17.
Dai Fuk finally finished his story, and I now know his and Heng-yi’s final fate. According to the narration in the spirit summoning sessions, Dai Fuk decided to marry Heng-yi after finding out she was pregnant. After Heng-yi gave birth, she committed suicide, and Dai Fuk adopted the baby. The true identity of the child’s father, whether it is one of her clients, a debauchee, or Heng-yi’s foster father, Lai Ah-chang, has become impossible to verify and irrelevant – it’s merely a malevolent paternal force combined from countless men. However, out of his love for Heng-yi, Dai Fuk accepted everything and treated her child as his own, thus continuing the Dai lineage. Whether there is any blood relation has become unimportant.
The letter from Dai Fuk to Heng-yi was written by my hand. Yet, as the one reading this letter, I had also become Heng-yi. Through these words, I came to know Dai Fuk, and Heng-yi, and, in turn, myself. I am Heng-yi. Dai Fuk’s letter, after a lapse of one hundred and fifty years, finally reached Heng-yi’s hands. It is a love letter that arrived a century and a half late. But it was finally delivered, opened, understood, and even responded to. The father I have strived so hard to search for turned out to be my lover, and the mother is, indeed, myself.
I suddenly felt relieved about everything. Though burdened with infinite sorrow, the pain was no longer as sharp. I gazed at myself in the mirror, finally understanding why I was a cursed existence. However, I felt enlightened, just as the scripture says: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” In the Anglo-Chinese College version of the Bible, the word “love” (愛) was rendered as “benevolence” (仁) in Chinese. Yet, when Dai Fuk printed this scripture and recited it to Heng-yi, he must have thought of love.
I finally understood the meaning of that batch of movable type. In the deep of night, I arranged all the characters on the dining table, restoring them into three scriptural passages. They were respectively from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, the thirteenth chapter of Paul the Apostle’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and the fourth chapter of John the Apostle’s First Letter. There were some missing texts or sentences, and I didn’t know when they were lost, therefore the scriptures were not complete, but the origin of the texts was beyond doubt.
Dad woke up in the middle of the night and saw me in the living room. He came out and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I had lined up the characters. He moved closer and squinted his presbyopic eyes, but he couldn’t make sense of it. No wonder, the characters were small and reversed. I told him the origin of the words. He nodded his head, but due to his lack of religious knowledge, he didn’t really understand.
“Dad, would it make a difference if I wasn’t your daughter?” I asked him suddenly.
He was probably not fully awake, or thought I was talking in my sleep. He didn’t have a big reaction and just smiled, saying, “What sort of nonsense are you talking about now?”
“What if I were the child of Mom and someone else? What would you do?” I asked in a different way.
He still wouldn’t answer seriously, saying, “How could such a thing happen?”
“What if it really happened?” I asked earnestly.
“A hypothetical situation isn’t real, and something real isn’t hypothetical,” he cleverly replied.
“So, is it hypothetical, or is it real?” I persisted.
He was a little vexed, thought for a while, and then said:
“Does it matter? If the result is the same.”
“The result is the same?”
“No matter what, you are my daughter.”
I suddenly couldn’t help but tear up, took my father’s hand and said, “Dad, thank you!”
I brought the final chapter of Six Records of a Resurrected Life to meet Nami. Nami was wearing a black strap dress, revealing her snowy white skin and graceful figure, which was very enviable. She wore a black mask to match her dress, and even her long, thick hair was dyed pitch black. She looked like a figure from a woodblock print, with distinct black and white contrast.
I sat on the armchair in the same manner as before while she took her place on the low stool beside me, her thick black eyelashes fluttering as she carefully read the ending of Dai Fuk’s story. I could see in her eyes an unusual sparkle. Once she finished reading, she let out a sigh and said:
“This is not a story, but a letter of love. Do you agree? The recipient of this love letter isn’t Heng-yi, but her descendants. It’s you, Sun-fei.”
“But Dai Tak is not Dai Fuk’s son, the inheritance isn’t true.”
“Blood ties are not the only truth. The soul is what can truly be inherited, not the body. In the same way, even if you are not your father’s daughter, your soul can still connect with your father’s.”
“Nami, how did you--”
She just flashed a smile and said, “I am a therapist who can read souls.”
Her words always carried a gentle persuasive power that put people at ease. I naturally told her about Teacher Bei’s request for me to let him draw the sketch. Nami thought seriously for a moment and asked, “Do you trust him?”
