The Transmigration of Rabbits

T

he digital alarm clock on the dresser by Tallow’s head was dead. It had been alive not long ago, its colon pulsing steadily in the semi-darkness. 5:08. That’s when he had opened his eyes, roused by an awareness of Qin’s absence from beside him on the bed and a rank wetness that was slowly spreading. Qin sat on the edge of the mattress with her back to him, a grey mound against the dawn light seeping through the curtains.

Like someone stumbling on the edges of a fog, Tallow got up and got her out of her soiled clothes, leaving them in a heap in the bathroom sink. He then helped her get dressed again. With jerking, uneven motions, he tugged the sheets from the bed and opened the sliding door of their wardrobe to retrieve new ones. That’s when his left leg buckled in its socket, making him lose his balance. He sat down on the floor with a muted thud. Qin, who had been bringing the soaked sheets into the bathroom, reappeared immediately, clicking her tongue.

Tallow had broken his leg twice in the past 20 years—once when he fell down the stairs to his office in the warehouse and another time when he and his bike tumbled into a ditch. The second fall left him with a permanent limp, and his left leg had been unpredictable ever since. Once in a while he would feel all the remaining strength drain from it, as though a plug had been pulled in the sole of his foot, and down he went.

Clumsily, Qin inserted one claw-like hand under Tallow’s armpit and tried to help him up. Her good arm was as strong as a crowbar—she had been a manual labourer back in the day, part of a construction brigade that laid roads—but her grip on him was painful, and Tallow crumpled back down. His shame warmed into fury. If the semi-darkness was alive and had eyes, it would surely be rolling around in laughter at the spectacle this old couple was making of themselves.

It didn’t help that Qin was still clicking her tongue and fussing at him, her voice rasping like a dry sponge. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did you break something again? You’re always knocking about and running into things.”

“You’re one to talk,” Tallow grumbled. The anger in his belly propelled him to his feet—too quickly, it turned out, as his left leg began to wobble. Qin gripped his arm to steady him, but he flung her hand away. “Get off me!” he yelled. Stung, Qin opened her mouth to make a retort, but nothing came out. He saw her frustration with her memory reach its peak, before she snatched the nearest projectable object at hand and hurled it at him. The alarm clock narrowly missed his head and collided with the wardrobe door, followed immediately by another sharp crack when it dropped to the floor.

So that was how the clock ended up dead on the dresser by Tallow’s side of the bed. The room was empty. The curtains had been drawn aside and the window left open to air out the room. Qin, dressed in three layers of summer clothing, sat in the living room facing the powered-off TV. She owned several sets of patterned shirts and pants made of a breezy cloth and had developed the habit of layering one set over another. Tallow had tried to dissuade her from doing so, but after a while he gave up. There were other more pressing changes overtaking their lives, like the bedwetting, the stroke that half-paralyzed her right arm, the loss of words.

With the tumbling of the washing machine in the background, Tallow sat at their square kitchen table peeling a pear. He was too angry still to even look at Qin, sitting as she did every morning in the rattan chair their son had bought for them online as a housewarming gift. Their son lived a mere six hours away by train, but he and Tallow were not on good terms with each other and he hadn’t come home in years.

He didn’t even make an exception the previous summer, when Tallow and Qin moved from their old rowhouse into their current flat. They had lived in the residential area by the textile factory for most of their lives, but one day everyone was given a year’s notice that their houses were slated for demolition, to make way for new roads. Since then, several of Tallow and Qin’s former neighbours had either left to live with their children or left the living altogether. Those who remained were allocated apartments in a newly developed area, scattered above and below and around each other in a three-dimensional grid of virtually identical units. The vertical dimension was new—most of their old houses had only the ground floor—and for several weeks, whenever Tallow and Qin ran into old neighbours in the street or at the wet market, they would hastily exchange coordinates.

How different she seemed now, sitting deflated like a plum drying out in the sun, an inscrutable expression on her face as she observed the perfectly still reflections in the depths of the TV screen.

