The sky was growing dark, and there were no lights on in the house. I stood in front of the fluorescent display panel, waiting for music to emerge from the cylindrical speakers. If this were before, I would have put the disc in and walked away to make tea or brew coffee. Now I would stand there, waiting until the music started playing. Was I worried the record was damaged, or that the machine had broken down? I couldn’t say for certain myself. I just felt a bit of heart palpitations, worried that the music might never play again.

The music started playing. I turned on the lights. Keke’s paintbrushes were scattered on the sofa, and a giraffe’s head was stuck upside down between the cushions. I picked up the paintbrushes and pulled out the giraffe, tucking it under my arm. Xing Lei walked over, circled around me to the low cabinet, and pulled open the top drawer. I asked her what she was looking for. She said she cut her hand while preparing the fish. I told her to leave it there for Chen Jie to handle.

“Could you go downstairs and buy some white sugar? The fish is still flopping around,” she asked.

“They can have some drinks first when they arrive. It won’t be too late to eat at seven.”

“Daqi has something to do and needs to leave early.”

“Wasn’t he the one complaining about having nowhere to spend Mid-Autumn Festival?”

“Also cooking wine. White sugar and cooking wine.”

She circled around me again and left. Lately we rarely talked. She always seemed somewhat absent-minded, or perhaps she had some opinion about me in her heart. That wasn’t something I could change by doing something, and besides, I didn’t plan to do anything. We had long passed the time of trying to please each other. After a certain number of years, marriage becomes like a ship without a pilot, where both parties are too lazy to touch the steering wheel, letting it drift on the sea wherever it may go.

Coming out of the convenience store, I lit a cigarette and sat down on a bench in the residential complex. Several seven or eight-year-old boys were crouched under a nearby tree playing. The one wearing the blue hoodie seemed to have fought with Keke before. A dirty white cat passed behind them and disappeared into the bushes. A food delivery person came over asking where Building 9 was. The plastic containers in his hands seemed to contain grilled skewers, which would go quite well with ice-cold beer. After a while, the boys’ mothers came and called them away. Under the tree remained a pile of branches, scattered and stacked together, looking like they were preparing to light a bonfire.

Bonfire. The wood still carried a trace of heat, proving it had been extinguished not long ago. Luna walked around it in a circle, then sat down beside it. It hadn’t been easy to find such a pile of dry wood after yesterday’s rain. She untied her backpack, took out several cooked chestnuts and began eating them, then opened the map and used a pencil to mark the path she had walked yesterday. The map was drawn from the blind blacksmith’s memory and might not be reliable. But if she got there, she knew she would recognize it. Even if the houses were gone, the rice fields were gone, the mango groves were gone, she would still recognize it.

She used the same method of eating chestnuts from her childhood, biting open a small hole and using her little finger to pick out the chestnut meat, leaving the shell almost intact. Mother used a bamboo pick, which could make an even smaller hole. After cleaning out all the meat, she would paint bright colors on the dried chestnut shells and string them into necklaces to give to neighbors. Pink was the hardest to find. In spring, they had to collect oleander petals and crush them in a stone bowl. Throughout the entire spring, Mother would take her all over the mountains searching for oleanders. They had plenty of time anyway. Luna had never thought that one day she would leave that small village. The most outrageous dream she had ever had was marrying the tailor’s son at the village entrance.

My phone rang. Xing Lei asked where I had gone, saying Deng Feifei had already arrived. I stubbed out my cigarette—the fifth one—and stood up from the bench. There was an unread text message on my phone. I opened it:

Please let Luna go, okay? I’m begging you.

I opened the door. Deng Feifei was sitting at the dining table flipping through a home decoration magazine. She seemed to have gained weight, or perhaps it was because of her new short haircut. Her round, chubby face had seven or eight transparent adhesive patches the size of fingernails stuck on it.

“I went to remove moles yesterday,” she said.

“There were that many?” I asked.

“I kept two of them. The master said those two are auspicious.” She pointed to the square box on the table. “Where’s Keke? I brought her chocolate.”

I told her Keke was at her maternal grandmother’s house because Xing Lei’s cousin had returned from America. Deng Feifei immediately asked if it was the cousin who had given birth to mixed-race twins, saying she had seen photos of them—a very happy family. I didn’t comment. Anyway, Xing Lei hadn’t asked me to spend Mid-Autumn Festival with them, and I felt quite grateful for that. I opened a bottle of champagne and poured Deng Feifei a glass. The last time we met was when her play was performed. She wore a Victorian-era long dress, her hair disheveled, with thick black eye shadow painted around her eyes. I had forgotten everything else about that evening except that it rained very heavily.

“Remember to refrigerate the chocolate, and don’t let Keke eat too much at once.” Deng Feifei looked at me. “Are you sick?”

“I’m rushing to finish a script.”

“A new one?”

“Still the same one.”

“What genre was it again?”

“Fantasy, animated film. But not the kind for children.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to explain.

“Amazing. Is it the kind where people live for thousands of years and know all sorts of magic?”

“They probably can’t live that long.” I hadn’t chatted with anyone in a long time and felt somewhat strained, so I suggested she try the wine in her glass.

“Thank goodness for you two,” she said, putting down her glass, “taking in Daqi and me during the holidays.”

“It’s not really taking you in, is it?”

“I got divorced last month. Didn’t Xing Lei tell you?”

Her eyes were full of desire to confide, waiting for me to ask questions, but I couldn’t remember her ex-husband’s name no matter how hard I tried.

