Endless War: Fiction and Essays by Wang Wen-hsing

Calendar

107 Calendar September 1960. This is the second of five experimented stories Wang wrote when he was twenty. It is about a boy who suddenly realizes the span of a human lifetime is just a moment in the existence of the universe, a subject that reflects the author’s concern for the human condition and an underlying theme in Wang’s writing. v Huang Kaihua, a happy, carefree young man, is only seventeen. He has a round, ruddy face and sparkling black eyes. He often moves around the house in a running posture. Even when walking from the study to his bedroom at night he tightens his fists, lowers his body and mumbles “one-two, one-two” to keep his strong legs fit. It is May. A Sunday afternoon. He has just finished his algebra exercises. His study is bright. A big window opens onto a courtyard filled with sunlight; the fragrance of coconut blossoms floats into the room. He rests his head on the desk, looking through the window like a curious puppy. Ah, who knows what happy thoughts he is having? Who could possibly count his thoughts? He is dreaming about the summer break. His dream is all about green water, red watermelon and the basketball just going through the hoop. He takes a small notebook out of his pocket and turns to a page with a tiny calendar. Starting with the previous week, he crosses out each day and calculates how long it will be until the summer break. How slowly time passes. The crossed-out days, compared with those still left, take up only a small part of the page. This 108 v SHORT FICTION very day is less than halfway through, yet he crosses it off impatiently . After the summer, it will be September. He thinks. October, November, December, the semester will be over in the blink of an eye. In this case, time seems to pass quickly. After this December, it will be the year 1961. The page after 1961—it’s the address page. No calendar. He wants to make one himself to continue. Huang Kaihua finds a large sheet of blank paper in his drawer. He begins to write: 1961 January SMTWTFS 1. . . Using the small calendar as a model, he prints the numbers on his version the same size. The more he writes, the more excited he becomes. Calculating the days of the future brings him an inexplicable and mysterious sense of pleasure, as if he suddenly possesses supernatural powers of prediction. Having finished copying the calendar for 1961, he continues on to 1962, then 1963. One year after another, he feels not even a hint of fatigue as he writes on. He murmurs excitedly: “Now I am thirty! . . . Now I am forty! . . . Now I am fifty! . . .” Finally, when he reaches September 2015, the whole paper is filled. There is no empty space to continue. Something that Huang Kaihua has never thought about comes into his mind. Will this be the end of life? He wonders. In 2015, he will be seventy-two. He has no idea if he can live that long. But this sheet of paper right in front of him, nothing but a paper, is filled with his future, all of it, all the days of his life. Suddenly, this happy boy bends over and sobs. Translated by Shu-ning Sciban ...