Live Turtles and the Silent Borderline

Let me tell you, that day was hot like a giant, clammy hug. The air was thick enough to paste up your throat. Fatty and I were walking down the road to the border, feeling like two slabs of melting butter. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst was, we were covered in "things". Not pimples, not tumors, but live, hard-shelled, still-wriggling turtles. Twenty-eight in total, no more, no less, strapped tightly to our bare chests and backs with wide tape and strips of ragged cloth. Fourteen on me, fourteen on him, like some kind of bizarre, symmetrical torture.

Fatty sweated more than me; he had a thick layer of fat, the turtles probably found it warmer on him. He wheezed all the way, like a busted bellows. "Skinny Monkey," he gasped, "how much d'you reckon this stuff is worth? Enough for us to go back and marry a wife?"

I said, "Marry a wife? Dream on. It's doubtful if it's even enough for our food money for the next half-month. Besides, this stuff isn't for finding a girlfriend, it's art, get it? Performance art." Truth is, I didn't know what these turtles were really for either. The people higher up just told us to transport them, said someone would meet us on the other side, price negotiable. These days, "negotiable" usually means "not good." But Fatty and I, besides our brute strength and brains that didn't work too well, had no other skills.

The border was right ahead, an invisible, yet incredibly solid wall. A uniformed man stood in the shade, his gaze sweeping over like a searchlight. My heart started racing. The turtle strapped to my chest seemed to feel it too; a bold one stuck its head out and rubbed against my ribs, cold and clammy. I quickly straightened my back, trying to push it back in.

"Halt! What are you doing?" A voice rang out, not loud, but penetrating, like an awl piercing the muggy air.

We stopped, trying hard to squeeze out the most innocent, law-abiding smiles. Fatty rushed to speak, "Officer, we... we're just going over there... to visit relatives." His voice trembled slightly, the flesh on his face quivering.

The man in uniform, let's just call him "Uniform", slowly ambled over. He wasn't old, but his face held an indifference beyond his years, as if he'd seen too many bizarre things to be interested in anything anymore. His eyes wandered over us, lingering on our bulging upper bodies.

"Visiting relatives? Dressed so thickly? Aren't you hot?" He gently poked my chest with the tip of his baton. I felt a turtle startle, retracting sharply into its shell, hitting me painfully.

"Uh... we... feel the cold," I stammered, feeling the excuse was so stupid I almost wanted to laugh myself.

Fatty nodded vigorously beside me, like a garlic-pounding pestle, "Right, right, weak constitution, weak constitution."

Uniform's lips seemed to twitch upwards, but it wasn't quite a smile. The expression reminded me of the clay temple guardians, imposing and merciless. "Come with me," he said curtly, then turned to lead the way.

We were led into a small room. White walls, incandescent light, an iron table, two chairs. The air conditioning was blasting; the cold air hit our soaked clothes, and Fatty and I shivered in unison. The turtles seemed chilled too, starting to squirm more violently, as if in protest.

"Take off your clothes," Uniform commanded, his tone as flat as if he were saying "Have some water."

Fatty and I looked at each other, seeing despair in the other's eyes. It had come to this; there was nothing left to hide. We started unbuttoning our shirts, slowly, stiffly, like two clumsy male strippers. When our tape-and-turtle-covered bodies were exposed under the harsh white light, the air in the room seemed to freeze.

Uniform's face finally showed a flicker of change, but it wasn't surprise, more like an "as expected" weariness. He didn't even ask why we'd done it, just picked up the record book and pen from the table and asked matter-of-factly, "Name? Age? Where are you from?"

Then came the inventory of the "contraband". He had us untape the turtles one by one and place them on the iron table. Twenty-eight little green and dusty-grey things, the big ones the size of a bowl, the small ones no bigger than your palm. They crawled aimlessly on the cold surface, stretching their necks, looking around blankly. Suddenly, I felt a bit sorry for them. Like Fatty and me, bound by fate (or whatever the hell else), brought involuntarily to this strange place.

"Total twenty-eight," Uniform recorded, without looking up. "Species... pending identification. Live specimens. Condition... good." The scratching sound of his pen seemed particularly jarring in the silent room.

I couldn't help asking, "Officer, these turtles... what will happen to them?"

Uniform stopped writing, lifted his eyelids to glance at me, his eyes as blank as an unpainted wall. "Handled according to regulations," he said.

"What are the regulations?" Fatty pressed, his voice tinged with tears.

"Regulations are regulations," Uniform said flatly, then lowered his head and continued writing his report. As if these twenty-eight lives, and our subsequent fates, were just an insignificant line of text under his pen.

Watching those turtles crawling futilely on the table, I suddenly found it comical. We'd gone through so much trouble, endured physical pain and mental torment, like two mobile turtle warehouses, and for what? The result was they'd be "handled according to regulations," and we'd be "handled according to regulations." Everything fit perfectly into some huge, invisible machine, making a clicking sound, then falling silent.

I remembered Wang Er saying that living is like setting up a program and then waiting to see the result. Fatty and I, and these twenty-eight turtles, were probably just a ridiculous piece of code written by some lousy programmer. Our existence was merely to add a bit of dark humor to the world, or perhaps, a bit of meaningless noise.

What happened afterwards, I don't remember clearly. It seems we were locked up, or maybe not. It seems someone came to question us, asking who directed us, asking about the turtles' final destination. I randomly made up some stories, about a foreign tycoon who loved turtles, about a mysterious biological research project. Fatty just kept crying, saying he wanted to go home, wanted his mom's noodles.

Later still, we were released, maybe fined, or something else. Can't recall. Walking out of that small white building, the sun was already setting in the west, but the air was still scorching. We didn't have the turtles on us anymore. We felt light, as if a heavy burden had been lifted, yet also as if we'd lost some vital support.

Fatty asked me blankly, "Skinny Monkey, where do we go now?"

I looked at the still silent border line in the distance, and suddenly thought of the numb spectators in Mr. Lu Xun's writings. When we were stripped, interrogated, and documented inside just now, were there people outside watching? Were they curious, sympathetic, or did they think we deserved it? Or maybe, they thought nothing at all, just like Fatty and me, just like those twenty-eight turtles, merely existing, and that's all.

"Don't know," I let out a breath, feeling the chill of that small room and the smell of tape still lingering in my lungs. "Let's find a place to get something to eat first. Damn it, I'm starving."

Living in this world, when you're hungry, you eat; when you're tired, you sleep. As for freedom, dignity, and those heavy things strapped to our bodies... sometimes, they really aren't that important. Or rather, they're so important it's despairing. I think, well, this is probably the fate of little guys like us. Like turtles, carrying our own shells, crawling slowly and futilely between hard reality and silent rules.