Forgotten, Lop Nur

I suddenly felt a little sorry for him.

He had originally gone with his wife to see a psychiatrist, and his wife looked more like the one with psychological problems. Yet in the end, the doctor's attention had turned to him. Not only had the doctor insisted that he undergo therapy, but he had also prescribed him a whole pile of medication. Could psychiatric drugs be taken so casually?

Gu Song's face was filled with helplessness.

"You have no idea how many times my wife and I have shut ourselves in and fought over whether I should take medicine. She should know perfectly well what her own problem is, while I'm completely normal. Really, believe me."

I nodded, but inwardly I thought of what Eccentric Song had said: no mental patient would ever admit to being mentally ill.

That included me. A lot of people said there was something wrong with my head, that I was sick, but I didn't see it that way. I was merely different from ordinary people. I had not truly detached myself from real life; I simply preferred my own world, my own space.

Yes, I really did not have many friends in reality, because I felt I simply could not get along with those people. But I did not dislike them, nor would I do anything to them. We were just two parallel lines—they lived their lives, and I lived mine.

"Get him to the point. It's been nearly an hour, and all we've done is listen to him ramble." Duan Hongbin yawned.

Embarrassed, I said to Gu Song, "You should tell us about your wife."

"Oh, right, right. Look at me—I got sidetracked and forgot the important matter." He was clearly a little embarrassed too.

After taking a sip of water, he continued, "At first, I thought she had developed some psychological problems, but I never expected things to turn out like this. We've been together for many years and have hardly ever even argued, but this time, we fought several times over whether I should take medicine. I found that her temperament had changed. She had become somewhat paranoid and unreasonable."

I was a little speechless. Why could he not get away from the subject of medication? But then he continued, "After that, her condition grew more and more serious. She would often sit alone in a daze, with a very strange expression on her face. One moment she would laugh, the next she would cry, and then she would look terrified. When I asked what was wrong, she would suddenly act like a normal person again. She said nothing was wrong with her. Instead, she asked why I kept saying something was wrong with her. She asked what my intentions were—would I only be happy if something really was wrong with her? Mr. Jiang, you have no idea how miserable I felt then!"

For some reason, hearing him call me Mr. Jiang made me feel uncomfortable all over. I really was not used to being called "Mister," especially by someone Gu Song's age. Besides, he was a teacher at a teachers' college.

I had feared teachers ever since I was little. From childhood to adulthood, teachers had always seemed lofty and unreachable in my eyes.

"Ahem, Mr. Gu, just call me Little Jiang, or Xiaobai. To be honest, I'm really not used to people calling me Mr. Jiang. It makes me feel so old."

"Oh, sorry. Then I'll call you Xiaobai." Gu Song was easygoing. He was probably like that with his students too. He had a gentle personality, yet someone like him had nearly been driven mad by his own wife.

"Every night, she would have conversations with the air right on schedule. Gradually, I stopped being so afraid. Then she began sleeping more and more. At first, I suspected there might be something wrong with her physically, so I had her go to the hospital for an examination. She was unhappy about it, but she went anyway. Yet the results showed that everything was normal. That left me completely baffled."

I suddenly asked, "You mentioned that she didn't think anything was wrong with her. But earlier, you said she told you she always felt someone was watching her from the shadows. After she saw the psychiatrist, did she still have that feeling?"

Gu Song said, "Yes. She mentioned it to me more than once afterward. I didn't even know how to comfort her anymore. But strangely, during the week before something happened to her, she never brought it up again. I asked whether she still felt someone was spying on her, and she looked at me as if I were an idiot. She asked me when she had ever told me that someone was spying on her. When I asked her about the earlier events, she didn't remember any of them at all."

"By earlier events, do you mean the things that happened to her, or everything that happened before that?" I made my question very clear, because I felt it was important. There was a difference between her forgetting only the recent events that had happened to her and forgetting everything from before.

When Duan Hongbin heard me ask that, he gave me an approving look.

Just then, the door opened. Xu Qiuyan had returned.

She was somewhat surprised when she saw Gu Song, but she still smiled and nodded at him before heading into the kitchen.

I did not call her over. She had not heard a large portion of what had been said earlier, so there was no point in having her listen now. If she was interested, I could tell her about it after Gu Song left. At the very least, my retelling would be much more concise than his.

"She forgot the things that happened to her. Of course, there were some things she never knew about in the first place, so there was nothing to forget."

After Gu Song finished speaking, he let out a soft sigh, and his expression became somewhat desolate.

"Mr. Gu, forgive me for asking, but before your wife started having problems, had the two of you gone anywhere or met anyone?"

That was not what I wanted to ask. Duan Hongbin had told me to ask it.

"We've been to many places. Both of us like traveling, especially her. She loved wandering everywhere. She said the person she envied most was San Mao, who could leave her footprints across ten thousand rivers and a thousand mountains. San Mao's Ten Thousand Rivers and a Thousand Mountains Traversed was her bedtime reading, and San Mao was her idol. Let me tell you, when I first met her, she was absolutely obsessed with San Mao. Her room was practically filled with San Mao's books and posters. Actually, San Mao wasn't particularly pretty—she was nowhere near as beautiful as my wife. I really don't know what was worth admiring her like that..."

I was on the verge of breaking down. He had gone off topic again.

"Where did you go most recently?" I interrupted his recollections about San Mao. Otherwise, he might not have emerged from San Mao's shadow even by nightfall.

"Oh, we went to Lop Nur. That was our fourth time going there. She suggested it—she had a special attachment to that place. But I think she was adventurous at heart and curious about all kinds of strange things. Do you know why she liked going to Lop Nur? Have you heard Peng Jiamu's story? And the Twin Fish Jade Pendant?"

I nodded. I had read about them in some book, but I did not find those legends particularly credible. The authorities had long since provided an explanation for Peng Jiamu's case, and as for the Twin Fish Jade Pendant, I did not believe such a thing could possibly exist.

"Was this trip the same as usual? Or did anything unusual happen?"

I was becoming curious too, because I understood why Duan Hongbin had told me to ask that question. He believed the changes in Gu Song's wife might have been caused by some special experience, or perhaps by encountering someone unusual.

"This time, we went with a group of hiking enthusiasts again. They were all experienced people, and two of them were old acquaintances. They had been with us the last time we entered Lop Nur. There were eight of us in total, and we had prepared plenty of food, water, and everything else."

He paused there and narrowed his eyes. "At first, nothing strange happened after we entered Lop Nur. Then, on the night before we were due to leave, one of the hikers said he was going to relieve himself, but he still hadn't returned after nearly half an hour. We became anxious, afraid something might have happened to him, so we split into two groups and searched nearby. We agreed that whether we found him or not, we had to return to camp and meet up after an hour. At the time, my wife was in the same group as me and another hiker. We searched for almost an hour without finding him, so we returned to camp as agreed. We all thought that perhaps the other group had already found him."

I really could not understand people who liked adventure. Wasn't it good enough to live safely? Why did they have to make trouble for themselves and add danger to their lives? That saying was right: if you don't court death, you won't die. Many accidents were brought about by people themselves. Free solo climbing, tightrope walking—anyway, I would never participate in such dangerous activities. Unlike some people, I did not think my life was too long.

It was not that I feared death. It was just that some deaths simply were not worth it; they had no meaning at all.

Sima Qian had said that death could be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather. If I was going to die, then it had to be in a blaze of glory.