Actually, I had met him many times. Just a year ago, the couple had sat at this very table, enthusiastically discussing with Xing Lei whether or not to have children. I listened with interest for a while, mainly because I found Xing Lei quite interesting. She had always regretted giving birth to Keke, but whenever any woman asked for her opinion, she would always tell them they must have a child—that’s how life becomes complete. She looked completely sincere, making me believe that the disappointment she experienced was one of the world’s rarest misfortunes.

I had a premonition that the entire evening might be consumed by discussions of emotional topics. It would be best not to let Deng Feifei start this conversation. I stood up and walked into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, and stared at a small cluster of green plants in the vase by the sink.

When darkness fell, Luna lit the bonfire. The bushes rustled a few times, then returned to silence. She looked carefully in that direction and discovered a pair of eyes hiding in the trees, watching her. Just as that fellow was about to run, she leaped up, ran over, and grabbed his clothes. He turned his head in terror—a clown’s face painted with colors. Through the diamond-shaped oil paint on his eyelids, you could see a pair of childish, innocent eyes. The clown explained that he had lit the bonfire and had gone out to find food. When he returned, he saw Luna sitting beside it.

The clown roasted a plump wild rabbit over the fire and invited Luna to eat with him. He mysteriously told Luna that in a few days the volcano would erupt, this place would be leveled, and only by boarding Klein’s spaceship could they be saved. So he had escaped from the circus, planning to find the spaceship. When he discovered that Luna already knew this secret, he felt very puzzled—then why was she still heading toward the volcano? Luna said that as a child, she had lived in a village near there. Later, after experiencing war and plague, people had all left. She wanted to go there one more time before the volcano erupted. The clown asked, “To see what? Isn’t everyone gone?” Luna said, “I don’t know either, but I keep dreaming about it, so I’ll go say goodbye to that place.”

Before parting the next day, Luna gave the clown her ticket to board Klein’s spaceship. She comforted him, saying, “I am a Sacred Fire Messenger. I can board the ship even without a ticket.” The clown hugged her and cried, tying his yellow handkerchief for magic performances around her wrist. He asked Luna what the spaceship looked like. Luna said, “It has a round metal door, like the moon.”

I hoped dinner could end before nine o’clock so I could return to my desk and continue writing this story. Coming to the living room, I saw cold bamboo shoot salad, preserved egg tofu, and white-cut chicken on the table. Xing Lei came out carrying a plate of braised arrowhead with pork: “Can someone call Daqi?”

“I’ll call,” I said. Xing Lei glanced at me, neither encouraging nor opposing. I found his number and dialed. Daqi answered, saying someone from a New York gallery had suddenly come to visit his studio, and he would come over after seeing them off.

“Looks like Daqi’s luck is about to turn. Maybe they want to invite him to have an exhibition in America!” Deng Feifei said.

“Let’s have a drink.” I raised my wine glass, looking at Xing Lei.

Daqi was a photographer, but he would probably prefer to call himself a visual artist to distinguish himself from commercial photographers. However, in my view, their biggest difference was that commercial photographers shoot things to make them beautiful, while Daqi pursued ugliness. His most famous photograph showed three Miao elderly women holding up their bound feet, laughing heartily with toothless mouths wide open. If you ask me, the little praise he received was entirely thanks to the squalor and chaos of China’s remote areas. Once when I had too much to drink, I expressed this opinion, and as a result, Xing Lei and I had a fight.

Now Xing Lei didn’t seem in a hurry to start dinner. When I suggested again that we eat while waiting, she slowly stood up to get bowls and chopsticks.

“I can’t eat shrimp. It will inflame the wounds on my face,” Deng Feifei said.

“You shouldn’t drink alcohol either.” Xing Lei was about to take away her glass, but she quickly blocked it with her hand.

“Oh, one drink is fine. I’m not rehearsing anything recently anyway!”

Xing Lei examined her face: “Were all those moles bad?”

Deng Feifei pointed to the small adhesive patches, introducing them to us one by one: “This one means I’m prone to petty people, this one means I’m prone to losing money, this one means I’m prone to traffic accidents, this one means I lack a backbone…”

“After removing this mole, can a backbone grow out?” I asked.

“A segment will grow.”

“I actually think that mole by your eyebrow looks quite nice,” Xing Lei said.

“That’s the divorce mole! It’s a bit big, so it might grow back after a while. If it grows back, I’ll have to remove it again. Anyway, the master said my true love won’t come until the year after next.”

“If you can’t eat shrimp, have more meat.” Xing Lei put two pieces of braised pork in her bowl.

“Did Chen Jie cook all the dishes?” Deng Feifei asked while chewing the meat.

Chen Jie happened to come out and smiled at Deng Feifei. She placed the steamed mandarin fish in the center of the table. Steam rose from the emerald green scallion strips, and the fish stared with pale eyes, its gaping mouth stuffed with a bundle of ginger strips.

“Chen Jie, you should leave now. Come back tomorrow to clean up.” Xing Lei walked Chen Jie to the door. “About the hospital registration, I’ll ask again when I go to work tomorrow. Listen to me, don’t think too much, okay?” There was a professionally trained quality in Xing Lei’s tone, but the gentle halo on her eyelashes was enough to conceal the cold rationality. Her beautiful and intelligent eyes were always filled with understanding and sympathy for humanity. With these eyes alone, she was well qualified for her current job—she was an excellent psychologist.

“Who’s sick?” Deng Feifei asked after Chen Jie left.

