1. Li Momo left me a decade ago, came back ten years later, and I can’t remember the time between. She left a little girl and came back with thin wrinkles by her mouth. She dressed more proper, had changed all her old bad habits, and drove a BMW. When I asked how much money she had now, she said, “I’m set for the next ten years.”
I suffer amnesia so can’t remember many things, including how she left. After a week of meaningless sex (in a hotel, eating a lot of random food, going to the night theatre in spurts, to test stamina) she suddenly said she wanted to take me somewhere she’d been before – a place that would help restore my memory. I asked where. “The China Arts Academy at Fragrant Hills,” she said, “They’ve got this modern building complex.” I’d never been. “You’ll understand when you get there,” she said.
She told me a story about some boy, as we drove to Fragrant Hills. The boy came from out-of-province to take the academy exam, but ran over to the wrong place. It was clearly the academy at Fragrant Hills in Hangzhou, but he went to Ningbo’s Fragrant Hills. That’s a famous seafood town rich in such produce – East Ocean fish and shrimp and mollusk. He took the bus from out-of-province and smelt a sickening fleshy smell the instant he left the station. He mistook it for a stench over the whole town, but he was standing by seafood restaurant swill, as luck would have it. People from the interior really can’t adjust to that. He looked everywhere without finding the fabled ‘modern building complex.’ He saw only row on row of restaurants and a half-finished residence that was shudderingly ugly. It had to be the wrong city. He crouched by the road and threw up loudly.
“Marco Polo had similar misfortune,” said Momo. “Calvino talked about it in Invisible Cities. For an error arising from place names, consult A Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami, which touches on the incompatibility between literature and the real.”
“Would a seafood eater have gone to the wrong academy?”
“I guess not.”
“So it’s a one-way error?”
She drove and I sat next to her. We reached Hangzhou in the afternoon. She was slightly lost and I didn’t know the roads. The BMW ran over and back across the great bridge over the Qiantang River, and I saw the Six Harmonies Pagoda three times. It was a grey day, and a Level Seven typhoon was set to make landfall on the coast. First the waters were bright, then gradually they became gloomy and sunk. Something surged in the distance.
“Looks like we’ll have to stay the night by the river,” I said.
Momo parked the car, studied the map, and opened her cellphone. She did everything herself. I sat shotgun and watched the scenery.
“There are two academy campuses – one by West Lake, one on Fragrant Hills. People do often get to the wrong place, so could you call it a two-way error?”
I had no intention of carrying on arguing with her. She was the sort of person who grew stubborn and dug in intractably as soon as she started quarrelling. But I did still mumble: “Can’t call it an error. That’s too mundane.”
The car rolled on past mountains that were a full kingfisher blue, like a painting. We seemed to pass through a scenic district, and were stuck in a few minute’s traffic by a bridge archway with railway tracks overhead, the long train whistling past like quickly drawn curtains. The empty highway was further on up. Momo said it was the right way. In the gloomy weather, the dusk arrived near imperceptibly. The colors were the same, just the shade of grey changed. The academy appeared in my sight quite unexpectedly.
“Those are the famous buildings,” said Momo. “They twist and turn inside. Take a look. Don’t they look like the apartments from when we were small?”
As the car drove nearer, cut off by deep forests, an enormous tiled building stood up lazily from the smog. Two large birds just happened to be soaring over its rooftop. When I craned forward to look, I realized it was dusk. An unknown dust was flying through the air.
The car moved forward by the college wall, and odd buildings appeared endlessly in my sight. I couldn’t get a good view of them, but they moved and turned rapidly. I watched, slightly absently. There was something I’d been through, forgotten. The shred of an experience climbing inexplicably into my mind.
Momo held the steering-wheel. We turned, and a truck entered our side-view. I heard the crisp sound of braking, reaching me at the same time as a mighty rumble. The front of the truck crashed into the left side of the BMW’s rear, like someone shoving me. I had half a head leaning out the window at the time. After that, everything goes dark.
2. I’ve known Momo for thirty years now, and I’m thirty years old this year, like she is. We were childhood sweethearts who lived in the same courtyard when young and grew up together until the year we turned twenty. So before I was equipped with powers of memory, Momo was there by my side, which makes her practically something I was born with. In thirty years she’s the only female I’ve loved.
When we were young I led her coursing through the little alleys of our hometown, looking for something called a ‘plastron.’ At that time, when people had finished eating a tortoise, they left the whole shell to sun on the balcony, waiting for the medicinal herb collectors to come and buy. I can’t remember what specific illness it treated, only that Momo’s mother had a kidney deficiency, so she whacked together some old wives’ remedy that involved boiling a plastron to make soup. We looked for that damn thing everywhere. In those days, families hardly ate tortoises anymore, and you had to be even luckier to find someone selling stolen plastrons. As soon as I saw one, either stolen or sunning on a balcony, I would seize it and slip away, legging it with Momo. Sometimes the owner would chase me, but I was never caught in the maze of little alleys. I never lost Momo either.
I didn’t know the roads then. That happened later.
3. I woke up and found I was lying in bed. Li Momo, the BMW, and the dusk had vanished. This was obviously a bed in some motel. With the window open, a large wind brewed outside and blew onto me, all of it. I jumped up, completely headache, and felt my head fit to burst. My breathing was blocked, and my mouth was parched with thirst. I panicked, but luckily my clothes were draped on the chair. I put them on and took out the phone from my jeans pocket to check the time. It was 10 a.m. This was the day following the accident.
I rang Momo’s cellphone, which was switched off. I thought again, and dialed my elder sister’s number. I said I’d been in a car crash the day before, with Li Momo, but she’d disappeared now, and I was inexplicably in a motel. I was fully confident that she’d ask ‘You’re not injured, are you?’ but what she shouted down the line was: “What? You haven’t seen Li Momo for a decade!”
In the past I had a pinpoint awareness of the roads. My talent made an even better showing in the age of stealing plastrons. We went stealing from the southeast corner to the north of the city, from the small alleys to the workers’ new village, from the bureau compound to restaurants, brimming with the confidence that no-one could get us. But then I remember being trapped by a corner of the city wall one year. The household had probably laid out a feast for guests, and tables-full of guys ran out, the maze teeming with pursuers. We were stuck in a dead-end. Then, the moment I helped Momo up over the wall, I felt something clobber the back of my head. It was like electrical circuits suddenly ripped out, and afterwards I was road-blind, intermittently amnesiac, my mind like a crashing symbol that was dead silent after. Some of the time that I experienced was inscrutably deep, like a black hole. Some was like floating wood, silently displaying an element with itself, and some was like eyebrows – because it was right above my eyes – but I needed to be against the light to see a patch or two.