Unit 1A, apartment 3, block 46. That was the apartment they had been assigned. Being on the first floor had its benefits, the most obvious being fewer stairs; there was only one flight of eight steps leading up to the landing. First-floor residents were also given a narrow storage room directly beneath their unit that could only be accessed from outside. This was where all the “junk” from their old house was stored—a collection that included gardening tools they had used to tend the vegetables in their back yard, disused furniture, and an old wooden chicken coop Tallow had built himself.

There was only one other unit on the same landing, unit 1B, occupied by a young couple and their five-year-old daughter. The wife worked at a hair salon and after Qin’s stroke in December had kindly offered to give her haircuts at home. Qin’s right arm wouldn’t let her raise it beyond a 30-degree angle, so for the sake of convenience the wife shaved her hair stylishly short. (“No need to really brush it, and it won’t take so long for grandpa to wash it for you,” she said.)

Tallow remembered thinking Qin looked somehow dapper after a haircut, like the young athletes sporting similar hairstyles in the yogurt commercials they saw on TV. How different she seemed now, sitting deflated like a plum drying out in the sun, an inscrutable expression on her face as she observed the perfectly still reflections in the depths of the TV screen.

He finished peeling the pear, dropped the long spiral of peel into a small bag of other scraps, and sliced the rest of the pear into chunks. Then he called Qin to the table. “I’m going down to feed the rabbit,” he said after she sat down. As she began munching on the pieces of pear, he strapped his sneakers on in the entryway and took the bag of food scraps with him down the stairs.

The rabbit was also a gesture of kindness from their neighbours in unit 1B. “Our daughter has a black one,” the husband had explained, standing outside their door and offering Tallow the second rabbit in a cage. It was a runty, mouse-like animal with walnut and black patches over its white fur. One dark patch covered most of the right side of its face, including its eye. “Why don’t you take this one for grandma? It must be hard not having your garden and not having much else to do. This’ll give her something to take care of.”

In Tallow’s mind, until very recent history, rabbits had always been for eating, not for raising. But of course he didn’t relate any of this to the husband. He smiled instead and obligingly took the small wire cage by the handle, thanking the young man for his concern. The rabbit skittered about inside, its paws scrabbling for a foothold on the wires. Qin broke into a windy grin when he showed her the rabbit—she and Tallow had five remaining teeth combined—and said, “Ishun-eye!”

“Yes, it’s a one-eye,” Tallow agreed. She had forgotten to put her dentures in. They tried keeping the rabbit in a cardboard box on their enclosed balcony, but the smell was overpowering. That’s when Tallow struck on the idea of giving the old chicken coop downstairs a new lease on life. He dusted it out, spread a few layers of newspaper on its floor, and furnished it with a water bowl and food dish.

Once One-Eye was safely behind bars, however, Tallow suddenly realized how prison-like the storage room was. All it took was the introduction of a living thing—even one as small and skittish as this rabbit—for the dust, the dark, and the decaying smell of old furniture to take on an ominous and punishing cast. It was as though they had been transported back to the Ten Years of Madness and its cowsheds, only the roles were reversed and Tallow was now the one doing the locking up.

A few months after they moved into their new apartment, while taking their evening walk, Tallow and Qin ran into an old neighbour who mentioned in passing that Old Ji had died. “Serves him right!” Tallow bellowed. He was even more surprised by his reaction than their neighbour, who stood there blankly as though Tallow had slapped him. Tallow knew how he must appear to others: hunched and mellow, perhaps lacking a spine, the last person anyone would suspect of having a vengeful streak. He immediately regretted his outburst and chuckled in embarrassment. He would have apologized to the man if Qin, standing square and firm beside him (this was before her December stroke), hadn’t echoed drily, “Serves him right. If he hadn’t died of stomach cancer then all the curses piled on him would have dragged him to the grave. I’ve cursed him myself.”

“Is that so ... ?” Their old neighbour grinned nervously. Then he sighed. “Well, what can we do? Better to let bygones be bygones.”

