The trip back had been like a ghost trip, she like a ghost of herself, a ghostly red thread stretching tighter and tighter away from her baby for four hours until, when she got off the train again in Tienja, got off the train in the succulent dark and walked to the bus station, it snapped. But not a clean snap, no. I am not free, she thought, no. I have made a terrible mistake, for all of us—Jiwei and Xia and me and Chun—and also for this life itself because I have added to the missing, to First Sister and to my own mother and father; I have added to the suffering. From the moment her husband saw her again when she got off the bus at Chindu, she saw in his eyes that he knew—despite everything—that they had done the wrong thing. And she knew he would never admit it. “How did it go?” he asked. “I put her in a pile of celery. She was found at once.” “Good.” He didn’t ask her how she was.
What do You think about At The Heart Of The Universe?