When Chen Jie first said her husband was ill and she needed to return to her hometown, I thought she just didn’t want to work at our house anymore. You couldn’t blame me for this—the previous two housekeepers had both left us for very bizarre reasons. One said her nephew had hit someone with a tractor, and another said her mother-in-law had run away from home. But someone had seen them at the domestic service center, interviewing with new employers. So after Chen Jie left, I suggested finding a new housekeeper. But Xing Lei believed Chen Jie was telling the truth. I asked her what evidence she had, and she said it was intuition. I couldn’t possibly have no complaints—after all, I was the one who had to get up at seven every morning to take Keke to the school bus stop. After more than a month, Chen Jie really did come back, saying her husband had lung cancer and wanted to come to Beijing to see more doctors. Xing Lei helped contact a specialist, and the conclusion was similar to that of the local hospital. Her husband stayed in Beijing for a few days before going back. Chen Jie continued to stay at our house. I always felt she had become much colder toward me—perhaps Xing Lei had told her about my previous suspicions. I never asked her how her husband was doing afterward. Now, hearing Xing Lei tell Deng Feifei that his condition had suddenly worsened and Chen Jie had asked her to help find another specialist.

“She knows that seeing more doctors won’t help, but she still needs to show this consideration, so her in-laws won’t gossip,” Xing Lei said.

“Does she have children?” Deng Feifei asked.

“Two of them.” Xing Lei pushed aside the scallion strips and picked up a piece of fish. “It’s still a bit overcooked. I told her to turn off the heat after eight minutes.”

Deng Feifei tasted it and thought it was delicious.

“Your housekeeper—where is she from? You could teach her too,” Xing Lei said.

Deng Feifei said she had dismissed her housekeeper because her parents were coming to stay and didn’t like having someone constantly around. They would take complete control of her life—someone to wash clothes and cook, someone to fix the car and pay fines, and of course, someone to nag if she came home too late.

“I feel like I’m getting smaller and smaller, like going back to high school days.” She shook her hair. “How do you like this student haircut I got?”

“Weren’t you supposed to have dyed red hair back then, standing at the pool hall entrance smoking?”

“Haha, exactly! Have you seen ‘Run Lola Run’? I looked exactly like the female lead back then! And I was also a long-distance running champion!” Deng Feifei lit a cigarette and began talking about how glorious she was at school, how she won first place at city-level sports meets, and how her photo holding the trophy was always posted in the bulletin board at the school entrance… I thought about that rainy evening, while waiting for a car outside the theater, I saw the poster of that day’s play in the shop window across the street. She played Lady Macbeth on the far left, and rain rolled down the glass like a hand reaching into the big dress to grab her body and shake it.

“If I could have persevered, maybe I could have become a decent athlete. Too bad life can’t be like in movies—if it doesn’t work out, you can’t just rewind and try again.” Deng Feifei poured herself another glass of wine.

“Drink slowly, high schooler,” Xing Lei said.

Deng Feifei pointed at me: “What was he like in high school? Was he this deep back then too?”

“Him? He was very good at riding a bicycle with one hand on the handlebar.”

“Showing off?”

“He broke his arm in a fight and rode a bicycle with a cast for three months. After that, when riding, his other hand felt uncomfortable if it wasn’t holding something.”

“The other guy was hurt worse than me—broken nose, had two surgeries,” I said.

“I never would have guessed. Did you fall for him because he could fight?” Deng Feifei asked Xing Lei.

“My music wasn’t bad either,” I added.

“You mean playing grass whistles?” Xing Lei laughed.

The phone on the table rang.

Deng Feifei said, “It must be Daqi. If the American gallery signs him, have him buy a bottle of good wine!”

“It’s not him.” I took the phone and left my seat.

The producer called my name several times on the other end, asking if I had seen the text message he sent.

“What’s wrong with you? Luna’s part has long been finished. Just have her board Klein’s spaceship and leave. Now you should concentrate on writing the final big battle. Prince Sol is the protagonist of this story!” Because I had seriously exceeded the deadline, they required me to use synchronized online documents so they could monitor progress at any time. I heard the sound of a lighter clicking on the other end. The producer took advantage of lighting his cigarette to adjust his emotions:

“Da Yu, I completely understand that screenwriters have favorites among their characters, but this isn’t writing a novel where you can write whatever comes to mind… I ask you, who cares about this Luna’s childhood? When a character has completed her task, she can take her bow. Why do you insist on trapping her in this story?”

He said he would give me two final days, asked me to promise to end Luna’s story tonight, then hung up.

I changed records and stood in front of the fluorescent panel waiting for the music to start. Could we consider this waiting time as part of the music? Any art has blank spaces—it cannot and need not present the complete picture of things to people. A story—I certainly couldn’t call this script art—cannot contain a person’s entire life. Even if we claim to have breathed a soul into a character in the story, that can only be part of a soul. The soul, this thing that supposedly weighs 21 grams, is as vast as the universe.

After noon, it began to rain. Luna received a message from Klein’s spaceship saying the volcanic alert had been sounded and asking her to stay put—they would come to pick her up. When the rain stopped, she climbed to the hillside and saw a section of disappearing rainbow in the distant canyon. As a child, on dry days, she and the neighbor’s children had used garden hoses to create rainbows in the sunlight. Humans always want more than nature provides. She decided to continue forward. In the evening, she walked out of the forest and came to a great river. She had an intuition that her former village was on the other side. She couldn’t swim, so she picked a leaf from a tree and played a grass whistle, hoping distant boats could hear it. It was a melody her uncle had taught her as a child—she thought she had long forgotten it. Her lips moved across the moist leaf, and joyful notes traveled through the twilight and landed on the calm river surface… The ground beneath her feet began to tremble, mud splashed up, and she turned to look—elephants, not just one, but a herd, striding toward her with great steps…

I returned to the dining table and served myself a bowl of fish ball soup. Both ladies had simultaneously fallen into silence, as if their previous conversation had been interrupted by me.

