Shao Wu gradually fell fast asleep against Yang Shuyi’s shoulder. He had no idea how long the off-road vehicle drove. During one particularly hard jolt, he opened his eyes halfway and vaguely heard Ding Li say, “That’s one loyal buddy you’ve got. Coming all this way to find you.”
But before Yang Shuyi answered, he fell asleep again.
When he woke next, only he and Yang Shuyi remained in the vehicle.
The driver’s window was half open, and the rushing sound of water drifted in. Shao Wu looked outside and saw that the vehicle was parked on the bank of a small river. Terraced fields rose on both sides, then green hillsides. A handful of single-story houses clustered at the foot of the hills.
They had clearly arrived at the village where the survey team was stationed, but Ding Li was nowhere to be seen.
No, Ding Li’s whereabouts weren’t the point. The point was that right now, in what was practically an enclosed vehicle, he and Yang Shuyi were alone.
Shao Wu glanced at Yang Shuyi’s shoulder, afraid he’d drooled while sleeping.
But Yang Shuyi wore a dark-brown sweater, so there was no way to tell if there was a damp spot.
For lack of anything better to say, Shao Wu asked, “What time is it?”
“I don’t have a phone,” Yang Shuyi said.
Shao Wu reached for his own. Only when he slipped his hand into a pocket did he remember that he was still wearing Yang Shuyi’s outdoor jacket.
“…”
Shao Wu unzipped it and fished out his phone.
“It’s twelve forty-five,” he said.
“Are you hungry? I’ll take you to lunch.”
“No… I ate a lot this morning.”
Actually, he was a little hungry.
But Shao Wu had a feeling Yang Shuyi wanted to tell him something. Otherwise, why hadn’t he woken him when they parked?
Sure enough, Yang Shuyi asked in the next moment, “You saw Grandma?”
Shao Wu nodded.
He waited for Yang Shuyi to continue, but Yang Shuyi went quiet and turned to look through the mud-speckled window. After a long while, he asked, “Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Yes,” Shao Wu said.
Was it fate? Shao Wu had stopped carrying cigarettes around, but while waiting at Chengdu East Station he’d bought a pack of Yellow Crane Tower cigarettes, thinking a smoke might help keep him alert.
He hadn’t even opened the pack.
Shao Wu took it out of his backpack and handed it over.
Yang Shuyi rolled down the rear window a crack, lit a cigarette, and held it between his lips. He didn’t seem to want to smoke it so much as simply keep it there. The familiar smell filled Shao Wu’s nose. He drew a deep breath and suddenly thought that his plan to quit smoking might fail after all.
Yang Shuyi said, “You know, don’t you? She’s ill.”
Senile dementia.
But Shao Wu couldn’t bring himself to say those words.
He said quietly, “Alzheimer’s?” The name was awkward on his tongue.
“Yes.” Holding the cigarette, Yang Shuyi spoke very calmly. “One morning last March, I suddenly got a call from her. The only thing she knows how to do on her phone is call me. She said she’d gotten lost. I was terrified. I thought she’d gone somewhere far away… I asked if she knew roughly where she was. She said Yongchuan. I asked if there were buildings and roads around her. She said yes. I wondered if she’d wandered over to the development zone, somewhere she’d never been.”
Yang Shuyi’s lips trembled almost imperceptibly.
“We were very lucky that day. It was Saturday, so the students weren’t in school. A middle-school girl passing by heard her talking to me and asked if she needed help. I told Grandma to give the girl her phone. I asked where they were, and she said, ‘Yonglin Farmers’ Market.’”
Yonglin Farmers’ Market. Shao Wu knew the place. It was no more than five hundred meters from the apartment Yang Shuyi had rented for Grandma.
“I went home that afternoon, brought her to Chengdu, and took her to West China Hospital the next day. The diagnosis came quickly. Alzheimer’s… The doctor said that if things went well, she might have another eight or nine years. I asked what happened if they didn’t go well. He said then it might only be two or three years, and we should be prepared at any time. He tried to comfort me, saying that people get sick when they get old, that Alzheimer’s wasn’t uncommon, and I shouldn’t put too much pressure on myself.”