Momo flew up to the roof along the alley wall. She looked back calmly as a crowd surrounded me like well-railings. This meant she couldn’t see me, but I could see her. She stood frozen in space, and even had time to smooth down her clothes.
“How come you’re messing about with her again?” my elder sister asked.
Memory like floating wood… I recalled Li Momo saying that heavy strikes might return an amnesiac to normal. I’d tried it that way many times already: people hit me with steel poles, smashed me with beer bottles, or I tripped down stairwells, or throttled myself and crashed into doorframes – all to no effect.
Like now, even though I’d been in a car accident, I couldn’t remember whether my elder sister was married or not. When she’d stopped her endlessly questioning, I went and drank some tap water in the bathroom, and finally found the red writing written in lipstick on the mirror.
I’m hanging in the college opposite!
The mark of Li Momo’s hand; the color of her lips. Floating wood memories rolled over in the waters.
4. I left the motel opposite the academy, and saw the strange buildings again. They looked like squashed pagodas from afar. When I went in I noticed that the college was a bit too big for its boots, embracing an entire hill, those odd buildings laid out around it one by one and without end. I went around twice without finding Momo, or even a generic academy student.
I was held up on campus by a security guard in a tan uniform. I stuttered an explanation.
“Ah,” he said, at once. “You’re talking ’bout that girl. She came in first thing in the morning, but I don’t know where she’s got to now.”
He was a little kid just in his twenties, with unshaved hairs above his lip that he apparently couldn’t grow into a beard. It was left very long and hung down thinly, making him look slightly yobbish.
“The Level Seven typhoon’s coming,” he said. The wind was strong, trying its hardest to rip apart the thick, low-lying clouds, as trees rattled and shook. “Hurry and find your friend,” he said. “You’ll be trapped when the typhoon hits.”
“Can I get through the road ahead?”
“Neither way’s passable,” said the guard. “Central point here’s the hill, and every campus building’s built around it. But it’s U-shaped, like a horseshoe; not round. It doesn’t connect either side, but you don’t feel that. It just cuts you off, naturally. There’s a sports track at one end, and weeds and forest at the other. It’s a layout that pretty much guarantees you won’t lose your way. Once you’ve walked on in, you’ll know. There aren’t any extra choices on the main way.”
“What about the lesser way? I heard it winds back and forth.”
“Yeah…it’s fun.”
Not necessarily, I thought… I know there’s a Fragrant Mountain for eating seafood on the main way.
“The horseshoe layout’s a maze like a ticking clock. Its layout is more artistic than round. It’s hypnotic, walking around. My daily work is tick-tocking on the main way.”
“Do you hang about where it gets more intricate?”
“Guards in tan like me only have to walk around. The winding paths inside have maroon guards in charge, and they gave the corridors inside every building to guards in this milky white…”
“The hill?”
“Nobody’s in charge of the mountain.”
“How come I haven’t seen red or white guards?”
“It’s summer vacation, so they’ve split. There’s sealed-off strips on all the buildings. All they need’s our type: that’s enough.”
When he put it that way I remembered that he was a guard, where I’d straight-up seen him as a tour guide a moment before. We were facing a pond overgrown with wormwood, with several red damselflies flying over it. When you walked upwards by the pond you found a building where layered eaves took up the entire façade, the glassy steel rubbed to a sheen, reflecting a cinder-like sky. I turned my head to look over as a burst of wind scattered the damselflies. There were no people in any direction. It was a vacant group of buildings, some like accordions, some like smashed bottles, and some like giant thunder-dragons who had stuck out their necks to pry and were frozen by a curse.
“Li Momo!” I shouted to the building. I cried again, with some despair: “Li Momo! Where are you!?”
“What are you yelling for?” said the guard, “No one’s going to answer if you yell like that.”
5. …So we ended our plastron-stealing career then, and later on (I forget which day it was), Momo’s mum died. Her sickness had dragged on for a long time, and her entire body was like a water-drugged pig. With her death, Li Momo was freed as well. When the coffin left home, they made Momo climb the wall and stand on the eaves of her own house, calling the spirit back. By local custom, that was carried out by the son, but the Li family only had the one daughter. Logically, nobody should be climbing up to call the spirit, but someone voiced the harebrained idea that Momo should take to the roof. She called out for ages, and didn’t want to come down. ‘This is ridiculous!’ they said, ‘Li Momo’s calling her own spirit out, but she’s a woman. She shouldn’t be on the roof.’
I have a clear memory of that building, Li standing at a height, the white walls already turning black, with a few frightened little men drawn on them, each person with three stalks of hair, hands with five matchstick fingers held open, some people crying, some laughing. I forget who drew that. It wasn’t me.
She was walking the roofs the entire night, onto mine, where I heard tiles break as she stepped on them. My elder sister was driven out of her mind, and swore skywards from the room opposite mine: ‘Li Momo have you lost it?’ I had stuffed a dead mouse from a trap in her drawers. She was saying that all the Li girls had weird habits: Momo’s mother liked eating wall paste, which rotted her kidneys, and Momo’s fetish was roof-walking. Saying that, she pulled open the drawers and leapt in fright at the dead mouse, fleeing out of the door like a madwoman.
6. The guard waved towards some high point. A girl was standing on the exposed passageway between the tall buildings. You couldn’t count the number of floors from the building’s front. It was fully encased in glass, like some top-grade commercial tower in the city, there in the group of huge tiled buildings of mixed concrete and wood, like a lady in a light veil facing a crowd of armored troops. The glass curtain became invisible when you went behind the building to what was, after all, another concrete-wood building that clambered continually to a Z-shaped staircase jutting outside, gloomy like an aboveground garage. I remembered the Zhejiang townships where the buildings had all been this type since a certain year – three-floor residences with mosaics glued to the street-facing front, the backs bare-naked with bruised red bricks. It was said that every Zhejiangese bought bricks and built an apartment once they had money, stacking the bricks in this half-mansion, half-hovel style. This high tower had the same style.
“That there’s the ugliest building in the province,” said the guard, pointing.
“You should say the saddest!” called the girl. She stood atop the third floor, half probing her body out, half looking haughtily down on us.
“Have you seen a thirty-plus year old woman?” the guard asked her.