“Do I need to excuse myself?” I asked.

“No need,” Deng Feifei said. “I’ve moved on. I can discuss those things very calmly now.” Xing Lei placed her hand on hers, and she seemed to gain encouragement, puffing out her cheeks and exhaling:

“After performing ‘Macbeth,’ I locked myself at home every day, walking barefoot on the floor, turning on the faucet to wash my hands over and over, lighting candles as soon as it got dark. Xu Hong was filming in Shanghai at the time and came back for a few days. One night he got up to use the bathroom and saw me wandering around the living room, muttering unintelligibly. He had a hard time waking me up, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I screamed and ran into the bedroom, locking the door. For the next few days, he slept on the living room sofa. Every night I would come out to wander, and one day I even ran to the balcony and opened the window. Before Xu Hong returned to the crew, he convinced me to go to the hospital with him. Halfway there, I suddenly said I wouldn’t go and told him to turn around and go home immediately. When he refused, I opened the car door and tried to jump out while we were still on the elevated highway… Do you have any cigarettes?”

Now I remembered—her ex-husband was called Xu Hong. She took the cigarette and put it in her mouth, repeatedly rubbing the lighter’s wheel with her thumb. The sudden flame nearly singed her bangs.

“I knew this couldn’t continue, but I couldn’t do anything… This went on for half a month. One afternoon, Xing Lei called, saying she was passing by my place and asking if I wanted to have dinner together. I said I didn’t want to go out and hung up. Soon the doorbell rang—Xing Lei was standing at the door. She stayed until evening before leaving, then came to see me again after two days. She really went to a lot of trouble for me during that time. I thought she would have told you about it.”

I said, “She probably considered you her patient. Confidentiality is part of her professional ethics.”

Xing Lei narrowed her eyes at me.

“I really was her patient. Without her, I’d still be trapped in Lady Macbeth’s character…”

“You mean you were possessed by Lady Macbeth?”

“Not possessed,” Xing Lei seemed to feel offended. “Medically speaking, this is a normal manifestation of transference.”

“To play that role well, I made myself think like her, be evil like her. My hands were also stained with blood… Yes, that was acting, no one really died, but when I incited Macbeth to kill, the words I spoke really were my inner thoughts at the time. Even if that sword weren’t a prop, I would have watched it pierce the body of the actor playing Duncan… I wasn’t reciting lines, you understand? I was commanding those words—I was their master. Xing Lei helped me find what I was really afraid of. She didn’t convince me that I was innocent, but taught me how to face this sense of guilt. She’s amazing, like she has magic powers. You watch her mouth open and close, and slowly you become hypnotized. When you regain consciousness, you find that your perspective on many things has changed…”

“Da Yu doesn’t believe in these things,” Xing Lei said. “He thinks psychology is all trickery.”

“Not at all. I have great respect for psychologists’ work—saving lives and healing the wounded, immeasurable merit. I’m just saying that I personally find Freudian stuff annoying in my creative work.”

Deng Feifei laughed: “I feel sorry for you. Maybe Xing Lei hypnotized you long ago, and you don’t even know it.”

I smiled at her. Her eyes gradually dimmed:

“I’ve been considering changing careers recently. I’m afraid I can’t continue being an actress. Maybe children’s theater would still work—playing a tree, playing a chattering mother hen.”

“Don’t think about these things now. Rest for a while and then decide,” Xing Lei said. “Who wants some rice?”

“Is there more wine?” Deng Feifei asked.

I took the last cigarette from the pack, planning to return to my study to work after finishing it.

The lead elephant stopped in front of Luna, bent its front legs, and knelt down, letting her climb onto its back. Then it strode into the river water with great steps. The ancient river awakened from its dream, and the startled water droplets kissed Luna’s feet.

She squinted her eyes. The opposite shore gradually became clear in her vision. The dense canopy glowed with a golden sheen, gradually revealing oval-shaped outlines, forming into heavy mangoes. Like trembling hearts exposed in the hot wind, as if there were no more secrets left in this world.

Reaching the shore, the elephant set her down, flicked its tail, and turned to walk back into the river. Luna watched them depart, suddenly remembering something, and picked up the leaf to play again. She used the melody to tell them of the approaching danger. The elephant herd flapped their ears and began to run. The turbulent water splashes were like white flames, leaping and dancing in the night, disappearing bit by bit. The great river fell asleep again.

Luna turned and walked toward the shore. The smell of mud, the fragrance of fruit, the laughter of children who had left long ago still clung to the branches. She knew she had arrived. She wanted to remember every scene before her eyes. In the days to come, she would have plenty of time, plenty of time to say goodbye to them. Goodbye doesn’t happen at the moment of turning away—it is the continuously multiplying dreams that follow, the pieces of wood added to memory’s bonfire.

“Da Yu?”

I looked up. Xing Lei stood beside me holding newly opened red wine.

“Are you still drinking? Aren’t you going to write something later?”

“It’s fine.” I handed her my glass. “Should I call Daqi again?”

“Don’t call him,” she said.

I dialed anyway. After three rings, Daqi answered.

“Almost there, I’ll be right over,” he said loudly.

