Neighbor邻居

Zhao Song (赵松)

Translated by Dylan Levi King

Illustration by Xi Dahe

I

n the spring of 1989, I moved into a Japanese-style apartment building in the old part of town. I rented a single room on the first floor. There was a shared kitchen and bathroom. Not long after I moved in, the people living across the hall moved out. After that, the room sat vacant for a long time.

I appreciated the peace and quiet. I only had a single room and I never went across the hall, but I enjoyed feeling like I was the master of an expansive suite. The way I figured, if I was going to live alone, I might as well enjoy the solitude. If I needed someone around all the time, Id go out and get married.

Im a lazy person by nature. Back then, I spent most of my free time reading. I likedwuxiastories—martial arts masters descending into the underworld to seek revenge, that kind of thing—or collections of strange stories about ghosts and immortals. I wasnt even above picking up the occasional gossip magazine. In order to preserve my indolence and give me enough time to read, I found a job as a night watchman guarding an engine room. My shift started at four oclock every afternoon. Each day, I showed up with my book, dutifully took my post, and read until midnight, listening to the machines whirring behind me. Except for whoever came in to relieve me, I never had to deal with any coworkers. That was another perk of the job.

When I got home each night, I took a shower and cooked up some noodles or something else simple to fill my belly, then I would stretch out on my bed with a cup of tea and start reading again. I usually read until around four in the morning. Sometimes I would drift off to sleep with the lights still on. Sometimes I just didnt feel like turning them off. Sometimes I even fell asleep with the TV on.

A middle-aged couple lived down the hall. We shared a wall. The husband was a brute. He liked to yell at his wife. Sometimes, she shrieked back at him. I was more or less used to it, though. The apartment across the hall from them—and so, down the hall from me—was being rented by a woman who was around 28 or 29. Come to think of it, she might have been even younger. She was a quiet woman, to the point of seeming removed from the rest of the world. You might be picturing her as elegant and aloof, but she actually seemed a bit eccentric to me. You know, there are some people who stand out because they are strange, but people can stand out for being too normal, too. Personally, I didnt mind having an eccentric neighbor.

The night I met her, I had gotten home later than usual. Id put in a half hour or so of overtime and taken a shower at work. Not long after I got home, I heard a knock at my door. I went to open the door with my coat still on. It was the woman from down the hall. You know, the quiet eccentric. She seemed a bit nervous. Instead of coming inside, she poked her head in and glanced around, then looked back at the closed door of the room across the hall. She had knocked because she wanted to know which room was mine. She seemed shocked that I wasnt living in the room across from me, which shared a wall with her own.

I asked her what was going on. She hesitated for a moment, then said: “I thought you were living in the room next to mine. The last couple days, right around this time every night, I keep hearing someone knocking on the wall. I even heard someone singing.” I laughed and asked her if she was trying to spook me. That wasnt the right thing to say. “You think I would come and knock on your door in the middle of the night just to mess with you?” she demanded.

I decided to take her more seriously. I turned on the light in the hall, motioned for her to come with me, but left my door open behind us. “Go knock on the door,” I told her, gesturing across the hall. “You can see for yourself if anybodys in there.”

She hesitated. “Youre scared to knock?” I asked. “Ill do it for you.” I stepped across the hall and rapped on the door. Just as I expected, nobody answered.

She walked back down the hall, but I could tell she wasnt completely satisfied. “Sorry,” she mumbled reluctantly. “I should apologize for disturbing you.”

“Dont worry about it,” I said. “I was still awake. You were probably just imagining things.”

She didnt make any reply. The door slammed behind her. Standing alone in the hallway, I suddenly felt uneasy. I crept back to the closed door of the vacant room and put my ear against it. There was no sound coming from inside. It was so quiet in the building that I could hear the TV in the room above me. A half-deaf old man lived there with his mute son. I figured that must have been what she heard. That was my conclusion: She was working herself up over nothing. I could tell she was the type of girl who liked to give herself a fright. She was definitely a bit neurotic.

