Nothing But the Now: Seven Short Stories by WEN Zhen

By Zhen Wen

Nothing but the Now is a collection of seven stories, most of them about chance encounters in the world, the consequences of greed and temptation, the inescapable past, and moral dilemmas that seem to be tailored to each character’s flaws and foibles. The book explores the larger and more fundamental issues of life, death, love, and desire, and further interrogates the inter-relationships between the individual, the other, and the world. Each character in the stories must struggle to understand the meaning of his or her encounters and translate them into gains in their lives if they are to truly grow and arrive at themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bridge 21 Publications
• Release date: May 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781626430945

Zhen Wen

WEN Zhen, born in 1982 in Hunan province, is the youngest Lao She Literature Prize winner and among the first group of MA graduates in Creative Writing in China from Peking University. In 2015, she won the “New Writer of The Year” of the Chinese Literature Media Awards with her work The Last Night We Were Together.

Book preview

Night Train

1

When Song told me he wanted us to go on a trip together, somewhere far away, I agreed without much hesitation. This was after his stay in hospital, and we knew what to expect. When he said he wanted to go by train, I avoided teasing him about whether this was meant to be some kind of nostalgia trip. We quickly got everything ready, packed up our luggage, bought our tickets, and were on the train that very night.

Taking the night train always feels like travelling through the dreams of strangers: each pulse of distant amber light reflected in the window is a ripple we have creased into the stillness of their lives. We went to brush our teeth, wash our faces and use the toilet before the lights were switched off for the night, and then lay in our bunks, top to tail and stiff as fish in a freezer. Listening to the rumble of carriage against rail, eyes closed to the projections flitting past the window.

Hands joined across the guardrail.

This was the K497 to Jiagedaqi, one of the old green trains. The rush of Spring Festival travellers was not here yet, and the shabby carriage was mostly empty. The temperature outside must have been minus fifteen degrees or so, and there was a draught. It felt cold even with clothes on under the blanket. Occasionally the thin curtain was blown open to reveal the silhouette of a distant mountain looming like the maw of some enormous beast. Frightened, I pressed Song’s hand tight, and then noticed the gleam of his eyes in the dark. He was watching me.

Do you want to go out for a smoke? he asked quietly.

After a moment’s consideration, I agreed, even though I didn’t much feel like stirring.

There was an old man smoking between the carriages. It wasn’t quite right to address him as daye, despite his grey hair, since we were in our thirties ourselves. But I couldn’t think what else to call him. He glanced at us with utter indifference, and made no move to open up space at the ashtray. There were no curtains out here, and it was totally dark outside.

We lit our cigarettes. The three of us soon filled the vestibule with white smoke. A woman started coughing in the bathroom. Song looked at me, and his eyes were bright. I knew what he was thinking. We had watched a foreign porn film before where they did it in a train bathroom. But that wasn’t an option here. Too dirty, too many people. The one thing China has no dearth of is people. To the daye (a respectful form of address for an older man) over there, we were the undesirable presence, and he could only hope against hope that it wouldn’t be too long before our disappearance restored his solitary silence. From the toilet came a loud flushing noise, as if some tremendous force had sucked down the entire bathroom, and was now preparing to suck down the rest of us. A woman with untidy hair soon heaved open the door and stepped outside. I recognised her: she had been sitting at the table in our berth before the lights went out. She looked to be in her forties, and the boy with her was eight or nine years old. Apart from the occasional glance down at her phone, she had spent the entire trip staring dully out of the window. Her interactions with the boy were limited to curt commands. Drink some water. Eat this apple. Sit down. Stay still.

I’d asked Song whether he thought she could possibly be a child trafficker. Unlikely, he said, not with a kid that old. He did look a bit brighter and cleaner than your typical village boy, but he didn’t have the look of a city kid. And she didn’t have that wary look in her eyes.