The girl pointed towards the hill: “There.” She was talking about the other side of the U-shaped road.
“The typhoon’s about to start!” said the guard, “You’re not heading back?”
“When can you get me the key?”
“That’s tricky…” As a final act, he sighed.
The girl stuck out a middle finger, struck us with a low-brow hand gesture from on high, then disappeared.
We followed the horseshoe to the south part of the hill. The wind wrapped our clothes to us, and a swathe of sunflowers went face down on the ground by the foothills.
“She’s a sculpture student. Did you get a look at that building? The one with a roof that looks like a few tiles facing the sky, lightning rod slotted dead-center. That’s the college library. You can go up on the roof, although the entrance is blocked, and the leaders have the key. She’s always wanting to get the roof. I couldn’t tell you why. Begging me to sort her out with a key…”
“Didn’t look like she was begging.”
“I know. She’s ferocious.”
7. …Many years back Momo spent long periods on the roof, like Calvino’s Baron in the Trees. She would come down when she got tired and would go back to normal, going to class as normal, dating me as normal. One day I demanded that she take me up on the roof with her. As soon as I climbed up onto the wall, I slipped down.
“The doctor says your eye membrane’s broken,” she said. “You’ve got terrible balance. You’ll have to stay on the ground.”
“What’s so good on the roof?”
“It’s amazing! You just wait down there.”
8. “What did you think of her?” the young guard asked me.
“Who?”
“The girl just now.”
“Oh…” He had brought me back to my senses. I’d sunk too deep into my restricted memory. “The wind was strong just now, and the sun got in my eyes, so I didn’t see clearly. Seems you’re in love with her.”
He sheepishly plucked off his broad-rim hat and patted himself on the head. “I’m just a security-guard, right? Obviously I’d sort her out a key, so I suppose I had the chance.”
“Girls shouldn’t go up on roofs,” I said.
9. You have to understand that memory runs off when you suffer a brain hemorrhage. During the decade after Momo vanished I searched my memories with great effort on multiple occasions. I sorted everything out nice and neatly, laid out like the internal components of a building, which I walked past time and time again, artificially arranging everything unfamiliar, fading, or fictional into a chain of memory. But on a certain day the hemorrhage would wreak havoc and the building components would get bent out of shape, and I was cast out by a giant shove. Then I toppled over outside the building. It happened many times. I lost patience and hope. I’d rather just be an amnesiac.
The security-guard’s telecom rang.
“Meeting…” he said, “You can only go there by yourself. Here’s hoping you find ‘er. Good luck.”
“No problem,” I said. “I never worry about getting lost.”
We parted at the crossroads. He followed the main path on the horseshoe, off to the comms room, while I took a side road paved in black brick.
10. …The time of the house demolitions was truly hectic. A giant character for ‘demolition’ was pasted in red ink on the front door of every household, then in came the bulldozers, and up went the men and women onto the roofs, tiles flying down like hail. They made me guard seven steel gas canisters in the courtyard; I brought over a chair and read Critique of Pure Reason while I played with my lighter, firing it up with click after click.
“Who’s this guy?” asked the demolition company man.
“He’s an idiot,” a guy answered. “Someone knocked his head out of shape a few years back.”
“I’m a university student!” I yelled, but I still got a baton to the head. Momo thought it would knock me back to normal, but sadly I just rolled about on the ground, wailing as two demolition company workers dragged me from the courtyard. Only she was left when the rest had come down, running wild on the roof like a mad female assassin, screaming with joy. The demolition people looked on stupidly.
“The girl lost her spirit a few years back,” it was explained. “She’s the idiot’s girlfriend.” They propped me up and tied me to the bulldozer, calling out to Momo through a megaphone: “We’ll bulldoze him with the building if you don’t come down!”
“Dream on!” I laughed, “She won’t be coming down.” But that was when she sprang demurely from the wall.
One moment with the bulldozer, and the apartment wasn’t an apartment, just like my memories.
11. A mad wind spun through the buildings. Some were irregular hollowed-out cavities on cement walls, like freak animal spirits. Some corridors were like the mazes I used to run through, with the gradient of time passed and no more traces of when I was hunted down, nor were there plastrons in the countless window terraces high and low, which were emptied, like when I used to seize them. I searched several times without spotting any trace of Li Momo, although I did find a vending machine. I rolled in a coin to buy a coke, and drank it, thinking Just how did she leave me?
The girl from a moment ago was suddenly in front of my eyes. “Hey! I ran into your friend just now.”
“The security kid’s gone to a meeting.”
“The typhoon’s coming…” She walked over and sat next to me. After a moment, she asked, “You guys came to visit here?”
“My friend said the buildings here would help me restore memories,” I said, “but something went wrong right in the middle. Someone rear-ended the car, and she came here to hang out by herself and dumped me in the hotel.” Seeing her confusion, I added, “Oh, right! I forgot to tell you. I’m a historical amnesiac.”
“Sounds awesome! I had a teacher who was a sufferer, too stupid to recall anything. Later they sent him to a welfare institute. You know? A mental hospital.”
“I’m not that bad. I remember more than the average person, it’s just that the order’s all messed up, like someone’s wearing their shirt on the feet and trousers on their head. Your teacher, I suppose, was fully naked in that sense. They sent me to the welfare institute before. Things weren’t too bad. The nurses were a little icy, but they figured I wasn’t mental pretty quickly, so they let me out.”
“You seem very clear-minded to me.”
“Thank you. On the borders of chaos, clarity turns out to be the easiest thing to express.”
“I’ll take you to find your friend then. You’re sure to lose your way going around mindlessly here. Obviously the pretext here is it’s best she doesn’t get lost…” I almost added, ‘When she is lost, Li Momo will climb straight up on the roof.’ But I realised further roof-talk was inappropriate, considering what the young guard had just told me about her. I also supposed Momo had probably broken the rotten habit a decade on. I hadn’t seen her straddle any rooftops, at least in the week we were having sex.
The girl led me around the teaching building which looked more like a Japanese castle hemmed in with square cement blocks.
“What do you think of the architecture here?” she asked.
“Not bad,” I said. “At least, I haven’t seen any penis-esque architecture yet.”
“Penis?”
“Yeah, like a boner. Doesn’t matter where you go, the trademark building’s always something like a boner, tall and imposing, dominating all horizontal vision. Our eye muscles just aren’t that great at measuring it up. I’d say all architects are conflicted. In a way they worry about people becoming amnesiac, and in another way they’ve got to guard against people stealing their work too easily. But a boner building isn’t an imaginative approach.”