During the Ten Years of Madness, Old Ji had been the superintendent of the textile warehouses where Tallow worked as an accountant. One morning, it was discovered that several bolts of cloth had gone missing, and Old Ji accused Tallow of stealing them. Tallow of course had done no such thing, but mercy and luck were both in short supply in those days, and he was locked up in a cowshed. The cowshed wasn’t really a shed, and the cows weren’t really cows, but people labeled “cow demons and snake spirits” for engaging in counter-revolutionary activity. All across the country enclosed spaces were instantly converted into cowsheds the moment such a person was thrown in them.

What’s in a name? he wondered. How far was he willing to go, how much of his flesh was he willing to let them grind to a pulp, for the sake of a name—his name and, by association, Qin’s name and their son’s name? Or was it simply that he couldn’t stand the humiliation, that his pride was as fragile as glass, that he wasn’t protecting anybody at all?

After two weeks Tallow thought he could still take it, but by the end of the third week he felt as though his nerves had been stretched as taut as a tightrope at the circus. One beating he received from his interrogators knocked out most of his front teeth. He gave in shortly after that and made a false confession. What’s in a name? he wondered. How far was he willing to go, how much of his flesh was he willing to let them grind to a pulp, for the sake of a name—his name and, by association, Qin’s name and their son’s name? Or was it simply that he couldn’t stand the humiliation, that his pride was as fragile as glass, that he wasn’t protecting anybody at all?

He was released from the cowshed without being able to answer any of his own questions. Brought before a meeting of factory workers, he was denounced and beaten again. Then, to Tallow’s shame and bewilderment, instead of being locked up again or sent to a labour camp, he was reinstated to his former position. An amount equal to the cost of the missing cloth was deducted from his wages, with the result that he went without a salary for nearly two years. The burden of supporting him and their son fell to Qin, who had gone from laying roads to dyeing fabrics at the textile factory. As the days went by, Tallow began to melt. His face puffed up, his shoulders sagged, and some mornings it took every ounce of strength he had just to leave the house.

Then came the great earthquake in the north and, as though dislodged by the convulsions, the soul of the man who had precipitated the Madness came loose. With his death, the Ten Years came to an end, but for a long time Tallow could smell the stench of it everywhere, like a corpse rotting in a too-shallow grave.

Cautiously, he opened the door to the storage room that housed One-Eye and the remnants of their former life. It was only 9:00 in the morning, but the sun glared off the brick pavement behind him and elbowed its way inside, revealing the swarms of dust particles disturbed by his entry.

One-Eye was crouched in its favourite corner of the chicken coop—the one furthest from the storage room door—and in its haste to scramble there had kicked a clod of grass and droppings into its water bowl. Emptying the food scraps from the plastic bag onto One-Eye’s dish, Tallow dashed the water bowl’s contents onto the lawn outside and refilled it. Then, seeing the weather was fine, he stumped back upstairs and waited for Qin to finish eating.

They reemerged in the hot sun, Qin squinting from beneath the perforated shade of a straw hat, Tallow bare-headed and drooping. He retrieved One-Eye from the storage room and set the animal under Qin’s watch on the narrow lawn. It had been two weeks since One-Eye was abruptly inserted into their lives and, as Tallow had foreseen, the caretaking fell almost entirely to him. He scrunched up the dirty sheets of newspaper lining the floor of the coop, used a birch broom to sweep up the droppings, and laid down a fresh layer of newsprint. That’s when a cry from Qin sent him flapping out the door.

Qin stood at the edge of the lawn with her long arms hanging emptily. At her feet, One-Eye was desperately trying to beat an escape. It dragged itself by its forepaws, its left leg trailing behind it like a rake. It took a moment for Tallow to rewind the scene and understand what had happened.

“Now you’ve done it!” he said, stumping up to Qin. “What did I tell you to do? Watch the rabbit. Watch the rabbit. I never said pick it up. Now pa!—it’s a cripple. Just look at it. It’s disgusting! Why did you have to go and drop it?”

Qin’s silence cut through to him. For the first time since he burst from the storage room, Tallow saw her face clearly. The square line of her jaw was as hard as cement—she wasn’t about to yield him an inch—but her crescent eyes beneath the brim of her hat were dilated and full of tears. The words were gone, he realized. The words she would have thrown at him were gone, but somehow he still heard her question loud and clear. If it had been you, are you so sure you wouldn’t have dropped the rabbit too?

