Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The accident destined to happen

When he woke again, he was ravenous. Since he could feel hunger, his body must have begun to recover.

A bowl of rice porridge sat on the bedside table, topped with a poached egg and minced meat sauce, giving off an enticing aroma. He could sense no one in the outer room; everyone had probably gone out.

Zhang Ke lay still, but finally succumbed to the temptation of such real hunger and the smell of food. He struggled upright, thinking that even if this was a dream, there was no reason to go hungry. He emptied the porridge, egg, and minced meat into his stomach, then lay down for a while longer before strength gradually returned to his limbs.

Zhang Ke pushed open the door and went to the bathroom, where he stared at himself in the mirror. His face was pale and sickly, his chin pointed, his eyes dull, his lips thin, with a little down above them. This was exactly how he had looked at sixteen. Without seeing it in the mirror, memory alone could never have conjured up his face so vividly.

What on earth was going on? Zhang Ke slapped his cheek, not daring to use much force. It hurt a little. Dreams could not simulate physical pain, but who could be sure? Was time flowing backward any more reasonable? Unable to prove that he was dreaming, yet even less able to believe he was in the real world, Zhang Ke had no idea what had gone wrong to leave him in this state.

Walking through the living room, his gaze swept over the calendar on the glass coffee table-July 18, 1994. Ah, July 18!

Hadn't the fever broken on July 16? Zhang Ke remembered the date his high fever had broken so clearly because on the third day after that fever when he was sixteen-July 18-a terrible traffic accident had occurred on North Street behind the government staff housing compound, leaving five dead and three injured.

Zhang Ke pulled a T-shirt over his head and grabbed a handful of change from the earthenware jar on the cabinet by the door. A key was threaded onto a colored cord-exactly as he remembered; at sixteen, he used to wear his key around his neck. He stuffed the key and change into his trouser pocket and went downstairs.

He bought that day's Morning News. It really was July 18. Zhang Ke looked up at the sun hanging above the corner of a tall building to the west, then rounded the corner and headed toward North Street.

Nothing seemed unusual about North Street at that moment. The heavy air made people drowsy. Near the corner was a building supplies shop, next door to it a hardware shop, and beyond that a convenience store. Heat shimmered, and there were almost no pedestrians on the street. This was the place. Apart from him, there was no one, though an occasional car sped past in a cloud of dust. Zhang Ke stood by the street for a while. It did not look as though an accident had happened, nor was there any sign that one was about to. His fever had only just broken, and his weakened body could not bear the heat. Sweat streamed down his forehead. Lowering his head, he ducked into the convenience store and stood beneath the loudly whirring ceiling fan.

Someone lifted the door curtain from outside. A young man held it above his head to let the young woman behind him enter first, holding a little girl's hand. Zhang Ke glanced at her. The young woman had a lovely face and a slender waist. She wore a plain-colored long dress, cinched narrowly at the waist, making her breasts look all the fuller. As she passed through the doorway with the light behind her, Zhang Ke could almost make out the shape and creamy whiteness of her full, long thighs through the thin fabric.

Once the young woman came inside, the light no longer shone through her dress, which Zhang Ke privately regretted. He felt that a woman this beautiful was rare even in Haizhou. With her male companion there, he did not dare be too brazen. He noticed only the weariness in her eyes so common on summer afternoons. The little girl holding her hand was very pretty too, about five or six years old. She was pouting as she wiped sweat from her forehead, her eyes a deep black.

Zhang Ke felt a little envious of the young man in the doorway. With such a beautiful wife and daughter, probably every good thing a person could encounter in life had fallen to him.

The young man stood in the doorway facing inward. The light outside was so strong that Zhang Ke could not make out his face. The young woman turned back to speak to him in a dialect from farther north that Zhang Ke could not understand clearly. He thought he would never encounter the accident just standing inside the shop. As the young woman led the girl farther inside, the girl pointed at the fan above Zhang Ke and cried excitedly, "Mommy, there's wind! There's wind!"

Zhang Ke headed out, passing the young man in the doorway. The young man happened to turn sideways to look at something in the corner, so Zhang Ke still failed to see his face clearly. A fat middle-aged man came out of the building supplies shop carrying two folding stools. A thin man followed him with a deck of cards and a wad of change, calling, "Fourth! Biaozi! What's taking so long?"

"Coming! What the f*** are you bawling for, with that great booming voice?" A shirtless young man carried a small square table out of the hardware shop and set it up in the shade of a roadside tree. The young man behind him carried two low stools...

In an instant, Zhang Ke recalled the report about the accident fourteen years earlier: "A major traffic accident occurred on North Street in the West District. A dump truck turned onto North Street from Dongsheng Street. Its driver, driving under the influence, lost control and veered onto the roadside pavement. Four young men playing cards in the shade of a tree on the pavement were unable to get out of the way..." Zhang Ke turned in shock to look at the couple and the little girl in the convenience store. The report had left a deep impression on him, not only because the accident had happened on North Street, but because the newspaper had also printed a photograph of the little girl, making it all the more heartbreaking.

Blood surged to his head in waves. Shock numbed his entire body, leaving him unable to move!

"Uncle Tian's car should be here soon. I'll watch for it outside..." the young man in the convenience store told the young woman before ducking through the curtain. Outside, the coolest spot was in the shade of the poplar in front of the building supplies shop. He glanced at Zhang Ke, standing woodenly by the convenience store entrance, then walked over to the shade and stood watching the four men play cards.