“At least there’s an order. How about using that to restore memory?”
“A boner-style order?”
“Wow…” she sighed. “You really can talk nonsense.”
She led me winding through a cloister, and amazingly we arrived at the rear of another building – a monstrously strange building.
“It’s summer,” said the girl, “so they’ve stuck up sealed-off signs at many places. But the road’s easier to take, otherwise it’d be even stranger here. Look at the bricks. They’re all old, shipped in from the country, at least a hundred tons of them stacked up here.”
“You and that little guard are the same,” I said. “You’d both make good guides.”
“Him!” he said. “He was an examinee for the academy, but some sinister force sent him running off to the Fragrant Hills town in Ningbo on the day of the exam. It was a huge amount of stress to get him a make-up exam, but he still didn’t pass. He’d used up all his cash, so he ended up settling down as a guard here.”
“So that’s the story.” I said. “It seems he’s in love with you.”
“He wrote plenty of love letters, like someone from the last century. The guy can’t even use a computer, and he’s road-blind. Ha! Ran off to Ningbo for the exam. To think a road-blind guy like that could be a security guard. It’s unbelievable.” She pointed to a building ahead of us, broad and wide like some massive curtain. “That’s the college library. All I want is for him to get me a key for the roof, then I can go up there before graduation. Is it sexy up there? They say it’s oozing with desire…”
“I didn’t notice that. It’s just a few tiles facing the sky.”
“In cross-section it’s like a chart of female orgasms – three climaxes, arced rising, then troughing…”
“That’s an outrageous explanation,” I said.
“I’ve been learning from you,” she said. “You’re the one who said ‘Boner-style Order.’”
“Fine,” was all I could say. “Let me ask you, what does it feel like up there?”
“When you stand on the roof in good weather, you see spots of clouds like a flock of sheep in the blue sky,” Momo had told me, a few years back. “I become a herder of clouds. The world below ceases to exist.” If that was the reason, then I couldn’t figure why she always had to run like hell, when sitting on the roof would do. “But that’s what all the cloud herders have to do,” she said. “Some clouds go astray, like the sheep.”
Too romantic for me. Better to be a conscientious amnesiac, I thought. Illusions could only get me residence in an asylum.
12. After the demolition, the maze of small alleys was laid out flat. A few large lingering trees stood proudly in the mess of bricks and tiles – cultural artefacts that needed to be conserved. The swathe of tiles discomfited us. We’d lost the roof and the road. But now there was clear passage in every direction.
“All thought vanishes on the roof,” she said. “Simple as that.”
13. The typhoon winds slapped us like giant waves. I have this memory of when the typhoons used to come – the flowerpots, the tiles, and the clothes flying about the sky, and sometimes entire windows whooshed out. Even Li Momo wouldn’t be up on the rooftops on days like that. I was seeing only a pure wind then, the bricks stacked tightly on the outer concrete wall, hundreds of wooden-frame outer windows fused together in one massive façade, like a seventeenth-century warship parting the air and cutting through waves. I remember those buildings so well, shuddering in the storm.
The young guard ran over to us, hand covering his hat.
“Hey, hey!” he called, “Your friend’s up on the roof!”
“What!? What are you saying?” asked the girl.
“She went up onto the library roof!”
I sprinted ahead of them. The girl griped behind me: “I thought you couldn’t get a key? How come she got on the roof?”
“It’s with our leader,” said the guard. “Maybe she’s got some special relationship with him. How could I know?”
“Hey! I want to go up too!”
“She’s locked the door from the inside!” said the guard. “She’s locked herself on the roof.”
“Li Momo!” I yelled, running like hell.
It began to rain, the slingshot in the clouds releasing pellet-sized raindrops onto my head. The building was larger than my eyes had measured it – like the husk of a movie-theater, as I found out when I arrived – and paved excessively with bricks, so people got the mistaken impression of a bungalow. It wasn’t, actually. It was quite tall. I couldn’t see anything when I stood and looked up at the eaves, just rainwater splashing down. I stepped back and continued to call her name.
“What are you shouting for?” Momo stood at a dip in the roof – the nadir of the orgasm, in the girl’s expression – looking haughtily down on me. She was the one shouting.
“I’ve already spent an afternoon running around here!”
“Did you remember anything?”
“I’ve been trying to remember how you left me.”
“The car crashed. We went to fix it, then had a lot to drink, and got a room. I got up early, you weren’t awake, so I slipped out. That’s it. I didn’t leave you.”
“I remember the crash knocked me out.”
“You just fainted for a minute, then woke up. You drank a lot, and sang a load of childhood songs when you were drunk…” She yelled: “Looks like your memory’s still not better.”
“I mean how you left me ten years ago!” My tears were mixing with the rain.
She didn’t reply. Instead, she stood slowly and walked to the center of the roof, looking as agile as all those years ago, and vanishing fast.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I’ve remembered. That time your mother was eating wall paste, the walls at your home were identical to here!” But it wasn’t coming back. I hadn’t been as alone as I was now, even a decade ago. When I couldn’t see her I grew frantic and wound around the building.
“We’ll have to go back to where we just were,” said the girl. “You can see the roof from there.”
So we ran back with the guard. The wind was about to flutter me away, like a kite. Standing firm and gazing from afar at the roof, all we saw was a tiny clump of a shadow standing on the W-shaped slope, lightly running up to the highest point. The black lightning-rod pointed skywards.
“Awesome,” said the girl.
“I’ll get you a key, guaranteed,” said the young guard, with emotion.
“She once said the clouds were like a flock of sheep,” I said, “and she wanted to herd clouds on the roof. But they don’t look too much like sheep today.”
“Like wild horses,” said the girl. “A pack of wild horses.”
The wild horses raced across the sky over the building, on whose highest point Li Momo was standing. My phone rang. It was her. I answered it. She spoke in my direction from there on the roof: “Take a good look! Do you see? Do you remember?”
