CHEN ZHIWEI

GOODBYE, LEMON! I’M GOING TO SEE THE OCEAN WAVES

translated by Qitong Cao, Ana Padilla Fornieles, and Henry Stevens

I lost another lemon. I didn’t know there were so few lemons in the world. Everyday I went to the Lemon Hotel, where the lemons are neatly arranged in tight rows on the fruit rack. I would scratch them with my fingers so excitedly. Ah, they were cold and sweet — do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti. I spun and counted again—doremifasolati. The one lemon my finger randomly fell upon would be the one I would pick up, period! I took that lemon off the fruit rack, gently squeezing it. How hard it was! Whenever I took down a lemon, other lemons would immediately slide down and fill the empty space as if I were playing Tetris. Then all the lemons on the rack would begin to flash — Biiiiiingo! All the lemons before my eyes vanished! I would take my lemon and go to the register to pay. The clerk behind the reception desk owned the Lemon Hotel. He had opened it and built it to resemble a lemon. Every traveler who checked in would get a lemon. A small sign on the edge of the fruit rack full of lemons read, “Gifts! Not for sale!” However, the first floor of the Lemon Hotel looked just like a convenience store, with its penetrating light and air conditioning on full blast. The owner would sit at the register, waiting for you to pay for a room and take a lemon—only one, never more! Pay for one night at the hotel and get a perfect lemon! How wonderful! I put away my lemon. It was my lemon, a sweet and cool lemon. The allure of the lemons lasted a long time, until one day I saw an exhausted traveller, so weary that sweat was steaming from his body. That day, I was picking out a lemon at the Lemon Hotel when he opened the door and came in, wearing an overcoat and dragging his suitcase straight to the front desk. He took off his hat, put it on the receipt printer, and made an enquiry about room fees. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Whoop-whoop-whoop, gah!” the owner said, raising an index finger: one. The hotel charged one coin per night, which is higher than other hotels. Had it not been for the free lemons, I would never have stayed here. For the lemons, however, I was willing to spend that one coin. For the lemons. Just for the lemons. I had never actually stayed in that hotel. The traveler did not look surprised at all and seemed fine with the price. He picked his hat off the counter to reveal a neat stack of coins. “I want to stay for 10 days,” he said, and then he turned and walked towards the dark corridor behind the fruit rack. Just when he was about to disappear down the corridor, the owner turned round and called to him, “Whoa!” He had forgotten to take a lemon. The owner pointed to the fruit rack and said, “Haha.” The traveler pulled the suitcase back to the register, stood in front of the fruit rack, and gazed at the lemons. He contemplated each and finally took one, pinching it. Suddenly I wanted to know what kind of lemon he had chosen. I approached him. He flinched like he had been shocked and put the lemon back on the fruit rack. My God! No one had ever put a lemon back. Incredibly, when he replaced it, the fruit shelf was too neat to tell which one he had put back. “Wow-wow-la?” I asked him. “That one was bitter,” he said casually, randomly taking another lemon down and scrutinizing it. He then seemed satisfied and dragged away his suitcase. After he left, I felt at a loss. I wanted to know which one he had put back, why that one was bitter, and why I had never encountered one single bitter lemon. My finger ran over the lemons repeatedly. The pores on their surfaces felt cool and sweet. None of them were bitter. Which one was it, exactly? I touched a little rough spot and suddenly I felt as if I had cut my finger on a grain of salt. I had found the lemon that the traveler had put back! I took the lemon down. What shocked me was that the lemon was completely bitter on the back side, like the light blue back of the moon. I had never seen lemons like this at the Lemon Hotel. Why did the Lemon Hotel have such an awful lemon? I took another lemon and it was slightly better, but still bitter. I picked up lemons and put them back again, repeating the same motion in bewilderment. It was then that it struck me—I could not find a perfect lemon anywhere. I realized that I had lost one lemon after another. Every time I had taken a lemon, I had lost one. Standing in front of the fruit rack, I felt as forlorn as a dinosaur facing extinction. Finally, I picked out a perfect lemon, cool and sweet like a gust of wind. I cupped it in my hand, gently, and went to the front desk to pay. The hotel owner knew that I had finally chosen a perfect lemon, and there was a look of relief on his face, as if he were happy for me. The second before I pulled out a coin however, my finger touched a rough, bitter dot! Even this flawless lemon had a bitter speck. It felt even more bitter than all the other bitter lemons put together. I looked back at the lemons on the fruit rack. They looked like ice-cold beers on a table—their caps were neatly arranged, the surface of the bottles steaming cold. I wanted to exact revenge on the hotel owner. Why did he sell bitter lemons like that? How could he be so unscrupulous? I took a pistol out of my pocket and shot him. He flew backwards with the sound and knocked over the fruit rack, causing the lemons to pour onto the ground like seawater. Bright yellow lemon juice flew out from his head and spattered all over the wall. I blew the smoke from the muzzle and put the gun back in my pocket, but the owner stood up from the pile of lemons, without a single mark on his head. I did not know whether the wound had healed instantly, or if he was another hotel owner, but that did not stop me from taking the gun out of my pocket and shooting him again. The shot knocked him down and back into the sea of lemons. There were more and more lemons flowing onto the ground, nearly drowning me. The hotel owner kept standing so quickly that I could not shoot fast enough to keep him down. Sometimes three or five of him would get up at once, which exasperated me. Fortunately, other people armed with fruit knives rushed into the store to help me deal with the owner. They must have been travelers who had also been cheated. Yes, we were all victims of the Lemon Hotel. We shook hands. They cut up all the Lemon Hotel owners to pieces. During the course of the brawl, they told me that the hotel owner had done even worse things to them. He would mix lemon soap with the lemons and give them to travelers. Many had taken these lemons and failed to even notice that they were chewing mouthfuls of foam. That made me even angrier, but at that point the lemon tide was rising higher and higher, so much so that I could hardly see any of those who had come to my aid. A lemon wave broke and I could not escape. The helpers were gone by the time I opened my eyes again. I was on a mellow, peaceful lemon beach, dipping my toes in the lemon tide, and the pistol in my hand had turned into a camera. I noticed the hotel owner had become an ordinary tourist, wandering among other tourists and taking pictures of his wife. She looked sad and said to the owner, “I’m going to die right now. Right now! I am here to die, yes… But I know I am beautiful. I hope you can record my beauty. Use your camera. Record the perfect me, the perfect beauty, my beauty…” Before she could finish her sentence, a lemon wave, a lemon wave even larger than the previous one, rolled over her. I hurried to take a few photos. By the time the waves passed, the owner’s wife had disappeared, and the owner was grabbing other tourists’ cameras because he knew that his wife was beautiful and perfect, but the moment when she was swept away by the lemon wave was bitter. That bitterness is just like the tiny bitter spot on a perfect lemon, more bitter than all the bitterness of other lemons combined. I hid behind the owner, secretly staring at my camera. Yes, I also recorded that moment. I do not know how long this battle will last, but I know it is far from over. It is not just my battle with the owner — from now on the battle can only increase in size! I also know we have been ruined by the good taste of that tired traveler who destroyed almost all the lemons in the world. Goodbye, lemon! I want to hide in the waves with just this bitter picture. I want to tell others that the whole world is made up of bitter moments and even suicide is useless. Every night, however, I remember to brush my teeth with sweet, cool lemon toothpaste. After all, it is one of my most cherished childhood memories.