927
"Your friend's illness is terminal. There's no cure."
The Fortune-Telling Old Man acted as though he hadn't seen Xiao Wu's and my grim faces and clenched fists. Shaking his head, he continued with what was even a hint of glee at our misfortune, "Young men, take it in stride. You both have bright futures ahead of you. Don't let a moment's grief throw you off balance."
He had started talking in that mystical, cryptic way again, and it really pissed me off.
But Xiao Wu was a young man after all. Faced with an old man who kept pushing his luck and didn't even know to say something nice to his customers, Xiao Wu actually remained polite and asked, keeping his voice as steady as possible:
"With the right method, even a terminal illness isn't completely incurable. Is there any way to prolong his life for now?"
I was stunned. I looked up at my young colleague, who was about my height when he stood, unable to believe that he would pin his terminally ill friend's hopes of survival on a fortune-telling old man whose hobby was gloating over other people's misfortune.
As a successor to socialism and an inheritor of historical materialism, I treated all this mysterious stuff as entertainment. I really wanted to tell Xiao Wu that even if he was a foreigner, even if he was of mixed heritage, he should know that mysticism and faith couldn't save people. Holy water, prayers, and blessings were all psychological comfort for the living and the sick. Those who overcame terminal illnesses through conviction were a minority, after all, or they wouldn't have been written up in newspapers and magazines. The vast majority still succumbed to disease. He would have been better off asking a doctor about treatment plans