The Noodle Maker(49)

‘That incinerator was too hot,’ the shadow said, humming like a mosquito. ‘I’m looking for a piece of cloth that hasn’t faded yet.’ She bent down and rummaged inside the chest.

‘This is my home!’ he replied, breaking into a sweat.

The flickering apparition laughed. ‘Had! But I have lived here all my life! I know every corner of this room like the back of my hand. When the dirty handkerchief under your pillow was new, I used to keep my ring inside it. Have you taken a look under the bed yet?’

The street writer shook his head from side to side, and discovered he was still alive, and that the old hag flitting before his eyes was alive too. The strands of black hair on his balding head stood up on end. He opened his mouth, his tongue thirsting for a drop of water.

‘What’s under the bed?’ he asked. He watched the old hag move towards him, then lower herself, or rather fall, onto the bed. ‘What a pathetic creature you are,’ she hummed. ‘You’re as thin as a matchstick. How much longer are you planning to stay here?’

‘But I live here,’ he said to the dim and blurry face. These words soothed his nerves, and soon the hairs on his head drooped back down onto his scalp. He suspected that he was speaking to a ghost. This was a regular occurrence for him. He had been visited by the ghosts of the Virgin Mary and Chairman Mao, a girl he had seen in a magazine, and a woman with small feet who had walked past him on the street. One night, when the spirit of a policeman who had harassed him a few years previously paid a visit, he slapped his face and knocked his helmet off. Who knows, maybe this muddle-headed old woman was just another of those ghosts. He attempted to get out of bed, just as he’d done when he went to slap the policeman, but his legs couldn’t stop shaking.

‘You little worm,’ the old hag said, in the same harsh tone she used with her son. ‘You’re like a maggot burrowing into a corpse. You run into our shed every night, pretending to be mad, always calling out some woman’s name. In a few thousand days, those girls will be like the old housewives you see outside, dragging their children down the street. Even the freshest face will one day resemble a chunk of salted gammon. All women become smelly and clumsy in middle age. Why didn’t you listen to what the mother of that actress told you? Why are you still here, wasting your time writing those obscene letters?’

As the old hag sank to the floor, he heard a rustling noise from inside the chest. Two mice scuttled out from under the bed and jumped into the lowest drawer of his desk.

‘Why not put an end to it now? You’ll have to go sooner or later, so you might as well get it over with. Ha! I see our belongings are still here. At least you haven’t stolen anything.’ The rustling noise came to a stop. He put his hand over his lungs and heart to check whether he was still alive. When all the sounds died down, he sat up in his bed, turned the light on and waited for dawn to break.

Early next morning, he returned to his corner of the street. It was a fine day. He could tell there was no wind because the plastic bag wasn’t moving and the white clouds in the sky were perfectly still. Squatting down against the wall, he hunched his shoulders and wondered why his spirits were so low. Perhaps he was upset by the old hag who had pestered him last night, or by what the mother of the actress had told him the week before, or perhaps the strain of writing so many letters every day was finally taking its toll. Having lived away from his family so long, his thoughts often drifted back to his hometown, although the sight of the white plastic bag always flicked him back to the present as fast as the snap of a rubber band. Now, as he squatted in the corner, he remembered how, as a child, when the maple leaves were turning red, he had walked up to a tree, his eyes brimming with tears, pulled out a pencil and carved into the trunk the words ‘Help me! Help me!’ Even from an early age, he liked to write down words to express what was on his mind. He remembered standing for hours in front of a shop counter gazing at the fountain pens he couldn’t afford to buy; running all day along the banks of a river after his mother had slapped him in front of his classmates; secretly grieving for a girl next door who had committed suicide; pulling out the first shoots of grass in spring and rolling naked over the bare earth.

Now, as a man of thirty, he felt that the hopes that each new spring had promised were empty and deceitful. He had discovered that the stages of his life’s journey were in fact as neatly mapped out as the Chinese characters on the pages of his draft letters. He knew he presented a pitiful sight, and that his mind was filled with dry and meaningless memories. The old hag who had badgered him last night was right – he was a piece of scum, stuck by gob to the street corner.