The Seventh Day Read Free

you add up all the city officials, big and small, as well as those from adjacent districts and counties, that must amount to over a thousand people, and every one of them needs to say goodbye to him, and they can’t walk fast—they need to walk past slowly, and some will want to weep as well.”
    “What’s so special about a mayor?” the VIP grumbled.
    The new arrival had not finished. “Starting this morning, all the main roads in the city were sealed off and the vehicle carrying the mayor’s remains moved along at walking pace, with several hundred cars following to escort it. What should have taken just thirty minutes required a good hour and a half. The main roads are still sealed off and regular traffic won’t resume until after the mayor’s ashes have been returned home.”
    If the main roads are sealed off, the other streets are bound to be crammed with traffic. I remembered the sound of collisions when I was walking in the fog that morning and the scene of havoc that I saw later. Then I was reminded of the news of the mayor’s sudden death that had circulated in all the newspapers and on television channels a couple of weeks earlier. The official explanation was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack as a result of overwork; the popular version making the rounds on the Internet was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack in the executive suite of a five-star hotel just as he reached orgasm with a young model. The model was so shocked that she ran into the corridor screaming and sobbing, forgetting she was naked below the waist.
    Then both sets of conversations turned to the topic of burial plots. Those in the plastic seats had plots measuring one square yard, whereas the burial grounds for the VIPs were all at least six acres. Perhaps because the VIPs had heard what the plastic-seaters were saying, one of them asked loudly, “How can one possibly make do with one square yard?”
    A hush fell over the plastic seats as people began to listen to the luxurious appointments of those in the armchairs. Five out of the six burial plots were established on mountain peaks, facing the sea, encircled by clouds, the most uplifting and awe-inspiring ocean-view grave sites imaginable. The sixth was in a dale where trees grew thickly, streams gurgled, and birds sang, and where a natural rock that had been rooted there for hundreds of thousands of years served as headstone. These days everyone wants to eat organic foodstuffs, the owner said, but his was an organic headstone. Of the other five burial plots, two had monuments that were miniature versions of real buildings—one a Chinese-style courtyard dwelling, the other a Western-style villa—while two others boasted formal grave steles: they didn’t go in for all that showy stuff, their owners said. The last one took everybody by surprise, for the stele was a full-scale replica of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, the only difference being that the inscription in Mao Zedong’s calligraphy on the monument, “In eternal tribute to the people’s heroes,” had been changed to “In eternal tribute to Comrade Li Feng”—also in Mao’s calligraphy, since the owner’s family had hunted down the characters for “Comrade Li Feng” in Mao’s manuscripts, enlarged them, and inscribed them on the stele.
    “Comrade Li Feng—that’s me,” the owner added.
    “It all sounds a bit risky,” another VIP said. “One of these days the government might insist on demolishing a memorial like that.”
    “I’ve already paid my hush money,” he responded confidently. “I can’t afford to let the story get out, so my family has already deployed a dozen people to keep reporters from covering it. Twelve is exactly the strength of an army squad, and with a team of guards protecting me I can rest without any worries.”
    At this point the two rows of ceiling lights in the waiting room came on, and the twilight hour suddenly was transformed into