It was then they both realized the obvious: One-Eye was getting away. In almost perfect unison, with as much speed as they could muster, they advanced pincer-style on the rabbit. One-Eye had managed to drag itself almost to the other side of the lawn. Qin, swinging her left arm forcefully, got to it first. In one swift motion she swooped down and plucked the rabbit up by the ears. Suddenly suspended between heaven and earth, One-Eye began to twitch, and for a moment Tallow was afraid it would scream.

But Qin had full control of the situation. She proceeded matter-of-factly into the storage room with One-Eye dangling from her hand like a freshly harvested carrot. Tallow followed behind her and watched as she lowered One-Eye through the hatch of the chicken coop. In the blink of an eye, the rabbit kicked away from her and flung itself into the far corner, where it stretched out full-length on its side. A strip of sunlight came in through the crack of the door, illuminating the soft white fur on One-Eye’s belly, which trembled violently.

“You scared it,” Tallow said, but Qin breezed right past him out the door with her shoulders tensed almost up to her ears. One of One-Eye’s eyes, the one sunken in the black patch of fur, flashed a devilish red in the sun. Then the stench of it rolled over him—the bottomless lust for violence and the helplessness of the Ten Years of Madness. Tallow, startled, threw a reproachful look at the reclining rabbit before making his retreat.

He felt guilty all the rest of the morning and afternoon. He hung up the laundry to dry on the metal poles attached outside their living room window. He made a stir fry of tomatoes and eggs, which was Qin’s favourite, and they sat across from each other in silence, shoveling it down with rice. On his way back from checking the mail, Tallow ran into the husband from unit 1B on the landing. Filled with relief at the opportunity to confess, he apologized and told the young man what had happened to One-Eye.

“Oh, then it’s done for,” the husband said casually. “Apparently it’s a common thing for young rabbits to get injured from a fall. Their bones are too soft, and most of them don’t survive. It’s too bad, really.”

“Ah ... ” Tallow’s mouth spread into a half grimace. His earlier relief had evaporated. “If we had known we would have been more careful. I’m very sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for, grandpa!” the husband exclaimed. “The pets they sell on the street are just that way, malnourished and not expected to live for very long. But kids feel sorry for them ... and I guess I kind of do too, in a way. Maybe that’s why I bought the rabbits."

“Honestly,” he said after a moment, “we should be the ones to apologize. It seems our giving you the rabbit has caused you two quite a bit of trouble.”

“Oh, not at all,” Tallow said politely. “Not at all.”

Inside the apartment, Qin sat stormily in her rattan chair. It was getting late, but still the summer heat clung implacably to everything like a child to its mother. Tallow saw Qin roll one layer of pant leg up to her knees, then another, and then all three loose layers had been folded up, exposing her speckled shins. At 7:00, he reminded her it was time for their evening walk, but she acted as though she couldn’t hear him. Taking evening walks had become such an established part of their routine that if something prevented Qin from going she inevitably sleepwalked at night, but Tallow in his frustration forgot this. He set off on his own. Halfway down the stairs he got the sinking feeling that he had better check in on the rabbit.

The red evening light that streamed through the doorway had fuzzy edges, unlike the morning sunlight’s harsh angularity, and it showed the rabbit stretched out full-length in the same corner. But its belly was no longer trembling, and when Tallow reached through the hatch to pick it up, One-Eye hung limp in his hand.

A wave of sadness rolled over him as he stared down at the patches on One-Eye’s back. Why had he yelled at Qin over something so insubstantial, an animal whose soul was so weakly tethered to its body that a single fall had cut it loose? His thoughts were interrupted by a thin stream of liquid that leaked out from the rabbit’s nether end and splashed onto the floor. Tallow grunted with disgust. Opening up a large sheet of newspaper, he wrapped the rabbit’s body in it and put the bundle in a plastic bag.

Out on the streets, Tallow followed their normal route. Whenever he met neighbours who asked about Qin, he told them she was suffering from the heat and had gone to bed early. Their neighbours offered their sympathy; some prescribed cures. Qin’s absence was so conspicuous that he managed to make it all the way outside the neighbourhood walls without anybody asking him about the bag.