“Just what are you trying to say!?” I called despairingly at the phone…
~
“站在屋顶上，天气好的日子里，云是一片一片的，像蓝天上的羊群。我就变成了一个牧云的人。”
壹
十年前，李茉沫离开了我，十年后她又回来了，但这中间相隔的时间，以及在这时间中发生的事，我已经记不太清了。她走的时候还是个小姑娘，回来时嘴角已经有了细细的皱纹，穿得也比以前称头，过去的恶习都改好了，开了一辆宝马。我问她现在有多少钱，她说，多得足以把十年的时间抵消掉。
我患有失忆症，很多事情都想不起来了，包括她是怎么离开我的。在没头没脑地做爱长达一周之后（住在宾馆里，吃了很多乱七八糟的菜，间或去看夜场电影，做了个体检），她忽然说要带我去一个地方，她以前去过，那里有助于我恢复记忆。我问她是哪里，她说 ：“象山的中国美院，那儿有一个现代建筑群—是建筑群哦。”我从来没去过那里，她说 ：“到那儿你就知道了。”
在去象山的路上，李茉沫给我讲了一个男孩的故事。男孩从外省来参加美院的考试，可是他跑错了地方，明明是杭州象山中国美院校区，他去了宁波的象山。宁波的象山镇是著名的海鲜镇，盛产东海里出产的各类鱼虾和软体动物，男孩是从外省坐车来的，他走下长途汽车的一瞬间闻到了令人作呕的腥味，令他误以为这座小镇被此气味笼罩其中，事实上只是他不巧站在了一个海鲜馆的泔水桶边上而已。内陆地区的人对这气味 很不适应。他四下里张望，没看到传说中的现代建筑群，倒是一排排的饭馆，砌了一半的民宅，丑得让人心寒。 这显然是一个错误的城镇，男孩蹲在路边大声地呕吐起来。
李茉沫说 ：“马可·波罗也有过类似的遭遇，在卡尔维诺所写的《没有名字的城市》里谈到过。至于同一地名产生的谬误，可以参看村上春树的《寻羊冒险记》，牵涉到文本和现实的不兼容性。”
“吃海鲜的人会跑错路去美院吗？”
“这不会吧？”
“所以是一种单向的谬误吧？”
李茉沫开车，我坐在她身边，到杭州时已经是下午。她有点迷路，而我是路盲，宝马在钱塘江的大桥上跑了好几个来回，三度看到六合塔。那是一个阴天，七号台风即将登陆沿海地区，江水起初是明亮的，渐渐变暗，渐渐消沉，有什么东西在远处涌动。我说“看来我们得在江边过夜了。”李茉沫停车，看地图，打手机。 所有事情都是她一个人做的，我只是坐在副驾上抽烟看风景。
“中国美院有两个校区，一个在西湖边上，一个在象山。经常有人跑错地方，这可以算是双向的谬误吧？”
我无意于和她争论下去，她这个人一旦争论起来就固执得不能自拔，不过我还是嘀咕了一句 ：“这不能算谬误，太形而下了。”
车继续走，穿过一片山，四周苍翠如画，似乎是经过了景区，在一个头顶上过铁轨的桥洞之下还堵了几分钟，火车像急速拉上的窗帘，漫长地哗啦啦而过。再往前便是空荡荡的大道。李茉沫说这条路就对了。阴天的黄昏来得不是那么醒目，颜色如故，只是灰度的变化。美院的建筑不期然出现在眼前。李茉沫说：“这是很有名的建筑，里面绕来绕去的。你看，像不像我们小时候住的房子？”随着汽车驶近，隔着很深的树林，一尊巨大的瓦房在阴霾的天空之下缓缓站立起来，两只大鸟正从屋檐上滑翔而过。伸出头去看的时候意识到 这是黄昏了，不知哪里来的尘土飞扬。
车沿着学校的围墙往前，不断有古里古怪的建筑出现在视野里，虽然看不真切，但它们在迅速移动、扭转。我看得有点失神，某种东西像曾经经历过的、遗忘的、残存的经验，说不清道不明地爬上心头。
李茉沫打方向盘，车转弯，有一辆卡车斜刺过来。我听见清脆的刹车声，这声音与强烈的震动同时到达。卡车一头撞在宝马尾部左侧，像是有人推了我一把，当时我的半个头颅都在车窗外，然后我就什么都不知道了。
贰
我和李茉沫认识已经三十年了，我今年三十岁，她也是。我们是青梅竹马，小时候住在一个院子里，后来一起长大直到二十岁那年。在我具备记忆力之前，李茉沫就已经出现在我身边，这近似于一种与生俱来的东西。三十年来我唯一爱过的女人就是李茉沫。
少年时代我带着李茉沫在故乡的小巷里穿行，寻找一种叫鳖壳的东西。那时人们吃过了王八就把整块的鳖壳放在窗台上晾干，等待收药材的人来买走它。至于它具体治什么病，我想不起来了，只记得李茉沫的妈妈肾亏，搞来一个偏方，用鳖壳煎汤喝。我们满世界寻找那玩意儿，很多年以前吃王八的人家屈指可数，可供偷盗的鳖壳更是可遇不可求。晒在窗台上的鳖壳被我们顺走，偷，或者是明抢，得手以后带着李茉沫撒腿狂奔，有时会招来失主的追杀，在迷宫般的小巷中我从来没有被追到过，也从来没有一次丢失了李茉沫。
那个时候我不是路盲，成为路盲是后来的事。
叁
我醒来时发现自己躺在床上，李茉沫消失了，宝马消失了，黄昏也消失了。这显然是旅馆的床，窗打开着，外面起了很大的风，全都吹在我身上。我赤裸裸地跳起来，觉得头疼，呼吸不畅，口渴。这让我感到惊惧， 所幸衣服什么的都耷拉在椅背上。我穿上衣服，从裤兜里掏出手机对了一下时间，上午十点。这是发生车祸 的第二天。
我打了李茉沫的手机，关机。再想了想，拨通了我姐姐的电话。我说我前一天出了车祸，和李茉沫在一起，不过目前李茉沫消失了，而我莫名其妙地躺在宾馆里。满以为我姐姐会问我伤着没有，但她在电话那头叫喊的是：“喂，你已经十年没有遇到过李茉沫啦！”