Now this potential child trafficker appeared again. She didn’t recognise us as the people who had been sitting on the bottom bunk waiting for her to leave the table. The toilet window was half open, and the opening of the door let in a cold gust of wind that carried a vaguely malodorous stench. I shivered. Only a crazy person could imagine getting it on in a toilet like that. I glanced at Song. He understood. We put out our cigarettes and went back to our bunks, allowing the smell of feet and instant noodles to envelop us once more. I climbed up into the darkness first, and felt for my bag. Still there under the pillow. I heard him clambering up behind me.

We didn’t hold hands this time. Sleep, I said quietly.

I pulled the blanket of many odours a little further away from my mouth. Sleep.

2

The sunlight was sharp and bright when we woke the next morning. Lying on my bunk, I figured there must be snow out there. Such a surfeit of brightness and warmth. In the vestibule, someone was shouting that there was no hot water left. I looked over at Song: he was curled up, facing away from me. I was suddenly struck by the chilling possibility that he might have died. I poked him a few times, and he eventually rolled over. Are we there already? he asked blearily.

I exhaled. No. I just wanted to see if you were awake.

There were another two hours to go. The villages and towns of night, behind us now, might as well have belonged to a world that had never known sunlight, or a past that had proved expendable. The woman was no longer sitting at our table – she and the child must have got off the train at some point while we were sleeping. After a yeasty night in the overheated train, the body odour in our carriage was overpowering. Outside this trundling tin can, the temperatures were in the minus twenties, but in here my feet and back were itching with sweat. How I would have loved to step out onto a platform and slap a handful of snow into my cheeks. But the next station remained somewhere off in the distance, and the windows were firmly locked. It was hopeless.

Song, it’s been snowing.

He didn’t respond. Since waking up he had been sitting over by the window, reading an atlas. Look here, he said in excitement. Jiagedaqi is in the northwest of Heilongjiang, on the southeast side of the Daxing’anling mountain range – but also within the Oroqin Autonomous Banner within Inner Mongolia. Longitude 123.45 to 124.26 degrees, latitude 50.09 to 50.35 degrees. The south and west sides join Oroqin, and and the north side borders on Songling district. Total area 1587 square kilometres.

Seems pretty normal. So?

Do you not see the problem?

What problem?

"Think about it. Jiagedaqi is in the northwest of Heilongjiang, and on the southeast slopes of the Daxing’anling range, which belongs to Oroqin in Inner Mongolia."

Oh, I get it. So does it belong to Heilongjiang, or Inner Mongolia?

This is such an unusual city. On paper, it’s an enclave – geographically within Inner Mongolia, but under the control of the Heilongjiang government.

Feeling pleased with himself, Song continued reading: Daxing’anling is a unique district in the northeast. The government office is located in the capital, Jiagedaqi. Jiagedaqi has a population of one hundred and twenty thousand, and is a prefecture-level city. But because Daxing’anling straddles two provinces, it is very difficult to separate the city from the district. Along with Songling District, Jiagedaqi is physically located in Inner Mongolia, but under the jurisdiction of Heilongjiang. This means there is a conflict over the control of the region. Since Jiagedaqi and Songling are geographically part of the Oroqin Autonomous Banner, the government of Heilongjiang must make an annual payment to the Inner Mongolian government. Hulunbuir and Orochin have repeatedly requested for the Inner Mongolian government to reclaim Jiagedaqi and Songling. The request has been put to the authorities many times over the years, through the local governments, the National People’s Congress, and the CPCC, but since both regions also involve the interests of the logging industry, there remains no immediate solution to this longstanding problem.

So complicated. I ran my tongue along my lip. Are you thirsty?

Song tore his attention away from this quirk of geography. I am, he said, turning limply and pointing to his throat. Parched, actually.

We had finished the bottles of water we brought with us. In our university days we would have remembered to bring a flask any time we took the train. Not that it would have done us any good, seeing as how the water was out. If there was no cold water then it meant there was no hot water either, or else some thirsty person would have figured out a way to cool some down and use it to wash their hands or face, or drink it. Not a drop wasted.

We waited for the attendant to bring the refreshment trolley round again so we could buy a couple more bottles. The state of Song’s dark, cracked lips concerned me; his complexion was worse than it had been when we got on the train.