“This is not a question of trust. I just feel that at this point, this work has to be done in this way. I simply had no room to choose. If there is no choice, it is no different from being forced. I am fully willing to help Teacher Bei, even if it means going through fire and water, but it must be out of my own will.”
“Yes, indeed it is. We all value our own will. This is the essence of the soul. Without will, there’s no soul. But will can also be divided into individual wills and converged will, which is the issue of being one in many, and many in one. From the perspective of converged will, there is no question of choice. Everything comes naturally and logically in due course. There’s a phrase called ‘duty can’t be shirked.’ Here, duty isn’t just morality, but it’s also the justice of the universe or the wholistic will of souls. For this justice, even in the face of death, injury, or humiliation, we would not shy away. This is the supreme law of the soul.”
Nami’s words were incredibly profound, leaving me lost in thought. She lowered the angle of the chair back, allowing me to recline, and said, “Don’t be impatient, what you need now is relaxation and rest, not thinking. If you can dream, all the better.”
Her voice had a hypnotic effect, and I felt my field of vision beginning to soften. Nami, looking down on me from above, removed her black mask, revealing her true face, and showed me a smile like the sunrise. The face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t recall where I had seen it before. Then she also took off my mask for me, allowing me to breathe freely.
I slowly drifted into the realm of dreams. I found myself in Teacher Bei’s studio. In the middle of the floor, there was a pair of naked men and women, embracing each other. I couldn’t clearly see their faces, but my intuition told me they were young Teacher Bei and his wife. They were making love passionately on a wooden board, reaching the climax of ecstasy between life and death. The woman clung tightly to the man, revealing a flushed face, like the first ray of the sun on his shoulder. I suddenly recognized that face. In the same instant, the couple disappeared, leaving only the wooden board on the ground. I stepped forward, squatted down, and lifted the board to discover that it was actually an inked engraving block. Underneath, on a white cloth, the image of a naked man and woman intertwined was imprinted. From the woman’s lower body, a blurred black substance trickled out. I touched it with my finger, it felt sticky and slippery. Pulling my hand back for examination, my fingertips were stained with black blood, emitting a fishy smell. Nami’s voice told me, “It is the Leech God. He is coming back.”
I called Teacher Bei to say I could come over. He had already prepared a space in the center of his studio, laying out a yoga mat on the ground. He handed me a large towel, telling me I could change my clothes inside the room. I came out wrapped in the towel and noticed that the curtains were not drawn. He said the area on that side was an open space, with no other houses, and no one would be able to peek inside. He preferred to work with natural light. He sat to the right side of the window, signaling me to face his direction, so that the light would fall on my body at a diagonal angle. He made a spreading motion with his hands, so I unwrapped the towel and threw it on a chair nearby. The situation was so unreal that my emotions seemed to have become unresponsive, leaving me in a state devoid of any feelings.
He gestured for me to kneel down and recounted the concept of the sketch to me. He asked me to imagine that behind me was the Antichrist or the Anti-Bodhisattva, half-angel, half-vajra-protector. He was torturing me with the tools in his hands. I clumsily tried several poses, but he was not satisfied either, saying it was not what he wanted. He paced around anxiously, commanding me to do this and then that. I had never seen such a Teacher Bei before. He seemed to have transformed into another person, even into a monster. I was reminded of Yoshihide and his daughter, as depicted by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
Unable to achieve what he desired, he suddenly roared, “Do you want me to set a fire?” I was so frightened by him that I trembled all over, feeling as if I could be engulfed by flames at any moment. He slapped himself hard in the face and changed his tone, “I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant! But how else should I do it? How else could I represent the torment of hell? Could it be with water instead of fire?” He murmured to himself before wandering into the bathroom and returning with a bucket. He splashed the cold water all over my face and body. I took it silently, choking back tears, but he wasn’t satisfied. Suddenly he had a new idea. He took an old towel, tore it into strips and used it like a rope to bind my hands and feet. As he tied me up, he said in an apologetic tone, “I’m sorry! Please tolerate it! It will hurt a little, but it’s necessary! Hell can’t be comfortable.” I screamed out loud but he didn’t stop, only exert more force. After binding me, he began to knead and twist my body like it was a piece of clay, contorting my limbs until he achieved his desired effect. Then he ran back to his position by the window, picked up his sketchbook and began drawing furiously, keeping his eyes fixed on me at the same time. He shouted frantically, “Spread! Spread! Spread it as much as you can! I need to see the leech on your thigh!” To maintain the pose he required, my limbs were twitching, my chest and stomach felt as if they were tearing apart, and all my bones seemed to be dislocating. There came a point where all the feelings of being wronged, of shame, of fear, of regret in my life exploded at once. I felt a terrible force weighing me down, driving me to a frenzied struggle, to scream and to cry. At this moment, Teacher Bei stopped his pen, froze in his actions, his lips trembling, and he too, started crying.
