Floor 9: The Silent Scream and the Low-Frequency War
My ass, no, my entire existence, is welded to this supposedly ergonomic chair. Dante described Hell, but he clearly never saw upstairs and downstairs neighbors waging class warfare. If he had, he would've created a special circle of torment just for the 7th and 8th floors, and I, Old Wang on the 9th, would be the innocent prisoner with a millstone around my neck, eternally damned. This war has been going on for three years, not much shorter than the damn Anti-Japanese War, but far more intense, only the battlefield is the floor slab, and the weapons have changed from planes and cannons to hammers, high heels, and a high-tech gadget called a "ceiling shaker."
At first, it was just ordinary noise. The old lady on the 7th floor has a voice like an air-raid siren, and her dog, having learned from its master, barks loud enough to wake the dead from their coffins. The young couple on the 8th floor are energetic as two caged baboons, fond of moving furniture at midnight or engaging in some indescribable but thunderous athletic activity. Back then, I was younger, or rather, not yet driven to the brink of nervous breakdown like I am now. I just thought, well, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what surprise—or fright—your next neighbor will bring. I even wrote some pretentious poems, something about "symphonies in the concrete jungle, the soft murmurs of modern life." Looking back now, I must have had water in my brain back then, rusty fucking water at that.
The real war began when the 8th floor bought that "ceiling shaker artifact." Apparently, it was because the 7th-floor lady's dog delivered a half-hour barking speech aimed at the 8th-floor's floor at 3 AM, finally igniting the fury of the man on the 8th. Once that thing starts up, the whole floor slab begins to hum rhythmically, like a giant beast with Parkinson's snoring below. The frequency isn't high, but its penetrating power is intense, boring straight into your guts, making your teeth resonate, turning your brain into a pot of lukewarm porridge. At first, it was intermittent retaliation, but it evolved into a constant state of mutual destruction. The 7th floor fought back with high-decibel square dance music and dog barking; the 8th held its ground with low-frequency resonance. They are like two old soldiers hunkered down in trenches, using every means possible to torture each other, incidentally blasting me, caught in the middle, until I'm charred on the outside and raw inside.
I, Old Wang, a washed-up scholar trying to find houses of gold and beauties of jade within my study, thus became the sole designated victim of this absurd war. My ceiling is their Verdun meat grinder. Daytime is manageable. I can put on headphones and pretend I'm floating in space. But at night, especially in the dead of night, that low, regular vibration, seemingly emanating from the earth's core, begins. It's not the kind of sudden loud noise that makes you jump, but rather like an insidious curse, slowly and steadily eroding your nerves. I tried communicating. Knocked on the 7th floor door. The old lady yelled at me through the security door, saying the 'dog couple' on the 8th floor were bullies and she was defending her home. Knocked on the 8th floor door. The young man, bleary-eyed, told me he couldn't help it, they started it, he was just exercising his right to self-defense, and asked if I wanted to see the scratches the dog's paws left on his ceiling. Their logic is perfectly self-contained, as if they are the only victims, and I, the one lulled to sleep every night by the symphony of the floor slab, am just an irrelevant bystander.
I went to the property management. The young guy at the office, wearing the weary look of someone from the old society, handed me a form, a noise complaint form. It was ridiculously designed, requiring detailed descriptions of the noise type, decibels (where the hell would I get a decibel meter?), duration, and the specific physical and psychological damage caused. I filled out three pages, writing about everything from insomnia and heart palpitations to questioning the meaning of life and losing all faith in humanity. Handed it in. Nothing happened. Vanished without a trace. The second time I went, it was a young woman. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Sir, we can only mediate neighbor disputes, but neither family cooperates, and we can't enforce anything. Maybe you should try calling the police?"
The police came too. Two young officers, wearing the resigned expressions of people dealing with trivial domestic squabbles. They went through the motions between the 7th and 8th floors, spouted some clichés like "a close neighbor is better than a distant relative" and "try to understand each other," and then left. That night, the vibrations stopped for about three hours, then returned with even greater ferocity. I even suspect the police visit provoked them, made them feel their war had received some kind of official attention, spurring them on.
Over time, I began to develop a morbid dependence on the vibration. Like a Stockholm Syndrome patient falling for their captor, I started distinguishing subtle differences in the vibrations. Sometimes it's an angry, rapid tapping; sometimes a continuous, desperate hum. I can even guess, based on the rhythm, which act is playing out downstairs. Is the 7th-floor lady's dog barking wildly again, or are the young couple on the 8th launching a retaliatory strike after their 'athletic activities'? My life has been completely hijacked by this absurd resonance. My writing has stalled. My brain, filled with nothing but the buzzing, can no longer accommodate any romantic notions. I started suffering from insomnia, losing handfuls of hair, the circles under my eyes as dark as a panda's. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, shaken awake, and stand barefoot on the cold floor, feeling the pulse transmitting from my soles through my entire body. In those moments, I feel like I'm not living on the 9th floor, but inside a giant, frantically beating heart, or on top of a ticking time bomb about to explode.
I've thought about moving. But looking at my bank balance, then at the city's housing prices, the thought pops like a soap bubble just blown. I'm trapped here, like those onlookers in Lu Xun's stories, numbly watching a farce that deeply concerns me but which I'm powerless to change. The only difference is, the stage for this farce is my ceiling, and I am both the spectator and the sacrifice.
Last night, I was shaken awake again. This time, I felt no anger, no despair. I walked to the window, looked out at the dark city, the myriad lights flickering like countless tired, indifferent eyes. The vibration downstairs continued, steady and persistent. I thought of the interesting things Wang Xiaobo wrote about, those maverick pigs. I think maybe the 7th and 8th floors are also 'pigs' in a sense, resisting something in their own way – maybe the boredom of life, maybe each other's very existence. And me? I'm probably not even as good as a pig. I'm just a piece of meat being repeatedly hammered by the floor and the ceiling shaker, slowly losing sensation.
Maybe, in a few more years, I'll get used to this vibration, maybe even stop hearing it. Or maybe I'll become one of them, buy an even more powerful ceiling shaker, aim it at the ceiling, towards the 10th floor, towards the heavens, and let out my own scream. Although I know that scream might be just as silent, just as pathetic. But at least, it would be some kind of noise, proof that I, Old Wang, the prisoner of the 9th floor, am still fucking alive, still resonating.
Buzz... buzz... buzz... The vibration continues. Just like this fucked-up life, never stopping.