Ten Words No. 5:
White Elephant
A Short Story
by Robert Odom
(See 10 Words Intro for an explanation of the concept.}
The random words:
propping, crew, evaporative,
flickering, standards, clumps,
featureless, amnesia, bemused, routine
propping, crew, evaporative, flickering, standards, clumps, propping, propping, propping,
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On his way to work, Xia Hua had pedaled past the large, featureless building in northwest Beijing more mornings than he cared to think about. Two, maybe three stories—you couldn’t tell because there were no windows, just blank walls all painted white. One large door that opened directly onto a small parking area where there were always several dark green army vehicles, each with its big red star. Occupying an entire block, the building sat behind a high wire mesh fence, clearly electrified, with lights on tall standards, eerily blue-white lights that burned all night, every night. Nestled against one side of the building was a large refrigeration unit which, strangely, also ran day and night, in summer and inexplicably through Beijing’s hard winter. As with so many aspects of life in New China, one did not question the building’s presence or its purpose. It was there. Someone, somewhere in the labyrinth of the government wanted it there and wanted whatever was in it kept very cold. Passersby would have reason to remark on the structure only once a year, in early autumn, when a crew of painters would appear and, after cleaning off a year's grime and sand from the Gobi which westerly winds dropped so generously on the capital of China, give the building a new white coat. Older residents of the neighborhood, if asked, would claim to remember seeing it built in the early 1950s. But through all the turmoil, the economic and political ups and downs, the building remained attended by its retinue of army people, lighted by its cold blue lights, and cooled by its big evaporative compressors. On this lovely day in May, it was the silence that brought Xia Hua up short, that stopped his pedaling directly in front of the driveway leading through the dangerous fence. Because he realized what had been bothering him in the couple of minutes since he emerged from his apartment and got on his bicycle: the silence. The compressors weren’t running. Never in his memory had they switched off. Now they were definitely off. There was an emptiness in the air. He wanted to remark on it to another person, but he, ever the early bird, was the first on the street, just before dawn. He looked, and looked again. The lights were also off. The lights which always burned at least an hour after sunrise and came on an hour before sunset. The building was dark. Xia Hua stood motionless, propping up his White Swan bike, looking. He knew it could be dangerous in certain times and certain places even just to look. But this was so extraordinary. Such a break in neighborhood routine. He looked, and began to be afraid. Not only were the compressors not humming and the lights not burning. The gate in the fence was rolled back. The little parking area was empty. And the large metal door of the building was open. Up and down the street now a few people were coming out, getting on their bicycles and mopeds. No one else seemed to have noticed the change in the white building. All his survival skills told Xia Hua that the thing to do was to pretend nothing was amiss, to get back on his bike and head for work and the pile of forms waiting to be filled out. He was amazed but at the same time curiously bemused to see himself instead walk his bike across the dusty street and into the parking area. He paused and checked the street again. No one was looking at him or the building. Aware that he was smiling, Xia Hua rolled his bike straight through the door as if this place were his and he had come to work here a thousand days before this. He found himself in a large office with several desks. Hard to see, because the only light was coming through the outside door. He tried a light switch. Nothing. It was not too late. He could step back outside, get on his bicycle, and be gone. Continuing to surprise himself, he pulled out his cigarette lighter and struck a flame. Ah. There was another door. He opened it and was almost physically pushed back by a wave of very cold air. He sniffed. Something was wrong. There was a faint, very faint, unpleasant odor in the air. His lighter flickered in the cold breeze. He sniffed again. He glanced back at the outside door. Still not too late. But he stepped forward into cold darkness, his flickering lighter letting him see only a couple of meters ahead. A long white hall, evenly space, heavy doors lining it. He went to one of the doors. It was wooden, thick wood, you could tell, with one tiny window at eye level. Ah. A placard, no, a plaque of metal on the door. Xia Hua squinted and held the lighter close to read the characters: 1 May 1952-31 May 1952. He moved to the next door: 1 June 1952-30 June 1952. The facing door across the hall was 1 June 1953-30 June 1952. Holding the lighter as high as he could, he looked up. Metal stairs and balconies disappeared in the darkness. He thought he could see three, maybe four levels. His immersion was complete. No thoughts of his job, his neighborhood, what might happen. He had to know more. A few minutes of rapid exploration convinced him he had to go up. The dates on this floor stopped at 1957. As quietly as he could be mounted the metal stairs. Up and up he went, checking an occasional door. Finally, on the fourth level, near the middle of the building the placards stopped. He tried a handle. It moved, he pushed, and the heavy door swung slowly open. Inside, he saw shelves, and neatly arrayed, small metal containers, the size of lunch boxes. Stainless steel. Spotlessly clean. He sniffed. The odor here was stronger. Now he identified it, but he could not believe what his nose was telling him. Xia Hua was shivering now. It was freezing cold in here. He touched one of the containers and his fingertip adhered to the cold metal. He blew on it to no effect. All he could do was pull hard. He felt the skin tear but he was free. He sucked on the wound and bent to examine the container. It too bore a small plaque: September, 1976. This was the last room. He searched and found the last date: 9 September 1976. He pulled out his shirt tail and using it to protect his hands, lifted the last container and opened its lid. The odor was very strong. Holding the container in one hand, the lighter in the other, Xia Hua stood for he didn’t know how long, trying to make sense of what he was seeing: a small mound of brown substance, some of which had been liquid before freezing, some of which was in clumps. The shape of the clumps, plus the color, plus the odor: there was no doubt. He was looking at shit. Human shit. The dates, the dates! Xia Hua’s mind screamed at him. You idiot, think of the dates! Xia Hua thought of the dates and was very, very afraid. He closed the little box, put it back, left the room, closed the door, and walked as fast as he could down the stairs toward the entrance. Waiting a moment at the office door, he listened. No sounds. No one was in the office, only his bike looked out of place. The odor was definitely getting stronger. Things were thawing. He pocketed his lighter, rolled his bike outside, got on, and wheeled through the fence. By now, his neighbors were gathering across the way, staring at the building. They were all, he noticed, holding their noses. Yes, the odor, drifting out the open door, was beginning to overwhelm. They saw him come out, but he knew they would never speak. Whatever they thought he had done, for them even to admit they had seen him coming out could lead to endless interrogations and who knew what else. Xia Hua pedaled away, toward work knowing he could never tell anyone what he had seen. They wouldn’t believe him. If they believed him, word would quickly spread and then, very fast, no more Xia Hua. He did do one unusual thing at work that day. When no one was around, he checked the People’s Encyclopedia. Though in his 30s, Xia Hua had been too young to remember the date, and the later national amnesia had erased all such formerly important dates from everyone’s mind. He found the entry in the encyclopedia, and started skimming through it (in spite of everything, it went on for pages), born December 26, 1893, and on and on. He came to the end. Yes, there it was. September 9, 1976. The day our beloved Great Leader, Chairman Mao, breathed no more. Though apparently he had shat one last time… Xia Hua found himself smiling again. He wanted to add a line to the official record: "…and the decades of his shit was preserved until a recent power outage in northwest Beijing." When Xia Hua returned home that evening, the neighborhood was back to normal. Except for the odor, which everyone was pretending didn’t exist. And except for the line of large army trucks which, one by one were being filled with boxes from within the large white building. But the trucks also didn’t exist. Soon the invisible trucks would go away and the white building could recede again from everyone’s attention, and a few years or maybe a few decades of Gobi winds would eventually remove the terrible odor. END
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