The next day, right around the same time, she knocked at my door again. This time, I was less patient. I stared at her coldly. She shifted awkwardly under my gaze, struggling with what she wanted to say, then finally blurted out, “I heard the same sounds again. The same as the night before. Exactly the same.” She begged me to come to her room, so I could hear for myself. She wanted me to know she wasnt hallucinating. I considered for a moment, then followed her, closing my door behind me.

The young womans room was clean. There was a faint aroma in the air that I thought could have been perfume or cosmetics. From my own observations, though, she didnt seem to be a woman who used either. Her room was mostly empty and simply furnished. The books were a surprise, though. She didnt have a bookcase, but there was a stack of books on the floor, a pile on the desk, and even a few on the bed. Her tastes seemed quite peculiar, too. The pile on the floor was devoted to history, geography, and fortune telling. The stack on her desk was divided between astronomy, feng shui, and research into various paranormal phenomena. I noticed that some of the books were in English, including a six-volume set of Daniel HarrisonsStudies on Paranormal Activity in Ancient China. The binding on the set was so beautiful that I couldnt stop myself from picking up one of the volumes and flipping through it. Of course, my English wasnt any good, so I couldnt read much more than the copyright page. I could make out when it was published, by whom, and who the editors were. The rest was incomprehensible.

The young woman was annoyed that I had gotten distracted by the books and seemed to have forgotten her problem. She cleared her throat loudly and pointed at the wall beside her bed. As I took a seat on her white duvet and surprisingly soft mattress, I once again noted a faint fragrance.

I listened closely. Silence. I glanced back at her. “I dont hear it,” I said. She didnt believe me and came over to listen, too. There was still no sound.

She looked disappointed, thought for a moment and said, “Maybe its done for the night.”

“Fine,” I said. “You want me to come back tomorrow?” She had no choice but to agree.

As I left, I took another look at her books. I told her she had decent taste. Some of the books looked rare. “But dont read too much of that stuff,” I warned her. “It puts ideas in your head.”

She shot me a dirty look. “You mean reading those books is causing me to imagine all of this?” she asked.

I waved her off. “Its just a suggestion,” I said.

“Well, thanks, I guess,” she said.

“Dont mention it,” I said. “After all, what are neighbors for?” I could tell she didnt find that funny. That woman didnt have much of a sense of humor.

The next day, I went to her place as soon as I got off work, bringing a few tangerines that I picked up in the night market. They werent intended as a gift. I just happened to have some extra. When we got into her room and stood under the light, I noticed that she seemed to be wearing makeup. It gave her a sultry air. She was smoking, too. I hadnt expected that. There were no signs of it the day before. She held a finger to her lips, signaling me to keep quiet. We pressed our ears to the wall and listened in silence. I realized she had been telling the truth. The sound couldnt be coming from upstairs. It had to be from the next room over.

At first, it was a slow, rhythmic knocking. It reminded me of monks striking a wooden fish to keep time during their chanting. The rhythm almost matched, but the sound was less sharp. After that came the sound of singing, or more accurately, chanting. Again, it reminded me of monks reciting sutras, but the syllables were clearer. It almost sounded like someone muttering, mixing in the occasional grunt. The voice was too muffled for me to make out what it was saying. I was a bit freaked out, and realized that I had broken out in a cold sweat. My palms were clammy. When I glanced back at the young woman, I instantly felt very close to her. Theres a saying that fear has the power to bring complete strangers together as intimate friends. I think its spot on.

She poured me a cup of hot water and set it on the coffee table beside her bed. I stood for a moment, slightly stunned. I ended up pacing nervously around the room. “You believe me now?” she asked. She was sitting on the sofa, looking calm.

“Yes,” I said. “Ive never heard those sounds before.” I realized that I probably sounded like a wimp. I felt embarrassed.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “a little.”

“So, what should we do?” she pressed.

I told her that we should wait until tomorrow and ask the landlord for the keys to the room. That was the only way to know what was going on in there. She agreed. But she was worried we wouldnt be able to get to the bottom of the matter just by doing that. “What Im worried about,” she said, “is that its not somebody or something, but…”

“You think its haunted?” I asked.

She paused, as if reluctant to admit the possibility. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she countered.