Xing Lei took an empty wine glass from the cabinet and placed it on the table. The transparent glass was crystal clear, with light flashing on the rim. Perhaps I was looking at that wine glass through Xing Lei’s eyes—her face radiated a girlish quality. Although we had known each other since we were sixteen, that quality still felt foreign to me. As if it were another Xing Lei, one who had never met me. Whenever this happened, I felt ashamed for having participated in her life. Actually, I had discovered her feelings for Daqi long ago. What puzzled me was why she stopped at this ambiguous fondness and didn’t continue forward. Wouldn’t unfinished feelings cause her pain? For a very long time, I had been waiting for her to take action. Waiting for her to take the heart she had taken from me and entrust it to another person, anyone. Would that cause me pain, or would I feel relief? I only knew it would make me feel that my wife was a little more real.

Xing Lei brought up the mooncakes and fruit. The pomegranates lay in the plate like little crowned figures grinning with their mouths open. This metaphor should come from Luna’s voice. She was still walking around in that story, searching for her childhood village. I knew I had to release her, let go of my grip, and watch her fall into the sky like a helium balloon. I was about to leave my seat when Deng Feifei pressed down on me:

“Do you think I’m a good actress?”

I said of course. But she wasn’t satisfied, looking at me with a puzzled expression. She lowered her eyes and sighed:

“‘Macbeth’ was probably the last play I’ll ever perform on stage. I invested too much emotion in that role… I really wish you could have seen it.”

“We did see it,” Xing Lei said. “Feifei, you were wonderful. We’re all proud of you.”

Deng Feifei bit her lip, her eyes reddening:

“I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but you didn’t actually watch the whole play that day. You both left less than twenty minutes after it started…”

My head began buzzing. For a long time—maybe not long enough, just three months—I had been trying to forget that evening. The rain that evening, the streets that evening, the halo cast by the candles that evening, and the smell of herbs in the air. I took a sip of wine to calm myself down. So Xing Lei hadn’t watched the play to the end that day either? Where had she gone?

Deng Feifei said: “When I was about to go on stage that day, I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to tell you about getting drinks together afterward to celebrate. The table was already booked. I was worried it would be too chaotic after the show, so I asked a colleague from the theater company to go tell you. My colleague was delayed backstage for a while, and when she went down again, she found Da Yu’s seat empty and you were walking out. She chased you to the door, but your car had already started. She waved from behind, but you seemed not to see her at all—or maybe you did see her but still stepped on the gas and drove away. I’m not saying this to blame you. I just don’t want things to stay stuck in my heart… I really wish you could have been there that day. I performed especially well—the best I’d done in over ten years. During the curtain call, I still couldn’t calm my emotions. Tears kept streaming down…”

Xing Lei picked up the plate and dumped the fish bones into the trash can by her feet: “Feifei, you’ve had too much to drink. Why don’t you lie down on the sofa for a while?”

She started crying: “I know I shouldn’t say these things. You’ve both been so good to me…”

I really couldn’t sit still anymore and left my seat. I walked to the balcony and, feeling my body swaying, steadied myself against the nearby telescope.

Ten minutes after the play started, I received a WeChat message from Xiao Jing. She said: I quit taking sedatives today, and now I feel terrible, lying in bed shaking all over. I hesitated for a moment, then replied: I’ll come see you, wait for me. I pocketed my phone and quietly told Xing Lei that the producer had called an emergency meeting and I probably had to go. Xing Lei asked: Are you driving? I said: No, I’ll call a car. There’s no signal here, I’ll go outside to call. Xing Lei said: Okay, tell me when the meeting’s over. I quietly left my seat and walked out of the theater. It was raining at the time, and I stood under the eaves waiting for a while before the car came.

I stayed at Xiao Jing’s place for over an hour, left at ten o’clock, then sent Xing Lei a message telling her the meeting was over. We often went a whole day without contacting each other, but since she had asked me to tell her when it ended, I did as she requested. She didn’t reply. When I got home, she wasn’t there. She didn’t return until twelve-thirty. She said she had run into some old friends at the theater and went to sit at a bar with them for a while. I asked her how the play was. “Too forced,” she answered, throwing the car keys into the tray.

I stood on the balcony, gazing into the distance. There was a park over there. Looking down from the 19th floor, you could only see a blur of tree shadows. I fingered the dust-covered lens of the telescope. The day the telescope was first installed, Keke was very excited, clamoring to look at the playground in the park, to see if the children on the pirate ship were screaming in terror. She pressed her face to the viewfinder for a while, then suddenly stood up, turned around, and ran away. Since then, she had never approached this telescope again. What exactly she had seen, no one knew. I had never asked either. I had a rather pessimistic thought: everyone is exposed to their own fate, and no one can protect anyone else. I couldn’t protect my little daughter from harm, couldn’t protect anyone.

That night, I pressed the doorbell for a while before Xiao Jing opened the door. She wore a white nightgown, and her hair carried the scent of herbs. To calm her nerves, she had stuffed a sachet filled with medicinal herbs under her pillow. I had her lie down and pulled up a chair to sit beside the bed. The room was very dark, with a candle lit on the bedside table. The desk lamp that used to be there was lying on the floor—she said she had knocked it down while reaching for the switch. The cup-shaped blue candle had burned more than half down, with the flame sunk deep in a pool of wax, giving off a pale blue light. I said: A blue candle, very special. Xiao Jing said: Red candles are festive, white candles are mournful. Only blue candles are neither sad nor happy—they can make your heart very calm, as if time has stopped. Her Persian cat suddenly leaped onto the bed, positioned itself between me and Xiao Jing, and calmly turned its head to lick its tail. It’s nice having it keep you company, I said. Actually, I didn’t like this cat at all. Several times when I tried to hold it, it fought desperately to escape and even scratched my hands. It wouldn’t let anyone else hold it either—only Xiao Jing. I could feel its eyes looking at me with hostility, as if hoping I would leave quickly. I went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, added lemon and honey, and brought it out for Xiao Jing. Xiao Jing smiled and asked: What’s it like being in love with a patient? I said: You’ll get better soon.

