichen made a new discovery. A seller on a used-book website had changed their listing of The Pleiades – at first there had been three copies available, now there were ten. What did that mean? It looked like the seller was hoarding the book. We emailed the seller to ask for a meeting, under the pretext of needing help to track down some old books. He replied with an address, and said we should call him when we were nearby. We did as he said and found ourselves surrounded by farmland, although none of us could identify the crop. A man in a straw hat appeared and led us down a narrow road to a courtyard. Three dogs were slumped on the ground, asleep. We sat beneath a trellis and the man offered us home-brewed cider, which tasted odd. One of the dogs – with a black-and-white coat – woke up and came over, sniffed at my cup, and walked away. Dawei said, Do you have many copies of The Pleiades? The man took off his straw hat to reveal prematurely white hair. A few hundred, he said. I’ve been slowly gathering them from all over. Why? I said. If bookshops aren’t able to sell them, they’ll return them to the publishing house, where they’ll eventually get pulped, he said. I want to keep the book available for readers. I said, You’re doing this out of love for Hai Tong. It’s an act of protection, maybe, he said. Everyone has something they want to defend, and if they don’t, they create that something themselves. Zichen asked what he thought of Hai Tong. I feel she must be dead, he said. When I read The Pleiades, I got the strong sense that the author hated the world. On the one hand, I detected a strong life force in the pages; on the other, it felt like she wanted to destroy that life force. In a way, the whole novel was a suicide note. The author was saying: I want to die, can you find me before that happens? The three of us remained silent. The man went on, Of course, that’s just how I felt after reading the book. It was only an inkling to start with, but it got stronger day after day. One morning, I sat up in bed absolutely certain Hai Tong was dead. From that day on I’ve been buying up every copy of The Pleiades I can find. Maybe I’m wrong, but her being dead is a better fit for my aesthetic sensibility, it allows me to nurture certain fantasies, the sort I can spend a lot of time in.
In the sunlight the cider had begun to reek of decay. The man confessed that his brewing was very much at an experimental stage, and he might have overdone the hops. Drink up, drink up, he said. You won’t get drunk. Have you always lived here? Dawei asked. Oh, no, I used to live closer to the city, in a house full of old books. One night, the room with all my books caught fire. Were there many copies of The Pleiades? Dawai asked. Yes, he said. I lost many but a few survived. After that, I moved out here. Do you think someone set your house on fire to destroy those books? Dawei asked. I don’t know, he said, maybe it was a coincidence. I’m a simple person, I like to find simple explanations for things. You can tell by the way we’re sitting here chatting, can’t you? Dawei said. We didn’t come here to burn books! The man laughed and said, There are too many books, you’d never be able to burn them all.
Before we left, he gave us a tour of the vegetable garden. Pointing at the watermelons nestled in the soil, he said, Their patterns change – you notice when you stare at them every day. Then he gazed at an empty field in the distance and said, Maybe not long from now there’ll be a library here, with a restaurant, a small events hall, glass-roofed, so when you look up at night the stars would seem to be tumbling down from the sky. Just like in The Pleiades? I said. Ha, he said. I’ll have to remember to plant speedwell to keep ghosts away.
We were back at the desolate cafe. Autumn had arrived, and scraps of fallen leaves kept blowing through the open window, landing in our cooling coffee. Do you think she’s dead? I asked. I don’t think so, Zichen said, but I agree with that guy. The Pleiades is filled with the atmosphere of death. Hai Tong might have already planned her suicide. We need to find her soon, Dawei said. Death can’t be prevented, Zichen said. If someone really was trying to burn all those books, who would that person be? I said. Probably Hai Tong herself, Dawei said. She didn’t want the novel to remain in the world. Remember in The Pleiades, when the author says she wishes she could have 3,999 readers, no more and no less? The print run was probably more than that, right? The used-book website doesn’t give an address, I said. How would she have found the place? As long as she bought something from the site, she’d have a return address, Zichen said. That’s insane, Dawei said, you mean she looked at the address on the delivery slip, found the shop, slipped inside one night and set the books on fire? That’s what I like about her, Zichen said, her madness.
I phoned the white-haired man and asked for the contact details of everyone who’d bought a copy of The Pleiades. He chuckled, For a book club? Yes, I said, I want to hear what other people thought of the novel. You’re trying to find more clues about Hai Tong, aren’t you? he said. We’re choosing to believe she’s still alive, I said. Good, let me know if you learn anything new, he said. Oh, also, I’ve finally perfected the cider.