The apartments built into the wall had storefronts facing out onto the street. One of those stores was a noodle shop owned by a man called Lao Ba, who was a generation younger than Tallow. Being from an ethnic minority, Lao Ba had managed to have five children when the majority of families were limited to one. His youngest son, Xiao Wu, was the one who had helped Tallow and Qin move from their old house the previous summer. The boy went to a technical college in the same city where Tallow’s son lived. Xiao Wu not only studied but ran a one-man street food business on the side. Loading up a two-wheel cart with noodles, toppings, and a steaming pot of the family’s secret broth, he would attach the cart to the electric motorbike his parents had bought him and haul his fare to a busy street, where he sold breakfast to passersby. His success in the city had made him something of a local celebrity.

Lao Ba was very proud of his youngest son, but to Tallow he would only say, “I always tell that kid not to let a bit of money and fame get to his head. You get puffed up there, with all the zipping around he does on that motorbike, and sooner or later you’ll end up running a light and getting T-boned by a truck.”

If Lao Ba’s wife was within earshot when he bragged about Xiao Wu in this odd, backhanded way, Tallow always heard her spit three times in rapid succession. (“It’s some superstition of hers,” Lao Ba would say lightly. “Can’t make heads or tails of it.”)

“Xiao Wu’s a good kid,” Tallow would say to Qin whenever he thought of the boy after last summer. It was one of those things, like Old Ji being served right by dying, that they could unequivocally agree on.

Feeling strangely exposed without Qin by his side, Tallow drifted past Lao Ba’s noodle shop. A grey sheen of smoke escaped from a square chute above the red awnings, infusing the air with the sting of chili oil. A group of men sat stripped to the waist at one of the outdoor tables in the heat, firing loud volleys of words at each other over an archipelago of empty dishes and noodle bowls. Stray dogs nosed about under the tables. One of the larger dogs stopped and looked up as Tallow passed by. I’ll bet it can smell One-Eye, Tallow thought, and limped on a bit faster.

He reached the broad intersection where he and Qin would normally have turned left, but this time he crossed the newly paved road and stepped off the other side. There was no sidewalk here; the new multi-lane road marked the boundary between the buildings of the old textile factory, including their rowhouse, and the new residential area. Behind the curtain of trees and shrubs was a trail that led down a corridor of ancient camphor trees, and beyond them were the old dirt roads that Qin’s brigade had laid. Tallow could walk these roads blindfolded—as he very nearly used to do before the installation of electric street lamps, winding his way home from the warehouses in the dark.

Beyond the trees lay an ocean of rubble, as though a giant had sneezed and their small corner of the world had come tumbling down. The ruins unfolded into the distance—crests and troughs, houses and streets.

But this familiar landscape no longer existed save in memory. One day about a month ago, after it had rained overnight, Tallow and Qin got up in the morning and proceeded outdoors to check on their old house. They did so once in a while, partly out of curiosity and partly out of responsibility, as though their old house were an ailing relative they were obliged to visit a few times a year. But there was a different feeling in the air, and not simply due to the rain. Tallow knew before they laid eyes on it that the demolition had taken place.

A construction crew was still on site, digging trenches around the camphor trees so they could be lifted clear out of the earth with their roots. One of the construction workers told them the camphors were being relocated to a tree sanctuary in another province. Beyond the trees lay an ocean of rubble, as though a giant had sneezed and their small corner of the world had come tumbling down. The ruins unfolded into the distance—crests and troughs, houses and streets.

He and Qin had been able to locate their old house without much difficulty that first day, but as time went on and portions of the rubble were cleared away, their memory of what used to be became less and less defined. Now, with One-Eye’s weight hanging from his wrist, Tallow questioned whether he would recognize the remains of their old house when he came to it. He made his way between two rows of gaping holes; all other traces of the camphor trees’ presence had been removed. From there, it was usually about a 15 minute walk to their former street, but his bad leg and the wreckage strewn all over the road nearly doubled the time.