I wanted to forget all about the way he looked. I wanted to lie down together under the same blanket, open the windows, and let all the fresh air of northern China come rushing in while we rolled about under the covers, as safe and cheery as a couple of grizzly bears.

A rumbling sound drew near. The refreshment trolley had returned at last.

3

It was three thirty when we got off the train at Jiagedaqi Station. The temperature out on the platform felt pleasantly cool for an instant, until I let out a long breath and the chill hit me right through my puffa jacket. My body felt like a frozen anchor, and it was hard to even walk. Song looked bulkier in his bulging winter coat.

They call Jiagedaqi an enclave, but it’s an enclave of one and a half thousand square kilometres, with a hundred and twenty thousand people living out their lives here. He was blathering away again, apparently indifferent to the cold. I wonder whether the people here introduce themselves as Northeasterners or Inner Mongolians.

I interrupted his speculation: And you just had to come here, did you? To a place that belongs to no one?

Perhaps because this place that belongs to no one reminds me of me. In high spirits now, he started declaiming a Zang Kejia poem we had studied in class: Some of those who live are dead… some of those who died live still.

Hey, enough of that, I said.

And this place is controlled by Daxing’anling. No one else is in charge of their enormous forest. He pointed casually into space. Take the road north through Daxing’anling, and you get to Mohe county. The furthest north you can get in China. You can see the aurora there.

He had never mentioned any desire to go to Mohe before. But I reckoned he would want to go now, if the chance arose.

It was an old train station. The K7108 to Mudanjiang had stopped on the other side of the platform. Song stopped babbling and gazed, spellbound, at the train.

Are you planning to go to Mudanjiang now? I asked. Because of that Nan Quan Mama song? I hadn’t heard that song since we were at university, over ten years ago.

Travellers flowed across the platform, clutching bags and pulling suitcases, their faces expressionless. As if it was the end of the world. Out of nowhere, Song started crooning a song: Who’s out there singing of Mudanjiang, the sweet sound of your voice makes me sad. The crisp tinkle of bells, the village on the riverbank is calm like naptime…

This bit of the song was meant to be sung by a woman. He strained his voice, inhabiting the role. Then it was back to a gruffer male voice: Faraway is what we call the places we can’t go, Home is the name we give the place we can’t return to.

I left him to his own devices. Song was once an antisocial engineering student who was happiest at home. Then he got sick and became a fiend for travel. I was still struggling to get used to the change. It was like he was in the process of rediscovering all the reasons it might be hard to leave the world behind. Just like he was suddenly rediscovering me.

At three thirty we arrived at the guesthouse Song had booked. The building, we discovered following a protracted check-in process, definitely had the Soviet throwback vibes that Song was hoping for, but was decidedly deficient in terms of heating. The last vestiges of the train’s lingering heat had long since dissipated into the cold air. Fortunately the bathroom had hot water, and I lost a layer of skin to a very brief, very scalding shower. In the thirty seconds it took to get out of the shower and under the blanket, the droplets on my skin were already icy cold.

This place is fucking frigid. Do they even have any heating? We’ll have to move. How can we stay here if it means freezing to death? I’m close enough to dying as it is.

There was real fury in his pseudo-Beijing accent, but the tough talk was just for show, and his voice was trembling. Just like I was trembling in his embrace from the cold. A Zhejiang native, he had been working hard to survive in the capital since we graduated, over a decade ago now, and had picked up the Beijing habit of blurring consonants off the end of words. I thought of the Nan Quan Mama song when we got off the train – Faraway is what we call the places we can’t go, Home is the name we give the place we can’t return to – and for some reason felt the tears springing to my eyes.

Alarmed, he made a trembling attempt to kiss away my tears. Desire soon made its presence felt, like a creature thawing out of ice, and soon enough things were simmering along nicely. The heating came on, too – clearly we were their sole clientele, and they must have switched it off to save money until we arrived.