I seemed to have fainted. When I woke up, the rope around me had been untied and my skin was dry. I was lying curled up on a mat, covered with a warm blanket. I sat up and looked up at the window where the setting sun’s rays streamed in leisurely. The air conditioner emitted a faint vibration, like an eternal rhythm. I searched the entire room but did not find Teacher Bei. All I saw was a note left on the desk that read, “Sun-fei, I have no right to say thank you, nor do I have the right to continue being called your teacher. Please forgive me. Bei Ming-yi (Wailing Child).”
If you ask me today whether such a scene really happened, I can’t tell you the truth. Let’s put it this way. Everything that happens in a dream is real, so we are also responsible for our dreams. If I had such a dream, and Teacher Bei also had such a dream, then we are conspirators in reality.
Coming out of one dream is merely entering another one, layer upon layer, never ending. Given this, one must do something while conscious. Even if it turns out ultimately to be nothing but actions within a dream.
The original copies of historical documents lent out by university libraries and other institutions for the exhibition had been arriving one after another. Among them were A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1823) and Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828), both compiled by Robert Morrison, printed in Macao by the East India Company Press using steel movable type individually engraved; The New Testament of Our Savior Jesus Chris (1823), translated by Morrison and printed in woodblock by the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca; the Delegates’ Version of The Old Testament (1864) printed by the Hong Kong Anglo-Chinese College with Hong Kong type; the first volume of Chinese Classics (1861), translated by James Legge and printed by the Hong Kong Anglo-Chinese College; and the English-Chinese Dictionary (1866), compiled by Wilhelm Lobscheid and printed in Hong Kong Type by the Daily Press. Holding these old books, aged between one hundred and sixty to nearly two hundred years old, I was overwhelmed with imaginations of the efforts behind their making and the turbulent times they had gone through, which made me tremble all over. Flipping gently through those yellowing, brittle pages, and reading those painstakingly crafted characters, all the past events recounted by Dai Fuk and the character spirits reemerged in my mind. History seems just a vague concept, and evaluations, viewpoints, ideologies, and the like are just added by later generations. Only the weight carried by the real objects, the quality they reveal, the images they represent, are the source of all inspiration. Perhaps, apart from moving me deeply, they would also bring similar emotions to other visitors. We had previously used the online scanned files of these rare books to select the contents to be displayed. Now that I was actually turning the pages by hand, it felt almost surreal and was hardly believable.
Direct contact with historical rare books aroused in me an impulse. I wanted to use the type pieces left by my grandpa to print the three scriptures selected by Dai Fuk. But in the end, this was my personal myth, and I didn’t want to attract attention. For this reason, I needed Yixisi’s help. He claimed to know how to operate a printing machine. During his interviews with new generation letterpress artisans, he had recorded the operation process in detail, and he had also observed how Master Lok printed promotional materials for the exhibition.
Yixisi had asked Miss Yung if he could borrow the printing press to create some flyers for a literary event. Miss Yung had agreed in principle but had told him to ask Master Lok for help in operating it. A week left before the exhibition, all the colleagues in the print art studio were busy helping to set up the venue. Yixisi made an excuse to go back for something, and asked Miss Yung for the key to the studio. I had already set the printing plates at home and brought them to the studio in a suitcase. Of the two Heidelberg windmill platen presses, the one in better condition had already been moved to the museum for exhibition. The one that remained was said to be weaker in performance due to lack of maintenance, but I believed it could still work. I checked the printing plates again to make sure the movable type was securely installed. Following the steps he had written down in advance, Yixisi nervously tried to activate the press. We had prepared paper of the appropriate size, as well as the commonly used black ink. Due to lack of experience, it took us a long time to install the printing plates correctly.
