The Age of Ding-Dong-Ji
When the ordinary couple who lived downstairs stood before the manager of a used-car lot, they were probably thinking back to the day, some years ago, when they drove a new car home. The sky had not been especially blue that day, nor the breeze especially soft, and yet their hearts had been bright, as if life had finally grown legs and might keep moving forward.
“Don’t sell it,” the woman said.
“Whatever happens, we can’t sell it.”
She knew what it was. The car had cost only a few tens of thousands of yuan; it was not a good car by any measure. But for them it had never been only a few tens of thousands. Inside it were years of hard work, meal money saved bit by bit, new clothes left unbought, the soundless sighs that escaped over the household ledger late at night. In a family like theirs, that sum became frontage, respectability, proof that “our family is still doing all right.”
Other families, especially the relatives who had done a little better for themselves, had long since owned cars. At New Year and on holidays, they parked downstairs and tossed the keys onto the table; even the way they spoke seemed louder than other people’s. Only this couple had none. To have none was to seem a notch below. So they bought one too. The car was not expensive, but at least now there was a car. And once there was a car, there were smiles on their faces.
I remember it was before the age of “Ding-Dong-Ji.” Back then they were wage earners, but life still looked proper enough. They went to Wanda often, ate meals that cost more than a hundred yuan, bought drinks at a dozen or so yuan apiece, and walked home slowly with their child. There were smiles on their faces.
Then they bought the car. That small bit of hope seemed to reach its summit. It was as if from then on they, too, belonged among the people who were “moving upward.” The car stood downstairs without making a sound, and yet it had an air about it. For those few days, even the way they looked at other people was lighter, as though the hard years had truly fallen behind them.
And then the age of “Ding-Dong-Ji” arrived.
I went on passing their building every day. Whenever I walked past their car, I always turned back for one more look. At first there was nothing to notice. Later, little by little, I realized it was hardly driven anymore.
After that I heard the family had fallen into debt, and there was a child to raise. After the years of masks, they had apparently lost their jobs as well.
Later a cloth was thrown over the car. I heard it was to keep rats from chewing the wires. At first the cloth was whole. Later it, too, had been gnawed through in several places. The holes were not large, but I saw them every time.
Later still, one day, I suddenly noticed that the car was gone.
At first I thought it had simply been parked somewhere else. Parking downstairs was tight; moving a car now and then was ordinary enough. But a week passed, then two, then many weeks more, and the car never returned. Only then did I understand: it had probably been sold.
In the end, it was sold.
The couple went on living as before, going out as before, coming home as before, as if nothing had changed. Only the smiles were no longer much seen on their faces. It was not that they looked stricken all the time; they had merely gone wooden, faint, as if life had rubbed across them a few too many times and they no longer cared to let any expression show. That small brightness they once had was gone. I could not tell whether it was discouragement or fatigue.
Every time I came home, I still could not help glancing over. I kept suspecting the car might return someday, stop there again, grey with dust and still counted as present. But it never came back.
Only then did I feel that an ordinary life is mostly like this. One saves up a few things and thinks one’s feet are planted; one loses a few things and learns that the ground underneath was empty all along. What we call hope is only a thin layer, like window paper: poke it once, and it breaks.