“Ghosts could be real,” I said, “or it could be all in peoples heads.” That had always been my way of thinking. I had no evidence one way or the other. “But it doesnt matter what I think. I dont have any experience with supernatural stuff.”

“Now you have,” she said with a smile.

“Are you tired?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I was sleepy during the day. I even dozed off around noon. Now, Im not tired at all.”

I wasnt tired, either, so I took out the bag of tangerines. I gave her the biggest one, peeled one of the tinier ones for myself, and ate it in a few bites. They were seedless, and very sweet. I watched as she gently kneaded her tangerine, rolling it around in her hands. After a while, she dug her thumbnail into the top of it. One by one, she methodically squeezed each segment up through the hole and ate them. She took her time. I could tell that she was a very patient person.

It was only natural that we started making small talk. She told me that after finishing university in the provincial capital, she had gotten a job here as a librarian. Her major was history. Her hobby was researching theI Ching. I couldnt help but admire her. I immediately blurted out that I used to like reading theI Ching, too. The book was intended for fortune telling, but I liked to read its statements as poetry.

“Those statements arent important,” she smiled, shaking her head.

“Why not?” I asked. I didnt appreciate her directness.

She went on, as if talking to herself: “Whats really important is the numbers. You know what I mean? Its the numbers behind the statements. Invisible numbers. Not the text. If you can understand those, you can tell the future, and know the past too. You can easily comprehend all events from all times. Just like Song dynasty philosopher Shao Yong, once you understand theI Ching, you can come up with your own model to predict things with.”

She really knows her stuff, I thought to myself.

“Did you know Confucius once warned people about theI Ching? He said it was okay for playing around, but if you got too deep into it, it would cause you problems. Spotting fish in a deep pond is not auspicious, as the saying goes. Theres such a thing as knowing too much.”

The bag of tangerines was gone before I knew it. From the light coming through the crack in her curtains, I could tell that it was probably dawn. Without realizing it, we talked until five-thirty in the morning. I slowly shook off the spell she had cast as she talked about theI Chingthrough the night. I breathed a sigh of relief, and said goodnight to her. When I got back to my room, I crawled into bed and slept soundly.

We became friends. It was only natural. We both liked books. I was not reading at her level, but that wasnt a problem. She was a good teacher and I was a keen student. As for the strange sounds coming from the neighboring room, they continued for about a week and then stopped. That perplexed my new friend. She eventually decided to use theI Chingto divine for an answer. She rarely used theI Chingfor divination, but she decided to make an exception. After consulting the book, her conclusion was that the room had been inhabited by a spirit that was stuck in the living realm, and had been practicing self-cultivation in order to move on to the next life. Only two weeks had gone by in our world, but for the spirit, it had been equivalent to two hundred years.

That all sounded slightly far-fetched to me. I had never come across this form of divination in any books about theI Ching, but I nodded along and took things with a grain of salt. Whatever or whoever had caused it, the sound was gone. I didnt need to worry about being kept up by the creepy goings-on across the hall, and, if I went over to chat in her room, we werent going to be spooked by strange sounds from next door.

I was always curious about her English books about the ancient Chinese paranormal. It turned out she had not read them. They were mailed to her by a former classmate who had moved to the UK. They were accompanied by a letter that said that theyd been taken from an old monastery in London and were allegedly left behind by a young monk. After explaining this, she picked up one of the books, flipped to the last page and showed me a signature in flowing, cursive writing. I picked up another book and discovered the same signature. I flipped through the book and stopped on a page with a woodblock print of a cat lying under a poplar tree that was shedding its leaves. I turned the page and handed the book to her. “Can you translate it for me?” I asked. “Just give me a rough idea, at least.”

