The next afternoon, Zhang Youzhi and Li Douyu boarded the bus to the countryside. Their suitcase went into the luggage compartment underneath, but Zhang Youzhi still had three or four large bags clutched in his arms.
They contained clothes they had bought for Li Douyu's father and grandmother, along with all sorts of other things.
Li Douyu had even remembered to buy a can of city dog food for the big black dog back home. Who knew whether that rascal would like it?
The mountain roads of Longnan were winding and rough. Zhang Youzhi watched in terror as the driver smoked with one hand and casually spun the steering wheel with the other. The jam-packed bus swung nimbly around the bends, and at times Zhang Youzhi felt its wheels were less than a meter from the cliff beside the road.
Zhang Youzhi wasn't afraid of dying, but he wasn't ready to check out early right here.
Li Douyu's motion sickness had flared up again. She hugged her cushion and dozed fitfully on the bus. When she grew tired of sleeping, she leaned against Zhang Youzhi and stared blankly.
"Here, have a piece of orange. Perk yourself up a little." Zhang Youzhi held out a segment he had peeled until only a thin membrane remained.
Li Douyu opened her mouth, her eyes vacant.
And so the journey passed, with him feeding her, her sleeping, and thoughts and worries turning over in their minds.
They arrived in Kuba Town.
Zhang Youzhi and Li Douyu got off the bus with bags of every size dangling all over them, like a pair of walking coat hooks.
There were still more than ten kilometers of mountain road between Kuba Town and Maziping Village.
Li Douyu forced herself to rally and finally found a local heading their way who could give them a ride in his van.
The van jolted even harder. Li Douyu felt so sick that she threw up all the orange Zhang Youzhi had fed her, then raised her head and looked at him with tearful eyes.
Zhang Youzhi gently patted her back, then wiped her little mouth with warm water.
By the time they reached the foot of the mountain, it was already six in the evening.
The large entrance sign for Maziping Village was visible in the distance. Zhang Youzhi picked Li Douyu up and set her on a nearby rock to recover from the ride, then hung the bags on himself one by one.
A cold sweat covered Zhang Youzhi's forehead. The painkiller clearly had the effect of temporarily boosting his stamina, but it didn't last long.
Crimson waves occasionally rose from the rolling green mountains, lifted by the lingering heat of the evening and swept away in every direction.
Zhang Youzhi could almost smell the rich scent of Sichuan pepper.
On a slope not far from one of those red pepper groves stood three lonely rooms, all belonging to Li Douyu's family. On that whole vast mountainside, theirs was the only household.
Zhang Youzhi pointed at the house, summoned his courage, and shouted toward the endless barriers before him.
"Come on. I'll take you home."
Her father was still harvesting Sichuan pepper and wouldn't return until evening. Fully recovered now, Li Douyu settled Zhang Youzhi on the bed that had once been hers, grabbed a sun hat, and headed up the mountain to call her father home.
It seemed he was the only one left in the house.
Zhang Youzhi pinched the four painkillers in their plastic packaging and said nothing.
Li Douyu's old home had a striking sense of disconnection, a clash between city and country.
The kitchen had white ceramic tiles, a microwave, and a complete gas stove setup. Yet a large pile of firewood stood in one corner, beside an earthen stove whose hot ashes still stubbornly glimmered with embers.
Clearly, compared with the gas stove, the earthen stove and its large iron wok were the household's true favorites.
The other two rooms were much the same. The walls of the main room were covered in tiles, but the floor was still dark, bare concrete. Looking up, he could see a lamp and a rotating fan hanging from the wooden beams.
This wasn't Zhang Youzhi's first visit, but the place never stopped feeling novel to him.
Just as Zhang Youzhi was about to return to the inner room, he suddenly came face-to-face with an old woman whose footsteps made no sound.
It was Li Douyu's grandmother.
"Grandma," Zhang Youzhi said hastily.
Without Li Douyu there to translate, Zhang Youzhi struggled to communicate effectively with the old woman. The older generation's Longnan dialect was rapid and clipped.
"When'd you get here? Have you eaten?"
That much he could understand.
"Just got here this afternoon. Yes, I've eaten." Zhang Youzhi nodded.
Only then did the old woman raise her head and take a good look at her granddaughter's husband from out of town.
Zhang Youzhi stood rooted to the spot under her scrutiny. Without realizing it, he straightened his body.
"Youzhi, are you not doing too well?" The old woman approached with a puzzled look and squeezed his hand.
A slight swelling had already developed beneath Zhang Youzhi's skin, making him look a little heavier than he had a few days earlier, though it was almost impossible to notice without looking closely.
"You're all swollen. What's going on?" The old woman's cloudy eyes bore into the flustered Zhang Youzhi.
People on the verge of starving to death swelled up like this. The last time she had seen anyone swollen had been during the famine decades ago.
"Grandma, I've just put on weight these past few days. I'm perfectly healthy." As he spoke, Zhang Youzhi jumped vigorously in place twice, then threw a few punches, deliberately putting on a show for quite a while.
"See? It's just fat." In his panic, even Zhang Youzhi's own hometown dialect slipped out.
The old woman clearly didn't believe him. She told Zhang Youzhi to bare his arm.
Zhang Youzhi took a deep breath and tensed his arm with all his strength. What little muscle he had pushed up beneath the swollen skin, making it look considerably more normal.
Her large, dry, aged hand squeezed his arm. To Zhang Youzhi, it felt as though a sheet of plastic was scraping across his skin.
At last, the old woman let out a soft breath.
"Eat properly from now on. If anything's wrong, tell the family."
Zhang Youzhi nodded repeatedly.
Once the old woman entered the courtyard, the exhausted Zhang Youzhi went limp. He barely managed to find a chair and collapse into it.
Seeing that she was still looking at him, he made himself sit up properly again.
The old woman said nothing, merely shuffling slowly outside.
Zhang Youzhi truly had no strength left. The morphine's painkilling effect blocked the pain, but that didn't mean he could jump around like a healthy person. Every breath felt like an effort.
Going by the doctor's two-month estimate, Zhang Youzhi had one month left to live.
But Zhang Youzhi felt he wouldn't make it through July.
Before my body deteriorates too far, I'll take the last four painkillers, leave Li Douyu back in her father's care, then cross these endless mountains and go somewhere farther away.
Before you continue