Jingwei was curled up in a corner of an old train car. The cold seeped from the peeling sheet metal walls; her knuckles were already white with frost.
This car was windowless, lightless, and without the slightest heating. Electrical wires hanging from the ceiling, like dead vines, trembled slightly with a barely perceptible draft. In the gaps between the rivets at the corners, transparent icicles had formed.
She leaned against the pile of coal behind her, having managed with great difficulty to clear a small, relatively clean space for herself. On her lap lay your notebook, the pages slightly warped by humidity. She blew warm air onto her hands to warm them, licked her fingers to turn the pages, then wiped the condensation from the glass of her flashlight with her sleeve. Under the flickering beam, a few lines of poetry in already ancient ink gradually became legible – and she didn't know where on earth you could have found these verses.
"借得徵风三分醉,笑问人间情何生.流光转瞬情何依,愿将心事付花飞.
Borrowing from the south wind three parts of intoxication, I ask with a smile whence love is born in this world. The fleeting light departs, on what can love depend? I would entrust the sorrows of my heart to the flying flowers."
Her lips moved silently, reciting the verses in her heart, her voice so faint that only her heart could hear it.
"花间月色映清辉,弦动心波逐水归.春风拂面情愫生,愿借流云寄相思.
Among the flowers, the moonlight casts a pure glow; the movement of strings, a heart's wave, follows the water returning. The spring breeze caresses the face, feelings are born; I would borrow the floating clouds to entrust my loving thoughts to them."
She bit her lips, refusing to let out the slightest sob, but could not hold back her tears. Drop by drop, they rolled onto the words of these ancient love poems. She inhaled and exhaled the icy mist, her fingers numb with cold, but refused to let go of this notebook.
She desperately bit her lower lip to keep from sobbing, but the tears finally burst forth, pearl after pearl, crashing onto the ink traces of the ancient love poems. She gasped the frigid air, which condensed into white mist before dissipating. Her fingers had long been numb and stiff from the cold, but she still clung desperately to that notebook.
As if, by continuing to read like this, your voice, your breath, could pierce this infinite cold and silence, and appear before her.
Thoughts receded like a tide, then surged forth again.
Happy days are always as ephemeral as dreams.
You had received that thin marriage certificate. No noisy wedding with gongs and drums, no wedding banquet with a crowd of guests, not even a proper new outfit. When you had received that paper, your eyes were red. You held her tightly in your arms, repeating over and over: "Jingwei, thank you."
Your "new home" was an old dormitory room that the institute had previously assigned to Nantang; the walls were peeling, the windows let in the wind. You always felt guilty about it. Often, under the yellowish lamplight, you would stroke the few old books she had brought back from Revachol, murmuring: "Wait a little... wait until I've saved enough money, I will definitely buy you a better bookshelf, and then a warmer stove, and also... also that fountain pen you've always wanted." You counted on your fingers, listing one by one these unattainable "beautiful objects," your eyes shining with hope.
However, the peaceful days did not last long.
The undercurrent stirring the tranquil lake finally began to surge. At first, it was you who was summoned from time to time for "interviews." Then, this invisible pressure began to envelop Jingwei as well. Her past as a student in Revachol, like an invisible label, put her on tenterhooks at every collective study session and "self-criticism" meeting.
Then, she was sent with you to clean the old moldy newspapers in the archive room, or to "experience life" on the farm, pulling weeds, carrying manure. Those hands, once accustomed to handling precision instruments, were now covered in mud.
You always came home exhausted, but you forced yourself to smile at Jingwei. Jingwei did the same; she swallowed the sharp interrogations and unjustified accusations, saying nothing of the cold treatment and suspicious looks she endured outside.
But gradually, things began to deteriorate. One evening, you came home with a bluish bruise at the corner of your lips and a swollen forehead. You only said you had fallen awkwardly. Jingwei brought you warm water to clean yourself. Touching your wound, you couldn't suppress a wince.
She understood everything but could only clean your wounds in silence.
From that moment on, you regularly came home with injuries. Sometimes it was red and swollen eyes, sometimes hideous bruises on your arms. You no longer justified yourself, merely lying silently on the cold cement floor, your eyes fixed on the ceiling with a vacant stare, as if you wanted to pierce that barrier to see a sky without fear.
Later still, you began to suffer from insomnia night after night. You often woke up with a start, plagued by nightmares, shouting fragmented words in a sweat that no one understood. Your gaze became furtive; those eyes that once shone with a gleam of intelligence were gradually invaded by an unspeakable fear.
