In the alley, the old man was watering his plants again, and he gave Zhang the same unblinking look. Zhang opened the gate to Mad Dog’s yard. The kitchen light was on, as usual. When he knocked, Ling Ling came to the door.
“Mr. Zhang,” she said. “Come in.”
He followed her into the kitchen, where she offered him a glass of tea. He had the strange sensation, sitting at the table, that there was another version of himself outside the window, looking in. He remembered Mad Dog telling him that, for ghosts, the past could bleed into the present, and it seemed believable to Zhang just then. He looked at Ling Ling. Though she wasn’t crying, her eyes were swollen. He told her he was very sorry for her loss. It was his loss too, of course, he said.
“It’s better to know,” she said. “The not-knowing—that was difficult.” Her voice was uninflected, monotonous, like a landscape drained of color by the moon.
“How long were you together?”
“Five years.”
“You have a daughter—”
“She wasn’t his, but he grew to love her as if she was.” Ling Ling paused. “I think he was happy to have a daughter.”
“I don’t think I ever saw him happy,” Zhang said. “I can’t really imagine it.”
“He saw it as a form of weakness. But sometimes he gave in to it.” Ling Ling rose from the table. “Would you like more tea?”
Through the open doorway, Zhang could see into the next room, where Mad Dog’s spare double bass leaned against a green wall. In its hard case, which gleamed in the half-light, it reminded him of a huge insect, wings folded for the night. Before Ling Ling moved in, Zhang had often called round with his guitar, and the two of them had jammed together, sometimes for hours.
“What was it like to live with a man who was so much older?” he asked.
“I never thought about it.” She brought the tea to the table and sat down. “I’m not someone who thinks very far ahead.”
“That’s probably a good way to live.”
“I don’t know any other way.”
They fell quiet.
Ling Ling went to check on her daughter, who was asleep in the bedroom. Zhang bent over his tea and blew on it. As he lifted his eyes, he noticed a bookshelf on the far wall, beyond the double bass. He got up from the table and threaded his way through pieces of furniture, cardboard boxes, and piles of neatly ironed clothing. While scanning the shelves, he came across something unexpected. The book had a matte-black cover, and red characters on the front and down the spine. Its title was A Handbook of Ghost Culture in China, from Ancient Times to the Present Day. Inside was a photograph of the author, Mad Dog as a much younger man. He still had the same sour curl to his top lip, but his hair was cut short and showed no trace of gray.
“You can have that, if you like.”
He turned to see Ling Ling in the doorway behind him, her arms folded.
“Are you sure?” he said. “I don’t have any use for it.”
Thanking her, he took the book back to the kitchen with him, and they sat down again.
“You were the last person to see him,” Ling Ling said.
He nodded. “So far as we know.”
He told her that when he and Mad Dog left the bar, Mad Dog seemed to want company.
“Was that unusual?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Normally, he would insist on walking home alone.”
“But this time he wanted you to walk with him?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he was a bit drunker than usual. Perhaps he felt unsteady.”
Ling Ling stared down into her tea.
“It was so unlike him to ask for something,” Zhang said. “He never asked for anything, not in all the years I knew him. He didn’t want to be in debt to anyone, not even his friends. He was his own man. I respected that.”
“Perhaps it was selfishness,” Ling Ling said.
Zhang looked at her.
“Not allowing people to do things for you,” Ling Ling went on. “Not allowing them to feel good.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
They fell quiet again. Outside, in the yard, a cat let out a low and mournful howl.
“He was drunker than usual, though, you think,” Ling Ling said at last.
“It’s hard to say.” Zhang finished his tea. “I feel bad. Maybe I should have forced him to get into the taxi. Maybe I shouldn’t have given him a choice.”
Ling Ling looked at him, but said nothing.
“We had walked for about an hour,” Zhang went on. “I felt tired suddenly. It had been a long week, and it was late. When a taxi stopped for me, I offered him a lift, but he wasn’t interested. He said he preferred to continue on foot, and that the night air would do him good.” He paused. “That was the last thing I heard him say—”
A dizziness came over him, and he felt for a moment that he might faint. He asked if he could use the toilet.
“Do you remember where it is?”
He shook his head.
She led him down a narrow corridor. In the yard, there was a concrete outhouse with a weak bare bulb, electric wires dangling. He pulled the door half shut behind him and turned on the tap. Tepid water trickled out. It didn’t smell too clean. He brought the water up to his face a few times, then turned the tap off again and stood with his hands braced on the edge of the sink and his head lowered. The stray cat howled again, closer this time. The swirling sensation passed. He returned to the kitchen, where Ling Ling was sitting at the table, as before.
“Tell the funeral people to contact me,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.” He put his business card on the table.
She seemed to have become immobilized, as she had been in the grounds outside his building, and on the sofa in his apartment. His card lay in front of her, untouched. He couldn’t imagine the kinds of thoughts that were going through her mind. Maybe none. He picked up Mad Dog’s book on ghosts and left.
In the taxi, it occurred to him that Ling Ling might see his offer to pay for the funeral as an attempt to buy her silence. He knew more about Mad Dog’s death than he was letting on. He was implicated, somehow—or even guilty. She might see it as the sort of grand gesture a person only makes if he has something to atone for.
Did he have something to atone for?
* * *
—