The sound of a heavy vehicle rolling over asphalt could be heard in the distance. As it approached the corner, it did not seem to slow. The sound of death was so clear...

"Daddy, Mommy got you an ice cream..."

Holding up an ice cream, the little girl practically bounced out of the doorway. Half the front of an earth-yellow dump truck had just appeared at the street corner, showing no sign of turning.

The little girl passed Zhang Ke, and he almost felt the hem of her dress brush his bare calf below his shorts. The dump truck drove through the middle of the street, showing no sign of turning...

The little girl skipped past the hardware shop, tripped, and fell to the ground, her ice cream splattering on the pavement... The dump truck driver over there seemed suddenly to realize he had missed the turn and wrenched the wheel around. Its tires scraped against the asphalt with a piercing screech. The young man, just about to come over to help his daughter up, turned his head in shock and saw the dump truck swing around in the middle of the street and charge toward them...

"Ah!" The young woman at the convenience store entrance screamed.

Zhang Ke thought of the photograph of the little girl published after the accident. He looked at the adorable girl lying less than five paces in front of him and thought of her tiny body about to be crushed beneath this crazed dump truck. A surge of strength flooded him. He lunged forward, scooped her up, and ran backward.

The dump truck slammed into the poplar, its trunk as thick as a person's waist. With a crack, the tree snapped in two, and half the trunk plunged violently into the fat middle-aged man's lower abdomen. The truck paused, then lurched forward again-the engine had not stalled, and the driver had mistakenly stepped on the accelerator again. The other three card players and the young man were all petrified, their bodies frozen, forgetting to dodge until the dump truck sent them flying one after another.

The dump truck came hurtling toward Zhang Ke next.

Zhang Ke was stunned with terror too. Holding the little girl, he did not know to dodge sideways. Clutching her rigid body, he desperately retreated until his back hit a wall and he could move no farther. He could only hold her tight in his arms and watch the dump truck swerve sharply past the tip of his nose. His heart nearly stopped...

The dump truck swerved off the pavement and shot toward the middle of the street. A Jetta coming from the west drove headfirst beneath its belly...

Zhang Ke felt wetness on his face. He wiped it, and his hand came away covered in blood. "Waaah..." He burst into tears, shocked and terrified, sinking to his knees with the girl in his arms and feeling all over her. "It didn't hit her! It didn't hit her!"

There was a bloody, salty taste at the corner of his mouth. Zhang Ke wiped it and saw something white. Brain matter? His stomach churned. Before he could turn his head, he vomited up everything in his stomach, splashing it all over the little girl...

Zhang Ke remembered that when he had been in his own car accident, he had only felt his body being hurled violently away. He had lost consciousness while still airborne, without even having time to feel the fear of death? Looking at the bloody scene, only now did he grasp the terror of a car accident and the fragility of human life. He sat on the ground holding the little girl, utterly dazed.

After the accident, people seemed to seep out like water from a sponge, crowding the street corner in an instant.

A black sedan pulled up, and two middle-aged men got out, shouting. Zhang Ke's mind alternated between clarity and confusion, and he could not hear them distinctly. He saw one middle-aged man go over to help up the young woman who had collapsed on the ground, while the other came to take the little girl. Zhang Ke handed her over. "I don't know if she was hit. I don't know if she was hit..."

"The little girl's fine. This young fellow's a good one. He rushed over and saved her. Look how deep those tire marks are..." someone beside them said. "The young fellow got quite a fright too. He probably wasn't hit. It was that close. I was only ten meters away and saw it clearly. My calves are still shaking. Only this young fellow dared rush over to save the girl..."

An ambulance arrived shortly afterward. Its loud siren brought a little calm to Zhang Ke's muddled mind.

Zhang Ke did not dare look at the people who had been knocked flying. Anyone in his place would have been afraid to subject themselves to that shock again. He wiped his face. The blood had dried, crusting over in that short time. His limbs weak, he struggled to his feet and walked dazedly out of the crowd. A nurse ran over to support him. "You mustn't move around..." "It didn't hit me. The blood splashed on me. Go look after them..." The nurse paused, then went back without thinking further, never considering keeping Zhang Ke there or taking his contact details.

Zhang Ke turned back to look for the driver. He lay beneath the roots of the second poplar he had knocked down, his face pale. He should have sobered up long ago. Zhang Ke kept feeling he ought to offer him a word or two of comfort, but did not know where to begin, and gave a wry grin. Only after crossing Dongsheng Bridge did he see two traffic patrol cars heading toward North Street.

Only then did Zhang Ke remember that on July 18, 1994, almost all the traffic patrol officers in the West District had been assigned to maintain order around Bell Tower Square. That day, nearly a hundred workers from Xinguang Paper Mill had gathered there to make trouble. The mill's old plant stood beside the port access river in the south of the city. Its technology was outdated and its pollution severe, so Chengnan District had resolved to move Xinguang Paper Mill out of the main urban area and had built a new plant in the Southern Suburb Industrial Park. But construction and equipment purchases had exhausted the bank loans, leaving no working capital to buy raw materials, so the plant had never begun operating. On top of that, the workers disliked how far the new plant was from the city and refused to let the old one close, gathering in front of the Municipal Government to make trouble every few days.