She turned away and walked off across the meadow towards the distant line of trees. The inside of her elbow stung, and she still had the taste of her own blood in her mouth. She could hear the house burning behind her. Her past was burning too. Later, she would imagine there had been a happy time, all those years growing up with her family, all that love, but she couldn’t find it in her memory. The happiness wasn’t something that could be proved. It was a matter of belief, or faith. Like God.
She spent the first night in the forest, at the base of a tree, in the sheltered space between two roots. On the second night, she found a woodsman’s hut, a floor of beaten earth, its roof half gone. She had been troubled by the prospect of sleep, fearful of the dreams that might be lying in wait for her, but every morning when she woke the inside of her head was bare, like a room emptied of all its furniture. As she walked, she recited spells and incantations that were part of her heritage, and came naturally to her. There are strangers at every gate, and enemies round every corner, and in the forest there are sorcerers, but I am not alarmed. I am not in the least afraid.
The weather was in her favor, warm and dry.
One evening, after walking for six or seven days, she came to a smallholding. Two children ran out to meet her. They tugged at her skirts, begging her to join in with the game they were playing. One of them brandished a doll made from bleached bones, a torn rag, and a piece of string. Their father stood watching from a darkened doorway. He was a tall man. His left hand lacked a finger.
“Have you come far?” he asked. “Where are you from?”
She began to cough, as if smoke from the torched house had forced its way into her lungs. As if she too had been soaked in lamp oil and set on fire.
The man’s wife brought her cool water in a wooden scoop. She drank it all. The taste was of pine needles, fallen leaves.
“Tell us your story,” the man said.
He was only asking what anyone might ask, and his eyes, though narrow, were not suspicious or unkind. A story was a passport, after all. Something that allowed people to place you. Trust you. But her story had been hidden from her, and she found she couldn’t speak. When she looked behind her, there was nothing but trees and more trees, and then perhaps a meadow, and in the distance, at the very limits of her remembering, a house consumed by flames. She seemed, even to herself, to have emerged from nothing. She was like a boat that leaves no wake.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” the man’s wife said, pushing him away. “You can stay if you like. You’ll be safe here.”
The woman’s promise seemed rash, and born of a profound and dangerous innocence, and she didn’t believe it. She would never be safe again. Nonetheless, she let herself be taken to a woodshed at the back of the house, where there was a simple bed of straw. That evening, she lay down and rested, but she couldn’t sleep. There were things just out of sight inside her head. She had to keep herself from looking.
She was gone before the people woke, while all the stars were still out, dusting the sky like flour spilled from a sack. Once again, she murmured as she moved among the trees. May I pass unnoticed through this world and leave no trace. For if I am not seen, I will not come to any harm. That she might cast off her life like this wasn’t something that had ever occurred to her. Before, she would walk to the river, where she would dream or swim or fish, or to a neighbor’s house, to see Agata, her friend, returning after many hours, but this was movement in one direction only, and it felt hazardous, as if she might outstrip herself, unravel. Cease to be. She wanted the miles to open up behind her, though. She wanted to keep going and never reach the end. She supposed that was impossible, but she couldn’t be sure.
Sometimes at night she bit into her arm, opening the wound. Or sometimes she used the knife she had brought with her. There was the bright flash of pain and the metal taste of blood. There was the calmness that flowed through her afterwards. It became a habit. A necessity. It helped her to remember, and to forget. But there was no sense, in those early days of exile, that she was undergoing a transformation, no sense that she might be changing into somebody who did not change.
That came later.
IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT, and Zhang Guo Xing was thinking of going home. He was in a club on Fuzhou Road, twenty-four floors up, the Shanghai skyline in the window. There were private tables sealed off with scarlet ropes, and bottles of champagne in silver buckets. The DJ had been flown in from Brazil. Zhang’s guests were the usual European businessmen. Most of them were middle-aged, and most were drunk. They would try to pick up the go-go dancers, aloof and graceful on their cubes, or the Russian models who were in town for photo shoots or runway shows, but they would almost certainly be unsuccessful. They would take taxis back to their hotels. Wake up jet-lagged, dehydrated, and alone. Excusing himself, Zhang stood up and left the table.
The walls in the bathroom were black, and the lighting was so dim that an attendant had to guide him to the urinal. Afterwards, as he washed his hands, a small man appeared beside him. The man was wearing a pale blue suit and white patent leather shoes. The suitcase he had with him was also pale blue. Looking straight ahead, into the smoked-glass mirror, he began to talk.
“You think you have everything under control,” he said, “but then something happens. Something you didn’t see coming.”
Zhang looked sidelong at the man, but didn’t speak.
“Suddenly, you’re in a whole new world,” the man went on. “Things have a different smell, a different taste.” He bent close to the mirror and picked at his teeth, then smoothed his oily hair down flat. “All the familiar parameters are gone. You lose your bearings.” He paused. “Fear rushes through you, like a gust of wind.”
Zhang was still looking at the man. His voice, so eerily objective and detached. His head thrust forward, like a turtle’s. The suitcase on the floor next to his leg.
“Did you just arrive,” Zhang asked, “or are you about to leave?”
The man chuckled and nodded, as if this was exactly the question he had been expecting.
Zhang took a towel from the attendant and dried his hands. When he glanced round, the man with the suitcase had disappeared. Dropping the towel into a basket, Zhang left the bathroom. Out in the corridor again, he looked both ways. There was no sign of the man. He shrugged, then moved back towards the main part of the club.
His guests had forgotten all about him. Many were on the dance floor, their jackets undone or tossed aside, their faces wide and loose with alcohol. The music was louder than before, a constant pulse that pushed up through the soles of his shoes. He stood still, watching people dance. It was then that he noticed her, over by the bar. A light round her, a kind of shimmer. Something he could feel rather than see. He walked up to the bar and asked for a cognac. Now he was beside her, the effect was even stronger. Like standing beneath a pylon, or next to an electric fence. The angle of her head had altered, and her eyes drifted across his face. He felt her intensity, and her indifference.