When the blue hour come to Hong Kong, the sky dim, the smell of spicy meat and exotic seasonings rose through the air, the stars dissolve into the warm haze and the golden streets lit up; and at the feet of the chaotic buildings, packed with machines like warrens in a hive, the red of celebration flow and the heavenly chime of neon lights ring out.
The heart of the city, Kowloon City, beat swollen with effervescent life, with cheerful voices and others full of violence, laced with shrill honks that, up in the heights of the enormous apartment block called Check Bo House, blurred into a murmur, almost into a harsh kind of music that rocked the exhausted Guo Zhao Wun to sleep. He lay down replaying the laughing look Shui Tsei had given him only minutes earlier as she waved goodbye, her hand cutting the air with the elegance of a swan and cherry blossoms blooming at the tips of her nails… And once again he buried himself under the sheets without finding the courage to tell her, before that black hair slipped out of sight past the door of the neighbouring flat, that his heartbeat for her.
Guo closed his eyes, and in his drowsy mind Shui was no longer that little girl who used to burst out laughing and strut like a queen whenever she scored a goal in their ball games. She was no longer the slim, willowy teenager who dazzled on the dance floor and was the pride of the high-school gymnastics team.
Then he remembered those days, when the somersaults of Shui’s supple youth in rhythmic dance routines had cast a spell on him, and the memory of her breathtaking vaults over the horse brought moisture to his tightly shut eyes.
The patterns traced in the air by Shui’s ribbon and her graceful dance returned untouched to Guo’s mind, as did the streamers fluttering around her, her skirt bouncing over her firm buttocks and those instants when the ripples of her shirt mapped out the swell of her breasts; he ran through them again and again, as if rewinding perfectly recorded footage and playing it back from the start.
Those patterns spun and spun, drawing vortices in the air, and confusion began to flood Guo’s dream as he slipped, little by little, into a dark nightmare.
Amid ashes floating and billowing around Shui Tsei’s footsteps, a monstrous creature devoured the scorched remnants of life, knocked down walls wrapped in charcoal and shattered blackened panes of glass.
Lying on the ground, Shui Tsei watched her immaculate white skin stain with the blood from cuts that never stopped. The horror on her face projected a dread that shook Guo Zhao Wun where he tossed in his burning sheets. Heat rose beneath his bed, the walls began to crackle, and a distant pane of glass exploded into the dark sky.
When he opened his eyes and felt his chest heaving, flames were dancing on the wall that backed onto his lifelong friend’s flat. Panic nearly smothered the pain, but Guo couldn’t silence his own groans.
He rolled to one side and crashed to the floor, blisters blooming across his skin, his throat convulsing with a toxic burn as poison was driven out of his lungs.
He clutched at a burning chair, his legs buckling as he tried to stand, and his injured eyes saw nothing but shadows among the newborn flames.
He stumbled towards the door and remembered Shui’s smile, a smile that had never lost its charm or its honesty, not even in the hardest moments of her life, when she had been thrown out of the gymnastics squad.
He had pictured her in bed so many times… her generous curves in harmony with lotus-flower patterns and a shy wish to lavish caresses; the astonishing weight of her breasts brushing the sheets beneath a loose nightgown and the tender lust that had fuelled so many of his daydreams. And yet, suddenly, he no longer dared to imagine her that way.
He wrenched the door of his tiny flat aside and, barefoot, kicked away the crackling boards that blocked his path. His whole body shook, dizzy spells rising through his burning chest, and one of his teeth creaked under the pressure of his clenched jaw.
A figure lurched past him, bathed in fire. It wasn’t the screams that drove him mad, because the sight of a human being burning is something you would never dare to imagine, and the stench of rancid roast twisted his stomach from the inside.
The first thing Guo looked for in the smoke was the stairwell, groping desperately through the grey world around him.
Beneath the rubble and the walls that hoarded little hells, the screaming did not stop.
He staggered down the corridor, swatting uselessly at coils of smoke with flailing hands, managed to grab a handrail after slipping and falling; he went down one step, two, three, five. He stumbled, caught himself again and looked back: the flames were rearing up, ravenous, his heart pounding wildly at the thought of her, and he remembered the monster from his nightmare.
‘Hurry up, down, down!’ a neighbour shouted from below. ‘Save yourself!’
At the foot of the stairs an old man stretched a handout to him.
But Guo shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He turned and climbed back up into the fire that danced with the terrible beauty of the image of Shui in her leotard, that summer of ’92 when he had knelt in front of the television as if paying homage to the greatest of deities, already knowing he would love her forever.
He battered at Shui’s door with a plank that tore the skin from his hands; in his mind that TV set from ’92 exploded, everything going up in flames, and driven by sheer panic he plunged inside, knowing that at least he would no longer spend night after night regretting that he had never told her that, if he was still breathing, it was because of her.
He reeled through the inside of that flat he had always dreamed of sheltering in. He crashed shoulder-first into one wall and then the one opposite. A burning stab went through one knee, his legs buckled and he went down. He dug his nails into splintered wood and the charred scraps of carpet and forced himself to crawl through the fire that was eating his flesh and feeding on air that had already fled.
The floor cracked apart around him, opening a hole that punched through the floors below, floors that belonged to no one and to the dead, and everywhere Guo saw charred bodies twisted into poses that carved furrows into the mind.
Then the ceiling answered with a groan, agony tearing through wood and concrete, death raining down on Guo; a heavy blow to his back forbade him to move, and as a ton of debris poured over him, strong hands grabbed him by the arms and dragged him away.
Shui Tsei’s face was etched against the night glow of a window: her sick eyes swimming with tears, her lips trembling in a half-curve that wanted to shape words, and her broad, almost uncontainable body, the only home he had ever wished for.
‘Why?’ Shui mouthed with difficulty, her voice dry. ‘Why didn’t you run?’
And beneath the clouds of black smoke, Guo broke down in tears.
Out in the city’s rivers of gold, amid the songs of the casinos the wind carried, engines roared and sirens flared to life, unheard, hurling promises into the night.
Together, as if they were holding the whole world between their arms, standing before the open window, Guo finally dared to speak the words he had kept to himself for so long, until his chest was conquered by pain and his breath ran out beneath the violence of the crackling flames, beneath the cries for help and the wailing sirens, rising from hundreds of metres below, from those grey colossi of concrete and wood.
Guo and Shui looked into each other’s eyes.
Stripped of any hope, there was no fear left.
In the arms of the woman he loved, Guo did not hesitate.
‘Don’t be afraid, my love,’ he whispered with a happy smile. ‘I’ll teach you how to fly.’
Shui nodded, her tears evaporating the instant they touched her reddened skin.
And from the staircase climbing up through a hell of black fumes, a firefighter caught sight of their bodies, like two kites tethered to a single fate.