Yixisi started the ink roller, and the inking process was running smoothly. He excitedly made that gesture of winning a grand prize. The next steps were paper feeding and plate pressing. Yixisi rubbed his hands as if he was going to tackle a big challenge. I stood by watching, my heart almost leaping out of my chest. He pressed some other buttons, and the paper stored on the left was sucked into the plate position by the feed rod. The ink roller swept over the plate, which immediately pressed onto the paper. The plate lifted and the paper was sucked out by the feed rod and sent to the collection area on the right. Yixisi paused the machine and we picked up the printed paper to inspect. The ink distribution was a bit uneven, which might be a problem with pressure adjustment, or perhaps the old lead type was in poor condition. Even though the print quality needs improvement, we felt a great sense of accomplishment in printing a readable copy by ourselves.
Since we managed to print a copy successfully, there was no reason not to continue trying. Yixisi made some adjustments to the machine, removed the printing plate, and thickened the back padding with adhesive tape. He said he learned this trick from a junior master. When it restarted, the output was indeed improved. Yixisi was dancing around like he had hit the jackpot. The machine printed dozens of sheets smoothly, but then, the paper jammed. Yixisi tried to correct the error, but accidentally pressed the wrong button. The machine made a gruff noise and then began to smoke. We were alarmed and tried to stop it, but it went berserk like a beast out of control. Not knowing if a short circuit or something had happened, flashes shot out from the position of the printing plate. The smoke triggered the fire alarm and the building’s security personnel rushed over with fire extinguishers.
We had caused such a big disaster and Miss Yung was very angry. I feel extremely guilty for causing such trouble and implicating Yixisi. Fortunately, the scoop of the accident wasn’t extensive and the studio didn’t suffer a significant loss. Only the printing press was severely damaged, and the lead type inside was burned, reduced into a chaotic mess. This treasure passed down by my family might have been specimens of Hong Kong Type, but now it was all gone. Strangely, I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel shocked, as if I knew this was destined to happen. The movable type came from fire, and also ended in fire. It’s just natural. Even if we had planned cautiously, the result would have been in vain. In the end, all evidence vanished like smoke, all our pursuit and confirmation were dismissed in one stroke. The last bastion of the truth was breached, all that was left was illusory imagination. I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone that the story I told held any credibility. However, compared to what happened next, this fire was just a minor incident.
Today, I recount this past event with a calmness akin to still water, which may come off as cold and heartless. But for me at that time, it was the greatest blow I had ever endured in my life. No previous setback could compare to this. This is the extent to which I can describe it in words.
Three days before the opening of the exhibition, Teacher Bei committed suicide. I came to know of the details only afterwards. He laid a blank canvas on the ground, inked the completed engraving plate, swallowed a large amount of pills, and then laid on top of the plate, using his body weight to imprint the image onto the white canvas. Holding the portrait of his late wife in his arms, he died on his own work, or rather, he used his own death to complete his final piece of work. He chose to perform this ritual at four in the morning. Before losing consciousness, he sent a text message to Miss Yung, expecting her to see it when she woke up in the morning. Miss Yung received the message at seven, immediately called the police, and rushed to the scene. Teacher Bei showed no signs of life. After removing his body and lifting the engraved plate, the completed new work was revealed underneath. The teacher had previously submitted a paper version of the print for exhibition, but his suicide note stated that the cloth version was the ultimate product. He hoped that the exhibition could display both versions. Miss Yung fulfilled his last wish. Therefore, in the exhibition, the better quality and more beautifully printed one was the paper version, and the uneven yet powerfully raw one was the cloth version, which was the picture of hell created by Teacher Bei with his own death. Usually regarded as conservative in style, Teacher Bei finally made a breakthrough by dramatically incorporating elements of performance art.
I didn’t go to the exhibition. Late on the day when Teacher Bei was found to have committed suicide, Miss Yung, after much hesitation, finally gave me a call, personally delivering the terrible news. I didn’t speak, only hummed a reply before hanging up. Putting down the phone, I told myself it must be just another dream. I would wake up soon. But I didn’t. Looking out the window at the row of shadow trees beside the road on the other side, I saw a tall figure standing below, looking up. I laughed inwardly, told myself: Isn’t Teacher Bei standing there looking at me? He had promised me that next time I wanted to jump, remember that he would be standing below watching me. He definitely did not want to see me jump. But where are you, teacher? Why aren’t you standing there?
The girl from the building across, stripped naked, climbed up to the window, and hurled herself down.