‘If those hooligans were dogs, how would you deal with them?’ I asked the survivor.
‘The fact is dogs would never commit such a crime.’
‘Still, the committee leaders are doing a fine job. They’ve charged into the thick of things and resolved to sort this matter out in person.’
‘Of course, the editorial of tomorrow’s newspaper will claim that the secretary of the municipal Party committee left his sickbed to rush here and put an end to this hooligan riot. You are lowly creatures, far inferior to us dogs. You try to adopt our civilised behaviour and our sense of morality and justice, but in your hearts all you think about is money and food coupons.’
The dog seemed to ignore for a moment the noise booming from the streets below. He turned his head away. ‘Can you do me a favour?’ he said, lowering his gaze to the ground. ‘I saw some spare ribs in a dustbin on Serve the People Road. There was still some meat left on the bones.’
I kept silent.
‘They were obviously stewed in some thick, spicy sauce,’ he said, still averting his eyes. He took a gulp of water from his bowl, then pointed his nose into the air and sniffed the breeze.
‘You still haven’t finished that joint I brought back from the cafeteria yesterday.’
‘It was revolting,’ he moaned. ‘You know I don’t like mutton bones.’
‘But I can only get bones from the Muslim section now.’
He bowed his head again and sighed.
In the streets below, the crowd started scattering like a swarm of ants. More policemen and security officers arrived at the scene. Then a regiment of PLA soldiers, fronted by two army tanks, suddenly appeared from nowhere, and began to drive back the remaining hordes chanting ‘Socialism is good!’ in thick Henan accents.
‘They’ve caught one of the rapists,’ I cried.
‘Did you see those people demonstrating in the streets last week?’ The dog seemed distracted. He was probably still thinking about the spare ribs in the dustbin.
A huge grey cloud moved through the sky, and the streets darkened. The girl was wrapped in a blanket and escorted into a police van. On the flyover above the intersection, the leaders’ meeting was approaching a conclusion.
‘She shouldn’t have worn that tight skirt,’ I muttered. ‘None of the women in our museum are allowed to wear tight skirts.’
The dog gazed up at the clouds and said, ‘In two minutes the rain will fall. It was the low air pressure this morning that made those boys lose their minds.’
Raindrops cut through the sunlit sky like threads of nylon. The dog shook the water from his coat and stood up. ‘The rain is clean, but when it reaches the earth it turns into mud,’ he said. ‘Why not just enjoy the sight of the rain and forget about the mud?’
‘I live in the clouds, so of course I can just look at the rain. But your feet are stuck on the ground, so you can’t ignore the mud.’
‘You dogs are so lucky. You can roam the world without a care, while we must spend our days earning money to pay our rent, buy jumpers, raincoats and thermal underwear. If we want to keep our jobs, we must control our behaviour and deny ourselves the flights of fancy and reactionary meditations you indulge in. We have to study the newspapers every day to ensure we take the correct political line. Our skins are so thin, we have to wear clothes, and when these clothes are ripped from us, we become like naked pigs, or that girl on the street below. We depend on our elegant wrappings. We have to conceal our true natures if we want to survive.’
‘You sound as though you’ve caught a cold,’ the dog whined, paying no attention to what I had said.
When I returned from the conference and discovered the survivor had died, my spirits crumbled. Every day I stared at my paintbrush, but was unable to lift it to my canvas. I longed to contract a fatal disease, or to perish in some natural disaster. If I’d been a drinker, I would have drunk myself to oblivion. How nice that would have been. To stop myself from dreaming about him at night, I turned my bed round so that my head pointed south. I’d read in a magazine that this keeps nightmares at bay, and also improves your complexion and delays the onset of grey hairs. Although I did indeed suffer fewer nightmares after that, my dreams became more erotic. One night, I dreamed I was flying through the air, chasing after a fat girl’s bottom. After I grabbed hold of it, I discovered it belonged to the woman who plucks dead ducks in the museum’s cafeteria.
Since he passed away, I haven’t cried once, or encountered one setback that might have allowed me to release a strong emotion. The world has carried on as usual. Although my parents are over eighty, they are in fine health. My classmates are still living dull, uneventful lives. My girlfriend’s suicide has almost vanished from my mind. Apart from me, everyone seems at peace with themselves.