His mother's cries gradually faded as she rushed down the hospital corridor toward the elevators. The room was left with only the child lying in the hospital bed and Shen Le, staring wide-eyed at each other.
"You're Zhang Zihan, right?" Shen Le leaned over to look at him.
"Are you feeling any better?"
"It hurts so much..."
The boy had been dozing, and with painkillers in his system, he could just about bear it. Now that he was awake, his face was scrunched up with pain, and he grimaced.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the one who found your family's puppet." With the boy's mother gone, Shen Le pulled up the chair beside the bed and sat down. He swung his backpack around to the front and took out the Little Puppet.
"Take a look. Is this yours?"
"Uh..."
Zhang Zihan strained to lift his head and looked it over. The Little Puppet before him had vivid makeup and a dazzling Red Skirt. It was completely different from the shabby, dusty puppet he remembered. Only the cinnabar tear at the corner of its eye was still just as he remembered.
"I think so... Did you change her clothes?"
"I repaired the wood inside, replaced the silk threads, and gave her a new outfit." Shen Le answered honestly, then asked, "Did you often play with her at home?"
"Yeah!" Zhang Zihan reached out to touch the Little Puppet, but the movement tugged at his wound, and a fine sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead. He protested indignantly, "I told them I was playing with her, but Mom and Dad wouldn't believe me. They kept saying I was lying, that I was playing with dolls instead of doing my homework! But she was the one who always kept me company!"
I believe you, Shen Le thought silently. Children were different from adults; they could often see things adults couldn't. Besides, this puppet had been passed down through their family for generations, and its spirit was all the more extraordinary. He waved a hand and gently pressed the child back onto the bed.
"Lie still. If you want to play with her, I'll work her for you. How about I put on a puppet show?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
Zhang Zihan couldn't help trying to clap. The movement tugged at his IV, and the back of his hand hurt, so he quickly lay still again. Shen Le smiled at him. He set down his backpack and held the wooden board flat in his left hand.
"Chaang! Chaang! Chaang-dong-chaang!"
He made the sounds with his mouth as he tugged the silk threads with his hands. The Little Puppet followed, flicking out a sleeve. Her left hand caught the cuff, while her right formed an orchid-finger pose and lifted it above her shoulder.
"At the sudden clash of drums and the blare of horns—"
Excellent, absolutely excellent. Every movement was just right. Except... the threads suspending the puppet's right arm didn't seem quite taut.
So, Xiao Ling, are you dancing on your own?
Never mind. As long as I fool the audience into thinking I'm working the puppet, it'll be fine. Shen Le thought as he did his best to keep singing.
"Stirring my lofty ambition to break through Heaven's Gate—"
Singing the female role's part in the same high, theatrical style as that old man was impossible, so he'd just have to make do. Fortunately, as soon as he sang those two lines, the boy's eyes lit up. He strained to lift his head from the bed, watching the puppet eagerly. It was as if he'd forgotten half the pain in his body.
Shen Le breathed a little easier. There was a rustle from the next bed over. The old man lying there turned to watch the show. Heavy, hurried footsteps approached from outside the ward, but Shen Le paid them no mind. He simply kept working the puppet, doing his best to sing and entertain the child.
"Back then, I cut a mighty figure atop my peach-blossom steed—"
The Chinese loved a lively spectacle; it was practically in their nature. Someone singing opera in the orthopedic ward drew a crowd in no time, filling half the floor. There was the young man from the neighboring orthopedic ward, hobbling around with his leg in a cast;
the burly fellow from the urology ward, wearing a skirt and walking with his legs spread wide;
the middle-aged man from cardiothoracic surgery, carrying a drainage bottle and unwilling to miss out;
the old man from rehab, making round trips with a four-legged walker because his doctor had told him to;
and bored family members keeping patients company, from middle-aged women to young men with dyed hair...
They poured out from every corner in a great mass, instantly packing half the ward. It was no less of a spectacle than the time a neurosurgery patient's companion and an old man from the urology ward were caught fooling around in the toilet and started making a scene.
The patients' worried family members were beside themselves. They tugged at them and scolded them, trying to get them back into bed. But it did no good. If anything, the patients snapped back at them.
"Day after day, I'm stuck lying here with nothing to do. Now there's finally something fun to watch, and you won't even let me see it! The doctor said I need to move around more!"
"Make way, make way! Let me through!"
Amid the crowd, hurried footsteps and commotion rose all at once, then abruptly fell silent. The man who had rushed over froze at the foot of the bed, gazing at the puppet dancing nimbly in Shen Le's hands. Before he knew it, tears were streaming down his face.
He remembered now.
This was his family's Little Puppet. When he was very young, his grandfather had entertained him with it at his bedside and taught him how to perform puppet plays. He had practiced working the puppet with his grandfather and learned the singing style from him. When his grandfather grew gravely ill, he had even pretended to play a two-stringed fiddle with empty fists, accompanying the puppet show just to make him happy...
Later, his grandfather passed away. And because practicing puppet plays took up too much of his time and affected his studies, his parents had threatened to throw the puppet away.
In the end, they didn't throw it away. They just put it in a box and locked it up. After that, after that...
After that, he forgot all about the Little Puppet...
Now he was seeing it again, in the hands of a stranger, skillfully worked and put on display. The middle-aged man suddenly remembered that this was his grandfather's favorite song, the one his grandfather had always sung to him when he was little...
Back then, his greatest wish had been to become a puppet-show performer, working the Little Puppet onstage and performing for everyone, becoming the center of everyone's attention...
Grandpa, Grandpa...
As he watched the puppet lift her sleeves, spin, sing, and dance, two streams of tears unknowingly welled up in the middle-aged man's eyes.
When his son was very little, he'd been just like his own grandfather, singing to him and putting on shows, doing everything he could to make him happy. When had things come to this? When had he ended up constantly scolding his son, sometimes hitting him, until his son had angrily jumped from a building?
Shen Le had heard him arrive and stand in the doorway, but he paid no attention. He simply focused on performing for the child, hoping to give him a little while to forget his pain.
"Back then, I cut a mighty figure atop my peach-blossom steed, my enemy's blood spattering my pomegranate-red skirt—"
Pomegranate-red skirt...
Pomegranate-red skirt?
What were the next lyrics again?
Oh no, he'd forgotten!
"I'll take it from here." Just as Shen Le was feeling awkward, the man at the foot of the bed strode forward. A few tearstains still marked his face, and he managed a faint smile as he nodded to Shen Le. Reaching out to touch the puppet, he turned to look at the boy in the hospital bed.
"Son, Dad knows this part too. Let Dad sing it for you!"
Shen Le understood and handed him the puppet. The man's fingertips moved, and the Little Puppet swayed awkwardly beneath his hands, her limbs jerking as she danced clumsily.
The middle-aged man held the wooden board in his left hand and tugged at the silk threads with his right. He focused intently on making the puppet move, while also struggling to match the operatic singing to its movements.
"At the sudden clash of drums and the blare of horns, stirring my lofty ambition to break through Heaven's Gate. Back then, I cut a mighty figure atop my peach-blossom steed, my enemy's blood spattering my pomegranate-red skirt..."