过去我对道路敏感极了，在偷鳖壳的年代我便表现出了这种天赋，我们从城南偷到城北，从小巷偷到职工新村，从机关大院偷到饭馆，自信满满，没有人能逮住我们。但是，我记得某一年被人堵在了墙角，那户人家大概是在摆宴请客，好几桌的人都跑了出来，迷宫中充斥着追捕者。我们被堵在了一个死胡同里，我把李茉沫送上墙头的一瞬间，后脑挨了一下。好像骤然拉下了电闸，那以后我就变成了路盲，而且间歇性地失忆，脑子里像敲锣一样，敲完之后便是一片死寂。我所经历过的时间，有些像黑洞般深不可测，有些像水中的浮木， 静静地展现着其中的某一部分，还有一些像睫毛本身，近在眼前却只能凭借逆光才能看到一丝斑点。
李茉沫沿着墙头飞速跳上了屋顶。她平静地回头看，一群人像井栏一样围着我，所以她什么都看不到。不过，我却看到她了。她凌空而立，甚至还有工夫稍稍整理一下凌乱的衣裙。
我姐姐说 ：“你怎么又和李茉沫混在一起了呢？”
浮木般的记忆……我记得李茉沫说过，有些失忆症患者经过重击可能会恢复正常，这个办法我已经试过好几次，被人用钢管打过，用啤酒瓶砸过，从楼梯上摔下去，自己拧住脖子往门框上撞，都不怎么管用。
拿现在来说，尽管我出了车祸，还是想不起我姐姐到底结婚了没有。结束了她无休止的质问，我去厕所里喝了一点自来水，终于在镜子上发现了一串用唇膏写就的红字 ：我在对面学校里逛。这是李茉沫的笔迹以及李茉沫嘴唇的颜色。浮木般的记忆正在水中翻滚。
肆
我走出旅馆，马路对面就是中国美院，又看到古里古怪的房子，远看像一座被拍扁的塔。走进去才发现学校大得有点过分，环抱着整整一座山，怪房子一座连着一座，没完没了地绕山铺陈。我走了两个来回，不但没找到李茉沫，连一般的美院学生都没看到几个。
在校区里，穿焦黄色制服的保安把我拦住了。我结结巴巴向他解释了一通。他立刻说 ：“啊，你说的那个女的，她一早就进学校了，不过她现在在哪儿我就不知道了。”保安是个二十出头的小伙子，嘴唇上的汗毛看来一直不舍得让它变成胡子，留得很长，细细地耷拉着，样子有些菜。他说 ：“七号台风已经来了。”风很大， 努力撕扯着厚重而低垂的云，地上的树木噼啪乱颤。保安说 ：“赶紧找到你的朋友吧，台风来了就走不掉了。”
“前面那条路通吗？”
“两头都不通。”保安说，“这里的中心位置是一座山，校区里所有的建筑都绕山而建。不过不是环形，而是U形，像一块马蹄铁。两头走不通，不过也不会特别感觉走不通，自然而然就被阻隔了。一头是操场，另一头是杂草和树林。这个格局基本上确保了你不会迷路，你走过以后就知道了，大方向上，不存在多余的选择。”
“小方向上呢？听说绕来绕去的。”
“那只不过是些游戏罢了。”
我想未必吧，大方向上我还知道有一个吃海鲜的象山呢。
保安说 ：“U形布局是一种钟摆式的迷宫，比圆形更艺术，走来走去会有催眠感。你知道吧，我每天的 工作就是在大方向上做钟摆式的运动。”
“细节部分游戏着？”
“穿我这种焦黄色制服的保安，只需要沿着 U 形主干道走来走去就可以了；里面绕来绕去的道路，由穿绛红色制服的保安负责 ；每一幢楼内部的过道交给穿奶白色的保安。”
“山呢？”
“山不归任何人管。
“我怎么没看见穿红色和白色的保安呢？”
“暑假了，人都走光了，房子里都贴了封条。只需要我这种保安就可以了。”
这么一说我才想起他是保安，刚才简直把他当导游了。我们面对着一个长满蒿草的池塘，池塘上空有几只红色的豆娘飞过。沿着池塘往上走是一幢被层层屋檐占据了整个外立面的房子，玻璃窗像磨亮的钢铁，映着灰烬般的天空。我转头过去望，一阵劲风吹散了豆娘们。四下里无人，这是一片空荡荡的建筑群，有的房子像手风琴，有的像打碎的瓶子，有的像伸脖子探望的巨大的雷龙，都被咒语凝固了。
“李茉沫！”我对着房子们喊了一声，有点绝望，接着又喊，“李茉沫你在哪里？” 保安说 ：“你在乱喊什么？你这样乱喊也不会有回声的。”
伍
我们就此结束了偷鳖壳的生涯，后来忘记是哪一天，李茉沫的妈妈死了。她已经病了很久，浑身上下就像注水的猪肉。她一死，李茉沫也就解脱了。出殡的那天，他们让李茉沫爬上墙头，站在自家的屋顶上喊魂。当地的风俗是由儿子喊魂，李家只有一个女儿，按理说没有人可以上去喊魂，可是不知道谁出了馊主意让李茉沫上了屋顶。她喊了很久，却不肯再下来了。有人说胡闹啊，李茉沫把自己的魂也给喊丢了，女人怎么能上屋顶？那房子我记得很清楚，李茉沫站在高处，白墙早已发黑，上面画着很多毛骨悚然的小人，都长着三 根头发，叉开五根火柴一样的手指，有些哭，有些笑。我忘记是谁画的了，反正不是我。
她整夜地在屋顶上走，走到我家屋顶上，听到瓦片被她踩裂的声音。我姐姐烦得要死，在隔壁仰天大骂，李茉沫你丢了魂啊？我在我姐姐的抽屉里塞了一只被夹死的耗子。我姐姐说他们李家的女人都有怪毛病，李茉沫的妈妈爱吃墙粉，把整个肾都吃烂了，而李茉沫的怪癖是在屋顶上走来走去。她说着拉开了抽屉，被死耗子吓得像一个疯女人那样狂奔出家门。
陆
保安向着高处挥手，有个女孩站在裸露于高楼之外的楼道上。这栋楼从正面数不清有几层，完全被玻璃包围了，类似城里的甲A级写字楼，在一组混凝土构建的巨大的瓦房之中，它像一个穿轻纱的妇女面对着一群甲士。走到高楼的背后，玻璃幕墙不见了，原来也是一座混凝土的建筑，不断攀升向上的 Z 形楼梯裸露在外，阴郁得活像一座地上车库。我想起有一年来浙江的小镇，那儿的建筑都是这个样子，三层楼的民宅，沿街的那面贴着马赛克，背面裸露着惨兮兮的红砖。听说浙江人都是挣一点钱就买几块砖头砌一点房子，砌出了一半是豪宅一半是贫民窟的风格。这座高楼也有这样的风格。保安指着它说：“全省最丑的房子就是它了。”