Those interrogations, those humiliations, those beatings accumulated day after day, like an invisible hammer, struck, blow after blow, slowly and cruelly, shattering your mental universe. Little by little, you were heading towards the brink of madness.
One day, at the institute, those artifacts that had once carried history and civilization were thrown, in bundles, in crates, into a blazing fire that rose to the sky. The air was filled with the acrid smell of burning paper, wood, and fabrics, mixed with the frenzied clamor of the crowd.
Jingwei desperately squeezed your hand, trying to pull you away from that window overlooking the ocean of fire. Your gaze was sometimes vacant, sometimes shining with the light of a lost child.
"Nantang, Nantang... let's not look, okay?" Jingwei's voice was hoarse and trembling with fear and sorrow.
"There are... there are wild beasts out there, Jingwei," you suddenly said, gripping her hand with surprising strength. Your gaze cleared for a moment, then was again overwhelmed by fear. "We've all melted..." he murmured, pointing towards where the flames were most intense outside the window –
It was your shared office, and also the darkroom where you had developed and sorted countless archaeological photographs. There were your academic books, the artifact drawings you had made with your own hand, and above all, the shared memories of your countless days and nights.
Jingwei's heart felt as if it were being burned by those flames. She had tried to dialogue with the "lucid" Nantang, to cling to your rare moments of reason, to tell you that all this would pass.
But most of the time, she could only speak to that you who was plunged into chaos and delirium, as if whispering to a distant, broken soul. She tried to bring you back to the shore of reality. However, what often answered her was your vacant and frightened gaze, or a few incoherent words.
"Boom –" A huge noise, as if a large pottery vessel had just been smashed, or a wall was collapsing in the flames. The roar of the crowd became even more deafening.
In the midst of this chaos, several people burst in. You were brutally torn from Jingwei, still shouting incoherent things, your eyes filled with extreme terror. Jingwei wanted to throw herself at them but was firmly held back by another man. She could only watch you, helpless, being dragged away, disappearing around the corner of the staircase, your cries gradually fading, finally drowned out by the slogans thundering outside and the crackling of the flames.
You were taken to that place in the suburbs, called a "sanatorium," but which was no different from a madhouse.
Jingwei's heart sank completely into an abyss of ice. She knew that place was hell on earth.
But she didn't give up. Thanks to her status as a former student of Revachol University, and a few old connections who, in those troubled times, still retained an ounce of lucidity and courage, she secretly contacted friends in Revachol.
Her friends' reply took several days to reach her; the handwriting was hasty and disorganized, but it brought a glimmer of hope: they could organize an exfiltration, there was a channel – a freight train carrying coal, which could reach Revachol.
What warmed her heart even more was that the letter mentioned that some crew members of this train were former classmates from Revachol University.
Hope, like an ember, rekindled in Jingwei's almost desperate heart. She began to plan everything, regardless of the consequences, selling anything of value, greasing palms, solely to get you out of that sanatorium.
Each visit was a torture for her soul; she forcefully held back her tears.
Seeing you wither day by day, your gaze becoming more and more vacant.
"You have to get better, Nantang, you absolutely have to get better..."
She didn't know if you could still hear her, if those words could pierce the wall of your consciousness.
She took advantage of moments when no one was paying attention to whisper in your ear, little by little, the details of the escape plan, using the simplest, most direct words.
Sometimes, she carefully hid scraps of paper with place names and key times inside the coarse flour buns she brought you, nervously watching your reactions, hoping to catch in your vacant gaze a tiny flicker of understanding.
Most of the time, you stared at her blankly, or nervously tore at the corner of your clothes, muttering indistinct sounds.
Each visit ended in deeper despair, but each time, a faint glimmer of hope was rekindled.
It was a dreary afternoon. The sanatorium's visiting room was filled with an acrid smell, a mixture of disinfectant and despair.
You were silent as usual, your vacant gaze fixed on the grayish sky outside the window. Jingwei held your icy hand, her fingers whitening slightly under the pressure. She repeated, as usual, in a low voice, the details of the escape, her voice hoarse with contained emotion: "...Someone will come for us, I already have the train tickets, Nantang, do you hear me? We're leaving..."
She was merely mechanically fulfilling a promise, a promise she had made unilaterally to herself, to make you escape this ocean of suffering.