When I first met her, I felt she was very special, with a strange tranquility. Maybe it was related to her upbringing—she was Dai, grew up in a village in Xishuangbanna, and only moved to Kunming with her uncle in middle school. She had something simple and innocent about her, like an extinct bird. Many nights, I would escape from the smoky script planning meetings, drive dozens of kilometers to her place, just to spend a little time with her. That was my greatest reward. Only when facing her could I voice the frustration and resentment in my heart. I was jealous of successful peers, despised snobbish investors, mocked stupid audiences… My once vigorous ambition had now become excess fat. I was like a stumbling fat man, bending my body to crawl into a narrow tunnel designed specifically to torment me. I gave her my weakest, darkest self, like a little boy who had lost a fight, gasping for breath in her embrace. She would always gently pat my head: It’s okay, it doesn’t matter. As if I still had plenty of time, plenty of strength. Will you leave me, I asked her. She said: No, never.

She had never studied film. After graduating from college, she went to work at a travel agency. When a director was filming in Yunnan, he discovered her spiritual quality and introduced her to work at a film company. That’s how she came to Beijing. We met at a script planning meeting. She had wheat-colored skin, a slender neck, and when she smiled, she was like a seagull gliding across the horizon. Though she didn’t say much, her insights were very unique and left a deep impression. For a while after that, we often worked together. I expressed my feelings for her, and from then on she started avoiding me. When we met in the break room, she was so startled she knocked over the hot water and ran away. At the time, I almost felt hopeless, but three months later, during the Hong Kong Film Festival, we ran into each other on the Star Ferry from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui. That day I was supposed to buy toys for Keke, but why I had the sudden impulse to take the ferry remained a mystery to me. It was raining, and there weren’t many tourists on the boat. We sat on the wooden bench watching the lights come on over Victoria Harbor. I took her hand and said: Stop running away—fate wants to connect us. She lowered her head and started crying.

After we got together, she quit her job at the film company because I had collaborations with that company, and she was afraid colleagues would gossip. I teased her for taking our relationship too seriously—everyone was already used to such things. But she seemed very worried and refused to work anywhere related to film. So I suggested she write scripts with me, so she could work from home. This suggestion wasn’t entirely for our relationship—after more than ten years in this industry, I could tell at a glance whether someone had talent. Xiao Jing was a highly gifted child, just lacking professional training. With a few years of refinement, she could definitely become a very good screenwriter. So I split up the script and gave her parts to write. When I took on this fantasy animation project, I showed her the character profiles and asked which character she wanted to write. She chose a girl named Luna. The introduction had only two sentences: Luna, fifteen years old, one of four Sacred Fire Messengers, escorts the sword and delivers it to the prince, then leaves Jialan Kingdom with the other messengers aboard Klein’s spaceship. I asked why she chose her. She said: I don’t know, I just feel she’s a good girl. I kissed her cheek: You’re a good girl too. She never made any demands of me. She never asked me to spend more time with her, much less hoped I would get divorced.

By then she was already sick, but I thought it wasn’t serious. About six months into our relationship, one day she said she was under a lot of mental stress and wanted to see a doctor for medication. I was a bit surprised because she seemed very normal. When she came back from the hospital, she mentioned casually that she had some depressive tendencies and started taking medication daily from then on. I even advised her to see a different hospital, not to trust any single doctor’s word lightly. I really didn’t believe much in psychology—I always felt it was a fabricated set of theories, with doctors just trying every way to make patients very dependent on them. Xing Lei had several patients who had been seeing her for depression for over ten years. Some had taken their companies public, some had had two children, but come Friday afternoon, as if hearing the call of church bells, they would punctually sit in her consultation room. Their psychological illnesses were like a kind of original sin—if they forgot about it, they should go confess. Xing Lei’s work was nothing more than chatting with them. I felt I could do it too. Would convincing someone to live be harder than convincing a film company boss to invest in an art film? After taking medication for a while, Xiao Jing didn’t improve. Her mental state got worse and worse, she talked less and less, and once while we were making love, she suddenly started crying. She said her bones hurt, like they were about to crack. She also said: I know it’s not really painful, it’s just my hallucination. She spent a lot of time describing that hallucination, and I began to feel things were getting serious. Only then did she tell me that many years ago she had suffered from depression and it took three or four years to recover. I asked what had happened at that time. She showed a fearful expression that made me believe it must have been something terrible. I felt very uneasy, but I had to admit, at the same time I felt somewhat relieved—her illness was a relapse, not something she got because of me. Xiao Jing began going to the hospital regularly, standing in line with a group of mental patients, waiting for the doctor to dispense her medication for the next week. Because she had trouble sleeping, she took sedatives long-term, sometimes sleeping all day. She would only agree to see me when her emotions were stable. She would put on makeup and still look full of vitality, but those eyes controlled by sedatives were like two withered leaves stuck on her beautiful face. Each time she would tell me about Luna’s story’s progress, how many words she had written that day. If I said you should rest well and let me handle the remaining parts, she would frown and say: Hey, Luna and I will definitely complete the task given to us!