According to the sales list, the white-haired man had sold sixteen copies of The Pleiades, twelve to people in other cities. The editor said Hai Tong’s safe deposit box was in a Beijing bank, so we decided to start with the four locals. We called them one by one to say we were setting up a book club for The Pleiades, and would they like to take part? The first three were men. One said he’d forgotten he ever bought the book. Another said he’d only read it because he was interested in haunted buildings, but that section wasn’t scary at all, and he’d been disappointed. The third said he’d love to join our book club, and we told him we’d be in touch soon with a time and place. The fourth person we called was a woman. She said she wasn’t interested and hung up. Her delivery address was Room 217 in the literature department of a local university. The name on the order form was Professor Luo.
We went to the university and found Room 217: a small office, full of plants, that felt like a tropical greenhouse. A young man was filling out a form beneath a large-leafed specimen. We asked if there was a Professor Luo here and he said, Oh yes, Professor Luo Xuewei. She’s not here right now. We said we were hoping to sit in on one of her classes, could he tell us when the next one would be? The man tapped at the computer and said, Two o’clock on Thursday, seminar in Room 2113. As he walked us to the door, he said, You won’t have many chances left. We asked what he meant, and he said, Professor Luo is leaving halfway through the semester, she’s having a baby.
We left the literature department and walked through the withered grass outside the entrance. She’s having a baby, I said. Dawei glanced at me, You seem sad about that, as if a man you love had betrayed you. Zichen said, Maybe she delayed her suicide because she got pregnant. Dawei said, I wonder what kind of person she married.
On Thursday afternoon we arrived at the classroom punctually and sat in the last row. There were more than twenty students, some with purple hair, some with nose rings. A woman in the front row said to the man next to her, I had some Prozac with my beer and it made me see a mirage. I grew up by the sea, and I’ve always been embarrassed to admit that I’ve never seen a Fata Morgana.
Professor Luo arrived, her belly pressing against her black sweater dress. She walked up to the lectern and said, Today we’ll discuss Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’, I trust you’ve all had a chance to read it. The story’s quite bland, a young man said. Professor Luo shook her head. There’s enormous sorrow buried beneath the surface. Another man raised his hand. Professor, do you have erotic dreams about your exes? The man next to him said, Do women have erotic dreams when they’re pregnant? Professor Luo didn’t lose her temper. She never stopped smiling. In a level tone, she began analysing the short story, repeating words like pain, grief and shadow. The students kept interrupting her to speak of their own sorrows: being tormented by their fathers, falling out of love, contemplating suicide. The professor’s gaze was serene, like a pastor listening to her congregants. After the seminar, we asked the student next to us what the class was called. She said she didn’t remember, but anyway Professor Luo only talked about books that made people sad. We asked if that was what the professor was interested in, and she said, No, it’s what we need, we all enjoy heart-rending stories.
We went back to Professor Luo’s office and found her watering the plants. She swung around, startling us as much as we had her. She brought out chairs for us, and we sat amid the greenery. We asked about her class, which had seemed to us like a form of counselling. Yes, she said, the kids who choose my class all have psychological issues. Sad stories help them to process their inner torments. Do you write? Dawei asked. A bit at university, she said but then I stopped. We exchanged glances. Zichen said, Have you ever read a novel called The Pleiades? Yes, she said. I asked if she’d enjoyed it, and she smiled. Of course I enjoyed it, it’s my story. Well, not all of it, but a portion. That’s one of the lingering effects of the book, I said. When I was done I also felt as if I’d personally witnessed some of these things, for example the white flower in the tunnel. Dawei and Zichen said, That’s right, us too. Professor Luo said, Did your mothers all have lovers who got executed, and did your uncles make you serve as art models? We fell silent. She said the childhood experiences of the author in the novel were almost exactly the same as hers. Okay, Dawei said. Who else knew these things happened to you? I had a flatmate at university, Professor Luo said, we were really close, and I told her all about my childhood. She encouraged me to write the story down, and I tried, but my psychological state worsened and I had to drop out of school. Zichen said, Are the words in the novel the same as the ones you wrote? I can’t really remember what I wrote, Professor Luo said. People told me the plot of The Pleiades, but I didn’t dare to read it myself. I wanted to reread my own version first, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. In the end I bought a second-hand copy of the novel, and once I’d read it, the story replaced my own memories. Now the only thing I know is: this is my story. Dawei asked, What kind of person was your flatmate? A very tall, thin girl, Professor Luo said. She never talked about herself. I took two years off, and by the time I returned she’d graduated and changed her phone number – maybe she didn’t want me to get in touch. When I thought back, I realised I’d never known anything about her past. Dawei asked, Did she have a sweet tooth? She was a little bit anorexic, Professor Luo said, she mostly lived on celery juice. Do you hate her for stealing your story? I asked. The image of her in my mind has grown blurry, and I just can’t believe this book was written by the person I knew, she said. Whenever I recollect my childhood, my memory slides towards the events of the novel. I’ve become a person without a past. That’s why I am in need of a future. She clasped her hands over her belly as if to warm them there.