She took the book, carefully read the passage, and then summarized it for me: “In the Song dynasty, there was a monk. He had a cat that lived in the temple with him. He didnt pay much attention to it. The cat used to recline beside the sutra hall and listen to the chanting. The monk eventually developed some kind of skin disease. It was contagious, so the other monks left the temple. He had only the cat to keep him company. The disease got worse. Nothing he tried seemed to improve the condition. One day, the cat came to him with a scrap of paper in its mouth. It was a torn-off page from an ancient book. When the monk looked closer, he saw that it was a prescription. He saw that the symptoms it listed were identical to his own illness. The recipe was simple: burn some cat skin and rub the ashes on the affected area. The monk sighed and looked down at the cat. It stared back at him. He told the cat to leave. His illness was none of its business. The cat didnt move. The monk asked why it wouldnt leave. And the cat actually answered. It had a human voice. ‘Diamond is impenetrable, it said. The monk had always recited the Diamond Sutra, so thats what the cat had to be talking about. At that moment, the monk achieved enlightenment. He left the temple. The cat was left alone.”

“What does ‘diamond is impenetrable mean?”

She studied the ceiling, not speaking for a moment. “Thats my question, too,” she said.

“It makes no sense to me,” I admitted. I had no knowledge of Buddhism, so I was out of my depth.

She wasnt put off by my cluelessness. She thought this story might not have been a supernatural tale, but a Zen koan. I wanted to know what the difference was. What counted as paranormal activity? She told me that it was simple. Once we figured out the source of the mysterious sounds from next door, then that would count.

“I thought you already consulted theI Ching,” I said.

“You cant only go off the fortune I got,” she said with a smile. “It wont match up exactly with what really happened.”

“Are you scared?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said. “Im only human. Were dealing with something from another realm. Of course Im scared.”

“Me too,” I said. I tried my best to sound casual: “But whatever. If he comes again, well deal with him.”

She said nothing but smiled grimly.

The next day, I slept until noon. I was awoken by a knock at the door. When I opened it, I saw the guy who lived next door to me. He studied me quizzically. “Why were you knocking on the wall last night?”I had no idea what he meant.

“When was this?” I asked. He told me the time. It was about the same time of night when the young woman and I had usually heard the sounds from the room across the hall. But at that time last night, I had been in the young womans room. I told him that I had a witness who could prove I wasnt making the sound.

“A witness?” he asked. I smirked and led him down the hall. When he saw me going to knock on the young womans door, he was even more mystified. “Hey,” he called, “are you sure youre awake?”

“Fully awake, my brother,” I said, knocking again on the door.

“That room is empty,” he said, giving me a tap on the shoulder. “You realize that, right?”

Impossible! I kept knocking. She just wasnt home, I concluded. I turned back to the man and said, “Wait until she gets back tonight. She must be out.” Confused and annoyed, he went back across the hall, muttering to himself, and slammed the door behind him. That night, I knocked again at her door. There was still no answer.

A couple days later, I was awoken at noon again by a sound in the hallway. When I looked out, I saw that somebody was moving in. The door to the young womans room was open, and several people were tidying up inside. “Did that girl move out?” I asked one of them at random.

“Who?” the man asked, puzzled. “I just moved in.”

“What about the girl who was renting this room?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I dont know what youre talking about,” he said. When I stepped into the room, I was even more surprised: instead of books piled against the walls, there were slabs of stone covered with old newspaper, and on the desk were a few pieces of mismatched wood with scraps from old English newspapers pasted on them. The bed had been stripped of its white duvet and sheet.

As I was looking around, an old woman came to chat with the new tenant. I overheard her saying that it was good he had moved in, since the place hadnt been rented out in months. That made it much easier to clean up, too. She noticed me and asked, “Youre the fellow that lives across the hall, arent you?” I explained that I lived one door down. “Is that room across from you still empty?” she asked. “You wouldnt remember, but there was a girl who lived there for a while. She got a rare skin disease and passed away from it very quickly. It was a real shame. She was a sweet girl, kept to herself...A shame for the landlord, too, since he cant find anybody willing to rent that room.”

The new tenant seemed shocked to hear all of this. “What kind of stuff goes on around here?” he asked.

Right, I thought to myself, feeling the panic rising. I suppose this is the kind of stuff that goes on around here. I felt a shiver run up my spine.

