A Road of a Thousand Years. Part Two. Chapter Four

Decades later, when new blocks of Beijing had risen on the sites of old wastelands, Sergei Morozov returned to this city, now with a diplomatic passport, with gray at his temples, and a weariness in his eyes that neither his uniform nor his smile could hide.

He returned not for medals and not for memories — he returned for what had been lost, for what had no name but would not let him go in Sverdlovsk, nor in Warsaw, nor in long dreams where it still smelled of jasmine and tea.

Beijing met him differently. The city was different: the streets had become wider, the cars louder, and the sky lower. Old houses had vanished, just as dreams vanish when one wakes up too early. On the site of the factory, where it once smelled of iron and machine oil, now stood a shopping center with mirrored windows. No one remembered that trucks for the army were once built here; no one remembered either him or her.

He wandered these streets as if through a labyrinth whose exits had long since been sealed. He asked at the embassy, at the archives, at the old library where it once smelled of books and other people’s lives. He looked for her name in lists, in telephone directories, in yellowed documents, but found only empty lines, only strange faces, only indifference.

“Mei Lin?” asked a young employee at the library, not looking up from her computer. “No, we have no record of such a person. Perhaps you have the name wrong?”

He tried to find at least someone who might remember her — the Russian language teacher, the translator, the woman with thin hands and a quiet voice. But everyone who might have remembered had already left, died, disappeared, dissolved in the stream of time like raindrops on asphalt.

Sometimes it seemed to him that he was seeking not a person, but a shadow, not a name, but an echo. He went into the old school, where it once smelled of chalk and children’s voices, and looked at the empty classrooms where new portraits, new slogans, new rules now hung. He stood by the window, looking at the courtyard where plums once bloomed, guessing: everything that was, is gone. Everything that was, will not return.

In the evenings, he sat in his hotel room, drinking tea, looking at the city lights, and thinking that perhaps he had only dreamt it all. Perhaps there was no Mei Lin, no evening conversations, no wasteland. Perhaps all this was just an old photograph someone had forgotten in a stranger’s suitcase.

One evening, when the city had already begun to glow with neon, Morozov finally found one of his old acquaintances — Lao Zhang, a former engineer from the factory where they once worked. Zhang had aged, become stooped, and spoke slowly, with long pauses, as if every word had to be pulled from the depths of memory.

“Mei Lin?” he asked again, looking thoughtfully into his cup of tea. “Yes, I remember such a one. She was quiet, always with a book. After you were expelled, she wasn’t seen anymore either. They said her parents took her somewhere, and then…” he shrugged. “Many were taken away back then. Much is forgotten, Comrade Colonel. Everything changes.”

They sat in a small tea house that smelled of jasmine and old wood. Outside the window, rain was falling, and drops trickled down the clouded glass like tears down a stranger’s face.

“Everything changes,” Morozov repeated. “Only the tea remains the same.”

He nodded, not knowing what else to say. He looked at Lao Zhang’s hands — as old as his own — and thought that perhaps all this really happened long ago, in another life, in another country, in another city.

That night he had a dream.

He was young again, standing once more at the entrance to some old school where it smelled of chalk and rain. Her voice sounded in the corridor — quiet as a whisper, and he could not make out a single word. He walked through empty corridors, looking for her, calling her by name, but instead of an answer, he heard only the rustle of leaves falling somewhere in the darkness. He opened the door to a classroom — and saw that only shadows sat at the desks, and someone had written a name on the blackboard, but it was impossible to read — the letters were blurred by water.

He woke up at dawn, when the city was still sleeping, and stared for a long time at the ceiling, trying to remember what was a dream and what was life.

Everything that was, is gone. Everything that was, will not return.

And only the rain outside the window continued to drizzle.

Part Three. Chapter One →
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