Yang Shuyi took two hard drags, briefly closed his eyes, and continued. “I know what he meant. Everyone dies someday… But I couldn’t understand why Grandma had to get this disease. You know how capable she always was. Then, all of a sudden, she started forgetting things. She forgot how old I was, where I worked… I asked her to stay with me in Chengdu, but she refused. She said she had to go back to Yongchuan and cook for Shuyi because his gaokao was coming up. I asked her, ‘Then who am I?’ and she couldn’t answer.” At last his eyes reddened, though his voice remained steady. “I had no choice but to send her back to Yongchuan to live with my great-aunt. Sometimes she was perfectly lucid. She’d call and ask how things were going between Zou Xin and me, and when we were getting married. I don’t know whether she understood that she was ill. She began telling me over and over that I was the one she worried about most. She was afraid that after she died, there’d be nobody to care about me or look after me. She kept urging me to marry Zou Xin. Then, in May, I discovered the affair between Zou Xin and Teacher Zhang.”
Shao Wu gripped Yang Shuyi’s hand tightly. It was very cold.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“Because before that, I sincerely wanted to marry Zou Xin.” Yang Shuyi gave a miserable smile. “Besides, what was I supposed to say to you? This is Grandma’s last wish, so even if it’s just an act, I have to see it through. I have to let her watch me marry Zou Xin… And then what? Was I supposed to tell you it was all fake, that I was only marrying her for Grandma’s sake? That you shouldn’t blame me? ‘Shao Wu, wait for me’? Was I supposed to say those things to you?”
Shao Wu stared at him in a daze.
He remembered that night. Yang Shuyi had been dead drunk, his gaze crusted over with rippling despair like river water freezing into ice. Under Shao Wu’s relentless questioning, he’d finally said one word: Love.
At the time, and afterward too, Shao Wu had believed that only that one word, love, belonged to him.
Only now did he suddenly understand that the despair preceding that word had belonged to him too.
Yang Shuyi blinked. His eyes were red but no tears fell. “I couldn’t be that shameless, so I didn’t tell you… And I didn’t want to deceive Grandma either. I didn’t want to say that because she’s old and confused, it’d be easier to fool her. I didn’t want to do that.”
“I understand,” Shao Wu said.
He did understand. Some things in this world mattered more than one person’s suffering or happiness. Could Yang Shuyi deceive Grandma? Of course. Grandma had little education, had never seen the world the way young people had, and now had Alzheimer’s. Deceiving an old woman in that condition would be easy. Shao Wu could invent several excuses on the spot for why Yang Shuyi wasn’t getting married: Zou Xin had gone abroad to study and he needed to wait a few years; his workplace discouraged extravagance and wouldn’t allow a wedding; getting married now would hurt his future career… Any of these explanations might convince her.
But even if she believed him, she would still worry. She still wouldn’t be able to let go. In her increasingly blurred and fading memories, she always remembered that her grandson was alone, and that after she died there’d be nobody left to love him.
How, then, could Yang Shuyi bear to deceive her? Perhaps this was fate’s cruel joke: the easier Grandma became to fool, the less able he was to fool her. Even if Zou Xin called him an ant, he would grit his teeth and act out that ‘marriage.’ He had to carry the entire performance alone, with nowhere to retreat.
Yang Shuyi crushed out the cigarette butt beneath his shoe and said quietly, “I thought you’d never come see me again.”
His head hung low. His skin was darker from the sun and his ankle was sprained. He looked like a little monkey who hadn’t managed to get an apple when all the others had, helpless and a little aggrieved.
Fate had refused to throw him an apple.
But, Shao Wu thought, if you need one, of course I’ll be your apple.
This time it was Shao Wu who raised a hand and pressed Yang Shuyi’s head onto his shoulder. Yang Shuyi gently wrapped his arms around Shao Wu’s waist. They embraced without moving, the river outside the window rushing along with a light, cheerful sound.
“But here I am,” Shao Wu said. Though he still had no idea what the two of them would do from now on.
Yang Shuyi murmured an “Mm” against his shoulder.