Once Tallow reached the house (he assumed it was theirs), he advanced haltingly to where he estimated their garden used to be. It took several minutes before he found what he wanted: an earthen pot embedded in a heap of debris. The pot was inconspicuous and almost wholly intact, which made it perfectly suited to Tallow’s purposes—an empty grave. As gently as he could, he lowered the plastic bag containing One-Eye’s body inside. Then he retraced his steps to the threshold of their house (or that of their neighbours, he couldn’t be sure) and sat down, exhausted, on the concrete step. He sat there for what felt like a very long time.

Before he knew it, the sun had slipped below the horizon. A chill descended as the dark fabric of the sky finished knitting itself together. Since nobody lived in the neighbourhood anymore, the electricity had long been cut, and the streets would again be swathed in pitch blackness once the last traces of light drained away.

Tallow’s left leg had fallen asleep. He slapped it several times to get the blood circulating again and rose to his feet. Then, slowly, he began limping down the main road back the way he came. The laundry had to be taken in, and Qin would need help washing up and getting ready for bed. Perhaps she was still brooding in her rattan chair over the accident with One-Eye. He decided against telling her that the rabbit was dead.

Staring at his feet to make sure he didn’t slip on a roof tile or trip over a brick, even though it was almost too dark to see, Tallow didn’t realize he had entered the lane where the camphors used to be. He didn’t realize how close he was walking to the edge of the path until his left leg gave a shudder, and then the ground was no longer there. A speeding bulk of black slammed into his back and knocked all the wind out of him. His head and shoulder blades bounced off something hard and cold, and then his entire body ground to a halt.

The first thing he felt when he came to was the sensation of thousands of small feet crawling up his arms and over his throat—an army of ants advancing on his head! Tallow coughed and tried to thrash his arms, but such a wave of pain lanced from the base of his neck to his skull that he abandoned the effort immediately. The gravelly texture in his mouth made him realize the ants were really just loose dirt. He had fallen into one of the holes left by the camphor trees, which was deeper than he was tall, and lay almost perpendicular to the ground with his feet propped up against its steep walls.

If only someone else was here, Tallow thought. Oddly, the face that flashed through his mind was that of his son, and the improbability of help from this particular quarter filled Tallow with resentment. His son had no feeling for them—and even had the gall to try making up for this lack of feeling by sending them that stupidly elaborate rattan chair, which held his mother in its clutches most of the time. If he knew how much his mother’s condition had worsened, would he at least soften his heart enough to come home?

It was shortly after Tallow made his false confession and got his job back that the middle school sent a messenger to the warehouses with the news: Tallow’s son had gotten violent with his female homeroom teacher. What began as a verbal fight culminated in his son throwing a chair at her from the back of the classroom. Without waiting to see whether the chair hit its mark, he bolted from his seat and sprinted down the second-floor hallway. The male teacher next door dutifully chased after him, and in a panic Tallow’s son lost his footing and fell down the stairs.

Tallow’s face was no longer swollen from the beatings, but he had yet to get a replacement for his missing teeth. Upon learning that Qin had left work early to be with their son at the hospital, he returned home to wait, pacing up and down the length of their house. At last, he saw their figures through the screen door, which Qin opened and held so their son could slink in. The boy’s right forearm and elbow were encased in a dazzling white cast. Once inside, he scowled at Tallow, who scowled back.

“Is this what we get for raising you?” he asked. “Don’t you realize what situation our family is in? And still you go gallivanting about and beating up teachers. You think that’s impressive? Let me tell you, using your fists to solve problems makes you no better than a hooligan or a common criminal.”

“At least I’m better than you,” his son retorted. “Look at your face! You couldn’t even defend yourself.”

At that, Tallow lost his cool completely. Before he could stop himself, he marched up to his son and slapped him in the face. The blow sent the boy sprawling backward into the square dining table, whose corner gashed the side of his head. Qin let out a sharp cry. Instantly she was on her knees, cradling the boy’s head. Blood from his wound soaked into the lap of her trousers. “Go, get out of here!” she screamed at Tallow. “Can you hear me? Get out!”

If Tallow had broken down and wept then, as he had felt like doing, perhaps his son would have regained some regard for him. But he had turned and stalked off, unable to face what his own hands had done.