When we were done, we lay back on the bed, relaxed and satisfied. We were never so happy just being together, before. Just think what might have been, if only we hadn’t been fighting all the time. Still so many places I could take you. Mohe, Mudanjiang, Istanbul, Kashgar, Cambodia, Luang Prabang. I’ve been stupid. So stupid. I always figured I had a whole lifetime to fritter away.

I laid my head on his arm, and concentrated on trying to work out whether the knob on the ceiling was a light, or something else. They have them in every hotel, like it’s standard issue or something, and I’ve never managed to figure it out.

Song had not finished. You’ve never forgiven me, not really. Now he was getting maudlin again. You’re just letting me have my way because you feel sorry for me, because I’m doomed. Aren’t you.

We agreed we wouldn’t talk about this. I rolled quietly away from him.

He ignored me, and continued monologuing: There was a time when I hated you. I hated you for not caring about me, for threatening to leave me. For always finding time to text your friends, to chat and eat and watch movies, but never choosing to come home early. I’d do anything to make you angry, but then it always felt empty afterwards. Sometimes I felt afraid, felt I had done wrong by you. For a while there I was drinking a lot, sacrificing my liver to secure business deals, and I used to moan about how there was no point in living, how I’d rather fucking die, because then you’d regret not treating me better. Ridiculous, looking back, how simple my intentions were. All I wanted was to make you hurt with regret. But I didn’t learn until it was too late that I’d be the one with the most to fucking regret.

I remained silent, still angry about what he had just said about being doomed. He levered my body back over so we were face to face. I mean it, he said.

I told myself not to give in to pity. There was a sobbing tone to his voice, but the tears were out of sync – his eyes were still dry. There is something inherently ridiculous about the face of a bawling man. What do I have to regret? I said. I’m not the one who screwed things up. I’ve been here, all this time.

Without speaking, he slowly stretched out an arm for me to lean against. I didn’t move my neck.

Apparently I had cheered him up.

You’re really angry.

You’re insane, I said. Don’t be too nice to me all at once. Don’t be nice to me just because I’m dying.

You’re despicable, I said between clenched teeth. The only people nice to you are people who don’t know you.

I thought that last remark would make him angry. But when I glanced at him after a moment, he was lost in thought.

Does everyone despise each other? Does anyone really know how to treat each other right?

4

The actual city of Jiagedaqi wasn’t that big. It might have been the capital of the region, but it was a city in decline, run-down and dilapidated. Most places brighten up a little at night, but in the orange glow of the streetlights this place looked even more like a town out of the seventies or eighties, all bumpy roads, narrow and muddy. Apparently there had been several snowfalls already, and it would probably snow again tonight. We ate some noodles with stewed meat at a little place near our guesthouse. Song said we were lucky that we’d get to see the town in the snow tomorrow, but to me it was a bleak picture: just a hundred and twenty thousand people scattered across a thousand square kilometres, a few black specks poking out of a vast snowdrift.

I was started to regret coming with Song to such a desolate place. It couldn’t do his health any good, all this cold and damp. But he remained in good spirits, going on about how it made sense that a place like this would be in decline. The old forestry management system had been abolished, and Jiagedaqi was a part of the land that Inner Mongolia had reclaimed from Heilongjiang in the nineteen seventies. Now, with Heilongjiang unable to exercise complete control over the city and Inner Mongolia making noises about taking it back, neither province was prepared to put any investment into the region, in case they had to give it up to the other side just as it was starting to prosper.

Falling through the cracks is no good. You need to belong somewhere. We were on our way back to the guesthouse. No proper status means you don’t really belong anywhere, in the end.

I acted like I didn’t see the subtext. No one wants the world to make total sense. It would be dull.

Ultimately you realise you need someone to take care of you. Someone to see you on your way.

I know that’s what you’re looking for.

No, he said. Not entirely.

By the time we had walked halfway round the city the following morning, the two of us were as rigid as insects in amber. I put my hand in the pocket of his coat, just like when we were first dating at university. Except now his hand was like a block of ice, and we both shivered any time I touched it.