That rainy night when I went to her place, she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her face was pale, and her eyes, surrounded by dark circles, were full of red blood vessels, as if they were about to shatter. She said: I haven’t written a single word in a week. I must quit the sedatives—I can’t keep sleeping like this. I told her not to rush, to take it slowly. She started crying and asked if I was forbidding her to write. I can’t even do this little thing well, she said, shaking her head. I know you’ll leave me. I told her I would always stay with her. Always? Maybe the word I used was “forever.” But she kept crying, begging me over and over not to abandon her. I felt very heavy, and perhaps also some disappointment. When I first met her, she had brought me everything I wanted. We were in love and worked together. I felt life flowing again, and I was no longer alone. But now, beside her, I felt extremely lonely. She was sealed up by her illness, like a distant and precarious star that could neither receive nor send signals. Looking back now on the time when we first got together, it felt like another lifetime, and her beauty then also seemed questionable, as if it were a hallucination I had produced. What I saw before me now was the real her. I was depressed by my own conclusion but tried to appear confident, even saying I would take her traveling when she felt better. This suggestion seemed very effective—she asked where we would go. I said Hong Kong, we could take the Star Ferry again. She said she didn’t like Hong Kong—everything there was artificial. Then she said let’s go to Chiang Mai, she wanted to ride elephants. I asked why she wanted to go there. She said: I like the tropics, but not by the sea—just that pure kind of heat. As for elephants, I think I had similar dreams as a child, riding on an elephant’s back to reach mangoes in trees. Mangoes are a strange fruit, don’t you think? I asked how they were strange. She said: Mangoes are very real—the color of the skin outside is the same as the flesh inside. I said persimmons are the same way. She said: But even when mangoes are dried, they still have that bright color. Persimmons don’t. Okay, I said, we can bring the script to write there and stay for a while. She said: I really want to bring Luna there too. I said: The next script can also have a girl named Luna. From now on, every script we write will have a girl named Luna, and you’ll be responsible for continuing her story. Really? she was very happy. We talked about travel plans for a while longer, getting more and more excited, as if we were leaving tomorrow. Her palms warmed up, but because of exhaustion, her eyes could no longer stay open. I told her to sleep early and said I would come see her tomorrow. As I was leaving, I said: If you can’t sleep, take another sedative. She said: No need, I’ll think more about elephants. I touched her head, just like she used to touch mine.

After that night, I was dragged to the suburbs for three days of script meetings and only managed to slip away on the third afternoon. When I got to her place, the house was messy. She told me she was cleaning the room, throwing away some old things. Then she sat back in the middle of a pile of boxes, holding a hardcover notebook and looking at it. She had seven or eight similar notebooks stacked around her. I asked what they were, and she said they were old diaries. I said: Have you been keeping diaries since childhood? She said: I only started writing them after moving to the city. I stood there bored, saw the broken desk lamp still lying on the floor, and decided to fix it. I spent a long time with a screwdriver but still couldn’t get the drooping lampshade to stand upright. She was still looking at those diary notebooks, with no intention of talking to me. I was very angry and wanted to tell her I had driven an hour and a half to get here and would have to drive another hour and a half back. But I said nothing, sat for a while longer, and left.

That night, she committed suicide by taking sleeping pills.

Before committing suicide, she sent me an email with no content, just the unfinished Luna story attached. For the first month, I didn’t even dare open that document. In fact, my mental state at the time couldn’t support me continuing to write the script, so I told the producer I was quitting. He reminded me to look at the contract’s breach of contract penalty clauses. Besides, the actors’ schedules were already set, and this would cause huge losses to the film company—they would have the industry blacklist me. Brother, I’m thinking of your reputation, he said, and besides, this film is the best opportunity you’ll ever get. You’re almost forty and desperately need a representative work. I said: Let the representative work go to hell, and hung up. That night—like the past month—I drank a lot but couldn’t fall asleep smoothly. At three in the morning, I got up and went to the study to smoke. The computer wasn’t turned off, and colorful tropical fish were swimming around on the screensaver. I smoked all the remaining cigarettes in the pack while facing the screen, then opened that document. Luna’s story was a full twenty thousand words, far exceeding the required length, but seemed only half finished. From a professional screenwriter’s perspective, there was too much psychological description and the dialogue was very verbose. But if you set aside the technical flaws, the story was very moving. More importantly, she had breathed her soul into Luna’s character, making her live and think, cry and laugh in the story like a real person. When her companion lost the sword, she patted his head and said: It’s okay, it doesn’t matter. I sat at my desk with tears streaming down. When dawn came, I sent the producer a message telling him I would finish the script.

Xing Lei came to the balcony and stood on the other side of the telescope:

“Feifei fell asleep on the sofa.”

“Did Daqi come?”

“Probably won’t come.”

The balcony’s overhead light shone down, enveloping her in a circle of apricot-yellow glow. Her hair draped smoothly over her shoulders, and her professional woman’s makeup was meticulous. I suddenly realized I couldn’t remember what she looked like without makeup. For many years, when I woke up she had already gone to work, and when she went to sleep I was still working in the study. The her I saw was exactly the same as what her colleagues and patients saw. A standardized, emotionless her. I didn’t know what her troubles were, or what had made her laugh heartily recently. I thought she likewise didn’t know mine. But now I discovered she did know. She knew what had caused me to lose my appetite and sleep for the past three months.

“Xing Lei,” I heard my own hoarse voice, “you followed me that night, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t,” she said immediately, placing her hand on the telescope and wiping some dust off it.

“You went to see Xiao Jing that night.” I pointed to her injured hand: “The next morning your hand also had a band-aid on it. Maybe it wasn’t cut by a glass. You hugged that cat she kept, didn’t you, because that could bring you closer to her.”