“应该说是最残酷的房子。”女孩说。她站在三楼，半个身子探出，居高临下看着我们。保安说：“看到一个三十多岁的女的吗？”女孩指着山说 ：“在那边。”说的是 U 形道路的另一侧。保安说：“快要起台风了， 你还不回宿舍？”女孩说：“你什么时候能给我搞到钥匙？”
“难呐。”他最后叹息了一声。女孩伸出中指，高高地冲着我们做了个下流手势，然后便消失了。
我们沿着U形道路向着山南走去。风吹得衣服都贴在身上，很多向日葵倒伏在地面。向日葵成片地种在山脚下。
“她是个学雕塑的女生。你看见那个房子了吗？屋顶像几片朝天放着的瓦片那样的，中间还竖着一根避雷针的。那是学校的图书馆，那个屋顶是可以上去的，不过入口被锁住了，钥匙在领导那儿。她总想到屋顶上去，也不知道为什么。求着我给她搞钥匙。”
“她那个态度可不太像求着你的样子呐。”
“是啊，很凶恶。”
柒
很多年以前，李茉沫长时间地待在屋顶上，如同卡尔维诺所写的《树上的男爵》。不过她待腻了还是会下来，她下来以后就恢复了正常，正常地上学，正常地和我恋爱。有一天我要求她带我一起上屋顶，刚爬上墙头我就掉了下来。李茉沫说：“医生说你的膜迷路被敲坏了，平衡感很差。看来你只能待在地面了。”
“屋顶上有什么好的？”
“很特别哟。你就待在地上吧。”
捌
年轻的保安问我 ：“你觉得她怎么样？”
“谁？”
“刚才那个女生啊。”
“噢，”我被他打回了神，在有限的记忆中我已经沉溺得太深了。我说“刚才风很大，又是逆光，没看清。恐怕你是爱上她了吧？”
他羞赧地摘下大盖帽，拍了拍自己的头顶，说：“我只不过是个保安嘛。当然，假如有机会，我会替她搞到钥匙的。”
“女孩子是不能上屋顶的。”我说。
玖
你得明白，脑子里有了淤血，记忆就会跑丢。在李茉沫消失的十年间，我几度努力搜寻记忆，将它们整理得方方正正的，像一座建筑的内部结构那样排列起来，再一次次地走过它们，所有生疏的、淡忘的、虚构的，便人为地组成了一个记忆链。可是某一天淤血作祟，建筑内部扭曲变形，巨大的推力将我抛出，跌落在建筑 之外，如此三番五次地，我便失去了耐心和希望，情愿做一个失忆人罢了。
保安腰间的对讲机响了。“集合了。”他说，“你只能自己去那边了，但愿你能找到她，祝你好运。”我说 没问题，我从来不担心自己会走失。我们在岔路口分别，他沿着 U 形主干道向传达室走去，我踏上了铺满青砖的支路。
拾
拆房子那次真是热闹，每一户人家门口都用红笔刷一个巨大的“拆”字，后来推土机来了，男男女女都上了房顶，瓦片像冰雹一样飞落。他们让我看守着院子里的七个煤气钢瓶，我搬了把椅子过来，一边读《纯粹理性批判》，一边摆弄着手里的打火机，咔嚓咔嚓点亮它。拆迁公司的人问：“这个人是干吗的？”有人答道：“这是个白痴，前几年脑子被人打坏了。”我大声说 ：“我是大学生！”不过后脑还是挨了一棍。李茉沫以为这一棍子能把我敲成正常人，但是很可惜，我只是被打翻在地，大哭着被两个拆迁公司的职员拖出了院子。等到所有人都从屋顶上下来之后，唯独她还在高处飞奔，像一个疯狂的女刺客，发出快乐的尖叫声。拆迁公司的人都看呆了，有人解释道：“这个姑娘前几年丢了魂，她是白痴的女朋友。”拆迁公司的人把我架起 来，绑在推土机上，用电喇叭向着李茉沫喊：“再不下来就把他一起推进房子里去。”我微笑着说：“别做梦了，她不会下来的。”但这次李茉沫却老老实实地从墙头上蹦了下来。
推土机只一下子，房子就不再是房子，如同我的记忆。
拾壹
狂风在建筑群中打转。有些房子被镂空了，不规则的洞呈现在混凝土外墙上，类似某种异物的阴魂。有些长廊像我曾经奔跑过的迷宫，带着时间的坡度而不再有追杀者的踪影，无数个高低不一的窗台上再也没有鳖壳了，空荡荡的犹如被我当年一扫而空。我找了几圈，未见李茉沫的踪影，倒是找到了一个自动贩售机，投币买了一听可乐，一边喝着一边想她到底是怎么离开我的呢？
刚才那个女孩忽然出现在我眼前，说 ：“嗨，我刚才遇到你的朋友了。”
我说：“保安小伙子集合去了。”
“台风要来了。”她走过来，坐在我身边，过了一会儿问我，“你们是来参观这里的吗？”
“我那个朋友说，这里的建筑，有助于我恢复记忆。”我说，“不过中间出了个差错，我们的汽车被人追尾了，然后她就一个人到这里来玩，把我撂在旅馆里。对啦，我忘记告诉你，我是一个历史性的失忆症患者。”
“听上去很酷啊，我以前有个老师也患上了失忆症，傻得什么都记不起来了，后来他们把他送到福利院去了。你知道福利院吧，就是精神病医院。”
“我还好，我记得起来的东西比正常人还多点，可是秩序被打乱了，就像一个人把衣服穿在了脚上，把裤子套在了头上。至于你的老师，我想他应该是赤裸裸的吧。以前他们也把我送到福利院，那儿条件不错，护士有点冷漠。不过她们很快搞清了我不是精神病，又把我放出来了。”
“我觉得你很清醒哎。”
“谢谢。在混乱的边缘，清醒反而是最容易体现出来的品质。”
“那我带你去找你的朋友吧，你在这儿胡转，一准会迷路的。当然，前提是她最好不要迷路。” 我差点就说，当李茉沫迷路的时候她会直接爬到屋顶上去。不过，考虑到刚才保安小伙子对我说的话，我就不宜对她再提起上屋顶的事情了。我想经过了十年时间，李茉沫大约也改掉了这个恶习，至少在和她做爱的一周时间内，我没再见到她爬上屋顶。女孩带着我绕进了一幢教学楼，不过它看起来更像是被正方形的 水泥壳子限制住的蜘蛛巢城。她问我 ：“你觉得这里的建筑怎么样？”我说 ：“还好，反正到目前为止我还没有看到阴茎式的建筑。”