Winter arrived. We huddled in a corner of the cafe. Swaddled in a jumper, the waitress watched expressionlessly as a worker installed a heater. Professor Luo had given us her former flatmate’s name: Chen Sining. According to the alumni website she’d moved to Spain after graduation, and now lived in Córdoba. There were three pictures on her page: a bullfighting ring in Zaragoza, a performer dancing flamenco in Sevilla, and a selfie on the balcony of her flat, surrounded by bougainvillea. We searched the university’s chatboard for her ID, and found one post: she’d asked on a beauty forum if anyone who’d had breast augmentation surgery found their ribs hurt so badly afterwards they didn’t dare to sneeze? No responses. Just a question from 2011, dangling lonely on the page. Before our eyes floated the image of a woman far from home, trying to suppress a sneeze.
We began to despair. Perhaps we had trouble believing an author would care about the size of her bust. Dawei suggested a trip to Córdoba – he’d put up the money. Maybe Córdoba will be our Araby, he said. We have to go. Zichen looked at the bare branches outside the window and said, ‘The Last Leaf ’ is a terrible short story, but to be honest, if someone painted me a leaf like that, I’d be so grateful. Dawei said, Córdoba is warm and has a lot of leafy trees. I hope so, Zichen said. Even if she isn’t the person we’re looking for, it won’t matter, Dawei said. We could just stay in Spain until I’ve spent all my savings.
A golden minaret was visible in the background of the balcony photo. We circled all the mosques on a map of Córdoba, and booked a hotel near one of them.
The day before we were due to leave, Zichen swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. He was still breathing when his elderly aunt found him, and she called an ambulance. Unfortunately, the roads were blocked off – a president was being whisked to the airport after a five-day state visit. The ambulance was caught on the wrong side of the cordon, red light flashing like an augury. By the time they reached the hospital, Zichen was dead.
Dawei and I were at his funeral, which was sparsely attended. The other guests didn’t seem to know each other and left right after the ritual. I went over to speak to the elderly aunt, who didn’t seem particularly sad – more relieved. When I suggested I could come by in a few days to help sort through Zichen’s possessions, she told me to come after three, because her afternoon naps were lasting longer and longer these days. Dawei had gone outside for a smoke. I found him under a pine tree. It was freezing, and sleet was falling. The quadrangular sky looks like the grimace of a robot, I said, and Dawei smiled bleakly.
I fell ill afterwards, and my fever refused to lift. I phoned Dawei and said I might not have the courage to go through Zichen’s things. He said he understood. I’ll go. Take care of yourself. I said, You too.
Dawei and I didn’t see each other for four months after that. During this time I moved house, went on a couple of dates, and started seeing someone regularly. I got several phone calls from the man we’d invited asking whether The Pleiades book club was happening and complaining that we’d never gotten in touch with the details. The sailor’s ghost showed up again, regaling me with stories of his failed romances. I warned him not to lose himself in love. Characters in novels aren’t like real people, he said. They inevitably end up living for just one thing. The personality you created for me had nothing in it but love. I asked if he’d met other characters from unfinished novels. Yes, he said, and every woman I meet is in the same condition – they’re like embryos who never finished developing. That’s why they drift around. I asked if he could help track down a character from a friend’s novel. The author’s name was Wu Zichen. He said, I’ll give it a try, although we don’t usually mention our authors’ names, unless the author is very famous – those characters constantly name-drop their creators. They think they’re better than the rest of us.
