A Road of a Thousand Years. Postscript

Mei Lin’s eyes were empty and wide open.

She stood by the wall in a faded robe, her hands folded over her belly, as if protecting something she did not possess. Her face held no tears, no feelings, no malice, no regrets. Only weariness, only numbness, only the indifference that follows pain endured too long. She was a shell, the shell of a girl who once danced to songs in a language now so distant.

The officer behind her muttered something — words about enemies of the people, about Soviet spies, about duty and justice. His voice was hollow, like the sound of rain outside a window, and bore no relation to her. She did not listen. Words no longer carried weight. They were merely sounds drifting upward into the starless, still-dark sky. She was no longer here.

When he finished, the soldier beside him worked the bolt. The metallic click pierced the silence, but not her.

In that instant, which should have been the last, Mei Lin saw not darkness, but light. Not life flashing before her eyes, but an endless field. A field studded with birches. There was no pain there. There was no fear there. Only lightness.

It was as if she were sinking into soft, warm water. As if all the threads that once bound her to the world had suddenly snapped at once. She was lighter than air, more transparent than glass. She was dissolving, becoming part of this light, this field, this water. And somewhere very far away, she heard music — not the kind that played on the radio, but the kind played for her in childhood. And she saw the shadow of a garden that had long since vanished, and in that shadow — a broken plum branch falling into the void.

The shot tore through the air. Birds took flight from the branches, not knowing where to fly. Mei Lin’s body slumped against the clay wall — like the old, gauzy headscarf her mother once wore. Her eyes remained open, gazing into the starless sky.

At last, silence.

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