Zhao Song 趙松

Born in 1972 in Fushun, Liaoning province, Zhao Song is a writer, literary critic, and curator. Initially a bureaucrat who drafted official documents and reports for a state-owned enterprise, he resigned in 2003 and moved to Shanghai to work in an art museum. Zhao continues to write part time, and is now the author of eight books, including short story collection Yichun(《伊春》), from which this story was selected, and Fushun Stories (《抚顺故事集》). His short story “In the Park (《公园》)” won the Short Story Biennial Award organized by Fiction World and the Si Nan Literary Journal in 2021, while his short story collection Building Block (《积木书》) was selected as one of the best books of the year by the One Way Street Book Award in 2017.

Authors Note: My inspiration for “Neighbor” came from stray cats always showing up at my window before Halloween, as well as the work of the great Argentine short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges. This story reminds me of how surprisingly imaginative improvised writing can be—its like a random strike, but worth keeping in mind. Now I always try to make room in my work for improvisation and fun, which may be the most important thing when writing.

Tongcheng City

You can never go back. This ancient city

remakes itself day after day. The layered dialects

blow smoke with figures from a bygone past.

The stories and sights elude your attempts at description.

Longmian Mountains landscape smudges under the brush like spots of ink

as tired as novelties in the eyes of a traveler. Every street you walk

is a molting snake. Murky rain drips

from the black eaves. You remember the old teachings and tales

your grandfather used to repeat. In the past, people turned to books or

the fields.

Like all youths, you left thinking this place had nothing for you.

But the lakes and mountains in your dreams are not from foreign lands. You remember

the temple hidden deep in the green hills. The roosters crowing outside the village.

The faces of your relatives morph with the years.

Hundreds of rivers once ran alongside the Yangtze.

桐城

你再也回不去了。这个古旧的县城

日日在重复着自己。那叠加在一起的方言与

旧时人物在时间的深处吞云吐雾。

你竭力追忆的风光与轶事殊无可言。

龙眠山水在一个人的笔下软化如水墨点染

陈旧得如同过客眼中的新鲜事物。你走过的

每一条街道都如同蜕皮的花蛇。黑色的屋檐

滴下的雨水并不鲜翠。你记起祖父重复多年的古训

和旧闻。在早年，人们唯有读书与种田二事。

你像所有的少年一样，离开时并无感激之心。

只是梦中的湖水和山岚不是他乡之物。你想起

远山的庙宇隐在青山深处。鸡鸣在村野之外。

亲人的容貌年年更改。

成百上千条河流曾与长江并行。

The Rain Comes

When the rain comes, it comes without a sound

like a hermit in ancient times

walking a long way to see another hermit.

We sit cross-legged by the river, listening to the night wind

combing through a sea of bamboo, our hearts clean as

empty bowls waiting to be filled with water.

This world is too full, of things too beautiful to bear,

like the distant green mountains, by night

as by day, their forests, mists,

beasts, clouds, and immortal legends

making us a magnificent offering.

When we slip away from the leaping flames,

that bonfire enchantment, we sit quietly

in the pulp of the night, sinking into a silence beyond words,

hearing at last the sound of running water, as clear as

a tsunami in the deep.

雨來

雨来的时候，没有半点声响

就像在古代，一个隐士

走很远的路去见另一个隐士

我们盘膝坐在河边，听着晚风

梳拂过竹海，内心干净得如同

等水填满的空碗。

这世间太多事物，美得让人难以承受

比如远处的青山，在黑夜中

和白天没有什么不同，它以树林、雾气

禽兽、白云和关于神仙的传说

予我们以盛大的馈赠。

当我们短暂的离开那些升腾的烟火

美妙的篝火晚会。静坐着

在夜的果瓤中陷入无可名状的沉默中

终于听见那流水的声音，清晰得犹如

大洋深处的海啸。

Text by Li Xiaojian (李小建)

Translated by Nathaniel J. Gan

Illustration by Li Si

Li Xiaojian李小建

Born in 1986 to a family of beekeepers in Tongcheng, Anhui province, Li Xiaojian is a poet now based in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. He won Peking Universitys Weiming Poetry Prize in 2009, and Anhuis Zipeng Poetry Prize in 2011. Nostalgia for his childhood and hometown is a constant theme of Lis poetry. These poems are from his collection Beekeeping Diary (《养蜂手记》).