A mountain creek with rounded pebbles and a fast-flowing current. He looks back. In the gray drizzling rain, opposite, on the mountain slope is a village connected by stone steps; it has a church with a prominent bell tower. The rain is falling even more heavily.
He is walking on the village highway, his clothes almost soaked through, and water is running down the back of his head. As a car drives past, he signals. It has gone ten paces past him, but stops. He quickly runs up and a door opens.
A woman is driving. From the rearview mirror the woman's profile can be seen: she has wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She asks him something and he answers. The woman turns to look at him. She really knows how to use her makeup. The woman asks him something again and he answers again. The woman looks away, but in the rearview mirror there is the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. The car windows swept by the rain are dripping with water.
The murky seawater goes over the steps behind the doors and continues to surge inside. In the light behind the doors it looks more like black satin running off a roll and cascading down.
Looking down, he sees naked men and women on a long table. They are huddled in couples and move up and down and turn around endlessly, as drops of milk white flour and water splash onto the table and their bodies, making a sound like pattering rain. All around are bundles of straw; it seems to be a granary, yet from time to time there is snorting, and it seems to be a stable.
He is sitting at an old round table wearing a pair of dark blue swimming trunks. Both of his hands are on the shiny grain-patterned hardwood surface, one of them turning a glass half filled with red wine. A hanging lamp with a metal shade casts a yellow light that shines only on his hands. In the circle of light there is also a highly polished stone ball that leaves a distinct shadow on the table. He withdraws the hand with the wineglass from the circle of light, and his other hand moves the stone ball so that from that position the shadow is extended. Music instantly starts up. It seems to be jazz blues, trembling and restrained, intermittent, powerful yet weak, seemingly far and yet near, and finally it stops abruptly, yet seems still to be suspended there… He gets to his feet and walks around the table, observing the endless positions of the stone ball and its shadow in the circle of light.
Next to the white curtain, a wall lamp illuminates the portrait of a woman on the wall, with black lips, fair skin, black hair piled high on the head, eyes looking down, lips slightly parted, and looking almost asleep. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that one eye is open and the other is shut, and if one takes a step back, it would seem that one eye is higher than the other. To look up at an angle, one would see that the lower lip is thick and fleshy. But looking at it sideways, one would see that the lips are pouting. Another look would make it seem like the wide-open mouth of a bird. An upside-down look would make the tongue seem to stick out. Away from the light, there are knife marks all over the cheeks: it is a shaman with an evil look. A look with eyes narrowed and with an air of indifference would return the sexiness to the face. There is a pop as the light goes out.
A gurgling sound, water is flowing down the stone steps in places. Now and then a dim light flashes a few times.
The curtains open noisily. A woman's bare back appears in front of the curtains. She opens the window, and outside is a mass of gray rooftops. Farther off, one after the other, are endless balconies and apartments of old buildings. The dark blue sky is unusually clear, but it could be morning or dusk. The woman turns and leans on the laced wrought-iron railing outside the window, wearily. Her face and body are in the dark and only her eyes glint, like a cat's eyes in the dark. A bracelet on the wrist of her hand that grips the railing also has a faint glint. A car speeding by brings with it the rumbling of the waves.
Seagulls circle the sea, screeching, as if they have found something and are following the rising and falling of the waves. The waves are huge, and between the crests are expanses of smooth, deep blue sea.
Underfoot is withered grass, swaying in the strong wind, soundlessly. He is walking on a mountain slope and he goes behind the ruins of a wall where a few young people are waiting for him. One of them is wearing glasses, and the thick lenses for severe shortsightedness look like fish eyes. Another, a young woman with short hair and dark complexion, is eating melon seeds. She spits out the shells that float and then drop into the clumps of grass. Seeing him arrive, without a word, they head down the slope together. Below is a cluster of houses, a bell tower, and a football field.
In the underground cellar that has filled with seawater, the mattress soaked in murky water slowly floats up. The faint rumble of cars driving past sounds like the wind.
The young people go into a long corridor where sections of sunlight broken by pillars appear unusually bright. It is a classroom with the doors and windows wide open but empty of people. It is filled with tables and chairs that pass them, one by one, as their footsteps sound after they have passed.
At the end of the corridor is a room. The door is shut but there is a sign. They come to a halt and look at the sign that has nothing written on it, hesitate, seem to be having a discussion, then knock on the door. It opens instantly, soundlessly. Inside the room, teachers are sitting at desks as if they were students, all busy marking homework. While they are wondering whether to ask someone, a young teacher appears behind them. She is as young as she was in those times, only her face is pale and she looks to be made of wax. Fatigue shows all over her face; her eyes are puffy and have grayish shadows. She says she will escort them to the principal and also says she is delighted that, so many years after graduating, they have come to visit their old school. She says she remembers the class, back then they were all children but full of mischief. As she talks and jokes, her voice is coming from a paper person. Of course she remembers the time when there was a cruel struggle right on those very desks. Someone had started banging on a desk and everyone unthinkingly followed, so that every desk was banging. As she mounted the dais, textbooks under her arm, her rounded eyes swept the class, but she couldn't isolate the ringleader. Confused, she threw down her textbooks and ran out in tears. Everyone was scared stupid, then suddenly it was quiet and nobody made a sound.
There is a red-colored cross on the door of the medical clinic in the passageway. She points to the window. The small, dark room is piled with junk as well as some musical instruments – erhu, pipa, gongs, and drums – all of them covered in dust. He knows that this used to be where students were kept after class as punishment for failing to hand in homework. Those passing the window can see that miserable desk scarred with knife cuts and covered in ink stains and pencil marks.
He stares at the desk for some time and, from where he is looking, there clearly emerge, one on top of the other, pencil drawings of little people and little crooked houses as well as Chinese characters carved with a penknife. Some of the character strokes have been inked in, and some inked characters where the ink couldn't be scrubbed clean had been penciled in and again carved with a penknife. It is a jumbled picture but it conjures up fantasies.
The sound of water dripping, dripping in the cellar filled with seawater, dripping on the floating mattress, dripping and soaking the sheet. And the ink black seawater keeps rising, soundlessly. The floating mattress hits a soggy wall, bounces, and changes direction.