In April Dawei phoned, asking to meet. He sounded solemn, like he had something terribly important to impart. We’ll have to go somewhere new, he said. The cafe’s closed down. And so we went to the bookshop where we’d met that first time. The ground-floor coffee shop had been renovated, and the waiter told us there was still time to sign up for their flower-arranging class. Dawei sat across from me, fingers interlaced. He had a tan and was growing a beard. I asked if he’d been on holiday. He leaned forward and said, in a low voice, I found Hai Tong. I put down my coffee cup and stared at him. Where is she? His face contorted. Zichen was Hai Tong, he said. I shook my head. That’s not possible. I’ve spent these past few months investigating, he said, and there’s no doubt.
While Dawei was smoking on the day of the funeral, a short man in a tight woollen overcoat had come over and asked for a light. The man asked, Are you Zichen’s friend? Dawei said yes. The man nodded and said, Me too. He seemed to be caught up in the past, and words spilled out of him. He told Dawei that he and Zichen had been in a relationship for the last seven years. Dawei didn’t show any surprise, he said he and Zichen had literary interests in common, but never talked about their personal lives. Ah, literature! The small man nodded. I remember Zichen once told me he wanted to write a book from a woman’s point of view, concealing himself so no one would know he was the author. Dawei, hiding his shock, asked, But why a woman’s point of view? The small man said, Probably he felt people might be prejudiced against a gay author, and if he had to choose between the voice of a straight man or a woman, he preferred the woman. Did he write it? Dawei said. I don’t know, the man said, we lost touch. I don’t think he’d have expected me to show up today.
Dawei paused for a moment. He’d gone to Zichen’s flat to sort through his things, but didn’t find any diaries or handwritten manuscripts. In fact, it looked like someone had already tidied everything up. In a bag that looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time he found a bundle of notepapers on which were written unrelated names and scattered phrases. The words ‘tunnel’ and ‘cable car’ appeared several times. A few of the papers were dated 2010, prior to the publication of The Pleiades. Pressed between the sheets was a white flower. That could all be coincidence, I said. Think about it, Dawei said, when we were searching for Hai Tong, every clue was provided by Zichen, right? Why would he help us find her? I asked. He needed devoted readers who would keep his legacy alive. He chose us. Weren’t we completely hooked? I burst into tears. Dawei said, Professor Luo’s flatmate, Chen Sining – she must have known him, and told him the professor’s life story. That’s why he didn’t want to go to Córdoba, get it? He sighed. Zichen’s aunt told me he broke his leg jumping from the fourth-floor balcony – he’d already tried to kill himself once. That’s enough for today, I said. Let’s go home.
I phoned Dawei the next morning and we met again that afternoon in the bookshop cafe. I didn’t sleep last night, I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, he said. I hated him to start with, I said, but by dawn I’d stopped hating him. I kind of admire him, that he could sacrifice his whole life for literature. We couldn’t do that. Dawei said, It’s true, we couldn’t, because we only get this one life. We stayed at the cafe till it closed, then went to a bar. We met again the following afternoon, and went straight to the bar this time. The next week passed like this. Neither of us brought up literature or Zichen, we just talked idly about this and that. He regretted giving up football after university, I was thinking of enrolling in a baking class. We kept reminding each other to live well, but this prolonged encouragement only revealed our confusion. One evening the following week, the bar was full of football fans. Dawei asked if I wanted to come to his place. I did. His house was huge and empty, with a garden that was also empty, even though it was May. I keep meaning to plant some flowers, Dawei said. Aha, I said. What should I plant? I said, Chinese roses or Japanese roses? Okay, he said, I’ll look into which variety I should buy. Your neighbour’s garden is full of them, I said, just ask for a few. But I’ve never spoken to them before. I said, All the more reason to. Didn’t we say we were going to embrace life wholeheartedly?
I didn’t leave that night. The next morning, we held hands as we walked up to the neighbour’s house and rang the bell. The neighbour gave us three Japanese rose cuttings, and dug up five of their Chinese rose bushes. It took Dawei and me all day to plant them. Then we rushed to the supermarket just before it closed to get bath towels and slippers.
We were married a month later, and I was pregnant two months after that. I completely redecorated the house, and we invited our new friends to come and visit. Another two months passed, and Dawei began working at his dad’s company. On days when he had an important meeting I would get up early to help him knot his tie. I’d put on twenty pounds, and my face was covered in freckles. I spent my days in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. My dreams were like pure water, filtered so many times there wasn’t a single stray thought left. I went for afternoon walks and got to know two women even more pregnant than me. They never grew tired of discussing the best kinds of pram or milk powder, or swapping horror stories of children who’d been kidnapped by rogue nannies. I got the sense they liked me because I was so ignorant, and was always staring blankly at them. My God, they would shriek with a sort of satisfaction, don’t you even know that?
