The old botanist with me has already spent two days wandering around in the mountains; he’s been in bed for some time but I can’t tell whether or not he’s asleep. I just can’t get warm in this damp bedding and lying here fully clothed even my brain seems to have frozen, yet down the mountain it’s May and the middle of spring. My hand comes upon a tick which has lodged itself on the inner part of my thigh. It must have crawled up my trouser leg during the day while I was walking through tall grass. It’s the size of my little fingernail and as hard as a scab. I hold onto it and rub myself but can’t pull it out. I know if I pull any harder it will break off and the head with the mouth which has a good bite on me will remain embedded and grow into my flesh. I get help from the camp worker in the bed next to me. He gets me to strip, gives my thigh a hard slap and squeezes out the blood-sucking little bastard. Tossed into the kerosene lamp it smells like the meat stuffing in a pancake. He promises to get me a bandage in the morning.
It’s quiet both inside and outside the shed, but everywhere in the forest there is the sound of water dripping. A mountain wind blows from afar but doesn’t reach the mountain and instead recedes and lingers noisily in faraway valleys. Afterwards the planks above me also start dripping and seem to drip right onto my quilt. Is there rain leaking through? Mindlessly, I get up. It’s as damp inside as it is outside. So let it just drip, drip, drip … Later on, I hear a rifle discharge. It’s clear but muffled and reverberates in the valley.
“Over there near White Cliff,” someone says.
“Fuck. Poachers,” another person swears.
Everyone is awake, or it might have been that no-one had been asleep.
“See what time it is.”
“Five to twelve.”
Then nobody says anything. It’s as if they’re waiting for another shot, but there isn’t one. In the shattered yet suspended silence, there’s only the dripping of water outside the shed and the reverberation of the wind imprisoned in the valleys. Then you seem to hear wild animals. This world belongs to wild animals but human beings persist in interfering with it. The enclosing darkness hides anxiety and restlessness, and this night seems to be even more perilous, awakening your phobia that you are being spied upon, stalked, about to be ambushed. You can’t get the spiritual tranquillity you crave …
“Beibei’s here!”
“Who?”
“Beibei!” the university student yells.
It’s total chaos in the shed and everyone’s up and out of bed.
There’s a loud snorting and grunting outside. It’s the baby panda they saved when it came fossicking for food, sick and starving! They’ve been waiting for it to come, they were certain it would come. It had already been ten days and they’d been counting the days. They said it would definitely come before the new bamboo shoots started to sprout. And here is their pet, their treasure, clawing on the timber walls.
Someone opens the door a crack and slips out with a bucket of corn mush and the rest quickly troop out after him. In the murky night this huge dark grey thing lumbers about. Corn mush is quickly poured into a dish and this thing comes up to it, snorting and grunting noisily. The torches are all trained on this animal with black semicircles around its black eyes. This doesn’t worry it at all, it’s completely engrossed in eating and doesn’t look up even once. They are madly taking photos so there’s a constant glare of flashlights, and everyone takes a turn to go up to it, to call it, to tease it, and to touch its far which is as hard as pig bristle. It looks up and everyone runs to take refuge back inside the shed. It is after all a wild animal and a healthy panda can wrestle a leopard. The first time it came it chewed up the aluminum container and ate it as well as the food, and then excreted a trail of undigested aluminum pellets which they had all followed. There was a journalist who kept going on about the giant panda being as cute as a pet cat and got into the enclosure to have his photo taken with his arms around one they’d caught in the ranger station at the foot of the mountain. He got his genitals torn off and was immediately driven to Chengdu, fighting for his life.
It eventually finishes eating and, grabbing a piece of sugar cane and chewing on it, saunters off towards the clumps of Cold Arrow Bamboos and bushes at the edge of the camp.
“I said Beibei would come today.”
“It mostly comes at this time, round about two or three.”
“I heard it snorting and grunting and scratching on the wall.”
“It’s good at begging for food, the cheeky devil.”
“It was starving. It ate up everything in that big bucket.”
“It’s fatter. I touched it.”
They are very excited and go into minute details — who was first to hear, who was first to open the door, how he saw it through the crack in the door, how it followed him, how it put its head into the bucket, how it sat down next to the pan, and how it really enjoyed eating. Someone even said he’d put sugar into the corn mush and that it likes eating sweet things! Normally they scarcely speak to one another but here they are talking about Beibei as if it’s everyone’s sweetheart.
I look at my watch, this whole episode took no more than ten minutes but they are raving on endlessly about it. They’ve got all the lamps on and some are even sitting up in bed. That’s just the way it is, life is monotonous and lonely on the mountain and one needs this bit of comfort. From Beibei they go on to talking about Hanhan. The rifle shot earlier on had alarmed them. Hanhan came before Beibei and was killed by a peasant called Leng Zhizhong. They had been getting Hanhan’s signals from the same location for a number of days and, thinking it was seriously ill, set out to look for it. Finally, under a fresh mound of earth in the forest they dug out Hanhan’s carcass and its neckband which was still giving signals. They organized a search with tracker dogs and got to this Leng Zhizhong’s house where they found the rolled up skin hanging under the eaves. Another panda with a neckband was Lili but its signal simply disappeared in the wilderness of the forest and was never again heard. There was no way of knowing whether it had been attacked by a leopard and its neckband chewed up or whether it had met a clever hunter who had smashed the neckband with his rifle butt.
Close to daybreak two shots sound from the lower part of the compound. Their muffled echoes reverberate in the valley for a long time, stubbornly lingering like smoke in the barrel of a rifle that’s been fired.
7
You regret not fixing a time to see her again, you regret not chasing after her, you regret your lack of courage, not getting her to stay, not chatting her up, not being more forward, and that there will not be a wonderful liaison. To sum up, you regret losing the opportunity. You don’t suffer from insomnia but you sleep badly the whole night. You’re up early, think it’s all ridiculous and luckily you hadn’t been rash. That sort of rash behaviour damages one’s self-esteem. But then you detest yourself for being too rational. You don’t even know how to go about starting a romance, you’re so weak you’ve lost your manliness, you’ve lost the ability to take the initiative. Afterwards, however, you decide to go to the riverside to try your luck.
So you’re sitting in the pavilion just as the timber merchant had suggested, sitting in the pavilion and looking at the scenery on the other bank. From early morning it’s busy at the crossing. The water level goes right up the sides of the ferry as people cram into it. As it docks, even before the ropes are tied, people fight to get ashore. People with big baskets on carrying poles and people pushing bicycles jostle one another, all shouting and swearing as they surge towards the town. The ferry shuttles back and forth and eventually brings across all the people from the other shore. This side of the crossing also turns quiet. Only you are left sitting in the pavilion, like an idiot, pretending to wait for an appointment which wasn’t made, with a woman who came and vanished, just as if you’re daydreaming. Could it be that you’re bored, that you’re fed up with your monotonous life devoid of passion and excitement and that you want to live again, to experience life again?