“阴茎？”
“就是八叼。不管你去哪个地方，标志性的建筑永远都是些像八叼一样的玩意儿，高大威猛，纵向地征服着视野，仅仅是因为人类的眼部肌肉不太擅长上下打量。我想所有的建筑师都很矛盾，一方面担心人们患有健忘症，一方面又得提防着人们过于轻易地获得他的作品。不过，八叼式的建筑实在是个没有想象力的办法。”
“至少有秩序，通过这个恢复记忆你觉得如何？”
“八叼式的秩序？”
“唉……”她叹了口气，“你真会胡扯。”
她带着我绕过一个回廊，莫名其妙地就来到了另一幢房子的背后，这房子诡异得很。女孩说，因为是暑假，很多地方都贴了封条，道路反而比较容易选择，否则会更诡异。“看这些砖，都是老砖，从乡下一车一车运上来的，最起码上百吨吧。现在它们又被重新砌在了这里。”
我说 ：“你和刚才那个保安小伙子一样，都很适合做导游。” “他啊，从前也是美院的考生，考试那天鬼使神差跑到宁波的象山镇去了，好不容易给他办了个补考，他又没考上。盘缠都用光了，最后干脆落脚在这儿做保安了。”
“原来如此！”我说，“他好像爱上你了。” “
写了很多情书，像个上世纪的人，连电脑都不会用的家伙，而且是个路盲，哈，考试跑到宁波去了。这样的路盲居然可以做保安，真是不可思议。”女孩指着前面一幢宽大如幕布的房子说，“那是学校的图书馆，我只想让他给我搞来屋顶上的钥匙，这样在毕业之前我就可以去屋顶了。这屋顶性感吗？他们说它充满了欲望。”
“没看出来，无非是像几片朝天放着的瓦片而已。”
“从剖面来看，它是女性性高潮的走势图，有三次高潮，弧形起伏……”
“这个解释太糟糕了。”我说。 “向你学习，八叼式的秩序是你自己说的。”
“好吧。”我也只能这样说了，“问问你，在屋顶上究竟是什么感觉呢？”
很多年以前，李茉沫告诉我 ：“站在屋顶上，天气好的日子里，云是一片一片的，像蓝天上的羊群。我就变成了一个牧云的人，下面的世界就不存在了。”倘若仅仅是因为这个原因，我想不明白，你安安静静地坐在屋顶上即可，何必疯狂地奔跑？李茉沫说 ：“牧人都是要奔跑的，有一些云像羊一样走散了。”这个说法 太浪漫了，我想我还是老老实实做一个失忆症患者吧，幻觉只能使我住到精神病医院去。
拾贰
拆迁之后，那片迷宫式的小巷被推成了平地，剩下几棵百年大树还矗立在废砖乱瓦中，说它们是文物，必须予以保护。整片的瓦砾让人不安，既失去了屋顶也失去了道路，不过，这下它终于四通八达了。
女孩说 ：“在屋顶上，所有的思想都消失了，就这么简单。”
拾叁
台风如巨浪般劈向我们。我记得从前起台风的时候，花盆啦，瓦片啦，衣服啦，都在天上飞着，有时会有整片的窗户被吹出去。那样的日子里即使李茉沫也不会去屋顶上。而我此刻所看到的仅仅是单纯的风，砖都被紧紧地砌在混凝土外墙上，上百个合拢的木制外窗组成一个巨大的外立面，像十七世纪的军舰般劈风斩浪。我太记得那些在风雨中颤抖的建筑了。
年轻的保安捂着帽子向我们跑来。 “喂，喂，”他喊道，“你的朋友上屋顶啦！” 女孩说 ：“什么？你说什么？”
“她跑到图书馆的屋顶上去了！”
我率先向那儿跑去。女孩在身后大声抱怨：“你不是搞不到钥匙吗？人家怎么能上屋顶呢？”保安说：“钥匙在领导那儿，也许她和领导有什么特殊关系呢，我怎么知道？”女孩说 ：“嗨，我也要上去。”保安说：“她 把铁门反锁啦，她把自己锁在了屋顶上。”
“李茉沫！”我在狂奔中大喊。开始下雨了，云中的弹弓将丸子大的雨滴射在我的头顶。 那幢房子比我目测到的更为宽大，到了下面就知道了，它像一个电影院的外壳，由于过于地铺展，使人误以为它是一幢平房。其实不是，它相当高，从我这儿朝屋檐上看，除了雨滴刷刷降落之外什么都看不到。我向后退，继续大喊。
“喊什么啊！”李茉沫站在屋顶的低处，也就是女孩所说的女性性高潮的谷底，居高临下看着我。其实 她也在喊。
“我已经在这儿转了整整一个下午了！”
“想起什么了吗？”
“我在想你是怎么离开我的。”
“车被撞了，我们去修车，在外面喝了很多酒，又开了房间。今天早上我看你还没醒，就自己过来遛。 就这么回事，我不会离开你的。”
“我记得我是被车撞晕过去了。”
“不不，你只是晕过去了一小会儿，后来就醒了，你喝了很多酒，喝醉了还唱了很多小时候的歌。”李茉沫大声地说，“看来你的失忆症还是没好啊。”
“我是说你十年前怎么离开我的！”我在雨中大哭起来。
她不再回答我，缓缓地站起来，向屋顶中间走去，她就像很多年以前一样矫捷，并且迅速地消失了。我喊道 ：“嗨，我想起来啦，你妈妈吃墙粉那会儿，你家的墙壁就和这儿的一模一样呐！”可是她并没有回来。即使是过去的十年，我也没有像现在这样孤独。看不见她了，我只能干着急，绕着房子打转。
女孩说：“我们还得回到原来的地方，在那里可以看到屋顶上。”我们三个又跑回去，风从身后把我吹得快要像风筝一样飘起来。等到我们站定，眺望屋顶，只见一撮小小的人影正站在W形屋顶的坡度上，轻盈地向着最高处奔去。黑色的避雷针直指向天空。
女孩说 ：“真酷啊。”
年轻的保安深情地说 ：“我一定会替你把钥匙搞来的。”
我说 ：“她以前说过，天上的云就像羊群，她要在屋顶上牧云。不过今天的云不太像羊群。”
女孩说 ：“像野马。像一大群野马。”
野马正奔涌在建筑上空，李茉沫站在最高的地方。我的手机响了，是她打过来的。我按下了接听键。她在屋顶上对我说 ：“好好看着啊。看到了吗？想起来了吗？”
“你到底想告诉我什么啊！”我对着手机绝望地说。