Cat Country Read Free Page B

retain of going, as a little boy, with my mother to sweep my father’s grave and make offerings to his spirit.
    I really can’t say what I especially noticed at the time, for I directed equally to everything around me a ‘disinterested attention’, if that phrase means anything. I was like a bush in the rain, whose movement is entirely dependent on the drops: if a drop falls on a leaf, then that leaf moves.
    I saw a grey sky. It was not a cloudy sky, but rather a greycoloured atmosphere. One couldn’t say that the light of the sun was weak, because I felt very hot; however, its light was not in direct proportion to its thermal power. It was simply hot, but not at all bright. The grey atmosphere that surrounded me was so heavy, hot, dense, and stifling that I could almost reach out and grab it. The weight of the atmosphere could not have been due to dust in the air, for things could be seen very clearly in the distance. It wasn’t at all like it is back in Beijing when we have dust storms of wind-blown sand. It was rather that the light of the sun was diminished upon first entering this grey world; what was left of it was then evenly distributed so that every place received some of the light, thus creating a silver-grey planet. It was a bit like the summer drought in North China when a layer of useless grey cloud floats in the sky, shading the light of the sun without at all reducing the extremely high temperature; however, the grey atmosphere here was much darker and heavier so that the weighty ashen clouds seemed glued to one’s face. A model for this universe would be a bean curd parlour back home filled with hot fumes in the night, lit by a single oil lamp scattering rays of ghastly light through the mist. In sum, the atmosphere made me feel very ill at ease. Even the few small mountains in the distance were grey, distinguished from the sky only by their darker hue. Because there was some sunlight, the grey of the mountains was speckled with a bland shade of red, making them look somewhat like pheasant necks. A country of grey, I remember that’s what I thought at the time, although I really didn’t know if there were any countries there or not.
    As I drew my line of sight back from the horizon, I noticed a plain and it too was grey. There were no trees, no houses, no fields. It was flat, flat, flat – boringly flat. A carpet of grass hugged the ground. Its leaves were very large, but none of the stalks were upright. Since the ground was obviously fertile, why, I wondered, was no one cultivating it?
    Not far from where I stood a number of hawk-like birds took off, all grey except for their white tails. The white of their tails did bring a note of change to the monotony of this all-grey universe, but it was powerless to lighten the foggy and depressing atmosphere. The tails of the birds reminded me of slips of paper money – the kind we burn for the dead back home – floating in a dark and gloomy sky.
    The hawk-like birds flew in my direction, watching me as they came. Suddenly my heart gave a start. They weren’t watching me; they were watching my dead friend! Watching that pile of . . .
    In the distance I saw a few more take off. I became anxious and instinctively began feeling around on the ground, foolishly hoping to find a shovel or a spade. I couldn’t even find so much as a stick. I went over to the spacecraft to see what I could find. If I had a piece of steel, I’d be able to dig out some kind of grave for my friend. But the birds were already circling overhead. I couldn’t take time to look up at them again, but I could feel that they were getting lower and lower. Their cries, long and piercing, sounded directly over my head. I reached the spacecraft and, having no time to choose a particular piece to pull off, I grabbed at whatever came to hand. I had no idea what part it was I had gotten hold of, but at any rate I tore at it like a madman. One of the birds landed. I screamed at him as loudly as