Incidentally, it was the day after their grown son introduced them to his fiancée, whose parents were performers of revolutionary operas and who had consequently grown up in a theatre troupe, that Tallow fell down the stairs leading up to his office at the warehouse. The cracked left femur prompted him to retire early. A few months later, when he was still limping around with a cane, their son got married against their wishes and moved to his wife’s native city. Their only child, a girl nicknamed Button, was raised by her maternal grandparents. When Button was four, her parents finally came to an agreement with Tallow and Qin that they could come over and visit.

Perhaps it was the euphoria of riding one of the new high-speed trains, or the delight of seeing his granddaughter for the first time, or a combination of both. But when they arrived back home to their rowhouse, Tallow was seized by a spurt of youthful vigour (and a heavy dose of youthful folly to go along with it) and announced to Qin that he would bike to the wet market the next morning.

The chill of night slithered into the hole and coiled itself around him, persuading his stiff limbs to become even heavier, and he felt a growing desire to urinate.

“You do what you want,” she said dismissively. In hindsight Tallow wished he had taken her lack of enthusiasm to heart. It had been years since he last rode a bike anywhere, and with the plastic bags of groceries he hung on the handlebars throwing their weight around, he tipped over into a roadside ditch and broke his left leg a second time.

His son phoned to admonish Tallow for his careless behaviour. He even ordered some fruit online and had it delivered to his parents’ house, but he never once visited during Tallow’s convalescence. It was then that Tallow realized just how much his blow to his son’s head had cost them. Recalling this as he lay upside down in the hole, Tallow also realized something else: He had never asked his son what the fight with his homeroom teacher had been about. The chill of night slithered into the hole and coiled itself around him, persuading his stiff limbs to become even heavier, and he felt a growing desire to urinate. He considered calling for help. But who would be wandering the ruins in the dead of night? And if they heard him, wouldn’t they simply think he was a ghost?

Just as he was on the verge of resigning himself to wait until daybreak, Tallow heard the sound of rattling metal from the direction of the demolished houses. The sound came closer—it was something on wheels—and soon the lip of the hole was caught in the beam of a headlight. The clattering came to a stop directly above Tallow’s feet.

“Hey, you alive down there?” The voice had a friendly brashness that Tallow had heard somewhere before. Then the speaker popped their head over the edge of the hole, and Tallow was so frightened he nearly lost control of his bladder.

The face of his rescuer was unmistakably that of Xiao Wu, Lao Ba’s enterprising son—except Lao Ba had mentioned to Tallow that Xiao Wu had enrolled for summer classes and wouldn’t be coming home. What’s more, the Xiao Wu Tallow remembered didn’t have a dark birthmark covering most of the right side of his face.

Seemingly oblivious to Tallow’s distress, not-Xiao Wu said cheerfully, “Hang in there, grandpa, let me help you.” With a “hup!” the boy jumped down into the hole, landing behind Tallow’s head, and proceeded to tow him backward by the armpits so he slid into a sitting position at the bottom. After Tallow caught his breath, not-Xiao Wu helped him to his feet. The boy then climbed back out, took hold of Tallow under the arms, and dragged him onto the road.

Stretched out flat on his back, Tallow saw for the first time the electric motorbike that facilitated Xiao Wu’s wildly successful side business. The two-wheel cart, empty, was attached behind it. Not-Xiao Wu stood nearby, looking down at him without the slightest recognition. His eyes were deep and large like those of a horse. The sight unnerved Tallow. With not-Xiao Wu’s assistance, he climbed to his feet and shambled off alone to urinate into the hole opposite the one he had fallen into.

“Do you want a ride home?” the lively voice behind him asked when he was done. Tallow was about to refuse, but then it came to him: It must have been hours since he left Qin alone in the apartment.

He nearly pounced on not-Xiao Wu. “What time is it?” he asked.

The boy checked his watch. “Why, it’s almost 3:00 a.m.”

“Then go, go!” Tallow limped over to the bike and deposited himself in the cart with a bang, his legs hanging over the unlatched tailgate. “I’ll give you directions. Just hurry!” 

