Vertical Motion. Can Xue
a few days and he wasn’t in a good mood, either. He was always angry, scolding people at the dinner table for no reason. Everyone was baffled by this. When he opened the door, his thin face was expressionless. I glanced into the room: he’d covered all the books with an old cloth, and the old chair had been moved away from the window. Father didn’t seat me while we talked. He was standing, too, because—apart from that old chair—the only place to sit was a small stool. Ordinarily, he sat on it to straighten out his heap of old papers, but this time, for whatever reason, he had tucked the small stool under the bed.
I stood there chatting aimlessly of household trivia. As I talked, I was getting more and more flustered, for all I wanted was to escape from there as soon as possible and steer clear of this awkward errand in the future. Through all of this, Father kept a straight face and paced with his hands behind his back. All of a sudden, he stopped, walked over, and shoved open a side door that faced the courtyard. The room brightened at once. Only then did I notice that he had moved the cupboard and begun using the side door behind it that had been closed for years. The door had warped, requiring great strength to open it, and it was even harder to close again. Father beckoned to me to help him. We pushed it hard several times before it reluctantly closed. As I brushed the dust from my clothes, I noticed that his haggard face was a little flushed.
“Rushu, you never thought I could open this door, did you?” Father turned around so that I couldn’t see his expression. “This door goes straight to the courtyard. Something could happen without anyone knowing. Of course the rest of you wouldn’t notice, for you’re preoccupied with other things. Your attention wanders, and so does your sister’s.”
“Papa—” I said.
“One can do whatever one wants to do!” He twisted around crabbily and looked at me almost savagely. “Do things furtively, and no one knows. Ah!”
“Papa, if you feel bored staying here alone, you could take walks in the park with me every day,” I said uncertainly.
“Me? Bored? Whatever made you think that? Let me tell you, I’m a very busy man.” With that, looking extremely arrogant, he seemed to start thinking intently about something.
“Rushu, get me the scissors from the lowest drawer,” he ordered.
I felt that at this moment Father was extremely vigorous. It was as though he wanted to strut his stuff over something.
The drawer was a jumble of little sundries. After searching for a while, I found the small scissors and handed them to him.
Taking the scissors, he charged over to where he usually sat, removed the old cloth, grabbed an old book, and began carefully snipping the book into scraps. In this dim room, the kaki kaki sound of the scissors was particularly grating. I could hardly control my feelings.
After cutting up one book, he cut up another. There were not only books in the pile, but also all kinds of old notes and correspondence. He cut whatever he got hold of. After a while, the floor was stacked with wastepaper. I saw his old bare, blue-veined hand squeezing the scissors hard. His fingernails turned purple. When he wasn’t paying attention, I quietly withdrew to the doorway.
“Rushu, go ahead and leave. There’s nothing here that concerns you,” he said from behind me.
=
It was about a week later when I heard my colleagues’ rumors about my family members and me mistreating my aged father. They made special mention of me, saying that I “had cut Father’s palm with scissors” and that Father “had wailed.” The rumors were well-founded and vivid, and I couldn’t help shuddering. I didn’t dare look at the others, nor did I dare defend myself. I just shivered blindly.
It was tough to endure this until I got off work. When I reached home, I groped for my key in my purse in the dark corridor. Just then, my brother leapt out from an invisible place and patted me on the shoulder. Paralyzed with fright, I nearly fell to the ground.
“Ha ha!” He patted me on the shoulder again and said with a laugh, “You got off work really early today.”
“Early? It doesn’t seem early to me.” I looked at him bitterly. I wanted to go to my own room.
“It is early.” He yanked on my arm and continued talking. “It’s hard for all of us siblings to get together. Usually everyone is busy. We only sit at the same table at mealtimes. Although we sit together, we don’t talk much. I think this is because Father is present. Looking at him, who dares talk and laugh freely? As I see it, when one is old, one should know one’s place and retreat from life. Paternalistic behavior won’t do him any good in the end. Sometimes, I can’t avoid thinking that this family isn’t a family anymore! It’s oppressive, disorganized, and unreasonable. Do any other families maintain patriarchy as we do?”
“You’ve been dismissive of Father for a long time, haven’t you? Why are you being so alarmist?” I interrupted him in disgust.
“That’s the way it is on the surface. You’re the same. Behind his back, we say he’s a piece of old garbage. Everyone seems to ignore him. But do we truly ignore him? At the table, I’ve noticed your knees trembling.”
I threw his hand off and entered my room in one stride.
When we ate dinner, Nishu talked of the encephalitis that was rampant in other towns. She rapped her chopsticks on the table for emphasis. I sneaked a look at Father and saw that he was looking down wretchedly, preoccupied with his worries. After pushing a few bites of food into his mouth, he set his bowl down and stood up to leave.
“Papa didn’t eat a thing!” I said loudly. “Look, he hasn’t eaten anything for days!”
All of us put our chopsticks down and looked at Father in consternation.
Nishu seemed chagrined and said accusingly: “What’s wrong with you, Papa?”
Apparently his old self again, Father stared at everyone, and looking haughty, he held his head high and returned to his room.
Something was collapsing in my heart. I recalled the door that Father had quietly opened in his room, and I couldn’t help feeling misgivings. I thought that my colleagues’ rumors were connected with that door. Why? Because Father abhorred outsiders entering his room, and so twenty years ago he had sealed off the door that opened onto the courtyard. Previously, when he burrowed single-mindedly into the pile of old books, I didn’t have to worry. What kind of elderly person’s crazy idea had led him to take this step? It would be difficult to tell someone like Father to retreat entirely from life. He’d been quiet for years and hadn’t made any trouble. Now, when everyone was almost accustomed to this, this awkward situation had suddenly cropped up. Maybe we didn’t really understand Father. Perhaps, during these years, he’d been making preparations all along. Perhaps the inflated illusions in his head had caused him to lose his common sense.
My colleagues’ rumors didn’t subside. I felt pressure from all directions. With every passing day, this pressure made me feel more and more dread and disgust. I thought it over and made up my mind to confront Father. I would catch him off guard and see how he explained his behavior. I was vexed and unhappy. I couldn’t figure out why he had to cause so much trouble.
When it had just turned dark, I hid in the oleander grove in the courtyard. Father stood in front of the window, his shadow reflected on the curtains. His back was stooped. I thought of his face that had become increasingly thin, and I felt something that I couldn’t express. After a while, he bent his head, as if to cut his fingernails and also as if he was fiddling with his watch. About half an hour later, he covered the light with a newspaper. When I looked across, it was as if he’d blacked out the light and gone to sleep. I knew he wasn’t asleep, for I heard him sighing quietly. I sat on the small stool I’d brought and made up my mind to get to the bottom of this.
The moon was hidden in the clouds. Except for the bright light in my brother’s room, everything was dark. Just as I was about to doze, some odd sounds suddenly came from Father’s door. He walked toward it, as if he had noticed something. He stuck his head out a few times. The door was still half-open.