Some research says that people with depression develop a great many attractors in their brains associated with certain fragments of memory. Like whirlpools in an ocean, your thoughts keep circling nearby. They call this state of distraction depression. What interests me more, though, is a hypothesis: suppose there is a whirlpool of memory so very, very vivid that its pull rivals a black hole—what happens to the boats passing by?
This hypothesis played out in me, and so, naturally enough, I became a case of depression in their eyes. I couldn’t escape that whirlpool. I stared into space at work and was constantly drowsy. My colleagues’ words were like a faint breeze over that sea, leaving no trace. They said I needed a psychologist. I kept saying I was fine, fine, fine. Later, my boss came to me and said I was going to be fired. I said I just had a bit of a psychological problem, that seeing a psychologist would take care of it, and asked for two days off while I was at it. (“I promise these two days plus the two days of the weekend will be enough for me to recover, boss. See you Monday.”)
So I had four days to deal with the problem, from Thursday to Sunday.
On the first day, I went to see K. It was during working hours, and he was teaching at school. K was a history teacher, and this lesson was on the destruction of opium at Humen. I don’t know why I went to him first. K was surprised to see me; we hadn’t seen each other in years. I sat in his office. The office was small but spacious, as though K were an ant. I said, “K, I’m ill, but I don’t know why. Can you help me?” Even speaking was difficult for me now. I had to be constantly on guard to keep my tongue from straying into a phenomenological account of that memory. K said, “I have no money left—as you can see, I’m only a history teacher.”
Money! I strained to divert some brain cells away from that memory, because the word seemed to have triggered some keyword. Right, K had been terribly stingy back in school! Money! I’d once managed, with great difficulty, to borrow a large sum from K and hadn’t paid it back! That was why he’d opened with that!
Remembering all this, I felt a little ashamed. I said, “All right—thank you, K.” Then I left without looking back.
That was everything I did on the first day. It was only lunchtime when I left. I’d meant to do something else, but the memory’s effect on me had grown stronger. It really did seem like a black hole eating away at my brain, even beginning to affect my vision. All I could do was sleep.
When I woke in the dead of night, it was already three or four in the morning. On my phone were lots of WeChat messages from K, along with a large money transfer. Money again. The splitting pain in my head started up again. I hurriedly cleared the messages and returned the transfer.
There was a withered iris in the entryway; who knew how long it had been there. I tried to remember when it had been put there, but my head hurt too much. I decided to go downstairs for a walk and throw it away while I was at it. I went out lightly dressed—hoping the cold wind would bite to the bone and draw a little of my attention away from the inside of my head. Money, K, stingy. Money, K, stingy. The destruction of opium at Humen, history teacher. I breathed into my palms and began imagining yesterday’s scene over and over to distract myself. I tried to reconstruct it—but it was too difficult. Every time I thought of K’s face, I would veer back to that memory. I had to sum up yesterday’s scene in brief words to remind myself. But eventually the phrases became a mechanical chant, and my thoughts were dragged back again. I was like a zombie in the predawn streets. At least there was progress, though: before, I hadn’t even been able to control my own tongue.
Day broke. I remembered that I still had three days. I also remembered what K had written to me on WeChat: his wife might be able to help—a psychologist. A psychologist. Ah, yes, every high school had a counseling room and a psychologist. No wonder I’d gone to K first—I’d actually been looking for his wife! I’d simply forgotten. So that day’s business was settled.
The light in the counseling room was warm, but I felt as though my condition had worsened again. I felt like a walking corpse. My eyes wouldn’t connect to my brain, and the boundary between reality and imagination was a little blurred. I’d lost that little bit of progress from yesterday—I couldn’t control my tongue again. I sank primly into the sofa provided specifically for people seeking counseling. K’s wife—the psychologist—was a woman whose age was impossible to tell. I felt I had seen her somewhere before. It wasn’t just her appearance; above all, it was the smell. I knew why my condition had worsened: it was this smell. I had definitely smelled it somewhere before—unfortunately, I couldn’t remember where.
She began to speak, and the sound of her voice made me sleepy. I stared at her glasses. Now things were interesting: my tongue was doing its own talking, my brain its own thinking, my eyes their own seeing. It was a strange and dangerous feeling. I don’t know at what point I became aware of the danger, but I interrupted her and once again walked out of the counseling room without looking back. It wasn’t that I was being rude; it was that my tongue had slipped out of control. Well, to be precise, I didn’t know which side I was controlling. K was waiting anxiously at the door, which surprised me a little. I said, “Nothing’s wrong. M says I’m almost better.” He went into the counseling room, looking doubtful. I hurried out of the school.
On the third day, I went to see K again. It was the weekend, and K came to a café with me. I said, “K, you don’t understand. My illness is incurable! I’m turning into someone else! It’s that damned memory! That black hole—it’s making every part of me stop belonging to me!” K comforted me: “Even if you turn into someone else, you’re still you. As long as no one notices.” I went on: “K, you don’t get it. I figured it out last night! I have to become you!”
K grew wary.
Yesterday, after running out of the school, I’d seen the iris by the gate and remembered that the school where K taught was the one we’d attended. It was strange that nothing in the school had reminded me of this, as though the iris were some kind of token. Or perhaps—my memory was already beginning to go wrong. The black hole was beginning to swallow everything around it.
I said to K, one word at a time, “K, did we both attend the high school where you teach?”
K said yes without hesitation.
At the time, I had been crouching by the school gate and had scooped up a handful of soil. Grains of soil trickled through the gaps between my fingers, and there, in my palm, was an iris. The familiar smell came over me again. I struggled to my feet—I understood everything. Because of money, K had joined forces with M to betray me. M—K’s wife. I realized I’d said her full name without thinking. I was certain I’d had some dealings with her before. A dangerous suspicion took shape in my mind.
I continued: “K, about what’s in this memory—it belongs to you! That’s why it’s affecting me so much—if you don’t take it back, I’ll soon turn into you. But you can’t take it back anymore!”
“Listen, K—I know I’m the fucking history teacher. Don’t you…” My tongue was moving with increasing difficulty. “Don’t you try to fool me. I figured it out yesterday when I left the school. You and your wife, I, I was hypnotized by you…” I really had lost the ability to put words together. But I said this because of the scene that had suddenly flashed through my mind yesterday when I scooped up the soil—M had put the iris in the entryway. M liked irises, and her perfume smelled like them too. But I truly couldn’t remember what she’d come to my place for, so all I could do was assume the worst for now and test the waters.
K stared at me, wide-eyed, unable to speak for a moment. So the two of us looked at each other in silence for a while.
“K, you two came up with a good plan, but I’ve been teaching history for ten-odd years—however full my head gets, there’s still room in it for those few textbooks!” I kept probing. I found I could no longer focus on K’s expression.
“That money…was it that important to you? Important enough to nearly ruin my life!”
To cut a long story short, the next day K and I went to his house. M sat upright on the sofa, looking as though she were the guest in the house. She still gave off that familiar smell of irises.
She hypnotized me again and deleted that memory. And so I got better—it was that simple. But what that memory was, I would never know again (which is why I didn’t write about it earlier). I asked K, but he wouldn’t tell me either. He did pay me back, though.
Back home, I stared blankly at the empty vase in the entryway. Why had M put a flower here? What connection had I ever had with her? Whenever I tried to remember, my head hurt terribly. Until one day, I went to see an old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time, and the very first thing he said was—“Why didn’t M come?”