Despite the unusual administrative status of this city, and the fact that Bobby Chen and Zuoxiao Zuzhou had been inspired to sing about it, the reality of it was just another dreary county-level city. According to the atlas, after struggling for for forty-odd years to establish a city that was independent of the county, they had failed resolve the question of ownership, meaning that the hundred and twenty thousand residents were still unable to give a definitive answer to the question of whether they were Northeasterners or Inner Mongolians. Which was kind of cool, actually, I thought to myself. But didn’t say out loud.

After a protracted attempt to extract information from the guesthouse clerk, we were only able to discover one dish that could be called a local speciality: noodles in sesame sauce. We ordered a couple of bowls in a restaurant that seemed comparatively busy. The sauce was too thick, and the noodles too thin, making it impossible to mix them properly. And there was nothing particularly local about it. Song said he was done after a few mouthfuls. Every gulp looked like it was difficult for him, but that was to be expected, according to what the doctor had told me before we left. He was supposed to be consuming plenty of nutritious liquids, milk every day and preferably chicken soup or ginseng porridge. But it would have been a challenge to boil them up on the road, and they weren’t to his taste anyway. He always wanted to order lamb and kidney skewers, or a big joint of meat. But since he couldn’t eat them, he just sat and looked at them, watching the steam dissipate as they cooled.

Yangguofu Malatang (hot spicy soup), Wumingyuan rice noodles – the same restaurant chains you found everywhere else in China. Just like any other boring northern town. You forgot the names of the shops you’d just passed the minute you turned away, and the best brands on offer were mediocre names like Guirenniao, Yishion, Jeanswest or K-Boxing. Even the women working in the shops seem to have been popped out of the same mould: same long puffa jackets in gaudy colours, same black trousers, same desperately bored stares through the window. The dead-eyed locals passing by would never so much as glance into the shops lest they be dragged inside by these ravenous sales assistants. It was right after Spring Festival, and things were still slow in the barbecue business. Two women were leaning against the doorframe of a restaurant, a carpet of sunflower husks spread before them. When they weren’t chatting loudly about family goings-on in their thick northeastern accents, they were teasing the kid from the place next door, a swaddled ball of winter clothing scampering back and forth. At the end of the row was a barbershop that definitely had no daytime business, with a revolving, tricolour sign in lights out front. Exact same setup as all the others you saw around the country. Occasionally the insulating curtain would suddenly swish aside to reveal a girl overdressed in winter clothes that were entirely unseductive, out to enjoy some rays with eyes scrunched up against the sun.

Everyone was laughing, young and old alike. They looked as if they could live forever in this warmthless sunlight. Grow up, get old, buy groceries, make dinner, make love, go shopping, have kids, go to a funeral if someone died, then go home and keep eating and drinking. My heart felt tight; all of a sudden it all felt terribly unfair.

The world won’t stop spinning for the death of anyone as insignificant as me, Song said calmly. And you need to keep on living, find a way to forget me.

I stared at him in astonishment. How did you know what I was thinking about?

The knuckles stood out on his scrawny hand as it gripped mine. His thumb brushed back and forth across the back of my hand. I looked down to avoid seeing the people passing by. I wanted to say something, but couldn’t bring myself to speak.

You’re sad again, chuckled Song. Won’t do you any good to pretend otherwise. This is just the way it is. What will be, will be. I know I haven’t always treated you right, but at least I’ve always been honest with you.

Have you never thought about how hard that might be on me, I said at last. Telling me everything, never worrying about whether I can take it.

I know you, he said. Other people I might not always understand, but you I know. You can understand. And you can take it. So long as it’s the truth. You just can’t stand people trying to outwit you.

For some reason, hearing him say that – I know you – made me start to well up. Can we talk about something else? I was almost begging him. Let’s talk about something happier, instead of fixating on all this.

There’s nothing to get upset about, not really. We’re just out for a walk, looking around. Sometimes all this waiting makes me impatient. The drugs, the chemo – they take their toll. It’s painful. Sometimes I think about how exhausting it all is – go to work, get married, get divorced, have kid, get kid through school, look after aging parents. It feels inescapable. Yet somehow I’ve managed to become a deserter. I don’t have to persevere into old age. You’re the one I feel sorry for – you have to keep putting up with it all.