At that precise moment, your gaze, hitherto vacant, seemed to move slightly. You slowly turned your head, your gaze no longer diffuse, but possessing a tiny flicker of concentration, as if you were pushing aside a thick fog, struggling to recognize the world around you. You looked at Jingwei; that gaze, it was one she hadn't seen for so long, one she thought she would never see again in her life: lucidity.
"Jingwei..." Your voice was dry and weak, but it struck Jingwei's heart like a thunderclap.
Her breathing stopped abruptly. She looked at you, incredulous.
You laboriously raised your hand and lightly touched her cheek. In those eyes once consumed by madness, a glimmer of tenderness now shone. "The sink... at home..." you said in fragments, each word seeming torn from the depths of your throat, "...behind... that loose... brick... take it out..."
Jingwei held her breath, staring at you without blinking, fearing it was just a fleeting illusion.
"...My... notes... and also... the negatives... there's also a little money..." Your gaze, however, was surprisingly firm. "Important... everything... everything is there... we... we take them with us!"
At that moment, it was as if all her strength and pretense crumbled. Jingwei's tears gushed from her eyes, hot pearls crashing onto the back of your icy hand.
It was you! It was her Nantang who had returned! Even if only for a moment, he was lucid; he was entrusting her with the last proof of their struggle against this absurd world.
"Good... good!" Jingwei, shaken by sobs, nodded repeatedly, her voice so choked she could barely utter a complete sentence. "I'll definitely take them! Nantang! I'll definitely take them all! We're leaving together!"
You looked at her, your lips seeming to form a very slight smile, an extremely faint but incredibly real smile. Then, that glimmer of lucidity retreated from your eyes as quickly as a receding tide. You became again the one who was lost and overwhelmed, as if that shattering recommendation had exhausted all your strength.
But Jingwei knew it was not an illusion.
Finally, everything seemed ready. On the agreed day to pick you up, her heart pounding as if it would break, she went to the sanatorium again.
However, an employee with an impassive face announced to her in a neutral tone: "Sima Nantang? Oh, that one. A few days ago, he had dark thoughts, he threw himself into the lake. We've already recovered the body."
"No... impossible!" Jingwei felt the world spin and collapse before her eyes.
She didn't want to believe it. Like a madwoman, she demanded to see you, to see the remains, but was brutally pushed away and driven out. As she was haggard, devastated, a familiar figure caught her – it was Old Han.
Old Han was also on the Revachol contact list; he was initially supposed to leave with them today. He knew Jingwei would come for you that day. Not seeing you arrive at the agreed meeting point, he had worried and risked approaching the vicinity of the sanatorium.
The shock and pain on his face were identical to Jingwei's; clearly, he too had just learned the terrible news through some means. Only, he possessed a lucidity that Jingwei no longer had.
Old Han almost forcibly dragged a dazed Jingwei away from the sanatorium. In a secluded alley, he yelled in a low voice: "Jingwei, Nantang... Nantang is really gone. But you have to leave! These people won't leave you alone! If Nantang has a soul in heaven, he absolutely wouldn't want you to stay here waiting for death!"
Jingwei, like a puppet, let herself be pulled by Old Han, through the shadows of the city.
Only when that black train, exhaling a strong smell of coal dust, appeared before her like a beast lurking in the shadows, did she have a slight reaction. She wanted to struggle, to turn back, to go demand explanations, to at least see the place where Nantang had "thrown himself into the lake."
"Quick! There's no more time!" Old Han's tone was imbued with an urgency that brooked no argument. He almost pushed her with all his might towards the open coal car and threw his own bag into it.
As Jingwei scrambled unsteadily into the icy, dusty depths of the car, she heard disordered footsteps and shouts from outside.
"Han – !" she wanted to scream.
Immediately after, there were the dull, terrifying sounds of clubs striking flesh, and Old Han's heart-wrenching, stifled screams. That sound pierced through the thick walls of the car like a sharp blade, planting itself violently in Jingwei's heart.
The train lurched abruptly and began to move slowly. Old Han's atrocious cries were gradually drowned out by the rumbling of the rails and the screeching of the wheels, finally vanishing into the heavy Paichelan night.
Jingwei, curled up in the icy pile of coal, let her tears flow in silence. She knew that some people, some things, had remained forever on that land of despair behind her. And she, carrying an indelible pain and guilt, was sailing towards the distant.
Year 427 of the Ashen Wheel Era, the last day of the Deep Waters period. After almost half a month of travel, the train reached, in the dawning light, the border tundra between Revachol and Paichelan.