She looked at me quietly, then after a while said softly:

“It wasn’t like that. I like cats. I only gave mine away because of pregnancy—you know that.”

“Do you know she’s dead?” I said, choking up.

That night, I walked out of the alley where Xiao Jing lived and stood under a streetlight smoking. The rain was still falling, countless raindrops piercing through the night and shooting down. The car in the distance had no lights on. By the weak light, I seemed to see windshield wipers swaying in the darkness. Click, click.

Xing Lei pushed the handle and closed the window: “I didn’t follow you. I already knew where she lived. When we traveled to Europe during Spring Festival, you wrote several postcards in Prague and gave them to Keke to mail. But she saw a puppet shop, threw the postcards into my hands, and ran inside. Every postcard had a salutation: Zi Jun: Happy New Year, Da Yu. Li Min: Happy New Year, Da Yu. Only one had a blank salutation and directly said: Happy New Year, Da Yu. I thought it must be someone very close—if you wrote her name and then wished her Happy New Year, it would seem too distant. You can deny it. Maybe it was just my intuition, like that night when I followed you out of the theater—that was also intuition.”

“Yes, you know everything. I shouldn’t have hidden it from you. Maybe it’s too late to say this now… Can you tell me what you said to her that night?”

I was almost pleading with her, but at the same time terrified to hear her answer:

“Xing Lei, I know you’re an excellent psychologist who can control patients’ thoughts and make them listen to you… What exactly did you say to her? Tell me, please. That night she was fine, her emotions were very stable…”

I stood there waiting for her to open her tightly closed lips. The sound of windshield wipers swaying in the darkness pounded against my eardrums. Click, click.

After a long while, she finally spoke: “Whatever I say is too late. She could have lived if you had separated earlier.”

My breathing became difficult: “Xing Lei, you can’t…”

“Did you want to keep her locked in the house forever as your mistress, as your ghostwriter? She saw no one, had almost no friends. Have you ever imagined how she lived when she was alone? She had already suffered trauma at sixteen and never completely recovered. But you disregarded all that. Da Yu, you were too selfish.”

“What happened when she was sixteen?” I suddenly realized that Xiao Jing’s choice to write Luna’s character might have been because she was only fifteen. Fifteen was before sixteen, before everything happened.

Xing Lei withdrew her hand from the telescope and put it in her cardigan pocket. Doctors always like to put their hands in their white coat pockets, indicating they can remain detached:

“She was willing to open her heart to me, which shows she trusted me very much. I think I should keep her secrets. Let’s respect her choice, okay?”

She had probably prepared these words long ago. A sense of superiority, a secret that belonged only between women. She knew this would torment me for many years to come.

“She wasn’t your patient,” I said. “You had personal motives. You didn’t try to save her like you would other patients.”

“Da Yu, what were your personal motives? Have you ever hoped she would disappear so you could be completely free? Even for a moment, have you ever had such thoughts?”

I looked at her, looked at those eyes that had watched me from behind the car window glass with swaying windshield wipers. I couldn’t remember us ever gazing at each other for so long—the last time was probably when we exchanged rings at our wedding.

“You think you can see through everything, but you understand nothing, including yourself.” I tiredly looked away, gazing into the distance. Standing in this place, at this moment, there was no way to see those blurry tree shadows clearly, even with a telescope. A telescope at night is a blind person’s eyes.

I could feel the air between us descending, crystallizing into some kind of structure that gave off a blue glow. When I turned my head, I saw Xiao Jing standing right behind us. She wore summer clothes, with a yellow handkerchief tied around her wrist. She looked like she had walked a long way, with sweat streaming down her face, her girlish chest rising and falling slightly. She was also looking at me, her gaze carrying a faint melancholy, like examining a desk she had used as a child. When I looked back at Xing Lei, I found her leaning sideways against the telescope, her mouth wide open, her eyes full of terror.

None of us moved, as if we were supporting something together on three points. Time froze, the air glowed pale blue, everything around was vast and empty, with only that telescope between us, stubbornly gazing toward the night sky.

The pale blue light gradually became broken, fading bit by bit until it was almost transparent. Then Xiao Jing lightly lifted her feet, leaped upward, and dove into the deep black hole. A round metal door slowly closed behind her.

…In that room with tightly drawn curtains, the broken desk lamp lay on the floor. She sat in the middle of a pile of pink and blue diary notebooks, using her hand to brush dust off the covers. The rising dust floated in mid-air, gathering around her layer by layer, surrounding her. She was deeply attracted by something and didn’t look up even when I left. Goodbye, I said, pulling open the door and walking out.

Goodbye. Now I heard myself say it again, as if learning to use a language I would communicate with her in for many years to come.

The metal door slowly rose upward, shrinking bit by bit, like a bright moon disappearing into the clouds.

Xing Lei wasn’t watching. She kept her head down, as if just awakening from a nightmare, her hair disheveled, her eyelashes stained black with mascara. She stepped back two paces, leaving the circle of light cast by the overhead lamp. The wind picked up, and tree shadows swayed outside the window. I walked over and turned off the balcony light.

“Da Yu.” She called out from behind me, stepping forward to grab my arm.

We stood there, listening to the wind outside, listening to the hissing roar of glass under impact. When I had grown used to that monotonous rhythm, I suddenly feared it might disappear. What would be quieter than quiet?

In the darkness, Xing Lei said softly: “Chen Jie just called. Her husband probably won’t make it through tonight. I want to give her two thousand yuan.”

“Okay,” I said.