This is your last warning. I pulled back my hand. Carry on like this and I’m leaving right now. Don’t think I won’t!

He laughed, and the indulgent look he shot me was like you’d give some naughty kid. I didn’t like him looking at me like that. It felt like the beatific gaze of a ghost, observing me and my impending decades of struggle and strife. Everything he was soon to leave behind.

Song felt hungry as we were passing a farmers’ market, and decided to buy a half kilogram of dazzling golden tangerines. He carried them proudly along as we made our way back to the hotel. The colour was beautiful in the sunlight, he said. Like a Repin painting.

He lowered his voice: Let’s go eat tangerines in bed. He was putting on a sleazy persona, but I liked this playful side of him.

We haven’t had any dinner, I objected.

You won’t die of hunger, he replied. Come on, let’s subtract one from the total number of times we have left.

This was an in-joke. In our first few years together we were forever arguing about breaking up. I was so dramatic when I was younger, threatening to leave him forever any time I was even slightly upset. He would always work his socks off to win me over again, and then, when things were good again, he’d say (through gritted teeth): I don’t know who’d ever want a girl as stubborn as you. Subtract one from the total number of times we have left.

He actually kept count the first few dozen times, but eventually lost track of his running tally. We didn’t stop fighting, but it became a less frequent occurrence. It’s been so many years now. We had to get through an eight-year war of our own.

We agreed that neither of us would mention his illness. I rarely broke that rule, but he was a repeat offender. It was a hard to believe a cancer patient could have such a healthy libido – presumably the liver was far enough away from the prostate that it had no impact on that particular capacity of his. I didn’t worry about it too much once he got his diagnosis, and didn’t ever really turn him down. Perhaps I was counting down our total number of times left, too.

We didn’t need to do anything really. It was nice just to hold him, to hold the body I knew so well even as its strength was ebbing away. I acted like I didn’t see his face getting paler by the day, or the clumps of hair he left on the pillow after chemo. We had painkillers as well as the Sorafenib tablets, and I fed him some any time he complained his liver was hurting. A quick fix. If he refused to take his pills, I’d go out and get some tangerines, his favourite, and alternate between a mouthful of fruit and a mouthful of medicine. I’d tried them myself, and they weren’t so bitter really. He was probably just making a fuss for the sake of the attention. But there was no harm in indulging him – he never used to be this way. Before it was always conflict, sex, relationships, influence.

His family didn’t know too much about all this. He told his parents it was benign and could be treated, because he hadn’t dared tell them the truth. If they knew, they would insist on keeping him in hospital, and there would be no escaping their wailing exhibition of grief. Dying in a hospital meant dying after enduring endless rounds of chemo. Dying with no dignity in a such a reduced state. I hadn’t told them. There wasn’t really anything they could do to help, and there was no point in having them worry in vain.

It became our secret. A secret simultaneously enormous and so slight it seemed like a child’s game. At times I felt like a terrible person. But one doctor told us it wouldn’t make much difference now whether it was treated or not. It had been six months since we broke up. He always blamed me for the ache in his liver, said it was because I made him so angry. Never went to get it checked out. When he finally did, it was too late.

Sometimes I even found myself hoping he would die like this, in bed with me. And then I would walk out, calm in my grief, and call for the ambulance, the police. But it never happened that way. He would always struggle upright once we were finished, and even find the strength to get out of bed to grab a tissue and clean up.

Is there any chance it could all be a mistake? I asked. Maybe you’re not sick at all. You might live for millions of years yet. Probably still be buzzing around long after I’ve turned to dust.

The evidence is right in front of you, he said. I never used to be so horny before I got sick. No, we had the diagnosis confirmed again and again. It’s hopeless.

Eventually the heating in our room approached the unbearable temperature of the train. I managed to wrest open the rusted-shut window, and a