“Sure thing,” not-Xiao Wu said. He hopped on the bike and turned the key. “And don’t worry about directions, I’ve got it figured out.”

Tallow watched the barren camphor lane recede behind them. Not-Xiao Wu steered across the broad intersection and onto the brick-paved sidewalk. They rattled past Lao Ba’s shuttered shop and toward the neighbourhood gates. At the window, the boy displayed some kind of pass to the night watchman, who barely gave his birthmarked face and the dirt-streaked old man a second glance before raising the barrier and letting them through.

“Unit 1A, apartment 3, block 46,” Tallow heard the boy mutter. How on earth did he know? Then he remembered that Xiao Wu, without the birthmark, was the one who had volunteered to help them move a year ago.

As they turned onto block 46, Tallow twisted around in the cart so he could see ahead to their building. He swallowed a cry of alarm. Beneath the light of the street lamps, the door of their storage room stood open. Had someone broken in? Or was it Qin, sleepwalking in search of the rabbit?

Before not-Xiao Wu could make a full stop, Tallow had already creaked up from the cart and was hurrying across the strip of lawn. He stumbled into the doorway and froze. Inside the storage room, dressed in all three layers of summer clothes, Qin lay flat on her back atop the empty chicken coop. Her face was angled slightly toward him, and her eyes were closed. Fearing the worst, Tallow limped into the room, the sole of his left shoe scratching against the cement floor. The sound woke Qin. Her crescent-shaped eyes opened. For a long while, she studied him without saying anything. Then she raised herself on the elbow of her good arm and spoke their son’s name.

“Is that you?” she asked. “So you’ve come back at last. But good heavens”—she broke into an amused smile—“you’ve gotten so old.”

Tallow limped closer and peered into her face. “Qin, Qin!” he said, shaking her lightly. “Don’t you know me?”

Qin paused. The happy lines mapped over her face rearranged themselves into a maze of confusion, and she sat up fully, bringing her legs over the side of the coop. 

“Of course,” she said. “You were coming down to feed the rabbit. So what’s it doing out there, sitting on the road? Why is it looking at us like that?”

“You’re dreaming,” Tallow said. He didn’t check behind him. He didn’t dare. Wearily, Qin let him help her onto her feet. As they stepped out from the storage room, Tallow turned his head left and right, but the street had been swept clean of any trace of boy, cart, and motorbike.

The empty cart would have made a racket going over the brick pavement, but he hadn’t heard a sound. It was as though not-Xiao Wu had vanished into thin air.

Am I dreaming too? Tallow wondered as he and Qin mounted the eight steps to the landing. Inside the apartment, the living room phone was ringing. Tallow ignored it and brought Qin to their room, where she shuffled to her side of the bed and sagged down onto the mattress. Tallow removed his shoes by the bed and was about to stretch out beside her, dirt and all, except the electronic burbling persisted. Annoyed, he turned to leave the room to take the phone off the hook.

“Don’t let it in,” Qin croaked from the bed.

“What?” Tallow paused. “Who?”

“Death,” said Qin. “Death is on the other end of the line.”

Then, for some reason he couldn’t explain, Tallow had the intense premonition that the one on the other end of the line was none other than Lao Ba, his grief obliterating the bounds of politeness and time, calling to tell him Xiao Wu had been killed in an accident while zipping around on his motorbike. Why else would the boy have appeared here with his cart and a strange birthmark when he was supposed to be safely asleep, hundreds of miles away?

Curiosity got the better of him. Tallow limped a few steps into the living room—just to see the number on the display, he thought. Just to see.

Then, from the bedroom behind him, he heard Qin let out a snore. There was something sad and feathery about the sound that stopped him in his tracks. Tallow turned around to look at her, a grey spindle shape on the mattress. An unexpected lump of pity for her welled up in his throat. What if she is right? he thought. Why did he have to go and tempt fate? With all the trouble he had gotten them into over the years, didn’t he owe it to her to just listen for once? He made up his mind and returned to the room, shutting the door and lying down. He waited. After a moment, he heard the living room phone give one last putter, and then all was still.