Yangping was born two months premature and had to spend a fortnight in an incubator. During that time I often felt as if I was merely ill, and forgot I’d had a baby, only to be startled when the nurse brought him in. He was tiny, like an exposed heart. Don’t worry, Dawei said, he’ll grow up big and strong.
He woke up many times through the night, slicing my sleep to shreds. Sometimes after he’d drifted off I’d sit by the window, not bothering to button my top, waiting for him to wake again. I’d look out at the garden, where the transplanted roses still hadn’t bloomed, just bare branches without so much as a single leaf.
Dawei started drinking heavily and got home late each night. He’d complain that his colleagues had insulted him, that they’d made him look bad, that his father was always saying what a disappointment he was. One day I replied, It’s just a job. That’s true, Dawei said, but what do I have apart from this job? Nothing, I said. I know what you’re thinking, he said, you feel I’ve become a philistine and can’t do anything well. You’re disappointed in me too, aren’t you? No matter what kind of life I give you, you won’t be satisfied, you won’t even greet me with a fucking smile when I get home. The baby’s crying, I said. Let him cry! We sat there amid our child’s bawling. He howled for a good while, then quietened to little sobs, and finally he stopped. Do you keep thinking about Zichen? Dawei said. Yes, I said, and so do you. It was a mistake for us to be together, Dawei said. Maybe. He slumped back on the sofa, despair on his face. Eventually he fell asleep. I kept sitting there waiting for the baby to summon me with more crying, and when he didn’t I shook him awake. He glanced at me, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I stood in the silent room for I don’t know how long, and then I heard someone rapping at the window: the sailor’s ghost, his smiling face pressed to the glass. I went into the garden. As soon as I stepped out, the ghost said, I found a character from that author you mentioned, Zichen. Who? I asked. A very cool girl, he said from a half-written sci-fi story. Science fiction? I said. Everything from her neck up is metal, he said. Her brain is brilliant – she can work out the cube of seven-digit numbers. Then, with some emotion, he added that he’d been wooing her for a very long time, and she had finally agreed to be his girlfriend the day before. He was very happy, he told me. Chills shot through him when they kissed. Everything was beautiful. I wish you both the best, I said. It’s all thanks to you and your friend, he said. He waved farewell. I turned off the outdoor lights and went back inside to take off my dew-soaked slippers.
I got up very early the next morning and made breakfast, then stood in the doorway and watched as Dawei left. When the baby had had his fill, I put him back in the cot and cleaned the whole house thoroughly before putting clothes in a suitcase. Just before leaving, I went to the bookcase for my copy of The Pleiades. I locked the door behind me and walked away with my suitcase. The sprinkler truck had passed by earlier and puddles of water were steaming in the bright sunlight. I got to the subway station, where the crowds pushed me into a carriage. A man elbowed me and looked away when I glared at him. At the next stop, I squeezed out onto the platform and sat on a bench, where I devoured the bun I’d brought. Out of nowhere, I felt homesick for the place I’d just left, though I couldn’t have said what it was I missed. I stuffed the last bite of bun into my mouth and crossed over to the opposite platform.
Back at my front door, I heard the baby squalling as I put down my suitcase and got out my keys. Without stopping to put on slippers I rushed into the living room. A woman was sitting by the cot. Her hair was in a thick braid, her skin was very tan and she was wearing a shapeless dark grey dress. I couldn’t tell how old she was. She was telling the child a story in a low voice.
Who are you? I said.
She smiled. I’m Hai Tong, she said. You posted me your key a long time ago, maybe last year. I’ve been too busy to come by till now.
I shook my head. I didn’t post you my key.
Oh? she said, It must have been someone else who lives here. There was a love poem on the note, very moving. She reached into the cot and caressed the baby’s face. He’s very good, she said. So quiet.
I had so many questions for her, the answers to all those riddles we thought would go unanswered forever. Instead I said, Please leave. This is my home.
She looked confused. The homeowner invited me.
I’m the homeowner, I said, and I’m asking you to leave. I pulled open the door and stood by it. She shook her head, muttering as she walked out, People these days are unbelievable.
I shut the door behind her and returned to the living room, which was radiant with sunlight. I sat by the window, tucked Yangping’s bear into his arm, and looked down at my sleeping child.
Artwork by Lisa Chang Lee, World Atlas No.9, 2023
